After a long time spent in his mid-30s as my fishing and alchemy alt I eventually put the effort into levelling my dwarf rogue and he hit level 60 on 27 December with 9 days, 21 hours and 48 minutes played. I wasn't really sure what to do with him beyond that milestone other than getting him some half decent gear and the easy raid attunements, and in the end both proved much easier than expected.
A PUG run of Stratholme Living aimed at progressing the In Dreams quest line also netted me the Mask of the Unforgiven, and DM jump runs with some guild mates got me the Satyr's Bow on our 5th and final run for that evening. A single run each of Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire gained me Blackhand's Breadth (so nice not to have to agonise of the rewards for that quest!) as well as the Blackwing Lair attunement, and a group with another guild mate who'd reached level 60 at about the same time helped me through the dungeon steps of the Onyxia quest line which otherwise I had planned on avoiding, and also rewarded the rather useful Skilled Fighting Blade. The Clouddrift Mantle was another straight forward quest reward but otherwise I gained greatly from my alt status with my druid crafting me the Primal Batskin Jerkin and the Devilsaur set, and also scrounging the Nightslayer Bracers during a Molten Core bindings run, as well as ensuring I had the funds available for a Shadowfoot Stabber from the auction house and some Mongoose Boots crafted by our guild's feral tank.
I then felt ready to dip my toes into the raiding waters with a guild run of Zul'Gurub, and although that was very profitable for me, with another excellent quest reward of the Belt of Preserved Heads as well as a drop of the Zulian Tigerhide Cloak it was also nearly the end of my rogue's raiding career as my damage output was frankly awful.
A big part of my low damage I'm sure was my daggers spec and its positioning requirement, however I didn't want to change that since to me swords aren't rogue-y enough, and anyway melee should be behind bosses to avoid cleaves and parries. My raiding DPS inexperience went without saying and there was only one way to resolve that. And gear was no doubt a factor - although by pre-BiS standards I was in pretty good gear, for the average ZG raider my gear was a good way below what's typical nowadays and hence the baseline that log reports were comparing me to.
I was slightly taken aback by how steep the gear/damage curve is - our guild's feral tank was in the same raid on his rogue, with markedly better gear than me and performing much better, but still only doing quite average damage.
On advice from one of my guild's better rogues I decided to focus on Molten Core, with its smaller pulls of much larger mobs and hence positioning being more obvious. I also did a fair bit of work cleaning up my UI for things like clearer combat text and better visibility generally, and made use of the enormous amount of resources that are out there nowadays to help improve play.
And improve I did - in my four raids of Molten Core I've done good to very good iLevel parses of melee-friendly bosses such as Shazzrah and Ragnaros, improved noticeably on some less friendly bosses such as Geddon, such that I feel I was actively contributing to the raid rather than along for the ride.
However my current feeling is not to continue his raiding journey - while it's been great to see a side of the game I've not really tried before, with Burning Crusade somewhere on the horizon I feel there is limited mileage in this. I could probably gear up very slightly more and give a reasonable account of myself in Blackwing Lair, however given the limited remaining lifetime of the game and the need for nature and frost resistance gear in later raids I'm nearing the end of what I can achieve without detracting from my main character and focus.
Still my rogue, having completed Molten Core, Zul'Gurub and the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj has progressed far further in raiding than any of my characters achieved back in the day.
So he will go back to being an idle rogue (with occasional herbing outings).
