Rogue Hits 52, Lockpicking 260

I’ve learned a few interesting things while playing my Rogue up to near-Outland levels.

Lockpicking Requires Diligence

One of the big things is that Lockpicking is indeed a pain in the ass to advance in the early levels, and a Rogue who wishes to have good picking skills must be diligent about it, because it’s not a skill that can be advanced “incidentally” through normal play.

My personal diligence had me, at around level 32, pickpocket a bunch of humanoids lower level than me until the boxes I picked up were either “grey” or “red” for advancement - giving zero experience or being entirely too high level to open at all.

At that point, I made my way to Zoram Strand in Ashenvale and made my first round of beach-side and underwater lockpicking. To do the Underwater bit, I quaffed an underwater breathing potion and proceeded to pick waterlogged footlockers for the next 30 minutes.

Pickpocketing in Dungeons, Pickpocketing Havens

I tried to pickpocket humanoids before sapping them for dungeon groups but found it was way too slow. Occasionally I ran around pickpocketing humanoids that were already in battle with the tank, allowing the tank to build up threat before I got into the battle. My Damage Meter stats weren’t that impressive (but weren’t pathetic either) but I didn’t pull aggro!

Zoram Strand was my pickpocketing haven for a while - at least until I could make my way to Tanaris and pick-pocket the many groups of humanoids around there… Trolls, Ogres, Pirates - oh joy! Zul’Farrak is like heaven, because even the Zombies that come out of the graves are pick-pocketable and pocketpicking doesn’t raise one’s threat at all!

Guild’s Box Unlocker

Once I got past 125 Lockpicking, I chose to skill up mainly through pocketpicking of junkboxes, but my guildmates did provide a few boxes they wanted opened that gave me skill-ups as well.

We don’t have many high level Rogues in our casual guild, and I’m the one who is on the most regularly out of all of us. I’m happy to be able to provide more lockbox-picking services now that I can open up to and including Eternium Lockboxes!

Lockpicking Level Part Of My Sales Pitch

Since increasing the number of dungeon runs I’ve been doing on various toons, I’ve seen time and time again that the majority of Rogues don’t have Lockpicking skills high enough to unlock any chests in dungeons.

Therefore, I instantly recognized that by putting efforts into keeping that skill up-to-date, I would be able to stand out from the crowd of Rogues seeking the same things I’m seeking, and getting into someone else’s party or dungeon group would be easier for me as a result.

So far, so good - I get party invites when I list myself on the LFG tool and enter comments that include my lockpicking level, and they’ve been some pretty decent parties!

Eyes Opened to Appropriate Roguely Behavior

While I learned that Lockpicking is something I can become a top percentile in, I also had my eyes opened to a Good Reason[TM] that a Rogue may attempt to solo an elite in a dungeon party situation (as opposed to focussing fire with the group), when previously I had thought the Rogue might be trying to show off in some way:

CASTERS!

Casters can do huge damage to those wearing Plate or Mail, and if the tank of the party is already occupied and doesn’t seem to see the Caster, I’ve learned that I can serve a great purpose to reduce healing needs for the party.

As a Rogue I can disrupt most casters successfully enough times that it takes me to take him down, and because most casters have tissue paper for armor, I am more resiliant and last longer.

Thus, the Mail and Plate wearers take less damage, the Healer needs to heal them less, but the tradeoff is that I need a bit of healing myself, and I am disregarding the kill-order.

No longer will I worry so much about the Rogue taking on its own target - but I will check to ensure it’s a caster they’re wailing on, because if it’s a Melee mob, they ARE being a twit.

Engineering Advancements

My Priest has her hearthstone in Shattrath City, but my Rogue reset it to somewhere in Azeroth at some point and now I need to find a friend or pay a Port fee to get to Shattrath and on to Thrallmar to train up to the next level of Engineering and Mining, which I became eligable for as of level 50.

I don’t look forward to how expensive it’s going to be to advance Engineering, considering I don’t have an active Miner that is higher level than this Rogue himself.

And eventually I might need to go back to Leatherworking with this toon for gearing concerns…

But I’ll ponder on that another day, and sign off for now!

Tags: ashenvale, blackrock depths, Class 101: Rogue, dungeon playing guide, Dungeons, engineering, how to find a pug, how to stand out in pugs, instances, LFG tool, LFM Tool, lockpicking, lockpicking guide, maraudon, pick up group, PUG, pugging, pugging strategy, rogue tips, shattrath city, tips and tricks, underwater breathing potion, zoram strand, zul'farrak

Holy PUG Priest, Batman!

I’m quite enjoying healing in instances, overall. My Priest is now level 44.

I haven’t tried tanking, but after having two DPS characters hit level 70 and facing the repeat problem amongst my friends and in pick-up groups of finding a Healer or a Tank, I decided to put real efforts into bringing up a healer so I could trade favors with the few friends I DID have who played healing or tanking characters at max level.

I’ve been Holy pretty much all of this Priest’s existance, and really started to do PUGs a lot in my mid-30’s, doing a lot of RFD (razorfen downs) runs and then doing a few Uldaman runs before heading into Zul’Farrak and Maraudon. My gear doesn’t reflect the dungeons I’ve been in, but I’ve learned a lot about things that make a party successful or extremely difficult from the healer end of the spectrum - things I had never thought about before while playing other roles.

Finally Finding Friends

I finally found a “friend” on this toon - that is, a player who I partied with in a PUG at some point who advances at a level comparable enough to mine that, over a few weeks’ period of time, we’ve been able to join each other’s parties back and forth a couple of times, and are getting to know each other a little better. It sure is nice to join a group that is only a “partial” PUG because you already know that one of the people in the group is competent in their role.

Pushing Through the 40s

I’m finding the mid-40s to be slowish to advance through because there aren’t a lot of parties for Zul’Farrak nor Maraudon going at any time - advancing my Rogue through there was slow as well, but I found as soon as I hit 48 and could go into Sunken Temple or think about hitting Blackrock Depths soon, parties started to be advertised a lot more regularly on the LFG line.

Thankfully with the experience-gain changes of Patch 2.3, the “grind” isn’t nearly as painful as it would have been had I attempted to dungeon my way to level cap before.

Sooo, I keep my eye out as a priority for Zul’Farrak and Maraudon parties, and have found that late at night is the best time to find a quality group for it. Plus, I have a couple of friends who have toons this level and we’ve begun a Trading Cycle between ourselves to assist our lowbies:

Caught in the Trading Cycle

Sounds bad doesn’t it? Or, evil? Immoral? Nah…

It just means that myself and two of my Casual Guild guildmates with at least one toon at 70 and a regular connection to the guild’s Ventrilo server a few evenings a week have decided to trade off dungeon runs in a cycle:

First, I took their level 40’s over to the Hinterlands and did the whole gamut to get the Mallet of Zul’Farrak, which takes about as long as a full instance clear when one can’t sneak by much in Jintha’Alor. We had enough players and warlock alts to be able to summon all three of one guy’s 38-42 toons as well as helping the Paladin get the mallet without having to run up and down to get them to the right spots.

The next evening we could get together, the Paladin hopped over to her Hunter and was going to run my Priest and our other friend’s Druid tank toon through Zul’Farrak, but another guildmate friend logged in and offered to take all three of us through, so we did that instead and the Pally agreed to take her turn another day.

Then, the guy with the 3 toons right near 40 took his turn and took us through Zul’Farrak on another evening.

The agreement is that we’ll just keep trading these favors amongst ourselves so our lowbies will get an excellent shot at loot and also advance more quickly towards Outland levels. We’re still hopping into PUGs when the opportunity arises, but it’s nice to have a friend’s assistance (and be able to offer assistance of my own!), too.

Beginning The Tailoring Collection Process

My Priest is a tailor, and at level 50 she’s going to be able to advance her Tailoring again for the first time since she was level 36. And it’s going to be expensive.

So, I’m going to do some research and see what all materials I need to get to 350 right as soon as I hit level 50, and then I can let the advancement flow more naturally to 375 as I approach level 70.

But for now, it’s time to sign off!

Tags: Dungeons, guildmates, healing priest, holy priest, how to find a guild, how to find a pug, how to get run through's, how to make friends, instances, LFG tool, LFM Tool, making friends, maraudon, pick up group, pick up groups, priest, pug priest, pugging, pugging strategy, PUGs, rogue, run thru, run thru's, tailoring, tailoring 350, trading dungeon runs, zul'farrak