The Great Rogue Return

It's become rather apparent that Rogues are, quite indeed, coming back. At level 60 I had despaired because my crits, hits and everything deadly about my toon had been nerfed to the point of obscurity. I started leveling a Warlock (which I love to death) but at about lvl 30 I decided to swap back to the Rogue. I was getting tired of being chain ganked by allies in Arathi.

My bud had just reached 60 himself so he and I went into the outlands to start the expansion pack portion of the game.

Let me say that the outlands, after the initial bum rush, is a blast to play through. The new environments are wicked as well as some of the new enemies and instances. If I had a beef it would be that the drop rate for quest items off of mobs is impotently bad. It takes forever to get the items you need. On the plus side you're forced to kill a ton of enemies in 'constructive grinding' which helps you level all the faster.

What's even more incredible is the fact that my Rogue is getting his Mojo back. As I hit 61 and started to get outland gear I noticed a sharp rise in my Rogue's damage output and health. At level 63 I have over 2.5k in armor, 6k health and my Ambush crits for right around 2.5k. My backstab crits all the time now for roughly 1.1k-1.2k. Shadow step is a blast. Along with my hunter buddy we take out groups of two or sometimes three players. My burst damage is nothing short of monstrous. I can open up doing over 4k worth of damage if both my Ambush and Backstab crits, one hitting most casters.

I still have some problems with the classes. Frost Mages render me slow and useless, and if I cant kill them in the first few seconds the fight is weighted heavily in their favor. Locks still have their Fear-lock and full array of DOTs, as well as an insane amount of health. Pallys are Gods among men and fighting them is rather useless unless my bud is along with me. Even still there are some Pallys it takes us over a minute to kill. That's a long ass time in WoW. Warriors are no joke anymore either. A warrior friend of ours ran Hellfire Ramparts with us, and while he was only a level higher than me, his fury spec'd warrior was dishing out over 10% more damage on the damage meters than me. That and he has over 8k in health AND plate armor. Warriors are coming back, I'd keep an eye on them in the future. I think they're going to become a force to be reckoned with.

Hunters are starting to realize they aren't everything and a bag of chips. They are mean, dont get me wrong, but I find that if I'm willing to burn cooldowns I can take them on with reletively good odds at victory. I can see their traps and have to be aware of them as I move. Thier flares are easy to avoid as well. That just leaves thier wingclip and various dazing shots. Vanish and sprint help break those problems, while a well placed blind can give me the time to get upclose and personal. Once I'm on them they always start to panic as they realize that my white damage swings are critting for over 250 and my backstabs are pissing away thier health at over 1k per crit. My crit chance is over 25% and my attack power is 1163 as of the time of this writing. Hunters are tough, but they're not the unstoppable force they once were.

We're getting our Mojo back. I want to see how things even out at level 70.

~W