I've received a surprising number of people asking me about specs and one thing that seems to come up in conversations is some variation of "whats the best way to get ready for raiding?" I decided to address that here. Behold: everything you need to know about getting ready to raid.

Goals
  • 100 Hit for T2s
  • All T1 blue or better gear
  • 200-220 Hit for Raids
  • Weaponating your Weapon slots
44-49

In this level range, you need to spend 100% of your time in instances or in the following 3 zones doing quests: Ironpine Peak, Shimmersand, Stillmoor. The reason is simple: you need the reputations from the major factions in these zones for important items that will help you not be a 300 dps charity case when you get into T2s or Greenscale. Once you're 48, the only instances you should be running are Charmer's Caldera or Abyssal Precipice.

Day 1: Ding 50!

Grats! Now shut the hell up. We have to work to do.
  • Buy at Wyrmbane Spire (requires Decorated with Dragonslayers): Drake Scale Choker for +26 hit
  • Run Chamer's Caldera (CC) at least once (preferably before 50) to complete the quest and get: Wind-Touched Mace for +26 hit
  • Buy at Zareph's Return (requires Decorated with Mathos): Sapphire Studded Mathosian Band x2 for total of +40 hit
  • Crafted: Spined Compound Bow with augment. +30 hit
  • Crafted: Wayward Breeches with augment. This is equivalent to T2 leg.
  • Get your 6-slot Sigil/Core and throw some cheap level 40+ lessers in there with dex/crit. Get as many Agile Reflex as you can afford, and fill the rest with whatever is on the AH. Put lessers in your greater slots. Greaters are bad.
  • OPTIONAL Crafted: Sword of the Order or Callous Blade. +25 hit. Only do this if your weapon is particularly bad.
If you're not decorated with Mathos and Dragonslayer yet, get there. Its very easy. In the rest of the slots your questing/leveling items will suffice. You now have over 100 hit and are set for Tier 2 dungeons. Do not spend time in Tier 1s unless you just want the experience.

Runes

Now that you have some shiny (and some not-so-shiny) gear. What runes to use? Eventually, you'll want to be using the Mathos, Icewatch and Dragonslayer runes for your Belt, Helm and Legs, but you're probably not there yet. Runecrafters can get you started and the vendors in the zones you leveled through can fill in the gaps:

Helm
Get the Radiant Accurate Rune or Luminous Accurate Rune if you're not hit capped. If you are hit capped, grab Icewatch Bandit's Rune if you have the notoriety, otherwise the Redscar Strider's Emblem from Perspice.

Shoulder/Chest

Gloves

Belt
Get the Mathosian Pugilist's Rune if you have the notoriety, otherwise the Runeguard Battlemaster's Emblem.

Legs
Get the Radiant Accurate Rune or Luminous Accurate Rune if you're not hit capped. If you are hit capped, grab the Crafty Dragonslayer's Rune if you have the notoriety. Otherwise, get the Arcane Sneak's Rune from Lantern Hook.

All Weapons

Day 2: Tier 2s

If you are LFG for T2, you stand the best chance of finding one if you can queue as both DPS and support. You should have at least 2 roles.
  • Your DPS role should be ranged saboteur. This will allow you to crush the DPS meters while having maximum awareness to not stand in fire and do other stupid crap that will make people hate you. The rotation is 5x Shrapnel > Detonate, 5x Spike > Detonate. Cake.
  • Your support role should be raid bard. Focus on learning to be a good bard, keeping Motifs active, group healing, timing cooldowns and not dying.
You may have different ideas about these specs. You might think you know better or you might have a pet spec that you used while leveling. Maybe you really are smarter than everyone else, but I encourage you to learn to use the cookie cutter specs first and then once you have the basics down, you can use them as a baseline to compare with whatever you want to try. You will find that the cookie cutter specs are there for a reason: they are best in the vast majority of situations.

Which T2s to run?

As a DPS rogue, your weapons are of paramount importance. Expert Runic Descent should be your #1 priority and I encourage you to queue for that first before using the random queue function. RDx has the Eyemangler and Blackheart Blade for weapons, the trash drop Rune-Carved Bow (best for a long time) along with the Cover of Night, Loop of the Dangerous, Shard of Planes, and several excellent blue items. Its a rogue item bonanza.

There are great upgrades in every T2, and eventually you'll want to run them all many times. Your best items will come from RDx and DSMx.

Once you run 2-3 T2s, you should have the hit required for Greenscale/RoS.

Day 3: Ready to Raid

Your target hit is 220. On the off chance that your T2 runs didn't put you over the 200 hit soft cap, craft Mask of the Hunter for +20 more hit. You can then stick this in the wardrobe slot when you find an upgrade.

Before you march off into Greenscale and RoS, make sure you are doing the Daily Raid Rift each day. The quest is available in your faction's capital city and doing this will get you 7 Inscribed Stones, and a chance at some nice items each day. Every 3 days of doing the Daily RR will allow you to purchase one epic lesser essence and start tricking out that source core and replacing those blue/green essences. Nice!

Good luck in your raid career!
Posted by Dunsparrow

3 comments:

DirtyThirdRider said...

Great guides man. Always like reading your stuff.

July 7, 2011 at 3:16 PM  
theantichris said...

Love your site and have been sharing it with all my guild rogues.

What is your opinion on the +10 dex vs. +19 crit to weapons?

July 8, 2011 at 9:01 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

On 19 crit vs 10 dex, it really depends on your overall stat values. You need to keep crit and AP in balance. Dex does that for you automatically. If you're crit-heavy then 9 AP is better. If you're AP-heavy then 19 crit is better. However, 10 dex is always good. I use it and don't have to worry about that slot.

July 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM