Thanks to everyone who commented on my semi-frustrated post Saturday about my cruddy DPS as a rogue newly come to Dire Maul East. Angry Gamer suggester changing my spec to Assassination, dumping my swords for daggers and relying on beefy crits to up my DPS. Myrix offered up a Combat-focused spec (as opposed to my Combat/Assassination spec), urged me to ditch my slow offhand for a fast one, and reminded me, with Rohan, to keep Slice-and-Dice up at all times. Gordon and Endelon worried that I was focusing too much on my DPS at such a low level (55). Many people thought the heavy emphasis on min-maxing in World of Warcraft hurt the pure enjoyment of the game.

To that, well, World of Warcraft (and EverQuest and EverQuest 2) are achiever-oriented games. I’m sure lots of people play WoW for fun or social reasons, but I suspect most people play it to improve their character. Certainly this is why I’m playing WoW.

Since I don’t have any decent daggers at the moment (always looking!), I went with the Combat spec Myrix suggested and dropped my anti-elemental offhand sword for a fast fist weapon I picked up a few nights ago in Blackrock Depths in what might have turned out to be the last time the Looking for Dungeon tool would send me there. Thus equipped, I entered the dungeon queue and waited to see where I’d be sent.

A few minutes later, the LFD tool sent me to Dire Maul East. Yay! I’d never grouped with Death Knights before, and now there were two in the group. The tank was in the “I don’t need a group, I can heal myself” “blood” presence, causing the hunter to make a disparaging comment about DKs who don’t know how to tank and leave the group. He was replaced by a third death knight.

After three pulls in which I died because none of the death knights wanted to tank, I quit the group and logged out to do something else for awhile.

When I came back later, I got a group, again for Dire Maul East, and was happy to see there were no Death Knights in the party. The druid bear tank kept aggro, I was happy. The other DPS were a fire-spec’d mage and a hunter.

As suggested, I had Instant Poison V on my Lord General’s Sword (procs +50 attack) and Deadly Poison IV on my Bloodfists (chance to wound). Can I give another shout-out to the LFD tool for letting folks do dungeons enough times to get all the best loot from them?

We didn’t finish the instance – the tank left and soon after the healer decided to take off, and after that we were dead. It’s hard for people to join a group in progress in DM due to the respawning patrols. But we did finish three bosses and I had plenty of data from Recount to judge my performance.

My overall DPS improved from 148 to 219, over 70 points. Not bad! Against the three stand-and-strike boss fights, my DPS was 230, 231 and 260; number two in every boss fight behind only the hunter, and ahead of the mage and druid tank. If my poisons hadn’t been resisted half the time, my overall DPS would have been a lot closer to my boss DPS.

So color me very pleased. Nobody could legitimately call me out for poor DPS in that group, and it’s all thanks to all the very helpful and welcome advice!