bruceb

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16940-roguecraft_101_a/ is pretty good; no complex math, easy guidelines.

Thanks! The list of abbreviations is a godsend all by itself.

Elitist Jerks is one of my favorite theorycrafting sources. It's accessible enough to me, anyhow, and there's always excellent advice in there.

- Mel

I totally second/third this, and if you want a decent guide to gear for rough comparisons, Shadowpanther.net is comprehensive. Use the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet linked to from Roguecraft 101 for finer tuning. (It works on Open Office if you don't have Excel.)

Thanks! I also learned by reading that.

Bruce: I see that the Brutal Tanzanite (purple, +10AP/+6 stamina) is listed as a useful rogue gem, and I have one that I haven't known how to use. Would you like it?

Very muchly!

Those are BoP, like all heroic gems, unfortunately.

Silly me. I confused 'no longer Unique-equipped' with 'no longer BoP'.

Hey Bruce, do you have any links to Ret Paladin guides? I'm getting up to the level where I have to start worrying about this stuff. Thanks!

I don't, but let's see who shows up with suggestions. Eleanor Holmes' Banana Shoulders focuses on holydins, but may have links.

Retribution is the red-headed stepchild of paladin specs, with Holy a proven commodity and Prot now an essential part of most guilds' roster of tanks. It's a shame, because Ret is actually quite viable, provided you have decent gear. Yes, yes, that's true of all specs but it seems particularly true of Ret pallies. The best ones aren't differentiated solely by skill but also by gear, sadly, the best of which is only available in the raid instances or through Badges of Justice. But it's a very viable spec and brings a lot to raids. I wish we had a Ret paladin at my guild's gear level, but no one has yet taken up the hammer.

Yeah, I concur. Other players - particularly other paladins - have often looked down on Ret as a spec because it's historically been full of selfish dick-swinging PvPers who, for instance, forget they have a heal button. That has unfortunately tainted peoples' perception of the spec, because it is - as you say - very viable. I'd recommend most T5-level raids or better should take one along, particularly if they have a pally tank and/or pally healers, for the synergy advantages.

(If you're looking for gear, PvP gear is a good stopgap while you're waiting for raid loot.)

The EJ link is the definitive guide for us ro-gues. I would highly recommend checking out both of the Spreadsheets and using them for gear selection as well as what cycle you should be using.

Having said that I would *highly* recommend specc'ing 20/41/0 and switching over to swords if your going for pure damage. The 0/41/20 is seriously gimping your damage output. As a combat build you rely on ComboPoints and energy generation. The Subtlety tree is pretty much only good for pvp unless you go mutilate, even then it is considered inferior for pure damage.

Go run heroics/Kara and pick up pretty much *all* of the badge gear available it will be significant upgrades for you across the board. Yes it's hundreds of badges but the gear is good.

As a general rule at your gear level you want to gem for hit instead of ap/crit as you've done.

I'm aware of what the spec change could do to my damage, but there's an offsetting consideration. I am, right now, very very good at crowd control. Not in Karazhan, of course, but in instancing and in raids where there are living humanoids. Furthermore, I like it. It is, basically, a raid contribution like soulstones.

Eventually I'll do some experimenting to see how to balance these, but for now, I do know what I'm giving up, and so do the folks who lead the raids I'm on.

I appreciate the concern, but...some things about what I do aren't really open to discussion right now, for reasons that may or may not be obvious in light of health and impairment posts nearby. Really, what I'm looking for right now is more information, to better understand the options, not so much directives right now.

I'm trying not to sound like a prick about this. But there are some compromises I make because it lets the game be more fun for me in times when my life has damn little fun. Subtlety is one of them, and I am not really not interested in pursuing that further right now.

Heh, it's your character play it how you want to. No skin off my back at all.

And doh, sorry if I come off as "respec respec" in my other post; I wrote that before I read this. Seriously, if you find it more fun in your current build, DEFINITELY keep it, especially if it isn't getting you pressure from your raid leaders. We have a deep subtlety rogue in our group because she just finds it more fun, and yeah, her DPS takes a huge hit because of it, but we can absorb it. (We also have a raiding ret pally.)

I can definitely see it being nice to have sapping be effortless; I remember those days fondly whenever some mob standing next to my sap target spins around and attacks me. Just be aware of the tradeoffs.

And since you're getting most of your DPS from combat you're still going to love +hit and want to gem basically the same as a cookiecutter combat rogue; basically think +hit for yellow, +hit/+agi for red (orange), and +agi/+stam for blue (purple). One nice side benefit from stacking +hit is that when you face critters that reduce your hit chance (Attumen, banshees in Mount Hyjal), you can actually sometimes STILL HIT THEM with your specials. Which is so nice.

It comes differently this context - I know you, and many of the others you'd be with, and you know me and my particular circumstances about as well as anyone who didn't give birth to me. Heck, you're living the adventure yourself! So the framing's different in ways that matter.

There is one pull in BT where we have rogues sap the sheep targets, because the two kill targets will unsheep anything that's nearby, but they can't unsap; then we pull the kill targets alll the way down the ramp to kill them, and when they're out of range of the sheep targets the mages pick them up and keep them sheeped. That's it, though; they tried using us for saps in TK and SSC and kept having to scrape us off the floor (those early pulls have a lot of invisible walls around the edges, and the mobs are in a semicircle which is a hard sap configuration, and honestly coordinating several rogues into a simultaneous sap was a nightmare; we just started tanking those mobs instead and it went far better; even a Deep Subtlety Night Elf has a lot of trouble sapping raid-level trash.)

I've got to say that since my sapping is very low-need in raids, Sneaking Potions get the job done and aren't too spendy for the amount I use them... maybe one a week if that. I can almost always do without the potions in 5-mans even without subtlety, though I'm not as reliable at not getting spotted as a subtlety rogue or night elf. The important thing there is to have a group that doesn't pull if I get spotted (they should either let me vanish or let me die.)

This is after having levelled in PVP daggers (21/8/22 and yeah, I know, that's weird), raided a while in pre-BC both as seal fate backstab and hemo, and then levelled 60-70 in deep subtlety -- I'm well aware of all of the joys that Subtlety has to offer! I got more serious about my DPS in BC and went 20/41/0 sword spec. But sapping works just the same in Combat as long as you're careful and carry some Sneaking Potions around for the sticky saps; Subtlety talents only affect the sneakability (which can be worked around with Distract/potions) and range (ditto) of the sap targets, saving you a few seconds and a few spots but not really changing the functionality.

Sap is sadly almost useless in ZA because of how most of the humanoids are triggered and the ones who aren't are accompanied by stealth detectors. Other than that one pull in BT... yeah... well I guess I can look forward to using it in SWP maybe, because that's been it for raiding. It's of course highly useful in MrT and other 5-mans but I just don't have that much trouble sapping things in there.

What you'd lose in sap time you'd pick up in combo point generation, which is very powerful for interupting casters; our strategy on Caribdis in SSC was to have a pair of interrupters on her to keep her from healing the other bosses, and caster interruption in general comes up all over the place everywhere from soloing to five mans to raiding (hi, Aran!), and is another piece of rogue utility that comes up far more often than sapping; I get asked to interrupt tons, and do a lot of casual interrupting, of course.

I have to admit, I'm thoroughly enjoying playing the rogue, more than the other characters I have. Now, that might be due to the fact that I play her more than the others, but I do enjoy the stealth aspects that the class provides.

Not that I'm anywhere close to raiding yet. I've only managed to get my rogue up to level 28 so far.

I had a look at that link bryant provided. My brain melted - I don't understand half of what's been talked about there. :(