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…

Rogue specs in Mists of Pandaria Beta

After the download process and login, I found myself standing in Stormwind.  Unfortunately, I also found myself looking at the default Blizzard UI.  It made me realize how much I have customized my own UI, and how difficult it will be to play without my add ons.

Also on my screen was the obligatory, “Your talents have been reset” message.  So, my first order of business is to check that out.

I   Baseline abilities vs. talents

Blizzard is really trying to get rid of cookie-cutter talent specs in MoP.  What they have done is taken a lot of the must-have talents and rolled them into baseline abilities for each spec.  For example – have you ever seen a combat rogue who doesn’t have Blade Flurry?  Of course not.  So why waste talent points on that?  Just give it to all combat rogues at the appropriate level.

When you choose a spec, you are given a list of the baseline abilities for that spec.

Here are the abilities for assassination rogues:

Here they are for combat:

And here are subtlety:

You’ll see that almost all of the “must have” talent choices for each spec in Cataclysm are now given to the rogues baseline.  There is one notable exception that jumped out at me  - Shadowstep.  That’s not baseline for any spec, but can be chosen by any rogue in the talent decisions.  That’s right – all rogues can have Shadowstep!

You’ll recognize almost every skill that is listed there.  There is not much that is brand new.  Some have been tweaked a bit.  Here’s a couple of new ones for assassination:

Those look like they will have a nice little synergy.  Dispatch will replace Backstab as the execute-phase attack for assassination rogues, and Blindside makes it so that Dispatch can also be useful at other times during the fight.  It creates a more active attack model – rather than robotically following a set attack rotation, we’ll want to deviate from our pattern whenever we get a Blindside proc.  I expect we’ll see the theorycrafters figure out the Dispatch vs non-Dispatch damage output, just like they did with Revelaing Strikes and Rupture in past expansions.

I noticed that Revealing Strike has been tweaked:

The base damage of the attack has gone down (75% weapon damage down from 125%), the 35% buff to your next finisher is the same, but they added an 18 second secondary buff that increases your likelihood of getting combo points.  That’s a nice little perk, but with only a 20% chance  for an extra CP its a little random as to how much help it will be.

Also, Hemorrhage was altered:

The base damage of the attack is reduced slightly.  Rather than Hemo giving increased bleed damage, it just adds a DoT based on the attack.  I don’t play subtlety myself, but this seems to be a significant change.  On one hand, it makes Hemo stand on its own, rather than require you to keep both Hemo and Rupture tied together to maximize its effectiveness.  However, the “direct strike” in the description is unsettling.  If that refers to weapon damage it seems to me that this would not scale well with attack power.  If “direct” strike” includes all damage modifiers then it would be better.

However, Hemo is no longer a debuff  that can help the rest of the raid.  I know that the whole raid buff/debuff system is being streamlined and I haven’t had a chance to check that out yet.  I hope that this is being replaced with something else that gives rogues some utility.

Next post will show the talent trees.

I’m going into MoP completely in the dark

As soon as I said that I was in the beta, I had people asking me about preferred talents, and which features I planned to check out first.

Interesting  thing.  I have no idea.  I don’t even know what’s available.  I have done virtually no preparation for MoP.

My WoW time has decreased as my kids have gotten older.  I’ve had to give up some of my peripheral WoW-related activities.  Blogging, for example, has largely been ignored.  Also, doing advance research on expansion talents that may change 10 times before release is an activity that never materialized.

When I got the beta invite I was tempted to hurry up and cram in all the research I could while the client downloaded.  Then I changed my mind.  I decided to go in pretty much blind and see how that changed my perception.

I’ll let you know as things catch my eye.

MoP Beta… soon

Things are happening fast.  On Monday Blizzard lifted the press NDA and a torrent of MoP information was released.  Then by Wednesday it became clear that the beta servers were about to go online.

Once I get into the MoP Beta I’m sure that I’ll have a lot more to say.  I bought the Annual Pass, so I will get invited at some point, but there’s no telling exactly when.  Expect more updates to the blog once I have some first-hand rogue observations.

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?