From farming Mana Tombs to a combat spec Leveling Build? Just what kind of crazy is this guy on?

I promise that my entries will become a lot more organized in the future. I’m still getting use to this whole “blogging” thing and putting thought to text for most of my “articles”…if you can even call them that. They tend to come to me on Tuesday around 4 a.m. when I wake up and go “OH OH I can talk about this”. Not the most organized method, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m currently attempting to plot out a lot of future entries so I avoid this situation.

Anyway, on to the actual purpose of the entry – my preferred leveling build.

Cookie Cutter Builds
I’m going to try and break down the points, why I like to take them versus other choices and what you might find elsewhere. Hopefully we come up with something useful, because anyone can look at a cookie cutter talent build without really understanding the reasoning behind the talents. And unless your at the level cap, it’s really easy to go “Ooh that looks good” and slap the points down, even when it isn’t anything that helps you level. The reason those are cookie cutter builds is in the “end game” they are point for point where you squeeze out the most of the class for the dps it is intended.

The build that is ‘best’ at max level isn’t necessarily the build that is best while you level.

Levels 1-19
First things first – I recommend a pure old Sinister Strike build. Get your hands on whatever weapon happens be the best at that time, be it a Sword, Mace or even a Fist Weapon (though not that a lot of fist weapons exist in the early levels of the game). Keep in mind you never want to limit yourself to just Swords. Rogues are all about using the best weapon that you can get your hands on for that level.

“But what about Daggers?” You ask. Well, because this topic is about leveling with a combat centric build and because using Sinister Strike with Daggers is a big no no (at least in a perfect world) we are going to ignore daggers for now.

So your shiny new Rogue has just dinged 10 and has received his/her first talent point, it goes right into Improved Sinister Strike, followed by the next point at 11. Pretty straightforward – make your main attack more energy efficient by reducing the energy cost of your Sinister Strike by 5. Nowhere in the rogue talent trees will you see as potent or immediate returns with the placement of 2 talent points.

Now the next 3 Points (12-14) could go into Improved Gouge; at 3 points, this increases the effect duration making your gouge last 5.5 seconds. This can be situationally useful for leveling as combat. I would say Improved Gouge is most suited towards any PvP or a Dagger Build.

Seeing how your main attack does not require you to be behind the mob (and thus eliminating the primary usefulness of gouge and the need to improve it) I am going to recommend the next 3 Points (12-14) be placed into the Lighting Reflexes talent. I find the 3% increased chance to Dodge is a lot more useful, as it is passive and always benefits us while soloing mobs that melee (which, lets be honest, are the ones that can give us the most trouble) by increasing a Rogues already high dodge chance, thus offering a little bit more Mitigation.

Now comes to the next tier in Combat, with choices being between Improved Slice and Dice, Deflection and Precision.

Deflection increases your chance to Parry by 1% per talent point capping out at 5% and leads to Riposte, which is the only real reason to take this talent point selection. I do not recommend it, as I personally feel you lose out on far better options.

Precision, increases your chance to Hit by 1% per talent point capping out at 5% and leads to Dual Wield Specialization, the bread of butter of any combat build. I recommend slapping the next 5 points into this talent, as more hits means more damage. The benefit is pretty obvious and the fact that its linked to Dual Wield Specialization makes it even better.

If you follow my recommendations, at level 19 your build looks like this.

Levels 20-29
I did not forget about Improved Slice and Dice and I cannot recommend this talent enough. Slice and Dice is the engine of the Rogue, is what allows us to bring the damage that we know and love. Each talent point nets you a 15% longer duration on Slice and Dice, up to 45% at the 3 talent point top end. The next 3 points (20-22) go here.

Use this as your main “finisher” and never mind about the lack luster Eviscerate. It will rarely out damage your Sinister Strike or white hits. It may become repetitive but learning to love this ability at a low level will make you appreciate it even more at the higher end.

Now the Next tier of talents is Endurance, Riposte, and Improved Sprint. Riposte, while it might look good on paper, is not worth the 6 talent points it costs to acquire, and since you did not take the talent Deflection it’s not even an option. Though it is worth noting what exactly Riposte does, being another instant attack that requires 10 Energy and deals 150% weapon damage and also disarms your current target for 6 seconds. This ability is only able to be used after you have parried the enemy. While that might look really good on paper I don’t feel its worth the 6 talent points (requiring Deflection) it costs to get. Placing those points into gaining 5% hit and then into Improved Slice and Dice, as those are always active and always helping.

Endurance reduces the cooldown of Evasion and Sprint by 45 seconds per talent. Meaning spending 2 talent points gets your Evasion and Sprint down to 3.5 minute cooldown mark from an untalented 5 minute.

Improved Sprint gives Sprint a 50%/100% chance of breaking movement impairing effects when you activate Sprint. Read that carefully because if a mob casts Entangling Roots or Frost Nova on you while mid-sprint, you will be stuck.

It comes down to personal choice. A Sprint and Evasion ready every 3.5 minutes can be mighty useful if your sprinting to random places and going up against some heavy hitting melee mobs, but I feel being able to remove that root that the mob just placed on you is far more beneficial in the long run, because if you can’t get in range of the mob you can’t kill said mob. Your mileage may vary.

My next two talent points(23-24) go into Improved Sprint.

This brings us to Improved Kick, Dagger Specialization, and Dual Wield Specialization, in the 4th tier of talents.

Improved Kick gives Kick a 50%/100% chance to silence the target for 2 seconds This is much more of a PvP talent then anything else. Most caster mobs will not have the life to last long enough against us to make this talent worthwhile. In PvP this can be very very valuable but we are discussing a leveling build, so we’ll skip this talent.

Dagger Specialization increases your chance to get a critical hit with Daggers by 1% per talent point, for a grand total of 5% if you cap this talent out. This means that with a base crit chance of 20% the talent increases this to 25% if you have daggers equipped in both hands. If you only have a Dagger Main hand only that hand receives the 5% extra crit while if your off hand is a sword it is still at the 20% crit chance and vice versa. This provides little use to us as Daggers will not be sought after for this build, so we simply ignore this talent, as Daggers shouldn’t be in your main hand while leveling combat. Not to mention 5% extra crit for only your Off hand is not that impressive.

Duel Wield Specialization increases the damage you do with your offhand by 10% per talent point, capping out at 50%. Which is brings your Offhand Damage Penalty to a mere 25% rather then 50%, as the bonus is multiplicative rather then additive. Wait Offhand Damage Penalty? Yup!

There is an innate damage penalty for all classes that duel wield. Dual Wield Specialization increases the damage done by the offhand by 10%. As the formula works like this ((.5 * .1) + .5)*100 = 55% . At the 5th point it brings it reduces the penalty to only 25% making the offhand do 75% damage which is more than any other class is able to correct. And seeing how over half of a Rogues damage comes from white damage this Talent is a must for levels 24-29.

This brings your build to something like this.

Hopefully that is enough of a brain melt for now, we’ll pick up here next Wednesday and continue breaking down the build of a Rogue while leveling with a Combat spec. Same bat time, same bat channel!

Till then,

Zasp

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 and is filed under DPSers, ~ Zasp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.