Quick Facts

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by frmorrison

Currently this is lackluster talent, since it gives only a 30% chance to not die, and even if it procs, the next attack could kill you.

On the 2.3 PTR, this now has a 33/66/100% chance to proc and now also causes the rogue to take 90% less damage for 3 seconds when the effect triggers. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

Comment by 39921

Hooray for 2.3 change to Cheat Death!!

dot dot dot fear........dot dot dot, about to die, cheat death, 3sec later....dot dot dead.

/shrug ...... oh well :/

Comment by 97383

Love this skill. Its saved me countless times and won me losing victories over countless foes. At first glance I didnt like it but after slipping in and out of BG fights bandaging and returnng to repeat the process its priceless.

Comment by Shuror

As of 2.3.2, this talent is currently bugged and decreases all damage taken by 90%, and then absorbs 90% of the remaining damage.

The result is 99% decreased damage during the 3 seconds.

Edit: This talent was fixed in patch 2.4, and now always provides the correct amount of damage mitigation, 90%.

Comment by faia

Rarly got kiled before the 3 sec run out, so its like 3 sec exstra living when you die.

so basic, 3 sec of haunting

Comment by clavarnway

All I know is when this procs, Rogues are immortal. I just hope I'm alive when it's over so I get honor for my DoT's killing him.

Comment by 15702

this is bull crap

3 secs are good enough to get a heal off them in any arenas. its like a shield wall on warrior (greater shield wall) whenever they are going to die for 3 secs. lvl 60 can kill Illidan

Comment by 129278

I have lost my patience for this talent. As an MS warrior in the arenas when i lose 4 games in a row to subtlety rogues because they are sitting there getting crit by my overpowers and executes for 5-20 damage.... kind of makes you angry. And it isnt just 1 i would sit there whomping on them for a good 5-10 seconds, and they dont die.

Comment by 63180

This talent is screwed up. 99% reduction instead of 90%, hope its getting phixed in the upcoming patch. I stopped to count the times I could have executed these rogues if they didn't have cheat death on em. Gave up the counting at 20...

Comment by 45243

does this work for falling damage, too?

Comment by 78063

Good for those rogues that like to spam emotes before they die.

Comment by 46812

This gets a new animation for the proc in 2.4.

When it procs, it now shows up a purple skull over your head, vanishing after one second or so.

Comment by 65603

Pretty sure this is bugged at the moment, because whenever this procs, I get two buffs that last 8 seconds, and one lasts 3 seconds.

Comment by Khayman

Worth mentioning that the number of subtlety rogues has increased esponentially recently. This and shadowstep are the absolute certainty that none will ever escape you.

Basically a rogue at 1% can unleash death upon it's opponent while being invulnerable. Hope the patch will fix it, but if you ask me it'll still be unbalanced, 90% is kinda a lot anyway.

Comment by 6667

Cheat Death is the alpha&omega signature card of the Sublety tree. It's a talent which shows amazing power in all applications of the game.

For PvP, it's an obvious choice. It gives you more lifetime, more chance to bring the enemy down before you are killed.

For Raiding, it has an amazing use though: It makes you ~invincible. Since a boss is unlikely to get a deathshot on you more than once every 2-3 minutes, and you mitigate that with Cheat Death, you can be quite relaxed on dodging some bossabilities, and still come out unscratched.
It doesn't substitute for a quick eye and a ready mind, but remember: Dead Rogues have 0 DPS. Remember that before you calculate in the DPS-loss from speccing Sub ;)

Comment by 122037

IMHO Cheat Death needs to be buffed lol, weshould get a bonus 10000000k healing while in cheat death so renew ticks for our health and more :D just jokes, saved me countless fights, and ive killed probly more people in those 3seconds then the X-amount of seconds with BF / AR going :D

Comment by Anundir

i've played a rogue for 2 years and when the burning crusade came out, i retired it due to this talent. rogues took skill to play back in the day, now it's a 100% noob class, rogues never needed a talent like this, they really need to get rid of this imo.

Comment by 132195

Cheat death doesnt work if you're drowning :(

Comment by 132869

does it proc when you well jump from your flying mount from very very high things....maybe a flying mount ?

Comment by DrinkFloridaOJ

You have a 100% chance to completely avoid any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you and reduce all damage taken by 90% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

l2read.. fall damage and drowning aren't attacks.

Comment by JamesR

Unless you're willing to consider the fact this guy is attacking himself with his own stupidity.

Comment by Anundir

if rogues only viability is to go noobstep/hemo. Taking away rogues most signature move "backstab/daggers" and making it not as good as swords in pvp is retarded, people don't roll rogues to use swords, thats what warriors are for, and heck if u want to use fist weapons or axes you can roll an enhancement shaman (warriors can use these as well). Why don't they just take out all the daggers in the game that are for melee. Cheat death should be a lvl 70 skill bought at the rogue trainer, so daggers would have a little bit more viability.

Comment by Halliwell

Seems broken atm... Or is it just me? Often I feel like I die straight after the animation... And thus not " completely avoid any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you and reduce all damage taken by 90% for 3 sec" - I dont know if it's just me or it really is bugged? Feedback would be lovely :)

Comment by 149277

The talent negates a killing blow first of all, then it then reduces all damage by 90%... thats probably before mitigation, I don't know. I know that while I can NOT be one-shotted I can be two shotted, happens all the time in PVE and PVP. Its just not easy to do. This talent doesn't make a rogue unstoppable by any means. The reason most rogues seem so hard to kill is as soon as we see that skull we pop evasion AND cloak of shadows at the same time and try to sprint away from whatever is attacking us. Like an above poster said, back up, throw a dot on us and count to three.

Comment by 112089

This talent is rather annoying in a rogue vs rogue fight...as soon as that skull appears it's vanish time!
And then what is the other rogue to do? Too late your stun locked for the next 5-10 seconds more then enough time to get through your Cheat death. Best advice is as soon as you see his skull vanish...

also this talent is great in AV. whenever fighting Galv or Drek and he does his whirlwind attack, this will proc and i'm only a little under my halfway mark so it keeps me going to live a bit longer. (i like to stunlock/dodge tank galv ^_^)

Comment by Sandos

Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

/points at rogues
/laugh

Comment by 167081

I don't know why people complained about "Cheat Death". Any class can really get through this easily. All you got to do is be smart and put DoTs on the rogue or bleeds and it will do the same ammount of damage as it normaly would if the "Cheat Death" was not even happening.

Comment by 167081

That is not true....When fighting Rogue on Rogue they use Rupture for 2 reasons. 1 so they can't Vanish and 2 for Cheat Death because if you put Rupture before Cheat Death happens then is will deal same ammount of damage same goes for Warrior bleeds and such.

Comment by 174466

Probably the best patch rogues got this whole year.

Comment by makron

Also a PvE nerf. Previously, if rogue pulled aggro from tank, or tank died, rogue could be one shotted, but due to this talent, he was usualy left unharmed, after 3s he just popped evasion, and could tank for a while. This could save from wipe...
Now first shot got on 10% and second can still gib, not good :).

Comment by 139666

I cry a tear of sadness that cheat death is nerfed with the resilience factor. LOL!

Comment by sillyrabbit

honestly, who cares? rogues suck at everything besides pvp, might as well let the little nooblets have what fun they can while playing the most annoying class in the game.

Comment by tom226

In my opinion this is NOT ment to make you unbeatable but is to give you a chanse to run or vanish 3 secs aint much time to do a lot of DMG so you best vanish

Comment by 1771

worksagainst hazardous areas (lava, gas clouds)

Comment by 156183

does anyone know the exact formula to figure the effect of resilience on this spell?

Comment by 154897

How Much Resilience do u need at lvl 80 to procs and works the best?
Or how is it modified by resilience?

Comment by sandrat

The above post is excellent as well as the previous one. Only thing I would have to add is that you don't need to get your resilience that high since no one will be doing 20k dmg in 3seconds in pvp.

A good number to shoot for is about 750 resilience or around 75% absorbed which turns out to about 15k dmg. Maybe less depending on what you focus on (2v2, 3v3, 5v5 or BGs)

Comment by 169059

I have a small question I want to pose. If an all PvE rogue, meaning no to minimal resilience, as of 3.1 was to have this talent, how would it fair against a Hateful Strike from Patchwerk? I recently read this and discussed it with my guilds tanks. If the attack can land 86k BEFORE armor then is reduced by armor and other means then again by the Cheat Death talent it would be helpful.

The situation being the tank made to take the strikes doesnt get healed in time and dies so the rogue being next on threat from not fienting will take the hit. Cheat Death procs and reduces them to 10%, which for many rogues ive seen would be about 2k. a quick chain heal or circle and they are able to take only about 5k a hateful for a few seconds while the tank gets revived by a druid and healed up to spec.

One of our top rogues would only take on average about 55k from a hateful when one slipped and he was not sub so wouldnt have this talent. If it really did work out then this would be a nice emergency buffer in 10 man where losing either tank spells death for the raid.

Comment by 340836

Can anyone besides me imagine the WMV's of Rogues with this showing it off to the song "Time of dying" by Three Days Grace?

Comment by 362919

Lol I like how you kept saying assass.. it made me laugh

Comment by 325248

what if youre below 10% health and Cheat Death procs
are u healed then up to 10% health

Comment by Tsychiya

PVP (3.2.2)
I find this talent helpful in PVP. There have been a few times where I'm sprinting away at low health while a class (cough Paladin) hits me with an ability that would have killed me (cough Hammer). This talent has helped me run away and restealth allowing me to come back.

PVE (raids)
I tried respecing to sub to dps raids... I got all the maximizing talents/glphys along side of cheat death hoping that cheat death would hep me during those times when I'm 1 shoted by bosses (ie TOGC animal charge, ony breath, WW's etc..) . Although dead rogue = 0 dps, the dps I was producing in the sub tree was significantly lower than mutilate, and usually when you know the fights, your not likely to be 1 shotted. But i liked the fact that I could have this passive talent just in case.. But the dps of the subtly tree is not worth it.

Comment by woa12

Never Ever try to cheat death...

Comment by 581826

Every time i defeat a Paladin because of that talent, and he starts whining, I remind him how he used bubble the same fight before i giggle silently in front of the monitor.

Comment by 334676

Is this no longer resil dependent? It seems its not in the cata talent tree/tooltip.

Comment by Felfaadaern

This talent can be a huge pve dps gain, because - face it - your dps sucks when you're dead :P

Comment by parazyte

worksagainst hazardous areas (lava, gas clouds)

Learn how NOT to stand in the fire.

Comment by parazyte

I hope moderators clean up this thread with all comments about Resilience.

This talent has NOTHING to do with resilience any more.

Comment by 449877

As of 4.0.6, Cheat Death now works correctly against Chaos Bolt.

From the patch notes: "Cheat Death was activating by a warlock's Chaos Bolt but not working. Chaos Bolt will still trigger Cheat Death, but will not kill the rogue."

Comment by 855064

If you're trying to track this proc or it's internal cooldown (90 seconds), the proc name is Cheating Death. This talent is useful, but not reliable. It's great against casters or any class that deals in large damage that comes at you in chunks. Note that it says "reduce you to 10% of your maximum health." It does NOT heal you. It just prevents you from dying from one particular swing or spell cast. That means that a big hit can bring you down to 500 health, the next auto attack procs Cheat Death, but you stay at 500 health, just now you have an 80% damage reduction for 3 seconds. Well, big whoop, the next windfury weapon to the face takes you out.

It's not all bad, though. If you get deep freezed at ~15-25% health, there's a solid chance you'll proc cheat death and have CD eat the whole thing.

Comment by Magnatross

When it procs the flashy lights mean that the rogue's life is flashing before their eyes

Comment by Mormolyce

There is now a "Cheated Death" debuff that appears when the ability is "on cooldown" like a Mage's Cauterized debuff. Pretty handy.

Comment by 299060

Hotfix (2012-09-14): "Cheat Death can now only absorb up to twice the rogue's maximum health."

Comment by 827371

This talent is INSANELY useful, no matter what anyone says. It's basically 3 seconds of self-triggering invincibility every 90 seconds.

If you're leveling on a PvP server this thing can be hilarious. I can't even count the number of times a 90 swooped by to kill me (while I was a lowbie) and failed completely - because of this thing.

What this skill also means is nothing can ever kill you in one shot, so if you're quick with your Vanish and Sprint, you can escape from 90's ganking you like a baws. Saved me so many corpse runs along the way.

To add to it, it's amazing in any form of PvP, if you get nuked down it gives you just enough time to comfortably prep+vanish+cloak again, as well as really annoying players thinking they can just use an execute move on you when you're low and that's it.

I could rant on forever, but I love this skill, I've had so many 90's make another toon just to whisper me and ask how I survived their 100k crit at level 40, and I've won so many duels just because of this buying me enough time.

Comment by Sarhion

"To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together; I know we can discover the secret."

Comment by Neffi

Applies the following aura, for people looking to create triggers in their favorite addons: Cheating Death.

Comment by Thottbot

goes uner your combat log as having absorbed the attack.

Comment by Thottbot

that makes sense, because if it didnt then if a warrior used overpower to kill you and this occured it would contradict eachother hehehehe

Comment by Thottbot

does this just have a chance to proc off of any hit or does it make you practically invincible?

Comment by Thottbot

You have a 100% chance to completely avoid any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you and reduce all damage taken by 90% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

You can clearly see it says "any damaging ATTACK".

When you land from a high jump i dont think it's considered that the ground is attacking you... altho it makes sense... you are just happily falling and that stupid earth stands in your way

Comment by Thottbot

I love this. I'm a big PvPer and it always gives me that one sec that allows me to get my Eviserate off for the kill. Or a vanish...

Comment by Thottbot

hahah yeah it doesnt count for falling i tried it lolz. its a sick ass move thoe...good with execute or hammer of wrath.

Comment by Thottbot

Right, this is OP because no other class has abilities to save themselves from dying when they're low on health...

shut up and l2p.

Comment by Thottbot

Most OP bull$%^& spell ever. Mostly because it doesn't function as it should. Blizzard has stated that they know it's doing 99% reduction after the initial hit, and don't intend to change it.

Comment by Thottbot

My view on this is... well, the best way to go about this is comparison.
Ok, rogues essentially get a 3 second bubble at the end of our life bar... really, the ones who should be complaining are the mages, as usually their half-health-bar casts are the ones that should kill us. It just fizzles and we run at them while they begin to sweat.

I was fighting a pally recently... Yeah, I can hear your groans from here, I'll keep it brief. During our battle, he bubbled twice, healing himself up to full each time and continued to attack me with the time he had left, and in between bubbles, he instant-full-healed once.
Working my way through his health bar for the fourth time- no exaggeration- was when I died.
Before you complain about how I was able to work my way through 3.8 health bars of his, know that he was a few levels lower than I.

Please, people, don't complain about this. If a rogue uses those three seconds to vanish, remember that he could have done that at any point in the battle. He could have eviscerated, he could have cheap shotted, etc. at any time. The extra three seconds just means that you have to wait to take him down the remaining 5-20% of his health.

I may not be a very experienced rogue, but for the time that I had this skill, I can honestly say that it never really came in handy. I had those three seconds, but usually I was so bogged down by players that I wouldn't have a way out anyway, and I just had to accept my death.

And for the warriors, I know where you're coming from. I've played a level 70 warrior on a friend's account, only to do very badly- I didn't know how to handle it, and noticed a complete lack of escape options. Just remember that we rogues specialize in escape, so the three seconds at the end of our health bar is a bit of an appeal to that.

Comment by Thottbot

how do you get this and when?

Comment by Thottbot

Playing 2 casters and a pally, this is almost as bad as COS.

IMO; this needs to be clicked

Comment by Thottbot

I read people saying this rogue skill is OP because the rogue can get 90% less damage when hes about to die. When a paladin can bubble and heal himself completely when he has tons of people on him not to mention he has more than one bubble. Same goes for warlocks who can fear and drain your life, every class has its advantages agaisnt another and weaknesses agaisnt others. So people who say rogues are OP because of that need to learn how to play

Comment by Thottbot

Try to be civil, if you must comment.
FYI, this effect is only for 3 seconds, so tell me how many spells can be cast by a Pally in 3 seconds, that would heal and bubble, etc. As well as if there is a DoT on the rogue, this spell doesn't stop it, just reduces it's effect for 1 or two ticks. This is just an escape clause, people, not an OP. Anyone sending a serious attack towards the rogue will prolly end up killing the guy as he tries to run.....
my 2 cp.

Comment by Thottbot

Just to say I am not moaning at rogues. This is about play balance. My main is a mage and I PvP alot and I am getting a bit sick of pouring damage into something that can kill me in about 4 hits and wont die!

When bliz named this skill why did they put "death" in the name, they should have just called it Cheat. At least if rogues must get the Cheat skill surely it should be a button.

Mages get minimal health, they are crippled by stupidly long cooldowns and mana costs, no strength, no armour and their "all powerful" spells are useless against someone that can stunlock about 50 different ways and then simply not die whilst they dps you. Rogues don't run when the cheat talent kicks in they nail in a few more Xk crits. Running is almost always futile in the bg. It usually comes down to 1v1 (or 1v2 if you are fighting a hunter, another issue).

Rogues get more armour than mages more health and do more damage, no mana cost (spare me the energy bar bs, its a joke)...why do they need to be unkillable as well? Why did blizz pick rogues and say "you shall be unkillable"? Is it because wow is a product and they tally up the most popular class in the bg and say "you get this cool stuff, go for the poor guys wearing dressing gowns. They can kill you in about half an hour so be careful".

Pallys get the bubble and its unfair in the same way. Being invulnerable AND being able to cause damage (and heal) at the same time? Where is the play balance in that? The Cheat skill in rogues is worse than the pally bubble though, the latter you have to toggle and pallys can not dps like a rogue.

For def mages can freeze (which allows the target to keep fighting) or poly WHICH GIVES HEALTH BACK or ice-block which lets everyone gather round: exactly what a mage DOESNT WANT. Hello blizz, helllooooooo! My point is there is play balance in those spells. There should be price for being invulnerable.

I tell you rogues are not stupid. This is not a swipe at them. The idiots are the mages (and locks), like me, that queue up to get cut up by an invulnerable dps machine. Although, killing a rogue (when against all the odds I can do it) is great because you know you have won an uneven fight.

And please remember my fellow gamers this is a discussion forum and my comment was about play balance not an invitation for special-needs cases to shout "noob!" :)

Comment by Thottbot

Ok, I've been playing a rogue for a while now, and people are freaking out about this skill a little too much, in my opinion.

That 3 seconds of reduced damage we get goes incredibly fast during a point that we're pretty low on health to begin with. All this skill does is gives us an extra 3 seconds to kill whatever we're fighting before it kills us anyway. If the 3 seconds wears off, whatever we're fighting will kill us with the next attack anyway.

Maybe this is just because I haven't done any pvp'ing with this skill yet, but in pve it usually just means I'm dying a few seconds later than I would have. It seems to me tht in pvp, if this skill causes you to die instead of the rogue, that it was a close fight to begin with and you would've died shortly after anyway.

I realize it's easy to see how godly this ability is if you haven't experienced its use, but I promise it's not.

Comment by Thottbot

i think that this skill only gets a bad rap because its name is cheat death.

Comment by Thottbot

and if this gets nerfed in the new patch then im just gonna start sapping everything nonstop

Comment by Thottbot

Echoclaw, u better start sapping lots of people cuz this gets a nerf/balancing now:

"You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead reduce you to 10% of your maximum health.
In addition, all damage taken will be reduced by up to 90% for 3 seconds (modified by Resilience). This effect cannot occur more than once per minute."

If u are above 10% hp and get "killed" this will put u down to 10%. Although, if u are below 10% hp and get "killed", this will act just like before, completely avoiding that attack.
I don't know how that Resilience thingy works though. If it has 0% reduction in the beginning without Resilience, then it kinda sucks for us who are still leveling and haven't aquired any Resilience yet :(

But we get alot of love in WOTLK anyway ^^

Comment by Thottbot

I fought a rouge on my shammy (level 50-something), I got a windfury triple crit of: 1, 3, and 200-something.

Back then, I didn't know what cheat death was. But I still managed to kill the rouge so I didn't question it.

Comment by Thottbot

hey, I wondered is this that giant purple skull that appears above peoples head and then makes a quick flash (really big flash)and then disappears?, or this aint have an animation?

Comment by Thottbot

im a rogue sense pre bc i liked it at first but when i used it its just not the best i wanna use those 3 points for somthing better WHEN it procs its like getting hit by a car just shoot me cus im ganna die fudge that move

Comment by Thottbot

this isnt always the best idea of a talent ive seen....BUT it does have possible, however unlikely times where it is really worth it
i was i warsong gulch... fighting a shadow preist, we were neck and neck, i got a 5 point rupture on him before he schicic screamed and started to run away...he died and w was almost dead with a devouring plague on me. i had one second left on the plague...but with 100 health, it ticked..and cheat death poped, saving me

sometimes...it's really good!

Links

Cheat Death

Cheat Death

Talent

An attack that would otherwise be fatal will instead reduce you to no less than 10% of your maximum health, and damage taken will be reduced by 85% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 90 seconds.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect

Apply Aura: Absorb Damage (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Physical, Shadow)
Value: 10000000
PVP Multiplier: 1

Flags

Is Ability
Passive spell
Instant Target Procs
Absorb Cannot Be Ignore

Cheat Death

Buff

Spell Details

Related

Contribute