Hexapuma’s World

One of our defining characteristics as rogues are to keep out of sight and attack at our own leisure. Monty Python gives us a lecture in the art of “How not to be seen”:

… WOW is in a temporary holding pattern. Just got Bioshock. Amazing soundscape!

Currently Warspike’s build is combat fist but with a slight difference from the cookie-cutter build. I’ve put points into MoD for additional stealth – and when doing lots of BG that stealth is very welcome. I can easily say that rogues without MoD are very easy to spot… For me MoD has become a requirement.

Warspike’s Combat Build

Assassination Talents – 15 points

The first tiers of the assassination tree is almost a requirements. I would recommend all rogues to go for 11 points here. Malice, Ruthlessness and Relentless strikes are god send.

# Improved Eviscerate – rank 3/3
# Malice – rank 5/5
# Ruthlessness – rank 3/3
# Relentless Strikes – rank 1/1
# Lethality – rank 3/5

Combat Talents – 41 points

Combat tree for sustained damage. If you do venture down the combat tree make sure you pick up the signature moves here – Riposte, Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. When you combine BF and AR you are effectively in god mode. Add evasion and not much can withstand your fury. This goes for both PVP and PVE. Although make sure you have the target stunned before starting.

Personally I chose to go with Combat potency (for that extra energy) and all the way to Surprise Attacks (10% damage increase) and I love them both!

# Improved Gouge – rank 3/3
# Improved Sinister Strike – rank 2/2
# Deflection – rank 5/5
# Precision – rank 5/5
# Riposte – rank 1/1
# Improved Sprint – rank 2/2
# Improved Kick – rank 2/2
# Dual Wield Specialization – rank 4/5
# Blade Flurry – rank 1/1
# Fist Weapon Specialization – rank 5/5
# Aggression – rank 2/3
# Adrenaline Rush – rank 1/1
# Nerves of Steel – rank 2/2
# Combat Potency – rank 5/5
# Surprise Attacks – rank 1/1

Subtlety Talents – 5 points

The king of the rogue talents – if you are the stalking kind of guy that is… I cannot play wihtout it, I feel naked and I do even consider dropping a few points from assassination and put them into camoflage for increased speed as well.

# Master of Deception – rank 5/5

This works for me, although I used to play with maces before getting my Nexus-Claw and that was even more fun! With mace specialization you get a chance to stun and increased weapon skill. Very handy… and very annoying for your cloth targets.

So finally Warspike has reached the esteemed level of 66 which means a trip to the rogue trainer for that lovely skill – Cloak of Shadows. The skill allows a rogue to remove all harmfull effects and then have 90% resist to everything nasty for the next 5 seconds. The number of PVP tricks that this skill alone allows is amazing. Needless to say CoS is an integral part of end-game PVP.

In addition I’ve made it to Nagrand now. A beautiful zone with lots of beasts to kill – and skin! It seems that every mob that goes down has something for a faction, a quest or just plain simply some good knothide leather. The landscape is very interesting – rolling hills with little ponds and other interesting landmarks. Even though it is pretty open it is hard to spot the opposing faction… very interesting.

I haven’t taken part in the world PVP action in Nagrand yet. There is a neutral town smack in the middle and apparently either horde or alliance will have control over it – along with its questgivers and other NPCs.

Going from level 64 – 66 went amazingly fast and I guess the main reason is the ease of doing the quests in Terokkar forest.

Doing some changes to the visual layout of this blog. Don’t worry I’ll have it refreshed in no time. Actually it do feels a little bit of what I am doing when the main character is getting a bit boring – i.e. getting a new alt.

I don’t know if it is the pain of leveling enchanting or if it is just the fact that most of my old WOW friends have rerolled and now plays on the dark side..err the Horde, but I feel a strong pull towards creating a new toon.

I know it is going to be a rogue.. but I can’t decide if I am going with a Blood Elf or an Undead. I don’t care about the racial traits (if so I would probably have chosen a gnome) but style and appearance.

I’ve alreay created two horde rogues on my preferred server, one elf and one undead. I did create a female bloodie mostly because of the sick cool stealth animation they have. If you haven’t seen it… roll a blood elf rogue and level her to 2 and get stealth… its currently maintenance over here or would gladly have posted a fresh screenshot. Didn’t find any animation on youtube besides this one.

So previously Hexapuma was herbalist and engineer. Engineering was really sweet in PVP with all those little gadgets and especially spell interrupting grenades. In a couple of patches ago the grenades were nerfed big time. A grenade throw would be aborted if you took any damage.

I do understand that the developers might have considered grenades or actually engineering a wee bit too powerful for PVP. At one time almost everyone dedicated to PVP had to be an engineer.

Come TBC I didn’t find any new gadgets or gear I thought interesting… so why keep the old profession. Also the factions out there doesn’t give any cool engineering recipes when gaining reputation.. I decided to take up enchanting. Now I always find myself wanting loads of enchants but never the patience of waiting around in Ironforge to find a decent and trustworthy enchanter.

So last Friday I dropped engineering and went for enchanting. I figured that if I spent sometimes in deadmines and then the higher instances I don’t have to spend a fortune in buying reagents.

Boy was I wrong!

Running Deadmines did help me raise enchanting from 1-100 but thereafter… oh the pain. You actually need to disenchant ALOT to get the required stuff. I’ve heard that it is actually totally worth it to level tailoring at the same time to be able to control the enchanting ingredients. And cloth is easily farmed.

By the end of the weekend I’ve raised enchanting to about 275 and it has so far cost me about 200 gold. I expect to spend almost the same amount on the next 25 skill points. And then its the next level from 300-375… although I am not that stressed out of increasing that last part so quickly. It is getting it up to 300 that is important for me now.

To help me level enchanting I’ve used this Enchanting 1-300 guide. It is excellent and I strongly recommend it!

Oh.. Hexapuma dinged 67 while finishing up the last quests in Terrokar Forest!

Even though I am not a raider I do find the new T6 armors interesting. The rogue T6 armor is somewhat cool looking but nothing special. I sometimes wonder if Blizzard’s art department do make the tier sets look cheesy so that we casual gamers can laugh behind the raiders’ backs.

From MMO-Champion.com:

Hexapuma turned 66 this weekend and in addition to getting the fantastic rogue ability Cloak of Shadows, he can now wield the very slow fist mainhand weapon: Nexus-Claw! The weapon is fantastic because it has a whooping 2.8 weapon speed which is very uncommon among the new weapon arsenal of TBC.

Why get so excited about a slow mainhand you ask? Well for a rogue a slow mainhand is king as it allows bigger insta attacks. In addition attack power addition to the talent hemorrage (or plain and simple hemo) is not normalized – which means that hemo takes full benefit of a weapon being really really slow such as the Nexus-Claw.

The Claw is a green vendor item sold by Dealer Jadyan in the Netherstorm. The weapon is rare so odds are you’ll find it overly expensive at AH or worse, you reach Jadyan soldout.

For me it was pretty exciting to travel to his location as it included lots of ganking (with me being the victim) and a fine moment of revenge at an over-confident L69 undead rogue.

Now with my amazing pair of claws I am actually thinking of respeccing into a build containing both combat and subtlety…

Going from Zangarmarsh to Terokkar Forest was a wee bit of disappointment for me. The washed out colors of the zone does not sit well with me and for some reason the initial kill X timber worgs to collect their tails isn’t doing it for me either. I guess I really hate animal-collection quests. That quest aside – I did have a lot of fun with the numerous birdmen quests.

I’ve now reached The Bone Wastes, helping refugees and what not. More collection quests, although these have better drop rates. I am seriously thinking of leaving this zone and move on to Nagrand or the Blade’s Edge Mountains.

Did you like Terokkar Forest?