Changes... a lot has happened since my last post in RL and in-game. Who really cares about RL so lets just talk about in-game changes. Let's start off with the biggest change first. I left my long time guild... whoa! I pretty much have been there my entire WoW lifespan barring the first couple of months in some wannabe-raiding-qq-guild called Champions of Azeroth. That was really a bad experience for me. They were a joke.
Simply put, WE is one of the best guilds I could have ever have hoped to have been associated with. I left for a variety of personal reasons and 1 actual guild reason, which was we just weren't progressing fast enough. Being a casual guild it's implied that RL comes first always. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does impact progress. Personal reasons include not seeing my friends online as much as I would like, wanting to be more productive with my online time (grinding out rep on alts is just busy work), and missing the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself... a grand machine who's will to succeed is unstoppable. That being said, I don't expect to foster new friendships or to revel in the camaraderie that made WE so fucking enjoyable. It'll take forever to learn the dynamics of everyone's personality and to discover who is friends with who and probably even longer to discover who ISN'T friends with who. What I expect to do is bring all the good things that I've learned from WE and show this guild what makes WE so special.
Another big change is patch 3.3. Honestly, this has to be one of Blizz's best patches yet if not the best. The content in this patch is just awesome. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself with all the new content and UI changes. I see a lot of people posting about how blizz doesn't do this right or how blizz messes that up. What I see is a company adjusting itself to accommodate its player base. The new Looking for Group tool is simply awesome. Sure, it could be better, but for just being implemented it has far exceeded my expectations. Not enough positive things can be said about that right now. The equipment manager is pretty darn good as well. It's still behind Outfitter only because it lacks automated changes. Otherwise, it's very stable and easy to use. It really sucked when it first came out. Switching out gear, saving and updating gear sets, and changing specific gear items are all very easy to do now. Blizzard has also updated map and quest functionality making Questhelper useless. Questhelper was great because it guided you on where to go (reading the quest also does that) but it was buggy and at times cumbersome to use (having a lot of quests and looking at your in-game map could cause epilepsy). Blizz killed all that noise in this patch. Any quest mod should be promptly deleted from add-ons folder. I find myself looking to use a lot less add-ons now. Blizz has identified ways to make their game less complicated and has done a great job in bringing that to the community.
Lastly, it seems that a lot of guilds are looking for rogues these days. Who knew we would be in such demand at endgame? Having languished through most of the expansion as just another dps it's nice to feel wanted again. Rogues should return to the top dps spot very soon from what I've seen and read recently. Mut is getting a slight nerf to HfB but it was prolly well deserved considering the insane numbers they were putting out when properly geared. Combat will still be competitive but its unclear if we will compete at the very top level with Mutilate spec'd rogues. I'm very excited to be able to bring something more than just my charming personality to raids again. Also, being able to talk rogue with one of the top rogues on the server is definitely exciting too. It's not an easy class to master.... more on that later.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
New Class
I know this is a bit premature considering that LK just came out a few months ago... but I can't help wondering.
Apparently, with every new expansion (supposed to occur once per year or so) Blizz is going to incorporate a new hero class into the game. I think death knights have been a hit thus far. They are a great concept and seem to be very easy to use. I haven't leveled mine yet. I'm not sure I'm going to as I'm not very interested in another melee toon AND I don't like tanking very much. Otherwise, I love the buffs they bring, I love the disease based nature of their spells, and I love the little sublteties like the creepy laugh.
With that said, what will the new class be? I'm sure they already have a list of ideas. I'm thinking it has to be a caster type unit. Another healer would be cool, but is another hybrid class really valuable? Archdruid has been mentioned a lot in various forums/posts. I just can't see this happening. Lets go over a list of requirements:
1. The class has to be accessible by a number of races.
2. The class has to be represented in WC lore.
3. The class has to be unique.
4. The class has to be associated to the new content.
Here are some other earlier ideas that we probably won't see either... Brewmaster, Necromancer, and Runemaster. I suppose we could list the Bard in there too :). In the past Blizzard had attempted to combine spell casting and melee into one class/spec ie. shamans and druids with little success. I think these classes have been improved upon but in a direction away from what was originally intended.
Any ideas on what to expect?
Apparently, with every new expansion (supposed to occur once per year or so) Blizz is going to incorporate a new hero class into the game. I think death knights have been a hit thus far. They are a great concept and seem to be very easy to use. I haven't leveled mine yet. I'm not sure I'm going to as I'm not very interested in another melee toon AND I don't like tanking very much. Otherwise, I love the buffs they bring, I love the disease based nature of their spells, and I love the little sublteties like the creepy laugh.
With that said, what will the new class be? I'm sure they already have a list of ideas. I'm thinking it has to be a caster type unit. Another healer would be cool, but is another hybrid class really valuable? Archdruid has been mentioned a lot in various forums/posts. I just can't see this happening. Lets go over a list of requirements:
1. The class has to be accessible by a number of races.
2. The class has to be represented in WC lore.
3. The class has to be unique.
4. The class has to be associated to the new content.
Here are some other earlier ideas that we probably won't see either... Brewmaster, Necromancer, and Runemaster. I suppose we could list the Bard in there too :). In the past Blizzard had attempted to combine spell casting and melee into one class/spec ie. shamans and druids with little success. I think these classes have been improved upon but in a direction away from what was originally intended.
Any ideas on what to expect?
Sarth 3D
This muthafuckin' fight is a motherfucker!! I love it. It's the only challenging thing in the game. I really like the idea of being able to choose your own difficulty for a fight. What is a bit off is the scaling for this fight especially at 2D. Sarth by himself is a joke. Sarth plus one drake isn't much harder. Sarth plus 2 drakes can be a challenge but is also a modifiable fight depending on which drake the raid chooses to down before the boss fight. If Shadron is killed there just isn't any pressure on the healers or the tank unless the raid dps is just super horrible.
The one thing I don't like is that the 3D fight doesn't allow for a dynamic group. For example, due to the high necessity of dps it isn't viable to mix the group between caster and physical damage classes. This is disappointing cuz my rogue actually ends up nerfing the raid (or being nerfed myself by the lack of buffs). It's expected to have a fair shot of downing him that the raid put out at least 4k dps on average. I believe 3.5k dps would be the threshold.
Regardless, I've been toying with the idea of putting together a melee group to go in and hammer this SOB. Unfortunately, we just don't have the available players to make that happen. We need to recruit more!!
The one thing I don't like is that the 3D fight doesn't allow for a dynamic group. For example, due to the high necessity of dps it isn't viable to mix the group between caster and physical damage classes. This is disappointing cuz my rogue actually ends up nerfing the raid (or being nerfed myself by the lack of buffs). It's expected to have a fair shot of downing him that the raid put out at least 4k dps on average. I believe 3.5k dps would be the threshold.
Regardless, I've been toying with the idea of putting together a melee group to go in and hammer this SOB. Unfortunately, we just don't have the available players to make that happen. We need to recruit more!!
Mutilate vs. Combat specs
I recently ran did a VoA run just to pick up some pvp gear. I was invited by a former guildie that just happened to be a rogue. She's always had pretty decent gear comparable to my own. Upon inspection her gear is a bit better than mine by a few gear points AND she's specc'd mutilate. Immediately, I thought this is going to be a contest to see who does more dps. I'm not sure if she was competing, but I know I was!! I don't run into many good rogues anymore... actually, I never really did.
Her spec was pretty much cookie cutter HfB. Mine has the essential combat point allocations. The first bit of trash went down pretty fast with the two rogues topping the meter. I do want to point out one interesting thing I noticed. The first pull she was distracted and didn't start dps'ing for the first few seconds giving me a lead on overall damage done... but that frakkin' mut spec is so damn bursty that by the time the mob was down she had clearly caught up to me. I'm very annoyed at this...
Anyway, by the end of the raid we were both clearly the best geared toons there. How often does anyone see 2 rogues leading on the dps meters anymore? It was a virtual tie on both damage to Archavon and overall damage done for the raid. Her dps was a bit higher due to the burstiness of the spec. I believe with the new patch combat is going to surpass mut by a nice margin... I've noticed that as a single target dps class that my dps on single targets isn't really that great. I've seen classes catch up to me on the meters on boss fights quite often. This is the only place where I see haste actually providing a buff to me. Longer fights mean more energy procs and with the changes to mana pots I forsee a bonus to having non-mana users in raids. I'm very much looking forward to Ulduar.
I'm still not sold on the changes blizz made to haste to improve overall combat dps. I would like to see Armor Penetration get buffed a lot more. I would also like to have Blade Flurry on a shorter cooldown OR have Blade Flurry effect more mobs.
Her spec was pretty much cookie cutter HfB. Mine has the essential combat point allocations. The first bit of trash went down pretty fast with the two rogues topping the meter. I do want to point out one interesting thing I noticed. The first pull she was distracted and didn't start dps'ing for the first few seconds giving me a lead on overall damage done... but that frakkin' mut spec is so damn bursty that by the time the mob was down she had clearly caught up to me. I'm very annoyed at this...
Anyway, by the end of the raid we were both clearly the best geared toons there. How often does anyone see 2 rogues leading on the dps meters anymore? It was a virtual tie on both damage to Archavon and overall damage done for the raid. Her dps was a bit higher due to the burstiness of the spec. I believe with the new patch combat is going to surpass mut by a nice margin... I've noticed that as a single target dps class that my dps on single targets isn't really that great. I've seen classes catch up to me on the meters on boss fights quite often. This is the only place where I see haste actually providing a buff to me. Longer fights mean more energy procs and with the changes to mana pots I forsee a bonus to having non-mana users in raids. I'm very much looking forward to Ulduar.
I'm still not sold on the changes blizz made to haste to improve overall combat dps. I would like to see Armor Penetration get buffed a lot more. I would also like to have Blade Flurry on a shorter cooldown OR have Blade Flurry effect more mobs.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Rogue Vent
Ok, after a pricey respec and regear I walked into Naxx 25 last weekend. I was hoping for a lot more dps for a lot less hassle. What I discovered was the rogues are no longer PvE masters... not even close.
A guildie of mine messaged me the other day noticing that my dps was kinda low in comparison to some of the other WWS reports that he had seen. He was very delicate in addressing the matter. "Hey, HH... I've seen rogues topping the dps meters, you may want to look at your spec". Oh, he was oh so right. I saw rogues hitting between 7k - 11k dps depending on the boss. I believe Thaddius gives the best buff overall for rogues or really anyone. I'm thinking WTF!!! I'm no noob. I immediately wowarmory these rogues to see what the hell is going on. A quick comparison reveals that I have superior gear. I also see that they are mutilate spec'd. Fuck! The last thing I want to do is to go back to that fucking hassle of a spec. I'd rather watch John Goodman pole dance.
I remember looking at the WWS report for Thaddius and noticing that there were 3 rogues in the raid. Amazingly, all 3 were tops in dps. There's no way I'm that much of a noob that 3 rogues with lesser gear beat me out by freaking 5k - 9k dps. There has to be a rea.... wait. Quicky I return to the WWS report and investigate which spells were being used and sure enough... each rogue was spamming eviscerate about 60 - 70% of the time. Which could only mean that they were HaT spec'd... which could only mean they were taking full advantage of the bug by having 2 more rogues in the raid that are also HaT spec'd. Every WWS report I've seen with rogues topping the meters have been HaT spec'd AND with 2 other rouges in party. I'm usually the only rogue in our guild raids.
Unfortunately, this is the only way for rogues to top the dps meters at this point in time, even on single target mobs. I wouldn't mind so much if I could AoE more to help with trash mobs or stun-lock a mob while my raid pounds on his helpless body or maybe opening any number of blue lockboxes that always drop... but my AoE is on a 10 sec CD and costs half my energy bar, stun-locking doesn't matter cuz AoE rules, and no blue lockboxes drop. I've thought about stat reallocation to maximize my dps...
A guildie of mine messaged me the other day noticing that my dps was kinda low in comparison to some of the other WWS reports that he had seen. He was very delicate in addressing the matter. "Hey, HH... I've seen rogues topping the dps meters, you may want to look at your spec". Oh, he was oh so right. I saw rogues hitting between 7k - 11k dps depending on the boss. I believe Thaddius gives the best buff overall for rogues or really anyone. I'm thinking WTF!!! I'm no noob. I immediately wowarmory these rogues to see what the hell is going on. A quick comparison reveals that I have superior gear. I also see that they are mutilate spec'd. Fuck! The last thing I want to do is to go back to that fucking hassle of a spec. I'd rather watch John Goodman pole dance.
I remember looking at the WWS report for Thaddius and noticing that there were 3 rogues in the raid. Amazingly, all 3 were tops in dps. There's no way I'm that much of a noob that 3 rogues with lesser gear beat me out by freaking 5k - 9k dps. There has to be a rea.... wait. Quicky I return to the WWS report and investigate which spells were being used and sure enough... each rogue was spamming eviscerate about 60 - 70% of the time. Which could only mean that they were HaT spec'd... which could only mean they were taking full advantage of the bug by having 2 more rogues in the raid that are also HaT spec'd. Every WWS report I've seen with rogues topping the meters have been HaT spec'd AND with 2 other rouges in party. I'm usually the only rogue in our guild raids.
Unfortunately, this is the only way for rogues to top the dps meters at this point in time, even on single target mobs. I wouldn't mind so much if I could AoE more to help with trash mobs or stun-lock a mob while my raid pounds on his helpless body or maybe opening any number of blue lockboxes that always drop... but my AoE is on a 10 sec CD and costs half my energy bar, stun-locking doesn't matter cuz AoE rules, and no blue lockboxes drop. I've thought about stat reallocation to maximize my dps...
- Haste isn't the way to go. All of my spells are instant cast. Strike 1! Reducing the global cooldown does very little with that little finite yellow mana bar. 3 spells and I'm out of energy unlike a 15k blue mana bar. Strike 2! My attack speed is increased by a percentage but considering that my white attacks miss a lot more now (hit cap rating for white damage is over 700 now) and are deflected 30% of the time really reduces the impact of haste. Strike 3!!
- Armor Penetration isn't the way to go. Boss mobs have soooo much freaking armor in the thousands. The small amounts that gear offers doesn't begin to be the answer in raising our dps back to a respectable level.
- Other stats... well, all the other stats were introduced a long time ago and have already been used and abused. They won't offer much in the way of reclaiming those tops spots.
- Buffs: Our guild is primarily caster dps. I'm sure if we had more melee dps my overall damage would increase but no to areas that I'm accustomed to seeing.
So, what's the answer. Easy... wait for new and better gear to come out and hope that blizzard will make changes to allow rogues to compete with boomkins and ret pallies that are easily pwning my ass every raid. Hybrid classes should not be out-dps'ing pure dps classes (ie, only rogues atm) with lesser gear.
http://wowwebstats.com/q3wksruaydvqe
http://wowwebstats.com/41cc6uggtvmtc?s=300-30095
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