Can we get some adds with a little less whirlwind

Rounding up and AoEing trash in instances and raids isn't a massive problem for rogues these days, no cooldown on Fan of Knives and a couple of slow daggers means we can easily keep up with mages and warlocks.

However there is a certain ability that warriors are fond of in PvP that several trash mobs are also keen to use. I'm talking about Whirlwind, something that will kill me 9 times out of 10, and quite frankly it's getting on my nerves.

I'm not talking about remove the ability, that would be unnecessary, but can we stop giving it to trash mobs that the tank expects to round up and be burned down at the same time.

Reasons are this:

1. When doing single target dps, Quartz will show me when whirlwind is being cast and I can run the heck away.
2. When mobs are being tanked away from each other, a mob spinning around is a good indication that it's performing whirlwind.

Problem when 4 mobs are grouped up on top of each other, and the marked skull doesn't whirlwind chances are the rogue is going to die.

This came to light the other night when we were attacking the military wing in Naxx. Our melee DPS included me and 2 death knights and unless I got lucky with evasion or the healers were on the ball I died on nearly every trash pull compared to the plate wearers who laughed it off. This slows the raid while I'm rezzed and buff up and quite frankly annoys the bejesus out of me. In the end I resorted to try and train ranged skills and this isn't fun.

I mention this now because of the Razorscale fight in Ulduar which has Iron Dwarf adds during the air phase and the highest priority one to kill does a, guess what, whirlwind attack. At least this one we should be able to run away from, but that still limits dps on a fight that relies on killing things quickly.

This is probably a personal moan, and I expect QQ comments should anyone choose to do so. But when raid trash is designed to be rounded up and killed en mass it seems slightly unfair that classes with low armor that need to stand in the middle (I'm including Arcane mages in this) can be killed very quickly because one guy decides to spin around with his big sword.

Patch 3.1 Fallout

The big patch has landed (and was quickly followed up by a smaller one) which has brought many changes and additions to the game. Here's a quick run down of the major ones that have affected me and my thoughts.

Fishing dailies
Having leveled fishing up to 450 trying to catch the rat and fishing up all the coins in the fountain it's quite nice to have something else to fish for with random rewards. There's only been three of the five quests offered so far but I've received the jeweled fishing pole, the weather beaten fishing hat, a new fishing line and some vendor trash which has netted a tidy sum.

Dual Specs
I've purchased this for Crash so far, which does provide a slightly pricey achievement. I've stuck with an assassination spec for raiding and have a subtlety one for mucking about in PvP and soloing. Personally it's just a nice thing to have, but for classes which can do more than one thing it does add an extra dimension to putting groups together and changing group makeup once you're in the raid.

Assassination Spec
The two big changes I've noticed are the Hunger for Blood change, which is a blessing given how much I hated having to try and remember to refresh the buff within 30seconds. Now once a bleed is there I can put the buff up and given Rupture up almost constantly it's less of a problem to refresh it when I have spare energy. Secondly the changes to poisons to proc based on weapon speed rather than a flat figure means it's possible to use a 1.8 speed dagger in the main hand again rather than trying to find the fastest available, and not necessarily finding them in the raids we're hitting as a guild.

Subtlety Spec
I hadn't played subtlety since TBC when I spec'd for a blast at the battlegrounds to grind honor for the season weapons when they were the best available to the 10 man raider. However now for soloing and hitting battlegrounds or WinterGrasp it feels really good. Premiditation, Ambush, Eviscerate is generally enough to reduce most mobs to tears if not kill them outright.

Ulduar
Our guild is clearing Naxx fairly regularly now and so far we've had one night to have a play around in this new instance. The Flame Leviathan fight is an interesting diversion and we've managed to down Razorscale. However the lack of spawns in the air phase of that fight means I don't think we've done it properly, but at least know what not to stand in and the tanks know what to do during the landed phase. This appears to be a tougher raid than Naxx which means hopefully the challenge will remain for longer. Plus there's always the hard modes to beat once we've killed the bosses on normal.

Argent Tournament
I loved the Isle of Quel'Danas when it opened, especially considering the Blood Elf lore surrounding it, and worked hard to get to exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive in order to purchase the title once our server unlocked phase 4.

The new tournament appears to be more of the same and I'm eagerly working my way through the quests. So far I've managed to become the exalted champion of Silvermoon and am currently working on Thunder Bluff as I need the most rep with them. Once I've become a champion with them I'll move onto the Trolls which should then net me the Ambassador title while I work my way to the Crusader title that I really want for when we face Arthas.

Non-combat Pets
Finally the Horde have a way of getting hold of some pets that were only available to the Alliance. The Westfall chicken is obtained by buying the seed from the farmer in Brill and then spamming a /chicken emote at a nearby chicken until the quest becomes available. The Sprite Darter Hatchling is another kill grind through Feralas. This was a lot quicker and easier than any of the dragon whelps, twenty minutes of running around and the egg dropped.

I'm planning to write some more posts about my experiences on the bosses in the new raid as and when we hit them.

Mistakes Happen

Nobody's perfect!

Right, now that the shock is out of your system let me put some perspective on this possible statement of the bleeding obvious.

Behind every tank, healer and dps character in your raid is a human being hopefully trying their best to complete the encounter, and because they are a human being occasionally they might make the odd mistake or two.

This in itself is not a problem but the key thing is to learn from it. There's nothing more frustrating than wiping on a boss because someone keeps standing in the fire, however this doesn't mean you can call them out on it unless you are 150% certain they are just carrying on with what fails without trying something else.

Conversely if you do make a mistake and realize it, nothing helps appease your raid members than admitting it and apologizing. Trying to make out it's not your fault or it was some random bug can have the complete opposite effect and set up resentment within the raid group, leading to more mistakes and a less pleasant night's raiding all round.

A couple of examples of the positive from our recent raids include:
The MT on Patchwerk successfully picks him up but forgets just how much damage the slime in that room does and proceeds to try and tank whilst standing in it. Within seconds all the melee and the OT are dead but whilst running back the apology allowed us to laugh about it and the next time the boss dies.

Whilst clearing trash I got a bit keen and failed to notice that Tricks of the Trade hadn't been cast on the MT properly. As I opened up with some big damage moves I quickly pulled aggro and died at the hands of the big nasty spider. Whilst the MT was trying to apologize for letting me die (assuming he'd made the mistake) I owned up. While this may have helped my Karma, it also kept confidence high with the tank knowing they had been doing everything right whilst learning the new raid zone.

Don't Panic!

There's another patch on the horizon which does contain some rogue changes. I'm not talking about 3.1 which is so far out there that I'm not going to comment on the changes that have snuck out so far as they'll likely change again (like with patch 3.0).

Patch 3.0.9 is due to hit this week and amongst the changes is a doozy. A 30% drop in mutilate damage against poisoned targets. On it's own this would seem like a horrendous nerf, but whilst Blizzard taketh away, they also giveth. Hunger for Blood is being buffed up to 15% damage increase from 9% and Slice'n'Dice is increasing attack speed by 40% up from 30%.

Now I haven't crunched the numbers so I can't tell you if the damage output from a mutilate rogue such as myself will be the same but I would hope that they would be given I seem to be holding my own damage wise against other dps classes in our raids.

However this could be a buff when we look at the next big raid encounter, Ulduar. The bane of the mutilate rogue has always been the poison immune mob, I'm looking at you here Curator. Now given that the current Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightening instances have contained a light smattering of poison immune mobs it's not a huge leap to assume that there might be some more in the raid instance.

With this change hopefully we won't be at such a disadvantage as our combat and subtlety spec'd brethren. Of course there may still be a lack of damage at which point it might be time to work out a combat daggers spec or try and get hold of some swords and head back to the monotony of combat swords to have as the alternate spec.

What's important when raiding

Now this isn't a post about how tanks should tank, dps stay alive or healers conserve mana. It's about what you personally get from attending raids and down a boss with 9 or 24 other people. I'm not going to come up with a definitive list but would like to outline a few that I've spotted.

For some people it's all about the loot, what epics will the drop and what's the likelihood of winning said drop with the group you are in.

For others it's about the technical aspects of the encounters, learning how a fight works and what each person needs to do in order to get the boss down, but also to ensure the raid members stay alive and are able to get the job done.

There are those who are interested in seeing content, it doesn't matter when, just that it's nice to see the inside of certain instances and to kill the bosses, maybe for lore reasons, maybe just for the ability to say I was there and got the achievement.

Finally there are those that are there to play with friends, have a good laugh and enjoy an evenings gaming.

I would expect that the majority of players are a combination of all 4, with leanings towards a particular one.

However there are those that will have a very strong leaning towards a particular trait. While this isn't a problem in the general sense, these people will have to accept that not everyone feels the same way. If they don't then friction can arise during a raid, which means a less fun experience for all involved.

I've written this up on the basis of something that happened in the last raid I went on. I won't go into details as I don't think it's necessary but do want to leave with one thought.

Enjoy the game as you want to enjoy it, just don't do it at the expense of others.

The man who doesn't like to pug...

...pugs the 10-man version of the Wintergrasp raid.

I decided to have a go at Wintergrasp whilst online just to see what the zone was like and see how well the Eviscerator's set I've crafted holds up when fighting against everything else.

As it turns out the Horde were outnumbered but the Tenacity buff and some good work from those involved (no real idea who) meant we won, provided the buff to all the instances the rest of the guild were running and made the raid instance available.

There were soon messages running around the General channel, and having heard good reports about pugging normal and heroic instances I decided to give it a go, especially as there would be the chance for some nice epics. Sadly no rogue loot dropped but I did get a chance to have a look at the boss fight.

First up, we are definitely in a dps race, there's a 5 minute hard enrage timer so you need to get him down within that time. Second there's a lot of damage everywhere, the boss has a couple of random target abilities and leaves an AoE effect about the place meaning ranged need to keep on their toes as well as the tank if he leaves one on top of the melee. Finally he'll wildly lunge and grab the main tank, meaning he needs to be picked up by an off tank for the duration.

As a rogue there are two key things for this fight.
1) Stay below both tanks on threat. Think Gruul, think Moroes, just stay below both of the tanks or you'll be dead as soon as the main tank gets picked up.
2) Tricks will aid which ever tank needs it most so use it as much as possible.

The week lock out means you're not going to be farming it any more than the other raid instances but with the right group (or even within guild) there's a potential quick way to some epics and a couple of emblems.

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.

Knowing your (threat) limits

So if you've done much instancing or raiding you'll have a threat meter installed and running. If you don't go install Omen, don't worry we'll wait for you to come back.

Ok, so now we've got it installed there's some very funky configuration you can do to help stop pulling aggro without having to stare at the bars. Opening up the configuration we can go to the options for 'Single Target Mode' and under that we see a set of options for 'Warnings'.

The tick boxes should be fairly self explanatory, so turn on as much as you need to ensure you know when you're getting close to aggro. Personally I have a sound played (war drums), flash the screen and stick a warning message out. The warning message also hooks into Scrolling Combat Text if you use that for information whilst destroying the enemy.

So the final thing to consider is when one of these warnings should go off. In the options is a slider which ranges from 60 to 130. Before we go picking which number is best, let's remind ourselves of the threat mechanics for pulling aggro. If you are in melee range then you need to exceed 110% of the threat the current player the mob is targetting before it will attack you. If you are at range then you'll need to exceed 130%. The value you set the slider to means that when you hit that percentage of the tanks threat the warning will go off as you've configured them.

I personally have the slider set to 90, and I'll explain why. While I'm not going to pull aggro till 110% it's always worth being careful of the nasty situations, such as the tank gets a string of misses/parries and you get a string of crits. By leaving a bigger gap you can just use white attacks for a bit without relying on any threat dumps which use energy or have a large cooldown. As a ranged dps player you may want to set it higher but that's my recommendation for melee people (which is the target audience for this blog).

As a final word please don't be swayed by those chasing the dps meters who suggest leaving the warning to the last possible moment, stealing aggro from the tank isn't big or clever and can cause problems for the rest of the raid. If you want a fun game see how many times you can trigger your warning during the boss fight, which means you're right on your limit but not causing issues for everyone else.

Karazhan Off Tanking

Now Medrare has the Master's Key, he's fully able to sign up to guild runs on his own merit and start tanking things with his face. The run was pretty smooth with only one wipe due to a ninja pull of an elite pack and we survived it the second time it happened (well I didn't but it's not a wipe if half the raid survive). It was good to learn boss fights from a new perspective even if you can't really see a thing of what's going on with the rest of the raid.

Attumen the Horseman
A place for the off tank to shine as you start the encounter by tanking Midnight until the mount up. Our boomkin pulled aggro and died before I could grab him back but other than that it was smooth whilst he was dps'd down. Once phase 3 started and I wasn't needed to tank anymore it was time to go cat and pretend to be a rogue. However one of our priests didn't survive the transition to phase 3 and so required a battle rez and innervate before I could get back to it and down he went.

Moroes
No need to run after adds here, just a case of keeping up with the main tank on threat and staying alive when the MT gets gouged. Again we lost a healer due to a bad combination of the MT being gouged and me being blinded. No problems a quick battle rez and innervate again and we'll be back in the fight. Unfortunately I didn't spot that I wasn't targeting the healer before hitting the button and innervated myself. As it was we managed and got everything killed without losing any of the raid.

Little Red Riding Hood
A rarity for our guild as we always seem to get Wizard of Oz, but an Opera where I wasn't really required to tank so time to go cat again. The plan went a bit south when a priest died whilst Red Riding Hood I needed to shift back out and help keep the tank alive with rolling lifeblooms, and the occasional big heal when I managed to resist the fears.

Maiden of Virtue
Again only one tank required so this fight was almost identical to when I've done it on Crash except running out to heal is a lot easier when you not relying on potion and bandage cool downs, and again it's possible to help keep the main tank alive when the main healers are all stunned due to Repentance.

Sadly no tanking/cat dps loot dropped but there are the lovely badges to compulsively collect and it was a lot of fun fighting the encounters with a different set of skills and responsibilities. Hopefully there will be enough raids over the summer that I can get along to to try out all the fights again and hopefully get my gear a good leg up ready for the expansion.

Little Bear in Big Raid

Last night was the last of our scheduled Kara runs for the raiding week, with the run from Aran up to Prince staring us in the face. Given that Med still isn't keyed I was all signed up with Crash ready to interrupt Aran's spells and run away whilst enfeebled from the Prince's Shadow Nova.

However when invite time came around we found ourselves a tank short so Med was called in to try and not die to the nasty elite mobs that patrolled around the former home of Medivh.

Things went fairly smoothly, our healers did a great job keeping my health a positive value and deaths were just a part of learning to deal with the new tank and how well I can cope with the damage from the bad guys.

Anyway we were soon outside the Shade's room and it was decided tanking on the summoned elementals would be better than dps and interrupt given we didn't have any warlocks to fear or banish. One quick(ish) fight later and Aran was dead and there was badges and loot to be distributed.

After a quick bio break we headed up to the Chess event which was very smooth and the dust covered chest gave up a very nice necklace for me before disaster struck. Suddenly a few internet connections (including my own) broke down and we had to call the raid early before the Prince could feel our wrath.

All in all a good night given the 'chucked in the deep end' feeling at the beginning and trying to learn the encounters from a new perspective. Hopefully once I can get the key and on the quest chains inside the rest of the encounters will have that shiny new feeling to them again.

Raid progression, it hurts.

Our guild has recently cleared Karazhan and is having a mooch around the troll city of Zul'Aman to see how we fair there. The bear boss, Nalorakk, is being defeated with relative ease and so with the raid finding itself with plenty of time left it's time to have a crack at the gauntlet on the way up to Akil'zon.

For those that haven't tried this encounter, it's tricky, there are 4 pulls of elite pairs (one of which does chain heal), pairs of elites spawn behind the raid which needs to be running forward at all times and then to top it all off groups of birds fly down which need to be AoE'd. These last two things keep spawning at regular intervals until you reach the top and start fighting the final 'Tempest" so as a raid you have to move, and move fast.

At the moment this is very much a learning experience and tactics are being developed based on which players we have in the raid and how well we can keep them alive and how much damage we can do to the bad guys. The guild doesn't have what would be considered a core raid group, instead it tends to be a balanced group from those that sign up and are able to make the cut in terms of gear and experience. This means that we may not have what would be considered the ideal group based on the strategies you can find online and have to adapt as required.

What doesn't mean however that you can't learn, nor even succeed so long as people are prepared to try and refine what they are doing, and more importantly listen to those who are leading the raid. As a general rule our main tank is raid leader, so deals with looting, invites and where and what we do. I make an attempt at doing tactics and strategies which most of the time come off, but often will require refinement as we discover something interesting about the mobs and how they react to the spells and abilities we chuck at them.

One of the keys things that is useful at this stage is for everyone to evaluate how they are doing, what's working well and more importantly what could be altered at a personal level to try and get that bit further. In my case it'll generally come down to keeping the heals interrupted and only pulling aggro if the final mob is close to death as we're moving forward.

However making random suggestions up to and including changing the make up of the raid for an alt isn't necessarily helpful as it won't help this raid progress, and if you come to rely on a certain class or player then when they're not available you're stuffed before you begin as there's no concept of alternative tactics.

The downside to this 'single-minded' approach is that there will be wipes, there will be repair bills and you're going to need to bring consumables. However if you can come out of it with a new perspective and a better understanding of what needs to be done then the next time should be more productive.

Obviously we won't be killing every boss on the first or second try but if we can learn something from every raid then it should be considered a success for the group, even if there isn't the purple shinies to impress the masses.

Here's to moving forward in the raids and taking a positive attitude into the wipes as they'll always be there when something is new.

The Sound of Drums

One of the nice things about being a leatherworker are the rather nifty raid consumables that you can produce in the shape of drums. There are four recipes which can all be bought from vendors either at the right rep or from the leatherworker trainer.

Drums of Battle - Simply the best drum there is, haste rating and spell haste rating for your group for a whopping 30secs. I use this on Crash whenever heavy burst damage is required or on fights like Aran where threat isn't an issue. Pick this recipe up from the Sha'tar once you've ground your way to honored.
Drums of Panic - Pretend you're a warlock/spriest and have your enemies running around in fear. Ideal for battlegrounds if you need a few seconds with people off your back or just getting that warlock in trouble in a raid. Available at honored rep with Keepers of Time and a great recipe for getting those last skill points up to 375.
Drums of Restoration - A group wide potion effect for mana and health which doesn't share a cooldown with any of the other goodies such as potions or health stones. Available at honoured reputation from your faction representative in Nagrand.
Drums of Speed - Sprint in musical form, again this is a nice PvP buff esp if you've been brave enough to venture into WSG. Again you can pick this up from your faction rep in Nagrand once you're honored.
Drums of War - The first recipe you'll pick up from the leatherworker trainer and provides a nice AP buff which stacks with any other buff you can get your hands on. Crash uses this in preference to the haste rating on the Prince fight, when melee haste on our tank might cause an extra parry or two which can lead to a bit of a mess.

A brief outline but hopefully enough to encourage everyone that can to make and carry these whilst instancing/raiding or running a battle ground.

Shared Topic: Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King

This is a response to a Blog Azeroth shared topic.

The original plan once I knew the expansion was more than just vapourware was to level my new druid alt to 70 and get him geared to act as a tank. While the levelling is done there is still gear and practice to be done and it would be really nice to get him into Kara to at least try out against the early raid bosses, plus the possibilities of some extra shiny tanking gear. My primary professions are maxed on both characters and a couple of the secondary ones are there as well. A few mats will be horded to try and kick start with the new recipes and I'm hoping that the current plan where a lot of the good leather tanking gear is BoE.

The changes to raiding with a proper 10-man progression through all the raid instances looks to be a great change. Our guild only really has enough balance to run 10 man raids and having nearly cleared Karazhan and spotting just how tricky Zul'Aman can be (given that it's more T5 level content rather than direct progression) is making things tricky in terms of what to do. Having tried a couple of 25man raids I tend to find them too pressured and am less able to have fun and a laugh with people while playing a game. Having fun is quite a key thing, especially when I'm trying to explain tactics and ensure everyone is in the right place during a fight. Also getting to see some of the key lore items in the expansion (and possibly Arthas himself) really adds to the excitement.

Finally having levelled both characters almost exclusively by questing and having missed out on most of the instances on the way, it'll be good to get some instance runs in at the right level and as part of the aventuring in that zone.

Regardless of when the expansion comes out there's still plenty to do and with the inevitable class changes that will come along there'll still be plenty to talk about on this blog.

/salute
/vanish