Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A case for Pickpocketing

 For years I have been advocating for rogues to pick pocket as a way to level their lock picking with out having to wander all over Azeroth looking for boxes, however with the recent changes to lock picking effort is no longer required. So why bother taking the time to riffle through those humanoid pockets? It is only a few silver after all right? Wrong. If you are not one of the sticky fingered set who can't seem to stop the compulsion to see what that mob or boss just may be hiding you may be missing out on some really nice goodies added this expansion.

Flame-Scarred Junkbox is our newest pick pocked locked box, it is what you can sometimes find in these boxes that may be of the most interest to us. I will try to cover the vast majority of them but Blizzard has granted us an unexpected treasure trove you shouldn't miss.

Three epic weapons, all of which are good for us. They have about a 1% drop rate, so it isn't going to be every day you will find one, but they are all BoE. The Spinerender is a throwing weapon, The Twilight Blade is a nice slow dagger, and the Krol Decapitatior is the upgraded version of the Knol Cleaver we saw back in Wrath.

As before you will occasionally find trade supplies such as uncut rare quality gems. You will also find some Inscription supplies which otherwise can only be obtained via limited supply off select vendors. Deathwing Scale Fragments, Bleached Jawbones, Silver Charm Bracelets, and Perserved Ogre Eyes are all used by Scribes to create blue level items at the higher end of Inscription and will fetch you a nice price on the Auction house. These aren't the best trade items however. Located ONLY through pick pocketing are the Polished Bronze Rivets. ANYONE wishing to have a Tailor craft him a High Society Top Hat is going to need 8 of these babies. While the location of the actually recipe is still unknown start stock piling these if you get them because they will be worth their weight in gold shortly.

I can hear you now, well ok Dar, I can see the money making opportunities your presenting but those are still few and far between. What about all the other pockets I have to go through trying to GET those? Fear not. Today's high level rogues will find more than just empty wallets. There will always be the prerequisite few silver but they have also added another item which is just for us. Rogue's Draught is a BoP Health pot. This means not having to fork out cash to your local Alchemist for Mythical Healing Potions. Now we have always had the chance of getting healing pots from pick pocketing. These however are the only ones that have been designed specifically for us and with the recent changes in Cata where mobs are no longer dropping them VERY useful to have.

There is one other thing to consider in regards to pickpocketing. At present gear levels Crowd Control has returned and a great many rogues are out of practice in placing saps. Some have never done it before period. Pickpocketing is a great way to practice outside of a raid or instance situation. Personally I found my saps to be one of the more consistent forms of CC in my guild runs as while glyphed they can last almost 3 minutes usually allowing us time to kill a full pull before getting to the sapped one. Practice placing saps without all the advantages of Subtlety spec. Those who farm places like Grim Batol or the Fractured Front in Deepholm specifically for boxes will highly advocate for using Subtlety, and it does make box farming easier, but all specs should know how to sap with out relying on Subtlety's extra advantages.

There are lots of macros out there you can use to assist you in pick pocketing, for those who are concerned about mobs noticing you with your hand in their pockets there is the following:

/cast Sap
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Ambush

A popular one I have seen credited to Lilyn  for those who just want to farm but not kill anything is:

#showtooltip Pick Pocket
/console targetNearestDistance 5
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/cast Pick Pocket
/cleartarget

So is it really worth losing a minor slot just to pick up the Pick Pocket glyph? That is a totally personal choice but I try to have a least one spec with it. Then again I have always had sticky fingers and the ability to pick a pocket from the same distance I can place a sap appeals to me.

9 comments:

  1. I've been a pickpocket fanatic ever since I started playing WoW. I once tried to pickpocket Price in Kara only to discover that he had no pockets :( and ended up agroing him and wiping the raid. Since then my unofficial guild title has been "Pickpocketeer Extraordinaire". I even have pickpocket macroed to every one of my stealth moves and have found several of the old junkbox epics from previous expansions. Definitely one of my favorite rogue abilities.

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  2. Oh how I can relate! The guild still laugh at me for complaining about how Arthas didn't have any pockets either...at least the Prince was a demon, and obviously NOT wearing pants but Arthas' has big plate ones....sigh...such a tease.

    Thanks for stopping by Makhlook!

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  3. Wow, i havent seen any mentions of my macro elswhere besides on wowhead ;) i just want to mention to bind my macro (Lilyn) to the scroll-wheels of your mouse, makes pick-pocketing very fast. Oh and /console targetNearestDistance 5 doesnt work anymore so ensure ur having the Pick Pocket Glyph glyphed

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  4. Any suggestions on the best place to pickpocket in cataclysm? I found the coast of twilight with the fighting mobs to be ok...anything better?

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  5. Linux if you want to just farm boxes the Fracture Front in Deepholm or the instance Grim Batol are both great.

    If you are trying to get the Polished Bronze Rivets, I like the Shipbuilders in Tol Barad. The drop rate seems higher with them, but there are not many.

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  6. Don't forget awesome and funny "flavour" items you can pickpocket. Not terribly useful, but I imagine many of them move well on RP server auction houses, and some of them sell even on regular servers. I've had decent luck with the occasional Steamy Romance Novel. (I sold six at a time to the same person, once. Always wondered what they did with them... Possibly gifts or prizes for a guild event?) The drop rate on the current SRN volume seems a bit lower than the previous ones, so it's possible collectors might pay a bit more on the AH for it.

    Oh, and booze. Mobs are carrying around SO MUCH BOOZE in their pockets now. Who doesn't like free booze?

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  7. Oh yeah the Steamy Romance books are fantastic! Though I was a little disappointed that our favorite paladin Marcus was abandoned this expansion in favor of a Female Goblin.

    The various liquors you can find are impressive as well. My personal favorites are the Gilnean Fortified Brandy and Red Ale, the Embalming Fluid always gives me pause as a "typical alcoholic beverage".

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  8. It looks like they really improved pickpocketing in this expansion. I haven't played my rogue in a very long time and he's delegated to bank alt duty these days but pickpocketing was just about the only good thing about the class, IMO. I would think that those who don't pickpocket are either lazy or don't know that it can be done.

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  9. One of the things that I think really hurt pick pocketing was the resurgence of Combats popularity.

    The majority of Rogues who play Combat play more like a warrior in leather than an Assassin and since Pick Pocketing requires stealth they never slow down enough to make use of it. Assassination rogues and of course Subtlety rogues on the other hand seem much more inclined to make use of this ability as their main openers already start off in stealth.

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