a couple in azeroth

So over the past week, our little guild has gotten closer, friendlier and more engaged.
How did this happen? The forums exploded with life.

People have opened up to each other, and posted photos of themselves (in the members only section, so non-guildies can’t see it - sorry!). This has sparked up a heap of conversation, antics and personalities, that weren’t previously seen.

Did Josh and I post a photo? Well, yes we did. It was quite refreshing to be told that we were “spunky” as put one way

How has your guild bonded, gotten to know each other, and just generally ‘get along’?

This is a little old, so I ask for apologies. I have been very busy at work, and only remembered this post today

Unless you’re taking a break from World of Warcraft, you know doubt are aware that the latest big patch, 3.1, hit the servers last week. Killing all our mods and seeing the dreaded server queue was the unwelcome sight of the latest patch, but apart from that, everything has be AWESOME!

<Casualty> were aware that the patch was coming, due to the massive hint that a Blue posted, so 10 of our best member’s characters entered Ulduar right away.

So! Ulduar! We all knew that there was going to be a lot of tanks/motorcycles/demolishers stuff at the start, so at the moment this is a novelty which we feel will wear off soon. But last week, we prevailed, and downed 4 of the bosses. I even managed to pick up [Energy Siphon] for my lil’ Museli off our first kill - the Flame Leviathan!

We added an extra raiding night due to everyone’s enthusiasim for new and challenging content, making it 12 hours (roughly) of raid time.
Last night, in two hours, we cleared the same amount we had done in those 12 hours.

My thoughts? Ulduar is a welcome change. new content. Challenging, fresh and exciting. I can’t wait to get home tonight and get back into Ignus (which we haven’t downed yet) and have everything fit for the Iron Council (which we pretty much had last night). I just wish I had more time to play, as work commitments at the moment aren’t giving me any time to do dailies/heroics to get money (and repair bills are steep!)

But enough about me, what are you guys enjoying about the newest patch?

Full Disclosoure: Decode is my 3rd level 80 character and my first DPS. My previous 80s are Encode: Unholy/Frost Death Knight Tank and Cure: Holy Paladin. I have raided with Decode for a total of 3 hours, but have practised, theorycrafted and analysed countless hours prior.

Any numbers not otherwise explicitly stated are gleaned from Elitist Jerks Forums. Specifically this thread.

On my first night raiding, I sat on 1800 overall DPS (including yawnfest trash) and 2,100 on bosses (2,600 on crit-inflation Loatheb).

Raiding as an assassination (Mutilate) rogue is tough - and I’ve tanked and healed progression content. I remember having to survive 3 stoneskins on the gargoyles leading up to Noth and keeping a tank with 20,000 HP healed on Loatheb. So when I say that Assassination Rogue is tough, I have some nice comparison points to draw from.

Playing assassination well requires a heck of a lot of awareness. You need to keep an eye on the following:

• Concepts: Combo Points, Energy Pooling
• Buffs: Hunger for Blood, Slice and Dice, Envenom Buff, Turn the Tables, Cold Blood, Overkill, Trinkets
• Debuffs: Rupture, Deadly Poison
• Positioning: Avoid parry, get out of the AoE, physically move to DPS adds, follow the tank when he won’t stand the F-percent-ampersand-exclamation still!

And getting any one of these things wrong, even slightly, is a loss in DPS. That’s freakin’ intense! Shadow Priests and Affliction Warlocks also have a rough time; their rotations are complicated and unintuitive - but if they miss a tick or two of a DoT, they lose (at most) 1% damage (over the entire fight). If an Assassination Rogue drops Hunger for Blood, 9% of their damage is lost until the buff is restacked - and restacking the buff costs 90 energy (9 seconds) plus the Mutilate + Rupture/Envenom they would have cast instead. Imagine having your DPS cut to 20% for 10 full seconds! And if Slice and Dice drops off your target, forget about it.

The good news is that your damage scales very, very well. Your hit caps are (with 5/5 Precision) 97 for Specials (Mutilate & Envenom), 315 for Poisons (237 if Misery or Improved Faerie Fire are available) and 722 for White Damage. This means that hit (to 237) scales very well. In fact, your damage scales brilliantly with all stats. Here’s a sample table (from Elitist Jerks) of the relative weighting of each stat:

• Attack Power: 1.0
• (Weapon) DPS: 3.1 - I use off-hand value here
• Hit Rating 2.2 - This drops considerably (~1.8) when you reach the poison hit cap.
• Agility: 2.0
• Expertise Rating: 2.0 - This drops to zero (0) when you hit 214 Expertise Rating.
• Critical Strike Rating: 1.6
• Haste Rating: 1.6
• Armor Penetration Rating: 1.1

Here is a Wowhead filter, listing all rogue loot in the game, by slot. Use this in conjuction with ShadowPanther.net.

Note that for weapons, a faster main-hand dagger is preferred; this is for Instant Poison and Focused Attack procs. Generally speaking, higher DPS is preferred, but put the faster dagger in the main hand. In fact, the [Librarian's Paper Cutter] is ranked as the 3rd-best main-hand dagger available in the game by ShadowPanther, second only to Naxx-25 loot. Certainly worth picking up and enchanting - I got mine for 130g!

Like most classes, the rotation for an Assassination Rogue is not that simple; it is based around these goals (in priority order):

• Keep up 3 stacks of Hunger for Blood
• Keep Slice and Dice up
• Keep a 4 or 5 Combo-point Rupture up
• Use Envenom to proc Cut to the Chase
• Use Mutilate to build Combo Points

So what is my de-facto rotation for say, Patchwerk? I’m glad you asked:

• [Before Combat] Bring up three stacks of Hunger for Blood
• Open with Ambush (for 2-3 combo points)
• Slice and Dice
• Mutilate to 4-5 Combo Points
• Rupture - if rupture already on the target, consider pooling energy for a moment or two.
• Mutilate to 4-5 Combo Points
• Envenom (procs Cut to the Chase) - if less than 5 stacks of Deadly Poison on the target, consider pooling energy for a moment or two.
• Check on Hunger for Blood

I plan to continue documenting my feelings as I learn how to play Decode. I think that it will be very interesting to look back of this (and subsequent) posts, detailing my tweaks and revelations bringing my Rogue from 2,100 DPS to 3,500+! Oh, and Matticus made me do it.

This week I decided to focus on Decode, my Undead Rogue. Taking him from 70 to 80 in about a week, I dinged 80 yesterday ~ 2pm server time. Decode joins Encode (Orc Death Knight) and Cure (Blood Elf Paladin) in the pantheon known as Josh’s 80s ZOMG.

Within an hour of reaching the level cap and tweaking my Assassination build I was pulling 1900 dps in heroics.

As soon as I dinged 80 I equipped the following items:

• [Trollwoven Girdle]
• [Trollwoven Spaulders]
• [Titanium Impact Choker]
• [Titanium Impact Band]
• [Ice Striker's Cloak]
• [Librarian's Paper Cutter]

This is on top of all the pre-80 blues that I had crafted up.

With all of this in mind, I am really quite disappointed with a few members of my guild, whose DPS after a month or so of 10-man Naxxramas is barely above 1500 on Patchwork. The leadership group made a deliberate decision to take new, undergeared people into Naxxramas in order to even the field and give us a larger pool of geared, effective characters to choose from when the wheel spun back to progression.

For two or three players, this brought a fresh 80 from 1500 DPS to 3000+ DPS (Patchwerk) in just 6 weeks. For others, they went from 900 DPS to 1200. One melee DPSer in particular has two iLvl 213 weapons and can’t push more than 1400 on Patchwerk. This is after at least 6 gear upgrades (from green to purple!). On top of their poor DPS, this person continually harasses us for a spot in raids.

Now ultimately, I would prefer us to be a 25-man guild; every night 25 people log on with the perfect mix of classes and specs and we raid. Instead, we’re a 10-man guild with 15-20 active players, on any given raid night 8-15 will be around. This means that most nights someone draws the short straw. With Naxx/Maly/Sarth on farm status, no-one really minds a night off - but when we start up in Ulduar - these people who can’t pull their weight will be getting a rude awakening.

I wonder sometimes about the nature of our guild. We’re called and we claim to be a casual guild but perhaps we’re not? I personally have a Tank and Healer completely geared (definitely top-2 Tank and Healer in the guild in terms of skill and gear) and now a DPS who I plan to gear up over the next month or so. Maybe I’m not so casual.

Hi all! Just a quick post today…

It’s been a long time between posts, and both Josh and I are sorry for that, but life has been crazy busy! We’re both still playing, and enjoying ourselves with our little guild, so we decided to start a twitter feed to update you all on our antics!

Feel free to follow us if you so desire, but we hope to keep you all up to date with what we’re doing!