Axe-Wielding Maniac

Upon receiving the 10 man Axes from the first wing of ICC on Tuesday, I respeced my off spec to Combat.  I’ll admit, I’m a bit rusty, and I’m getting used to it again, but two things did stick out to me yesterday while I was adjusting back:

1. Combat didn’t feel any better on trash or bosses in heroics.
2. Leveling melee weapon skills as a Rogue is a joke, and no Rogue should ever complain about it.  Ever.

Focusing on point #1, I did a random with some guildies to get the last 10 or so levels of Axe skill.  On the first boss, I got a 2pt Slice and Dice up, popped Blade Flurry, and Killing spree like a good Combat Rogue should, and then proceeded to pop Adrenaline Rush to Sinister Strike my way to a 5 pt Eviscerate, except the boss died before that could happen. I almost missed the 4pt Eviscerate I did manage to land. 

Conclusion:  Short fights (25 seconds or less) are better suited to Combat Rogues, but only due to the inital burst from using Killing Spree.  I thought it would be Energy related, but truth be told, there’s not as big of a difference in the amount of Energy a Combat Rogue and an Assassination Rogue have in that small span of time.  Inital burst from Combat is the main difference in such a short fight.

On to point #2, Rogues have to have the easiest time leveling weapons of any class.  I had zero axe skill yesterday, and it took me all of 2 minutes to get to 300 skill.  I flew out of Dalaran and found one of the frozen earth elementals in north Dragonblight to Sinister Strike spam for a few minutes until he died, and after killing 3 of them was nearly to 340.  After that, I went to pay the Scarlet Onslaught a visit.  The mobs have a much tighter grouping and make it easier to be constantly hitting something.  In the end, 7 minutes was all it took to get past 380, and I did the heroic previously mentioned to get it 398.  I’m sure it’ll be maxed in whatever random I do today.  Nobody levels melee weapon speed faster than a Rogue.

Anyway, after It’s amazing how a brief 4 month hiatus will make something as simple as Combat feel so foreign.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get back in the “groove” soon, as I’d love to try it out on some Raid bosses.  I’m still not sure if my 251 Axes will beat my 245 Daggers, but I’ll find out soon.

- Sam

Monday Morning Macro

Although I’m pretty good at remembering to use Tricks of the Trade on longer fights to boost group DPS, I’ll admit that I forget about it a fair amount of the time.  That being said, having recently received the two set bonus (Your Tricks of the Trade ability grants you 15 Energy instead of consuming it), I needed a better method of applying it to another DPS.

I’m a keybinder, using a Logitech G13 for most of my bindings.  However, I left Tricks unbound on a bar off to the side of the screen near my raid frames (I use Grid).  I would simply click Tricks and then click on the person I’d want to cast it on.  I would do this when not energy capped, so other than costing 15 energy, It didn’t affect my rotation.  However, now I want to make sure I’m using it when it’s up every time, and I wanted to create a macro that would make that task easier.

My inital macro looked like this:

/tar character name

/cast Tricks of the Trade

I made that back in Naxx, and I haven’t changed it until recently (primarily due to just clicking).  There are two problems with that macro:

1. You have to edit it every time you want to cast it on a different person
2. It de-targets your current target.

The editing aside, targeting was a big issue for me, because I’m the main assist for our raids. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept of a main assist, that’s the person who selects what target is DPSed.  It actually works better than raid marks, if you can get everyone on board to the concept.  Anyway, to fix the de-targeting issue, I worked with a friend to make this:

#show tooltip Tricks of the Trade

/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

Assuming that you have a focus target set, this macro will cast Tricks of the Trade on them provided that they are within 20 yards and the ability isn’t on cooldown.  It will also retain your current target so you won’t have to reselect your target to resume DPS, you just press the button and keep going about your business.  The only two pieces of effort on your part are /focus on who ever you want to tricks and actually pressing the button during the fight.

Anyway, hope that helps.  I’ve found it immensely useful in my playing from heroics to raiding.  Maybe you’ll get some mileage out of it too.

- Sam

Expose Armor Could Use Some Love

With Feburary approaching and Valentine’s Day on the horizon, I’m thinking of a Rogue ability that could use a little love.  Expose Armor, I’m looking at you.

There are Rogues that have never used this ability, and it’s not hard to understand why.  It’s a hassle for a Rogue to put up, and under most scenarios where it would be useful, you can usually survive without it.  For the sake of those of you who are unfamiliar with it off the top of your head, here’s the tooltip:

Finishing move that exposes the target reducing armor by 20% and lasting longer per combo point

I left off the rest due to formatting, but basically, you get 6 seconds of this debuff for every combo point you use.  For you to keep this Expose Armor active, you need to completely alter your rotation taking out 2-3 of your Envenom or Eviscerate cycles per minute. 

Warriors also can use this debuff (Sunder Armor), but their version is a stacking debuff.  While it will usually take a warrior longer to get the full 20% on a boss than a Rogue, they can refresh it (30 second duration) with one use of the button.  Protection Warriors apply Sunders through their natural rotation, and the other two specs can use it as a Rage dump.  Either way, it’s significantly easier for a Warrior to apply and keep this debuff up than a Rogue.

Where is this a problem?  Certainly not in 25 man raids.  The likelihood of forming a 25 man raid without a warrior is pretty slim.  It’s really not an issue in 5 mans either, as the bar is generally set too low for it to matter whether the bosses lose 20% of their armor.  However, in 10 man raiding with the current DPS requirements, there might be situations where the lack of a warrior is very detrimental to your group…

Downing the Lag Boss

I try not to use this forum as a medium for ranting, but this is getting beyond annoying. 

 /Cast Rant Rank 1

As much as I love 3.3, there are times when it’s making the game very much unplayable.  The same may not be true for your server, but for Mug’thol at 6:30 server on a Tuesday, getting any serious raiding done is a nightmare.  Enter the Lag Boss…

For weeks without fail, my raid group will have around 100ms latency until the clock strikes 6:30, and at that point it shoots up to (and sometimes past) 2000ms.  The server just can’t handle the strain of all of the raids going on at the same time.  It’s been a long time since Mug’thol had a queue, so it’s not that we’re overpopulated.  With Blizzard making raiding availible to all while still keeping the encounters fairly complex, the number of instances running at the same time with all of their mechanics and all of the player’s abilities going off is obviously more than the instance server can handle.

Last week the lag was so bad that we wiped twice on Airship and gave up.  In addition to it taking forever to down the adds, the healers couldn’t adjust to the 6 second delay between people taking damage and their heal going off.  We came in on Thursday and one shot it like normal; the latency was back around 100.  This week we cleared past airship, and the moment we hit Saurfang, the latency creeped up.  500.  700.  1400.  2000.  We tried to give it a go, but to no avail.  We even regrouped 30 minutes later to see if the lag went away.  It didn’t, so he’ll die on Thursday.

Another instance of the Lag Boss is Dalaran.  It was laggy before, but it’s certainly much worse now.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the random queue system.  However, not ever needing to actually take the time to get to a dungeon means people park themselves in Dalaran and you can’t really see the street anymore.  I’m fairly sure that it was never designed to contain as many people as it does now, and it shows.  Being in Dalaran during peak hours is by no means as bad as it is on patch day, but it’s noticably slower than it was in 3.2.

Blizzard, please either add more servers or find another way to fix the problem.   Losing half of my raid time to lag is not fun.  I don’t want you to nerf any of the ICC bosses, but I’d love to see a nerf of the Lag Boss.

 /Stopcasting

 - Sam

Hotnerf Inc

Sounds like the other members of my raid group are going to need to pick up some more of the slack:

As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high. We will be making hotfixes to lower the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat rogues. The Combat nerf will be slight. Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn’t be beating out other specs to such a large degree.

Here’s what that translated into:

• The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
• The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

I agree I was doing too much damage, but really, if Blizz is going to take 10% off of the pre 3.3 HfB, shouldn’t they redesign it?  It was mediocre before, but now it’s just getting sad.  I won’t lie; if HfB leaves in Cataclysm, I won’t be upset.  It hasn’t been an interesting talent since they took out the part that let you remove a bleed anyway.  Imagine if there wasn’t a glyph; there’s a good chance that it might be worth skipping.  With it being as inept as it is, they could at least make it passive.

I’m not sure on the actual math behind the poison nerf, but I’m sure I wouldn’t be surprised to see about 7-10% of my total single target DPS go between it and HfB.  Loosing approximately 500 DPS is a pretty hefty nerf, and is going to make fights that are already tight on timers even more so.

To be honest, I only destroy other similarly geared players on fights like Saurfang (7% above the next player in 10 man) where I sit on a boss, and part of that has to do with the players having to use other abilities to help with the adds on that fight.  I think this really hurts Assassination more than Combat, as the ramp up time for Assassination is longer than that Combat, mainly due to the cost of abilities, and slower energy regen.  I’ll have to get into game to confirm that, thought GC seems to

Did we need a nerf?  Probably, but I think the main problem is from the design of the class.  We are the premier melee dps class, and unlike every other class that can perform our role, damage is the only thing we do.  Mages are similar from a ranged perspective.  Similarly geared, these classes should exceed the others in damage, and in fights where you have to leave some people constantly on a boss with the rest doing other things, which classes are you going to pick to kill the boss?  The best damage dealers.

All that being said, I like the design of our class,  and wouldn’t change it; however, I can understand why people think we do way too much damage.  It’s not that I disagree with their point, but the degree of how “overpowered” we are is something I might take issue with.  At the end of the day, I just want the boss down, and there are a couple that are pretty tight already from a DPS perspective.

- Sam

Guide Rewrites Coming Soon

The guides are two patches behind, and while they’re still quite viable, they don’t reflect all of what I’m doing with my Rogue.  I’m currently using a 51/18/2 spec for PvE, and have changed a few things in my playstyle for the better.  The bad news is that it will take a near total rewrite to fix.  The good news is that miraculously, I’m not blocked at work anymore and can devote a little free time here and there to getting it done.

The plan is to start with the Assassination guide and then fix the Combat guide.  I won’t set a timetable, but I’ll say that it will get done “soon.”  As an aside, the 170 comments on the original post and its first revision are a testament to the great Rogue community around here.  I’m not the only one answering questions or offering suggestions around here, and I like that.  I hope it’s always like that.

- Sam

Challenge and Reward

I’m  not a gear driven player.  I enjoy getting new gear, and I love seeing my overall numbers increase over time, but that’s not what defines me as a player.  I like a good challenge, and I like to conquer those challenges with 9-24 other players.

I know that there are players out there who think that some of the ICC content (specifically talking about 10 man) is overly difficult.  I am not one of those players.  I think it’s perfectly tuned.  Players with 25 man / Heroic mode gear probably think that regular 10 man is a joke.  It’s probably true for them.  They have the gear, and by virtue of what it took to get, the skill too.  That’s not the world I live in though. 

I’m the guild leader of a casual guild that’s serious about raiding and focuses mainly on 10 man content.  ICC 10 is significantly more difficult for a group that’s got 219-232 gear vs a group that’s sporting 245-258 gear.  Make no mistake, I’m not complaining, just making reference to the group I’m working with.

ToC – ICC reminded me of Naxx - Ulduar.  Blizzard made it a point to make raiding accessable to more players, and in doing so lowered the bar a bit for Naxx.  Ulduar required more out of players who had become rusty and used to sleep-walking through raids.  Ulduar wasn’t really all that hard until you got to the very end, but it did require coordination and teamwork that wasn’t needed in Naxx.  ToC felt much easier in its mechanics, and my guild was able to defeat each boss as it was introduced each week.  I think that’s a combination of the skills relearned in Ulduar and that in general the requirements to defeat each boss were not difficult.  ICC requires more of everyone than ToC did, and I’m glad that Blizzard made it that way.

Double Zombiedrake

Given that I’ve never heard that term outside of my guild, I’m going to assume (probably wrongly) that we invented it (the term, not the accomplishment).  Anyway…

Zombiedrake [zom-bee-dreyk] -noun – A successful run of Heroic KoT: Culling of Stratholme in which the group completes both the Zombiefest and Culling of Time achievements.

We did this the other day, not once, but twice.  If you haven’t tried this before, it’s a good challenge for a dungeon that I’m sure we’ve all seen enough of.  To really understand the challenge, you have to realize that doing Zombiefest will take 5-8 additional minutes of timer for the Culling of Time…

Great Quote from a Guildie

***Slightly more mature than my normal posts.  Just slightly, but hey, you’ve been warned.***

The other night, we were in ICC 10 working on Lady Deathwhisperer and having a bit of trouble.  When I decided it was time to rally the troops, I declared that we were going to progress all the way through Icecrown Citidel, becuase I was going to “teabag Arthas before this expansion is over.”  Well, that little motivational tidbit led a good friend to reply:

“If you’re going to teabag the greatest Death Knight of all time, you’ve got to grow a pair first.”

Rofl.

Just thought I’d share.

- Sam

The New LFG = Win

I like the new LFG.

Nay.

I LOVE the new LFG.

The Random button is the most fun I’ve had in recent history.  I hated running Heroics in BC for badges; in fact, loathe probably isn’t a strong enough word to describe my hatred for them.  Running for Badges of Justice back in the day as a Rogue wasn’t easy.  It was hard to find a group, and often the groups were terrible.  However, that experience isn’t something I’ve had since last Tuesday.  I always tried to get a guild run for any heroics I would do before 3.3, and while I still do go on those runs, I really enjoy running the random heroics.  They’re usually successful, and I get to interact with new people.

Truth be told, Sam has 220 Emblems of Triumph, and other than converting those into Heroism for a Mammoth or gems, I’ve not a lot of use for them.  Staying current in the raid game (unlike BC) I’ve been able to keep my gear up to par with whatever we’ve been working on.  I run them on my Paladin for gear, but on Sam, I run them for fun.  Sure, I’m working toward a Perky Pug, but even after I get it, I’ll probably keep running them.