Brass Tacks

I guess it's finally time to get down to them. I've been avoiding this. Really I have.

A week ago, maybe, Martin sent me an email containing links to Rogue-centric blogs, intending that I should start looking them over for end-game information. Builds and gear and that sort of thing. I balked. Who wants a hobby that you have to work that hard on? Math? Are you serious? I wasn't good at math in school. I even hated doing pro-rate calculations and making change at my dad's office. Now I'm going to try to figure out what makes the best DPS and damage meters and I don't know what all? I don't even know where to begin, honestly. I sorta snapped at him and he snapped back and it was never spoken of again...until now. And now we shall speak of that part of it no more. Shhh.

Anyway, the last couple of days, after some disasterous PvP I decided that maybe I will put some minimal effort into this. In other words, I'll find someone who has already done the work and copy them! Genius! I am Brain and all others are Pinky or below!

One problem, though. When we first started playing, and really up until now, I've counted on Martin to tell me where to spend my talent points. Now, he's never leveled a rogue and I've never leveled a...well, anything, so we were sort of flying blind, popping points in willy nilly. That worked well enough for a while, but I'm starting to think that it won't cut the mustard at 70. Two things I DO know, however. One, I want to stay combat sword specced, but the issue I see there is that everyone says it's a bad PvP build and Martin wants us to start doing some PvP (plus I hear the reward gear is awesomeness). Two, we plopped 14 points into Subtlety with Master of Deception, Camouflage and Initiative and I don't really want to lose those. I really like the extra combo points and the better Stealth. However, from what I can see, those are better for a combat dagger specced rogue who PvPs.

Gah, I'm all messed up and unsure of where to go from here. I don't know if I should just go ahead and try one or two of the "standard" combat sword builds and see how they go, or try to customize my own build and risk screwing it all up like crazy. To make matters MORE complicated, I picked up the Ceremonial Warmaul Blood-Blade last night and, since it outstripped my offhand sword, I switched to it, which makes my sword speccing a bit useless at the moment. I'm going to wait until I pick up another sword to replace it to try experimenting with builds, but I'd like to know a place to start, for Pete's sake!

Ideas, suggestions, complaints, tar and feathers?