zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

Welcome to my guide on the Trial of the Crusader. Please note that I will cover rogue-specific roles and strategies only, although melee DPS will probably find something useful here as well.

Northrend Beasts

The first round of TotC pits your group against 4 Northrend Beasts: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw, Dreadscale and Icehowl.

Gormok the Impaler

Gormok is a magnataur that carries 4 snobolds on his back. This fight is mostly a tank and spank.

• Get out of the fire on the ground.
• Kill snobolds when they hop on to someone in the group.
• DPS the boss.

Acidmaw & Dreadscale

The next fight involves two jormungars: Acidmaw & Dreadscale. The important thing to note here is that one of them will be mobile while the other is rooted. You need to identify that. The simplest way to do it is to look for the tail. If you can’t find it, then that’s not the worm you should be DPSing.

Dreadscale always starts as the mobile worm. At some point, they’ll burrow to the ground and then swap places, with Acidmaw becoming the mobile worm.

• DPS the mobile worm. Make sure you stay behind it. Stay away from the rooted worm.
• Watch out for poison clouds from the mobile worm. They look like the ones that Grobbulus drops.
• The fight’s big gimmicks are two debuffs: Paralytic Toxin and Burning Bile. Paralytic Toxin can only be dispelled by Burning Bile. If a tank gets hit with the toxin and you have the burning debuff, run to the tank to remove the toxin, then run out of the group because you’ll be doing AoE damage while Burning Bile is on you. If you get the toxin, run to someone with the fire debuff.
• Burning Bile can be dispelled by Cloak of Shadows. I have not verified if this applies to the toxin as well.

Icehowl

Icehowl is a yeti and is the final boss of the Northrend Beasts encounter.

• Again, this is mostly a tank and spank.
• Watch out for Arctic Breath. I recommend you attack him from the side and not from behind.
• He knocks back often. Make sure you’re close to a wall so that you don’t do a lot of walking back.
• His big gimmick is Massive Crash. When he does this, everyone gets knocked back to the wall and gets stunned. Pay close attention to who he targets and get ready to run. You’ll have plenty of time to move away from his charge.
• If he doesn’t hit anything, he gets stunned. Unleash massive DPS.
• If he hits someone, he enrages. Hunters can dispel this, but so can you with Anesthetic Poison.

We’ll cover Lord Jaraxxus in the next post.

Let’s say you have the best possible gear that’s accessible to you, all fully gemmed and enchanted and you’re ready to go. How do you go about dealing maximum DPS?

Slice and Dice

If you use WWS while raiding, you’ll see that your swing damage is where most of your DPS comes from. Swing is your default, non-ability attack. It’s what happens when you right-click on a hostile target, click on the Attack button or cast /startattack. Since it makes up a good chunk of your overall DPS, keeping Slice and Dice up should be your number one priority. Don’t let it drop.

Hunger for Blood

If you’re specced for Assassination, then this one’s a no-brainer. Keep HfB up along with SnD. Maintaining SnD is simplified thanks to Cut to the Chase, so the only thing you have to look out for is HfB. You’re not the only class capable of causing bleed damage so keep an eye out for it so you can apply cast the skill ASAP.

Rupture > Eviscerate/Envenom

The fast and flawed advice here is to cast Rupture once you have SnD (or SnD + HfB) up. However, some mobs die too fast for Rupture to finish its duration. In that case, it’s better to hit Eviscerate or Envenom, depending on your spec. Obviously, you should cast Rupture first before the other two during boss fights.

Fan of Knives

For trash pulls and multiple mobs, Fan of Knives is your best friend. Get into range and spam the hell out of it. You’ll be dealing damage that even casters will be envious of. You can combine FoK with Blade Flurry or Adrenaline Rush for mad DPS. Also, don’t forget to cast Tricks of the Trade on your tank prior to spamming it.

Yes, I know that it’s going to get nerfed in the next patch, but it was bound to happen. We’re not supposed to be an AoE class. It’s nice to finally have an AoE skill after all these years but we shouldn’t be topping damage meters because of it. Single-target fights should be our area of expertise.

Now that 3.2 is out, emblem farming is the trendy thing to do. I know that some of you don’t like the way Blizzard is practically giving away epics, but what can we do, you know? Might as well go with the flow.

I found myself in a curious situation a couple of weeks ago before the patch came out. After doing a quick gear check, I saw that there were no upgrades available for me in terms of Conquest emblems. I was done. For someone who only raided Kara in BC, it was quite a shock. I’ve never had this much gear before.

After the surprise went down, I looked at the Triumph emblem vendor and checked what I needed to do next. Maybe that’s a question you’re also asking yourself. I mean, which gear should you get first? The answer lies in a spreadsheet. Grab one that’s ready for 3.2 and check what you should get. As much as I would like to get the 45-emblem shoulder piece, breaking the 4-piece Terrorblade set bonus hurts my DPS too much so I’ll have to settle for something else. Right now, I’m set to get the ring then the thrown weapon.

3.2 is all about upgrading your gear. Like I said, Blizzard is practically throwing them at you so run those heroics when you can. Do the daily heroic, farm heroic Trial of the Champion till you’re blue in the face. This is our chance to catch up with the content. Might as well take advantage of it.

Patch 3.2 is in full swing and as a Combat Rogue, there aren’t a lot of changes worth noting yet. The biggest one is the ability to use one-handed axes, which is the least stealthy weapon that I can think of. However, one can also say the same about swords and maces so there’s really no point in arguing. It’s also a little too early to tell how much of an impact axes will make to Rogue DPS. Hell, I’ve yet to learn the skill to use them.

Blizzard has kept its word regarding the dailies though. One of the dilemmas of getting the Crusader title was that you lose the faction dailies. No dailies, no gold. Thankfully, the patch opens several new quests that you can repeat to your delight. Furthermore, they give players the opportunity to get more Champion’s Seals per day, making the grind to those mounts less of a pain. You can also make your squire a little more useful than being a banner carrier.

I’ll post an update on the Icecrown dailies once I get used to the new dailies. They’re pretty straightforward (I like the new quest log, by the way) so they’re easy to do. Finding the quickest way to do them all is the tricky part.

Tricks of the Trade is the lesser known (as opposed to Misdirect) aggro management skill that allows Rogues to redirect threat to the tank. Think of it as a short-ranged version of the more popular Misdirect. Used properly, it will allow you to unleash damage without having to worry about getting aggro.

As you can tell from the description, Tricks will redirect all of the threat caused by your actions to whoever you cast it on for six glorious seconds. Minus macros and addons, you can cast it by hitting the spell, then clicking your target, which is usually the tank. I don’t have a habit of casting it on another DPSer because I don’t want threat issues and I don’t want to share the damage buff. Yes, I’m selfish. Terribly, horribly selfish.

Now, doing it that way is a bit tedious. As rogues, we’re used to casting skills without having to worry about who or what to cast them on. When we press a button, there’s usually no need to select a target because we’re already on it. That’s where Tricks is…well, tricky. You have to cast it then click on your tank to use it successfully. Macros will remove that unnecessary click.

1. Select your tank, then enter “/focus”. You can also right click on his frame and then set your focus there.
2. Create a new macro and then type:
   • /cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade

Bind the macro to a key and try it out. Hitting it will cast Tricks on your focus target, removing the extra click.

What I really like about Tricks is that it gives you a full six seconds to do anything you want. The next time your raid runs into a big group of mobs, try doing Tricks + two Fan of Knives + Adrenaline Rush and watch your damage blow up everything in sight. Don’t be shy about using Killing Spree and Blade Flurry as well.

Ding! Congratulations, you’re level 80. Now you want better gear so you can do heroic instances and 10-man raids. Here’s a gear guide to help you get there. We’ll start with the best blues you can get from quest rewards. These will be enough to get you through most if not all of the heroic 5-man dungeons. From there, we can move on to epic gear so you can become Naxx 10 ready.

What I like about quest rewards is that they’re guaranteed loot. The catch here is that most of them come from either group or dungeon quests.

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As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been raiding Ulduar thanks to a guild that’s been gracious enough to include me during their runs. Yeah, it’s a PUG, but when you’re always tagging along with them you kind of get used to how their guild works and how they do their runs. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far on what you’re supposed to do as a rogue in the early parts of Ulduar. Before we get into that, let me set the expectations first:

This is a guide specific to what rogues should be doing. This isn’t a comprehensive Ulduar guide nor does it outline boss strategies and abilities.

My experience is limited to the 25-man version.

For now, I can only take you as far as Auriaya. I have not had the privilege of defeating any of the keepers yet.

With that said, let’s begin.

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It’s probably very late (because saying “too late” doesn’t really cut it) to talk about it now, but I’ll tell you guys about the realm transfer.

Sinlaris and Razcien used to be in Quel’dorei. Some of my guildmates were being asked to move to Area 52 and, under a bit of peer pressure, I decided to join them. I’ll admit that for personal reasons I was hesitant to do so but these guys were my friends. That outweighed the misgivings I had about the whole thing.

So anyway, I moved. I realized about three weeks ago that it has been worth it. Aside from the gear upgrades that Sin has been receiving, I’ve been able to see content that I would have been unlikely to see back in Quel due to the number of PUGs in Area 52. For example, I’ve been to Ulduar thanks to a guild that has been gracious enough to include me in their runs.

Unfortunately, this is also the downside. When one consistently runs with a good PUG or guild, the idea of joining their side of the fence eventually comes to mind. A guildmate has already done this (note that I do not fault him for that. I’m merely stating a fact.) so a precedent has already been set. After all, you do better with them than you do with your own guild so why not join them instead right? I haven’t given jumping ship serious thought because I can’t commit to a raiding schedule due to time zone differences but the temptation is certainly there.

On a side note, our guild is planning to host a Naxx 25 run this weekend. Hopefully it will push through. I don’t know if we’ll be doing Ulduar 10 but I certainly hope that we will. The previous week’s one-boss kill on Flame Leviathan was pathetic. I mean, come on, one boss? I know we can certainly do better than that.

If you went to my Twitter page recently (and you should, just to show me some love, LOL), you’ll know that I was looking forward to heading to Ulduar over the weekend. It’s not that I haven’t been there. I have, thanks to a 25-man PUG whose raid leader was nice enough to bring me along even though I was a bit undergeared for it. The eagerness was more on going through the instance with my guildmates. It’s always a lot more fun to raid with people you actually know. I have to admit that I was also looking forward to leading the raid again, so I reviewed boss strats and what-not. To make a long story short, we ended up not going through it because we didn’t have enough people.

Things evened themselves out later on. First, I was finally able to pick up this title. We’ve been trying to get that title ever since we jumped realms so it’s good to finally get it. The embarassing thing was that I was the only one who died during Malygos’ third phase. He dropped the shield, which made a certain paladin very happy.

The last thing is even sweeter. This is going to be very indulgent, by the way, but remembering how well it turned out still makes me smile. I was able to join a Naxx 25 PUG and, to make a long story short, Sapphiron and KT dropped their respective daggers. Before you start calling me a greedy bastard, no one rolled on Sapph’s drop and I just plain won the weapon from KT. You’ll probably call me a greedy bastard anyway, but there it is.

Following my last post, I thought about writing things I like about the class. Don’t get me wrong, folks, I still love being one. I wouldn’t write QQ about it if I didn’t care. Anyway, here’s the list of top ten signs you love about being a Rogue.

#10 - Illidan is your favorite lore character. Or maybe Garona.

#9 - You love stunlocking.

#8 - You love picking pockets and then stunlocking.

#7 - You think mana is for wusses.

#6 - Poisons are more likely to be in your inventory than food.

#5 - You consider unlocking doors and chests an actual skill.

#4 - You’re a big Nightcrawler fan.

#3 - When in doubt, vanish.

#2 - You love doing it from behind.

#1 - You think pain should be delivered up close and personal.