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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Cataclysm Beta

I was finally able to get the Cataclysm Beta installed, I ended up having to completely reinstall World of Warcraft, since the Cataclysm Beta requires the retail version to be installed, and part of mine install was corrupt. Then after spending hours wondering why I couldn't log in, I realized the beta invite was for my second WoW account, which is on the same Battle.net account. XD

I got my 85 premade rogue set up for a tanking run. The dodge chance ended up being much lower than my current rogue, around 20% compared to 48%, but with 85K health Recuperate was ticking for 5.1K health every 3 seconds. So now I can tank forever as long as I don't take more than around 1.7K dps. Unfortunately when I went to do runs through Lich King instances, they were all unavailable. :(

So I switched over to my current rogue, and set out to explore the new content. There was a starting quest that I received that directed me to the new port at the northern end of the east coast of Durotar. The boat there took me to Vashj'ir, where I got pulled under by some sea creature, and began questing underwater. The first thing you get is the ability to breathe underwater, with an underwater mount coming soon after.

 Unfortunately I haven't spent much time leveling, so I haven't gotten past the first area. Hopefully I will be running some instance soon, on one of these characters.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Patch 4.0.1 and Cataclysm

Patch 4.0.1 is out on the Public Test Realm, so I copied some of my characters over to try out the new changes. Unfortunately I encountered a lot of difficulty testing certain things the way I wanted to, due to lack of availability for glyphs and gems. Regardless, I filled out both my specs, got abilities from the rogue trainer, and set out to explore.

Now to specify, patch 4.0.1 on the PTR is NOT Cataclysm, it is simply all the changes that will come out to prepare for the new content in Cataclysm. So unfortunately theres not really anything to explore, but I did do some experimenting with the new talent setup. I tried a Assassination spec for my first set, and for my second one I did a Combat TANKING spec.

Assassination plays out pretty much the same. Due to glyph limitations I couldn't really test the effectiveness of integrating Backstab or Rupture into the rotation, also at the moment haste still affects attack speed and not energy regeneration, so you won't need to rotate as many attacks as when haste does affect regen. Vendetta replaces Hunger for Blood as a shorter damage buff that won't stay up all the time, but it doesn't require a bleed effect on the target. Finally, with Cut to the Chase and Master Poisoner remaining functionally the same, Assassination plays out almost the same as it does on Live servers.

I encountered a couple difficulties with my foray into "Rogue Combat Tanking". First, since the level cap is still 80, I can't get the talent Quickening, which would dramatically increase the effectiveness of Recuperate. Second thing is the lack of availability of gems, since Agility seems to no longer increase armor, at least on rogues, it may be better to stack all stamina gems, since the amount Recuperate heals is based on maximum health. Despite these limitations, it wasn't all that. I was able to solo through Utgarde Keep on normal without dying, and a good bit into Azjol-Nerub before I was unable to get past a certain trash pull. All in all, not a bad experience, I could literally tank forever assuming I take less than 600 dps.

Unfortunately I still haven't been able to install the Cataclysm beta. For some reason the installer keeps crashing at the same point. Its a model for some tree or somewhat in Terrokar, it really annoys me. I should have another post in the next few days assuming I can get Cataclysm installed.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

100 Followers!

Thank you all for showing your support of my blog, I appreciate your enthusiasm and helpful comments. Hope to have a Cataclysm post soon!

Friday, September 17, 2010

Stat Changes

There will be a lot of changes to item stats in Cataclysm, enough so that most of the existing gear will be changed. While I may not like everything they decided to change, it does make for a much simpler system, and there are changes that are beneficial to rogues. The list of Cataclysm changes relevant to rogues is as follows.


Attack Power will no longer be on gear, Agility will now grant 2 AP per point.
Armor Penetration will no longer be on gear, but will still be provided by some talents.
Weapon Skill will be removed completely.
Haste will no longer increase attack speed, instead it will increase energy regeneration rate.
Mastery Rating will increase the Mastery bonus from your Talent Spec.

So what do these changes mean for rogues? As far as gear goes, it means items with agility on it will be much less attractive to plate wearers, since it will only give them 1 AP per point. Also our crit chance may become naturally higher since armor pen is all being turned into haste or crit.

Haste will allow us to "do stuff more often", essentially paving the way for much more complicated skill rotations. A typical assassination rotation will now likely consist of Mutilate, Rupture, Backstab (at least when the boss is under 35% health due to Murderous Intent), Envenom, and Vendetta. Slice and Dice will be kept up by Cut to the Chase just like always, and Ambush may become the opener of choice since 2 points into Improved Ambush is essentially forced for Assassination spec.

It is yet unseen how much Mastery Rating will come into play. I'm sure Blizzard will try to balance it so we will want it. At the current time I believe the number is 179 Mastery Rating equaling one point of Mastery. The Assassination Mastery is Potent Poisons.

Overall the change in Cataclysm that will create the biggest difference in the way a rogue is played is Haste, and this is likely to be true for all classes. Hopefully Blizzard will have everything balanced nicely by the time Cataclysm is released, but it is Blizzard, and they are never prepared :D

I got most of the information from this post from WoWHead and the WoW Forums

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Rogue DPS

There are a few things that I would like to say about the rogue's dps. First thing is, we're the best, thats how it should be. Why do I believe that? The rogue is the weakest melee class, in terms of getting hit, yes, clothies are weaker in this sense, but they don't have to stand right next to the boss to dps. Yes, kitty druids are also in the same boat, but they share a tree with a tanking spec, and besides, I hate druids. 


Next thing is dps/GS, this tends to be higher for rogues than other classes who are gearing up, since most "rogue" gear is 100% spec gs, while this is less true for other class. So unless a rogue is using PVP gear, or some caster druid gear, they will most likely be at 100% spec gs. 


The last thing I would like to talk about to DPS Optimization. This is done by using the optimal enchants/gems and making sure none of your stats are capped out, except hit of course, which is best to be over the special hit cap, the poison hit cap, but under the white hit cap. I have used a variety of different methods to calculate this, the easiest one by far being AthRogueCalc, since its an ingame addon. Like spreadsheets found on Elitist Jerks, and the java app iDPS, which are both also very useful tools, AthRogueCalc uses calculation to determine your optimal setup, taking into account just about everything. Another very useful tool is SimulationCraft, which unlike the others, uses simulation instead of calculation to determine your DPS. You know your DPS is optimal when you come to the same conclusion by using both methods, calculation and simulation. 


A few specific DPS optimization tips. If you are combat, stack armor penetration ALWAYS. If you are assassination, stack AP or Haste, they both are very close, but the difference is very rarely more than a few points of dps either way. Also for PVP, stack armor pen. Just keep in mind when Cataclysm comes out that this will all change.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Cataclysm Talents

There are a lot of changes coming to talents in Cataclysm. For Cataclysm, Blizzard has decided to completely redesign the talent trees, the way talents are gained and spent changes quite dramatically. First off, they cut the talent trees in half, but then again, they cut the talent points in half too, ending up with 41 at level 85, so its not too big of a deal, 76 talent points would have been an awful lot of talent points anyway.

Assassination spec hasn't much, Hunger for Blood has been replaced by Vendetta, a 30 sec 20% damage buff with a 2 min cooldown, and I think they're trying to force both Rupture and Backstab into the rotation.

Subtlety seem to remain mainly a PVP spec, with a bit of DPS splashed in, all in all about as useless as ever :'( .

Combat, however, has a lot of interesting changes, and with the addition of Combat Readiness, the combat tree is putting rogues well on the way to tanking. With the talents Reinforced Leather, and Improved Recuperate, rogues get a huge increase in damage reduction, as well as being able to self heal 5% of max health every 3 seconds, and 6% less damage taken, for 30 seconds, for only 5 combo points. All these things, along with the rogues evasion ability, and inherent high dodge, are really making rogues look more and more like tanks.

  Now you might think I'm joking, but in deep in ever rogues heart, there lies the desire to take aggro and completely destroy everything. Seriously, this is every rogues dream, to tank, as a rogue. This is the reason there was a dodge debuff in SWP and now in ICC, because a rogue wanted to tank so bad, they became the perfect tank. Blizz couldn't handle that. So I believe this is an effort to satiate every rogues desire to survive while tanking aggro, maybe they just don't want ungeared rogues to die every pull in every instance. All I know is, we need another class to step up and be able to tank, and who better than the rogue ;)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Welcome to Roguez4Life

Welcome to Rogues for Life, a blog about the World of Warcraft Rogue class. I started playing a Rogue at the game's release, and its been my favorite class ever since. I have spent a lot of time playing a rogue and experimenting with the mechanics of the class. Having said that, this blog will mainly be mainly about new changes coming to the rogue class, and how those changes will affect how the class is played. There will be a lot of changes with the new Cataclysm expansion coming out soon, so stay tuned to see what important changes I will discuss.