Greg, Author at The Azeroth Cookbook

Greg

Raiding Rogue Builds and DPS

Apr 082009

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:

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

Combat

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

Subtlety

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

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

Main – Titansteel Shanker
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.

WoW User Interface Updates

wow news 3 Responses »

Mar 182009

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

So You Don’t Like The Way You Look?

Just for Fun Comments Off

Mar 162009

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:

It costs $15, and
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.

Patch 3.08 is Live

wow news Comments Off

Jan 202009

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.

And in the News Department

News Comments Off

Jan 072009

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.

The Craft of War: Blind

Leveling, Rogues, Videos 6 Responses »

Jan 062009

Ok, This is Why Rogues Are Cool

Rogues, Stormwind, Nobility pwning their lessers…

Actually, what this really is is an awesome video. The creator says he’s a professional animator and this is his first real, personal, piece.

This is only the second personal creative work I’ve ever posted so I’m a bit nervous about it. The first being an image I painted years ago which…um… we don’t talk about. 🙂 It’s a bit nerve-wracking to post creative work for others to judge.

With over 500 comments , all along the lines of, “Dude, this is Awesome!” I don’t think he has anything to worry about.

This will probably spoil you for other WoW videos and you really need to see it in High Def, which is why I’m not posting the YouTube version here. Check it out, now:

Update: 8/24/12: Found it again, it was apparently accidentally deleted. See it here.

The Craft of War: BLIND

Credit where credit is due, I found this on Jame’s Blog.

The woman with the staff is here

update 8/31/10: Above link was broken. Click here for the HD YouTube vid.

Rogue Talent Build – Shadowstep and Shadow Dance

Rogues 4 Responses »

Dec 312008

Currently my Rogue is level 78.5 and is helping the Argent Crusade to kill Alliance the scourge. I’ve respected into a shadowstep dagger build and grabbed the Shadowdance talent.

The daggers I’m using (which dropped off the AH at a decent price) are:

To make the best use of that talent you might want to have some Thistle Tea on hand, a Glyph of Vigor, and gear that adds energy, such as the Gladiator set.

Ok, here’s the (dagger) build and I’m using it to level. Feel free to comment. I don’t claim to be any great shakes at PvP, the 3.0 patch killed any thoughts of competence that I might have been having. I’m sure that experienced PvPers will roll their eyes at some of my choices here:

5 points Malice: Gotta love the crits.
5 points Dual Weild
5 points Precision: More hits = more DPS
5 points Relentless Strikes
3 points Master of Deception: Great for PvP
2 points Opportunity
2 in Dirty Tricks: The extra range is surprisingly useful, especially since you can now sap almost anything living.
Ghostly Strike: Instant strike, more damage, more dodge, and a combo point to bot. What more could you want?
3 pts in Serrated Blades: Lead-in to Hemorrhage
3 pts in Setup: If you have a decent dodge skill this will add a useful number of combo points.
3 pts in Initiative: More combo points.
2 in Improved Ambush: +50% to crit. ’nuff said.
Preparation: Kindof the “Get out of Jail Free” card.
2 in Dirty Deeds
Hemorrhage
3 pts in Master of Subtlety: More damage attacking from stealth.
5 pts in Deadliness
Premeditation: I stick this in a macro with my openers, so I get those 2 points a lot.
5 points in Sinister Calling:+15% Agility, yummy.
2 pts in Waylay: More for PvP
5 points in Slaughter from the Shadows: I Ambush and Hemo alot, so this is good.
Shadowdance
2 pts to spend elsewhere (at lev 79 & 80,) which I may stick into Improved Eviscerate.

Here’s the full level 80 build on WoWhead.

If you open with Ambush (or Cheap Shot or Garrote) you will,much more often than not, see an immediate 5 combo points ready to go. So you do Opener and Finisher, bang bang, such as Ambush + Eviscerate. Get a couple of crits there and you open with some nice damage.

If you use Eviscerate then check out a Glyph of Eviscerate.

Here’s what I’ve been experimenting with:

Ambush + Eviscerate
Shadow Dance
Cheap Shot and move behind
Ambush
Eviscerate
gouge and move behind…

Fighting more than one mob?

Sap one
Cheap Shot another
Blind the 3rd
Shadowdance
Gouge one and move behind
Ambush
etc.

Here’s the opener macro that I use, which I found on Arena Junkies (lotta macros there.)

#show premeditation
/cast Premeditation
/cast Pick Pocket
/cast Cheap Shot

Swap Cheap Shot for Ambush or whichever opener that you use. The Pick Pocket will keep you in healing potions and lockboxes as you level.

It might be a good idea to put your Shadow Dance hotkeys on a second action bar, and swap it in when you do the dance. Here’s a macro to switch action bars when you do just that, also taken from Arena Junkies.

Set up bar 2 to be your main bar with Sap on it, Ambush instead of Backstab, Cheap Shot instead of Kidney Shot, and Garrote over Rupture. Hit the Shadow Dance macro once to activate, and a second time to swap your bar back to normal.

#showtooltip
/cast Shadow Dance
/swapactionbar 1 2

Comments? Besides the obvious ones about my newbishness.