Should You Fail, You Don’t Exist

Upon returning back to Si:7 in Stormwind to train after hitting level 22, I found Master Mathias Shaw wished to speak with me. He asked me to return to Westfall and check a watch tower at the Southeast corner of the zone. Meet up with Agent Kearnen to be briefed on the situation (she is crouching stealthed by a tree so look for the question mark!). So, I go to find zombie-fied Venture Co. and Defias workers shipping things down the river that divides Westfall from Darkshire. Pick a pocket and break into the watch tower to retrieve contents from a chest, I am told. But, what no one knew, was that when the chest was opened there was a trap inside. Touch of Zanzil is a poison effect that lasts for SEVEN WHOLE DAYS. It lowers your agility by 15 and you can’t stealth in any form. Vanish? Nope. Stealth? Dream on. Shadowmeld? Of coarse not!

Lucky for you, as soon as you turn in your quest to Master Mathias he is appalled by the poison you brought back with you and sends you to see the Doctor gnome in the building’s basement. He’s a little crazy, talking to the squirrel you can see in the top of the picture but he gives you a quest and eventually the cure.

With a Stroke of Precision

The subsequent two points since my last build link is to finish off Precision and move a point down into Endurance. Here is the visual. While Close Quarters Combat is tasty with that extra crit, not only do I not have daggers or fist weapons equipped but while leveling you take whatever upgrade you can get. If I were to have daggers and fist weapons but upgrade to an axe, sword or mace these talent points are now wasted as they will not work. You either have to live with it or pay the gold at your class trainer to wipe your slate clean. Similarly with Mace Specialization or Hack and Slash a few tiers down.

Anyone a football fan?

Oops…They’ve Changed It

I was embarassed twice today by my boyfriend while running around on my rogue. First, while questing in Redridge he asked why I wasn’t on my mount. I had forgotten, despite the Recruit a Friend that Riding Skill had been changed to level 20. When I arrived in Stormwind Harbor he asked why I didn’t just use the Dalaran Portal. Heh. If you have access to Wrath, making your Hearthstone from Dalaran is probably the most useful thing you can do. It might be a pain when you need to hearth for class skills but you will thank your stars when you have to travel to some far off distant land. Or, if you happen to be a Night Elf and need a quick trip back to Darnassus.

Needless to say that I changed both errors. What a blessing it was when they bumped up all of the skill levels for mounts. Darkshire was the biggest pain in the ass to traverse without a mount.

Once a Thief, Always a Thief

Since I’m in Redridge, I would like to point out that Alther’s Mill is a beautiful spot to max out your current Lockpickng skill. There is actually a quest entitled Alther’s Mill, given by the dwarf Lucius to get him an item from a box he’s hidden away. Upon completion you get the very functionless but very cool Certificate of Thievery. It is a giant pain and you’ll waist upwards of fifteen minutes just clicking on re-spawning boxes but you will be rewarded with maxed out Lockpicking. If you don’t skill up here you can hit up an engineer for some Practice Locks or try your luck at pick pocketing some junkboxes from Humanoid spawns. I wouldn’t suggest the latter, though. I try to pick pocket every spawn I can and got my first junk box right before I logged for the night. The drop rate is rather atrocious. :/

This is where I wanted to start my blog from, mainly because I will be excited to finally see some poisons on my weapons.

Note that I didn’t say daggers.

Weapons and You During Those Baby Levels

Part of the beauty that is Lich King is that you have a few more weapons added to your arsenal and with just a short trip to a nearby city you have access to most, if not all of them. Several levels back a friend offered to run me through Deadmines even if I did not have the quests to complete yet. Dungeons are wonderful to get run through because all of those in Azeroth have a painful amount of trash mobs and with an 80 blazing through everything you can have the whole zone dead in a matter of minutes.

That first run landed me with a Cookie’s Tenderizer, Smite’s Reaver and a Buzzer Blade. At the time, I was of level for the Tenderizer and the Blade but, unfortunately, I did not have the weapon proficiency to equip the lovely cooking utensil. So! With a quick trip to Ironforge you can visit Buliwyf Stonehand and he will teach you most of what you will need as a rogue – Guns, Fist Weapons, One Hand Axes, One Hand Maces, Two Hand Axes and Two Hand Maces. Though, as a rogue, you do not have access to two handed weapons.

Currently, my character is dual-wielding the Reavers. Why? It was between that and the Tenderizers, to be honest. After some encouragement from a friend rogue the thought process went as follows. While the Tenderizers have a higher high end (51 to the Reavers’ 36) the Tenderizers suffer in the way of stats. By sacrificing 2 Strength you gain Stamina and hit rating, both more important at lower levels. Plus, the Reavers are considerably faster so you can get more swings in. In trials for both weapons mobs of the same level as me were dead by the third or fourth combo point so the killing power is roughly the same. This time, extra stats wins out.

Being Talented is Important

To round out my happy I-turned-20 post, this is my current build with current glyphs. Since I am still such a low level pumping Sinister Strike is near mandatory. Making it stronger and cost less will make leveling much less painful and Blurred Speed is not only awesome but gives you another option to run away from mobs or potential gankers, assuming you have some water nearby and handy.