I made my way through the first steps of the legendary dagger quest over yesterday and today. I pickpocketed Hagara last night, paid the guy in Stormwind to charge the ring, and today I went to Ravenholdt and did my business there.
I thought the epic daggers were as good as mine.
I got to Gilneas and did the whole stealth run through the city. It was a good challenge. I chose not to look at any online guides and figure it out myself. Solving the puzzle was good fun, if not a little frustrating. It took about an hour and a half of trial and error until I found a good path. More than once, I would get to a safe spot 2/3 of the way through and think, “I wish there was a save game function.”
Finally, I stood in the courtyard with Creed. You have to kill this guy solo, which includes not only dishing out damage, but avoiding damage, self-healing, and using your stuns and interrupts. You’d think that all of these would be easy mode for someone who has played a rogue for as long as I have (six years).
Not so fast.
I am strictly a PvE rogue. I don’t PvP *at all*. As a result, there are a number of rogue abilities (Combat Readiness, Gouge, Dismantle) that are not even on my button bars because they are not useful in raiding. I don’t think I have used Gouge since Burning Crusade. I certainly don’t have the survival habits that are second nature to PvP rogues. My bandages and healing potions are not easily keybound, for example.
In addition, I am play an assassination rogue almost exclusively. My assassination rotation comes almost as easily as breathing. Of course, that’s the spec I chose to use in the fight.
As assassination spec I didn’t even come close. In several attempts I never got him below 50%. Without the Improved Recuperate talent my self-healing couldn’t keep up with his damage.
I switched to Combat, which I am not nearly as practiced with. Right away, on my first try in this spec I got him below 20%. Improved Recuperate helped a lot. Still, though, I could not interrupt consistently and had a hard time avoiding his damage.
Eventually, my gear was all broken. I was frustrated and annoyed. Its not that I wanted it to be easy. I was annoyed knowing that a lot of rogues would find the fight easy because they practice these skills all the time in PvP. In the end, I had to completely rearrange my button bars and keybindings for this one fight to have better access to my various interrupts and damage avoidance.
In the end, I succeeded. I did have to hearth back to SW to repair, and then re-do the stealth run through Gilneas. I flasked up and got Well-Fed and pre-potted before attacking. I have an iLvL of 381, so it should have been a lot easier than it was.
Someone will read this and say that I suck as a rogue. I would disagree. In my opinion, I am very good at my job, which is doing massive sustained damage, especially to single targets. I’m not so good at doing the things that I am never called upon to do in raids, like stunlocking and self-preservation.
This is not a complaint. It was a good challenge, and it took me a couple of hours all-told. I’m only writing this to say that it won’t be easy for everyone, no matter how much rogue-ing experience you may have. Don’t go into it thinking that it will be a cakewalk.
