Yesterday was the first 25 man raid for the expansion that are guild ran. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was to finally do this. 10 man Naxx is a bit of a joke. I believe our team is still a bit undergeared and that we are actually over-performing based on our willingness to do the right things to beat bosses.
I've been terribly upset over my dps in 10 mans... well, not just my dps but the shift in the game towards AoE damage. Even on bosses, ie Patchwerk, I wasn't tops on the meter which is fine considering I'm missing a lot of enchants on my gear. All these elements are leading me to think, "What is the purpose of rogues, now?"
Anyway, the 25 man was my first real opportunity to get a clearer picture on the matter. In my 10 man group, I don't get too many buffs. Rogues really seem to be hyper-sensitive to buffs and scaling. In the 10 man I averaged around 1200-1500 dps topping out at 2k dps on boss fights. In the 25 man I topped out at 2.9k still easily behind other classes. I still had an awesome time in Naxx 25 man. This was easily the best group I've been in yet. We cleared the plague quarter. I'm not sure if having a 10 man version makes the learning curve flatter but we had very little issue with understanding the bosses. After a couple of attempts on each boss the group really seemed to sync. There are usually so many elements to consider when getting a raid group together. Each class will impact the raid in specific ways creating a synergistic effect that is rarely duplicated unless the exact same people come every time. Learning this synergy is usually just as important as learning the boss. For this group to go in and wipe a couple of times on each boss and then down them was very impressive to me. I remember wiping on High King so many fucking times. Even after downing him one week and coming back the next week with less than 10 different people still made the fight pretty fucking hard. Next up was Gruul who was equally a pain in the ass to get down consistently. It's an easier fight to manage overall but still requires execution cuz Shatter is such a motherfucking pain in the ass. I don't think Naxx is as hard as this. Factor in many more competent people and it almost becomes a joke.
My favorite moment, there were a few, but the tops for this day was the last boss Loatheb. We wiped on him about 3 or 4 times. This is a straight dps fight, the catch is that the healing is nerfed for most of the fight. I suppose you could look at it as a healing fight also. Anyway, our first 2 attempts were pretty good. We were able to get him down to about 30% at least before wiping. Our 3rd attempt was fucking amazing. My computer was acting retarded and I missed about the first 30 seconds of the fight. When I came back, I went in balls-to-the-wall and handled my bidness. I didn't get a lot of healer luv and I tapped out about halfway through. No hate, I'm just a rogue. As I'm lying there, dead, on the floor, watching the fight... you know cuz i'm dead (read: shamynowammy keep my ass alive!!) I'm watching the remaining 8 people still standing continue to will themselves not to fail. This unbelievable shit went on for about 10-15 minutes. It was like they were carved out of granite. No one was going to fall. Hit by hit and tick by tick the elemental giant was withering. You could see its resolve failing it. Raid chat started to get active. 10%, 5%, 2%... we were almost at a fever pitch. My heart was pounding in my chest. If we could just hold on. Then it happened. One dps down, then another... next a healer down... 1%. I could see the gloriousness, fuck that, I could taste it. It's sweet and syrupy and filled with bliss. It's right there in front of me. A huge handful of delicious victory was waiting for me... well, for us... cuz I'm lying there dead - but I digress. Next, a tank goes down then the other shortly after. I could see it's health in the tens of thousands now. If we can just hold on a bit longer. The last healer dropped and that was all she wrote. It made quick work of the remaining dps. Maybe the granite had cracks in it...
All full of adrenaline I was ready to get back in there to try again. I believe someone mentioned that we give up to try again next week. I remember wanting to slap the silliness out of whoever said that. You don't leave a boss at 1% or less for next week. You go back in and murder that motherfucker the way a bear murders its prey. We were hungry, son!! We regrouped and killed him and left feeling well fed. It was much easier the last time for some reason. Plague quarter down!!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The journey continues...
I went from a hard spec to an even harder spec for my rogue. I really haven't been satisfied with my dps so I decided to do some more research to answer a lot of questions I was having on the matter. Here's what I found out so far:
The nature of the mutilate spec is very dynamic due to crits which makes it very hard to form a standard rotation cycle. Part of the complication lies in the high cost of the Mutilate ability and the necessity of having high crit rates to build energy. This isn't much different than a combat daggers spec to start with. Factor in keeping up slice and dice and things are still pretty much the same. This was basically all I did was spam backstab and keep up SnD. I never had enough energy to get rupture going unless I got a lucky proc from ruthlessness while adrenaline rush was up. Now, for my current build I have to focus on rupture and hunger for blood. Luckily I can use eviscerate or envenom to refresh my SnD but this isn't enough. This is a very unforgiving spec. If SnD drops I have to spend a lot of energy to get it back to full duration. If HfB drops, again I'm spending a lot of energy to get it back up to 3 stacks. There are times when I don't have the ability to keep rupture in the cycle if there was an actual cycle. In a perfect world relentless strikes would proc all the time. If I build 5 combo points I am guaranteed some energy return, but the way mutilate works it is often that I build 4 combo points or 6. I end up wasting energy or missing the proc. Ruthlessness is even more random. I would love to get that extra combo point after a finishing move all the time, so I wouldn't have to worry so much about SnD.
Basically, I'm now forced to micro-manage my combo points, energy, dots, and buffs while maintaining the proper positioning to maximize my dps. This is a huge change and may make the mutilate spec very undesirable for many rogues used to the mindless combat swords spec. So far it hasn't offered the dps gains for the hassles it presents.
This poster on Elitistjerks.com says it well:
My point in this post is to give rogues who are a little bit lost with this "new" talent tree (Assasination/HfB-Mutilate) and how they should be playing it. I'm not claiming to be the best or that I can't be wrong. That said, I've kept up to date with this thread (and its predecessors) and have been playing the rogue class at the highest level of raiding for quite a while now. As always, I welcome discussion on the cycle mechanics and such, especially if you think I'm wrong or could improve upon my analysis.Basically you just need to play Mutilate as a priority system:-Never let SnD fall (via CttC Envenoms)-Never let HfB fall-Use a finisher at 4+ combo points.Basically you end up with 2 seperate but simultaneous rotations: a simple one where you refresh HfB every ~29 seconds and another for Mut/finishers.Have a timer which shows your HfB buff with time remaining very clearly. Watch it and take note when it has less than ~5 seconds left that you'll need to put some energy into that soon - plan your other moves accordingly.Have a timer that shows your SnD buff with time remaining very clearly. Also, have a debuff timer which clearly shows your Rupture and your Deadly poison stacks with time remaining. Mutilate 'till you have 4 or 5 combo points. Check your SnD timer (and HfB timer) if you think you can't fit in a finisher and get back to 4 combo points before SnD wears out, use Envenom. If for whatever reason you don't have a deadly poison stack up, wait until you are at ~80 energy and Evis if you still don't have a deadly up (is Shiv/Enven a better option at this point.. how much does Envenom beat Evis by?). If your SnD has enough time on it (generally ~10 seconds is a decent mark), check your rupture timer. If you don't have a rupture up, hit rupture. If you do but its only got 2-3 seconds left.. wait. Don't let your energy cap out - if you're nearly capped on energy and rupture is still up - hit another Envenom.In practice this generally means you end up doing 4+ Enven, 4+ Rupture when you don't get Ruthlessness or a Crit on any of the Mutilates. If you get a couple Ruthlessness procs in a row with Crit mutilates you'll often have time to fit in a second Envenom. I'd recommend also being able to clearly see your Enveom buff so that you don't Envenom while it is already up unless you would otherwise cap out on energy. As an example, this week on Brutallus I had 59 Rupture ticks and 11 Envenoms in a 2:30 kill. 59 Rupture ticks works out 79% rupture uptime and 1 envenom every 13.6 seconds. 59 Rupture ticks means I hit rupture 8 times, a majority of the time with 4 combo points.I'd further recommend that if you're new to Mutilate and want to improve - try the test dummies out for a bit. HOWEVER, keep in mind a few things. First, raid buffs will change stat weightings and even your cycles. On the test dummy you'll be roughly 10-15% crit behind what you'll get in a raid. This means fewer single-mutilate finishers via Ruthlessness + Crit-Mut. Don't do a 3 minute test with 1 set of gear then a 3 minute test with another set of gear and pronounce set A better than set B in a raid - use the dummies to get a feel for the cycles.Also, keep in mind that this is more related to lvl 70. At lvl 80 our Rupture will last longer (Glyph). This leads to a much higher chance that Rupture will still be up after an Envenom + Mutilate to 4 combo points. You will likely find at 80 that you run into a 4+Rupture, 4+Enven, 4+Enven cycle. This was mentioned a while back by Ald (I think :S). Basically, maintaining a cycle which is at most 23 seconds long (SnD length) and at least 20 seconds (rupture length) with an energy bar only 100 big, just isn't possible long-term. You'll certainly run into the scenario where it does happen that way, but fitting in multiple Envenoms between ruptures will be more even common.
A lengthy quote but appropriate nonetheless...
The nature of the mutilate spec is very dynamic due to crits which makes it very hard to form a standard rotation cycle. Part of the complication lies in the high cost of the Mutilate ability and the necessity of having high crit rates to build energy. This isn't much different than a combat daggers spec to start with. Factor in keeping up slice and dice and things are still pretty much the same. This was basically all I did was spam backstab and keep up SnD. I never had enough energy to get rupture going unless I got a lucky proc from ruthlessness while adrenaline rush was up. Now, for my current build I have to focus on rupture and hunger for blood. Luckily I can use eviscerate or envenom to refresh my SnD but this isn't enough. This is a very unforgiving spec. If SnD drops I have to spend a lot of energy to get it back to full duration. If HfB drops, again I'm spending a lot of energy to get it back up to 3 stacks. There are times when I don't have the ability to keep rupture in the cycle if there was an actual cycle. In a perfect world relentless strikes would proc all the time. If I build 5 combo points I am guaranteed some energy return, but the way mutilate works it is often that I build 4 combo points or 6. I end up wasting energy or missing the proc. Ruthlessness is even more random. I would love to get that extra combo point after a finishing move all the time, so I wouldn't have to worry so much about SnD.
Basically, I'm now forced to micro-manage my combo points, energy, dots, and buffs while maintaining the proper positioning to maximize my dps. This is a huge change and may make the mutilate spec very undesirable for many rogues used to the mindless combat swords spec. So far it hasn't offered the dps gains for the hassles it presents.
This poster on Elitistjerks.com says it well:
My point in this post is to give rogues who are a little bit lost with this "new" talent tree (Assasination/HfB-Mutilate) and how they should be playing it. I'm not claiming to be the best or that I can't be wrong. That said, I've kept up to date with this thread (and its predecessors) and have been playing the rogue class at the highest level of raiding for quite a while now. As always, I welcome discussion on the cycle mechanics and such, especially if you think I'm wrong or could improve upon my analysis.Basically you just need to play Mutilate as a priority system:-Never let SnD fall (via CttC Envenoms)-Never let HfB fall-Use a finisher at 4+ combo points.Basically you end up with 2 seperate but simultaneous rotations: a simple one where you refresh HfB every ~29 seconds and another for Mut/finishers.Have a timer which shows your HfB buff with time remaining very clearly. Watch it and take note when it has less than ~5 seconds left that you'll need to put some energy into that soon - plan your other moves accordingly.Have a timer that shows your SnD buff with time remaining very clearly. Also, have a debuff timer which clearly shows your Rupture and your Deadly poison stacks with time remaining. Mutilate 'till you have 4 or 5 combo points. Check your SnD timer (and HfB timer) if you think you can't fit in a finisher and get back to 4 combo points before SnD wears out, use Envenom. If for whatever reason you don't have a deadly poison stack up, wait until you are at ~80 energy and Evis if you still don't have a deadly up (is Shiv/Enven a better option at this point.. how much does Envenom beat Evis by?). If your SnD has enough time on it (generally ~10 seconds is a decent mark), check your rupture timer. If you don't have a rupture up, hit rupture. If you do but its only got 2-3 seconds left.. wait. Don't let your energy cap out - if you're nearly capped on energy and rupture is still up - hit another Envenom.In practice this generally means you end up doing 4+ Enven, 4+ Rupture when you don't get Ruthlessness or a Crit on any of the Mutilates. If you get a couple Ruthlessness procs in a row with Crit mutilates you'll often have time to fit in a second Envenom. I'd recommend also being able to clearly see your Enveom buff so that you don't Envenom while it is already up unless you would otherwise cap out on energy. As an example, this week on Brutallus I had 59 Rupture ticks and 11 Envenoms in a 2:30 kill. 59 Rupture ticks works out 79% rupture uptime and 1 envenom every 13.6 seconds. 59 Rupture ticks means I hit rupture 8 times, a majority of the time with 4 combo points.I'd further recommend that if you're new to Mutilate and want to improve - try the test dummies out for a bit. HOWEVER, keep in mind a few things. First, raid buffs will change stat weightings and even your cycles. On the test dummy you'll be roughly 10-15% crit behind what you'll get in a raid. This means fewer single-mutilate finishers via Ruthlessness + Crit-Mut. Don't do a 3 minute test with 1 set of gear then a 3 minute test with another set of gear and pronounce set A better than set B in a raid - use the dummies to get a feel for the cycles.Also, keep in mind that this is more related to lvl 70. At lvl 80 our Rupture will last longer (Glyph). This leads to a much higher chance that Rupture will still be up after an Envenom + Mutilate to 4 combo points. You will likely find at 80 that you run into a 4+Rupture, 4+Enven, 4+Enven cycle. This was mentioned a while back by Ald (I think :S). Basically, maintaining a cycle which is at most 23 seconds long (SnD length) and at least 20 seconds (rupture length) with an energy bar only 100 big, just isn't possible long-term. You'll certainly run into the scenario where it does happen that way, but fitting in multiple Envenoms between ruptures will be more even common.
A lengthy quote but appropriate nonetheless...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
1st Purple Team Raid - Naxx
I've waited months to finally raid with an elite group again with no weak spots. Even with the expansion coming out and changing a lot of the ways the classes work and interact there's still the undeniable ability to play one's class, to stay alive, and to assist in what's needed to beat raid bosses. I've been so frustrated the past year having to deal with noobs, lazy mutherfuckers, arrogant incompetance, and unwarranted entitlement that it forced me to take about 8 steps back away from raiding. This has been reversed with the creation of Purple Team. We are EPIC!!! Allow me to elaborate....
About half of the team reached level 80 within the past week... if not within the last 24 hours. The other half has been 80 for at least 2 weeks or so. What was so fucking amazing was that we went into Naxxramas with toons still wearing gear from level 70 and we destroyed the Arachnid Quarter and started into the Construct Quarter easily dispatching Patchwerk. That's 4 bosses down in the first night. We only raided for about 3 hours. Grobbulous was a bit more challenging. I believe I understand where we were making it harder on ourselves.
Our group is caster based so my dps was pretty low comparably. Actually, I was the only one without a mana bar. All the mob debuffs were for casters. I was really upset that I was sooo low on the damage meter, but our group just isn't tailored to boost my dps. We had 2 pally tanks, 2 mages, 1 spriest, 1 boomkin, 1 lock, 1 hpally, 1 hpriest, and finally me... the lonely ass rogue. I totally expect to be dead last in dps whenever I'm in this group judging from last nights results and the group make-up. I still did respectable dps once I realized what was going on. I can't wait to see them get geared cuz it's just going to escalate our group so much faster. My impact as a rogue will be pretty minimal in this group, but it'll just push me that much harder to keep up with them.
Maybe what this group needs is an elemental shammy... the synergy would be amazing, unfortunately the guild needs a rogue and I love being a rogue even when I suck.
About half of the team reached level 80 within the past week... if not within the last 24 hours. The other half has been 80 for at least 2 weeks or so. What was so fucking amazing was that we went into Naxxramas with toons still wearing gear from level 70 and we destroyed the Arachnid Quarter and started into the Construct Quarter easily dispatching Patchwerk. That's 4 bosses down in the first night. We only raided for about 3 hours. Grobbulous was a bit more challenging. I believe I understand where we were making it harder on ourselves.
Our group is caster based so my dps was pretty low comparably. Actually, I was the only one without a mana bar. All the mob debuffs were for casters. I was really upset that I was sooo low on the damage meter, but our group just isn't tailored to boost my dps. We had 2 pally tanks, 2 mages, 1 spriest, 1 boomkin, 1 lock, 1 hpally, 1 hpriest, and finally me... the lonely ass rogue. I totally expect to be dead last in dps whenever I'm in this group judging from last nights results and the group make-up. I still did respectable dps once I realized what was going on. I can't wait to see them get geared cuz it's just going to escalate our group so much faster. My impact as a rogue will be pretty minimal in this group, but it'll just push me that much harder to keep up with them.
Maybe what this group needs is an elemental shammy... the synergy would be amazing, unfortunately the guild needs a rogue and I love being a rogue even when I suck.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
1st Naxx run
Last night was my first raid into Naxx. I was very excited to go in and get some phat lewtz!! What I came to discover was that the place was an AoE fuckfest. We worked our way through the military quarter to Instructor Razuvious. I'm not at all happy with the amount of deaths I incurred from the cleaves and AoE's from the trash mobs. It was so bad that i just had to stand and watch for a bunch of the pulls. I felt like blizzard had tattooed "Utterly Useless" on my forehead. My nickname is "HH"... I could just hear my guildies calling me "UU". I know that trash mobs drop an epic dagger that would've really boosted my dps. Unfortunately, a guildie had to mention that it drops all the time effectively jinxing that run for me. Sigh... nothing could've been better than doing absolutely nothing and having that dagger drop for me.
The boss fight was pretty cool. I got to single target dps without fear of pulling aggro. I like to visualize my boss fights into something a bit more meaningful. Don't get me wrong, I love killing stuff in WoW. I really want that edge... that extra push that will get me to the top of the charts. I have some pent up bitterness and frustration from ex-girlfriends. I pictured my last ex as the boss and I fuckin' went to work. I stabbed the fuck out of that boss. Luckily, I have two daggers. While one was shanking the bitch I had the other one giving her that mean-ass shiv. After the fight was over, I spat on her and called her a silly cunt er, I mean I called the boss some colorful names. Apparently, I got a bit caught up in this as my dps was mid-level. Oh well... I enjoyed myself. :)
The next wing we did was the arachnid quarter. I believe we went to the last boss Maexxna. She was pretty easy to learn and freaky as fuck to look at. I really don't like spiders. I think I was more motivated to kill the spider than stupid bitch-ass cunts cuz I really put a hurtin' on her. Only a geared out mage out-dps'd me.
We head back in tonight with a designed group full of competent people that will hopefully represent the idea of what blizzard had in mind. It's not about the classes you bring, but about the players.
The boss fight was pretty cool. I got to single target dps without fear of pulling aggro. I like to visualize my boss fights into something a bit more meaningful. Don't get me wrong, I love killing stuff in WoW. I really want that edge... that extra push that will get me to the top of the charts. I have some pent up bitterness and frustration from ex-girlfriends. I pictured my last ex as the boss and I fuckin' went to work. I stabbed the fuck out of that boss. Luckily, I have two daggers. While one was shanking the bitch I had the other one giving her that mean-ass shiv. After the fight was over, I spat on her and called her a silly cunt er, I mean I called the boss some colorful names. Apparently, I got a bit caught up in this as my dps was mid-level. Oh well... I enjoyed myself. :)
The next wing we did was the arachnid quarter. I believe we went to the last boss Maexxna. She was pretty easy to learn and freaky as fuck to look at. I really don't like spiders. I think I was more motivated to kill the spider than stupid bitch-ass cunts cuz I really put a hurtin' on her. Only a geared out mage out-dps'd me.
We head back in tonight with a designed group full of competent people that will hopefully represent the idea of what blizzard had in mind. It's not about the classes you bring, but about the players.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
A frest start...
I've been a bit reluctant to write about my WoW experiences for fear that they would be criticized or labeled as QQ postings. I've read enough forum postings now that I can easily say "Fuck you!" Luckily, I don't have to worry about being banned by a forum moderator. Sweet. With that in mind... let's begin.
I've been playing a rogue now for about 2-3 years. It is one of those classes that polarizes other players especially in pvp. Since the game has changed a lot over that time let's just fast forward to today. I fucking love my rogue. I just hit level 80 about a week ago. I'm already running heroics and 10 mans. I really don't think rogues are as complicated as Blizzard makes them out to be, rather should be. Think about it... someone hitting you with a fucking sword shouldn't really be that complicated. Let's factor in hit rating, armor penetration, poison hit rating, special attack hit rating, haste, expertise, weapon speed, agility, critical strike rating, attack power, target armor value, target level, etc. etc... It's too much. I just want to sneak up on someone and poke, stab, stab till they die.
The game is definitely different now. Gone are the days of maxxing out hit rating to 100% when every attack landed. No more T6 rogues mopping the floor in dps charts over ret pallies and boomkins (these specs almost became extinct). The slate has been wiped clean. Every rogue tree is now pve viable at least until the next patch comes out. In the beta, mutilate was the top dps spec marginally beating out combat swords. Just the other day I saw a WWS report that put a sub rogue over 6.1k dps!!! Seriously, wtf?! Which leads us to... what the hell am I doing?
I spec'd mutilate upon reaching level 80. The burst damage is phenomenal when crits are involved. Rogues still lack a reliable AoE. The problem that I'm finding is that I am forced to stay on a single target to look good on the charts. I'm running about 1.5k dps right now in purples, blues, and greens. When I move around to multiple targets my dps drops down as low as 900dps. Switching targets as mut is so fucking combo point inefficient. A big chunk of my damage comes from Mut crits and Rupture dots. White damage has been reduced by a chunk. I remember my white damage being over 75% of my total damage. It's now probably around 60%. Regardless, my concern is that mut rogues really don't have the ability to multi-target very well. Fan of Knives is great but the 10sec cd kinda stinks. Switching between 2 or more targets can be the absolute downfall. I don't think spamming FoK is the answer for dps meters but it certainly will help killing those trivial mobs that can burden a healer.
I've been playing a rogue now for about 2-3 years. It is one of those classes that polarizes other players especially in pvp. Since the game has changed a lot over that time let's just fast forward to today. I fucking love my rogue. I just hit level 80 about a week ago. I'm already running heroics and 10 mans. I really don't think rogues are as complicated as Blizzard makes them out to be, rather should be. Think about it... someone hitting you with a fucking sword shouldn't really be that complicated. Let's factor in hit rating, armor penetration, poison hit rating, special attack hit rating, haste, expertise, weapon speed, agility, critical strike rating, attack power, target armor value, target level, etc. etc... It's too much. I just want to sneak up on someone and poke, stab, stab till they die.
The game is definitely different now. Gone are the days of maxxing out hit rating to 100% when every attack landed. No more T6 rogues mopping the floor in dps charts over ret pallies and boomkins (these specs almost became extinct). The slate has been wiped clean. Every rogue tree is now pve viable at least until the next patch comes out. In the beta, mutilate was the top dps spec marginally beating out combat swords. Just the other day I saw a WWS report that put a sub rogue over 6.1k dps!!! Seriously, wtf?! Which leads us to... what the hell am I doing?
I spec'd mutilate upon reaching level 80. The burst damage is phenomenal when crits are involved. Rogues still lack a reliable AoE. The problem that I'm finding is that I am forced to stay on a single target to look good on the charts. I'm running about 1.5k dps right now in purples, blues, and greens. When I move around to multiple targets my dps drops down as low as 900dps. Switching targets as mut is so fucking combo point inefficient. A big chunk of my damage comes from Mut crits and Rupture dots. White damage has been reduced by a chunk. I remember my white damage being over 75% of my total damage. It's now probably around 60%. Regardless, my concern is that mut rogues really don't have the ability to multi-target very well. Fan of Knives is great but the 10sec cd kinda stinks. Switching between 2 or more targets can be the absolute downfall. I don't think spamming FoK is the answer for dps meters but it certainly will help killing those trivial mobs that can burden a healer.
Maybe I'm just jealous that the instances are an AoE-fest that don't require much skill and I chose a non-AoE class.... maybe I believe in a world free of tyranny. Nah, basically, I just have to learn to play with a new spec. I just feel sorry for those poor souls on the dps meter below me. Can I go back to writing about women now?
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