zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

3.1 is out. To be honest, it’s still too early to determine what the optimum spec is but keep your eyes open on the Rogues section of the EJ forums. Use a spreadsheet when you can. I’m still waiting for Vulajin to update his. The quick-and-dirty response to the spec question is to take a look at your weapons. If you’ve got good swords and/or fist weapons then go with Combat. If your daggers are better, then go with Assassination. Dual specs are live, so you can go with both if you want to.

As for the actual specs themselves, here they are:

• Combat Fist MH / Dagger OH
• Combat Swords

Poisons: Wound MH, Deadly OH

Note that the third major glyph is up to you. You can use Killing Spree, Adrenaline Rush, Slice and Dice or Tricks of the Trade. Also, the update to Lightning Reflexes throws the old Fist MH / Sword OH out the window because there aren’t enough points left to assign for both CQC and Sword Specialization

I should also mention that there is another Combat spec out there that’s been receiving a lot of attention, but I’ll wait until I see better confirmation about its viability.

• Assassination

Poisons: Instant MH, Deadly OH.

Like before, feel free to swap Fleet Footed with Murder. The jury’s still out on which one’s better: Master Poisoner or Turn the Tables. Otherwise, Assassination is relatively unchanged. As soon as I find out more information about specs, glyphs and other things, I’ll post them here.

Icecrown is a great place to earn gold through daily quests. I’m going to post my usual route through the area, but please take note of a few things first: some of these quests are only available once you unlock them. I suggest that you do quests in Icecrown as soon as you can so you can unlock the dailies ASAP. Also, I skip some of the quests because some of them are out of the way so I don’t bother with them. I prefer quests that are concentrated on a single area or are at least nearby each other. Finally, this guide is intended for all classes and not for rogues only.

Before we start, here are a few addons that will prove useful.

OPie - it’s primarily a radial action bar mod, but what’s great about it is that it has a preset ring for quest items. That means you can hit the key bind for it to bring up a ring menu that has all of your useable quest items. It eliminates the need to search your inventory to use them, saving you time and effort.

Questguru - what I like about Questguru is the sound alert. You get an aural announcement every time you complete or partially complete a quest, letting you know when it’s time to move on. It also has an autocomplete feature that will turn in quests automatically when you talk to the NPC. I know it’s only an extra click, but don’t knock off the benefits of not having to do so. When you’re doing something repetitive such as dailies, anything that automates the process is a godsend.

The first place you want to stop by is Orgrim’s Hammer. This is the horde flying ship. The easiest way to get to it is actually in Dalaran. Talk to Sky-Reaver Klum [69,41] and ask to be flown to the ship. He’s near the Dalaran FP. If the option to be flown there isn’t available, you may need to unlock Cold Weather Flying first.

Once there, talk to Koltira and grab Not A Bug and Drag And Drop. You can also grab That’s Abominable if you want to, but it’s a little way off the path I usually follow so I skip it. Next, talk to Sky-Reaver Korm and get Keeping the Alliance Blind. The other one is a PvP daily. I’ll leave it to you if you want to take it.

Go outside and look for two wandering NPCs, Brother Keltan, who gives Slaves to Saronite, and Warbringer Davos Rioht, for Blood of the Chosen. Finally, go below and talk to the goblin at the end, Chief Engineer Copperclaw and get Retest Now. I don’t grab the other one because it’s another quest that’s off the path I follow. You should see a trend by now.

Now head to Ymirheim [57,53] and start killing the mobs there. You need to kill 20 humanoids here to finish the quest. The males are straightforward fights. The females offer more variety because the Blight Falconers have pets called Carrion Hunters while the Ymirjar Element Shapers are casters.

When you’ve downed 20 of them, go inside the cave at [56,57] and talk to the slave NPCs there to free them. Some of them will commit suicide, some will free themselves and some will attack you. For NPCs that are supposed to be slaves, they hit pretty hard so be careful. Also, the Val’kyr mobs here have a nasty habit of attacking you from behind so keep an eye on them. You may want to engage them first before talking to the slaves so you get the first strike advantage. Once you’ve freed 10 slaves the quest is done. I find this quest pretty annoying because talking to the NPCs takes me out of stealth. I can’t imagine caster classes having a good time with this one either. Anyway, I just wanted to let that out as a warning. As a rogue, I skip it. As a death knight, I don’t.

Head out of the cave, mount up then fly north a bit to [55,47]. Kill Bitter Initiates until they drop an Orb of Illusion. Look for a mob called a Dark Subjugator and throw the Orb at them to turn them into humans. Do this three times to finish the quest. Take a look at the second screenshot above to see how you can select the Orb using OPie. Note that you cannot use the Orb while in combat.

Mount up, head north a bit to The Valley of Fallen Heroes. [47,43] is a good spot. Map the SGM-3 to a hotkey and type “/tar sky” over and over again. You can add it to a macro, copy-paste it or whatever, just spam the heck out of it till you target a Skybreaker Recon Fighter. Once you do, hit the hotkey immediately to fire. Doing it this way prevents you from having to manually click on the Skybreakers with your mouse to target them. You don’t even have to look up to search for them, really. Just enter the command and fire the rocket. Do this 6 times to clear the quest. Watch out for the undead pats in this area.

Mount up, head north up to [50,33] and use the Diluted Cult Tonic in your inventory to get the buff that will let you loot a Tainted Essence from a mob here. Once you have 10, use them to turn them into a Writhing Mass, then go near a cauldron and use it to complete the quest. Watch out for the green clouds that the mobs create because they do a DoT at 500 HP per tick if you stay in them.

Mount up, then head northeast to [53,31]. Kill the orc warlocks and their voidwalkers then use the Rod of Siphoning in your inventory to grab a Dark Matter. You don’t need to target the voidwalker. Just stand close to it and you should get the quest item. Make sure that you get the item off the voidwalker shortly after killing it otherwise you won’t be able to get anything. I suggest you kill one master-and-minion pair at a time. Gather 5, then fly to [53,33] and right click on the giant shard to finish the quest. Fly back to Orgrim’s Hammer and turn in everything.

You’ll notice that you start at Ymirheim and then inch your way northward from there. We’ll cover the Shadow Vault and Death’s Rise dailies next time. If you have any questions and suggestions, let me know. You guys might know of a few more dailies that I missed.

I’m taking a break from the usual WoW posts to take a look at Prototype. It’s like a cross between Devil May Cry and Grand Theft Auto, if both of them took place in a war-torn police state.

Expect the mayhem to come in June for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Got tagged by Dinaer at Forever A Noob, so I here I go with the name history behind Sinlaris.

It all started in Guild Wars. I created a warrior named Maleficent Sin after a friend of mine. I found that I liked it when players I met online called me Sin so I stuck with it when I rolled my druid Sinstrider. When our guild decided to switch factions and we joined the Horde, I used Sinlaris for my rogue. That’s all there is to it.

I’m tagging Blackfury and Sera to respond to this one.