zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

Okay, at this point I think it’s fair to say that we’re being bombarded with Cataclysm information. You’ll notice that I haven’t been writing about it. It’s by choice. I tend to ignore previews because of the fact that they’re temporary. I’m not sure if what I’m seeing is going to make it in the final product and I don’t want to spend the time and energy involved in keeping up with every little update. I also don’t want to deal with the eventual disappointment if something I’m looking forward to gets cut in the end. Just take a look at what they’re removing now and you’ll see what I mean.

Now, this is something I do for all games, not just WoW. I’ve been there before, folks. I’ve felt the anticipation, the excitement—then the game comes out and all you have a shell of what it was in the previews. So no, I don’t want to go through that. I’m going to get Cataclysm when it comes out whether it’s good or not. We probably all will.

I’ll tell you where it came from instead. I blame Arcanum. I’m a Fallout fanboy. Fallout 1 and 2 are two of my favorite games and I used to spend hours talking about them back in college with another friend of mine. Arcanum was created by the same guys so I saw every preview I could, bought every magazine that featured it. This was before Gametrailers, folks, so online preview videos were virtually unheard of. If you wanted information about a game, your best bet was to buy a magazine that covered it.

Then the game finally came out and it all went downhill. The real-time combat was too fast and awkward. The turn-based combat looked downright silly albeit more rewarding. The whole magic versus technology bit that they were trying to pull off came out half-assed. It was just a train wreck compared to Fallout. I hated it when it was released. I eventually played it after a few months when all my expectations were dead and it was only then that I appreciated it. I’ve been very wary of previews since.

So, going back to Cataclysm, if I find something interesting then I’ll write about it. For now, please don’t count on me covering previews and anything related to them.

I contacted Blizzard support via email and was asked three questions to verify my account. I was unable to answer all of them. One question involved providing my vanilla WoW serial number, something that I no longer thanks to Typhoon Ketsana. The rep told me to email Account Services directly and provide a government-issued ID plus a scanned printout of a document they provided in the link. I submitted what was required two days later. After nearly three days, I got a response that Blizz has removed my authenticator and I was able to login.

It was a long and arduous process. I still can’t get over the fact that the one thing that was protecting my account also prevented me from accessing it. Overall, I was unable to play the game for about a week.

Pardon the short update. Real life is getting in the way again. If you want to hear about the new talent previews, WoW.com has those covered. I was supposed to write a post about gear stagnation but this week’s heroic drops have managed to shut me up. Imagine that?

I should be raiding, but I have no power at home due to a nearby blown transformer. Some birthday week this is turning out to be. Anyway, moving on.

You’ve all heard about the Cataclysm raiding changes by now. The most glaring one is the loot and lockout integration of the 10- and 25-man content. This means that the 10-man version of Cataclysm raids will drop the same items from the 25-man. And once you commit yourself to the 10-man, you can’t do it again on the 25 due to the shared lockout. Blizz says that the 25-man version will simply drop more loot.

This begs the question: what is the incentive for 25-man raiding? I can think of two things: better loot and “easier” fights. The first one is self-explanatory so we’ll skip that. What I mean with fights being easier is that there’s more room for error. If you lose one or two DPS during a Festergut-25 fight, it doesn’t automatically mean a wipe. If the same thing happens with the 10-man version then you can say hello to a higher repair bill.

The upcoming changes just removed the first incentive. The loot is going to be the same, which leaves us with the second. I don’t think potentially easier fights are strong enough reasons to still do the 25. It then takes us to the incentive that Blizz presented. They say that more loot will drop in the 25, so the next question is how much more is “more”? ICC 25 bosses currently drop 3-4 items. Given the current itemization scheme, you’re not really fighting against 24 people for them. If you’re a tank, your chances of getting a drop are 50%, because your only rolling against the other tank. If you’re a healer, it’s you versus 4-5 other players. The chances to win are lower if you’re DPS since there’s more of us in the group, but that also varies per class. If you’re cloth, well, I tend to laugh in your general direction when it comes to winning rolls. Trying to win against 5-6 people? Seriously, good luck with that.

Now, compare those numbers with the 10-man. There are 2 drops per boss. For tanks, it’s still 50% since you’re only rolling against the other tank. For healers, it’s you against two other people, maybe. For DPS, the chances are definitely a lot better. The point here is obvious, and has blatantly been from the moment the changes were announced: given the way things are right now, no one is going to run the 25-man raids when Cataclysm hits. With that said, what’s your guild going to do?

And now, for the nitpicking.

Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue’s current target, helping to ensure combo points aren’t wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

This is a nice, welcome change. We won’t be wasting time building up combo points on fights that have a lot of target-switching, which then mean that we can do finishers more often. Too bad there’s no mention of transferring Deadly Poison stacks though. It wouldn’t make sense but it would be convenient.

Read more… »

Blizz has announced the upcoming changes to our class. Here are the details. My comments are going to be in a separate post.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. Here, you’ll get a glimpse at what’s in store for the rogue class, including a look the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the rogue’s different talent specs.

New Rogue Abilities
Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue’s current target, helping to ensure combo points aren’t wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

Read more… »