Shi Mian Mai Fu

Since a couple of days back I've been having my throwing daggers equipped when going into AB. Sure I do loose a wee bit of stamina & agility from leaving my Carapace Spine Crossbow at home BUT instead of waiting 3 seconds before shooting, throwing weapons are almost instantanious.

So? you might ask.. well instant ranged allows me to throw a dagger into that pesky hunter with aspect of the cheetah or that druid running off and score a dazing effect. Even more importantly I can now much more reliable break node captures when rooted or severly snared.

Maintenace day today... lets see if I can get to rank 8 for the Knight-Captain's Leather Armor and
Knight-Captain's Leather Legguards. I am at 46% of the rank. My guess is that I'll only make it up to 80-90%...

AB reputation is at 9k so only 3k remains to revered and the Highlander's Leather Boots.

Into the depths... again and again

So after doing a few AB matches a guildie looked for people to do the Onyxa pre-quest. Wanting to have that one finished too I packed my flash powder and flew to Thorium Point. Well at the Blackrock Mountain I realized that the poor kid also had to find the notes, kill the two bosses and others in the group wanted to complete the pre-mc quest.

We went down to talk to Windsor (poor bastard being locked up forever in that mountain and everytime he gets rescued he is killed in Stormwind) to start the questline. Of course there were numerous trips back to the Burning Steps to get the quest onward.

After an hour or two we had cleared him up the final step AND completed the pre-mc quest and then both of us had to quit. So I still have not completed the jailbreak part after 8 attempts. Loot? Well I managed to secure a Black Diamond which sells for about 50g on our server currently... not bad. It will keep my poison stash for a couple of more AB matches =)

Mother's day

Today is mother's day here in Sweden (I don't know if other countries celebrate this as well) so me and my 4 week old son Nemo has been shopping. There is a goth doll series called Bleeding Edge Dolls that my wife collects. We managed to find a pretty cool one, Cyberella D'Nile...

Know thy enemy - warriors

There are a few tricks that rogues should be aware of when facing warriors.

The first one is that warriors are immune to gouge when in Berzerker Rage.. they will have to activate this from Berzerk stance and but it do lasts a couple of seconds before going on cooldown. Second is that warriors can also break sap with the very same rage. Most experienced warriors enter berserk stage right before trying to cap a flag to be able to break our sinister saps... so what do you do?

For an epic warrior I sometimes go evasion -> sprint -> CS -> SS -> Rupture and flee.. hoping that the crippling poison will kite him. Dont go running to far or he'll intercept. vanish wait for the dot to do its job and then go in for another pass. Hopefully backup is on its way...

The nasty warrior.. when stalking the farm for an easy ninja-cap I sometimes see warriors running around attacking rats. These warriors are especially nasty since they continue to be in combat (no sap) and they fill up their rage bar for those nasty MS/whirlwind extravaganzas... I dont know if the other resources are equally rat infested but farm can keep a warrior at max rage for a long time...

Just 4k away from revered with AB now... slowly I am getting there. At this pace I'll be exhalted in about 40 days. Too easy to get epics for casuals? Bah. We have to sweat for it... however it might be too easy for hardcore solo (non-raiding) players.

Don't mistake the casual player for the solo-hardcore player.

Rank 7...

So I made rank 7 this week. The boots and gloves are mine... yet my Nightslayer Boots are better and I dont know if I can part with my devilsaur gloves yet.

Speaking of the devilsaur set.. isn't it a wee bit too good? I mean I've worn the set since I had the level requirement to wear them. There are not many better choices outside raiding and all you need are approx 80 gold for gloves & leggings.

I got halfway to rank 8 so I figured I am going to try for it and hopefully get the Knight-Captain's Leather Armor and the

Knight-Captain's Leather Legguards. I gather the devilsaur will still be stronger.

Tonight I'll try to get a full night's worth of AB. I've put up new wallpaper in the bedroom while my wife's parents have watched my son Nemo so I've earned a little extended WOW time ;)

It ain't easy to find time these days...

Patch 1.11 goodies

Patch 1.11 have a few rogue highlights to look forward to. My absolute favourite is the following

"Chain targeted spells and abilities (e.g. Multi-shot, Cleave, Chain Lightning) will no longer hit stealthed or invisible units unless visible to the caster."

As a rogue this is probably one of the top stealth-breakers when trying to stalk an often unsuspecting target...

"Detect Traps is now a passive skill."

I guess this is just streamlining the gameplay since most respectable rogues have this active all the time. No energy, no cooldowns etc.

1.11 patch notes available here.

Defence is paramount in AB!

I had to skip two chances of going to MC this weekend. Company party on friday left me pretty wasted on saturday for the Pinioned guild raid and sunday I had to take care of the family so no MC raid with Inquisitor either. I did have an hour or two to do some pvp though. I hope I'll reach rank 7 this week but little play means little honor.

Interestingly enough there seems to be new PVP rewards coming out for patch 1.11... I've hadn't have enough time to analyze the new stats but I expect them to be slightly stronger. I gather that will mean lots of more people competing for honor in the next couple of weeks.

AB at Ravencrest in pickup groups are usually a disaster. Most allies start off riding through the mine and lumber mill and converges at the Farm. Only sometimes do they listen to the plead to defend the resources before moving on. It usually ends with horde capturing most bases 4-1 or even 5-0... I try to get people to understand two basic rules:

1. Always defend AT THE FLAG. It makes it harder for the horde to ninja the flag in the chaos and for reinforcements to arrive quickly from the GY. More than often though alliance are fighting far away from the flag leaving the base open for ninjas and flanking attacks.

2. DEFEND the resources. It is not always fun to defend a resource but it is neccessary for the team to win. To have 3 ppl at a base usually buys enough time for reinforcements to arrive even if the base is attacked by 5-8 horde. Defense is a joke at Ravencrest. Most alliance are too busy riding onwards to the Farm or trying hopelessly to recapture the Stables.

Stuck at rank 6...

Well maintenance day, used to be my favourite day as you'd get a honor rank promotion. I really hoped to get rank 7 today but of course I totally filled up the rank 6 bar but not enough to carry me all the way to rank 7. I was hoping to buy the Knight-Lieutenant's Leather Gauntlets and the Knight-Lieutenant's Leather Boots today :(

Well.. another week of AB and a smattering of AV should solve that problem.

Hexapuma's build

I've recently switched from a 20/31 combat sword build to a more pvp oriented build after I discovered I lacked the proper punch in AB.

Right now my current build is 17/8/26 using daggers. Speaking of which.. I am probably not the best equipped rogue out there, being mostly clad in blue gear.

I am aching to try out a Seal Fate build or even the classical 21/8/22 dagger pvp build for the Cold Blood talent. Still I feel that my crit rate is still a wee bit low for a full SF build. In my current PVP gear I have about 18% ... kind of low for some but I have focused on lots of stamina and have just below 4000 hp.

Lets get this started

Since I do spend an awful lot of time playing WOW I thought it would be fun to keep a record of what I've actually ackomplished in the world of Azeroth.

First let me tell you a little about my current character.

Enter Hexapuma, a level 60 human rogue played on Ravencrest (EU). My exploits currently include instance raiding into Zul'Gurub and Molten Core. The raiding is somewhat seldom as I currently don't have the time to spend 5+ hours raiding. Well the problem is more that I can never be sure to have those 5 hours available when the guild wants to raid.

I am currently an officer in the guild Pinioned, a great guild that recently have started raiding seriously. Zul'Gurub is almost complete and we're looking forward to the first incursions into MC as Pinioned.

I've previously played both a warrior (Ripperjack) and a hunter (Aela) up to 60 but my true love has always been the stealthy rogue. Nothing compares to sneaking around invisible looking for prey...