Horridon the horrible

In MoP, each raid has had its “roadblock” boss.  Mogu’shan Vaults had Elegon.  Heart of Fear had Garalon.  Terrace… well that didn’t have anything (on normal mode, at least).

Now in Throne of Thunder we are at a dead stop on Horridon.  I feel like this isn’t even the roadblock boss for most people, but it is for us.

I have issues with this fight, and not just because its a rotten fight for rogues.  Its also an annoying fight for just general playing.

(1) Horridon has a big ass.  Seriously.  I can’t tell you how many times my view has been blocked because this huge dinosaur has charged into my screen.  I have to keep adjusting my camera view during the fight to see around it.  Very frustrating.  I ended up playing with my camera zoomed out into the sky, but I really don’t like that perspective.

(2) Targeting is awful when adds are all grouped together.  In many add-based fights, you can simply AoE down a group of adds.  In this fight, that big group of adds has one tougher one in the group that you are trying to focus.  Finding him in that pile is a terrible chore.  Yes, you can write a targeting macro, but I consider that to be an inelegant kludge solution to an encounter design problem.

(3) Frozen Orbs.  Oh, to be a ranged class that can spread out and plink away at the Frozen Warlords without standing in the midst of Frozen Orbs.  Either I’m in the melee zone, dying to Orbs or I’m out of range doing essentially nothing.  This phase stinks for rogues.

I have yet to see past the third door, so I can’t even comment on the rest of the fight.

Maybe something will suddenly click and I’ll find a secret that I’ve been missing.  Until that happens, this fight annoys me more than any other in MoP raiding so far.

 

Rogue-only Easter Egg

I originally saw this on Reddit, then it was posted on WoW Insider.  There is a hidden bit of content in WoW that is a nod to the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.  Only rogues can access it.

For the full discussion including background and a thorough walkthrough, go to Chase Christian’s writeup at WoW Insider.  For the quick version, here are the steps:

• Go to Ravenholdt Manor
• Outside the Manor, find Reislek’s Ghost
• With the Glyph of Disguise equipped, pickpocket Reislek’s Ghost and take his appearance
• Go into the Manor and go to the basement
• With the Glyph of Detection equipped, look for a sparkle near the floor in a corner of the room
• Use Detection to reveal the ghost of Orsur
• Talk to him.  He’ll think that you are Reislek.
• You’ll get the Survivor’s Bag of Coins, which is a fun item to play with
• Pickpocket humanoids to get coins to fill the bag (they fade whenever you change zones)

See the WoW Insider article for more discussion on how you can play with the coins.

 

 

Are PvE rogues all the same spec now?

Look up and down the top dps parses for rogues.  Lots of assassination rogues tearing it up.  Nary a combat rogue to be found (no subtlety either, but that’s old news).

Recently my guild has been working on Garalon.  This is the quintessential cleave fight.  You target a leg and get a crit buff for doing so, and your cleave hits the boss.  When the leg dies, its damage is transferred to the boss, so all cleave damage is pure bonus.

At the start of MoP, combat rogues were putting up obscene numbers on this fight.  Patch 5.2 brought the big change – making the cleave do only 40% weapon damage (down from 100%) but affecting more targets.  Sure, it was a needed fix to a balance problem.  However, it has perhaps gone too far.

All the theorycrafters have emphasized that Blade Flurry is still a plus whenever you have two or more targets in proximity (and its effect increases for three or four targets).  Since Garalon has been the Combat Spec Fight in this tier, I completely regemmed and reforged for combat when we got to this boss.

After a number of tries and lots of practice, I was frustrated with my sub-par dps numbers.  So, this week I switched back to assassination.  Immediately, I gained nearly 20k dps without using any cleave.

Currently, I don’t see any reason to spec combat in raids.  Assassination is so far superior its not really even a discussion.  Since subtlety has again fallen out of use in PvE, I guess that means that all raiding rogues are or will be assassination spec.  World of Logs reports bear this out.  While there are still combat rogues out there, it looks like that spec is around 40k dps behind assassination in ToT raids.

Having specs a little unbalanced is routine and almost expected.  If two specs are producing numbers that are 5% apart, then you can justify using either one based on familiarity or gear or just preference.  However, if one spec is 20% ahead, as it is now, then its almost impossible to justify not using the top spec.

Until this is addressed (and it will be), I expect to see just about all raiding rogues in assassination spec.  That’s a shame – especially in a pure dps class.  I look forward to seeing how Blizzard balances things.

Rogues in patch 5.2

How patch 5.2 going for everyone?

This is my busiest time of year in my life outside the game.  My son’s baseball season is in full swing.  My work responsibilities are more significant in this part of the year than during other seasons.  I can barely find time to sit at my desk at home.

I’ve logged on enough to do the Isle of Thunder dailies once and have two nights of raiding in MSV and HoF.  That’s all the time I’ve spent in WoW so far since the patch.  I had to figure out a lot of changes by trial and error since I have not had time to keep up with them.

Right away in MSV, I noticed that my Combat spec did less damage than normal on Stone Guard.  That’s because of the change to Blade Flurry in the patch.  It now hits for less damage, but affects more targets.  On Stone Guard, when you’re hitting two or three dogs, you’re not getting the most out of Blade Flurry.  Damage is good, but not as spectacular as it once was.

I also noticed that my single target damage in Assassination spec was a little higher, but not much.  Assassination got buffed a bit in the patch.  I hear that Subtlety got a small buff as well.  I expect Blizzard to keep giving us small buffs until more people play rogues.  For those of us who still play our rogue mains, it just makes us that much more awesome.  However, I will also note that I wasn’t as far ahead on the damage meters as I usually am on some MSV fights, like Elegon.  I suspect that other classes got buffed as well, and maybe more than we did.

I was really surprised when I went to use Ambush as an opener and I teleported to directly behind the target without using Shadowstep.  That’s when I remembered that there were talent changes in the patch.  Preparation was removed as a talent, and now all rogues have it as a baseline ability at level 68.  Instead they added Cloak and Dagger in Prep’s old spot on the talent tree.  It works like Shadowstep built into your stealthed openers.  It essentially gives your openers a 30 yard range.

A change that I noticed while I was fighting Elegon was for Cloak of Shadows.  It now has a shorter cooldown (1 minute), but its no longer reset by Preparation.  That surprised me.  I usually use Cloak-Prep-Cloak to mitigate damage at the end of the fight when we’re burning Elegon down.  Didn’t work this time.

I was, as usual, dismayed when our raid got to Will of the Emperor.  I don’t like that fight.  At some point in that fight, I always end up far from my target with Vanish and Sprint on cooldown.  This time I specced into Shuriken Toss.  This gave combo points and also made my autoattacks into ranged shuriken throws.  I don’t think it was very effective, but it was fun.

Also on the Will of the Emperor fight, when we all grouped up to AoE heal through the Titan Gas phases, I threw down my Smoke Bomb.  It was just given a new ability – reducing incoming damage by 20% on everyone in its range.  I have a defensive raid cooldown!  That felt good.

There’s another talent change that I tried.  Versatility was removed as a top-tier talent and replaced with Marked for Death.  This gives 5 combo points to start with on the fight, so its much like the Premeditation ability on steroids.  A major difference is that when your target dies, Marked for Death resets.  That makes this good for burst damage in target-switching situations, since you can start with 5 CP on each new target.  Its not useful on most boss fight in PvE, but good in fights with a lot of adds that need to be bursted down.  That said, I tried to use it on Garalon’s legs, and the cooldown never reset when a leg died.  Is it because the legs don’t really “die”?  Is this a bug?  (not Garalon himself, but the lack of cooldown reset).

Most of the changes were not very noteworthy, although a lot of rogues are affected by the alterations to the talent tree.  The Smoke Bomb change is nice – I wonder how long it will take everyone to realize that it is there, so that raid leaders call for it at times of high incoming damage.

What now?

I don’t mean in game.  I mean with this blog.  I’ve been running the blog since 2008.  My play has gone through many stages since then.  My current playstyle doesn’t give me a lot to talk about.

Starting in BC and then through Wrath and Cataclysm I stayed fairly well at the forefront of the game.  I wasn’t a hardcore raider, but I was very knowledgeable on the game in general and the rogue class in particular.  While I have never done heroic raid modes, I think I was informed enough to know how rogues would perform and I was qualified to give pretty good advice and recommendations on all aspects of rogue play.

Now I have gone full casual.  My raid team just last week downed Elegon on normal mode, and now we’re slowly learning Will of the Emperor.  By the time patch 5.2 comes with its new raid tier, I will only have seen 6 of the 16 bosses in the current tier.  I haven’t even done the other ten on LFR.

I could write a great post on how to maximize rogue dps on Elegon.  I do really well on that fight.  However, at this point in the expansion, is that post even needed?  Many rogues will be raiding Tier 15 next week.  I expect I won’t even take a peek in there for a month or more.  What can I offer in this blog that is useful to the rogue community?

The game has been so homogenized.  There is little in the PvE game that is unique to rogues.  Most melee classes are pretty similar in tactics and strategies, and that information is readily available on Icy Veins or Elitist Jerks.

With little to offer the rogues of WoW, I’m struggling to find a reason to post here.

What now?

Auction House – another gearing path

I really hate to buy gear. There’s no real logical reason for this, other than it fits into my own personal version of the way the game should be played.

I know that I’m in the minority – the large majority of players just want their iLvL to get higher, no matter what path they take.  Its like their own personal scoreboard for WoW. For me, though, I play the game in a certain way.  I won’t run raids on LFR until I have first cleared them on normal mode with my guild.  I don’t repetitively grind heroics to cap my valor points every week.  I try to earn the gear I get.

This has put me in a bit of a bind, lately, as far as weapons go.  Specifically, daggers.  We’re four months into the expansion and I am still using two blue level 463 daggers.  Until very recently, I was raiding with a 450 dagger. There are no daggers to be purchased with Valor Points.  The Stone Guard, the first boss of Mogu’shan Vaults, has stubbornly refused to drop a dagger for me.  I had no luck even getting the dagger that dropped from the Greench daily during Winter’s Veil.

I’ve got all the gold I need to buy anything I want, but I have always felt that I shouldn’t resort to buying gear.  This week, I finally gave in to frustration.  I bought myself a Miniature Winter Veil Tree from the auction house. That got me to thinking – how well geared can a rogue get using strictly the auction house to buy items?  That means BoE drops and crafted items which can be sold.

• Head: nothing good for this slot other than the crafted PvP piece, Contender’s Leather Helm (iLvL 450, pvp)
• Neck: If you’re lucky you might find the rare drop Don Guerrero’s Glorious Choker (476) on the AH.  Otherwise you’re certain to see a Golembreaker Amulet (450).
• Shoulder: only the Contender’s Leather Shoulders here (450, pvp).
• Back: the rare drop Dory’s Pageantry (476) is when you want.
• Chest: several options here – two crafted items – the Chestguard of Nemesis (496) and the Greyshadow Chestguard (476).  Also, there is a rare BoE drop, Vulajin’s Vicious Brestplate (476).
• Bracers: the best option here is a BoE drop from the Heart of Fear raid – Smooth Beetle Wristbands.  There are heroic (509), normal (496) and LFR (483) versions.
• Gloves: more crafted items: Murderer’s Gloves (496) or Greyshadow Gloves (476)
• Legs: only the crafted pvp item here, Contender’s Leather Leggings (450, pvp)
• Feet: only the crafted pvp item here as well, Contender’s Leather Boots (450, pvp)
• Finger: if you are lucky you might find the rare drop Perculia’s Peculiar Signet (476).  You can always find the JC-crafted Roguestone Shadowband (450).
• Trinket: the top option here is the Relic of Xuen (476) (from Darkmoon Faire).  Also useful is the Ghost Iron Dragonling (450) which has nice stats when you put the better cogwheels into it.
• Weapons: All pretty pricey options here.  The Krol Scimitar (476 sword) and the Gloaming Blade (476 dagger) are both super-rare pickpocketing results.  The Miniature Winter Veil Tree (480 dagger) can still be found on the AH, too.  After that, its the crafted blacksmith dagger or sword, both level 463.

Overall, if you’re willing to spend a couple hundred thousand gold and be patient until all these rare items show up on the AH, it looks like you can get yourself to about iLvL 470, although that includes some pvp pieces which are not optimally itemized for raiding.  That’s a lot of gold for little reward, because you can easily do better than that through some dabbling in dailies and heroics and maybe a trip or two into LFR.

Challenge Mode… ouch

We’re not too far progressed in raid content yet.  However, we were looking for something interesting to do. The presence  of Challenge Modes has been taunting us.

Since the Challenge Modes scale your gear down to 463, in principle it shouldn’t matter how high your gear is, as long as most/all of your pieces are higher than 463.  We got together a group of five who fit that description and gave Temple of the Jade Serpent a shot.

Whoooooooo……. boy.

I was under the impression that it was much like a normal heroic run, maybe a little harder, and it was on a timer.  We ran through heroic Temple for practice right before our Challnege Mode attempt, and got through it relatively quickly.  Then we switched to Challenge and waded in.

To paraphrase our old friend Illidan, we were not prepared.

Everything is much harder.  The mobs hit harder and they go down slower.  All damage effects are increased.  On top of that, since your gear is downgraded your dps and healing are lower than you are used to.

We got to the first boss (Wise Mari) and promptly wiped on him twice.  Turns out he has a mechanic in Challenge Mode that he doesn’t have on normal or heroic.  If you are more than 20 yards away he lobs water bombs on you, and its unhealable damage.  Thus, you have to do the whole fight on those rings around the boss.

Also, he turns around faster when firing his water jet.  Hooray.

We wiped a few times.  We reset the instance and tried again.  Got him down the first time.  Went on to the next boss.  Got it down.  Third boss.  Got it down.  We’re being methodical and not trying to push things.  We pull the final boss with 12 minute left on the bronze medal time.

…. and its all downhill from there.

The final boss is crazy hard.  His shadows do tons of damage, and healer mana gets used up like crazy during the shadow phase.  It took us 6 wipes before we finally got him down, missing the bronze medal time by… a lot.  We did manage to finish, though.  Got our 45 VP plus another bunch of VP for it being the daily Challenge Mode quest.

At this time, in my opinion the Challenge Modes are going to be an exception to the “bring the player not the class” mantra that Blizzard uses.  You would be crazy to do these without a Heroism/Bloodlust in the party.  Also, AoE classes are very useful in moving through trash packs quickly.  We did the dungeon with a very poorly optimized party – no heroism, no paladin blessing, not even a hunter with a variety of pets.

I was hoping that my Shroud of Concealment would be useful, but not in this dungeon.  The trash packs are hard to get around, and many are mandatory.

All in all it was really fun, and quite challenging.  I’m looking forward to trying more.

Latest Patch 5.2 PTR Rogue Changes

The problem with datamined information is that it has a short shelf life.  Only 4 days ago I posted a summary of some datamined rogue changes coming in patch 5.2.  Well the patch information has hit the PTR and already some of what I posted is changed.

I’m not sure if its even worth posting, because its likely to change again.  However, here goes… (pulled from MMO-Champion)

• Preparation is now a baseline ability learned at level 68.
• Versatility has been removed.
• New Level 90 Talent: Marked for Death
  
  • Marks a target and instantly generates 5 combo points. When that target dies, Marked for Death’s cooldown is reset. This talent has a 1 minute cooldown.
• New Level 60 Talent: Cloak and Dagger
  • Ambush, Garrote, and Cheap Shot now have a 30 yard range, and will cause the Rogue to teleport behind the target.
• Burst of Speed now costs 30 Energy (was 50 Energy), can be used in Stealth, and always grants increased movement speed in addition to breaking snare effects, but no longer breaks root effects.
• Shuriken Toss now causes the Rogue to Throw shuriken instead of autoattacking for 10 seconds after Shuriken Toss is used.
• Deadly Throw can now interrupt spellcasting when used at 3, 4, and 5 combo points, and upon interrupt prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4, 5 and 6 seconds respectively (was 5 combo points and 6 seconds).
• Nerve Strike now reduces the effectiveness of healing provided by the target by 25%.
• Shadow Focus now reduces ability energy costs by 75% while stealthed (was 100%).
• PvP set bonuses have been changed:
  
  • Vigor is now the 4 piece set bonus and increases maximum energy by 50 (was 10).
  • Deadly Brew is now the 2 piece set bonus, and its effects remain unchanged.
• Combat
  
  • Vitality now increases attack power by 30% (was 25%).
  • Blade Flurry now deals 75% less damage.
• Subtlety
  • Sanguinary Vein now increases the damage the target takes by 20% (was 16%).

Marked for Death is still there and still exciting.  The Blade Flurry nerf is still there, as are the changes to our ranged attacks with Shuriken Toss and Deadly Throw.  Preparation is being moved, as mentioned before.

The noticeable change is to the 4th tier talent.  Cloak and Dagger as it now appears on the PTR is much less interesting than the previous version I had posted about.  Now it basically just wraps Shadowstep into your opener from stealth.  Since we still have Shadowstep as a baseline ability, I’m not sure what we gain from this.  One less keystroke?  Will anyone choose this talent over Preparation?

Datamined Rogue changes in patch 5.2

We all know about the current lackluster state of rogues.  Blizzard has recognized it and dataminers have pulled out some changes to the rogue class that should hit the PTR when it comes online.  Most of the changes are buffs, and they are being tested for inclusion in the next patch.

Before I list the changes, I’ll start by saying that there are no apparent changes to our energy regeneration.  That has been the biggest complaint by rogues since MoP launched.    It looks like Blizzard is trying to compensate by giving us faster ramp-up time and better mobility, but I think that with slow energy regeneration the class will still feel clumsy.

With that out of the way, here’s what we’re seeing in the PTR data:

First, one problem being solved is the Preparation vs Shadowstep issue.  Since MoP put them on the same tier of talents, many rogues have complained at the need to choose between them.  In the PTR data, Preparation has been made into a baseline ability learned at level 68 by all rogues.

There are two new talents that have been found in the data.

One is Hit and Run.  It allows us to teleport to a targeted location.  Then we will quickly teleport back to our original spot by hitting the skill again, or we will automatically be teleported back after 10 seconds.  This is a nice mobility talent.  It will help on those fights where you have to run-out-then-run-back-in.  I’m always jealous of ranged dps  on those fights.    (side note: these type of abilities are hard on people who run with their keyboard, since you’ll certainly have to use the mouse to target the teleport)

Since Hit and Run is a mobility talent, it will likely replace Preparation on our 4th talent tier.

The second, which really sounds useful, is Marked for Death - a level 90 talent  This ability instantly gives us 5 combo points on our target.  More importantly, it resets when that target dies.  Its similar to our old Premeditation talent, but stronger.

This talent serves two purposes.  In raids, it significantly reduces our ramp-up time.  We can get a 5-CP SnD, Rupture, or Envenom (depending on spec) up in the first moment of the fight.  When soloing or in small group content, it allows us to hit hard on our first attack, instead of building up combo points just in time for the target to die.  Since the ability resets at the targets death, we can use it over and over when soloing or killing trash mobs.

In other changes, Deadly Throw will interrupt spellcasts with at least 3 combo points instead of 5.  More combo points means longer duration on the interrupt.  As another change to our ranged toolkit, when we attack from at least 10 yards with Shuriken Toss, the Shuriken Toss damage is doubled and all of our auto-attacks will become shuriken throws for 10 seconds.  That’s interesting, and adds a small amount of auto-attack damage when we are forced out of melee range.

If all that sounds great, there are some nerfs as well.  The big one is that Blade Flurry’s cleave damage is reduced from 100% of normal damage to 25%.  Sorry to my Combat  bretheren.  The main reason to play Combat has been for multi-target cleave fights.  I’m not sure how Combat damage will compare if this change goes live.  Will it bring Combat “back to the pack” or will it crush the playability of the spec?

There are other, smaller changes in the mix which I won’t detail here.  If they make it through the PTR testing process I’ll worry about them then.

Remember: all of this is not even on the PTR, and will have to go through playtesting  before it goes live.  None of this is set in stone.  I’m still hoping that we get some love for our energy regeneration, because without it I’m not sure that any of these changes are a big enough draw to pull players back to the rogue class.

Where are Rogues Going?

Matthew Rossi at WoWInsider has written an article based off of some number crunching by Cynwise at Cynwise’s Warcraft Manual.  He analyzes the distributions of the classes and how they have changed over the past two expansions.

(Image taken directly from Cynwise’s Google Docs):

Note the precipitous decline in Rogues since the release of Mists.  The WoWInsider article and the comments that follow do some speculation about the causes of this.

As a long-time rogue player (PvE only) and blogger, I’d like to offer my thoughts.

• Monks.  Obviously, a lot of people rerolled to the new class at MoP release.  A lot of those players then went back to their mains after getting used to the monk.  I would speculate that monks took a bigger chunk out of rogue players than other classes.  The reason is that monks play a lot like rogues, but with better resource management and more interesting abilities.  In particular, monk AoE is more compelling than rogue AoE these days.  I have heard from a lot of people that monks are what rogues would be if rogues had been redesigned.

and that brings me to the second point…

• Sameness.  For a long time, the Blizzard developers have implied that they really liked the rogue design.  Rogues have received the fewest tweaks over the past few expansions.  I have grown used to looking at patch notes and seeing nothing listed for rogues.  At first, that was a point of pride – we didn’t need adjustments or tweaks because we were already damned-near perfect.  However, over the years we have seen other classes get changed and buffed, gain new abilities and grow.  Rogues today are essentially the same as they have been since Wrath.  There are subtle differences, but our main mechanics are almost unchanged.  This can easily become boring, and when we hear that warlocks or monks or the other flavor-of-the-month classes are a lot of fun, the draw to switch classes can be strong.

and finally…

• Decreased energy regeneration.  At the surface, this seems like such a small adjustment in our class mechanics.  In reality, it has completely changed the way the class plays.  In Wrath and Cata we were whirling dervishes of death, attacking with a ceaseless stream of stabs and slashes.  The class played frantically with almost no downtime.  Now, in MoP, we have these comparatively massive pauses in between attacks while we wait for energy.  The class no longer feels like a rogue.  When you combine this with the interesting mechanics of the new monk class…  yeah.

I’ll also concede that there may be some sour grapes among rogue players.  For the past two expansions, rogues sat easily at or near the top of damage meters in a lot of raid boss parses, and it took very little effort to reach those lofty damage totals.  When you’re used to being at the top, it might be hard to adjust to the new paradigm where we are middle-of-the-pack.  I’m certain that there are some rogues who have fled to a DK or mage or warlock since they are the top of the dps heap these days.

I don’t PvP, so I can’t speculate on how the changes to the rogue class have impacted that side of the game.

What can be done?

It’s long past time to redesign rogues.  I still think that rogues are very well designed mechanically, but a redesign would create buzz and interest and bring some wayward rogues back into the fold.

In that redesign, I think rogues should get additional mechanics linked to stealth.  Also, stealth should be a more integral part of combat rather than just a way to get an opener at the start and after a Vanish.

I think that it is imperative that the class returns to its frantic non-stop attack playstyle.  We’re not warriors or ret paladins, so it shouldn’t feel like we’re playing those classes.

I’d like to see Slice and Dice folded into other abilities, and free up those combo points for other more interesting purposes.  Assassination already does this, allowing SnD to refresh with every Envenom.

Rogues need more interesting and effective AoE.  Blade Flurry is too limited, and Fan of Knives too energy intensive with our current energy regen rate.  The idea of using FoK to build up combo points for a Crimson Tempest was a good thought, but in practice this is too slow to be an effective AoE rotation.  Every time we’re in a heroic instance and do a group pull and see a warrior or monk more than double our dps, it’s just a bit more demoralizing than the last time.