The Adventures of Pilnik

Pilnik, the Goblin Rogue — my first true Horde Character.

As previously discussed in my post about never having played Horde, I planned on leveling a new Rogue and playing through as a Horde character to get a feel for the lore.  It’s been several weeks since I posted about that, and had actually gotten started on this project a few weeks ago, but time constraints have kept me from posting.  I’ve actually enjoyed playing as a Goblin so far, and I intend to keep at it until 100.

On another note, Heirloom gear is both awesome and a curse.  It’s amazing how powerful you are leveling in the stuff; up to level 40 it’s a bit too powerful.  Being able to one-shot almost anything really doesn’t teach you much about a class leveling up, but I suppose that’s not as important as leveling quickly to most players.  I feel that if you really want to get a feel for a class and quest zones you’ve never done before, you might be better off without the heirloom gear. You won’t out-level everything so quickly.  But I digress…here is the story of my exploits as Pilnik, the Goblin Rogue…

Some Clarification

Wow.

I’m amazed at the number of comments on the prior post.  I wouldn’t have imagined it to be such a popular (and not necessarily in a good way) post.  I feel as if I didn’t do a particularly great job of explaining what exactly happened and I wrote the post without further consulting the other eight people who are still in the guild that were in the raid (including The Mrs.).  I’ll try and clarify everything today, and hopefully put this behind me and move on.

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

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

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Turkey Day from Sam and The Mrs.

The Hallowed

I know that some of this title was based on luck.  I also know that I saw 3 Hallowed Helms yesterday, the third coming in a treat bag after I finished the Achievement.  I’ve also already received multiple sets of toothpicks from treat bags.  Lucky or not, I finished all of the achievements this year in less than 2 days.  Check my Armory if you don’t believe it.  It is possible, and it really doesn’t require that much work.  Just make sure you’re running with a consistent group for the drops off HH and trick or treat whenever possible.  You’ll get there, you still have almost 2 weeks.

Good Luck,

– Sam

Under 10 MinutesLeft – Final Information

–  Race: Final Info  –

The course for our Not So Gnaked Gnome Race will take you in any way you choose to Loch Modan, and the Thelsamar flight path.  From there you’ll fly to Ironforge and make your way to the Rogue trainer to find me.  This flight will cost you 1 silver and 4 copper.  Once the race starts you can make the money in anyway you’d like, but you can’t vendor your tabard or shirt.  The first player to place these items in a trade window with me in Ironforge will win the event.  The other members of Bucklers of Swash will be monitoring the race to catch anyone who tries to enter Ironforge through the gates.

Once the race is won, an announcement will be made and we’ll give players some time to assemble around the outer circle of Ironforge for the next event.

Good Luck to you,

– Sam

Gnomestock In 30…

Nope, I’m Still Here

Wow, more than a week between posts.  I suppose I should tell you that I’ve been sick.  In fact, my voice has yet to fully recover, and as a music teacher, that kinda sucks.  Anyway, between my job and my health, I’ve been a tad pre-occupied.

I have been working on achievements and the like in game, and since my last post, Sam’s got 4 new titles:  Jenkins (finally), the Noble, of Gnomeregan, and of Stormwind.  Ulduar is progressing nicely, and overall things on my end are pretty good.

I’m also the proud owner of a brand new Logitech G13, and I’ve gone from a good keyboard turning clicker, to an even better mouse turning keybinder in a week.  The initial transition was weird, as the fingers I have been using for years to move were now being used to activate abilities.  It took the longest to adjust on Sam and Anabelle, as they are my oldest toons, but for Cristobel, my Frost mage, the change was almost instant, and it felt good.  For those of you who are keyboard turners / clickers, you’ll improve your game if switch to mice / keybind, and though it may feel weird at first, you’ll probably wonder why you didn’t switch sooner.

I think that’s enough random babble for now.  On the horizon: a combat spec a friend of mine is using with great success, a revisit of the Combat vs. Assassination damage output, and the Leveling UI post for UI and you.  See you soon.

-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….