Encrypted Text: Emblem of Triumph rewards for Rogues
by Chase Christian 
Jul 22nd 2009 at 8:00PM
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we talk about the upcoming Emblem of Triumph gear, analyzing each piece's stats and bonuses.Due to the tireless work of Boubouille of MMO-Champion and many others, we've been able to discover many of the new items coming our way in patch 3.2. There's a wide variety of gear planned for Rogues, as there are three separate ilvl tiers of gear being distributed. In addition, Blizzard has included two copies of nearly every piece of gear: one for the Alliance, and one for the Horde; each piece possesses its own art and design.
We'll be able to pick up our new Emblems of Triumph from the Daily Dungeon quests and the new Crusader's Coliseum. You can trade the EoTs for a few very attractive pieces of gear, especially for those few slots that you could never find the gear to fill. When planning your gear migration path in patch 3.2, remember to include these items in your spreadsheets. They're guaranteed items that you can plan to acquire within a well-defined timeline.
I'll be talking about both the Horde and Alliance version of the gear, though I'll refer to the Horde pieces by name when necessary. The Alliance pieces are a perfect mirror (statistically), the only difference is aesthetics. Miscellaneous items are typically the same for both factions, while display items such as Helmets have the two separate versions. The Emblem gear is all ilvl 245, which is the 10 man Heroic / 25 man Normal quality gear (right in the middle of patch 3.2's quality spectrum). It's going to be stronger than even Ulduar 25's best gear, and so you'll be able to immediately upgrade to the newest tier of gear.
Trinkets: Mark of Supremacy, Shard of the Crystal Heart
Blizzard included two very potent +hit trinkets in 3.2, mirroring items such as the Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood or the Pyrite Infuser. They stack a very high amount of hit (they cover the Yellow Hit Cap by themselves), and both possess a Use: effect that we can coordinate with our other cooldowns to maximize their potency. The Mark of Supremacy's Attack Power is clearly superior to the Shard's Haste, but if you're hurting for trinkets, there are two options available to you.
Ring: Dexterous Brightstone Ring
The Dexterous Brightstone Ring may be ilvl 245, but unfortunately it's not ideally itemized for a Rogue. Agility, AP, and Armor Penetration are all great stats to have, but spending all of those item budget points on Haste make the ring less than perfect. If that had been crit or hit rating, I would consider it higher, but it's still not a bad ring when compared to a Naxxramas or Ulduar 10 level alternative.
Throwing Weapon: Crimson Star
The Crimson Star throwing weapon is a better example of what Blizzard can achieve when they purposely make the perfectly balanced item. This mirrors the other Throwing Weapons available to us, especially the Emblem of Heroism vendor's Lillehoff's Winged Blades: they're all itemized very well. This is to keep us sticking to Throwing Weapons instead of taking Guns and Bows from our Hunter rivals. They've even started implementing Throwing Weapons for tanks!
Helm: Mask of Lethal Intent (Horde), Hood of Lethal Intent (Alliance)
The Mask of Lethal Intent is a very strong option for helms, blowing away any helmet currently available. This is partly due to there being no hard-mode helmets available for Rogues, we're stuck with simple Ulduar 25 quality headpieces. I see this as one of the first pieces being picked up by Rogues, as with the new slot-agnostic tokens (the Rogue token buys ANY of our 5 slots), you can pick and choose which pieces of T9 to acquire, and in what order.
Shoulder: Duskstalker Pauldrons (Horde), Duskstalker Shoulderpads (Alliance)
These Shoulders are another solid option for Rogues, and they even stack up quite nicely against their T9 counterparts. However, the Shoulders are 30 Emblems cheaper to purchase, and so perhaps we'll see more Rogues sporting some flavor of Duskstalker instead of purchasing the previously mentioned helmets. It will take some time to acquire Triumph badges, as we will only have access to a couple of bosses for the first weeks of the Coliseum's release. This means that maximizing your benefit per Emblem is very important.
Tier 9: Garona's Battlegear (Horde), VanCleef's (Alliance)
The new Tier 9 sets comes in 3 flavors, as I mentioned previously: 10 man normal, 10 man Heroic / 25 man Normal, and 25 man Heroic. Each of these tiers get progressively stronger, but more importantly, they allow a talented 10 man raider to achieve the same level of gear as a basic 25 man raider.
Our 4 piece bonus is fairly vanilla, simply providing 5% crit to some of our basic attacks. Our 2 piece bonus, on the other hand, has the theorycrafting world trying to figure out its value and where it will fall in our spreadsheets. Its proc rate, and the resultant DPS cycles, will determine its worth in the long term, and so we're eagerly awaiting patch 3.2's release to discover exactly how potent it is.
Idol: Idol of Mutilation
Okay, you've got me, it's not actually a Rogue item. However, I saw the name and figured I had to bring it up. Our Feral Druid cousins are picking up a brand new toy, and it looks to be quite the bonus for them. After the nerf to a Bear Druid's dodge, this 200 dodge rating proc may make up for the difference. It almost has me wishing we had Idols!
Conclusion:
We've got a lot of great stuff on the way, here's to hoping the rest of the Crusader's Coliseum gear look this good!
Are you a Rogue looking to up your game? Check back every Wednesday for the latest strategies in Encrypted Text! And for the raiding Rogue, get ready for Ulduar with Ready Check and our Ulduar guide for Rogues, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Filed under: Rogue, Items, (Rogue) Encrypted Text
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
martin.tomasi Jul 27th 2009 7:02PM
What? Van Cleef's Battlegear? You are not serious about that, are you? :D
trenzor Jul 22nd 2009 8:42PM
yay for phat lootz
Foxfire Jul 22nd 2009 8:49PM
Hrm I thought that was Duckstalker shoulders for a second.
Which made me think of Sex with ducks. (Search youtube).
While I dread to think of us rogues all bright yellow and feathered. It would be an awesomely hilarious set piece to wear.
Precision Jul 22nd 2009 9:00PM
I love the amount of ArPen that's coming with this new gear. Combat just got a whole lot sexier
Precision Jul 22nd 2009 9:02PM
The amount of ArPen on this new gear is awesome. It makes combat just that much sexier.
Arkeband Jul 23rd 2009 1:35AM
The amount of ArPen on this new gear makes Mutilate rogues barf in their masks.
Grubba Jul 23rd 2009 3:51AM
In their sweet, sweet bird masks.
fernando Jul 23rd 2009 5:12AM
no more hit points pleaseeee ! we are already over cap and we could be using those hit points in armor penetration or expertise, so on...
theremover Jul 23rd 2009 6:25AM
Good read.
Constructive criticism though:
You vastly underestimate haste. That ring is fantastic. Definitely better than anything rogues are walking around with now. (Dexterous Brightstone Ring).
Try the math out.
Shardrell Jul 23rd 2009 7:44AM
What concerns me right now with 3.2 rogue itemization is the availability of weapons for Combat spec. We need a slow MH/fast OH combo of either sword/axe (either hand) or fist MH/fist or dagger OH. So far on Wowhead I see no PvE main hand fists, no PvE swords at all, and two slow axes.
Should I be worried, or are we still waiting for more loot to be discovered via testing?
theremover Jul 23rd 2009 8:11AM
Of course there's nothing to worry about, there's always something obtainable. Hopefully we'll get more love than we have now:
There are great weapons available to us in Ulduar, but only if we have friends/guilds that do all the hard mode content.
The "upgrades" otherwise are extremely trivial, and some weapons are even inferior to naxx 25 gear.
Avrus Jul 23rd 2009 11:40AM
Yes thank you for bringing this up. Rogue weapon itemization is abysmally bad but it's especially felt with MH weapons for combat Rogues.
I'm still using an i200 MH fist from Naxx after 2 dozen or so Naxx runs (after which I finally gave up) and about 15 Ulduar runs.
In that time I've managed to upgrade my OH 3 times.
Loudfiero Jul 23rd 2009 7:51AM
Combat NEEDS haste! That ring is da'bom!
Armor penetration is sweet too. But seriously - more expertise please! I'm up to 412 hit in Naxx25 + Ulduar10 gear...
theremover Jul 23rd 2009 8:07AM
Ulduar 25 gear has way too much expertise for combat rogues. I'm finding myself having to equip naxx 25 gear, etc, because i'm constantly over the cap.
Ryan Jul 23rd 2009 9:34AM
"no more hit points pleaseeee ! we are already over cap and we could be using those hit points in armor penetration or expertise, so on..."
Yes. Good lord that's a lot of hit. At this rate, you may see rogues getting close to the white cap before WotLK is said and done.
Just to make an example, looking at some of the emblem rewards, and 25-normal rewards, if you were to pick up:
Trinket from this article: 128 hit.
Helm from this article: 82 hit.
Treads of the Icewalker (25 man): 67 hit.
Belt of the Merciless Killer (25 man): 59 hit.
Bracers of Dark Determination (25 man): 50 hit.
I'm assuming the boots, wrist, and belt could be BiS, depending on how the 25-heroic loot table ends up looking like. But still, those 5 pieces of gear will get you 386 hit...71 over the poison cap. It's also halfway to the white cap (assuming you have 5/5 Precision).
Add in some more hit from other tier pieces, and it probably won't be uncommon for rogues to be walking around with ~450 hit without even trying.
Oh, just decided to look at the regular ilvl245 tier pieces.
Legs: 74 hit
Gloves: 59 hit
Chest: 82
So bring that 386 up to 601! Even if you later drop the Badge helm for T9 (which has no hit), you're still at 519.
I don't think there's a need for more expertise (Just grabbing the t9 shoulders/helm will give you a little over 16 rating. The thrown weapon in the article brings it to 19, and other gear not seen yet should cover the last 7.
But some more ArP would be nice.
Ryan Jul 23rd 2009 9:40AM
Also, I guess I'm officially giving up hope that our 4pc bonus was just a placeholder that would be changed before the patch went live.
5% extra SS crit is kinda...meh. Yeah, it'll be kind of nice with SS glyph for faster combo points (doubly nice when the 2pc makes your SS free).
But still, the combat rotation as it stands doesn't really need faster combo point generation. Going from rupture crits to that seems like a downgrade.
JCBeastie Jul 23rd 2009 10:34AM
You poo-poo haste then link a bunch of ArP gear? I smell Combat Rogue...
ArP is junk tbh, give me oodles of Haste anyday!
Arakune Jul 23rd 2009 12:29PM
Where's the critical strike rating?
artifex Jul 23rd 2009 1:20PM
Emblem of Triumph!
More than a note saying "huge success"...
LostOne Jul 24th 2009 11:41AM
My rogue just hit 80 this week. I'm finding weapon options to be very limited. I'm a casual player with a toddler at home. As such I RARELY have the time or opportunity to raid, and by the time I logon after my toddler is in bed most people are done with the heroic daily and any heroics they want to run. So I have trouble finding heroic groups. I'm a combat rogue, been leveling with swords. It seems the only weapon options for a casual player currently in the game are crafted daggers, expensive (and never seen) BoE epics on the AH, or the maces from the Argent Tournament. I think the Mace Specialization talent is about the worst thing in the combat tree. What options are there for me other than waiting for 3.2 and hoping that Argent Tournament will add some decent rogue weapons?