So my Rogue hit 100 and in an interesting path too.  I skipped Talador completely and opted to run the Spires instead.  The gear was better, I like the zone better and it unlocks the Salvage Yard and Leroajh as a follower.  That’s the bodyguard who gives you access to garrison missions.

Side note: I really think that rewards for Talador and Spires should be swapped, in particular the level 2 barracks which gives a bodyguard.  The sheer number of kills required (20,000) makes it near impossible to complete without farming.  Salvage yard is also incredibly useful, stupidly so.  Waiting until the mid-point of Spires seems…odd.

The first few missions were kind of tough as I was a solid 40-50ilevels below where I should have been.  I think I went from 530 daggers to 580/590 within short order, for example.  Along the process I had naturally burned through all my rested experience so I opted to try a slightly different strategy.

Once you get the level 2 garrison, for 100 resources you can buy a 1hr buff that boosts exp gains by 20%.  I used this once I left Shadowmoon.  Math-wise, that’s 2 levels I bypassed, at the least.  And the actual leveling experience was very focused.  I selected the same outposts as before (lumber mill, artillery, trading post and the ranch) so those quests and leveling path were easy.  I knew where the named enemies were and picked them up if I got a notification.  I raced through the “area quests” as they give rather good experience for the time spent.   It’s near a quarter of the time I took on the Monk, overall.

Rogues in WoD

I have a dislike for lockpicking now.  Lockboxes were originally a nice form of gambling for rogues, a perk if you will.  It took a lot to get anything decent out of it and it was a very bad money generator.  Now lockpicking gives you some cash (very small) and a non-tradeable item.  This item is swapped for coins which gives a bag of gold (~200 if I recall).  I leveled from 90-100 with pickpocket on every target with pockets.  I am 75% of the way to that bag.  In contrast, my level 2 jewelcrafting building gives me 200g per day to turn in 20 ore (or some dinky jewelry).  So yeah, pretty disappointing.

Leeching poison, Shadow Reflection and Vendetta make quick work of everything but an elite level 100 enemy.  This means that Barn farming is out for now but my ilevel isn’t even above 100 yet.  I’ve only just unlocked Telari in Nagrand, so quite a bit more to get.

I do like the pace of combat, at least as an assassination rogue.  There’s a significant critical hit breakpoint so that Seal Fate keeps me going forward.  The rotation is simple enough and energy pooling is close to what I follow on my monk.  I’ll have to give a few dungeons and LFR a pass once I get better gear.  I’d expect the pace of combat to pick up.

Garrison

This is a bit different than before because I opted not to build a lumber yard and I used the 20% experience potions @ 100 resources per shot.  When I hit 100 the level 3 garrison option opened and I was very short on resources.  My followers were also rather weak, since I didn’t send them on missions – further burning resources.  I wasn’t exactly brimming with options here.

You can generate resources in a few ways

• Daily allocation ~150 in the garrison
• Kill a rare mob for 15-30
• Find resources in the wild 25-100
• Complete specific 1 time quests, including garrison campaigns (25-100)
• Complete follower missions (20-500, depending on the follower assigned)

It’s funny really because my monk has every follower at ilvl 545, every building maxed and is still sitting on ~10,000 resources with nothing useful to do with them.  And here’s my rogue, short about 5K in resources to get over the hump.  Maybe the 6.1 will help with that…

Anyways, the only way to get over this for now is to scour every single rare and treasure on the map.  Spires, Talador and Gorgrond are done.  SMV is next (I skipped a lot surprisingly) and then Nagrand.  At least I have a bunker for Nagrand, which should boost my gear rewards there.  The downside is that I already collected the major resource treasures around Oshu’gun, so I think I’m in a bit of trouble.

Not that there’s any terrible pressure for resources mind you.  If I only use the daily allocation I should have enough for a solid set of missions for every follower, eventually being able to complete the resource missions on my own.