Project Lore

Like most rogues, I use Tricks of the Trade (referred to as ToT, TotT, or Tricks) a lot. Its a rogue ability that has gained a newfound popularity with the great 2 piece tier 10 bonus from Shadowblade Armor. Tricks of the Trade is cast on a friendly player in your party or raid who is within 20 yards. After it is cast, the rogue gains the Tricks of the Trade buff, lasting for 30 seconds. Once the rogue attacks something, the buff is removed, and a buff is applied to your target that lasts for 6 seconds (10 seconds glyphed). This buff causes all threat caused by the rogue to be applied to the player with the buff, and all of the targeted player's damage is increased by 15%. Once the buff is applied to the target, the cooldown of 30 seconds begins on Tricks of the Trade. In short, Tricks is a rogue ability that lasts 10 seconds, has a 30 second cooldown, and transfers all of the rogue's threat to someone else and makes that person deal 15% more damage. It can be cast on anyone within 20 yards initially, but after casting the rogue can move and attack something farther away and the effect still works. Its usually used to pick up adds or help with aggro. Pretty straightforward. The kicker is the tier 10 bonus that everyone has been picking up. Normally Tricks costs the rogue 15 energy, so rogues usually only used Tricks when the tank needed threat or the rogue's threat was too high, such as during an initial pull. With the tier 10 bonus, the ability grants the rogue 15 energy instead of costing energy. This means that Tricks actually increases the rogue's own DPS, making it very valuable. As such, using Tricks of the Trade whenever it is available because an important part of a rogue's DPS rotation. There are a couple of issues that most rogues will run into. The first is how to select a target to use Tricks on when in combat. Most rogues will focus their target, by selecting them and typing /focus. Then, they use a macro along these lines: /cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade The issue is that there are usually multiple tanks. The one you picked before the fight might be out of range, dead, or not supposed to be getting threat on your current target. For example, if you are Tricksing to a tank with a lot of threat-per-second (TPS) ability and a tank with less TPS needs to get aggro, you could be screwing things up by Tricksing at a bad time. What's a rogue to do? Rogues in this situation usually make a series of macros that look like: /focus tank1 /focus tank2 Then we hit these until something works if it isn't crucial who has aggro, you know you are Tricksing an okay target, or you think your raid is oblivious to why the offtank is pulling aggro. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes, the tank is doing fine on aggro, and you would rather use it on a DPS target. Other times there are unique encounters and situations, like Blood Queen Lana'thel, where ToT has a unique use. An addon to manage Tricks of the Trade could easily because a rogue staple. A simple version would have users give an ordered list of targets that are viable to ToT to, and when you use Tricks it attempts to use it on each target on the list until it is successful. Again, sometimes your target is out of range or dead, so its important to be able to have multiple targets on the fly. A more sophisticated version could synchronize ToT timing between rogues using it on each other. On fights where DPS checks are tight, like on Festergut, a Tricks of the Trade addon could be set up with two rogues where it could tell if they were glyphed for the extra time and give an alert to each rogue when the other one Tricks on them so they could Tricks back. It could designate a "leading rogue" and a "responding rogue" to simplify the process. Additionally, in case threat got out of hand, one of the rogues could press a button to have both of the rogues Tricks onto the tank during the next cooldown to help stabilize threat, or have the other rogue wait a few seconds to resynchronize the ToT rotation. An even more sophisticated version could tie into threat and DPS tools like Skada, Recount, and Omen as well as range tools such as those in DBM to deliver automatic and on the fly target choosing based on user-configurable rules. For example, it could detect the tanks from gear and HP, or from something like CT_Raid, and when a rogue uses tricks, it would go to any tanks in range, given that there were targets that were within 20% aggro of the tank. If the tanks are out of range or dead, there can be an option to tricks onto the lowest threat DPS in range below a certain threshold. If the tanks are well ahead on threat, there can be an option to Tricks onto the highest DPS below a certain aggro level. These can be customized and reordered, perhaps with a scripting language, such as in Outfitter. There are special circumstances that could be taken advantage of in some encounters, like on Lana'thel. Lana'thel turns players into vampires, causing them to do double damage, heal themselves, and generate no threat. The fight is very tight on DPS, and since there are players generating no threat, it makes sense to Tricks to a vampire in range doing the highest DPS. An extra 15% damage for 10 seconds every 30 seconds is an extra 3% DPS, and saving cooldowns and stacking it with things like potions of speed, the vampire buff, and bloodlust make Tricks a valuable DPS tool. An addon with the ability to automatically ToT onto vampires when possible would be a great tool. If this addon gets made, let me know right away so it can be featured right here on the Project Lore blog.

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne or subscribe in iTunes for notifications of new videos!

Patch 3.3's addition of the Dungeon Finder has been nothing short of a game changer.  There's been no single feature added to World of Warcraft in its illustrious five year run that has changed the daily lives of so many players.  People are using the tool to gear alts for raiding that would have never of been geared before, creating new characters to experience the early dungeons, reaping achievement after achievement from dungeons that were rarely seen before and soaking in, dissecting and analyzing dungeon participation on a whole new scale.

I've been a part of the revolution, using the Dungeon Finder on three characters (rogue, holy/shadow priest and frost mage) on almost a daily basis and I've noticed a few trends, some nice, some annoying and some design mistakes.

• Queue discrepancy - Everyone who's used the Dungeon Finder knows about the queue discrepancy.  If you're a healer or a tank you'll be placed in a group within five minutes, but more likely within one.  But DPS spots generally take between 10-15 minutes, at least a 200-300% increase even though there are three spots.  It's lopsided because of the population numbers; the ratio of DPS to tanks/healers is greater than 3:1.  This leads us to...
• "I'm special" complex - So you're a hot commodity.  Groups need you to complete their mission.  To some people that means they can abandon their team at a moment's notice.  Actually, it's usually no notice. My rogue has been left sitting in a half completed, DPS-filled run on numerous occasions because the tank or healer had had enough.  Because of their desirable nature they know that the next group is only a few moments away, so their far more likely to abandon the group than the DPS.  Those three are then left waiting in queue for another ten minutes.  For a tank/healer combo that just abandoned some other group.  A vicious cycle.
• Social dynamics - But it's unlikely we'll ever see those people again, or remember their slight against us if we do, so it's okay.  The greater anonymity of cross-faction play tends to promote childish acts at a higher frequency than normal.  But I have meet some fun, entertaining people during my runs.  Too bad there's no (easy) way I can keep up with them after the run is complete.  Despite the highs and lows of the WoW community, occasional clearing of throats and crickets remain the most common form of interaction that precipitates from the Dungeon Finder.
• Being carried dispute - Player X's DPS sucks, player Y went AFK for half the run and player Z is naked.  We've all half-assed it during a run here or there, and as long as the run is completed who the hell cares if someone, be it tank, healer or DPS, is carried?  As long as it isn't the tank and healer, or all the DPS being carried the job will get done.  It might take 3% longer, but the end result will be the same.
• Meters - Whether they are being pasted to complain about above, to extend your e-peen or put someone down, they suck.  And no one hates it more than your tank and healer. Once a meter is displayed all group play goes out the windows.  No more waiting for the tank to grab aggro,CCing or any group mechanics at all.  The DPS will crawl over their dead comrades in an attempt to top that meter, which means next to nothing nothing in a dungeon.
• Heroic to raid gap - Awesome, my alt is decked out in badge gear from head to toe.  I've got enchants and gems out the wazoo.  But I still can't get into most raids because of my non-badge gear.  They seem my mediocre non-welfare gear and realize that I can't link to any achievements forTotC or ICC.  Everyone chuckles at the thought of me starting a full Ulduar or Naxxramas run to fill those gaps.  My alt logs off and hopes theguildies finish their alts for alt night ASAP.
• Min/maxing - The idea that casual players are now min/maxing, not their stats but their time spent in an instance, is awesome to me.  The sheer volume of runs has lead to players of all shapes and sizes teaching each other small tricks to finishing a run as quickly as possible.  It reminds me of my childhood gaming; sitting in the playground sharing tips and tricks for beating The Legend of Zelda and Contra.  And those were the days.

That's three issues brought on by the community, two by design, and a pair of positives.  Can't blame Blizzard for all those problems.



Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne or subscribe in iTunes for notifications of new videos!

I venture into the Vault of Archavon with 24 other players to try out Toravon the Ice Watcher. Tier 10 get?

I'm sure most of you have noticed by now when running your daily random heroic that there have been a few changes to dungeons to make them run a bit faster. Patch 3.3.2 brought with it several changes that decreased the number of times a boss does a special move, making the encounters quicker and less annoying. And for anyone still working toward earning Glory of the Hero, the changes are bringing that Red Proto-Drake almost within our grasp.

Many of the changes also make their related achievements substantially easier. Let's take a look again at the recent changes that will affect achievements.

The Nexus

• For Chaos Theory: Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times, reducing the number of rifts that you have to fight through.

Click to read more ...

The last few weeks, I've become quite the little achievement whore. And since my main character wasn't around for the grand days of Vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade, she has plenty to catch up on -- questing, rep, professions, dungeons and raids. In fact, some of my guildies with the same state of mind have started running old school achievement content on Fridays. it has been lots of fun - not only to see the content and old loot, but also to get that shiny message popping up saying that you've earned an achievement.

I also have a few alts, none of which have hit 80, and I've come to realize something: While I may love achievements on my main, I really don't care about what achievements my alts do or don't have. Sure, there are plenty of achievements that I'll get along the way if I level the way that I plan to, but other than those, I won't go out of my way to earn anything special.

It's a weird state of mind. I guess I think of it this way: If I've done the achievement once, I've already achieved it. Why go through the hassle again on an alt, unless it's something that I need to do to reach a completely unrelated goal in the game? We need to have a way to track achievements on multiple characters - not to tell us our total number of points, but instead the number we would have if we added up all the different achievements we've gotten altogether.

But I also can see another point of view:

Click to read more ...

Overlooked captures smaller news stories that didn't have the legs to stand on their own, or have just fallen through the cracks of the blogosphere.

Hey, we can't be everywhere all the time.

Incentives To Draw Players To Wear Maximum Gear Class

This inaugural post of Overlooked kicks off with something that has plagued the lesser gear wearers since the dawn of gear classes.  If you are sick of plate and mail wearers stealing your gear due to bad itemization, be rest assured that Blizzard is finally going to do something about it.  Come Cataclysm.

Bornakk states that Cataclysm (including its pre-launch patch) will offer incentives to players that stick with their correct gear class.  Unfortunately, the blue doesn't go into any detail, or even give an example of an incentive.  The information follows his previous warning that Cataclysm's stat overhaul will ruin those classes that have been picking up +Agility leather gear, such as DPS warriors, paladins and DKs.

Ghostcrawler follows up, adding "In most cases, a good piece will still be good for you. In the dps warrior, paladin and DK case, the now +Agility leather and mail you might be wearing will be bad for you. [But] if you plan to keep raiding after the conversion, that might be a problem."

Bottomline: Stop taking my gear!

Warcraft Movie Not Raimi's Next Flick

Apparently, I am the only one here at Project Lore that thinks the Warcraft movie has a shot at being good.  Not just "good for a video game movie," like Mortal Kombat or Resident Evil, but good in general.  Neither you readers, nor my fellow bloggers seem to hold much hope.

When Spider-man 4 melted down, resulting in a reboot of the franchise and dismissal of the entire cast, many people expected Raimi to get to work on the Warcraft project.  That won't be happening thanks to a movie called The Shadow, based on the old, 1930's old, radio show, stepping in the way.

Fear not, the Warcraft movie will be out "soon."

BlizzCon 2010 Returning To Anaheim In October?

WoW.com got tipped off that the Anaheim Convention Center, where most of the BlizzCons have been held so far, had added BlizzCon 2010 to its calender for October.  The convention was scheduled to happen from October 22-23, the normal Friday and Saturday routine.  'Was' being the keyword.

Since breaking the story the listing has come down, but the convention center assured WoW.com that the deal was "99.9% confirmed."  We've heard that one before.

First Nevada in July, now California in October.  Can we settle on Philadelphia in early September?  No?  I'll bring cake for everyone.

We recently recorded a test episode of a new project we have been working on, the currently unnamed Project Lore Audio Podcast. In this inaugural episode, itzkoopa is joined by Juggynaut and Heartbourne to discuss the latest news in the World of Warcraft, posts and comments on the Project Lore blog, and other MMO news. Take a listen above or grab the mp3 for yourself. Leave a comment with your thoughts and if you like it, we'll see if we can get some more popular voices on the show and make this a regular podcast!

That didn't take long.

Blood Legion, a Horde guild on U.S. Illidan server, has earned the world-first 10-man Arthas kill, scoring The Fall of the Lich King and The Frozen Throne achievements as well as a Kingslayer title. And, from the looks of a screenshot they posted, the group also earned a little something extra... what looks like a giant, floating statue of Tirion Fordring. Ok.

So what does one normal-mode Lich King kill on the first night of its release mean? Well, I doubt that the fight is a walk in the park, or we would have seen more thrilled guilds announcing their success. There's still plenty of potential for other top-notch guilds to get their own realm-first 10-man kills, and then there's also the 25-man version, not to mention hard modes. And it won't be long, I'm sure, until we see more and more guilds making it to the Frost Wing.

So while many of us (including myself) aren't nearly to that point yet, let's dream a little. The WoW Armory now lists the Lich King's drool-worthy loot table for all four incarnations of the fight. And there's a little something for everyone:

Click to read more ...

Awhile back WoW.com reported that Blizzard was having serious discussions about forcing players to use Authenticators.  The behind-closed-doors talks came about due to an increasing number of hacks on player accounts.  Furthermore, many of the compromised users claim to not have shared their passwords with anyone.  The recent Google Ads-based WoW Armory scam was probably the most prolific phishing attempt to date, and has become a prime example to the means people are going to for WoW accounts.

Being a business, Blizzard wants to do everything possible to keep our accounts secure.  Let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't being entirely altruistic in its intentions.  The company has a reputation to hold, it has a service to run, which is only possible with happy users, and by increasing account security as high as possible the company would save a ton of money in support costs.  As it stands right now, the customer service lines can take upwards of an hour to get through to someone.  That's with some 2,500+ customer service personal.

The only thing stopping Blizzard from making Authenticators mandatory is us, the users.  Ever since the rumor started there's been a back-and-forth between users.  Despite an Authenticator offering the utmost security (no confirmed hacks) players are reluctant to apply them because of the hassle or the cost.  Even with the shipping fee now waved, many players are still finding reasons not to purchase the $6 item.

My suggestion to Blizzard is to kill two birds with one stone by giving players a monetary incentive to using the Authenticator.  Any account that has an Authenticator applied, be it mobile or actual, can get a reduction in their subscription fee.  I'm not talking half off, just a dollar.  In six months an actual Authenticator would pay for itself, and in 18 months players would essentially "earn" themselves a free month of play.  All while making Blizzard look good.

It's something us consumers would jump at, but Blizzard will only resort to it as a final solution (the Core Hound Pup being the first attempt). To me, a long-time paying customer, it'd be a nice olive branch.  After all, shouldn't Blizzard's savings be passed on to those that are make it possible?

By employing this tactic players wouldn't feel "forced" into using an Authenticator, so much as "rewarded" for it.