One Rogue's Journey

It has been just over a year since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King and just over a year since I started blogging in earnest.

I’m sad to say that after a year, I just don’t have it in me anymore. I am sure you’ve seen it happening over the last few months, the quantity and quality of my posts have been waning. What you may not have seen is that this has been in direct correlation with the decline of my interest in the game as a whole. So it is with a heavy heart that I am laying down my daggers (in my mind, they were always daggers) and saying goodbye to the World of Warcraft.

I’d like to thank everyone who left comments or sent me emails asking questions or just thanking me for my site. It meant a lot to know that I was helping people and made me feel like I really succeeded with this little blogging experiment.

I have thoughts of relaunching this blog in the new year with a new theme, a scatter-shot of themes probably. Other video games, table-top roleplaying, all the other things I love; maybe just talk of this rogue’s journey through life. Who knows.

Keep Rogueing My Brethren and Sisteren
<3
Zaltu

Hello, hello, hello and (you guessed it) hello. It’s been a busy time for me lately (Dragon Age isn’t going to play itself) and a not so busy time to be a rogue. Things haven’t really changed and there isn’t a whole lot that is going to change for us in patch 3.3. Have no fear though, you’ll be hearing from me on patch day with all the wonderful info you need to know to keep stabby-stabbing things with the best of them.

Speaking of patch 3.3, it’s time for my now (in)famous guess of the patch drop day.

Drum roll please…..

Tuesday, December 1st.

There you have it, a quick and easy macro for weapon swapping.

Awesome, we’re done here. Let’s go eat some Halloween candy!

No can do, voice in my head, we’re not done here.

Are you sure about that?

Damn sure, we still have to explain what weapon swapping is and how/when/why to do it.

Oh, well can I eat candy?

Knock yourself out.

If you’ve had your ears open to a lot of the recent rogue chatter you may have heard the term “weapon swapping” being thrown around a lot lately.

What is weapon swapping exactly?

Weapon swapping is switching your offhand weapon when you have a full 5 stack of Deadly Poison to another weapon with a strong (Wound or Instant depending on your spec) poison and then quickly switching back to your deadly offhand to refresh the stacks.

Why would we do this? Well, the same reason we do anything: If done properly it can be a nice boost to your DPS.

Sounds awesome, how do I start? Well, you need a couple of things to be successful at weapon swapping:

• Two Similar (preferably identical) offhand weapons
• Low Latency
• Quick Reflexes
• The ability to keep track of another timer with razor sharp accuracy

These last two are really really important because if you aren’t timing it right and you let the deadly poison stacks drop off then you will actually be hurting your DPS.

So, if you have all these things, give weapon swapping a shot but remember to practice, practice practice.

Alert – INCOMING EXPERIMENTAL PATCH 3.3 PTR TIP – Alert – THIS TIP IS EXTREMELY EXPERIMENTAL AND HAS NOT BEEN TESTING – Alert

You’re probably not familiar with the weapon enchant Black Magic. Currently it causes your damaging spell to cause a DOT but on the PTR it increases your haste rating whenever you deal spell damage.

What does this mean for rogues? Well, poisons will proc this effect. Is this enchant better than berserking then? No, BUT, using weapon swapping (provided you have enough weapons laying around) you could possibly swap in an offhand with black magic, wait for the proc, then swap back to your berserking offhand and then repeat this action when the internal cooldown of black magic is up.

Sounds nifty, keep a eye out for this one.

In my quick (p)review of the T10 set bonuses I made a bit of an offhanded comment about the rupture-less cycle. Boy did I open up a can of worms with this one.

Did your offhand comment at least give you a combat potency proc?

I hate you so much. Was that really necessary?

It made me laugh.

I’m sure it did.

Was it necessary for you to mention a cycle that most people shouldn’t be doing yet, thus making them excited and possibly confused?

Touche.

Now, about this rupture-less cycle I mentioned, a lot of you emailed me requesting information about the cycle. I was hesitant to mention it earlier since, for the most part, you generally will not have the gear to support it but since I let it slip and now everyone is all curious, I’ll elaborate.

First, here is the spec for this cycle (substituting your weapon of choice):
15/51/5

So, the rupture-less cycle is really that, you drop rupture out of your cycle in favor of eviscerate. Why didn’t I bring this up is that it requires extremely high levels of gear (with lots of armor pen) before this cycle surpasses the rupture cycle.

So, when should I use the rupture-less cycle? Well, ask yourself a few questions.

Am I wearing 4 piece T8?
If yes, then no chance, rupture criting is too good to pass up.

What’s my Armor Pen?
I’m not going to give you a hard number but I will says that if I switched all my Agi gems for Armor Pen, I’d have 366 Armor Pen and I still wouldn’t be close to the number I needed to switch over to this new cycle.

So how do I know when to switch?
Well, you have to use a spreadsheet to be absolutely sure. I hear some groaning in the crowd. I’m sorry but please put your pitchforks down. Aldriana over at Elitist Jerks has created a wonderful Combat Spreadsheet that I find is very easy to use. Download it here.

So there you have it, the elusive rupture-less cycle I mentioned. Sorry it’s not as interesting as it could be. The truth is, you probably don’t need to worry about it, at least not yet. Don’t worry though, when you do, I’ll let you know.

The rogue T10 set bonus have been revealed thanks to some happy data-mining gnomes. First things first, let’s give the standard disclaimer here that this are from the PTR and may change slightly of completely.

With that out of the way, let me just say:
OMG OMG OMG GIMME GIMME GIMME I WANTZ IT!

*ahem* excuse me. As you could probably tell, I’m more than a little excited about these set bonus. After the very disappointing T9, it’s nice to see a set bonus I actually want! (In all fairness, T8 4p was just too good for T9 to really have a chance). So what are these wonderful set bonuses? Let’s look shall we:

WOW, this is just really nice. Three free combo points is lip-smackingly good. I suspect that by this point in the gear progression most of us will be moving to the high armor-pen rupture-less cycle and this will be a wonderful a addition to this, hell, it would be a wonderful addition to any cycle.

Very Nice. Very Very Nice. Placing tricks of the trade on another dps (usually another rogue) was always something that lowered our personal dps to the benefit of increased raid DPS (generally the other rogue would return the favor, thus giving up a boost as well). But now! But now my friends! Free energy! Who could say no to gaining 15 energy from an ability that used to cost 15 energy that you use on every cooldown? No on, that’s who.

Give them to me. I needs them.

Side Note: Did you see how they are fixing Vanish? What can I say, when I’m right I’m right.

Side-Side Note: Thank you for all the wonderful emails I’ve been getting. I’ve been doing my absolute best to try and get back to each and everyone but it is a losing battle overall. E-hearts all around.

All has been pretty quiet in the world of Rogue’s lately but our favorite crab just dropped a little tidbit of information to whet our appetites

Interesting. What is this fix? Will it work? Will it be awesome? Questions abound. The smart money (my money) is on a short immunity period after you cast vanish to keep you from getting knocked out immediately. You heard it here first(ish).

I would like to begin today with a little history lesson.

BOOOO…no one likes history, just tell us what we need to know.

Relax, it’s going to be quick. Remember in BC and (for the most part) before patch 3.1? I know it was awhile ago but think hard. Remember when Armor Penetration (ArPen) was…awful? Seriously, ArPen was arguably the worse stat in the entire game and you might as well have avoided it like the plague (save for Grim Toll which actually gave enough of it to make up for it’s general weakness as a stat).

You’re boring me buddy. So ArPen used to be bad, I remember, what’s your point?

My point, my patient-deprived, figment of my imagination, is that in patch 3.1 ArPen received a significant buff: A 25% increase in the effectiveness of ArPen.

Alright everyone, here is the short skinny

The short skinny?

Yeah, it’s a phrase, it means “here’s the deal”

I’m pretty sure you just made that up.

Maybe. Anyway, here’s the deal. Gear and stat scaling are getting a little out of hand, at least a bit more absurd than Blizz originally intended and the buff to ArPen turned out to be too much, so they’re nerfing it. Sad but true, such is life, etc, etc.

So, we can whine, we can complain or we can suck it up, look at the numbers and figure out what (if anything) we need to do.

Oh lord, you’re going to do math now aren’t you? No way man, I’m out of here.

Fine. Good riddance. So, here are the current ArPen numbers according to Elitist Jerks:

Hard Caps

Soft Caps (Mjolnir Runestone)

These are soft caps because Mjolnir provides 665 ArPen during it’s uptime (1232-665 = 567) so any ArPen above these caps is wasted during the proc uptime (which is significant).

So, the patch 3.2.2 nerf:

Currently, 1 ArPen Rating ~= .08% Armor Reduced (100/1232, rounded for simplicity)

Reducing this by 12% we get: 1 ArPen Rating ~= .07% Armor Reduced (.08 – (.08 *.12) again, rounded for simplicity)

So, what are our new caps?

Hard Caps

Soft Caps (Mjolnir Runestone)

So, what we’re looking at it about ~150 or so more ArPen to reach the caps (depending on your setup). Is the cap still attainable? Probably. Is this a nerf because it is going to cost you other stats to obtain it? For sure. Is this a bad thing? Well, if you think all nerfs are bad, then yes, but really, no. It’s a balancing act (and it doesn’t just affect rogues, all us melee -and I guess those silly hunters- are going to feel it too).

So there it is: History and Math, what a joyous day! Don’t forget to study for your Science test next week.

So rogues can now use one-handed axes. Have you jumped on this new fad? I have to admit that some of the new axes from ToC look mighty tasty.

Have you noticed something a little…lacking since you made the switch? Something just not quite right? Well, I have you answer and the answer is a nasty little bug.

Precision

Take a moment and read the tooltip carefully. Notice something missing? Noticing how axes aren’t on the list?

Sadly, this is not just a problem with a tooltip not being updated. Currently, precision does not work with one-handed axes so that little “oomph” you’re missing that you can’t put your finger on, that’s the lack of 5% extra hit.

Obviously this is a bug and Blizzard is aware of it and I bet it will be fixed in 3.2.2 but it’s just something to keep in mind for the time being.

EDIT: This has been hotfixed. Enjoy your axes. Thank you, please drive thru.

So, how you gem your gear is pretty important.

You sir, are a master linguist.

I know, right? I should get paid for this.

Anyway, one of the things you have to take into consideration when gemming your gear is socket bonuses. When should you go for them? Often times a spreadsheet is your best answer to theses and many other DPS questions but I’m going to take a minute and show you how to quickly eyeball a piece of gear and make an intelligent decision.

A quick disclaimer first: The most important thing when gemming is to make sure your Meta-Gem stays active. Which for rogues, will require at least 1 red, yellow and blue gem and you should use take the opportunity to kill two birds with one gem (rim-shot) and grab a socket bonus while activating your meta whenever possible.

For this discussion I will be using the following gems to fill the various slots.

• Red – Delicate Cardinal Ruby (+20 Agi)
• Yellow – Deadly Ametrine (+10 Agi, +10 Crit)
• Blue – Shifting Dreadstone (+10 Agi, +15 Stam)

The method of calculation (quick secret, it’s addition) is the same when using other gems but for simplicity I will be using these. It should be noted that when ignoring socket bonuses you will simply be stacking the red gem of your choice (Agi, Arpen, or AP)

Now, let’s look a two pieces of gear, one of which I suggest ignoring the socket bonus and the other I suggest going for the socket bonus. Let’s find out why.

Cuirass of Calamitous Fate – 1 Yellow Socket, 1 Blue Socket, +12 AP Socket Bonus

If you go for the socket bonus:
+20 Agi, +10 Crit Rating, +15 Stam, +12 AP

If you ignore the socket bonus:
+40 Agi

So, the question is really:
+20 Agi vs +10 Crit Rating and +12 AP

So, what’s the answer? Well, 20 Agi will give you 20 AP. So far, no socket bonus is winning but what about the 10 Crit rating? How does that stack up to the 20 Agility. Not too well actually.

With that known, the abstract question of which is better:
+20 Agi vs +10 Crit Rating and +12 AP
Is actually, which is better:
+20 AP and .24% Crit Chance vs +12 AP and .21% Crit change

That’s an easy, apples to apples comparison and you can easily see that not going for the socket bonus wins. Keep in mind you don’t have to do this math every time, once you know the basics you can pretty much eyeball it (do the math to double check if you’re unsure).

Conqueror’s Terrorblade Legplates – 1 Red Socket, 1 Yellow Socket, +6 Agi Socket Bonus

If you go for the socket bonus:
+36 Agi, +10 Crit Rating

If you ignore the socket bonus:
+40 Agi

So, the question is really:
+4 Agi vs +10 Crit Rating

So:
+4 Agi vs +10 Crit Rating
Becomes:
+4 AP and .04% Crit Chance vs .21% Crit Chance

To me, the socket bonus is an easy win here.

So that’s socketing in a nutshell. Isn’t math grand?

Happy Socketing!

First, the rogue specific changes:

Those first two were already know and we talked about them. They make us sad but we understand.

You understand, I liked being the top AOE.

Yeah, but was it fair?

Of course it wasn’t fair, but it was awesome and we deserve it because…uh…we just do.

The next two are decent buffs to our Assassination brethern and sistern, who were already beginning to fall behind Combat and was only going to slip further and further behind as those of us of the Combat persuasion gobbled up more and more Armor Penetration.

Decent way to give them a helping hand. I figured they would have just tacked more damage onto Hunger For Blood.

The next thing I found most exciting, while not rogue specific, is the return of leatherworking drums.

What the hell? This is what we get? What happen to my awesome haste buff?

Yeah, yeah, they aren’t the same as they were (or even close) but they removed them for a reason (Blizzard hates ultra heavy beats – there, I said it) but it’s a step in the right direction, right?

Maybe, those buffs look awfully familiar, don’t you think?

OK fine, so they probably won’t stack with Blessing of Kings or Mark of the Wild but a rogue can dream can’t he? A rogue can dream.