Raiding after the patch

Thursday is one of our normal raiding nights and true to form we tried to run one, however this time it was a chance to hit up some of the old world instances as an easier way to check everything was still working and get used to some new 51pt talents. Once the servers came back from an unscheduled shutdown we went in and downed Onyxia with no major hassles, though being able to spam 'Moar dots!!!' through raid warnings was great fun.

Once we'd turned the head in to Thrall, confusing a few people in and around Org we went off to kill some trolls in Zul'Gurub. Again this didn't cause any major hassles and soon we'd killed off all the Avatars and Hakkar himself. No mounts dropped sadly but we did get the achievements which does generate a large amount of spam when 15 people all get it at the same time.

Having completed the raids I have a few thoughts on how raiding is going to work (for us) until the expansion hits.

Raid addons
CT_RaidAssist is dead, it has ceased to be, and seriously screws up your chat window if you try to load it. In it's place we're running with oRA2 which provides all the same functionality and a little bit more. Suddenly raid votes and ready checks bring up a window showing who's voting which way.

Omen3 is the latest update to our favorite threat meter which now uses the built in threat information from the game. What this means is that the threat information is more reliable and should be able to cope with mechanics like threat resets, if we do something like the Nightbane fight this can be put to the test. There are also more information available during fights, such as when you're high on threat, losing threat, the mob is attacking you and if a mob changes target. Extra information is always good regardless of whether you're tanking, healing or dpsing.

Personal Addons
Most things seem to be working, and I'm taking the opportunity to have a clear out of addons which I no longer use or don't really need. Hopefully this will speed up some loading times and allow me to get the the occasionally mentioned, often done UI post.

The key thing at the moment is to get a working HUD up and running, ArcHUD2 is getting there but the latest build didn't show combo points properly which is a bit of an issue for a rogue. I'm currently playing with DHUD which shows everything I need but is slighlty different and not completely bug free.

Combat style
The standard 1pt S'n'D/5pt Rupture holds, but with a few new twists to the tale. My spellbook is currently inscribed with a Glyph of Sinister Strike and Glyph of Slice and Dice. The extra combo point generation and duration on Slice and Dice meant that I could refresh Rupture twice before Slice and Dice ran out. Not that I'd suggest trying this all the time but it's certainly worth considering based on the type of fight you find yourself in.

Now that a poisoned mob take a flat damage increase from everybody it's more of a requirement that there's at least one Deadly Poison debuff is on the mob. This means keeping an eye on the poison stack and using Shiv when appropriate to ensure it doesn't drop off.

Killing Spree is a lot of fun, as an AoE ability it doesn't really work on more than 2 or 3 targets, and jumping about all over the place can be a little disorientating. However on boss fights it's a good burst damage move and allows for energy regen whilst it's happening. Probably best that you do this right after a Rupture application to try and avoid any buffs dropping off.

Other than that everything seems to be carrying on ok, though with raid stacking buffs the huge number available now means you've gotta check very carefully to make sure you get the ones you want need.