Greetings folks,

I've been an EJ forums lurker since sometime in '05, and I never fail to find helpful information and number crunching here. Seems like a hangout for some of the very best and brightest min-maxers and tacticians in the endgame today, so I thought I'd submit this as a bit of a general question and see what more experienced minds than mine have to say.

I started WoW in closed beta and have played a variety of characters to 60 and in endgame, both as healing/support roles, as a MT for a guild through AQ40, and as dps. The one class that I've never raided with is rogue, and I have recently rolled one with a group of collected friends from other endgame guilds that have started up horde-side on a new server. Which brings me in a roundabout fashion to my question:

Given that I will not have access to AQ40/Naxx gear and weapons for a long time, likely at least three months, what sort of gear wishlist is even *reasonable* for me to look at in the meantime? If I were on a server that has the gates open and has guilds pounding on KT's door, it would be a bit different. The way things are now, I'll be in NS at best by the time TBC hits, and everything conceivably shifts in terms of what instances are worth doing and the operation of rogues in raids.

More or less I'm looking for nudges in the right direction, not hand holding. Most of the rogues here probably remember what their spec and gear were like when they were still in the weekly MC / Ony / world bosses clear mode and working on BWL. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Any resources that experienced PvE rogues have found useful as they've developed their characters would be great as well.

I'll go sit in the corner and hope my bobber dips in the water with an epic response or two. Or just some flames. Work's boring enough that I'd find those amusing too.

Thanks in advance! =)

With a combination of ctprofiles, wow.allakhazam.com or thottbot.com - you should be able to build yourself a decent profile based on the gear you have access to.

Eh, that's a pretty reasonable question I don't think anyone would flame you for it. Hardcore "reroll" guilds have killed Nef in under a month, so I think that expecting access to Nef loot + the first half of AQ40 is probably reasonable(assuming that you guys are approaching it more casually).

I was combat swords/fists for that particular gear epoch, mostly because I had a Vis'kag which treated me really well for a very long time. It's fun and fairly capable in PvP, and an excellent PvE spec.

So figure something like 2-4/8 Bloodfang, 4-5/8 NS, Vis'kag/Maladath, DFT + HoJ as a reasonable goal, with any AQ or Naxx loot as icing on the cake.

My rogue gear isn't very hard to obtain at all. Looking at the instances you're going to be sticking to, I'd stick with a pretty standard 15/31/5 combat dagger w/ AR and WepEx spec just to maximize your DPS output. While you could play around w/ SF or hemo, at that level gear, and in those instances the nuances of those two alternate specs won't really come to the forefront as much - as most of the fights in the "older" instances are just tank-n-spank. For which combat daggers shines.

Crap, figured "reply" would have showed my profile. I know the edit will...

As far as resources, I tried to plan my DKP expenditures around whatever Chalon's (as maintained by Kalman and Pf) spreadsheets indicated would actually be worthwhile. Ie. No BF boots/shoulders, and crap like that.

You should familiarize yourself with shadowpanther.net, which converts all stats on pieces of armor that a rogue could expect to use into AEP (agility equivalence points). It also lists where said armor drops, and has all items linked to the thottbot database for further information.

That combined with spreadsheets was how I min-maxed my gear. Disclaimer: Not everyone may agree with shadowpanther's methods, but I've found them to be a fairly reliable tool, especially when combined with kalman's spreadsheet.

Actually I would recommend steering clear of combat daggers in MC, just because you won't have the gear. While most of the fights are tank and spank, combat daggers ONLY gets damage from your gear, there are 0 other bonuses. My damage breakdown is often quite literally 65% melee, 35% backstab, absolutely nothing else. Thus, without the gear to back it up I think the build will be somewhat weak.

What I would recommend is a seal fate daggers build, probably like 30/15/5 or something similar. definitely get imp poisons for better instant poison application, and get precision to give you a strong boost to your dps. The flat damage from poisons combined with the 5/5/3 rotation with seal fate means you get an evi in there every once in a while, and those flat sources of damage, especially with mediocre gear, will account for a whole lot.

Once you get about halfway through BWL or something and you're putting together some decent dps stats, make the swap over to combat daggers. Before then, though, I think seal fate will serve you better, as well as giving you similar gear targets as CD so you won't have to change. I will say that swords is always a fine build as well and is really some of the best of both worlds, but then you'll spend more dkp going daggers afterwards which you might not want to do.

The very first sticky post has lists to sorts of good stuff. There you will find the Rogue dps spreadsheet (be warned, the first post is outdated, Pf updated the spreadsheet, but it isn't found on page 1, it is usually found on the last page of thread).

Also you can go to the UI thread, where many Rogues have posted what they feel is a good UI, and lots of talk about mods.

Shadowpanther is a decent site to get you started with blues, but once you have some epics, the AEP numbers it gives you are not accurate, since having different levels of stats changes things in relation to another thing.

There is nothing horribly wrong with AEP, just like there is nothing horribly wrong with Newtonian physics.

Technically, neither is completely accurate, but they are close enough approximations. And they are much easier to learn first than their alternatives.

Might be able to get tier bracers and boots, Razuvius could be killed by 38 monkeys as long as you had two decent priests. Anub not much harder.

1) avoid shadowpanther and any mention of "AEP" - it's shit.
2) combat daggers owns faces in MC - using GGR/bonescraper/ZG set gear I was able to out DPS (in MC and BWL) predominantly T2/DFT/CHT rogues. While some of that is effort, more is the spec and knowing how to play it. Also at the shitty levels of hit that we're talking about (the gear I was wearing at the time) you shouldn't be able to get 65% white damage. The gear this guy's looking at (with precision) will probably place him around 13% hit or so. If you're getting 65% white damage with that much +hit, your tanks suck, you forgot a couple talent points, or you're slacking. The only spec this guy should be considering if his main focus is DPS in MC/BWL/ZG/AQ20 is combat daggers. SF shouldn't really even enter the picture.

The spreadsheet's we're talking about can be found in this thread:
http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=6692

Also, 5/5/3 is a sword CP cycle.