First of all, I must apologize. In all the cowfusion, I udderly lost track of time and thus found that many Rogues had a serious beef with me over this column being late. But not to worry, dear readers! I've finally detoxed, and many hamburgers later, I'm back and ready to dish this week's Encrypted Text. Of course, there is one last remaining bit of Bovine Inspiration for this week's column... And that would be a little thing I like to call Content Avoidance.

Now, any Rogue worth their salt knows precisely what I'm talking about. The first time that you sneak past every mob in a particular area just to take out the named mob you have to get to, then proceed to sneak back out, you've experienced your first bit of Content Avoidance. Of course, many others will call it stealth running, or sneaking past mobs, etc. No matter what you call it, it equates to the highway to speedy quest completion. As hinted at above, I must give a nod to the other class that is almost, but not quite as good at stealth runs: Druids. Despite the fact that feral Druids love Rogue armor just as much as Rogues do, there is an excellent relationship that can be cultivated here if the Druid and Rogue in question are willing... I am speaking, of course of the Perfect Stealth Run Team.

While there have been videos of Rogues tearing through instances (and I'm relatively certain there are similar videos for Druids) the long and short of it is that for a truly cake stealth run, having a combination of Rogues and Druids is nothing but win. I would even go so far as to say that Druids and Rogues (if the players in question can work out an amicable distribution for armor between them) make for one of the best leveling teams in the game. Druids can alternate between Tanking, DPS and Healing. Rogues, while the more specialized class between the two classes, can bring crowd control, distracts, poisons and heavier DPS on many occasions. (I won't say all, because there are always exceptions, and having a L64 Feral Druid, I speak from experience on that front as well.) It doesn't matter if cat r fite, or sum durids r bare, the one-two punch of Druids and Rogues is a combination that was built for some serious stealthy hell-raising.

But why would you want to avoid content, you might ask? Either as a solo rogue, or in a group? Aside from fast and easy quest completion in many cases, it also opens you up to pull off some truly wicked fun things. One of my favorites to this day is to stealth through instances where you know there will be chests laying around. Scarlet Monestary is a perfect example of this. There are at least two, sometimes three chests in the Library, generally one or two in the Armory, and one in the Graveyard instance. If you're high level, you can easily stealth all the instances, homing in on the boxes, and then reset the entire place in nothing flat, often netting blues that sell for 40-60+g in the process. BRD is another lovely place for a stealth run if you happen to have (dis)Enchanting and are looking to make some fast cash. Sneak through, pick off the named, and shard everything. Rinse, repeat. This also works well in Scholomance -- just keep in mind that if you're fighting Gandling solo, he will still teleport you to another room. (Yes, this is exceedingly silly of him.) Dire Maul is exceptionally fun on a stealth run, and with a couple of other stealth classes along, you can achieve an amazingly quick Tribute Run. (You'll still want to take out some mobs due to their high level of stealth detection -- hooray, dogs -- but it's much faster than a normal Tribute Run ever was.) Obviously, this is much more challenging when you are at-level. But even above level, it makes for a nice quick lunchtime run that (with the help of one enchanter in the group) can net some fast shard/dust cash for everyone.

Now a word to the wise; many of the Burning Crusade mobs in instances have exceptionally good stealth detection, which is indicated by the spinning circle "icon" above a mob's head. So pulling off stealth runs in those instances is trickier, but not impossible. Distracts can help, but this is where the Rogue/Druid team-up will truly shine. Nothing is going to beat having a Feral bear Druid tanking and a Resto Druid at your back if a stealth run goes horribly wrong in an Outland instance. And those Druids will love your heavy DPS when the mobs see right through their stealth. After all, sum cat r fite, but none of the cats can Vanish.

And finally, the one thing that is the most fun to stealth run (if you can accomplish it) is sneaking into the city of the opposite faction and proceeding to pop out of stealth and whomp on a particularly "naughty" NPC -- like say, the other faction's leaders. This is one of the things that we loved about our new blogger, Eric -- his Rogue postcards, showcasing him stealthing all manner of places that he really shouldn't be in. The next time you're bored, see if you can't get a bunch of stealth classes in a raid and see what kind of havoc you can wreak together!

After all, why roll a stealth class if you're not going to revel in your ability to skip straight to the heart of the matter and Assassinate your target at least every once in a while? How about you? What are some of your favorite stealth runs?

Tags: content avoidance, ContentAvoidance, druid, rogue, stealth, stealth run, StealthRun, world of warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, wow

Filed under: Druid, Rogue, Humor, (Rogue) Encrypted Text, Analysis / Opinion