The many personalities of Hexapuma

I am such a sucker for alts... and now that I have returned and no longer raid and the honor system has been revamped I have much more time to actually play alts. While my rogue is without a doubt my favourite character and my "main". I enjoy playing a paladin as well. They are very different since they have so much more to offer in terms of support.

Having played so much battlegrounds as a rogue it is very refreshing to play support and healer sometimes. Of course everyone really appriciates my heals and buffs =) If I were to add something to the rogue design it would be some sort of buff or aura... doesn't have to be super or amazing at all.. just a little something to repay friendly buffers.

The server I play on, Ravencrest, is unstable at best and during its downtimes I've started an undead priest on another server. It is actually quite fun and I can't wait until my first battleground expeditions. Since I am going to try PVP early with her I am going into the shadow tree.

Preparations, preparations

Just getting back into the game was more difficult than I anticipated... of course Blizzard's manage account page had to be down when I finally decided to return. I quite understand it though as the pressure on Blizzard's site must be huge now that all subscribers are upgrading their accounts and with all of us oldies returning to play again.

Finally I managed to re-activate my account when the next problem appeared ... deciding the new talent build for my rogue. Well ... when I left WOW in October last year I was very happy with SF dagger build. With all the new talents I have a really difficult time to decide upon my next build. Fortunately there are a few good sites out that gives a pretty good orientation of various builds.. I strongly recommend www.roguespot.com and www.worldofming.com...

Before nailing down the talents... I ran into another problem. MODS! Most of the mods I used before doesn't work anymore so just getting them all back is going to be a pain.

Instead of going for the old ones I used I've downloaded Wowace updater.. which you can find at www.wowace.com ...

And by the way… for some fun podcasting I recommend listening to a couple in Azeroth’s podcast… which you can download from their site here.

Joining the Crusade

The time of rest is over. Hexapuma returns to Azeroth.

I've just downloaded three huge patches and updated my client. I still haven't purchased the expansion but I am going to return to check out the new arena play, the new talents that has been introduced for TBC. Hopefully I'll be able to brush up my old rogue skills after being absent for a few months. If I like what I find I'll probably go running for the actual expansion asap.

So What have I been doing all this time?

I've played a lot of other games... Total War, Silent Hunter IV, Civ IV and making out with another great MMO.. EVE-Online. Eve is pure fantastic... focused on PVP but do lack interesting settings and environments.

Hexapuma is in torpor...

So finally after almost two years it is time for me to put the WOW gaming to rest. A lot of other things have come up and on the gaming front I've started playing EVE together with the very same people I once started out WOW with.

I still have my account active and do mainly PVP with my Paladin alt, Hexapanther.

So if this blog suddenly changes to feature lots of starships and other sci-fi elements you now know why... and to all rogues. Take care out there and be careful with that thistle tea.

.Hexapuma

Looking for new server

I've been up to lots of things since the last post. Basically I've had it with the long wait queues in Battlegroup 3 for getting into AB/AV/WSG... so I've been researching various other realms.

It does mean that I have left my old guild. Painful.. and it is more painful that all of my friends are on the Ravencrest server. The only other option I have is to level a new rogue and stay below the 60 bracket or get busy with my alts...

Regarding raiding.. I've had my share of raiding now and quite frankly the 40 man raids lasting for 5-6 hours are not my idea of fun. I really dislike the idea that in order to get a *good* weapon you need to raid. I am so looking forward to TBC for the arena battles and the revamped honor reward system.

to be continued

BWL & Onyxia here I come

So last night I decided to ignore the guilds MC run and instead concentrate on getting leather-clad destroyer through UBRS. First off, I truly despise sitting waiting in IF spamming LFG every other minute. Especially when the channel is filled with crap from people who just gotta be heard. Every minute is painful.

While doing the LFG routine I got a lot of whispers with: LFG? Yeah a group not a player... eventually I understood that if I was to get me and my daggers into UBRS it would be by setting up my own raid.. including all the hassles of getting a keyholder, tank and healer. So instead I took the LFG channel with me into AB...

Even though you are automatically entered into a raid when going into the battlegrounds, these does not affect your "Real" party status. I was able to get invited by a group ready to go to UBRS =) No more waiting in IF for a group. SWEET!

The UBRS raid was led by an epic warrior from Inquisitors. Yay, this might even work =). It was a long time since I ran UBRS and those lower instances but it was fun. My new gear cut through their armor like a hot knife through butter. While the tank was AFK downing a pizza I was the tank =) Actually it works quite good as long as you don't have to tank multiple mobs.

Loots of stuff dropped, but no Eviscerate book..I did pick up The Shadow Prowler's Cloak. Never seen it before but it was a good find.

In the end I am now attuned for BWL, Onyxia and the next part of the MC questline! I increased my FR by 30 from the quest objectives alone ^^

Returning to IF my guild asked me if I'd join for Ragnaros.. I came into MC right as Majordomo was killed. To my surprise the Core Hound Tooth just dropped... when we downed Ragnaros (on second try) the Perdition Blade also dropped... I lost it to another rogue. If hadn't bidded on the claws previous MC run I would have had sufficient DKP to bring them home. Well there is always a next time - I hope.

Oh.. regarding the fists I picked up last week. Yes they do lots of white damage and yes they do work in raids but I am not overly impressed with them. I have not yet tried any PVP with them. My Krol Blade pops back into my hands as soon as danger lurks around the corner.

I am such a fool...

I am such a fool... last night in MC I was so hyped about the chance of getting a weapon upgrade. I was also in the lucky position of being top rogue DKP. So basically if anything would drop I'd be guaranteed to win it. Somehow I managed to fumble it... before the raid I noted down my DKP and that of the next one in line just to be sure. At Garr both Brutality Blade and the Gutgore Ripper drops. After a moment of joy I decided to go after the Brutality Blade (being human and found of Sword combat it was a rather easy choice). The Gutgore is auctioned first.. I pass and another happy rogue gets it. Next up.. the Brutality Blade.. I bid my max and just waits for the announcement.. but its not me its another rogue, the one just below me in DKP count. The strange thing is he bids with the same amount I have as max... and then it hits me. I misread the dkp chart.. instead of noting my own I had noted the other rogues dkp. Bleh. No weapon upgrade for me this run. So lesson learned? Double, nay, tripple check the dkp properly.

Well I didn't go completely empty-handed away from last night. I did pick up Eskhandar's Right Claw for minimum dkp. Now it was more of a fluke... I am curious of trying out a fast weapon with lots of poison. Before you say anything... I am pretty sure that a slow weapon is better for pumping out lots of nice sinister damage and it will be pretty moot in PVP.

But I rather discover that one myself after testing it... so for the next raid I'll be respeccing for fist/poison combat. If you have any suggestions I'll be happy to check it out.

Profile updated

So I took the time to actually create & update a ctprofile profile for Hexapuma. The main profile is what I use for grinding, PVP and raids without the need for FR. The fire resistance profile is (surprise surprise) used for the more fiery parts of MC including Ragnaros.

I am slowly upgrading my FR gear to become less and less of a burden for the healers, although I think I am already doing a fine job of that.

My next goal is to get a Molten Helm, Lava Belt and maby even Molten Boots. For the observant I don't have the pre-onyxia quest completed yet. I am waiting to get myself into an UBRS run. Something which has proven incredibly difficult after the Eviscerate book update... that combined with my time schedule.

Actually if I just could get one run into UBRS I would complete:
* The onyxia pre-quest and get my a valuable FR necklace
* The BWL pre-quest
* The Hydraxxian Waterlord quest for the FR ring.

Conclusion.. I really really need to zip through UBRS.

Cross-server Battlegrounds

So after two weeks of Cross-server battlegrounds I can only say it has been a huge let down for me. Previously on Ravencrest it took me 4-5 minutes for AB or WSG game and almost instantly for an AV game. Now the wait time is over 20 minutes for AB/WSG and around the hour for AV games. I suspect it is an overrepresentation of Alliance players in the battlegroup because there are an astounding number of instances up.

Anyway this is really sad... I love going into the battlegrounds but this is simply not an option anymore. I can't login, wait around for 20 minutes, play 5 minutes and then wait another 20.

So what can I do? I can play my alts and avoid the level 60 bracket or I could PAY and get a transfer to another battlegroup. Missing friends and all... Very unfortunate.

Had a great guild raid to Molten Core yesterday and we cleared all bosses of MC without any wipe on around four hours. With my gear somewhat good (PVP set + Nightslayer) I am holding out for a weapon. With my build now combat I managed to stay on the top 5 of the damage chart. I am sure that I can go higher when I get more efficient with AR and BF.

My biggest issue so far compared to a SF build is the lack of combopoints. It takes forever to generate them... ^^ I was hoping to do a little combat in BGs too... but hey the queues were simply too long.

Combat Swords...

So after being specced Seal Fate for a good while I wanted to go back to combat swords again to see if my gear would have improved it since last time. New build 16/31/4 (I personally can't live without a few points in MOD).

Survivability ... I seem to survive longer in BG's but when solo grinding I actually take more hits now. The whole SF build is all about gouging and getting a few nasty backstabs in.. combat swords is more about upfront damage. I haven't really nailed down a good flow yet and I suppose I'll have to rely more on kidney shot...

I am scheduled for a MC raid tonight but it seems like I'll have to sit this one over as it has 7 rogues signed up already... guess it will be BG night ;) If I do get into the raid I'll see if I have increased my dps with combat swords...

Guild trauma

We had a rough night... our server had constant lagspikes and we were supposed to get little ragnaros down. After 8 or 9 attempts ragnaros despawned (he will despawn 2 hours after the first battle with him has been initiated). It is a shame because we have had him 3 times before and I wish I could blame the lag but it wasn't entirely its fault.

With the guild progressing through MC, we've burned out 3 raid leaders. The guild is going through alot of inter-drama. I hope we sail it through. I've read on numerous other guildpages and blogs that once you nail Ragnaros and start peeking into BWL things are bound to change. Alot of guild can't handle the shift - suddenly you need enormous commitment. Lots of reagents to be farmed - fire pots, health pots, and gold for repairs, flasks and a gazillion other things. Constant wiping doesn't improve morale either. It becomes a rift between the truly hard-core raiders and the "causal raiders"... HC raiders being annoyed by the lack of dedication from the casual and the causal being annoyed by constant wiping.

Our guild started out casual, became semi-hardcore and now has both types of players. Various penalties are being handed out for leaving mid-raid (without notice) and the mood is getting darker.

Personally I am probably more of a casual raider. My schedule only allows me to raid once a week but with periodic gaming during the rest. It allows me to do some farming and more importantly PVP =) I love the guild and if it breaks down I gather it will be hard to find another that will accept a rogue that can only raid once a week =/

Oh .. our server is getting a hardware upgrade this maintenance. I wonder if we'll notice any difference. Hopefully it will quell some of the lagspike we have. I just wished more horde would play in our battlegroup since the waiting time is about 15minutes for AB and over an hour for AV... funny enough, the BG queues are much faster on lower levels.. so either there are plenty of hordes in training or just less alliance there. Dunno but I am getting most of my PVP fix at the lower brackets right now.

SF and UI hell!

So I picked the old classic Seal Fate for my new 1.12 build. I really wanted to go Hemo or heavy combat swords... but my weapons are not really up to par with hemo and I hesitated so much.. so I went with SF to see how the BGs would come out.

BGs in battlegroup 3 has been a pain. There is lag from hell when it comes to actually join the queues. You talk to the NPC... but nothing happens. 10 minutes later the instance list pops up for a second, just enough to remind you that if you were patient enough and waited by the NPC for an indefinate period of time you would be able to join the 40 minute queues.

But they'll fix it.. it will take a while but then it will start working. That is how it works.

I downloaded a new UI to celebrate the 1.12 patch... going with NurfedUI and nothing more. I've always believed in having as few mods as possible. But man! going from one UI package to another is time consuming. Spent a few minutes in AB in confusion of where my skills were and it seems everytime I tried to go for Cold Blood I would switch the menu page. SHIFT-2 is my usual Cold Blood key.. but without fixing up Nurfed UI correctly it swapped my main attack skills for bandages and shit...

1.12 rogue talents reviewed

So I've just downloaded and installed the 1.12 patch. Later tonight I'll have to respec and to be honest I don't really have a clue of what to spec. My previous spec was a classic Seal Fate (31/8/12)... I'll see if that will serve as a starter or else I am going with a Combat Sword build to make sure I don't gimp my PVE DPS too much.

Combat Sword is also quite handy in the BGs... although you need slightly better backup.

I just quickly browsed through the official wow forums and they are filled with many "OMG! the worst review ever" threads. Somehow I think the rogue community is a crowd impossible to please.

MC on farm status?

Yesterday the guild cleared the whole Molten Core in one go... little over four hours and without a wipe. I guess this qualifies for putting MC on farm status. Unfortunately I wasn't raiding yesterday. I had plans to join tonight.. with no raid going I'll try to get into an AQ20 spot later this week to get the quest Perfect Poison completed. I desperately need to upgrade my Heartseeker...

Anyways with MC cleared the guild will be hard pressed to start with BWL. While I want to get into BWL I still think we are miles away from doing anything but wiping as most of our members still only have very few T1 pieces. I gather we should stick around in MC for a few more weeks before seriously attempting BWL. Problem is that the most raid intensive members have little left to gain from MC and will probably do their uttermost to start BWL. We'll see what happens.

In other news.. this weekend I'll be taking care of our very-soon-to-be 4 month old son alone for the first time. It will be a great adventure! He is the curious, awake kind of little guy so I'll have my hands full.

Ragnaros down

I had a great time in MC... on our guild's third attempt we managed to kill Ragnaros. It was one of those really legendary fights that will live on in memory for a very long time. Our raid leader did a really good job shouting "More dots" and "Hit it like you mean it" during the fight. We had a few newbish players during the fight such as the paladin in my group that never tried to stick close to his melee group. I noticed how the Fire Resist Aura would come and go as I moved back and forth dodging Ragnaro's AOE blast.

Rogue tactics during the Ragnaros event is fairly simple. Start out behind Rag and move in to melee. Start building DPS slowly with lots of feints. As soon as the 5 sec raid warning appears move back to the edge to avoid getting thrown high into the air. Rinse and repeat. The last few percent was extremely exciting as we were just a few people left alive. Mostly caster loot appeared and no Perdy =(

Interestingly I didn't use any sharpening stones or other consumables than a +25 strength thingy from Blasted Lands. I ended up third on the meters.. a combat rogue in the 0.5 set did an excellent job of topping the charts. Guess I have to start focusing more ;)

Pinioned has now successfully cleared ZG and MC. My guess is that we'll soon start with the first bosses of BWL once we've killed Rag a few more times. So it is time to stock up on even more FR gear.

The new Burning Crusade PVP

I just read Joystick's exlusive intervju with Blizzard designer Jeff Kaplan.

There was a few very interesting tidbits...

The first is the arena combat system. You'll be able to join a team: 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. There are two different modes you can play: One is called practice mode to hone your skills and the other is competitive mode, which is level 70 only.

Very interesting. This will allow champions to emerge from pre-made groups. Hopefully the end of a few premades vs pugs. I really look forward to the 2 vs 2...

You can get the best rewards in the game on par with the raid game. So, wherever the raid game loot is currently at, the PvP arena system will match those rewards. And, the arena system is a seasonal system that will last three months then reset with a new set of rewards each season.

Again interesting.. I'll be sure to look for the raiders to start whining about easy epics. I guess most of them have not fought a godly team. On our Ravencrest server it used to be a guild called Amazing Randy... they sure showed skill.

The last pvp improvement is:

The third thing is a revamp of the honor system. We're not going to do away with the honor system, but we're going to fix many of the flaws with it. The first thing players will really care about is that your honor points will no longer decay. Honor points will now become the like the PvP equivalent of a PvE experience.

Finally.. I wonder if they do use some sort of weekly comparisson to adjust the amount of honor each player recieves compared to the amount of PVP done.

All in all extremely interesting features that definately gets my interest to wait for the expansion.

Move along, nothing to see...

Did some more raiding with the guild... and it was interesting to try out the Seal Fate build in a raid. It worked pretty good and I ended up third on the damage meter. Topped by another rogue (Mulán) and one of our mages (Fireleon). It was a close race. No deaths this time except for a full wipe as we were heading to Golemag... unlucky body pull as we were going to bypass a few mobs and a Core Hound appeared. In the end we got everything and a quick trip to the graveyard.

The guild got the whole beginning of Molten Core nailed down now. We need to learn Sulfron and then its Ragnaros time. I've started to farm for gold again to keep afloat. Wipeing costs gold and my reserves just went down after a lucky break on the AH... Goty myself a Myrmidon's Signet.. It was about time to replace my Mason fraternity ring =)

Everytime I go raiding I miss PVP...

Seal fate so far

I've been pleasantly surprised with the Seal Fate build for mob grinding. It is not a combat spec but it is still very efficient. I have yet to try it out properly in PVP and raiding.

Tonight I have a MC raid scheduled so we'll see what happens. Hopefully I'll have to vanish a lot ;)

A WoW Memory
About a year ago I was in Darnassus with my warrior, Ripperjack. I was lingering around the bank waiting for a friend to arrive. At that point a low level rogue approached. He whispered to me: "Hey can you craft me a dagger?" At that time most warriors were actually blacksmiths.. Ripperjack on the other hand was a herbalist/alchemist. So I replied to him "No, I am no blacksmith, I run around picking flowers and making tasty drinks instead :)" The rogue responded: "..." and then "Thats so gay". I don't know if it is unmanly to pick flowers but it did make me rich ;)

Talent Respec

So before the much anticipated 1.12 patch I decided to respec my old PVP build to 31/8/12, the much popular Seal Fate build. I've been itching to try out vigor, seal fate and cold blood.

Much to my dismay the queues to AB during the summer period is long. 28 minute instead of the usual 5-6 minutes. So far I've just noticed that I truly miss Preparation & Camo . I've also noticed that I am a poor finisher... especially to remember using Cold blood. More buttons to press but it has not let me down yet.

I also did the first two Molten Core quests... first a quick stop at EPL for the plagued elementals and then over to Silithius for even more elementals. Everytime I do a bit of grinding a miss my old combat spec. Silithius is thick with farmers... both alliance and horde. It seems they do have an unstable truce. All it took was one dagger in the back and a full war was raging - with me in the middle. Fun.. again World PVP is probably where we still shine as heroes or perhaps villains.

Was fun to do a bit of questing.. next stop is UBRS so I'll probably have to find me a nice PUG. The dread.

Hexa goes raiding

So I've been raiding in MC alot lately (that is once per week) and even though I missed the last ring I blew all my dkp on the Quick Strike Ring when it dropped this time. I switched a +9 agi/stam green ring so it was a pretty good upgrade. I was actually quite surprised when I won it since I dont have an especially large DKP pool but people are greedy =) also i gathered that it would be a hard fight against the other rogues in the guild to get any Nightslayer pieces.

We had trouble dealing with the Imps (at lucifron) or rather not trouble but we were slow and our raid leader wisely wanted us to clear em out to stop people of accidently pulling them into the fight or getting Mind controlled there. All the imps led our mage to get a good start into the damage meters but I prevailed and ended up second. Not bad for a shabby single target rogue.

With my focus being more on raiding instead of PVP I gather it is time to once again respec to combat swords... I love that build since I don't have to run around repositioning myself all the time... and in MC that is all you do.

The 1.12 patch looks exciting, although I am a bit disappointed. I had hoped for bigger changes - to bring a new fresh wave into the rogue game. Seems like the traditional builds still holds except a few talent changes. My personal build won't survive 1.12 so I'll have to find a new one.

over and out..