out

I have quit WoW. There, I've said it.

Thanks for all the fun times, the friends and the laughs. I have a lot of good memories.

I realised that I was only playing for two reasons: the social aspect and an addiction to improving Cat's gear. The latter is obviously a fruitless pursuit in the big scheme of things, and the former was great but it was taking me away from social time with my own family. It came to a head when I caught myself thinking "damn, I can't spend time with the missus tonight, I have to raid".

All the best to everyone. I'll leave this blog up for nostalgia reasons, and out of some vain hope that one of my dribbly rants might help someone with something roguey.

roguecraft spreadsheet

Just going through updating Cat's details in the spreadsheet, thought I'd note things as I went. It's a lovely piece of work. However, I've noted a few things just in case Vulajin is reading (yeah right!):

• Glyphs of Mutilate and Hunger for Blood aren't included
• There is no way to add a scope to a ranged weapon (not that it affects DPS)
• Few Ulduar items

About here I gave up. Meh.

However shortly afterwards I found Mavanas's DPS Simulation sheet and it has the bonus of being user-modifyable, including adding missing gear items. It's not entirely intuitive (especially on gems and slot bonuses) but it's the goods for now.

So I discovered a few things:

• With my current stats (close to the PHC at 302 hit, and expertise capped) choice of food makes no real difference. Fish Feast still works out slightly (0.5%) ahead. However, the sheet has no facility for +40 crit food, which I'd be interested in trying out.
  
• Talent swaps: 2/2 Murder = 6044. 2/2 Quick Recovery = 5818. Sticking with Murder.
• Talent swaps: 3/3 Master Poisoner = 6044. 3/3 Turn The Tables = 6012. Sticking with MP.
• Grinding Hodir rep to upgrade my shoulder enchant is a net DPS increase of about 30 DPS. Not exactly a huge priority, given the amount of effort required.
  

Next I'll try swapping in +agi gems in place of the current +AP/+Stams and see what happens. Rumour is that +agi is the shizzle. I also want to see if I have some swapsie gear that I can use to reduce my expertise, currently at 36, and what effect this will have.

looking to the stars

I want star ratings on my achievements.

Allow me to explain.

At my level - i.e. an Ulduar- and Naxx-geared endgame PvE 80 - there are certain achievements that are at my level, certain ones that are just below, and some that are trivial. Much of the QQ from the hardcore comes from the fact that post-nerf, muppets can get the same achievement as them and there's no way for them to lord it over the plebs other than with the date of the achievement, which depends on everyone knowing that a certain fight was nerfed on a certain date.

My solution (as you might now have guessed): star ratings.

If I get an achievement in current content (i.e. currently, content introduced in 3.1) it gets rated 3 stars. So Ulduar on any mode and Emalon, but not Naxx or Archavon. I achieved it before it was deprecated somewhat by new content. 3 stars.

If I get it after a certain point, say a major content patch (n.n level) it's 2 stars. So it's still legitimately difficult content, but you weren't in that top end that did it when it was fresh. Heroics, Naxx, etc. Maybe toons 70-79 could stil get 2-stars for non-heroic 5 mans.

If I get it after it became trivial, 1 star. Non-heroic 5-mans (for toons at 80), Classic and BC achievements, etc.

Now 3.2 comes out, and suddenly Ulduar achievements drop to 2-star with Naxx and the rest. Coliseum acheivements are the only 3-stars available, and they will only be 3-star until patch 3.3.

Of course there are always issues. A normal WotLK 5-man is challenging for 5 toons 70-79. It's trivial with 4 80s and a single 70. How should that be handled? I suggest that Blizz looks at the maximum star rating that would have been awarded if no party/raid members had already achieved it. So if you bring a single 80 into that non-heroic 5-man, everyone who doesn't already have the achievement gets a 1-star, not a 2-star. Of course that's not perfect, but it's a start.

Do you think that will address some of the legitimate recognition issues that the really hardworking players have? Amaze me with your boundless ability to find QQ.

Thorim

... down in 25 man after 14 attempts.

Shagged.

*edit*

OK it's the next morning now and I'm reflecting on last night's guild first drop of Thorim. It's an infuriating fight as it can be so dependent on individuals. Neither WoWWiki nor Encrypted Text offer much in the way of useful strategic advice either, so I will try to explain things from the rogue perspective. (please note: I do generally find Chase Christian's Encrypted Text very useful, and I have a great deal of respect for his knowledge and contribution to the rogue community, but I just don't find that Rogue in Ulduar series very useful. Feel free to disagree with me.)

In the first part of the fight, you run in en masse and take out 6 mobs in the arena while Thorim watches. This is dead easy. Target the healer, then the big worm, then AoE the others. Don't pull aggro, DPS, done.

The next part is arguably the hardest. The raid will split in two - one group heading off down the tunnel to get to Thorim, and the remainder staying in the arena to take down the spectators who jump into the fight. Rogues will generally remain in the arena and not be part of the tunnel group, due to the extreme usefulness of Dismantle and Kick for the Dark Rune Champions and Dark Rune Evokers.

As a rogue, your priorities are the Champions, then the Evokers. One of each will run into the group about every 25 seconds (on 25 man). That means that with two rogues you can Dismantle two in every three Champions, and with three rogues every Champion can be Dismantled. You need to do this because the Champion's Whirlwind is a healer-killer (and the healers can't stand back due to the charged orbs - everyone is in the middle). The Champions usually start their Whirlwind about 3-5 seconds after engaging in melee, so the 3 second mark is the right time to Dismantle them.

I found that Dismantle does not trigger if someone has already used theirs on that mob, so don't stress too much about setting up a rotation (we did it with 3 rogues). If they do get off a non-Dismantled Whirlwind, try Kick. I had mixed success with Kick - sometimes it seemed to work and others it didn't. Same with Feint - sometimes it seems to reduce damage from the Whirlwind and others not. Burn down the Champions as fast as possible, ideally within the 10 second window of Dismantle, but as each has 300k HP that's not an easy task. A combat rogue specced for Throwing Specialization is invaluable here, and I would say almost a necessity for the FoK interrupts on the Evokers.

Aggro is a big issue in the arena. There are lots of mobs streaming in and it is very busy for the tanks. Help out where you can by tricking the Champions onto your designated Champion tank but be very careful when tricks is on cooldown. If you cop a Mortal Strike, you'll die. If you're like me, you'll cop one very early in what turned out to be a near miss attempt, and realise that if you hadn't died, your DPS would have been the difference between a 4% wipe and a win. Not a nice thought.

So you've got the Champions figured out. Whenever possible, you need to help with interrupts on the Evokers. Both Runic Lightning and Runic Mending need to be suppressed wherever possible.

I find /target macros very useful in this fight as there are a LOT of mobs and picking out the Evokers and Champions can be hard. Some suggest using an /assist macro, but I think that the tanks are going to be switching targets too often for this to be a viable strategy. I have one /target macro for each type, and simply keep an eye on the edge of the arena waiting for one to run in, face it, and hit the macro to target. Don't just spam it, because you will target Champions and Evokers in the bleachers who haven't joined the fight yet.

Mutilate rogues may find that they are way down the meters on this phase. It seems to be a particular mechanic, with waves of tough trash, that the fights are too long for our nice opening burst to make too much difference, but too short to be able to reliably keep SnD and HfB up. Combat rogues own Thorim's arena.

So you do the arena for some time while the other group fights their way to Thorim. If you lose anyone in the arena, it will start to overwhelm you and you won't last long enough for the other group to bring Thorim down. Stay alive, take care of the Champions and Evokers, and clean the last of the adds down when Thorim jumps down. Then it's time for the final phase.

Aggro shouldn't be a problem in the final phase, but use Vanish offensively anyway. Depending on your raid makeup, you should consider trading tricks with another rogue to maximise DPS to beat the enrage timer; however if you find that DPS with no threat wipe ability (e.g. Shadow Priests) are having to back off, give your tank a hand.

Two of Thorim's abilities will kill you very quickly. Lightning Charge is relatively easy to see and avoid - one of the orbs will start to zap Thorim with lightning, and you need to stay out of a 60 degree cone around the lightning stream. Or you will die. It can be cloaked if you get caught.

The other is Chain Lightning, which chains up to 8 times. If my math is correct, the 50% increased damage on each chain means that if you're 8th in the chain, you'll take between 79k and 92k damage. One shot much? You don't want to be more than fourth in that chain or it's crispy rogue for Thorim's post-wipe snack. So how do you avoid it? You don't, but you can minimise it same as you did on KT. Put lucky charms on two melee DPS, and have them at 4 o'clock and 8'oclock with the tank at 12 o'clock. Split the melee stacking on those two marked melee. Stay out of range (set DBM /range to 11 yards) of the other stack and the tank, and you shouldn't have more than 4 within range of an arc. If your group is very melee heavy, you're in trouble. The 5th arc is 23-27k.

Of course it will be chaos during the regular Lightning Charges, when you have to abandon your lovely 12-4-8 triangle and avoid the lightning cone. But as soon as that's done, go back to your stack. It's tough on melee. Real tough. And someone else's positioning mistake can and will cost you your life.

Good luck my roguely friends.

the top 1%?

Interesting observation tonight: WoWRanked has Cat as rank 102,928 for gear in the world.

If there are 12 million accounts, and each has on average just one toon over level 10, that's well into the top 1% for gear.

In the world.

That kinda made me feel good. Then I looked at my brother-in-law's rogue. Ranked 7,455. In the world.

Bubble: burst.

*EDIT*

But then we dropped Hodir again, and Freya 25 for the first time tonight (25/6). And what did Hodir give up? The Conqueror's Terrorblade Breastplate. Which catapulted me to 13th on the guild DPS roster (the 3rd highest rogue) and 77,668 on WoWRanked.

In the world.

Oh and did I mention my spot on the Hodir meter? #1 for the first time ever in a guild progression raid. 6k DPS baby.

Hodir down

25 man Hodir down in an epic 4-wipe attempt. We lost to the enrage timer twice and had 2 quick wipes but he went down with about 10 seconds to spare on the final attempt.

I love that fight.

Even better: I was crushing the meters tonight. I mean crushing. I don't for a minute believe that pure DPS is the only measure of a rogue, but it is certainly high on the list. I was on the ball, wasn't dying, and everything was going in slow motion. I was spotting who was going to get iceblocked on Hodir while scouting for a sunbeam and shooting and standing on the snow pile; I only got iceblocked once due to a late knockback from a cave-in hidden under a bunch of spell effects; I was swapping my tricks to the highest DPS that had a safe margin on Omen; I was just on the ball tonight. I love it when that happens.

A look at gear post 3.2 from the grinder's POV

A quick look at the best PvE gear available in 3.2 from EoC/V/H plus crafted and Argent Tournament rewards (i.e. totally available from 5 mans and grinding, with no 10-man or 25-man or arena rating required) from a rogue perspective:

- ilvl 213 helm
- ilvl 226 3rd best in slot neck (3rd only to items available on Freya and Vezax hard modes)
- T7.5 ilvl 213 shoulders
- 2nd best in slot ilvl 226 chest, 2nd only to item from Thorium hard mode
- 2nd best in slot ilvl 226 belt, 2nd only to item from Yoggy hard mode
- 4th best in slot ilvl 226 legs, next to items from Uld25
- best in slot ilvl 226 boots from leatherworking, or ilvl 213 boots from emblems
- ilvl 213 bracers
- ilvl 226 gloves
- ilvl 213/200 rings
- ilvl 200 trinkets
- ilvl 213 cloak
- ilvl 200 thrown weapon
- ilvl 200 weapons for pretty much every major spec

So it is possible, without even considering what gear might be available in 3.2 or for EoT, to completely deck out a rogue in ilvl 200 or better PvE epics without ever doing 10 man, 25 man or arena - completely from grinding "heroic" 5 mans, gold and tournament dailies. Some of those items are 3rd, 2nd or best currently in slot. I suspect other classes are the same.

3.2 QQ

Well, what a stink. The 3.2 PTR patch notes have put the cat amongst the pigeons with regard to the new Tier 9 of PvE gear, the associated Emblems of Triumph and the changes to 5-mans which mean that you can now get the new top-end emblems from running daily 5-mans.

OK raiders, cease foaming at the mouth now. Take a deep breath.

I'm all for casuals. Hell, I'm a casual by most definitions - I have 1-2 largely uninterrupted approved WoW nights a week (which I use for raiding) and otherwise it's on a no-commitment, as-available basis. And yes, WoW is a game dominated by casuals.

But - and it's a big but - I don't believe participation trophies should be the same size as the winner's trophy. I believe in the beauty of Zipf's Law which is, essentially, that the glory of being #1 is exponentially bigger than the glory of being #2, and so on down the chain. Life is competitive, and competition is healthy. WoW reflects life in that only the most talented and dedicated people who persistently attempt the most challenging content (should) get the best rewards.

I am not #1 in WoW. Nor do I have the time or dedication to be so (though I like to think I have the skill, or at least the ability to develop the skill). However, I believe that my gear accurately reflects my circumstances - when someone sees my T7.5 shoulders, they know I've been doing Nax25. When someone sees my dual Mongoose, they know I'm serious about my spec but don't have the time to get the money for dual Berserking. When they see my neck piece, they know without doubt that I have dropped 19 bosses in Ulduar25, and/or know my way around Emalon pretty well.

Blizzard, in their increasing desperation to retain their flattening user base, are resorting to participationism. There's a back door to the grand finals, if you're prepared to play enough little league. But as most people know, you may get to the grand final that way, but when you start to play it doesn't matter how shiny your uniform is. You're going to die in the fire. And when you stand on the podium to collect your runner-up trophy, you'll have a hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach and you'll feel like a fraud.

Apparently the idea is that a) people will go back into heroics, and b) more people can see the endgame content. Well let's see.

The first is probably accurate, but it will be at the expense of Ulduar. In half an hour with four other people, you can faceroll 5 EoC and 2 EoT from H Nexus if it's the daily. Follow up with H VH and H CoS and it's EoC city within another hour. Why would you get 24 other people and spend twice the time getting past Iron Council for 5 EoC and no EoT? The only people that will be running Ulduar are the hardcore raiders, for item drops that they can't buy with welfare emblems, to gear up for Coliseum. Blizz are actively encouraging grinding rather than attempting hard content. How disappointing.

The second: an unskilled raiding group will still fail on every fight in Nax, even in T9 welfare epics. Never mind (presumably) the Coliseum. Gear is only one part of the equation, and I suspect it won't affect the numbers of people dropping KT at all.

Any guild that relies on pugs to make up a 25 man (such as, often, ours) is going to have a nightmare time with the abundance of notionally geared folks in LFG. Expect more achievement linking, more assessment, less trust. Guilds that use pugs must establish a whitelist of known good pugs to raid with and find a way to integrate them into their loot system, or they will ruin raid nights with trial and error pugging. If you're a habitual pug, you'd better establish a rep with a number of guilds, because nobody's going to trust your gear anymore.

That said, gear is definitely one factor that can prevent an otherwise decent raider from seeing the content they crave, and the new system will help alts.

I'm not going to say that it's necessarily bad, because there will be pros and cons. I guess the meritocrat in me dislikes grind-based backdoors. I'm going to think some more and try to be a bit more Zen about the whole thing.

5k

Ignis the Furnace Master. 5027.7 DPS.

Strut.

Downed up to Kolo tonight in Uld25 and followed up with H VoA. The very tasty Proto-hide Leggings and Deadly Gladiator's Leather Tunic dropped for me. Also bought the Broach of the Wailing Night with vadges. 16th ranked guild DPS now.

more lewts

25 man Nax clear (I almost typed Kara there...): Murder for my PvP offhand, Valorous Bonescythe Helmet to upgrade my T7, and Belt of the Tortured which was a nice upgrade. Stats were OK. Not happy at all with my deaths on Heigan and Patchwerk (opened too early with a mis-hit TotT and copped a Hateful Strike), but it was otherwise smooth; one-shotting everything (except one wipe on Gothik as the dead side was undermanned) in 4 hours.

I was actually pleasantly surprised at the benefits of some PvP practice for raiding. During the Gothik wipe, as we were getting overwhelmed on the dead side, I was running about with tricked fans trying to pull adds off the healers. At one point I must have done a fan too many, and ended up 1v1 with a big DK. Now with evasion and vanish already on CD (as I say, we were struggling undermanned), normally I would have been a bloody mess by now, but my PvP training kicked in and I twitch-hit Dismantle and Blinded another that was running loose. Not any great achievement, but they were reflexes that had degraded over a long time of hardly needing them in raids, and all it took was a bit of PvP to sharpen them again.

Current plan is to get everything over ilvl 213: that means Nax25, EoE10/25, OS10, OS25+2 and Ulduar. All that remains at ilvl 200 are my neck, chest, one ring, one trinket and cloak. Also working on Heirloom shoulders for Merry and PvP set by grinding Wintergrasp. Alarm set!

Uld25

4 new bosses (for me) in Ulduar 25 last night: Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Crazy Cat Lady and Hodir (who we called after 3 attempts).

Iron Council was a bit of a poop as I died in the fire. I was doing my best to run out of the big circle, but forgot to cloak and paid the price. Nuts.

Kologarn finally went smooth as butter for me. The only other time I've seen him was in 10 man and we had a wipefest, so it was a nice relief to one-shot him, especially as I pulled 4.3k DPS and didn't run myself off the edge. Sexah.

Auriaya was... confusing. I had read up on Encrypted Text, but soon found that it didn't really cover the sort of detail that one really needs on the first attempt. It was basically a mess of "stand in front" and "DPS the add" over vent, and at some point I died. That said, after a brez I still managed to punch out a useful, if not overly respectable, 3k. I'm going to need to review the logs and the detailed fight notes to figure that one out.

Hodir is my new favourite fight. for those of you who haven't done it, it is MENTAL. 8 minutes of crazy running about and trying to not die. You really have to have your head on a swivel - people getting iceblocked that need to be freed, icicles to stay away from, big icicles to initially stay out of then go into, buffs to go into, roots, AoE... it has it all. I was actually really happy with my performance on Hodir - 4.6k averaged over the 3 attempts, and a 3rd on the meter 4.9k on the final attempt. By my reckoning the raid needs 68kdps total to beat the enrage, which is about 4k each assuming 17 DPS toons. In the end the enrage timer beat us, though we had him to about 5%. Tonight, big guy... tonight...

My gloves and boots have hitherto been impossible to replace, being my last two blues. Guess what - Gloves of the Stonereaper dropped for me on cat lady and I understand I'm to be ticketed the Runed Ironhide Boots from Iron Council. How bout that - now my two best items, upgrading blues. And both from fights that I died on. Must be something in that... I say to you: woot.

I also finally got around to clearing VoA25. No loot though, which is a shame as I'm keen for my PvP gear to drop now.

*Edit* I got the boots thanks to Talendos's generosity. Nice one mate, I owe you an EPGP priority. I'm now up to 21 on the guild's DPS list (29th overall) which, with alts and inactive raiders, means I'll rarely be unable to get into the 25 mans. Tick!

frost mages

Bah. Damn their eyes. I found some good ones in Strand of the Ancients today, and 1v1 they always leave me a chilly blob on the ground.

My rogue instincts say that this is not because they are good, but because I am bad. A rogue can beat anything. So: introspection (note: written from the 41/5/25 Mutilate/Prep perspective).

What happens? I was opening Cheap Shot, but it seems they would simply Blink, Frost Nova/Cone of Cold and pew pew until I died. Not fun. Of course, the correct opener on a mage is Garrote for the silence effect. A proper rogue/mage fight starts at the 3 second mark, with the mage the victim of a couple of mutilates, 5 combo points up, Crippling Poison on and 15 sec of DoT remaining. A nice place to start, but then what?

At this point the mage can do a few things. Ice Block clears off the DoT and poison and buys them some time. They can throw down Frost Nova or Cone of Cold to root you, probably in concert with a Blink to get some range on you. Either way they'll get their Elemental out for 45 sec, which gives him another 2 abilities independent of your CC: Freeze and Waterbolt. They'll also be spamming Ice Barrier to limit incoming DPS.

Now I'm not going to get into "if they do this, do this" because I definitely won't remember and I doubt 90% of rogues will. But understanding what's up the mage's copious and effeminate sleeves is half the battle. The rest of their abilities fall into 2 camps: pew pew and a PvP trinket. The roots are their biggest weapons, and after the Ice Block you've got 30 seconds to kill him or you're at a serious cooldown disadvantage. Against the roots, you've got a trinket (or EMFH), CoS and Vanish. He also can't cast if he's incapacitated, and for that you've got CS and KS, plus Blind, Sprint and Deadly Throw to let you close the gap. Plus there's Preparation to make all the goodness come once more.

TBC...

the return of PvP Cat

Here's me saying that PvP is boring and all I'm interested in is raiding, and in the space of 2 days I've gone and bought dual-specs, have started experimenting with 41/5/25 Mut/Prep, have bought me some Hateful Gladiator gloves and started an arena 2v2 with my brother's ret monkey.

I'm under no illusions about the likelihood of doing well in T7 raid gear with a rogue/retadin combo, but it's just for fun and practice really. When another brother finishes levelling, we might try rogue/retadin/huntard in 3v3 and really tear up the DPS.

I love my PvP spec, it destroys everything. I'm even remembering all those things that have been sitting unused on my action bars, like Dismantle, Eviscerate and Deadly Throw, and have started getting used to when to use or not to use Preparation. All my recent PvP experience has been in Wintergrasp though, which is nothing like arena, so I'll update ye all on the progress of Unresilient as we go.

alternate MMOs

There are two MMOs that have a chance of having me swap off WoW. Star Wars: The Old Republic will tap into a deep-seated part of my medulla oblongata that has been fantasising about being a Jedi since the original Episode IV came out. I will definitely try it, and as I probably only have room in my life for 1 MMO, it will be an interesting time to see what happens.

But even more exciting is the prospect of an MMO based on the Warhammer 40,000 IP. I played the original 40k way back in the Rogue Trader days, and over the years have amassed many armies of miniatures. Sadly, when we moved home from the UK, I ebayed it all but I have lately been considering getting back into the tabletop as a result of reading some of the incredibly rich and well-written WH40K fiction. Make no mistake - if a quality 40K MMO is released in 2012 as rumoured, I will not only quit playing WoW/SWTOR but I will also probably quit my job and mutate into a half-man, half-chair gaming automaton, existing purely on cheezels, Dr Pepper and forty-first millennium pure WIN. Please, THQ, I beg you: make it full of win. It is an epic franchise that absolutely must not be sullied with an inferior product.

Although 2012 is a long time to wait, THQ will have ample time to learn from the SWTOR MMO and apply those lessons. There are a few things that interest me greatly about how it might be implemented:

• Presumably Humans would be one of the initial races, as would Orks. This immediately lends itself to a "faction" system similar to WoW. But what about Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Chaos etc? Nobody really fights on the same side as anyone else. It's almost going to have to be everyone versus everyone, possibly with server-wide or even zone-wide temporary alliances between certain races? Even then, can you imagine Eldar and Slaanesh Marines being allied for any reason? Not me...
  
• Taking Humans first: there's a hierarchy in the various arms. The Astartes report really to nobody except the Emperor, though they have some respect for the Inquisition. Would anyone want to play an Imperial Guard toon when there was absolutely no way they could be as powerful as a Space Marine toon? the only way to even it would be to have the MMO less "individual toon" based and more "warband" based - so a level-cap marine may have a squad of marine "combat pets" but a max level Guard commander may have a whole platoon plus heavy weapons, etc? Then it's almost a fair fight. Balance is going to be a hard thing to achieve, but it would be awesome to have a bunch of NPC combat pets doing your shooty bidding.
• There are degrees of "freedom" in the various denizens of the 40k milieu. Marines for instance are loyal only to their Chapter and the Emperor. They do what they're told - simple instruments of war, with little thought to personal advancement. How does that work for levelling/gearing up? Is a rank and file marine or Guardsman even an appropriate toon, or would it be too restrictive? Will it need to focus on the more "individual" characters in the milieu - Inquisitors, Harlequins (Solitaires?), Rogue Traders, Fallen Angels (aaaawwwweeeesome), etc.
  
• "Quests" - it would be great to have these race-specific. So for example for a marine toon, the missions would be handed down by the chapter in a level-appropriate way, possibly for a zone-wide PvE "instance" - so you could solo it as a skirmish, or group up with others from the chapter or allied factions to tackle a larger 5- or 10-man instanced zone quest. For Ork toons, maybe you're a small cog in a Waaaaagh, following your Warboss from world to world and occasionally encountering PvP resistance from opposing factions. Then the level-cap zones would be the epicentre of the fighting - where the Waaaaghs meet the Crusades, the Hive Fleets, the Craftworlds etc and all fight against each other.

Holy cow I wish I was working on this project. THQ, if you need a project manager, I could not be more motivated to see this MMO kick ass.

podcast review

Adam of The Noisy Rogue gives us his first scathing WoW podcast review. His first target: The WoW Insider Show. Enlightening and entertaining reading :)

everyone gets nerfed

So I read the 3.1.3 patch notes, which seemed to elicit more than the usual QQing on wow.com. Of course I'm stoked about the buff to Overkill, which for PvE rogues is a nice addition to our trash FoK DPS. But it also inspired me to write yet another song, so here goes. I'll definitely record this one soon:

Sung to the tune of "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M.

EVERYONE GETS NERFED

When the maintenance is long
and the news from the PTRs seems wrong
and the patch notes talk of nerfs to your class
hang on

Don't let yourself QQ
'cause everybody cries
and everyone gets nerfed
sometimes
sometimes balance is all wrong
now it's time to sing along

when your salvation is gone
and you feel like speccing ret
and you think you've had too much of death knights
hang on

Everyone gets nerfed
take comfort in your skill
everyone gets nerfed

Don't whine on the official forums
ooooooooh no
Or if you do, at least whine in an amusing rap battle
When you feel like you're alone
2 million people playing warlocks say you're not alone

When your buffs are gone
and the cooldowns on your favourite skills are long
and you think you've had too much of death knights
to hang on

Everyone gets nerfed
sometimes everybody whines
everyone gets nerfed
sometimes
everyone gets nerfed
sometimes
so hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
nerf hunters
hold on
hold on

everyone gets nerfed

2 more songs

Turpster's music kind of inspired me to finish off two more songs I've had in the works for awhile. Again, both are based on Dos Gringos songs, for no reason other than that was what I was listening to at the time I was inspired to write them.

Sung to the tune of "The Bitch Spent All My Money" by Dos Gringos

MY ALTS SPENT ALL MY MONEY

I make a thousand extra gold each month
and you would think with that amount
I'd have a positive number inside my backpack account
How many times can one druid hit
the auction house in a day
you can bet your ass that a pvp bitchslap is on its way

I got a story to tell to you
and man it ain't funny
I've been grinding daily quests
and my alts spent all my money

I know when you go into Deadmines
you want to wear something leet
but who the hell spends a hundred gold on level 16 purple feet?
And how bout that three hundred gold
on just one pair of pants
Hell I only spent 25 on my repairs from the Heigan Dance

Yeah I got taken to the bank today
by my own lowbie dummy
I've been grinding daily quests
and my alts spent all my money

You know I still love you baby
Yeah, but something's missin'
yeah I can't believe you spent last week's earnings levelling up Inscription
Besides, it's not even going to matter in Outland
No matter how epic your gear
You'll replace everything in a matter of minutes, including those Molten Core Tiers

Yeah it's not fair
I still want to level you honey
I've been grinding daily quests
and my alts spent all my money
Yeah don't laugh 'cause it could happen to you
and man it ain't funny
I've been grinding daily quests
and my alts spent all my money


Sung to the tune of "Jeremiah Weed" by Dos Gringos

TASTY THISTLE TEA

When I was a young'un my trainer said to me
Son I wanna know what it is you wanna be
I said I'll never wear a dress, But I love to PVP
I think I'm gonna be a rogue! The stealthy life for me

Well I heard my guildies cheering cause I said it over voice
My trainer said that I had made a pretty awesome choice
He gave me a quest to find a journal and a key
And on return he hooked me up with a simple recipe

Press 1! To stab them in the knees
Press 2! To slip away unseen
Press 3! When you're low on energy
A big chug from a green mug of tasty Thistle Tea

Now if you play a mage you make dinner for the team
And if you have a priest you make bad guys run and scream
And if you have a hunter you never find a group
'cause you're running round in Stormwind picking up your tiger's poop
And if you play a death knight you ninja all the plate
And if you play a pally then your raiding buffs are great
And if you've got a warlock, then my advice to you
is to moan about the nerf bat, there's nothing else to do

Press 1! To stab them in the knees
Press 2! To slip away unseen
Press 3! When you're low on energy
A big chug from a green mug of tasty Thistle Tea

The greatest raiding rogue that ever I did see
came in one day and took his place at the tank's side next to me
I knew he was a killer, his DPS was off the tree
The fucker had rotations that included Thistle Tea

Now everyone is curious, they all wanna know
Will it raise your stats, will it make your e-peen grow?
Well it won't bring you women, and it won't bring you luck
so why do we drink it? Cause our DPS rocks!

Press 1! To stab them in the knees
Press 2! To slip away unseen
Press 3! When you're low on energy
A big chug from a green mug of tasty Thistle Tea

lol

I like a good WoW song, and Turpster has a bunch of them. Warning: he's a godawful singer, but he's the Ricky Gervais of WoW lyric writing - witty, dry and slightly rotund (sorry Turpster!).

I'm currently working on recording "Evasion Tank FTW", but have had problems knocking the lyrics out of the original song due to its somewhat garagey recording. Might have to get my brother to do an original guitar backing track for it.

In other news: loot drama rap battle. Full of win.

how not to suck at powerlevelling

Let me say before I start that while this post is inspired by two twink runs through Stratholme last night, it is not meant as criticism of those involved. I actually had a bit of a laugh despite the numerous, numerous deaths, and the points below are as much for me as for anyone. So please take it as intended :)

To begin: You may find yourself, dear reader, at a point where you are levelling an alt or indeed levelling your first main on a server with some high level friends. With the XP rate boost as it is, you may also consider that running high level instances (as high as you are permitted to enter) is a good idea. You may also realise that having one of the said high level toons along may make said instances rather quick and, quite frankly, a loot and XP pinata.

All good and sound thoughts.

What you may not have thought of is that this run has the potential to be one of the more frustrating, demoralising and painful experiences in your WoW career to date.

For the purposes of the exercise, let's look at a typical twink run of a single level 80 toon and one or two lower level toons.

Your twinker pretty much must have a strong AoE attack. Until recently, that meant no rogues; however with the advent of Fan of Knives, rogues are now viable twinkers. It would also be extremely useful if the twinker were survivable and has a rez ability. Pallies probably make great twinkers. Make no mistake though: twinking is not the same as soloing. When soloing, all you care about is your own progress through the instance. When twinking, you've got one or two utter aggro magnets along for the ride and if they keep dying due to proximity pulls you will have an abysmal time of it. You must:

• Destroy everything in the instance
• Keep everything off the twinkees
• Keep the twinkees in XP range
• Allow the twinkees time to loot
• Not let anyone die (except maybe twinkee DPS/tanks in emergencies, if you have a rezzer in the party)
  

Finding the balance between speed through the instance and time for looting can be hard, especially in a loot-heavy instance like Stratholme. Furthermore, depending on the relative levels of the twinkees to the mobs, the aggro radius may be fairly close to the XP radius, which is challenging. The twinkees have to stay close enough to you to get the XP, but not so close that you're constantly pulling mobs off them. They also have to loot FAST and they will be watching their bags more than they're watching the mobs. Generally speaking, closer is better, especially if the mobs use stuns, roots and disarms, which can affect you no matter how high level you are and keep you from intercepting mobs wailing on your twinkees.

You may also be dealing with inexperienced twinkees, who will pull aggro in all sorts of unforeseen ways. A typical twinkee will be two- or three-shotted by trash, and one-shotted by bosses, so you haven't got much time. Make sure your twinkees know that they are not to do anything offensive (including healing and buffing) when anyone is in combat.

Looting is a hard one. You'll really want Free For All set on in the interests of speed, but your twinkees have to understand that they mustn't take BOPs that are useful for another twinkee. Even with Free For All and autoloot, they will get a warning when they try to loot a BOP blue and they must stop and think before they grab it. This might be different to what they're used to, especially if they've done a lot of soloing and are in the habit of blindly taking whatever drops. It's easy for experienced raiders to be critical of this looting instinct, as our instincts are now to immediately stop when we see blue or purple; but I remember a time when I did the same thing.

As the twinker, you may need to brief the twinkees on loot etiquette, especially if there are multiple twinkees and/or an enchanter along. Anything DE'd can be used to immediately enchant the nice new blue drops after the run! You might also want to consider flicking master looter on before a boss pull. BoEs aren't an issue, as being picky about those will just slow things down. Sort out BoEs after the run.

For the twinkees, your role is both simple and complex. You must:

• loot as fast as you can
• do not mis-loot
• do not pull aggro
• do not die
• stay in XP range of the twinker
• know and use all of your survivability abilities
• know and use all of your buffs
• heal the twinker when out of combat

Learn your proximity pull range in a safe environment at the start of the instance. Burn it into your brain. If you get aggro - run to the twinker and don't actively defend yourself (with heals and DPS), you will just make it harder for the twinker to pull them off you. Burn your passive defensive/threat wipe abilities (PW:S, Fade, Evasion, Vanish, FD, bubble etc) and stay alive.

There are also slight role differences as a twinkee. Any twinkee with a rezzing ability should give first priority to their own survival. DPS and tanking toons: I'm sorry, but you are the sacrificial lambs. If your death will save a rezzer, even briefly, do it. They can rez you. You can't rez them. Your intervention may save a corpse run, which saves time and frustration. Die, get rezzed, move on.

And my final tip: use voice. Vent, Teamspeak or ingame, it will help immensely as your twinkees will get aggroed and will need help right away.

When it's done right, the rewards are astounding. My 55 and 3 quarters priest (fully rested) went to 57 and a half from one run through Stratholme (with quests) and took a fistful of nice blues as well, and picked up about 40 stacks of Runecloth for Cat's Gnomeregan rep. Even when it's done wrong, you'll level fast but the angst factor might be higher. Hey, the more you do it, the better you'll get and it's sure as hell better than doing "fedex and kill-x" out in the world.

Enjoy your twinking!

RT

A few great posts on leadership in WoW:

• The Noisy Rogue part 1 and 2
  
• The Wordy Warrior
  

the dedicated few

Scene: It is approaching 9pm on Saturday. I thought I'd do a few dailies and retire early, so as to be fresh for the traditional 25-man on Sunday night. Then the call goes out for Nax10. Sucker!

As it turns out, we have at it with only 8 people and decide that we may as well have a go at The Dedicated Few, which I believe nobody had yet achieved. We had (according to WoWRanked for my guild): healer #1 and #12, tanks #7 and #9, and DPS #2, #20, #48 (me), and #49. So a strong triumvirate at the top, but alts and newbies (myself included) under that.

The half-hearted shorthanded Undying attempt ended almost straight away, to everyone's relief. Nobody seriously thought we could pull it off with 8 people anyway. Still, we dropped Heigan with 8 left standing and didn't meet any serious resistance until Four Horsemen, which wiped us 3 times before we found our rhythm. Sapphiron also gave us a wipe, but it was KT that both made and ruined the night for me.

By the time we hit KT it was past 0130. AM. I was completely shagged and sore, having had a single 3 minute bio break in the entire raid. I'd also not had a single piece of loot, burned almost a full stack of Fish Feast, and was on my fourth flask. KT casually wiped us twice, and we started to wonder if it was going to happen.

The third attempt started in the worst possible way. I'm going to claim tiredness - I managed to get myself out of healing range while cleaning up the last of the adds in Phase 1, ate a Frost Blast and despite mashing pots, died. The raid, though, settled into a rhythm and burned KT down towards 50%.

I was hoping that the drood OT would throw me a brez at 50% before the add phase, but sadly it wasn't to be. The adds came out and the real race began, with 3 DPS, the MT and our main heals covering KT and the OT and off-healer covering the Nerubians. At that point I felt we simply wouldn't have the DPS.

Then just when it was looking good, with KT below 10%, the OT wore a Frost Blast and went down. The adds went straight for the main healer and she went down faster than a cheap tent. The off-healer shortly followed and we prepared to wipe it up. I felt gutted, as with my DPS it would have been over by now.

I reckoned though without the DPS. With perfectly timed cooldowns, they ran him down before he could finish the job, at 02:08 AEST. Left standing: Hunter, Rogue and DPS DK. Both tanks dead, both healers dead, me watching from the tiles. Huzzah, epic finish. And he dropped my hat.

So yes, I got the aptly named achievement. Yes, I finally got a Northrend helm, after an accidental need from one of the others saw it ticketed to me. Yes, I made few mistakes and pulled my weight on the meters. Yet somehow, that last fight that I missed out on largely ruined it. I found myself cheering for the others, not for myself. It's irrational, but there it is.

Ulduar

Finally set foot in Ulduar 25 tonight!

I wasn't really set up for raiding unfortunately - normally raid night requires pre-notification to She Who Must Be Obeyed. Fair enough too, as it takes me out of the loop for household tasks for an entire night, and she then has to respond to any child-based dramas. We try to stick to sunday nights, I make sure everything's squared away in advance, and she stands guard duty over the kids.

Anyway, I digress - the point is, I wasn't expecting an invite to Ulduar, and couldn't turn it down when it came. Luckily, the whole family was asleep at 7pm. So.

Flame Leviathan was FUN. I was a gunner on a siege engine, and simply blasted the crap out of stuff for a good 20-30 minutes. I still have no idea what was going on, but we one-shotted him and it seemed to go OK. Seems like a hell of a thing to have to redo if one wipes on it, but luckily I didn't find out.

XT-002 Deconstructor was a more straightforward fight, and I feel I did OK over the two attempts. Phase 1: DPS the boss, run more than 15 yards away from everyone if you get a bomb debuff, feint during tantrums. Assist on adds if required. Phase 2: DPS the heart. Rinse and repeat. Averaged 3.5k DPS over both attempts, and we got him (her?) on the second.

Ignis the Furnace Master was a bit of a douchbag. I'm not sure if it was because I was the lowest-geared melee DPS in the raid, but over the 5 attempts I was pulled into the codpiece twice, and just died. I can understand that I might be pretty low on the list for bomb heals, but it's a shame to have one's best efforts cut short by the RNG. Most of the later fights consisted of the following inner monologue: "OK keep SnD up, keep Rupture up, keep HfB up, Tricks, is Cold Blood up? Don't stand in the fire, gosh I hope I don't get pulled into the codpiece." 3.7k DPS on the drop, pretty happy considering the rogue company I was in. He dropped Flamestalker Boots, but they went to another more dedicated raider, and I'm glad (but still a wee bit sad).

That's where my run ended in a cacophany of screaming children and glowering wife, as the family roused all at once.

Overall I'm happy that I can still consistently pull 3.5-3.8k DPS on T7/8 content while staying alive through largely unfamiliar fights. Considering I'm still rocking some blues, a T5 helm (!) and a BC necklace, I go to bed satisfied that my raiding skills are returning.

To dream of Ulduar...

pug loot rules

Many of you will probably have come across this issue: you pug somebody into a guild run, it's all going swimmingly and then, just when you're getting a nice sense of comfort, something epic drops.

And the pug wants it.

Now hopefully you've told them before the run started what your guild's approach to looting with pugs is. If you didn't, you're probably in a world of hurt right now - and to be honest, you probably deserve to be. Pugs have a right to a share in the loot, and the RL has a responsibility to ensure they're happy with the loot rules before they get saved to the instance. So, rule 1: define and communicate the rules upfront.

But what is a fair rule? Guildies quite rightly feel that they should not be disadvantaged by pugs, especially if they've been saving DKP/EPGP for specific items. That said, if you've got to the point of pugging a slot, you probably wouldn't be running right now without that pug so wouldn't have had any shot at the loot anyway. Then again, the pug presumably hasn't had a chance to build DKP/EPGP priority. But wait, without the 24 guildies in the raid kindly pugging them in, they wouldn't have had a shot at the loot either! Oh, the confabulation and bother!

The watchwords should always be transparency and consistency. Whatever your rules are, from RAR GUILD PRIORITY to a pure /roll, if the pug knew about it before they saved, they have no complaint.

SO that brings me to my suggestion. My guild uses EPGP, and we tend not to have issues with pug loot (at least not in Nax and OS, I'm not in Ulduar yet but I believe we don't pug slots there anyway) due to most of our folks being geared past there. An undergeared pug can look forward to a loot pinata. That said, an EPGP+pug strategy is always useful to have in one's back pocket. I'm thinking from an EPGP perspective, but I suppose this will work with DKP too.

What are the guidelines? My thoughts are:

• a system that neither unfairly advantages nor unfairly disadvantages pugs on loot rolls
• a system that can be clearly and unambiguously explained in advance
  
• a system that can be transparently applied

OK. So with EPGP, all guildies get a need/mainspec roll first. If nobody elects to go for that, there is a greed/offspec roll. If items are still not taken, it is DE'd and the mats go in the GB.

To integrate a pug or pugs into this, the three phases should be regarded distinctly. So first, here is a rule:

1. The pug will be judged as need/mainspec based on the spec they bring to the raid.
   

Now dual specs present a problem, but in general the raid will need specific roles and the pug will be brought in to fill that role primarily. So that, for the purposes of loot, is the pug's mainspec.

On the need roll: pugs who want to need/mainspec an item simply /roll when the item is announced during looting. Guildies use EPGP votes. One of three things will happen:

1. One or more guildies has needed, and no pug has rolled. The item is distributed by EPGP.
2. One or more pugs have rolled, and no guildies have needed. The item goes to the highest pug roll.
3. One or more pugs have rolled, and one or more guildies have needed. Take the number of folks that either needed or rolled, n, and apply the following formula, rounding up: x = 100 - (100/n). So with 2 guildies needing against two pugs, the highest pug roll must be greater than x (in this example, 75) in order to win the item. If the highest pug roll is <= x, the item goes to EPGP.

the first two make perfect sense. I believe the latter is reasonably statistically consistent. I ran a monte carlo simulation on the odds with 5000 samples, and from the perspective of a pug, it scales well with multiple guildies. There is a minor issue with multiple pugs, especially when they are rolling against few (but not 0) guildies. This is simply due to the fact that they must beat all the other pug rolls as well as getting statistically high roll; however the difference is not going to be more than a 5% chance overall and of all the formulas I tried, this is the best balance of simplicity and fairness.

The outstanding issue is on multiple rolls. There is no disincentive for a pug to roll need on anything that might be the slightest upgrade, and there is no penalty for continued wins (as there is with EPGP priority). A pug has the same chance to win every time, whereas from the point of view of a guildy, their chance to win reduces with every loot win (assuming they're rolling against other guildies).

We could weight rolls with item history, but that would make the calculation too complex. Instead, I would propose that a simple limit is imposed; maybe say maximum 1 need upgrade for every 3 bosses (unless no guildies need/mainspec, in which case go for it). You don't want to put a hard cap on pug upgrades, because they may just decide they have to go, and leave your raid in the lurch.

Greed/offspec simply uses the same rules, but on the second loot round.

The simplest way for shards to be handled is for everyone to /roll on each shard. If a guildy wins, into the GB. If a pug wins, they get it.

Many raids will roll for shards at the end; so if there are 10 shards to distribute, get everyone to roll and the top 10 rolls get a shard (or in the case of guildies, into the GB).

Well that was an epic post. I'd like to hear what you have to say about pug loot distribution, and whether you think this is fair and workable in a real situation.

Stay epic!

the pressure, the pressure!

It's been a good week. Got my artisan flying (finally!) and became a Champion of Stormwind. Rode the loot train to Epicville last night in a 20-man H Nax and walked out after 3 wings with Twilight Mist, Webbed Death (both now avec Mongoose), Grim Toll and the Ring of Invincibility from emblems. Pretty happy with 3.8k DPS on Patchwerk (new 25 man record).

But the majority of the run was done under the crushing pressure of achieving The Immortal - pretty ambitious when we had only 20 in the raid. You could feel the tension grow on Vent as we strode nervously into Heigan's room, and the more experienced players simply waved it off as a fait accompli that someone would bite the dust on the dancefloor. Personally, I was pooping myself - having only seen the dance twice before, and only surviving it once.

Once it started, it was obvious that the achievement pressure was weighing on our DPS greatly as we kept one eye firmly on the ground (and the other too, as often as we could). In the end, despite the flares being dropped out of position and having to compensate for that ("run 2 meters to the right of the 2 middle flares!") and due in no small part to the awesomeness of our healers, we all lived.

In the end, it was Gluth that got us. There were 2 deaths to Zombie Chow. One of them messaged the raid to express his sorrow at borking the achievement, and I whispered back "dude, there are 18 people who just breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't them that borked it" at which he laughed. It's true too - the remainder of the raid was much more pleasant though it must be said, less disciplined - and I count myself too, taking my eye off the ball on Thaddius and getting fried for my trouble.

Maybe next time eh. For now, rejoice in the madness of purple fever (and grind for enchants).

the Wormhole

A while ago I was thinking about the hassle of levelling an alt from 1-80 and how daunting that is for casuals like me, who make up the bulk of the WoW player base. I mean, I love the endgame but having levelled Cat 1-80 and Merry 1-55, I just can't face taking Merry through another 25 hard levels of Outland and Northrend despite my very real interest in endgame raid healing. Even less appealing is levelling a drood 1-80, despite the fact that I really am interested in trying out a drood.

Try as they might, Blizzard just can't sell the "bring the player, not the class" story to non-hybrid classes like the Rogue. It doesn't matter how good a player I am (listen to the peanut gallery and their sniggers!) I simply cannot tank or heal and those roles are necessary. I need a max-level alt to fill those roles.

So my brain, as is its wont, got to a-thinkin. (wavy dream sequence starts...)

Imagine, if you will, a 10 man instance in the Caverns of Time called The Wormhole (or something more imaginative and consistent with the lore). This is available to characters in certain bands, similar to the battlegrounds: 10-18, 20-28 etc all the way up to 70-78. Only toons in a raid group who are all in the same band are permitted to enter. Importantly, it is also only available if each of those toons are owned by an account with at least one level 80. So it is an instance for alts, not for mains.

The mechanics of the instance are largely unimportant. However, I had envisaged something like a trash gauntlet on a moving conveyor belt in a tunnel, dragging you "back in time" while you fought onwards through the wormhole against a raid timer to a portal and a single final boss at the end. Dead toons are slowly dragged backwards towards the other end, where another portal exists. Every toon gets a single-use "rezzing stone" that they can use on any other toon except themselves, and if any player corpse hits the rear portal or the raid timer expires, it's game over for the whole instance. Teamwork! Drama! Sacrifice! Tension! Sounds cool huh? Wait till you hear the best bit.

If you "win" the instance (defeat the final boss, every toon is alive and exits via the final portal in the allotted time) all those toons get instantly levelled to the level below the next bracket. If you go in at level 10-18 and win, you come out at level 19. Grind out one level (and level up your weapon skills, learn your new spec etc), and you're eligible for the Wormhole again in the 20-28 bracket. Incidentally, the bands are 10-18 not 10-19 to stop a newly Wormholed 19 going back in and stacking a Wormhole attempt for some friends.

If you "lose" (any player - live or a corpse - enters the rear portal, or the timer expires), every player in the raid goes back to the previous bracket, a quarter of a level below eligibility for the Wormhole. At bracket 10-18, you go back to level 9 3/4. That serves two purposes: it makes you take it seriously, and it stops raids stacking higher level toons to trivialise it, because the consequences of failure are much bigger for someone at the top of the bracket than someone at the bottom.

So what does that mean to someone who has a level 80 and wants to try endgame with a different class, but not spend months levelling an alt? They roll their alt, level it to 10 and get a bunch of like-minded individuals to try The Wormhole. They win, they come out at level 19. Grind out a level, gear up (with your level 80 sugar daddy providing the cash) and go again at level 20, coming out as lv29 and so on up to 80. You grind 17 levels, and win the Wormhole 7 times, and you're a level 80.

What does Blizzard get out of it?

• An alt means more reason to spend time in the game at the endgame stage. Rather than gearing a main up, you're now gearing two or three or more toons up. Rather than losing interest in WoW because your main is tooled to the hilt and you've run out of content and you can't face levelling an alt, you stick around and try the endgame from a different perspective. "Bring the player, not the class" takes on a whole new perspective, because that player may now have one toon in each major role.
  
• It's a gold and time sink, and creates a new market for outdated crafter items. Suddenly all those low level patterns are useful again. People are grinding dailies to get heirlooms (which this dovetails perfectly with). People might run all the old content again, especially if things like special mounts etc are available only at certain levels). People are spending money to pimp out their alts to make sure they win the instance.
  
• Take the wind out of the levelling services' sails - people can now quickly level alts themselves.
• All these new alts will probably have low profession skills - so more time spent levelling those professions, more olde worlde mats and items on the market, demand for gems and enchants etc.
• When the next expansion drops, players will level their main through the new content, Wormhole all their alts and then spend two or three or four times as much time and gold doing the endgame stuff as they would have with no max level alts. It broadens the appeal of the endgame content without cheapening the levelling content. Also, it slows people down through the new endgame, so there's less clamouring for new content a week after the release of the expansion.
  
• Casuals are no longer limited to the role decision that they made (probably without even knowing it) when they rolled their first ever toon. Blizzard can push their broad appeal agenda without all of this ridiculous class homogenisation that's been going on.
  

What do players get out of it?

• Try the endgame with a different class without having to grind 80 levels!
• Extra raid/PvP utility by being able to fill alternative roles
• Got a friend on another realm and want to raid/PvP with them, but don't want to leave your current server with your main? Level your alt and server transfer them, or roll your alt on that server and level it there.
• Guild bonding
• New content (you could have a different end boss at each bracket?)
• Players levelling their mains the hard way will suddenly find there's a market for their BoE green and blue drops, other than people levelling enchanting.
  

How could it be abused?

• Stacking the raid with higher level toons. They have more to lose if they fail the raid, and in any case the instance could be scaled according to the levels of the raid toons? In any case you're only going to get to do it once before you have to grind out levels in order to stack again. There could also be a disincentive to stacking, for example giving a stacking 5% stat debuff for every level over the minimum?
  
• Levelling services? Maybe, but why would you bother paying for a levelling service (except maybe if it's your first toon) when you can level an alt so quickly yourself?
• Gold services are probably the biggest downer, as this instance would create a massive demand for gold.

Balance and other issues:

• Making it hard enough to present a worthy challenge that needed preparation and gear, but not so hard that it actually takes longer to level an alt through the Wormhole by being constantly defeated
• Scaling it so that it is not unbalanced by high level stacking
• What happens if a player DCs?
• What can be done to prevent players simply hearthing out, or deliberately DCing, if the timer is about to expire?
• Will this create a wasteland in the 10-80 zones, as alt level grinding becomes a thing of the past? Will this be disheartening to brand new players, as the 1-10 zones are full of life and there is nobody to party with for the next 70 levels, apart from other noobs and the odd n9 powerleveller?
  

So that's the idea. It will be especially relevant as the level cap goes up to 90, 100 etc. I reckon if Blizzard doesn't implement something like this, one of their competitors will. What do you think, I'd love to hear your opinions?

Blizzard, my terms are very cheap. One shiny United States penny each time a toon enters my instance. Bargain!

*edit* on second thought, made the bands n0-n8 rather than n0-n9. Makes more sense from an abuse point of view.
*edit* the 10-80 zone wasteland problem

OS25 0D down

I imagine that Sarth would be quite difficult with a group that was geared appropriately; however in my case last night, where we had 24 of Pinnacle's best and brightest (plus me) he went down like a cheap tent. Will need to do that a few times before I can say for sure I know what's going on, but I stayed up (more from Meishy's amazing heals than by my own awareness) and punched out 3694 DPS, a new 25 man record. Yay raid buffs.

Concealment Shoulderpads were a nice, if minor upgrade, but as they have very different stats to the T7.5s, I can mix and match to keep my expertise balanced etc.

Gold grind is up over 4000 now, getting very close to that epic flying. Sweeeet.

And my bow skill is now 38. Poor penguins.

Nax10

New personal best 10 man raid DPS: 2670 on Maexxna (Loatheb and Thaddius don't really count due to the DPS buffs). Swoit.

Survived Horsemen and Patchwerk this time, but had an epic lag-fail on Heigan. Ah well.

But what you're really interested in is the mad loot right? Check these out: Cloak of Mastery, Heroes' Bonescythe Breastplate, Accursed Bow of the Elite (no I didn't take it over a Hunter, it was going to vendor), Loatheb's Shadow and a gun and a dagger that I'm not using right now. Loot pinata indeed.

stupid dailies

Blizzard usually gets the mix right when they create dailies. Fish for this thing, cook this thing, collect these stones for an ongoing construction project, etc. It makes sense that these would be done every day, even if particular folks have unusually passionate taste for leftover wine.

But what's the deal with the daily The Edge of Winter? How many stupid times do I have to get the same sword from the same ice-encased maiden? This quest makes no sense as a daily. But as it's worth two Valiant's Seals, I can't not do it or my AT grind will take nine days instead of five. Meh.

omg more goldz

Put my Rigid Stormjewel on the AH at a speculative 750 bid / 800 buyout... and it has a bidder.

I say again, woo. That will take me over 3000g for the flyer. Yay fishing.

the slow grind to my epic flyer

Read an interesting post over at The Noisy Rogue (which, curiously enough, I read as Thenois Y Rogue when I first saw the URL) about, amongst other things, grinding for the epic flyer.

I am doing this. Ask me if I enjoy it. Go on.

I'm up to 2000g, mostly from dailies. Problem is, I'm also starting to gear up in Nax, and every time I get a new bit of kit I feel honour-bound to gem and enchant it to maximise my raid utility. Each tasty new piece of equipment is, in fact, a bill for between fifty and several hundred gold and, by extension, an invoice for several hours of doing dailies.

Yay upgrades. Woo.

So I've started looking for other ways to increase my earning rate. Advertising in /trade as an Ironforge tram tranny-toy has met with limited and fairly disturbing success. Somewhat more successful was spending the time and cash to level Merrybelle to 350 enchanting, and shipping all my BoE drops to her for DE. Thomasy (my bank alt) is also scouring the AH for bargain ilvl 121+ items for DE into Infinite Dust and Cosmic Essence, both of which are key materials for Northrend enchants and are in high demand. Based on limited testing, I can make about a 25% profit on this. However, it's limited by the supply of AH greens, and it will take me a bit to figure out the most economical stack sizes - individuals purchasing for specific enchants will want specific stack sizes, but enchanters will want big stacks. Saving all the auctions for 48 hour Friday night stacks is probably a good idea.

The Argent Tournament doesn't seem to be the goldmine that everyone says - maybe because I'm still a lowly Aspirant edit: just became a Valiant of Stormwind! We shall see. Whenever possible, I'm doing the five tournament dailies, plus the cooking and fishing ones, and four of the Hodir ones for rep. That's about 143g per day, plus what I dig up on heroics and drops (plus Wintergrasp if I can be arsed).

Any other ideas?

new toy

Mirror of Truth pretty sweet...

Burned through H AN, H CoS (daily) and H VH tonight. Got the timed achievement on CoS with a couple of mates and 2 good pugs. Didn't get the drake, but we're going to try to run it regularly until we all have it.

I'm happy that I currently have my Expertise balanced (26) and my Hit pretty much where it needs to be for 25 mans (277). While a bit more would help me hit the PHC in heroics, I'd have to gimp myself and really I'm still doing well on the meters in heroics unless there's a ton of AoE, where extra hit won't help me anyway. 2771 AP with another 1670 from trinket procs and on-use.

Wondering actually if it might be wise to cook up some +crit food and start stacking crit gems, as the Mirror of Truth procs on crit (not on hit)? Yet another reason to use Cold Blood whenever not on cooldown too.

Children's Week - Meh

I started kid's week all enthusiastic - right up until I realised I'd need to run battlegrounds and UP. Think I can find a tank for UP? No way. Think I can be arsed stuffing about in battlegrounds trying to organise achievements while the 50% of BG asshats either ganks me or abuses me for ruining their PvPness? Screw that.

Started the Argent Tournament questline and dailies instead. Still not quite sure what I'll get out of it, though the prospect of getting exalted with Gnomer and getting a mechanochicken mount seems pretty cool.

In other news, Merry is finally 350 enchanting. Now she can DE every BOE in the game. Ench mats FTW.

Nax25

Finally!

Guild run, full clear, 2 wipes (Thaddius and KT). Thrusting Bands, Valorous Bonescythe Pauldrons, Valorous Bonescythe Legplates.

Myself: apart from the 2 wipes, I had 3 deaths on trash (cleaves and whirlwinds - just awareness really), plus Patchwerk's Hateful Strike (might try dipping in the slime next time), Gothik (I'll buy that one), Horsemen (volleyed) and a void zone on the KT wipe (too worried about distance from the tank and not watching the ground enough) though I stayed up the second time. Pretty happy that I survived the Heigan Dance, Sapphiron and the other "first timer" killers.

DPS was about 2400 over all of the bosses, which I'm pretty happy with given that I was (and am) still carrying a lot of quest and BC gear. My new gear took my unbuffed+poisons dummy DPS to about 2100, so I should do a bit better now when raid buffed.

Yay Nax!

the surprising fun of achievements

I had a funny day today. I was busy with a lot of work but took some time at lunch to do the fishing and cooking dailies. That's when I got bunny-eared.

"What's all this?" I thought, and after some research, had discovered the Noblegarden festival. Well I'm a sucker for a title (having only Sergeant until today) and I went for it.

Collecting eggs is a pleasantly mind-neutral experience, easily done during a conference call and with a four-year-old playing along. Actually, my son had heaps of fun helping daddy collect easter eggs! I wonder if there are any nonviolent dailies out there that we could make a regular activity of? But I digress.

The best part was definitely the stalking of females of various races for Shake Your Bunny Maker. I simply sat at the Dalaran fountain levelling my fishing, and waited for a female of the appropriate race to turn up. Most of them were pretty easy to find except (in increasing order of painfulness): Orc, Tauren and Dwarf. Orc females are pretty rare. Tauren females look exactly like male ones and I blew 2 cooldowns on males before I found one outside of her armour. And female dwarves - I swear there's only one on the Nagrand server. I got lucky.

The surprising part was the amount of fun I had stalking the orc and tauren. It came down to a tense wait, with my thumb poised over my flower button hotkey, for the existing bunny ears on my chosen target to despawn and... POUNCE!

So now Cat is Catheryna the Noble. Was it worth the time? Hell yeah. Would I have done it if the Naxx25 run had gone ahead (the third in 4 days to fall through undersubscribed)? No way. Hey, I've got my priorities...

H UK

Drake-Mounted Crossbow.

Woot. Best in slot until Naxx25.

glyphs

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Mutilate rogues should be taking Glyph of Mutilate, Glyph of Hunger for Blood and Glyph of Rupture. The first two are no brainers, but I'm not so sure about the last - what about Glyph of Tricks of the Trade, Glyph of Cloak of Shadows or Glyph of Feint (given Feint's nice new AoE benefit). What do you think?

The first is a direct DPS buff - 5% rather than 3% if you keep Tricks up - and the second have the potential to ease the load on your healers in progression content, particularly Feint as AoE is something you can't avoid as melee DPS. 50% reduction in AoE damage 60% of the time equals 30% less AoE damage over an AoE-heavy fight. 20 energy every 10 sec is a lot to give up, but 10 energy every 10 sec is a lot better.

I'm going to try TotT for awhile, maybe swap in Feint if we're butting up against content due to AoE healing load.

Naxx... not

Naxx10 fell through. Damn.

So, H Gundrak and H HoS. Guess what? The Fleshshaper (now with added Mongoose), Hemorrhaging Circle and Gorloc Muddy Footwraps.

So not a bad night after all! Also, Monk and I have started a new tradition. When we replace epics we had grown fond of, we toss them into the Dalaran fountain. That way we know where they are, and console ourselves that just maybe some new 70 will fish them up.

So what should PvE rogues do when they hit 80?

Understandably, I've been asking myself that over the past couple of days. The simple answer is, of course, "get out there and raid". Ah, if only it were that simple...

To raid, even in a very tolerant guild, one needs gear. To get Naxx-suitable gear, one needs to do heroics. One also needs enchants and gems to maximise the value from the gear. That means gold. We will get to all of this, but first: stats.

You've probably heard a lot about the Hit Cap and Expertise Cap. There is a lot of very comprehensive info out there on these topics, but comprehensive often equals long. So here it is in a nutshell.

• You need 99+ hit rating (the Yellow Hit Cap) or your special attacks might not hit. Gear for this first. Unless you're a complete wally and have been stacking druid gear, you're probably at this point. Don't ever let it go.
• You need 26 Expertise/214 Expertise Rating (the Expertise Cap) or bosses might dodge you. Gear for this next. Don't ever let it go once you've got it. Any more is wasted, so don't go nuts.
• With that sorted, start stacking more +hit. For guild raiding, you want 210-237. For pugs and heroics, you might need closer to 315. This is the Poison Hit Cap, which ensures that your poisons always hit. If you want more details, it's out there. Just trust me.
• Now you can stack Attack Power, Crit and Haste.

So now you know what stats to go for. Where do you get them? Heroics and gems, my stabby friend. Shadowpanther (armour and weapons) and guides such as Encrypted Text are your friend here.

My key criteria for grinding gear is: "how long will I keep this item?" Given that the aim is to get into Naxx and move on to Ulduar, spending ages grinding Exalted rep for an epic item that will be replaced in one's first Naxx25 run seems a waste to me when there are other more easily accessible items of suitable, if not equal, quality. Go for "bang for buck", where the "buck" is your time.

There is some rep that is worth grinding though: Knights of the Ebon Blade revered for the Arcanum of Torment head enchant, and Sons of Hodir exalted for the Greater Inscription of the Axe (unless you're a 450 Scribe). Both of these are best in slot enchants that will be used over and over as you upgrade gear in those slots. Grinding those dailies will get you gold as well. The Ebon Blade rep can also be brought up by wearing their tabard on your heroic runs.

Enchant everything, even placeholders. Get what you can afford. Use the recommendations from be.imba.hu, checked against Shadowpanther. Weapon enchants are a sticky one, as you certainly want good ones on your longer term weapons. I quite like Greater Potency on placeholders. The mats are cheap and it's about half of the MAEP of a Mongoose for a tenth of the price. If you've got the gold, go for Berserking on everything. I don't, but I've got a couple of Mongoose scrolls in my bag for when those really nice raid daggers drop. Again the diminishing returns: Mongoose is 80% of the MAEP of Berserking, for about 1/3 the cost on my server.

Gem around your hit and expertise caps. Once you've got a pool of swapsie gear, you might for example trade some excess hit for some haste etc. Spreadsheets are your friend.

On gear swapping, I have a golden rule about gear retention. I won't vendor any gear if:

• It is similar in quality to an equipped item, but with different stats, and/or
  
• I really like it.
  

So yes, I still have my Hanzo Sword and Ebon Mask. Sue me. If I ever get a figureprint, they will come in handy.

The point of the golden rule is this: let's say you have 2 chest pieces: 1 with +hit and 1 with +expertise. You're at the EC, so you wear the first to get closer to the PHC. Now some awesome head piece drops, with so much +hit it's just crazy. Problem is, your existing head piece has +expertise, and you're now below the EC. If you had vendored the chest with +expertise, you're stuffed. Because you're following the golden rule, you simply swap chests and party like it's 1985.

Finally on Emblems: there are some very good items to spend your EOH on. I'm going for the Mirror of Truth first, then the Pendant of the Outcast Hero. Of course, if something better drops in the meantime, I'll happily spend them elsewhere.

So here are my final tips:

• If be.imba.hu says you're not yet at the Naxx stage, do all the above until you are. Focus on the YHC and EC with easily obtainable gear, gems and enchants.
• If you're ready for Naxx, do Naxx. Meanwhile, keep the gold and select rep coming in. Don't worry too much about grinding for gear, do the daily Heroic and store up those Emblems. You'll get the gear in Naxx.

And read up on Naxx! Good luck.

and there it is

Dinged 80 at about 1am in a specially organised Nexus and Azjol-Nerub run. Thanks to all the Pinnacle folks who helped me out, I am truly overwhelmed with the generosity.

Followed it up with a Heroic Nexus run, and lo and behold both the Spaulders of the Careless Thief and the Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood dropped for me. I'm speechless.

Can't say I enjoyed the levelling, but I enjoyed dinging 80 and I'm keen as mustard for Naxx10 on Friday. I say woo to you, sir.

So I'm now rocking new shoulders with a Greater Inscription of Vengeance I had left over, an Ice Striker's Cloak and Chain Gang Legguards with Nerubian Leg Armour from the GB, and dual Librarian's Paper Cutters with Greater Potency.

Now, the game begins. I need Expertise.

not quite...

7/20 bubbles to 80. Still over a million XP to go.

79

79 in Storm Peaks after a looong session in Zul whatever. The final stretch - 1.6 million XP to go.

78

78 in Zul whatever. Yay, only about 3.5 million xp to 80.

realm still down

... so I've had a look at my talent build. Here's what I think - cookie cutter Mut/HfB with Vigor:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0efoexoVboIzAo0xV0hZLb:TIimVc


I won't go dual spec yet as I'm saving the cash for my raid enchants. When I eventually do, I'll probably take a quite difference PvP spec, maybe a Shadow Dance spec or something.

The other option, that Monk is running with, is to run a HaT build as secondary for when the raid is stacked with crit-heavy toons. Something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#fhbbZ0xV0x0xoZxbcbIMddAzVc:ckfmcV

The Triple Shiv Opener

I've been playing around with a little spreadsheet of my own devising, which I'm using to optimise my boss opening in 3.1. It seems a little weird at first, but hear me out:

Shiv > SnD > Shiv > Rupture > HfB > Shiv > Envenom

Allowing for GCD, helmet fire and a wee bit of lag (essentially mandating 1.5 sec between button presses) that puts me 10 seconds into the fight. SnD (my most valuable ability) has been up for 8.5 of those 10 seconds, and has another 21 sec to run (maximum refresh from Envenom). HfB has been up for 4 sec already, with 60 seconds to run. I've also got a 1-dot Rupture up with another couple of seconds to run. I'm running at my maximum white damage (with SnD and HfB up), low threat (no big bursts) and I've made maximum use of my combos (none left) and energy (5 left). It's also non-positional.

Opening Ambush from stealth is an alternative, but it loses me white/poison time on target (my maximum DPS abilities) unless I can start behind the boss in stealth. It also puts 2 combos into the initial SnD (wasted with the usual intent of refreshing with Envenom), uses twice the energy of Shiv (making other abilities harder to access) and generates a lot of threat. On shorter fights that might be worthwhile (maximising the damage with CB/TotT), but I'm talking about long tank'n'spanks here.

Open Mutilate? Possible, but again 2 combos get wasted into the initial SnD, it doesn't get the benefit of the "poisoned" buff from Deadly (which a Shiv opening guarantees for later Mutilates) and it uses even more energy than Ambush.

With my opening, I've got my high-value abilities up in absolute minimum time, and am pooling energy for say a CB/TotT double Mutilate to 4- or 5-dot Rupture, with 21 sec breathing room before I need to worry about another Envenom. Throw some Tea in there and I get another couple of seconds' grace.

Opinions?

getting back in the "swing" haha

Have just checked out my WWS from a recent DTK run. Couple of notes:

• Stealthing for an opener is costing me a lot of time on target.
• I shouldn't be using Eviscerate (a hangover from grinding)
• SnD shouldn't be dropping (once)
• Rupture! Better get used to it, it'll be essential for HfB in 3.1

On rotations, it is a really complex balance. I need to keep 3 abilities up:

• Most importantly: SnD - refreshes with an Envenom after initial activation. Should never drop.
• Rupture - harder to keep up as requires specific refresh, and is useful in 3.1 for HfB.
• HfB every 60 seconds, requires a bleed (like Rupture) to come up (but not to stay up).
  

SnD is clearly the priority as it is a 40% boost to white and instant poison damage, which together represents about 55% of my damage. Fast daggers and SnD = high DPS. Combos should be used on Envenom to refresh SnD to full if there's any chance of it falling off before combos are available again.

So long as that is up, HfB is next. As it expires every 60 sec, I just need to keep one eye on it, as it may need a Rupture in advance to enable it. Luckily it doesn't use combos.

Rupture is nice to have up, but without a lot of combo procs, might be hard. Reserve for a) quick bleed when necessary for HfB, and b) when I have 5 combos and everything else is peachy.

If those are cooking along, then Mutilate. Ideally with a 120 energy pool for 2 quick Muts, and on the tail end of a CB/TotT for guaranteed crit and threat handoff, and a 5-dot Envenom for added instant poison procs. Bit of a PITA selecting the focus for TotT, will have to work out a macro.

Problem comes in with that rotation that Mutilate is the only combo builder. It's 60 Energy (55 glyphed), so if something is about to drop and energy is low, Shiv is the answer. It can't crit (in 3.1) but it gives a combo and applies Deadly Poison automatically and only costs 35 energy. Emergency use only, but definitely useful. (Note: see above post about the Triple Shiv opener).

Another problem: what if there's no warrior doing Sunder/Revenge/Devastate (or Feral Drood), Expose Armor needs to be in the mix, and done at 5CP for best effect. In raids this shouldn't be a problem, but in heroics it definitely is. This is one area where the rogue must sacrifice individual DPS for the good of the party DPS. Technically speaking, depending on the number of physical DPS dealers, it even needs to be ahead of SnD. It's only every 30 sec, but still needs to be factored in.

Another consideration is Attack Power. Most rogues will have a +AP trinket or two. When's the best time to use them? Well, seeing as both Rupture and Envenom scale with AP, ideally just before a 5-cp Envenom or Rupture refresh.

One final point: trading tricks. If the tank is doing well on threat and there's another rogue in the raid, trading TotT with them will give an average 3% DPS boost to both. The threat handoff is negated if both rogues swap tricks with each other, and both get the benefit of 15% increased damage for 6 seconds on a 30 sec cooldown. Requires some coordination as ideally you'd want to call for tricks just as you're about to unload a CB double mutilate or whatever your grandaddy burst is with other specs.

And all those people say that Rogues just mash 2. Pah.

I don't want another expansion

Talk has already begun about the next expansion. I may make myself a pariah here, but it's my blog so I'll say what I want.

I don't want another expansion.

Am I mad? Well, possibly, but that's beside the point. The simple fact is that I can't stand another 10 levels of "fedex and kill-x". It is pointless - a meaningless grind that simply forms a speed hump between the release of the expansion and the things I want to do. I mean sure, occasionally one comes across an entertaining quest, but seriously, how much can we really be expected to enjoy meandering around new zones leaving a trail of bodies in our wake in exactly the same way as we meandered around the new zones in the previous expansion?

How much effort goes into creating these quests that we simply accept without reading, blow through, hand in and vendor the reward with barely a thought? What is, to be brutally honest, the freaking point?

Why not leave the level cap at 80 and release new content patches? Kara, ZA, BT, Sunwell, they were all content patches and kept a great deal of people happy without forcing them to meaninglessly butcher thousands of random mobs to do it. Ulduar will be great. Why not just keep doing that? More Hero classes, more interesting questlines for rep or tokens, more dungeons and raids, more content at the current level cap.

Surely it makes sense from a casual point of view too. How many casuals never set foot inside Kara, because they didn't gear up in enough time before it was rendered irrelevant in WotLK? Surely by extending the life of the level cap, casuals (who make up the bulk of the player base) will get better use out of the content?

How intimidating is it now when considering levelling an alt? You're facing 80 levels of the same boring shite that you've done on your main. Now imagine that after another couple of expansions. 100 levels of grind if you feel like trying out something different. Whoopee.

Levelling is a pain in the arse, let's stop pretending it's not. Less frequent expansions, more focus on content patches at the current level cap. Sounds good to me.