Auto-Attacks

The Balancing Act - Talent Mastery in Cataclysm

2010-02-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

Worgens and Goblins are all good fun, but in terms of purely nuts and bolts game design, the incoming changes to talent trees have the potential to dramatically affect the perpetual (and often painful) issue of class balance in Warcraft.

Summing up what we know so far:

Level 85 will give us 5 more talent points to work with.

Talent trees will remain 51 points deep.

Passive talents will largely be removed and replaced with more "fun/interesting" talents.

Talent Mastery will unlock passive skills which will then be accessed by spending more points in a given tree. (example: spending most of your points in a priests shadow tree will most likely give you passive damage increases, where as points into holy would give you passive healing increases.)

Looking at the last two changes I can't help but breath a sigh of relief. While this has the potential to completely change game play for multiple classes what I feel is most important is that Blizzard is moving to make class and spec balance infinitely easier to manage, and hopefully reduce the amount of live server experimentation and tweaking they are currently forced to do.

Since the game began, Blizzard's attempts to balance classes have involved multiple steps and adjustments over time, often requiring several patches and occasional hot fixes to get any given spec into an acceptable (if not ideal) state. While moving slowly and carefully is without a doubt the best option for something as complicated as balancing a game like WoW, the constant buffing and nerfing of some classes tends to get people riled up, and each change is greeted with a symphony orchestra of angst from the player community. The ability to adjust the damage of a class that was over performing often required adjusting multiple talents, since nerfing the damage of one talent into the ground would merely cause a flurry of theorycrafting and result in a new "cookie cutter" spec. Attempts to give players more choices than the one "best" tree have been touch and go, since for the most part buffs to a weaker tree are restricted to higher tier talents, least they become a buff to the entire class and not just one talent spec.

Talent Mastery is looking to be a game changer in that it will allow Blizzard to have one or more "tuning dials" on every talent tree in the game. Are holy priests lagging behind other healers? Try dialing up their Mastery healing bonus. Blood death knights destroying every other dps class on the meter? You know what to do.

Ultimately we don't need to wait for the expansion in order to see how well this idea might work. Blizzard has been partially balancing the rogue assassination tree this way for months, using the 51 point talent Hunger for Blood. Want to see more rogues spec mutilate and use daggers? Dial up Hunger for Blood a couple percent. Assassination destroying every other class/spec on the damage meters? Turn the dial down. In fact the phrase "damage dial" and "Hunger for Blood" are pretty much synonymous in rogue discussions these days.

No matter how well implemented Talent Mastery is, I truly doubt that it will be a magic bullet for class balance. The developers will surely still need to adjust base skills and talent trees as issues arise. However in the next expansion we now have reason to hope that all classes will be able to experience the relative stability that rogues have enjoyed for much of Wrath of the Lich King.

OMG, Too Much Melee

2009-07-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves is hearing people start to worry that we have "too much melee". While certain encounters in the game are going to cause you troubles if you stack melee classes, there just aren't that many of them these days. I've often felt that this strange knee-jerk reaction to "too many melee" is a hold over from the days of the Burning Crusade (360˚ cleaves anyone?) and the tendency of players in this game to confuse real life physics with game mechanics.

The reality is Blizzard had made an effort to design encounters in such a way that there is rarely an advantage to stacking ranged OR melee classes. Bring the player not the class is the new mantra and in my opinion this is one of the areas where the developers are doing an excellent job. The game simply no longer operates under the idea that being closer to the boss means you will automatically be absorbing more damage.

In Naxxramas there are only 2 fights I can think of where melee are at a slight disadvantage. You will need enough ranged players to kill Sir Zeliek of the 4 horsemen, since his chained Holy Wrath could in theory one shot someone if it jumps through enough melee dps. And of course Kel' Thuzad will cause your raid quite a few problems if you don't bother assigning you're melee to groups and having them stack correctly. Yet both of these fights can be dealt with fairly easily in a melee heavy raid, so long as the strategy employed is one that takes into account melee dps. In fact I have gone into Naxxramas repeatedly with melee heavy groups and never had a problem.

Ulduar is equally melee friendly, in fact I would say it's almost ridiculously so. So long as you have enough ranged players to meet the requirements for a couple of fights (Kologarn and Vezax) you can march through all of non-hard mode Ulduar without batting an eye. As far as dps goes Vezax and Hodir will often see ranged topping the charts, but at the end of the day Vezax has an enrage timer that is so ridiculously long that even with their attack speed slowed, melee dps can easily finish him off in time, and Hodir is structured so that if your tank actually knows how to move the boss around the room, melee dps can easily take advantage of the buffs. In reality nothing in Ulduar is out of melee reach so long as you have enough ranged players to kite eye beams on Kologarn, and absorb shadow crashes on Vezax.

So what's the moral of the story??
Bring the player not the class. Once you've covered all the raid buffs, stop worrying. Choose the players that are the most skilled and with the best attitudes, zone in, and most importantly have fun.

Jack of All Trades, Master of ...

2009-07-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

From a design perspective, creating an MMO that will not only last but thrive over a series of years is an accomplishment that continually amazes me. Blizzard Entertainment has managed to create a game that continually re-invents itself and they aren't afraid to change course to make it better.

One of the elements of the game that I've noticed as being most in flux recently is the structure of the hybrid vs. pure dps class. While many players think of the roles in the game being balanced around tank/healer/dps, these distinctions are continually being re-written, and with the introduction of dual spec the lines blur even further. Increasingly the classes seem to be divided primarily into two groups, "hybrids" who can fulfill multiple roles in a group, and "pure" dps classes.

In original wow, as well as in the Burning Crusade, the concept of the Hybrid class seemed to be that each class could fulfill one roll particularly well, and the other rolls just "ok". Since there were "pure dps" classes already in the game, the hybrids were focused more towards tanking and healing. In a couple of cases a class was a "Jack of all Trades, Master of None" but they brought buffs to a raid that were so powerful that they were essential to success (Heroism, Windfury).

With the current expansion the developers have made a considered effort to move away from this idea, and have made statements in forums that they are attempting to balance PvE around the idea that all classes have the potential to bring significant damage to a raid. On the whole this was a wise move, since for a variety of reasons players were leveling characters all the way to the end game, and discovering that they simply did not enjoy the roles they were being pigeon holed into.

But in any large restructuring of a core concept, things will get messy once you get into the thick of it. At the moment developer posts seem to indicate that in "many" fights hybrid classes should be "slightly" behind pure classes in Dps output, though not "significantly" behind pure dps. These statements will often be qualified with phrases like "depending on the encounter".

Balancing PvE dps is no easy task and it's only reasonable to expect a large amount of tweaking and adjustment over time. My worry is less with how well Blizzard is executing this goal, but with the long term playability of the goal itself. For example, at the moment Feral Druids can consistently out dps Rogues on pretty much every encounter in Ulduar. The incoming class changes imply that feral damage will be brought down some, but it appears that this will only take them down to a point that they are about equal with rogue dps. Even if this estimate is wrong, and ferals are successfully dropped to a point where they are "just below" rogues in damage, will this be enough to offset the fact that stacking feral druids in your raid is FAR more desirable than stacking (or even including) rogues.

Let's compare and contrast.

Feral druids bring to a raid:

Battle Rez, Innervate, Mark of the Wild, Leader of the Pack, Mangle (for the improved bleeds), and the ability to dual spec to either tank or heal or even become ranged dps if the encounter requires adjustments to the raid composition. In addition they currently have some of the best single target dps in the game, and extremely high aoe damage.

Rogues bring:

4% to physical damage, or 3% to damage crit, reliable interrupts, some excellent burst aoe ... and some VERY situational poison abilities that are currently not featured in the vast majority of raid encounters in Lich King. (mind numbing, anesthetic, and wound poisons).

Even when feral dps is balanced "just below" rogue damage is this really going to be enough to make rogues competitive and valued for raids?

If you have the choice to bring 4 dps and you are choosing between equally skilled druid or rogue players the obvious answer would be to bring 1 rogue and 3 druids. Multiple Battle Rez's alone are going to make this option extremely tempting. The only reason to bring extra rogues is because you simply feel bad for your friends who play rogues and want to include them in your raid, even though it will make beating the encounter more difficult.

If the developers are going to continue down the path of minimizing the potential damage output between hybrid and dps classes they should really take a step back and rethink the role of each of the pure damage classes in a raid. In particular I want to see the developers rethink the distribution of powerful buffs amongst the classes. There seems to be a reluctance to give rogues in particular a truly powerful raid utility on the par with battle rez or heroism. While I am not suggesting that rogues be given the ability to battle rez, I AM suggesting that they be given a serious and attention getting raid utility talent that makes it more desirable to have multiple rogues in a 25 man raid, or at the very least makes them a desirable option for a 10 man raid.

Hard Mode- Hodir

2009-07-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

A general note about these Hard Mode guides.
I'm assuming you already know the fight on non-hard mode. I will always attempt to cover the most important elements of the fight, but I'm also interested in sharing the tips and tricks rogue players specifically and to some extent melee dps will need to know in order to be successful in the fight. This means I will on occasion refer to rogue abilities and discuss how best to use them.

This is a DPS race. While you can beat this fight easily before the enrage timer, beating the Hard Mode timer requires that you be aware of all elements of the fight and maximise them for your raid's dps. You will have 3 minutes.

First of all the NPC's will help your raid's dps significantly, and understanding why and how they help you is essential to beating the encounter on hard mode. The NPC's do the same thing they always do, but because understanding their damage buffs isnt necessary for most guilds to kill Hodir on normal mode, many players are unaware of how to utilize them to their benefit.

First the raid leaders should put a raid mark on the mage npc's. This is because once freed these particular npc's will help you free the others. This will reduce the amount of time it takes you to break out the npc's . This should be adhered to for the ENTIRE fight. After every flash freeze the raid should switch to the marked npc's and free them FIRST.

To mark the appropriate npc's you will need to target them by typing /tar Missy or /tar Veesha. Clicking on the flash freezes won't show you the name of the npc inside, so whoever is setting up the marks will need to use the command line.

On 10 man you will have one mage, on 25 man you will have 2.

If you are Horde your NPC's will be named :
Veesha Blazeweaver and Amira Blazeweaver.

If you are Alliance your NPC's will be named :
Missy Flamecuffs and Sissy Flamecuffs

Some guilds will tank Hodir in the corner so as to set up the ranged dps in an ideal placement to free npc's, and receive dps buffs. This is a fine strategy if you have a large number of excellent ranged dps, but is not a great strategy if your raid relies heavily on the dps that it's melee players bring. Death Knights in particular do exceptionally well on this fight when buffed, as the majority of their attacks count as spells and will also benefit from the "Singed" buff. If your ranged players are not particularly strong dps, tend to die alot, or if your raid is melee heavy, you should consider going with a strategy that allows the melee to gain full buffs. This requires that your tank move Hodir around the room, to stand him close to the Starlight beams.

Starlight beams are columns of light that will fall around the room . Standing in these will give you a 50% haste buff. Your tank should kite Hodir around in order to be near these beams. It's worth noting that for a lot of tanks the buffed damage that the dps will receive will really make them sweat the threat meter particularly if you are using the strategy where the tank keeps Hodir moving. Getting the haste buff as a tank will help alleviate this and Misdirects and Tricks of the Trade for the beginning of the fight should be used to help the tank get far enough ahead on threat that the dps can open up. The hunters and rogues should keep a close eye on thier threat meters in order to monitor the tank's general threat level, and assist in helping them regain a threat lead, since under no circumstances do you want any of your dps to have to hold back on damage.

As melee it can be tricky to find a Starlight beam while staying behind the boss and simultaneously avoiding icicles, but you should make every effort to do so. If it's not possible to do this the buff is important enough that you should move in front of the boss to pick it up, as it will more than counteract any dps loss you might encounter from being parried, and the current theory is that Parry Haste (boss swing timer resets from being parried) is turned off on Hodir. I have not seen hard evidence that this is true, but in wws parses of our Hodir kills I can find no evidence that this is NOT true, and for the moment that is good enough for me.

The next buff to be aware of is Storm Power. This is 135% crit chance. One of the shaman npc's will cast "storm cloud" on a random target. Boss mods will very helpfully put a skull on the person who just received this, and for once getting the skull on your head is a "good thing". The person who has been marked with storm power has the ability to share the buff with 5 more people. You do this by "touching" aka running through other players, and you will know you have shared out the buff fully once all the charges on the buff are gone. For the melee group this is relatively easy, the ranged players will need to be more resourceful. However sharing the buff around is going to get you the damage you need to make the timer so make sure to call out whoever has the buff so that nearby players can move in to help facilitate spreading it around. Since ranged should be aiming to stand in Starlight at all times, and ideally be near a toasty fire they should naturally be clumping up to begin with. Starlight has no limit to how many people can stand inside a beam, so there is no reason to go running off to stand in one alone.

Toasty Fires are important to know about for your ranged players. There should be at least one ranged player next to each mage at all times in order to benefit from toasty fires, as this will allow that player to stack the "Singed" debuff onto the boss. The debuff stacks up to 25 times and will increase magic damage done to the boss with each stack. The fires get put out during flash freeze so this is yet another reason why you want to break the mages out first.

Fires will also prevent the Biting Cold debuff from stacking up, allowing casters to stand still and chain cast. However if a caster needs to choose between toasty fire and Starlight, they should choose Starlight, as the haste buff will greatly increase dps , and they simply need to jump in between casts in order to remove biting cold.

Specific Rogue Notes:
Because you are attempting to beat a timer you shouldn't be wasting potential dps on anything like feint to minimize your damage taken, though if you are about to die while Frozen Blows is up, this might save you. If you want to help your healers out, avoid the obvious damage such as Icicles. While it is extremely rare on this fight that melee dps will stop moving long enough to pick up stacks of biting cold, the rare occasion will occur where you do not need to move out of a Starlight beam for a while. Because of this simply tapping your space bar to jump while you dps will drop the aura off of you without losing any damage. Since your healers need to constantly move between casts avoiding damage is essential on this fight in any mode you attempt it on. The only time you should ever get hit by an icicle is if you are in a frost nova, and both Cloak of Shadows and Vanish are on cooldown.

Hard Mode - Iron Council

2009-07-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is where the Hard Modes will start to get truly challenging. Iron Council is the entry level Hard Mode for opening up the quest line to reach Algalon. Only one person can receive the quest item per kill, so you should probably decide who will be getting it in advance, and make sure that it is someone with excellent attendance since they will then need to kill each of the keepers on hard mode to complete the quest (Freya, Hodir, Mimiron, and Thorim, in no particular order).

The kill order for Hard Mode is Runemaster Molgiem, Storm Caller Brundir, and Steelbreaker last.

The healing required for this fight is extreme and will increase over time until it is no longer possible for the healers to keep up. It is the very definition of a dps race, and absolutely no damage buff should be overlooked.

When each boss dies, the remaining bosses heal back to full. So on every difficulty mode of this fight you need to find a way to reliably deal with the additional abilities that a boss acquires.

The core reasons this hard mode is so difficult are:

1) Steel Breaker hits like a truck and healing a tank through the entire fight is a considerable amount of mana.

2) Each time a boss dies he hits HARDER.

3) After the first boss dies, Steelbreaker gains an ability that he will cast randomly on a ranged target that will cause damage to the target and aoe any player in a 6 yard radius. It also will add a debuff (Static Disruption) to affected players making them take 75% more nature damage. Even if you interrupt every single spell Brundir casts, Steelbreaker's unavoidable aura is causing the entire raid to take 3K nature damage every 3 seconds which will quickly overwhelm the healers if too many people get Static Disruption. Your strategy MUST account for minimizing the number of people Steelbreaker hits with this debuff.

4) Once Steelbreaker is the only boss alive he will cast a debuff on the tank that essentially turns them into a ticking time bomb. You have 30 seconds (60 seconds on 10 man) before the next tank needs to taunt and your current tank runs away from the raid and explodes. Each time someone dies (including a tank) Steelbreaker gains damage and 15% of his life is restored. While it is possible to kill him before a tank dies (highly unlikely if you are new to the encounter) you do not need to do this in order to win. Your raid's DPS just needs to be strong enough that they can out dps the heals. If you are an assassination rogue, make sure SOMEONE in the raid is putting up a healing debuff. If you don't have someone available to do this, then switch to wound poison. If too many tanks die, Steelbreaker's damage will become impossible to heal through. You have roughly 1.5 to 2 min to kill him. This amounts to one tank death on 10 man and 3 tank deaths on 25man.

On the 10 man version of this fight we had one tank take Steelbreaker while the other took the Runemaster and Brundir. On 25 man you can use 3 tanks and keep Brundir separated.

Since healing is going to be a huge part of this fight, interrupting Brundir while maintaining your best possible dps on the Runemaster is essential. This isn't needed on 25 man since you will be tanking all three bosses far apart, but on 10 man your raid will be eating a significant amount of damage from Brundir while you are killing the Runemaster.

/cast [target=focus] kick

Set your focus to Brundir. During this first phase he will only be casting chain lightning and of course Overload, so just interrupt chain lightning every time you have an available cooldown. And of course make sure that you are positioned in such a way that Brundir is not technically behind you or your kicks will fail.

If you don't already use unit frames like X-Perl, or PitBull, this is the type of content you may want to consider it for. Being able to move your focus target frame into the middle of the screen is going to make it a lot easier to monitor Brundir's cast bar. You will need to continue to run out when he casts Overload, and since he is not your primary target during phase one, it can be an adjustment for people to learn to watch two targets at the same time. Personally I find the Blizzard default location for the focus unit frame (lower left corner) to be an extremely unfortunate set up, when attempting this kind of event.

Once the Runemaster is dead, Brundir should be brought close to Steelbreaker and they should be tanked close together with the raid stacking up close by. A couple of ranged dps with high health (warlocks are a good choice) are left standing at range to "soak" steelbreaker's aoe debuff. This is the strategy typically used to deal with managing raid damage. Interrupters should be assigned, with one or two people assigned to interrupting the Lightning Whirl and everyone else taking out the chain lightnings. Because your raid is bunched up you cannot miss interrupts. Make sure you are ready for them. Everyone (including the tank who is holding Steelbreaker needs to continue to run out for Overload casts, just reposition Steelbreaker afterwards. As with any fight where you need to run out, make sure you use you're Killing spree at a "safe time". After an Overload is complete, and while your kick is on cool down is what you should be aiming for.

Blow your major cool downs as soon as the fight starts . This will assure that you're shortening the overall length of the fight while also making sure that you have your 3 min cooldowns (vanish/adrenaline rush) available again for Steelbreaker. Remember you have at most 2 minutes to kill him once he is alone so you will want to make sure that you have every damage ability available once you get to him. If your killing spree is glyphed and it comes up near the end of killing Brundir you should hold off on using it, since being able to use KS twice on SteelBreaker is going to benefit your raid much more. The 2 minute CD on Blade Flurry means you will realistically only be using it 3 - 4 times in the fight, so you should go ahead and hit it as soon as the cool down is up. Obviously as your group gets better at the fight and gets better gear, the timing will change and you will get faster requiring you to adjust your cool down timing, but a reasonable time frame for a first kill is about 5.5 to 6.5 minutes. When you are first attempting the fight try planning your CD's around this time frame, and after a few attempts adjust your strategy based on your raid's dps. In any version of this fight you should save your potion cool down for Steelbreaker and make sure you utilize sprint as often as possible to increase up time on the targets after running back in from an overload, or traveling to your next target.

Saving your health stone or other self healing options for the Steebreaker phase is also smart. Remember that as a combat rogue you are going to gain 20% crit damage as long as your relative health percentage is above the target (Prey on the Weak) , so popping your health stone near the beginning of the Steelbreaker phase while he still has a high health percentage will help you're healers slightly as well as maximize your dps for a few extra seconds.

Finally remember that while your job is maximizing your dps, it is imperative that no one other than a tank die once Steelbreaker is alone because this will also buff Steelbreaker' s damage and give him additional hitpoints. While the encounter is tuned assuming that you will lose a couple of tanks, there is no margin of error allowing for extra deaths. If any non-tank dies during this phase you should just call a wipe, and reset the encounter. Because of this you should keep a close eye on your health bar, particularly as you get closer to the kill and the healers are under an increasingly heavy burden. A well timed feint or cloak of shadows might save you and your raid.

Raid Composition and You

2009-07-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

The changes to buffs that Blizzard made in Wrath of the Lich King are something that in concept I very much approved of. The goal, as stated in numerous Blue posts on the forums was "bring the player, not the class".

The raiding in Burning Crusade was riddled with issues that caused good players to be left on the sideline because the buffs that another class brought was more desirable, or situations where players were pressured to switched from dps to heals, or dps to tanking, because their class was pigeon holed into a specific role . While in some cases this was actually justifiable from an overall raid dps perspective, it was in fact having a negative effect on the most important part of the game. FUN. It isn't fun to make it to 80 and find out that you rolled a class that just isn't that desirable in a raid. Or to be told that you have to heal because your class "sucks at everything else".

So when Blizzard changed the buff/debuff system to make stacking certain classes less desirable, I for one cheered. This was exactly the kind of change that end game raiding needed.

The problem is even though Blizzard may have changed the system to make building a raid with your best players more viable, they didn't necessarily make it easier. Before I transferred to my current guild I explored what was going on in the raiding scene by raiding with several friends guilds, trialing in a couple of raiding guilds, and joining several pugs. While my experience may not be representative of the community in general, what I saw was extremely disappointing.

Contrary to current game perception raid building with an awareness of covering all your buffs still matters. The difference between a raid that covers most if not all of the available buffs and a raid that only has half of them is HUGE. I cannot tell you how many times I was in a raid where the melee dps was missing the haste buff, and the attack power % buff, and the raid leaders were clueless as to why their melee were underperforming that night. In some cases I saw inexperienced raid leaders building raids that buffed their own class completely but not bothering to make sure everyone else was covered. In one case a ranged dps raid leader seemed completely unaware of what buffs his melee group needed, and really how to use his melee group most effectively (hint: assigning your melee to kill adds on XT while the ranged stays on the boss, is not smart).

It is extremely important to remember that this is a game that is dictated by numbers. Regardless of how self important your raid leader is, and any commands to "dps harder" variations in your performance from one raid to the next are simply not always in your control no matter how hard you spam the keys.

Fortunately for us all there is a very useful tool over at MMO champion.

http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com

If you are a raid leader I strongly recommend you check it out. If you are not a raid leader it's worth while to show it to your raid leader if they don't know about it already. While many guilds do not always have the option to bring all the buffs because they are working with a limited group of players, just knowing that a raid is missing certain buffs will help you understand how to read your damage meters, and probably help you make better decisions about what classes you may want to recruit.

Hard Mode - XT-002 Deconstructor

2009-07-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

DPS THE HEART.

Sounds simple, but if your raid cannot pump out enough dps to kill the heart in the 20 seconds it's down then you will not be able to initiate the hard mode.

When the heart drops you have 20 seconds to give it everything you have. That means all cooldowns saved and carefully planned out.

First of all, if you don't have a warrior in your group you should be putting up Expose Armor. Yes it will make that much of a difference. It is a major debuff and could mean the difference between killing the heart and a night of frustration.

Managing your cooldowns for the heart is extremely important for Combat builds. If you're Assassination you're really only going to be able to utilize Vanish for the Over Kill buff, and of course Cold Blood. For this reason I prefer to swap to combat for this fight. I personally put out similar dps in either build, but Combat allows me to focus that dps when it is most needed. Plus this boss is not murderable so there is not reason to favor Assassination.

Before the heart drops aim to have enough combo points stacked up to have Slice and Dice refreshed to its full length. Since the heart descends at 75% it may take you a couple of rounds to get the hang of this, since the time frame will be dictated by you're raid's overall dps.

In most of my discussions of encounters I won't be getting into this kind of detail but the heart phase of XT presents a somewhat interesting problem. The phase lasts only 20 seconds, and blowing all of your cooldowns together (Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush, and Murder Spree) will put you in serious danger of capping out your energy bar and losing potential dps. Since every little bit will count in this phase, you will want to think through carefully about what order you will blow your CD's to get the maximum effectiveness from your 15 second Adrenaline Rush. Just remember that near the end of the heart phase you will probably have adds near the boss and you do not want KS to pull you off target.

Once hard mode is initiated XT will heal back to full health, so the adds should be ignored, and ALL of your attention should be on the heart. Adds can be dealt with later on, depending on your raid's strategy.

For the rest of the fight adds will stop spawning and the heart will never be exposed again. Instead the debuffs that were cast on you previously will gain nasty new abilities. Gravity Bomb will spawn a void zone beneath you at the end of it's 9 second count down. Light Bomb will spawn a small spark add with an aoe, that will need to be picked up by the tank and dps'd down.

Your raid should designate a location for dropping void zones, away from the group. More importantly they should also designate a location for spawning your spark. On 10-man this is usually to one side of the main tank, away from the melee group. On 25 this will typically be in a central location, between the ranged and the melee group, often with the ranged split up into two groups. An off tank is used to round up the spark and hold it away from the raid, while it gets dps'd down. As melee you shouldn't be on the sparks, as the aoe will only increase the amount of overall damage.

Cloak of Shadows will remove the Gravity Bomb from you completely but still spawn void zones. With Light bomb Cloak will remove the aoe debuff but cause the spark to spawn immediately. This isn't necessarily a problem, but you will need to make sure you are in the appropriate location when you spawn the spark or void zone, so as to not drop it right in the middle of the melee group.

If your healers are struggling in this fight it could be a long night. Keep an eye on your health bar, and if you go into a Tantrum with anything less than full health, use feint to minimize the damage. However, remember you are trying to beat an enrage timer, and if your healers are managing to keep you topped off without the extra help, the best thing you can do for the group is to maximize your dps and end the fight as soon as possible.

Rogue Class Questions

2009-06-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

My question for the class Q and A thread. I'm not really interested in the eternal crying over Vanish, and Cloak of Shadows. To me there are some larger design issues at stake here.

"Before WotLK Rogues were designed to be the "top damage dealer". With the expansion this niche needs to be redefined since all classes were given the potential to put out high levels of damage. What is the current "core" purpose or concept that you are working with for the Rogue class? What is the reasoning for putting such a low emphasis on our animations?

My concern is that the developers are having trouble clarifying for themselves what the core design concept should be for the this class, or that they HAVE come to an agreement and whatever they have come up with just isn't causing them to be excited about the class, or inspired.

The changes and new abilities that we have seen with Wrath, while not BAD, don't seem to have the excitement and inspiration that I have come to expect from Blizzard developers. While other classes get exciting, fun, and graphically interesting new abilities such as Mirror Images, Metamorphosis, Dispersion, Guardian Spirit, and temporary minions that they can summon, Rogues are being designed with "mathy" damage modifiers that are honestly pretty boring in concept, and animations that are lack luster if they are even visible."

Hard Mode- Flame Leviathan

2009-06-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

This is one of those fights that is a little difficult to give clear pointers for since much will depend on what role you are asked to fill.

Typically I have been a gunner on either a siege engine or a demolisher so that will be the focus of this post. If in the future I wind up filling another role, I'll revisit the topic.

As part of a demolisher team I was in a "non-launching" vehicle assigned to only DPSing the boss. It's much better to assign caster classes to be launced to the top of Flame Leviathan as they can help dps other turrets once thier own is down. As melee you can work only on the turret directly in front of you, and once that is done you're stuck waiting for the others to be destroyed and cannot help, because there is no way to get into melee range.

If you are a driver in a hard mode your best bet is to watch video's of the hard mode encounter so you can see the obstacles you will be avoiding.

But as a gunner here are the important elements of Orbit-uary

If you are a Siege Engine Gunner

You need to remember that your primary job is to help the Demolishers keep pyrite stacks up on the boss by shooting down pyrite for them. Killing Freya's adds is of course important and needs to be dealt with quickly, but shooting down pyrite is just as important. The siege engine gunners have a longer range on their anti air rockets allowing them to be more effective at shooting down pyrite all over the room. The demolisher gunners have a shorter rocket range, are busy hooking pyrite, and getting launched. They just don't have as much time as you do to shoot the stuff down.

At the beginning of the fight, while clearing adds in the courtyard where you will fight the boss, start shooting down pyrite. Pyrite currently has 3 minutes on the ground before it despawns, which means you can get a nice head start on the fight once you engage the boss. Concentrate on shooting it down around the edges of the room so that the demolishers will not need to go far to refuel. Whenever you see tar get put down try to light it on fire using your anti air rocket ( again, it has a longer range than your ground attack and will light the stuff up just the same)

In the event of a wipe, it's good to know that you can fire your anti air rocket at pyrites over the boss's room without engaging him. So there is no reason to ever engage the boss without plenty of pyrite on the ground.

Killing Freya's adds entails keeping an eye on the corners of the room. Boss mods does not currently alert you when the adds re-spawn, so you need to keep an eye out and call it out as soon as they show up. HINT: they spawn from the green beams in the corners. Use your cannon to take them out.

While shooting down pyrite try to be aware of where the demolishers are. Shooting down a ton of pyrite on the north side of the room, when the demolisher teams are all on the south isn't helping any of them. Your goal should be to make sure the ground around the demolishers is covered in pyrite at all times so that they can sit and dps constantly while moving only to avoid the boss, frost beams, and fire.

IF you manage to get caught up on adds and there is plenty of pyrite down, then and only then should you dps the boss. Helping out on the boss will make a difference, but I cannot stress enough that the majority of the dps will need to come from the pyrite stacks. This is what is going to let you beat the hard mode.

If you are in a Demolisher

Set up a way to communicate with your driver as soon as possible. This is essential because the driver will have their hands full trying to dps, while avoiding fire, frost beams and the boss. If you need them to relocate to a new area to pick up more pyrite, let them know before they run out. Clear communication with your driver is key, because ideally they will never let their stack of pyrite drop, but they can't do that if you can't restock. Moving is going to be unavoidable to some extent since unlike the siege engines you cannot shoot pyrite that is directly above you. Anything you shoot down yourself will be slightly farther away than you would like.

You should keep an eye out for oil slicks and get them ignited asap. This will not only help add damage to the boss, but will help control the adds. If you're sitting pretty with pyrite, and have plenty nearby, go ahead and dps the boss or help with adds, but again remember that pyrite is your #1 priority.

In both cases keep an eye out for vehicles that have been frozen. Recent changes to the encounter have made it possible for any vehicle to free these people making it easier to avoid a wipe.

Data-mined Tier 9 set bonus

2009-06-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is what we know so far.

(2) Set: Your Rupture ability has a chance each time it deals damage to reduce the cost of your next ability by 40 energy
(4) Set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Hemorrhage, Sinister Strike, Backstab and Mutilate abilities by 5%

So what does this mean? Absolutely nothing.

First of all until we see hard numbers on the proc rate and internal cool down of the the 2 piece bonus, it is totally impossible to judge if it will be a good bonus. About the only thing right now we can say about it is it sounds a whole lot more exciting than the 4 piece bonus.

As far as the 4 piece bonus goes....

Let's hope it's a placeholder. Which to be fair is a possibility. This information was data-mined from a test realm patch remember. Blizzard didn't announce it, it's not official, and it's certainly not on live servers yet.

While the other stats on the T9 items might eventually make them an over all upgrade, 5% crit to sinister strike or mutilate, is actually not as much damage as allowing rupture to crit. Which makes the shiny new tier items... well a bit less shiny.

Hack and Slash (patch 3.2)

2009-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a bit of confusion regarding the upcoming addition of axes to the rogue weapon arsenal.

On a scale of 1-10 this change is going to affect rogue play style zero to none. Meaning this isn't really a class change it's a change that is streamlining work flow for Blizzard developers when they go to itemize weapons.

The current loot table for rogue suitable weapons is only really interesting to enhancement shaman, and the shared items include a very narrow list of items, namely maces and fist weapons. It's no coincidence that up till now the most favorably itemized rogue weapons have been fist weapons. By making the best in slot items interesting and usable to more classes the game developers greatly decrease the number of item drops they need to design and implement, and greatly INCREASE the number of items that will actually get used by players instead of disenchanted. Win/Win.

We've seen changes like this before, when Druids were given the ability to train polearms in 3.0.8 The net result is that druids see a lot more items drop that are truly usable to them, instead of sitting around waiting for the feral staff to finally come up on the random number generator. Sure you might lose the roll, or not have enough dkp, and have to watch the item go to someone else, but ultimately you still have a better chance of seeing the item again or at least another item that is similar in quality.

My prediction is in the next tier of content we will be seeing several usable slow axes that will be interesting for rogue mainhand weapons as well as enhancement shamans. Swords will continue to drop but will largely be fast offhand weapons and hopefully (fingers crossed) with better itemization. I wouldn't be surprised if our best in slot combat mainhand wound up being an axe.

So don't put off leveling the new weapon skill. Odds are you are going to need it sooner than later.

The Rogue Reborn

2009-06-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

The rogue class has gone through some changes since Wrath of the Lich King was released. While the play style and basic structure of the class is more or less the same as it was in Burning Crusade, I am struck by one major change that I just did NOT see coming.

There are fewer of us.

I realize that without hard statistics this is an entirely unprovable statement, so my personal experience will have to do. But hey, this is a blog after all, and if you don't want personal experience then you should probably bookmark MMO Champion, and call it a day.

During BC I transitioned from casual player to dedicated raider, and entered into a long phase of searching for a raiding guild. I was a good player with (at the time) extremely flexible raiding schedule, wws reports to prove my excellence, and a determination to find a guild with excellent players who were just as capable of moving out of fire as I was. Resolved to find a good match I went looking for the guild of my dreams...

What I found over and over again looked something like this:

Welcome to GUILDNAME HERE
We are currently recruiting a few good players to round out or 25 man raid team

Recruitment Needs as Follows

Shadow Priest -- High
Healers --High
Mages -- Medium
Warlocks-- Medium
Shaman--High
Ret Pally -- LOL
Rogue--CLOSED

Ok, the good news was I wasn't a Retadin.

But after that it went downhill. No one was recruiting more rogues. And it wasn't because they weren't raiding with them. Leader boards and top parses from around the world showed guilds running 2 sometimes even 3 rogues in their raids. We were top damage dealers. In fact Blizzard had outright made it clear that we were top damage dealers by design. We didn't bring buffs to a raid or utility, we were brought to a raid to be buffed. Who doesn't love that? Show up, make sure you have Blessing of Might, and when all is said and done, you have this wonderful meter that proves how awesome you are!

Of course the reality was the rogue with that #1 damage parse, while certainly a good player, probably owed much more to the shaman who was totem twisting, and the raid leader who swapped a second shaman into the group mid raid just to buff the melee with a second heroism. While playing a rogue was awesome fun and full of glory in high end raiding, the reality was people who had rolled other dps classes were not exactly feeling the happy fun times.

And the result was a large abundance of players rolling rogues, and very few shadow priests and shaman. Competition for raiding spots as a rogue was stiff. Even in less hard core guilds you didn't need to know all that much to do well with the class. Lets face it, as long as you could get your hands on some decent swords, and knew enough to not let Slice and Dice drop you were golden.

Then Lich King hit. And true to their word the developers over at Blizzard attempted to make good on some pretty game breaking changes.

1) Encourage raids to bring good players not the class (buff).

2) A mediocre player should not be able to out dps an excellent player purely because the mediocre player is playing a pure dps class.

3) Death Knights

These were good changes. I mean really, who wants to be brought to a raid just so you can buff everyone with a blessing, or pop your one awesome ability, and watch someone else rise to the top? While there are always some people who are fine with living in the "support role", you just aren't going to find that many of them in end game content. The personalities that push people to that level are often the personalities that are going to want to have tangible results. And one of the few tangible results, other than a dead boss and purple loot is... the dps meter.

And Death Knights. What's not to like? You don't have to level them that far, they have a totally new resource mechanic, and Blizzard dev's have consistently erred on the side of letting them be wonderfully over powered in both PvE and PvP. (probably because accidentally making the new hero class underpowered would be a huge problem for sales and future health of the game)

But design intent and execution is not the same thing. When the expansion was released, suddenly previously laughed at dps spec's shot to the top of the meters. (*cough* Retribution *cough*). And while Blizzard continued to fine tune by bringing out the nerf bat, several hybrid classes saw their moments in the sun. Ret, Dps warriors, Dks, and lately Feral Druids, have all had their moments of glory. Blizzard hits them all with the nerf bat eventually, but seems content to let them have some fun for a month or two. (Ferals and Dk's are about to be reigned in in 3.2)

And where did this leave the Rogue class? Well for the first few months of Lich King the cold reality was Rogues weren't doing that well. Sure we weren't TERRIBLE, (that title was reserved for the Elemental Shamans who at the time were hurting pretty badly) but we weren't all that great either.

The general perception of the rogue class was that we existed to provide dps. If we didn't do that what good were we? Yes of course we were given more utility, but perception and an unwillingness to change are often more important than good game design. Both of our major debuffs could be provided by classes that could out dps us (arms warriors, and ret paladins). Our new Tricks of the Trade was shiny and amazing but players were so used to calling out to Hunters to misdirect that our attempts to help out went largely unnoticed. Not to mention threat mechanics were changed so much that it was a rare day indeed that the tank wasn't so far above the dps in threat that misdirects were even needed. Later on our aoe skill was made retardedly over powered, only to teach us the lesson that Mages and Warlocks learned long ago. No one cares if you pawn the dps meter on trash.

All this is long in the past though. (how quickly we forget!) With Patch 3.1 rogue dps was finally buffed, and leader boards once again show the class going strong, providing the pure dps you would expect from a non-hybrid. My own dps shot up, allowing me to finally get to the #1 spot on the meter occasionally, and rare is the fight where I don't make it into the top 5. Given that I now raid with an excellent group of players top 5 dps is pretty darn good in my book. How did I manage to find this group you ask?

Well after 3.1 came out I found myself once again looking for a good raiding guild. And my oh my, how the landscape had changed...

Welcome to GUILDNAME HERE
We are currently recruiting a few good players to round out or 25 man raid team

Recruitment Needs as Follows

Healers --High/Medium
Mages -- Medium
Warlocks-- Medium
Rogue--MEDIUM/HIGH
Death Knight -- CLOSED

So the last few months of the expansion may have been a bumpy road. And yes, there are still going to be quite a few class changes incoming, BUT Blizzard posts seemingly indicate that Rogues are pretty much fine, and I wholeheartedly agree. In the end I can't say I'm at all sad to have stuck it out on my rogue. Blizz eventually got around to buffing the class to a strong level, and my patience has been rewarded with a drop in over representation of the class. To top it off a HUGE number of fights in Ulduar (and for that matter Naxx) are down right melee friendly allowing me to feel like a valuable member of the raid and not a damage sucking albatross around the healers' necks. And yes Feral Druids and Dk's seem to be shooting out a tad too much damage for hybrid classes, but the upcoming patch notes indicate to me that the developers are aware of the issue. So I can say that I'm pretty happy with where my favorite class has settled in.

After all it could be worse. At least I'm not an unguilded DK, right?