A View from Behind

Making the Move

2007-11-12T14:38:00.001-05:00

Sick and tired of blogger.com, I created myself an account over at wordpress.com. I'm going to try it for a bit and see if I like enough to do invest in self hosting.

My new address for the time being will be doomilias.wordpress.com. If you link to my blog at all, make sure to update the jump. Thanks!

Beowulf

2007-11-09T15:18:00.000-05:00

I would like to share the following clip from the upcoming movie Beowulf.

Yes. This is CGI...

Another Quickie

2007-11-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

So busy again today, apparently we are hitting crunch time where all of the various brands we work for *find* extra money and decide to spend it all before year end so as to retain reason (no matter how ridiculous and false) for their inflated budgets to carry into quarter 1 of the following year.

First,

Memorandum
To: The 37 females I've seen so far today, in various wings of my office building, wearing skirts and knee-high black boots
Notice: Thank you
From: Doomilias S. Rogue

Second, watch this video. It may not be all that amazing to someone who doesn't play the drums. But I do. And it makes me want to throw away my sticks and sell my kit. The video is unimpressive at first, but hang around until the end when the guy maintains a flawless beat while juggling three drumsticks...

OH NO!

2007-11-06T23:57:00.000-05:00

I have a really long post written about three possible builds for raiding with the new hemo, but it isn't finished yet!! AH! Such a busy day today at work, I couldn't actually procrastinate to write the post.

Then someone wanted her CE heroic key...

And as for the new layout...eh, I was messing with it at work and haven't had a chance to finish. Either way, I'm moving to wordpress very soon...

The New Hemo vs. Sinister Strike

2007-11-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

Finally! I've been asking for this. Wishing for it, even. Yes, you are reading that right. With the upcoming patch, hemo will deal 125% weapon damage, along with the up-to-36 physical damage increase.

See ya later sinister strike!!

But seriously, this is a very nice buff. I've argued before that hemo is a bit better than sinister strike, from an energy to damage, 1:1, ratio. This definately gives the sub tree a kick in the pants for raiding purposes. Lets take a look...

Using Spiteblade as an example, with 1800 attack power:

Spiteblade
Weapon speed: 2.7
Minimum damage: 165
Maximum damage: 308
Minimum Range = [((165 / 2.7) + (1800 / 14)) * 2.7] = 510
Maximum Range = [((308 / 2.7) + (1800 / 14)) * 2.7] = 653

So, I've established an attack power modified weapon damage of 510 to 653.

Sinister strike rank 10 adds 98 damage to each attack. Simple:
(510 + 98) to (653 + 98) = 608 to 751

The new hemorrhage does 125% weapon damage, plus the physical damage buff of up to* +36 after the first strike:

(510*1.25) to (653*1.25)+36 = 637 to 852

At first glance it looks like hemo would out damage sinister strike per hit, right? Well, not necessarily. There are a few talents that are going to further modify the damage of each ability. Between aggression and surprise attacks (2%/4%/6% and 10%), sinister strike receives a 16% damage boost:

((510 + 98)*1.16) + ((653+98)*1.16) = 705 to 871

Now, to look at two significant damage modifiers to hemo. The first is serrated blades, with which 3/3 points causes your attacks to ignore 560 armor (8 armor per level at level 70).

Ugh...this is going to get complicated. First, most raid bosses have between 6200 and 7700 armor**. Physical damage mitigation from these armor values comes to about 37% and 42%, respectively. Since I am giving this will all to be happening in a raid, well, here we go...assuming that the raid boss will also have sunder armor x5 (-2600 armor), faerie fire (-610 armor) and curse of recklessness (-800), we can expect the sum of armor debuffs to equal a decrease of about 29% and 26% damage mitigation. So, our raid boss now only has 8% or 16% damage mitigation.

Adjusted, our sinister strike becomes
(705/1.08) to (871/1.08) = 652 to 806
(705/1.16) to (871/1.16) = 608 to 751

Armor penetration is still a bit hazy for me, but I managed to find some interesting information. According to this thread, 500 armor penetration in concurrence with the above armor debuffs equates to about 4% and 3.6% decrease in damage mitigation. 560 would then very roughly translate to about 4.5% and 4%. Adjusting once again, our raid boss now has either 3.5% or 12% reduction.

(637/1.035) to (852/1.035) = 615 to 823
(637/1.12) to (852/1.12) = 568 to 760

Interesting. Sinister strike has a higher minimum damage, but hemo has a higher maximum damage. So it could be argued that the difference between the two, over the course of a boss fight, would be non-substantial***. That is, until you consider the 20% damage bonus when a target is below 35% health from 2/2 dirty deeds. Up until this point in a fight, both sinister strike and hemo will theoretically provide similar amounts of dps. But then...

(510*(1.25 + .20)) to (653*(1.25 + .20))+36 = 739 to 982

Mitigated...

(739/1.035) to (982/1.035) = 714 to 948
(739/1.12) to (982/1.12) = 659 to 879

Compared to sinister strike in the same circumstance...
Raid boss with a base of 6200 armor and full armor debuffs = 652 to 806
Raid boss with a base of 7700 armor and full armor debuffs = 608 to 751

So whats to conclude from all this horrible math? Other than I probably have no business trying backup a theory in such ways? Basically, that with the new changes in patch 2.3, hemorrhage and sinister strike are going to be fairly comprably, with hemo coming out on top in longer fights. However, the talents built around each attack really make the difference between which one is more viable for significant raid dps.

More on that tomorrow...

*For this calculation, I assume the minimum damange to be a strike that gets no benefit from the hemorrhage debuff, and the maximum damage to be a strike that gets the highest possible benefit.
**Ok fine...when I did my research on this, all signs led back to elitistjerks.com. I feel...dirty....
***I considered trying to factor in the energy regeneration for a combat build from combat potency versus the reduced energy cost of hemo, but there are too many other factors at play there; i.e., added energy cost from finishing moves.

Well, as Anon so anonymously posted...my math is wrong. Mostly because I didn't account for hemorrhage being normalized. What does that even mean? Basically, I would have to redo all of math with a normalized swing speed, which I believe for 1 handers is 2.6. I fully intend on doing so, but not this week. I'm moving out of my apartment tomorrow and just have too much to do at work in the meantime. However, I would like to thank anon for bringing this to my attention.

Without getting into all the numbers, he is right. Before 500 weapon damage sinister strike is better, but after 500 weapon damage hemo becomes better. Then there is the adjusted energy cost value of sinister strike when considering the combat build (combat potency). The reason I left out DPE in this post was because I wanted to save the discussion of how a combat swords build would compare to a hybrid combat hemo build for it's own post. I have it written...just need to do some adjustments to my math now. Or you could just go the EJ forums and read all about it there.

Should I just give up on trying to be a mathhead?! Poser...

I'm not the only one?

2007-11-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

courtesy of http://xkcd.com/337/.
Thoughts are strange. Indeed. This isn't the first time I've posted about the occurance of seemingly unmentionable passings of the mind.

I hadn't even remembered that I do this until TJ sent me the link this morning.

It happens when I'm driving and someone does something to make my inner road rage seethe from the tips of my hair...So if this guy slams on his breaks and gets out, I'm breaking his knees with a swift mule kick of my driver side door

When I'm dining in a fine restaurant, I'll scan the room for any object that, when launched from my siege weapon-like catapult of a right arm, could cause heavy cranial damage. Should...you know...terrorists break in heaving hand grenades and spraying the room with armor piercing rounds.

The point is, always have a plan. Always. You never know when those strangers around you will reveal that they are really pirates with lasers and everything. Ninjas rule.

On (Procrastination) Moving

2007-11-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

I suck at it. Period.

Two weekends in a row now I've gone to bed on a Friday night with the intention of waking up early to drive the hour from my parents house to my apartment in New Jersey to pack as much as I possibly can in the entirety of a Saturday afternoon.

Two weekends in a row now that I've woken up around noon on a Saturday, lazy'd around for a bit (read: more than a bit), eventually made my way east, and wasted the entirety of a Saturday afternoon doing everything but packing (note: last Saturday wasn't a waste of time, by any means. But for the sake of the story, it was a waste of time, ok? Good.)

I have to be out by the 11th of November. I am going to miss living by myself, but I won't miss the diet I came to rationalize as healthy during that time. A 27 year old person should not be eating as if he was a 17 year old college student who traded 1 month of his dining commons points for adult beverages and a 2 month supply of ramen noodles (chicken, not beef) and brand X mac n cheese.

Nothing beats mama's home cooking. Especially when mama is a middle aged Italian woman. And when Tuesday night is pasta night...

Uh, yeah. Moving. I suck at it. Period. ! point.

Taking the day off from work on Thursday because my brother has off, and my parents can come help. That means I can do what I do best.

Pretend I'm working hard by achieving a pronounced scowl and letting everyone else do it all for me.

I am. A. Procrastinator.

Proof? Look at the time of this post...

...juuuuuuust in time for this NaBlaPoBlowMe thinger.

NaBlo...PoMo...Oh...No...

2007-11-02T15:17:00.000-04:00

Dammit, TJ. This must be some kind of evil ruse. To...to...to get me to post more?

Ok, fine. 1 post per day for the month of November. I ken haz manijments fer tat, rite? But the pressure! But I'll do it. But but.

Um.

Here. This is a picture of me wearing a Konoha forehead protector. The first person who quotes Naruto as saying "Believe it!" instead of "dattebayo!" is gonna get teh banhammer. I reserve all rights to be elitist here...anime does not belong on American television. The voice actors are generally terrible. Translations are hideous. Most anime is NOT intended for a young audience. Also, if you watch a particular anime series, you should also be reading the coinciding manga. Otherwise you're just a poser. Also, I will stop using also twice in the same sentence.
POSER!

I will also try harder, to use proper punctuation; and be more better with my grammar'

Lastly, I HATE that blogger.com uses div tags instead of br tags for line breaks.

/end.

(Ego claims she doesnt own a forehead protector, but I know she is lying. This saddens me. There is no shame in being a shinobi. NO SHAME!)

Gearing Up and Resocketing and Some Other Stuff

2007-10-30T10:20:00.000-04:00

Monday night was good to me. Finally had enough points to win the token for my T4 shoulders, which gives me 3/5 total. Yay me!

I also made the decision to do a major resocketing job. I had been stacking alot of agility so as to balance attack power and crit to support my build. I knew that while my hit rating met the minimum requirements for specials (about 9%), eh, yeah it's been lacking. But up until this week, I haven't had the extra gem slots or other gear to warrant the necessary reduction of other stats just to improve hit. Anyway, I placed 7 +4agi/+4hit gems in 7 of my available red sockets and raised my hit rating to 224. Knowing that one of our druids has improved faerie fire, I can loosely calculate (for raiding) my chance for direct melee misses as follows:

Base miss for dual-wielders = 28%

Current hit rating modifiers:

5% = 5/5 Precision

14.20% = Gear and itemization

3% = Improved faerie fire

Thats 22.20% chance to hit. Right? Well, not exactly. It would be more accurate to say that my miss chance is reduced by 22.20%.

Talented, geared, and raid buffed (28% - 22.20%), my chance to miss is now around 5.8%. I actually have the recount data to support this, but I forgot to email the screenshot to my work email address before leaving this morning. Ah, well.

I'm still struggling with dodges and parries, which I have read can be eliminated by standing >.5 yards directly behind the enemy target. Go ahead and try that during the HKM or Gruul fight. I. Dare. You. Regardless, it's nice to finally be settling into a comfort zone with my gear and itemization.

A random list for today, mostly because I am too busy at work to complete any of the 4 posts I've been trying to write about the following subjects:

Eating pizza with a fork and knife should be a federal offense. Charges should be considered capital when the fork and knife have been proved to be plastic.

I may or may not have acquired a level 70 warlock through means by which may or may not be worse in comparison to eating pizza with a (plastic) fork and knife.

TJ reminds me of her awesomeness daily, sometimes through force and other times just by sheer...awesomeness. However, a certain BM hunter and I have a plan that involves the recent allowance of paid character name changes and the word "brkfangirl".

In fact, I need to end this list and this post with the following awesomeness of teh TEEJ because of the following exchange, which literally JUST took place:

TJ: %ranting about work sillyness%
TJ: I need you to distract meeeeeee
Me: Ok, hold on, do you want me to write about your awesomeness, or not?
/pause
Me: I guess not
TJ: Doom wait, I do
Me: Let me finish the post
/pause
(Speaking to the frustations of TJ's workday)
Me: DIRECT YOUR FURY AT MEH
TJ: I can't. I like you
TJ: As much as that disgusts me
Me: That was possibly the most amazing backhanded compliment I've ever received. And I love it
TJ: Who? What, me? Oh.
TJ: Yeah, I totally meant whatever you thought I meant that was funny and made you like it

Elite Game Masters

2007-10-25T14:38:00.000-04:00

Don't have much to say today. Not anything new, but I love this vid.

Hump(ing) Day

2007-10-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

Ugh. October, can you make up your MIND already?! I cannot continue with this 75-degree-100%-humidity-one-day-55-degree-and-windy-the-next cycle. Seriously, my sinuses are in /wrist mode with all of this atmospheric fluctuation.

This has been somewhat of a slow week at work, with the exception of a pretty embarassing SNAFU by yours truly yesterday afternoon. It's been a bit of a stressful start for this new job (which I guess isn't really all that new anymore), having to assume project management on the implementation phase of multiple Pharma web presence initiatives. Not being involved from the start of design means that there are required elements to pushing development into production that I just don't know about. Regardless of how many handoff/status meetings I have with the previous owners of my current responsibilities, knowledge transfers are never complete.

Anyway, a marketing email for a popular drug was supposed to drop yesterday, and I thought everything was in order. I had the final meeting with my business technical contact for the brand, and assured him that we were good to go. On sending out notification to the communications team to initiate the delivery of the email, I was returned the following response:

"We cannot send this email until tickets 27406, 27757, 27770, 27269, 27047, 27022, and 26859 have been pushed to the productin environment."

(Quick explanation: I work with web/graphic developers, and we use a ticketing system to submit and track active development. Each element of a website is tracked in it's own ticket by the program we use, so this means that SEVEN pieces of the website still needed to moved to the live domain.)

Weeeeeeeeeeeell, crap. You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to move a bunch of files from one network folder to another (which is essentially the difference between test and live environments). At my previous job, a small development company, this would have been no problem. Just copy and paste, right? Eh, here it's a bit more complicated. Big company = many departments = multiple avenues of approval.

I had to go back to the BT and admit my mistake, which was made to suck even more because he is out for vacation for the rest of the week. "My fault.", I say. And that's fine, for now. But the expiration on my new guy card is coming up pretty soon.

In the end, I learned a valuable lesson. Not that I need to be more diligent about covering the entirety of a project's scope, regardless of at what point I have been given ownership. No, something much more valuable.

What happened late yesterday was may fault. It was caused by my actions, or rather, my inactions. But the developers and back end quality control team (who are ultimately responsible for pushing development to production) were more than willing to put forth some extra effort to help me get the situation right. They stayed late, helped me gather the requirements I had missed, and kept me updated as tickets were closed (which means they were verified as working on the live website).

I learned that my colleagues are not only reliable to, but are willing to help each other out in order to accomplish the goals set forth unto the information systems team.

THAT is enough to make someone enjoy coming to work everyday.

Arena God Mode?

2007-10-23T09:45:00.000-04:00

Since TBC came out, Rogues have been complaining about how the subtlety tree just isn't good. For anything. Shadowstep and the surrounding talents just weren't tuned for the way that arena playstyle was evolving, where mutilate and combat maces were shining. Fair enough. Blizzard can only give skills and talents, they can't dictate how to actively use them. They can, however, adapt talents, retune, and reapply.

From what I have experienced so far on the PTR, the changes to sub have been very good. The improvement to hemorrage is actually quite nice when paired with the upgrade to dirty deeds (2/2 points gives 20% additional damage from specials when enemy is below 35% health). Since I don't PvP much at all, I have been fooling aroud with builds that would allow the new hemo to be used as a raid buff while still dealing significant dps.

More on that later, as I am still getting some screenshots and theories together.

But.

This new change, released this morning. Is. In. Sane.

Cheat Death (Subtlety) chance to trigger increased to 33/66/100% and now also causes the rogue to take 90% less damage for 3 seconds when the effect triggers. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

It seems that Blizzard wants to give the sub tree a real strong boost for those who enjoy pvp and arena, and the change to this talent is proof. But seriously, don't expect the new cheat death to hit the live realms as it reads above.

If it does, watch every other class QQ until it gets nerfed back to something between what it is now and it's current PTR capacity.

Think of it this way. I am in an arena battle, getting pounded by an arms warrior. I have 3k health left and his next mortal strike crits for 4k. I've been hit by this before. It's not fun. It hurts. With 3/3 cheat death, not only do I completely avoid that amount of damage, but for the next 3 seconds I am pretty much invincible. Granted, this cannot happen again for another minute, so his next big crit will most likely kill me anyway. But 3 seconds could be all I need to finish off his healer...or something else that could turn the battle. I don't know much about arenas, but enough to know when a talent buff is overpowered. This is one of those times.

Even more daunting is what this could mean in PvE and raiding: Roguetards. In other words, rogues who don't care about strategy because they know that once a minute, they cant die. Rogues who spec deep into a tree being retooled mostly for arena to get a talent because it's "cool". Rogues should not be raid speccing for death avoidance. If you need to avoid death once per minute it's because you aren't paying attention to the strategy of the fight.

I don't know, I'm kind of shocked at this one still. I keep checking my calendar to make sure it's not April 1st.

Another change I would like to see to hemo is the addition of a bleed. Not a significant bleed like garrote or rupture, something more along the lines of a rend. It wouldnt stack, only being reapplied after it's duration has run out.

Anyway, what do you all think about this change to cheat death? Am I just being a huge negatron? To those who do arena often, is this as OP as I really think it is?

The New Hemo: An Exciting Change

2007-10-22T10:30:00.000-04:00

Trained to rank 4, the new and improved Hemmorage adds up to 36 damage to any physical attack. Melee. Pets. Backstab. Mutilate. Sinister Strike. Shield Slam. Auto Shot. Steady Shot. Kill Command. Heroic Strike. Execute. Rip. Mangle.

This could quite possibly be the answer to a Rogue's lack of a true group/raid buff.

I really like this change, mostly because I ran a 20/0/41 hemo build leveling from 60-70 and I enjoyed it very much. But...thinking about using hemo as a raid buff could be entirely erroneous on my part. Is the overall increased physical dps worth the significantly reduced individual dps? Obviously one could forget about being in the top 5 of a 25-man raid. If I were any good at math I would try and calculate the damage per strike gained for each class that dealt physical damage, attempt to figure for an average attack per second, and try to estimate raid dps gained (assuming a certain number of each physical dps class) versus individual dps lost.

Perhaps a hybrid 5/25/31 build would work best to serve the purpose of this grandiose idea of mine? Heh. I lawl just thinking about it.

Sigh. Why do I always do this to myself? I know exactly what's going to happen anyway. Because...I just can't leave well enough alone.

Maybe I'm just too in love with the idea of being able to have a significant raid/party buff like every other class.

In other news, these changes look fun too. You can bet that I will be making a copy of Doomilias on the PTR this evening...

Quick Rant

2007-10-19T13:49:00.000-04:00

Ever see that Visa commercial where everyone is dancing around the store effortlessly buying their merchandise with the swipe of a card and smile? And then some noob comes along and breaks out the checkbook, the music stops, and everyone stares?

Well...

EXCUSE ME LADY TWO SPOTS AHEAD OF ME IN LINE THE TIME IS 12:34PM AND THERE ARE 31 PEOPLE BEHIND YOU SEARCHING YOUR POOP COLORED WALLET FOR COINS TO MAKE EXACT CHANGE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE WHEN THERE IS A PERFECTLY FUNCTIONING SPEEDPAY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU OMFG YOU NOOB ITS NOT FUNNY STOP LAUGHING MY LUNCH IS GETTING COLD AND I CAN FEEL THE PERSON BEHIND ME GETTING IMPATIENT WHICH IS MAKING ME ANXIOUS WHICH MEANS YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET SLAMMED IN THE FACE BY ONE OF THOSE 18 INCH TWISTED PRETZELS NEXT TO THE CASH REGISTER!

WHILE IM YELLING I DONT CARE THAT THE SWEET POTATO FRIES ONLY COST 90 CENTS THEY ARE UNDERCOOKED SOGGY POORLY SEASONED AND THEY MAKE ME WANT TO STOMP ON THE TOES OF THAT 5 YEAR OLD KID WHO IS OBVIOUSLY CELEBRATING HIS BIRTHDAY BY HAVING LUNCH WITH HIS DAD AT WORK HOW CAN YOU MESS UP SWEET POTATO FRIES OMFG JUST HEAT UP OIL FRY AND SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERVE!

/breathe

...at least the cheddar bacon potato soup was delicious. Until I added one packet of salt too many.

/fail
/queuesadbastardemo
/wristswidthwisenotlengthwisebecauseidontreallywanttodie
/weepforattention

Otherwise, the new Coheed album is rocking my face(s) off.

The Back Up

2007-10-19T11:55:00.000-04:00

I was going to use today's post to write about my experience playing a friends 41/0/20 affliction lock in Kara last night, and how I loved it so much that I may or may not be browsing Craigslist looking for a good deal.

And then I came across this video, which led to me spending the last 30 minutes clearing brain matter from my monitor.

Who. What. When. Where. How. BLAM!

A Huge Mistake

2007-10-18T11:18:00.000-04:00

I often over analyze. Hardly ever satisfied with what is, I probe/consider/examine/experiment different avenues of change. Changing just for the sake of improvement, however, is not always necessary. In fact, changing that which already has found synchronicity can prove, in the end, to be counter productive.

Why, then, did I respec my rogue from combat mutilate (41/20/0) to combat daggers (15/41/5)? Because. I wanted to try something old again.

5 minutes into leading the mid-week Kara group last night and I was furious. Howling mad. Everything that I had come to love about raiding with my rogue was gone. No cold blood. No shiny double crits. Nowhere near enough combo points.

I spent the better part of yesterday running spreadsheet calculations comparing the situational differences of backstab and mutilate. This is why I hate paperdoll scenarios. I somehow figured that over the course of a long raid, with an increased amount of critical chance from improved backstab (after respec, it was at 60% [30 base and 30 from the talent]), that backstab would out-damage mutilate by close to 55%. Maybe my math was wrong, but I checked and rechecked and it seemed to be right.

30 gold and two hours later I was standing behind mobs spamming backstab and waiting what seemed like forever to generate enough combo points to do any kind of finisher. BS, SnD, BS, BS, BS, BS, BS, Evisc.

2-7-2-2-2-2-2-3
2-7-2-2-2-2-2-3
2-7-2-2-2-2-2-3

Shoot. Me.

I don't know, maybe if I had the patience. But I don't. I am too much in love with the micromanagement of cooldowns and countdowns that drive the combat mutilate build. I adore the incredible combo point generation.

Anyway. A bit of an analysis.

Combat Mutilate
Pros:

Highest single-hit damage offensive rogue skills

Increased healing taken improves survivability

Pseudo group buff via improved kidney shot

Superior stun-locking

Superior combo point generation

Cons:

Gimped against poison immune enemies

Higher hit rating cap makes pushing miss from the attack table an itemization nightmare

Heavy crits increase threat generation

Intangibles:

Maximizing dps output requires serious micromanagement

Combo point generation allows for robust rotation of finishers and offensive abilities

Combat Daggers
Pros:

Weapon expertise decreases miss/block/parry/glancing chance

Increased base critical damage

Superior sustained melee dps

Cons:

Slow combo point generation

Limited options for combo point sink

Boring

Anyway, there you have it. I know that it's somewhat crude in that I'm not giving any calculations or theorycraft as proof or backup. Neither of those, however, is relevant to my ultimate conclusion.

For me, combat mutilate is infinitely more enjoyable than combat daggers (and presumably combat swords/maces/fists). I just plain have more fun with the deep assassination talents than I do with combat.

I should have been ecstatic last night. I co-led the raid (with the help of Brigin as MT) to clear Moroes, Opera(BBW), Curator(2d evocate), Aran, Chess, and Prince in just over 3 hours. Only one wipe in the beginning because of an accidental pull and one wipe on prince because of those damned infernal drops. Only three pieces of gear were sharded. It was an extremely successful run.

But I didn't have fun. And that is the most important thing. This is a game. A game, by nature, should be fun.

No worries though. As soon as we were through handing out the prince loot I hearthed to IF and respecced back to 41/20/0.

I'll never make THAT mistake again.

Today's Agenda

2007-10-16T10:07:00.000-04:00

1. Hit level 32 with Doomtard, even if it means staying up until 2am. - Done
2. Reset alarm clock since power pwntage. - Done
~~3. Wake up at 6:00am to get an early start.~~
~~3. Wake up at 6:30am to get an early start.~~
~~3. Wake up at 7:00am to get an early-ish start.~~
~~3. Wake up at 7:30am.~~
3. Wake up late. - Done
4. Don't fall asleep during 9:00am status meeting. - Do...ne
5. Get toasted bagel with maple syrup cream cheese and chocolate milk. - Done
6. Get coffee from the campus Starbucks. - ~~Cancelled~~ Reopened, In process (white mocha latte).
7. Don't fall asleep at desk or during any of the three remaining meetings. - Pending

Huntardiness

2007-10-15T12:48:00.000-04:00

A while back, after my rogue became completely dedicated to raiding, I became completely bored. I've never been one for alts, just couldn't get into them.

Until I started a hunter. Now I'm hooked. I hit 31 with him last night.

This is entirely too much fun. Group quests? pfft. Elites? /lawl. Yes, I'm using the BRK "how to build a BM hunter" guide.

And it is absolutely shining. Here are some pics of Doomtard and Cyboarg.

Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator

2007-10-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

So I have gotten a few emails asking about the mods I use. Here they are, in no particular order

I run 1680 wide screen resolution, which is why the screenshot is so large. Alot of my addons run on the Ace2 framework, so I recommend downloading that first. I don't want to link to each mod, but they can all be found either on the Ace2 download site (just do a CTRL+F and search) or on Curse.

The action bar modification is actually two add-ons in one. The first is Bartender3. It allows you to have complete control over the position, size and interactivity of your actionbars. You will need to first turn all of your actionbars off in the Blizzard UI before implementing these. The second, which gives the polished circle look, is called CyCircled. It is a very simple addon that allows you to choose from library of graphics for your hotbar buttons.

To the left of the actionbars is my chat window. I just recently added a mod called Prat, which allows you to change the look and feel of your chat windows. I am still fiddling with it, but I like it so far.

To the right of the actionbars is a combat log reader called HitsMode. There is a ton of customization you can use, such as displaying post-combat summaries, and color-coded sequences and actions. I am just using the default settings here.

Above the HitsMode window is Omen Threat Meter. I used to run KTM, but this one is much better. If nothing other the customizable bar sizes and settings for aggro gain threshold warnings, it is a must have for any class.

In the middle of my screen, which can barely see beacuse I did not have the foresight this morning to target anything before snapping the shot, is a HUD called IceHud. I really like this because it keeps my focus in the center of screen, instead of continually needing to look up to see my health, energy, and the mobs health and mana. One of the best attributes for rogues is the energy ticker. Knowing when you are about to a tick of 20 energy REALLY helps you be proactive about your next move. If I have both slice and dice and rupture up and running, 2 combo points, and say about 60 energy, I can watch the ticker so I can time a mutilate > finisher > mutilate with only the global cooldown to worry about.

At the top-right-centerish youll see two timer bars. This addon is called SorrenTimers. It can be used for any class, and can track any ability that either has a cooldown or has a countdown. It learns your skills as you use them, so if you are using it while you level, remember to keep updating it. Another thing you can do with this addon is create categories. For instance, I have cheapshot, kidney shot, gouge, and blind all categorized under "Stuns". I can then move this category anywhere on my screen. Similarly, I have garrote, rupture, deadly poison, wound poison, and crippling poison under Debuffs". What you see on this shot are my bloodlust brooch and cloak of shadows both counting down.

For my party UI, I use Perl Classic. I've tried Perl-X, but I just can't get into it.

Finally, I use Titan Panel to track things like guild, money, performance, bag space, and armor percentage.

What are some of the mods you guys use? I am always looking for new ones. I like change.

(not pictured: damagemeters. I hardly ever have this up on my screen, except during bossfights or certain situations to watch the active performance of the raid)

(if i gave out cool points, which i dont, you'd get 5 for knowing where i got the title of this post)

Violated?

2007-10-11T11:29:00.000-04:00

So I just got up to walk to the bathroom, to you know, go to the bathroom.

As I turned the corner, I found myself within inches of my life. Suddenly the office transformed to the Pleistocene and I was about to be gored by a woolly rhinoceros.

She seemed to be just as scared as I.

Then I looked to my right and there was her male companion. I guess they were making their way to the watering hole or something, but he was about a third of her size.

And we made eye contact. And he looked at me. And I looked at him. And then his eyes slowly lowered to my chest.

To my waist.

Legs.

Back up to my eyes again.

"Hey."

It speaks?

Standing at the urinal (for some reason, I had a momentary random thought about how urinals should definately have rearview mirrors), I realized that was no woolly rhino.

No no. That was a very oddly shaped large woman with wild hair dressed in a grey pantsuit.

And her male friend?

OMG.

Thats the last time I get up from my desk without putting my pants back on.

A Bit About Rogue Leveling

2007-10-10T17:16:00.001-04:00

Minnieu from Kargath has a young rogue, and is asking for some leveling advice:

"...I am having problems with the pickpocket macro that you have. I copied and pasted it directly from the web site to the macro menu in WOW. Then changed it from cheap shot to the opening skills that I do have and it worked a few times then nadda. I see the toon stand up but not window pops up. If I then stealth and then go to another mob sap it then pick pockets I alway get a window with some loot. Any idea?"

First, if you play a rogue and don't use this macro...well, shenanigans. It's free money and loot, and will support your poison and reagent needs (at least until blind becomes reagent-less in 2.3) with junkboxes from humanoids (note: If you can, dont completely loot these junkboxes. Leave something in them and stash em for Ravenholdt rep turn-ins). Second, to answer your question Min I kinda need to see the macro itself. Could send me a screenshot of your macro window? Make sure to turn on auto-loot in your interface options as well, otherwise it can get buggy.

"...As a relatively new player to WoW and to playing Rogues I have my points all over the place...what in your opinion is the best solo spec for a Rogue?"

That all really depends. On alot of things. Any one of the combat weapon specs (maces, daggers, swords, fists) are great solo specs. But you can make any spec effective for soloing, since rogues have the ability to stealth past unnecessary or unbalanced fights. But, uh, what would I recommend for a new rogue leveling?

"...should I go with dual daggers/dual swords/or dagger and sword?"

Combat swords. The only reason I suggest swords by default is that they are probably the most accessible one-handed melee weapon. Why? Because one-handed swords are the most diversely used melee weapon across all melee or physical damage classes.

However, through your first 40 or so levels, use the best dps weapons you come across. Always check the auction house for upgrades. Use whatever you can find that will give you both the highest dps available and the best stats (for leveling, agility and stamina). At some point, you may want to make a point of trying to wield a sword in your main hand and a dagger in your off hand if nothing more than to have your sword/dagger skill level with you. When I made the decision to switch to combat mutilate at 70, I had to spend an entire Saturday afternoon leveling my dagger skill...and that just plain sucked.

"...Please if you are able to take a look at my profile and give me ideas."

Now, as for your spec. I see you currently have all 14 points in the combat tree. I would personally go with something like this instead.

I'm not really a fan of lightning reflexes. 5% dodge at that level isn't going to give you as much benefit as you would get from 5% increase to crit. Crit will fluctuate as you level, and having this base 5% increase is really going to help you kill mobs faster.

Don't worry about parry and riposte. The amount of mobs you'll be fighting that you can actually use this ability against doesn't really justify the points spent...yet. It's much better to get the points into abilities that you should be using on every single fight: eviscerate, sinister strike, and gouge. Why improved gouge? Because it gives you 5.5 seconds to regen energy, reposition behind the mob, not take damage, etc. You can also use it as an evasion tactic. Aggro'd something you dont want to fight? Gouge it and you'll get away.

So. This is just my recommendation, but fill up your imp's first, along with malice, and then start putting points into improved slice and dice. Some may argue this, but having more slice and dice time at the cost of less combo points is something I would want if I was leveling again. Fill out precision next, endurance (you should be using evasion whenever you have it up), and finally dual wield spec. Your level 28 build should look like this. Where to go from there? Write me again when you get there!

Again, these are just my recommendations. I'm sure there are other rogues out there who will tell you different, and thats fine. In fact, how about some more advice for Minni? Anyone?

Thanks for writing Minni. Hope this helps!

Can't Post! Busy Bee!

2007-10-09T15:54:00.000-04:00

Well, its been somewhat of a busy day, I have started three different posts on three different topics...but I just can't finish em yet.

Anyway, someone posted this in my guild forums.

I lawl'd

Dungeon Stunlocking: A Tank's Plea

2007-10-08T10:21:00.000-04:00

Excuse me, Mr. Rogue. Do you know what my job is? I r ur meetshield, k? I stand in the way of angry monsters and ugly humanoids, trying to MAKE them hate me enough to want to kill me instead of you. Sure, I wear heavy pieces of thick metal and carry a shield. But you couldn't imagine the ringing in my ears after taking a good mace to the face. You know those huge pyroblasts I take for you? Well, try getting used to the smell of your own singed body hair after being trapped inside your breastplate for a few hours. I do all this for you. All so that you can stand safely behind this deadly foe, stabbing ankles and dissapearing at the first sign of trouble. When we are finished, and you are marveling at the shinyness of your new dagger, I'm over here in my little corner, just wondering how I'm going to explain to the mrs. another 20 gold wasted on repairs.

That's all fine. I chose this line of work, I will live with it. I enjoy being your protector. But you're not making it easy. You know how your skills and special moves cost energy? Yeah. You get energy pretty fast right? Course you do, you little bugger. Mine cost rage. Do you know what rage is? I didn't think so. Let's just say that it's the opposite of energy. I NEED to be hit in order to generate rage. I know you're just trying to help, but it's just making my job harder. Stop stunlocking my target! If I don't get hit, I don't get rage. If I don't have rage, I can't use my abilities to control the threat of the bad guys. If I don't control the threat of the bad guys, you die. Got it? Good!

This has been an excercise in role play. Failingly, maybe...but there is a point.

Stunlocking. It is one of the greatest treats of playing a mutilate specced rogue. You get all the combo points you could ever need, and the nice little benefit of increased damage when your target is under the effects of kidney shot. But it's poor practice to stunlock everything when your tank is focused on a single target. Your intentions are good, but they are more of a hinderance than a help. Not allowing your tank to get hit will also keep him from generating the rage necessary to use his abilties (shield bash, sunder, etc.) in a threat generating manner.

Wait. Let's back up.

What is a stunlock? Well, to put it simply, it's when the attacker uses different stunning abilities in succession to keep the attackee in a completely helpless and immobile state. Some rogue builds are better for stunlocking than others (seal fate is almost a necessity to stunlock effectively). It starts by opening from stealth with a cheap shot. This stuns the target for 4 seconds and rewards 2 combo points. For a 41/20-ish specced rogue, mutilate is the next move. Depending on wether or not the mutialte crits, the rogue will then have 4-5 combo points. This means that either a 5 or 6 ~~point~~ second kidney shot will follow. 10 seconds of target-cant-do-shiiiiiiiii...nevermind. [note: in pvp, following the kidney shot with a gouge (assuming 3/3 imp gouge) will allow the rogue to get to a distance that will remove in-combat status and restealth, which then allows the rogue to start the process all over again).

So, running an instance (raids are a completely different post). When is it ok to stunlock? These are the general ideals I try to follow:

1. Watch the tank's rage bar. If it's above 50%, go ahead and use your stunlocks.

2. Multiple targets. In a situation where your tank needs to tank more than 1 mob, by all means stunlock the second target. This is where the 41/20 build will shine. You are controlling the mob while giving a very nice dps party buff (9% increased damage for the duration. 3/3 imp kidney shot). But beware, make SURE to have the party leader mark YOUR mob as the focus fire target. While you are stunlocking, ranged and melee dps should be attacking your target to get it down first. Mobs don't like stunlocks. When it comes back, it will want you dead.

3. Staggered stuns. So this doesn't really count as stunlocking, since you are not using your stuns in succession. Anyway, one of the situations where I use kidney shot the most for 5-mans is as a finisher. Open with a cheap shot, get your slice and dice up, smack some mutilates, and hit that 5 point kidney shot when the mob is at or below 40% health. The 9% damage increase helps burn the mob down, and allows the healer to catch up on tank hp for the next pull/mob.

I hope this helps. I know I didn't even figure it out until I had already been 70 for some time and my tank said to me over vent "I can't hold aggro if I don't have rage."

Always remember, while the primary focus of the rogue class is to deal damage, you have the abilities and skills to be much more valuable to your party than just pwning the meters.

Have fun with it

2007-10-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

"Hey Doom...I had a quick question about the [41/20/0] build as I recently ran mech for the first time. As you probably know a large chunk of the trash and all the bosses in there are immune to poisons and bleeds. This really hampered my dps, and i was struggling to figuire out what i could do with my 5 combo points. I cant slap ruptures on, or use evenom, and mutilate damage is hampered also by the lack of poisoning. Do you put eviscerate on your bar as a finisher? Basically what should i be doing on these mobs? Is this instance one of the more painful for the mutilate rogue? - Lalecize on Aman'thul"

Thanks for the email Lal. Are you sure you are talking about The Mechanar? I've never had an issue with mobs being poison immune in any of the Tempest Keep instances, seeing as how the large majority are blood elves and demons. The first boss in mech, Mechano-Lord Capacticus, is immune to poison and bleed. Seems fair enough, he is a mechanical type after all. The Tempest-Forge Destroyers (the big mechanicals that do charged fist), however, are not immune to poison. At least, they are not immune to offensive poisons. What is your poison setup? I highly recommend using an instant poison on your main hand, and a deadly poison on your offhand. There really is no good reason to be using mind numbing or crippling poisons while you are running an instance. Some circumstances call for them, but they are very few and far between.

As for bleeds, well, yes. Er, no. You will come across alot of mobs and bosses that are immune to bleed effects. All mechanicals and certain undead bosses, for instance (Laj in Botanica, Attumen the Huntsmen and Moroes in Karazhan). In this case, by all means use eviscerate as a substitute finisher, but wait until you have 5 points to do so. To maximize your dps for bosses like these, make sure not to use mutilate unless you have the find weakness buff. Instead of spamming your attacks to try and make up for the lack of rupture, focus on keeping your energy bar close to full. Watch your energy ticker and try and time your regen so that you will be able to get two mutilates off. I will also use a 5/5 envenom on occasion, using shiv to quickly refresh 5 charges of deadly poison. Be very very careful of your threat when not using rupture, as your tendancy will be to try for more burst.

Lal, one of the most important things as a rogue is to find a rotation that works for you. You have to be comfortable with the skills you are using. If you aren't, your dps will suffer because you wont be confident, you'll get distracted by trying to do the "right thing". One last thing that is important is not to pay too much attention to any sort of damage meters (I have meters, but I only check them every once in a while). Watch your energy, be aware of your cooldown timers and buffs, and work with your environment and party. There are all sorts of elitist jerks out there. Play your rogue to have fun.

Punch in the Face

2007-10-04T14:32:00.000-04:00

I swear. My mind is entirely distracted today. 30 solid minutes of work followed by 40 more solid-er minutes of drifting into the ceiling tiles does NOT make for a productive work day. Pfft. It just took me 4 minutes and 3.23 seconds to write those three sentences.

Sometimes I am right smack in the middle of concrete concentration, and something or someone comes flying out of nowhere to...

...example. Real time. Just a few seconds ago, the woman on the other side of my cube wall sneezed, and immediately said, "ooo. excuse me!". Why did she have to do that? It's been dead silent for over an hour. Is anyone even here? I can hear papers rustling, but that could be a desk fan or the wind. I can't understand why people excuse themselves after sneezing. It's not a burp, it's not a poot. It's a sneeze. Hairs inside of the nose have suddenly sent a signal to the brain that translates "bad things here. get rid. fast. hard.". Why apologize for that?

And then I always have this...um, problem? Say I'm standing in front of someone with a notepad and pen. And that person is talking to me, explaining that I need to do this in order to make that happen, and blah blah blah the world is safe. During said person's speech, as I am listening and taking notes, I have this completely destructive thought process:

- What would happen if I stabbed this person in the neck with my pen?
- WTF, why would you even think that?
- Seriously though, could I make it out of here in time not to get caught?
- Would he die from the wound or from ink poisoning?

AMBER ALERT - AWFUL PERSON JUST OVERHEARD IN THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION: "So omigawd guess whaaaaat happened to my girlfriend? Sheeeee went to see the Rachel Ray Show, and she was standing in line waiting to get into the studio, when she noticed that the producers were going through the line and giving all the attractive women FREE TICKEEEEETS!!! Can you belieeeeeeeve that?! Welllll, wouldn't you know, when she got to the front of the line, they said there were no more seats!! How awful IS that?!"

NO! What's awful is that your girlfriend went to see the Rachel Ray Show. And she's also apparently not attractive at all. You have effectively forced me to form an extremely shallow and negative opinion of your friend.

- Stop. Look Normal. Pay attention.
- Crap. What has been saying for the past 5 minutes?

This happens to me often. It usually is just "what would happen if I punched this person in the face right now?", but as you can see...my brain seems to be a bit more morbidly distracted than usual. Am I insane?

And yes, the above conversation was transcribed as it happened.

Doomtard and Bacon

2007-10-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

Firstly, let me thank TJ for her link and activist attitude towards delurking. I have long been a staunch opponent of lurkers and blog ninjas, and it is encouraging to have support in the fight. Spread the word: the leeching apathy of those who read blogs but do not comment will stand no longer! The revolution will not be...uh, bloggerized? Er, anyway...upward and onward.

To Bastiaan & nibuca, I was metaphorically referring to anyone who reads a blog regularly yet does not leave comments as a ninja, because, well...thats what ninjas do. They see you, but you dont see them. Anyway, thanks for the comments!

To kakalakalakakalakalakakalaki (whom I can't link to since his/her profile is private). Question: What defines a real game? Loosely, a particular piece or series of software designed, programmed, created, and sold with the purpose of providing entertainment via console or PC/Mac interactivity with one or more end users. I normally enjoy a good argument, so well...as such:

"1. Over-hyped. Halo is good, I'll give you that, but it's not God's gift to console games, not ever console FPS games. I'll take Goldeneye anyday!" What Microsoft licensed Xbox games aren't overhyped? And what about the Madden series? Isn't it also insanely over-hyped, considering the gameplay hardly varies from year to year, except for the players on each team? Besides, the Sega sports games are better than the EA sports games. Actually, I lied. I don't even play sports games. My point is, people like different games for different reasons. Because you don't get enjoyment out of Halo does not mean it is universally lame.

"2. Lame main character name. Master Chief... sounds like steroid driven Indian with a authority complex. I'm a master, no I'm a Chief. Which is it?!" Master Chief Petty Officer is the highest non-commisioned rank held in the US Navy. In the Halo series, Spartan-117 (aka, John), holds this same rank in the UNSC. So, that is where the main character gets his name. Know your US Military Ranks!

Joining the Club
So a couple of days ago I made a hunter. A dwarf hunter. I named him Doomtard. Then I trained a boar, because I hear boars make arguably the best leveling pet. I named him Bacon. Why is it that a level 11 pet can fight the level 15 Harvest Watchmen better than a level 11 warrior? It take long for me to feel the bond with Bacon. He's my ugly buddy now.

Maybe in a little while I'll apply for my membership card to Huntard Nation.

Friday Afternoon Memo...

2007-09-28T14:17:00.000-04:00

...To Merck Food Service:
Mixing shredded chicken with medium salsa in a sandwich wrap and heating on a grill pan does not mean you can label the item "Hot Buffalo Chicken Wrap". Please call it "Medium Salsa Chicken Wrap".

...To the Man at the Urinal Next to Me:
If you shake it once, that's fine. If you shake it twice, that's OK. If you shake it three times, that's playing with yourself. If you shake it four times, and splash the toe of my right shoe with your pee, that's just disgusting. Please be more careful.

...To Women:
You may or not be aware that wearing a low cut shirt and a long necklace with a bulky charm that rests at the top of your breast cleave will draw the attention of male eyes. This phenomenon is akin to using shiny, flashy metal lures to catch barracuda. Please do not cast your bait into the ocean if you do not desire to have it bit.

...To the Wrigley's Scientist(s) that Created the Raspberry Mint Flavor for Orbit Chewing Gum:
Thank you.

...To Bungie Games:
I'm so glad we are together again. It was a rough couple of years, wondering if your letters promising physical and spiritual rehabilitation would ever find their way from my heart to my HDTV. I'm so happy to have you back. Last was night was great, and I hope we can do it again soon. I love you.

...To the Ninja Blog Reader:
I know you are reading. I can't see you, but I can feel your presence (and see your IP address in my WebStats). Please, reveal yourself and let us enjoy a cup of steaming green together.

...To My Fiance:
I'm sorry to have to tell you this way, but I am in love with someone else. His name is Master Chief, and I am running away to play 4v4 games of Eliminatio, Slayer, VIP, CTF, and Territories with him. Please don't be sad.

...To the Weekend:
HERE I COME!

Blinkstep

2007-09-28T09:51:00.000-04:00

I had heard rumors, but I /scoffed and /huffed that the Blizz developers would actually do it. Yeah. Come patch 2.3, Shadowstep won't require stealth. Huh? We can...blink? Well, without the stun and bond removal, yes.

Ok, so its not really blink...but wow. Along with a couple of other changes, the Subtlety tree just might become a top performer among PvP specs once again. Not only will deep sub specced rogues be able to use Shadowstep in combat (what a great combo CoS + Shadowstep will be against frost mages!), but the Dirty Deeds talent will also increase damage from specials by 10/20% (respectively, based on 1/2 or 2/2 points) against targets below 35% health. Hemo is getting retooled as well, but there are no details. I would imagine that they are either going to increase the damage per rank that it adds to physical attacks or add a damage bonus similar to Sinister Strike. I'm pretty excited about these changes, as I leveled 60-70 as lewlstep, just because it was fun and I solo'd a ton. I will definately respec for a few days once 2.3 comes out, just for the sake of trying it out.

Friday's at a Pharma

2007-09-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

Summer...hours? You mean...people are allowed to leave at noon on Friday's during the summer? This is a concept, a practice, that I will have to get used to. Too bad this is the last acceptable Friday of summertime. I won't be leaving at noon today anyway because, well, it's my first full week and just doesn't seem right. Anyway, on to more important things...

More on Hit Rating and Mutilate...
Epic post coming. I've been lotioning and oiling and oiling and lotioning...er, rather, calculating and testing and testing and calculating. I did resocket a number of my gems to gain more hit rating than I had before, and my stat line now reads 1594 ap / 23.75% crit / 202 hit. Not too bad right? Eh, Wednesday night was my first test run, as we did up to and including Curator. The other 41/20 raiding rogue in our guild was out dpsing me by a fair margin, maybe 1/2%, on trash through Attumen and Moroes. His baseline stats are 1399 / 28.08% / 167. This was confusing to me at first, as I was predisposed to relate it directly to my change in hit rating. One would think that the -4.33% crit would be offset by the +195 attack power and +35 hit rating.

I was confused.

Alas, I was a psychology major in college. If there is one thing I learned from analyzing results data, it's that there is seldom just one cause for any one effect. What were the other factors? Well, our attack power difference became normalized because he was using flask of relentless assault + ravager dog, and I was using neither (Why? Because I have this thing about "overdamage". What? Yeah, it's just a wierd thing. I dont like to waste resources like flasks, pots, food unless I really need it.). That's 120 + 40 = 160 attack power. 1594 > 1559, but you can see how it wouldn't have the same impact as 1594 > 1399. Two other major factors: I was attempting to lead the raid, but was failing miserably because I was very distracted by some real life goings-on type stuff. That being said, I was not paying attention to my cooldowns and timers, instead dividing my time between *trying* to lead the raid and *trying* to deal with the other stuff. Anyway, Sunday and Monday will give me much better results as we are doing through Prince and Gruuls respectively.

What is my hypothesis? That when considering the 41/20 build for raiding, hit rating is slightly less important, but not near irrelevant, than attack power and crit rating; once miss chance for specials has been pushed off the table (approximately 9% hit rating, or 143 hit rating), crit rating becomes even more valuable. When I complete my experiments and calculations, I will propose more background research and critical variables to the subject matter.

Random workness...
Working in such a big office presents more opportunity to encounter interesting and captivating randomness. These are my observations so far today.

It is very hard not to chuckle when standing at a urinal and the middle aged, important-looking man in a full three piece suit standing at the adjacent urinal lets loose a squeaky, high pitched breaking of the wind from his buttocks.

The following are incorrect, and TJ agrees are entirely infuriating when heard:
-fustrated
-could care less
-imput
-lyberry
-drownding
-nuke-you-lar
-perscription

Walking to the snack machine, I happened to pass by a woman's cubicle to hear the following (in subdued sob), "I can't believe she passed away...". This is the kind of thing that will haunt my conscious for the next few days, every so often prompting me to place myself in her seat on the day I get the phone call that one of my loved ones has passed on to the next life. This is why it is so easy for me to understand and relate to others.

One Last Thing...
This is the best streaming radio availble. Everyone should try it at least once.

High Queen Ballerina

2007-09-18T09:22:00.000-04:00

On our 7th try ever, Aetherial Circle slew HQB and his merry troop of en pointers. Our mage-tank had 15k hp buffed, our hunters MD pulled onto their tanks with precision, and our DPS was tremendous. The guild raid leader and MT, Celliana (who had previously been raiding a hunter through a fair amount of 25-man content), gave excellent directions and kept us calm through the chaos of learning the initial pull strategy.

One thing that will never cease to amaze me about this guild is our collective discipline when learning new fights. All through Kara, and now starting into GL, it seems that there is just an inherent dedication to knowing ones role in a particular fight; and not just knowing the role, but mastering every aspect involved. As the Great One-Eyed Prima Ballerina was holding onto his last few thousand hit points, Celli was already exclaiming that this had been the best group he has had the pleasure to raid with. /tear. WTF is this salty discharge at the corner of my eyes?

Ok, so why do I keep referring to High King Maulgar as a ballerina? Because every so often he will do this little move called "whirlwind"...but thats no whirlwind at all. No, no. You sir, are pirouetting. Seriously, the fight is not very hard at all. That is, after the first pull. To illustrate how important the initial pull is, well, the first 6 times we tried the pulls were off. Someone didn't grab aggro on the right ogre, someone got death coiled, spellsteal got resisted, etc. On the 7th try, the pull went off without a hitch, and it was chewy chocolate chip cookies from that point. Here is a video of the fight, thanks to Cayleigh.

Roguery on this fight is very simple. Myself and 3 others joined a private chat channel to discuss kick and kidney shot rotation on Blindeye, and we proceeded to stun and interrupt the bastage to his death. Not one heal got off. I managed to die on my way to Olm, because he was just a bit to close to Krosh and I took a nasty fireblast. But I got a battle rez right after the last of Maulgar's council died, and helped finish the fight. Drops were good, but I didn't have enough SWAPS points to win anything.

Note: Being dead for more than half of a boss fight doesn't help you stay on top of the damage meters. No matter, I was just as happy that we were able to pull it all together and drop him.

More on Hit Rating and 41/20/0

2007-09-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

The following is an email I wrote to a friend, asking for his opinion on my quest to figure out how hit rating relates to the combat mutilate build.

"The thing about me critting is that I need crits to generate combo points. This is what I worked out. If I replaced my rare agility and crit rating gems with the appropriate socket color hit rating gem, my stats go from...

1598 / 24.38% / 182 to 1562 / 22.06% / 222

I lose 36 attack power, 2.32% crit chance, and gain 40 hit rating. Not to mention it would cost me about 400 gold to resocket all of these gems.

Here is my dilemma, figuring out if the reduction in those stats will affect my overall damage negatively or positively. Supposedly, I missed 36 regular white attacks during the nspite fight. Of the ones that landed and didnt crit, the average damage was 305. Had I not missed any of those, I would have added at lease (36 * 305) 10,980 points of damage. This of course increases as you think about that any one of these could have procced mongoose or instant poison. Losing 36 attack power is about 2.5 dps. But what happens to Mutilate? Since my spec is based on combo point generation, will I have less combo points to work with, or will it even out and maybe now I wont feel like I have TOO many combo points and that some are wasted energy (2 or 3
point evisc for only a few hundred damage). BRKs stats showed that I crit about
33% of the time on my white attacks. It would seem that reducing that to
30% may not be that big of a deal?

Honestly, I don't think that I need to be doing any more damage than I am doing right now, since I'm head and shoulders above everyone else in raids, except for BRK.

What do you think? Is it worth it for me to spend 400 gold just to try and do THAT much
more dps? Or should I just wait and let my hit rating climb as I continue to get new gear? Or the opposite? Should I stack hit rating now and let new gear settle me back into increasing attack power and crit?"

Anyone out there care to comment on that at all? I'm just very cautious about changing something that works so incredibly well, just because other people say its the right thing to do. Jabari pointed out that hit rating is probably more important for combat/sword spec rogues because the build is heavily reliant on procs (extra attack and combat potency). Hmm...

Hit Rating and the Noob Within

2007-09-14T13:44:00.000-04:00

Well, first let me say thank you to everyone who left advice about PvPing as a rogue. I like doing arena every now and then, and maybe someday I'll actually spec for it. But I'm a raider at heart. Through and through, I just love the PvE experience.

A little bit of an update, I know have not been keeping up with posts at all lately. I've been doing quite a bit of moving around, what with quitting my old job in favor of this new one. Had a bit of a time getting myself set up with a new workstation both while I'm staying with my parents (while I look for a new place closer to the new office) and at the new job. Anyway, I've been doing alot of reading, and I'm confused. This...hit rating thing.

After trying to do some of my own calculations based on what I've read, I was only able to come to one solid conclusion. I am a noob. N00b. n3wb. WTFhowever you spell it, it's me. I'll try and explain my predicament. Maybe someone out there can shed a little extra light on the topic for me.

Ok so, in this post on the WoW-Euro forums, Cryinfreeman writes what seems to be a fairly informative breakdown of some hit rating theory. It's important to note that it is just a theory. At no point has Blizzard ever revealed as truth or fallacy the ideas/calculations presented on forum posts like this or on sites like wowwiki. However, he does present some very strong game-tested evidence, via screenshots and such.

Anyway, he gives a pretty solid argument as to the existence of a circumstantial 1 or 2 roll system. As it pertains to melee, if the attack is non-special (aka "white damage" or "autoattack") then the roll may have only one result: [Miss] [Dodge] [Parry] [Glancing Blow] [Bock] [Critical Hit] [Ordinary Hit]. If the attack is a special or skill attack, then the roll will result in one of [Miss] [Dodge] [Parry] [Block] [Hit]; then, well, to plagiarize, "If value rolled is block then roll for blocked hit or blocked crit If value rolled is hit then roll for ordinary hit or critical hit."

I am ok with this, it makes perfect sense. I am ok with the fact that hit rating is NOT related to how often you successfull land a melee attack, but rather how often you miss a melee attack (in other words, hit rating decreases your chance to miss, it does not directly increase your chance to hit). I understand that based on all of these theories, a hit rating cap for dual wielding melee has been set at around 220 + talents.

What really spins my wheels is trying to figure out how important hit rating is to the 41/20/0 build. Is it really THAT important to max out the hit cap at the total expense of crit% and attack power? I understand that a raiding rogue should have at least the minimum 9% hit rating (apparently the special attack hit rating cap, regardless of dual wielding or two-hander). But for a combat mutilate rogue to reach 220 hit rating while still attempting to acquire gear from Kara, that rogue would have to sacrifice alot of crit%. Is it worth it to have a 220 hit rating but only a 20% crit chance?

I currently have 175 hit rating and 24% crit. To get 45 more hit rating points, I would need...screw it I'm not wasting time figuring out how my stats would be affected by changing all my gems. Personally, I'm not sold on whoring all of my gear and gem socket selections for less of a chance to miss my target. I'd rather balance hit, crit, and attack power to scale equally with the progressive content. Anyway, thoughts?

Edit: Melnayo brought up a good point in taking a look at the breakdown of where the majority of my dps is coming from. Here are two screenshots from last nights Kara run (Curator through Prince + Nightbane in under 2 hours. Only one wipe the whole night, which happened on Nightbane.) The first is the damage meter totals, the second being the itemized damage totals by source.

As you can see, more than half of my dps comes from white damage. I also frapsed the boss fights for my own analysis of glancing blows and misses, and I'm still going through them. I can say that on the Prince fight, I saw a handful of glancing blows, and maybe 5 or 6 misses per minute.

PVPnmypants

2007-08-31T10:38:00.000-04:00

PvP. Player versus Player. No timed action patterns, no artificial intelligence (sometimes none at all). Just you sitting at your desk and someone else sitting at theirs. Each of you trying to reduce the others health points to zero. And I stink at it. Well, specifically, Arena. I've tried and I just can't get the hang of it. A big part of it is that all of my talents and gear itemizations are purposed for raiding and dungeon content. I know stamina and reslience are the most important stats to have for being successful with Arena play. But I've never done any serious PvPing. Sure, when the honor system was revamped towards the end of 2006, I was right in there with all of the other BG noobs farming for perplz.

I can take any of the popularly accepted Rogue builds and make them work well for PvE content (yes, I was 20/0/41 lewlstep for my virgin Kara run, and I managed to keep myself in the top 3 dps). But ask me to put together a solid PvP build with talents focused for Arenas, and I'm lost. Does the old school 31/0/30 Cold Blood Prep build work? How about 41/0/20 Mutilate Assassination? I know Combat Maces is one of the more popular newcomers, but what talents in the combat tree are good for Arenas? What about the stunlocking Hemo builds from the past?

Not that I plan on respeccing for PvP anytime soon, I am just curious. I want to know what other people have had success with. I try looking and reading through the forums, but all I see are trolls and flamers and I have no patience for that garbage.

So, any advice from anyone out there?

Progression

2007-08-27T08:24:00.000-04:00

It really is awesome to be in a guild that is progressing quickly through Karazhan. I know it's not a huge deal considering most raiding guilds are well into 25-mans by this point. But for me, who has bounced around from guild to guild trying to find a home...it's exciting. We had two groups on Prince last night, and as you can see from the picture, we got him down again. Took 6 tries because of horrible infernal drops. Group 1 should get him tonight, and the group I'm in is going to take out Illhoof and then give both a dragons a go.

In other news, heroic Durnholde is totally overpowered for the loot it drops, and I'll never do it again.

Prince? More Like Princess...

2007-08-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

Our second time in on Prince as a guild, and our something like 5th try...and down he went, just like a little sissy. I'm not much a fan of luck fights like this one...if you get a couple bad Infernal drops, you're toast. But again, I guess all boss fights have some element of luck involved. Either way, he gave me what I wanted!

I'm sleepy now. It's been raining here since Sunday morning and isn't supposed to stop until this weekend. It feels almost time to hibernate...

More Kara Lewt

2007-08-16T09:58:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks, our group of Kara regulars have pretty much turned the first half to farm status. It's nice to rotate in some of newly keyed members for Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, etc. and see them get some really nice gear upgrades. Going from greenies and quest rewards to purples has got to be exciting for them, but there is a part of me that is sad that they are missing the experience of grinding 5-mans for D3 and faction rep. Or maybe I'm mistaking sadness for jealousy. Either way, it's refreshing to know that before long we will be moving on to 25-mans. I've only been playing for about a year, and the closest I ever got to end game content was a couple of MC runs.

Last night we grouped up for Opera through Chess, and cleared flawlessly without any wipes or even any major resistance. We got Romulo and Julianne, they went down like the emosexuals they are, and I got my dagger! Here it is in all of its socketed glory (with a touch of Mongoose to boot).

This is, in my opinion, the best available offhand dagger for a Combat Mutilate build. Very high top end damage without sacrificing too much speed, AND it adds a wonderful element of stat customization.

Another positive that came from last night was the new Rogue our guild recruited last week. While his Mutilate build needs a bit of work (in the Combat tree) to better optimize his white damage, he still put out massive amounts of sustained dps. He was very good watching his threat, payed attention to when he needed to stun his target, and had an overall well rounded understanding of his role in the raid. Being the class officer for Rogues in our guild, this makes me happy. Oh yeah, he hooked me up with a good portion of the materials I needed for the Mongoose enchant!

It was a good night, and I can't wait to get back to Aran and hopefully take another shot at Prince this weekend.

Mutilate for PvE, Part III: Tactics

2007-08-06T17:02:00.000-04:00

I sit here on a rainy Monday morning, the sleeves of my black dress shirt rolled to mid-fore, top button undone and matching black tie loosened. The small fan on my desk is blowing straight across my unshaven face, and Bear Vs. Shark's Terrorhawk is driving strong indie rock (read: awkwardly layered guitar riffs, driving drum beats, and aggresive vocals) straight through my day drifting thoughts. It's days like these, where I couldn't care less if was told today was my last (at the office), that put to bed my realist negativity and awaken my hopeful idealism.

To the point you say? Tactics. That is, how to use the 41/20/0 Combat Mutilate build. Putting it all together, like any other Rogue build, it stards with an opener and ends with a finisher. But which? And in what situations are they specifically best used? Since I don't do arena and I rarely do battlegrounds, I will focus on 5-man dungeons and raiding.

The Basics
Every Rogue build focuses on one main voluntary offensive skill, one secondary voluntary offensive skill, and many auxiliary offensive, defensive, and passive skills. Rogueplay has long been regarded as button mashing, skill spamming, and disappearing when things go awry. To a degree this isn't totally innacurate. Often times when soloing or partaking in regular world activity, relentlessly tapping one or two keys will produce the same results as paying attention to all of the buffs (proccable or combo-point based), countdowns, and cooldowns that are at a Rogues disposal.

But when grouping either in a raid or party instance, this style needs to change. A well balanced group should consist of proper healing, threat generation and damage mitigation, mob control, crowd control, and damage production (both ranged, melee, physical, and magic). As a Rogue, you bring the potential for heavy amounts of both sustained and burst melee damage (Your crowd control options are limited unless you are an advanced thinker, but thats for another post, another time). I say potential because in order to provide your group or raid with the varied types of damage for which you are capable, you can not simply spam one or two skills.

Attack Sequence & Positioning
Going into any particular pull of grouped mobs or a boss fight, it is critically important to think ahead about where you are going to be standing, what type of mobs you are fighting, and the sequence at which you will execute your attacks.

The beginning
The first of your attacks in any fight. Before the pull has even started, identify the mob type you are about to engage. This will ultimately determine which of your openers will be most effective. Is this mob immune to stun? Can it bleed? Is it a caster?

My most used opener in regular/heroic 5-mans and the beginning of Karazhan is Cheap Shot. I always make sure to be in stealth mode well before a pull is about to begin. From this point I will position myself almost directly on top of the tank. As the primary target approaches, I will strafe around behind that target and perform a cheap shot. If the mob is immune to stuns but not to bleed effects, than I will open with Garrote. If the mob is immune to both, I will open with Ambush.

The objective here is to start off the fight by giving myself a foundation by which I can begin to build combo points and stack attack speed buffs. With 160 haste rating for 6 seconds from the Assassination Armor set bonus and 2 combo points, Cheap Shot is my preferred opener. At level 70, a 10.5 haste rating gives 1% increased attack speed. This calculates out to about a 15% increased attack speed for the duration of the effect, which not only ramps up my dps rating, but also gives me more strikes to proc poison applications.

For boss fights and even a large number of pulls in Karazhan, Cheap Shot does not work. This is when I use Garrote. At level 70, Garrote does a base of 810 points of damage over 18 seconds (the 3 second silence effect is purely meant for PvP, but is useful when soloing). Modified by only attack power (since for this build I obviously don't have any of the Subtlety talent multipliers):

Total Garrote Damage = Garrote Rank + (Attack Power * 0.18)

I'm going to assume Garrote Rank to be 810, because I am level 70, and I have a raid buffed attack power averaging around 1800. So, 810 + 324 = 1134 over 18 seconds, or 189 damage per tick (where 1 tick = 3 seconds). Further, if you have a Feral Druid in your raid or party, wait for them to apply Mangle (which they will almost always do right away). This skill adds 30% damage to all bleed effects to target for 12 seconds. Assuming the Druid keeps this debuff from expiring, my Garrote will increase to a total damage done of (1134 * 1.3) 1474, or 245 per tick. In my opinion, this is better than opening with Ambush because it does as much or comprable (not counting heavy crits, since I do not have Improved Ambush or any damage multipliers) damage without anywhere near the same amount of threat. Will the average trash mob last 18 seconds? Hopefully not. But on boss fights, where it counts, Garrote is always my number 1 choice.

When fighting mechanicals, ghosts, or any other mob or boss type that is immune to bleed (Attumen or Mechano-Lord Capacitus, for example), I will just open with Ambush. It doen't crit very often, which I prefer (I don't want to spend the next 6 or 8 seconds waiting for my threat to decrease), and gives one combo point. Good enough considering. Another alternative that I will sometimes use, when I absolutely know that neither Cheap Shot or Garrote will work, is to open with a Shiv. Low energy cost, instant Deadly Poison application, 1 or 2 combo points (depending on if it crits).

The Middle
The fight has begun. You have your foundation. Now what? Well, it's up to you, really, but this is what I do.

For some time, when I first started using this build for instances and raids, my sequence for trash would go Cheap Shot > Mutilate > Kidney Shot > Slice and Dice/Shiv (note: or vice versa, depending on if Ruthlessness procs from KS) > Rupture/Shiv (see previous note) > Shiv > Mutilate > Envenom. I thought that by keeping the mob stunned for 10 seconds (and giving the 9% increased damage from all sources) that I was really helping the entire party or raid. What I failed to realize until recently is that unless the tank is controlling multiple mobs at once, I am taking away his only way of generating rage. It's fine for that one mob because the healer doesnt need to, well, heal...but the tank would have no rage at all when moving to the next mob. This is not a good thing. No rage = no threat. No threat on the tank means death amongst the ranks, or it forces the tank to burn cooldowns that aren't otherwise necessary. So I modified my sequence, for a few reasons.

Cheap Shot > Slice and Dice > Mutilate > Rupture > Mutilate > Envenom/Eviscerate is now my preferred attack order on the first mob of a trash pull. When moving to the next mob, I will throw a Shiv as I make my way around behind. This gives me at least 1 combo point to keep Slice and Dice going, as well as that guaranteed 50% increased damage from Mutilate when the mob is poisoned. So, Shiv > Slice and Dice > Mutilate > Rupture > Mutilate > Envenom/Eviscerate.

This isn't THE best order in which to use your skills, but it is the one I have found the most comfort using. You can really mix and match as to per your preference, whatever fits your playstyle. However, there are two very important buffs that you must keep from expiring. Slice and Dice and Find Weakness.

Way back in this post, I tried (somewhat failingly) to give a few actual caclulations as to how much Slice and Dice increases your DPS. Well, it's simple really. Thirty percent. Keep it going, and dont let it run out. Having Improved Slice and Dice is a key talent in contributing to this build's overall DPS.

Where Slice and Dice is a skill that you can control with the push of a button, Find Weakness is procced by a finishing move. Since I regularly opening with Cheap Shot, a 2 point Improved Slice and Dice will last me 17 seconds. This, in turn, will last 7 seconds longer than Find Weakness. So in the next 10 seconds, I will throw a Mutilate to generate 2-3 more combo points, wait until Find Weakness has just under 3 seconds left, and then I will hit Rupture. Using Rupture at this point in my attack sequence serves a number of purposes.

First, it adds a very nice damage over time effect to the target. At level 70, a two point Rupture will deal 460 base damage over 10 seconds. Using the same attack power value as I did for Garrote (1800), this increases to 640 damage. Add to that the 10% increased damage from Find Weakness and the DOT increases to 704 over 10 seconds. Add, once again, the 30% damage to bleeds from a Feral Druid's Mangle, and I get about 896 total damage. According to Wowwiki.com, at 2 points this will tick 5 times (provided the mob stays alive for the duration) at about 128 damage per. Factor in the 40% worth of multipliers, and the DOT ticks at about 179 every 2 seconds (and very little threat!). Taking this even further, I will always use this as my first 5 point finisher on a boss fight. 5pt = ([(1800) * 0.24 + 1000]*1.4), or about 2004. So, about 250 every 2 seconds for 16 seconds. *I'm actually very unclear if damage multipliers like these stack or are applied seperately. In other words, having (dmg * 1.1)*1.3 > (dmg *1.4). Anyone have any ideas?

Second, and probably most important, is the 10% increased damage bonus from Find Weakness. 10% to all normal swings. 10% to Mutilate. 10% to Eviscerate. 10% to Envenom. Everything. It's simple really, do your best to keep this going at all times, and your DPS will increase by 10%.

The Finisher

Where Slice and Dice and Rupture are classified as finishing moves, Eviscerate and Envenom are the true battle-enders. I don't have talents in Improved Eviscerate, mostly because I hardly ever use it. I prefer Envenom largely because of the 20% damage increase from Vile Poisons, but also because it is not mitigated by armor. Since it is nature damage, it can be partially resisted, but I have not noticed this but for 1 or 2 times. I will normally wait until I have 3-5 charges of Deadly Poison on a mob and there is less than 10k hit points left before it's death. This pretty much ensures that any threat I generate from my oft 3k+ Envenom crits won't put me in a position of certain wisp-form.

Positioning

Using a Mutilate or Backstab build requires a Rogue to be positioned behind the enemy. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be sniffing up the buttcrack of said mob, just that you have to be near it. Think of the target as a compass, with the center being the actual mob and the radius being your attack range. If the mob is facing any of the four cardinal directions, you must remain behind the corresponding perpendicular directions, slightly less than 180 degrees from point to point.

Grouping with BRK on regular occasion, he has said that watching me keep my position is something he would have a hard time doing. For me, it's pretty simple. I don't use my mouse during combat. Ever. I have all of my main attacks mapped to keys on my number pad. I have the left and right arrow keys controlling my strafe, and the A and D keys controlling my left and right movement. It's just my preference, but it allows me to move in all directions and attack without moving my hands and hunting for hot bar buttons to click.

Well, that's about it for now...I've written a lot. If you've read this entire thing, I commend you.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/flames/trolls/etc's.!

The PickPocket Macro

2007-08-06T08:42:00.000-04:00

I've seen this particular macro posted on other Rogue sites, but I'd never tried it before this weekend.

What prompted me to do so was when I checked the auction house for fadeleaf to make some more blinding powder...only to find 1 measely piece. Since blinding powder can be found in junkboxes, I figured what the hell. I must say, it is glorious. In one heroic Sethekk Halls run, I made about 10g just from pickpocketing (coin and selling junk).

The concept is simple. Set yourself to auto-loot, and let the macro do the rest. Here it is:

#Showtooltip Cheap Shot
/Cast pickpocket
/Stopcasting
/Cast Cheap Shot

Repeat this for any other openers you wish, and you are good to go. Give it a try!!

Finally, Kara Rewards Me

2007-08-03T01:02:00.000-04:00

Well there it is. My first piece of Tier 4. Finally, Karazhan has rewarded my DPS uberness. On night two of our Kara team 1 progression, Curator went down like the bucket of rusty bolts that he is...and I was one happy rogue. No pallys in the raid and the shammy already had hers, so I got the token for a measley 100 DKP!

In other news, I have an update for my previous post. I was farming for ravager flesh to make some ravager dogs for our run, so I decided to take some screen shots of my dps rating. This is totally unbuffed save for the haste set bonus of the Assassination Armor and Slice and Dice.

Remember that Find Weakness gives you a 10% boost to all damage for 10 seconds, and Improved Kidney Shot gives you another 9% increase to all damage (from all sources other than you as well) for [1cp = 2, 3, 4, 5, 5cp = 6] seconds. Thats 19% increased damage. Anyway, there it is, 537.5, completely unbuffed and pure.

An just for good measure, here I go again topping the meters by a large margin (of course, exluding BRK because, well, I'll never catch up to him and his pet). This was clearing trash from the backdoor up to and through chess (which dropped the SAME loot as last week) up to 3 shots at Aran.

Muta1337 (Myoo-TAH-1337)

2007-08-02T08:39:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Chris (moar posts pls!) asked me for some actual DPS numbers that he could compare to his 10/41/10 combat swords build. So, I made a video last night (first time using Fraps, and I guess I have something to learn because youtube doesn't care much for 1.7gb avi files). Then he sent me an email this morning, and I guess I didn't really understand that he meant DPS RATING numbers. Doh.

Here is his email, and the screenshots I took from our Attument fight last night (we cleared up to and including Opera last night with considerable ease). Tonight I will try and get some screenshots that show some actual DPS rating numbers, although I did discuss this briefly in a this post.

"Ok, the SWstat crop shows my DPS while grinding lv 70 mobs with no raid buffs, just Instant/Deadly on the MH/OH. I've been as high as 650 on bosses when I had Priest, Pally and Druid buffs.

My armory profile is: Ontherocks

The reason I was asking to see your DPS in the manner I sent to you, is that number can be compared, while those cumulative damage totals can't. And the reason I'm curious is that I'm curious how my gear and spec would hold up with someone whose gear is itemized for PvE. I have a Lumbergh-esque meeting to get to, so I may add more later."

One thing I noticed while actually watching the video that these screenshots (check out the first Mutilate crit!!11//!) were taken from, is that even with 126 hit rating, I still miss quite often on ?? bosses. I'm not sure if I should sacrifice some crit rating for hit through gem itemization, but I may try it.

Regardless, you can see that with raid buffs and proccables, well, proccing (trinkets, Find Weakness, DS3 set bonus, Mongoose, etc.)...the raid DPS output of this build is just outstanding. I'm going to install SWStats tonight so that I can monitor my DPS rating, and tomorrow I'll post some numbers and caps and maybe even some calculations.

Random Monday Musings: Gibbons Syndrome

2007-07-30T12:49:00.000-04:00

It's not that I hate my job, I just hate working.

Now, it'd be hard for anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment to argue that Office Space is not a classic movie. Especially, like me, if you work for a software development company. And even further if the software development company you work for employs a COO who personifies the Bill Lumbergh character. I'm not even remotely exaggerating when I say that this man speaks with the same drawn-out syllabic monotone when addressing his employees. It's like Mike Judge spent a day in my office before writing his script for this movie.

And don't even get me started on how many bosses I have to hear from when there is even the faintest appearance that I may have made a mistake...

...Really, it's a problem of motivation. I get to a point everyday, usually around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, where I just lose all ability to concentrate on anything.

Randomness

Note to self: do NOT drink orange juice because you are thirsty. Further, do NOT drink orange juice because you are thirsty the morning after burning the roof of your mouth on a hot dinner.

I move to standardize the pronunciation of General Tso's Chicken. Is it "so"? "tow"? "tao"? Can't we just call it "All-American Chicken"?

Claymore (torrent here) is a wonderful new anime about well-formed-iron-clad-demon-fighting females. Just in time for me because Naruto is starting to get a bit boring (catch up to the manga already!!).

The customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is usually wrong.

Note to self: Actually make notes to self when thinking of "notes to self" before falling asleep. You will not remember them in the morning.

Google's image search sucks, and Yahoo's is useless since it started using Flickr images (Flickr.com is blocked by our web filter).

Rogueness

Just some more proof that Combat Mutilate, when played properly, is a superior DPS talent specification for raiding. This was up to and including Maiden of Virtue. Note that BRK's combined hunter/pet damage, as usual, is the gold standard. 21.02% to my 18.05%? I'll take it.

The key? I keep Slice and Dice, Rupture (i'll pop a trinket that awards extra attack power just before applying this bleed effect, as it's damage increases accordingly), and 5 charges of Deadly Poisons ticking between Mutilates, timing the usage of each (along with an Eviscerate or Envenom when they are all in mid countdown) to keep Find Weakness from ever completely running out. Also, I never hesitate to vanish during a boss fight in order to wipe aggro and reapply Garrote.

EDIT: Moar proofs. This was from Curator through Chess and 4 shots at Aran. We got him down to 11% on our very first try, and 5% on our last. Damn respawn timers.

Blind: A Viable Form of Crowd Control?

2007-07-13T16:28:00.000-04:00

Blind - Blinds the target, causing it to wander disoriented for up to 10 sec. Any damage caused will remove the effect.

A disorienting effect much like a Hunter's Scattershot or a Mage's Dragonbreath, it does not suffer from diminishing returns. All of us have it. But, what can it be used for?

When soloing, it's easy to tab-target an extra mob and hit blind, giving yourself a few seconds to finish off your primary and regroup. When dueling, it's classic for the blind and bandage combo (pallies can bubble and LoH, so stop crying foul when it happens to you). It's great for arena, to stop that caster when your kick is on cooldown. But what about when running dungeons or in a raid. Could you possible use blind as a form of crowd control? I do.

Especially in heroics, this can save a wipe. If you've got a good set of cooldown timers, you can keep a close watch on your sapped target. Use your discretion. If your party is still fighting off two mobs and your sap only has a few seconds left, run to your target and slap a blind on it. That 10 seconds should give your party plenty of time to finish the active targets and reposition. This is one of many seemingly simple things that will not only impress your running mates, but will also make you more valuable than just for raw dps.

Think about this. You are in heroic Botanica and you're working the 5 mob pulls after Thorngrin the Tender. You can't CC the fleshlashers, which seems OK because they aren't elite, right? You can just burn em down no problem? Wrong. Those suckers hit on leather for 1500-2500 NON crit. And they have alot of health. They need to be either off or pet tanked, and they NEED to go down first because they will destroy your healers. So what about the other three Blood Elves? Not only do they do some wicked AOE that your tank needs to move out of, they have awful aggro issues. If you see one running away from your tank and towards a mage or a priest, tab target and slam that blind. So long as no one touches it, problem solved...for the next 10 seconds anyway. A crude example, but hopefully the point is solid.

So, to answer the question, is Blind a viable form of crowd control? Yes and no. It does have a 3 minute cooldown (thanks blizz for that 1 minute cd tease) without talents, so that is definately a limitation. It's nothing like a hunter's chain trap. Can it be resisted? Yes,and generally, if a mob is immune to poisons, it will be immune to blind. But when it does work (which in my experience is 98% of the time), you've effectively stopped that mob in it's tracks for the next 10 seconds. Try it sometime, especially to lengthen the duration of your only true form of crowd control; sap.

Mutilate for PvE, Part II: Combat

2007-07-09T12:49:00.001-04:00

It's essential. Your role is as clearly defined as any class in the World of Warcraft. You do one thing, and you do it very well. Deal damage. Burst. Sustained. Even damage over time (the lesser known advantage of the Subtlety talents).

Traditionally, rogue dps is thought of in two ways: PvE and PvP. Either you have specialized yourself through talent points to be most effective for instancing and raiding, or battlegrounds and arenas. Can one specialization work for the other's purpose? In a word, yes. I will always believe that regardless of talent spec, what makes any toon worth his or her weight in primal mights is the person at the controls. But, having said that and for the purposes of this post, I want to consider all things normal in that respect.

As far as rogue talent builds go, 15/41/5 (or some general variation of) combat daggers/swords/fists will produce the highest sustained damage over the course of any instance or raid (I dont consider combat maces to be viable for any sort of PvE, since the stun effect will be resisted by most instance and raid bosses...I know, kind of contradictory to the main point of the previous paragraph. Meh, I digress.) The primary talents, such as improved slice and dice, adrenaline rush, combat potency, aggression, and improved [weapon] are specifically designed for a rogue to maximize white damage and increase the base damage of skills. But what if we took the foundation of the combat build and married it to the burst damage of the mutilate build?

A few posts ago, I went through what I feel to be the best distribution of talent points in the assassination tree (for the purposes of raiding and PvE). Here, I want to review how to use your remaining 20 points in the combat tree and how to pull it all together to give you a very potent, very powerful and fun build.

Improved Gouge - 3/3 - Increases the effect duration of your Gouge ability by 1.5 seconds

Why? Because you're going to be grinding alot, and your main attack is still made from behind. This ability gives you a short break in battle to regenerate energy and reposition yourself for that wonderful burst damage. However, there is an interesting contradiction here. Since I am going with vile poisons, I use deadly poisons almost always. Gouge is broken by any damage, including periodic DoTs. Alas, this talent becomes highly useful when I am grinding and aggro an extra mob (ogres, elementals, etc.), and need a bit of extra crowd control.

Improved Sinister Strike - 2/2 - Reduces the cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 5

Two of the first 10 talent points a rogue spends will go here. You wont use this very often, but when you need it, you really need it. If the situation requires you to not or prohibits you from being behind an enemy, well, you get the point.

Improved Slice and Dice - 3/3 - Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 45%

As I so gracefully discussed with poor math, this post, Slice and Dice is really one of your most important finishers. Simply, you attack faster; you hit your target more times per second and you apply more poisons per second. Putting 3 points in this talent means you can keep Slice an Dice up for a longer amount of time while freeing up combo points for other finishers.

Precision - 5/5 - Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 5%

Rogues, well, we miss alot. Enemies can dodge. One thing that I notice alot about rogues (since in neurotic and need to check every rogue I see on armory) is that they don't pay enough attention to their hit rating. I haven't the slightest idea how to calculate it (which means I'm just too lazy to look it up right now), but I know it makes a big difference in your damage dealt. Either way, this talent isn't one that any rogue will argue...you put 5 points in here for the hit, but you really want that Dual Wield Specialization...

Dual Wield Specialization - 5/5 - Increases the damage done by your offhand weapon by 50%

Remember, this is a Mutilate build intended for PvE situations. It's the beauty of burst damage with all the benefits of sustained dps, and this talent is where it all comes together. As a rule, offhand weapon damage is reduced by 50%. With this talent, that becomes 25%. Simple enough, right? Right. White damage, normalized. Check. But something that is largely unknown is that this talent also increases your offhand Mutilate damage. Don't believe me? Allow me to plagiarize: "Previously, the Mutilate Bonus Damage was listed as being reduced by the offhand penalty. However, it is in fact not reduced by the offhand penalty. Also, not only is the bonus damage not reduced, 5/5 DW Specialization increases it by 50%. This means the offhand bonus ends up being 101 if you don't have DW Specialization, and 151.5 if you have 5/5 DW Specialization." Check out the calculation here. Is it as much of an increase as Opportunity? No, not at first glance. At least not to Mutilate. But Opportunity does nothing for your offhand. And in a long instance or raid, your white damage is more vaulable than your burst damage.

Endurance - 2/2 - Reduces the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 1.5 minutes

Not my favorite cooldown reduction talent. I like Camouflage better, and Elusiveness the most. But well, we're not in the Subtlety tree at all...so this will do. I do use evasion quite often when grinding, just to increase my survivability, so having it's cooldown reduced is nice. The main purpose for putting two points here is to reach Dual Wield Spec. It's not going to make or break the build if you choose to put two points in Improved Sprint, or even split 1 point to each.

I wish I had more time today to bring it all together, but I think I could take a whole entire post just for that. There is such a ridiculously high rate of combo point generation with this build that you really need to pay attention to your energy ticks and time your finishers to keep Find Weakness up as much as possible. Until next time, if anyone has experience with this build and wants to share their own findings, I'd love to hear them.

ZOMG my pooter > urs

2007-07-06T13:51:00.000-04:00

It's a beaut. After my old GeForce 7900 decided to burn out last night...this is my new baby.

PNY nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS

This is long overdue, as my previous card was *GASP* AGP.

I really should upgrade my cpu again, even though my AMD64 3500 still runs super awesome. Maybe a newer mobo than this too?

I dunno, it can get costly...but who cares I can just go grind some primals to make up for it.

Uh, er, I mean...work a few extra hours.

Whatever.

The Ultimate Chopper! A Theorycraft? BAH!

2007-07-05T14:31:00.000-04:00

Chop! Grate! Mince! Crush! Grind! Whip! Puree!

You've seen this guy before. Hes one of the most famous
infomercial hosts in television history (although this guy is gaining fast). His name is Chef Tony, and he sells the Ultimate Chopper.

ZOMGWTFBBQ am I talking about? STFU, k?1! YOU, silly rogue. Ask yourself, how often do you use slice and dice? Yeah, yeah, I know. Even a noob rogue knows this should be one of his or her most oft used abilities. But do you really, I mean really, know how important it is to your overall dps output? Take a look at these, a very simple set of calculations to understand the mechanics of the skill.

First, your overall dps is determined by a combination of your main hand damage and your off hand damage. Take a look at the damage tooltip for your melee stats. In my case, 349.5 damage per second. In other words, if I began attacking a "paper-doll" without using any specials, over the course of 1 minute I should do 20,970 points of damage. Right? Well, not really. Rogues do miss quite a bit, and our targets often dodge our attacks...and then there are glancing blows. But then, hmmm...what about my 23.38% chance to crit? And uh, well...ok I lied. It's not really all that accurate to combine both the dps ratings for each hand into one. There are entirely too many circumstantial modifiers for me to try and make a realistic calculation. But the numbers look pretty, so why not just for arguments sake?

OK, so, back to that 349.5 number. Simple enough, 201.2 + 148.3. Any idea how much of an increase slice and dice adds? Well, itd be better to think of slice and dice as addition by subtraction. That is, from your attack speed. By 30%. My main hand dagger goes from 1.80 to 1.38, my off hand from 1.50 to 1.15. Here comes the fun stuff.

In order to figure the damage per second of either main or offhand, you first need to take the average between their respective minimum and maximum (which is affected by attack power and stuff, I just dont feel like looking it up).

Main Hand = ([394 + 330]/2)/1.80, or, 201.1, uh, 201.2 (no idea why the tooltip doesn't match).
Off Hand = ([241 + 204]/2)/1.50, or, 148.3.
201.2 + 148.3 = 349.5

At rank 2, Slice and Dice reduces attack speed by 30%.
1.80/(1+0.3) = 1.38.
1.50 /(1+0.3) = 1.15.

Now...
Main Hand = ([394 + 330]/2)/1.38, or, 262.3.
Off Hand = ([241 + 204]/2)/1.15, or, 193.4.

262.3 + 193.9 = 455.7.

455.7 - 349.5 = 106.2

What does this all mean? I am gimping myself one hundred six and two-tenths (106.2) points of damage for every second that I do not have Slice and Dice up.

Over one minute? 6,372.

Remeber 20,970? Try 27,342.

Now, do this using your own numbers, and ask yourself, "Do I pay enough attention to Slice and Dice?".

Note: The above calculations and statements are made with the intention to apply mostly to instances and raids.
Dislcaimer: Due to the author's mathematical ignorance, the above calculations are subject to be completely wrong. Well, this came true, as GSH kindly pointed out. I adjusted my terrible calculations and viola...I fail.

Mutilate for PvE, Part I: Assassination

2007-07-02T14:23:00.000-04:00

Playing a PvE rogue isn't really all that complicated. Your job is simple. Stealth around, stun some stuff, incapacitate some more stuff, and dump large amounts of dps onto the main target (yay for button spamming! anyone see my drinking bird?) We even have an easy button for controlling our aggro.

Mastery of the PvE rogue, however, is a different story. Have I? Absolutely not. Hell, I've only been playing the game for just about a year. But when I get into something, I really get into it. It's not just about progression and getting epic gear; for me, it's about the entire experience. I thrive on learning how to specialize my toon through his talent trees and execute skill combinations that maximize what he does best: deal damage. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be reviewing some of the most popular rogue builds through actual game tested results. I'm not much of a theorycrafter, but I'll try and add some calculations in as well.

First, lets take a look at my current build: 41/20/0. This build is also known as Combat Mutilate or Mutilate PvE.

Assassination
Malice - 5/5 - Increases your crit chance by 5%
Regardless of your build, you are putting 5 points in this talent. Period.

Ruthlessness - 3/3 - Gives your finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combo point to your target
One of the biggest advantages to the talents in the assassination tree is combo point generation, and it starts here. Six out of ten times, when using one of your finishers and wiping your combo points clean, you get to start your next step of points with a base of one.

Murder - 2/2 - Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin targets by 2%
Two percent. ALL damage. DoTs, poisons, white, crit...all of it. In my very humble opinion, this is a no-brainer. Agreed, it's not a true base damage modifier because it leaves out Elementals, Demons, and Undead. Screw it. I'll take 2% increased damage to four out of the seven mob types any day of the week.

Relentless Strikes - 1/1 - Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy
Another automatic, especially with this build. As you'll see in a bit with Seal Fate, combo points are a dime a dozen, so expect to often see SCT pop this beautiful little message on your screen "+25 Energy (Relentless Strikes) ".

Lethality - 5/5 - Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv, and Hemorrhage abilities by 30%
A source of mild debate for traditional Combat Dagger builds (how many points to put into this talent versus Opportunity), there is no discussion here. A critical hit for 1000 damage is modified and increased to 1300.

Vile Poisons - 5/5 - Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom ability by 20% and gives your poisons an additional 40% chance to resist dispel effects
This is one of my favorite talents in the assassination tree. First, the 20% damage increase to poisons is outstanding. Poisons are a staple in the rogue diet of dps, so a base modifier is more than welcome:

Deadly Poison - 1 charge ticks damage over time for 12 seconds, for 180 damage total. This effect can stack up to 5 times, for essentially 900 points of damage. With this talent, 180 becomes 216, and 900 ramps up to 1080. With 5 charges, you will see about 300 damage per tick.
Instant Poison - Each strike from the applied weapon has a 20% chance to inflict the target with 146 to 194 nature damage. Add 20% and it becomes 175 - 232. Simple enough, right? It's even better when you consider Shiv, an instant offhand attack which automatically applies to the target poison that has been coated on the offhand weapon...more on that later.
Envenom - This finisher is certainly an alternative and in some cases a replacement for Eviscerate. Where eviscerate is physical damage and is mitigated by armor, envenom deals nature damage (but can be resisted or diminished). Consuming the full damage per charge of deadly poison per combo point (5 charges and 3 combo points with consume 3 charges and all combo points, where 3 charges and 5 combo points will consume 3 charges and all combo points). The formula for this skill reads "5 doses: (900+AP*0.15) damage". I have 1560 attack power. So, (900+[1560*.15]) = 1134. Add 20%, like the talent tooltip reads, and you get 1360. Multiply by 2 for a critical hit, and you have 2721. Hmm, how can I then explain that screen shot? Patience...patience. Is envenom better than eviscerate? I think so, yes. I'm sure some super theorycrafter out there can prove me wrong with all sorts of calculations and whatnot, but I see what I see...and 3k+ crits from envenom are just too pretty to pass up.

Cold Blood - 1/1 - When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100%
Please. Cmon, it's a guaranteed critical hit. On a 3 minute cool down. Putting one point in this talent isn't mandatory. It's not required. Go ahead, skip it. I dare you.

Improved Kidney Shot - 3/3 - While affected by your Kidney Shot ability, target receives an additional 9% damage from all sources
Huntards have Ferocious Inspiration, rogues have this. It's the closest we get to a party buff (I have ideas, but am open to suggestions...future post? Something like battleshout that increases dodge rating?). At 5 points (generated easily with the entirety of this build), the duration is 6 seconds; 6 seconds where not only is the entire party/raid dealing 9% extra damage, but the mob is stunned and dealing none. Put three points here, and don't look back.

Quick Recovery - 2/2 - All healing effects on you are increased by 20%. In addition, your finishing moves cost 80% less energy when they fail to hit
Want to give your healers a surprise? Grab this talent and don't tell them you did. Seriously, this is a wonderful survivability talent, especially in heroics. Your bandages go from 425 healing per tick to 510. Priest and druid HoTs soar. Add a blessing of light (stop it already with the selfish demands for blessing of might, a dead rogue does o dps), and your healers will WANT to heal you, if nothing more than to pad their healing meter numbers. If you can think of an argument NOT to put any points in this talent, I'd love to ignore them.

Seal Fate - 5/5 - Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point
Where Ruthlessness starts, Seal Fate finishes. An Assassination rogue deals in two absolutes (no, I'm not suggesting we are Sith): high burst-type dps and combo point generation. If hot and heavy damage is your butter, this is your bread. With 5 points in this talent, every time one of your combo point generating abilities crit, you get an extra point. Not sometimes, not a chance, not if then this or that. If you are opening with cheap shot, timing your attack (if you don't have an energy ticker on your HUD, get one) properly, and slamming a quick Mutilate...that's 4-5 combo points in the first couple of seconds entering battle.

Vigor - 1/1 - Increases your maximum Energy by 10
If you are this far into Assassination, you're taking this talent. Just like that, with one click of your mouse, you are blessed with 10 extra base energy. Once upon a time, there was a wonderful little set of tiered gear that also gave you an energy increase of 10. 120 energy? Will we ever see this again?

Deadened Nerves - 2/5 - Decreases all physical damage taken by 2%
OK. I'll probably take a bit of flack for this one. This is somewhat of a filler for me. I could have put two points in Improved Poisons. Do I really need 4% increased chance to apply poisons? Maybe. I haven't had a problem with my application rate so far, but again, im no theorycrafter. Master Poisoner? I'm not on a PvP realm, and I don't do arenas or battelgrounds often enough...so no thanks. Fleet Footed? Same story. I chose put a couple points in Deadened Nerves because I like the idea of taking a little less damage. Flame on.

Find Weakness - 5/5 - Your finishing moves increase the damage of all offensive abilities by 10% for 10 seconds
Remember that screenshot? Scroll up a bit. My Envenom calculation didnt quite match up to the game tested results. Why? I didn't factor in that Find Weakness was up. 10% increased damage for 10 seconds. Once again, there is no argument with this talent. You are taking it, with 5 points and a tequila chaser. Think about it...5 point Improved Kidney Shot + Find Weakness = 19% increase to ALL of your damage for 6 seconds. Know your finishers (Slice and Dice, Rupture, Envenom, Eviscerate, Kidney Shot, etc.), get yourself a nice timer/countdown mod, and do whatever you can to keep this beast going. Don't gimp yourself.

Mutilate - 1/1 - Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional 101 with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against poisoned targets. Must be behind target. Awards 2 combo points

Old-schoolers will argue this is not a worthy 41 point talent. They'll say that Backstab does more damage based on their crafting of theories and calculations. Funny, does backstab give you two combo points or one, or even three when it crits (Mutilate will not give you 4 points if both hands crit)? I didn't think so. See that up there? What does that add up to...hold on let me get my calc...u...lator. *Presses some buttons*. 3063. Fully raid buffed with the same gear, in Karazhan, the highest my backstab ever reached was 1900. Factor in damage modifiers from this tree, even 19% increased damage only raises that to 2261. Either way, I'll let the picture speak for me. Did I forget to mention that this by far, without a doubt, the second most fun ability we have. Number 1? Shadowstep.../sigh, another place and time. Another fun fact about Mutilate: Offhand damage is NOT affected by the duel-wield penalty; in other words, the full damage of your offhand weapon is applied without the 50% reduction (25% with talents).

EDIT: In fact, if you do have dual wield spec, the offhand damage is actually increased

Review
Again and again, I will say that I am NOT a theorycrafter. For as many calculations as I try and do, I feel that I get better information from game tested results. It's just my way. I'm not the best rogue out there, and I'm certainly not the most informed about my class and it's abilities.

Next up, Part Deux: Combat.

Mount My Macro

2007-06-30T12:46:00.000-04:00

Ever get annoyed that you can't use the same key binding for your flying mount and your regular mount? Yeah, me too. Ever accidentally dismount while in mid flight and plunge helplessly into the abyss? Yeah, me too. Solution? Macro! I'd been wondering about this for a while, so I decided to look it up on wowwiki.com. Here it is, plain as day.

#showtooltip

/stopmacro [flying]

/use [outdoors,nomounted,flyable] Swift Red Gryphon; [outdoors,nomounted] Black War Ram

/dismount [mounted]

Let's take a look at the pieces, just so you can understand what is going on.

#showtooltip

A very simple variable to any macro. For this application, it is going to show the tooltip for either of your mounts, depending on how the rest of the macro interprets your surroundings.

When in Ironforge, it will show the tooltip for my Black War Ram. When in Shattrath, it will show the tooltip for my Swift Red Gryphon.

/stopmacro [flying]

Simple enough. If you are flying, the macro will not execute. I actually removed this from my version because I often do a low fly-by of a mob I want to kill or a vein I want to mine, and enjoy trying to time my dismount so that I land as close as possible.

/use [outdoors,nomounted,flyable] Swift Red Gryphon; [outdoors,nomounted] Black War Ram

The use command is one of the most common among macro aficionados. It's simple, effective, and applies to just about everything. Within the brackets (those left and right square looking thingys) are what we software engineers* like to call "variables" (var-EE-ah-bulls). The only change you need to make here is to replace the red text with the name of your specific mount. To translate for the layperson, this line of the macro says " If I am outdoors, not currently mounted, and in a zone where flyable mounts are allowed, use the Swift Red Gryphon; Otherwise, if I am outdoors and not mounted, use the Black War Ram.

/dismount [mounted]

Finally, the last piece. At first I forgot to put this in, and wondered why the key to which I bound this macro wasn't dismounting me.

And there it is! A very simple, yet extremely time saving macro that anyone and everyone can use. Of course, that is...if you are level 70 and have a flying mount.

*I'm not actually a software engineer anymore...I just work with em and tell em what to do

...in the beginning...

2007-06-29T13:47:00.000-04:00

A good hunt(ard)er friend of mine, BRK, has been publishing a very interesting weblog for, oh, the last 6 or 7 months. Lunacy, schizophrenia, raving rants, theorycrafting, trolling, and flaming...all elements that, agree with the subject matter or not, create a readable and extremely entertaining bit of online fodder.

BRK and I met almost a year ago when three of my real life friends (and work colleagues), convinced me to stop wasting my evenings owning noobs in Halo 2 and start pawn1ng n00bZ in the lands of Azeroth. I'd played my fair share of fantasy RPG's before (read: Neverwinter Nights, Diablo 2, etc.), but never an MMO. I was in for a surprise.

What type of character should I choose (I had no idea you don't "choose" a "character", you "roll" a "toon")? Let's see...hmm...what is there to choose from. Are there wizards? Mages, warlocks. Hmm, paladins? Yeah, but they are a sonova to level. Warriors? Yep. Monks? Whats? Ninjas? Lollercoaster, try a rogue. So a night elf rogue I cho- er, rolled.

Hello level 2, goodbye social life. I found myself rushing home from work to make the deadmines run, because I REALLY wanted another piece of Defias Leather. I was wasting hours at work perusing thottbot for item upgrades and quest hints and tips. Mods? What are those? OMG http://www.curse-gaming.com/ will you marry me? 20 days, 32 hours, and 15 minutes of game play later, I hit level 60 (ok I completely made that up because everyone knows it takes alot longer than that to max your first charac- er, toon).

I was hooked, I was addicted, there was nothing I wanted to do more than play my stealthy, sneaky, quest-objective-stealing, backstabbing rogue. Until, that is, I saw a Hanzo Sword up on the auction house. Combat sword spec, here we come! Oh the wonders of spamming sinister strike until Scrolling Combat Text jumped onto my screen screaming, "5 points, FINISH HIM!" Uldaman (/vomit), Mauradon (/slitwrist), Dire Maul (the new DM), BRD, and LBRS all experienced my button mashing style: 2222222 3, 22222222 3, 222222...priest died? /vanish (something I do to this day). It wasnt until UBRS that I really started learning how to use my rogue to be more than a dps machine, but that is for a different post and time.

Back to BRK and the history of madness that has been our gaming relationship. He was already level 60 when I joined the guild, spending countless hours in Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, and Warsong Gulch; grinding his way through honor to get the epic gear he swore he'd never see from raiding. In fact, he was the hunter class officer, a favorite whipping boy of the ruthless, redheaded GM. Hobbesburger anyone?

Eventually we were two pieces of a great UBRS group, turning it to farm status when the rest of the server was transitioning from Zul'Gurub and Molten Core to AQ40 and Blackwing Lair. Sure we were a bit late, but we were all really good friends and we had a blast (except for when the hunter class second was busy wiping the raid).

As go the cycle of guilds, the one I was born into was eventually no more, and my real life friends and I moved to a different server. Not more than a few weeks ago (and shortly before that reunited with the aformentioned redheaded devil of a priest), I was reunited with the now famous BRK. We 6 (priest, priest, druid, warrior, rogue, hunter) form one of the most dysfunctional, elite groups youll ever meet. No instance, raid, heroic, or offensive guildname can stand in our way!

Suffice to say, reading BRK's blog for so long has got me thinking. Hunters need help. This much is not debatable, and BRK provides some of the best hunter advice on the internet. But what about rogues? I consider myself an expert, having played all of the different combinations of all the available trees and specs. But really, how hard can it be to sneak around unseen, executing saps, stuns and high end dps?

...next up: why using a pvp spec for end game raiding is better than you think.

Serenity Now

2007-06-27T12:06:00.000-04:00

/cast Vanish