Blog Posts from "(Il)logical Justification" - Gameriot.com

On Leveling in BGs

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:35:39 -0400

Ah yes, the day has finally come. I don't have to go out and quest for 4 days in game just to hit 60 anymore without RAF. Finally, I can get my 3 level 70 alts to 80 by doing PvP! It actually sounds pretty good, and don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction. For those who haven't tried it yet, the experience you get from BGing comes entirely from objectives completed and points gained. Every flag capped gives EXP, every 300 points in AB, every objective captured in AV, etc. This in essence will allow you to level a character completely by AFKing in theory, but that assumes your team will be semi-sentient and that is a false assumption. It's nice that Blizzard did it this way and it's generally pretty good EXP, despite the fact AV is making the other 3 BG's look like a joke though in terms of average gain. Overall, a quick, well executed AV can get you a level in about 2 hours assuming about 20 minutes a match. Hard to complain with that kind of result. Unfortunately, losses make you lose out on the 10k bonus at the end (based on level 50 yields) and long drawn out turtles, IE, 90% of BG's yield close to nothing.

I started leveling my 52 shaman this way, and I digress, the 50's bracket is probably the single worst place to start leveling in a BG. This is DK heaven, where you will walk in with 2-4k HP varying by class and every DK will have 6k HP, be back peddling, and 1 shotting you. Once you hit about 56, where I am now, it levels out a bit and I actually feel like I'm doing more than spamming chain heal in AV, but herein lies the problem of leveling in BG's. Just because it is worth EXP does not make anyone on your team any smarter. These brackets were always riddled with twinks pricely because the picking was very, very easy. The people you will be playing with will on average have maybe 2 skills bound and are clicking the rest. Moreover, you're lucky if most of them know what the objectives are, much less where they are. I actually found a hunter who was LOST in a WSG today. He could not find out where either flag, or the enemy was. He was walking in corners. It was something out of the Darwin Awards, to be sure.

Another likely problem is that if you are not playing a healer, your team will have absolutely no healers. There's really no motivation to be a healer in the first place as the minute you suddenly decide to update your gear by questing, you have to try to level as resto which is a grand pain in the ass unless you bought dual-specc already. Which you didn't. The entire current leveling in BG system is just a bit off for the simple reason that technically speaking in large scale battlegrounds there's a huge motivation to do absolutly nothing and just reap the free EXP with no negative consequences.

The simple solution is simply to make EXP work the same way honor does. Each kill on an any player is worth exp, more exp for doing a lot of healing or a lot of damage/kills because otherwise there's really no reason to be a healer unless you're feeling particularly nice (Read: masochistic). This would also fix the problem of the heirloom shoulders and rested EXP doing nothing for you in BG's other than looking real pretty and giving you 1% damage reduction due to resil (**** yeah).

It's not really clear whether Blizzard ever intends to make this a primary way to level or whether this is just to be a break from the quests you've done 3-4 times on other characters. If it is indeed the former, it would be a hell of a nice way to do things with a few tweaks. Realistically, starting even from level 50 I'm sure by the time I hit 80 I'll have a full 75k honor with full marks to turn in for another 100k after. This in itself will pretty much give your new character full hateful/deadly/whatever is available for that season the minute you ding. Sure, realistically it's just another form of grind and I don't think anyone truly thinks otherwise, but I'd rather choose my grind, what can I say.

The Best Joke Ever

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:19:38 -0400

I suppose it was too hopeful on my part but I think it would've been great if Blizzard had come out with an official WoW April fools. Anyone with half a brain has realized by now that arena is the biggest joke ever and with the announcement of two weeks left on Tuesday I somehow imagined a Blizzard dev coming on the forums with something like:

On second thought, this probably is the best ongoing joke ever and they're getting paid in the 10-digits to preform it. Jokes on us. So I'd like to award Blizzard with the "Troll of the Year" award. You earned it guys.

Nerf Rogues IMO

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:55:03 -0400

Because I always get a kick out of blogs that actually use stats and factual information I decided to do one on rogue representation for those tools that still thinks rogues are viable due to the existence of RMP. Mostly, I write this because with the Gladiator titles rapidly approaching, I kind of got a kick out of how many melee are HONESTLY going to be getting them, and that number is going to be ridiculously low. I have a large amount of facts about warriors and Death Knights at the bottom as well, so if you're really completely uninterested, skip to "Final Observations" for the actual insight on melee as a whole.

I'm going to limit my SK100 survey to US BG9 because in fact this battlegroup has been one of the more rogue-centric battlegroups in the past and it also happens to be the one my rogue resides on. Having been on both Stormstrike and Ruin in the past, I honestly think, despite the mass exodus, BG9 is still one of the more fiercly competitive BG's out there. This is all arguable, but these are my paradigms.

First, let's look at rogue representation in the 2's bracket:

http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/player/2/all/all/25/all/

See that's small bar at the bottom with the 1.8% representation in the top 100? That's us. Slightly below warriors, slightly below our favored ball-and-chain the mages. Below druids too, actually. If you look over to the right, you'll see Mutilate/prep isn't even on the LIST of most used speccs. We got beat out by resto druids. Frankly, I think I just said it all. We get beat out by resto druids.

Now on to 3's! The bracket ruled by RMP and powerful rogue comps! Right?

Well, not really. If anything we're middle tier at best at a 8.2% representation. If you take a look at the armory and look at the RMP's at the top:

http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml r=Frostwolf&ts=3&t=Wrestlers+IRL&select=Wrestlers+IRL&fl=1

http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Kil%27jaeden&ts=3&t=Got+Game+Praktis&select=Got+Game+Praktis&fl=1

you'll also see both rogues wearing 3600-3800 AP. That's when it hit me. This is oddly familiar. THAT'S PVE GEAR! Yes, that's right kids, once the TR is over and we return to live for the 11 months the TR isn't on, you better be in a pretty good raiding guild because your middle tier standing pretty much depends on you playing RMP with 400-500 more AP than a PvP geared rogue. Cool.

Woo 5's! The most balanced bracket!

Appropriately, we're also dead last here. Bottom of the class list, not even on the specc list.

Final Observations:

More than anything though, what I found to be the BEST part about this list, is that there is now only one "melee" class, and that's Death Knights. Well, can we really even call Shadow Frost melee though? I mean you do about 80% of your damage from a range, the notable lack being PLAGUE STRIKE ohemgees.

Moreover, let's take a look at warrior representation in all 3 brackets:

2v2: 2.2%

3v3: 1.9%

5v5: 5.4%

And finally, Death Knight reprsentation:

2v2: 24.2%

3v3: 14.6%

5v5: 14.4%

(A side note for Ret. I also play ret on live and the retribution numbers were so nominal, below warrior, I chose not to include them)

It's almost humorous how little melee is actually IN the top 100. With hunters completely dominating that which used to be the main melee debuff, the MS debuff, there's literally no reason to have a melee. There's already proof on the tournament realm that comps like Hunter/Mage/Priest have potential to work as well, if not better, than RMP because let's face it, a 40 yard instant 10 second undispellable MS is just plain better. Was giving a RANGED class an instant dispellable MS an inevitable step towards eliminating the core melee classes? More than likely.

Say whatever you want about the game, but altogether eliminating melee due to nigh-undispellable freedoms, frost traps, and ludicrously high ranged damage output is not what I had in mind for Wrath.

My final solution to this problem is simple though. Replace the names of the titles.

Rank 1(Deadly Gladiator) should become: Death Knight

Rank 2(Deadly Gladiator's healer) should become: Paladin

Rank 3(Hateful Gladiator) should become: Hunter

Rank 4(Savage Gladiator) should become: Warlock

This is all that I ask, that we're actually honest with oursevles. All other titles can be kept that same for all I care, just as long as we make a statement about what it means to be a "Gladiator" this season.

Redefining Subtlety: An Accessible Shadowstep

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:34:13 -0500

Its become painfully obvious since the rogue nerf that, whether Blizzard recognizes it or not, ridiculous burst was really all rogues had to crutch upon. Rogues in themselves aren't a broken class, in fact they're not very imbalanced at all, it's simply the fact that the other DPS classes dominate them too completely. With the upcoming 3.1 patch, I've become extremely skeptical of Blizzard's ability to accurately evaluate how insanely overpowered hunters, DKs, and Pally's are compared to their counterparts, so it came down a question of how I would personally "overpower" the rogue class.

Overall, mutilate doesn't have immense damage issues. The 30% nerf certainly didn't help our cause, but it removed a good amount of our already questionable burst. I say questionable mostly because I've been hit by 6k+ Icy touches for one frost rune and I know for a fact that's more than my mutilate will ever hit for, for a much smaller cost. Generally though, I find the largest mutilate issue to be mobility. I can't do my already nerfed damage if I can't close distance after a good snare (read: Scatter shot + frost trap, Death Grip + Blood Boil Glyph). What I'd personally like to see done, to kill two rogue problems with one stone, is to see Shadowstep changed to the 11 point rogue subtlety talent in place of Ghostly Strike. A bit extreme perhaps? Well, let's look at the other melee and their distance closing methods. Seemingly every other melee currently has less mobility issues than the "agile" leather class.

-Warriors, even fury, have an intercept, and on a 45 second CD a double intercept, which is all you will ever need.

-Death Knights have Death Grip. Enough said.

-Ret Paladins have freedom

-Feral druids have feral charge/pounce and infinite shifting now that LOTP recieved a buff.

-Enhancement shamans...Ok now that I'm done laughing, yeah they need some help.

-Rogues have sprint. A comapritively useless skill that rarely promises closing distances instantly without the use of another CD in conjuction, ie Vanish or CloS. If you're rooted, it's null. If you're in a trap, it's null. If you're slowed, it's severly gimped.

I ask for Shadowstep earlier in the tree simply because it became such an essential skill in TBC and now that we've lost it we can be kited down in most fights with almost no effort. Lower the damage bonus by 10% on the next attack, keep the short sprint effect afterwards, and keep the 30 second CD if you like, but give us back our distance closer. Many would be quick to argue that indeed mutilate has as much power behind its strikes because it sacrifices such great mobility, but if you plan on taking away insane striking power, by the same logic you must return some mobility. If you think about it though, does this really indirectly nerf any other class related to rogues? Is there any class so complete dependent on us NOT having Shadowstep that this buff would destroy them? Given, this buff would destroy the 1 arc mage left in arena, but that's about it. Against frost mages, you're snared 90% of the fight anyway so it seems somewhat regardless of the fact.

The other question would be, of course, what to replace Shadowstep with as the 41 pnt talent of the sub tree? Clearly not Ghostly Strike, as generally, Ghostly is a bad enough talent as it is. Since hemo and backstab have become so extremely ineffective, I would like to see what I call a standard "6 second strike" 41 point talent. For reference, let's look at other 31/41 pnt talents of other melee classes.

Warriors: Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst. Both 6 second cooldown powerful strikes

Death Knights: Scourge Strike, 2 rune using armor penetration strike

Ret Paladin: Crusader Strike- Instant powerful strike

Enhance Shamans: Stormstrike- Short Cooldown double weapon strike (Mutilate, in essence)

Feral druids: Mangle- no CD bleed increaser.

For the sake of being cheesey, what I'd like to see is something along the lines of a "Shadow Strike".

Shadow Strike(35 energy)- 150% weapon damage +400 damage if daggers are used. The next two rogue special attacks used in the next 5 seconds have their damage increased by 20%. (10 second cooldown)

This would largely help to bridge the "helplessness" gap of a Shadow Dance rogue outside of their singular kill cooldown. It would also help combat the insanely obsolete nature of Hemo and Backstab, with their insanely low damage. With Sinister Revenge I'm still hitting 1300 noncrit backstabs on anyone wearing anything but cloth, so at least you're getting a minor refund of 1600+ damage on non-crit Shadow Strike backstabs, or perhaps even 3-4k on crits. It also helps the set up of Shadow Dances, which, while already effective, doesn't justify the extremely poor Sub tree. Ambush already had its crits nerfed by 30% on the Lethality nerf, so in a sense this is pretty much just giving back the damage that on the same level as the other melee DPS classes.

Fixin' What Ain't Broken

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:25:09 -0500

To everyone with half a brain its become fairly obvious that Blizzard completely screwed the pooch with the 3.0.8 release of the patch, but, even for them, this entire incident seems sort of unusual. It seems lately in response to player complaints, Blizzard has failed to set a list of realistic objectives to make arena both fun and accessable and indeed gone an entirely different direction fixing issues that did not need fixing. The arena ratings are the obvious culprit here as most of them were already lowered low enough for any half decent (or back peddling, clicking arc mage) to achieve, and even if you couldn't achieve them in arena, you could achieve them in Archavon. Instead of just leaving it at that though, Blizzard tried to implement a change on arena ratings that caused a large bug and just kind of pulled the last thread at the end of a very short rope that was the PvP community.

It's not even the fact that this is the dumbest thing Blizzard has done since the release of Wrath, it's just more the fact that now I'm back to the point that I can't even PLAY arena that frustrates me. It was hard enough to play on an even ground with BM hunters and DK's, but taking out arena altogether basically puts us back to square one of Wrath: "There's no arena, so go out and PvE or something, I guess."Â

Instead of doing the logical thing and just admitting they ******* screwed the pooch though, Blizzard chooses to do what is traditionally the dumbest thing a corporation can do when they make a mistake. They first DENY that it was a mistake and try to write it off as if it was intentional, then they refuse to explain themselves. I can't imagine that it would be terribly difficult to describe to the population what exactly you are changing with arena ratings, but instead we have Devs telling us it's just too damn complicated! Well being condecending with your already frustrated audience effective playstyles. Arena to me was a template and nothing more, nor should it be anything more. The arena should not be a place where you have no control over what happens to you because the other player is specced into "insta-win". The sooner Blizzard realizes the players don't need big numbers and flashy achievements to have fun, the sooner arena is going to go back to normalcy.

Assorted Arena Tips/Bugs/Opinions

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:40:32 -0500

As arena is picking up tomorrow and I only have a few hours before some finals, I have decided to make this article brief. My guild and I have been doing arena/duels for most of the day and here are a few general tips/bugs we have found.

-Traveler's Mammoth basically gives whoever is riding on it a 5k shield, as you must kill the mammoth as a melee before you can the players on the Mammoth. On the other hand, if you sap the mammoth and begin damage on any of the people RIDING on it, they will be unable to dismount and heal themselves. It is strongly suggested that any melee find some way to cc the mammoth while they beat on the people on it. This may be fixed tomorrow though.

-Rogue bleeds are a HUGE damage increase if you're not using them already. Most classes cannot survive a Garrote/Rupture > CS opener as your DoT will be ticking for about 1k+ a tick in total. I currently use the T7 2 piece bonus and full bleed talents with a rupture glyph as well. A 13 second bleed with 1 combo point is ridiculous. This in large part will help mitigate any serious problems that resilience are going to cause for us in the first month.

-Druids are still going to be top healer for one reason: They don't have to engage at the start. I honestly don't see any healer being as effective during the first 2 weeks because stealth is that ridiculously good on a healer. Without perception rogues running around, druids can sit back and wait until their team is actually in trouble and even then they can get opportune cyclones and outheal most other healers.

- /cast [target=WhoeverYouWant] Tricks of the Trade
Do it today. Your mage needs to be hitting for 12k shatters, not 10k.

-PvE gear, in my opinion, is going to be vastly superior for savage for almost any class. If you have good PvE gear, I would not even bother with savage as the amount of resil it gives you WILL NOT save you. In the rogue case if you took all 5 savage pieces and gemmed full 16 resil gems it would give you at most 400 resil. This will not help you nearly as much as the dodge and agil on your other gear will. Playing defensively as a rogue right now is NOT the right route. Go balls out and you'll be 10x better off getting Deadly gear.

-Armor pen can be seriously underrated. With the amount of Plate teams you will be running into it may be worth your while to invest in some. I tried some duels against DKs tonight using Grim Toll and when armor pen turns your plate target into a CLOTHY for the first 10 seconds of the fight it's ridiculous. Whether or not stacking some is a good idea, is arguable, but the damage increase was extremely stupid. If you get a chance the trinket is highly suggested.
15.39 armor pen. rating is 1% armor pen. at level 80

Anywho, cheers and good luck in the arena!

Catonmars 1- Arena Skirms: A Day in 3.0

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:22:30 -0500

http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=96221

This is the first PvP video I've ever put out and it was a 24 hour project. All of the footage was taken in a 24 hour period and it was published in that same period. There is virtually no editing sans the addition of music and this movie was generally made to show what the first few weeks of arena are probably going to look like for a rogue. This video was not planned in advance, but just kind of came together.

I started doing skirms around 6 PM server and just started recording matches with random partners and it caught on from there. The only parts where I am using vent at all are the parts where I was working with guildmates (Altoids/Kenza). Altoids had never done arena on a Shaman so if you're wondering what happened there it was mostly us going "oh **** lol." I actually enjoyed this project as it confirmed some of my ideas about arena. Mutilate, by and long, seemed the most powerful specc to me after a full day of arena.

The specc I used for mutilate is shown in the video along with my gear at the start and the Shadow Dance specc is: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fbxcoeZZebbdhGdbhzAcRt. The macro used is just a very simple bar switch macro which I screw up horribly several times.

This was really my first time walking into arena in almost 2 months now, so looking at the mistakes, I can't say I'm particularly surprised, but with Kenza I had a perfect record except for one disconnect. I'm aware I blind into an IB once etc. etc. This is really just me playing, not picking my best Neilyo clips for everyone to fawn over. Sometimes I vanish stuff, sometimes I don't!

Frankly, I would not watch this video as a skill video at all. There are many times garrote would've been 10x better than ambush but I was playing for entertainment purposes and doing more of a damage test(and yes our damage is clearly OP pre-resil). I'll probably put out another video in the future once serious arena comes around and winning actually matters.

In the video you will see everything from Challengers with downsies to Gladiators in vent and you will see a hell of a lot of Death Knights. There is also a very brief dueling section which resulted from the question of how much damage I can pump out on a healer.It's definitely repetitive in some parts which is probably a side effect of my very novice movie making skills so if it gets redundant to you, I've itemized what's in it so you can skip ahead.

Itemization:
00:00-2:53 - Random skirms, random partners
2:53-8:00 - Rogue/Enh Shaman with Altoids
8:00-12:15 - Mutilate with random partners
12:15-18:55 - Shadow Dance Daggers with random partners
18:55-27:25 - Rogue/Druid 2's with vent
27:25-29:50 - Cat v Kenza (Resto Duels)
29:50-37:07 - Rogue Druid 2's with vent

Music:
Soundgarden- Like Suicide
The Exies- Ugly
Atmosphere- Dreamer
Geto Boys- Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta
65daysofstatic- Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here
Celldweller ft. Styles of Beyond- Shapeshifter
Nine Inch Nails- The Good Soldier
The Shins- Caring is Creepy
Shiny Toy Guns- Le Disko
Coldplay- Don't Panic

HAT Spec in 5's Arena

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:29:47 -0500

Because it can no longer be ignored and because my ******* roommate had Chris Rock blaring at 7 AM yelling something about "Cutting off my Penis!" I've decided to address the idea of Evic spam in arena. First of all, the spec I am using, flawed though it may be, for the sake of example:

PvP HAT Spec (possibly switch 2 points into Imp SnD)

So in case you've been living under a rock for the last week the entire crux of this spec is Honor Among Thieves, which clearly would make this spec most viable in 5's, which is very convenient since 5's is going to be the best way to get your deadly gear straight off. If you've used this in PvE, like I have, you have probably also seen the absolutely ridiculous. We're talking like 5k+ DPS on Patchwerk (my personal best) and while I realize this isn't an arena realistic number, if you catch the enemy in something as short as a 3-6 second stun you can pump out more damage than you can even imagine. We're talking like 2k+ DPS minimum in a PvP encounter here. This is of course based entirely upon your group which I believe will determine a vast majority of how well this entire specc will work in the first place.

The 5's comp I was idly thinking of trying was something like:
Â Hunter/Rogue/DK/Shaman/Druid

Read the article, I'll be damned if I'm re-reading this to summarize it.

WCM Review: Neilyo 15

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:05:16 -0500

I haven't been watching many PvP vids lately, but Neilyo's vids are always worth a watch when they come out. I must say, putting only duels in the videos threw off a lot of people it seems, but since I started the game in 1.7 when the only objective way to show skill was dueling, I rather enjoyed it. It also showcased the powerhouse that is Shadowdance Dags, well, the powerhouse that used to be Shadowdance dags in my opinoin.

Overall, the video was pretty standard Neilyo. You'll see the first 9 minutes pretty much consumed with his Akrioss duels, which show pretty much exactly what his fans requested: How to beat other rogues once they've opened on you. While the video itself illustrates that this is not an exact science by any means, he has some pretty decent clips. Moreover, this part of the video just really proved that Neilyo's biggest mistake was trying to please his fans as 90% of the comments about this section were "ZOMG YOU DIDN'T SHOW WHEN AKRIOSS WON!" So apparently people want to see how to win, without actually seeing him win. It sort of baffles me that people expect losing clips in a video mostly because I'm not the type of person who needs to know how to LOSE to a rogue that opens on you. Odds are if you are one of the people that commented that there needs to be more losses, you are not the type that looks at general video appeal. I don't need to see it to know he lost to a rogue opening on him, if you do, watch Akrioss' video.

The next section was my personal favorite because it was the Shadowdance Dags vs mage section. Having played this spec almost all of 3.0 TBC I found it pretty amusing how smooth he made it seem after a few days of play. Generally the mages got it handed to them, which is to be expected with that specc, but it was still good quality. You also got to see some top mages in this video and I was a bit surprised to see Pookz, or who I assume is Pookz, since I hadn't played him in a while. Pookz did indeed put on quite a show though and I'm rather surprised he won any of them against that kind of specc. It's what you expect from Neilyo though, a show of skill.

The boomkin section was fairly interesting as beforehand I had thought he would lose most of those duels. Boomkins were and still are a very powerful anti-melee class and actually beating them as a rogue was no easy feat come 3.0. More than anything this section proved that Neilyo was not about to be easily replaced as a top rogue. Coming into 3.0, it's plain to see that he still retained a lot of the talent and playstyle that had brought him to the top in the past and I look forward to his future vids.

The last section was priest v. undead rogue. Do I really need to say anything else? It was about as unpredictable as the sun rising in the morning.

The video was as much of a 5 star video as you're going to get for showcasing skill though. The music was new and oddly calming and as long as you're ok with acoustic and don't have to have screamo metal or club music to make a video enjoyable, you'll like it. Neilyo's playstyle is extremely smooth and the music flowed very well with it, so I fail to see why people don't like the music to this video. Must be a personal preference thing. As usual there is no editing, but then again Neilyo's vids are rarely entertaining except for rare moments of Wry humor (IE "I has a feeling") and if you watch them as an educational PvP video you can learn quite a bit. Personally, I would've liked to have seen some WOTLK clips shown, but with the video market the way it is right now, you take what you can get. While it's a bit of a filler video, it's still definitely worth a watch.

Play for the People; Mutilate is GG

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:06:04 -0500

As there's been a lot of QQ lately, I begin to wonder what most people play WoW for. I've always had a fairly good sized group of friends and partners to play WoW with and that is what sustained me. To steal from Tosan "This game isn't addictive at all...but the people who play it are". I can honestly say that outside of arena I've had some of my best times in WoW when I wasn't just grinding or constantly playing to win. When you begin to turn WoW into a job, you begin to put an impossible standard on it for fun. While I'll be the first to admit Blizzard not putting in arena wasn't a great decision, there is still plenty of killing to be had if you're willing to have fun with it.

Get together a Wintergrasp group sometime and actually work together towards a goal and you'll find you can get the same rush out of kicking some ass there as anyone else. The same goes for SoTA or just plain cleansing the horde scum from the basin. It seems to me all of the top players have this weird tendency to view WoW as more of a chore than a game at which point I think it will become a self-fufilling prophecy that they will be replaced. You saw the same habits in Xecks when people began slacking off towards the gameÂ then expected to jump back in and be awesome at it. If you're not having fun with the game anymore, don't play it, but I cannot wait for blogs in a few weeks showing the product of not doing anything in the game.

Fortunately, there will always beÂ the insane drive to win for some people so I look forward to the first few weeks arena when compitetion is rife again. Like most rogues I plan to play mutilate, not because everyone has ZOMGNORESIL right now, but because it's plainly the best specc for the moment. I'll be the first to admit I was plugging Shadow Dance before WOTLK, but with the way crit scaled down it's almost a given that rogues are going to need sustained damage badly. I tried Shadowdance dags and when your backstabs are only critting 50% of the time, you are doing jack **** worth of damage outside of your openers, which you will not get enough of.

AR/Prep was entertaining for sure, but it still seems simply weak when I can drop huge amounts of opener and sustained damage consistantly with mut. While the stun reduction skills that pretty much every class has at this point do put a bit of a damper on your stun burst, it's hardly noticable since you're no longer dependent on Find Weakness to upkeep huge amounts of damage. I'm predicting, with the proper gemming that some classes are going to be scaling upwards of 25k HP easy (Warlocks, you know who you are) so sustained is going to be a big bonus.

A real nice new bonus though is that you can save up 130 energy for a double-mut switch which can almost down a pet in and of itself, especially if you end that combo with a CB mut. Generally, there is simply no other way to go for now. The added mobility of fleet footed and prep makes mut so ridiculous that it almost rivals DKs and Paladins.

Generally, if you're not lazy as hell, you can run Heroic Halls of Stone like...Twice and you'll get 1x Fleshshapers which are Naxx 10 level daggers and you can also grab Roflsen's Ripper from badges. Again, if you have to motivation to spend like 5 hours playing the game you pay for, you'll be more than prepared for arena when it comes out and you'll be well geared for Mut with this and the buyable PvP set.

Ret v. DK

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:21:11 -0500

As much as I hate to admit that Retadin vs DK has become a stereotype in my mind, it has. Every story in history has that backbone of "Light v Dark" and WoW is certainly no different. Blizz seems to have taken that to mind full force by making Retadins and DK's both extremely powerful classes, at the very least in the current state of WoW PvP. With Blizzard putting such a heavy emphasis on the two classes in the coming patches, it seems almost obvious that there are going to be some Legendaries thrown around for these classes. The question in my mind though is in the end, which class will be superior?

Being that it's a "Hero" class, DK would be the obvious choice, but in general I think Blizz did TOO good of a job of balancing them. While they seem to be the perfect image of Druid destroyers, they seem to be sadly vulnerable to kiting classes, and have many other weaknesses that seem relatively easy to exploit if you're a good player. Death grip is nice, but 25 second CD is very punishing for the misuse of the ability. As I see burst damage being curved significantly by arena gear, it seems very unlikely one would be able to burst an opponent down during a single Death Grip pull. Generally, they seem ADEQUITE as an arena class, but not completely dominant. They're plate warlocks without range if you take the current popular unholy specc. Being very weak vs dispells seems to make them more of a support class that very often will be unable to support their teammates. This to me highlights a fairly large weakness in the DK design.

Retadins on the other hand were given far more tools at their disposal for not only utility, but general mobility. As a retadin you now have the abilitiy to break stuns, break snares, cleanse, CC, and add a sustainable 100% slow on an opponent. Your only real enemy is your mana, which while it's low, I believe it is relatively sustainable if you play conservatively. The damage you put out as Ret is still...Significant to say the least and less and less luck based. Not to say a Seal of Casino procc doesn't help, but you don't necessarily NEED it anymore. As the class becomes more skill based and gains more tools, you generally find good retadins further becoming distinct from the particularly bad ones. I know, saying Ret is a skill class right now will light some fires, but it's come a long way from Auto attack and hope for the best.

Generally though, I find myself wondering WHY so many people are rolling DK's as a I see Rets being the future much more so than DK's. Perhaps I've had too shallow a view of DK abilities, but thus far I have been thoroughly unimpressed by the class in terms of potential Arena power. With Shamans becoming the top healers and Rets accenting their class so well, I am quite skeptical of how well DK's will preform in comparison. On a whole, I don't see a lot of team comps where a DK would be altogether necessary for it to work. Without an appropriate niche I remain skeptical of DK potential until proven otherwise. Guess the light wins this time around.

Thanksgiving Gaming Stories

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:38:01 -0500

Since I've had a VERY gaming Thanksgiving this year I've come up with a few amusing stories I decided to share instead of doing a real article tonight. To me Thanksgiving is a great time for gaming because if you're a Uni student, you get a week off to basically sit on your ass and eat. With eating comes gaming and it can surely be said that gaming has its moments.

Overall, I can say that console games are always going to be more entertaining simply because of the people. While online people can have their own unique characteristics and be pretty awesome, it's true friendly interaction that motivates console gaming. I suppose it's possible to find the same personalities online, but the look on someones face is simply priceless after situations like this. I hope one day online gaming can illustrate this kind of interaction for convenience sake.

Recycled Content: Really Blizz?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:50:40 -0500

As I've been doing heroics and even a 25 man (I love my new deadly legs, straight off a PvE boss) or two I've begun to realize just how much content Blizzard is recycling. Many of the heroic bosses really are straight out of previous raids and Blizzard isn't even trying to hide it anymore. My personal favorite is the Maiden from Halls of Stones who literally even looks exactly like the maiden from Kara. She does a repentance, an AOE shadow attack, and a single hit Holy Fire attack. It makes one kind of wonder though if this was really the best Blizzard could do. In that same instance you'll also find Gruul part 2. A boss that is actually easier to 3-man due to the fact that his shatter with 5Â people in a small area can drop you rather quickly.

While I admit it's hard to come up with a unique fight for every single boss in the game, taking ancient boss and remaking them further reinforces the idea that all WOTLK is right now is a pointless grind. Blizzard is the kind of comapny that will give you Wintergrasp and SOTA to take a PvP step forward, then force you to grind the same bosses you grinded in TBC for gear and take a step back. Archavon has already been beaten to death as a blogging topic, although I will admit it's bat**** easy. I just wish that my grind could be augmented with some NEW content rather than tired old content, reused over and over again. I don't need to do Black Morass twice through Violet Hold just to get badges that I got in TBC!

It's a pity too since the questing system was fairly immersive and gave room for a lot of creativity and use of Lore in heroics. Most heroics now are just non-linear heroics with no entertainment value or learning curve. The only motivation to do them is when Wintergrasp is down. The only fun part of instances for me was actually learning new fights with some friends and getting it down. There's no sense of achievement from beating any bosses whatsoever in WoW now and it seems to game is increasingly spinning into pointlessness until the release of arena.

This being said, if you're going to repeat content, then don't make it at all. The Gauntlet of Stone Halls was a pretty interesting fight and lent itself a "new" sort of feeling to it. If you must make a heroic with one boss, do it and drop the filler crap. Trust me, if there's one thing this game does not need right now, it's more filler crap.

WoW IS fairly complicated

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:02:15 -0500

I know arena players typically spend most of their time complaining about the over-simplified nature of WoW lately, but in a broad perspective WoW is an extremely complicated game. I went down to chill with some friends for Thanksgiving (IE bumming off their house because thedorms are closed) and they are all console gamers because computer gaming simply isn't cool. I got to play some Fable II the first day down here and I immediately asked how to hotkey abilities at which point I got a quizzacal look. I actually began playing the game and realized you can pretty much win just by swinging a big hammer around and tapping the potion button if **** ever goes down. To say the least, it wasn't very difficult. I wasn't finding 24 other players who had to KNOW the bosses I was about to fight. I didn't need a healer. I didn't need any real knowledge outside of the x button.

While I know Fable isn't the picture of difficult games, it was about the closest thing I found to a fantasy RPG while playing the console and I was very surprised. Pretty much every console RPG I've ever played has been 20 difficulty levels down from WoW even at the highest difficulty.

This of course opens the question of whether PC gaming really IS just for hardcore people who really want to dedicate a lot of time to video games. It's a very odd appeal if you think about it, but one that WoW seems to exploit ruthlessly. WoW has people memorizing skill sets of not only their own class, but of NPC bosses, every other class, and their mom. It's an excessive amount of knowledge to have to compile just to play the game at a high level. Most arena players know at least 5 ways to counter every move an opponent makes and have every single key from Shift through G bound to something. Then of course you have people like SK/Nihilum who has every boss fight memorized before the game releases.

While it's easy to say that WoW is an "easy" game and that they're over simplifying it, in general there is always something better you could be doing in the game. If you are not doing it, odds are you are not #1. While WoW can be very samey at times. In essence, WoW is as complicated as you make it. If you want to be the picture of simplicity you can fly around mining ore and doing 10 mans all day. If you want to try to push WOW to the furthest limits, there are almost always new limits to find.

One can always say "Arc mages" and "retadins" as a point of reference for EZ mode, but even then there are goods and bads. Fight Nick from Mal'Ganis sometime. You'll know. In short, WoW's value as a complicated game can be measured in comparison to "What it used to be" all day long, but in reality in terms of gaming WoW is a huge step forward in complicated gaming knowledge. There's always going to be games like SC and WC3 to compete with it for amount of knowledge memorized, but again, it's a PC gamer thing.

Tempted by the PvE Devil; Execute Effects Too Much

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:40:47 -0500

Like most WoW players I am easily tempted by shinies and with PvE being easier than ever I recently found myself tempted to actually try it. Whether or not we like it, PvE gear will always give people an advantage in arena because it gives a player more options, even if it's just a single trinket such as the Earring of Soulful OMFGMANAREGEN. As such, I found myself once again in the position of my healer trying to convince me that PvE is 1337 and I must do it to get teh lewtz. My main issue though is that I ******* hate it.

Make no mistake, PvE can be difficult on some level, but most of the difficulty of PvE comes from being able to tolerate 24 other people wiping you all day on computerized events. To me, it's really only for people who actually enjoy that kind of thing. It's a small mystery to me how on servers like mine which have literally one really good PvE guild on Alliance side, some people can tolerate that kind of crap for gear. If at any time I stop having FUN playing a game I pretty much figure I'm doing it wrong and I've walked in on some interesting vent conversations during raids that seem to defy fun.

The sad reality that Blizz doesn't seem to get is that some people simply are never going to want to run 25, or hell even 10 man raids, to get their gear. Many people like to pass it off as a "necessary" evil, but to be honest, it's not really necessary, it's arbitrary. Resilience was a very big step towards making PvP gear unique to PvP as in the gem vendor in Wintergrasp, I'm just hoping Blizzard continues to follow this line of thought through.

If people like Serennia wanna raid however many hours a week for gear and glory, that is there business. For pure PvPers I'm just asking nicely that we are not obligated to get that extra 400 atk power for 25-man raid instances. It's not even that PvErs can get gear from the Wintergrasp instance that bothers me, it's that Blizzard is now making it necessary for ME to do it.

I had a request in my last blogs comments to talk about execute effects so I figured I'd touch on this issue because it is an interesting one.

The original execute was of course made for Warriors and I'd like to say straight off I think it's balanced. Stick with me here for a minute. The reason execute is balanced for warriors is indeed because of the rage system that warriors are chained to. It encouraged warriors to manage rage better in anticipation for a kill shot once they got an enemy to 20% and I believe this did add an extra dimension to the class. What balanced this extremely damaging ability was the fact that if you FAILED at killing your opponent with it, you were stuck with absolutely zero rage and it could very often put you in an awkward position if your next attack missed. You couldn't apply MS. **** got real fast. I will say that the new "I'm going to execute you in the middle of a fight" ability is a bit over the top, but again even that does have the drawback of dropping all of your rage at once, which is still a serious problem.

The new execute effects are indeed ridiculous though because they are mana-based in nature. The two I'll talk about here will be Hammer of Wrath and Kill Shot. The thing that makes these two abilities extremely overpowered is that quite simply, they have no serious drawbacks to using them and failing to kill your opponent. With Kill Shot, hunters are basically able to go balls out and augment their already very high ranged damage with an insanely high damage instant shot. Worst of all, this shot takes literally only 7% of their base mana, which is less than multi-shot for Christ sakes. While the cooldown on the ability is much longer than either of the other "execute" options, it's pretty doubtful you're going to have to use it twice. Generally I find ranged executes pretty stupidly overpowered and the mana system doesn't provide nearly enough of a drawback to justify the amount of damage to put out. If you made Kill Shot cost about 25% of base mana you'd at least give them something to think about. A limiting factor beyond 20% HP is required to balance this.

As to Hammer of Wrath, the main issue is really that it's a spammable, cheap, and excessively powerful execute. While warriors are forced to take their chances and hope their execute crits, retadins have no such drawback due to Sanctified Wrath which gives you about an 80% chance to crit it with your already high spell crit. Basically what Blizzard gave retadins is an execute that ALWAYS crits, that has a fairly low mana cost, that is spammable on a 6 second CD (or a 3 second CD if you're feeling saucy and have the Avenging Wrath glyph). Again, the drawbacks do not justify the use of the ability. If you're going to give people an opportunity to end most fights after only taking down 4/5ths of the enemy HP, there needs to be punishment for failing to do so. I won't dare say increase the mana cost as retadins would kill me for it, but I would like to see the 50% crit taken away and the CD vastly increased. I have no problem with having an ability that aids you to finish off an opponent, but don't make it so ridiculous as to be unsurvivable.

WOTLK Prof Choices; Ret Still Decent

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:43:54 -0500

I was unfortunately one of those poor tools who honestly believed Blizz would give us an EXTRA inscription slot for picking up that POS prof so after a 2k gold dump I was ready for Wrath and my extra slow. Lo and Behold it did not happen. As such I had to decide on my new Wrath profs! I already had JC because during BC I had what's called "Night elfitus" where you have a racial so pathetic you need trinkets to make up for it or it kills you in arena. Long story short I decided to keep that on the offhand chance they bring the panther back (for all you prospective JC's there is no panther figurine in the game right now, don't waste your time) but I needed a "Fun" profession so I decided to go with the only consistantly fun profession in the game: Engineering.

With DK's farming the thorium for me, I managed to level 1-300 eng for about 300g which is about as much as you can make in a day if you do any dailies anymore. Or 1 hour if you have a gathering prof. The 300-375 was a bit more tricky, but I had a miner friend with an epic mount so it was definitely tolerable. All in all I spent about 1k gold on the whole endeavor which otherwise would've been used to buy my warlock his mount (Yeah, right).

I must say though I have been EXTREMELY satisfied with the results thus far. I picked up goblin engineering like any real man does and grabbed a rocket launcher immediately and went ganking. Basically 375-420 engineering gives you a Boba Fett starter kit. You get your glove rockets, your slowfall cloak, your rocket boots, and your zappy trinket which reminds me a lot of the Gnimish death Ray. Also if you're a MAN and you took Goblin you can get the new Global Thermal Sapper Charge which you can promptly macro to something like:
/yell ALLAH ACKBAR
/cast Global Thermal Sapper Charge
and charge into horde with around 2k HP left. Hours of entertainment.

Overall though, a great ganking prof, you can basically become a spell damage rogue at this point with about 6k worth of spell damage if you put it all out there. Good times and it adds insult to injury. I only wish you could use some of the older Engineering trinkets to good effect (Leper Gnomes anyone?)

Speaking of ganking, that's pretty much all there is to do lately, so I've been doing quite a bit of it. Now there's only a few classes I won't even bother trying to gank (IE Prot warriors, Feral druids in bear, because **** I could kill 22 DK's in the time it takes to kill them) but today I was forced to add retadins to that list. To be honest, I don't see any way to win that fight 1v1 on an equal playing field as just about any melee class. I pretty much kill myself just trying to hit the bastards and if I'm caught in a stun at any time I get 10k chopped off the top instantly. I must admit I was a bit envious and hopped on my retadin to proceed to kill 7 horde in a row without stopping or dropping below 100% Hp. It kind of made me wonder why so many people are rolling DK's as 5 of those corpses were DKs. I suppose the mana nerf was bad, but honestly if you play with a conservationalist attitude you can still have quite a bit of fun with that specc. It may or may not be top tier arena, that's up for debate, but damn it's good for just about everything else.

Enjoy Your Rep Grind

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:58:04 -0500

I gotta say, I liked everything about Wrath until I hit 80 and looked around for a bit. Turns out, there's no PvP gear at all right now that's buyable with honor so I got to buy a full eviscerator's set for a hefty amount of gold. But no, that's not all you'll have to do to have "PvP" gear, you're going to need to instance/raid for your weapons. Anything you have from leveling will be VASTLY inferior to the Heroic Badge Dagger and the dagger drop from Heroic Stone Halls. It seems Blizzard really is pushing PvE on you at every turn.

Wintergrasp is great, but you get to do it like once every 3 hours and as fun as that is, it gets rather boring sitting around waiting for it. But wait, you could farm! Except there's nothing really worth farming for being that as soon as PvP gear drops it will make anything you can have for now vastly inferior. I'm not exactly sure what Blizz was thinking PvPers would DO when they hit 80 and there was nothing to use. Apparently they thought we'd love the rep grind.

I'm one of the kind of people who didn't even have exalted with 5 factions TBC because I didn't raid so the whole concept was foreign to me. Apparently you're supposed to do the exact same quest for like 2 monthsÂ straight to get exalted with a faction that will give you gear you'll replace in the first instance. Yet, as of right now that seems to be the most interesting thing to do.

To be honest, I think Blizz will fix this by the end of the month, but it kind of makes one wonder why you play to pay for a week then wait 3 weeks so you can play again.Â It seems like Blizzard really just dropped the ball on the end game in WoW, which is rather dissapointing, but to be expected by this point.Â Someone really does need to point out to them that PvP servers DO enjoy their PvP and as much as I love farming honor so I get above 75000 (owait LOL!), I'd rather have something to do with my new 80. In the mean time, have some delicious fish from the Kalu'ak tribe. Tastes like honored.

Wintergrasp: Too Good!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:57:47 -0500

First of all, to all of the skeptics about Wintergrasp: You're wrong. I have to say wintergrasp is some of the best entertainment I've had in quite a long time playing WoW. I've done about 5 Wintergrasps now varying from level 77-80 with my guildmates and it is EXTREMELY ENTERTAINING.

For those of ye undeducated:
-Wintergrasp starts every 2 hrs 30 mins and lasts for 40 minutes or less depending on how good the attackers are.
-In order to win attacks must break through 2 levels of fairly durable keep walls with siege engines and then a final keep door. Then they must have a player left alone for 10 second to activate the "Titan Panel" inside.
-Each Siege workshop allows you to build 4 vehicles.
-There are 2 capturable siege workshops and 2 that are naturally owned by each side.
- There is a balancing mechanism called "Tenacity" that increases your health by 25% and damage by 18% per stack depending on how outnumbered you are. This can get absolutely ridiculous.
-There are different ranks attained by killing other players or castle NPC's that allow you to buy bigger siege weapons.

All of this being said (and I'm sure I missed something) Wintergrasp is ALSO one of the greatest honor sources in the history of WoW. I began yesterday with 60000 honor and decided to do wintergrasp with my guild for the day. In 5 Wintergrasps I am now closed to maxed atÂ 74000 honor. That means that each Wintergrasp averaged around 3k honor for me.

In general Wintergrasp heavily encourages objective based combat due to the nature of the BG. I mean you could technically drive a Demolisher around killing NPC's and being a general idiot, but there's really no BENEFIT to it. Typically one can make a raid group of players at the start of a Wintergrasp and actually have them, for the most part, follow your orders for the win.

Probably the best story I can give you is from last night. I finally hit 80 and deicded to celebrate with my Shaman Iowna by doing a Wintergrasp at like 2 in the Goddamn morning. Well turns out, there were upwards of 15 horde defenders and just 2 of us. This was good. Wth Tenacity x12 (216%+ damage and 300%+ Health) we became the veritable Gods of that place. Iown was ableÂ literally able to 1 shot people with a Stormstrike > Windfury and I seriously doubt I need to describe how bad the rogue damage was. After quickly dispatching about 10 horde, we were both First Lieutenants(The current highest rank you can get because flying machines aren't in yet) and we decided to hop in a siege tank with a turret for good times. We managed to break all the way in to the final keep door before the horde could even manage to take down our vehicle and promptly rape the hell out of us (because 15 vs 2 is still pretty ******* hard when you never get to move). From there on out we both agreed the "demolisher" would be the best bet (a half-dps half-seige tank hybrid) and moved in for the kill. After promptly taking out all of their vehicles (because our vehicles also have tenacity!) we broke into the keep where they proceeded to stack on Iown's ass and take upwards of 6k fire damage per a second from me in an AOE. Long story short: they died, I activated the Titan Panel while Iowna stormstruck anyone coming inside and game over. We made upwards of 5k honor from that one in particular due to the fact that we had just gone 2v15 and beaten the Horde.

If nothing else Wintergrasp is just novel. The weapons, the terrain, and the strategy are all new to people and it's a new method of PvP to learn. I have no doubt this will bring back guild PvP as my guild is already gearing up to kick some ass here. Anyone who says you can win this BG by zerg is truly foolish though because in 5/5 wintergrasps with my guild we won 100% (even against horde with tenacity) because of vastly improved organization. If you are smart enough to man the turrets, you will win. If you use your vehicles in a logical manner, you will win. If you rush in solo like a retard with a siege tank, you will promptly get popped out of it and **** on.

Someday, novelty will wear off and maybe it will become the new AV, but if Blizzard learns to take a hint and actually begins making PvP zones like this consistantly, I have no doubt this idea will catch on.

Actually Pretty Decent

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:40:27 -0500

Like most PvPers I did not look forward to leveling AT ALL. I figured it was just another 10 levels of pure tedium pushed upon me by Blizzard to donkey punch me further and steal my wallet. While I'll fully admit I still feel like they donkey punched me and stole my wallet, Blizzard still did a pretty good job with the leveling scheme this time around.

More or less they added a lot of coherency to the leveling system so if you're worth half your **** you're basically able to do 4-5 quests at a time and it really speeds leveling up quite a bit. More notably though, this time around some of the quests are actually INTERESTING. I'll be the first to admit I thought Dragonblight was an amazing WoW zone. Despite the lack of any real PvP the artistic value and the storyline was pretty attractive. While some of the quests were completely unrelated, those quests that were related could actually be pretty engaging. It all lead up to that unusual cutscene that was actually of decent quality and gave you a bit of essential storyline.

Blizzard also managed to break up a lot of the questing into sections of "Kill 10 of these" then turn into a giant ******* unstoppable God of a man and crush 20000 of them at once to vent your frustration. I tended to like these quests a lot more simply because I finally got to do something different. It's a lot like playing the campaign mode in Battlefield 1942, except instead of being in a B52 bomber, you're Raptor Jesus. It tends to be alluring in a morbid sort of "genocide is fun because they're not real people" way.

The PvP quests are, as par normal, complete **** though and that vastly dissapointed me. "Kill 10 horde players or 10 NPC's...whatever is around". Thought you could sneak it past me eh Blizz? Although, in the dialy quest areas they did give PvPers a reason to kill the poorly geared farmer class of players and I used to do that for free, so **** I get paid now. While I'm aware most of these are just a lead up to Wintergrasp, they're still pretty dissapointing in their lack of creativity, but I suppose if there's anything TBC proved, it's that no one does World PvP.

The leveling process definitely hasn't been the worst ever as TBC kicked my ass with boredom, and I'm glad WOTLK seemed to dumb everything down in that aspect. Really one could say it's just "pretty decent". I'm still jacking around doing crap I hate just to do the crap I love, but at least it's not all crap I hate anymore. Blizz likes to giveth and donkey-puncheth and if you still bought WOTLK, you had probably accepted this a long time ago. Needless to say, I still wish I had a small Chinese man making $2.50 an hour.

Skewed Server Pops: Will It Be An Issue?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:46:25 -0500

As did a lot of WoW players today I took part of my day off just to enjoy the new terrain and kill the **** out of those baby mammoths. It was generally pretty calm on the whole ganking side, but occasionally you'd run into the inevitable situation of a 3v1 group coming to shove your pants down your throat. I persoanlly am blessed with residing in a fairly balanced server of 1 Alliance for every 1.3 horde and the population is only slightly noticable. Horde generally stick together more for whatever reason, and there are more of them, but it's rarely an impediment.

This raises the question though, with servers where population is extremely skewed, will places like Lake Wintergrasp have serious issues and will players in general have leveling issues? Overall, it's currnetly said that alliance have most players over every server, but it seems the PvP heavy servers favor horde largely. Take for example our neighboring server (which my team was thinking of xfering to before we saw the pop) Mal'Ganis. This server has a 1:4 alliance/horde ratio.Â Can you even imagine the suck this would cause for the alliance on this server to try to get anything done? When zerg mechanics can play a large part in the instances you are able to open and the leveling you're able to do, it quickly becomes a problem. No matter how good of a player you are, if you are zerged by a competent group of 4 other players, you are dead.

Ever the "New PvP capital" Cho'Gall is EXTREMELY horde skewed, so much so that the census doesn't even have enough data on alliance to provide a reliable tally. Yeah, wonder why.Â It's great that Blizzard made cross BG battlegrounds and whatnot, but if they're serious about making pure world PvP zones they seriously need to learn to cap servers. Archimonde was at one point as bad as a 1:2 alliance/horde ratio and if that ever happened again I have no doubt we'd be completely dominated. All it takes is one ******* to start a war in any given place. One horde attacks, one alliance attacks, 2 more horde attacks and the whole thing spirals until one side is kicked out due to lack of numbers.

Just idle thoughts though, reality is one way or another there's always going to be an overly dominant side on a server. To me, it seems more like it should be based on skill though, than how many 16 year olds wanted to roll UD rogues to be "Just like Neilyo".

All data taken from: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

Will E-Fame Change Hands?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:40:05 -0500

With the expansion finally dropping tonight you can already see people hard at work trying to get their characters to 80. I personally got mine mail-ordered for tomorrow because the day I stand out in Northern Colorado weather for an hour to get a goddamn video game is the day I off myself. But back to the point, I think one of the main advantages of the whole expansion is the passing of the mantle of "pro" to new players.

Many players were held back by gear, lack of time, and just plain being behind so expansions in large part give a chance to bring in new rising stars. You saw the same effect in the switch from Vanilla WoW to TBC precisely because new mediums of competition came out and new modes of gameplay. The fall of "The Golden Child" came as a surprise to many because of his great WSG success and so on, but TBC also lead to the rise of many of the modern heroes like Neilyo, Gumbot, and Serennia. The question now is if the old heroes will be consistant or if they will slowly fade from the public spotlight like their predecessors did come TBC.

People like Serennia it seems like will always be on top simply because of the amount of time they didicate to the game. If you look back on all the Wrath posts and the rate on which Serennia picked up on them, it's pretty impressive, if not a little scary. But players that were more background characters seem to have much less interest. I can't say I'd be too keen on leveling again and trying to go to tournaments mostly unprepared due to not playing on live either though. I personally look forward to seeing a new wave of arena players put on an equal gear scale.

A time for exploration and learning to play many of the classes anew is coming and only time will tell how the competition will handle the classic E-stars.

WoW Addiction: Srs Business

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:58:45 -0500

Being a Journalism major occasionally has its entertaining moments, I was looking through some old articles for a project and I happened to run by this one from '06:

http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2006/05/08/OtherCampus/World.Of.Warcraft.Causes.Unhealthy.Addiction.In.Students-1922360.shtml

It never ceases to amaze me how the media tries to portray anyone who plays WoW as a hopeless social retard who couldn't stop WoW any more than crack. They always manage to find the most addictive personalities in the world and interview them. Then they always find someone who "Tried it"...Just once though (I mean clearly, he's not sniffing grinded up game cards off a garbage lid). It's some weird compare and contrast where people think everyone has to play like 15 hours a day to be good. There's never a positive article about it. I played my acc less than ever S4 and altogether quit, and I managed to get Gladiator playing in ONE SESSION with my 3's team before I quit WoW for the whole season. I will never be interviewed, I am unfortunately not socially retarded enough.

There is also always some kind of implication that you will fail out of college because you play a video game. No, you'll fail out of college because you're a dumbass and you can't control yourself. The media loves to throw person responsbility out the window though and name the article "World of Warcraft causes..." vs "Dumbass who probably would've failed anyway causes..." It just kills me when these kinds of articles come around because first of all, this school is blindingly easy, and secondly, he's a ******* freshman. But that wasn't the best part of the minimal research it took to find out just how stupid this entire school is.

Not only does stuff like this come up a lot, a guy at my school got a research grant to research WoW addiction... You think people would've figured out by now it's the same as every other addiction except it has no real addictive problems other than a lack of real control. They should pay me 100k to tell them that, ****.

Healer Changes; Will RMP become RMS?; Iown interview

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:15:15 -0500

As much as I wanted to walk into this subject and be able to go on about like I know it, I really don't know as much about the healing aspect of RMP as I'd like to. Everyone by this point knows what healers are going to be completely revolutionized and revamped at 80 and recently my priest for about 2 seasons Iown began rolling a Shaman claiming that at 80 they would probably be able to play better than any healer on the block. Now for Shamans, this would be a big step up, but I was skeptical of comps like RMS beating out the traditional RMP.

Instead of just doing what I normally do and prattle on about my opinion(which is still sexy) I decided to do a brief interview with our healer Iown. Hes been doing heals for us for quite a while and held the #2 stop in our BG with mage/priest for quite a while. Hes had top 5's teams and 3's teams across the board. He's like all the goodness of Swarm without the fattening nerd rage! Now on to the interview:

Catonmarz: So can you give a brief introduction of yourself for everyone who doesn't know you and list a few of your healer credentials?

Iown: Iown from Archimonde, been playing since Beta. I started as a mage and switched to Priest when BWL came out Pre-TBC. I have played Priest/Druid/Shaman to at least 2k+ arena rating. Mostly played Priest in all 4 seasons and got Gladiator with my priest in season 3 as RMP.

Catonmarz: Cool, so as of late you've started rolling a Shaman instead of a priest, do you think RMS will be superior to RMP come S5 and why?

Iown: It will really depend on what will be the FOTM comps once S5 gets going. Since RMP has been relatively a strong comp all season round, RMS could definitely feed on the RMP to get high on the ladder. I believe RMS can counter RMP due to Shamans having the ability to lock down both Mage and Priest CC. Also Shamans can get rid of poison debuff that Priests cannot, so it gives the healing/mobility edge also.

Catonmarz: Which healing class do you think is generally more complicated to play in all of your experience and do you think that'll effect any particular healer representation at tournaments?

Iown: Once WOTLK goes live, I would rate as Shaman > Druids > Priests > Paladins. I believe healer representation will have to do with synergy with other classes more so than which healer is more overpowered. Druids were clearly more overpowered the last few tournaments however Priests were represented at high levels because of the synergy of RMP.

Catonmarz: Do you think we're going to see a huge jump in Shaman representation in both live and tournaments?

Iown: Most definitely, with a lot of e-celebrity healers learning Shaman, I believe a lot of other healers will jump on the bandwagon once they start pumping out movies like a lot of Druids did pre-wotlk. Shamans will definitely have a higher representation in live and tournaments than they are currently right now.

Catonmarz: Do you think the changes to mana drains and burns is going to have a negative effect on all priest comps?

Iown: They are actually hurting one of the "core" offensive abilities that Priests had in all brackets. As we don't have the numbers on what percentages they are changing to it is hard to predict whether it will be an overall nerf or just against hybrids. One thing is for sure, it will be a direct nerf towards fighting against hybrids like Feral Druids, Ret Pallies, and Enh Shamans. Although I really don't know how big the change will be since they all gained abilities to regen mana/reduce mana costs. It might end up being that Manaburn will be useless against hybrids.

Catonmarz: Do you think healers have been over simplified in Wrath with a lot of powerful, quick healing skills like Riptide, wild growth, the new 6 second Holy Shock, and the new CoH or do you think they were needed changes?

Iown: I honestly thought they were needed changes. Anyone who has played a Shaman or Paladin knows their biggest weakness, which is susceptibility to lock outs. It was actually what astrayed me from rolling one until recently because I didn't want my team to die depending on whether I could succesfully fake cast enough or not. Besides that, I really think Blizzard is leaning towards homogenizing healers to an extent.

Catonmarz: Would you say healers have a bright future in Wrath or do you see a general downward trend based on the current burst abilities of most DPS classes?

Iown: I think a lot of healers are feeling out of place right now due to the huge amount of burst that a lot of classes have. Once everyone has reached max equipment I think a lot of the burst that we are seeing now will go down. However I think that healing will have a downward trend and more focus will go towards on control as Blizzard implements more skills/abilities.

Catonmarz: Alright. And now the question everyone has been waiting for. Are Asians naturally better healers?

Iown: I really don't think that Asians are "naturally" better healers or players for that matter. I think Asians just have more of a tendency to play video games than say other ethnicities since we are a lot of the times peer pressured into the stereotype. However, I do believe that Asians love to compete which usually leads to them working harder at a subject. (Or we are just mentally scarred from our parents beating us too much and brainwashed into thinking that we either become the best or were **** otherwise)

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Judging from the answers given, I personally still put all my money on priests. Maybe I'm just stubborn and stuck in my ways, but when everyone and their MOM is a Retadin or a DK, I'd rather have someone who can dispell both diseases AND Bubbles.

Gamers Representin'

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:12:10 -0500

Today's blog is going to be a brief anecdote about a fun little exchange I had with one of the future Hilary Clintons of the world. Everyone has probably run into this person at one time or another, but majoring in journalism/advertising I tend to see these situations lot. Video games get brought up in the class and all of a sudden half of the class pretends to be insulted by them. Whether it's because they're "just for kids", they're cop killing simulators, or because "they turn women into objects" you're going to hear some bull**** prattle from some crack pot who has never played a game. Being that I am one of the few people representing gaming in these classes, I always find a need to put these people in their place.

Now you can pretty much assume a few things about these people off the bat:

1. Their parents never let them play games because Mario was the Red Apple of temptation and Luigi was the Snake that draws you in! (Protect your children today! Buy a brain.)

2.Â They are female. Sorry gals, but pretty much every guy is at the very least OK with video games. Even the black 6 foot football player in my hall owns a PS2 and plays Madden. Guys love video games.

3. They have done absolutely no research and are walking into your territory.

Under this assumption I entered a wonderful debate of objectification of women in gaming. What most of these people don't seem to realize is that women typically get the same amount of respect they demand. If women act like tools in the media, end up with rich old guys, and screw with men a lot, yes they will be portrayed as such. Since this is the prevolent showing of women in media, it is natural that it made it into video games.

We were discussing an advertisement that was put out for Hitman II that showed a very curvy woman on silk sheets showing most her body, except she had a bullet between her eyes.Â Apparently it's OK that she was dead though in advertisements though because the main topic became "WHY IS THAT WOMAN NAKED?"! Not why is she dead. Why is she naked? No. I'm not joking.

Ignoring how ******* stupid that is in the first place, I tried to point out that every marketing tactic in history is geared towards sexuality because people pay more attention to this. She didn't have any of that though, she insisted that VIDYA GAMES encourage objectification of women more than any other medium. I really only had one answer to that one:

"Porn."

While I'd hate to talk my blackness on you, go out and represent gamers(Yo). Make sure these people realize that Video Games are the least of their ******* worries. Every one of them you convince to shut up now is 3 you've convinced to shut up later because TRUST ME these people are the breeders. Give something back to the gaming community. Or hell, just shoot them.

The Design of PvP Leveling

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:57:57 -0500

Blizzard seems to be tossing around the idea of leveling by PvP, but like most games, I fear that they'll probably go about it wrong. To keep up consistent PvP leveling, there needs to be a multitude of quests much in the way there are with dailies. The achievement system for PvP already seemed to have implemented this kind of system, but it only rewards achievement points, which is rather dissapointing.

For example, imagine that each of the PvP achievements, and quests like them, each rewarded varying experience based on the difficulty. Wrecking Ball for example that is getting 20 killing blows with 0 deaths could be worth something like a standard Wrath quest and be redoable in each BG. Things like The Grim Reaper which is 30 honorable kills and a lot more healer friendly could also be introduced. Generally, almost the same system as achievements could be used for this, but simply make them repeatable and worth experience.

On top of these, you could always put in objective based achievements to encourage BG's to be a lot more than just a mindless slaughterfest. Give encouragement to actually PROTECT the flag carrier rather than run around trying to kill randoms in the middle of WSG. The rewards on these quests, such as capturing 3 bases, would be perfect to chain with other kill related quests and encourage a general greater teammwork and a better leveling experience than just grinding BG's all day.

Another idea that I'd love to see implemented is selectable PvP dailies. Instead of just saying "do EOTS for this much gold and this much exp" let people do every single BG in such a manner and select which they're going to do. I know I enjoy WSG 10x more than I'll ever enjoy AV simply because the game mechanics of CTF are more fun. If Blizzard were to also add something like "streak"Â bonuses such as winning a BG several times in a row = more gold and EXP it may even begin to rival questing in leveling potential.

Right now, Blizzard is at a turning point where it can force all of it users to level in the same manner as they always have, for longer periods of time, or change their approach. I don't deny that questing probably SHOULD be an overall better way to level simply because it introduces the lore, you get to run around and see the world, and blah blah blah, but frankly, it gets old. I have 3 level 70 characters and the last thing I want to do is raise all 3 to 80 by doing the same quests that require me to do something I hate. I enjoy PvP and I'd love to see Blizzard actually get PvP leveling right.

Best PvP Music Artists

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:39:02 -0500

I did a series of articles similar to this a while back, but with a lot of new videos with decent music, I've come back to revisiting the idea of PvP music. I'll be the first to admit watching PvP vids and hearing a particular good song has added to my iTunes library in the past. Even since the time of Pre-BC there were videos that stuck out with music that stuck out even more. It even went as far in some cases as introducing me to some artists I had never even heard of before because unfortunately metal and techno are extremely limited in Southern Colorado.

Without further ado I present the current best artists used in PvP videos.

The Crystal Method
Reference point: Tosan 2 and Tosan Twos (http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=5441

Actually going BEYOND the stereotypical used in Hydra 6 by Subkulture feat. Clayton from Celldweller. This was an excellent mix of Goth Metal and electronica and the move on a whole was a great success. Both my mage and I agreed after watching it though, if you didn't watch it for the movie you could certainly watch it for this song alone. Probably one of the single best songs I've heard in my life and surely one of the best movies to put it in. Hydra 6 actually managed to make Priest PvP interesting even though I had never played one.
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Anywho, that ends the list of my personal favorite artists from PvP videos. While it's extremely abridged because there are countless talented artists in PvP videos, these were the ones that stuck out most. Again, it's based heavily on music taste so you don't see a lot of rap up there, not that rap is used that often anyway. I'll probably continue article series such as these in the future simply because they're the most fun to write and music is such a huge part of gaming. The two are inseperable pieces of a puzzle when you look at entertainment. For the most part you'll find the media you consume in your life (if you use this site, that is) will consist mostly of these two things, so it's worth looking into. I'm up for other artiest suggestions if anyone has some links!

The Cycle of WoW

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:39:54 -0500

Lately a lot of people have tended to see Blizzard as a sort of balancing machine that doesn't work. Given, Blizzard does have an odd tendency to completely blow buffs and nerfs completely out of proportion, but as a whole, Blizzard is probably one of the most predictable balancing machines in history. A lot of people were complaining about the vast nerfs to Warlocks, and they were vast, but in a mere 3 weeks after 3.0 hit Blizzard has put them on a pedestle even higher than they were before. With a 20% Soul Link at 11 points, Fel Hunters gaining a vast amount of spell resistance back, and the BEAUTIFUL new Improved Fel Hunter Talent that essentially allows you to have a ****ton mana through Dark Pact without ever life tapping, Warlocks really ain't looking half bad at 80(http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Idx0rurAkwVR0stbxczsM). This is the cycle of Blizzard though, you can pretty much asssume that no matter HOW MUCH your class gets nerfed, it will have its comeback.

Having played a rogue for about four years now, I've seen the very few lows the class has had (see S1) and for the most part I've stuck with it based on the assumption that Blizz won't keep you down forever. Everyone spent a week or two *****ing about ret, but deep down inside everyone knows that almost EVERY class got blown out of proportion. Ret had their time, and although they're currently *****ing about their new nerfs (They now do 11.5k damage in one stun with a 1k Dot instead of 13k damage in one stun) generally they've been fixed. Warriors, while not the best class right now, will always remain a top class simply because of their synergy with so many other good classes. Look at Serennia's new video (http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Serennia-3-PvP-Trinket-Tracker)
and tell me what comp he's playing in 3's. Why yes, that would be Warrior/Shaman/Paladin, thanks for asking! Anyone who played S1 and S2 would know that different variants of that comp have been thrown around forever simply because of the large amount of synergy those 3 classes share. Sure, it's with a retadin and a shaman healer now, but the general abilities of each class remain the same. The warrior makes up for the lack of a healing debuff, the Shaman provides the totems and the offensive dispells, and the pally provides the defensive dispells and the large burst damage.

You'll more than likely see the same cycle of RMP as well because that's simply how Blizzard worked. Most people would've ranked Priest's as the lowest current healing class yet my priest today was ranting about something like a vastly reduced CD on CoH. Again, Blizzard is turning the cogs to continue fitting classes into their comfortable niches. It's possible that Shamans could become the next healer in RMP (and my healer has rolled one, insisting on this fact) but priests have so many virtues in that particular comp that I'm nonetheless skeptical.

While Death Knights will have to make out their own niches, it seems very likely that come the expansion when Arc mages are doing 4k Ar bars on a 20k HP bar, rogues are mutilating for 6k on crits for 60 energy, and Retadins are whacking you for 8k in a stun, everything will pretty much be the same as 2.0. At the end of the day, all Blizzard is trying to do is please its customers, and half of the time this involves giving them what they're used to.

The Warrior Conundrum

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:44:42 -0500

Being one of the rogues who originally saw the raw power of warrior's S1, I rolled one shortly after my rogue first hit 70. I've never enjoyed the warrior class as much as the rogue class because half the time you really were playing the roulette wheel of mace stun and imp hamstring when you were going for a kill, so I ultimately dropped it. I've been playing the class intermittently for about 2-3 years now and in between playing arena I've begun to pick him up again in light of the recent claims of warriors being a lot less powerful and procc dependent.

First of all, my warrior is in all arena gear but has no real enchanting or gemming so this isn't a "fully geared" warrior perspective, but it's just based on my personal experience with the class. My specc (and the assumptions for this article) are as following: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0IdfIzxbMocfRthx

Now all I've been playing is Arms primarily because I don't think Fury really has any future. With the amount of resilience it requires to stay alive as a warrior right now, you simply cannot gem for the amount of hit rating it would require to keep up damage as solidly as a rogue can. No improved intercept and no second wind are also two quick stakes to the heart which basically put Fury on my "Not now, not ever" list. Besides, a VAST majority of a warriors power comes from his ability to use their two hander's for instant burst attacks which are lethal when chained together. So let's look at the arms tree.

Bladestorm in itself is a bit of an issue. It's a wonderful skill overall when used properly and the damage (if you can ever pull it OFF) of Ruthlessness + Trinket + Sweeping Strikes + Bladestorm can easily put someone out of business in seconds. It's extremely situational, much like Shadow Dance though, and it's very evadable overall. It seems to depend largely on a set-up by your team for you to be able to use it. This would naturally lead to more team work in arena with great rewards if it's pulled off, but the fact that it is SO situational makes it a weak 51 pointer.

This in itself is nothing new, since TBC warriors have never had a very strong "end" tree, whether it be the perpetually bugged Endless Rage or the questionable Bladestorm. The real issue now stems from the lack of a real controlling aspect. Mace stun for warriors, while completely bull****, was essentially their "Kill move". Much like KS for a rogue, it opens a window of opportunity to drop some much needed uninterrupted damage, and without even having piercing howl, it is extremely difficult to find these windows now. I would seriously suggest blizz take a whole new route on warrior maces and allow to to have an activated 5 talent point ability that stuns for .6 seconds every 1 point put into the talent. Give it a 30 second CD and let them actually CONTROL the stuns.

The other main problem tends to come from how much one needs to "stance dance" to really use all of a warrior's abilities to their fullest now. If I want to rend, I need to be in arms and then I have to hope for an overpower procc. If I want to use revenge after I parry for huge damage, I have to be in defensive stance. If I want to use my whirlwind attack and gain my highest crit rateÂ I have to be in berserker. Warrior's were given a HUGE amount of instant attacks and no way to possibly use all of them at once. Making Ruthlessness, Retaliation, and Shield Wall 5 minute CD's and usable in arena was a step forward, but having to stance dance constantly and lose all the juicy rage you gain from endless rage really nullifies a lot of the current benefits. Especially when you get a beautiful instant execute procc (skillful).

It can be said that in a lot of ways these changes have seriously upped the skill cap on the warrior class, separating the boys and the men, but it has also made the class itself almost impossible use to the full potential. My personal suggestion, although I hate to admit it, would be to drop the warrior GCD down to 1 second and drop the damage on some of their instant abilities. I believe warriors should be able to chain their instants to maximize damage without having to wait longer amounts of time, with slightly smaller damage coefficients. It'll reduce what's commonly refered to as "crit luck" when a warrior crits you 5 times in a row and you die instantly, and it'll give warriors a chance to use all of their abilities instead of just depending on blind hope for kills.

The real warrior conundrum is how it's possible to increase skill cap, without just making them insanely overpowered. It's pretty clear that by S4 warriors were dominant in almost every way to rogues (see WLD Tourny's) and this isn't the aim of anyone, so force them on some level to work with new skills. I believe the warrior class will probably scale much better with the level 80 HP boost, as they always do, and the resilience will be a nice addition so I seriously doubt past level 70 that survivability will be an issue. Really, it's just a matter of balancing damage and control.

Follow-up: Shadow Dance...Burfed?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:37:56 -0500

As usual blizz goes about making "surgical changes" with a chain saw and I personally cannot WAIT to see the look on the retadin's collective face. This is why I kept my mage partner around and didn't switch to my Ret. I HAS A FEELING! Anywho, ignoring that part, let's look at the changes to Shadow Dance and how they will indirectly and directly effect the specc.

We'll start on a positive note with:

Glyph of Shiv: Replaced with Glyph of Vigor, which increases maximum energy by an additional 10 for those with the Vigor talent.

Now this is ******* amazing. If the 4 piece PvP gear buff stays the same this means that at level 71 every Shadow Dance rogue who's going to be an idiot and level by PvPing half the time (IE, Me) will have 130 energy to drop in an opener. This pretty much screams of insta-death, but in fact it gets better!

Shadow Dance: The cooldowns on Sap, Garrotte, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pickpocket, and Disarm Trap are no longer increased while this ability is activated.

Well that's fantastic. That means that if you're really looking to kill someone you can now drop 3 ambushes in a row with a full bar of 130 energy. It also means, if you're actually fighting someone with a dome piece, you can CS, Garrote, Ambush, KS, and do almost everything else with impugnity with 130 energy to drop someone. If you catch anyone in a KS with no trinket up, it's pretty much over.

Unfortunately, Blizzard being Blizzard likes to give with one hand and uppercut you in the face with the other.

Resilience: The damage reduction component of resilience has been increased from 2 times the critical strike chance reduction to 2.2 times the critical strike chance reduction. In addition, the maximum damage reduction to a critical strike from resilience has been increased from 30% to 33%.

Shadow Dance dags is by far the most critical dependent specc in the game and even with 85% crit on ambushes (with 0 resil) it blows my mind how often I don't crit. 3 non-crit ambushes in a game pretty much makes your job 3x harder. I see that we were given a level 80 ambush skill, with the added damage 907 up from 508, so I suppose it may not be as much of an issue, but resil hurts this specc the most. Your backstabs only get +30% crit and with base crit going down to 20% when you hit 80 in Wrath, this could throw one hell of a wrench into the cogs. Reducing not only the chance to crit, but the damage taken, feels like blizz was trying to prove that they were out to nerf retadins and mages, but really just proved that they're tools. Fix the classes, not resilience. Resilience was never broken.

On a side note, it seems Blizzard also tried to sneak a fix Killing Spree by making you "unstoppable" during it's duration. So basically, it's a really ****ty bladestorm. It seems to me if they're serious about making this a viable skill (and they're not) they'll give it the same effect as blade storm. It should you hit all five targets within 10 yards with both weapons every .5. That sounds like a decent 51 pnt skill though and we can't have more than 1 of those at any given time.

Shadow Dance And Frost: The Pain Train

no.spam@gameriot.com (Catonmars) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:49:02 -0500

Having been able to play Shadow Dance daggers (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fbxcZZebf0hGdbhzNfot) [On a side note: I choose Waylay over 5 minute Prep because fights NEVER last that long and a 70% undispellable slow with a 20% atk speed debuff is very very nice] solidly for a while now I can honestly say I think this specc has the potential to be one of the best rogue speccs in the game. Mutilate will ALWAYS have the sustained damage award and is more than likely your best choice for any given team that is not a huge burst team. I would say that I think Shadow Dance will generally work best with a mage/retadin though.Â Generally, Shadow Dance dags is a solo survivability specc with an affinity for restealthing and dropping huge upfront burst damage before focusing on controlling until a prime Shadow Dance moment. The best example I can give of this is my experience with my Frost Mage in 2's so far.

First of all, playing with a Frost Mage has pretty much made using cheap shot taboo as it will vastly reduce their superior freeze/stun. As long as you have the dispeller controlled their Deep Freeze should be your choice of stun 100% of the time. Even with a dispeller up with the 2/0/59 Frost specc it is extremely unlikely deep freeze will be dispelled through 30% resist and multiple stacks of Winter's Chill. That being said, a combination that has made arena ridiculously easy for us goes as following:

Sap (Target X) > Premed Ambush (Target Y) > KS

Now by this time the mage has his pet out and this leads to the pain train. You target has 2 choices right now, he can choose to trinket the 6 second KS or die in it. More than likely he will trinket and this is the cue for your mage to Freeze > Deep Freeze him into another 5 second stun. THIS ALONE is why I find frost to be better than arcane right now. Being able to force someone to choose between a 6 second stun or a 5 second stun/freeze is absolutely game breaking. Odds are at this point you're OK to pop Shadow Dance and end the game before Target X leaves sap. On the offhand chance target X DOES trinket sap, which is pretty much unheard of, he gets to eat at the very least a blind and another sheep. It's a real catch-22 for the other team.

Naturally the above situation is purely theoretical, arena NEVER works out that well, but as a general example it serves to show situations in which you can essentially pigeon-hole the other team into an instant death situation. A lot of people are concerned with not being able to pop a Shadow Dance and make it work, but fact of the matter is all you need is 1 stun to infinitely chain it. You can use CS if your mage can't freeze and have a 4 second stun. You can chain garrote for the silences. You have ambush and any finisher you please for damage, so generally I fail to see a problem with Shadow Dance as of now.

The whole restealthing aspect is relatively easy as well, considering that a mage has a huge amount of control over the other team and you have 2 vanishes (or 3 if you play a NE like me). Every time you restealth you can almost promise yourself an instant 7k burst upon re-entering the fight and in many of our RMP fights in 3's I simply wait until my mage can deep freezes someone and while the person fails to trinket since I haven't entered the fight yet, we drop upwards of 14k damage in 4 seconds. Saying that mutilate is our only likely specc right now seems like nothing short of a joke.

Whether or not this specc will scale in Wrath remains to be seen, but with the addition of Vigor and Lethality it seems like rogue openers are only going to become more potent. After the addition of vile poisons, I can honestly see Shadow Dance dags becoming better than Mut based on survivability, mobility, and a relatively high damage output. That and Honor Among Thieves (when it crits, or anyone in your party does) allows for rogues to chain deadly throw just like in the old days. Good times. Good times.