The rogue has finally made it to 90 and, after seeing the procession of 480 - 500 ilvl recruits appear in my main guild, I was curious to see how difficult it was to gear up in the current patch.
It must be really difficult to gear up, right? 500 must be a magic number that is virtually impossible to pass without being boosted in a couple of raids, right?
Needless to say...wrong! On both counts.
Ding 90 at 422ilvl in Dread Wastes. In fact, I had barely arrived in Dread Wastes at the time so was quite fortunate to have 422.
First port of call has to be Timeless Isle.
Ran around opening chests, joining in on rares, attacking the odd turtle (and dying, not recommended) plus a few pieces sent over from my main gave me a big chunk of Timeless gear.
Within an hour of hitting 90 I was at around 465ilvl, missing belt, legs, both trinkets and both weapons.
Being a horde re-roll I have no gold to speak of so can't buy the LW crafted gear but I did have one advantage over a complete fresh start... Ordos!
An incredibly lucky start with the warforged neck dropping on the first kill.
More Timeless shenanigans netted me belt, legs and the free Burden of Eternity which I used on the legs.
All of a sudden, within 2 hours of reaching 90, I am at 480ilvl and can enter SoO lfr!
Still no weapons, still no trinkets, all I have done is Timeless Isle, and I can enter SoO lfr!
Next step... PvP!
Not real PvP mind you, I'm hopeless at that.
Instead, it was down to Krasarang Wilds to kill the Alliance rares, then back up to Shrine to open the questline, then down to Krasarang Wilds to kill the Alliance rares!
You can only get the reward once per day but they drop a whopping 275 Honor Points each time!
Actually killing them was a different matter, there are mobs everywhere around them with patrols coming in constantly.
It was great fun! Any two mobs together would kill me unless I blew all my cooldowns but this is what playing a rogue is all about.
Sneak around, pick off enemies who have strayed too far from the safety of the crowd, sap here, blind there, stun, vanish if things go south and start again.
It reminded me of the great fun I had completing the legendary daggers questline in Cataclysm, using all the (many many) tricks in the rogue arsenal to survive and take down your target.
(The rogue legendary daggers questline is fantastic and some of the most engaging gameplay I have experienced in WoW. I recommend it to anyone who has at rogue still languishing at 85. Do it at 85 though, it will lose so much if you just do it at 90)
These 3 rares plus the PvP daily quests on Isle of Thunder (very easy, quite unremarkable) gain you roughly 1400 Honor Points per day! This is huge! Honor Point gear is now 522ilvl and that's almost 1 piece per day, without even doing any actual PvP!
Very quickly I had replaced a dagger, a ring, a belt and shoulders with 522 PvP pieces. Add in the 522 Valor Point trinket and the Timeless Sword for 10,000 Timeless coins, tier chest from lfr, and I was up to 507ilvl in less than a week.
Now was the time to gem/enchant etc so I wouldn't be as much of a burden on my lfr groups. Unfortunately this took the majority of my gold so LW crafted gear still wasn't an option.
A fresh week, starting at 507ilvl and replacing the 420ish ilvl trinket was my main aim. The 535ilvl timeless trinket is very nice but at a massive 50,000 Timeless coins remains out of reach at the moment, I just don't have the time to spare to grind that out (especially as my dps is still woefully inadequate even if my survivability has improved).
So it was down to lfrs and hoping my luck wasn't all used up in that first Ordos drop.
I had used a coin again for Ordos this week (gold) and one on Celestials (PvP legs, not bad but not great as I had 535 anyway) so I had one coin saved for Sha of Pride and the utterly gorgeous Assurance of Consequence...
Drops from the first two bosses (1 minor upgrade to shoulders) left me thinking I had peaked too soon but as Sha died.. loot! Tier Chest! Damn... but at least I have a coin to use.
You guessed it... Tier Chest again!
That's 3 kills on Sha of Pride in 9 days (ding was on a Tuesday, just before reset) and a coin used each time. Result... 4 Tier Chests. Unbelievable.
Decent weapon gained from Iron Jug and a couple more pieces brought me up to 521ilvl with all SoO lfrs done. Last chance of a trinket this week would come from ToT lfr. Not exactly great trinkets but they are in comparison to the 429ilvl one I was using.
Two trinkets drop in the first wing, from Jin'rohk and Council of Elders. First attempt I zone in on trash before Horridon (which has incredibly been nerfed recently in lfr, presumably because it was too hard?) and no joy from the trolls (which is a shame because I love that Bad Juju trinket with the crazy gnomes).
Requeue to get Jinrohk and, at last, success! Rentakai's Soul Charm falls into my grateful hands.
I didn't think it was possible to be so happy to get a previous tier lfr trinket.
So, here we are, two weeks after hitting level 90 and sat at 527ilvl. Around 1500 Valor Points and 1400 Conquest Points (I bit the bullet and ran some random BGs) sat in the bank waiting for me to decide how best to use them means I haven't finished yet.
TLDR: Gearing is easy, wtf have people been doing?
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