Rogue guide to achieving 'Intense Cold'

The Intense Cold achievement is done in heroic Nexus and is on the last boss Keristrasza. To do this you have to prevent the Intense Cold debuff to stacking to more than two. Normally this isn't a problem as movement will cause the debuff to be removed. However the Crystal chains which you get hit with stop you moving for 10 seconds and can be enough to ruin your attempt.

So if you need to have this on your rogue here's how I managed it in a heroic pug.

Positioning: Like pretty much all dragon bosses in game you want to stay away from the head and the tail as there are cone based attacks around this area. So stick yourself facing the ribs and you should be safe from those attacks.

Movement: A simple jump is enough to remove the debuff so that's all you need to do every time Intense Cold gets applied.

Chains: The first time this gets applied use Cloak of Shadows, the second time Vanish. After this unless you're combat spec'd with Improved Sprint you'll need to hope your dps is high enough to take the boss down before you get chained again. A sub rogue could also use Preparation to reset the necessary cool downs, but as a HfB/Mutilate rogue I was left with just the two and a lot of praying.

Don't be disheartened if you don't manage it the first time you should hopefully running this instance a few times for the chest piece and the trinket. (I have yet to see the trinket drop but the chest piece has dropped every time).

Good luck

Fool for Achievements

The holiday event achievements have been a great way to experience all the various parts of the events plus there's the titles and the grand prize of a flying mount.

Love is in the Air is in game for just 5 days over the Valentines weekend and has various things that have to be done in order to grab the meta-achievement and the title. This included running a quest chain and then performing various actions with holiday related items. However the vast majority of these items could only be obtained as a random drop from something you could only get one of once an hour.

Time wise this meant this was the least demanding of all the ones that I've done, but conversely turned out to be the least fun. The random nature of things meant that I could potentially have ground a pledge/gift every hour for the whole event and not got everything I needed to complete the meta-achievement.

Now I'm not saying that the achievements should be attainable just by logging in at the right time but I do prefer the concept of being able to work towards something, even if it requires a group for parts of it, rather than just logging in performing a couple of mouse clicks and crossing my fingers.

However as it currently stands this is Elder Merrymaker Crashandburn the Hallowed the Love Fool signing off.

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.

Time to switch main?

The rogue has been a class close to my heart. My very first character on a trial account was a rogue, and my first level 70 and 80 character has been Crash (I started playing just after TBC came out so 60 wasn't a massive milestone). However now I've got there and started hitting the heroics and early Naxx I don't find myself enjoying the class as much as I did back then.

It's great to play daggers again, and when soloing I'm an unstoppable killing machine as everything dies whilst stunned, but the constant button pushing to keep HfB up, the lack of AoE when dealing with trash and the feeling that using stealth just hampers dps rather than adding to it means I'm not enjoying the group play as much.

Whilst it's been quiet over the Christmas break I've started levelling Medrare again and am remembering how much fun druid is. Plus as a hybrid class I could tank (which I've done a bit of), dps (rogue with less issues) or once the dual specs thing comes in heal, though Elune help anyone who takes me as a healer initially.

This might make things a bit tricky to start with as we currently have some high level tanks who have been running stuff for weeks and so have lots of the tasty badge gear but I don't think this will be too much of a problem as we go on as there's always plenty of dps looking to do runs.

I'm not making the decision just yet, especially as I'll have to go through the whole levelling and gearing process again, but with the alchemy trinkets available and Crash already able to make nearly all the leatherworking stuff it might be a bit easier this time around.

Watch this space...

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.