What If: Return of the Buckler

With a new expansion coming there will be new things added to the game.  Oddly enough more often than you would realize many of the new things added to the game are actually old things that were in the game before but were removed or changed into something else.

For example a warriors heroic leap was in the game but there were mechanic issues with it so it was removed.  Hunters original resource was focus but they could not make it work so they switched them to mana.  Things like that, things that were tested and removed but found their way back into the game.

What if some other things that were once in the game found their way back into the game.

The idea that has popped into my mind has to do with the buckler, but there are many other things that were removed that could some day return, perhaps when this what if article is done you could add a few removed things you would like to see returned, but I am going to think about adding the buckler back into the game.

Back in the original game hunters and rogues could use a buckler, which is like a shield.  It was removed from the game and any remaining bucklers in the game were relabeled as shields but both hunters and rogues were able to equip one.

Being there is no longer a ranged weapon slot the idea of a hunter using a buckler is really something we can not roll with.  That along with the fact hunters do not have a melee spec.  But rogues on the other hand use melee and melee weapons so them using a buckler is not exactly out of the question should they return.

What if the buckler returned and gave rogues an option to tank?

Unlike most tank classes that will, as the expansion goes on, eventually move up to the point where they can "cap" some defensive stats or become so high in them that it makes them in game super heroes.  Kind of like how I can solo the celestials on my druid now just for fun or when guild mates finish their legendary line and need to kill all four I will just go and pull with only me and them and not worry if others join in or not.  While I'll be the first to admit that is amazingly fun and exciting to do it really should not happen in a current content, even for something like the cesestials.  A rogue with a buckler can be the first class to reach true balance as a tank to the point they would not be able to do things like that.

The rogue could be left as is, no real need to even redesign the class what so ever.  Just add something to abilities that acts differently while a rogue has a buckler equip.  When a rogue keeps their poisons up, keeps their finishing moves rolling, keeps their buffs up, keeps their debuffs or DoTs rolling, they now also add something passively to the rogues defensive capabilities.

Lets say that with a buckler equip they automatically gain the ability all tanks need to not be able to get crit plus a base amount of dodge and parry.  No block however as bucklers are smaller and should not be able to take a full hit but block could work too I guess, if you feel that strongly about it.

Then when the rogue puts up a buff like slice and dice, while a buckler is equip, it would give 20% dodge and 20% parry.  Keeping it rolling would keep those numbers up.  While poisons are ticking on a target with a buckler equip they gain another 10% dodge and 10% parry.  Then from that point on their finishing moves offer short buffs.  Maybe an envenom with a buckler equip would give 2% dodge per combo point used for 6 seconds or a rupture with a buckler equip would give 2% parry per combo point used for 6 seconds.  Things like that.

It could be designed to work exactly as they intend it too.  If they want rogues to have a maximum of 60% dodge and 60% parry at any given point they could make it so.  If they decided that 60% was too much they could just adjust how things work.  Effectively they could set it up that rogues would have exactly what they want them to have and no more.  Unlike other tanks that get stronger as they get more gear a rogue tank will always be what it is with a buckler equip and excellence of execution.

Now this would not make for a rogue being a great main tank but it would make for a rogue being an exception off tank for those moments when one might be needed.  They could effectively fill a roll in the game there really is no class that can fill right now.  A part time tank and a full time damage dealer, all with the switching of an off hand weapon to a buckler.  While the plate classes can do it to some extent, they are all left at a disadvantage while playing off tank.  A rogue could be designed with the intention of being an off tank while wearing a buckler.  I think it would add something really exciting to the game.

The possibilities are there and all it would require is the buckler to make its way back into the game the same way heroic leap did and hunters using focus as a resource did.

What if something you liked that was removed came back?  What would you like to make a return, and what could you see it changing if it did return?

Remember, anything can come back.  Who would have every thought something as huge as a complete change to resources would come back but it did for a hunter so nothing is impossible.

The Basic Classes of Warcraft Need Help

Zell over at Unwavering Sentinel made a post yesterday about how ghostcrawler mentioned that hunters were on the block for a make over yet his class, the warrior, which is in desperate need of a make over remains for the most part untouched and unspoken about.

As a hunter main of course I must take to the defense of my class and why we are deserving of a revamp but I can not argue anything he has to say about warriors.  He is 100% correct in saying that they are in a very bad place.  I play a warrior as an alt, I have tanked on my warrior, I used to play with perhaps the greatest warrior tank I have ever seen in the game, I know people that have been warriors since vanilla that have quit because of warriors being basically forgotten.  So it is not like I am oblivious to warrior concerns.

The point is, why do they just have to do hunters, why can they not do all the basic classes of warcraft.  While it is just an opinion I believe the basic classes of warcraft to be (tank) warrior, (healer) priest, (melee) rogue, (caster) mage and (ranged) hunter.

If you look at that list three of those five are the most often talked about as in need of a revamp.  Actually it seems like the only three classes we hear talked about lately as in need of a revamp are those three, the hunter, the rogue and the warrior.

Zell goes on to use some charts made by Cynwise as proof that hunters should not get any attention as they are the most, or one of the most, popular class in the game.  He seems to discount that popularity and actual usage mean two completely different things.

Budwiser is the number one selling beer in the united states and it is quite possibly one of the worst beers on the market.  The reason it is the number one selling beer is advertising, ease of access as every single store carries it, and it is usually a cheaper price than the better beers.  Being number one does not mean it is in a good place.

That is exactly were hunter are.  They are easy to level, killer in low level battle grounds, great gathers which makes them ideal for secondary profession alts, good soloers, and over all a decent class.  The are easy to play but hard to master, however you can get very far with that easy to play zone and that is why some people like them.

Also, these facts are all well known which basically means advertising makes them popular, just like budwiser.  So when someone wants to make a profession alt, a double gather, or something easy to just play around with and maybe solo once in a while, hunters are a very popular choice.  But like budwiser, just because they are number one, does not mean they are good.

I can go over the issues with rogues and warriors that can show they deserve some class spanning changes but over all I would be in a much better place to go over why I believe hunters are in need of something sweeping as a class as I play them more often so I am more versed in the ins and outs of them.

1) Bad Scaling:

Hunters usually start off a tier in an okay place but as the tier goes on and people get gear they start to fall in the ranking because they do not scale well with secondary stats.  A redesign of how secondary stats are handled for hunters to better smooth out their place in the standings so they do not dip as gear levels go up would be a nice start in the redesign of hunters.

When Patch 5.4 came out if you did an ordos group you would see the top 5 damage dealers as hunters.  Week two, as people started to get some gear, some of the better hunters might be able to hold on to a top 5 spot but most others start to drift, maybe of those previous 5 that were top 5 only 2 would be top 5 now. By the third week as more people were getting gear maybe one of those original top 5 people are even in the top 10 any longer.

It is not that hunters are having bad luck with gear, or the hunters are just getting worse while everyone else is getting better.  It is that when a hunter picks up a few hundred crit and a few hundred haste and maybe even a couple of hundred mastery it might mean a 3 or 4K increase where a feral druid picking up the same exact stats would mean a 8 or 10K increase for them.

It is all about bad secondary stat scaling.  That is why as patches move on, hunters move down.  It has nothing to do with the ability of the person at the keyboard or their luck, bad or good, with getting new gear.  It is that the gear upgrades mean more to every other class in the game.

To create real balance for hunters they need to scale better with gear.  Hunters asking to be #1 on the charts are not asking because they want to be #1, they are asking because they know if they are #1 at the start they will end up middle of the pack or even lower middle of the pack once everyone is geared up.  All hunters are asking for is a fair shake, not for the #1 spot locked in forever.  Just not #1 at one item level and #16 when you are talking only 13 item levels higher.  Balance, that is all they are asking for.  If hunters where 8 and stayed 8 they could deal with it.  A hell of a lot more than being #1 for a short time and #16 for a long time.  This is all because of secondary stat scaling.

2) Button Bloat:

Button bloat isn't just about having a lot of abilities.  That is a common misconception among many people that hear the term, hunters too.  They do not realize why some hunters, myself included, complain about button bloat.  It is not that we have more to hit that is the problem it is because we have more to hit that makes what we hit feel less important.

Because there are so many buttons and blizzard is trying to make them all worthwhile to use that means that the average damage value per button and focus has to make anything with a cooldown worth using but not so powerful that it would be over powered in PvP.  This has the effect that every ability feels the same.  Even if one ability is more important than the other they are so close in value that it doesn't feel like it is a big deal.

In a way it is why even a bad hunter can seem decent as long as they are hitting something all the times.  Even if they are hitting the "wrong" abilities they can come off as looking like they are doing okay.  Sure a good hunter will be significantly better than the bad one hitting anything, but the anything hunter will not come off as horrible as the anything warlock because the warlock actually has some abilities that hit like a truck whereas everything the hunter has hits like a wet noodle.  If he hunter forget noodle number two and hits noodle number one an extra time he might lose 4K but if a warlock forget chaos blot they could lose 40K.  Abilities that hit harder matter more and for hunters with so many buttons there are not really any options that hit hard enough to every notice a huge difference.

That is all thanks to button bloat and one other thing that is rarely mentioned.  Auto shot damage being so high is another thing that makes the button bloat issue even worse.  Because auto shot damage is so high that means there is less damage to add to used abilities and that lowers them to the point where they are closer to each other and all seem to hit like a wet noodle.

In my most recent test (not really a test) of auto shot only yesterday while talking on vent moonfang spawned.  I right clicked on him and that was all I did.  At the end of the fight I was sitting at 72K.  Of course those numbers are off because of the legendary cloak proc and the high amount of adds there, but even without that I would say that it had to be close to 60K just doing auto shot.

If my auto shot damage was indeed around 60K (with my pet too) and my simmed DPS with no buffs, as that was the state I was in, is 175K, that means that over 1/3 of my damage done comes from doing nothing but right clicking on a mob.  Yes, this is faulty data because all my trinkets procced on the pull and there was some AoE from the cloak and the fight was really fast so there was not a lot of time for the damage to die down from its high point of 128K (yes with just auto shot) on the pull when all my trinkets went off.  But the fact that auto shot played such a huge part in my numbers (combined with survival pet damage) it leaves less for the "big" abilities to do.

This is why there needs to be fewer buttons, to make the bigger buttons bigger, and the filler buttons filler instead of on par with everything else.  It would make abilities feel more powerful which makes the class feel more "fun" instead of just having every single button you press hit for 60-90K and it starts to feel as what you hit doesn't even matter making the play style boring.

3) Specs:

The three hunter specs used to have identity.  The button bloat helped remove a lot of that because all classes just became hit whatever was best that was available while saving focus for our so called big shot that really isn't all that big.

All specs play that exact same way now.  Not like there was much of a difference in hunter specs before, lets face it, there really wasn't.  But what little difference they had, like marksman being the only spec that could refresh serpent sting and they all can now, or survival having traps mean a lot more to them than the other classes but they mean to same to everyone now.  It just seems that the little things that made each spec its own entity aren't there like they used to be.

A little redesign to give them all identity again would be nice.  Same could be said, and has been said, about the rogue.  Both the rogue and the hunter have the same problem however.  Even when making things different they are still basically the same.  Go stabby stabby or go pew pew, nothing really is all that different.

The specs can use some individuality again.  While there is still some of it they all seem to share the same rotation.  Keep sting up, hit those new bloat buttons on cooldown, use steady/cobra for focus, arcane for dump and make sure you have enough focus for your big shots when they are off cooldown.

Someone could argue, and I could not really disagree, that it is the same for every class in the game.  Maybe it is, maybe even if things were changed it would still be the same rotation, but some sort of change to add some individual feel to the class like they did with all three warlock specs, would be nice.

But Warriors...

So while I gave three reasons I think hunters are deserving those three reasons could basically fit any class in the game.  So while I do not agree that hunters should be forgotten because they are the most played class in the game.  They do have a lot of glaring problems and the fact that many players have a hunter at max for one reason or another as the stats might show, it isn't a reason to ignore those issues.

Warriors however are in a sad place.  The basic class of warcraft, the class you think of when you hear a tank.  They are the fantasy image of what a tank should be and they are the second class citizen of tanking now.  Everything warriors can do other classes can do better.  Just looking at healing alone, all other tank classes can fight and heal all day long but the poor warrior is left to die with limited healing and rage generation that makes even the most rune starved DK think he is swimming in runes.

Warriors are not just in a bad place, they are in the forgotten place.  Tanking and damage dealing they are just left out.  The hunters might be hurting in scaling, bloat and specs but they are not really in all that bad of a place when compared to where warriors are sitting right now.  Does that mean warriors should get the attention over hunters?  Not at all.

Why can't they just redo all the basic classes of warcraft that still need it?  Warriors, Rogue and Hunters.

A Rogueing We Will Go

The two starter daggers from the legendary quest line for rogues are just so good that even if you do not play your rogue often you have to get them.  Not to mention, a mere 10K gold for them is a steal based on the prices that I see weapons going for on many servers.  Weapons, even 359 ones, are always over 5K so I say go for it.

If you are in a guild like mine or basically any guild that is not so uptight that they are not willing to waste a few minutes on the 4th boss to allow any guild rogues to start the quest even if they are not raiders then you can get every rogue in your guild a nice set of daggers.

You can do many at a time too.  Just pull boss, vanish, wait for reset, pick pocket, bring in next rogue that does the same thing.  Everyone online that wants it can get it in one visit if your guild is willing to take the time to do it.

When we get there we ask if anyone online has an alt rogue that wants to do the quest and let them come in for the pickpocket.  That is how mine got it.  I have never raided on my rogue.  Perhaps a few of the bosses for the wrath weekly raid thing where my inability to play a rogue well would not exactly put a kink in things.

I had a 356 item level before the daggers and a 363 after so they put a nice little boost on my numbers and now I want to gear up my rogue some to match the daggers.

So I took my newly minted combat spec, which I have not been since back at 60, and entered the queue.  I was up to about 13K-15K in assassination before the daggers on boss fights, not as good in combat, usually 11K-13K but now that I had the daggers I really did not have much of a choice.  The boost to combat was so great that I had to roll as combat.

Now remember before you start to laugh at my numbers that I am not a very good rogue.  I could be better but I always get bored with it and have never invested the time into it.  I am sure if I actually put my mind to it I could do fine.  Not great, but at least better then I had been.

Enter the daggers.

Having no additional practice I entered a dungeon.  My daggers are my only thing gemmed and enchanted.  I still have 5 333 pieces, head and shoulders being two of them that are usually large stat items.

After running through the bosses I now consider anything under 20K as I am doing bad.  On some fights where I can basically stand still and pew pew I have been pulling 27K.

Yes, you heard that right, from a max of 13K to a max of 27K with just adding the daggers.

Holy cow do they make a difference.  Even someone that sucks at being a rogue can go medieval on the big baddies now.

The sad part is that on my main, my hunter, mathematically speaking I need to execute perfectly in every way to get 27K.  Now my rogue, in gear 30 item levels under my hunter, can beat my hunter while doing a bastardized rotation while I am learning with no gems and no enchants.  There is something really wrong with this if you ask me.

I know there is more to learning a rotation, but if you ever read my post on How to Teach a Rotation you will notice that I tell people to start slow and when they master that add more to it.  I've just never had the desire to take my own advice with the rogue because I just do not like playing it so any dummy time more then 5 minutes to me feels like wasted time.

I am starting off with just doing sinister strike until 4 points, revealing strike for the fifth and then eviscerate as the finisher.  That is it.  I am using a three button rotation, 2, 3, and 4 respectively, on my binds.  Rupture is 1 and slice and dice is 5.  I will add them once I get a few more runs under my belt in using just the three buttons.

I plan to attempt to get myself at least all 378 gear from heroics this week, if I am lucky with drops that is.  I can only imagine that 30K will not be a problem when I have all 378s and actually have everything gemmed and enchanted.

If you have a rogue and you have access to the 4th boss of DS I suggest you take the time to do the starting quest.  Even if you never get the legendary version, the two weapons are good enough on their own.  Even more so if the character is only an alt for you.  Having an alt that you could do such good DPS on without even thinking is not a bad thing is it?

Being this is the last tier of raiding the 10K for two weapons is a worthwhile expenditure if you ask me.  I know I will not be making these into legendary weapons until we are punting pandas and I come back to farm it but I still like what I got from beginning the quest line at least.

As for the quest, for those that do not know, it is not exactly what I would call easy.  More so for someone like me who, as I have said, is not a very good rogue to begin with.

You will be tasked with sneaking through a city that is swarming with mobs.  Once you get the pattern down getting back there will be no problem.  Took me about 20 tries before I mastered it.

There are a few tricks you can use too if you are not that good at sneaking around.  One is the way I first made it in.  All you need to do it get close enough to sprint into the area where the boss is.  As soon as you get in there you will get ported out because you where seen but now you can mount up and fly back in.  You might get ported back out again that first time flying back in but the second time you will have no problems.

If you ever leave the area, as in zoning to another zone, you will need to rework your way in again.  Just figured I would give you fair notice there.  But like I said, once you have the pattern to getting in there getting back is not so much of a problem.

There is a second way to make it is, a friend told me he did it and it worked.  It is the latency way.  Go to something like you tube and open a few dozen videos and have them all playing, more if you have a great computer, and wait until your latency to crap out and then mount up and fly in.  Take off all your armor first because it is safer if you just release your mount and drop into the area.  Drop, die, come back to rez your body, you are in now without having to sneak though all those mobs.  Make sure you close all those windows after you are in, you do not want to be lagging when fighting this guy for sure.

Tips for fighting Creed:

1) One cast leaves a void zone on the ground.  It can not be interrupted so you should either stun to interrupt it, or start moving as soon as the cast starts.  That will avoid most of the damage.  Moving might be the best idea but stuns work when learning the difference with the casts.
2) One cast you can interrupt, do it every time.  Even if you have to slow DPS to make sure you have energy for the kick, do it.  That hurts, and that drains all your energy.
3) Third is a breath effect, you will never, I repeat never, want to stop this one.  This is the free DPS time for you and wasting a kidney punch on something like that could be the difference between success and failure.  It is easily avoidable and he does not move while casting it so get behind him and do what rogues do best.
4) Play smart with your combo points.  Using them to kidney shot the boss or apply recuperation is usually more important than doing a 5 point finisher.
5) After a few tries you get the feel for how things go and you can mix it up.  Two or three point finishers or recuperates, so you have 1 point available for a kidney shot is sometimes ideal.
6) If you are under geared like I am, and yes, if I had better gear this guy could have very well been a push over, make sure your keep moving.  Heck, even if you are not under geared, keep moving but move smart.  You want to be close enough for the kick when needed.
7) Max out your first aid if you have not, use it if you need too when he is kidney shot, blind, gouged, casting his breath or you can slow him and get some distance.
8) Think at least 8K DPS, because that is what you will need to down him before he enrages, but worry about that after you have gotten good at avoiding all the casts and abilities.  20K DPS is not going to help you here if you are not micromanaging the little stuff.
9) Know your whole toolbox and use it.  You have many abilities that can help here evasion, cloak, combat readiness, deadly throw, etc.  Use them all.
10) Take your time learning the fight.  Watch a video or wipe on it a few times.  Once you get the pattern to managing his abilities down the fight is a piece of cake.  If you need repairs, have someone meet you outside the phased area with a repair bot or mount.  Do not leave the zone unless you feel like sneaking through again.

Short version, keep moving, keep recuperate rolling, kick his energy drain every time, use your whole toolkit to control that bum.

When all is said and done you will have two new awesome daggers to enjoy and rip things up with.  No longer do you need to work for your DPS, it is given to you in the form of two weapons.

I might actually start to like playing my rogue if I get to pull number 1 numbers doing nothing that takes any skill what so ever.  It would be a change of pace from working my ass off trying to stay competitive.

Eh, who am I kidding, I don't like being a rogue, but it sure is nice to have another character I can bring into a raid that can do decent DPS without me even taking the effort to gem, enchant, or gear him up.

If you ask me, the starter weapons for the quest line are way to easy to attain and are way too powerful for starter weapons.  But hell, what do I care.  I got them so I am happy.

Now I am starting to wonder what those looking for raid rogues with the daggers are doing.  While waiting in queue my poisons wore off and I went into a dungeon with no poisons and did 13K on the first mob.  Funny part is, before the daggers I would have thought that was amazing.  With them I said, something is wrong, and noticed I had no poisons on.  I can't wait to get my gear up to level and see what I can do in a LFR.

If you can pull 13K with a bastardized rotation and no poisons in a 5 man then there is no reason for any rogue with the daggers to be pulling less then 25K in 372 item level gear in a 25 man.  I say kick any rogue doing less.  The daggers do all the work, if they are doing less than that, they are not even attacking to let the daggers do all the work. They are AFKing and thinking that no one will notice that doing 15K is actually horrible if you have those daggers.

I think for me at least, that another reason I am liking it at the moment is that it gives me a chance to learn.  I can do my super simple rotation and not be hurting the group while I am learning.

I always put way to much pressure on myself to do the best I can do.  The over powered daggers allow me to play without having to do the best I can do right at the get go and still contribute reasonably well.  It allows me to learn over time as I go.  It allows me to just play and not analyze everything I do.

This could very well turn into the time where I can actively learn my rogue because the pressure to do well is no longer there.  The daggers do all the work.  I can do badly and still do 20K and if looking at the masses in the LFR system as any sort of indicator then a large majority of the WoW player base can't pull 20K anyway, which means I am in a good position all thanks to blizzard giving rogues a free pass at having to work to be good this patch.

The relative ease to get the daggers means that every 85 rogue in game should have them.  There is no reason not to.  Go get yours now, you will not regret it.

Ability Meet Brick Wall

First, my Rogue.

I ran a few more normals last night and it seemed more of the same.  I am having no luck with trinket drops and no luck with a wrist or gun.  Outside of them, my other gear is starting to look heroic ready.  I'm up to a 334 items level now and (as long as the tank is not moving things all over the place) I am doing solid DPS on boss fights.

It might be time to move up to heroics even if I do feel I still have a lot to learn.  Had one run yesterday where I pulled over 9K on all bosses and 7.8K over all for the run.  My trash DPS sucks big time.  Maybe I will have some luck getting those 4 gear spots filled in heroics.  I am just so afraid of not being able to pull my own weight in them.

I even spent time on the dummy while waiting for the random working on timing.  I am almost to the point where I no longer even think when I do the rotation.  I've even gotten to the point where I am, mentally at least, redesigning my bar.  I want to move backstab to a more prominent place, even more so for normals being things die so quick I can never get two mutilates off on anything, doing a mutilate and then a backstab I think would be a trash increase.  Not that trash matters.

I am thinking that I might actually do better in heroics with things lasting longer.  I've noticed when I was on the dummy that my DPS would always start really low, I mean like 2K low and it would keep climbing fast until around 6K and then it would keep moving up slowly to about 7K.  Meaning that a Rogue is really one of those characters that needs a fight to go on for them to get the most out of the rotation. 

On my hunter, unless I open with cooldowns, the DPS I do right at the start will be the DPS I do over all.  It is the same all the time.  There is something to be said about always knowing where you are because your DPS is always stable.  My Rogue does not seem to have that benefit.  Maybe my heroic DPS will take a step up because things will last longer.

While I know a really skilled Rogue can pull more out of my item level I am not really skilled and I think based on my ability I have reached a brick wall in normals.  I might still do a few for the hell of it but I know it is time for me to move on. 

I am going to miss those fantastic normals I've gotten so used to do.  I pulled 12K on a boss yesterday and was last of the three DPS.  One was 18K and the other was 13K.  Do you know how rare it is to get 3 DPS that could do numbers like that and move from the bad at the same time in a heroic?  Really rare.  I'll miss normals where good players play.

Normals are where people that care about how they play learn.

Second, my Warrior.

My Warrior is sitting at item level 347 but it is really not 347 it is probably 344 or 345.  I crafted a bow to keep in my bag to get to 346 because I am still rocking a 318 bow.  All you warriors out there can probably name that bow I am sure.  Unless you get a drop in a heroic it is the best bow.

That coupled with my relatively limited skill as a tank means that I really need to step up my game when I try to do a Zul.  I only run with guild if they need a tank and then if I am having issues I bow out.  Nothing wrong with admitting you can't do something.  I've tanked many bosses in the Zuls but have yet to finish one.

I end at the cauldron boss in ZG because it always seems someone makes some sort of mistake and it all goes downhill from there.  I did the oops I stood in the fire thing a couple of times but once you do that 2 or 3 times you learn and never do it again.  Perhaps my gear and/or ability is what starts to make it harder on the healer.

Last night I got ZA, first time ever on this character.  I fear the dragonhawk guy as a tank.  I know the other fights I can do with ease but that guy was enough to give me fits on how I would do it.  So we did that guy last.  No problems up until there.  A few trash wipes but oddly enough the only trash wipes we had where wipes of over confidence.  We handled the harder of the pulls, the ones up to the bear, without any wipes or incidents at all really.  Even in a group that had no CC except for a poly.  I've healed and DPSed that and it is rare to see no wipes there.  I was impressed.

Other bosses, no problem.  A few wild pulls, no problem.  A scout that snuck up behind us and called help, no problem.  Three mobs that we just rushed into, wipe.  You know, it made for some fun laughing on vent.  How is it we can do all the pulls I see wipes on in pugs as if they where no problem at all yet something simple we wipe on?  It is not an original event just meant for us.  I hear a lot of stories from people that end up wiping on easy stuff when the hard stuff is no problem.  I'll blame over confidence so mistakes are made.

When we get to the dragonhawk guy I say I want to tank it by where the hawks will be coming from, the same way every tank I ever saw doing it has done it.  After they are released I start grabbing them up and then a few start squeezing through.  We have no hunter or rogue to send them my way so it is on the DPS to either kill them or the person they are on to come to me so I can drag them off.  Neither happens and we wipe.

Two more attempts later and I tell everyone that this standing by the gate is not working. I need more room to bounce around and if something gets past me and I am in the middle I can get it off of the person a lot easier then if I am by the gate and it is now across the entire platform.

We go with me pulling him dead center and it goes so much better. I am grabbing them as they come out because they need to pass me to get to anyone.  A few get away here and there, but a quick move over, clap, move back, and I have them back.  Sure, there is one or two here or there but things are going much better.  We have almost all the first side down when the second side comes and I do the same thing, grab them up, try to pick up the ones that snuck by, and people start going down.  Wipe.

Again, wipe, once more, wipe.  I could place the blame on the DPS, one pull one of the DPS that usually is good for 15K is doing 5K, but it is not all that.  I could blame the healer for not keeping me up but when I died I still had 2 cooldown left (a life and a dodge trinket on use) and that makes it as much my fault as his.  I could blame people for not moving from the fire ball thing but I got caught by one in our first attempts to and it is hard to fault someone else for something you did yourself once if it is something that only happened once for them too.

Maybe it was a series of unfortunate things that happened.  Everyone only got caught once, but everyone seemed to get caught in different attempts causing us to be undermanned in a few attempts.  Before we moved to the center tanking position I was not doing as well picking up the hawks so that was all on me.  The first guild healer, that had to leave, would always run away when he had the hawks on him instead of running to me, which made it impossible to get the damn hawks back. 

There are a lot of things that went wrong but in the end it was all on me.  I could have done better picking up the hawks.  I got hit by the fire only once in all the attempts but once is too many.  I got hit by the fire ball only once in all the attempts but once is too many.  I could feel down on myself about it, we tried for an hour, about eight attempts and we got him down to less then 30% in five of them.  The healer said I should not feel bad, he has done this 18 times since it was released and said he has yet to see any warrior tank that has been capable of doing this boss.

Challenge accepted.  I know I can do it. 

By the last attempt I was snagging 90% of the hawks right away and the other 10% could have easily been dragged over to me.  I had worked on the timing for when to use my AoEs to grab them, even used some engineering tricks to help out.  Those few that got away and are on the healer on the bone pile, well, here, have a saronite bomb.  They all came to me.  Ah, the joys of using all your tools when you play, some people forget they even have those.

I know I can do it.  Better DPS would have made it easier.  A rogue or hunter to help send strays my way would have helped.  Having all the first pack of hawks down before the second pack started to come out would have helped.  Hell, having better gear on my own would have helped.

Be it gear, be it ability, be it the people I was with, one of which had never been in there, I hit a brick wall.  Sometimes you have to wonder, it is not the perceived difficulty of a battle, it is the battle itself.  I tanked Chimaeron the other day filling in for someone yet I can't tank some stupid heroic boss with annoying pets.  Difficultly has nothing to do with tier of the content, it is all about your ability to handle the content.

I know I can do it.  Each attempt I got better at my timing and picked up a greater amount of hawks.  That is a case of my ability was getting better.  For the moment at least, after those attempts, my ability hit a brick wall.  I do not think there is much more I can do.  By the last attempt I was picking up nearly everything, not getting hit by anything and using my cooldowns when I knew the healer needed to tend to other wounds that where not my own.

A warrior can do this, just not this warrior, yet.  Give me a few more tries and maybe a group with 2 ranged and one melee instead of 2 melee and one ranged or a group with better DPS so all the adds are down before the second batch comes and I got this baby.  I could tell my DPS where getting tired of trying.  They all started out in the 13s and 14s and by the last attempt only one was in the 10s.  Maybe if I where better at the start when they where doing better it would have went down on the first try.  For now, I sit back and plan my revenge.

I am going to look over my engineering stuff and see what else I can use like those saronite bombs, they really did wonders to pull packs off the healer.  One bomb and he healer was all alone again.  Almost makes me think that a warrior tank has to be an engineer and not just for those dead sexy goggles.

I'm All Over The Place

I did a few more normals on my Rogue while trying to polish my rotation and reaction speed and I can tell I am getting better but I am also all over the place.

Lets take the four bosses at the end of HoO. 

The chick I did 4K on, yes, that low.  Hence the reason I am in a normal.  Why so low?  I do not know.

The plant guy I did 12K on.  Yeap, still in mostly all greens and did 12K.  Being he does not have a damage bossing phase that means I am capable of that and should be getting closer to that normally.

Then the portal guy and I did 6K.  No real target switching but lots of running around and a few times of moving from the bubbles, still should not have effected my damage that much.

The the last guy, I did 10K, we never made it to the bonus damage phase.  We downed him before he could make it.  He never cast anything either, lots of interrupts in that group.

If you average it out I did 8K over all on those four bosses, that is a lot better then most of the people I run into in heroics can do yet I still only consider that normal ability.  For me however, that is still an amazing failure and proof I do not know how to play a Rogue all that well yet.

I can deal with that one 6K fight.  That is something I can understand.  It was a lot of running around him and I need to get used to fighting on the move like that and there is a phase where I can not do any damage because of the bubbles.

What bothers me is the 4K on the female one.  First off, there is no moving involved for the most part.  I only needed to turn for the radiance and that was no problem, timing it I made sure I was at low energy when I did so I could be regenerating energy while my back was to her.  Switching to the other versions of her should not have hindered me either as they are right there and I really did not need to move much to get to them.

I can blame it on the shield, that absorb does lower your damage.  I think I do less on that fight on my hunter too and I know damn well I am doing it right with that character.  I am questioning myself with this character however because I am just learning.

I did pick up a new thrown weapon, justice pants and the BoE 353 hands from the new Zuls that a guild mate got for me for 200 gold.  Now I have no excuse.  I have two good pieces, and another decent piece.  Only half my gear is green any more. 

Even without gems and enchants (I will put them on the gloves and pants, anything 346+ I start gemming and enchanting) I should be pulling 8K easy at item level 329.  At least now I am an honest 329, an honest 331 now actually. 

If you can not pull 8K+ at 329 without gems and enchants, you are doing it wrong.  I will keep running normals until I can do 8K in my sleep.  I feel as if I am getting closer to that but I still do not see myself as being heroic ready yet.

You know, sucking as badly as I do on my Rogue has helped breath a little life into the game for me.  It is a challenge for me and I enjoy it at the moment.  I am sure it will pass, but for now, the challenge of getting better on my Rogue is kind of fun.

One thing I think I need to look up is AoE stuff.  I know Rogues lack there, but on AoE battles it sometimes feels like I should just sit back and let everyone else do the work.  Why even try when my DPS, no matter how good I do, will be half the tanks. 

My AoE does no damage, and everything dies so fast I can't get any combo points up to make anything count.  I am sure there are good Rogues out there that might be able to give some tips there, please, feel free too.  I've done okay figuring out the rest but I am lost on AoE fights and unlike a lot of people you run into in pugs I am not insulted by people giving me advice.

Either way, now I am getting better gear, I am getting more comfortable playing it and I've even stopped getting the need more energy message as often as I had.  My DPS is all over the place, now is the time to tighten it up.  I'd say a second week of normals and I should be done with that.

I am thinking of making myself the leatherworking 359 belt because I have all the items for it but it would feel weird having a 359 belt when most of my gear is still 318 or lower.  I'll do it anyway.  From what I read it is the best in slot pre raid for a Rogue and being I do not plan to raid with this character it is basically best in slot for me over all.

I think part of the reason my DPS is all over the place is the lack of hit.  Perhaps in time as I get some more gear I will not be subjected to the random number generator which could be influencing my DPS some.  Only time will tell.  I'll knock out a few more normals today as week two of learning to play a Rogue begins

State of Dungeon DPS

My Rogue was my second character to 85 and then I never really touched him.  He basically just sat there in the shadows, fitting, but serving no purpose otherwise.

Being all my characters are either healers or tanks with the exception of my hunter which is my main I decided that I wanted to start gearing up a second DPS character (Not big into casters so mage and lock are sitting out the gearing up stage for now).  The Rogue ended up getting the nod being he is also a skinner / leatherworker so having him geared is not a bad thing when I am bored and feel like farming some skins.

The thing with the Rogue for me is, I like playing it to an extent, but I suck at it, so playing it with others makes me feel as if I am making them do all the work.  If I can not do my part I do not join in on a random, it is as simple as that.

So first things first, I basically just threw points where they looked good while leveling, I needed to get myself an actual spec.  I look up some of the top assassination specs at all the usual places and to my surprise, my assassination spec, the one where I just threw anything where it looked good was 100% the same as the top assassination DPS spec, at least in the assassination part of the tree.  The other points I needed to move around.

Being I just mentioned I suck at being a Rogue this goes to prove one thing I said early on, these smaller specs leave you with no choice but to choose the top spec.  As long as you read the skills you will never have much of an option.  And they changed it to this so it would not be cookie cutter.  It does not get more cookie cutter when someone that knows nothing about being a Rogue picks up the perfect spec without even thinking.

Back to the story however.  So I fixed those points in the extra things and read over my rotation, which seems to be what it has always been and I set out to do some normals.

I did a few normals and did decently.  Even reached a high of almost 12K DPS in the last fight of HoO, well, it is a gimmick fight so that was not all me.  I was pulling 5.5K-7K on trash and 8K+ on bosses.  Not all that bad but still not heroic ready.

But enough about me.  Everyone else in the normals was rocking it.  Even when I pulled out all the stops and had some nice crit streaks and reached 9K+ on some fights I was still dead last.  Yeap, 9K and dead last.

This was not in only one normal, this was in five of them.  I was always dead last in DPS, often behind the tank even.  Personally I do not want to try a heroic until I can pull at least 8K over all and 10K+ on bosses for a dungeon.  I believe that should be the minimum any one does, at least if they have any self respect.

Lets flash forward to another character, me helping a friend start to gear up.  We queue for heroics, me as a healer, him as a DPS.  We spam a few of them, four actually.  Outside of my friend who was only doing around 7K over all himself but at least 9K-10K on bosses, there were no other players in any of the dungeons we did that could pull that much.

He was top DPS in heroics doing roughly what I was doing in normals, as bottom DPS, below even tanks.

I was seeing a better selection of DPS in normals then I was in heroics.  Something seems a little off here if you ask me.  Heroic dungeons means you usually have more gear, which in turn should mean you have more skill.  How come the over all that I have seen in the normals and heroics I have run in the recent weeks seem to always have the DPS in normals, on average, doing more DPS then the people in heroics?

Perhaps there is a telling factor here.

People that care about doing their part, like me on my Rogue, shine their skills up in normals.  Hence the reason for so many good players in normals.  Whereas people in heroics are rushing it just to get more gear because they are under the false assumption that gear = DPS.

The few and far between, those people that are learning and honing their skills in normals, will enter heroics and enter the mix of half wits, no wits and dim wits, that think they can pull 4K in a Zul heroic and they are doing their job well.

Perhaps blizzard should introduce other ways to determine how and when you can get into a heroic besides item level.  It is giving the false impression to those morons that if they have the item level that means they can do the job.  This is wrong 100 times over.  Gear is a means to an end, skill gets you to the end.

At the moment the state of DPS in dungeons, to me it seems at least, is that there are a great deal of very good players coming the way of heroics soon.  They are just working out the kinks in normals.  Like everyone should.  Maybe this is a good sign.

There are a lot of bad players out there, they all seem to be in heroics, but you should be happy to know that there is a group of people coming up that are much better then the people we see in dungeons now.

The end question is, with my Rogue, I could easily do better DPS then I see from most people in heroics, should I start doing them?  Nah, until I can do 8K over all with out even thinking about it I won't.  I do not want to be another person that is part of the problem.  I want to be part of the solution.  A good DPS that waits until they can actually do the job.  Maybe when I finally hit item level 329 (I can cheat my way in now) I will be doing at least 8K easily.

How can I manage almost 8K on a character I suck on yet that boomkin that says he has been playing since the family and friends beta still can only pull 5K in item level 356 and he thinks he is good?

The game isn't the problem, it is the people that play it.

The state of DPS is, people will always try to skate through in doing bad DPS because there are two other DPS in the group they are hoping will make up for their short comings.

They will not get better, unless we as players, start kicking, or at least least mentioning it to them, respectfully, no need to insult people.  Blizzard is not going to do anything to fix the problem, only we can.

Every time you run a heroic and there is someone doing 5K DPS but the other two are doing fine you let it side, well, that makes you part of the problem.  Mention something, kick them, do not let them do 5K.  Who cares if the other DPS are 22K and 18K and they are not really needed.  They will never get better until they know they are not doing good to begin with.

This is the mentality that wrath gave us all and I am guilty of it as well.  I would do a random and did not care if the other two DPS sat at the entrance picking their nose.  I did not need them, at 80 I could solo almost all the heroics.  I only needed other people to get my points for a random.  I let it slide when the DK did 800 DPS or the hunter did 500 DPS because in the end I did not even need them to do anything.

That DK is now the DK doing 5K in Zul, that hunter is now the hunter wiping the group because he is screwing up every step he makes.

Maybe if I said something back then they would not be as bad as they are now.  Lets all hope those people that I see in the normals are going to be joining us in heroics soon.  Heroics need them.

Ding! Another 80.

Okay, I know I said I was going to do it on the weekend but 76 to 80 is so stupid easy and quick and I had nothing to do so I went for it last night.  I did some work on it on Monday night before raid time and finished it up last night.

If leveling is Cataclysm is anything like 76-80 I expect to be 85 less then 1 day of game play time at most.  This is a feat that I never thought I would accomplish.  Rogues, in all kindness, suck ass.  They really are hard to level.  Maybe it is because I suck at being a Rogue, maybe it is because I really do not like melee to begin with, maybe it is because they are so freaking squishy for someone that is fighting a battle hand to hand.

Either way I rode recuperate to 80.  Go in hack hack stun (if I can), hack hack kill recuperate and move to the next target.  Never needed to stop and eat after battles, no worries about finishing moves unless it is going to be a long battle.  Just hack and recuperate made for a constant flow of movement.

Rogues basically went from kill one or two and eat to kill, kill, kill, kill, no stopping ever.  That is what got me back to leveling my Rogue.  I hated having to eat after every freaking fight because they get the crap beat out of them so easily.  The Rogue was my second character believe it or not and it took forever to get it to 80 (real time wise, not game time wise).  It feels like a huge accomplishment to get it done being as bad as they are to level.

A few notes on Recuperate that others that hate Rogues but want to punish themselves by trying to level them should know.

1) Use it whenever something dies with combo points on it.  If the time of the buff will be longer then the buff you are currently working on is then it will give you the max time for it.
2) It counts as a finishing move which means it procs Relentless Strikes which in turn can make it almost free and there is no reason not to take a free heal.
3) It can be used in stealth.  So if you need a break in the action you can vanish and use it before getting back into battle. Or stealth instantly after the fight and do it before moving to the next target.
4) You do not need to target the target to use it.  Two mobs?  No Problem.  Mow down one, target the other to start auto attacking it and use it to get the combo points off the dead one.
5) It has a nice range.  You do not need to be on top of the target.
Some things I read just recently but never personally realized...
6) You can get a small but free heal by using premeditation on anything and then recuperate to start the heal.  It will not start battle and it will not break stealth.
7) It stacks with Quick Recovery which ups the healing to 36%
8) Improved Recuperate brings it to 50%, 60% when paired with Quick Recovery
Honestly I never even noticed those things...

All in all, I would still have a level 60 something Rogue if it were not for this little baby that heals you.  When 4.0.1 dropped I had 2 characters sitting in 60s that I had not worked on.  My Mage and my Rogue.  The patch made Mages gods that walk on earth when it comes to damage which made leveling super fast.  The patch made Rogue less annoying because they no longer needed to stop and eat every 30 seconds.  Both those character from 60something-80 took me less then 1 day play time each to get from 60-80. 

I wonder if I can do that with my Warrior as well.  Just got to 60 with only 2 days played so far.  Imagine leveling to 80 in only 3 days while leveling engineering and jewel crafting as well to max.  That would be impressive.

Thank you 4.0.1.  For every bit of Hunter hate that patch spewed in massive amounts it seemingly gave huge love to every other class out there.  Now, can I get my Warrior, Lock and Paladin to 80 before Cataclysm comes?  Hell no.  But I will try to get my warrior there at least, if only because it is my only Engineer.