Massively has an interesting post:

There are always going to be times when, due to real life commitments, you can’t play your favourite MMO, whether it’s a month of exams or an important week at work…

The rest: The Daily Grind: How do you cope without your favourite MMO?

So the question is this: You’re not only cut off from WoW for a week (or month!) but you’re also cut off from the internet. No email, no twitter, no facebook, no illegal (or legal) torrent downloads, etc.

How would you cope?

Hey, if this is your first time here, consider subscribing to my news feed or even subscribe to this blog by email. Thanks for visiting!

The 3.1 patch introduced a bunch of new glyphs. I was looking for info on them and here are a couple of notes. 

• A few of the new glyphs are from the trainer, but most of  the new glyphs are found only through a Book of Glyph Mastery, not through any research procedure. edit: Also, you need to have 425 Inscription skill to use the book.
• The book is found as a world drop from any Northrend mob. Start the mass slaughter now.
• It’s a rare drop and is BoE, so can be traded or sold. Right now the going price for one is anywhere from 1-3k. Edit: Just checked Dark Iron. There the price is 4-5k each. Not worth it to me and I can easily afford it.
• Inscribers “read” the book and get a random glyph. So you may well pay 2,500 -4,500 for a book only to find a glyph that you can’t use and that won’t sell.
• These glyphs are going to be pretty rare for awhile and people who have them will be charging pretty high prices.

So there ya go. Happy hunting!

There was a comment, on the Raiding Rogues post, on the question of hit rating. I use ElitistJerks.com and ArenaJunkies.com for a lot of my info. I’ve also been using the Recount addon, which gives some interesting numbers for hits, misses, and so on.

Here’s the comment:

Hi, Just looking for sum answers to questions i have been asking myself but as yet have not found any answers. I am level 80 comat rogue with a hit of 294(need 315 apparently)but have not worn my Gloves of fast reactions, titainium chocker and titainium impact band because the blue items have all hit on them and changing them moves me away from the hit cap? Any suggestions? I guess what am asking is is it worth upgrading to items with better Agility and AP but loosing a lot of Hit?

So based on recount numbers… If you’re combat or using the above build, or something like it, then you should have the precision talent. With a PvP version I’m working with about 130 hit and, according to recount numbers, I’m not missing on any strikes fighting in the BGs or against level 80 mobs. Fighting raid bosses, and the raid boss target dummy in Org, with a 200 hit rating, the miss rate was around 15%.

How much Hit you need depends on what you’re fighting. Generally mobs require less Hit rating than players/elites which require less than raid bosses.

How much hit is needed? Here’s my qick and dirty answer, since you already have precision from the combat tree:

• When fighitng mobs, you’re good. Upgrade your gear.
• Same answer for PvP, though high end arenas might be different. PvP hit caps are a bit lower than for Raid Bosses.
• Raiding is more complicated and I’m not a raider. Not yet, anyway. Part of it depends on the raid buffs you have and the debuffs on the boss.

There’s a concept called Agility Equivalence Points (AEP) which tries to measure the value of various stats. These numbers will change depending on exactly what you’re fighting. For example, a PvP calculation involves stamina and resilience, while raiding doesn’t.

So a general AEP table, for raiding, looks like this (taken from ElitistJerks info

• Expertise rating: 2.6
• Hit rating: 2.4
• Agility: 2.2
• Haste: 2.1
• Crit rating: 1.7
• Strength: 1.1
• Attack Power: 1

Multiply the stat for your gear by the numbers above. For example…

1. Gloves of Fast Reactions : 66Ag, 64 Stm, 38 Crit, 49 haste, 110 AP
2. Dropping Stam, we have: (66 x 2.2) + (38 x 1.7) + (49 x 2.1) +  (110 x 1) = 424.27
3. Now do the same for your blue gear. The highest number gives the best DPS for raiding.

The point is that your better gear will provide enough extra DPS to more than make up for the lack of hit, so go for the upgrade.

For PvP Stamina and the Resilience stat are important, though I’ll go out on a limb and say that the importanceof Res is situational. Rogues die very quickly in PvP and Res doesn’t slow that down much.

Comments?

Ok, so the 3.1 patch went up and I was finally able to log on about 6pm or so.

By 1 am I had made almost 10,000 gold, all in glyphs. Sold about 350 of the things (math test: the average price per glyph is…?)  I’ll be hitting the gold cap in a day or two and will be dumping some on various alts. Maybe then I’ll power level something like Blacksmithing.

There’s a hint there, if you want it. Zuggy is a good one for market timing and the introduction of the dual spec in the 3.1 patch was a perfect example. Those of us who had large numbers of glyphs stocked up are cashing in. All of a sudden a lot of players need glyphs to fill out their second spec. And they have the money to buy your glyphs.

How do I know they have the money? Besides the obvious? Because it costs 1,000 gold to get the 2 spec capability (from your class trainer.) After that, what’s 30 gold for a glyph?

Prices are rather high on some pre-3.1 glyphs and I expect they’ll be really high for the new 3.1 glyphs.

By the way, for you Herbalists out there, what do you think the increased glyph demand is going to do to herb prices?Herbs being a necessary component for the Inscription inks.

If you need a quick and dirty guide to either profession, go to:

• The GotWarcraft Inscription Guide
• Herbalism Guide

It’s going to take some time for this demand to cool down, so if you’re a scribe and/or herbalist, get to work!

Weool Ok… the servers aren’t up yet (as I write this) but the patch is finally here. Rumor has it that this is the biggest patch Bliz has ever provided.

Naturally there will be a few bugs coming along with the patch, and no, they’re not the ones you’ll kill to earn XP. As an aside, it’s be kinda interesting to be able to code a hack that fixes a game bug and get Bliz to pay you for it.

Anyway, the full patch notes are in the usual place so check them out. Here are my remarks on miscellaneous points:

General Notes

Mounts can now swim.

Trainers, having decided that their trainees can’t read, have done away with the course requirements for books and will now teach those skills directly.

Dual Talents - Now you can have two builds to switch between. For example, one for raiding and one for PvP. The only downside is that it costs 1,000 gold to get the ability.

Glyphs - A bunch of new glyphs are being introduced and a bunch of old glyphs have been changed. You no longer need to be near a lexicon of power to install glyphs.

And the most important, game-changing, change of all: New music can be heard at the Argent Tournament grounds and in Ulduar.

Class Notes

All classes get a couple of pages of changes, except Warriors and Warlocks, who get a few lines each. Guess that means that Warriors and Rogues are nearly perfect. Looks like there are more than a few buffs in the list of changes. A few nerfs, too.  I’m looking forward to Rogues now being in demand for raids. Oh, Ok, I’m awake now… what was I saying?

Enough changes have been made to talents and spells that everyone (except Rogues and Warriors?) will get a free respec and should visit the trainer the get new spells.

Armor Penetration has been buffed. All classes now get 25% more effect from it. The main visible change of this will be to drop PvP survivability in the BGs (at level 80) from 1 second to 0.9 seconds.

The Fear mongers on the house have had a bit of a nerf. The fear (and related abilities) break sooner now.

DKs, Pallies, and Droods, the classes most in need of a buff, now receive 30% more haste from Haste Rating.

Profession Notes

Alchemy - Several Flask changes, introduction of Northrend Mixtures, and secret Alchemist loot caches (from the Bosses) in Uldar.

Blacksmithing - New recipes from Uldar and an upgrade to some recipes in the 1-300 range to make them useful.

Cooking - I’ll pass these on to my wife and she’ll update our cookbooks (Tauren Chef and Wrath of the Kitchen King) appropriately.

Enchanting and Engineering: have some updates and tweaks.

Fishing - You can now catch a mount! It’s pretty rare, though. Also, you can now fish anywhere.

Gathering skills - For some time low-level twinks have been able to get to 450 mining and skinning (for the crit and stam buffs.) No longer, there’s now a level requirement for those skills.

Inscription - More recipes and quite a number of Glyph changes.

Uldar bosses - will, rarely, be dropping recipes for several professions.

Misc Notes

There’s a bunch of interface tweaks

Lots of little item changes, but if you use Glyphs (you are, aren’t you?) you will want to check it out. There have been some significant changes.

Lots of little bug fixes.

So all in all there’s a lot there. Something for everyone and all that.

I’ll state this upfront - I’m a newb when it comes to raiding. I finally joined a guild (with my 80 Rogue) which does some raiding (mostly PUGs) and when asked,”Hey, ya wanna join us for (some raid abreviation)” my answer is typically, “What’s that?”

So I prodded a friend, who does raid a lot, into writing an article on Rogue Raid DPS which I found quite useful. Now it’s time to start playing around with some of this stuff and see what I can come up with and see if I can get to the point where my Rogue is useful.

My first raid was 25 Man OS (no drakes) and I beat most of the healers for DPS output. I was running a PvP mutilate build and had no clue so didn’t respec.

More browsing brought me to the ElitistJerks.com Roguecraft Spreadsheet which factors in a huge amount of stuff. It includes a Mutilate build and various defaults for maximum DPS.

I specced into that build and hit 2k DPS on the Orgrimmar practice dummies, so maybe there’s hope for cracking the top 20 of a 25 man raid?

Anyway, here’s what I’m working with for now:

Mutilate Build Details

Here’s the build on WoWhead

Note: this is a dagger build and assumes use of instant and/or deadly poisons. Lev 80 (non elite) mobs go down real fast with this build.

Assassination:

1. 5/5 Malice - more crit chance
2. 3/3 Ruthlessness - more combo points
3. 2/2 Blood Splatter - Adds to your DoTs
4. 3/3 Puncuring Wounds - +15% Mut crit, +30% Backstab crit
5. 5/5 Lethality
6. 3/3 Vile Poisons - Greater chance to actually apply poisons
7. 2/2 Fleet footed - Moved faster while stealthed and spend less time being rooted
8. 1 Cold Blood - add this into a macro with your favorite strike. I add mine to Eviscerate.
9. 5/5 Seal fate - Use less energy
10. 3/3 Focused attacks - gain energy from crits
11. 3/3 Find Weakness - All damage increased by 6%
12. 1 Mutilate - Your bread and butter attack
13. 3/3 Turn the tables - Adds 6% crit chance to bread and butter attacks. lots of arguing going on over whether to choose this or 3/3 Master Poisoner. Comments?
14. 5/5 Cut to the chance - lets you keep Slice and Dice up permanently.
15. 1 Hunger for Blood - More damage, Rarr! Edit: Will be changed (improved?) when the 3.1 patch hits.

Combat

1. 5/5 Dual Weild Specialization - More DPS
2. 5/5 Precision - Your Dual Weild gives a major “to hit” penalty. This compensates somewhat.
3. 3/5 Close Quarters cbt. - More crit chance

Subtlety

1. 5/5 Relentless Strikes - Restores energy
2. 2/2 Opportunity - +20% damage to your bread and butter strikes.

Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.

1. Main - Titansteel Shanker
2. Off hand - Librarian’s Paper Cutter

Enchants:

• Exceptional Agility (+26 ag) on Main hand
• Titanium wpn chain on off hand (+28 hit rating)

I’ll be playing with some weapon choices, poison combos, gems, etc. to see what I can do to boost DPS.  Your comments? Thoughts? Changes? What do you have to say?

Edit 4/9: Joined a PUG into 10 man OS. Hit almost 2400 dps on the trash (#2 on the DPS list,) but the group disintigrated before the first drake. No one died, but people suddenly realized they had to wash their socks, so poof. All of a sudden I’m raid leader with two people in the raid.

The Recount addon said I had a miss rate of almost 15%, so I guess I need to look for more Hit ratng. Might try the Titanium Weapon Chain on the main hand as a start and swap an Ag gem for a Hit gem.

Changed off-hand to Namlak’s Supernumerary Sticker

Mongoose provides better DPS than Exceptional Agility and Berserking is better still, but Mongoose is over 400 gold (and Berserking is a lot more.) I’ll see if I can get better weapons before blowing that much cash on Berserking.

Dual Speccing is on its way. Want one spec for raiding and another for PvP? Now you can have them both, for the low low price of 1k gold (pocket change, right?) By the way, your glyph set can change with the talents. One set of glyphs for raiding, another for PvP.

As of today…

• You have to be level 40+. Originally you had to be 80.
• You can switch talents anywhere, no Lexicon of Power is necessary.
• 1,000 gold to set it up, payable to your trainer. Need more gold to pay for that? Go here.
• It looks like the system is set up that you can use it during any period of downtime and never in the middle of a fight, battle, or raid. So you can duel someone, but cannot change spec mid-fight.
• Your actionbars also switch with the specs. Have one setup for your raid, another for PvP.

Switch your gear, too

There’s also a very cool change to the Equipment Manager. You can now save up sets of gear and switch them with a hot-key. Finish that raid, then switch specs and gear with a couple of clicks and you’re good for the arena.

For the near future there will only be the two specs, but GC says that Bliz is considering …

We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.

Here’s the Interview with GhostCrawler that originally lays it all out.  There have been some changes since the interview, mentioned in the UI Page.

More UI Stuff

There’ve been some changes to the Looking for Group chat interface. Think anyone will use it now or will we all continue to spam the trade channel?

Like the BGs, but hate to have to travel to the big city? You will be able to queue for the Battlegrounds from anywhere, as long as you aren’t in a fight. Take a momentary break from farming crystallized whatevers and jump in line for your BG. When you’re done you’ll be popped back to where you were, to continue… your….. farming……zzzzzzz

Actually, that should be “… The Way Your Character Looks?”

So change it already. As I’m sure you’ve know (via the WoW Launcher) Bliz is offering a complete makeover of your character’s appearance.When I saw the blurb I had a (very) brief hope that Bliz was going to do something a little more like the City of Heroes character generator. No such luck, but they do once thing that the CoH system doesn’t…

Tired of being (fe)male? Get a sex change. Yep, you can change gender as well as looks. Class and race remain unchanged, so you can’t go from that ugly male Night Elf to that stunning female Dwarf. You can also get a name change while you’re at it. Great for those times when you really really need to get away from those vengeful guildmates…

Just hop over to the character changer device (you’ll have to log into your account) and make any necessary … adjustments.

Just one downside, well… two:

1. It costs $15, and
2. You can only do it once every 30 days. So try not to offend your new guild for at least a month.

Two bad we can’t get that kindof makeover in the real world for that price.

3.08 patch is live. Looks like there are a lot of buffs going around. Plus, the Warlock class wasn’t, in fact, deleted (see last post.)

Death Knights, as one might expect, got buffed, in addition to a bunch of tweaks.

Other classes got their tweaks, too, though not as many.

Lots of stuff in this patch, see WoWinsider for details and commentary about all aspects of the patch.

Just a roundup of a few posts I found interersting.

Blizzard to eliminate the Warlock class. On BRK:
We Are So Not Totally Making These Up

The test server has some changes to the materials requirements for certain WotLK enchants and Zuggy has posted the list: Patch 3.0.8 Enchanting Changes. Remember that it’s on the test server, so it might not make it to live as written.

Game balance concerns: WoWriot jots down his thoughts on each class and how they stack up in PvP, especially in the arena, but also mentions a few PvE concerns. Talents, abilities, and how they need to be changed. Join in and add to the 250 comments.
“State of the Game” Class Balance Report

Spoon has some Blue remarks on character transfers:
Blue News for Jan. 7th: Population Balance, Transfers, and Theorycrafting

Twinking is the fine art of making your character far more effective than he should be at his level. AzerothNow has a cool interview with a Master (level 19) twinker, here: 19 Rogue Twink Speaks. Also, on the same site, is the Ultimate Guide to Level 19 Rogue Twinking.