A Quick & Dirty 3.3 Guide For 5-Man Rogue Gear

Post soundtrack:  “Daughters” by John Mayer

I’ve been getting Ringle geared up with an eye to sneaking her into Icecrown to get rep for the leatherworking and blacksmithing patterns.  To do this, it’s been necessary to get her geared up from her sub-Naxx level of gear to something more contemporary.

Cue the Looking For Dungeon tool, and a substantial number of pugs.  Oh, and 25 pugs later, cue the been-there-pugged-that pet pug.

What it comes down to is this: provided you can put out a modicum of dps you shouldn’t have any problems gearing up to have a fighting chance in 10-man Icecrown.  (I’m working on the assumption that the rogue being geared up is specced mutilate, mostly because that’s how I’m playing Ringle but also because it’s so much fun!)

Starting Out

All you need to start with is some cheap crafted and BoE gear, such as the list below.  NB: Crafted PvP gear is acceptable when starting out, but those pieces will be at the top of your to-be-replaced list.

Head: Ryft’s Deathgaze or Eviscerator’s Facemask
Neck: Emerald Choker
Shoulders: Eviscerator’s Shoulderpads (or Trollwoven Spaulders)
Back: Ice Striker’s Cloak
Chest: Dark Arctic Chestpiece
Wrist: Eviscerator’s Bindings
Gloves: Seafoam Gauntlets
Belt: Eviscerator’s Waistguard
Legs: Leggings of Visceral Strikes
Boots: Jormscale Footpads
Rings:  Shadowmight Ring and Ring of Scarlet Shadows
Trinkets: Darkmoon Card: Death and Darkmoon Card: Berserker!
Mainhand: Titansteel Shanker or Namlak’s Supermumerary Sticker
Offhand: Librarian’s Paper Cutter
Ranged: Tracker’s Balanced Knives

As an aid, here’s links to WowHead lists of BoE items for each slot – they can come in handy when doing your initial gear-up:

Head	Belt
Neck	Legs
Shoulder	Feet
Back	Rings
Chest	Trinkets
Wrist	Daggers
Gloves	Ranged

Now it’s time to enchant and gem.  You can make do with cheaper enchants, but don’t make the others in your pug carry you by not having any enchants or useless gem choices.

Head: Arcanum of Torment
Shoulders: Lesser or Greater Inscription of the Axe
Chest: Super Stats or Powerful Stats
Wrist: Striking or Greater Assault
Gloves: Greater Assault or Crusher
Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs:  Nerubian Leg Armor or Icescale Leg Armor
Boots: Assault or Greater Assault or Icewalker
Weapons: Greater Potency or Superior Potency
Gems:  Delicate or Bright Bloodstone/Scarlet Ruby/Cardinal Ruby

Trial of the Champion Gear

Now, once you’ve put together your gear and started running pugs, it’s time to start looking at specific dungeons to run for gear that you can’t easily (or at all) buy with badges.  Basically this means Trial of the Champion (as your gear isn’t good enough for the Icecrown 5-mans at this stage).

Head: Mask of Distant Memory (Black Knight, heroic)
Neck: Ancient Pendant of Arathor (Eadric/Paletress, heroic)
Shoulders: Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave (Black Knight, normal)
Wrist: Armbands of the Wary Lookout (Eadric/Paletress, heroic)
Gloves: Gloves of the Argent Fanatic (Eadric/Paletress, normal)
Belt: Belt of Fierce Competition (Grand Champions, normal)
Legs: Leggings of Brazen Trespass (Eadric, normal)
Boots: Treads of Dismal Fortune (Grand Champions, heroic)
Ring: Uruka’s Band of Zeal (Black Knight, normal)
Weapon: Black Knight’s Rondel (Black Knight, heroic)

Sadly, you can only run the heroic version once per day – the head and dagger make it well worth repeating this instance as often as you can, which is pretty easy with LFD.

Badge Gear.

Still, there are a good number of different dungeons available, and you’ll be pulling in probably 5-6 emblems per heroic.  Let’s see what you can buy with them.  With the changes to emblems since Wrath launched, it’s actually worth comparing items available for each slot, and deciding for yourself whether it’s worth buying the cheap item first, or doing 2-3 more dungeons and buying the more expensive equivalent.

Head:
Conqueror’s Terrorblade Helmet T8.5 (58 conquest, ilvl226)
* VanCleef’s Helmet of Conquest T9.0 (50 triumph ilvl232)
Hood of Lethal Intent (75 triumph ilvl245)

Neck:
Pendant of the Outcast Hero (25 heroic ilvl200)
* Broach of the Wailing Night (19 conquest ilvl226)

Shoulder:
Valorous Bonescythe Pauldrons T7.5 (60 valor ilvl213)
VanCleef’s Pauldrons of Conquest T9.0 (30 triumph ilvl232)
* Duskstalker Shoulderpads (45 triumph ilvl245)

Back:
Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak (25 valor ilvl213)

Chest:
Heroes’ Bonescythe Breastplate T7.0 (80 heroic ilvl200)
Conqueror’s Terrorblade Breastplate T8.5 (58 conquest ilvl226)
* VanCleef’s Breastplate of Conquest T9.0 (50 triumph ilvl232)

Wrist:
Wristwraps of the Cutthroat (60 valor ilvl213)

Glove:
Heroes’ Bonescythe Gauntlets T7.0 (60 heroic ilvl200)
Gloves of the Blind Stalker (28 conquest ilvl226)
* VanCleef’s Gauntlets of Conquest (30 triumph ilvl232)

Belt:
Jorach’s Crocolisk Skin Belt (40 heroic ilvl200)
* Belt of the Twilight Assassin (28 conquest ilvl226)

Leg:
Valorous Bonescythe Legplates T7.5 (75 valor ilvl213)
Leggings of Wavering Shadow (39 conquest ilvl226)
* VanCleef’s Legplates of Conquest (50 triumph ilvl232)

Boot:
Boots of Captain Ellis (40 valor ilvl213)

Ring:
Ring of Invincibility (25 valor ilvl213)
* Dexterous Brightstone Ring (35 triumph ilvl245)

Trinket:
Mirror of Truth (40 heroic ilvl200)
* Mark of Supremacy (50 triumph ilvl245)

Dagger:
Rolfsen’s Ripper (50 heroic ilvl200)

Throwing Weapon:
Lillehoff’s Winged Blades (15 heroic ilvl200)
* Crimson Star (25 triumph ilvl245)

As you can see, the cost of items has (on the whole) come down.  I’ve marked with an asterisk the best-value item for each slot – where there’s only one item which has been crossed out, the item isn’t worth the emblem cost and you are better off waiting for an instance drop from ToC or one of the Icecrown 5-mans.

I’d recommend working towards the T9 items first, as they’re probably the best value for your emblems when you start out.  After that it’s a case of replacing your remaining items on an item-by-item basis.  Oh, and enjoy the rep that’s pouring in.

Icecrown 5-mans

Once you’ve a couple of pieces of T9 (and picked up assorted other pieces from other heroics – ideally full epics by this stage) you should finally be eligible for the Forge of Souls (FoS), the first of the Icecrown 5-mans.  Once you’ve completed this you can then attempt the Pit of Saron (PoS), and once PoS is completed you can finally attempt the remaining 5-man, the Halls of Reflection (HoR).  You’re better off starting with the normal instance, both because it’s not quite as difficult and also because the items are very nice upgrades on their own (especially the daggers).

Normal rewards:
Shoulders: Bewildering Shoulderpads (FoS)
Back: Accursed Crawling Cape (FoS)
Chest: Blackened Geist Ribs (HoR)
Gloves: Carpal Tunnelers (HoR)
Belt: Flayer’s Black Belt (PoS)
Legs: Shaggy Wyrmleather Leggings (PoS)
Ring: Ring of Carnelian and Bone (PoS)
MH Dagger: Heartshiver (FoS)
OH Dagger: Krick’s Beetle Stabber (PoS)

Once you’ve some upgrades under your belt (ideally at least one, maybe both daggers), it’s a good time to step up to the heroic version.

Heroic rewards:
Head: Frayed Scoundrel’s Cap (FoS)
Neck: Barbed Ymirheim Choker (PoS)
Shoulders: Spaulders of Black Betrayal (HoR)
Chest: Choking Hauberk (HoR)
Wrist: Chewed Leather Wristguards (PoS)
Legs: Fleshwerk Leggings (PoS)
Feet: Blighted Leather Footpads (HoR)
Ring: Band of Stained Souls (PoS)
Trinket: Needle-Encrusted Scorpion (FoS)
MH Dagger: Blood Weeper (FoS)
OH Dagger: Unsharpened Ice Razor (all IC heroics)
Thrown: Papa’s Brand New Knife (FoS)

As you can see, between the three instances, normal and heroic, you can gear out a new character pretty comprehensively.

Anyway, following this path (roughly – my starting gear was a little better than the selection I listed, thanks to some gold spent on crafted and BoE epics, so I didn’t have to farm normal ToC) Ringle is now sufficiently well-geared that she’s good to enter Icecrown 10-mans – to put it in perspective, she has a gear score of 4776 without any raid-instance gear.

Yay for the brave new world of gearing up alts!

/wave

[edit: added Unsharpened Ice Razor and link to heroic IC drops, and a soundtrack link – nothing like forgetting things when you post at 4am]

Leveling Disc – Once More, From The Top

Post soundtrack:  “Come to me” by Koop.

Guess who’s leveling a new disc priest?  No, I’m not leaving my dwarves high and dry – this is mostly a preparation-for-cataclysm-and-thought-experiment kind of thing.

Meet blood elf Phinglezouse, priest soon-to-be-extraordinaire.  Or semiordinaire, maybe.  Almostordinaire?  Yes, it’s going to be disc all the way (mostly because I just like the playstyle*, but with an added touch of “You’d have to be utterly insane to level another priest to 80”).  Helped along with some bits and pieces from the AH, of course, because I’m lazy like that and have a higher-level alt to help bankroll it.

Phingle is currently sitting at level 19, with Herbalism and Inscription learnt.  Her sugar-daddy is OldDingle, who’s now level 54 (with Enchanting and Skinning).  Total bankroll between the two of them, around 340g when the server went down earlier this evening.

Talents at this stage are pretty minimal – there’s only 10 points to allocate at level 19, and nothing fancy for a few levels yet.  My picks so far:

Level	Talents
10	Spirit Tap (1/3)
11	Spirit Tap (2/3)
12	Spirit Tap (3/3)
13	Twin Disciplines (1/5)
14	Twin Disciplines (2/5)
15	Twin Disciplines (3/5)
16	Twin Disciplines (4/5)
17	Twin Disciplines (5/5)
18	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (1/2)
19	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (2/2)

Her dps rotation right now is pretty much what you’d expect from your average low-level priest:

1. PW:S on herself
2. Smite to pull her target.
3. SW:P on it while it’s running toward her.
4. Mind Blast.
5. Then she just wands it to death.  (Don’t underestimate wands; they’re mana-free dps, and they make for a great way to start regenerating mana before you engage your next target)
6. …
7. Profit!

Old internet memes aside, it’s a pretty straight-forward routine – single-target pulls, and if an additional target blunders in, she uses Psychic Scream where possible, puts SWP on the new target, and finishes off the original target.  Self-buffs at this stage are PW:Fortitude and Inner Fire, along with the inscription-made Intellect scrolls.

Time for another quick list, this time tips for new characters

• It can be worth taking your new characters to the blood elf or draenei starting zones when they’re just getting started, as they zones make for a much less irritating leveling experience than the vanilla starting zones.  (And the gear from Tranquillien rep is a nice bonus on horde side)
• Casters should always buy the best water you can get for your level.  (It helps to actually buy a stack or two when you’re still the level before you can use them, so you don’t forget – and you invariably will).
• If you’re leveling a priest, it’s a lot easier if they have the best wand you can get for their level.  (I might do a quick post on what/where, if I don’t forget or get sidetracked again)
• Bags!  Four netherweave bags for a new toon are the gift that keeps on giving.

That’s probably going to be it for this post – I’ll probably do another one when Phingle has something interesting to talk about (the 20-29 stretch would likely do).

/wave

* – Disclaimer:  My playstyle (and leveling style) aren’t designed for efficiency, or speed, or ease of leveling – indeed, if you want to level a priest fast, shadow is likely your best option (I’ve been told my bloody-mindedness is part of my charm).  So I’m sharing on the off chance someone discerning out there might find something in this to be useful, not because I think it’s fast or easy (or even fun, sometimes).  Offer void where prohibited by law, and probably causes cancer in rats.

It’s The Little Things That Make It So Enjoyable

Today’s post soundtrack: “One Life” by Lisa Ekdahl.

Lately I’ve particularly been enjoying two little additions to the game, one of which is new with the patch and another which was introduced with 3.2, but is new to me.

First of all, meet my baby Venomhide Ravasaur.  I’m only a few days into this chain, which begins with a series of quests in Un’goro Crater where you acquire an egg.  Eventually you’re given the young ravasaur which has hatched from the egg, and then have to complete twenty daily quests given by the ravasaur as it grows and matures.  The end result, the Venomhide Ravasaur, is the horde equivalent to the Winterspring Frostsaber.

I’ve really been enjoying logging onto OldDingle each day for this, despite the fact that it’s essentially a tamagochi (without the cleaning).  Riding across Tanaris or Un’goro on one of my mounts with the itty-bitty little ravasaur following behind me has surprised me with the feeling it creates, of being responsible for raising this growing creature.

WoW is usually a very static world, yet this provides a surprisingly substantial experience of something within the world changing (and growing) due to your actions.  Think of it as emotional phasing, done right.  (I just wish there was something equivalent for Alliance)

The other little change that I’m quite taken with is the new collection of animations that were added for Hippogryphs with 3.3.  MMO Champion released a video of the new walking and running animations that were found when the PTR went live, but I’ve also been charmed with the new idling animations.

And yes, the image above is traderogue Ringle (in her around-town T6 gear), who I’ve been running heroics on in preparation for getting her into Icecrown at some stage for the crafting recipes (if I can swing it somehow).

I’d still be running them, but the server has been experiencing lag issues of such severity that…  Well, you can thank the lag for this post.

/wave

Mostly Painless

Something different for today’s post soundtrack:  “I am the very model of a singularitarian” by Charlie Kam.

Well, 3.3 has been mostly successful so far.  All my characters and addons worked fine, except for an ERROR #132 on raiding toon Mingle.  Turns out it’s something to do with the Wowhead looter (determined after a great deal of enabling/disabling/restarting/crashing), but it only effects Mingle – all my other characters work fine with it enabled.

The new authenticator pet was an unexpected (yet nice) touch, for us authenticator users.  Anyway, it’s a bit early to have formed much of a reasoned and experienced opinion about the patch, so I’ll just get ready for an raiding tonight – yay for not-ToC!

Actually, one thing I’ve noticed – I don’t think I’ve had mail open so quickly and smoothly in a long time.  (Maybe it’s a result of maintenance, but it feels substantially better than I’m used to)

Oh, and they’ve changed the login background for dwarves – it has a distance-fade thing going on.  Curious little cosmetic change there.

/wave

When Are Bigger Numbers Worrying?

Post soundtrack: “Ready Steady Go” by L’arc en ciel

It’s an odd combination; the excitement of raiding with a new guild, combined with increasing demotivation as pre-patch ennui settles in with the newguild raiders.  It’s good to be getting back in the saddle (so to speak), but due to a lack of numbers the 25-man raid last night was scaled down to a single 10-man (which I sat out on, giving me time to get another level on Dingle v1).

The thing that’s really jumped out at me from the first couple of raids has been how much more healing I was doing, while not actually doing that much more healing.  The best way to illustrate is this comparison between oldnewguild (perhaps failedappguild would be more accurate?) and newguild logs.  (I was a little chagrined after offering to parse the logs and post the results to the newguild forums, and then discovering I was quite often at the top of the healing-done lists – hopefully it doesn’t come across as bragging, or something equally unflattering)

Oldnewguild:

This was ToC25, along with FL and XT from Ulduar25.  That’s an average of 2666hps or so from me, putting me at #7 of 8 healers.

Newguild:
This is Koralon (we skipped the other two VoA bosses), Onyxia and ToC25.  About 2730hps from me.  (The priest bringing up the rear is shadow; I just left him in to keep the number of rows the same)  Anyway, #1 of 7 healers.  Sure, it’s not completely an apples-to-apples comparison (and I was healing as 100% disc for the latter raid, compared to mostly holy for the former) but the effective result was the same in the other 25-man log I’ve parsed.

It’s quite an ego-boost for me, to be honest.  (The results were very similar when parsed through WMO as well, so it wasn’t a parsing error on WoL’s part as I was originally suspecting)  So, yay for disc priest topping healing meters!

I could also make comment about this being the difference between a hard-core, hard-mode raiding guild and a casual raiding guild, but the numbers tend to speak for themselves (although what they said most to me was “this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so don’t go reading too much into it.”  Followed with “and why don’t you call your mother more often?”).

Of course there’s a downside to go with the swollen head.  While normal modes aren’t too much of a problem, the guild won’t be burning through hard modes the way I’m used to.  It follows on from that, that progression through new content (I’m looking at you, Icecrown) may also be more drawn out than I’m used to – although the drip-feed manner in which 3.3 encounters are to become available may nullify that to some degree, with the corollary that ToC25 (and maybe ToGC25 with the advantage from Icecrown gear) won’t be leaving the raid rotation for some time yet.

Ah well, at least I’m still healing.

And I’m putting a tentative plan together to try make some profit from the upgrades coming with 3.3 with leg armors, gems and belt buckles, along with getting back into the glyph market (albeit in a more casual manner than previously was the case).  Of course, milling inks is still one of the most mind-numbing activities in-game at this time, so it’s really dependant on how much of it I can put up with.  (Doing it in batches of 30 stacks of herbs at a time is about the best compromise I’ve been able to come up with, between bag space and milling time – seriously, Blizz, your implementation of milling, along with inscription crafting in general, is truly EPIC FAIL game design)

OldDingle (ok, that works better than Dingle v1) has been working his way through Azeroth, and hit 52 late last night.  And thanks to the market for Greater Nether Essences, he’s building up a bit of a bankroll that should be handy when he gets to Outland and buys his first flying mount.  I’m tentatively aiming at getting to OL by the end of the weekend, depending on how much grinding I can get under my belt over that time (although my trusty magic 8-ball reckons “Outlook not so good”).

My tentative plans to roll a horde warrior (perhaps a tauren?) and priest (both troll and forsaken are…  unappealing, but the troll is slightly less so) remain tentative.  WTB dark dwarves horde-side (sigh).

In a non-WoW topic, I bought an iTunes gift card yesterday and have purchased my first apps for my shiny second-hand ipod touch – some nifty games (just what I need for those milling sessions), and an app to track my weight while I try to reduce my weight from “Planetary Mass” to “Small Asteroid.”  It’s a nice system (the app store I mean), apart from the nearly-total lack of filtering to let you find the gold amid the immense quantities of dross.

For now?  Back to milling.  And more milling.  And general inscription-type-stuff that takes a metric way too long.

/wave

(Oh, and if the person I’m expecting to pop by and read this does so, “Hi Mr. Good-Looking Pally Healer!”)

One In-One Out, One Out-One In

(In a move inspired by a little something that WoW.com sometimes does, and also because of how much I want to introduce other people to music I love, I’m going to offer a soundtrack for this post:  “Fuoco Fatuo [performed by Koop]” by Nicola Conte, from volume 4 of the awesome nu-jazz compilation series Saint-Germain-des-Prés Café)

It’s been an interesting few days.  Not only has my shiny new (or at least, reclaimed) troll rogue made progress towards Outland, but I’ve also stumbled into a new raiding guild for priest Mingle.

Dingle v1 has managed to move from level 40 (on Saturday) to 48 (late last night), and I’m almost finished cleaning up the half-finished quest chains in his log.  It’s actually an odd feeling, visiting all the old zones and doing all these new quests there.  (I’m doing it without following any leveling guides, although I have found it necessary to look up locations for some of the more obscure “kill npc X” quests on Wowhead)

In a similar theme, I’m tossing up whether to hop onto the undead mage who’s sharing Dingle’s server, or rolling a new horde priest and spending some quality time in the Blood Elf starting zone.  I’m also actually sorely tempted to put some money into a name and possibly gender change for my troll – a new name would make referring to him less unwieldy to reference (“Dingle v1” lacks a certain charm), and I’m not really a fan of the male troll character model.  However, I have to watch my budget at the moment so it might be some time before I can get around to this – and I’m seriously considering bringing Fingle (and her transmute) back to Dath, which would be another expense.

On the raiding front there’s been an interesting development.  I hopped on oldguild vent on Sunday, and a friend popped in who’d switched guilds and in conversation the question was raised about if I was looking for another raiding guild (after I mentioned my failapp).  After giving it a little thought I decided to accept, and a minute after joining I was sent an unexpected invitation for a guild 10-man.

So I found myself running ToC10, VoA10 and Onyxia10 that evening with some small success and only one definite fail (healer heal thyself!) and one maybe fail (if the dps dies it’s their own darned fault, right?) on my part.  (As an aside, I’m not really good at switching specs mid-raid as I tried to do for Twins, which was my personal fail of the night)

Anyway, last night was my first newguild 25-man raid, and I was summoned in to find myself looking at Mimiron.  Turned out, the guild hadn’t actually downed him before, so when we one-shot him there was much celebration on vent.  (It was messy as heck with a good number of dead players littering the floor at the end, but one thing I’ve noticed is that this a guild with some pretty impressive dps)

We moved on to Vezax, and three-shot him (yay for the advantage of ToC gear!).  A healer also picked up the 30th fragment he needed for Val’anyr, to much acclaim from guildmates.  This also set the bar a little higher for the encounter with Yogg, with the decision to attempt it without Mimiron’s buff in order to complete the hammer.

Anyway, we then moved on to Yogg, and I got to watch them putting together an strategy to get through phase one.  Very different to the one I know from oldguild, but we reached the second phase more than once before we stopped for the night.)

So far the new guild looks promising:  competent raiders (and great dps), effective leadership, and a nice balance between effort and humour during the raid.  I’m going to give it a couple of weeks before I look at moving my alts across, but this could well be the guild I experience Icecrown with.

Well, time to get back to leveling (having done my gem transmutes for the day and finally been rewarded with a new fishing rod from the daily).

/wave

Oh, one last thing: Munchies over at The Munch Land blog is giving away a couple of authenticators – if you don’t have one, I'd recommend popping over and expressing your interest in the form of a comment on this post (you have until December 18th).  Go for the giveaway, stay for the priest posts!