I heard news today of an upcoming change in 4.1 which made me thought a little. Bliz announced that they will give rewards to the least represented role in an LFD. This reward will probably be in the form of a goodie bag (remember those during your 20th time in SM:GY??) and will include mounts and non-combat pets as possible rewards. Possible, because it doesnt have to be. For sure these least represented classes will be given extra gold. The pets, maybe. the mounts, maybe. So it's good news right?
Well not really. Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.
1. Call to Arms will always be on. Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand. Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious: Call to Arms will always be on. and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks. It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers. And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards. This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet.
2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking. The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands. There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves. It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie. This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be. In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank. But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today. But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop.
3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount. This is bad? Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it). But i am basically QQing about this one. I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop. Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse! that's about nine months of farming. although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times! Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated. Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit. I felt cheated still. I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now. Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?). Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh? These are all the mounts i am currently farming. Deathcharger again? well i do have alts. =P and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake. at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.
4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time. What else will this mean? a flood of gems into the AH. For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee. But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap. The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks. Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week. So what does this mean for the gem market? people will begin to drop out. cut gems will be scarce again. Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points. What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need? you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold. right?
In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses. Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment. But we all know it will only make things worse. and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is. lets not make it worse, yea? thanks bliz!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Another one gone.
There has been quite a few people packing up and leaving WoW or blogging lately. One of whom i enjoy reading often, Redhawks, has somehow hit it big (GRATS MAN!!!!). I'll be ordering my first CD via Amazon when his album lands. He's a rapper, aparently. I do enjoy meself some good rap. I just hope he doesnt kill any more classics while doing so!
But you know. this is April 1st..... =P
But you know. this is April 1st..... =P
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Practice in Oblivion
I just had to write a post today just to get this out of my system. Actually it is already out of my system, as many issues seem to fall off of me like water rolling off a duck's back. and i am writing this when i should be following up on a couple of closings and working on several reports actually say something--its not rolling off my back as it should. You guessed it, rant/story incoming!
Well me and my gf were out there gear-leveling our alts, me on my rogue and her on her DK. I barely had enough ilevel to enter heroics, 329 to be exact, as does she and we qued for our second or third heroic on those toons last night (the first we ever did on the rogue/dk set was throne of the tides with no other that i can recall of. so i am thinking this is our second heroic).
We sit for 30 minutes in queue, waiting, patiently. Actually i was trying to put together a computer fan, a box from ikea, a used USB cable, and make it into a cooling solution for my xbox. We were all a little occupied doing various things. Anyway, the queue pops and we get Deadmines. Back in the days we used to abbreviate it VC, for Van Cleef. but i am not sure if we're still using that term. Maybe DM, or Dire Maul fell off the face of the earth and no one mentions that as DM. DM. Anyway, lots of tangents today. sorry.
We zoned in and i checked out the three puggees. They were all from Sisters of Elune, tank had mainly tanking gear with some dps pieces (no no right there), healer had good gear but nothing fancy. spec looked OK but with no pain suppression? whaaa? oh and fury warrior was speced... fury, of course.
In we go, after the first readycheck (omg really?) we pulled the first ogre and his kobold. After the first pull i can tell we werent doing too well. Me and my gf were at 7k dps. pretty decent for entry level heroics, i thought. then i saw the warrior's dps at 3.2k. oh noes. But maybe he wasnt ready. plus, no one died. so off to the next pull and i jumped into the cannon. I shot everything up so the second pull, which included a whole bunch of kolbolds and an ogre was a farce. the cannon did all the work and the dps could have just stood there. that's fine. the next pull were the two ogres before the first boss. i couldnt sap so we pulled them together. take fell to about 15% health twice but recovered. healer went OOM. warrior did 3.4k dps! an increase, yay!
Then our first boss fight occured. again, me and my gf were doing about 6-7k dps while running around in circles, avoiding the fire wall and the electro-zones. actually i got caught in electro bomb zones several times because there was really no where else to go. I had to help the tank pick up adds with Tricks/FoK, which really really helped centralize damage. After about 20 seconds of fire wall, the warrior dies. then the healer. then the tank and everyone else. the tank asks what went wrong. no one replied. actually it was pretty obvious. healer died so we all died. duh, right? the 3.2k dps warrior could have just been dead since the start and it wouldnt have mattered.
Second attempt went better. Me and my gf both got the [Ready for Raiding] acheivement. i think a chestpiece dropped for me, which i was pretty happy about since it replaced a level 312 chest. we move on to trash. death happened when we pulled the two casters which i expected was bound to happen. but we rebounded because the second attempt had less mobs! on one pull, the healer died to a monkey. the tank died to the monkey too. then i realized what was happening and i clicked on the ball and chain to make the monkey turn friendly. after that, the tank made it an effort to make all the remaining monkeys friendly.
We get to the lumber room with the oaf/goblin and, of course, took two attempts. the first attempt was a little dull. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. we would have survived if the oaf didnt pick the healer to slam into the wall. besides that, the only real complaint i had was that no one picked up the goblin to attack. i guess it doesnt matter either way. but after the first wipe on him, the tank said hmmmm. and i replied with, "healer died in that attempt, if oaf picked someone else to ram into the wall, we would have been okay." the healer replied with "so blame the healer for everything". well, i call it like i see it. its nothing personal. anyway, i replied with basically instructions on how to do this well. "avoid the bombs, dps down the boss, switch to goblin when he jumps off, and if you're below 70% health when you get slammed in the wall, you die." the tank replies with "so you know everything about this fight". i took that as a snarky remark and said, "totally". no reply.
we went ahead and killed him this time. again, me and my gf were tops in dps. brand new heroic rats doing about 7k dps. and again, warrior was at 3.2k dps. tank was doing abotu 5k. healer was OOM.
We went on to wipe again. On trash. Once we got to the forge, it was it for me. we were there for a little over an hour and anything bullshit that anyone gave me will have me reply with less than pleasant words. We were at four wipes already, maybe more bc i could have lost count. but at least four. twice on boss and at least twice on trash.
We proceeded down the circular ramp towards the first reaver. The tank asked who wants to use the robot. i asked if anyone knows how (much better question, dont you think?). there was no reply. i asked my gf not to jump on the reaver, even though she has an idea of how to use it. i knew how to use it too, but i wanted the warrior, who was doing crap ass dps to get on the reaver. at least we'll maximize our potential that way. after a couple of minutes of just standing around, the warrior got the hint and jumped on the reaver. after we killed the enemy reaver, i would hop on to it to help out the fight before it self destructs. what i found out was amazing. the warrior stood with the tank, thereby receiving the cleave damage. by the time we got to the third reaver, the warrior's reaver bot died and he had to dps on foot. he also used steam jets or whatever that ability was to knock me back several times. i countered with a charge that stunned the enemy reaver. easy enough. after the last reaver died, the warrior got into his robot and the tank pulled Reaper.
Now things were going quite smoothly for the first 30 seconds of the fight. yes, it was bliss for that long. stay out of harvest, stay out of overdrive. easy. we did that. most of the fight was us running away with intervals of dps. this is how the fight should be. then from behind i get a slag attacking me, then i died. upon hitting my face with the keyboard, i saw several more slags moving up the ramp. good job warrior. We wipe, of course.
As i was zoning into the instance again, for the sixth time, the tank posts the dps meters. then says, i dont think we have enough dps for this fight. i was in disbelief that this guy could actually say that after we topped meters the entire fight. and his warrior buddy was on a reaver, so his dps didnt quite count. also, this is a heavy movement fight and dps is secondary to survival (a misnomer, since dps should ALWAYS be secondary to survival, but this fight exemplifies it). in any case, i replied with, "this is a two-dps fight". the tank replies with, "i know that but i dont think our dps is good enough". no shit. the dps cant dps with slags flowing in. in any case, i replied with something like this, "you're right, i do think you guys need to learn to play better before you queue for heroics again. peace out. "
then i left. my gf saw the rest of them leave so she left too. no one replied to me. no one could say much i guess.
in any case, why is this a problem? and why is my blog post title about another game? It is because the tank completely disregarded the fail of his teammates. as if, it was completely forgotten. of course, him and his friends could do no wrong and every little piece of failure that his team produced was lost to oblivion.
i dont know what planet these guys were from, but from the "dont blame me" attitude of the healer, to the snarky comments from the tank, to the utter disregard of incompetence from these three people or the ridiculously low dps from the fury dps warrior (you know the class that usually tops meters with their whirlwind?), i could not imagine the only response from the tank was that maybe the dps wasnt good enough for this fight.
No, the dps did suck. but it didnt suck because the rogue or the dk was doing bad dps, or that our total combined 15k dps (5k split between three people). the dps sucked because the warrior sucked donkey nuts. total was about 15k for all three dps. but the tank was doing 3k. we were doing 6k each. im sorry, but we can only carry so much fail. after a while it becomes a matter of, Gevlon told you so. and yes, im sitting there watching how M&S cannot figure out that maybe they are the problem and not the good players. It's people like these that make us wish we could play with our guildies more. at that time, it was 10pm PDT, or 1am EDT, so most of our guildies were sleeping.
Not once did i see a penance from the disc priest. not once did i see a prayer of mending fly around. very little will i see a PW:Shield come flying my way. I never saw a power word barrier, never saw hymn of hope, never saw inner focus, never saw a renew. the healer's major heals were greater heal and power word shield. no archangel either, tho he was specc'd into it.
The warrior was doing mainly auto-attacks (40% of damage) heroic strike and colossus smash. yep, that's it. maybe rend every once in a while and a thunder clap. but that's it.
The tank, on single bosses, hammer of the righteous (crusaderstrike, no?), little judgments, and very few shield of the righteous. add to that no inquisition. i cannot comment on whether he did use divine protection or ardent defender.
but how can a bunch of fail players get together and pretend like they're good without seeing that other people are doing amazingly better than them. yes, amazingly better compared to how they play. i mean if somoene was doing twice my damage, sometimes 3x my damage, wouldnt i want to know how he does it? maybe i can reproduce what he did next time around. that's how i see it. and how can i play a class and not take criticism? i mean the healer's response was basically, "yea blame the healer for everything." What's even more striking was that the tank would often say, "thats my fault" when it really wasnt his fault. it was the healer. i could come up with my own theories of why that is, but let me keep my theories to myself for now.
now i dont care if someone is bad as long as he is willing to listen to reason and learn from those who are doing better than him. five wipes before we get halfway into the instance is NOT good. and thinking that maybe its everyone else except for me is not "reason" or reasonable. perhaps it is you especially if the dps arent being stupid. maybe its you. or maybe its one of you. stop defending your failed friends. protecting them will not make them better. pretending that they are great players will only make them great players in their own world. but in a world where people are playing with each other, there is a matter of truth that must be accepted by all. you cant relegate all oberservations that's critical to you or your friends to oblivion. thus, i will not relegate your actions to mere disregard. i will regard your actions, your playstyle, your abilities and your replies to me. i will not pretend you guys dont suck. and i didnt. please do the same to your friends. you're only fooling yourselves and eventually, it will cause headaches for those unfortunate to party with you. i should have put you on ignore when i had the chance. too late now as i forgot all of their names. i only know them as the idiots from Sisters of Elune.
to you, poor souls, i pity you.
Well me and my gf were out there gear-leveling our alts, me on my rogue and her on her DK. I barely had enough ilevel to enter heroics, 329 to be exact, as does she and we qued for our second or third heroic on those toons last night (the first we ever did on the rogue/dk set was throne of the tides with no other that i can recall of. so i am thinking this is our second heroic).
We sit for 30 minutes in queue, waiting, patiently. Actually i was trying to put together a computer fan, a box from ikea, a used USB cable, and make it into a cooling solution for my xbox. We were all a little occupied doing various things. Anyway, the queue pops and we get Deadmines. Back in the days we used to abbreviate it VC, for Van Cleef. but i am not sure if we're still using that term. Maybe DM, or Dire Maul fell off the face of the earth and no one mentions that as DM. DM. Anyway, lots of tangents today. sorry.
We zoned in and i checked out the three puggees. They were all from Sisters of Elune, tank had mainly tanking gear with some dps pieces (no no right there), healer had good gear but nothing fancy. spec looked OK but with no pain suppression? whaaa? oh and fury warrior was speced... fury, of course.
In we go, after the first readycheck (omg really?) we pulled the first ogre and his kobold. After the first pull i can tell we werent doing too well. Me and my gf were at 7k dps. pretty decent for entry level heroics, i thought. then i saw the warrior's dps at 3.2k. oh noes. But maybe he wasnt ready. plus, no one died. so off to the next pull and i jumped into the cannon. I shot everything up so the second pull, which included a whole bunch of kolbolds and an ogre was a farce. the cannon did all the work and the dps could have just stood there. that's fine. the next pull were the two ogres before the first boss. i couldnt sap so we pulled them together. take fell to about 15% health twice but recovered. healer went OOM. warrior did 3.4k dps! an increase, yay!
Then our first boss fight occured. again, me and my gf were doing about 6-7k dps while running around in circles, avoiding the fire wall and the electro-zones. actually i got caught in electro bomb zones several times because there was really no where else to go. I had to help the tank pick up adds with Tricks/FoK, which really really helped centralize damage. After about 20 seconds of fire wall, the warrior dies. then the healer. then the tank and everyone else. the tank asks what went wrong. no one replied. actually it was pretty obvious. healer died so we all died. duh, right? the 3.2k dps warrior could have just been dead since the start and it wouldnt have mattered.
Second attempt went better. Me and my gf both got the [Ready for Raiding] acheivement. i think a chestpiece dropped for me, which i was pretty happy about since it replaced a level 312 chest. we move on to trash. death happened when we pulled the two casters which i expected was bound to happen. but we rebounded because the second attempt had less mobs! on one pull, the healer died to a monkey. the tank died to the monkey too. then i realized what was happening and i clicked on the ball and chain to make the monkey turn friendly. after that, the tank made it an effort to make all the remaining monkeys friendly.
We get to the lumber room with the oaf/goblin and, of course, took two attempts. the first attempt was a little dull. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. we would have survived if the oaf didnt pick the healer to slam into the wall. besides that, the only real complaint i had was that no one picked up the goblin to attack. i guess it doesnt matter either way. but after the first wipe on him, the tank said hmmmm. and i replied with, "healer died in that attempt, if oaf picked someone else to ram into the wall, we would have been okay." the healer replied with "so blame the healer for everything". well, i call it like i see it. its nothing personal. anyway, i replied with basically instructions on how to do this well. "avoid the bombs, dps down the boss, switch to goblin when he jumps off, and if you're below 70% health when you get slammed in the wall, you die." the tank replies with "so you know everything about this fight". i took that as a snarky remark and said, "totally". no reply.
we went ahead and killed him this time. again, me and my gf were tops in dps. brand new heroic rats doing about 7k dps. and again, warrior was at 3.2k dps. tank was doing abotu 5k. healer was OOM.
We went on to wipe again. On trash. Once we got to the forge, it was it for me. we were there for a little over an hour and anything bullshit that anyone gave me will have me reply with less than pleasant words. We were at four wipes already, maybe more bc i could have lost count. but at least four. twice on boss and at least twice on trash.
We proceeded down the circular ramp towards the first reaver. The tank asked who wants to use the robot. i asked if anyone knows how (much better question, dont you think?). there was no reply. i asked my gf not to jump on the reaver, even though she has an idea of how to use it. i knew how to use it too, but i wanted the warrior, who was doing crap ass dps to get on the reaver. at least we'll maximize our potential that way. after a couple of minutes of just standing around, the warrior got the hint and jumped on the reaver. after we killed the enemy reaver, i would hop on to it to help out the fight before it self destructs. what i found out was amazing. the warrior stood with the tank, thereby receiving the cleave damage. by the time we got to the third reaver, the warrior's reaver bot died and he had to dps on foot. he also used steam jets or whatever that ability was to knock me back several times. i countered with a charge that stunned the enemy reaver. easy enough. after the last reaver died, the warrior got into his robot and the tank pulled Reaper.
Now things were going quite smoothly for the first 30 seconds of the fight. yes, it was bliss for that long. stay out of harvest, stay out of overdrive. easy. we did that. most of the fight was us running away with intervals of dps. this is how the fight should be. then from behind i get a slag attacking me, then i died. upon hitting my face with the keyboard, i saw several more slags moving up the ramp. good job warrior. We wipe, of course.
As i was zoning into the instance again, for the sixth time, the tank posts the dps meters. then says, i dont think we have enough dps for this fight. i was in disbelief that this guy could actually say that after we topped meters the entire fight. and his warrior buddy was on a reaver, so his dps didnt quite count. also, this is a heavy movement fight and dps is secondary to survival (a misnomer, since dps should ALWAYS be secondary to survival, but this fight exemplifies it). in any case, i replied with, "this is a two-dps fight". the tank replies with, "i know that but i dont think our dps is good enough". no shit. the dps cant dps with slags flowing in. in any case, i replied with something like this, "you're right, i do think you guys need to learn to play better before you queue for heroics again. peace out. "
then i left. my gf saw the rest of them leave so she left too. no one replied to me. no one could say much i guess.
in any case, why is this a problem? and why is my blog post title about another game? It is because the tank completely disregarded the fail of his teammates. as if, it was completely forgotten. of course, him and his friends could do no wrong and every little piece of failure that his team produced was lost to oblivion.
i dont know what planet these guys were from, but from the "dont blame me" attitude of the healer, to the snarky comments from the tank, to the utter disregard of incompetence from these three people or the ridiculously low dps from the fury dps warrior (you know the class that usually tops meters with their whirlwind?), i could not imagine the only response from the tank was that maybe the dps wasnt good enough for this fight.
No, the dps did suck. but it didnt suck because the rogue or the dk was doing bad dps, or that our total combined 15k dps (5k split between three people). the dps sucked because the warrior sucked donkey nuts. total was about 15k for all three dps. but the tank was doing 3k. we were doing 6k each. im sorry, but we can only carry so much fail. after a while it becomes a matter of, Gevlon told you so. and yes, im sitting there watching how M&S cannot figure out that maybe they are the problem and not the good players. It's people like these that make us wish we could play with our guildies more. at that time, it was 10pm PDT, or 1am EDT, so most of our guildies were sleeping.
Not once did i see a penance from the disc priest. not once did i see a prayer of mending fly around. very little will i see a PW:Shield come flying my way. I never saw a power word barrier, never saw hymn of hope, never saw inner focus, never saw a renew. the healer's major heals were greater heal and power word shield. no archangel either, tho he was specc'd into it.
The warrior was doing mainly auto-attacks (40% of damage) heroic strike and colossus smash. yep, that's it. maybe rend every once in a while and a thunder clap. but that's it.
The tank, on single bosses, hammer of the righteous (crusaderstrike, no?), little judgments, and very few shield of the righteous. add to that no inquisition. i cannot comment on whether he did use divine protection or ardent defender.
but how can a bunch of fail players get together and pretend like they're good without seeing that other people are doing amazingly better than them. yes, amazingly better compared to how they play. i mean if somoene was doing twice my damage, sometimes 3x my damage, wouldnt i want to know how he does it? maybe i can reproduce what he did next time around. that's how i see it. and how can i play a class and not take criticism? i mean the healer's response was basically, "yea blame the healer for everything." What's even more striking was that the tank would often say, "thats my fault" when it really wasnt his fault. it was the healer. i could come up with my own theories of why that is, but let me keep my theories to myself for now.
now i dont care if someone is bad as long as he is willing to listen to reason and learn from those who are doing better than him. five wipes before we get halfway into the instance is NOT good. and thinking that maybe its everyone else except for me is not "reason" or reasonable. perhaps it is you especially if the dps arent being stupid. maybe its you. or maybe its one of you. stop defending your failed friends. protecting them will not make them better. pretending that they are great players will only make them great players in their own world. but in a world where people are playing with each other, there is a matter of truth that must be accepted by all. you cant relegate all oberservations that's critical to you or your friends to oblivion. thus, i will not relegate your actions to mere disregard. i will regard your actions, your playstyle, your abilities and your replies to me. i will not pretend you guys dont suck. and i didnt. please do the same to your friends. you're only fooling yourselves and eventually, it will cause headaches for those unfortunate to party with you. i should have put you on ignore when i had the chance. too late now as i forgot all of their names. i only know them as the idiots from Sisters of Elune.
to you, poor souls, i pity you.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Learning the Combat portion of a Rogue
With the last post out of the way, i can finally get into the little nitty gritty on playing my rogue. This is not a guide, nor is it a primer of any sort on helping anyone learn the rogue class. this is just my experience so please, if you think im doing this wrong, please say something. =D
My initial experiences with rogues are that they are sneaky, elusive, and most of all, annoying. Ever level through Ashenvale, running from questgiver to objectives, only to be interrupted by a rogue who's bored? Ever read local defense and see that Cross Roads is under attack? its usually a rogue. Ever run around tarren mill, turning in quests and finding out that a rogue is having a great time sapping people? Ever enter a cave full of ogres and fighting through the ogres just to get to that one Khorium deposit but having it ninja'd by a rogue as you fight the mob guarding the node? Not too many good experiences with rogues i tell you.
But as i leveled my rogue, i find that they offer a pretty niche type of gameplay. The energy and combo point system makes playing a rogue a lot more complex while questing and significantly while in dungeons. The combo point system allows me to save up combo points for stronger finishers. The mob's health, their numbers, even their spell selections will determine which finishers i will have to use. Not only that, but the energy system is the only system in the game where timing is absolutely necessary. Spamming attacks isnt the rogue way. And rightly so, it shouldnt be since the whole character of being a rogue involves planning, timing and finesse. Button smashing might not be the best form of play. That is, unless you're playing shinobi.
Everyone knows the basics of a rogue. or at least i believe everyone does.
Energy: Rogues use energy to attack. Energy is used up when performing attacks. Energy replenishes at a certain rate. Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back.
Combo points: Rogues have two basic categories of attacks. One to produce combo points and the other to spend combo points. Both use up energy. Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back. Ideally, rogues will want to maximize their combo points (being 5) before using a finisher. Each finisher has its own effect (some do instant damage, others do damge over time, others make the target more vulnerable to melee damage, and still others cause your own attacks to speed up.
The basic combo point maker for Combat: Sinister Strike (SS) and Revealing Strike (RvS).
Sinister strike is your bread and butter attack. I use this attack more than any other attack. Revealing strikes are tossed in between, at least once per 5 point stack prior to an Eviscerate or Rupture. Revealing strikes will not do anything for Slice and Dice so using it before slice and dice is not essential. Although, if you use it as your 5th combo point move before slice and dice, revealing strikes will still be up since it has a 15 second duration. It basically buffs your finisher by 30%, so use once before you Evis or Rupt. Using it twice will do nothing but add another combo point (which SS can do) and reset the cooldown for Revealing Strike buff to 15 seconds. The 30% incraesed bonus to finishing moves does not change.
The basic finishers for Combat: Slice and Dice (SnD), Rupture and Eviscerate.
Slice and dice cases you to attack faster. use this first and always try to keep it active. some rogues start off with a 1-point SnD, which gives them a good 30 seconds or so. 5 points will give you 40 seconds of SnD. go with 1 point SnD. it ends up pretty easy to maintain.
Rupture causes a bleed on the target for a certain amount of time. the time is fixed, but the damage is different based on the number of combo points. with revealing strikes buff, it also ticks for more. Use this on bosses, or on long lasting mobs. there is no other benefit for this spell besides that you can keep doing damage while you're running around avoiding fires.
Eviscerate is often preferred over Rupture. The point is that many fights will have phases that take the boss out of the fight (basically immune) while we take care of adds, fires, dance, whatevers. in these instances, just Evis instead of Rupt. Getting all the damage at once may be more beneficial than going for a DoT that may not be allowed to last its whole duration.
The special finishers for Combat: Expose Armor, Recuperate, Kidney shot.
Expose armor is one of these spells that many other classes can do better. Plus, its only useful for physical damaging dps that having one magic dps in the mix will make this ability pretty much useless. you'll get more benefit if you just evis. Other classes can do it better because they dont have to waste too much of their resources to place this debuff on. Overall, this ability is very situational and almost never used.
Recuperate helps a lot when in high damage fights. Although you'll miss out on a finisher, it does make it easier for your healers to heal you. Finally, Kidney shot is one of those spells which i love to use on casters, especially the healing type casters. Open with cheapshot. When they come to and cast a heal, i kick. Then they cast another heal, i can blind. then i can kidney shot and basically finish them off. its not a stun "lock", as it was before, but it does keep the mob incapacitated long enough so that dps can kill him off.
Cooldowns for Combat: The two major offensive cooldowns for combat are Killing Spree (KS) and Adrenaline Rush (AR).
These two abilities are my two favorite reasons to go combat. It took me several levels of practicing and playing around to really figure out how these buffs work. but when i finally got them to work well, they became the "candy" to this whole fighting system.
Killing Spree causes me to jump from one mob to another (if one mob, then it just jumps five times to the same mob) doing pretty good damage. It seems to last about 3 seconds, but in those 3 seconds, it is amazing. added bonus to this is that the auto-attacks are still going. True, you might only get 3 auto-attacks off, even with slice and dice on, it doesnt change the outcome--dps boost. Of course, being that auto-attacks still goes off while KS is up, it makes it doubly fun to time it just right (ie. during slice and dice, while my energy is zero. Also, KS also works with Blade Flurry, so if there are two or more mobs in the fight, KS will also hit adjacent mobs, as well as the sped up auto attacks. So like i said, its candy.
As for adrenaline rush, this spell speeds up my energy regen, thus allowing for more SS, RvS, Evis, etc. during its duration. Much like Killing Spree, time it after SnD and when your energy is low (you dont want to be energy capped). You can use these two cooldowns back-to-back. It might not be as effective together, as KS will not produce combo points and the time you're jumping around through the shadows, you may end up being energy capped.
Utilities for Combat: Other utilities are Tricks of the Trade, Shiv, Feint, blind, Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Vanish.
I suppose Recuperate can be utility but do keep in mind that it does require combo points.
Tricks of the Trade, or Tricks, or TotT is used prior or during a pull to redirect threat to someone else, usually the tank. Not only does it redirect threat, it also gives the target an increase in dps. this can be utilized several ways, but the most important way is to Tricks the tank. Upon tricksing the tank, the rogue will basically pull for the tank, or pull a stray mob to the tank. This is almost identical to the Hunter's Misdirect, where they use misdirect to pull for the tank. The second area where this is useful is during fights where you want to buff the main dps. Sure putting tricks on the tank will buff his 5k dps. but tricksing the hunter who's doing 10k dps will ultimately produce twice the damage from Tricks than the tank. Finally, two rogues can simply Tricks each other to give each other a damage buff. since the tricks is on each other, the threat transfer is almost transparent.
Shiv removes enrage. Shiv also adds poisons instantly and cannot be dodged. Although this ability does add combo points, i did not include this as a combo point ability. We use this ability more for the two reasons stated above--the combo point is an added bonus. One more thing to add about instantly applying poisons, this ability costs less the faster your offhand dagger is. so in a pinch, if you're seeing 5 stacks of your poisons about to expire, this ability may be preferred over waiting and gambling on your next offhand attack (or Main Gauche) to hit.
Feint is awesome. Say it with me, Feint is awesome! It reduces a lot of the AoE damage, 50% to be exact, that can cause a lot of fail and healer stress. This ability not only reduces your threat it increases your healer's love towards you. Please use it often to avoid those nasty AoEs, especially on boss fights where tanks dont know how to move mobs out of dark fissures, etc.
Blind is basically a stun for 10 seconds. Also interrupts casting. Kick is on CD? blind. Mobs is running for the healer and your Tricks is on CD? blind. Similar to a hunter's scattershot. We have a lot of similarities, dontchaknow?
Evasion, cloak of shadows, vanish.... they all have their uses. Evasion is useful when you grab aggro, or have to grab aggro for a while. Cloak of shadows will remove harmful debuffs (slows, poisons, dots) and Vanish will allow you to stealth immediately, even in combat. When you do have some kind of debuff on you, like say, a disease or faerie fire, use cloak of shadows first, then vanish. the disease ticks will break your stealth if you dont remove it first (you can tell i want to end this post already since this section is so short!!).
Blade Flurry: An ability that allows you to hit two targets instead of one but in return your energy regeneration slows. the ability can be glyphed so that energy regen doesnt take as big a hit, which is often a must if you're doing dungeons. for raids where much of the damage is to a single boss at a time, blade flurry may be useless. in any event, it is up to the player to decide whether blade flurry should be used, assuming more dps is always better, even on trash, or left out altogether. if you use blade flurry often, do consider glyphing. Blade flurry also works with Killing Spree. The reason this ability is set aside and mentioned on its own is because this is spell does not fall into any of the above categories. It's just an ability any rogue can turn on or off and any time really. in dungeons, i have this on after my first slice and dice. then i turn it off when there is only one mob remaining, or when there are two mobs who are not standing right next to each other. in these situations, the cleave effect will be wasted. (Cleave effect = hitting two or more players at once with a single hit or cleave or swipe). Overall, this is a very handy ability. Remember to tricks often, as the cleave can cause unwanted aggro.
Other tricks, tips, or corrections? please comment so i can improve. I've only played combat for the past 10 levels, but during those 10 levels i've actually figured several things already mentioned above. To summarize, i cant spam attacks. there is a basic category of spells but what makes rogues particulary fun to play are the utility spells, timing of cooldowns and weaving of differnt combinations and abilities. This is the major reason why i enjoy the rogue. my favorite classes are usually melee classes with the occasional healer (of course, druid healing preferred), so finding another fun melee class to play is motivational indeed. the only other melee class i think i still havent played is the enhancement shaman. one day i hope to write about it as well!
Note: not all spells and abilities are mentioned. either i havent found a reason to use them or they do not apply. If there are other abilities that i should also consider, or if the abilities i've mentioned can be expanded on, please comment. thanks!
My initial experiences with rogues are that they are sneaky, elusive, and most of all, annoying. Ever level through Ashenvale, running from questgiver to objectives, only to be interrupted by a rogue who's bored? Ever read local defense and see that Cross Roads is under attack? its usually a rogue. Ever run around tarren mill, turning in quests and finding out that a rogue is having a great time sapping people? Ever enter a cave full of ogres and fighting through the ogres just to get to that one Khorium deposit but having it ninja'd by a rogue as you fight the mob guarding the node? Not too many good experiences with rogues i tell you.
But as i leveled my rogue, i find that they offer a pretty niche type of gameplay. The energy and combo point system makes playing a rogue a lot more complex while questing and significantly while in dungeons. The combo point system allows me to save up combo points for stronger finishers. The mob's health, their numbers, even their spell selections will determine which finishers i will have to use. Not only that, but the energy system is the only system in the game where timing is absolutely necessary. Spamming attacks isnt the rogue way. And rightly so, it shouldnt be since the whole character of being a rogue involves planning, timing and finesse. Button smashing might not be the best form of play. That is, unless you're playing shinobi.
Everyone knows the basics of a rogue. or at least i believe everyone does.
Energy: Rogues use energy to attack. Energy is used up when performing attacks. Energy replenishes at a certain rate. Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back.
Combo points: Rogues have two basic categories of attacks. One to produce combo points and the other to spend combo points. Both use up energy. Missed attacks can refund a % of energy back. Ideally, rogues will want to maximize their combo points (being 5) before using a finisher. Each finisher has its own effect (some do instant damage, others do damge over time, others make the target more vulnerable to melee damage, and still others cause your own attacks to speed up.
The basic combo point maker for Combat: Sinister Strike (SS) and Revealing Strike (RvS).
Sinister strike is your bread and butter attack. I use this attack more than any other attack. Revealing strikes are tossed in between, at least once per 5 point stack prior to an Eviscerate or Rupture. Revealing strikes will not do anything for Slice and Dice so using it before slice and dice is not essential. Although, if you use it as your 5th combo point move before slice and dice, revealing strikes will still be up since it has a 15 second duration. It basically buffs your finisher by 30%, so use once before you Evis or Rupt. Using it twice will do nothing but add another combo point (which SS can do) and reset the cooldown for Revealing Strike buff to 15 seconds. The 30% incraesed bonus to finishing moves does not change.
The basic finishers for Combat: Slice and Dice (SnD), Rupture and Eviscerate.
Slice and dice cases you to attack faster. use this first and always try to keep it active. some rogues start off with a 1-point SnD, which gives them a good 30 seconds or so. 5 points will give you 40 seconds of SnD. go with 1 point SnD. it ends up pretty easy to maintain.
Rupture causes a bleed on the target for a certain amount of time. the time is fixed, but the damage is different based on the number of combo points. with revealing strikes buff, it also ticks for more. Use this on bosses, or on long lasting mobs. there is no other benefit for this spell besides that you can keep doing damage while you're running around avoiding fires.
Eviscerate is often preferred over Rupture. The point is that many fights will have phases that take the boss out of the fight (basically immune) while we take care of adds, fires, dance, whatevers. in these instances, just Evis instead of Rupt. Getting all the damage at once may be more beneficial than going for a DoT that may not be allowed to last its whole duration.
The special finishers for Combat: Expose Armor, Recuperate, Kidney shot.
Expose armor is one of these spells that many other classes can do better. Plus, its only useful for physical damaging dps that having one magic dps in the mix will make this ability pretty much useless. you'll get more benefit if you just evis. Other classes can do it better because they dont have to waste too much of their resources to place this debuff on. Overall, this ability is very situational and almost never used.
Recuperate helps a lot when in high damage fights. Although you'll miss out on a finisher, it does make it easier for your healers to heal you. Finally, Kidney shot is one of those spells which i love to use on casters, especially the healing type casters. Open with cheapshot. When they come to and cast a heal, i kick. Then they cast another heal, i can blind. then i can kidney shot and basically finish them off. its not a stun "lock", as it was before, but it does keep the mob incapacitated long enough so that dps can kill him off.
Cooldowns for Combat: The two major offensive cooldowns for combat are Killing Spree (KS) and Adrenaline Rush (AR).
These two abilities are my two favorite reasons to go combat. It took me several levels of practicing and playing around to really figure out how these buffs work. but when i finally got them to work well, they became the "candy" to this whole fighting system.
Killing Spree causes me to jump from one mob to another (if one mob, then it just jumps five times to the same mob) doing pretty good damage. It seems to last about 3 seconds, but in those 3 seconds, it is amazing. added bonus to this is that the auto-attacks are still going. True, you might only get 3 auto-attacks off, even with slice and dice on, it doesnt change the outcome--dps boost. Of course, being that auto-attacks still goes off while KS is up, it makes it doubly fun to time it just right (ie. during slice and dice, while my energy is zero. Also, KS also works with Blade Flurry, so if there are two or more mobs in the fight, KS will also hit adjacent mobs, as well as the sped up auto attacks. So like i said, its candy.
As for adrenaline rush, this spell speeds up my energy regen, thus allowing for more SS, RvS, Evis, etc. during its duration. Much like Killing Spree, time it after SnD and when your energy is low (you dont want to be energy capped). You can use these two cooldowns back-to-back. It might not be as effective together, as KS will not produce combo points and the time you're jumping around through the shadows, you may end up being energy capped.
Utilities for Combat: Other utilities are Tricks of the Trade, Shiv, Feint, blind, Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Vanish.
I suppose Recuperate can be utility but do keep in mind that it does require combo points.
Tricks of the Trade, or Tricks, or TotT is used prior or during a pull to redirect threat to someone else, usually the tank. Not only does it redirect threat, it also gives the target an increase in dps. this can be utilized several ways, but the most important way is to Tricks the tank. Upon tricksing the tank, the rogue will basically pull for the tank, or pull a stray mob to the tank. This is almost identical to the Hunter's Misdirect, where they use misdirect to pull for the tank. The second area where this is useful is during fights where you want to buff the main dps. Sure putting tricks on the tank will buff his 5k dps. but tricksing the hunter who's doing 10k dps will ultimately produce twice the damage from Tricks than the tank. Finally, two rogues can simply Tricks each other to give each other a damage buff. since the tricks is on each other, the threat transfer is almost transparent.
Shiv removes enrage. Shiv also adds poisons instantly and cannot be dodged. Although this ability does add combo points, i did not include this as a combo point ability. We use this ability more for the two reasons stated above--the combo point is an added bonus. One more thing to add about instantly applying poisons, this ability costs less the faster your offhand dagger is. so in a pinch, if you're seeing 5 stacks of your poisons about to expire, this ability may be preferred over waiting and gambling on your next offhand attack (or Main Gauche) to hit.
Feint is awesome. Say it with me, Feint is awesome! It reduces a lot of the AoE damage, 50% to be exact, that can cause a lot of fail and healer stress. This ability not only reduces your threat it increases your healer's love towards you. Please use it often to avoid those nasty AoEs, especially on boss fights where tanks dont know how to move mobs out of dark fissures, etc.
Blind is basically a stun for 10 seconds. Also interrupts casting. Kick is on CD? blind. Mobs is running for the healer and your Tricks is on CD? blind. Similar to a hunter's scattershot. We have a lot of similarities, dontchaknow?
Evasion, cloak of shadows, vanish.... they all have their uses. Evasion is useful when you grab aggro, or have to grab aggro for a while. Cloak of shadows will remove harmful debuffs (slows, poisons, dots) and Vanish will allow you to stealth immediately, even in combat. When you do have some kind of debuff on you, like say, a disease or faerie fire, use cloak of shadows first, then vanish. the disease ticks will break your stealth if you dont remove it first (you can tell i want to end this post already since this section is so short!!).
Blade Flurry: An ability that allows you to hit two targets instead of one but in return your energy regeneration slows. the ability can be glyphed so that energy regen doesnt take as big a hit, which is often a must if you're doing dungeons. for raids where much of the damage is to a single boss at a time, blade flurry may be useless. in any event, it is up to the player to decide whether blade flurry should be used, assuming more dps is always better, even on trash, or left out altogether. if you use blade flurry often, do consider glyphing. Blade flurry also works with Killing Spree. The reason this ability is set aside and mentioned on its own is because this is spell does not fall into any of the above categories. It's just an ability any rogue can turn on or off and any time really. in dungeons, i have this on after my first slice and dice. then i turn it off when there is only one mob remaining, or when there are two mobs who are not standing right next to each other. in these situations, the cleave effect will be wasted. (Cleave effect = hitting two or more players at once with a single hit or cleave or swipe). Overall, this is a very handy ability. Remember to tricks often, as the cleave can cause unwanted aggro.
Other tricks, tips, or corrections? please comment so i can improve. I've only played combat for the past 10 levels, but during those 10 levels i've actually figured several things already mentioned above. To summarize, i cant spam attacks. there is a basic category of spells but what makes rogues particulary fun to play are the utility spells, timing of cooldowns and weaving of differnt combinations and abilities. This is the major reason why i enjoy the rogue. my favorite classes are usually melee classes with the occasional healer (of course, druid healing preferred), so finding another fun melee class to play is motivational indeed. the only other melee class i think i still havent played is the enhancement shaman. one day i hope to write about it as well!
Note: not all spells and abilities are mentioned. either i havent found a reason to use them or they do not apply. If there are other abilities that i should also consider, or if the abilities i've mentioned can be expanded on, please comment. thanks!
The Rogue Experiment
I have a rogue. His name is Bruno (post character re-customization). He's been leveling on and off for the past several years. Although i've never really taken any sustained interest in playing a rogue, i find that since i've leveled up through Northrend and now in Cata stages, i've begun to actually like my rogue more and more.
Perhaps the problem, in the beginning, is that i had a druid who leveled as Feral and about 80% of the rogue's major attacks and fight mechanics are copied directly on to the feral druid "cat" form style of play. From openers to finishing moves, to even combo point makers, they all seem so very similar. For example, Hemmorage = mangle, backstab = ravage, sinister strike = claw, maim = kidney shot, etc. After levels and levels of playing a rogue, it felt almost the same as leveling a feral druid. And i've told myself many times that i would probably never want to level a feral druid again.
Maybe the problem wasnt just the similarities these two classes/specs have, but also the differences make playing a rogue seem a little limiting to me. For one, as a druid i can simply switch into bear form and tank should a pull go bad. As a rogue, my only option is really to blind one, then switch back. When the blind wears off, its time to evasion aura. If things go really bad, i can vanish and start over. Now after the fight, my druid will heal, stealth and move on to the next mob almost seamlessly. With the rogue, i'll sit there eating or waiting for my health to replenish. Simple differences like that does make a difference when deciding what's more "fun" to play. Back then, i was unhappy with the way rogues cannot heal themselves apart from bandages and how they always have to remember to coat their daggers with poisons. Also the complexity of weapon choices with different specs also turned me off a little regarding this class. With a feral druid, pretty much any weapon is good, with the added bonus that you will never have to learn that weapon skill. of course, weapon skill is now built into your level and makes it easier to switch between swords, maces and daggers for rogues.
Now i dont want to make this post about Feral Druid Cats vs. Rogues of all Specs, but a background needs to be included somewhere. When Wrath of the Lich King hit, i went from feral dps to feral bear tank and never looked back at feral dps. in fact, i tried dpsing once or twice again and never enjoyed it. So there you have it. For the longest time, i have always felt that i am playing the rogue class with some limitations and would be better off playing feral dps. then, since i've already played feral dps, i never really cared to level up a melee dps class that relied on energy again. Well now im sitting here writing about energy-bassed rogue dps.
Actual Rogue-related Stuff
In any case, it has been an experience trying to get used to the rogue class. I leveled several months ago from 60-70 and found that Subtlety was quite simple and boring. I had to attack from behind constantly and realized that 50% of my damage comes from the first 5 seconds of play. The remaining damage just trickles resulting in a DPS in the first 5 seconds of 5k, then after a 15-20 second fight, it goes down to less than 1k. Sad huh? that's what i thought. I was a little dismayed but i figued i could work this to my own advantage. In outland dungeon fights where im stacked with delicate bloodstones, fights last 10 seconds max. and even boss fights dont last too long either. I was satisfied with 1k dps at level 65 anyway since most dps classes barely get to break the 1k
Enter northrend and things changed a little. Mobs have more health so fights last a little longer. Thats good and bad. Although it does favor the rogue in terms of dps in longer fights, it doesnt favor a subtlety rogue, who's usually great at opening damage but fails at sustained damage in the long run. So after several dungeons between 69 and 72, i was resigned to doing lowest dps in all dungeon fights. This did lead to days of non-play on my rogue and eventually, loss of play completely.
Then one day, my gf decides to level up a death knight and i leveled with her when she hit 70. The experience was relatively the same so i decided to switch specs and grab different weapons. Although i knew that Sub wasnt ideal for dungeon play, i really liked the idea of shadowstep. Keeping hemmorage up to buff rupture was simply familiar to me when i was playing a feral druid. Playing combat simplified things a little. one, i had no "buff" to maintain besides slice and dice, and two, i never really had to stealth. =D
As a combat rogue, my main concern was to activate slice and dice, rupture if the fight will be long, otherwise, eviscerate. my combo maker is sinister strike, which can be used from any direction (further simplification). Now there are a few items that are tossed into this spec that acually makes it different from Sub. I have two cooldowns to play with and one toggle-able ability that allows me to cleave. And those are the difference. But those differences make leveling a rogue so awesome this time around.
Bruno is now level 82 and working on leveling through vashjir. He basically sat in LFD queue for the first level and a half since hitting level 80.
Perhaps the problem, in the beginning, is that i had a druid who leveled as Feral and about 80% of the rogue's major attacks and fight mechanics are copied directly on to the feral druid "cat" form style of play. From openers to finishing moves, to even combo point makers, they all seem so very similar. For example, Hemmorage = mangle, backstab = ravage, sinister strike = claw, maim = kidney shot, etc. After levels and levels of playing a rogue, it felt almost the same as leveling a feral druid. And i've told myself many times that i would probably never want to level a feral druid again.
Maybe the problem wasnt just the similarities these two classes/specs have, but also the differences make playing a rogue seem a little limiting to me. For one, as a druid i can simply switch into bear form and tank should a pull go bad. As a rogue, my only option is really to blind one, then switch back. When the blind wears off, its time to evasion aura. If things go really bad, i can vanish and start over. Now after the fight, my druid will heal, stealth and move on to the next mob almost seamlessly. With the rogue, i'll sit there eating or waiting for my health to replenish. Simple differences like that does make a difference when deciding what's more "fun" to play. Back then, i was unhappy with the way rogues cannot heal themselves apart from bandages and how they always have to remember to coat their daggers with poisons. Also the complexity of weapon choices with different specs also turned me off a little regarding this class. With a feral druid, pretty much any weapon is good, with the added bonus that you will never have to learn that weapon skill. of course, weapon skill is now built into your level and makes it easier to switch between swords, maces and daggers for rogues.
Now i dont want to make this post about Feral Druid Cats vs. Rogues of all Specs, but a background needs to be included somewhere. When Wrath of the Lich King hit, i went from feral dps to feral bear tank and never looked back at feral dps. in fact, i tried dpsing once or twice again and never enjoyed it. So there you have it. For the longest time, i have always felt that i am playing the rogue class with some limitations and would be better off playing feral dps. then, since i've already played feral dps, i never really cared to level up a melee dps class that relied on energy again. Well now im sitting here writing about energy-bassed rogue dps.
Actual Rogue-related Stuff
In any case, it has been an experience trying to get used to the rogue class. I leveled several months ago from 60-70 and found that Subtlety was quite simple and boring. I had to attack from behind constantly and realized that 50% of my damage comes from the first 5 seconds of play. The remaining damage just trickles resulting in a DPS in the first 5 seconds of 5k, then after a 15-20 second fight, it goes down to less than 1k. Sad huh? that's what i thought. I was a little dismayed but i figued i could work this to my own advantage. In outland dungeon fights where im stacked with delicate bloodstones, fights last 10 seconds max. and even boss fights dont last too long either. I was satisfied with 1k dps at level 65 anyway since most dps classes barely get to break the 1k
Enter northrend and things changed a little. Mobs have more health so fights last a little longer. Thats good and bad. Although it does favor the rogue in terms of dps in longer fights, it doesnt favor a subtlety rogue, who's usually great at opening damage but fails at sustained damage in the long run. So after several dungeons between 69 and 72, i was resigned to doing lowest dps in all dungeon fights. This did lead to days of non-play on my rogue and eventually, loss of play completely.
Then one day, my gf decides to level up a death knight and i leveled with her when she hit 70. The experience was relatively the same so i decided to switch specs and grab different weapons. Although i knew that Sub wasnt ideal for dungeon play, i really liked the idea of shadowstep. Keeping hemmorage up to buff rupture was simply familiar to me when i was playing a feral druid. Playing combat simplified things a little. one, i had no "buff" to maintain besides slice and dice, and two, i never really had to stealth. =D
As a combat rogue, my main concern was to activate slice and dice, rupture if the fight will be long, otherwise, eviscerate. my combo maker is sinister strike, which can be used from any direction (further simplification). Now there are a few items that are tossed into this spec that acually makes it different from Sub. I have two cooldowns to play with and one toggle-able ability that allows me to cleave. And those are the difference. But those differences make leveling a rogue so awesome this time around.
Bruno is now level 82 and working on leveling through vashjir. He basically sat in LFD queue for the first level and a half since hitting level 80.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Still Here
First I'd like to apologize for my absence. I've actually been really unmotivated to write lately. I've also been working a lot more at work than usual. And when i do have the few minutes to write, nothing comes to mind. Call it what you will, bloggers' block, dryspell, dissatisfaction with the current state of coffee (starbucks wants to buy peet's, wtfno!), the weather, high gas prices, or dysentery, i havent really had any solid thoughts that i'd like to share with anyone. heck, when i play wow i dont even think of how online social behavior shape the community's perception of harder heroics (though basically everyone think they suck, but heroics are supposed to be hard, correct?). anyway. just saying. wow bores me. im in auto mode right now. what am i doing?
1. Half-heartedly doing dailies. yes, dailies for the fourth year in a row. dailies to get some cool gear and some enchants. of course, i'll get a different enchant depending on faction. but stealing food from dwarves get boring after the 5th day. and i dont even get to eat any of it.
2. Half-heartedly doing dailies. what? yea, the cooking, fishing, jewelcrafting... even the daily transmutes and research/discoveries. i missed a few researches on my scribe last week. i missed a JC daily or two last week (and i have two JCers). i missed a few xmutes, and when i do them, i dont even visit uldum or hyjal anymore, i just do them in orgrimmar and get a random element.
3. Automatically relisting gems twice daily. Most of my gold is made from JC, or from disenchanting the JC stuff and making enchants. well my enchants arent selling so i have a bunch of unenchanted rings and neclaces sitting in the mailbox. my "green" gems are sitting in my xmute character waiting to be changed to "blue" gems and metas. im always out of red gems and have way too many green gems. i've given up selling green gems for now, as no one seem to want sensei's, vivid, etc dream emeralds anymore.
4. I'm leveling a rogue. yes, another melee dps. i do miss having the instant attacks with very little cooldowns, providing me double the dps of my rogue usually. im doing half of what most people do, until i use my cooldowns. it sucks leveling as a rogue. i mean i get to a mob, get enough combo points to cast slice and dice, then try to build more combo points and lose it because the mob just died. now im out of energy and have to start over on another, almost dead mob. after the first finisher, i could never build enough combo points to actually do anything else. i cant even get enough energy up to do a 2-point finisher. nerfed content sucks i tell you. Then the boss fight comes and i shine because that's the only time the fight last long enough (okay, not always. some fights are stupid short) for Adrenaline Rush to last its whole duration, and then, i top the meters and actually feel useful. haha. tanks dont even care that i tricks them to pull a stray mob to them, which ends up in a messy pull.
5. My rogue is a skinner/leatherer. yea, typical. but that means i am running around killing countless kodos, wolves, dragonkins and yetis to actually make enough garbage items to get through to something useful. seriously, a rogue takes a ridiculous amount of time killing and skinning, even if the kill takes 1-shot. i cant "train" or aggro more than four mobs at a time unless i want to risk losing the first two mobs. i gather three or four at once, dismount, kill, loot, skin, mount, repeat. boring as hell. but hey, at least its not archeology.
6. Speaking of Archeology, gonna spend the next few mindless weeks leveling that up too.
So in conclusion, cata heroics are hard. rogue leveling is stupid. Jc makes lots of gold. and wow is pretty boring.
1. Half-heartedly doing dailies. yes, dailies for the fourth year in a row. dailies to get some cool gear and some enchants. of course, i'll get a different enchant depending on faction. but stealing food from dwarves get boring after the 5th day. and i dont even get to eat any of it.
2. Half-heartedly doing dailies. what? yea, the cooking, fishing, jewelcrafting... even the daily transmutes and research/discoveries. i missed a few researches on my scribe last week. i missed a JC daily or two last week (and i have two JCers). i missed a few xmutes, and when i do them, i dont even visit uldum or hyjal anymore, i just do them in orgrimmar and get a random element.
3. Automatically relisting gems twice daily. Most of my gold is made from JC, or from disenchanting the JC stuff and making enchants. well my enchants arent selling so i have a bunch of unenchanted rings and neclaces sitting in the mailbox. my "green" gems are sitting in my xmute character waiting to be changed to "blue" gems and metas. im always out of red gems and have way too many green gems. i've given up selling green gems for now, as no one seem to want sensei's, vivid, etc dream emeralds anymore.
4. I'm leveling a rogue. yes, another melee dps. i do miss having the instant attacks with very little cooldowns, providing me double the dps of my rogue usually. im doing half of what most people do, until i use my cooldowns. it sucks leveling as a rogue. i mean i get to a mob, get enough combo points to cast slice and dice, then try to build more combo points and lose it because the mob just died. now im out of energy and have to start over on another, almost dead mob. after the first finisher, i could never build enough combo points to actually do anything else. i cant even get enough energy up to do a 2-point finisher. nerfed content sucks i tell you. Then the boss fight comes and i shine because that's the only time the fight last long enough (okay, not always. some fights are stupid short) for Adrenaline Rush to last its whole duration, and then, i top the meters and actually feel useful. haha. tanks dont even care that i tricks them to pull a stray mob to them, which ends up in a messy pull.
5. My rogue is a skinner/leatherer. yea, typical. but that means i am running around killing countless kodos, wolves, dragonkins and yetis to actually make enough garbage items to get through to something useful. seriously, a rogue takes a ridiculous amount of time killing and skinning, even if the kill takes 1-shot. i cant "train" or aggro more than four mobs at a time unless i want to risk losing the first two mobs. i gather three or four at once, dismount, kill, loot, skin, mount, repeat. boring as hell. but hey, at least its not archeology.
6. Speaking of Archeology, gonna spend the next few mindless weeks leveling that up too.
So in conclusion, cata heroics are hard. rogue leveling is stupid. Jc makes lots of gold. and wow is pretty boring.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Garrosh Recycles
Can anyone tell? Not only is he a bad ass, no brains all action kinda guy, but he is also green. he recycles!
Look!!!!! =D
Look!!!!! =D
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The More Things Change...
As the old saying goes, the more things change, they more they stay the same (or it stays the same, or whatevers). The point is clear. its all the same. everything is recycled. rant time? yes.
The problem is, yet again, dungeons. Oh i loved the first few weeks of Cata. The dungeons were hard. Every dungeon was difficult. Every dungeon had wipes. At the end of the night, i had to redo some macros, or prioritize differently than before.
I started cata with my warrior, Ithacus. he's an orc. they're pretty no-nonsense type of warriors bent on killing things, usually by overpowering them as opposed to out-maneuvering them. i'll leave the finesse for dainty night elves and blood elves. but the human counterpart in the world of azeroth are the orcs. and they are fierce. they rush into a fight with zero regard for their own well-being with the one purpose to obliterate their foes. Ithacus was one of them. he would charge+shout, rend, drop a thunderclap, then cleave+sweeping strikes and bladestorm til he died. this happened on every wrath heroic between 4.01 and cata launch. imagine the fun i was having with ARMS warrioring. =P yes. arms... i said it. Fury my ass. anyway, moving along...
(to accomplish the above, i had two macros. one for charge/shout, which had me tap the button twice. once to charge, and again to shout while i was in the middle of a charge. easy. second is the sweeping strikes macro'ed to cleave. since i only use cleave for multiple mobs, adding a sweeping strikes to it always makes it worthwhile. especially in wrath dungeons. you need sweeping strikes on as much as possible, because that's how the game was played. i rend once per fight, so that's not macroed anywhere. i thunderclap often, so that's its own separate button)
Then Things Changed
Enter Cata. Life was gleeful. every dungeon was rough, especially when i was asked to tank for half of them. i was essentially learning two players at once. but overall, i was learning to wait a little to dps. I was using pummel or body slam or whatever it is. i forget. having two specs make it difficult to remember. but i know i was using my interrupts more. i found that in the battle between slam and heroic strike, heroic strike wins. i finally started using colossus smash and not just when the "thing" procs. you can tell i have no idea what the name of the proc is, but i know what it looks like and press colossus smash accordingly. i even back up and hit intercept now, whenever something needs to be stopped, like a heal from this Adepts in Vortex Pin.
Overall, pulls were thought out a bit more. There's more consideration to each class' CC abilities. I have learned quite a few things about CC, like who can CC what, and who should CC first, etc. I also know that no boomkin has ever used hibernate on a dragon. none. the more obvious CCs are usually a hunter's trap and a mage's polymorph. no one figured maybe you can bind an elemental, or banish it. or hey, let the boomkin entangle roots and hiberante. two in one. yay! several paladins couldnt find Repentance, but they found them eventually. rogues often use distract before they sap and deathknights.... well they're pretty much useless for now.
Apart from the crowd controls, there's the other obvious good things that changed about the fights themselves. Mobs lived longer, did more damage, had better abilities and caused a little more trauma. thats great!!! no seriously, my wrath-era-yawns turned into, "oh hey!! something new!" i had to watch my surroundings more, had to interrupt more whirlwinds and AoE casts and all that good stuff. The healer would be OOM after almost every fight. YAY!!!! that's so awesomesauce. people were at half health, or less, after every fight too. awesomesauce with added tobasco! and at the end of pretty much every fight, it felt like i actually earned that kill. awesomesauce that's better than Hooter's 911 chicken wings!!
But They Stayed the Same
After leveling my warrior to 85 and getting a few dungeons in, i started leveling my deathknight with my girlfriend's priest. we leveled through hyjal, deepholm, the ramhaken part of uldum and finally twilight highlands. While leveling, we did queue for all the dungeons along the way. What my girlfriend felt was that she had better mana efficiency, which is good. she didnt lose much of the difficulty in healing each fight, but she did find it less stressing when her mana bar was twice as full as usual. she has two priests, both 85 now. leveling the first one 80-85 was omg hard. leveling the second one 80-85 was a lot eaiser. i guess blizzard made a few tweaks. but i am sidetracked.... lets get back to the subject.
I noticed something when i was dps (Arms Warrior and Frost DK), that somehow not a lot of people knew how to dps. really? yes. now i dont mean CC, or interrupts, or even moving out of Bad, which is required. but many of them were doing less dps than me. there were hunters and boomkins doing 3k dps. just 3k, at level 83. they may have had to CC, which was obvious if the tank asks for them, but they did not know how to interrupt spellcasts, dont know how to deal with adds, dont know how to avoid bad stuffs. many folks are learning, true. but how many times does it take for a summoned elemental to shoot a beam at you before you realize maybe you should kill it before it reaches you? slow it down. run away. kill it or else a gigantic pillar of fire will spawn from your feet and kill you? how many times???? OMG!! ARRRRGHGHHHHH.
But my god the dps is crap. on my warrior, i was really miserable at level 81 doing 4k dps inside Throne of Tides. Then it jumped somehow at level 82 to a whopping 6k. and if things are done correctly, i can hit 8k+ on some fights. but that's it. averaging around 6k and we're not even talking heroic geared. on my deathknight, who has a lot more AoE tools, she's able to do 8k normally, in her sleep. and 10k+ if i decide to actually do more (like turn on AMS and IBF while bad AoE is happening, etc). and what is everyone else doing? half. yes, half. no not half 10k, half 8k. some are doing more, yes, but some just cant cut it. and what bugs me even more, is that these are heroics. you know the heroics where you have to have an average ilevel of at least 329. this is where the learning should have already happened. i had to drop a heroic deadmines run because a hunter was doing about 3-4k dps. the last boss is harsh if you cannot get him down before the healer was OOM. and the lock and i were doing 8k dps each. we go the boss to about 30% each time we wiped. and we wiped because the healer was OOM. another 4k dps would have helped. it may have even prolonged the healer's mana supply because there would be less damage taken overall. but we couldnt do it since there just wasnt enough dps output. this is just one of many examples. i only had one, ONE experience where everyone was about 10k dps. we were in vortex pinnicle and all the dps were spot on. my girlfriend had zero problems with healing and things moved like clockwork. i actually had competition in the interrupt meter.
Lately, i've been running dungeons without the dps meter on display. it's on, but not displaying damage. its switched to interrupts. and even there, im at the top, usually. shamans dont windshear, paladins dont rebuke, warriors dont pummel, deathknights dont mind freeze, rogues dont kick, mages dont counterspell, warlocks dont fear (get the glyph), and s.priests dont silence, or fear (again, get the glyph). i'd like a little competition with the interrupts and i only get it sometimes with the tanks. everyone else do not. also, if anyone can suggest a spell for moonkins (besides bearform+bash and typhoon) please comment. =] but overall, my experience in dungeons are somewhat a mixed bag of fun with minimal challege. there's not a lot of people to compete with really. whenever there's a rogue who actually kicks, i find it very challenging to keep up with the interrupt counts. but more often than not, this is not the case.
Just this past weekend, i decided to level my druid again. this time, she's going to be boomkin (respec'd and ready, with the pvp healing spec removed) instead of healing. she deleted much of her pvp gear and upgraded from her mixed t8 and t9 gear to cata "greens". then went on over to Hyjal, Vashjir, Uldum and Twilight highlands to farm herbs. im sure she got about one whole level's worth of experience from just picking herbs. while picking herbs, she's queued in the dungeon finder. now when i first started this, i knew zero about being a moonkin. actually, redhawk, graylo and sunfyrre were awesome resources at helping me understand boomkin dps. thanks guys!! =] and i quickly understood the basics of boomkin dps. dont ask me what eclipse is for, i just know that i start spamming another spell when it does happen. =P
most of the weekend was used to adjust to the style of dps. honestly, its kinda different from any other dps styles i've ever played. as a caster, sure, Shooting Stars procs are like anything else, but the whole sun/moon eclipse mechanic was completely new to me. by the end of the holiday weekend, three levels and about 10 random dungeons, i was able to go from 3k dps to 6k dps. im sitting pretty at level 83, almost 84, doing "the most" dps in most groups i run with. most, until the last two.
Again, keep in mind that not a lot of people interrupt and there are still some folks who still stand in bad. i battle rez people for the sheer sake of not wanting to be yelled at (although i would love to have the group wipe sometimes) later on. also, sometimes its the tank that needs to be b-rez'd during a boss fight, so that's quite important to rez them in that case. but anyway, i've encountered, finally, a repeat of wrath. here's what happened.
Tank: So someone mark CC please.
Healer: you dont need any CC.
Tank: oh right!
We were in normal stonecore. The tank was level 85. the healer was level 85. aparently they were running their ret paladin friend who was level 83 doing 3k dps, max. yes. that's all he was doing. i was the only one there doing more dps than the tank. although he was level 85, he was pulling just about 6k dps. in this instance, there was zero crowd control. everything was AoE'd down. most of the dps were doing less than the tank, no one was focus-firing and no one was interrupting. sounds like wrath of the lich king all over again, doesnt it?
i know some 85s are newly ding'ed 85s with some gearing up to do, but there are others who are really beyond normal vortex pin or stonecore. and even when running your friends through instances, at least have your friend make some effort to try to do well. at least practice good play by incoporating cc's and interrupts and even pull carefully. maybe? all youre doing is making a bad, lazy, inexperienced level 85 who will end up being useless in heroics. and i've gone through one instance where we failed miserably because two of the dps were doing 3-4k, and the tank was doing 3k. and i was doing 9....
in any case, my arms are tired from all this carrying.
The problem is, yet again, dungeons. Oh i loved the first few weeks of Cata. The dungeons were hard. Every dungeon was difficult. Every dungeon had wipes. At the end of the night, i had to redo some macros, or prioritize differently than before.
I started cata with my warrior, Ithacus. he's an orc. they're pretty no-nonsense type of warriors bent on killing things, usually by overpowering them as opposed to out-maneuvering them. i'll leave the finesse for dainty night elves and blood elves. but the human counterpart in the world of azeroth are the orcs. and they are fierce. they rush into a fight with zero regard for their own well-being with the one purpose to obliterate their foes. Ithacus was one of them. he would charge+shout, rend, drop a thunderclap, then cleave+sweeping strikes and bladestorm til he died. this happened on every wrath heroic between 4.01 and cata launch. imagine the fun i was having with ARMS warrioring. =P yes. arms... i said it. Fury my ass. anyway, moving along...
(to accomplish the above, i had two macros. one for charge/shout, which had me tap the button twice. once to charge, and again to shout while i was in the middle of a charge. easy. second is the sweeping strikes macro'ed to cleave. since i only use cleave for multiple mobs, adding a sweeping strikes to it always makes it worthwhile. especially in wrath dungeons. you need sweeping strikes on as much as possible, because that's how the game was played. i rend once per fight, so that's not macroed anywhere. i thunderclap often, so that's its own separate button)
Then Things Changed
Enter Cata. Life was gleeful. every dungeon was rough, especially when i was asked to tank for half of them. i was essentially learning two players at once. but overall, i was learning to wait a little to dps. I was using pummel or body slam or whatever it is. i forget. having two specs make it difficult to remember. but i know i was using my interrupts more. i found that in the battle between slam and heroic strike, heroic strike wins. i finally started using colossus smash and not just when the "thing" procs. you can tell i have no idea what the name of the proc is, but i know what it looks like and press colossus smash accordingly. i even back up and hit intercept now, whenever something needs to be stopped, like a heal from this Adepts in Vortex Pin.
Overall, pulls were thought out a bit more. There's more consideration to each class' CC abilities. I have learned quite a few things about CC, like who can CC what, and who should CC first, etc. I also know that no boomkin has ever used hibernate on a dragon. none. the more obvious CCs are usually a hunter's trap and a mage's polymorph. no one figured maybe you can bind an elemental, or banish it. or hey, let the boomkin entangle roots and hiberante. two in one. yay! several paladins couldnt find Repentance, but they found them eventually. rogues often use distract before they sap and deathknights.... well they're pretty much useless for now.
Apart from the crowd controls, there's the other obvious good things that changed about the fights themselves. Mobs lived longer, did more damage, had better abilities and caused a little more trauma. thats great!!! no seriously, my wrath-era-yawns turned into, "oh hey!! something new!" i had to watch my surroundings more, had to interrupt more whirlwinds and AoE casts and all that good stuff. The healer would be OOM after almost every fight. YAY!!!! that's so awesomesauce. people were at half health, or less, after every fight too. awesomesauce with added tobasco! and at the end of pretty much every fight, it felt like i actually earned that kill. awesomesauce that's better than Hooter's 911 chicken wings!!
But They Stayed the Same
After leveling my warrior to 85 and getting a few dungeons in, i started leveling my deathknight with my girlfriend's priest. we leveled through hyjal, deepholm, the ramhaken part of uldum and finally twilight highlands. While leveling, we did queue for all the dungeons along the way. What my girlfriend felt was that she had better mana efficiency, which is good. she didnt lose much of the difficulty in healing each fight, but she did find it less stressing when her mana bar was twice as full as usual. she has two priests, both 85 now. leveling the first one 80-85 was omg hard. leveling the second one 80-85 was a lot eaiser. i guess blizzard made a few tweaks. but i am sidetracked.... lets get back to the subject.
I noticed something when i was dps (Arms Warrior and Frost DK), that somehow not a lot of people knew how to dps. really? yes. now i dont mean CC, or interrupts, or even moving out of Bad, which is required. but many of them were doing less dps than me. there were hunters and boomkins doing 3k dps. just 3k, at level 83. they may have had to CC, which was obvious if the tank asks for them, but they did not know how to interrupt spellcasts, dont know how to deal with adds, dont know how to avoid bad stuffs. many folks are learning, true. but how many times does it take for a summoned elemental to shoot a beam at you before you realize maybe you should kill it before it reaches you? slow it down. run away. kill it or else a gigantic pillar of fire will spawn from your feet and kill you? how many times???? OMG!! ARRRRGHGHHHHH.
But my god the dps is crap. on my warrior, i was really miserable at level 81 doing 4k dps inside Throne of Tides. Then it jumped somehow at level 82 to a whopping 6k. and if things are done correctly, i can hit 8k+ on some fights. but that's it. averaging around 6k and we're not even talking heroic geared. on my deathknight, who has a lot more AoE tools, she's able to do 8k normally, in her sleep. and 10k+ if i decide to actually do more (like turn on AMS and IBF while bad AoE is happening, etc). and what is everyone else doing? half. yes, half. no not half 10k, half 8k. some are doing more, yes, but some just cant cut it. and what bugs me even more, is that these are heroics. you know the heroics where you have to have an average ilevel of at least 329. this is where the learning should have already happened. i had to drop a heroic deadmines run because a hunter was doing about 3-4k dps. the last boss is harsh if you cannot get him down before the healer was OOM. and the lock and i were doing 8k dps each. we go the boss to about 30% each time we wiped. and we wiped because the healer was OOM. another 4k dps would have helped. it may have even prolonged the healer's mana supply because there would be less damage taken overall. but we couldnt do it since there just wasnt enough dps output. this is just one of many examples. i only had one, ONE experience where everyone was about 10k dps. we were in vortex pinnicle and all the dps were spot on. my girlfriend had zero problems with healing and things moved like clockwork. i actually had competition in the interrupt meter.
Lately, i've been running dungeons without the dps meter on display. it's on, but not displaying damage. its switched to interrupts. and even there, im at the top, usually. shamans dont windshear, paladins dont rebuke, warriors dont pummel, deathknights dont mind freeze, rogues dont kick, mages dont counterspell, warlocks dont fear (get the glyph), and s.priests dont silence, or fear (again, get the glyph). i'd like a little competition with the interrupts and i only get it sometimes with the tanks. everyone else do not. also, if anyone can suggest a spell for moonkins (besides bearform+bash and typhoon) please comment. =] but overall, my experience in dungeons are somewhat a mixed bag of fun with minimal challege. there's not a lot of people to compete with really. whenever there's a rogue who actually kicks, i find it very challenging to keep up with the interrupt counts. but more often than not, this is not the case.
Just this past weekend, i decided to level my druid again. this time, she's going to be boomkin (respec'd and ready, with the pvp healing spec removed) instead of healing. she deleted much of her pvp gear and upgraded from her mixed t8 and t9 gear to cata "greens". then went on over to Hyjal, Vashjir, Uldum and Twilight highlands to farm herbs. im sure she got about one whole level's worth of experience from just picking herbs. while picking herbs, she's queued in the dungeon finder. now when i first started this, i knew zero about being a moonkin. actually, redhawk, graylo and sunfyrre were awesome resources at helping me understand boomkin dps. thanks guys!! =] and i quickly understood the basics of boomkin dps. dont ask me what eclipse is for, i just know that i start spamming another spell when it does happen. =P
most of the weekend was used to adjust to the style of dps. honestly, its kinda different from any other dps styles i've ever played. as a caster, sure, Shooting Stars procs are like anything else, but the whole sun/moon eclipse mechanic was completely new to me. by the end of the holiday weekend, three levels and about 10 random dungeons, i was able to go from 3k dps to 6k dps. im sitting pretty at level 83, almost 84, doing "the most" dps in most groups i run with. most, until the last two.
Again, keep in mind that not a lot of people interrupt and there are still some folks who still stand in bad. i battle rez people for the sheer sake of not wanting to be yelled at (although i would love to have the group wipe sometimes) later on. also, sometimes its the tank that needs to be b-rez'd during a boss fight, so that's quite important to rez them in that case. but anyway, i've encountered, finally, a repeat of wrath. here's what happened.
Tank: So someone mark CC please.
Healer: you dont need any CC.
Tank: oh right!
We were in normal stonecore. The tank was level 85. the healer was level 85. aparently they were running their ret paladin friend who was level 83 doing 3k dps, max. yes. that's all he was doing. i was the only one there doing more dps than the tank. although he was level 85, he was pulling just about 6k dps. in this instance, there was zero crowd control. everything was AoE'd down. most of the dps were doing less than the tank, no one was focus-firing and no one was interrupting. sounds like wrath of the lich king all over again, doesnt it?
i know some 85s are newly ding'ed 85s with some gearing up to do, but there are others who are really beyond normal vortex pin or stonecore. and even when running your friends through instances, at least have your friend make some effort to try to do well. at least practice good play by incoporating cc's and interrupts and even pull carefully. maybe? all youre doing is making a bad, lazy, inexperienced level 85 who will end up being useless in heroics. and i've gone through one instance where we failed miserably because two of the dps were doing 3-4k, and the tank was doing 3k. and i was doing 9....
in any case, my arms are tired from all this carrying.
Friday, December 24, 2010
A very merry Christmas to you all!!
My daughter got the bulk of all the presents this year. that's not a problem because i was notified someone purchased my swords deck.
merry christmas to me!
merry christmas to me!
Edit: Just so everyone understands why this is so "christmas"....
The Swords deck is made up of four cards: Ace of Swords, Two of Swords, Three of Swords and Four of Swords. Thats it. Collect all four, click on one of them, and you make yourself a Swords Deck. Now the individual cards in the AH are selling for 90 silvers each. yes. 90 silver. less than one gold. so with my 3gold, 60silver investment, i combined the cards and listed the Swords Deck for 99gold each, as seen above.
after AH cut, total profit is about 90g.
i went on to sell four more Swords Deck for 100g each.
i went further and bought the Mages cards (there are five, to make a Mages Deck). I sold these for 150g each. all sold.
i also sold 2 sets of Demonds (if i recall correctly) deck. these costed about 15g to make, but sold for 200g.
why are these decks so expensive? they offer good rewards for twinks. The mages deck gives a nice neck piece as a reward at level 30 and good for a level 39 twink. at first look, the stats suck since everyone is playing with level 80-85 gear. but understand that people in the 30s range have less to choose from, and you can see why these go for 150g. maybe the buyer is waiting to resell these for 300g. who knows.
What my Shaman can teach my Disc Priest
Wrath of the Lich King has taught me one thing. Spam.
Yes, that's right. Spam everything.
Resto Druids: Spam Rejuv.
Resto Shams: Spam Lesser Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Spam PWShields
Holy Priests: Spam Flash heal
Holy Palas: Spam Flash of Light (or Holy Light, depending on build)
Of course, after spamming these heals, there's always the obligatory bigger heals. Think of the spam heals as buffers.
Resto Druids: Nourish.
Resto Shams: Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Penance
Holy Priests: Greater Heal
Holy Palas: kinda stumped on this one.
And of course, these heals arent all set in stone, meaning you dont have to spam rejuv for a resto druid. i did an instance only putting rejuv on the tank with everyone else getting wild growth. back in the day... when healing was boring.
But what i want to talk about is the AoE healing that only a shaman can offer to a disc priest. Why not druids? they have aoe heals. yes, but that's instant. holy? that's dropped on people like a blizzard or a rain of fire. but shamans are different. see, their aoe is chain heal. and it's casted at a single person (and heals 2 or 3 additional players depending on glyph).
1. it is casted.
2. it is directed at a certain person.
this is exactly like prayer of healing. =D
as a disc priest, i've almost never.... no, actually, i've NEVER used prayer of healing unless it was to top everyone off at the beginning of an instance after i blessed everyone with fort. there are simply better spells for me to use than prayer of healing when it comes to healing two or more people. heck, i skip the binding heal as well. but that was before cataclysm. that was back when mana didnt matter much. today, however, with flash heal being so expensive and pw:shield being so weak, we're stuck with heal and greater heal to do our work. now is a great time to pull out prayer of healing as a viable heal when 3 or more people needs healing at once.
honestly, i would never think of this before, but after playing a shaman, i have been "programmed" to toss chain heal often (for the haste proc). with this mindset, i can easily go on my priest and prioritize prayer of healing more. it does take some getting used to, but overall i think this is what blizzard wanted us to do anyway. we're all holed up into a certain healing "style". style doesnt mean more than having our own set of healing spells and ignoring everything else. but now, our style will incorporate more of the healing spells we used to ignore. this is a chance to use prayer of healing more, which i am glad to have. now if only prayer of healing gave me some other buff. that would be awesome.
Yes, that's right. Spam everything.
Resto Druids: Spam Rejuv.
Resto Shams: Spam Lesser Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Spam PWShields
Holy Priests: Spam Flash heal
Holy Palas: Spam Flash of Light (or Holy Light, depending on build)
Of course, after spamming these heals, there's always the obligatory bigger heals. Think of the spam heals as buffers.
Resto Druids: Nourish.
Resto Shams: Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Penance
Holy Priests: Greater Heal
Holy Palas: kinda stumped on this one.
And of course, these heals arent all set in stone, meaning you dont have to spam rejuv for a resto druid. i did an instance only putting rejuv on the tank with everyone else getting wild growth. back in the day... when healing was boring.
But what i want to talk about is the AoE healing that only a shaman can offer to a disc priest. Why not druids? they have aoe heals. yes, but that's instant. holy? that's dropped on people like a blizzard or a rain of fire. but shamans are different. see, their aoe is chain heal. and it's casted at a single person (and heals 2 or 3 additional players depending on glyph).
1. it is casted.
2. it is directed at a certain person.
this is exactly like prayer of healing. =D
as a disc priest, i've almost never.... no, actually, i've NEVER used prayer of healing unless it was to top everyone off at the beginning of an instance after i blessed everyone with fort. there are simply better spells for me to use than prayer of healing when it comes to healing two or more people. heck, i skip the binding heal as well. but that was before cataclysm. that was back when mana didnt matter much. today, however, with flash heal being so expensive and pw:shield being so weak, we're stuck with heal and greater heal to do our work. now is a great time to pull out prayer of healing as a viable heal when 3 or more people needs healing at once.
honestly, i would never think of this before, but after playing a shaman, i have been "programmed" to toss chain heal often (for the haste proc). with this mindset, i can easily go on my priest and prioritize prayer of healing more. it does take some getting used to, but overall i think this is what blizzard wanted us to do anyway. we're all holed up into a certain healing "style". style doesnt mean more than having our own set of healing spells and ignoring everything else. but now, our style will incorporate more of the healing spells we used to ignore. this is a chance to use prayer of healing more, which i am glad to have. now if only prayer of healing gave me some other buff. that would be awesome.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)