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Pro Tip: Damage meters don't tell the whole story
Some people /ignore others in random raids or dungeons for language or bad play. I add to my instant /ignore list those who spam the meters in raid chat. Anyone who cares about whose bar is the longest is already measuring on their own screen. Not only is the reporter almost always on the top (and conveniently never reports when s/he is below), but displaying the damage done for a fight to the same raid who's on the meter is just pure epeen spill. Asking for a damage meter is just laziness (or, in rare cases, a really crappy computer paired with a log-intensive fight). Let's not forget that problem of boiling a player down to a single number. All three roles of the holy triad have a complex set of abilities for every encounter.
Encrypted Text: Why does Kick cost energy?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Rogues have always been the premier interrupters of World of Warcraft. Back in the day, druids and paladins didn't have any interrupts, much to their chagrin. Warriors couldn't interrupt from Berserker Stance, which left them unable to interrupt effectively. Up until recently, death knights and monks didn't even exist. Shamans have been valuable in the past with their short-CD interrupts, but the main job of locking down a target always fell to the rogues. Rogues have been tirelessly interrupting spells since WoW's launch 8 years ago. Individual mobs use spells quite frequently. You're bound to find an array of dangerous casters in a dungeon. Interrupts have been a crucial raid mechanic from the days of Molten Core. Other players are also notorious for trying to cast spells at rogues. Kick has been a featured part of the rogue arsenal for years. So why has it failed to evolve alongside the other interrupts?
This Week In MMO: Interrupting dance edition
It's time for yet another episode of This Week In MMO, and you'll never guess what the topic du jour is. Well, unless you guessed Star Wars: The Old Republic (again), in which case you would be correct. Much discussion is had about the hilarity that was SWTOR's /getdown exploit, which allowed players to interrupt enemy mobs by... dancing at them. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIV will resume charging subscription fees tomorrow, January 6th, so if you're still subscribed and don't want to pay, you'd better cancel now. And lastly, on a note of complete and utter excess, the gang reports that one gamer (who we imagine spends most of his time swimming in his money like Scrooge McDuck) has spent $16,000 US on an in-game sword for Snail Games' F2P (irony!) title, Age of Wulin. The kicker? The game isn't even out yet. For the full video, just click on past the cut and have a look.
The Light and How to Swing It: Working with a single school of magic
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. Holy paladins have several features that make them powerful healers in PVP environments. Our diverse utility spells provide us with capabilities that our rivals can only dream of, and we have plenty of cooldowns that can counter our opponents' actions. While holy paladins are generally considered to be strong PVP healers, we aren't without our weaknesses. Our most notable flaw is our complete reliance on a single school of magic -- holy. All of our spells and abilities are tied to one school of magic, which means that interrupts are incredibly potent at shutting down holy paladins. Even Judgement, which feels like a physical attack, is tied to the holy school. Interrupts are obviously potent against any caster, but holy paladins are especially hurt since we don't have any alternative spells to fall back onto. Mages can still cast Frost Nova if their Arcane Blast gets Kicked, and shaman can use any of their fire spells after getting a heal hit by Pummel. Holy paladins are useless when interrupted, which provides us with a unique set of challenges.
Encrypted Text: Troubleshooting rogue DPS
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or topic suggestions. Did you know that druids have four different, viable playstyles? They can heal, tank, and DPS in two different ways. While others might be impressed with their flexibility, we aren't. Rogues have learned that complete dedication is required to be the best. Do you know what else doesn't heal? A shark. Do you know what never tanks? A viper. Do you know what always attacks from melee range? A wolf. Rogues channel their predatory instincts while concentrating on a singular purpose. The only issue with being so focused on DPS is that we don't have any backup plans. What do rogues do when they can't kill things in melee range? If you're familiar with the Shazzrah encounter from the days of old, then you know that a rogue who can't attack is completely useless. My guild used to have all of us rogues light a few campfires in the back of Shazzrah's room and cook food for the rest of the guild while they downed the boss. After years of training to kill, I was stuck wearing an apron and making Savory Deviate Delights. Rogues need to do good DPS in order to validate our very existence.
Encrypted Text: Pinpoint interrupts with Gnosis addon
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. This week, we talk about an addon that solves the problem of missing interrupts. Once, when experimenting on my holy paladin (I'm a dirty traitor, I know), I healed through an entire heroic dungeon with my user interface disabled. Matticus had recommended the exercise, as it allows you to focus on what's happening and your surroundings instead of little green bars. The experience was interesting, but I simply couldn't handle it. I'm an information junkie, and I want to know everything there is to know all at once. Why? Because knowledge is power, knowledge is the food of the soul, and knowing is half the battle. With that said, there's still such a thing as too much information. I can set up my UI to have all sorts of numbers and statistics displayed everywhere, but it's not valuable unless I can interpret them. When you're in a high-stress situation like learning a new boss fight, you want to spend as little time as possible worrying about your UI. A good UI should make your rogue easier to play, not harder.
Encrypted Text: Let's get kicking
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any article ideas or questions you have! You've all seen my arguments for having rogues top the DPS meters. We're the only pure melee DPS class, meaning we have the most specific role. Yellow is a great color, and so having a nice patch of it at the top of Recount is awesome. You get the idea. The fact is that rogues are known for their DPS, so doing lots of it becomes pretty important in succeeding. Even with this huge focus on DPS, we do have one other trick up our sleeve. Back in the days before balance, the developers had to find a way to ensure that every class was brought to a raid. Hybrids could bring powerful buffs, bosses would use debuffs that required certain healers, and there was always a boss per tier that you needed a warlock to Banish. Even the DPS-focused rogues had a special niche to keep them getting invited: Kick. A boss would be designed with an ultimate ability that needed to be interrupted, and there was nobody better at that job than a rogue.
Shaman forums shocked by interrupt changes
The official site Shaman forums are revolting. No, I mean they're up in arms over the changes to interrupt in 2.3, specifically diminishing returns and how it's going to affect Earth Shock. The protest seems to be taking the form of a series of posts consisting entirely of a period. (The idea being that Blizzard doesn't listen to shamans anyway, I suppose.)Now, I agree that putting Earth Shock's interrupt on a diminishing return mechanic, considering that it already locks down a shaman's casting time longer than it does the people you interrupt with it (1 second lockdown on the affected spell of magic vs 1.5 second global cooldown) is a nerf for all shamans. But since it's just in PvP, where all sorts of other mechanics have been reduced or lowered in effectiveness - just ask a mage about hypothermia sometime - I don't think it's really worth all this uproar. While interrupts will be much less effective against others, so will CC of all kind, the shaman's absolute bane. In the end I expect this to balance out. What do you think? Are the protesters storming the barricades in the shaman forums on the money or is this just a case of that last straw falling on the camel's back?
