The Ambush Everyone Sees Coming

Right now in World of Warcraft in the lower-level battlegrounds there is nothing more imbalanced than the subtlety-specced Rogue. There are a lot of interesting little changes to spice things up in the 10-19 bracket such as resto Shamans with Earth Shield and frost Mages with their elemental pet, but giving a rogue Shadowstep at level 10 is just mind-boggling.

Hearing about the outrage on the forums yesterday, I decided to quick roll a new rogue to test out the allegations. I dinged 10 and joined the WSG queue and immediately noticed how there were few hunters, but more rogues than usual. Immediately I saw why. There was a L10 warlock boldly running alone, and I quickly saw the opportunity to test my damage. Shadowstep - Ambush - crit! - 1-shot kill. I was critting for over 300 damage at level 10 on an undetectable, indefensible opening move.

There were a couple of other rogues L16 and L19 who were dominating. The L19 didn't even bother to stealth much, and after one-shotting any character of their choosing would stay unstealthed and fight packs of enemies until eventually killed. She finished the match 36-10.

So now I have two heirloom daggers with +15 agility enchants and heirloom chest and shoulders, and the heirloom bow. I hit L12 last night, almost 13, and I plan on leveling to about 15 tonight and then going the rest of the way to 20 just in battlegrounds. As long as Blizzard doesn't fix this - and history shows they are very slow to fix class abilities - I should be able to level most of the way to 80 in battlegrounds with my overpowered rogue.

There's a number of things that go into making this ability overpowered. They include:
- Glyph of Ambush increases Ambush range by 5 yards
- Shadowstep range of 25 yards puts you right behind your target, and adds 30% damage to ambush
- 3/3 Improved Ambush increases Ambush crit chance by 60% and damage by 15%
- 3/3 Opportunity increases Ambush damage by 30%

Add it together and the level X9's are one-shotting everything.