Killing you Subtly

On Tuesday I finally collected the last of the shadowy gems I needed for stage 2 of the rogue legendaries. Luckily we cleared the entirety of Dragon Soul that night so I knew I had the rest of the week to work on getting stage 2 without resorting to "AMG RAID STARTS IN 5 MIN AND IM STUCK ON THE STEALTH PART!!!" type of panic.

I read a few guides that suggested combat or subtlety for the stage 2 boss, Nalice. I can't stand playing combat (tried it, pulled decent numbers but I hated it) and I personally feel like subtlety has more survivability and neat "tricks", so I fixed up my spec, loaded up on bandages, potions, food, and got prepared to tackle the next stage in the quest progression.

I had watched the video so I knew the stealth part would be significantly easier than Creed. Creed was an absolute nightmare, and it took me close to 20 tries before I realized I was never getting in through the front door. Whereas with Nalice, within 10 or so tries I had made it to the boss. There are quite a few mobs, but way fewer pats and the behavior seemed a lot more patterned. With Creed I swear mobs literally jumped out of nowhere to ambush me.

So anyways, Nalice. I was ready to wipe more than a few times before I actually got in, and well...it was a long fight to be sure (maybe 5 min or so? That's pretty long for an unscripted, solo fight). But in terms of difficulty? Cakewalk.

It all came down to using the right "rogue trick" at the right moment. When she uses her weapon, disarm or stun her. When she casts, kick. When she enrages, shiv off the enrage. When she puts up armor, expose armor. As long as you take care of each boss buff/debuff mechanic, things were pretty smooth sailing. I had recuperate up the entire time for self-heals but honestly I think I could've managed with just a potion and a bandage. My health barely got below 90% the whole fight, and she hits like a wet noodle.

It also made me recognize that subtlety has a lot more potential than I previous gave credit. I was prepared for a really long drawn out fight as a pvp-survival subtlety spec, but surprisingly I was pulling 11-12k DPS (considering that I had no raid buffs and was facing the boss the whole time, this is pretty good). With a more DPS-oriented spec, for instance putting the points into Honor among Thieves, I think those numbers could be much higher. The rotation was not too onerous, and if I didn't have to worry about saving energy for disarm, kick, gouge, etc, I think it's very manageable. Just get the slice n dice & recuperate rolling and it all comes down to good energy management.

The DPS cooldowns for subtlety are not as straightforward, I'll admit. With mutilate basically you just coordinate the timing so that you can use all of your CDs in conjunction. Which mainly comes down to vanish -> garrote -> vendetta -> racial buff. Whereas with subtlety, the main DPS CD comes from shadowdance which should be used in conjunction with shadowstep, not only for the added buff but because positioning is so crucial to effectively utilize shadowdance. There is basically no point in popping shadowdance unless you're in a position to ambush, which require you to be behind the boss. With practice and maybe a couple macros, it should not be a huge challenge, I bet.

One thing about subtlety is that I won't be seeing huge 50k crits like I do with mutilate spec. But there are many upsides, such as a vastly increased survivability, faster energy regen, quick combo point regeneration, and excellent mobility. I also won't have such a huge dependence on poisons as a main component of my DPS, which is not really an advantage but more of a personal preference. I think it's weird that my poisons hit harder than daggers. Doesn't that seem backwards?

With that said, managing the buffs are trickier than mutilate for sure. And subtlety has such as huge dependence on positioning to maintain competitive DPS - on fights like Ultraxion I'd be a sitting duck, unable to utilize my strongest DPS CD. And who knows, maybe after a while spamming hemo might get just as old as spamming mutilate.

It's also hard to try out something else when you're doing so well in your current spec. I'm usually top DPS or #2 on most fights, and I'd obviously drop down as subtlety until I really master the spec. That hurts the raid, which sometimes does depend on me to pull through during DPS check encounters (I'm not carrying anyone, but I will say that we still struggle to meet the enrage on Ultraxion, and every little extra I bring helps). Not to mention the pride factor here - I like being #1.

But we'll see. Maybe once the content becomes easy enough and we go on farm mode, I can attempt a transition.

Love the one you're with

I like the peruse the wow forums when I have spare time, and my favorite section is always the "raid and guild leadership" forum.

People air their woes, either from a raid/guild member standpoint or from a raid/guild leader standpoint. If you can get past the fact that this is all over a video game, the discussions people have are always interesting. As a guild member, I always find the guild officers' opinions insightful. They deal with issues that I'm happily unconcerned with and do a surprisingly amount of work to get a group of different people to get along and work together.

I have never raid led or been an officer, nor do I want to. Sometimes I get snippets from the officers or GM about the drama they have to deal with, and my reaction is always "what drama???". I guess a lot of drama unfolds itself through private vent channels and whispers, and that's something I'm glad to not be a part of. As far as I'm concerned, I show up on time, do my best, and get some loot. Don't we all do that? Isn't everybody happy?

The most frequent complaint I see on the forums is this: "my guild isn't a 100% match with what I want out of this game. Should I leave my guild?"

It's a silly question, really. It's a video game, you should do whatever you want. If you're not happy, leave and explore greener pastures.

But speaking from experience, I have to say that guild loyalty pays off. What does guild hopping really get you in the end? If you have the mentality that your guild must change to suit your needs, than you're really looking at it backwards. Guilds change and evolve (and sometimes devolve) with time and it's not "them" that needs to adapt to your wants, it's you who has to adapt.

Believe me, I learned my lesson when I left a beloved guild because we switched from structured, progression-driven 25man raiding to casual 10man raids. It seemed perfectly justified at the time, but I ended up coming back in a few months because I missed my old crew. That was when it hit me that it wasn't the format or the content that made raiding enjoyable - it was the people. The PEOPLE!

I mean it when I say that I'd rather be clearing dragon soul farm content with my current group every single week than pushing heroic progression with some die-hard group of elitists. It's the friendships and connections you make with like-minded people that really adds the "fun" component of a raid. If the thrill of killing bosses was enough for me, why wouldn't I be playing Zelda?

Yeah, I know it's a game and I know there are people out there who will say, "LOL go find some real people to hang out with". And if others want to be close-minded and continue to believe that the only "real" interaction in this digital age is face-to-face interaction, then that's fine. Eventually they will need to get their heads out of the sand. I speak to these people a few hours each week. I recognize their voices when they speak. I know what they look like, where they live, what they like and what they're into. I know that when I make some stupid obscure reference about Skyrim or Star Wars or Family Guy, that someone will chime in and laugh. To me that's as real as any "real life" friendships can get.

Oh dear, this post has become inadvertently sentimental. It's the weather, I swear. My point is, when you find a guild with great people that you have fun with, stick with it. The shiny epic loot is tempting, but just remember that in a few months it all gets replaced by even shinier, epic-er loot anyways. Because when you find 9 other people who know what you mean when you say "I demand a Shrubbery!" and continue to quote Monty Python for 15 minutes, that's a beautiful thing. Love your nerdy friends and love the guild you're with.

Top 5...worst grinds

I put off playing (starting) wow for a really long time. Being a longtime blizzard fangirl, I knew about it the moment it was released, and I knew I should stay away from it. Almost since the initial launch, people recommended it to me. People asked me if I played it. People asked me why I didn't play it.

MMORPGs are like crack cocaine to me, you see. The first MMORPG I ever tried had me glued at the computer screen for an entire summer where I slept 6 hours a day and spent the other 18 hours nonstop gaming. I realized it was a very dangerous drug and consciously forced myself to never pick up any other MMO.

I think what's so addictive is that whole concept of neverending goals. There are nearly an infinite number of things to do, new levels to attain and new things to do that gets you logging in night after night.

I think it's certainly what makes WoW so damn hard to quit. There are so many big and small things to do. Big things like end-game raiding, completing a legendary, getting a full set of heroic raid tier gear, getting server first kills, getting your 2200 arena rating, etc. Then there are the little things like collecting pets, getting rare vanity items, holiday events, finding easter eggs...the list goes on and on.

What really revolutionized all this was the introduction of the achievement system, which every single MMO (and even other unrelated games like mobile app games - farmiville etc) has adopted by now. Now not only do YOU know that you're a proud owner of that rare mount or you killed that raid boss, but the whole world (potentially, although I doubt anyone else really looks) knows it too! Seeing that achievement tab light up whenever you complete an objective gives players a much more tangible goal to work towards, and thus a bigger incentive than ever to keep playing.

I, for one, am a total achievement junkie. There are some pretty ridiculous things that I've sunk countless hours into for the sake of one achievement, or title, or mount. My list of WoW achievements are very impressive and at the same time, very very sad, knowing how many hours were sunk into it.

So without further ado, here is my own personal top 5 craziest grinds I've suffered through just for the sake of "achieving" something.


5. The Loremaster



Basically, do every single quest, ever. While this seems like an awful grind, it actually wasn't the most painful (but still the 5th most painful) grind. With Cataclysm, they practically cut in half the number of quests required in each zone so that you really only needed to do half - 3/4 of the available quests in each Azeroth zone.

They did not, however, nerf the quest numbers for Outland and Northrend, so those were definitely an annoying grind. By far the worst zones were Area 54, where I lost the highly linear quest trail and was abruptly cut off and forced to wander for an hour or so, and Icecrown, where you had to do like 140 quests, most of them in a linear chain. *shudder*

4. Iron Chef/Hail to the Chef



I really can't choose which was harder, because as you can see I got them at the same exact time. I had been working on Iron Chef for some time by hunting the AH for every cooking recipe I didn't have, and even camping out at low-level vendors for the rare ones I missed.

I was getting really close to the 200 mark, so I even had my hubby use his alliance alt to mail me some unique alliance-only ones that can't be bought from Horde vendors.

At the same time I noticed I was only missing one recipe from the Northrend gourmet achievement (which in turn was the one achievement missing from the Hail to the Chef achievement) - the Haunted Herring recipe. After much trash farming in Naxx, I finally came across it only to find that I couldn't even pick it up. Thinking it was a bug, I ticketed the GM, who kindly told me that in fact I already had the recipe, but to earn the achievement one must actually cook the damn thing. Imagine my embarrassment!

Anyways, I cooked the damn herring and BAM I had my chef achievement & title. A few minutes later I camped a vendor in Desolace and BAM I had my Iron Chef achievement!

Not really difficult, but man, was that time consuming.

3. What a Long, Strange Trip it's been



This one is probably a big one for lots of folks. It takes a year to finish, no less. You basically have to get every achievement from every holiday quest.

No biggie, most of the holiday ones are not hard, just really time-consuming and requires you to do all the seasonal dailies. Some of them have you sneak into ally cities or whatever, but with flying mounts these days it's not hard. Heck, even without flying mounts it's perfectly possible to get into ally cities by persistent corpse runs.

What everyone QQs about is the children's week achievements, "School of Hard Knocks" which requires you to complete several BG objectives with your orphan pet out. I've noticed that most of the hardcore achievement junkies are PVE'ers, and therefore the outrage from both the PVE and PVP community at this achievement requirement is significant each year.

PVP crowd: We're sick of having the PVE scrubs mess up our BGs without actually trying to win games! Nerf the achievement!

PVE crowd: These objectives are too hard! I'm not skilled enough to cap a flag/defend a base/cap a tower etc etc. Nerf the achievement!

I also thought these would be uber tough, but once I tried to do it...I had them done in about 10 BGs, no more. Sure, being a rogue helps, but I found that with persistence, basic knowledge of BG objectives, and a little luck, it really isn't that hard. So enough QQ!

2. Menagerie



I'm actually still working towards the 150 pets achievement. This alone was no easy feat. Some of the pets were only obtained through endless farming low-level instances (I cringe at the thought of going back into Magister's terrace). Some of them were obtained through grinding months of dailies (I will never do an argent tournament quest again). Some of them were through other achievements (the hours I spent camping dalaran for book spawns...). Some of them were from quests, some were random drops, and towards the end I was so desperate to get 125 I started buying whatever I didn't have from the AH. I even have a few blizz store pets!

I'm still missing 19 pets...I know where they are, I'm just not quite desperate enough to grind for these just yet. Nor do I want to spend 50,000 on a pet. I still need a few more from the new Darkmoon Faire, and I'm still working to get Pebble from Deepholm. And once our caster gets her legendary I should have another to add to the list.

1. Insane in the Membrane



Well, obviously this was going to be number 1. By far the worst, most terrible, most carpal tunnel-inducing achievement yet.

Basically, you have to get exalted with:
Darkmoon Faire (before we had all these freaking daily quests available)
Shendra'lar (doesn't even exist anymore)
Ravenholdt
All the goblin factions
Booty Bay
Bloodsail Buccaneers

All at the same time too - they nerfed it in cata so you don't have to do the bloodsails and booty bay at the same time. And they took out Shendra'lar, which are the two toughest things in the whole damn achievement.

Because of the painful memories, I won't go into sordid details about the aggravating hours I spent on this. I think it took me a little over 6 months of almost constant chipping away whenever I had free time to play. Oh, the stacks upon stacks of herbs I had to mill for inks to make Darkmoon cards. Oh, the Scholomance and Stratholme runs I did to collect quest items (curse you pristine black diamonds!). Oh the hours I spent running all over EPL to collect bloods. Oh the hours I spent killing booty bay guards, the hours spent pickpocketing junkboxes, the hours I spent scouring the AH for mats. And oh, the hours upon hours I spent running Dire Maul over and over and over to save that damn goblin.

Well, now I feel sad about so much of my life spent earning pixel points.

Warmaster Blackhorn

Now that I've written a somewhat scathing review of Madness of Deathwing, I think that Dragon Soul overall is not without its merits. Some of the bosses are enjoyable and challenging, even creative and unexpected. I think Warmaster Blackhorn is definitely the high point of the raid for me.

I give the fight 9/10 - an intense but fun multi-phase, multi-add battle in the sky. And damn challenging too.

You start off the fight on top of a gunship (ICC anyone?) where adds land and must be killed before the next set drops (3 sets of 2 each). There are also drakes in the sky that shoot bomb-like projectiles at the ship and must be killed by the range DPS. There is also a sneaky little sapper that gets dropped every once in a while and must be killed quickly or he blows up the boat, kamikaze style. And once this is all done, the boss himself finally lands on the boat and it's a tank and spank from there on.

What makes the fight interesting are the variety of adds and their abilities during phase 1. First of all, the 2 big adds cleave like a truck so positioning is important for tanks. On top of that they randomly charge at a player and anyone in the path gets mowed down as well. So you constantly have to be watching to make sure you're not in the way or targeted.

The fire bombs the drakes spit at the ship are dangerous too. What's really fun is that you DON'T want to move out of it - if no one takes the damage, then the ship takes the full brunt of it instead, and if your ship takes too much damage it blows up (there is a HP bar for the ship).

So unlike every other instinct in your fingertips telling you to move the hell out of the swirling purple fire, you actually want to be standing in it. Sometimes there are extra large bombs that everyone in the raid must stand in, or else it does a lot of damage to the ship.

Then there are the sappers, clever and quick little bastards that sneak their way to the back of the ship and blow it up. Their HP is low but they move fast, and drop smoke bombs to make them untargettable until they're halfway across the ship. This is where rogue stuns (and any other insta-stuns) come in real handy. There have been many a time where I wished I was subtlety spec so I could shadowstep over to that sucker and knock him out.

Besides that, the boss, once he lands, is pretty much a tank and spank. He does a massive frontal cone AoE towards a random raid member which can be tricky for ranged DPS to move out of, but for melee you can just run through the boss. He also does a "shout" attack which has a funny audio effect (basically he cackles like a maniac and everyone takes damage???).

All in all a great fight that took my guild many wipes until we could execute it. I give it 9/10 for creativity, 8/10 for difficulty and 10/10 for awareness level required. You really need to be watching everything at all times!

Madness of Deathwing

Overall I give this fight a 4/10. Not stellar. Not amazing. Sub-mediocre. And certainly not befitting the end boss of a whole expansion.

I know, I know, people are pretty sick of fighting yet another gigantic dragon. We've already had several of them this expansion, what with Atramedes, Nefarian, Theralion & Valiona, etc etc. There are only so many things you can do to make a fight fresh and new and exciting when the end boss is a dragon (ie the standard tail whip, cleave & breath).

Which is why I think they went with a whole new direction. The Madness of Deathwing is not a dragon boss fight, even though he's technically a dragon. But by this point you've pried off his armor plating and he's starting to unravel and come undone from his own physical form.

So what are you left with when you have a dragon whose own crazy evil corrupted insides are spilling out from him like lava? Apparently it disintegrates into a series of wildly flailing limbs and tentacles.

The entire fight consists of jumping around several platforms as you take down his mutated tentacles one by one. Not once do you even get a glimpse of Deathwing or anything that might resemble deathwing during this entire phase. When all of his tentacles are done, you are basically DPSing a giant wall that is supposed to be deathwing's head or something (this is pure speculation since you are, quite literally, DPSing a giant lava-covered wall).

The whole punch-the-dragon-wall thing, I guess, is to put into perspective just how gigantic this mofo of a dragon is. But didn't we already establish that he's freaking huge in the previous fight, spine of deathwing? You know, where the entire raid is riding around on his back?

While it may get the point across that deathwing is really, really, REALLY big, it's also not that fun to sit there stabbing a wall for 5 minutes. At least give it some identifying features or a claw or something. Towards the end I kind of felt sorry for the poor sucker, sitting there helplessly like a big rock while all these insane bloodlusted orcs and trolls wailed on his defenseless hide.

The fact that you never actually see deathwing in any recognizable form also detracts a lot from the fact that this is end-game boss. Compare with Lich King, for example. I mean, there's no doubt that what you're fighting is none other than the Lich King. He might not have been a gigantor (although he was much bigger than a tauren...), it was exciting to finally tackle the one and only Lich King.

Whereas with Deathwing...hey here's that guy that wrecked the world. Let's kill a series of tentacles! Do you see where I'm going here???

As for the execution of the fight, phase 1 was somewhat interesting, involving a lot of add control and movement and raid cooldowns. I still would've liked to see more variation in the 4 different platforms - our guild used the same strategy on all of them except the last. It would be a lot more challenging and fun to deal with different types of adds and different mechanics per platform, as opposed to a carbon copy except what kind of buff you get. The buffs don't change the strategy much at all.

Phase 2 was extremely disappointing. Shrapnel debuff is incredibly stupid and way too dependent on RNG (for example if a healer or tank gets 2 in a row that's a wipe). I would personally like to never see that stupid emerald dream button ever again (Ultraxion's button was more than enough for one raid).

Also, 2 phases in a end boss fight? Really? I don't know about the others but LK had like, what, 5 phases? 6 if you count getting trapped in the sword? Defile was an interesting and fun mechanic that really had you on your toes. The Valkyrs really highlighted a rogue's burst DPS and stuns. The vile spirits required ranged to be on top of their game.

With Deathwing, you have adds but all they do is whack you randomly for stupid amounts of damage. Tanks need to eat CDs and DPS just has to pray that they don't get hit twice in a row. No snares, no traps, no rescuing, just kill adds then stab boss. Kill adds then stab boss. The elementium bolt was somewhat interesting but again, nothing so engaging and dynamic as the Valkyrs or the Frostmourne mechanic in LK.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh. The only other comparison I have is LK, and maybe it's just that LK was my very first end-game kill and I have fond memories of ICC. However that affects my assessment of the Deathwing fight, I can't help but feel that it had boring, uninteresting busywork-type mechanics and could have used a lot more creativity and thought.

Oh well, he's dead now. Maybe heroic mode will be more interesting, although I doubt we'll be getting to that anytime soon. Perhaps MoP will bring the return of interesting, innovative boss mechanics (and perhaps some new graphics too! I'm tired of reskinned bosses).