Project Lore

[caption id="attachment_3267" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Don't let those bars fool you! I only use like three or four of those buttons!"] [/caption] The Rogue is, by magnitudes, my favorite class. I've played one as my main (Amatera) for over 4 years now and enjoyed every second of it. Out of all my alts, not one has yet convinced me to give up on the master of melee combat. Or at least what should be, considering the lack of other roles for a Rogue to fill. No doubt that the class has seen its ups and downs. I was pretty excited by the new abilities and talents introduced with Wrath, but, like many others of my ilk, came away disappointed with a pretty significant (and unexpected) drop in playability caused by the new mechanics. Raid DPS went down the tubes and, on my server, level-capped Rogues were a scarce lot. Heck, I was (and still am) the only non-alt Rogue in my guild. And I'm surprised that I stuck through it, considering that towards the tail end of Burning Crusade I was regularly in the top 3 for damage and was now struggling to break 10. Things have taken a turn for the better since 3.1. I've reclaimed my position in the charts thanks to the modification of Hunger for Blood and a slight respec back into Improved Poisons. But it did something else that makes me wonder whether or not playing a Rogue is too easy -- it made my core rotation reductively simple again. Now, it takes skill and a keen reaction time to play any class well, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm tailing a boss spamming Mutilate and Envenom whilst our healers have their hands full playing whack-a-mole with raid frames. There is a certain sublimity, a zen-like state if you will, about punching only two or three keys and outputting the insane amount of damage that a Rogue can, but I think people get excited about simplicity until they start to feel the guilt of not putting in the same amount of effort as others. Or, at least I do. Maybe not all those chumps riding coattails for gear. Before 3.1, my rotation was a lot more complicated than it is now (or was when I was playing Combat in BC), but my damage clearly suffered. Having to maintain three stacks of Hunger for Blood and Slice and Dice was a pain, between expensive Mutilates and the occasional Rupture where I could fit it. The thing about Energy is that, even though you may never run out, your cap is always fixed. So when your pool of the good stuff is being sucked dry by a few expensive skills, it destroys your DPS. With a duration of only 30 seconds, Hunger for Blood was the main culprit: easy to let drop, and far too expensive to get running again. Considering I needed the skill's buff to even compete on the damage meters, leaving it out was not an option. Thus, it seems, that the smaller a Rogue's rotation ultimately is, the more efficiently they can utilize their Energy, and the changes made to the class reflect that. Hunger for Blood now lasts a full minute and need only be triggered by a Bleed effect. In a raid situation, those are going to be a dime a dozen, so unless you're off tussling with some off-tanked mob, you rarely have to worry about it (and it frees you from having to queue up Rupture, as well). Slice and Dice? Well, that's refreshed by Envenom, which an Assassination-specced Rogue should be dishing out relentlessly anyway. Like a Showtime Rotisserie, all you need to do is "set it and forget it!" Sure, I've found a few ways to improve my utility, even if only by a tad. I'll throw an Expose Armor up on a mob if there are no Sunders to be had, I'll use Feint to ignore some of the crazy Area of Effect damage most of the new Ulduar bosses dish out. Heck, Cloak of Shadows is as useful as ever, especially for those pesky light and gravity bombs XT-002 is fond of afflicting players with. These skills aren't ever in my regular rotation, but I'd be more than willing to take a slight hit to my DPS if it meant giving the class more raid-enhancing utility skills. Then again, that might go against the selfish, dirty-dealing, throat-slitting, gold-stealing spirit of a Rogue! Considering these dynamics, must we be crucified for sins we did not commit? My "Damage-Dealer's Burden" aside, is there some way to stop the general populace from slinging bawdy insults our way and sermonizing about how over-powered our class is? I don't know. Blizzard has stated that they, too, are unhappy with the ease with which a Rogue can obliterate their opponents (especially in PvP). The changes made to Hunger for Blood, after all, were a bit of a hot fix. It's a fundamentally broken skill, once detrimental to the Rogue itself and  now detrimental to everyone else (at least in their eyes). Makes you wonder why it was even incorporated as a new talent in the first place if it was going to cause so much trouble. For now, we wait impatiently for an answer. We have been told that it is not the right time for a total rehaul of the class and Blue posts concerning Rogues have dwindled since the raid damage output issue was finally "addressed." But there must be other Rogues out there reading this. Let me know what's on your mind! Does "easier-to-play" equal "overpowered?" Do you feel some deep sense of personal guilt when your healers and tanks are yelling at each other as your raid falls apart in front of you, wondering if there was anything you could've done to help? Or do you go stealth and wait in a corner until the smoke has cleared? Rogue or not, what are your feelings on the ethics of rotation complexity? Do you feel as if the game is at its best when it gives you a lot of skills to manage at once, or is a simple hotbar better and more fun? Does it make certain classes more "fair" to play than others?

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An Unfriendly Paladin Shows Me My Place I've never been a big PvPer in World of Warcraft.  Sure, I've had my fair share of battleground victories - especially when they were first introduced - but I never took it seriously.  I never specced for it, I never bothered to know the best counters to this or that, I just didn't care.  It isn't that I think it's stupid, PvP just is not what draws me to WoW, and yet I rolled on a PvP server.  I made that call over four years ago without knowing if I would like the ability to camp players or not.  I don't regret the choice, I made the executive decision to keep my options open, just in case.  It may not be my favorite thing to do in Azeroth, but it has brought me hours of fun and hilarious stories. Case in point; Attacking a druid doing Threat From Above with my lance equipped.  Yeap, I totally had the advantage there.  The only reason I went after the Horde player who was attacking Chillmaw was because the humanoid cow stole my tap.  I wanted revenge for the slight against all of my people who are all too often overlooked.  Needless to say, I got nothing be a ghost screen thanks to my trusty Argent Lance.  Newbed it up there didn't I? We rogues are known for finishing off low health players before disappearing into the shadows or even more extreme, PvPing everything that moves, but that isn't me anymore.  Once upon a time I attacked the Horde with reckless abandon.  I'd roll in with half my health and start tearing into a mage, I'd sap one character only to take on two more, I was cocky.  Those were the days when I had the best gear available, the best daggers, the latest Tier of armor and the most disgusting trinkets a rogue could strive for.  This could have easily been a Fond Memories post, but it's not about the fun I used to have, but the difficulties I come across now. By no means is my toon in the position he used to be.  Solidsamm is still equipped with a few blues and even a green trinket (!) because he can't buy a good roll in heroics.  Seriously, I have tried to buy one.  With such awful gear the little Gnome is no longer the terror he once was.  Rather than being a cocky, fearless, burstDPSing machine, Solidsamm has "matured" into a "tactical master" who selects his battles carefully (read scaredy cat).  In essence, the vertically challenged rogue has been relegated to believing that he is seriously outgeared in most scenarios. Sure, there's a good chance that Solidsamm may go down because he's undergeared these days, but I still PvP when the opportunity arises.  Especially with the boredom that is now stemming from my insert-stupid-number-here consecutive days doing the Argent Tournament quests.  How do you roll inPvP?  Do you dive right in hoping for a heal here and there or do you selectively chose your battles?  Do you bother trying to figure out what gear the opposition has - a visual check - or do you expect to outskill them regardless?

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Band-Aid Fix For Lag Kills PvP Zone For all intents and purposes, Patch v3.1.2 was designed as a clean-up to Secrets of Ulduar.  The minor content patch added a few features that were meant for Ulduar's patch, including the swanky Equipment Manager, further "fixes" for Wintergrasp and general tweaks to the massive amount of changes v3.1 brought us.  Unfortunately the Band-Aid (TM) patch tore the wound open. It took Blizzard a little while to admit it, but v3.1.2 completely broke Wintergrasp on many servers.  If you don't happen to be on one of the affected servers then you missed out on some serious Honor.  The issue is that the Wintergrasp timer is royally screwed, which caused the battle to restart ~5-10 minutes after it had completed.  I managed to score a few Wintergrasp Achievements during my struggle to complete my daily fishing quest. I was also rewarded with a handful of marks and a token amount of Honor for my anglin' expedition.  It's unknown what caused the error, but Blizzard has disabled the PvP zone until it can be rectified. Thankfully, the Wintergrasp bug seems to be the only lingering issue, but it wasn't the only one for Magtheridon (US).  As with most patch days, my ancient server struggled to re-open in a timely fashion.  It was then plagued by login and world server issues, a problem that delayed last night's raid for more than an hour.  During the wait I tried to busy myself with Terminator Salvation.  It just wasn't my night, the action title fails to install from the DVD.  Sigh.  In the end my night of gaming was worth the wait.  By the evening's culmination I had scored a shiny new dagger to replace my dull Maexxna's Fang redux.  Score. How were your servers?  Any login problems?  Did you get a chance to soak up Wintergrasp wins, honor and tokens?  Exactly how bad is Terminator Salvation?

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In an effort to reduce lag by reducing the number of players who are in Wintergrasp at one time, the daily quests in the zone, such as No Mercy for the Merciless, Slay them all!, and Defend the Siege will only be converted into a new weekly quest format in an upcoming patch. Honor and Stone Keeper Shard rewards are said to be increased, though the gold reward doesn't seem to be affected. MMO-Champion is reporting that certain quests are giving 20 Stone Keeper Shards each, but the current reward is showing 10, so we will have to wait and see how things unfold. There are a couple of known issues with the new weekly format, specifically the quest showing up as a yellow exclamation point instead of a blue one and the quests not showing up after the reset until the player moves out of line of sight of the NPC who gives it. I am not sure how much this change is going to affect the numbe of players who go into Wintergrasp during each fight, as most of the people I know go in for Marks of Wintergrasp or so they can go into the Vault of Archavon afterwards, and not necessarily for the quests. , the quests are a nice bonus, and the new format may actually increase the amount of honor and shards that many players get who don't usually finish the dailies every day, like me. What do you guys think? Is it going to affect you at all, or will you still go into WG every time you get the chance?

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