Of Gnomes and Rogues

I’ve been so busy with work the last few days, I really haven’t been keeping up with with all the new patch notes for patch 3.2. Some of them are definately cool and I’m looking forward to them, but it was with great interest I read a post on wow.com entitled: Patch 3.2 Upcoming Engineering Changes.

At first I was thinking….great, what are they giving us? A super duper walking stick to go with the handy dandy flashlight they gave us last time? Well, when I started reading the post, I practically peed my pants. These changes are awesome! We may still be the laughing stock of WoW professions, but at least we’ll be cooler laughing stocks!

Here is Part 1 of my take on all the awesome changes coming our way:

Added a new Mind Amplification Dish attachment for helmets, allowing engineers to control other humanoid targets. Some restrictions apply: does not work in Arenas, dish sometimes reverses targets, unable to stack with other stat-improving head enchantments and makes your helmet look… stylish?
Now this is cool, but since it doesn’t stack with other head enchantments, I likely won’t have it on my main raiding gear. I might, however, put it on my pvp helmet and try it out in the battlegrounds. Too bad it doesn’t work in arenas! But then again nothing cool from engineering works in arena *sigh*. I think the funniest thing is the ability for this to backfire…so I might go into mind control something and all of a sudden find myself mind controlled! Ahh…no one said living in the fast lane was fool proof.

Added a schematic for a Goblin Welding Beam that can heal friendly mechanical or vehicle units.
Now this might come in handy in certain fights. I’m wondering if it will be usuable in Ulduar while fighting FL…if so, that will be a way to make sure my chopper makes it to the end of the fight! It will kind of like the the Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator that I attached to my belt and use during the XT-002 Deconstructor fight in Ulduar to stop the little mechanical adds if they get too close to the boss.

Alarm-o-Bot functionality changed. Materials required reduced.
I have never used an Alarm-o-Bot, so I don’t really have any feelings on this one way or the other. I figure it probably comes in handy moreso on a pvp server, however, it really doesn’t say how the functionality is changing. Maybe it’s something cool like you can detonate your Alarm-o-Bot and it will rain evil bunnies upon your enemies! If that’s the case, I am SO using this as often as possible.

Box of Bombs no longer requires an anvil.
I really do like to blow things up (hence, the reason I am an engineer in the first place), so making it easier to make them is always a good thing! Now I don’t have to track down an anvil everytime I make them. Yay for us lazy engineers!

The Cobalt Frag Bomb now incapacitates enemies within a 3-yard radius. A short cast time was added, but they are usable while moving. This change applies to any Cobalt Frag Bombs already created. The existing recipe now makes 3 at a time.
I don’t really use Cobalt Frag Bombs anymore…I haven’t since I reached 350 in engineering and could start using Saronite Bombs. It still does less damage than the Saronite Bombs, so I don’t really see myself making a lot of these, however, it is good news for those engineers in between 330 and 350 in engineering.

Engineers can now learn to create a portable Wormhole Generator for Northrend. The Wormhole allows them to travel to different locations in Northrend, although the locations are sometimes in dangerous places.
Now this is one of the new gadgets I am most excited for. This is kind of like the Ultrasafe Transporters we have now, but it looks like we will be able to use them to transport ourselves all over Northrend instead of to just to one spot. And the chance of ending up in dangerous places won’t stop me! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve transported to Gadgetzan and ended up 100 yards in the air or as my own evil twin. That only adds to the excitement of being and engineer. Basically, this is another way of saying that if you like everything to work properly, ALL the time, then engineering is not the profession for you.

Stay tuned for part 2!

On our guild message boards, we are currently having a discussion of how to be situationally aware while raiding.  Some of the tips were good, so I have compiled them in to a list for your reading enjoyment.

Pyxia’s tips for DPS in raids (new and improved…complete with rogue examples!)

1. Please note you are not the top of the healing priority list…you come after both the tanks and healers.
2. Always bring a stack of health pots (see rule #1).  Use them if your health is getting really low, as the healers are busy using their mana elsewhere.
3. Try and use a damage reducing ability as much as possible
   • As a rogue, I use Feint a lot…it not only reduces my threat, but as of patch 3.0.8 it reduces aoe damage by 50% for 6 seconds. 
4. Always stand behind the boss unless otherwise indicated:
   • For dragons, always stand on the back leg because of tail swipe
   • For Hegian in Naxx…its best to actually fight him closer to the tank (i.e. in front) or at the very least on top of the boss so you don’t get hit with the stinky green goo!  Remember that the tank will position him in a safe spot of the tank.   If you are familiar enough with the fight that you feel safe standing behind the boss you can do so…but if you die it is your own fault.
5. Never stand on or in the following (unless otherwise indicated):
   • Black circles
   • White circle
   • Red circles
   • Circles of any kind
   • Green goo
   • Poo clouds
   • Sparkly shiney things
   • Blizzards
   • Flaming walls
   • Whirlwinds
   • Basically…you want to stay out of everything!
6. Make sure your video settings are high enough to see everything listed in #5 but not so high you are lagging a lot.
7. Keep an eye on OMEN so you don’t take aggro.
8. Always have at least one (and preferably two) escapes for when you do take aggro.
   • As a rogue I use feint first and if that doesn’t work I vanish
   • If all your abilities are on cooldown, don’t be afraid to stop attacking for a bit so you don’t overtake the tank on the threat list.
   • If the tank is dead and the boss comes after you, a rogue can pop evasion and try to stay alive long enough to either get the boss down or let the off-tank grab aggro.  This has actually come in handy a few times for me, but normally you just end up dead.
9. Always attack in the proper kill order…if you’re not sure what that is, ask and write it down so you don’t forget.
10. FOR ROGUES ONLY: Do not use Killing Spree on the Kologarn fight when you are standing next to the edge of the dropoff….if you do, you will go SPLATT and end up looking up Kologarn’s skirt for the rest of the fight (and trust me, you don’t want to see that!).
11. Give the tank a few seconds to establish aggro before charging in or use an ability that will mitagate any threat caused by you.
    • Rogues can use Tricks of the Trade and jump right in since this will transfer all threat gained from your next attack and all of your actions taken for 6 seconds after that attack to the party or raid member on which it is cast (which is typically the tank).
12. Many bosses have a specific strategy for melee that comes with experience.  If you are having a particularly tough time with any fight, feel free to ask an experienced melee dps if they have any tips.
13. Don’t have recount open (or at the very least not when you’re fighting).  From my own personal experience, I find I actually do better overall dps if I’m not constanly looking at it.  More often than not if it is open, I’m paying more attention to it than I am OMEN…which leads to very nasty surprises.
14. Know that some fights (like Grobbulus or Heigan in Naxx) are just not melee friendly fights.  Just do your best while staying alive.
15. Make rude gestures at each boss when you enter the room.  No reason here, it just amuses me.
16. Have fun!

I as happily reading about all the patch changes on wow.com yesterday when I saw this:

The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5-player team rating. Rating requirements from 2-player teams can still be used to purchase the previous season of gear.

This made me a little upset.  I like 2v2…I mean, I really like 2v2 and I’m actually getting better at it.  There is something so simple about such a deathmatch.  Not that my arena scores in 2v2 are near good enough to purchase the top tier arena gear….but I like to have my illusions of granduer and think I’m actually gonna get there someday. 

Along with this change, I imagine more and more people will stop playing it so the queue times will become longer and/or you’ll keep meeting up with the same teams (good if you stomp them…bad if they continually stomp you).  I guess 2v2, when played, will be considered entry level arena…much like entry level raiding.  A stepping stone to the lower level pvp-gear you need to survive against players in the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets. 

I do understand the balance issues in 2v2, but I wish there was another way to address it – like make the 2v2 ratings needed to get the uber gear higher…or, just delete the bracket altogether.  Somehow I think that S7 will be the last time we see the 2v2 bracket.  My guess is that by S8 they will have phased it out altogether.  *Sigh*  I still hope to play 2v2 next season, even if it means I also need to do 3v3 every week to keep in sight my slight glimmer of pvp-uberness.

After such a great experience PuG’ing last week, I decided to try it again last night.  One of my guildies, Exelus, put out the call in guild chat for a Naxx-25 PuG group he was in.  It was a little before 10pm my time, but I figured it wouldn’t take longer than 2 hours to clear the Military Wing, Sapphiron and Kel-Thuzzad.  I mean, how long could it take? 

I haven’t done much in Naxx-25 – just a couple of bosses and Sapphiron, but I know the 10-man very well and have cleared it on numerous occasions.  Even though it has better loot, I don’t think I would even bother with 25-man if it wasn’t for the achievements.  What can I say?  I’m an achievement whore.  Besides the obvious reason of not having a regular group to do 25-man content with, I also don’t like to do them because everything is so chaotic.  I always have to turn my settings down really low, but even then, its tough to see what’s going on all the time.  And while I imagine that there are regular 25-man groups out there that know each other and work well together, for me, our 10-mans work like a well oiled machine.  Our core group of raiders know and respect each other, which makes the runs go so much more smoothly, quickly and happy (even if we have 1 or 2 new people with us).  I’ve been amazed at what we have accomplished, even though we aren’t focused on raiding (only one or two nights a week for about 6 hours total).  So what if our gear isn’t as “leet” as those who run 25-man?  I prefer the happier, quieter times with my guild in 10-man.

We ended up accidentally starting the Instructor Razovious three times (once to a hunter pet, once to a DK ghoul and once to a priest who’s mind soothe buff wore off and aggro’d everything).  After that, we made it through Gothik the Harvester and the Four Horseman without too many difficulties, just at a slower pace than I’m used to.  Once the Military Wing was cleared, we headed up to take on Sapphiron…and that is where we seemed to get stuck in an awful, Star Trek-like, time loop.  For whatever reason, we just kept wiping.  After about the 3rd wipe I noticed how late it was getting (well past midnight), we wiped a couple more times, and at that point, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I also noticed I was making stupid mistakes – for example on one attempt I hit killing spree, got turned around and ran the wrong way, got tail swiped and then ran back only to be killed by a combo of a blizzard/curse. 

When the raid leader said over vent that we had at least 8 hours till it reset, I started to panic.  We were going to keep at it for 8 more hours?!

We finally defeated Sapphiron and were regrouping/handing out loot when I realized I could go no further.  I messaged the raid leader and said I had to leave, but I would stay a bit while he tried to find someone else to take my place.  No response.  I tried to find a guildie to take over for me, but nothing.  I messaged the raid leader again, but still no response.  I finally had to put it in raid chat that I was leaving, but this of course upset some of the rest of the group.  They had no clue that I had been messaging the raid leader for the last 10 minutes.  I felt horrible since I usually stick with PuG’s until they fall apart of their own accord, but it had been 3 hours already and I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.  The raid leader finally piped in and gave me the all clear to go, so I quickly hearthed and signed off for the evening.

I did manage to pick up my T7.5 breastplate from the 4 Horsemen during the run, which only served to make me feel worse for leaving.  So, boys and girls, my original warning still stands: All PuG’s DO end in tears.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am really, really bad at 3v3. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I am exactly the opposite of the description of super uber. In fact, I really think that if I put a monkey at the keyboard, he would perform better at 3v3 than I would. Of course 3v3 is not anywhere near as bad a 5v5 for me, but that’s a post for another time.

A few nights ago my regular 2v2 partner, Galyan (Holy Paladin), and I found a guildie (an Enhancement Shaman) to come with us to try 3v3. Being a new grouping, I expected the learning curve to be high, but perhaps not that high.  We certainly lived up to our team name (Team Splatt), however, and went 5-15 that night. I guess it’s actually not as bad as I’m making it out to be. I tried 2v2 for the first time last season and I think I went 2-8 in my first 10 games. I’ve had a lot of practice and read up on some strategies for 2v2 since then, so I’m starting to get better.  In fact, I think I’d go as far as saying I’m not horribad anymore!

There is also a lot to be said about having a good team dynamic. I got comfortable with my first 2v2 partner (a Disclipline Priest), and we started win more as we could better anticipate each other’s moves and develop strategies for specific team makeups. He decided to leave the game for a while, but I found another Discipline Priest and the above mentioned Holy Paladin to do 2v2 with me each week. It took a while playing with each person to really get comfortable with their playstyle (and them with mine), but after a while something just “clicks”.  For example, last night I did some 2v2 with the Paladin and we went 15-5. Vent is nice to have during arena play, but its much better to have a level of familiarity with your partner so you don’t always have to communicate via words.

So I guess the moral of this story is that if we keep on playing 3v3 matches each week, something will eventually “click” and we will start to win a few more battles. If not, maybe I’ll hire a monkey to play the matches for me.

Those that know me will know that I almost never PuG. Even though I’m sure most go off without a hitch, I have great guildies who will run things with me most of the time, so why chance it?** But last night I headed into Wintergrasp and helped successfully attack the keep, and because of my talent of talking incessently in guild chat, I didn’t leave the raid group right after the battle was over. Somehow a raid started to form around me, so I thought I would stick with it to see what happened.

It took about 30 minutes to get a full group together (apparently we were having a tough time finding healers). I brought in a guildie, but he had to leave before we really got underway. Tried to bring in another for heals, but he ended up getting kicked because they had grabbed another healer right before his invite. *Sigh* I must say I didn’t have high hopes, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. Once we were underway, the raid leader said he would be judging us on trash pulls, not exactly a great things for rogues…but I was pleasantly surprised that I was number 3 on the damage meters. (Whether or not that’s a good thing for this group is anyone’s guess *grin*.)

We wiped our first three attempts (although the last time we got him down to 17%), and we lost some people, but we were so close that I decided to give it one more go. I will stop and put a disclaimer here: I have never done Emalon successfully on VoA25, but I had done it twice in 10-man with some guildies, so I knew exactly what to expect. I will say that my dps went considerably down from the trash pulls though (from around 3500 to around 2500) on the fight…I think it is due not only to the mechanics of the fight but also to how the tank decided to tank it (every tank is different, so I’ve learned to go with the flow).

For melee (especially those of us silly enough to wear only leather), there is a lot of runing around in this fight just to make sure you (and everyone else) stays alive. Now, when we do it on 10-man, our main tank will pull Emalon to the front right corner and every time he does Lightning Nova, he will pull him to the back right corner and then wash, rinse and repeat. The benefit of this method is that I (and other melee) can get back to dps’ing the boss quicker after a Lightning Nova by running less distance back to the boss and it really doesn’t add any distance in getting to the Overcharged add. Another reason why melee dps will have a tougher time on this fight is because of the Overcharged add. In order to get to it in time (and thus not have the raid wiped), I need to stop dps’ing on Emalon about 5 seconds before the overcharge and start running across the room so I can immediately start dps’ing the add once it becomes overcharged.

I’m happy to say that on the 4th attempt, we were able to successfully down Emalon – yay! I was very excited to see that he dropped some rogue loot: Conqueror’s Terrorblade Gauntlets!! Better yet, there was only one other rogue in the group. I shouldn’t have gotten too exited, however, because I am horrible on rolling for loot (I once ran 5 instances in one day and didn’t win any of the greed rolls). I, of course, rolled a 22 to his 61 and lost. *sigh* There’s always next week, I suppose.

We decided to head on to Archavon next, and we one shotted him. I was even more excited to see that he also dropped some great rogue loot: Deadly Gladiator’s Leather Leggaurds!!! I figured if I couldn’t get the awesome PvE loot, it was time to get some awesome PvP loot! I rolled against the other rogue (yes, he rolled again!) and…..lost the roll again. The raid leader, however, was really cool and told him that since he already won a rogue epic, he was giving me the other piece of rogue loot. Even though I would not have rolled against the other rogue had I won the first piece, I wasn’t really expecting a PuG leader to honor the same personal code I do…so I was very happy that he has a similar one.

So, the moral of this story is: Not all PuG’s end in tears, unless you happen to be the other rogue.

**Okay, not exactly true…almost no one is willing to run Heroic Oculus with me. But then again, I probably wouldn’t run it with them either unless they took a pledge to be nice to gnome rogues for at least 2 weeks straight afterwards.

I can just hear you now: You play a rogue!? And why in the world would you play a Gnome?! Don’t worry, I’ve heard it all before. I can answer both questions simply…yes and because I like them. To be honest, I can’t imagine being anything other than a Gnome rogue. Even in game, sometimes I really convince myself that I am 2 and a half feet tall with green Princess Leia buns. I’ve tried, and I mean really tried, to play other toons, but I just haven’t found one I like yet. The farthest I’ve gotten is a level 21 shammy, but she’s been sitting in an inn on Bloodmyst Isle for the better part of 2 months.

I warn you right now, I am not the best rogue out there…I don’t always have the right spec and I certainly don’t understand a lot of the theorycrafting. Reading Elitist Jerks, while informative, gives me a headache…but I will forage there when I need to. I do, however, like to dabble in all aspects of the game: Questing, Leveling, Raiding, Battlegrounds, Arena, Achievements and, of course, trumpeting Gnome rights (and biting the kneecaps off of Gnome punters across Azeroth and beyond).

I started playing WoW around March of 2008. I was bored one evening and rolled a toon on my hubby’s account. I didn’t expect I would like it at all…but I couldn’t stop playing. We actually had to buy a new computer so both of us could play at the same time. My first toon was a Night Elf Druid, but of course I had my own account practically the next day, so I rolled Pyxia…my sneaky, little Gnome Rogue with the green Princess Leia buns.

Since I was very new to MMO’s (I admit I tried Star Wars Galaxies before WoW – but only for a few weeks), I had no clue what I was doing, but I went about learning to play a rogue the best I could. I managed to level her up, guildless, to 70 before deciding on a guild. Not sure exactly why I did that, but it was kind of a personal challenge for me. I got to level 70 a few weeks before wrath released and applied to join my guild (shout out to Chivalry!).

My guild is great and they don’t mind that I talk incessantly or that I constantly say silly things in guild chat or that protect my gnomish pride to the death (often at the expense of a smelly druid joke). We raid, pvp, level, quest and hang out together, but the guild isn’t about that. It’s about friendship and camaraderie…something we have in abundance. All and all, I’m one happy little Gnome rogue.