Legendary daggers… check

As you can tell from my previous post, I’ve completed the legendary daggers, Golad, Twilight of Aspects and Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages.

I made a post back on December 14th, 2011 saying that I had done the Assassinate Creed stage of the questline.  Since then, it has taken me twenty weeks of Dragon Soul runs (plus one stealth run in the basement of Karazhan) to complete the questline.

This is the first time that someone in my guild has completed a legendary since Blizzard implemented the collection/grind model back in Ulduar.  We never got the Ulduar legendary or the ICC legendary.  We have someone pretty close to the Firelands staff, and I just got the daggers.

I think the whole experience was pretty fun.  The two class-specific assassination quests were interesting and challenging.  They definitely made the whole effort worthwhile.  I’m glad that I got to do that content, and its a shame that more classes don’t get to see it.

The collecting was… meh.  However, I have nothing to compare this to.  I don’t know what kind of perseverance it took to get the rare legendaries back in the Molten Core days, so I can’t tell you how this compares.  Getting a few pieces each week makes you feel like you’re progressing, unlike the MC days when you would go months (or longer) without seeing the one drop that you needed.

But I don’t feel legendary.  I’ve never done a single heroic mode fight.  We didn’t get Deathwing down until after the first nerf.  I don’t have most of the achievements related to the Dragon Soul boss fights.  Do I really feel like I deserve this?

How exciting was it?  Right after the raid, when everyone knew I was flying to Hillsbrad to turn in the quest, half of my raid team logged off for the night rather than wait the extra ten minutes to see the guild achievement pop.  That hints that the excitement of the accomplishment was gone.

Look, I’m definitely excited.  I’m not going to turn it down.  Still, I have to say that I think legendaries should be more rare.  I think legendaries should be something that you wear and people stop and stare, or say in guild chat, “Hey, there’s a guy in SW with the legendary Sword of Uberness!  Come see!”  Instead, I got my legendary by grinding through a nerfed normal-mode raid for twenty weeks.  It feels… cheapened.

But I’m slowfalling whenever the cooldown is up.  I’m even putting together a Batman-ish transmogging set.  Yay!

No, its not Red Bull…

More Rogue Fun on the Epic Dagger Questline

Having completed the Cluster Clutch quest, I was taken to another stealth-sap-distract run leading to a solo combat, much like the one we all did previously in Gilneas City at the start of the questline. The new quest is Blood of the Betrayer and it takes place in Deadwind Pass.

First comment – I wanted to do it completely cold without reading any strats or guides.  In the end I had to look up a guide because I COULDN”T FIND THE ENTRANCE TO THE CELLAR.  The quest sends you to the town outside of Karazhan.  You’re phased, and the town is full of 85 elite mobs and wandering pats (just like Gilneas City was when we did the Assassinate Creed quest).  However, I had no idea where I was supposed to go.  I wandered around for almost a half hour before I gave in and looked up a guide online.

Next, the stealth part this time was significantly easier right up to the end.  That may be because of my experience from the first go-around, or it may be that the mobs weren’t as tightly packed.  It does get tricky in the hallway right before the mob you have to kill.

The fight itself was much like the Creed fight in Gilneas.  You’ll have to use all of your rogue abilities – kiting and bandaging, Recuperate, Stun, Blind, Cloak, Shiv, and even Expose Armor.  This time around, though, you’re given some assistance.  You get warnings like, “She’s casting Arcane Infused Armor!  Expose her Armor!” and they tell you what to do.  I’m not really sure if those warnings were from the game or from DBM, honestly.

Also, this time I went prepared.  When I killed Creed in Gilneas I wasn’t expecting how many times I would die figuring out the fight, and I ran out of consumables.  This time I went in loaded with food, potions, flasks, and bandages.  I had a Travelers Tundra Mammoth so I repaired before each attempt at the stealth run.

Once I got through the stealth part into the fight area, I did die 6 or 7 so times while learning the ins and outs of the fight, but managed to eke it out in the end before I was forced to repair and re-do the stealth run.  That’s much better than I did on Creed when I was forced to hearth out and repair TWICE before figuring it out.  When I did Creed, I tried it a bunch of times in Mutilate spec before I learned that Combat or Sub for Imp Recuperate was necessary.  This time I went in with my Combat spec from the start.

So, after a couple of hours of stealthing and about 45 minutes of fighting a dragon in a basement outside of Karazhan, I am now the proud owner of The Sleeper and The Dreamer.  I am 3/60 on the next collection quest, and that has a one-per-Dragon Soul boss drop rate.  That puts me at 57 DS boss kills to go.  For my guild, that’s probably 9-10 weeks.  I only hope we keep raiding for that long without losing our raid team to the end-of-expansion doldrums.

Slowly Getting There

As all rogues recall, Patch 4.3 was released in late November of 2011 with great fanfare.  With the release of the patch, came the questline to get the legendary daggers.

Every rogue worth his stealth did the opening steps of the questline in the first few days.  Then you had to get to Hagara and pickpocket her, then do the wonderful stealth run through Gilneas City.  A lot of us who play a rogue as our main had all of that done within a couple of weeks of the patch, and we had earned our first stage epic daggers – Fear and Vengeance.

Then came Cluster Clutch – the collecting quest in the Dragon Soul raid.  It cannot be completed in LFR so the rate that you finish this is based on how many bosses you can kill each week on normal or heroic difficulty.  This is where the hardcore raiders can pull ahead of the rest of the rogues.

At an average of about 6 Shadowy Gems per boss kill (assuming 10-man raids) this quest required you to be there for about 56 kills.

I’m happy to say that I completed this quest tonight.  It took me nearly three months.  My casual guild has not been doing full clears each week, so my progress has been steady but not rapid. In fact, we just got our first Deathwing kill on normal tonight, so it was a double-bonus for me.

I’m curious where other rogues are.  I think that a lot of them just got their first stage daggers and called it a success at that point, with no intention of moving on to later stages.  Then I think that many other rogues want to keep moving forward, but the mid-expansion lull may bring them to a halt as they have trouble forming raid groups.

This weekend I expect to do the next stealth run (near Karazhan) and hopefully get my next-stage daggers.

So, where are you in the questline?

Mogged

I finally got around to transmogrifying my gear.

I really wasn’t in a hurry to do this.  I liked the Firelands/Dragon Soul gear and I didn’t feel a tremendous need to change its appearance.  Still, I figured that there was probably some room for improvement.

I originally thought I’d go with the standard rogue-ninja-all-in-black look.  I crafted a ‘mogging set based on the Nightscape pieces.  I added a few other items to fill out the set and and the change.  It was… dull.  Flat black with no flair and way too cliche.

So, back to the drawing board.  I have almost the full Bloodfang and Slayers sets in my bank, so I considered those.  I decided that I didn’t want to wear one of the tier sets, and that I needed something more interesting.  After thinking it over, I realized that I didn’t really like red as a rogue color.

After a lot of thinking and browsing armor pieces online, I decided to use a recolor of the Bloodfang set made up of individual pieces that drop throughout Karazhan.  It only took a few runs to get most of the pieces.  I have almost a complete set.  Here’s how I look right now:

I’m still missing a couple of matching pieces but the ones I have don’t look too terrible.

Here’s the rundown of what I have:

• Head: Cursed Vision of Sargeras, drops from Illidan in Black Temple
• Shoulders: Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless, drops from Chess Event in Karazhan (OR Forest Wind Shoulderpads from The Curator in Karazhan looks the same)
• Chest: Stonebough Jerkin from Nightbane (OR Chestguard of the Conniver from Nightbane looks the same) in Karazhan
• Hands: Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation from Attumen (OR Mitts of the Treemender from Maiden of Virtue looks the same) in Karazhan
• Legs: Earthsoul Leggings from the Opera Event (OR Skulker’s Greaves from Netherspite looks the same) in Karazhan
• At the moment, my boots are Dark Leather Boots, made with Leatherworking.   They look so-so with the set. I will eventually get the Edgewalker Longboots from Moroes in Karazhan
• At the moment my belt is not ‘mogged at all.  It will eventually be the Gronn-Stitched Girdle from Gruul in Gruul’s Lair
• I’m wearing the Shadow Wing Armbands from Dragon Soul with no mogging.  They match fairly well with the set.
• I’m wearing a white shirt under the armor, which gives color to my arms between the shoulders and bracers.
• I have the cloak turned off.  I can’t find a cloak that looks good with the set, and I think the effect is better without a cloak, anyway.

I’m missing the bracers, belt, and boots that drop in Karazhan.  More Kara clears for me!

I like the look.  Its dark, which is rogue-ish, but not black.  The shoulders are eye-catching but not excessive.  I like the way Illidan’s blindfold goes with the rest of the gear.

I have not yet done anything with my daggers.  That’s not too important to me.  Whatever daggers I have will primarily show the enchant effect so you don’t see much of the dagger, anyway.

Incoming Nerf

Dragon Soul is supposed to be nerfed starting this week.  It will be a 5% reduction in boss damage and health, and that number will gradually increase.  It doesn’t affect our attack power or abilities, so our damage output should stay about the same.

For rogues, this nerf has some small effect.  It means that bosses will die quicker, so you might not get to use your cooldowns as often.  This might have a small negative impact on our damage totals.  Be aggressive using your damage cooldowns.

Here’s something interesting you might try.  On Ultraxion in 10-man normal mode, the Hour of Twilight does 300,000 damage.  Presumably that will be nerfed down to 285,000.  If you hit your Feint, reducing AoE damage by 50%, that should only hit you for 142,500.  If you’re in 378/384/397 gear you probably have enough health to survive that, assuming that your healers are keeping you topped off.  If you’re feeling adventurous, see if you can live through an Hour of Twilight without hitting the Heroic Will.

Of course, if your health is below 142000, or if you time the Feint wrong you’ll die.  If you manage to survive, that’s extra dps time.  You might give your healers and raid leader a heart attack, though.

Rogue drops in Dragon Soul

Am I just incredibly unlucky?

I’ve run Dragon Soul now about 6-8 times in normal difficulty and a handful of times in LFR.  That’s a total of 40-50 boss kills split between 10-man runs and 25-man runs.

So far, I have gotten exactly three drops.  I got my first DS tier piece in LFR yesterday.

I’m not too surprised by that.  What I’m annoyed with is not that I’m being outrolled, but that I almost never even have a drop to roll on.  I’ve gone entire guild runs without ever typing /roll, and entire LFR runs without ever hitting Need or even Greed.  Its become kind of a joke.

Am I just amazingly unlucky?

What’s Been and What’s Coming

The (recent) past:

I’ve been grinding along in game.  No new posts recently because nothing interesting has happened since the fun little questline early on the path to the legendary daggers.

For what its worth, I am just 1/3 of the way done with the Dragon Soul collection quest, Cluster Clutch.  Since this is the last raid in the expansion, and I expect interest in WoW to gradually wane as people get bored with this content, it seems reasonable to me that I will not have a shot at getting the legendary daggers.  I simply won’t be able to run DS enough to get through the two collection quests.  This is as I expected.  In general, casual raiding guilds just don’t kill enough bosses to get the legendaries.

I spend most of my time working on gold making.  I’m just about to hit 500,000 gold, which was my goal.  The gem market has bottomed out because people aren’t getting much new gear anymore.  As the lull between now and MoP stretches out, more people will play alts so I’ll always have the glyph market to rely on, but I don’t think I’ll be raking in the gold any more until we see pandas.

The (near) future:

My guild is 5/8 in DS on 10 man normal.  Blizzard announced that DS will be gradually nerfed, so we’ll get through the rest one way or another, either pre-nerf or post-nerf.  After that happens, it would not surprise me at all to see some of our long-time players drift away from the game.  Its sad, but its life.

This blog will probably continue the zombie-life that it has.  I made only 58 posts in 2011, and considering the new raids and such that really is not very many.  With the homogenizing of the game, there is very little rogue-specific information for me to convey.  Between the Dungeon Journal and LFR in game, there is less need than ever to tab out of the game and find information.  What information is needed is covered nicely by Elitist Jerks.

I’m keeping the blog alive so that it can return as a valued source of information when Mists of Pandaria hits.  I did the one-year commitment, so I’ll still be around.

Besides, I’d like to see the blog hit 1,000,000 pageviews (not counting feedreaders) and that will happen in another couple of months.

Is the LFR expected or optional?

I was reading and posting in an online forum on a WoW-related topic.  In the discussion, someone spilled the beans about the ending of the Dragon Soul raid and storyline.  Another person said, “Dude, put SPOILER ALERT on that so we know not to read it if we haven’t done it yet.”

At this point, the person who had asked for the spolier alert was raked over the coals in the way that WoW trolls really know how.  They accused him of being a failure at the game because, at this point, only a total loser has not cleared the Dragon Soul in the LFR.

I stepped in to disagree, saying that I preferred to raid with my guild and so I, also, have not done the LFR raids yet.

Then the tide of opinion turned against me, saying that I should be running LFR to get gear to help with normal mode raiding.  The fact that it is super-easy was the main argument for its necessity.

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I feel like I’m part of a dying breed in WoW.  The main joy of raiding for me is playing with my long-time gaming friends.  There is no thrill in loot.  Loot lost its appeal to me back in BC when epic purple gear became more common than rare blue-level gear.  My joy comes from the shared experience of overcoming the obstacle that the devs have set before us.  For that reason, I’d much rather run the raid in normal mode, using gear I got in normal mode Firelands and by running heroics.

Basically, I see the LFR as a nice alternate path for those who want/need it.  I don’t see it as a necessary part of the gearing-up process.

Am I the minority here?

Assassinating Creed – probably easier for PvP rogues

I made my way through the first steps of the legendary dagger quest over yesterday and today.  I pickpocketed Hagara last night, paid the guy in Stormwind to charge the ring, and today I went to Ravenholdt and did my business there.

I thought the epic daggers were as good as mine.

I got to Gilneas and did the whole stealth run through the city.  It was a good challenge.  I chose not to look at any online guides and figure it out myself.  Solving the puzzle was good fun, if not a little frustrating.  It took about an hour and a half of trial and error until I found a good path.  More than once, I would get to a safe spot 2/3 of the way through and think, “I wish there was a save game function.”

Finally, I stood in the courtyard with Creed.  You have to kill this guy solo, which includes not only dishing out damage, but avoiding damage, self-healing, and using your stuns and interrupts.  You’d think that all of these would be easy mode for someone who has played a rogue for as long as I have (six years).

Not so fast.

I am strictly a PvE rogue.  I don’t PvP *at all*.  As a result, there are a number of rogue abilities (Combat Readiness, Gouge, Dismantle) that are not even on my button bars because they are not useful in raiding.  I don’t think I have used Gouge since Burning Crusade.  I certainly don’t have the survival habits that are second nature to PvP rogues.  My bandages and healing potions are not easily keybound, for example.

In addition, I am play an assassination rogue almost exclusively.  My assassination rotation comes almost as easily as breathing.  Of course, that’s the spec I chose to use in the fight.

As assassination spec I didn’t even come close.  In several attempts I never got him below 50%.  Without the Improved Recuperate talent my self-healing couldn’t keep up with his damage.

I switched to Combat, which I am not nearly as practiced with.  Right away, on my first try in this spec I got him below 20%.  Improved Recuperate helped a lot.  Still, though, I could not interrupt consistently and had a hard time avoiding his damage.

Eventually, my gear was all broken.  I was frustrated and annoyed.  Its not that I wanted it to be easy.  I was annoyed knowing that a lot of rogues would find the fight easy because they practice these skills all the time in PvP.  In the end, I had to completely rearrange my button bars and keybindings for this one fight to have better access to my various interrupts and damage avoidance.

In the end, I succeeded.  I did have to hearth back to SW to repair, and then re-do the stealth run through Gilneas.  I flasked up and got Well-Fed and pre-potted before attacking.  I have an iLvL of 381, so it should have been a lot easier than it was.

Someone will read this and say that I suck as a rogue.  I would disagree.  In my opinion, I am very good at my job, which is doing massive sustained damage, especially to single targets.  I’m not so good at doing the things that I am never called upon to do in raids, like stunlocking and self-preservation.

This is not a complaint.  It was a good challenge, and it took me a couple of hours all-told.  I’m only writing this to say that it won’t be easy for everyone, no matter how much rogue-ing experience you may have.  Don’t go into it thinking that it will be a cakewalk.