The new tier 10 armor sets. This might be enough to make me pass on any gear rolls in the new 3.3 raids (assuming I could actually get into them in the first place.)
So here they are, in all their, ahem, glory.
I think Bliz needs to look into Aion’s armor remodeling system.
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:
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🙂
Multiply the stat for your gear by the numbers above. For example…
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?
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
Combat
Subtlety
Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.
Enchants:
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.
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.
Got a 70 Rogue with decent gear? Try the Mana Tombs in Terrokar Forest (The Mana-Tombs are a wing of the Auchindoun instance. It is accessed due north from the Ring of Observance.)
Zuggy, of Zug Gaming, has a video showing you just how to do this. He says that a Rogue can generate from 100 to 400 gold per hour, depending on your server, the economy at the moment, and your skills at clearing the mobs.
Your targets are the two chest that spawn at random places in the instance. It also helps if you have a combat build, but that might not be necessary.
Check out his page for the video. Mana Tomb Stealth Farming
And check out Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide for more killer gold making tips.
The Patch has landed.
1.2 gigs of data, wow. Not so bad if you’ve been playing regularly, the background downloaded already has it. If you’ve taken a break for awhile, well… 🙂
From the new splash screen when you log in to the modified talents and trees to the new Inscription skill, there are a lot of changes here. Check out the Latest Patch Notes for details.Ă‚Â Also keep in mind that the patch has probably broken at least some of your addons. I referred to that previously and linked to an addon update list.
So what I’ve put together here is a collection of posts regarding the new talents and builds. I did this previously (Level 80 WoW Talents And Builds) and this new post linksĂ‚Â to new and, hopefully, updated info.
Dual Talent Builds and What’s Not in This Patch:
Dual Talent Specs – At last — “…And my personal favorite: Dual Talent Specs. This new feature should be added to the game in one of the content patches following the release of Wotlk. Hopefully in Patch 3.1.” What does that mean? It means you’ll be able to save 2 different Talent Specs for your characters, and that you’ll be able to switch between the two as much as you want, any time you want, besides while in combat or in arenas.
Breaking News: Patch 3.0.2 will not contain all major class changes – There were spells and abilities missing, talents not enumerated, and generally the notes looked as if they were lifted from a version of the game done a few weeks ago. Apparently this was intentional. Ghostcrawler made a post moments …
Class Talent Discussions:
Hunters: BigRedKitty: 3.0.2 Hunter talent trees – The major purpose of this column is to give you, the WoW Insider reader, a point of reference. You know our writing, you know our play-style. You should know our limitations and the areas at which we’re not too shabby. …
Warlocks: Patch 3.0.2 primer for Warlocks – In fact, out of all the 11-point talents, Soul Link is the only one that should give us any pause for thought. Considering that for about a month, we can only allocate up to 10 points in another tree if we choose to get a 51-point …
Mages: Mage WotLK Talents & Developer Q & A – She has done a great job already working with many of classes and now she’s finally making it to the mage class, particularly the information regarding the new spell frostfire bolt. Initially I really didn’t understand the purpose of …
Priests: Spiritual Guidance: Patch 3.0.2 – Holy and Disc Priest talent review – This post will cover all of the new Holy and Discipline talents that will be accessible when the patch becomes live. Not only that, I’ve offered up some suggestions on different builds to remain raid viable (at least to the rare few …
Shaman: Going Resto in Three-point-Oh – New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Requires 5 points in purification and 30 points in Restoration) – 1 point – Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect. Shaman get an all-in-one …
Warriors: The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Door Swings Open Pt 1 – Honestly, the difficulty here is not in finding good protection talents you can spec into, it’s in picking which ones to talk to you about now. Some of these talents (like Gag Order) only get really good once you have abilities you …
Ferals: 3.0.2 for Feral Druids – In a few hours, when the servers come back up, patch 3.0.2 is going to hit, and WoW will change drastically. Every tree is get revamped to a greater or lesser extent, and extended up to 51-point talents. The Feral tree changes, …
Rogues: Four Seasons of TBC, Rogue 3.0 Specs – However, without prep which mutilate doesn’t get until WOTLK, the spec is severely lacking in outs and terrible at catching mages, one of the most dominant classes in 3.0. For offensive comps, perhaps a prep spec is still worth …
Paladin: Prot Paladin Talent Build – Block hurts them afterall. We’ll see. Lastly no Holy, nothing in the Ret tree beyond the above, and as the levels tick toward 80, they’ll all get spent in the Prot tree. Tagged: build, Paladin, pally, prot, talent.
Tankadin Preparing Your Tankadin for Patch 3.0: Part 3: Changed Tools – 10/8 – Part 3: Changes to Existing Talents and Spells 10/9 – Part 4: New Talents, and suggested Trees 10/10 – Part 5: The New Threat Rotation or 96969 10/11 – Part 6: Threat Stats for Protection Paladins and Tank Gear Reitemization …
That should be enough to chew on for now. Feel free to comment or, if you like the post, use the share buttons below.
PS: Wrath is bringing a lot of changes and Northrend is a pretty good sized place with a lot going on. Take a good look at the Killer Guides’ Wrath of the Lich King guide – It will make your trek to 80 much easier and much more lucrative.
For those of you interested in the PvP game here’s an overview of what’s happening with PvP as Wrath of the Lich King gets ready to invade our gaming space.
As always, keep in mind that very little of this is final. Finality won’t be reached until the actual game is in our greedy little hands.
WoW: Wrath of the Lich King PvP Portal Launched – Ten Ton Hammer – We have launched a new portal to collect all data on the PvP side of Wrath of the Lich King. If you’re looking for the latest information on PvP, from Honor, Arenas, and Screenshots from the new areas, visit our new PvP portal! …
Lifestyle of the Northrend Rogue – This is significantly more than it dealt previously, and I can see more Rogues integrating this into their PVP rotations.Gouge still adds 1 combo point to the current target (its combo point generation has been in limbo). …
WoW: State of the PvP in Beta Editorial – Ten Ton Hammer – Wrath of the Lich King’s PvP keeps adding new features and evolving so that players will have different experiences in PvP than they had when they played through WoW’s second expansion. In this article, Gabriel “DarkFact” Zamudio checks …
Wrath of the Lich King Beta Death Knight PVP Nerfs – I’ll never become a fully endorsed Blizzard fan-site because I criticize the developers for some of their decisions when it comes to the game. Case in piont, the Death Knight. They’re not a broken class in my honest opinion, …
WotLK PvP Changes and Blue Posts – There’s been loads of changes in the past few days for WotLK, specifically related to PvP. Take a look at a few of the most recent blue posts and updates regarding pvp in the last 48 hours. WotLK PvP Recap from Zug Gaming Berserker Rage …
The Eye of Eternity Loot, WotLK PvP Gear – WotLK PvP Arena Gear – ilvl 252 Warlock LK Arena 6 Warlock Helm LK Arena 6 Warlock Shoulders LK Arena 6 Warlock Legs LK Arena 6 Warlock Chest LK Arena 6 Warlock Gloves, WotLK PvP Honor Gear – ilvl 252 LK Honor 5 Caster DPS Bracers …
WotLK – PVP Rogues OP? – WotLK will certainly shift the way we play not only in PvP, but PvE as well. If you haven’t checked out the new talent points then get your butt over to Blizzard’s website and be amazed. Rogue beta talents …
Northrend will start at level 68, so if you’re not that high yet you should check out Zygor’s leveling guide, it’s the best thing out there for getting leveled fast.
Paladins in Warhammer Online? Is this what Paladins were meant to be? From Blessings of Kings, the Warrior Priest:
I gave the Warrior Priest in Warhammer Online a whirl. This class is awesome! If the class plays at endgame like it does now, Blizzard is going to lose paladins to WAR. (At least, if there are any old-school hybrid paladins left.)
Do you play the Pen and Paper RPGs, such as DnD? I have been since, oh, ’79 or so, right about the time the original DnD Player’s Handbook came out. What about you? Tobald’s MMO Blog asks the same question:
My pen & paper roleplaying group just started a new campaign, this time playing the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game (2005 edition). I’m playing with these guys for years now, various campaigns, usually every second Monday evening. But we are all around 40ish, and sometimes I feel like being a dinosaur when rolling dice and scribbling on character sheets.
The rest: Do you play pen & paper RPGs?
Spooncraft has some thoughts on leveling Blacksmithing before Wrath, or waiting till after it hits. Ask Spoon: Should I Level my Professions now or wait until Wrath?
Have a Hunter who’s approaching 70? Check out Aspect of the Hare’s The Hunter Enchants Cheat Sheet: Burning Crusade Edition
You want enchants. I see a lot of freshly-minted-70 hunters who do not have their gear enchanted, or have them enchanted incorrectly. Fear not, Pike is here to help while her WoWish avatar Tawyn goes off to get smashed at Brewfest (Seriously, part of Tawyn’s RP is that she’s an alcohol fiend. Brew-of-the-Month-Club has her name all over it.)
In this guide, I’m going to tell you the best enchants you can get per item slot, and how to get them. As a forewarning, do note that this list is PvE-oriented. So let’s start at the top:
Zuggy has some remarks on the Rogue’s Assassination tree: Rogue Opportunity Changes – Build 8982. Of course, I expect that any changes to the Rogue (and other class) talents aren’t finalized yet. Expect more in the near future.
There’s been some pretty big changes to the rogue class during this wotlk beta, none larger than the change to mutilate and positional attacks, but blizzard just tossed out yet another curve ball…take a look at the rogue changes for beta build 8992.
And in the This is Just Fraggin’ Cool department: Today, I was Reminded Why I Play WoW
Edit – In the “Some Things I’d Really Like to See in WoW” department: City of Heroes is coming out with some cool stuff.
The Wrath is coming. Time to hide.
Of course, one of the big changes in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is the changes to all the various talent trees. As you probably know, Blizzard isn’t just adding a few new talents or increasing the level cap to 80. No no no, there’s a little more to it than that – they’re making large changes to existing talents and shuffling around their exact position in the talent trees.
So what I’ve put together here is a collection of posts, from various places,Ă‚Â that discuss the level 80 talents and changes. Some of these also offer build suggestions, both from raiding and PvP points of view. In addition, If you want to play around with talent builds for your own characters you’ll find the level 80 WoW talent calculator here.
Of course, the changes aren’t 100% finished, all of this is still in beta test, and Blizzard has been known to make big last minute changes. We can count on more changes along with the usual collection of nerfs and maybe some buffs. Still, it’s a place to start thinking about how you might spec your characters when you upgrade to Wrath.
Update 10/14: The 3.0 patch has arrived and here’s an update post on what’s happening with the WoW Talents and Builds.
’nuff said, here ya go!
WotLK: Build 8962 – 4 Extra Points for Frost – When the WotLK expansion hits, as I level up, I will start filling in the Arcane tree until I get Focus Magic. When I hit 80 and start raiding again, the talent build that I will most likely be using is this: 80 PvE/PvP Frost.
WotLK Paladins May Have “Shocking” Potential – All of the above said, the following, were I to PvP as a Shockadin at level 80, would be my talent build without question:.Ă‚Â Allow me a couple caveats with the above build: …
Tanked! Revaluing Feral Combat Talents in Beta Build 8926 – The pictured talent build is essentially what I’d like to be using at 80. All PH NYI (place holder, not yet implemented) talents are now “live” on beta, and it’s pertinent to note that the talent “Mother Bear” has been renamed to the …
Want to hit level 80 fast? Looking for ways to familiarize yourself with Northrend without wasting valuable playtime running around in circles? Check out the Killer Guides’ Wrath guide and get ready to go before the expansion hits.
Shock and Awe: The Art of Dual Shockadins in WotLK – Both of these assumptions are based off of items I found in the WotLK database at WoWhead situated around an item level of 200 (the item level which seems to be the base for epics at level 80). In addition to these two assumptions, …
Why 3.0 will change Arena entirely – Much like when Blizzard imeplemented the WoW 2.0 41-point talent trees into the game shortly before TBC, and much of the dissaray it caused, the WoW 3.0 talents are almost entirely based around players being level 80 and consequently …
Truckload ‘o Changes – At level 80, this 80 spellpower. Much higher than it was before. I believe it is still weaker than Flametongue Totem and doesn’t stack with it. Twin Disciplines – The tooltip was fixed to read: Increases your spell power on instant …
8926 DK changes, Blue Posts, and Site News – They may be fun in that you get a lot for your money, but they work against the design goal of being able to build a customized talent tree for your character. They also make spec parity or class balance a lot harder when there are …
A look at our Bear Tanking future in Wrath – Clearly (I hope) a class that could do rogue-level dps and warrior-level tanking with the same talent build is the kind of thing that makes other players a little miffed. But we’re reevaluating a lot of old (and some admittedly tired) …
[Druid] The 3.0 patch – cat build edition – That’s about .66% dps per talent point, which just isn’t that good. This may not make the cut at level 80; it’s still lower per point than master shapeshifter. Rend and Tear barely makes the cut. Assuming that you’re only hitting …
WotLK Hunter Pets – Major Changes – Pets will still have to level to some degree, but it will be a lot more transparent than it is now. A level 1 beast trained by a level 80 hunter will hop to level 70 instantly. That way the pet isn’t completely useless while you try
Edit: Big Red Kitty says – Beta Talent Builds, Just Say No – “OK, see? The hunter class is going to be totally mixed up. Anything and everything people have said, including us, is kaput and moot.”
Edit: By the way, don’t forget to grab your free Death Knight Starter Area Leveling Guide.