I’ve been levelling an alt rogue and have been eyeing up what weapons to get as I progress. Naturally as swords are the best for DPS and once you focus on a weapon specialisation you’re pretty much locked into using that weapon exclusively.
While swords are undoubtedly the best for damage, I was wondering if anyone had tried leveling with mace spec instead?
While killing mobs for levelling, your efficiency is determined by the speed at which you kill mobs offset by your downtime. I was intrigued by mace spec for three reasons.
a stunned mob cannot attack you. Less damage taken means less downtime. Particularly effective v caster mobs on whom it will reset cast times.
a stunned mob cannot block dodge or parry.
the mace skill from the talent frees up two extra points that won’t be required in weapon expertise.
Obviously overall you might perform less damage in instances and even single mob farming. But do these 3 factors make the difference between maces and swords for single mob farming comparable?
There are other factors too such as very good quest reward swords etc, but has anyone else had any experience trying both out? Are we too blinded by the max dps meta to think outside the box? Or am I just bored at work theory crafting and trying to reinvent the wheel?
I’ve wondered this whilst lvling my rogue too. It’s nice to see something different from every other rogue out there.
It obviously won’t do as much damage as swords but I think it will be easier to solo elites that can be stunned and if you get lucky with stuns and crits you could take zero damage in a fight.
In the end I gave up trying to work out what was better and went daggers instead
I’ve an offhand mace on my rogue just as it was the better wep at the time and it’s done me around10 levels (49 now) but I can’t say I’ve noticed much on the way of stuns from it. One thing I tend to do with wep skills if the char is high enough, is take it into RFC solo and skill up off the mobs as if they were a training dummy. The skill points add up pretty quickly. I’ve dagger in main hand as I’ve gone a sublety/assassination route but decent daggers do seem harder to come by.
Not sure on this one. But also not sure what the best opener is for combat single target leveling. If they do DR you could garrote and use evis instead of a kidney? Quite a few variables at play. Got a bit too complicated for me to work out in my head
Some say Daggers are best in Raid because of Backstab, if you have good Epic Dagger, and Swords if you have good Epic Sword, so maybe if you have good Epic Mace then Mace is great cuz no other Rogue will Need on Mace?
You are overthinking it. Get a slow main hand a fast off hand slap two fiery enchants on them get leather gear with AG use some decent stamina enchants 3 to all stats on a good chest and sinister strike your way to 60 in a few days.
As someone who tried it I think I can safely say that it really isn’t worth the effort.
Sword and dagger spec outclasses it in pretty much every way, sure random stun procs are nice but random extra swings are just straight up better even in PvP.
It is however a lot better in TBC (it was a fantastic expansion for weird and wacky specs that actually worked), so if and when TBC Classic servers roll around I would definitely recommend giving mace rogue a try.
The main reason is talent progression of rogue leveling. When youre leveling a rogue you want 5 points in Malice and 2 points in Remorseless so you can only put points in weapon specialization around level 40+s. Just before our beloved Thrash Blade.
Another reason is Riposte. You dont want stun lock on mobs while leveling. You want they try to hit you. So invisible dps loss of mace stuns is much higher than you think.
