While Serennia-sama became a notable figure in the World of Warcraft community by getting an Ashkandi (when it was the symbol of status for every warrior) on his hunter, he wasn't the biggest loot ***** by any stretch of the imagination.  Over the past a few years we have seen hunters/paladins with thunderfury's.  During the TBC beta I had the misfortune of fighting a BM hunter with that sword, using snake traps he simply outmuscled warriors/rogues.  At level 67 vs 67, he was capable of killing me in 10 seconds with that sword, not fun.  Protection paladin with old school reckoning and thunderfury was also almost impossible for rogues.

Still, nothing beats rogues with legendary bows!  Laynd of Mannoroth and Analogkid of Area 52 got Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury from Kil'jaeden and you bet the hunters in their guild are not happy.  Even the hokage of the rogue community, someone as biased as you will ever be when it comes to the benefit of our class, has to shake his head in disgust.  It is a true disgrace to our village and it is incredible that a guild can kill Kil'jaeden and still have a reward system this flawed.

Mutilate vs Shadowstep Toe-to-Toe

Got this note from Ghettible from Sen'jin about his experience toe-to-toeing one of the best mutilate rogues in the U.S. 

I played Rngrofl/Luen last night with my shadowstep rogue/dreamstate druid two's.  I started on the druid, rngrofl started on me, so I switched to him.  My druid had been playing the druid class for his second day now and we were sitting in the 2100 bracket.  After about 50 minutes of the rogues hitting each other and neither druid dipping below 70% mana, we called it quits and let them have their 7 points.  This point of this pm?  I don't believe mutilate to be any better than shs.  Throughout the entire 50 minutes i could count the number of mutilates he landed on me while i wasn't in a kidney on one hand.  There must have been 20 forced kidney attempts from the front that he tried while i had ghostly up.  When he finally does land a gouge->ks, my druid is always there for a full cyclone.  I, at this time, would not say mut is better than shs for toe to toeing other rogues. - Ghettible

This is pretty much what I experienced toe-to-toeing shadowstep rogues as mutilate.  Granted Rngrofl does not have master poisoner and is combat mutilate with very little poison talents, but with subtlety mutilate your sustained damage is far behind shadowstep rogue's.  Landing kidney shot's and stacking poison on a rogue with 45% dodge/parry with mongoose, 60% with ghostly, not to mention two evasions is easier than done.  Abolish poison goes both ways.  There is also cloak to clean up the excessive poison stacks.

And in the end, a full energy kidney shot from a shadowstep rogue with a little druid assist DPS can drop me from 70% easily.  While bursts on shadowstep rogues that are not cheating too hard in resilience, always meets cheat death.  I am not convinced at equal skill/gear, mutilate can outmuscle shadowstep toe-to-toe.

What about rogue/priest?  Double Vengeful Gladiator Xpoze, who just picked up his warglaive, teamed up with Merciless Gladiator Wojo playing a priest, and took 1st spot in our BG quickly.  You can discredit them with the warglaive factor all you want, but their performance with standard PVP gear shouldn't be behind PVP gear mutilate rogue/priest's either.

Shadowstep may be boring, but it holds 95% of the market share for a reason.  It is just so much more flexible when it comes to target switches.  Being able to guard mages/druids also help a lot depend on the match-up.

Armor Penetration Change In WOTLK

Armor penetration is being changed to armor penetration rating in WOTLK.  The character tooltip is "Increases Armor Pen by X.XX%" although I don't believe they have implemented the correct formula yet, so it is always 0.00% at the moment.

This is a great, great balance change.  Corrently armor penetration is incredible vs clothes, worthless vs heavy armor.  With the same amount of armor penetration stats, warriors get a much bigger damage boost on a rogue, than the rogue hitting him back.  By changing armor penetration into percentage will allow both classes to benefit from the stat equally.

I just hope expose armor and serrated blade will change accordingly as well.  5 point for 20% armor reduction, improved for 30%?  Serrated blade for 3% armor reduction?  One can only hope.

New Logo, Thanks Jasmineleaf

We received a ton of great logos, but Estel really liked the design done by Jasmineleaf.  She has much better tastes than me, so I let her make all the artistic decisions.  I think out of all the logos submitted, Jasmineleaf's work received most praises as well from Gameriot users, so it was an easy choice.

China 6 and US 2 in gold medal standings!  I know traditionally China held a higher gold medal count until the second week of the tournament, when track and field becomes a gold mine for the Americans.  Liu Xiang is having way too much pressure and coming back from an injury, it will be a miracle if he can repeat.  I guess we will find out.