You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2008.
Thanks to Anna from Too many Annas for discovering Wordle.
Valenna at Parry! Dodge! Spin! posted some new info about rogues coming out of the beta; at first I started to write a comment but then decided to just write a post on it.
Right, first a change: Mace Specialization (Combat) no longer stuns enemies, and instead increases critical damage bonus by 2/4/6/8/10%.
I can see this replacing the Fist and Sword spec in raiding, which is already quite good with a 5% crit to fist. This new change is going to double that and who in his right mind is going to say no? So if they release the talents before the expansion, I will definitely spec Mace and Sword. ( Good thing that in BT there is a nice one that drops from Supremus: Syphon of the Nathrezim)
The second part of the news is the new inscriptions. I’m not going to report them here, go and read Valenna’s post if you haven’t seen them yet.
Looks like Valenna is not excited about them but I have to admit I find a few PvE ones quite tasty and here is why:
- Glyph – Shiv: this will probably make Shiv a good opener for mutilate Rogues with a fast OH. For example, with a 1.5 speed, shiv will cost 30 energy; this will allow the rogue to start an early 1 point S&D with almost full energy, and being able to mutilate twice a poisoned mob under find weakness right from the start.
- Glyph – Slice and Dice: this is equal to the T4 two pieces bonus. Seeing as a lot of rogues don’t break this bonus until they have 4 pieces T5, I believe it makes this glyph one of the first ones every raiding rogue will want. In reality, because 99% of the raiding rogues have S&D talented, it is an actual increase of almost 4.5 seconds
- Glyph – Expose Armor: EA duration increased by 10 secs, not overwhelming but it makes it easier to maintain EA on a boss even in movement fights especially combined with the S&D glyph.
- Glyph – Evasion: this is purely personal, but I like the glyph since I already Evasion-tanked the last 1% of both Najentus and Kaz’rogal.
I’m not sure if the Glyph – Hemorrhage will help bringing back the Hemo tri-spec that was viable before the Hemo nerf and it’s a shame that Glyph – Adrenaline Rush will still not allow the use of AR twice in a boss fight.
As for the more PvP oriented glyph, I doubt they are going to affect rogues in a significant manner but i’m not a PvP hardcore so what do I know? 
From Tor.com, looks like there is a lawsuit regarding distribution rights…
Here are just a few tips for rogues, following these will help you and your raid:
Keep Slice and Dice up all the time, white damage is at least 55% of your total damage (and more depending on spec).
Don’t die: dead rogue equals 0 dps.
Stuff that appear on the ground under your feet is bad, be aware of what happens and move out quickly.
In the Morogrim fight, time Blade Flurry so that you don’t use it when the wave of murlocks is next to you.
During TK trash, a well placed Blind can neutralise a whirlwind.
In phase one of the Al’ar fight melee are on the adds; when the little birds are on 10-20% depending how much dps your raid has, get all melee to move away, use Kidney Shot to keep the add in place and keep dps up, use Cloak of Shadow to avoid the blast from the exploding add. This obviously works if you have at least 2 rogues in the raid, the CD on CoS is too long for one rogue to do it on his own.
During the Najentus fight in BT, use Cloak of Shadow just before the bubble burst, that will be 8k health your healers don’t have to worry about.
Don’t die, surviving a fight is more important than the damage meters and if you die you will surely NOT be at the top.
Way to go RL!
This is what greets the raider that signs up for the next BT raid, and my question is why?
Why are we pushing in BT while we leave behind Vashj and Kael? Why we are we having a MJ farming night, a TK or SSC farming night and a half assed attempt to progression? And all of this in a week? I really don’t know.
From what I have seen and read, Kael and Vashj are the two fights that require more coordination and a good awareness of what is going on around you, not just enough DPS or enough healing or whatever. Compared to Kael, MH is a joke (excluding Archimonde which I have never even seen) and the first two bosses in BT are just annoying.
Despite being given a chance to see T6 instances, I’m starting to regret that attunements have been removed. Yes, Kael and Vashj were raid breakers but at least you could separate the committed raiders from the loot driven people and those raiders that just come along for the ride (no pun intended).
Yes I am a noob at this raiding game, I don’t really understand all the politics behind managing and leading a raid but I would be prouder to say I was there for a Kael kill than to say we are 4/5 and 3/9.
Am I wrong? Is there anyone out there that agrees?
Some time ago, after a couple of weeks of frustration trying to find the “right unit frames addon” for me I wondered on twitter why I’m never satisfied by any Unit Frames addon. Matt kindly replied with “High standards? =D”.
That made me actually sit down and think about what I want from a unit frames addon and in general from my UI and I don’t believe that high standards are at the root of my frustration.
Ok, let’s start from the idea that I more or less follow the Unix principle, ie small programs (addons) that do only one thing but do it properly and cleanly, that don’t require hours spent in the lua code to configure and that would still allow me to have an aesthetically pleasing UI. Also, for no other reason that I get a warm feeling inside, I want my addons to use as little memory as possible.
Sitting down and thinking about what information I actually need while I play both in raids and Battlegrounds, I came up with this list:
My Health and the target’s health.
My power and the energy ticks
Debuffs on target: Poison stacks, Rupture.
Enemy Castbar
Duration of stuns (Sap, Cheap SHot, Kidney Shot, Gouge, Blind)
Combo Points
Duration of Slice and Dice and a few other abilities like Find Weakness when I’m Mutilate specced
Cooldowns (Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush, Vanish, trinkets)
Debuffs on me
My threat
Temporary Weapon enchants
The second thing I did was trying to figure out which areas of the monitor I look at by default, and basically there are two: a central square around the character and the right bottom side of the monitor, probably because the cursor usually sits there when I don’t use the mouse, and it’s most natural movement for me is from that corner to the centre and back.
Armed with this information I collected the addons that would cover the list above:
XPerl for the Unit Frames
TickTock for Energy ticks
Debuff Filter
ECB
Stunwatch
naiCombo
RoguePowerBars
OmniCC and DoomCooldownPulse
Bollo (to allow me to move buffs and debuffs independently)
Omen
To these I added the defacto raiding addons: oRA2, BigWigs and BunchofBars, useful addons such as Align, AMP, BaudBag, BaudGear, ChatStamp, Dominos, Doublewide, OPie, PhanxChat, Jumiminimap, pMap, Hemlock, oPen, WeaponRebuff, SCT, RedRange, and a few purely esthetical like ButtonFacade, NeonChat and Shared Media.
The screenshot shows the first outing of this UI. It is still very much a work in progress, especially the unit frames and in the second part I’m planning to talka bit more about them.
