Current raid status and how it is affected by the new tier of raids

With patch 5.2 about to drop and bring a new raid tier, my guild finally completed Mogu’shan Vaults on normal mode this past week.  We’ve definitely been far behind the curve in this expansion.  This is very different than our situation in Cataclysm, when we kept up with the raid content (normal mode) as it was released.

This time around we’ve been hurt by the dps checks.  We spent a long time on Gara’jal before we could beat his enrage, and then another long while on Elegon with the same problem.  Our raid dps isn’t up to par (separate post coming on that) and as a truly casual, friendly guild, we don’t try and pick and choose our raid composition.  We take who wants to come, for better or for worse.

This week we will be setting our first steps into Heat of Fear, and we won’t see Terrace of Endless Spring until some time after that.  The new Tier 15 raids are in the more distant future.

Unfortunately, our experiences in the remaining tier 14 raids will be somewhat disappointing for a couple of reasons – one that is raidwide and one that is personal to me.  Here’s the point of view of a truly casual raid guild on the current situation.

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For the raid, the challenge of HoF anf ToES will be vastly diminished on two fronts.  First, they are getting nerfed by 10% in the upcoming patch.  While we could disable the nerf, it makes no sense to do so.  Guild morale will be improved by quicker progress through the raids, and it catches us up to current content faster.  Its just a shame that we won’t see the fights as they were designed.

In addition, the new T15 raids will soon be available to us at LFR difficulty.  That will allow our raid members to get higher iLvL gear, further reducing the challenge of the tier 14 content.  It took us three months to get through Mogu’shan Vaults.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we finished the next two T14 raids together in half that time.

On a personal level, I refuse to enter an LFR raid until I have seen it on normal mode first.  I have yet to ever see a single boss from Heart of Fear or Terrace of Endless Spring.  I won’t do the new raids on LFR either.  My raid-mates don’t have the same stance on this, and they will be gearing themselves up in LFR.  As a result, I will personally fall behind them in gear.  (although I still expect to lead the raid in dps, for what its worth).  That’s disappointing in the short run, but it will all work out eventually.

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I think that our current position is not that uncommon.  We are currently ranked #43 on our server and #11,155 in the USA.  There are still lots of guilds behind us in progression.  Here’s the question: is this situation damaging to casual guilds?  Will we see guild defections to move to more progressed guilds?

Next week, when new gear is dropping and people are getting new items from the new raids, it can certainly generate gear envy.  In a guild that is still working on T14, a jump to a T15 guild might be appealing.

I don’t think this will happen in our guild, since we are a pretty tight knit group.

WoW hasn’t really had the “feeder guild” issue since Burning Crusade.  The difference between then and now is the presence of LFR.  Back in BC, if you were in a Karazhan/Gruul-level guild, your only chance to see SSC and then Black Temple was to guild-hop.  Today, you can see all available content on LFR difficulty.  Will that be enough?  I really think so.  Time will tell.

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.

Gold cap… then a Yak

I’ve been dabbling in gold-making using my crafting and the auction house since sometime during Wrath.  I spent most of Wrath just doing glyphs, because that was practically printing money.  Then in Cata I moved also in jewelcrafting and a little bit of enchanting.  I wasn’t too serious – I didn’t hover over the auction house cancel-reposting.  It was enough to earn a couple thousand gold a day.

When I hit 350k, I realized that I could eventually earn a million gold this way.  I just had to keep doing what I was doing and resist the urge to spend a lot.  And that’s what I did, for over a year now.

This week, I finally reached my goal of a million gold.

 

So what do I do with all that gold?  Interestingly, I felt like I *had* to spend some.  When I first collected my gold from my mailbox and exceeded a million, I ended with 1,001,500 or so.  My first thought was, “I can’t spend more than 1,500g or I’ll drop back below a million.”  That’s crazy!  That means that even though I was a millionaire, I couldn’t buy anything that cost over 1,500g?  It’s like I was broke again!

So I decided to break the hold that this magic number had.  I went out and bought myself the Grand Expedition Yak for a cool 108,000g.  It was a huge expense and for no real purpose, but it broke me out of the “save your gold! save! save!” mindset I was stuck in.

Its now been three days since I hit that milestone and I have not crafted a glyph since.  I’m sure I’ll get back to it, but I feel no real compulsion to push it.  I feel much more relaxed.  I am spending more time now doing other things in game rather than posting auctions.

ahhhhh, nice.

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.

Ghostcrawler’s Twitter… Good or Bad?

Over the past year, Blizzard has embraced social media more than ever before.  Their blog, Facebook page, and assorted Twitter feeds allow for more interaction with the fans than ever before.

Sounds great.  What could be better than interaction with the customers?  Sounds like a smart way to get feedback and input from those who are in the trenches.

And yet…  think back to the people who were in that pug group you ran with yesterday.  Yeah, you remember the group… where the tank was calling the dps names and the melee dps was standing in bad stuff and then rolling need on the intellect leather and the healer was afk half the time and then yelling about people standing in stuff and and and…

Now, imagine those people interacting with Ghostcrawler on Twitter.

I don’t subscribe to the Twitter feeds myself, but I do read some of the interaction between the devs and their followers when it is posted on MMO Champion.  I have to say – its hard to stomach.

In the old days, some classes would get nerfed and other buffed and there was a constant ebb and flow of balancing classes.  If our class was nerfed, we would gripe on forums for a while and then settle down.  Well, that model is no longer true now that people can yell at the developers directly.  The Twitter “conversation” is almost entirely made up of an endless string of whining and complaining.  When the developers defend their decisions and philosophies, they are accused of ignoring the players.

In the final straw, then the players use their mask of internet anonymity to become complete jerks toward Ghostcrawler and his fellow devs.  The disrespect you read in those tweets is saddening.  This kind of sub-human interaction is enabled by the internet society we now live in – where you can say pretty much anything you want to anyone because your identity is hidden behind a site handle.

I don’t know how Ghostcrawler and the other devs can stand it.  In their position, I couldn’t read those tweets for more than a day or two without turning in my resignation papers and drinking heavily.

Am I wrong?  Am I just too old to appreciate the subtle complexities in the twitter discussion?

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?