77

77 just now in Sholazar Basin. Thanks to Ponendus (my brother) who dinged 77 2 mins before I did :)

gear upgrades

So Cat is 76. She's still in T4/5 raid gear, which is holding up nicely. However, she's starting to see some blue gear drop that may well be an upgrade.

Ohnoes.

I've deperately resisted the clownsuit in Northrend, but there will soon come a time where my old gear will be holding me back. I don't expect that to be a big issue until I start doing heroics and raids, at which point I'm going to have to simply suck it up and send in the clowns.

It's complicated by my gems and enchants, which where almost all best-in-slot at 70. Do I abandon a 103dps dagger with Mongoose for a slightly better and/or faster blue that I won't be enchanting? I guess only a spreadsheet can tell me.

So, my plan is:

- No greens. I draw the line at greens.
- Inconspicuous blues (i.e. those that aren't in highly visible slots like rings, trinkets, bracers etc) will be equipped if they're an upgrade according to the spreadsheet.
- Conspicuous blues will be equipped if they are a significant upgrade according to the spreadsheet. If they're major clowny capers, I reserve the right to vendor or bank them. I mean, I worked hard for my Swiftstrike Shoulders and the Grim'grin Facegard looks completely badass, I'm not giving them up for some random quest drop.

So I think that's fair. When I'm raiding, I'll be a little bit more mercenary, but until then I'm not hurting anyone.

76

76 just now in Grizzly Hills. Fark I hate levelling.

Gundrak

Ran Gundrak with a few folks from my brother's guild < Have Kids Will AFK >. Good people to run with.

Was pretty easy as there were some 80's along. Still held up well on the DPS, pulling about 50% of the top DPS (Azarul, lv80 Balance Drood in full epics). I think that's probably OK given 5 levels difference, and I'm still rocking my lv70 raid gear!

Others were Nianii (80 Prot Pally), Ponendus (75 Prot Pally, my brother) and Catraa (75 Holy Pally).

Great run. Picked up my Manual: Heavy Frostweave Bandage and 3 blobs of XP as well. Neato.

75

75 last night in the Grizzly Hills. Christ I hate levelling.

74

... and 74 with Monk's help. Cheers mate.

73

Dinged 73 last night questing in Dragonblight. Thanks for the help, Neezer.

back... sort of

Had a bit of a hiatus from WoW, what with a huge upturn in work busyness and moving house and whatnot. The release of Black Shark and Dawn of War II didn't help either. However, now I'm semi-committed to getting Cat to 80. We shall see. I have a few nights in a hotel this week, that will be a good start.

Wrath

Logged on, took a boat to Borean Tundra, the guild decided to do a run through Utgarde Keep and we one-shotted the place.  The last boss was still pretty tricksy, and after a battle rez I ended up doing an honest to god Evasion tank FTW.  A glorious way to start in Northrend.

Close to halfway to 71, I'm off to bed.

The Burning Crusade

So that, appropriately enough, concludes the Burning Crusade for Cat. It's been quite a ride. What do I remember?

• Running through the Dark Portal for the first time.
• The Kara attunement chain.
• My very first Kara run, also my very first Pinnacle run, and my very first raid. Prince and Nightbane. Malchazeen.
  
• The grind for Mongoose mats that I ended up doing 4 times.
• 375 Leatherworking, and the Primal Intent set that I only finally laid to rest this week.
• Electricmonk, Tempalilacu, Quron, all the guys from Pinnacle and the Knights Templar.
• Crystalgypsy giving me most of the gold for my flying mount (thanks hun).
• The grind for, and eventual high from, my Swiftstrike Shoulders.
• Being useless in PvP.
• Getting Lurker down, and the fishing grind that I never used to fish him out.
  
• Rage Winterchill.
• Racing home from the airport with WoW on my laptop in the cab, talking over the Naj'entus fight, and then dropping him as soon as I walked into my house.
  

Thanks Blizz, it was fun.

Lichy, you're on notice baby.

Black Temple

Yay Pinnacle! We finally made it into BT and had a blast. High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus went down like cheap tents (one-shotting both) and we only called it because it was getting late and people wanted to rest up for launch night tomorrow.

It was a pretty funny run for me - my flight ran late and I missed the start of the raid, which had me absolutely spewing. I finally logged in from the cab at about 8pm, and thanks to my awesome guild still got an invite. I sat through the Naj'entus brief on vent in the cab, and as soon as I got home I paid the guy, folded up my laptop (still running WoW with the WiBb dongle connected) and ran for the office. I knew there would be a good chance my wife would be putting the kids to bed, and it was so. Dropped Naj'entus on the laptop over WiBb (didn't want to risk a DC switching to WiFi), then went inside for a bio and family catchup :)

The Naj'entus fight went well - I managed to get spiked twice! I was healed through the first one, but the second was right at the end of the fight (literally in the last 1%) and it wasn't worth the heals. Supremus didn't go so well for me, as I was dumb enough to chase him around in melee range in phase 2. Surprise surprise, I got one-shotted.

Some great loot dropped, and I was lucksy enough to roll a 100 on the Pattern: Bracers of Renewed Life from Supremus.

So if I'm right that takes Pinnacle to:

• Before the patch: 5/6 SSC, 2/4 TK, 1/5 MH
  
• After the patch: 6/6 SSC, 3/4 TK, 3/5 MH, 2/9 BT

A pretty good effort for a casual raiding guild that's just a year old. Roll on Pinnacle in Northrend.

ZA

Finally finished off ZA tonight, downing Jan'alai, Hex Lord Malacrass and Zul'jin for the first time. Got some seriously phat lewt, with both the Bladeangel's Money Belt and the Grimgrin Faceguard falling for me. Thank you ZA for a seriously cool hat.

Also hit the Sunwell trash for the first time, though only one sunmote dropped. Still, seeing the whole guild showing in Sunwell was still pretty cool. BT on Wednesday, and if we can drop just one boss, I'll be a happy tranny.

WWS for tonight, I'll analyse it tomorrow. Probably still quite sketchy though.

messing with the nubs

I had a little bit of fun with Merry last night, helping my brother level his huntard.  Ploddy is a brand newbie to WoW and kinda digs on the PvP, so was getting into the duels with Merry and my youngest brother's pally.  All good, a good way to learn PvP in a safe environment.

At one point Ploddy and Merry had a duel and Merry just turned her back and allowed Ploddy to pew-pew her down so that Ploddy could get the duel achievement (throwing up a PW:S at 5% was my little way of messing with him).  I did laugh after the duel when he asked "so you let me win, right?" and offered to have a real duel with him.  Shadowform, Mind Blast, dead Huntard.  Rofls  all round.

Ploddy then thought that Ponendus was an easier target being only 7 levels higher and I saw the flag drop.  Figuring I'd make up for my recent incineration, I threw a sneaky Renew on Ploddy just before the duel began, effectively tripling his health for the fight.  It was a close fight, well done by both, and Ploddy emerged victorious by the slimmest of health margins.  Well, you should have heard the crowing!  Banging on about how awesome he was, how awesome his pet was, how crap Ponendus was, the general awesomeness of hunters in general, yada yada.  I had tears streaming from my eyes with laughter as I broke the news that he'd done it with triple health.  The following duel, on honest terms both, ended more predictably :)

Aaaah, messing with nubs...

Some feedback from the very helpful Timeless (EU Norkal) on the below has alerted me to the preference for Envenom over Eviscerate for a Mutilate finisher. Also it appears (thanks Daemona of EU Destromath) that Windfury has been reworked and no longer requires dropping the OH poison. Good and bad - good because I don't need to worry about it so much, bad because it means I had the benefit of it in ZA, increasing my potential DPS quite a bit, and still only pulled 1176!

So given that Eviscerate is gone from the rotation, do I use Cold Blood on Mutilate or Envenom?

evaluating Mutilate/HfB, continued

By way of example, here is my WWS report from my very first ever venture into Zul'Aman. Should probably start with a caveat - I suck at the moment. I haven't been raiding much, have a totally new build, and a new Nostromo to get used to. So, expectations suitably lowered, let's proceed...

OK So this report is from the following bosses: Nalorakk, Akil'zon, Halazzi (including a wipe), and finally a shot across to Karazhan to drop Attumen. 5 fights, 51/4/6 HfB.

• I violated the first commandment twice, both on Halazzi (although one was a wipe, so that doesn't really count). Slap on wrist.
  
• first of all: the chart (bosses only, trash doesn't really count). Damage out looks good, second only to Gank who is a pretty awesome rogue (10/51/0 Combat Swords). 1176 DPS which is well below my theoretical maximum from the spreadsheet of 1980. Of course that is unattainable with ramp up times etc, but I should do better than 1176. Damage in looks OK for melee DPS, below the tanks and above the ranged classes. Gank does a better job at avoiding being hit. Heals, looks like I did a good job of taking care of my own healing, but if I was better at avoiding getting hit I wouldn't need it so much! Still, I'm glad I wrote that /userandom healing macro to spam.
• On to boss fight individual stats. Swing at 36% is low, that is because I'm still getting used to keeping SnD up with Eviscerate/Rupture. 20% of my Swing misses, so I could use some more +hit. Only 13 Eviscerates and probably roughly the same number of Ruptures seems a bit low. Flipping to Gains, Buffs & Debuffs explains that to some degree - 12 SnD gains in 5 boss fights! So I let it drop at least once in each fight, which diverted combos to reinstating it. Back to Abilities - 5 (4 + 1 crit) Envenoms looks ok (assuming at the end of the 4 successful fights, plus a mis-hit extra). The single Backstab is a remnant of Combat Daggers muscle memory :) Eviscerate crit % is very low at 11%, I should probably save Cold Blood for Eviscerates as they do kickass damage when they crit.
• Back across to Gains, Buffs & Debuffs: Gained HfB 16 times! 0 is the number I'm looking for there, as it should be active before the fight begins. So I let it drop on average thrice in every fight. Not good at all, that's 180 energy in each fight, or three Mutilates - which means 7 or so combos, so all in all it's 12k or so damage per fight, just from letting it drop (about 7% of my damage on Nalorakk). It also means I spent a period of the fights (no idea how long) doing 9% less damage than I could have been. 5 gains of Lust for Battle, 3 of Ferocity and only 2 of Drums of Battle mean I'm not using trinkets and drums nearly enough. I don't have Haste potions, so that's missing, as is Thistle Tea which I haven't used in awhile. Probably should get back into the tea.
• External buffs: Windfury is totally absent, 8 Unleashed Rage and only one Battle Shout? Flip to the shammy shows he was dropping Windfury, so I should have dropped my offhand Instant to grab the Windfury buff.

So there's a lot of fun stuff there, and a few good lessons for me.

• Keep HfB and SnD up!!! HfB drops cost me about 7%+ off my possible DPS.
• Keep trinkets and drums going
• Cold Blood -> Eviscerate Mutilate/Envenom, see the next blog post
• Look out for Windfury no longer required, see the next blog post
• Get the Tea going again

evaluating a 51/x/x HfB rogue

Vulajin at Elitist Jerks has long held the title of author of the most useful post for a raiding rogue. However with the release of 3.0.2 and the ascendancy of Mutilate/HfB for raiding, it does need some updating. He's stated that it won't be updated until Wrath is released and people are raiding at 80 on regular servers, so here's a starter summary. I don't pretend to be an expert in mathcraft or even general roguery outside the specs I play, but I do raid a bit and have seen every raid in WoW/BC except BT. Additionally, the only toon I raid on is my rogue.

The Commandments are still very applicable, with an amendment for HfB. A 3-stack HfB gives you a flat 9% DPS buff. Renewing it before it expires costs you 30 energy. Bringing it up afterwards costs you 90 energy. No debate, keep it up at all times.

1. Don't die.
2. Don't do anything that risks wiping the raid.
3. Maximize your time on target.
4. Don't let your energy cap out.
5. Don't let SnD or HfB drop.
6. Use one of the spreadsheets to figure out your best cycle; this will usually be the highest Rupture uptime cycle that doesn't violate rule 4 or 5.
7. Use your cooldowns.

To be continued...

Hyjal

Well Hyjal is still as much fun as I remember. Tonight I was there for guild-first kills of Anetheron and Kaz'rogal. Both great fights.

2 wipes on Azgalor beat us but it was a great way to start getting used to my new build. Combos just keep coming, it's incredible. It's tough remembering to keep up Hunger for Blood and I'm slowly adjusting to the new hotkeys for my trinkets, Deadly Throw and pots/bandages. The decision tree for combos is interesting though - 1) SnD if it's down, 2) Rupture if it's down or going to expire, 3) HfB if it's down or going to expire, 4) Eviscerate. The free SnD refresh from Cut to the Chase is brilliant - but you do feel like allowing SnD to expire without getting an Eviscerate off is a waste of combos in getting SnD back up. Same with allowing HfB to drop. There is a real emphasis on not allowing those timed abilities to drop, because there is a real energy/combo penalty if you do. Yay ClassTimer.

2 of my brothers just started playing - Ploddy (Draenei Hunter) and Ponendus (Draenei Pally). A brother of mine a huntard. Ugh!

Going Down

Well as soon as I saw this Going Down achievement I thought I'd better get it.  Of course, a Rogue does get some resistance to falling damage, and I could get a pally to bubble me or something, but I really wanted to do it myself.

After one failed try off Aldor Tier from the top (obviously an enormous source of amusement to the nice person who rezzed me) I figured it out.  Start from the bottom of the elevator, let it take you up to about halfway, then run off.  One of three things will happen:

• You'll run off too low.  No achievement, try again.
• You'll run off too high.  And die.
• You'll run off in the right zone, take a huge whack of falling damage, live and get the achievement the hardcore way.  Like me.

builds

Neat site: http://www.talentchic.com/Assassination/Raid/Rogue

more songs

Once I'd finished Evasion Tank FTW I listened to some more Dos Gringos and have some more lyrics in development for the following songs:

• Jeremiah Weed (tentatively titled Roguey Thistle Tea)
• The Bitch Spent All My Money (tentatively My Alts Spent All My Money)

Watch this space. Obviously there's a lyrics warning on those songs. The clue's in the title.