Gearing Your Rogue, The 3.2 Way
August 6, 2009 33 Comments
I received a reader email recently presenting an idea of working up some sort of guide to help freshly leveled 80 Rogues figure out what to look for in gear, etc. I started working on the post, but when the Rogue Q & A came out, I focused my attention on it.
Now that Call of the Crusade (3.2 as most people I know call it) has arrived, players have an easier time obtaining some gear levels that previously required extensive raiding to obtain. Today I’ll discuss with you where you can quickly gear out a fresh level 80 Rogue, or even upgrade some of the gear on your veteran 80 Rogue.
– Trial of the Champion –
The new 5 man instance in its normal level has gear that is equivalent to the items you would find in the 10 man version of Naxxramus and The Obsidian Sanctum. It’s not incredibly difficult and it is the fastest instance to run, as there’s no trash. If you can get a group together to run it multiple times, you could clear it 3 times in an hour. In that time, fifteen ilevel 200 Epics will drop (great way to farm Abyss Crystals btw).
The loot table for this instance is pretty large, offering up several pieces of gear for everyone. Here’s a list of some of the items you could snag for your Rogue:
- Dagger – Black Knight’s Rondel (added in 3.2.2)
- Hands – Gloves of the Argent Fanatic
- Legs – Leggings of Brazen Tresspass
- Shoulders – Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave
- Belt – Belt of Fierce Competition
- Back – Drape of the Undefeated*
- Finger – Uruka’s Band of Zeal
- Trinket – Banner of Victory
* Note that this cape is itemized for Plate DPS wearers. However, if no one in your group needs it, it may still be an upgrade for you.
If you can get a group for Heroic mode, Ulduar 10 level gear will be your reward. I actually replaced my neck item on Tuesday with the one that drops here. Also note that the Heroic mode drops Champion’s Seals as well as Emblems of Conquest.
Again, the loot table is large, but here are the items a Rogue might be interested in:
- Ranged – True-Aim Long Rifle
- Mace – Aledar’s Battlestar
- Feet – Treads of Dismal Fortune
- Head – Mask of Distant Memory
- Wrist – Armbands of the Wary Lookout
- Neck – Ancient Pendant of Arathor
– Other Heroics & Emblem of Conquest –
Trial of the Crusader isn’t the only Heroic worth running. As you’ve probably are aware of, all Heroic instances drop Emblems of Conquest now. In addition, the daily dungeon quest provides two additional Emblems of Conquest, while the Heroic daily gives two of the latest Emblem, called Triumph.
Using your Emblems of Conquest, you could purchase the following Ulduar 25 level gear:
- Neck, 19 Emblems – Broach of the Wailing Night
- Belt, 28 Emblems – Belt of the Twilight Assassin
- Gloves, 28 Emblems – Gloves of the Blind Stalker
- Legs, 39 Emblems – Leggings of Wavering Shadow
- 58 Emblems – Tier 8 Chest
- 58 Emblems – Tier 8 Helm
In addition to the Emblem gear, here are some other epic gear that might drop while you’re farming badges:
-
Culling of Stratholme – Fist, Greed
-
Gundrak – Ring, Hemorrhaging Circle
-
Gundrak – Legs, Gored Hide Leggards
-
Halls of Lightning – Wrists, Advanced Tooled Leather Bands
-
Halls of Stone – Dagger, The Fleshshaper
-
Utgarde Keep – Waist, Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt
-
Utgarde Keep – Drake-Mounted Crossbow
-
Utgarde Pinnacle – Hands, Gilt-Edged Leather Gauntlets
– Argent Tournament –
The Argent Tournament has a few good starter weapons for you. For 25 Champion Seals you can pick up any of the following:
- Mace – Ironforge Smasher
- Dagger – Dagger of the Rising Moon
- Gun – Blunderbuss of Khaz Modan
– Putting it All Together –
If you spend a few hours a night for a week, with luck you’ll be close to a full epic set of gear. As far as weaponry goes, if you’re Assassination, using the Dagger of the Rising Moon as your main hand and The Fleshshaper as your offhand. Greed is a solid main hand choice for Combat, while either of the daggers would be a good choice for an offhand.
Unfortunately, just getting gear isn’t enough. I posted this back during BC to make a point. Enchants and gems are a big part of your DPS. However, it’s going to have to wait for another day to be posted here. So stay tuned for Enchants and Gems, The 3.2 Way, including both budget gems and enchants, as well as maximizing your gear.
– Sam
Slice and Dice 
Thanks very much for this post. A great post and helped me alot by saving me time and understanding the quickest way to get to endgame now that its sooo far from my blue ilevel 170-200 items 😦
Thanks again!
Yay! This will help out tons! I know once I hit 80 this will be awesome. Luckily, I have the BoA shoulders and chest piece to tie me over till I replace them. I also have the Sharpened Scarlet Kris and Venerable Dal’Rend’s Sacred Charge, which should last me until I replace my OH with a sword or my MH with a fist. I’m specced combat from your guide and it is so awesome! I think I’m going to go duel spec with Mutilate and Combat. I already bought the Librarian’s Paper Cutter cheap, so I could make that OH and the BoA dagger MH as mutilate until I get better weapons. So many choices!
Thanks for all your guides, they have really been helpful. I have printed some out and h ave next to my computer to see where to put my talent points, I am less than 2 weeks in to an Assassination Rogue 43 and loving it!
Salute…cant wait to hit 80!
My rogue has a LOT of PVP gear, and im not just getting into PVE, but my rogue cannot DPS!!!! I need gear! Hopefully i can get some Naxx runs soon so i can get some good gear. Ive been saving my Emblems for the Helm Teir 8. So we’ll see how i do.
What is your DPS like?
Jmoss,
It depends where you’re DPSing, and who’s buffing you. My Average DPS looks something like this:
Heroic – 2.5k – 3k
10 Man – 3k- 3.5k
25 Man – 3.5 – 4.5k
Again, those numbers can go either way depending on what other classes I’m with. However, when I’m in arenas, I average 1k – 1.5k damage due to resilience and loss of stats. It’s pretty normal to see a significant drop in power while PvPing.
– Sam
Alright. Well, I’ve never run any 10 or 25 man’s before, so my Heroic DPS is around 1.5 for PVP/Heroic Gear.
Jmoss, do you plan on doing more PVE, because the “norm” is at least 2k on average in Heroics, unless you are a fresh 80. If you have a guild, who runs you through Heroics and raids it won’t be much of an issue, because they can carry you, but you will run the risk of getting stuck with some 1337 person, who will harass you about your dps. I know my girlfriend ran into that issue until I helped her get a good pve rotation, regem, respec, etc. She got so depressed for awhile, because she did so well in PVP, but constantly got yelled at in PVE. She is doing fine now, so all is good. It is just something that happens to a pure dps class.
Thanks for the info. Sam. I really appreciate your website and the time you take to keep it going.
It’s nice to have a friendly site for we rogues to go to for information and request help.
As far as I can tell you are the only rogue site being kept current (unless you include *The World of Ming* lol) with information and solid advice when requested from your visitors.
Lord knows you can’t get that on the official WoW Rgue forums. Please keep up the good work.
Yeah. i am a new PVE 80. I was PVP for a while, and my gear didnt cut it in PVE (obviously). I have been spamming heroics with friends for 4 days now. I have a couple pieces from Emblems of Conquets, but im slowly getting there… I wanna do Naxx so i can get some more gear, but im worried (like your girlfriend) that i will get kicked due to low DPS.
You won’t always get kicked out, so don’t worry. Just worry about getting into a group and doing your best. Since you have been doing heroics you should get the rotations down and follow Sam’s guide on dps. Oh, if your friend is the Raid Leader you won’t get kicked, so find a good friend that is great at puging. lol
Sam for Mut wouldn’t you definitely want the slowest dagger in MH and for both Mut and Combat the slowest dagger in OH?
I’m 99% sure this is true unless it changed in 3.2
Slow OH for Mut and Combat is only good for Fan of Knives. You use deadly poison on your OH, which will proc more with a faster weapon, so you would need to have a fast OH.
Meljnrr,
Spear beat me to it. I guess that’s what I get for not checking my comments before bed.
🙂
– Sam
Thank you for this list, you rock sam!
Another fairly good but inexpensive weap enchant is Icebreaker, it grades out slightly lower than mongoose on shadowpanther and is not mat intensive.
I used it until I could afford to buy the Berserking recipe and do it to both hands.
Okay, what would be some good starter weapon combos for combat? Because I don’t want to try and avoid using my BoA at 80, I will use the Librarian’s Paper Cutter OH, and Dagger of the Rising Moon MH for Mutilate spec and hope to get something for Combat spec. Also, I noticed that you only mentioned the t8.5 chest, and did not mention some other items you can buy at 80. (for example the Invincibility Ring and Mirror of Truth) If I don’t get the valor ring and heroism trinket, what would be good items to farm for?
As far as a good starter weaponry goes, your best purchasable items are MH: Unholy Persuader (Requires Ebon Hold Honored, lvl 78), and OH: Librarians Paper Cutter
Getting into epic gear, Greed should be your first acquisition from Heroic Culling of Strat. Flame Leviathan drops a really nice OH, the Kinetic Ripper, as well. Until then, your Librarians should still work just fine. Beyond that, just use the best weapons that you can find, as long as they’re a matched set (Swords/Axes, Fist / Dagger, or Mace), and spec accordingly
As far as rings / trinkets go, you could convert badges down to get the two items that you mentioned, but I wouldn’t recommend that until you’ve got all the conqueror’s gear you can. That being said, both of those items are good items, and though I did replace the trinket, the Ring is still equipped. Just make sure you get the better stuff before you get them, as they’ll make a much bigger improvement.
– Sam
I looked up Unholy Persuader and it is OH only, so sad panda… There is a cool sword MH that I can buy from them once I’m revered, but I might have a replacement by then. Other than that thank you! I will let you know what I get. lol
http://www.wowwiki.com/Reaper_of_Dark_Souls
Reaper of Dark Souls is the MH and a very good one when you are Revered with KotEB.
I used it until the Razorscale Talon dropped for me.
Thanks very much for the great information Sam, especially the rotation hints and addon advice which will no doubt assist me to boost my dps rate to I hope 2 K minimum. I am working hard to upgrade my gear to pve. I need some advice on whether to continue to equip the following items for pve and in which order to upgrade:
MH Titansteel shanker dagger, OH Torment of the Banished sword, Nesingwary 4000 gun
Helm of the Vast Legions
Collar of Dissolution
Cloak of Darkening
Nimble Climbers Belt
Proto Hide Leggings
Triumph of Impact Band & Signet of Edward the Odd rings
Battlemasters Conviction & Mirror of Truth trinkets
I also have the Darkmoon of Death & Titan forged Rune of Cruelty tinkets while the rest of my armour is a mix of Gladiator pvp gear and my plan to get the Valorous Bonescythe Breastplate will soon be realised.
Zro,
You can get away with some pvp gear on your toon as you work to upgrade your gear, just realize that you more pvp gear you have, the less damage you will do. The reason is because you sacrifice the damage for more survivability. Most importantly, switch your weapons around, because you want a slow MH and fast OH. If you have a sword in your MH go Combat, and work on replacing your OH dagger asap to either another sword or dagger with a speed of 1.4/1.5.
When it comes to priority on what gear to replace first it comes down to priority and luck. The priority is get good weapons, which you have good ones, but for the spec you can do the dagger is not ideal. For Conquest emblems, go for the T8.5 gear first, and then whatever leather items are an upgrade and eventually when you got everything conquest, go down to Valor and Emblem stuff, like the Mirror of Truth, etc.
Zro,
I agree with Spear’s analysis. Switch your weapons around and keep grinding for gear. Upgrading your PvP gear to PvE equivalents will really help your DPS. Mirror of Truth and the Darkmoon Card are your best PvE options trinket wise.
When you get another Dagger / Fist or Sword / Axe switch up your weaponry so they match. That’s about all I can tell you without an armory link, but it looks like you’re basically on the right track.
– Sam
FYI, I believe Blizzard is actually adding a dagger to H ToC soon, so keep an eye out for that as well.
Yes a 1.8 speed ilevel 219 dagger called the black knight’s rondel will be added. Though it’ll be months late. Rogues are the only class that have no weapons that are good for them in H TOC (mace spec is terribad without at least runestone/ grim toll/ 50% passive ArP.
Ty for the guide. I am a first time rogue and this helped lots. In keeping with this, what would be the best mh/oh one can get outside raids from heroics/argent tourny/ purchasing from ah?
Hi Samuel,
I really appreciate your site and all hints you share. Im a fresh level 80 Rogue and have about 60k honor points, what you think i have to do with this?
Thanks again for your time! Greetings from Brazil!
Thanks this was very helpful. I really liked how I can see your website on my ipod 🙂
Thanks for this great guide! I will no doubt look at it once my rogue hits 80. I really hope you will update the list once Icecrown citadel goes public, will ya?
Thank you for a good grind guide once i reach 80.
73 at the moment:)
One think worth mentioning is to participate in WG, at least on my server (Bronzebeard EU) alliance win 8 out of 10. And the WG marks can give you some nice PvP with hit gear. And also trinkest who can remove movement empiaring effects (I do no damage when feared)
You get around 10k honor if you have quests and can then go and spend them on epic gems, for either gold or stats.
Ps. Thank you for many great posts, I enjoy reading them.
//Knut
Hey Knut I’m sorry to tell you that any PvP items at level 80 should only be used for PvP as resilience does NOTHING in PvE. And while your right you do no damage while incapacitated, but there is a very small amount of raid bosses that cause lose of control of your character and the procs from DMG trinkets are far better.
Great article….I’ve really enjoyed reading your articles. You obviously know what you are talking about! Can`t wait to read more
**Update for 3.3**
Since it hasn’t been updated, here is just basically the gear
that drops from the ICC heroics, and a brief suggestion on
the Triumph badges:
Forge of Souls:
Bronjahm
=Normal=
*Bewildering Shoulderpads (filler shoulders till you get t9)
=Heroic=
*Nighttime MH Axe (BiS for hack and slash combat spec till
you start raiding)
*Papa’s Brand New Knife (great thrown weapon)
Devourer of Souls
=Normal=
*Accusrsed Crawling Cape (tremendously great cloak, and
tremendously low drop rate)
*Heartshiver MH dagger (decent for Mut rogues. Use only cheap
enchants on this item)
=Heroic=
*Frayed Shoundrel’s Cap (great helm till you replace with
Mask of Lethal Intent)
*Needle-Encrusted Scorpion (tremendously great trinket, and
tremendously sought after by A LOT of other classes)
*Blood Weeper MH dagger (BiS for Mut spec till you start
raiding)
Pit of Saron:
Forgemaster Garfrost
=Normal=
*Flayer’s Black Belt (great belt if you need Expertise)
*Ring of Carnelian and Bone (decent ring that will get
replaced quickly)
=Heroic=
*Barbed Ymirheim Choker (BiS till you start raiding)
Krick and Ick
=Normal=
*Krick’s Beetle Stabber OH dagger (decent for mut spec and
fist/dagger combat spec. Use only cheap enchants only.)
=Heroic=
*Chewed Leather Wristguards (really good wrist, but can be
replaced with the crafted wrists if you are able to obtain
them.)
*Felglacier Bolter Bow (Only good if you don’t have better.)
Scourgelord Tyrannus
=Normal=
*Shaggy Wyrmleather Leggings (okay leggings you will replace
with t9)
*Rimebane Rifle Gun (Only good if you don’t have better.)
=Heroic=
*Fleshwerk Leggings (better leggings, but you will replace
them with t9.)
*Band of Stained Souls (Tremendously good ring that even fail
paladins will roll on it. I lost the roll THREE times to fail
paladins before winning this sucker. -_- )
Halls of Reflection
Falric
=Normal=
*Ghoulslicer MH Axe (decent but quickly replaced. Use only
cheap enchants only.)
=Heroic=
*Shoulder of Black Betrayal (decent but replaced with T9
shoulders)
Marwyn
=Normal=
*Carpal Tunnerlers (okay gloves, but replaced quickly)
=Heroic=
*Choking Hauberk (decent but replaced with t9 chest)
The Lich King
=Normal=
*Blackened Geist Ribs (okay chest, but replaced quickly)
*Hate-Forged Cleaver MH Axe (decent but quickly replaced. Use
only cheap enchants only.)
*Crypt Fiend Slayer Bow (Only good if you don’t have better.)
=Heroic=
*Blighted Leather Footpads (BiS until you start raiding)
*Liar’s Tongue OH sword (BiS for Hack and Slash spec until
you start raiding)
*Black Icicle MH Mace (great weapon, but is lacking a great
OH to go with it. Only get if you don’t have better.)
Trash Loot from all three instances
=Normal=
n/a
=Heroic=
*Seven-Fingered Claws MH Fist (BiS for Fist/dagger combat
spec and ONLY fist weapon in the ICC instances to drop…)
*Unsharpened Ice Razor OH dagger (BiS for mut spec and
Fist/dagger spec until you start raiding.)
About Triumph Badge loot:
My personal preferance is to buy all the t9 gear EXCEPT the
helm, and buy Mask of Lethal Intent. If you are combat you
will definitely need to if you go the route of Armor
Penetration, but you don’t have to focus on that.
As for accessories go, Dexterous Brightstone Ring is a no-
brainer, and Mark of Supremacy is a great trinket until you
start raiding.
On a side note, if you don’t get the belt from normal Pit of
Saron, you can either buy Belt of the Twilight Assassin
(conquest badges) or buy the Relentless Gladiator’s Belt of
Triumph (honor points). In addition, if you don’t get the
cloak from normal Forge of Souls (which you will most likely
never see drop) Hammerhead Sharksin Cloak (valor badges) is
your other alternative, unless you get in say Naxx and can
get Aged Winter Cloak (not recomended unless you are going
after Armor Penetration).
Hope this helps!
-SpearXXI
PS
If I missed anything, I wrote it all down right before falling asleep. I did forget to mention getting Crimson Star (thrown) with triumph badges. It is a really good thrown that you should be using unless you are lacking other stats that Papa’s Brand New Knife (h FoS) has.
In addition, I would like to mention that if you plan to play as combat, I strongly recommend you get the Axe/Sword instead of the Fist/Dagger, because the way the loot is in ICC, you will an Axe and Sword sooner.