Twenty-three months have passed since I blog’d about what potential talent builds I’d pick up for TBC. I figure it would be fun to reflect on those ideas and look forward to my current ideas for WotLK with my rogue. Back in August ’06 I laid out 4 talent spreads, 2 combat specs, a mutilate spec, and a pvp spec. Unfortunately I don’t have “snap-shots” of those builds, so I’m at a loss for what my “pvp idea” was, but suffice to say, rogue talents have gone through some changes since then.
In the end I mostly stuck with a combat build (20/41/0) since it provided lots of solo-oriented and group/raid talents. Of course instead of utilizing swords, I’m a mace-rogue if only because my buddy Trogdor assisted me with forging my Dragonstrike. Then once I got serious about pvp, mainly because raiding is pretty much not a possibility, I’ve stuck with your “cookie-cutter” lol-step build (20/0/41).
I’m still contemplating taking 3 pts out of cheat death for master of subtlety considering at 299 resil, cheat death only occassionally makes a difference as I usually die a (split)second later. Getting an extra 10% damage for 6 seconds could give me that extra burst damage I need in the arena when I’m able to properly open on someone: (Premed > Cheap Shot > (Imp) Expose Armor > Vanish > Cheap Shot > Hemo > Kidney Shot)
Speaking of arena combat, so far my 3v3 team with priest buddy and his brother’s hunter is slowly coming together. We’re still ranked really low (1449 rating as of our last outting) but overall our gear is pretty bad (I have about 100 resil on my other teammates) and we haven’t completely fleshed out our teamwork and plan-of-attack based on enemy composition. With that said, we’re doing well considering and for the most part going 50/50 with most of our matches.
We’re on the threshold of getting our first piece of season 3 gear; if we manage a 1554 rating we’ll have 1500 pts on Tuesday. I was hoping to hold out and pick up the s4 pants, but considering I’m still wearing the ghetto-pvp pants (rep pvp gear) picking up the s3 pants will provide a substantial increase to my stats overall. I’m also only a mere 8k honor away from picking up the +80 AP trinket which will bring me well over 1600 AP and make me a little more effective.
After that, I’ll more than likely upgrade my s1 head to s3 head and socket a relentless earthstorm diamond in it as opposed to a powerful earthstorm diamond. I’m also hoping to run a kara or two, or three, to get those leather boots that Moroes drops for even more socketing fun and to finally slap an enchantment on my feet. (I’m still boot-enchantless >.<)
So while there is still a lot of gear upgrades for me to obtain for pvp, the realization of just how much better my rogue is geared now prior to WotLK compared to how he was geared prior to TBC is incredible. It also has definitely affected my WotLK plans, and I’m pretty sure I’ll start WotLK on my rogue with a (16/4/41) build and dump those extra 10 talents points into the combat tree as I level leaving me with 16/14/41 build.
Going with that hybrid leveling build should provide substantial mob-killing power and give me some tricks like lol-step to make leveling fun. My current spec is actually faster at killing mobs solo than my combat-mace spec. So I’m fairly certain that it’ll remain faster as I continue to gear up prior to WotLK. Yet I don’t plan on keeping that hybrid spec once I do hit 80 as return to the pvp scene, or possibly start raiding.
While it’s hard to truly gauge what pvp will be like at 80 I’m either leaning towards 30/0/41 or 58/8/5. Going with 30/0/41 gives me the same pvp-flexibility I’m accustomed too right now while adding in seal fate for faster combo point generation. The mutilate build seems like it’d be tons of fun, even though it’d lack mobility. It would also hinge the acquistion of pvp-daggers (or if the removal of “Required: Daggers” is not a bug, maces will be lots of fun to mutilate with =).
If I do decide to put more focus on grouping and raiding, I’ll probably go with either Combat Maces (20/51/0) (Or combat swords) or try being a positional rogue with Combat Daggers (17/50/4).
Whichever spec I end up with mainly depends on weapon acquistion as I level, but if Blizz does impliment the ability for us to carry 2 specs, obviously I’ll carry one of the two pvp specs and a combat spec. I’ll probably continue to refine these specs as the trees are tweaked, and/or more information becomes available to what the new end-game/pvp will be like.
