A Rogueing We Will Go

The two starter daggers from the legendary quest line for rogues are just so good that even if you do not play your rogue often you have to get them.  Not to mention, a mere 10K gold for them is a steal based on the prices that I see weapons going for on many servers.  Weapons, even 359 ones, are always over 5K so I say go for it.

If you are in a guild like mine or basically any guild that is not so uptight that they are not willing to waste a few minutes on the 4th boss to allow any guild rogues to start the quest even if they are not raiders then you can get every rogue in your guild a nice set of daggers.

You can do many at a time too.  Just pull boss, vanish, wait for reset, pick pocket, bring in next rogue that does the same thing.  Everyone online that wants it can get it in one visit if your guild is willing to take the time to do it.

When we get there we ask if anyone online has an alt rogue that wants to do the quest and let them come in for the pickpocket.  That is how mine got it.  I have never raided on my rogue.  Perhaps a few of the bosses for the wrath weekly raid thing where my inability to play a rogue well would not exactly put a kink in things.

I had a 356 item level before the daggers and a 363 after so they put a nice little boost on my numbers and now I want to gear up my rogue some to match the daggers.

So I took my newly minted combat spec, which I have not been since back at 60, and entered the queue.  I was up to about 13K-15K in assassination before the daggers on boss fights, not as good in combat, usually 11K-13K but now that I had the daggers I really did not have much of a choice.  The boost to combat was so great that I had to roll as combat.

Now remember before you start to laugh at my numbers that I am not a very good rogue.  I could be better but I always get bored with it and have never invested the time into it.  I am sure if I actually put my mind to it I could do fine.  Not great, but at least better then I had been.

Enter the daggers.

Having no additional practice I entered a dungeon.  My daggers are my only thing gemmed and enchanted.  I still have 5 333 pieces, head and shoulders being two of them that are usually large stat items.

After running through the bosses I now consider anything under 20K as I am doing bad.  On some fights where I can basically stand still and pew pew I have been pulling 27K.

Yes, you heard that right, from a max of 13K to a max of 27K with just adding the daggers.

Holy cow do they make a difference.  Even someone that sucks at being a rogue can go medieval on the big baddies now.

The sad part is that on my main, my hunter, mathematically speaking I need to execute perfectly in every way to get 27K.  Now my rogue, in gear 30 item levels under my hunter, can beat my hunter while doing a bastardized rotation while I am learning with no gems and no enchants.  There is something really wrong with this if you ask me.

I know there is more to learning a rotation, but if you ever read my post on How to Teach a Rotation you will notice that I tell people to start slow and when they master that add more to it.  I've just never had the desire to take my own advice with the rogue because I just do not like playing it so any dummy time more then 5 minutes to me feels like wasted time.

I am starting off with just doing sinister strike until 4 points, revealing strike for the fifth and then eviscerate as the finisher.  That is it.  I am using a three button rotation, 2, 3, and 4 respectively, on my binds.  Rupture is 1 and slice and dice is 5.  I will add them once I get a few more runs under my belt in using just the three buttons.

I plan to attempt to get myself at least all 378 gear from heroics this week, if I am lucky with drops that is.  I can only imagine that 30K will not be a problem when I have all 378s and actually have everything gemmed and enchanted.

If you have a rogue and you have access to the 4th boss of DS I suggest you take the time to do the starting quest.  Even if you never get the legendary version, the two weapons are good enough on their own.  Even more so if the character is only an alt for you.  Having an alt that you could do such good DPS on without even thinking is not a bad thing is it?

Being this is the last tier of raiding the 10K for two weapons is a worthwhile expenditure if you ask me.  I know I will not be making these into legendary weapons until we are punting pandas and I come back to farm it but I still like what I got from beginning the quest line at least.

As for the quest, for those that do not know, it is not exactly what I would call easy.  More so for someone like me who, as I have said, is not a very good rogue to begin with.

You will be tasked with sneaking through a city that is swarming with mobs.  Once you get the pattern down getting back there will be no problem.  Took me about 20 tries before I mastered it.

There are a few tricks you can use too if you are not that good at sneaking around.  One is the way I first made it in.  All you need to do it get close enough to sprint into the area where the boss is.  As soon as you get in there you will get ported out because you where seen but now you can mount up and fly back in.  You might get ported back out again that first time flying back in but the second time you will have no problems.

If you ever leave the area, as in zoning to another zone, you will need to rework your way in again.  Just figured I would give you fair notice there.  But like I said, once you have the pattern to getting in there getting back is not so much of a problem.

There is a second way to make it is, a friend told me he did it and it worked.  It is the latency way.  Go to something like you tube and open a few dozen videos and have them all playing, more if you have a great computer, and wait until your latency to crap out and then mount up and fly in.  Take off all your armor first because it is safer if you just release your mount and drop into the area.  Drop, die, come back to rez your body, you are in now without having to sneak though all those mobs.  Make sure you close all those windows after you are in, you do not want to be lagging when fighting this guy for sure.

Tips for fighting Creed:

1) One cast leaves a void zone on the ground.  It can not be interrupted so you should either stun to interrupt it, or start moving as soon as the cast starts.  That will avoid most of the damage.  Moving might be the best idea but stuns work when learning the difference with the casts.
2) One cast you can interrupt, do it every time.  Even if you have to slow DPS to make sure you have energy for the kick, do it.  That hurts, and that drains all your energy.
3) Third is a breath effect, you will never, I repeat never, want to stop this one.  This is the free DPS time for you and wasting a kidney punch on something like that could be the difference between success and failure.  It is easily avoidable and he does not move while casting it so get behind him and do what rogues do best.
4) Play smart with your combo points.  Using them to kidney shot the boss or apply recuperation is usually more important than doing a 5 point finisher.
5) After a few tries you get the feel for how things go and you can mix it up.  Two or three point finishers or recuperates, so you have 1 point available for a kidney shot is sometimes ideal.
6) If you are under geared like I am, and yes, if I had better gear this guy could have very well been a push over, make sure your keep moving.  Heck, even if you are not under geared, keep moving but move smart.  You want to be close enough for the kick when needed.
7) Max out your first aid if you have not, use it if you need too when he is kidney shot, blind, gouged, casting his breath or you can slow him and get some distance.
8) Think at least 8K DPS, because that is what you will need to down him before he enrages, but worry about that after you have gotten good at avoiding all the casts and abilities.  20K DPS is not going to help you here if you are not micromanaging the little stuff.
9) Know your whole toolbox and use it.  You have many abilities that can help here evasion, cloak, combat readiness, deadly throw, etc.  Use them all.
10) Take your time learning the fight.  Watch a video or wipe on it a few times.  Once you get the pattern to managing his abilities down the fight is a piece of cake.  If you need repairs, have someone meet you outside the phased area with a repair bot or mount.  Do not leave the zone unless you feel like sneaking through again.

Short version, keep moving, keep recuperate rolling, kick his energy drain every time, use your whole toolkit to control that bum.

When all is said and done you will have two new awesome daggers to enjoy and rip things up with.  No longer do you need to work for your DPS, it is given to you in the form of two weapons.

I might actually start to like playing my rogue if I get to pull number 1 numbers doing nothing that takes any skill what so ever.  It would be a change of pace from working my ass off trying to stay competitive.

Eh, who am I kidding, I don't like being a rogue, but it sure is nice to have another character I can bring into a raid that can do decent DPS without me even taking the effort to gem, enchant, or gear him up.

If you ask me, the starter weapons for the quest line are way to easy to attain and are way too powerful for starter weapons.  But hell, what do I care.  I got them so I am happy.

Now I am starting to wonder what those looking for raid rogues with the daggers are doing.  While waiting in queue my poisons wore off and I went into a dungeon with no poisons and did 13K on the first mob.  Funny part is, before the daggers I would have thought that was amazing.  With them I said, something is wrong, and noticed I had no poisons on.  I can't wait to get my gear up to level and see what I can do in a LFR.

If you can pull 13K with a bastardized rotation and no poisons in a 5 man then there is no reason for any rogue with the daggers to be pulling less then 25K in 372 item level gear in a 25 man.  I say kick any rogue doing less.  The daggers do all the work, if they are doing less than that, they are not even attacking to let the daggers do all the work. They are AFKing and thinking that no one will notice that doing 15K is actually horrible if you have those daggers.

I think for me at least, that another reason I am liking it at the moment is that it gives me a chance to learn.  I can do my super simple rotation and not be hurting the group while I am learning.

I always put way to much pressure on myself to do the best I can do.  The over powered daggers allow me to play without having to do the best I can do right at the get go and still contribute reasonably well.  It allows me to learn over time as I go.  It allows me to just play and not analyze everything I do.

This could very well turn into the time where I can actively learn my rogue because the pressure to do well is no longer there.  The daggers do all the work.  I can do badly and still do 20K and if looking at the masses in the LFR system as any sort of indicator then a large majority of the WoW player base can't pull 20K anyway, which means I am in a good position all thanks to blizzard giving rogues a free pass at having to work to be good this patch.

The relative ease to get the daggers means that every 85 rogue in game should have them.  There is no reason not to.  Go get yours now, you will not regret it.