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..

Garr drops fine loot...

We went into MC tonight... and except for an embarassing wipe at the initial firelords (a bad pull) we cleared our way to Garr before call off. Guess we still need to work on our speed... A few cool items dropped such as the Quick Strike Ring and the Brutality Blade.. however my meager DKP wasn't enough. Strangely enough the Brutality blade didn't go for much dkp at all... guess most of our guildies are kinda greedy on their dkp =)

Ended up #5 on the damage meter so I still need to improve. Not bad though considering I have a straight PVP spec.

The Fire Festival

I've been pretty focused on PVP the last months but with the little Fire festival event I couldn't resist to ride out in the world to check out the various fires.

I had a blast... riding through semi low level areas looking for the fires was not only fun but it also brought me back the joy of World PVP.

It took me little more than 2 hours to complete a few of the quests but it was great fun. Rewards are not especially enticing as they only last for a set number of days.

There is something very sinister to world PVP as a rogue.. you really have complete control in when to start a battle and how to proceed whereas in the BGs you have a timer running (kill the horde before he caps etc).

There is a fine balance between World PVP and BG PVP.. and unfortunately rogues are gods in world and lackeys in BG. It will be interesting to see what blizz have in store for us in patch 1.12... I wouldn't be surprised if Blizz thanks to world pvp will be very limited in the ways that they improve our class.

Oh.. tonight I am going Molten Core with the guild... perhaps a nightslayer piece or two will be mine. I upgraded my OH dagger from Blood-etched blade to Scarlet Kris yesterday... ;)

Global LFG channel = bad

Well I guess I am not the only one that finds the new updated Looking for Group channel is really crappy. At first it seemed ok.. a way to find instance groups without having to loiter around in IF... but in a couple of days the LFG channel degraded into what best can be described as the Barrens' general chat. /leave

I guess the way to use it is to join the channel only when you are actively looking for an instance group. So the whole global idea kinda fails...

I hope the wait for 1.12 is a short one.. the 1.11 probably took longer than usual since it added the whole Nax instance. I wouldn't be surprised if 1.12 is almost complete by now.

Quick visit to Molten Core

Yesterday I had a chance to raid with the guild and we went down into the Molten Core. Since I don't raid much I was amazed to see how professional the guild has been in clearing trashmobs and the bosses. It was one of the first times that Pinioned went into MC as guild-only.

We effortlessly cleared our way to the first boss Lucifron. A freak pet pull had us wiped the firt try. Actually I wouldn't even call it a try =) A few minutes later Luci droped Cenarion Belt and the Gauntlets of Might.

Magmadar was next up... of all my MC runs (and I have about 10 under my belt) this was by far the most painless. From his bloody corpse our dear Krinssan looted the Aged Core Leather Gloves. Most of the rogues were uninterested and the gloves went for a lousy 50 dkp. While those gloves aren't the best, they are pretty good raiding gloves for a dagger rogue.

The raid continued to Ghennas. Unfortunately I had to leave right before the boss figh... I heard that Ghennas was killed at firt try and the Nightslayer Gloves droped. Oh well.. there is always another raid.

Patch 1.11 tomorrow!

Patch 1.11 is due on the EU servers tomorrow according to Blizzard posts. Very exciting and it brings us one step closer to our beloved 1.12 rogue patch =)

A few friends are sending out warnings to mail all their pots to their mains since they've seen screenshots of pots being bind on pickup. Personally I don't believe it for a second as it would make the alchemy profession seriously gimped. Something is bound to happen though as Argent Dawn will trade major health/mana pots for special crystals that will drop from the undead.

If worst comes to worst my alchemist will be stuck with a large supply of useless firepots. Bring it on Blizzard =)

Warsong wants you!

This weekend is WSG weekend.. so its an obvious hang out place for me who needs lots of honor at short time. Games are fast and at my server there are about 50/50 wins. It is also kinda nice to take a break from AB... I do have approximately 20k rep to grind and in my pace that will take about 10 weeks... =/

I ventured into Alterac Valley today. Just sniffing around checking the rep income to see how long it would take me to get the lobotimizer. Too long. However the game was won by the alliance! It is my first won AV - ever! I used to play alot of AV with my hunter (almost exhalted) so I've seen plenty of AV action. To my great disappointment the reward for winning AV is amazing for new hunters and warriors but totally sucky for rogues. I got the crossbow...

My computer is restored now.. for some reason I cant get the wirless network to work =/ Luckily I had a cable to plug it directly.

HD incoming

Just a little update on the HD situation.. Grimbold (co-worker) managed to restore all of the data on the HD so life is good! A new HD has been ordered and should arrive tomorrow... Felt a wee bit odd to raid at work the other day =)

Hakkar defeated

Last night I raided with my guild and it was loads of fun. We went directly for Hakkar (as they had cleared the five channeler bosses the day before). After a few wipes we downed Hakkar in a glorious battle. We had a pretty strange lineup for the raid with only 1 druid, 2 priests, 3 rogues, 2 paladins, 3 hunters, 3 mages, 1 warlock and 5 warriors. It is the third time Hakkar is downed by Pinioned so they're getting the hang of it. So loot... I've hard that Hakkar drops rogue loot galoré - not so this time. Heart of Hakkar, Cloak of Consumption and the Soul Corruptor's Necklace plopped out of his messy corpse.

After Hakkar we proceeded to take out the fishboss, Ghaz'ranka. And from his body we pilfered Nat Pagle's Fish Terminator. After a few crazed attempts by our seemingly drunk priest to bid on the staff a warrior finally won it. Except for the name, the Fish terminator is actually a really good 2H warrior weapon with more than +40 strength.

Now I have to find more time to do some guild raiding... I might get away with a raid once every other week =/

Analyzing the HD...

The HD is now under the microscope.. our sys admin is having a look at it. *holding thumbs*

On another note... tonight my wife is going on a small barbecue with her colleagues and taking Nemo with her. She is after all his personal food machine. So tonight is raid night for me. Was a month or two since last time but Zul'Gurub 'ere I come!

Harddrive crash

So my harddrive crashed this weekend. After a couple of hours with DELL tech support and running a few diagnostics we zeroed in on HD failure. It is not completely busted so even though DELL can't do anything I might be able to persuade our company tech support to help me extract important files from the HD. My biggest gripe is that I have about 5 years of digital photos stored on that drive and no DVD backup. yes stupid I know... but how often does a HD crash anyway? First time for me... So I'll probably play little to no WOW in the coming week =/ Guess that will ruin any chances for me to hang on to rank 8.

Amazing session

Last night after reconfiguring my equipment and reaching a whopping 600 AP together with 3.9K health I broke a few new records in AB. Mages, Shamans, warlocks and priests quickly fell to my amazement after receiving a 1.8K ambush and a backstab over 1000.

I guess for most end-game rogues this is pretty lame but for me it was a world of difference. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I really really need to replace my old Heartseeker with something more powerful. The Thunderwood Poker is just around the corner for me but I do need day to raid AQ20. Time my friends is not something I have a lot of these days.

oh.. and I got the Nightslayer Bracelets today... yummy.

Pinioned winclipped...

One of the guild's founding members (raidleader, main puller and guild bank) decided to move on to greener pastures this week. She left for one of the most prominent PVE guilds on Ravencrest - The Inquisitors. I fully understand her choice as she had most of the gear from MC already from various "open MC raids". She also plays in a whole other league than most of our members when it comes to time and dedication.

She will be missed.

However during times like this other members step up and get a chance to be main puller and even raid leaders. I think in the long run we'll grow stronger even though we'll have a setback in the comming week(s).

It does not really affect me since I have very little time to do any raiding at all. I need to start doing a few ZG runs though to get the primal hakkari's needed for the Madcap outfit. Especially now since there are rumors of the set being boosted from superior to epic quality...

I've been buying bijou's of AH for money grinded in various low-level instances so I should be able to pump up my rep to revered pretty easily. Just need those drops!

Finally a little humor - guess most of you have already seen it. But 'tis is good stuff =)

Knight-Captain Hexapuma

So I made rank 8 this week. Sweet. I've finally been able to toss away that old green of the monkey shirt and replace it with the rank 8 chest.

I still can't believe that my old devilsaur still is far better than the pvp set. With 1.11 the new pvp armors will be better though. So even though I had planned to relax the honor race a little it seems I will have to prevail until 1.11 patch is published.

I had a big laugh in AB this weekend as in one game two people were trying to direct the zerg to various locations. "Everybody - GO MINE NOW!!!" and five seconds later the other one would shout "DEFEND FARM FARM"... it was a fun game. At one point one of the "commanders" was angry yelling for people to stop attacking so many different places. Normally I would agree - but this time the zerg actually attacked what the two commanders asked for.

A tip for budding AB commanders. If you want to direct people to do things. Use more descriptions than "Attack Farm now".. people don't know how to choose between defending and attacking and odds are that no one will stay on defence.

Mind-numbing discoveries

I've had to scale down a little bit on my PVP this week. I hope it won't hit my rank too much. Worst case would be to have to grind AB one more week. I really want to get back into a little guild raiding once or twice a week but with a 6 week old baby in the house its hard to get those raiding hours together.

I've been a somewhat typical rogue and stalked around AB with dual crippling poison applied. I've started to experiment with other poisons as well and now I usually go with the crippling and mind-numbing combo. I do feel that it really improves my chanses against casters ... what a surprise =)

Worst thing to encounter at a flag is actually another rogue with cripling and deadly poison. Seems like they only exist to counter other ninja rogues. Wham-bam and your have crippling, deadly poison and a 5-pt rupture. Thats when a rogue is a true sitting duck... I'll be doing a little experiments with that myself next week.

Oh.. gotta run to IKEA now for a little furniture boost at home. Need another shelf to put our CD/DVD.