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Feint

Feint
20 Energy
Instant
Requires Rogue
Requires level 44

Performs an evasive maneuver, reducing damage taken from area-of-effect attacks by 50% for 5 sec.

Buff

Spell Details

Duration

5 seconds

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

20 Energy

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1 second

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Mod AoE Damage Taken % (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Physical, Shadow)
Value: -50%

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Mod % Damage Taken (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Physical, Shadow)

Flags

Guides

Raid and Class
cooldown list.

Rogue DPS Guide (Assassination,
Combat, Subtlety)

Rogue PvE
compendium - the
do's and dont's

Comments

Comment by Willismaru

Be aware that rogues have a passive -20% threat modifier.

Comment by Sebas

SPAM THIS when you're DPS-ing in a raid...if you overaggro everyone will get mad of you and you'll be dead in a blink of the eye.

Comment by phylen

Learn to vanish imo. Feint is not that useful and used rarely especially encounters in NAXX. The encounters in NAXX are not threat sensitive.

Comment by akirabrewer

Feint is used but not as much as Feign Death and Vanish, those eliminate all ur aggro from you. Feint only eliminates very little of your aggro, which isnt good since rogues have mad DPS skills.
You can use this but it isnt as great as Vanish.

Comment by DJTyrant

You no longer need the book from AQ20 to get this skill, it is now trainable at rogue trainers.

Comment by Sebas

the problem with vanish is that is has a long cooldown and may not always be avaliable.....and why bother mentioning feign death?

Comment by Hyde

I use this on my 24 rogue to get rid of threat while we have a tank. I will start with an ambush and since Im specced that way i usually hit for 350+. I get most aggro and then I just feint to bring it to someone else while I spam backstab.

Comment by barfield

Feint lvl 6 lowers threat by about 1050 points of normalized damage.
Rogue only get 80% threat from damage so one feint allows you to do about 1300 damage.
However you only take agro when your over 110% of tank threat so these threat points lost will not help a lot after a few minutes of a fight.

So either
use it early not to pick agro to fast
use it often when your close to picking agro
use vanish to completely reset agro

Comment by JyL1

With this ability, rogues should never be taking aggro in dungeon/raid situations, a much better threat dump than fade and can be used much faster than Feign Death.
The talent Sleight of Hand will negate an additional 105 damage points per talent point, totaling 210 damage negated per cast.

Comment by coyote72

This ability doesn't work. When I use it on a mob, sapped or not, it draws mass aggro. And breaks the sap.

Comment by Jediah

That's 2000 more damage that I've overcome in 1 SECOND. NOT worth the 20 energy spent. You will overcome it, and if you're doing that badly that you are pulling aggro from the tank, then you will be doing 0 DPS. Because you will be dead.

Plus, after more research, apparently I was incorrect. Feint is modified as well by the rogue's inherent threat reduction and threat reduced by spells. So, you only are only reducing your threat by 1050 damage under all conditions. About two auto attacks.

Care to tell me how many autoattacks you do in 10 seconds?

If the tank is limited with threat from the beginning, feint WILL NOT HELP YOU. Neither will vanish in that situation. I'm willing to bet all my gold that a better tank is your best solution.

If you are not a terribad rogue, and you are fighting something that isn't bleed immune, then you should never worry about threat if your tank is worth the gold spent for the repair bill. All of our best finishers (SnD and Rupture) spread the increased threat over time, which means you should not be overcoming rapidly any threat generated by your tank. If you are forced to use eviscerate as a finisher, then it is possible that you might get spikes in threat. However, eviscerate rarely does worth its salt in damage, so it shouldn't be a problem either.

If you reach the threat cap, what will using this spell do? Absolutely nothing worth while. You'll still have to deal with being threat capped. It's quite possible that this will be the only spell you can use; I might give you that one. However, those type of fights are no where near the majority. For the majority of boss fights in the game, feint should not be on your toolbar. It's a waste of a global cooldown. Besides, even on threat sensitive fights, you will get more DPS out of your 20 energy by using something else, especially as you escalate in gear.

And need I remind you that this spell gets worse and worse as you get better gear? I shouldn't, but it appears that I'm going to have to.

Moral of the story: if you are worrying about threat, this spell is not the answer. A new tank is. Either that, or learn to not jump in with DPS from the getgo; a rogue's goal should not be to top the damage charts, but to kill the friggin' boss, so if a delay is needed for threat to be gained, by god, give the tank time!

EDIT: Oh, and in the scenario that you mentioned, you are correct: vanishing from the start is a waste. However, vanishing early (such as 1-2 minutes in) then vanishing again once the cooldown is up should give you plenty of aggro management in a fight such as that.

Comment by noselasd

I assume this lowers threat by a static amount.
How much ?

Comment by Vashar

Simply makes the target forget the last 1050 dmg you did to it, since it's affected by threat modifiers.

Comment by helmers

Keep in mind that when fighting in melee you need 10% more threat than the tank to get aggro. He will need to surpass you by 10% to take it back.

This means: Use Feint BEFORE getting aggro. Threat meters like Omen and KTL will let you know when the time is right.

Managing threat is a key part of being a good DPSer. Be awesome, use Feint when necessary!

Comment by DarkShade

More of double aggro reduction that the highest Feint rank at level 70 (Rank 6)

Comment by paminen

Do not use Feint. Take this skill off your bar.

Rogues have a 0.71x threat modifier. This modifier affects anything a rogue does that changes his threat, mostly the damage dealing, but also the threat removed by Feint. This means that Feint doesn't actually remove 1050 threat like it says above, but 745 threat.

But that's not all! Almost always, you will have blessing of salvation on in a raid. The only reason you wouldn't is if there were no paladins: It's our most useful paladin blessing, and gives you a 0.7x threat modifier. This further reduces our threat generation, stacking with our base modifier - which also affects Feint. That means that with salv, Feint will take away a grand total of 522 threat.

Let's say you do 1500 dps. Adding in the modifiers from being a rogue and from salv, you produce 597 threat per second.

At 1500 dps, feint removes about one second's worth of threat for 1/5th of your energy. With how precious your energy is this is not a good tradeoff.

As you get stronger it scales even worse. Let's say you do 2000 dps now. That's 994 threat per second. Feint now removes a little more than half a second's worth of threat.

The only time a rogue should be using Feint is on Bloodboil, if he's not too sure of his tank's capabilities (and even then, you'll probably have a tranquil air totem). Otherwise, a well-timed Vanish will take care of any threat issues you might have.

Comment by eschatapapa

"Real rogues don't feint." -Lonika Stillblade

Comment by murolith

Also about half as useful since rogues do three times the DPS at 80 than 70. I honestly didn't think they'd make feint even WORSE, but they have.

Want advice? Take the ability off your bar, pay attention to your threat, and if you're about to pull, Vanish. (Or if you're a NELF, Shadowmeld then Vanish..it's not really more useful, but it's fun.)

Comment by Gfaded

yes rogues will be putting out way more dmg then before and yes they can vanish but lets say you can pull aggro before that 5 min cooldown is up this is still worth useing cus the more threat between you and the tank means more dmg you can put out in that time blizzard put it in the game for a reason im gonna use it for sure

Comment by karti

good bye feint,
hello tricks of the trade..

6 seconds of aggro-free dps every 30 seconds + increasing tank-aggro beats any feint hands down..

edit:
this was back then, when archa and naxx were high-end.
raiding icc, i have feint on cooldown pretty much all the time:

wheter trash exploding on death, (and being bombed, there are multiple explosions in short time)
marrowgar bone-storming,
festergut gas,
rotface blobs' aura,
putricide blobs' AoE..

..feint on cooldown.

oh yeah - forget the aggro reduction part.
2T10 makes you even forget what aggro is ^^

Comment by Eremes

Was using feign to get Deeprun Tram Rats to attack me for fun and found out that i can proc poison with it. Just something funny about this ability.

Comment by Kryptyx

As of PTR Patch 3.08, it reduces the damage you take from area of effect attacks by 50%

Comment by Linithia

I could see the AOE reduction being very useful. Good job on making Feint useful now!

Comment by Factsfountain

Fun to use on critters as it sends them running in random directions.

Comment by Draggo

Wait now i need to put feint back on my action bar. haha :D

Comment by Xaith

The new effect of Feint is such a blast!
It helps on encounters like Loken (Lightning Nova), Jedoga Shadowseeker (Cyclone Strike, should you fail to outrun it), Slad'ran (Poison Nova) and many trash mobs.
Not only does it help on regular AoE spells, it also lowers damage from spells that hit multiple targets like Shadow Bolt Volley or Chain Lightning.

It's still on a 10 second cooldown, while having a 6 second duration.
I don't use it as a threat dump anymore, since Tricks of the Trade is more than sufficient, but since 3.0.8 I have it back on my action bars.

Comment by amythe

Such an underused skill. Use this anytime you have a big AoE fight. Use this when you're fighting Grobbulus and your group drops a bomb under you, or when the offtank is too inept to grab slimes.

Comment by theakismaniac

best counter for bladestorm there is

Comment by Spinnacer

Proper use of feint is one of the things that separates good rogues from bad rogues.

Comment by Rogabr

What about Heart strike? its actually considered a AOE Attack since the cleave implemention and proof of this can be found if you attempt to cleave strike Treants, they take next to nothing, Could feint possibly decrease the damage from heartstrike by 50%?

Comment by ajpursell

With the 50% aoe damage reduction, it got useful again.

Comment by Frizy

Very useful for XT-002 Deconstructor during his tantrums. One less person to heal for the healers.

Comment by doomooman

Hey, does this work against the ret pally's divine storm?

Comment by cjm336

if used in conjunction with Tricks of the Trade, will feint Reduce the aggro of the redirected target?

Comment by elsinne

Thanks for the tips. It looks like Feint won't do the trick until level 78 (I am 71) but I will keep it in mind, as well as the usage of Cloak of Shadows and Dodge.

Comment by Uxus

Does feint works in PvP like Feint Death on Hunters?

Comment by audiogarden21

Hmmmmm.... This seems like a really nice ability for a Subtlety rogue coupled with Enveloping Shadows and Glyph of Feint.

Feint, at the time of writing this is worded as:

Feint
20 Energy Melee Range
10 sec cooldown
Performs a feint, causing no damage but lowering your threat by 5%, making the enemy less likely to attack you. In addition, reduces the damage you take from area of effect attacks by 50% for 6 sec.

EoShadows increases the duration from 6 to 9 seconds, giving it a 90% up time if used on cooldown, and the glyph removes the energy cost entirely, making it quite spam-able.

Going by the wording of both Feint and Enveloping Shadows, it's hard to say whether or not they are additive or multiplicative without testing (account inactive). If it's the former, then you have nearly a permanent 65% (30% of 50%) reduction to AoE attacks, and if it's the latter then it bumps up to 80%. Either way, 30% of that is permanent with EoShadows and that's an incredible reduction to the amount of healing required during heavy AoE fights.

It's also unknown by me whether or not they stack at all, but considering that they added a bonus to Feint on EoShadows tells me that they do indeed stack to some degree, otherwise what would be the point? If they do not however work in tandem at all, please feel free to ignore this post entirely.

EDIT

After thinking about it more, it could also work out to be only 45% with EoShadows + Feint active. Since EoShadows is a permanent effect, being 30%, and Feint adding a reduction to what's already available, thus increasing your permanent 30% by 50%, totaling 45%. Who knows? Perhaps when I buy Cataclysm this weekend I'll be able to test it out on my Rogue and report back.

Comment by I3rawler

First thing I thought about the AoE-effect on this: Quite useful in Deadmines heroic, for example - and other cata heroics ofc.

Comment by Zabfromdurotan

It separates good rogues from dead rogues too =)

Comment by Alexianoryuu

I find it very interesting that Feint now has no cooldown, costs 20 energy, can be used while stealth and does not break it, and can reduce all damage by 30% (AoE therefore by 80%, lest it be multiplicative then it is 65%) when adding in the talent Elusiveness.
This makes it very much usable in all fights (inc. trash) and can also be used a bit more frequently during elongated AoE boss abilities to help with survivability in all conditions - just make sure you have enough energy to use it.

Comment by Kanariya

Feint no longer reduces threat as of Patch 5.0.4.

Comment by Yakeshi

Great for tricking people into thinking you went into a portal you didn't, due to the sound effects being the same. The animation also may throw them off, if they have their sound off. Simply Feint while running towards a portal then hit stealth!

Comment by Phasha

Here is a fun macro I recently devised after 6.0 launch. It combines 4 abilities, Stealth, Sap, Vanish, and Feint, into one button:

#showtooltip
/cast Vanish; Sap; Stealth
/cast Feint

How to use:

Press the macro:
1) If you are out of combat, not stealthed => Stealth
2) If you are out of combat, stealthed => Sap
3) If you are in combat, not stealthed => Feint

Press alt key + the macro:
1) Cast Vanish

Feel free to leave any comments and feedback on how you like it. =D

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