In the World of Warcraft, things have received a great shake up with the impending Cataclysm coming ever near.  I am not going so far as to say my favorite class and raiding spec is broken, but it is close.  I am of the mind that competitive raiding and PvP action is over for WotLK content as the game begins the transition to Cataclysm content and mechanics.  The game has definitely changed and we all know that change is hard for many people to easily accept.  I have a rough time with change myself unless I am coached or otherwise helped to prepare for change.  I told myself that the new patch was called 4.0.x for a reason, and that is because it is WoW 4.0.  WoW 3.x.x concepts and mechanics are now a thing of the past.  I will most likely cut back on my WoW hours while things are in the midst of changing.  Another reason for a raiding break is that after trying to raid ICC25 last night was very little fun at all due to many different bugs and technical issues.  I had to turn the sound off while raiding due to the bad sound delay issues that are known.  The work-a-rounds that are posted such as disabling Death Knight voice effects, making sure the sound wasn’t set to system default in the WoW interface, and even reducing the hardware acceleration on my sound driver didn’t work. 

My place of work is also under going changes.  The upper management has seen fit to reorganize some of the gaming floor space.  The room we currently utilize as our comfortable and quite poker room has now been designated as a new area for high limit e-game (slot) machines.*  The poker room is to be eventually moved to another room with slightly less floor space which is fine as we never ran at full capacity in our current setup except maybe once during a tournament series.  Notice how I said “eventually”?  They haven’t even begun converting the new space for the poker room to suit our needs.  So where does that leave us until they finish?  We will be right in the middle of the open gaming floor in the midst of all the noise and smoke.  The only positive I can find in this situation is that we might draw a couple of extra players who just walk up, see the tables, and think to themselves, “Gee, that doesn’t look too hard.  I can take them.”  We will definitely lose many of our regular players who have grown accustomed to the smoke-free and quite atmosphere we provide with our room even if it is just a temporary situation.

That about covers many of the changes I’ve experience during my absence from the blog.  In my next few posts, I will cover some things I am definitely looking forward to with the release of the Cataclysm expansion in WoW.  Until then, good journey!

 Here are the recommended talent specs as provided by Aldriana over at Elitist Jerks.  If you have never been to the EJ website, then I strongly recommend browsing their forums. 

Recommended Assassination Spec   31/2/3

My notes: Most of my time using a Mutilate build has been spent in battlegrounds and arenas so I cannot say much about raiding with this setup. 

Recommended Combat Spec 2/31/3

My notes: My preferred raiding spec as well.  I have raided as Combat since my first forays into Karazhan.  I like Improved Sprint and Blade Twisting over the other filler talents if focusing on pure PvE content.  Blade Twisting acts as pseudo Crippling Poison as Combat Rogues will normally have Deadly/Instant poisons equipped without weapon swapping.  Improved Sprint is even better for getting OUT OF THE FIRE especially if snared which I get the feeling will happen a lot in Cataclysm content.

With the loss of Armor Pen, Rupture is back in the Combat rotation along with the new Revealing Strike ability.  So those that wanted a more interesting button pushing style for this spec apparently received his or her wish.  A bit of frustration may be found with juggling combo points by working RS around a glyphed Sinister Strike.  RS grants a 15 second debuff on the target so it does not have to be used immediately before an Eviscerate or a Rupture.  For example a rogue with glyphed SS with three combo points and no RS debuff on the target procs an extra combo point on the next SS for a total of five combo points.  Now the rogue loses the combo point granted by RS.  This can be avoided by using RS for the first combo point leading up to a rupture or eviscerate.

Recommended Subtlety Spec 3/2/31

My notes: I have never given the Sub spec a try, even when HAT was bugged in our favor in the early days of the WotLK content so therefore I cannot give any good personal insight to this spec and its rotation cycle.

Before I go, I want to leave with one last video posting.  This has quickly become one of my favorite WoW videos.  It is a music video parody of the song “Don’t Trust a Me” by  3Oh!3.  It was recently featured on WoW.com on the Moviewatch section.  Enjoy!

For the first time in my WoW playing career my rogue has stepped in the world of rated arena play with the start of season 8.  I  joined two fellow guildies on a 3vs3 team.  Royji, a mage, and Popefaks, a discipline spec priest, and I competed in about fifty rated matches last week.  Our win/loss record was close to 50% which isn’t too shabby in my opinion for having someone inexperienced with Arena play on the team.  Thanks for the matches guys, and I look forward to the rest of the season.  Hopefully we’ll end up with some nice PvP gear and titles after it’s all said and done.

On the PvE side of things, not much news to share.  Due to work and other RL obligations, my schedule still only permits me to raid one evening a week or sometimes two depending on what I can get worked out.  This has really limited my time in ICC which so far is a fun and challenging raid.  My other level 80 toons I have, my paladin and priest, have sat idle.  They are fun if I want something different to do from my rogue, but they aren’t toons I really want to concentrate on.  They hardly ever see any raid action anyways unless it’s for the weekly that happens in one of the early WotLK raids.  My goal for them originally was to have those toons be raid capable to help out fill any guild runs so in a sense then, mission accomplished.

My buddy Raquoon over at Shield and Armor whispered me in-game about an idea for our blogs; however, he whispered this at about two o’clock in the morning which by then I am usually falling asleep at the keyboard that late so I didn’t get a chance to hear what his idea was.  Guess we’ll see during the usual raid time tonight.

First, I’d like to toot my horn by announcing that I got my priest alt to level 80 last week.  Finally!  This is my third level 80 character.  It also means I now have a toon for all three roles; DPS, tank, and healer.  My priest is a bit under geared at the moment as the LFG Dungeon Finder tool won’t let her heal H ToC5 due to her gear score.  I will rectify this after a solid week of chain healing the lesser heroics.

Also, I have a couple of “for fun” projects I have bouncing around inside my head that I would very much like to start putting down to pen and paper.  They are very much in the early stages of pre-planning, but I hope to set aside some time in the very near future to make them a reality.  I will let one slip that one of the projects is another work of WoW fan fiction.  The other I am keeping very close to the chest, but I hope readers and my fellow guildies get a kick out of it when they see it.

A couple of things have gone on both in-game and IRL that have not been fun experiencing.  Sometimes things just don’t go as planned, or catch up with us in due time.  The piece of advice that I try to go by is to persevere.  If things continue badly, then all I can say is at least you wasn’t this guy. . .

I say it works great for all levels, but so far groups running the low level instances (Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep, etc) have been kind of rough.  The common issue I see is there are no dedicated tanks at those levels since no one has dual-specs and doesn’t level in protection trees.  The best chance for a good tank is the druid who is more often than not leveling in the feral tree.  Another issue more on my end is that playing an unfamiliar class/role ups the ante on the difficulty level.  I am currently leveling a hunter to play in the low level dungeons.  A combination of a limited spellbook and pet management (when to keep on passive/defensive) are some of the difficulties I’m having with the class, but I find the sound of gunfire in-game to be oddly satisfying.  I also equipped my toon with an Azure Silk Hood mostly because there’s not much in the way of head-gear with stats at these levels, but also for the aesthetic reason that it makes my dwarf hunter kind of  look like a Rifleman unit from Warcraft 3. 

Things are much better at higher levels.  Either players at this level are much more wise, or they are alts as evident by how much heirloom gear they are wearing.  My priest, who just hit level 79 yesterday, as benefited from the new LFG tool greatly.  I was surprised to discover that running random regular Northrend dungeons awards two Emblems of Triumph the first time.  Subsequent random dungeons only award gold and some experience points.  My priest alt, Shrylia, has exclusively been delegated to healing these runs which I don’t mind as I wanted the practice before attempting healing a heroic.  I am glad I did because I think I am just now getting the hang of priest healing at higher levels.  At first, I was trying to use healing spells like a paladin (flash, flash, flash, big heal), but I quickly found that not to be working so well as I was constantly going OOM.  I found a much more efficient and effective combination in Renew and Prayer of Mending.  I admit that I don’t research alts nearly as much as I do my main mostly because I don’t have the time, and they most likely will never raid.  I think my paladin saw action in Naxxramas twice prior to patch 3.2.

Speaking of the paladin, he has also benefitted from the new LFG tool.  He is getting some nice upgrades due to all the emblems he is raking in as a tank.  It takes him about five seconds to be placed in a random group as opposed to my main which takes at least ten minutes for him to go through the queue.  The only surprising thing about my paladin so far is that no one has mentioned that he is still using this.  Yeah, trinket drops have been scarce as ToC5 has been rather unkind to my paladin.  At the very least, if a trinket doesn’t drop for him, he will have enough badges to get one pretty quickly.

That is mostly this whole past month in a nutshell for me in-game other than rocking ICC10 and 25 on my main with the guild.  I hope others are finding the LFG tool to be just as useful and fun as I have.  I also want to take a this opportunity to thank everyone who has viewed my blog as WordPress is telling me I have been getting a lot of views lately.  Thanks all, and Happy Raiding!

    The battle at Icecrown Citadel has begun with Mythology leading the way.  The initial fighting began as the Argent Crusade laid siege to the citadel’s front gates.  Shortly following this action, small teams of heroes from Mythology accompanied Lady Jaina Proudmore through areas around the Citadel such as the Forge of Souls, the Pit of Saron, and the Lich King’s private chambers of the Halls of Reflection where the Lich King himself appeared.  Lady Proudmore confronted the Lich King alone as her accompanying champions were engaged in waves of Scourge led by deathknight commanders Falric and Marwyn.  The two deathknights were defeated, but the Lich King proved too powerful for Lady Proudmore, who called for a retreat from the Lich King’s grasp.  The Lich King pursued the escaping group through a hidden passage that lead to a deadend, but salvation appeared in the form of the Alliance gunship The Skybreaker. 

     Later in the day, the small teams regrouped into a larger force to begin an excursion inside the citadel’s front gates.  The Ashen Verdict, a combination of the Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade master craftsmen, had secured a staging area just inside the gates.  Before beginning the assault, the heroes from Mythology along with the dwarf Muradin Bronzebeard, discovered a startling revelation, Highlord Bolvar Fordragon is still alive and captured by the Scourge.  The force then began their attack which they then encountered the liches Lord Morrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper.  After defeating these horrors, the strikeforce joined up with The Skybreaker to assist in the ascent up the citadel, but the Horde’s gunship, Orgrim’s Hammer, interfered by engaging The Skybreaker in an epic gunship battle.  The heroes of the Alliance won the day, but the action caused a delay in the assault’s progess.

    What other horrors will Mythology encounter as they continue into the Lich King’s sanctum?  Will they be able to rescue Bolvar Fordragon in time before he is Scourged?  Stay tuned for more news from the frontlines in the continuing coverage of “The Fall of the Lich King”.

Rogues

• New! (11/17): Deadly Poison: In addition to its existing effects, when a rogue applies Deadly Poison to a target which has already reached the maximum number of applications, this will also trigger the poison which the rogue is using on his or her other weapon.  This will be a very good boost to every Rogue’s DPS.  All those DP procs that did nothing but refresh the DP stack are no longer wasted.  This makes the weapon swapping add-on obsolete.
• Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.  A good change for those new rogues as it does give a better idea what new rogues are in for as they level.  After playing a high-end rogue for so long, going back to a rogue just starting  out feels strange when you have nothing in the offhand slot. 
• Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.  Another good change for beginning rogues.  Just to be clear of any confusion that may be out there, this change means every rogue now has same stealth as a level 80 rogue does now.  The first rank of stealth that is currently in game before this patch only allows new rogues to move at 50% of regular movement speed while in stealth mode.
• Assassination
  • New! (11/17): Improved Poisons: Bonus chance to trigger Deadly Poison from this talent increased.  This along with the previous noted change to DP is gong to be huge for a mutilate rogue’s overall damage.
  • Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.  Another buff for mutilate spec.  I guess everything in the new Icecrown instances and raids is undead so have fun in their paladins.
• Subtlety
  • Preparation: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
  • Filthy Tricks: The cooldown reduction this talent provides for Preparation has been reduced to 1.5/3 minutes, down from 2.5/5 minutes.  These changes are due to the new rules about cooldowns in arenas.  I have never played arenas since I am a more PvE oriented player who causally spends some time in BGs.

I feel that my rogue has been underperforming as of late.  I am averaging between 5k -5.5k DPS on encounters where I am allowed to deal damage freely with very little interference from having to move out of trouble.  Now this is DPS is nothing to sneeze at and is satisfactory for the current content that is out there; however, I believe that I can do better.  One issue is that a couple of slots have not been upgraded, most notably my main hand weapon, Razorscale Talon.  Replacing that weapon will definitely give my DPS a good boost.  Until then, something I can actively do to increase my DPS is to look at my spec and gem choices.  I have made a slight change in the Assassination tree of my talent build by putting points in Improved Eviscerate instead of Blood Splatter.  This change has been augmented by more Armor Penetration gems than Attack Power gems.  I am hoping these two changes will see an increase to my rogue’s performance in raids.

I have logged onto my Paladin tank more often lately.  He is woefully undergeared and basically will stay so until I take time to farm heroics for badges.  This isn’t a big issue as I do not raid with him anyways, but it would still be nice to have a decently geared tank for backup.  I have him dual-specced into Holy, but the gear for that is in even worse shape.

My priestess, Shrylia, is still quest grinding it out on the final leg of the road to 80.  She is equipped with the +exp heirloom chest and shoulder pieces so all it will take is to do the quest lines for the Sons of Hodir faction to open up as well as the Knights of the Ebon Blade faction.  I intend for her to be a backup raid healer, but I have a feeling she may see more raid time as DPS as I am not as confident about raid healing.  That is if she sees any raid time at all as more than likely she will go the same way as my paladin.

Finally, I have been bitten with a small case of “leveling the lowbie hunter alt” bug.  The last time I tried a hunter it did not go well as I thought the first ten levels before you get a pet were down right awful.  I learned a few tricks though thanks to some videos posted by Big Red Kitty on the Project Lore website* and these tactics make the first ten levels of hunter leveling not only a breeze, but very fun to play.

*- The website is still active, but I think the guys who made the Project Lore videos have stopped playing WoW.  If you haven’t seen them already check them out as they are entertaining, especially their little trek to the Deadmines as Horde toons.