zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

After a few weeks of musing about it I think I’ve been able to pinpoint exactly what I like about Mass Effect that makes it different from WoW: it reminded me of how it felt like being the hero. WoW has a habit of addressing you as a hero. In fact, it calls everyone in the raid heroes, which kinda defeats the purpose of being one. It removes the importance of the word. It echoes Syndrome from The Incredibles movie, “And when everyone’s super, no one will be.”

I know it’s not a fair comparison, but this isn’t really a WoW-bashing post. It’s more about why I like Mass Effect. In the game, you play as Commander Shepard, recently assigned as the executive officer of the frigate SSV Normandy. Without spoiling things, let’s just say that the game gives you the opportunity to not only choose who gets to live or die, but also allows you to reshape the galaxy as you see fit. It’s fun to be in the spotlight again, to know that what you do literally sends ripples across star systems. WoW, as an MMO, is almost always about the group effort. The sense of accomplishment is different and the variety that the single-player experience brings is a breath of fresh air.

Oh, and the gameplay rocks too.

Festergut is a DPS race. He’s got a 5-minute enrage timer that you have to beat.

Again, for melee DPS this is mostly a tank and spank fight. Stand behind the boss and hack away.

Aside from the 5-minute timer, the other gimmick to the fight is Pungent Blight, an AOE spell that will one-shot everyone in the room. Surviving the ability will depend on how many stacks of Inoculated you have on you.

Festergut will put Gas Spores on random raid members (2 on 10-man, 3 on 25) prior to casting Pungent Blight. The spores cause a 12-second debuff and then explode. Anyone nearby will get Inoculated eventually (it causes another debuff first). He will cast the spores three times, which means you can get Inoculated three times, before casting Pungent Blight.

As you can tell by now, spreading the spores is vital to the raid. On 10-man, you’ll have a ranged group and a melee group. DBM will mark the two members who get the spores with skull and X. Your raid leader will likely designate which mark stays with melee and which mark runs to ranged. Pay attention to that part because you want to know when you’ll be running to ranged if you get the spore on you. For example, if your RL says X goes to ranged and you get marked X, then you’ll have to stop DPS, get to the ranged group and stay there until the spore explodes. You have 12 seconds to do all that. On 25, it’s the same, except that there are 3 spores and DBM marks the third raid member with square.

Still on the spores, the last thing to remember is that a tank can get a Gas Spore as well. This can screw up your assignments. Imagine the same scenario above where X runs to ranged. What if the tank is marked X? Obviously, he can’t go to the ranged group since he’s tanking the boss. Be ready to adjust accordingly.

Finally, Feint is your friend. When the boss starts casting Pungent Blight, get Feint up before he finishes and you’ll get hit with less damage. It’s even possible to survive with only two stacks of Inoculated because of it. And no, Cloak doesn’t work. Not in my experience anyway.

TL;DR:

Get 3 stacks of Inoculated. Bring the spores to the correct group when you get them. Use Feint to minimize the damage from Pungent Blight.

Saurfang is a tank and spank affair for melee DPS. Just stand behind him and DPS away.

All of his skills and abilities need not be your concern. Yes, even the dreaded mark. They’re things that your healers have to address.

What you have to watch out for is what not to do when the adds spawn, and that involves not AoEing (see how I just turned that into a verb? You get it, right?). Since Fan of Knives has no place in the fight I doubt that you’ll be casting that and hitting the Blood Beasts by accident. Time Killing Spree and Blade Flurry carefully so that you’re only hitting the boss when they’re up.

2 Blood Beasts spawn on 10-man while 5 appear on 25. They don’t do much damage and therefore don’t need to be tanked, but when they hit a raid member they return blood points to Saurfang. This is the reason why they’re usually assigned to ranged DPS. If your raid leader wants you to help DPS them down, then hit hard and fast. Bring them down quickly so that they die before you get aggro.

I’m probably over-simplifying the fight at this point since the boss has more abilities than I mentioned here, but none of them should be of any concern to you as melee DPS.

Bosses that have Mind Control abilities always make a fight more interesting. If they cast it on a healer, the other healers have to pick up the slack. If it’s on DPS, they have to be CCed quick enough before they kill somebody. Also, there’s the chance that it might burn a cooldown you’re saving for later in the fight. Seeing it wasted is always a downer.

Lady Deathwhisper seemed to have it in for me this week. She Mind-Controlled me thrice throughout the fight. I’d imagine that something like that would be frustrating under different circumstances but given that it was a one-shot, seeing it happen that much was amusing.

I have nameplates enabled for hostile targets only and (you can probably see where this is going) when I get MCed, everybody goes red. This is probably a bad thing to say but when that happens, I can’t help but think “Go Sin!” and hope that my toon casts a couple of Fan of Knives before getting CCed. The second time I got MCed, a fellow raider typed in chat that I killed him. I didn’t see Fan of Knives cast so I wondered how he died. Then I noticed that my Killing Spree was on cooldown. Oops.

What’s your take on getting MCed? You do root for yourself when it happens, right? Tell me I’m not alone here.

I’ve been holding off on purchasing emblem gear because I want a tier piece to drop from VoA first. My goal is to get the tier 10 4-piece bonus going and see my DPS increase. I want to be able to nail one finisher after another. After two weeks of doing VoA, I’ve yet to see rogue leather drop so I haven’t had the chance to even roll on it yet. That’s been the story of gear for me for the past couple of weeks, even in ICC. Melee DPS leather simply does not drop in our runs.

Yesterday Festergut dropped Plague-Soaked Leather Leggings. I put it on my spreadsheet and saw a DPS increase. Just for fun I decided to put the tier 10 legs and hands just to check what my DPS would be if I bought those instead.

I was floored to see a DPS decrease.

I checked and re-checked but the numbers were consistent. If they were both at ilvl 251, getting the tier 10 legs and hands to complete the 4-piece bonus was going to lower my damage output. I was in denial at first, thinking for so long that the 4-piece bonus was really, really good. Well, screw that. The discovery then led to me checking out what pieces I should buy. I finally settled on the waist and trinket, with those being the biggest DPS upgrades according to the spreadsheet. I’ve yet to run ICC to see how my DPS turns out though. I’ll find out this week.

Let’s talk about exploits. We know that Ensidia got banned for exploiting the Lich King encounter. We also know that the fight is not the only thing that’s exploitable out there. For example, it’s possible to trivialize the second half of Halls of Reflection by having the Lich King walk in front of the group. My question here is this: how do you feel about exploits?

For the sake of definition, an exploit is doing something that works outside of how a fight is supposed to progress. In the above example, your group is supposed to defeat the mobs before the Lich King gets close. By putting the Lich King in front, your group is effectively removing his presence and the threat he imposes. It’s not the way the fight’s supposed to work and is therefore an exploit. If you’re causing adds to despawn on an encounter that’s supposed to have them, that’s an exploit. If you’re off-tanking the said adds, that’s not an exploit.

I’ll admit that my definition of an exploit could be wrong and is open to interpretation, but I suggest you throw it out there anyway. My own thoughts on the matter will be shared later. I don’t want to influence what you guys have to say.