One Of These Alts: 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.

Woof!

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.

Ding!

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.

So *this* is what a well-geared dwarf rogue looks like.