Within the Shadows, but revelaed

So I haven't updated in awhile...sorry about that, I guess not getting any feedback leads one to believe they have no readers. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's a moot point.

I enrolled in the Arena Tourny 2010 and have had an absolute BLAST playing a Destro Lock there. Rogues have gotten pretty boring lately so I'm going to give leveling one a try and see where I go with it from there.

I guess this is a short blog post.

Finding the Pieces

Good Afternoon everyone, sorry I didn't post last night, I got involved with raiding the Undercity, and after relogging and hearthing out, my computer overheated en route to Dun Niffelem (it does this way too much, I don't have the money for a new computer right now, but if anyone has some tips other than unplugging, using a stand, and opening up the vents, I'd like to hear on how to keep a laptop from overheating). This post is going to outline the key points of the arena system, and the pvp system in general.

Arenas were implemented in the Burning Crusade as a way to stop PvP from being about grinding HKs. Instead, it became about weekly games in the arena with a team of a certain size. The arena comes in three forms, 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5. Under a (I believe it's a 1600) rating, you will get a set amount of points each week for playing 30% of your team's games, and the team must play at least 10 games. This means you need to play at least 3 games in a week to get your points, and if your team plays more than 10 games in a week you need to hop on board and play a few more until you hit 30% played. The set number of points is 250 for 2s, and 344 for 5s and 302 for 3s I believe.

There are always three tiers of PvP gear avalaible in the Champions' Hall, Hall of Legends, and the other arena vendors scattered about. (I'll be referring to both the Hall of Legends and Champions' Hall when I say 'In Stormwind' and am discussing gear.) This season (season 8) the tiers are (in descending order) Wrathful, Relentless, and Furious. Furious can be bought with just honor points (from killing other players, pvp quests, and BG objectives) in Stormwind, and both Wrathful and Relentless can be bought in Stormwind for honor, the catch here is they both require a certain rating (how well you've done, there's an algorithm for it...) from arenas. In Dalaran you can get Wrathful at a reduced price, with the catch it will cost some arena points, and it still requires rating. The same applies for Relentless with one exception-it requires no rating. This makes arena points highly valuable and useful for anyone gearing up.

Now the pieces I just got done discussing are what's called "Mainset" pieces. They have a set bonus (shared between tiers) and comprise the Pants, Chest, Helm, Gloves and Shoulders. As I have mentioned before (I think....) you can get shoulders from Wintergrasp for marks of honor that are about the same as Relentless Shoulders, with the exception it doesn't count towards the set bonus, and it has hit instead of crit on it. The set bonus is not important if you're only missing one slot from it, because it's in 2 and 4 piece increments. Now the word mainset implies something with it. That there's what's called an "offset," and there is. It contains the cloak, bracers, necklace, ring, belts, boot and trinket. This season you can get four pieces of Wrathful offset for just honor (the first four mentioned coincidentally). Now Wrathful boots and belt require rating to get (1300), but it's not nearly as high as Wrathful mainset, in fact I'm not sure off the top of my head it's as high as Relentless mainset.

So now that we've covered WHY, lets cover the HOW of arenas. To start a team you must buy a charter (you can get these in Dalaran sewers). It's 40g per person on the team (80g for 2s, 120g for 3s, 200g for 5s), and the person that covers the fee (to the NPC that is) gets to name the team and decide on their flag. I don't see the point in the flag other than everyone sees it when they /inspect you and it's on your armory page. After making your team you can invite more than 2/3/5 people to your team, but the factor of personal rating means they can't buy the PvP gear that requires rating without actually earning it from games. Personal rating goes up when you win as much as the team rating would at your personal rating level, and goes down the same degree. This means if you win a ton of games one week, and the next week you're not in the games, and the team loses a fair amount, you can have a rating higher than your team.

Now I can't tell you what makes the perfect team of any sort. Hell, I'm doing twos with a warrior (dumb idea). I know for 2s we look for ranged classes (arcane mages and hunters), threes not sure, and 5s you'll find your way into comps that want you. You can pull a team for any reason out of anywhere. Some people just do arenas for points and make 5s teams that play 10 games a week and don't fuss if they lose, and let anyone in their guild/friendslist in because winning is not the objective. Some people find teams to go to 2300 with from trade. My recommendation is, if you're looking for a team to win, but don't know how good your levelling buddies and you will do, party up and queue for practice skirmishes. You don't lose or gain anything from them, just don't get frustrated by your potential lack of gear.

I really do like the arena system (when I'm not getting 10 games in the Orgrimmar arena and Blade's Edge...), come Cataclysm rated BGs will be shaking it up. Season 8 is the last season where arenas are the sole way of getting the top two tiers of gear (unless you are patient and get arena points from doing your bg dailies/random bgs). It's worth noting though, only the top tier of gear (and their rating requirements) will offer weapons during any given season, so you will need to PvE to get weapons until you hit that magic number.

Until next time.

Change of Code

I don't know how I let time slip aside from me, Friday to Saturday afternoon I was out of town and the week before that I let rest and progress take priority over posting. I'm going to compensate by making three posts this week, the other two (probably) Thursday and Saturday. Today I'm going to talk about Subtlety in this patch because I feel qualified to do so from playing it thoroughly since the patch hit, and the fact I cheated you guys (plural form used loosely, I've yet to discover having a reader) of knowledge. If you haven't caught on by now (which would be really disappointing) I'm not talking about PvE. I have no doubt in my mind that in world and battleground PvP that subtlety is the new in spec. I've made a few changes to my spec after playing with it, as always, it's on my character sheet, but here's a link: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=4&tal=02500310000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005320232130022121350135231251

Now to sum it up, I put blood splatter into Remorseless Attacks (the length of the buff is the cooldown of Shadowstep with the new Filthy Tricks) Lethality into Waylay (it's useful, a lot of people will disagree though, instant poison's buff is nice, and the attack speed decrease is very nice. Besides, with puncturing wounds, backstab is very useful) and I moved Initiative to Cheat Death (I'm not sure how long/if I'll keep this). You'll notice it has no points in Improved Evis. which a lot of people consider to be very important for our burst.

For me in typical combat, I open with Ambush. With my current gear (full wrathful offset, battlemaster's precision, berserker card, decent throwing weapon) I'm not dealing a lot against Plate with that initial Ambush, so until the gear issue is done I do a decent amount of cheap shots to open with. It's important to put up Premed. before opening too, so you have 4-5 combo points. Regardless of CP, blow a hemorrage. Right now I'm not always remembering to, but if it's Shadow Dance is off cooldown, blow Kidney Shot and move into shadow dance (the glyph is really important). Ambush until the kidney shot goes down to 1 second or they trinket it (xPerl unitframes make your debuffs and their timers very visible) and then put on another cheap shot. Keep them stunned and blow Ambushes until you're out of shadow dance, Cheap Shot does get diminishing returns, so don't be too trigger happy with the CS. Then hemorrage/backstab (make a point to backstab when you lack Waylay or can get behind, hemo when the debuff is down or when you're stuck in front). This should take down most people. If you lack Shadow Dance or they do a good job of screwing up your SD strategy, then you should do the hemorrhage and backstab rotation as I mentioned before, and use your combo points on expose armor against plate (you'll get called dumb, but against plate that's upwards of a 10% damage buff, what's wrong with that?) rupture against druids and rogues (so they can't vanish or restealth if they sprint off or...win) and eviscerate against everyone else. Envenom will not be used as we don't have the talents to make it outdamage envenom (before armor reduction) and therefore shouldn't be using deadly because that disables gouge and blind for us.

It doesn't focus around using CPs, but it's definitely effective for now. I make no promises for arenas, but in the lower brackets I saw a rogue in 5s cloak of shadows waylay. Doesn't work.

Brink of Power

I'm sorry I didn't write this up earlier during server maintenance, or even on Saturday when I'm supposed to...but I'm 80 now, there's an embedded video of it below. Northrend was AMAZING on this character, I did quests in Dragonblight I never did on my Paladin, and actually got Hodir started for the first time. As far as leveling up alts Northrend has got to be the zone where you'll have a different experience every time, that is if you freehand it. A quick (and maybe inaccurate) level map I used with the 20% exp buff and dungeon finder...

68-72 Howling Fjord (got the quest achievement from it)

72-73 Dragonblight (maybe 74)

73-74? Grizzly Hills (maybe just some exp at 74 maybe it took me to 75 this was a blur)

7?-77 Zul'Drak (first time I did zul'drak so fully)

77-79 Storm Peaks (almost got the quest achievement from it)

79-80 Icecrown.

Without the EXP buff you should still be able to get to 77 that way, if Zul'drak doesn't take you and you did a good amount of Grizzly Hills (I did Amberpine and got the quest for Arugal is all) then go to Sholazar. Storm Peaks might not take you to 79 which is okay because you can get more dailies in Icecrown. Just be sure to get all your Sons of Hodir dailies (you should do the dragon one, just look up a how to video on youtube or the quest on wowwiki) .

(My guild leader and an officer disussing WG Premades with another guild leader and officer from that guild who share our vent in the background) And now onto gear.

Ideally, I'm going for the highest season gear I can. Which would be partial Wra1thful offset, some relentless offset, and furious mainset (For those of you who don't understand the sets I'll explain in a later post). My guild (which I got into over the weekend that I'd been trying for since I made Aarcial) runs two 5s teams for points which I might join for some relentless mainset. Now there are some choices you have to make along the way, and part of that is hit rating. A rogue wants 5% hit for pvp, and that's EXACTLY 163.95 hit rating. Hit rating comes in increments of 50 and 60 between a few pieces. The Wintergrasp shoulders are about the same as relentless shoulders, except there's hit instead of crit on them (63 exactly). The other avaliable hit items are the Wrathful cloak, Wrathful necklace (both 60, each of these has a counterpart with the same stats except instead of 60 hit they have 60 crit) and the relentless ring which has 50. With the relentless ring and either the WG Shoulders, wrathful necklace, and wrathful cloak (WG shoulders are MUCH easier to get than relentless shoulders and save you the points as they only require WG marks of honor so I reccomend getting those) you need to have two of those three and the relentless ring. You will be at 170/173 which will be breaking the cap by just a little, but it sure beats spending the time and money trying to get it exactly. I'm personally getting the crit necklace, as the cape is blue and it will look better than the red crit cape for RP purposes.

Also, it's yet to be announced if today 3.3.3 hits. If not, I'm grinding up as much gold as I can to buy my Mut/Env dual spec as I grind out honor. Also, I might be taking the two points of Lethality (+12% crit damage on non-stealth combo point builders) and putting them into Waylay (all backstabs and ambushes reduce movement speed by 50% and attack speed by 20%, or at least in 3.3.3 that's what it is), which is moving points off of assassination to subtlety, and then from Blood Splatter (30% damage buff to rupture/garrote) to Remorseless attacks, keeping those points in assassination.

You can always find my character sheet with glyphs, gear (as it is) and talents at

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Twisting+Nether&cn=Aarcial

Sitting in Wait

Patience is a virtue they say, but I can't wait for 3.3.3 to hit. I switched to subtlety on Thursday night after rigorous discussion with other PvPers and spec revision. My initial spec that was brought to the table was

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=4&tal=02530010000000000000000000000500000000000000000000000005300232133300121350130231251

After getting advice on changing in/out a few talents I had

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=4&tal=02530010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005300232133320121350135031251

And wound up just stealing the build a friend suggested in black and white as

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=4&tal=00502310200000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005320232130322121350105031251

(I will almost always link to talent builds on the official armory site).

Over the past few nights I have learned how to use Shadowstep, and done the DPS testing to tell you that in 3.3.2 a rotation of Hemo to build up CP, slice and dice, Hemo to build up CP again, rupture, repeat, outdamages similar finishers with Backstab in place of Hemo, making me reconsider the three points in Puncturing Wounds (assassination). You'll also notice I didn't put points into Waylay at the end, because I'd rather use crippling poison and get the 20% additional speed reduction, so Backstab remains to be pretty useless. Until I get vigor, the power of Sub. remains untapped in PvP though. After talking with someone who's played Sub for awhile now, we're supposed to use a 5 cp Kidney Shot on our targets, immediately shadow dance, and ambush the shit out of them. Now without vigor while leveling, we are confined to 100 energy (No the glyph of vigor does not work until you have vigor). However I'm hoping that the 120 energy will be enough to get off 4 ambushes with the glyph of shadow dance (I'm getting three with the glyph now, it's seconds 4-6 where I never seem to have enough energy) Otherwise, I'm still dealing a considerable amount with daggers/hemo (again, no damage buff), but there's still a decent amount to learn about other mechanics, like what to do when shadow dance is on CD in pvp (I'm thinking my hemo/S&D/hemo/rupture rotation?), when to use ghostly strike, and how to resist the sexy sexy urge to use shadowstep every time it's off the cooldown. Speaking of shadowstep, I was doing some cross-faction (sort of) RP today in the Deeprun Tram with two Alliance friends and a Horde one, and I shadowstepped across the tram-yons (get it? tram canyons). I for one can not wait for the cooldown to be reduced by 10 seconds. 30 seconds between screwing around is far too long. Also I need to rub it into my mut/envenom friends' faces better. They should not offspec into a PvE build.

In other news today I found a spirit bear and was going to give it away. The guy I gave it away to (first /who 80 hunter I found in Dalaran who was BM) paid me 100g. I also spent two hours trying to do DTK regular with healers and tanks that could not get along. Five different healers. And then there was a 5 hour queue for AV this afternoon. I died doing the quest where you get on the proto-drake in Skorn (Grizzly Hills) and use it to kill the thane. I died on the second story and missed the queue pop because I could time my jumps well enough.

Lastly, apparently some time during Wrath, sub has been good. This video won one of the xFire video awards, it's a 5s comp of all Sub Rogues...

http://www.xfire.com/video/1e46ef/

Greatest thing ever. Hope 3.3.3 hits THIS Tuesday. I'm not leveling Inscription till then either.

Another Man's Word

Usually I don't like to quote another person's blog, but after some forum browsing, I stumbled upon a post on WoW.com's rogue section (a great blog by the way), about 3.3.3 and how the guy who's done that blog has had the time to crunch the numbers and tell us all about how subtlety will surpass mut/envenom in pvp (and one can assume mut/evis) and without further adieu I will post a link to his blog and start looking up subtlety builds.

http://www.wow.com/2010/03/03/encrypted-text-patch-3-3-3-changes-mean-subtlety-is-back/#continued

While the patch hasn't hit yet with the nice damage buffs, I want to get used to it now. He's got a lot of nice things to say, and I think this is Blizz telling us Subtlety will be back with strength in Cataclysm. Which is good because I knew Blizz was going to usurp mutilate builds as a whole for Cataclysm and the last thing I wanted to hear was "Combat's good." I hate combat. That's why I don't level as it.

My last post being super long and it being the only post in a two week period sort of clears me from feeling the need to have posted last saturday, but I will (probably) post again on Saturday.

Jesus Christ I'm turning into Brian Clevinger with updating.

Treasure Hunting

I really do apologize for not posting on Saturday, as mentioned on the Twitter, I needed to hit 70 for a Black Temple raid on Sunday night (I'd been looking all throughout Outland for new Rogue pants. The pants I got from Outland were tier 6.) Got a nice ring and trinket from Zul'Aman on Saturday as well. The next few days sort of escaped me, but I've got a good amount to write about. First of all, Rogues rock the 60s bracket. I'm still destroying other players, (two shot a shaman mid combat last night) but as far as BGs go, 60s is where we can really fuck people up. Rogues take skill, and for that some people don't try them a lot. Mutilate specced rogues don't have a lot of offensive tricks (like avenging wrath, aspect swapping...) in our bag, as we are already so powerful there, especially with passive talents. Besides vanish, dismantle (which I consider defensive as it's used to pacify), evasion and sprint, cloak of shadows really shakes things up, making DoTs a less effective offense against us (as without it they can wreck us). Unfortunately it doesn't do shit against bleeds and things, making it so feral druids, warriors and evis. rogues (I ca only assume it works on poison). Anyway, a few important things I've learned at this point that I'm glad I'm not learning later

• No matter how much you destroy a paladin, they will bubble. Thankfully, paladins have become quite popular because they require little skill to play at this point, and many won't do much to you before they bubble, so just vanish.
• The sooner you get your trinket the better. Trinkets and EMFH (human racial trinket) are our worst enemies as they destroyed stunlocks. Make sure you have one on your side as soon as possible to even the odds.
• Against a warlock, if you're not a human, vanish and cloak are on a shorter cooldown than your trinket. Wait for fear to wear off and just cloak/vanish off. When distance is your enemy and it becomes an issue, it becomes stealth's friend
• Most classes don't know how the hell to respond to a sap. Most will carry on as if nothing happened, or pop an aoe. If they pop an AoE that doesn't hinder their movement (like consecrate or death and decay) then go ahead leave them be. They'll waste good. time just running around in circles on their little consecrate area, and will oftentimes be capable of beating you, as they are very much on their toes.
• Classes like mages and warlocks who have channeled aoes (for mages, if they're spamming arcane explosion, wait until they've figured out it's a waste of mana until you act) including hellfire, but wait until it's farther through the cast for that, cloak to get near enough to cheap shot (garrote always for mages) and then destroy them. They'll come out with diminished mana, and if a warlock is dumb enough to use hellfire, then diminished hp. If there's ever a second glyph for cloak that extends it's duration, it'll be the most useful thing in the world against warlocks if they ever learned to really use aoe to protect themselves.
• While Mutilate is always what you want to use when you don't have 4-5 CP, use the lowbie tactic of circling your enemy fast enough to get behind them, especially against other melee classes. They have to learn to counter-dance us to get to attack then, and change the way you dance at random intervals, especially when you have them at a point where they're trying to keep up with you, not the other way around. You want them to be unable to hit you, not the other way around.
• When there's no level difference involved, and not the difference of something like wrathful to eviscerator's set, then if the numbers are in your favor, the fight is in your favor.
• In a big skirmish, rogues can get tossed around by blinds, fears, stuns, any form of crowd control will not work in our favor, and will go towards us after healers and clothies, because we can get out of situations, but we CAN'T use cloak during polymorph and fear (among other things...)

I also want to talk about something important. Every day many dozens upon dozens of people get hacked. Blizzard spends a lot of money staffing their support lines, investigating claims, altering databases (as to restore hacked items), issuing bans to make it so hacked accounts don't spam gold sites and they can't mess up the account even more. Blizzard offers a very cheap service that saves THEM money so they can make sure the Cataclysm most-popular-rogue-spec isn't combat, fixing subtlety, and making us a stronger class. Ad all the other important things they have to spend money on. On Saturday a WoW friend got hacked. He has already got his items back, but he ad I both have gotten authenticators since. I highly recommend them to all readers, as no matter how many keyloggers an viruses y ou get on your computer, as long as you have the ability to run WoW, you can continue signing in with no concerns about your account safety. For those of you that don't know how it works, I won't go into the details, as I'd LIKE to get working on my new professions of the week: herb/inscription.