Before WoD launched, I had a bit of fun running old dungeons and raids to try and finish off some collections – pets and mounts.  I didn’t get lucky so much as simply following the odds.  Now that I have 2 characters at 100 (monk and druid) and a level 3 fishing hut (which took ~1000 fish to reach) I figured I’d try for them again.

In particular, Raiding with Leashes 1 & 2, which require kills in MC, BWL, AQ and SSC, Kara and TK.  I was running them pre-WoD with the monk, druid, rogue, hunter and shaman.  5 shots a week was decent enough, though my DK was sitting at 86 and a mage at 81.  Never really tried pushing those guys through.  I finished the 2^nd set of combat pets last week and was lucky on an Anzu drop as well (horror stories on that one if you read the webs).  Still no A’lar but that will come in time.

Running them post-squish made some of the fights interesting at 90, SSC in particular.  No big deal really, 10 seconds or so a fight (Broodlord and Twins are a PITA mind you…) but now with decently geared 100s (ilvl 630+), I was 1-shotting them.  That was certainly different.  I figured, why not try to get another to 100 to make it all a bunch easier (and fatten the coffers a bit more while I’m at it)?

I want a farmer for quick and easy runs.  Hunter, DK, Mage and Shaman aren’t there so much compared to a Rogue’s stealth.  Doing Baron runs with the rogue, I was in and out in ~ 4 minutes.  Even my cat druid wasn’t able to meet those times.  Asmiroth, probably the oldest character on the entire server (I made him 5 minutes after the servers went live 10 years ago) was back in the fold!

Starting Off

After the monk and druid experiences, I knew what I was up against.  Less people to compete with but I was aware of the travel path and linkages, where to collect followers and so on.  I opted not to build a Lumber Mill this time, and rather focus my resources on something other than missions.  Collecting treasures on each map and killing rares, so far, has kept me fairly well topped up.  I’ll worry about missions later.

Shadowmoon went by in a flash.  I think the quest flow (and the zone layout) is the best of the entire expansion here.  There are minimal walls and tunnels, so movement works pretty well.  Gorgrond came after and I have to say, I really do not like this zone.  I headed south (as I took the lumber yard) to run through all the quests and followers (Tormorkk and Blook are south).  It’s a pain to move around this zone, but it’s over with.  Interestingly, I’m now 96 due to rested experience and those area-mission-quests that I decided to pay attention to – enough that I’ve unlocked Spires and Talador at the same time.

Hurdles

That said, the actual leveling process hasn’t been uneventful.  The start of Tanaan and SMV was harder than previous.  Even though my Rogue wears leather like my monk and druid, his ilvl was quite a bit lower.  I think I died more in the first hour than I did TOTAL with my druid.  I changed a few things, in particular glyphs, to make the process easier.  Recuperate continues after a kill, S&D auto-refreshes as well.  I also started to focus on stuns a bit more, like in the old days.  That made things easier.  Upgrades through SMV were enough to get me back on track for decent damage and Gorgrond went by with little fuss.

I really like the rogue.  The playstyle is very aggressive and it always feels like you’re doing something, rather than waiting for something to do.  Druid cats feel like molasses.  Monks feel like slow bears due to the way their Energy works.  Rogues have been close to GCD locked for years and it’s a lot of fun.  My main issue with them remains though.  They have very little self-healing (it’s a weak HoT that drastically reduces DPS) though a few survivability options to counter known damage.  To contrast, the monk self-heal is part of the DPS rotation and druids are pretty similar.  This makes soloing at level quite challenging.  The lack of additional roles is also a bugger.  I mean, I understand that it’s hard to heal with poisoned daggers but every other game has a rogue tank.

Every expansion my rogue gets leveled up and then parked.  I’m sure it’ll be the same thing here but when he does get off the bench, he’s quite fast at getting the job done.  Works for me.