One Rogue's Journey

Oh boy have I been gone for awhile. Cards on the table, I took a break and I had no intention of coming back. But it called to me, the lich king pulled me crashing into it’s jagged rocks like a siren (I’m a boat in this metaphor, a nice one). I switched servers to rejoin some of my friends that I’ve known for longer than WoW has been around. The guild is full of nice, intelligent players that call me some variation of “that guy with the Warglaive” which I like. I don’t know if there is room for me on their raiding team but I enjoy my time there and despite my desire to raid I won’t step on anyone’s toes or over anyone to get there.
So now I’m back with every intention to update this bad boy as much as possible (with the exception of the week I’ll miss because of the upcoming holiday…what?). It is my overall goal to really make this a place of information and legitimate rogue discussion. Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been..wait..no…stop…I can’t pull that off..my apologies to Mr. Cool J.

So let’s talk about Wrath. Wrath is awesome. Well that was easy, see you next week!

…What? Ow! Ok, ok, stop poking me, that stick is pointy.

Ok, so I’m not going to go into gushing detail about why Wrath is awesome, chances are you already know that but I am going to talk about leveling your little stabber through Northrend. First things first is to pick a starting zone. I personally preferred the Fjord but if you’re a Skinner the Tundra will get you to 450 skinning before you can blink. My advice is to pick one at random and then do them both. The best advice I can give you for leveling is to do enough quests in each zone to get the achievement. Doing this will allow you to have two full zones left by the time you hit 80 which will give you the opportunity to make a ton of money from their quests. The quests in Wrath are (for the most part) fun and cleverly designed allowing for a smooth leveling process. You should still grab Cartographer and LightHeaded to make your life a bit easier though.

Once you decided where to go, you have to decided how to go, and I don’t mean which zeppelin, I mean your talent build. A level talent build has some slight changes from a raiding build. Combat is king for leveling, so here’s a build for a 70 stepping into the frozen North for the first time:
Combat Swords Leveling

The biggest differences you’ll notice are Remorseless Attacks (rogues are all about killing and killing and killing without stopping and that extra 40% to crit really helps things along, especially when you combine it with the Glyph of Sinister Strike) and Unfair Advantage (Since you’ll be soloing mostly as you level the damage from the counter really adds up, especially for a sword rogue).

Now that you have your spec, here’s some quick tips for when you’re out there:

• Use your cooldowns
• Don’t forget your poisons! Poisons are amazing now since they scale with AP! Since the fights are generally quick, I like to use either Instant/Instant or Instant/Wound
• Blade Flurry + Killing Spree = WIN
• Use food. You probably have a bunch of food left over from 70 so use it! There will be new and better food waiting for you at 80.
• Use your elixirs and flasks! Like with food, there are better ones waiting for you at 80 so why not use them to help your leveling along.

Allow me to change directions for a moment (I say for a moment as if I’m going to return to the previous topic, but it’s likely I won’t as I think I’ve said everything necessary for the moment). Tricks of the Trade.

Tricks of the Trade, our neat little “misdirect” like ability that we receive at 75.

Some marcos to help out
This first one assumes you set the tank as your focus.

Simple. Now, if for whatever reason you’re using your focus for something else (I have no idea what) you could use this:

There’s a disadvantage here of losing a bit of white damage with the target switching so I don’t recommend this one.

Now, that’s the obvious way of using the ability to lower your own threat and boost the tanks a bit but let’s look at a different way of using it:

Two rogues using it on each other. If the tank is having no problems keeping threat, this could be a good method for both rogues to eek out some more DPS; 15% more damage for 6 seconds every 30 seconds or ~3% overall to be exact (math below). The rogue would essentially be trading threat so that shouldn’t be an issue unless of course the the extra 15% puts them over the edge (that’s what Vanish is for though, right?)

My quick and dirty math:

Of course is based on a steady DPS which we know doesn’t happen but I believe you’d end up with the same results on a fluctuating DPS. The math was quick and dirty but I think it’s pretty accurate.

Wow, I’ve said a mouthful here. I’m going to duck out and take a nap before that stick-wielder comes back.