Azeroth vs. Tyria part 7: The Thief - Making Stealing More Than Part of Your Ambush Macro

Time to cover another one of the professions we're all looking at for our move to Tyria. We've got three left to talk about. Well, technically four, but anyone who knows about that one is apparently sworn to secrecy, so we'll deal with that when I've got more to go on than idle speculation.

For today's post we've got something from our resident rogue, Takkal. I'm going to assume that you're here to talk about the thief, right?

Might as well stick with what I know, right?

True enough. What's with the accent? Well, lack of one.

Something else I've been practicing. Believe it or not, there's not exactly a lot of trolls like me in that place. That and I've yet to see a single group over there that talks like I do.

So they all enunciate?

...Yes.

Sorry, couldn't resist. So you're doing this to fit in more?

Correct. After all I'm not a very good thief if I stand out and if I'm the only guy around who talks like this, then I'll be remembered and that's never a good thing in my line of business.

Makes sense. Guess we should start at the beginning. What drew you to the thief profession? I'm well aware of what the name implies, but let everybody know what the similarities are between being a rogue and a thief.

Well, the general feel is the same between the two. I mean, the two names mean the same thing to most people: we've a group of men and women who specialize in sneaking around, stealing, and attacking from the shadows. Both the class and the profession involve proficiency with dual-wielding. I suppose there's a few other areas that are sorta similar, but it's a bit of a stretch considering just how much is different in those areas as well.

Sounds like almost every other report we've had so far on the professions. Let's move to the weapons since those define most of your combat skills. What're you looking at as a rogue?

Well, I've still got swords and daggers like I do as a rogue. For ranged combat though, I've got pistols and shortbows. Like the rest of you found, all of these weapons serve their own specific purposes. I can only wield a sword in my main hand, but it gives me skills for enemy control and evasion like Crippling Slash and Dancing Blade. A dagger in my main hand lets me jump into the fray with quick attacks like Twisting Fang and Backstab, while an off-hand dagger can help me cripple foes as well as vanish from their sight. Pistols can be used to make my opponents vulnerable for further attacks as well as aiding my mobility or hindering my opponent's. Finally there's the shortbow for moments where I need AoE attacks as well as letting me shadow step around the battle.

So you'll still have access to your old rogue Shadowstep?

Yes and no, though calling it my old Shadowstep is somewhat wrong since there was no chance in the Nether of me ever going Subtlety. Back on topic though: while this shadow step still serves the same function as the old one, it's not locked to one ability for one specialization of the profession. There's a variety of skills that serve the function of helping the thief move around the battlefield and not all of them act the same. Infiltrator's Arrow lets me pick a location and fire an arrow to teleport there, while the Shadow Step utility skill just teleports me to the foe. There's even some dual-skills that mix the two: I could shoot my foe with a pistol then teleport in for a dagger strike, or I could reverse that with a melee opener that ends up with me attacking from range.

For some reason this video makes Fan of Knives seem a little underwhelming

Dual-skill?

Correct and here's where dual-wielding gets interesting for thieves. Back in Azeroth a dual-wielding rogue for the most part was only concerned with his off-hand so far as making sure it was the correct speed for his spec and the correct weapon type: daggers for Subtlety and Assassination and anything but for Combat. Looking at Tyria, we've moved on to actual weapon techniques like you showed in that first post and for a few of you, you've even learned how to use two different sets of skills if you're wielding two different weapons at the same time. There's no mixing for you guys though: it's always something like your first three skills are from your main hand and your last two are the off-hand. For thieves though, we've learned how to mix the two together.

Instead of three skills from your main hand and two from the off-hand, we've got two from each and that middle skill is now a dual-skill: a combat ability that mixes traits from both weapon types. I gave a couple of examples earlier in the section on shadow stepping, but we've also got some fun ones like Leaping Death Blossom for double daggers, Unload for a pair of pistols, and Pistol Whip for pirate wannabes with a sword and a pistol.

Tag, you're it!

Looking at those examples you gave earlier, it sounds like both techniques used a dagger and a pistol. How do you have two different techniques for the same weapons?

It's simple really: it's which weapon's in which hand. If I've got my pistol in my main hand, then I'll be using Shadow Strike so I'll need to be in melee range at first to use that ability. Reverse the order of the weapons and now I've got Shadow Shot and I don't have to wait until I'm in melee to use it. In essence these dual-skills serve as one of the two ways I can expand my weapon options, the other being through stealing.

So stealing actually has a purpose for you now other than a way to get free copper and vendor junk?

You have no idea how frustrating that was. The only reason any of us ever bothered to pickpocket back in Azeroth was to get lockboxes or we'd make it part of our normal Backstab or Ambush opener. Suppose that's why we went with rogue for our class name instead of thief. That or they thought it would be funny to give us a class name that would be constantly confused with a type of women's makeup. I swear half of Orgrimmar doesn't know how to spell...

I've tanked with people who spelled "gonna" with an H in the middle. Figure that one out.

Stupidity of some of our fellow Horde aside, most of us really didn't give a second thought to stealing. In Tyria though, stealing opens up a world of new weapon options for us. You know that last post you did on environmental weapons?

Yeah, they act like normal weapons and give us a new set of skills to work with. We've all got access to those. You find a boulder, you can throw it. Find a stick, you can beat someone with it.

Okay, now picture that a thief can pretty much take one of those from every single opponent he fights. For example I could be fighting a bird and try stealing from him. Some possible examples of environmental weapons I could take are an egg that I could use to heal myself or some feathers that I could use to blind the bird. This even extends to fighting humanoid targets as well. If I were fighting a warrior, I might get access to a rifle or a axe, while stealing from an elementalist could give me a staff or perhaps a scepter.

Wait, so a thief could take my weapon?

Not quite, it's more like I borrow the abilities from it. It's kind of an odd system. Since my notes all say that I only get access to these new abilities until I use them, my guess is that in the case of weapons, it's more likely that I take it and hit you quickly before you regain control of it.

That makes sense, I suppose. Sounds like that about wraps up weapons and stealing. What else makes the thief stand out?

Well, there's stealth which all of us rogues are familiar with. It does operate a little differently here though. Rogues are used to one flavor of stealth that's either on or off and we stay there until either we're detected or we stab something. Here though it's meant as more of a combat action. Stealth is a short-term state, so you can't just switch it on and make your way across the entire battlefield without being seen. For thieves it's meant as a way to either escape from a battle or to set up for another technique. There's even multiple ways to go into stealth. Hide in Shadows is probably the closest to what we're used to: you go into stealth and you come out after attacking. Shadow Refuge however allows the thief to go into stealth and heal himself, but it breaks if moves. Depending on the situation the thief finds himself heading into, he or she might wish to prepare a few different methods of going into stealth.

Another technique thieves have that we rogues do not is the ability to lay traps. Similar to the hunters back in Azeroth, these are simply something that is placed on the ground that can be triggered by one's enemies. Once triggered they can cause effects from poison and immobilization to allowing the thief to shadow step to the target.

Finally there's initiative. For most of the professions, if they use a weapon technique, there's an associated cooldown before they can use it again. For us though there's no such cooldown. If we want to use a weapon skill continuously, we're perfectly able to do so. The limiter here is initiative. Each of our weapon skills (with the exception of whatever the first technique for our main hand is) requires not only energy like all of the other professions do, but they also have an associated initiative cost. We start with ten initiative points and regenerate another one every second or so.

Using dual-wield pistols for an example, my first skill costs no energy, but Body Shot takes two, Unload is three, and Retreating Shot and Head Shot both take four. Even accounting for the fact that you can only use abilities so fast, there's still going to be a resource choke if you do nothing but use Head Shot over and over. This means that a smart thief needs to plan ahead. If you believe that you can burst fire your target down quickly if you stealth and get the drop on him, then you can do so. If it looks like a pretty lengthy fight though, you might want to sit on a few of those initiative points in case you need to use something like Retreating Shot to put some distance between you and your foe. Since your first skill always requires no initiative to use, it can be considered your filler skill while you wait for the right time to use another attack. Kind of like Mutilate or Sinister Strike, except they're not 50-60% of what you're doing during the fight.

So to wrap things up, a rogue looking to find work as a thief won't be disappointed, but there's going to be some retraining involved, particularly to get over the whole "why would I bother stealing?" idea. I imagine that's going to be a big hurdle for most of them.

Thanks for the report, Tak. That puts us up to five of the professions covered. Don't suppose you heard if anyone else is ready with another profession, did you?

I believe Lokaja's working on his ranger report, though he's still looking for info on pets. As for the elementalist, Malador and Daikaja are arguing over who's going to cover it.

Seems fairly obvious, I'd think. Elementalist is pretty much a mage, so that sounds like Mal's territory.

Yes, but Azeroth mages tend to be single element and Dai's arguing that since elemental shamans are more accustomed to working with multiple elements, he should get the job.

Sigh... fine. When you get back there, tell the two of them to just work on the report together. If they manage to write something halfway competent, I'll find work for both of them.

Picking a Trade Skill: Mordigg

Earlier this week I told everyone about Mordigg getting to 80 and our attempts at putting together some decent tanking gear for him. Operation "Make Mordigg Less Squishy" is still an ongoing process, but we've made progress. Part of the process was picking a new trade skill for him. He's already made the decision and powered his way through to get what he needed, but for the sake of discussion, I'll walk through the decision-making process we used.

There's multiple different routes one could go as a tank to get benefits from trade skills. For example, I am a miner/blacksmith, which provides me with extra Stamina and two extra prismatic sockets for gems. Solannis is a scribe/jewelcrafter, giving him a better shoulder enchant than the one provided by the Sons of Hodir, a high-Stamina trinket, and the ability to use Dragon's Eyes for better quality gems (i.e. the 41-Stamina Solid Dragon's Eye vs. the 24-Stamina Solid Sky Sapphire). Mordigg, on the other hand, was a skinner/herbalist, which provided him with... some small bonus to his critical strike chance and a small heal over time with a three-minute cooldown. Neither of these is really a tanking benefit - they're nice, but we can do better. We'd been using Mordigg to gather supplies for the others on the team while he trained in Northrend. Our resident leatherworker powered his way to 430-something based mostly off Mordigg's leather, while Sol's inscription and Mr. Boomkin's alchemy have benefited from the herb supply. After looking at everyone's trade skills, we decided to have Mordigg drop skinning. Our leatherworker already has capped skinning despite being only 70, plus he already has our leg armor kit recipes, so most of the important stuff is out of the way anyways. Given that it will be a while before any of our leather/mail wearers get to 80 anyways, we have time to prepare for getting their equipment. Now that we'd freed a trade skill slot, it was time to pick Mordigg's new profession.

Let's start by listing our options out: alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, inscription, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, and tailoring. The last two on the list can be cut right now: there is nothing from either of these other than their bracer/cloak linings that we can't get from the others on the team. That's true for most of these trade skills, so it comes down to the self-only benefits and the cost involved. Leatherworking's bracer enchant is 50 Stamina more than the best bracer enchant out there. This actually makes leatherworking have one of the best payoffs for a tanking trade skill out there, but it's a minor increase over the other trade skills and the downside is how time-consuming and costly it is to level. If there wasn't already a leatherworker on the team, I'd consider it, but given that we have one and Mordigg just dropped skinning, I can't justify the time/expense to level it. As for tailoring, it has a cloak enchant that gives 300 attack power for 15 seconds. Given how often it procs, it's assumed to be the equivalent of a constant 75 attack power. Attack power is nice as a tank, but we'd rather have survivability (Stamina, armor, defense rating, etc.) or a more useful threat stat (hit, expertise, or Strength which is affected by talents and Blessing of Kings). Tailoring is also quite expensive and time-consuming to level, given the cloth prices in the auction house and that we've been sending all of our cloth up till now to a tailor/enchanter friend of ours. Enchanting is out as well: the 24 Stamina ring enchants are quite nice, but considering that it requires materials that would be quite time-consuming to acquire and it would redirect resources away from our enchanter friends who already have most of the recipes we need, it would be the least cost-effective upgrade. This leaves us with alchemy, blacksmithing, engineering, inscription, and jewelcrafting to choose from.

Blacksmithing is a time and resource intensive journey that would require me to go and scour Azeroth and Outland for Mordigg's materials. Learning jewelcrafting, as Solannis puts it, is "a world of frustration and pain" that would also require me to go gather his materials. Engineering isn't quite as bad to learn according to our local engineers and the trinket is quite nice, but the recent improvements that have been made to the Tempered Titansteel Helm eliminates the need for the goggles, so half of the benefit is gone. Given that blacksmithing's extra sockets and jewelcrafting's higher-quality gems are essentially sidegrades (though customizable ones) to the benefits of other trade skills, and the fact that I didn't feel like farming materials for him or paying the ridiculous auction house prices, that left us with two trades that Mordigg could learn that he could gather his own materials for: alchemy and inscription.

Alchemy has a very nice tanking trinket and increased benefits from potions, elixirs, and flasks. It would also provide a second source of alchemy research to support Mr. Boomkin's work. Inscription would give Mordigg a superior shoulder enchant to that provided by the Sons of Hodir with no reputation grinding required (definitely a plus in my eyes) and he would be able to supplement Sol's glyph research. There are drawbacks however: alchemy draws a lot of benefit from consumables that Mordigg would need to keep in supply and even these are gated by the limits on potion and elixir/flask usage, while Inscription would going to have a lot of overlap in glyph recipes since Sol's been at this a while.

To eliminate some of the variables here, we made some assumptions based on what resources the team had available. Our druid buddy has been performing alchemy research since the first week we were in Northrend, and two of our healer contacts aren't that far behind him. Odds are that if anyone on the team needs something brewed, they'll help us out. Same thing goes for inscription research: Sol has most of the glyph recipes, but if we really need something that he doesn't have, hitting the auction house won't kill us considering no one on the team respecs all that often. That left us with alchemy providing better consumables and a trinket and inscription giving us a much stronger shoulder enchant with no reputation grind.

Looking ahead to where Mordigg regularly starts tanking heroic dungeons, the alchemy trinket would fall to the wayside to make room for Essence of Gossamer. It's definitely a good starter trinket, but between that and the Seal of the Pantheon, the alchemy trinket would be the one to replace. So now it's alchemy's better consumables versus inscription's shoulder enchant.

The improvement to consumables is certainly nothing to scoff at, being anywhere from 35-50+% better than the regular potions. Given an elixir pair of Mighty Defense and Mighty Strength, that's a difference of 11 defense rating and 12 Strength over the unmodified elixirs according to a post on Tankspot. The downside to this benefit is that it only applies to elixirs/flasks that the alchemist can create. This means that if Mordigg gets unlucky with his research (which has a 3-day cooldown), this benefit is greatly restricted. There's also the matter of the consumables themselves. Consumables are meant to enhance your abilities to make life easier, not boost you so you're just at the required level. You'll use them for learning new fights, but after that you might not use them all that often, so the benefit from alchemy is diminished.

Inscription however is a static bonus. Compared to Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle, the scribe-only Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle has an additional 32 dodge rating. That's the equivalent of two Subtle Scarlet Rubies. It's not as flexible as the blacksmithing sockets or jewelcrafter gems, but it's a lot of extra avoidance that frees up two other sockets for Stamina or threat. Having Mordigg pick up inscription would also free up a lot of time/resources that would have been necessary to get him to exalted with Sons of Hodir, allowing those Relics of Ulduar to go towards Sol, who still needs the Smooth Autumn's Glow recipe at Exalted, or other members of the team that make their way to Northrend.

The decisions made here may not fit every tank out there. Not everyone has a blacksmith on their team or has a smithing friend. If this is the case, I heartily endorse picking up the trade; it's a lot of work, but the resources available to you as a smith (and especially if you have mining to go with it) are quite useful. Same goes for jewelcrafting: it's a royal pain to learn, but it's handy to never need to hit the auction house for a gem. The decision to have Mordigg learn inscription really came down to, "What has the best benefit/time-and-money ratio?" After Mordigg went to the trainer, it took about 800-900 gold to get him up to 400 inscription for his shoulder enchant. Solannis did have some old ink stockpiled though, and we bummed some off of a buddy as well; given herb prices, that probably would've put the entire run up to 1000-1200 total for the whole thing had we started with nothing. I know for a fact there's no way we ever would have made that much progress in smithing or jewelcrafting for that kind of gold.

Planning for the Trip: Professions

There's only eight days (seven if you're already in line for the zeppelin) before most of the adventurers in Azeroth, including myself and the rest of my team, head over to Northrend to see what Arthas has been up to while we were off playing with the Burning Legion over in Outland. There's also some stories about mad dragons, giants, and undead the likes of which are worse than anything we've ever seen before. Because, you know, regular zombies and abominations of nature just weren't cutting it any more. Considering what the scouts have told us and what my own research has shown, we're gonna need a plan before we go in there.

I'll be the first one to go ashore and start exploring. The group we regularly work with will need a tank for their initial work, and I think it's written somewhere that the leader is supposed to go into the dangerous places first to show his men there's nothing to fear (gonna punch the scribe that started that nonsense...). Regardless, this works out with the plans I've got in place for the team's tradeskill work. I'm the blacksmith and only miner left on the team, so I'll be able to start smithing some plate armor for myself and Solannis, our resident paladin. From what I've read, there's a few pieces of equipment from the new trainers that should compliment my current tanking gear quite nicely. There's also some caster-type plate for Sol, so that should help him.

Once I'm a fair way into my smithing work, then Sol can pick it up from there with his jewelcrafting. I wish I didn't have to split the effort, but I think the smithing work will pay off more for us while we make our way to Icecrown than cutting some slightly shinier gems to put in whatever random pieces of equipment the questgivers decide to pawn off on us for their errands. I might also get some help with materials from some friends of the team, since our little group has kind of become the local one-stop shop for most crafting work.

After those two skills are out of the way, that just leaves inscription (either need someone to send Sol herbs or to yell at the hunter/druid to get to work herbing), engineering (hunter and lock are on their own for this one for a while), leatherworking (I'll work with the shaman on this one eventually), and alchemy (need to drag Mr. Boomkin's butt through Outland first). There's also enchanting, but right now the only enchanter we've got is a mage who hasn't managed to learn how to ride a slow mount yet, so I'll have to call in some favors for that stuff.

I suppose that will suffice for a plan for profession work. Now to just figure out how exactly to get everyone from here to Icecrown in one piece. That's gonna be a bit more work.