Friday, February 29, 2008

World of Raids

A day and a bit ago, I've sent a poke to the admins of MMO-Champion and World of Raids. So far Teza was the first to respond and we've had a little chat well over an hour.
I learned dark secrets which will scar my poor virginal brain forever! Well, not so much, but he did show me some very interesting things that i am unfortunately honor bound to withhold from you guys for the time being.

WoR first started their site back in april 2006, back when Naxxramas was just released on the PTR. Their initial site was wowwalkthrough.com, but this later got changed to the WoR that we know today and hasn't changed much since.

Well, the previous post isn't so much as a day old yet, but some of the comparisons are soon to be outdated. If you're a dedicated WoR reader you will be quite pleased to know that they have in fact been working behind the scenes at a number of quite interesting suprises for you all. Be sure to check their site regularly for a glimpse as i hear some hints will be unveiled soon. A number of things will be coming, and from what i've seen so far i'm convinced you'll definitely enjoy the result.

MMOC vs WoR

I'm sure most of you will know these two sites :
MMO-Champion, World of Raids.

I figure somebody will have to do it sometime, possibly it's been done before, probably more than once. Today however, it's my turn. Before continuing i'd like to make clear that I'm not getting paid or bribed by either site, nor do i hold any personal grudges toward them (unlike incgamers). The text below is based on my observations and opinion, if you don't like them feel free to leave flames later. A free cooking fire is never wasted.


With the coming of Patch 2.4 a highly competitive battle for who posts the latest info has begun again. One site posts some news and less than a few hours later the other site will post exactly the same with exactly the same screenshot but with slightly different wording in the text. It's rather redundant if you really think about it. So what does each site offer, that the other doesn't? What are you really "looking for" when you visit either of these sites?

Ofcourse there's also Curse, wow insider, Stratics, and other sites that offer some news. But in all honesty i highly doubt anyone really goes there for the latest patch info and game news. I certainly don't, do you? Aside that, those sites are actually different from all the rest.


Let's do a quick comparison

Who came first

I've sent both sites an inquiry as to their starting date, and other info they might find worthy of sharing, however neither site has responded to this request yet. I imagine each site gets hundreds of mails per day, so a random request like this probably goes to the bottom of the priority list.

For now i'll just share the whois info with you.

MMOC seems to have been registered in 2007
WoR seems to have been registered in 2006, so the site is a year older

Much like Thottbot was among the first databases, WowHead came after and did clearly better, then WoW DB came along and is now rapidly picking up speed. I doubt allakhazam was ever really popular. (sluggish, not very user friendly and spammers all over the place)


Advertising

The cream and butter of most public sites. Too much will scare frequent visitors away, too little will mean you end up losing money on the site. It's what keeps such sites running and allows them to pay for their hosting and server fees. Heck even wowhead was worth a million at some point in time.

MMOC : 3 banners on the front page, top, topright, and left.
WoR : 3 banners on the front page, top, topright and right. Slightly different positioning.
Both sites basically the same, just a different layout.


Site layout

MMOC : Header + 2 columns.
WoR : Header + 3 columns.

In my opinion MMOC has done a much better job here with the site layout.
The main news column is less compressed due to only having 2 columns, and rather than pushing the third advertisement straight in there, it's nicely down lower. Better usage of available space.

* Blue quotes, are actually "blue" on MMOC. It just looks so much more professional compared to the 3 color layout that's used on WoR.
* Archive (old news) is also a lot easier to find on MMOC.
* MMOC occasionally uses 2 columns in it's news posts for loot lists, WoR simply doesn't.
* WoR has a smaller header than MMOC, which is rather nice as you have to scroll less to get to the news.

Also, i'll let these W3 validator logs speak for themselves
* MMOC W3 Validator : 96 Errors
* WoR W3 Validator : 1374 Errors. Wooh, that's more than we get from blogger.


Community

Total forum members
MMOC forums : Total Members: 13401
WoR forums : Total Members: 26619

Number of user online at the time of writing (09.00 GMT)
MMOC : 3746 online, of which 100 members
WoR : 1004 online, of which 45 member

Even though WoR is a year older and seems to have more members, MMOC seems to be a lot more active. I'm guessing people have moved from one site to the other in the course of the last year. Take this recent post for example MMOC and WoR on the new PTR build. 88 vs 42 replies to the news article.



Item links

MMOC : Item tooltips powered by WoWHead.
WOR : Item tooltips powered by Curse's Wow DB.

WoWHead's site tooltips have an item icon, WoW DB does as well but this feature does not appear to be enabled on WoR currently.
WoW DB itself has a cleaner site, more features, and less advertising. But we're comparing MMOC and WoR sites, not the sites they link to. With the frequent problems of advertisements on some of these sites, i'd give a clear recommendation for WoW DB however.


In the end

Much like somebody was unsatisfied with thottbot and made wowhead and did better, somebody made wowdb because they were unsatisfied with wowhead. Good concepts are looked at and improved upon, old concepts forgotten.

In the same way i suspect MMOC was created at some point because somebody was unsatisfied with WoR and wanted something bigger better and faster. The result is a better constructed site which has been steadily attracting new viewers for nearly a year now.

The MMOC has some room for improvements.
* Tighten up the tables.
* Fix the W3 issues, especially the first few tags missing are embarrassing.
* Consider using wowdb for item links.

Perhaps this article will add fuel to the fire, but progress is not made without some good competition. It's why we now have commercial airplanes instead of highly flammable blimps. Maybe WoR will be encouraged to improve their site or do a full overhaul as they have done at least once in the past that i know of. I highly encourage them to they pay a little more attention to the W3 Validator this time though. A lot of errors are cascading, but over 1200 is still pretty embarrassing.


Which of the two sites do you use the most?
See poll on the right.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Trojans again

Remember this post? Well it's that time again.

It appears that all IGE media sites which use Right Media for their advertisements, are currently spreading a trojan virus.

The virulent advert will appear in the form of a browser highjack which grabs your front window and resizes it to fake a warning dialog. A common tactic which has been popping up on thott and allakhazam quite regularly.

If you know how to edit your hosts file, add this url to your block list : ad.yieldmanager.com

Known sites affected :
* thottbot
* wowhead
* allakhazam

Get a mac or get firefox.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Ugly banner v2

In my quest to get a better looking banner, i present you... /drumroll

Version 2

Yeah, so anyway... it still sucks. However, i got plans!
Indeed, plans. The banner was "supposed" to be 600 pixels wide, but blogger (yeah again) seems to do something weird with the size, and makes it an extra 30 pixels wider than i wanted it to be. Go figure.

So i reduced the size to 570 pixels and uploaded it again, and now it displays as 600. It's still ugly, mainly the font and dialog box are horrible, but expect it to be changed again in the somewhat near future.


ps: That's my main with his engineering goggles on.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Hit and Expertise

It takes 15.77 Expertise rating to gain 4 expertise at level 70 which will lower your target's chance to dodge or parry your attacks by 1%. Basically 3.9425 rating per point.
Boss mobs have a ~6.5% dodge chance versus your attacks. 6.5/0.24 = 26 Expertise needed to negate this completely, which equals 104 expertise rating. Also keep in mind, since ranged attacks can not be dodged by default, expertise only affects melee attacks.

To gain 1% hit, you need 15.77 hit rating, which is point for point exactly the same. The normal miss chance versus lvl 73 bosses is ~28%, which equals 441,56 hit rating without talents.

Hit chance can be improved by talents, precision gives +5% hit chance which will lower your hit cap by 78,85 Hit rating down to 362,71. In the earlier post about the new sunwell gear you'd have 394 hit rating with talents, so you'd be quite close to the cap. Keep in mind that the remaining few % can be reached quite easily by changing your gem sockets, bringing a moonkin druid with improved faery fire (3%), and eating Spicy hot talbuk (1.26%).

In effect, you can stack expertise or hit rating to the same effect point for point. However, once you are above 9% hit chance your special attacks should no longer miss. At this point expertise becomes the superior way for a rogue to ensure his attacks land on a mob. Expertise also reduces the chance your attacks would be parried, but since you should be standing behind your target dodge is really the only effect that a rogue will generally notice.

If you are combat spec, and have the 41'th talent point in Suprise Attacks then your finishing moves can no longer be dodged. In this case expertise would only affect your normal white and instant yellow attacks such as Sinister Strike, Gouge and Kick.


Talents and Items

Human rogues get a racial +5 expertise (1.25%) when using swords or maces. 19.7125 Expertise rating.
Combat rogues can get +10 expertise (2.5%). 39,425 Expertise rating.

Some items that give expertise :
* Shard of Contempt : 44 (11,16 @ L70)
* Slayer's Boots : 24 (6.09 @ L70)
* Belt of One-Hundred Deaths : 25 (6.34 @ L70)
* Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve : 18 (4.57 @ L70)
* Brooch of Deftness : 21 (5.33 @ L70)
* Shoulderpads of the Stranger : 10 (2.54 @ L70)
* Gloves of the Searing Grip : 18 (4.57 @ L70)
* Grips of Deftness : 15 (3.8 @ L70)
* Shapeshifter's Signet : 20 (5.07 @ L70)
* Fang of Vashj : 21 (5.33 @ L70)
* Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade : 25 (6.34 @ L70)

So, in patch 2.4 if you have the weapon expertise talent (39.425), Slayer's Boots (24), and Shard of Contempt (44) then you'd be on 107.425 Expertise rating. ~3 expertise rating over the cap.

If you were a human rogue using swords you'd need 19.7 less. Meaning for your budget you'd probably want to stick with Dragonspine Trophy or Madness of the Betrayer as a trinket instead of the Shard of Contempt. Slayer's Boots have so many extra stats, that there isn't really a viable alternative to them.

See this thread on the EJ forums for the related spreadsheet and more rogue theorycraft.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Blizzard vs Gold

Blizzard made a bold statement against gold sellers and buyers today. Here's the full thing.

Players who buy gold are supporting spamming, botting and keylogging -- activities that diminish the gameplay experience for everyone else.

It's the same reason i have a button from nogold on this blog as well.

Of all the gold that is up for sale out there in the big ol' interwebs, most of it has been obtained trough illegal means. Whether it's by multi boxing 10-40 farm bots, hacking other players with key loggers, or paying some poor underage asian kid 0.10$ per hour to farm himself mindless.

If you are a blog or wow related site owner and use any kind of advertisements on your site, i highly encourage you to look at this block list on nogold.org It's been updated recently and should block off most of the scum from your site. There's an alternative list with some tips on how to set it up at the Blog Azeroth forums.

I could rant about all the reasons why buying gold and supporting such activities make you no better than the scum that's earning money off this, but nogold.org's explanation page sums it all up pretty neatly as well. Inflation, sweat shops, against blizzard's ToS (section 3c-v and 9) to which you agreed upon when installing the game are among the main reasons.


In short, don't be a jerk, don't buy gold

If for whatever reason you're short on cash and want to buy yourself an epic mount, check this blog's highlights section or have a quick look at wow jones. There are plenty of free helpful guides that can tell you how to become a rich player in no time, without the help of any exploits or hacks that would make blizzard upset with you.

4Haelz

I got a dirty mind i can't help it. Blame my ex gf, but some things like this just catch my eye.

Of course like many guilds we have the "paladins have the ultimate safe sex" joke as well, but today i ran into 4Haelz, and they really topped if off with cream and a cherry on top.


Here's some quotes : (NSFW, but damn funny)

[Bellwether] Druids do it in seven forms, depending on spec. Pallies do it with Lay on Hands. Hunters do it with their pets. Shamans do it with earthshock.
[Ves] it is.
[Ves] earthshock? it's that good? drool
...
[Bellwether] Warlocks do it with a succubus.
[Meekrob] sucks to be hunters...
...
[Meekrob] hunters use rapid fire. /sob
[DaniAnnasBed] Hunters do it with aimed shot.
[DaniAnnasBed] :D
...
[Bellwether] Mages also do it Slow
[Bellwether] Tanks do it with stamina.


It's a pretty big post, and i'm not going to quote it all here obviously.
Just stroll over to the post at 4haelz and have a look yourself.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Link list

The links panel was getting a bit large, this post contains the site's expanded blogroll and other interesting links. It'll be linked from the front page, and frequently updated and expanded.

Blogs

Rogue
* Parry! Dodge! Spin!
* Rogue Spot
* Rogue Theorycrap
* Sweet Flag
* A view from behind
* Quincey backstab
* Thoughts for food

Hunter
* Artanis' Hunter Guide
* Aspect of the Hare
* Big red kitty
* Chain trap
* Epic Dwarfen blogger
* Fulltime wow addict
* Gun loving dwarf chick
* Mania's arcadia
* Petoholics anonymous
* Ready, Aim, Trap
* Survival Hunters Anonymous
* The Hunter's Mark



Misc WoW Links

* MMO Champion
* World of Raids


Web comics

Not all comics are updating frequently, and this is nowhere near the full list of bookmarks that I could show you, but these web comics I can highly recommend looking at. If you want a bigger list you should look at the Belfry WebComics Index.

Younger viewers might want to skip the comics marked with (18+), but i'm not going to stop you. You've been warned.

Wow Comics
* Blanc
* Cascade Failure
* Chidori of the flaming ruby
* Danesar daggerspine
* Dark Legacy
* GG Molecule
* Hammer of Grammar
* Looking for Group
* Shakes and Fidget (German) (mirror)
* World of Zach


Other


Commissions

These are several artists quite capable of drawing art based on your specifications. Just contact the artist for specifications and pricing.


Suggestions are always welcome, just leave a comment.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

You might like this

Some random (I thought you might like this) stuff.


Web comics

Abian
While i wouldn't normally recommend black and white comics, this one is "really" good and updates frequently. The story starts with a priest who does God's work by killing demons, but in the end turns into that which he used to hate. Rated for Mature audiences, you've been warned.

Atland
If you haven't heard of, or seen this one before, shame on you !
Atland is a great online comic with big brea,, eh. big, well. just go look. The story and art is excellent too.

Goblins
Life trough their eyes. Goblins is a comic about goblins in a D&D setting with occassional jabs in the direction of Warcraft. Highly popular.

Purgatory Tower
A number of convicted criminals are placed in a tower where they would be granted freedom if they are able to reach the top. Once inside however, the tower turns out to be an expansive jungle. Amazing art in this one.

Sorcery 101
A tale about werewolves, vampires and magic.

More links later.


Does it blend?

While the chuck norris idolization continues, these brave people have tried the unthinkable. Will Chuck norris blend?



Obviously no.
Check out some more short videos from these mad people who try to blend everything from iPods, milk and whole chickens, to golf clubs and brooms.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Sunwell gear

So, with patch 2.4 coming a bit closer on a daily basis more and more items are unveiled on MMOC and WoR.

Item prices are huge, but all 25 man instance bosses will be dropping extra badges for your spending pleasure as well.
* Chest - 100 Badges
* Legs - 100 Badges
* Gloves - 75 Badges
* Belt - 75 Badges
* Rings - 60 Badges
* Two-Hand/Caster Weapons (Including 1H Caster) - 150 Badges
* One-hand Weapons - 105 Badges
* Off-hands - 45 Badges

When blizzard announced T6 quality gear becoming available for badges you could hear the screams of indignation from some of the hardcore raiders. But seriously, how many heroic runs do you think those casuals would have to do in order to get one item this way? And we'll be receiving a lot of badges from 25 man raids, can do a full clear of Karazhan once a week, and Zul'aman twice a week. The high end players will remain at the high end for a good while yet.

Blizzard is adding a whole new layer of "better than T6" gear with the sunwell, and with T6 having three new items it's easier to mix and match based on your desires, When WotLK comes out you'll be able to replace items with greens and blue more easily without immediately breaking your set bonus. If the next expansion is going to be anything like the current those shiny purple items will be replaced with blues as soon as level 74-76.


2.3 vs 2.4 gear

So, i've been doing some gear planning for myself by using the rogue DPS Spreadsheet, and 2.4 would replace just about every single item you can get from Black Temple and Hyjal. I suspect many guilds and their players will be wondering on the use of farming BT/HY at all anymore when the sunwell gives so many upgrades.

Disclaimer : The below DPS estimate was calculated with a certain set of buffs, your own estimate may vary. Different gems will also have an effect on your results.

Also, in Tier-5 gear you'll notice that tri-spec (11/28/22 or a variation of that) will yield more overall damage to the raid. Once you get to a certain number of Tier-6 gear however you should respec to classic combat (21/40) for best performance.


2.3 The Gods of Zul'Aman

Best you can get in 2.3.3
Tier 6 gear, 4xT6 set bonus, 2xWarglaive bonus, about 1950 DPS.

Gear :
* Warglaive of Azzinoth + Warglaive of Azzinoth
* Arcanite Steam-Pistol
* Cursed Vision of Sargeras
* Slayer's Chestguard
* Slayer's Handguards
* Slayer's Legguards
* Slayer's Shoulderpads
* Insidious Bands
* Belt of One-Hundred Deaths
* Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots
* Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape
* Choker of Vile Intent
* Signet of Primal Wrath + Stormrage Signet Ring
* Madness of the Betrayer + Dragonspine Trophy


2.4 The Sunwell

Now, in the next example there are some Leatherworking / Jewelcrafting items which are Bind on pickup, there are non crafted alternatives for these which would result in about ~12-14 DPS less.

Best you can get in 2.4.0
Tier 6.5 gear, 4xT6 set bonus, 2xWarglaive bonus, about 2200 DPS.

Gems to use :
* Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (RED)
* Rigid Lionseye (RL)
* Glinting Pyrestone (GP)
* Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst (SSA)

Gear :
* Warglaive of Azzinoth + Warglaive of Azzinoth
* Thori'dal, the Stars' fury - image
* Duplicituous Guise (RED+GP)
* Carapace of Sun and Shadow (RL+GP+SSA)
* Gloves of Immortal Dusk (GP+GP)
* Leggings of the Immortal Night (GP+GP+GP)
* Slayer's Shoulderpads (RL+SSA)
* Slayer's Bracers (GP)
* Slayer's Belt (GP)
* Slayer's Boots (GP)
* Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape
* Hard Khorium Choker (RL)
* Band of Ruinous Delight + Hard Khorium Band
* Shard of Contempt + Dragonspine Trophy


Post 2.4

Sometime after 2.4 is released arena season 4 will start well. S2 items will become available for honor and S1 items disappear from vendors. MMOC has a preview of the S4 warrior set for your viewing pleasure. Since the S3 one handed weapons are 103 DPS i'm going to make a rough guess and say that the S4 weapons will be around 107-109 DPS.

One interesting part about patch 2.4 is that you'll be able to buy the pvp armors from S1 and S2 for Tier tokens. E.g. S2 arena shoulders can be obtained from a vendor by turning in the shoulder token from Void Reaver. T6->S3 won't be available though, at least not currently if you look at the PTR.

After 2.4 there probably won't be a 2.5 according to blizzard, meaning WotLK will be released at some point after 2.4 unless they run into some unforeseen difficulties. Never take blizzard's word for it though. Once the expansion is released the arenas will be shut down most likely to give everyone a chance to level and gear up for the new season 5 with all new rewards.

It should be an interesting time.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Poll ends

So, how much gold do you guys have?

According to the poll to which 569 people voted :
* < 5g 9 (1%)
* 5g-50g 21 (3%)
* 50g-250g 64 (11%)
* 250g-1000g 124 (21%)
* 1000g-2500g 138 (24%)
* 2500g-5000g 108 (18%)
* 5000g-10000g 49 (8%)
* > 10000g 56 (9%)

You lot don't seem to be doing too bad. Hopefully a few of the articles on this blog helped with that, or perhaps you were already rich to begin with. Money begets money, those gold coins do seem to multiply i tell you that.


New poll

New poll is up, two polls in fact.
Why two? Because i can, and polls can be interesting, right?


What class is your main?

I figure with this blog being somewhat rogueish related, a majority might be voting rogue.
But still, i'm curious.


Do you use IM?

Personally, i've used just about every one of them that's available, but more out of necessity than anything else. I still have MSN and Skype installed but rarely do i actually have them running. Saves cpu usage, and if people need me, use a phone if it's important.

I've started out with MSN, back when it was version 1.something and i had a few minutes during lunch breaks at school. Currently it's on 4 maybe 6, i don't care much as long as it works. At some point i started using ICQ. My number was 6904757, but sadly it got hacked.


The long version of the story

I used a hotmail account to create the ICQ account a good long time ago, but at some point i was getting 200 spam mails a day so i stopped using it. After 60 days or so MSN releases the name and allows others to register it, which indeed happened. The new owner of the happy spam account then used that name to spam others and consequently got banned by MSN.
Now, when my ICQ got hacked, i figured i'd pop onto the usual "forgot password page" and get it back. No sir. I needed access to my original email, which turned out to be impossible because those pencil lickers from MSN refuse to hand it back to me, even though I'm not the person who used that account to spam others.
The second problem, is that the goat f**kers over at ICQ stubbornly refuse to cooperate as well, even with IP logs clearly showing me as the original owner of that account and offering to send personal data to back this up they want me to use the blocked off hotmail address. Go figure.

With a lack of options i just created a new ICQ and used that for a year and some more while i was playing Ultima Online because it was simply widely accepted that ICQ was needed to communicate with your UO friends or needed to trade goods. UO is a dying game however and most my friends there have long since quit, activity on ICQ was down to zero so i recently uninstalled it and don't intend to get it again unless they'll give me back my 7 digit number.

If anyone from Great Lakes knows Lady Serenity or Tas from East Luna, tell them Nimrod says hi. Two of the most memorable characters one could possibly meet in a game, hope you're doing alright guys.

I've used Yahoo for a while (piece of bloody adware installing crap that it is), but uninstalled that fairly soon, or so i thought. I've uninstalled the messenger, but all the extra crap is still on the computer. I got skype but rarely use it, I got msn but only log that one once a month or so. I'd be using an older version without all the extra "features" if i could, i like my Instant messenger plain and simple much like ICQ used to be.

If i had the time and knowledge to make something myself, i'd be sorely tempted to make it interface directly into World of Warcraft.

Anyway, vote away !

Stealth and things

On stealth and things

While stealth is a well known art, only a true artist shall know no fame.

On the subject of stealth there are currently only two classes capable of this skill. Rogues and Druids, each with it's own unique set of talents. Both classes have some some comparable skills however.

* Master of Deception / Feral Instinct. Provides the player with up to +15 subtlety.
* Safe Fall / Feline grace. Reduces fall damage taken.
* Sprint / Dash. Increases run/walk speed for a short period.
* Sinister strike / Claw, a basic melee attack.
* Rupture / Rip. a finishing move that does bleed damage.
* Backstab / Shred, an attack from behind that does additional damage.
* Feint / Cower, an ability that lowers the player's threat.
* Ambush / Ravage, an attack from stealth with a high damage modifier.
* Cheap shot / Pounce, an attack from stealth which stuns the target.

You see, druids in cat form are more alike rogues than you might have thought previously.


Subtlety and Detection

Stealth works much the same way as any other skill in terms of levels. Base stealth skill is 300 at level 60, 350 at level 70. This skill level is checked vs another player or creature's level and detection skill which is also 5*his level by default.

Each time you approach a player the game checks your subtlety skill vs his/her detection skill. If your subtlety is higher than the other player's detection skill that player will have a harder time seeing you from a distance. If his detection is higher than your subtlety skill you'll be seen at a greater range.

A good example would be a human activating his "perception" skill to sniff out stealthed players near him. But there are more ways to increase your stealth or detection.


Subtlety

* Talent: Master of Deception (+3 per skill point, up to +15, rogue)
* Talent: Feral Instinct (+5 per skill point, up to +15, druid)
* Racial: Night elf - Shadowmeld (+5)
* Enchant: Enchant Cloak - Stealth (+5)
* Trinket: Figurine - Black Pearl Panther (+3), Figurine - Nightseye Panther (+5), Figurine - Shadowsong Panther (+5)
* Boots: Nightscape Boots (+5), Whisperwalk Boots (+5), The Master's Treads (+5), Silent-Strider Kneeboots (+5), Darkmantle Boots (+8, rogue), Boots of Displacement (+8)
* Consumable: Sneaking Potion (+30)
* Consumable: Stealth of the Stalker (+8)


Detection

* Talent: Heightened Senses (+3 per skill point, up to +6, rogue)
* Ability: Track Hidden (+30, hunter)
* Ability: Felhunter (paranoia) (+30, warlock)
* Racial: Human - Perception (+50)
* Head: Deathblow X11 Goggles (and most other epic TBC Engineering goggles) (+5), Catseye Ultra Goggles (+18), Bloodvine Lens (+10), Hyper-Vision Goggles (+30), The Night Watchman (+10)
* Item: Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets (Druid PvP gloves) (+10, druid)
* Consumable: Distilled Stalker Sight (+15)
* Consumable: Elixir of the Searching Eye(+15)
* Consumable: Catseye Elixir (+10)


Stealth in instances

Stealth is great, and if used properly can save you some money on your repair bill. Tank died? Time to vanish. Sadly that doesn't really work on boss fights unless however unlikely you happen to be the last man standing. If you're an engineer like me this could even save your group some time by using the Goblin Jumper Cables XL and resurrecting a healer... well... sometimes anyway.

One thing to watch out for in instances (and some areas outdoor) is mobs with "stealth detection", mostly these will be dogs such as you can find early in BRD, DM north, black temple after supremus, several undead in stratholme, and many more places. While in stealth "always" keep an eye out for mobs with a teal colored eye symbol above their head. Mobs such as those basically ignore stealth and will attack you if you come into their normal aggro range. For BRD this isn't so much an issue, but if you aren't careful this will likely cause an untimely wipe for your Black Temple raid. I should know, it's happened to us often enough.

Stealthing past all trash mobs and going straight for a boss or other objective is an age old and practiced pleasure by many a rogue, in the case of some instance bosses however a single rogue might not be enough. Teaming up with a druid buddy or two in this case then produces a "stealth team". For example Sethekk Halls' last boss Talon King Ikiss drops several items which are very interesting for both rogues and druids.
* Shoulderpads of Assassination
* Ravenclaw Band
* Hallowed Trousers
* Sethekk Oracle Cloak
* Avian Cloak of Feathers
A normal SH run would take you upwards an hour or so, but by teaming up into a stealth team you'd be able to do the same run in 10-15 minutes. For hard hitting bosses you'll want to bring a druid to tank, a druid to heal and a rogue or druid for damage.

This is of course just an example (though functional), stealth farming can be quite fun and addictive and you'll find that there isn't really a limit to which instances can be completed in this fashion. You could farm for leatherworking patterns, enchanting recipes or specific boss drops in instances this way. Crowd control isn't really needed since you simply stealth past most crowds.


Foot note

Rogue DPS Spreadsheet version 2.4.0.3 has been released and includes several new features and new sunwell loot.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

SC Ghost focus

You may remember this post from a few days ago, about Blizzard @ dice 2008. Well, there's some interesting new info on the mtv multiplayer blog which explains the following :

Pearce: It never was technically canceled. It’s just a focus thing for us right now. We’ve got a finite amount of development resources and a lot of different things that we want to focus on so there’s always the possibility, but right now we’re spending our time on “World of Warcraft” and our expansion “Wrath of the Lich King” and “StarCraft II.”

So it seems it's just temporarily on hold while blizzard puts their resources into WotLK and SC-II. Good news for many.


Wow on your phone?

In side news, blizzard "might" come up with some sort of wow plugin for your mobile, perhaps iphone.

Frank pearce explains that it's not a warcraft clone or fully functional gameplay emulator for your phone. However, he states that several warcraft programmers are working on a way to "improve the game experience". what this means exactly is anyone's guess. Some speculation and rumors have already circulated however, among these would be the ability to view your ingame mails trough your regular email, checking your auction status by mobile phone, perhaps even reading guild chat trough instant messaging or irc. The options are limitless.

Dutch version of the related article.

Small update

A small update between regular posts

Aside work (software engineering) i've been polishing the links section here on RRVS a bit. One thing you'll notice on the right is the "commissions" section. If you remember a post in januari about your character, you'll remember i linked some sites that do commissions. So here they are, accessibly linked for your viewing pleasure.

One new addition to that is Painting pixie by Megan, creator of Last Call, a webcomic with an alcoholic succubus. You can't go wrong there seriously, just check it out.

Also a reminder, Manic Graffiti does commissions for 200-300 gold. The gold has to be transferrable trough Tichondrius(US) though.

And, LFG page 122 was released today.


Near future

So many ideas, so little time to put them into action. I'm fairly sure that i'm not the only person with that problem. I'm working on a post about stealth (rogues/druids) that should see the front page here soonish. Also one about the good and bad about the auction house, and how it's just so much better than what a lot of us are familiar with (trading wise) from diablo 1, 2, or other games. An article about combat potency, wrath of the lich king, and a number more. I should probably just finish one at a time instead of going 5 at the same time but that's just the way my brain works.

I'm considering doing some interviews to see how other people got their cash, but as i said, time is short, ideas are many.

And i've gone back into the archives and added images, fixed some spelling, and cleaned up some of the older posts.

Site design, still not fully sure how to get rid of the weird bug in the navigation bar bottoms, but that's a fairly minor issue that should be resolved at some point in time. Or as blizzard would say... "soon-tm". I'm going to add an extra square on the topright of the blog with a little description and move the highlights in there as well. I'll have more room that way to change the top banner on the left side. The bottom bar (with counters and copyright) also needs to be a bit more wide but that should be a fairly easy fix.

All things in due time, good work is never finished.

Monday, February 11, 2008

2.4 Rogues

2.4 is on the PTR and both MMOC and WoR have their respective info about the new loot and the patch notes

The rogue changes are rather slim :
* Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates.
* Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.
* Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.
* Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

As you can see, the rumored "Envenom no longer consumes poison charges" is not on the list. Rather suprising, but don't be fussed, after some rough calculations you'll see that it would only provide about 9 DPS extra, not enough to make the spec more raid viable than combat or trispec hemo are.

To compensate however :
* Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.
* Elemental creatures are no longer explicitly immune to poison and disease effects. Elementals with nature school immunities will still be immune to nature-based poisons, however.

And there are many many MANY more changes in 2.4 coming up, i suspect the patch will be on the PTR for at least a month, maybe as much as two or worse...


DP Theory

If you are curious about what envenom would give you i'll give you a rough example.
Deadly Poison is about 90 dps on it's own.

Since you'd be using slow daggers, it's unlikely you can keep DP active by just enchanting your offhand dagger.
So any hopes of using a Windfury totem are straight off.

How fast does a 41/20 rogue go from 0 to 5 stacks of DP with both weapons poisoned with DP ? Pretty fast undoubtedly, but let's assume 4 seconds for now. Though it might be faster or slower in reality. So, with an energy consumption / combo point generation of about 20/2 : 600 energy per minute. With a rotation of 2s/4e means you'd be using 25,60,60,35 per cycle, and thus be using about 4-5 cycles per minute. I have not included talents in this simple calculation, but it would improve your energy rotation by about 30-40, speed up your rotation, and increase your overall poison downtime.


With 2.4 it would have been at a constant 90 DPS once you get the stack to it's limit instead of falling back to 1 or zero stacks 4-5 times per minute.
As a rough median you'd be on ~50 poison DPS for 4 seconds per cycle. 4x3.3x40 = 533,32 damage lost each minute.
533,32 / 60 = ~9 DPS

If you included the talents into the calculation, you'd get maybe another 3 DPS out of Deadly Poison. Feel free to correct me with more precise math on that subject.

Personally i think that if blizzard wants to make mutilate or envenom viable for raids they should make one of the skills "refresh" all poisons currently active on the target in order for it to be worth it, much like the paladin's Crusader strike already does for judgements.


Other Items
What got me curious are two items called "sun mote" and "nether mote", obviously the sun motes drop in the 25 man instance of sunwell, but the nether motes are required to upgrade your Engineer helmets to the next level.

Perhaps they'll be a rare drop from gas clouds, and can be merged per 10 to make a Primal Nether ? Perhaps they're crafted like primal might. Time will tell.

Bosses in the sunwell also drops 3 kinds of Tier 6 tokens. Three types each for boots, bracers and a belt. It's not shown which bosses drop these tokens yet, but it's likely from the first bosses as the later ones drop tokens for higher quality gear. The tokens can be turned in at the sunwell isle vendors.


Theorycraft

DMM has updated the rogue theorycraft spreadsheet with a number of sunwell items. Be sure to check it out. You can also visit the forum thread on the subject.

Shadowpanther has also updates his AEP lists with most of the sunwell gear.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Scholo for profit

It's sunday, i'm bored and, oh hey that sounds familiar.
Let's try cleaning out scholomance.


Scholomance is profitable too !

Before starting, put any items that are non essential into your bank or mail them to an alt. Scholomance is loaded with undead / humanoids and the droprate on random gray trash is crazy. As i mentioned earlier, everything is worth money and the gray stuff you get here is about 40s-2g a piece, don't leave anything behind. You'll also find a good score of lvl 55+ greens which have a chance to give Greater Eternal Essences, these sell for about 15-18g on my server.

Also, if you still need Argent dawn reputation, great! Each corruptor's stone is worth 150 reputation, you'll be exalted in no time. I did this run about five times today, and got about 8k reputation from it.

Make sure you pick up the quest from outside if you haven't done it already, the item [Spectral Essence] will allow you to repair and sell junk outside. This will save you a lot of time in the long run. (and thus bigger profit)


The Reliquary

Make sure you kill the tutors in this room as they can drop the enchanting formula called "lifestealing", currently there's two of these on the Auction House for about 120-140g. Most runs you'll see zero drop, sometimes one, and in extreme exceptions more than one. I just got three in one run, but none the other times today. RNG go figure.


Chamber of Summoning

After the first room you'll come into the hall with the "Scholomance Dark Summoners", these have a ~12% chance to drop a dark rune which sells for about 20g ea. I recommend putting them on the AH three at a time, as these are a quest item for horde paladins.

If you have a Blood of innocents from last run, take a quick turn to the balcony and kill Kirtonos the Herald. He hits pretty hard, can disarm, and has a knockback ability. Two blue items = 2x7g, and usually a corruptor's stone.


Jandice

I usually don't bother with jandice, but there's no real reason not to.
Stealth past everything, and get behind her. She's immune to garotte to just hit her in the face and pull her further into the alcove. Jandice can be tricky as you may remember, but with the arrival of cloak of shadows she should be no problem.
When she splits herself make sure you have nameplates active, and look for the one that's half on health then keep attacking that her. Using evasion is probably a smart choice at this point.
A little bit later she'll start casting a spell on you that must be dispelled as fast as possible. The ghosts don't hit hard on their own (35-40 dmg), but with the curse on you they each hit for about 100 damage extra, this will take your health down rather fast. If you can't kill her before a second split you should considder the quality of your gear.


Rattlegore

When done with that, you'll need to go into the large room, across, and into the room with the dragonlings. Don't bother going all the way across and jump straight into the first hole on your left. Kill 1-2 skeletons, then pull rattlegore. Use evasion if you feel you need it, but you should be fine without. Take the key and head back to the big room.

As a pure caster you might have some trouble with the skeletons in this room (magic immune) but rogues / druids should be fine. Unlock the door and you'll come into the viewing toom which is full of neutral mobs. Don't bother clearing these, as they have a substantial load of health and you'll be spending too much time here. Head across the room and down.


Ras Frostwhisper

Ras is an easy fellow, as a caster a single expose armor should put down his armor pretty low, and he's stunnable and can be interrupted. Two blue items, 100 rep, and usually a stone makes him quite worthwhile.

Head back up and right to the main area. You'll now enter the "Headmaster's Study" where you will be confronted by two levels with each three doors.


The Headmaster's Study

In order to summon the headmaster, you need to kill the boss in each of the 6 areas and clear the Coven room. Meaning, if you don't have a druid buddy, or an extra weapon with fiery weapon enchant, you won't be seeing the headmaster. I'll explain why in a few.

Lady Illucia Barov, The Ravenian, Instructor Malicia and Lorekeeper Polkelt each have a 44-46% chance to drop a Dark Rune.


Hall of Secrets
Top left. Lorekeeper Polkelt.

While you may remember this room being a major pain for a five man group, the mage always dying due to lack of heals, and the healer getting aggro afterwards, possibly wiping you. This room should be quite easy for a rogue. Simply stealth past everything and position yourself behind the boss. Now, wait for the center zombie to move away from you as far as possible then garotte the boss and pull him to the wall. At most two zombies should add, but these will be easily taken care of with a Blade Flurry. The boss is stunnable and quite a pushover. Cloak of Shadows to get rid of any debuffs after, and stealth back.

I once accidently pulled the boss and 6 adds, but still managed to kill them even though evasion and blade flurry were both on cooldown.


Hall of the Damned
Top center. Doctor Theolen Krastinov.

Stealth past the zombies, garotte the boss and get a 5p expose armor on him as soon as you're able. Save your Evasion for when he enrages at 50% and you should be fine.


The Coven
Top right. Instructor Malicia.

This is where things get tricky. The boss herself is a pushover really, but if you wish to fight the headmaster you have to clear this room. (Don't know why but he simply won't show up unless you do)
Some of the mobs in this room turn into a black undead ghost around 25% of their health, and become completely immune to all physical attacks, as well as poison.
Basically you're fucked here without a druid, or a good stack of explosives. (EZ-Thro Dynamite comes to mind

Also be careful if you decide not to kill the packs and just go for shards, if you interrupt her she has a tendency to run off and pull the pack closest to her.


The Shadow Vault
Bottom left. Lady Illucia Barov.

If you're looking for a Skin of Shadows, aside rattlegore's room you might get some from the Risen Bonewarders here. I highly doubt you are though. Illucia barov is one of the few bosses here that can't be stunned, but even so you shouldn't have much trouble with her or her room. Kill, loot, continue.


Barov Family Vault
Bottom center. Lord Alexei Barov.

The two guards at the door can hit pretty decent, but you should be able to dispatch with them without the use of blade flurry, save it for Alexei.
If you have an item that increases your shadow resistance, such as [Medallion of Karabor] use it, you won't need much but a tiny bit will help you resist a lot more of his aura. As the boss has two adds, you'll want to use blade flurry to kill at least one, evasion is recommended as well.


Vault of the Ravenian
Bottom right. The Ravenian.

The skeletons pull at 1-3 at a time and do decent damage. Make sure you clear at least one side and the one in the center to give yourself enough room to pull the boss.
The Ravenian himself can pack a decent punch and you'll probably want to use evasion on this fight. I've tried and can tell you not to bother attacking him from the water and skipping the skeletons, he'll go into evasion mode. Just clear one part of the room and pull him to a corner near the door.


Darkmaster Gandling

Once all six bosses are dead, and the coven has been cleared Gandling will yell "school is in session" to announce his presence. He'll occassionally teleport one member of the party into a side room and hilarity will ensue. I'm not yet sure if he also does this when you're completely solo, (I had a mage buddy come in and clear the coven as i don't have a fire enchanted weapon yet) but shall find out in due time.

The Darkmaster drops two blues and sometimes other random items.


Scholomance
It turns out scholomance is quite profitable if you run it a few times but try to make sure you have a LOT of bagspace available. Due to the number of gray and green items you'll probably end up going to town every 2-3 runs unless you have at least 40 slots available.

I've done the place about 20 or so times now, and on average i make 200-300g per hour. My path unlike above does not include the spectral researchers, jandice or gandling because these take quite a bit of time. An average full clear takes about 20 minutes and i end up with about 80-90g in items and trash worth on such a run.
A bind-on-equip blue, several dark runes, 6-7 shards, and some greens is a fairly average run.

Well that's it for scholomance, rince and repeat as much as you like, enjoy !

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Dire Maul for profit

Ok average saturday evening, not much to do.
Karazhan was cleared this afternoon, 22 badges in the pocket for about 4 hours work. And a couple of guild alts geared up with epics. Business as usual.

I used the badges to buy myself the last bit of fire resistance that i needed : Inferno Hardened Leggings, mailed myself the libram from an alt, and went into BRD to get myself the diamond and Fiery Essence.
It took a bit longer than i figured it would, but after 4 resets i got 2 essences. One for myself and one for another guild member.

BRD is good for cash so, heck it wont hurt my finances.
I checked my key ring whether i had enough keys to open the 12 coffers in the vault, turns out i didn't yet. But i did notice that i didn't have the key to Dire maul yet.
I had to have it. I hearthed home and took the portal to Thunder Bluff, then flew over to Feralas.


Dire maul, for fun and profit. The stealthy way.

Ok, first the key. I got lockpicking maxed out, but collecting keys is like an odd fetish, i got to have them all. It's like friggin pokémon.

Dire maul east, northern door. Talk to the imp on the left and he'll run off. From this point off it's just a matter of stealthing after it. The large trees have a "huge" aggro circle, even while they'll be 8-9 levels below you they will still aggro at almost normal range. Weak things though.
Talk to the imp 3 more times or so and he'll flee upstairs where you can kill him.

Drops :
* [Crescent Key]
* [Cooking: Runn Tum Tuber Surprise]
* Some green which disenchanted into [Greater Eternal Essence] = 15g or so

Mission accomplished.
But, it's still saturday, and i'm still bored.


Lethendriss

I'm here anyway, i might as well kill Lethtendris and her gImp companion.
Back in the days i've done a number of stealthruns to kill this bitch in the hopes of getting a [Felhide Cap] to boost my fire / shadow resistance for Molten Core, as well as the book for the fire resistance trinket.

Attack lethendriss, pop blade flurry, and she went down like a cheap hooker.

Drops :
* A few silver
* Gray trash
* Crappy blue > Large Shard = 7g

Highly anticlimatic.
But, it's still saturday, and i'm still bored.

You guessed it, since i'm here anyway....
Zevrim Thornhoof is just around the corner, and i figure i might as well do hydrospawn and Alzzin the Wildshaper as well then.


Hydrospawn

I went downstairs and went ahead at hydrospawn.
Not sure what he did, but he got me down to 5% health before he died.
Had to use vanish and wait two seconds for his add to despawn. Weird.

Drops :
* Some water elemental related junk = 10s
* Another green, blah. It actually disenchanted into a Large Shard though = 7g


Zevrim Thornhoof

Upstairs on the other side, kill the stealthed demon on the way there, and face the boss.
Now, as you'll know from days long gone, this guy does a "sacrifice" ability, which will do quite a bit of damage. And with him hitting me would quite possibly kill me and end the attempt.
I equipped the pvp Medallion just in case and figured i'd try anyway.
It turns out that you can use Cloak of Shadows just as he's casting sacrifice.
Still, that's only 90% chance, so the pvp trinket is probably not a bad idea either.

Drops :
* Some crap blue > 7g shard
* [Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying]. Huh? Nice! It's got a retardedly low drop chance but there it was, funny as heck. We'll see what it sells for on the AH.


Alzzin the Wildshaper

Back down, trough the garden, talk to the tree and enter the door.
Down the ramp, up the little stone, and jump down behind the boss.
Easy at level 60, cakewalk at 70.
The boss as i remembered summons adds at some pont, so save the blade flurry and other cooldowns until he does. Start off with garrote and pull him next to the wall. At 30% he changes form and the wall behind him breaks produces a horde of tiny little imps for you to deal with. According to wowwiki all the lashers in the room should also aggro you at this point, however they did not. (perhaps they will for you, don't know, but you've been warned) I'll tell you once again, blade flurry is a lovely skill, use it with relish.

Drops:
* 2x random blue > 2x7g


So, DM east cleared.
As i was talking to a guildie trough whisper (It's not like farming DM in stealth requires 100% attention you know?) i came up with the silly idea to do DM north as well.
I was here anyway, it's saturday, i was bored.. you get the idea.

Onward to DM north.


DM Tribute


At lvl 70 this almost couldn't get much easier. Enter either of the doors and head straight west. Here you can grab the key from the box and enter the next area.
Now, you'll encounter some floating eyeballs with stealth detection. They still have the aggro circle of a normal lvl 60 however, so they should be easily avoided. On the right you'll see a goblin that's stuck to a metal ball. The key to these is a random drop from one of the ogres in this area, it dropped for me from the first thing i killed upstairs near the ogre tannin basket.

" It puts the tannin in the basket or it gets the hammer!! "

I couldn't loot the basket without aggroing the 4 creatures guarding it, but at lvl 70 that shouldn't be an issue. Just kill them.
If you set the goblin free you get some leatherworking / tailoring stuff. I got a recipe for [Pattern: Inferno Gloves]. No use to me, but it's 1g to the vendor.

Further upstairs you'll need to kill the two ogres guarding the door to reach the king's throne room. There will be a load of dogs with stealth detection, but like the earlier eyes their aggro range is quite limited so should be easily avoided.


The king & the observer

The king doesn't hit too hard ~400-500, nothing some extra stamina gear won't solve.
He also does fear and Mortal strike however, so watch for that.

The observer will ocasionally mindblast you for ~700, which adds up. Try to use Cloak of shadows to absorb at least one of those (Stick a /focus on him to keep track of his casts) and get the king down fast so the observer will switch to healing him and ignore you.

I used one healing potion when my health was getting low, but the king went down and Zurgat was the new king of the Gordok Ogres. /cheer

Drops :
* 4 blues > 4x7g

Not too bad.
Far from amazing profit though, but definitely fun for a change.

I might do DM west another time.