How to improve high-risk, mechanically-gimped, user-stunted, whirlwind-susceptible, rogue dps - Part 1

So, since I last had time to blog, I’ve been on two Naxx 10 runs with Blue Circles, a Naxx 25 all-Heroes run and a Naxx 25 run with several Heroes joining up with Amber Knights. In those various runs, I picked up Fool’s Trial, Sinner’s Bindings, Webbed Death, Spinning Fate and Grim Toll. I also picked up Jorach’s Crocolisk Skin Belt (Emblems of Heroism) and Ring of Invincibility (Emblems of Valor). Not a bad haul for a couple weeks’ worth of casual raiding.

Now, with the arrival of Lich King, I knew that I would need to do a lot more reading and theorycrafting about my gear and abilities than I ever had before if I wanted to keep pace with other guildies. So, I that’s what I did, trying to read up a lot at the rogues forum over at ElitistJerks.com (their rogue LK pocket guide is great), checking out gear rankings at ShadowPanther.net, visiting MMO-Champion.com as often as I could to stay updated on changes and stuff.

So, I took in a lot of information that was helpful, but I couldn’t take it all in. Plus, reading forums threads isn’t my favorite thing to do, so there was a lot of stuff I didn’t even read. I even downloaded the rogue spreadsheet from EJ and messed around with that, but I didn’t really know what I was doing or what I was looking at.

The result of all this, is that I made some decisions that weren’t the best for my gear, ultimately gimping my dps. Specifically, I was trying to cap expertise at the expense of other things, and I was putting too much stock into ShadowPanther’s gear rankings. I’ll explain further a bit later, but basically, my raid set had come to:

• Angry Dread - MH
  
• Hailstorm - OH
  
• Accursed Bow of the Elite - Ranged
  
• Helm of the Vast Legions - Head
  
• Pendant of the Dragonsworn - Neck
  
• Spaulders of Resumed Battle - Shoulders
  
• Cloak of Darkening - Back
  
• Heroes Bonescythe Breastplate - Chest
  
• Dragonfriend Bracers - Wrist
  
• Rapid Attack Gloves - Hands
  
• Jorach’s Crocolisk Skin Belt - Waist
  
• Infectious Skitterer’s Leggings - Legs
  
• Boots of the Worshiper - Feet
  
• Sealing Ring of Grobbulus - Finger
  
• Ring of Invincibility - Finger
  
• Shard of Contempt - Trinket
  
• Mirror of Truth - Trinket
  

And this was just after the 25 man Heroes run, but before the 25 man Amber Knights run. I’ll get more into what I was doing wrong in another post (or some of you may leave comments to point things out :-)), but I compiled this list based largely on how ShadowPanther.net ranked each piece and tried to cap expertise above everything else. The spreadsheet said, with this gear, and my gems and enchants, without raid buffs, my dps would be 2286. I thought it was the best I could do, but I had no idea how much better it could be. More to come...