Distractions

I’ve got the gold for my Dual Specs, and I’ve got plenty of mats ready for 3.1 to hit.  So how does Sam spend his free time then?  Leveling a mage of course.  I’ve been following a fabulous guide for a leveling Frost spec, straight from the CriticalQQ blog, written by Euripedes.

As the picture suggests, I’m in Tanaris leveling through the mid 40’s.  At the time of this screenshot I was killing the Southsea Pirates for the fifth time.  If I make it to at least Zul’Farrak, that’s usually my tipping point on whether I make it to max level or not.

Overall, I’m really enjoying the Mage class.  I’m already familiar with blasting things from range after leveling my hunter, but this time, there’s no pet to keep the mob from running at me.  Tailoring and Enchanting are my professions on the toon, and both are easy enough to level, but disenchanting all of my greens and up made me realize just how much money you make from vendoring them.  I’m pretty much broke after I train.

No worries, I only play this toon when I’m not needed on my three 80’s.  I just thought I’d share my time killer with you.  

- Sam

It’s Over Nine Thousand! (Well, 10k Actually)

 /Cast Delusion of Grandeur

In 6 short months, this blog has gone from 5-10 page views a day to a  100-300 page view a day blog.  While this is hardly comparable to the huge WoW blogs like BigRedKitty, which I read daily, it’s a personal milestone for me.

The hits have been picking up steam recently (more than 3,700 visits this month).  Many people have found their way here from Google, but I’ve also been getting some link love as of late from the other rogue blogs out there .  I thought it only appropriate to celebrate a little by throwing a shout out back at some of the people that are getting others sent here.

Dinaer from Forever a Noob recently added me to his blogroll, and if you look on the side of this page you’ll notice that he’s linked from here too.  If you haven’t checked out his site, you really should, it’s quite good.

Aeltyr over at And Two Rogues is also a good read, and another blog that I already had linked before today.  Occasionally he ends his posts with something like this: “Aeltyr tries to find his knives and realises he left them in his other armor. Aeltyr casts Fan of Handkerchiefs, but it fails. “  I get a good laugh when he writes stuff like that.

Also linked on my blogroll is Rogue Chick by Raivyne.  She’s been more of a Discipline Priest as of late, but hey, I’m doing almost all of my progression raiding as a Holy / Prot Paladin, so I can’t say anything.  She seems excited enough about 3.1, so maybe she (and myself) will be back to our stealthy ways soon.

New today to my blogroll is Gone-Rogue, written by Eskel.  He’s a skilled combat rogue, and good writer to boot.  I’ve just recently started reading this blog, but I really like what I’ve been reading so far, as the posts are very in depth and informative.

Given the new found psedo-popularity, I’m thinking that I might need to spend some more time on my blog.  I really do enjoy to write, so I guess that’s not too big of a deal.  Again, thanks to everyone that’s been stopping by or sending people here. 

/Stopcasting Delusion of Grandeur

- Sam

Rogue: Glyphs in 3.1

Please note that these are not live changes yet, and may not make it into the game

Blizzard is spending some time adding and retooling a lot of glyphs in 3.1 (guess this means I should be more active on my Warlock and level inscribing past 407).  Today I’ll list off the changes (you could go to mmo-champion.com to view all of the 3.1 information), and I’ll give you a brief perspective on each glyph. 

Guild: Electronic Pat on the Back

With the downing of Malygos last night, My guild, Bucklers of Swash, has fully progressed through all of the Tier 7 10 man content.  This is quite an achievement, as we cleared the whole tier by the time that we had stated we were going to have raiding started by.

Initially, I had wanted the guild raiding by January 1st.  Some members had some concerns that they wouldn’t have the time over the holidays to level and gear up their toons.  So we moved the date to early February.  That’s when we realized that between Valentines Day, the scheduled due date for two of our officer’s (yes they’re married) new son, and my father’s wedding that it might be best to postpone official raids until February 28th.

February 28th.  LOL.  We had 10 DPS players ready to go midway through December, and over the holidays we got enough people ready to raid.  So we ventured into Naxx as a guild for the first time on Jan. 9th.  By the 17th we had learned and downed everything but Frostwyrm Lair, which would fall on the 1st of February.  We already took care of Obsidian Sanctum with a 1 shot victory on the 25th of January, and as I said before Malygos last night.

So, since my guildies occasionally drop by here, I just want to use this post as a shout out to the all of the behind the scenes effort that takes place to get these.  To our tanks, thanks for being prepared and geared, if you’re not getting your face beat on, we are.  To our healers, I’m sorry that the first two wings of Naxx are boring, but great job on adjusting from that to the constant damage of Sapphiron.  To the DPS, I loved one shotting Patchwerk the first time with 17k raid DPS, keep up the good work.

On a side note, we’re recruiting.   If you’re playing Alliance on the Mug’thol server and are looking for a good group of people to play and raid with, drop us a line at our website.  We have a solid group of 15-20 people ready to do weekly 25 man progression, but we need that extra 5-10 people to make it a permanent reality.  We could really use ranged casters of all types (especially Druids and Warlocks), healers (Shaman/Paladin).  We will accept applications from other classes and specs, but those are our main needs at the moment.

- Sam

Samuel’s still here

Sorry for the posting delays, I spent most of last week getting ready for and attending my father’s wedding.  But life, it seems, is returning to a normal schedule, and I’m back in buisiness.  I’m taking the rest of the day off from writing, but I’ll kick back into high gear tomorrow.

- Sam

P.S. – For those of you who cared to wonder, the wedding was great.  My dad is happy, and my wife and I had a blast (mostly because of the adjoining rooms with my brother and sister.)

Epic Wipe and the Year of the AoE DPS

I saw an amazing wipe last night, well more than one actually, but the one I’m referring to was epic.  It was not caused by a healer, or a tank,  but overzealous DPS.

This is the Year of the AoE DPS.  Make no mistake about it, AoE DPS is king of this game now, and it has a tendency to get people in trouble.  What’s the smartest way to kill things?  One at a time.  What’s the fastest way to kill things?  At the same time.

Enter Gothik the Harvester, his legions, and our 25 man Naxxramus raid.  Pan left to the live side of the encounter, and 10 dead raid members.   Zoom in on the gate in the middle of the room opening as the other 15 members of the raid are hopelessly slaughtered.

How did this happen?  Impatience.  Sometimes, I really wish Recount had never been invented.  Too many DPS players are blinded by the tunnel vision of being #1 on the meter.  I have to admit that I like seeing big numbers and it feels like an accomplishment to top the chart, but in a 25 man raid on a boss like Gothik is not the time to go crazy.

The main issue last night was that the tanks never got a chance to establish aggro before the DPS started to light the waves of adds up with AoE.  How bad was it?  The tanks were not in the top 5 of Damage taken, they were 6, 9, and 10 respectively.  One of our Deathknights took over 200k damage, and he was not a tank. 

Surely the tanks could just taunt the mobs right?  Well, yes and no.  Taunts are not spammable, and we only were using 1 tank on live side.  Once a mob or two gets out of control of the tank it’s basically a domino effect from that point forward to failure.  Even Challenging Shout has its limits.

The bottom line, is that meters are not the best or sometimes even a good indicator of a good player.  Anyone can make the data look good, like a player doing AoE damage on 15+ mobs at once.  It’s not hard to pull 17k DPS on a pull like that, but it doesn’t make you leet.  The best DPS players are the ones who pull good damage while avoiding threat and incoming damage issues.

- Sam

3.0.9 and your Rogue (Pt 2)

As promised, I did some testing last night to see how 3.0.9 would affect Assassination  DPS.  After my number crunching session on Monday evening, I had the following data for my 3.0.8 baseline:

And here are my 3.0.9 Results from last night:

Overall, this is a buff to Assassination DPS overall, but Mutilate is most definately nerfed.  How bad is the nerf?  Well, it depends….

Rogue: Dagger Speed and Poison

In the process of gathering comparison data for 3.0.9, which is now live as of this morning, I decided to take a look at dagger speed, and how it affects overall DPS.

I’ll be the first to admit that my stats aren’t all that hot.  It seems like when I bring my rogue to our guild raids no loot drops, but if I have to heal on my Paladin, the rogue loot drops all the time.  I am, however, hit capped for poison, so my tests should still be valid. 

Patch 3.0.9 and your Rogue

Edit:  I’ve done the tests, and the results are in, it’s a buff, read more here

Apparently there’s some more balancing to be done before 3.1.  Coming sometime this week (according to mmo-champion.com), will be patch 3.0.9.  The Rogue section looks like this:

• Hunger for Blood (Assassination):  Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
• Mind Numbing Poison  now reduces cast time by 30% down from 60%.
• Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
• Slice and Dice: this ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%

I can’t decide whether this is slight buff or nerf for PvE DPS.  It’s definitely a nerf for PvP, there’s no question about that.  Assuming this isn’t being applied sometime today, I’ll be able to get some pre-patch numbers on a target dummy, and compare those to some post patch numbers.

Here’s my concern:  I don’t know whether the boost in Slice and Dice, which would affect White DPS only, and the buff to Hunger for Blood, will compensate for the drop in Mutilate Damage.  I think that it will and more, but I’ll need to test it first.  Look for that information tomorrow.

- Sam

Rogue: How to Spec and Play Assassination

***Now Updated for 3.1***

Assassination is strong single target build Rogue build for PvE DPS. Just like combat, Slice and Dice, and Rupture are important to an Assassination Rogue, but even more so are Poisons, Mulitate and Envenom.  In addition to these key abilities, there are damage increasing self buffs like Cold Blood and Hunger for Blood.  Today, I’ll dissect the Assassination tree and how to play it.  

If you want to follow along, here’s the spec we’ll be discussing:  51/13/7

And now, on with the show: