Anyone can play a rogue...

...but only the dedicated will get to the top.

No, seriously, I can't stress that enough.  It goes for any other class in the game, really.  Anyone can play any class reasonably well - by reasonably well I mean you can finish a heroic dungeon without being a burden to the rest of the group.  You can get in the top 10 dps spots in a LFR group.  You can get through all of the solo content in the game without any trouble.

But the trouble starts when people who know their class reasonably well start coming into raid groups.  I don't mean to be elitist, but just being "pretty good" at playing your class just doesn't cut it.  You may get carried through the first few normal mode bosses without people noticing, but when you get to later bosses or heroics, people WILL notice you struggling at the bottom of the meters or not pushing out the required hps or being too squishy to survive mechanics.  

Raids are for people who are, and want to be, more than just "pretty good".  It's for people who actually invest a bit of time into researching their class, knowing the nuances of different stat weights and enchants, knowing some of the more intricate rotations and when to use CDs, knowing at least the basics of min/maxing.  

Of course there are the dedicated few who go above and beyond that - those would be your hardcore mythic raiders who are at the top of their games.  But that requires nearly a job-like dedication to playing and raiding.  The average player doesn't need to invest anywhere near that kind of time to be a competent raider.  

I've been playing a rogue for nearly 6 years now, so I've picked up on some things here and there.  I certainly don't spend anywhere near the level of effort the mythic raiders do, but I do browse the theorycrafting forums now and again.  I stay on top of class changes as they happen and re-adjust my spec and stat weights accordingly.  I buy the best level of gems/enchants that I can afford and spend some time at the practice dummy whenever I can't decide between gear options.  I do know my class.  My dps is usually above other players in my +/- 5 ilvl range and I rank in the 80-90th percentile according to the logs.  

So when our group brings in a pug rogue who is pulling half my numbers at an ilvl that isn't too far off from mine (less than 10 ilvl), I have to wonder what this guy is doing wrong.

He was wondering the same thing, as he kept whispering me, "what are you doing different?  How are you doing so much dps?"  

Assassination spec is by far the easiest of rogue specs as it literally requires 4 buttons (mutilate, rupture, dispatch, vendetta).  He told me he was doing the rotation correctly, I asked him a couple questions about CDs, he insisted he was using them correctly.  So all I could do was shrug and suggest that it was gear issues.

Well, I linked the logs from the fights to a rogue forum, and the response was quite enlightening.  Turns out this guy was doing a whole slew of things wrong - subtle, little things here and there, but added up can result in a ~20k dps increase.

For instance he was using the +200 agi flask, not the +250 agi one.  It doesn't seem like a big deal, but why not spend the extra 50g to get more of your primary stat?  He wasn't using a prepot or combat pot, which once again, why not spring the extra few gold for the big dps boost?  His rupture uptime was only 90% (despite him assuring me it was always up), he was using a wrong glyph, energy pooling, wrong enchants, you name it.  

So all this tells me that this is a guy who wanted to play a rogue, found that leveling to 100 was pretty easy, went and read some tips on noxxic and decided he was good enough to raid in a heroic pug.  I get that everyone has to start somewhere, but I personally wouldn't have the balls to step into a heroic pug without having first shown that I can beat 90% of the other players in normal mode first.  The last thing anyone wants is to get laughed out of a pug and blacklisted...

When we removed him from group (this was after the third week of him getting carried) he bitched to me in whispers.  This leads me to think that age may be a factor too - I'm guessing he's pretty young.  Which is of course an issue in itself - you have no business trying to get in a group of 30-something adults as it is unless you're super mature for your age or just show up, pull your fucking weight and never talk in vent (we'll never know how old you are and that's fine!).

Last I heard he got discouraged and quit his rogue.  I don't feel bad for him, honestly.  Some people are better off being casuals, and that's ok.  Just don't expect to be carried through content by other people.  

Too little too late

I think I've just about had it with my guild.  For a while now I've been feeling like we've been drifting apart, but now might be the time to cut the cord for good.

Since the release of BRF I've switched from playing a dps toon to healing since we needed a healer to fill in for a missing person.  That's fine, I didn't mind too much.  At that point, I had progressed through heroic Highmaul and even downed imperator on my rogue all through the group finder.  I didn't feel like I was "missing out" on progression by not raiding with the guild on my dps toon, so that was all good.

And it was, for a while.  I enjoyed healing, and I even found a steady group to progress through BRF on my rogue every week.  But then problems started a couple of months ago when attendance dropped off dismally in the guild.  People started bailing at the last minute or not signing up at all, and we were getting into BRF (normal mode, mind you) maybe like 3-4 times a month.  On no less than two occasions raid was cancelled at literally the last minute because our GM was "not feeling up to it".  Fine.  Whatever.

It was fine, though, my rogue was progressing along with the other group (the schedules were different so there was no conflict) and I even managed to get a heroic blackhand kill with a random pug group.  Hooray for AOTC!

After that I kind of lost interest in raiding.  My main guild wasn't really clearing anything, and I already had my blackhand kill on my rogue, so I was content to just sit tight and wait for the next patch cycle to bring some new content.

Well, apparently a couple of weeks ago our GM decided that she REALLY wanted AOTC before the patch drops.  And so she kicked up raiding into gear again in a frantic attempt to get the blackhand kill.  Last night I wasn't even going to raid but was roped into it and ended up staying an hour later than I intended.  Actually, when I called it quits, she was trying to get people to stay even later (not sure if it actually happened though).  And now I see that she's put up raid signups EVERY SINGLE DAY until next Tuesday, when the patch drops.

Here's my issue with what she's doing:

1.  A few months ago she was content to pretty much ignore progression and just do a few normal bosses or cancel raid altogether when we had less than 10 signups.  I suggested pugging a few people but she was very hesitant to do that.  Well, now that the patch is a few days away that really lit a fire under her ass (she's a huge achievement whore) and she didn't have a problem bringing pugs in last night in a desperate attempt to get a blackhand kill.

So what's the deal?  Back when she wasn't excited about raiding pugs were not good enough for her, and now that she's about to miss out on her AOTC suddenly that's all cool?  WTF?

2.  She told everyone to come focused and watch videos, etc.  I laughed at that, because pretty much all throughout BRF she has been completely clueless.  It was usually me or a couple other people who had done the fight before that had to explain everything.  Which is fine, except that she still likes to scream at people as if she knows what's going on.  Case in point: she yells at people to not get stamped on H&F, but when you look at skada, she gets stamped more than anyone else.  Someone stands in fire?  She yells at them.  When she stands in fire, she always has an excuse - 'I was too busy watching the tanks hp".

Bottom line is, if you want to actually lead the raid, then you need to know what's going on in the fight and you need to lead by example.  You can't show up with zero knowledge about mechanics and then make more mistakes than anyone else, and then expect others to perform better.

3.  She changed raid schedules and times.  When I initially committed to raid, that was based on certain times and dates.  And now that we're raiding at times that I specifically said I couldn't/didn't want to do, it's unfair of her to rope me into this shit.  Yeah, I could say no and I probably should, but I feel bad when she says shit like "we really need a healer~~~~"

This is a really long rant.  I guess what I really want to say to my GM is: You were content to sit back and be lazy and ignore progression, and now that the patch is a few days away and you want your AOTC you suddenly pressure everyone to raid.  We could've had AOTC three months ago if you had actually stuck to the raid schedule, pugged a few spots when we had to, and didn't make mistakes constantly and stand in fire.  Well, just because you want it now doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice my weekend making it happen for you.  You don't get to slack off for months and phone it in, and then suddenly go all drill sergeant hardcore trying to get everyone to push progression at the last minute.  I'm done.  I'll be pugging my way through Hellfire Citadel on my rogue, like I did with HM and BRF.

/end rant

Robot Logs

Askmrrobot.com has a really cool new feature - it now automatically parses your fights and organizes it into a very handy and digestable infographic.

An old guildie of mine used to parse all our fights and upload it to world of logs, but he is no longer with us.  And those logs weren't always the most informative - mainly just a lot of numbers that were hard to puzzle out.  But the logs on mr robot are simple and easy to figure out as they display everything in chart form.

Best of all, it compiles the data and lets you know how you and your raid are doing compared to the "average" - ie, how good your dps/hps is compared to others at your gear level.  It's really handy!

I've always been dps but due to a shortage of healers of late (a problem common to many guilds and pugs these days, it seems), I've gone over to healing.  And after looking over the logs for the past few attempts, one thing became very clear: people can't dodge fire.

It almost made me laugh when I saw just how much damage our healers were eating - all of it avoidable damage, mind you.  The number of times hit by stamp on Hanz & Franz, the times stood in Gruul's cave-in, the times pinned by Darmac's spear...yeah, a LOT of avoidable damage.

And yours truly?  Almost none at all.  I was lowest (of the healers) on avoidable damage taken.  Hell, I was doing better than most of the other dps too.  On some of the logs I didn't even show up because I didn't take ANY avoidable damage.  None at all.  And I think I know the reason - because my main is a dps toon, and always has been.

As a dps, you'r always told to dodge shit.  It's implicitly agreed on that for any fight, the job of the tanks and healers are always much harder than that of the dps (something I agree with 90% of the time, I do think there are fights where it's equally stressful for everyone and maybe even harder as dps).  Therefore, the dps should always be dodging the bad stuff, not only because their task is the easiest (stab boss), but because it makes the healers work less.

As a healer though, you're already doing a stressful job, so the task of dodging the bad shit is somewhat secondary.  This is not strictly from personal experience, but what I assume to be the default attitude of main-spec healers.  And I think overall the raid tends to feel more forgiving towards a healer who stands in the fire than a dps - that's something I've certainly observed first-hand.  Dps is replaceable, healers less so.

And so there it was - me, having been told to dodge fire for years, managed to do so, even though I was playing a healer.  And the other healers sat there and ate it.  It struck me as rather funny that the very people who are always screaming at me to move out of the fire were doing the exact thing themselves.  And that I had never noticed this pattern until the logs made it abundantly clear.

To be sure my healing needs some practice (not to mention gear, as I'm quite a few ilvls behind our main spec healers).  But dodging fire?  Apparently I'm already a pro.

The triumphant return of PUGs

Maybe PUGs never went away, but I sure as hell haven't stepped foot into any since wrath...

Since I began raiding with a semi-hardcore guild at the end of wrath, I haven't felt the need to pug, really.  There was plenty of normal raid content for my guild to do, and I didn't feel a pressing desire to pursue heroics (in fact, the guild was clearing a good amount of heroics as it was).  There was LFR for my alts, and beyond that I didn't see a need for pugs as they caused me more stress than fun.

With Warlords, however, we saw a major slowdown in guild progress.  And blizzard decided it would be fun to add yet another tier of raiding - mythic.  In essence all it did was push down "normal" mode raid down a notch.  That was what my guild was running.  I decided to give pugs another chance when I saw the new group finder feature, which looked pretty seamless - and it was, to a point.

It works kind of like a dating site, imo. You browse around to see which groups are running the bosses you want, and what their requirements are in terms of ilvl and class/role.  You apply to a few, and if you meet the criteria, they'll invite you and you're in a raid group, easy as that.  No more spamming trade chat for people, no more resorting to third party services like o-queue or openraid.

I found quickly, however, that making it so easy has also made pugs much more of a brutal place to be.  Back when you had to spam trade for hours to find a player, you generally put up with other players' incompetence of mistakes, up to a point.  Obviously if someone was really dragging down the group you'd replace them, but otherwise you sighed and resigned yourself that someone was earning a free carry.

Not in these group finder pugs, however.  You make one mistake and they might keep you around, but make two in a row, and boom, you'll find yourself removed from the group.  And why not?  There are 20 other DPS waiting in queue to take your place.  If that one mage isn't dodging fire properly or that rogue isn't pulling his weight in dps, it's as easy as a few button clicks to kick them and have a new one with a higher ilvl to take his place in literally seconds.  The only hassle is to re-summon the new members (a cinch if you have a lock) and having to deal with some nerdrage.

Even healers and tanks aren't immune - their mistakes are tolerated a bit more due to their natural scarcity in the queue system, but even then I've seen tanks kicked for not getting mechanics (completely justified as this is almost a certain wipe) and I've seen healers get kicked for low numbers.

Another facet in this is that the new raid system allows for flexible numbers - bosses hp and damage scales to raid size.  So that gives even more incentive to kick players.  Back in wrath you had to bring 10/25 players for a 10/25 player raid - even if one or two or five were really bad, it was better than not having anyone at all.  Whereas in the new system, if you have one really bad dps, it's actually beneficial to kick them, thereby reducing the boss's hp by an amount greater than what that player was contributing.

Sometimes you get invited to a group, and before you even zone in they'll kick you for seemingly no reason.  I've yet to whisper anyone to ask why, but my guess is they found a high ilvl dps in the queue.  Or someone complained about tier token imbalance.  Or they found a friend in the guild who's done the fight before.  A thousand possible reasons.

Basically, all this amounts to a brutally competitive and cut-throat raid environment.  I'm constantly on edge not not fuck up - it's either pull amazing numbers, or don't make a single mistake.  That's the only way I've found to not get kicked.  Even if your dps isn't amazing, if you do your job properly (interrupt, get adds, etc) and stay alive to the end, you generally keep your spot, assuming your dps wasn't dead last.  Or if you balls-out embarrass everyone else with your dps, they'll hesitate to kick you even if you fuck up a couple times.

My strategy has been to play it very safe, mechanics-wise, at least on heroic modes.  Generally my dps isn't anything to brag about when I'm surrounded by all the better geared people so I concentrate on not dying.  As the higher dps folks start dying to mechanics towards the end, my numbers start climbing the charts as I stay alive.  I pad the numbers whenever I can - going balls-out aoe with my combat spec on add-heavy fights really helps.

I'm not gonna lie, it's super stressful and there are times when I wonder if I'm actually good at the game or not.  But then I realize, not many people have 9/10 bosses cleared on the first week of a new raid.  But man, it's really killing my sanity...

You know I'm getting bored when...

When I start pvp-ing.

Although this has been true for almost every other patch (i.e., after we kill the final boss of whatever raid is current), this time around, I pvp'ed for a different reason - gear.

Up till now pvp gear has been crappy for pve except in instances of extreme ilvl differences and/or lucky secondary itemization.  I personally don't think I've ever resorted to using pvp gear...until now.

The itemization in Highmaul is so silly in that exactly one piece of gear for each slot for each class drops from a single boss.  Which means that only one dagger (a decent one, not some LFR crap) drops in the whole instance, and that from just one single boss.  And so for almost two months now we've been downing Ko'ragh over and over, and I've been using my bonus roll token every single time, even pugging him on different difficulties, and all with no luck.  Mind you, that's like going 0 for 30-40 possible chances of getting a dagger.

Why not craft one, you say?  Well, I've thought about it.  But every reset I told myself, 'Surely this is the week that I get my dagger', and instead used my resources to upgrade other gear.  And now two months into Highmaul I find myself wearing mostly heroic/WF pieces and still using a blue dagger.  The tragedy.

I was lamenting this when a guildie offered to do some arenas with me so I can get pvp daggers.  And that's when it dawned on me for the first time in this whole xpac - they removed resilience from pvp!  Except for the fact that ilvls change outside of pvp, that dagger is every bit as good as a pve dagger.  And even then the conquest dagger is ilvl 660 - a whopping 30 ilvl increase!

Of course, the very thought of arena made me want to vomit, so I looked around for easy ways to get conquest.  Everyone pointed to ashran, so I decided to give it a try.

The que was about an hour to get in, but boy once I got in, I could see why.  It was utter insanity.  It was like alterac valley on crack.  It was the craziest thing I've seen in wow.  And I got about 1000 conquest points in my first hour there.

The minute I entered I got invited to an event group.  From there it was a constant and hilarious back and forth between 40 people intensely focused on a sole objective and 40 people participating in an utterly chaotic, disorganized, AoE-fest of honor kill/broken bone/nemesis farming.

I mean, literally.  Whenever the event notification was announced at least 10 people would announce it over raid chat, and immediately an entire 40-man group would sprint off towards the designated area.  And then no one said a word as we waited for the event to pop, and the moment it did all 40 people would simultaneously try to complete the objective.  As soon as it was done we would all sprint towards the next event.

After completing all four within 5-10 minutes, the RL would say, "lets go clear base" and then we would all rush into our base where allies were GY camping and killing our faction leader.  What ensued then was not something that I could call actual pvp - it was just more a mess of everyone laying down their biggest aoes possible over as many allies are possible.  As for me, I just ran around with evasion/combat readiness one while spamming FoK/crimson tempest.  Sometimes a large tree would be there and everyone would focus it down within a matter of seconds.

When the base was clear of allies, then began the long, excruciating push all the way down the road to the ally base.  People would get hopeful and say things like, "we got this, let's get a kill and win ashran".  And then just as we were about to make the push across the bridge into the ally base, would come the inevitable zone-wide message: [Amphitheater of Anguish] begins in 3 minutes!

Everyone suddenly disengaged and booked it to the next event destination.  A few stragglers would complain and say "we got this one guys, keep fighting, rush their marshall" but it was all in vain.  All anyone cared about were events - and the 125 conquest points it awarded.

Sometimes at the event spot we would find a ragtag team of allies trying to complete the objective, but we basically just zerged them and took over.  And during the 4 or so hours I spent in ashran, the allies never got a single event.  And the horde didn't win ashran once.

After two days, with a total of 10-12 hours devoted to ashran (I had to leave once in a while because I was capping honor after 2 hours), I had a full set of 675 blue pvp gear, and two purple pvp daggers.  The joy of finally sharding that crappy blue dagger!  Not to mention I was able to rack up about 5000 broken bones for my gladiator's sanctum.

I hear Ashran is getting nerfed because obviously, if you want to do actual pvp, you'd be mad at the fact that the zone is overrun with asshats farming events.  All I have to say about that is, I better get cap my conquest points before the nerf!

You can't go home again

In life there are many times where the second, third, or the hundredth time you experience something is actually much better than the first.  For example the first time I got drunk was not memorable at all, but I recall many times after that initial sip of beer where drinking was so fun!  Falling in love is another good example, it might take a few relationships until you meet that perfect someone.  

Video games are not like that, though.  I can't recall a single game that I've played (not counting silly little games on my phone to pass the time, I'm talking about a 40+ hour commitment epic-feeling games here) where the second play-through was better than the first.

Don't get me wrong, the second time you play a game may be easier since you know better what to do and it may have more things you can unlock after beating it for the first time.  But that epic feeling, that tear-welling emotional moment when you finally watch the ending is never there the second time around.  You just can't go home again.

The first game I ever really seriously got into was FF7 (which will always be, to me, the pinnacle of RPG perfection and the benchmark standard for all time).  I was so hooked on it and I spent over 100 hours of gametime (likely a lot more, but the counter only goes up 99:59:59) doing everything in the game - beating all the minigames, breeding the gold chocobo & winning the races, killing all the weapons, collecting every materia, etc.  And when I finally killed Sephiroth and beat the game, well...words can hardly describe how it felt.  Despite the crappy, polygon-ed quality of the ending cinematic (it was 1997, ok?), it was so beautiful.  FF series, overall, are also renowned for amazing in-game music so that had something to do with the beauty as well.  I wept over the fact that I saved the world, and Aeris's sacrifice had not gone in vain.  I was an epic hero and I saved the world.

Almost immediately I made a new file and played through again.  But the second time, while fun, wasn't as great as the first.  Everything was too easy, for one.  And discovering a random treasure chest or a hidden item in the world didn't feel as fun because it wasn't a surprise anymore.  The long dialogue-filled cutscenes felt boring.  The plot twists didn't catch me off-guard.  It was like seeing a really great movie the second time around.  And when the ending cinematic rolled through the second time?  I hardly even felt like watching it all.  It just didn't feel the same as the first time.

The same deal with the scores of other storyline-based games I've played - FF6, FF8, FF9, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross (amazing game, definitely #2 on my list), Breath of Fire, Neverwinter nights, Skyrim, God of War, Devil May Cry, etc etc.  Most of them were awesome games and I'm not afraid to admit that I cried while watching the ending cinematic to a couple of them.  But the second play-through?  Half of these games I never even had the motivation to see the ending again, and if I did, I certainly didn't get emotional about it.  

And that's the thing about games.  A lot of games tout it's "replayability", saying that even after you beat it once, you an go back through on a different difficulty level, or unlock hidden secrets, or just to earn some more achievements.  And while that might be fun, that amazing, emotional, overwhelmingly epic, "I-did-it-I-saved-the-world-from-evil" feeling is something you can never capture again.  

If only I could selectively wipe my memory.  I'd happily play FF7 over and over again...

A Subtle Change

The big news of the day is...I've gone subtlety.  After nearly 4 years of die-hard assassination I finally had to swap specs.

I really had no choice.  The recent assassination nerf was...brutal, to say the least.  I saw my dps drop at least 20k literally overnight.  Suddenly I went from being #1 on the charts nearly every fight to not even beating the tanks on some fights.  It was really depressing.

The word on the street was that assn spec was overdue for a nerf compared to not only the other two rogue specs, but all the other melee dps as well.  That's apparently according to dps logs, although I can agree based on personal observation as well.

All throughout ToT my dps was always #1 or 2.  I only saw some competition for the top spot on add-heavy fights like Horridon.  A lot of fights in ToT were static for me anyways since my aoe/multi-target dps was weaker than most so I ended up almost never pulling add duty.  Which, of course, ended up skewing the meters towards my favor even more.  But even on fights like Jin-Rokh or Durumuu I was untouchable.

Then came the 5% overall damage reduction nerf.  I guess I didn't realize how big of an impact that would have.  Considering that some other dps classes and specs got buffed at the same time, all of a sudden my dps plummeted in comparison.  The first week of Siege I was still top, then the second week (when the nerf came) suddenly I was bottom.

There are other things as well such as gear drops that I won't go into, because bad gear was never a limiting factor for me when I played assassination.  In fact, I went through all of ToT using daggers from Terrace while other people had thunderforged weapons so I don't think it's all about gear.

Anyways, so I respecced that very week to subtlety.  I would've preferred to play combat as the rotation is simpler than sub but sadly I had no slow MH weapons.  Not a single one.  So I had to go sub.  *gulp*

Subtlety spec was a huge step up in difficulty for me.  I guess I never realized what a truly brain-dead spec assassination was until I tried a spec that actually requires all of your focus.

With assassination there are exactly 2 buffs you want to maintain in your rotation: slice and dice and rupture.  But in reality, you don't even have to think about maintaining SnD because it gets automatically refreshed by your envenom, which is your main finishing move that you cast all the time.  Rupture is the only thing you need to worry about, and with the tier 6 talent Anticipation, keeping enough combo points around to make sure rupture never drops was no problem either.

With Subtlety you have to maintain SnD, rupture, hemo, and to the extent you can, Find Weakness.  None of these buffs refresh automatically meaning you have to keep an eye on all of them at all times.  Hemo is easily refreshed but it's not as strong of a combo point generator as backstab so you want to avoid spamming it.  You can't maintain FW full time as it's only up right after a stealth opener (meaning I would have to vanish or use shadow dance) but you want to maximize its uptime.

Which brings me to another thing - using CDs.  With assn all your cooldowns are the "activate and then not worry about it" type.  Vendetta, shadow blades, and vanish.  Vendetta and SB you just set it and forget it.  Vanish is a small dps boost in that you can get a free ambush, so I usually just saved it for an aggro drop.  To maximize dps I simply timed all my CDs to go off at the same time, preferably in conjunction with a bloodlust.  On fights like Jin Rokh or Durumuu where we lusted on pull my dps would easily break the 500k mark just by stacking multiple CDs + lust + potion.

Subtlety is a lot more...subtle.  All my CDs are focused on getting the find weakness buff and maximizing its uptime.  Which means I always want to open out of stealth and start the buff going.  Then you have to use your CDs one by one, making sure that it doesn't overlap too much and waste your FW uptime.  For instance, you wouldn't want to use Shadow Dance and then vanish right after that when you still have 5 seconds left on your FW.  You want to be smart about cycling through your CDs.

My opener is always ambush x 2 (tier 1 talent subterfuge makes this possible), get all my buffs going then start shadow dance when FW runs out.  Shadow Dance is tricky because you want to make sure you're almost capped on energy before you start (to allow you to spam ambush as much as possible) and you want to make sure you're behind the boss. When FW from shadow dance runs out, vanish and ambush x 2 (again, want to cap energy before so you can get both ambushes).  Use Preparation to reset vanish and use again once FW runs out.  Then use shadow blades -  you don't want it to overlap with FW because SB allows you to bypass armor anyways.  Once SB runs out, the cooldown on shadow dance should be almost finished, at which point you SD again.  After that it's about using whatever CDs come off cooldown first.  All the while maintaining SnD, rupture, and hemo and keeping an eye on your anticipation stacks to make sure you're not capping out combo points from Honor Among Thieves proc.

You see how long it took me to explain all that?  Here's the assassination rotation: Open out of stealth, ambush, use combo points to start SnD.  Get 5 combo points with mutilate, use rupture.  Use SB and Vendetta either on pull or on bloodlust.  Keep up rupture.

Another big thing is stat priorities.  With assn I used a mastery build, which increases the flat damage of your poisons.  My energy regen was slow, but my poisons hit hard and made up the bulk of my damage.  Which meant I had reliable damage output through deadly poison and envenom, and the pace of combat was relatively slow.  I never had to worry about capping energy because of the slow regen.

With sub, I use a haste build, which means my energy regens really fast.  I'm constantly trying to spam as much backstab as possible to make sure I'm not capping.  My poisons don't hit as hard and instead I'm relying on increased trinket and meta gem procs due to the high haste.  So my damage is spikey - sometimes when everything procs at once it skyrockets and sometimes when nothing procs it's very low.  I see as much as a 40k difference in two different attempts at the exact same fight.

Positioning is also a huge deal.  I remember back in Dragon Soul everyone complained that they couldn't play sub because of the Ultraxion fight, where you're literally stuck in front of the boss with nowhere else to go.  Well, I'm glad there really aren't any fights like that in SoO and I can manage to get behind the boss 95% of the time.  Because you can't use ambush or backstab unless you're behind, which is incredibly crucial to my rotation and damage.  Hemo is useable in front, but so much weaker compared to backstab.  Mutilate has no positioning requirement which made assn so much simpler.

It took me two weeks of trial and error to finally get comfortable with subtely.  I think I've got the basics down as far as rotation and buff uptimes, I just need to fine tune and really learn the gritty little details to squeeze out the extra 5k dps.  With assassination everything was muscle memory  for me, whereas I've got a ways to go with sub spec.

But already I'm seeing some improvements.  For instance I finally got back on the top of the charts on Iron Juggernaut (completely static fight) and Malkorok (mostly static except for avoiding ground effects).  I'm also learning some of the severe limitations of the spec - mainly it's very poor for add-heavy fights and target-switching fights.  Since there are so many buffs to keep up and the damage ramps pretty slowly, target switching is really a dps killer.  Fights like Galakras and Spoils of Pandaria really suck for me as there isn't really a "main target" and there's nothing for me to build CPs on.

I'm considering going back to assn for those fights, but staying haste-heavy stat wise.  The damage output won't be much better than sub but at least the rotation will be simpler.  I'd love to go combat but currently I still don't have decent weapons, plus I don't think I have it in me to learn a third rogue spec!

I'm back, baby

The hiatus is over, in case anyone cared!

A little over a year ago, I stopped blogging about my wow adventures.  Mainly it was due to the fact that D3 was going full steam at that point and Cataclysm was in its dying throes.  It was those last few painful months of an expansion's lifespan where everyone has cleared the latest content and were just waiting around leveling alts or running old content until the next xpac dropped.

So it was a boring time for me.  I was planning on continuing the blog around Diablo, but D3 was such a sad sad disappointment that...I really don't even want to go into it.  Maybe it will redeem itself with the Reaper of Souls (remember how vastly more awesome D2: Lord of Destruction was compared to original D2?) but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyways, MoP.  It seems like it's been out forever and people are already waiting around for the next xpac.  But really, it's only been out a year.  I know this because right around when it dropped people were staying up till midnight to log in, but I couldn't because it was the first day of classes...

Overall MoP has been a successful expansion for all the wrong reasons.  The shift towards catering to casuals has been more and more aggressive.  With the introduction of scenarios, LFR at all tiers of raiding, and now flex raiding, it seems like organized guilds are almost a thing of the past.  With addons like O-Queue you can clear the raid using flex and get all the gear you want.  Do a couple heroic scenarios and you can cap valor in one day.  Zones like timeless isle makes it easier than microwaving a burrito to gear out your alts in near-current tier stuff.  Who would bother with alt raid nights these days?

This is not to say I have not bought into all of this either.  Well of course I'm going to run flex and LFR and all that at a chance to get tier tokens or that one trinket that never drops in raid.  And of course I'll send out BoA gear to all my alts like everyone else.  If you can't beat them...

At the least the raids have been more or less interesting.  The first tier was pretty disappointing but progressively raid design has gotten better, imo.  I enjoyed how Blizz stuck true to the "theme" of the dungeon in both heart of fear and Terrace (although the latter felt just a little bit like Trial of Crusader...the big circular platforms and lack of adds, if you know what I mean.).  Throne of Thunder was really fun, with interesting fight mechanics (Durumu took the meaning of cutter beam to new heights, and Animus was certainly creative, if a bit of a pain in the ass) and a full-length raid with plenty of challenge.

So far Siege of Orgrimmar has yet to disappint.  With 14 bosses, multiple trash packs and many different fight zones (you start all the way from Pandaria and make your way into the underbelly of Org) and a gradual difficulty slope, I think it's going to keep me entertained at least for the next couple months.

What's next for WoW?  Who knows.  I haven't kept up with all the forum gossip about the new xpac, so I literally have no clue what it may be.  Personally I think the Emerald Dream would be interesting.  As long as we don't get sent into any more underwater zones I think I'll be happy!  And no more cutesy pandas!!!

A sad day in gaming

I hate to be one of "those people" who complain endlessly about some supposed apocalyptic event that will surely destroy the games we love.  But I have to admit that the launch of this so-called Real Money Auction House has me feeling deeply disturbed.

I don't think it will kill Diablo 3.  I don't think it will signal the doom of the entire Diablo franchise or Blizzard as a whole.  I do think, however, that it signals a shift towards the whole microtransaction business model that more and more games are starting to adopt.

Whatever happened to the good old days where you bought a game for a fixed price, and you got to play as much or as little as you wanted?  Those of us who chose to invest more time in it reaped better rewards.  Did you know that in Final Fantasy 7 if you spend hours upon hours to breed a gold chocobo, use it to obtain the Knights of the Round materia, then max it out, you can easily beat both Ruby and Emerald weapons?  No gimmicks, no cheap work-arounds, and no need to purchase an additional "materia boost pack" from Square Enix for only $5.99.  All you have to do is just grind out the work for days.

I'm digressing a little here, I just get very nostalgic about FF7, perhaps the best single-player RPG ever made.

The point is, that microtransactions operate under the principle - "free to play, pay to win", which I despise.  It makes sense as a business model - the hardcore gamers these days are no longer teenagers who had to beg mom for $20 to buy the latest Mario game.  They're working professionals in their 20s or 30s who have disposable income but little time, and wouldn't hesitate to spend an extra $10 here and there to streamline their gaming process.

Think about it - when you're a broke teenager, you don't mind spending 6 hours on a Saturday to get some crazy good item.  When you're in your 20s those 6 hours on a Saturday are valuable, and you'd rather pay some extra cash to get that item rather than waste the day staring at the computer.  Come Sunday, both the teenager and the adult have equal items, both paid for it in some way or another.  But in the end, the teenager feels a little bit "cheated" out of the deal.  Because let's face it, $10 doesn't seem like very fair for something you had to work 6 hours for.  But as the adult sees it, it's as if he paid someone $10 to play video games for 6 hours, a task many happily do for free.

Does this make sense?  I'm starting to confuse myself a little here.  The point is that I see both sides of the argument.  I see that it makes sense to charge people with disposable income for a small advantage and let the other folks grind their way towards the same goal.

What Diablo 3 does with the RMAH, however, is taking it a little too far, if you ask me.  I know plenty of other games have the microtransaction model, but D3 takes it to a whole new level by giving players absolute control over the economy.  It's not a matter of Blizzard selling you a few things here and there, it's a bizarre system in which players have the power to inflate prices, hoard gold and goods, and effectively coerce the "average" player into participation.

I don't want to into all the thousand little ways in which this happens.  The big picture is that most people will eventually buy into it and end up buying a few things here and there for $10-20 rather than wait weeks, months, for a good drop they can actually use.  I know I probably will.

And this makes me very sad.  It's not that I can't afford it.  It's the fact that I know the value of a $20 is much greater than some pixels on a screen that will help me kill digital monsters in a digital world.  For $20 I can buy myself dinner somewhere, or go out to a movie with a friend, or treat myself to 5 smoothies at Jamba Juice, and as a rational adult I know that these things are just much more worthwhile activities/services/goods than an in-game frill.  I know it, yet I also know that we all have that impulse to get what we want, right when we want it, without any actual effort.

And so when I see an amazing upgrade, reasonably priced, I know I will probably click "buyout", even as some rational brain cell in my head is screaming "DON'T DO IT!  You could get half a tank of gas for that money!!!".  And I know that after I've bought myself all sorts of things, I will probably beat the game very easily rather than struggle through every champion and elite pack as I do now.  And after I've beaten the game, I will feel bored and sad.

Then I will probably go back to wow.

Monk in your Trunk

Since wow seems to be on hiatus for the time being, I thought I'd write out some of my thoughts on D3.  Why not, seeing as to how D3 makes me nerd rage just as much as wow did.

I signed up to play a monk with the expectation that it would play much like a rogue.  I imagined a hard-hitting, fast-moving DPS machine, relying on high burst damaged and mobility to weave and bob my way through enemies and landing big combos.

Instead, as I progress further into inferno mode, I find myself more or less a tank-type character.  I stack defensive stats and abilities and I sit there spanking a mob to death.  Ever so slowly.

Compared to ranged classes such as a wizard or those completely imba demon hunters, my DPS is pathetic.  On average I'm doing only about 30-40% of what my ranged counterparts are doing in terms of pure raw damage.  My HP and defensive stats vastly dwarf theirs though, and I can take quite a few more hits and stand in a lot more ground effects than they can.

The problem is, though, that this still doesn't create a fair play situation.  Think about it: you run into a swarm of champion enemies who hit like trucks and put down fire patches everywhere.  A monk has to be able to take those mack truck hits and occasionally step through fire patches just to be able to hit the mob.  A ranged character, however, drops dead as soon as they take a hit or stand in fire.  But this is a non-issue as ranged characters never need to put themselves in that situation.  As long as they keep their distance, which they do, they can just keep running and shooting, running and shooting, kiting their way merrily until the mob is dead.  And mobs die much much quicker when they can rock 40-50k DPS too.

So there I am, cycling through my cooldowns and heals, stepping gingerly around fire whenever I can, getting smacked around by 4 elites while trying to regen enough spirit just to spam my heals, while a DH or wizard runs around in a circle, never taking a hit, and killing the mob in a fraction of the time it takes me.

Of course kiting isn't an easy task and it takes a lot of coordination to be able to do this.  And there are some situations where kiting isn't effective at all (jailer mobs, frozen, narrow corridors).  But overall ranged have a huge advantage in that they never really have to worry about their defensive stats.  They are literally glass cannons that dish out huge damage but can never afford to be touched by a mob.  Monks and our poor sad cousins, the barbarians, have to beef up our health and resistance and armor, often at the sacrifice of our DPS which explains why it's so pitifully low.

Another very unfair advantage of wizards and DHs is their passive resource regen (not sure about witch doctors, never played one).  Wizards regen mana fairly quickly, and DHs can regen their hatred simply by shooting arrows, regardless of whether it hits a target or not.  Monks on the other hand, must have an active target in order to regen our spirit.  Which means that if you're on the run from an elite pack and you have no spirit left, you must somehow be able to get near them and hit them to be able to use your abilities.  In some situations this is just a no-go.  If I can't get near a mob I can't use my mitigation abilities, and I can't use my mitigation abilities unless I can get near a mob.  I think this is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed.

Not to say that playing a monk isn't fun - it is.  It's just not what I expected, and perhaps my expectations were flawed.  I do enjoy my monk, and now that my gear is up to snuff Act 1 inferno is a breeze.  I can farm the Butcher and punch my way through any combinations of champion packs (yes, even the ones with multiple ground effects + fire chain).

The other night during a 3 person co-op game I was able to solo the Butcher down from about 25% HP remaining - AFTER the fire enrage.  After all my party members dropped from the fire, I sat their dodging his hits, rotating my CDs, and slowly whittling down his HP.  Did the fire hurt?  Yes.  Was I standing in it the whole time?  Yes.  Did my HP ever drop below 50%?  No.  Is this how I imagined playing a monk?  No, but was it freaking awesome how I soloed the Butcher after a hard enrage?  Yes.

Act 2 inferno, however, is a different story...that might have to wait until the nerf.

The real wow-killer

Every time a new big-name MMO comes out, everyone on the battle.net forums are abuzz with speculation that the new game will finally be the "wow-killer".  Ever since WoW has been out, it has pretty much dominated the entire MMORPG scene.  Perhaps it would be more apt to call wow the "MMO-in-general-killer".

I've played my share of MMOs back in the day, but until wow came out on the market, there was no real big-name MMO.  Sure, there was a huge Lineage following in Asia and there were some rabid Everquest and Ultima Online players in the US & Europe, but even in their heyday EQ/Ultima had nowhere near the number of subscribers that wow did.  Over 10 million - no other game has come even close.  No one else even had a chance when Blizzard, a household name in the PC gaming world that draws a huge fan base with just its logo alone, decided to enter the MMO market.

When Rift came out, everyone called it the wow killer.  They even attempted to advertise themselves as such.  Rift came and went, barely breaking 1 million subscriptions.  Bioware tried to do what Trion couldn't do and pushed big advertising dollars into its Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.  SWTOR lost 25% of its players within the first quarter, only reaching about 15% of wow's playerbase at its peak.

Even another renowned Blizzard game, Starcraft 2, couldn't kill wow.  But I think that was mostly because SC2 was designed for an entirely different fan base compared to wow.  SC2 is for the hardcore, as SC1 was.  Once you play through the campaign modes, all that's left is content suited for the hardcore gamer: it's all about APMs and ladder rankings and high-pressure matches, which doesn't appeal to the more casual players of wow.  I know a lot of people who did pick up SC2 when it came out, played through it once and came back to wow within a couple weeks.

I have always said that the only true wow killer will be World of Warcraft 2: [insert catchy title here].  The day that wow servers would be truly empty and dead would be the day that a bigger and better version of wow made by Blizzard hit the markets.  Only time will prove whether I'm right or wrong.  But in the meantime, I think we do have a very strong contender for the title of "wow-killer".

On May 15th, Diablo 3 hit the market, and it seems as though almost everyone I knew who played wow has taken up D3.  It makes sense - D3 is more "like" wow than SC2.  It's kind of like a more action-adventure version of wow.  There's no set class roles, no real need for cooperative gameplay, and not as much depth as wow.  But at the same time it's fun, it's fast, it's "clicky" and "smashy", if that makes any sense.  In wow you click on a monster and your character will swing a sword and you see the monster chirp and die.  In D3, you click a monster and you smack it hard in the face with burning fists and the monster explodes all over the screen and dies.  It's more visceral, it's more gory, it's ultimately satisfying in a cheap-thrills kind of way.

It's too early to tell whether D3 will retain a permanent hold on the once-devoted wow players.  The game has been out for 3 weeks today.  When I logged into wow this morning (for the first time in 3 weeks), I was overjoyed to see 6 friends online!  Until I looked at my friends list and realized that they were simply my RealID friends who were logged onto D3.

I could see myself going back to wow eventually once I've worked my way through 99% of D3.  This could take a while.  Let's just hope there are people left to play with when I get back.

Heroic Hagara down!

After about oh, 20 attempts or so over two raid nights, we finally downed Hagara the stormbinder!  Or as I like to call her, Hagara bitchface.

Nothing terribly exciting or anything, just wanted to share our 4th heroic boss kill and talk a little about the fight.

Definitely not one of my favorites due to the insane RNG factor.  The Ice lance/Ice tomb mechanic can either make or break your group - like when we had her down to 30% and both our healers got ice tombed.  Given that the fight is dependent on 3 healers rotating their cooldowns on the tank every 10 seconds, this meant our tank just dropped like a rock.  During another pull our healer ate 3 ice lances at once and died, leaving us in the same crappy situation.

I'm not sure why Blizzard hates healers so much - it seems like almost every other dragon soul encounter description or video guide begins with "this fight is very stressful for your healers..."  Yeah, like all the other fights.

At least on heroic mode the phase transitions are more challenging and make the fight less boring.  On normal mode it's a total snooze, whereas on heroic the ice phase makes you clench your buttcheeks and grip your mouse!

I think what I miss most from Dragon Soul in general is the lack of adds.  It's nice to have one or two tank-and-spank fights as a breather but a whole raid of basically nonstop tank and spank is too much.  Spine and Deathwing is really the only add-heavy fight.  Blackhorn, maybe, but only for the first phase.

I really miss fights like Valithira Dreamwalker or Lady Deathwhisper.  Especially on 25man mode where people would be running all over the room CCing and tanking and kiting and killing things, and someone would scream over vent, "BLAZINGGGG!!!!" or "MC ON ME!!!" and people would drop whatever they were doing and run halfway across the room to take care of business.

Ah, here I go again, reminiscing about the good old days of Wrath.  What can I say, ICC was the most epic raiding experience I've had.  Nothing in Cata has even come close.

Tonight is Blackhorn!

Never met a game I didn't beat

Title says it all.  When I get into a game, moderation just goes right out the window.  It becomes either do or die and I won't rest easy until I've BEAT the damn game.

I don't mean "beat" as in, get to the final stage and kill the boss.  Oh no, I mean more like, beat the last boss, unlock the hard mode, beat that, unlock the super hard challenge mode, and obsess over it for weeks until I beat that too, and unlock all the secret characters and easter eggs and hidden challenges while I'm at it.

Games back then had a simplicity which curbed this dangerous addictive behavior.  Take for instance my favorite childhood game - Streets of Rage 2.  I mean, once you beat it on easy, normal, and hard, it's over.  Games nowadays, however, seem to come standard with at least 5 different difficulty levels, plus bonus stages, plus unlockable extra stages, PLUS a plethora of achievements.

Achievements are both a blessing and a curse.  It's a blessing because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over just so I can see the bright shiny words "You have earned the achievement - [insert some pointless menial repetitive in-game task, such as kill 20,000 boars for no reason]!".  It's also a curse because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over.  For hours.  And then obsess over it and scour online resources when I get stuck on a certain challenge.

Now with games like WoW, you obviously can't just "beat" it.  But I think I've come pretty damn close to it, at least when it comes to parts of the game I enjoy.  I don't pvp and I really haven't begun to "beat" that aspect of the game, but when it comes to pve...I've killed every damn raid boss multiple times, acquired all sorts of high end gear, and unlocked all sorts of stupid, pointless achievements.  Need I reiterate about that time I spent 6 months getting the insane title?  Yeah, that sort of thing is only possible when you have an insanely OCD/completionist mentality like mine.

And then there are cute little iPad games that are not meant to draw the hardcore gamers, but appeal to a more broad range of interests.  They do have a start and a finish.  There are a few difficulty levels and some achievements, but once you beat it all, you really are done.

These are the games that are truly dangerous.  Being able to see the end in sight just means that I obsess that much more over it.  I have been known to get up in the middle of the night and just spontaneously start playing games on the iPad because my own disturbed thoughts about how to get that one hard achievement woke me up from much-needed sleep.  Handing me the iPad is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of moonshine.

Take for instance my Plants VS Zombies addiction that lasted almost a whole year.  I played that damn game so many times, I must have killed about a million zombies.  I first played it on an iPod, then moved on to the PC platform, where they gave you even more gameplay modes!  Not only did I play through the entire campaign over 5 times, I unlocked every single plant, every single upgrade, every single bonus game & play mode, and beat every single one of those too.  Oh, and I got all the achievements.  Every.  Fucking.  Achievement.  This kind of behavior is pretty much standard whenever I find a game I like.

I remember I played diner dash for like 10 hours straight one day.  And that's not even something to brag about!  A game like WoW I can at least go brag to my guildies and fellow gamers, "look at this achievement I got!" or "look at this sweet epic drop!".  I will not be telling my friends, coworkers and loved ones, "hey I just beat all the minigames in PvZ!".

Sometimes I'm worried about this vicious cycle.  But then again, sometimes I'm glad that at least I'm not addicted to worse things, like cocaine or hookers.

Top 5...cash cows

I'm nearing 200k gold on my main toon. I guess it's mostly due to gold inflation during cata, but my net (wow) worth really jumped up since the expansion launched. I remember when I first hit 100k and thinking, wow I'm so rich, I should buy something. But then the tendency to hoard my wealth kicked in, and now I'm almost at double that amount.

I really SHOULD spend it on something, it's just hard to remember that it's just pixels. When you're frugal in RL, that kind of just carries over to your wow spending I suppose.

Anyways, I make my gold the way anyone else makes gold: grind professions & sell things on the AH. While some people claim that you can make a lot of gold just doing dailies, this takes a lot of time. In a fraction of the time it takes you to do 10 dailies (which would fetch about 160g total), I could buy and re-sell a few things on the AH for ten times the profit. You just have to know what are the hot sellers and when you can get a good deal on something.

For anyone who's looking to seriously get into the AH, you must have an addon of some sort. I use auctionator, and I honestly don't know how I ever got along without it. It keeps track of all your auctions, makes buying in bulk so much easier, and even keeps an ongoing database of prices so you can monitor when is a good time to buy an sell.

The other trick is to have a profession that can craft the popular selling items, and have alts with gathering professions that can support the crafting profession. For instance on my main I have alchemy but not herbalism. I use alts to gather herbs, or better yet, buy them in bulk whenever the prices are low. To be honest though, I can't remember the last time I went near an herb. Potions and flasks are not my moneymaker of choice - I go for the transmutes.

Anywho, without further ado, here is my top 5 gold-making schemes that's worked wonders for me:

5. Cloth

This is not something I do actively, but it's something that can generate a lot of profit, especially at low levels, for relatively low effort.

Cloth is everywhere - that shit drops from any humanoid creature and sometimes you find yourself literally swimming in cloth. I know I sure did when I was grinding rep for the Insane title. I had to run Dire Maul over 100 times, and let me tell you, I racked up stacks upon stacks of runecloth.

Rather than just vendor them or try to sell them on the AH, I enlisted the help of my hubby who was a tailor. Stacks of cloth BOLTs almost always sell for more net profit than the cloth counterpart. Don't ask me why, it's certainly not difficult to turn cloth into bolts, but there you have it. I guess people don't want to sit there on their mains making bolts for 10 min straight. The opportunity cost seems relatively small to me, but whatever.

I made a tidy little profit selling all those bolts of runecloth. Even now when I run low level dungeons or raids, I always save up the cloth and sell them as bolts. I've found that frostweave bolts always sell out very quickly at a good price.

Mind you, I don't go "farming" for cloth by any means. The beauty of it is that cloth just seems to appear in your bags mysteriously. After running BC-level raids, for instance, I'll often find several stacks of netherweave in my bags. It's almost like free money!

4. BoE badge gear

I used to do this a lot more during Tier 11 raids and Firelands, not so much anymore. Some badge gear, whether it be justice or valor, is BoE and you can purchase it with your mains and send it to your alts or sell it. Well, often times my main would accumulate a lot of valor points with nothing to spend it on (all my gear came from raids). So I'd buy the BoE bracers or boots and sell them on the AH. When content is first released they sell at upwards of ~7-8k gold so it's a good way to make a lot of cash in a short period of time.

I also did this on my alts during firelands - in the process of grinding valor points I'd also rack up a lot of justice points, which I would use to buy the lower tier BoE gear. They don't sell for as much, but sometimes you're just looking to unload all the JP sitting in your bag. Overall a pretty simple way to make some money if you've got a lot of points and nothing to buy.

3. Low level instances

You'd be really surprised at the cash you can make just by clearing low level dungeons. I noticed that my gold stash was really growing a lot when I used to run tons of BC dungeons for tmog gear.

First of all, there's just the plain old gold drop from mobs. This doesn't make up a significant portion. But then there's stuff like cloth, motes/primals and other crafting mats that drop. Running the zangarmarsh instances, I'd pick up so many primals that would each sell for ~50g.

Then there are random green drops that can be DE'd - the BC level enchanting mats sell pretty well. And sometimes you'll get a random BoE blue or epic, which sell very well nowadays due to people wanting unique gear for tmog. BoEs are generally hard to come by so people are willing to pay upwards of 1000g just for some garish looking sword!

Another big bonus is certain instances drop quest/rep items. Grinding heroic Steamvaults for tmog gear I picked up a lot of coilfang armaments - enough to get me exalted with the Cenarion Circle and plenty more to sell. At one point they were going for ~120g a pop and I would pick up 10 or more each run. The creatures in underbog would drop sanguine hibiscus, which also sold well.

2. Enchanting

Just the ability to DE useless gear is a big bonus. A piece of BoP epic gear will vendor for maybe 20g if you're lucky, but when you DE it into a maelstrom crystal you can sell it for 10 times that price. As you upgrade your own gear instead of just vendoring the old epics, you can DE it and sell the shards. When you pick up BoP epics and blues from dungeon runs, you can DE it and sell the mats! When you pick up a lot of useless greens out in the world, you can DE it and sell that mats again!

I've found that enchanting as a service or trying to sell enchanting scrolls alone is not quite as effective, simply because supply outweighs demand for a lot of the enchanting scrolls. Chanters make them to level their skills and flood the AH with tons of scrolls, so that's never been a good moneymaker for me.

But one thing that has sold consistently well are scrolls for rare, useful low-level enchants. For instance, I picked up a enchanting recipe for Fiery Weapon, a popular twink enchant, and I've been buying mats for cheap on the AH and selling the scrolls for 100g a pop for about a year now. People who are twinking or leveling alts buy it up quick whenever I put some up. Of course you need to first farm the recipe to do this, and I was just lucky that it happened to drop for my alt when I was leveling her. I'd say it's worth the extra effort to farm, it's always been a consistent seller!

1. Truegold

Seriously, I've been selling truegold on the auction house since the day cataclysm came out. Ok, maybe not THE day, but let's say within 1 week of cataclysm launch, I was selling truegold and they've been selling like hotcakes since week 1.

With the cata launch came the new epic crafting recipes, which all required a hefty number of truegold. Back then truegold sold for ~1200 a pop when everyone was hungry for new epics and you could turn a really tidy profit! All it takes is some pyrite (expensive on the AH but can be mined with some persistence) and a few volatiles.

Now the price has dropped down to ~300g but it's still a steady seller. If you consider the cost of the reagents it's not much profit, but the beauty of it is that you can easily mine your own mats. I keep a couple of alts handy to mine the pyrite (or smelt the ore if I can buy it for cheap), farm volatile fires at my secret fishing spot in Hyjal, or grind some elementals for volatile air. I also keep another alt with maxed out alchemy who transmutes volatile life into other volatiles as I start to run low. It's a pretty smooth process and when you account for the occasional procs, I'd say I sell anywhere between 5-10 truegolds a week.

Cataclysm has been out for what, a year and a half now? If you assume that I've sold one truegold a day at 300g, that comes out to over 150,000g! Not bad at all. If you're just willing to do a little farming now and then, this is a real moneymaker.

Am I spoiled?

As my alt projects all seem to peter out one after another, I have to stop and ask myself...am I just not cut out for anything other than a rogue? Am I spoiled for everything else?

The only modest success I've had with alts is my priest. Almost everything else I've tried I just can't, or won't enjoy it. Even with the priest I'm definitely not at the level of play that my rogue is at. Yeah, it's kind of fun to heal because it's so easy these days and my mana is limitless, but it's not like I'm motivated enough to go raid on my priest. Even when I see trade chat light up "LF 1 more healer for DS fresh" or some other crap, I just don't wanna do it.

All my other alts, I have no problem leveling them up, but end-game play is just way beyond the amount of commitment I want to put in. The rewards are just not there. Sure, I tanked on my paladin for a bit, but I won't even do LFR with her. The thought of tanking for 24 idiots is really too much. My shaman just hit 85 and my god, she's so boring to play. Despite the fact that enhance shamans have one of the more dynamic rotations!

What I've found is that I can't stand any of the following:

Long CDs...or any CDs really
Long cast times
Slow resource regeneration (mana, focus etc)
Having/managing pets
Slow damage ramping

I mean, basically anything that is not a rogue, I don't like playing. I tried to play ret pally and I was outraged that I could not simply spam all my abilities like I do with a rogue. What is this 6 second cooldown nonsense? I have to wait 6 seconds between abilities??? I can spam hemo almost nonstop on my rogue thanks to my ridiculous energy regen. What is this waiting business?

I tried to play a warlock, the pet drove me freaking nuts. Why are you even here? Why do my spells take so damn long to cast? Why do my DoTs take so long to kill anything? The pace just felt glacial.

I tried to play a hunter, and using focus as a resource was aggravating. Why does it refill so damn slow? You mean I can only cast two arcane shots? What is this steady shot nonsense and why the hell does it have a cast bar?

The list just goes on and on. It's a terrible shame because there are 9 other ways to play this game out there and I just can't get into any of it.

Hopefully the monk class will be enjoyable...

Fangs of the Father

How is it that I always forget to post about the important things? I got my legendary daggers last week!!!

Amidst attrition and poor raid attendance our guild continued to clear DS week after week. With the hard work of our GM who was able to bring in some semi-regular PuGs to help fill gaps, and the core raid members who didn't complain once about the tough situation, we were finally able to get together the last remaining few gems for my stage 2 legendary collection. As luck would have it, I was exactly 7 short as we began the newly nerfed (15%) Dragon Soul last week.

We downed heroic Morchok with ease and even managed to get heroic Ultraxion on our second try! We had put in quite a few attempts on him already but always came up short on DPS due to some poorly geared people. With the new round of nerfs and the help of some well-geared PuGs, we were able to easily make the enrage timer and down him! My gem count began to climb towards 60...

After we downed spine, I was at 60. I hearthed back to Ravenholdt to turn them in and get the final quest in the chain - kill Deathwing and bring back a fragment of his jaw.

Deathwing went down without much of a fight - to be honest it was stupidly easy with the new nerfs. We were killing the arm tentacles before it even began casting cataclysm and we didn't suffer any of our usual tank deaths on the 4th platform. We downed him in record time and I was back on my way to Ravenholdt to get my hands on the legendaries!

When I entered Ravenholdt I knew something was up. The area was phased so that the grounds were on fire and there were dead dragons scattered about. I found Wrathion and his assistant Fahrad outside in a little clearing. When I turned in the fragment of deathwing's jaw I saw the achievement light up "Fangs of the Father" as well as "Fangs of the Father Guild Edition"! Before I could even respond to the wave of "grats!" the cutscene began to play...

As it turns out Fahrad himself is a member of the black dragonflight. And since Wrathion is the only known black dragon free of the corruption of the old gods...that means Fahrad is also under the sway of the madness that gripped deathwing as well. Wrathion's final command was for me to kill Fahrad, who screams "YOU HAVE BECOME TOO DIFFICULT TO CONTROL!" before transforming into a giant black dragon. I put an end to him and his madness using my gleaming new daggers, and Wrathion disappears mysteriously with the words, "A new age for mortals has dawned, and heroes like you are among the vanguard..."

One thing I was REALLY bummed about was that I downloaded and ran fraps of the whole thing, and for some reason it didn't capture any of the actual cutscene! It only got the portion of my landing on Ravenholdt to turn in the quest and the phased area afterwards. Basically everything except the cutscene, which is obviously the coolest part of the whole experience. Oh well. My guildies can look it up on youtube.

It was kind of lame that I didn't get to have a realm-wide experience upon completion of the legendary like Dragonwrath, but I guess this really goes with the whole theme of rogues better. We work alone in the shadows, it's only fitting that we reap the benefits of our dirty deeds alone as well.

But of course none of it would have been possible without the guild. I thanked them profusely and flew back to org where they were all assembled to check out the fruits of their hard labor. My GM even enchanted them both free of charge! <3

The best part of the legendaries has got to be the wings. Yeah yeah, I know the stats are wickedly awesome, but really it's going to be replaced by even more awesome quest greens when MoP drops. But I'm willing to bet that no quest greens in MoP will have a 5 min CD on-use effect that turns you into batman! My guildies and I really got a kick out of that, I think I'll probably using it whenever it's off CD for the next few months.

And yes, the stats are of course awesome too. The proc is a little more unpredictable than I thought as I have to be actually watching the stacks but I think it will integrate pretty well into my normal rotation after a bit of practice. At the target dummy I was doing upwards of 24-25k with only a agility flask buff. Imagine what I could do fully raid buffed on a static fight like Ultraxion!

The exodus

It's that time of the year where guilds slowly begin to fold. I'm talking about the exodus of players that occurs a few months before the launch of a new expansion.

Last night I heard that one of the better progression guilds in the server are more or less closing shop. No one is disbanding, but as the number of consistent raiders slowly decline, raid teams begin to shut down one by one until even the best guilds have trouble finding 10 people to push progression.

I joined the game in wrath and back when ICC was first released, there were definitely more hardcore progression guilds. Off the top of my head I can count maybe 10 or so guilds who were pushing heroic modes in ICC at a much faster pace than the rest of the server. About half of them was horde, and the server first guild also happens to be a US-top 20 guild.

Then came the waves of nerfs to ICC and more people were clearing heroics. Finally there came a point where everyone was doing at least half of the heroic modes and the best guilds on the server only had heroic LK standing between them and a full clear (with the exception of our server first - they were the only ones to down heroic LK pre-cata).

And then you saw the best guilds fold, one by one, as raiders got bored and frustrated. Some of them bled people left and right until raids were no longer sustainable, some of them collapsed overnight when the GM server-hopped. Some struggled till the end to recruit with no avail.

My guild was no exception to this. First came the disbanding of 25 man raids. Some people left while some continued on with 10 man raiding. We made it through till the end, finally downing 25 man LK before cata hit. That was a big moment for us, and I think our guild fared much better than others in that we retained most of our people in the transition from wrath to cata.

Then came cata and with it came the permanent disbanding of 25 man raids. I think many of the folks who had been around since BC and pre-BC were burnt out. Attendance problems and unforseen absences got the better of everyone and so raids came to a halt. But within a month or so 10 mans began to pick up and during firelands, the guild was a lot more like what I had remembered from wrath - we had a surplus roster and people actually had to be rotated out! Everyone was excited and eager and we pushed hardmodes with zeal.

And now, a few weeks into dragon soul, we are again having trouble filling a 10 man group. Two of our longest-residing members have left. One had quit the raiding scene a month ago, and now has decided to quit the game. Another had been sporadic about attendance ever since we completed her legendary, and now has faction transferred. I don't know how the rest of the guild took it, but their departure was a shock to me.

This kind of problem seems to be server-wide, as longtime members take temporary or permanent breaks and everyone is falling short on their attendance rosters. Many people, having cleared DS normal, want to take a break until the next expansion. Some have quit the game for good (or so they say) in favor of new MMOs such as SWOTR. Some have just simply burned out, or have new RL commitments and can't raid anymore.

The first group of people are to be expected - it is what inevitably happens during the long lull between the end of an expansion and the start of a new one. The second happened to come at a bad time. It just so happened that a direct competitor to WoW (and pretty much a sci-fi clone, might I add) would launch at a time when WoW's gamer base is bored and looking for something new. The third, well, that is a small minority and there is nothing that can be done about RL problems.

So where do we go from here?

I hope we can stick it out. Recruiting is difficult, but at the least I hope we don't lose any more people than we have already. I hope we can bump up some of the non-raiders in our guild to raider status permanently. I hope that the experienced raiders who want hardmodes can learn to live with a slower pace of progression - we might just have to wait for nerfs at this point. I hope that things do pick up when MoP drops. I, for one, would at least like to give MoP raiding a try before deciding that pandas was a childish idea. Maybe it will be, fun, I don't know.

Things look grim at the moment, but I have faith. I have faith that the people who are currently sustaining our rosters are not the type of people to suddenly up and quit. I think we'll make it. We just need patience to ride out this rough patch.

Bye bye Mr. Lich King Guy

A long long time ago
I can still remember
How that raid used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my epic loot
I could give Arthas the boot
And maybe I'd get his epic mount

But December made me shiver
When Cataclysm was delivered
Deathwing on the world map
I couldn't even cast sap
I can't remember if I cried
When I read that Cairne Bloodhoof died
But something touched me deep inside
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Did you pay the forty dollars
And do you have faith in ghostcrawler
If blizzard tells you so
Do you believe in DBM
Will it get you banned by a GM
And can you teach me how to win Tol Barad
Well I know that you love to pvp
'Cause I saw you in that one AV
You both zerged right to Vann
Man I dig that speed boost enchant
I was just a lonely low level scrub
Wearing all quest gear I was a nub
But I still got my Hyjal bear cub
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Now for two years, we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on our hearthstone
But that's not how it used to be
When that lich king used to wipe the raid
Many a repair bills were paid
With the gold made from running dailies
Oh and while the raid was looking down
Bolvar stole his icy crown
The new lich king was born
We all felt a bit torn
And while the raid lead explained the fight
The pallys gave us blessing of might
And we practiced late nights
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Slice and dice and mages' ice
Getting chain-CCed isn't quite so nice
Our healer could use a peel
No one likes a noob who carries the flag
And we all know it's not just the lag
Don't you have better gear in your bag
Now the Eye of the Storm was almost done
One more cap and it would be won
We all got up to zerg
But we didn't have the nerve
The allies tried to take the mid
But the defenders refused to give
Do you recall if anyone lived
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Oh and there we were all in Mt Hyjal
A generation going through withdrawl
With no gear to start again
So Thrall be nimble, Thrall be quick
No one wants to get another gkick
And fire is Deathwing's only friend
Oh and as I watched him in Dragon Soul
I sometimes couldn't help but lol
This dragon born in hell
Died to Dovahkin's yell
And as I saw the loot pile up high
There was nothing that I could call mine
It all got sharded with a sigh
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

I met an orc who sang the blues
I asked him to please avoid the ooze
But he just ignored me and died
I went down to the quartermaster
But the gear was so lackluster
And the man there said I wasn't even honored
And in orgrimmar the raiders raged
Because they got kited by a mage
But not a nerf was spoken
pvp was still broken
And the three bosses I love to kill
Lich King, Marrowgar, and Lana'thel
Caught the last train to razor hill
The day...that Deathwing flied

Embrace the shadow

Technically my priest's main spec is shadow. By technically, I mean that my primary spec is shadow and holy is my secondary talent tree. But this was simply a result of my old leveling days - it's nearly impossible to level as holy, after all. I consider myself a holy priest with a bit of DPS on the side.

My shadow spec has remained almost entirely unused since I hit 85. Healers get much quicker dungeon ques and we sometimes even get a satchel for our efforts! Plus, I've never been comfortable enough with my off spec to try my hand at dungeons. Besides, I enjoyed healing and found it a lot less stressful when I didn't have to interrupt bosses.

Anyways, I was asked to come heal for one of my guildmate's "off-days" guild. IE, he's the GM of another raiding guild that he sort of manages "on the side". They were short a healer and asked me to come in for a quick dragon soul run.

I was nervous about healing a raid since my healing experience has mostly been limited to LFR and dungeons (although I have healed firelands with this guild before, which went reasonably well). But I also knew that this particular guild wasn't as geared or as progressed as mine, so their expectation also wasn't as high. I would, for instance, be scared shitless to try to heal for MY guild - especially when our GM is the main healer and I would've looked pathetic in comparison.

Despite my worries, I was happy to find that I could keep up and do just as much healing as the main healer, who is better geared than I am. Even in my inferior LFR gear, I had more than enough spirit to spam flash heals and throw out my biggest AoE heals without running oom. Even during heavy damage phases my holy word: sanctuary, circle of healing, and divine hymn kept everyone at full HP. I have to say that I really love a holy priest's ability to mega-heal an entire raid full of people. Pure quantity over quality!

The hitch came when after a few bosses, we lost someone to computer troubles. There was a lot of shuffling of specs and we finally found someone, another healer. Which meant I was asked to go shadow. Gulp.

As expected, I was last place. Just a few notches above the tanks, around 15-16k or so. What I felt was the biggest issue was gear. I hate to go blaming crappy gear for my crappy DPS but that's where I felt my biggest limitation came from.

I actually don't even have a proper shadow set. Given that holy and shadow both prioritize "sort of" the same stats, and I rarely played shadow anyways, I never bothered to collect a shadow-specific set. I prioritized int and spirit on my holy gear with haste as the preferred secondary stat. While this is ok to apply to shadow, you will never top DPS charts or even remain competitive with other DPSer's who are actually prioritizing stats correctly.

Second only to int, haste is king for shadow priests. Spirit is good too, in that it is converted to spell hit rating, as well as the passive mana regen. But the spell hit cap is only 17%, whereas in my holy gear I was well over 30% spell hit due to my prioritizing spirit. And my haste was vastly lacking since I don't prioritize gear or reforging for it. The main component of spriest damage is DoTs, and DoTs scale with haste, so having a little bit of haste vs. a lot of haste means a world of difference.

Now of course no one blamed me for my low DPS. You can't just bring in a main spec healer and expect them to pull fantastic numbers in their off spec. Especially when they're helping you fill a roster gap - at that point you're just thankful for the 10th person being there. But I still felt kind of bad about it.

I've played my rogue for almost three years and practiced endlessly and perfected the rotation to a point where every move is muscle memory. I can easily break 35k on most DS fights even on bad days. Seeing my poor little shadow priest struggling to break half of what I can do so easily on my rogue just made me feel kind of crappy. I wasn't expecting to top charts or anything, but still, it wasn't a good feeling to be last place. To add insult to injury, there was a rogue in the raid who kept making little hints about how good he was. Oh how I wished I could've brought in MY rogue to teach him a thing or two.

I went about fixing this right away. I can't do anything half-assed when it comes to wow. I can't just start an alt - I have to collect an entire set of heirlooms, bags, and a great name before I do that. I can't just collect a few pets, I need to go for the "all the pets in the game" achievement. So I decided I wasn't happy playing a half-priest. I wanted to be a rockin healer and a competitive DPS too.

I dug out a few pieces of gear that I had received during dungeon runs, but had discarded as I got better pieces with spirit on them. I bought a few more with VP and JP scraped together among a couple other characters. I even did LFR and won a nice pair of boots. Throw these all together, and I had a half-holy half-shadow set that I could work with. I gemmed and reforged all the new pieces to get as much haste as I could, while not touching any of the holy gear I was still using. By the end I had about half the spirit I started with, my hit rating was just at the comfortable 17% mark, and I had about 6% more haste. Not bad.

The improvement in DPS was pretty drastic. Whereas I was struggling to break 10k on a target dummy in my holy gear (self-buffs only, no food/flask), I was easily getting to the 15k mark. Not wasting stat allotments on overcapping hit and upping the haste really did the trick! I think fully raid buffed with the food/flask, I should be able to do 20k easily. While this isn't anyone's definition of "awesome DPS", it should make me at least competitive with other people. It's certainly good enough in LFR, where the average seems to hover at 17-20k.

Next step is of course, practice practice practice. I know that the really good shadow priests out there were doing much more than 20k before DS came out, wearing only firelands gear. Getting the rotation down perfect is where there is the most room for improvement, it just takes a lot more time than acquiring gear.

But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Managing the empowered shadow buff correctly to maximize uptime seems to be a critical component. Timing and refreshing my dots correctly will be important too, and probably a bit tricky given that I've never played a DoT class to this level before. But overall I think it will be a fun journey. I might never become THE shadow priest in a raid, but maybe just once beating a pure DPS at his own game would be fun.

Top 5...reasons to hate rogues

An alternate title to this post would be...they see me rollin', they hatin'.

Yeah, yeah, rogues are OP, it's imbalanced, unfair advantage, vanish needs to be nerfed, we've heard it all. I hear it everyday on the forums, I see it in BG chats, and at least one person makes a snarky comment every raid "they need to nerf backstab QQ".

Most of the hate is of course from the pvp crowd, as rogues are arguably the most pvp-oriented class. Here are the top 5 reasons why people hate rogues so much (based on observations gathered from forums QQs, trade chat, and an angry husband who has been kidney shotted for the 12th time in a BG):

5. Ambush is OP

I hear this a lot, and I've experienced this first-hand. At the low levels, a fully heirloom-geared rogue can 2-shot almost every other class with ambush. It's simple, really. Step one: get decked out in heirlooms. Steph two: stealth and wait for prey in a low level BG. Step three: sap anyone stupid enough wander close to you. Step four: ambush. Profit!

Ok, but let's be realistic. Low level pvp means diddly squat. It's like questing, it's just something you do to learn the class and earn some xp. Everyone knows that the real pvp action is at max-level BGs, and I guarantee you that no one is two-shotting anyone in those situations. I mean, unless someone tries to BG naked, two or three-shotting a level 85 player is simply impossible.

Here's the deal: I rarely even use ambush in pvp. It's an OP ability at level 40, not so much at 85. People usually have so much resilience that my role in a BG isn't so much damage as control. So my opener out of stealth is usually cheap shot, to incapacitate my foe. Which really brings me to my next point...

4. Stuns are OP and annoying

Yes, they are annoying. But have you ever been on the giving end of this? Like, have you ever seen someone about to cast a greater healing wave, and then ran up to them, and punched them in the face so hard that they stopped casting? Yeah, that's how good it feels.

In all seriousness, rogues are the best at stuns. And yes, it's really annoying especially if you're a caster and you're getting stunned almost continuously. But remember that stuns are now on diminishing returns, so that each successive application of a stun is shorter and shorter. Realistically, I can only stunlock someone for maybe 10 seconds straight, and that requires me to blow all my CDs. It's annoying for sure, but I mean...that's like, our thing. Deal with it. I don't see anyone complaining about how hunters get pets, because that's totally their thing. Our thing is to stun people.

We also like to sap people randomly on the road. I'm not gonna, lie, that is really annoying. But my god, it's so much fun.

3. Recuperate is OP

Ok, well the thing is...

Actually, you know what? Recuperate IS really OP. No argument there.

2. Vanish is OP

I actually agree that vanish is probably the most useful tool in a rogue's arsenal. The only thing even close to this is hunter's feign death, but that really only works in pve. No one is ever fooled by an FD in pvp. Night elves have shadowmeld, which is kind of like a really really weak and crappy version of vanish. Again, little utility against anyone of actual skill.

Vanish is great, because it literally lets you drop combat and escape with the last tick of your HP remaining. When used in conjunction with cloak of shadows, it also wipes your dots so that your stealth doesn't break right away. The only thing that can really prevent vanish is bleed effects, which many classes do have so it's not like vanish is useful all the time.

But it really is nice. You can use it, for instance, to drop combat, run away and bandage yourself and thereby escaping a tight situation. I often use vanish to sort of "reset start of combat". A rogue's best and strongest abilities require you to be stealthed, so being able to re-enter stealth is a huge advantage. For example, if I really wanted to keep someone locked down, I would start from stealth -> cheap shot -> kidney shot -> vanish -> cheap shot, etc etc.

Of course it is on a long-ish cooldown timer so it's not like we can spam it. And as much as people complain about it, no one has yet to complain when I use vanish to survive a wipe and mass rez people.

1. Rogues fight dirty

Um, yeah. We're ninjas, remember? Who said we had to fight fair? So what if we can stun you, sneak around undetected, drop combat and go invisible, heal ourselves back to full with recuperate, all the while doing insane amounts of damage in pve? As long as we win we don't care.

And honestly, it's not that hard to deal with rogues. We are, at most, really annoying pests. I never saw anyone who was like, "oh no a rogue is coming my way! Run!" It's always more like, "ugh that goddamn rogue is back again". We don't really pwn anyone. We just annoy the crap out of everyone.

Just brush it off, folks. You got griefed a little. Move along, now. Nothing to see here.