Blinding Powder's New Tooltip

LOL! At least Blizzard has a sense of humor still.

Continue reading 'Blinding Powder's New Tooltip'

I Feel Naked in the Arena

...and not in a good way. No, I'm not talking about ERP. I'm talking about craptastic armor values of my Arena gear!

After reading about Season 3 gear and armor penetration over on Phaelia's Resto4Life, it made me start thinking about the armor value I have now compared to the armor value of the cloth wearers.

With a little digging, I discovered the following:

• For Tier 5 gear pieces that correspond to Season 2 gear (head, shoulders, chest, gloves, legs), cloth wearers get about ~1k in armor, leather wearers gets about ~2k in armor, mail ~4k, plate ~7k.
• For Season 2 gear pieces that correspond to Tier 5 gear, cloth wearers get about ~2k in armor, leather wearers gets about ~2k in armor, mail ~4k, plate ~7k.

Uh... what? In our Arena Gear, the gear that is supposedly designed toward survivability against those who would rather we not continue stabbing them in the eye, we have as much armor as a Priest. Yeah. Priests and all other clothies got a 100% boost to their armor from Season 2 gear. Meanwhile, Rogues (and to a lesser degree the various Druid specs) get virtually no armor boost.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the various classes and their abilities designed around the type of armor they wear? A Warlock has Fear and other tools to help compensate for his cloth armor. A Mage has Polymorph and Frost Nova and other abilities. Every cloth wearer has already been balanced for their armor type.

Now this is probably the result of them already giving the cloth wearers the +910 armor that will be partially negated by the armor penetration of Season 3. However, why should Rogues (and Restoration Druids) be penalized by not getting any armor bonus? No wonder why in a 5v5 match, our team met with a Priest who seemed to have more armor than me. Add on Inner Fire and all their other abilities, she had way more armor than me.

Therefore, since the beginning of Season 2, cloth wearers have gotten tougher, while melee characters and healers in leather have received zero compensation. Even next season, it will take weeks for melee players to get Season 3 pieces. Meanwhile, cloth wearers will continue to enjoy their day in the sun.

All of this and rogues still get to stand toe to toe with their opponents to do damage. Cloth wearers already have ways to distance themselves from melee characters and now they have twice the armor as they did before as well!

It seems to me that the entire idea of armor penetration is flawed and this solution is even more flawed. Even a proposed solution of giving all characters 910 more armor just seems like a bad fix because PvP characters will have an advantage over PvE characters.

I'm under no illusion that game mechanics are easy to balance for PvE and PvP, but there has to be a better solution.

Continue reading 'I Feel Naked in the Arena'

Video: "Hemo is Dead" by Skahr

Skahr announced he was working on it two weeks ago and "Hemo is Dead", his PvP video, is finally done!

Coming in at a whopping 24 minutes, the video highlights his PvP play in battlegrounds, duels, world PvP and 2v2 arena.

After watching this, I have a newfound respect for the Subtlety tree.

And I suggest you watch the full version if you have the bandwidth, which allows you more control over the video to pause, rewind and skip ahead. Alternately, you can watch it in-line below.

Continue reading 'Video: "Hemo is Dead" by Skahr'

Possible Changes in 2.3

Ok. I'm a bit slow on this. I was kinding hoping for some more so I wouldn't be incredibly redundant.

Stickied by Drysc in the Rogue Forums!

These are the announced changes we're planning in 2.3 for the Rogue class.

• Blind is now a physical attack and the reagent requirement removed [link]
• Fleet Footed changed to increase movement speed by 8/15% [link]
• Shadowstep usable at any time, not only while stealthed. Threat caused by next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab is reduced by 50% and cooldown increased to 40 seconds [link]
• Dirty Deeds specials cause 20% extra damage against targets that are below 35% health [link]
• Deadly Throw missile speed increased significantly and snare duration increased slightly [link]
• Ruthlessness only affects melee finish moves [link]
• All poisons now last for one hour [link]

Honestly, I think these are token changes. None of them are going to help Rogues in PvE or arena, except maybe the change to Deadly Throw.

Now, if you use Shadow Step, I'll give you the gold to respec. You certainly don't need threat reduction on your abilities.

Nice buff for Dirty Deeds, but I still think the Subtlety tree is broken until it can either give Rogues a new essential role in raids or allows them to come close to the DPS of the other two trees.

The changes to Blind are nice, but making it a physical ranged attack will remove its ability to affect hostile arena opponents with Blessing of Protection or Paladins with Divine Shield.

Poison change is good, but really, let's just get rid of the entire poison creation system. It's slow and it's really just an unnecessary step.

Yeah, no picture for this one. =P

Continue reading 'Possible Changes in 2.3'

Vone! Two! Three Poisons ... Ah, Ah, Ah!

I've been PvPing a lot more lately, specifically Arenas. Some 2v2 and 3v3 matches are all DPS, making Wound Poison superfluous. However with the following macro (and an item/weapon switcher like ItemRack), you can poison a third weapon, stored in your inventory, and tie it to your Shiv ability:

/itemrack equip poisonthree
/cast Shiv
/itemrack equip normalweapons

Stab 'em where it hurts ... their mana!

Source: Osiris’ Guide to Playing a Rogue v3.0.

Continue reading 'Vone! Two! Three Poisons ... Ah, Ah, Ah!'