I've been back on WoW retail for more then a week now. I got my Rogue to 85 a few days ago, and haven't really been doing much since. I'm not really interested in doing dungeons without a friend along, for reasons of fun and I'm lazy and prefer to have a friend brief me on encounters over vent, rather then just look them up.
I've mostly fallen back into my old routine of just doing dailies, except now I do a full 25, and have to leave out many that I'd want to do. After my dailies are done, I usually just log, or maybe sit around Org for a bit raising enchanting and/or tailoring. It's a pretty bland playstyle, but I will likely have enough fun with it until my reps are maxed, and I have all the Quartermaster gear I want.
I did start planning and farming for my transmog set this week. I have about 5/8 pieces now. I had to do some farming in Kara to get it. Kind of surprised myself at how easy it was to kill all the bosses I cared to try. At 80 with a 264 ilvl average and 2x extended Evasion I couldn't even solo the first boss. Now in big part thanks to Recuperate, him and others can barely even move my health down, with my normal Assassination spec, the mix of greens, a few blues, and 2 purples I have. I guess why I was surprised was that as I leveled, I'd check my DPS on a training dummy each level. And despite getting higher level and a few pieces of gear upgrades each level, my DPS went down each level. I blame the horrible deign of crit chance lowering as you level. I had 52% at 80, and now about 15% at 85. I guess I understand the reasons for it, but its stupid and doesn't make any realistic sense. You gain more experience in battle but get significantly worse at your ability to aim for sweat spots on a target? If anything, it should be the other way around. But WoW fails to make sense at a lot of things like that. Large bulky metallic shoulders that would probably weigh 75lbs on a class that's supposed to be agile to the point where he can sneak around people undetected? I could go on and on, but I won't. But it seems the increased HP and avoidance of the 5 more levels was enough to make the difference, which as a Rogue I generally don't care about. As a Rogue, what more levels should mean to me is killing things faster, not things killing me slower. Oh well.
Unlike what it seems most Rogues will be doing, I won't be using Bloodfang for my transmog set, nor any complete set at all. Mines a custom mix of various pieces. Mostly from BC. It will however feature 3 pieces of the Netherblade set. That set looks horrible like a lot of gear blizz makes. But it looks significantly better without the mask and shoulders that seem like a bad joke. I'm using the BP, legs and gloves. The BP still sucks, but its the best of the worst, as no other BP in the entire game seems to match my set as well as it does. I hate tabards, but maybe I can find one that will go well with it all. Ebonblade is the best I know about, but even that's to bright. I seriously think blizz had something against ever making a set of armor that was pure black, or just very dark. At best, theres a few things like black whelp tunic and such that are kind of a dull greyish black. But it just amazes me how they can have Rogues in game and make armor for them for so many years, but not one single good solid black or dark armor set? Heck, even the best Rogue hood in the game isn't even Rogue useable. The DK greenie starter hood. Archerus Knight Hood I think it's called. They don't even have a single solid black cloak that I could find. Everything just looks like someone stole someones ugly table cloth or curtains, and put it on their back. Blizz just never understood that sometimes simple is better. They have to always try and make something elaborate and end up making things that just look silly. That's how we end up with the popular opinion about the each gear set getting worse and worse each time, to the point where this transmog feature was demanded enough to finally get implemented. I know I come from a viewpoint of a D&D type Rogue, or more accurately a Thief. That's what I want to play in an MMO, a Thief. But instead everything just uses a Rogue instead, seemingly to me just so they can have an excuse to use when they mess things up. "It's not a Thief, its a Rogue. So the thievly abilities and armor and general design you would want don't apply." That's the kind of a response I'd expect about this, and it's generally something I have to live with. But I wish MMO companies would try a bit more at least. Even EQ wasn't that great at it, but at least they weren't idiotic like blizz.
Thankfully, as I like to be unique, it seems most Rogues will be going for sets not like mine. But sadly I do expect Rogues to see me once, and just copy my gear. So I wont go into all its details. Another blizz rant I have is the lack of ability to keep things private. Everyone can just inspect you, see exactly what gear your wearing, enchants your using, gems, and as I completely expect, most likely transmog gear. And if your not around to inspect? Oh, they can just go to the armory and get all the info they want from that. The Armory was one of the worst ideas ever, strait from the start when not having the ability to hide your profile from public view at all. That should be a choice, not forced. Same goes for inspect too really. But instead the game devolved into this state its been in since were you may not even be able to get into a pug raid purely because some 14y old idiot thinks your gear isn't good enough, or to put it another way, because you actually need the gear that drops there. Thankfully I have had very few occasions that even resembled that.
Enough about that. I still need the boots, BP and legs for my set. I could live without the BP for a few weeks, thanks to the Ebonblade tabard. Possibly even the boots, instead using some other pair. But without the legs, the set just wont look right and won't be worth using yet. I'm highly skeptical, but hopefully I will be able to solo grull and mag for the tokens for those pieces. I'll probably give it a shot later tonight or sometime this week.
Later Addition:
Soloing gruul and magtherdion didn't go so well. I didn't try very hard, but I couldn't get past the first boss in gruuls. Going at it with a strategy may help, but I just think I can't do it. Far as Mag, I gave that several tries, but couldn't get a single one of the 5 channelers killed. Damn Dark Mending heal. I think my gear/DPS is just a little to low to do it atm, without serious luck. I'll try again when I get some 400+ DPS daggers to replace my 305 DPS daggers. Which will likely happen after a couple weeks more of rep grinding from dailies, or if I can get someone to help me with the ring quests in TH.
