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Encrypted Text: We've been normalized
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 a long history of exploiting weapon speeds for their own gain. The Barman Shanker was farmed by thousands of rogues, becoming a rite of passage in the early rogue community. While its model was unique, nobody farmed it for looks. The Shanker's unusual 2.0 attack speed dramatically improved the damage of our Ambushes and Backstabs, providing us with an amazing amount of burst damage potential. The slow-is-best phenomenon was cropping up with the other classes as well, and it started to create balance issues. Blizzard countered by introducing a new mechanic, normalization. By adjusting the attack power formula, instant attacks no longer favored slower weapons as heavily as before. Thus began the first of many changes that have led us here to the obsolescence of weapon speeds entirely.
Encrypted Text: Tools of the rogue's trade
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. Email Chase if you have any questions or want to submit a great screenshot. If you've been plugged into the rogue community for any length of time, you're familiar with some of the common thoughts that we share as a class. We're all very thankful that Cloak of Shadows is now a 100% immunity to spells, that aggressive min-maxing is part of our culture, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that our most pressing concern is getting Swirly Ball back. I would mention our years of torment waiting for a functional Vanish, but it's working now, and I don't want to jinx it. We don't always see eye to eye on every detail, though. While I imagine the rogue as a brutal killer, some prefer to think of our class as a group of honorable assassins. One of the most common ideas that I've seen but not understood is the obsession with daggers. I've heard the old standby of "a rogue not wielding a dagger isn't a rogue" a million times, but I just don't get it. Maybe it's combat talking. I even lobbied at BlizzCon for the devs to implement quick off-hand axes and swords, but the request fell on deaf ears. Like it or not, rogue weaponry has evolved.
Encrypted Text: BlizzCon news for patient rogues
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, I'll be sharing my report from BlizzCon 2010 for rogues. As a member of our shadowy brotherhood, my duty to investigate and report on the rogue class is never over. Even though I was enjoying the festivities at BlizzCon 2010 and testing out the new demon hunter class in Diablo 3, I still made time to take care of business. The class Q&A panel is one of the best places to communicate directly with the WoW development team, and so I staked my place in line before the prior panel had even ended. When my turn finally came, I had to first pay my respects to the developers. I had asked them at the prior year's BlizzCon if we would ever see a Vanish fix implemented, and Ghostcrawler avoided promising anything. Fast-forward a year and we finally have a Vanish that I'm proud to call my own. I opened my time by giving them their much-deserved thanks. I then took the opportunity to ask about something near and dear to my heart: off-hand weapon speeds. Axes and daggers were simply never meant to be used at the same time. Their art styles don't even match!
Lord of the Rings Online to make drastic combat changes with Siege of Mirkwood
It's very rare that you hear about a game changing how combat works at a fundamental level, but that's exactly what Turbine is doing in Siege of Mirkwood. We hope you guys weren't in love with weapon speeds and slow animations, because those are two of the things that are getting major overhauls.In the latest developer diary, it's been revealed that weapon speeds will now be standardized by weapon level and type, making sure that all one-hand maces of the same level swing at the same speed. This is key, as previously players were taking slower weapons to maximize their damage, even if it wasn't appropriate for their class. (Turbine was looking at you, mace wielding burglars.) Weapons have also gotten increased speed but lowered damage to compensate for their fast swing rate.
Encrypted Text: The logic behind Rogue axioms
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the logic behind a few of the popular Rogue mantras.While I was on the WoW Insider show last weekend, a question came up regarding weapon speeds and poison selection for a Combat Rogue. I answered the question in detail, and after finishing my explanation, I realized that I sounded more like an algebra teacher than a gamer. There is a lot of math involved in mastering the Rogue class.While spreadsheets provide exact numbers for DPS and gear comparison, it's often that a Rogue is unable to take the time to run the numbers for every weapon and gear combo. It's important to have a firm understanding of HOW Rogues work, in order to make your own decisions without needing to consult the formulas. After the cut, I'll be explaining a few of the current "Rogue axioms" in detail, so that you can understand the logic behind the tenets.
Encrypted Text: Weapons make the Rogue
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss the role that speed plays in Rogue weapon choices.No matter the encounter, Rogues really only have one true role: DPS. While there's trick fights like Gluth and Sartharion where Anesthetic Poison come in handy, we're designed to take down a boss as quickly as possible. In PvP, we're defined by our ability to create short opportunities to execute a wounded opponent. With damage as our one and only purpose, it becomes crucial that we maximize our DPS output.Min-maxing stats and using a spreadsheet for every single gem will help you squeeze the most out of your character, but you're still limited by the gear that you've got. Many Rogues, including myself, even use raiding gear in PvP. While we can overcome much of a "gear gap" by playing to our finest, there are simply things that we can't accomplish without the right tools: weapons (not gear) make the Rogue. Due to some great luck with drops over the past couple weeks, I've had a chance to pick up a few of the best Rogue weapons currently in-game. After the cut, I talk about my new experiences on the top of the Rogue weapon food chain.
WWI '08 Panel: Hunters
The first WoW panel has come and gone at the Worldwide Invitational. It was focused on class abilities in WoTLK, and there was some absolutely juicy stuff, especially for Hunters. As the proud player of a 70 Hunter, I'm feeling amazingly awesome about my class right now. Two of the biggest, most universal Hunter complaints have not only been answered, but answered in a way that I think a lot of Hunter players are going to be incredibly excited about. Steady Shot ClippingFirst up, it looks like Shot Rotations as we know them will soon become a thing of the past, or at least be incredibly simplified, as Steady Shots will no longer clip Auto Shots. This is actually an issue that has gained some blue post love in the past, but it's nice to see it so directly confronted and dealt with. There may still be a shot rotation of a type for fitting in Arcane Shot and various stings, but it looks like Hunter DPS will no longer be a complicated dance of weapon speed, haste rating, macros, and server latency. That in itself is amazing news. Pet Talent Trees and Uniqueness One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.
Phat Loot Phriday: Rifle of the Stoic Guardian
A gun... for tanks. But that speed makes things a little weird. Maybe some of the theorycrafters in the crowd can come up with some good reasons for that one (or just debate my own) in the comments.Name: Rifle of the Stoic Guardian (Wowhead, Thottbot, Goblin's Workshop)Type: Epic GunDamage/Speed: 120-224 / 1.90 (90.5 DPS, which is the highest on a gun, save for the Arena PvP guns in S3 and S4 -- except most of it comes from that low speed, see below)Abilities: +31 Stamina, which might make you think this is a PvP weapon, except for: Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 20. Which is a weird little stat -- with the stamina added on to it, that means that this gun (named after a "Stoic Guardian") is basically meant as a Tank pulling gun -- it'll let you shoot bullets and give you about the bonus of a minor trinket to dodge and Stam. But if that's true, what's up with that speed? You might think that a high DPS would mean this gun is good for a Hunter, but that's not quite true across the board -- especially for BM Hunters (a.k.a. Hunters that rely on their talents and abilities to do damage), a bullet pouch will often make this gun too fast to sneak special shots in, which will actually lower the DPS you can do. But on the other hand, from what I understand, weapon speed doesn't actually affect what happens when you first fire the gun. So the idea here may be that a Warrior, pulling, should have a fast enough gun to get a few shots off during the pull, in order to build up more threat. Why else would Blizzard give tanks such a fast gun? How to Get It: Drops from our old friend Teron Gorefiend, who we last killed for the Soul Cleaver. He's in the Black Temple, there's a Know Your Lore about him, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill by now. Drop rate on this is about 15%, but the good news is that if you need this (as in, you're a tank who often pulls at the late endgame), you'll probably be able to get it.You might have to fend a few confused Hunters off for it, though. But the dodge rating and the Stamina (not to mention, as we said, the title), should make it pretty clear that this weapon is for a "Stoic Guardian," not a "Pet-loving Peashooter."Getting Rid of It: Sells for 10g 79s 6c. Will disenchant into a Void Crystal.
Patch 2.3: Return of the Hemo? [Updated]
With todays news that Hemorrhage is being buffed yet again in the latest build of patch 2.3, I'm getting more and more excited to take out my old rogue character and use my favorite ability again. Back in the days before The Burning Crusade I used to enjoy using Hemo to succeed as a rogue in PvP when latency and casual gear would have left me at a bad disadvantage otherwise. Hemo was just strong enough that it gave me a real chance at success sometimes, and all the other buffs to stealth in the Subtlety tree made me feel like a real rogue sneaking around and stunlocking people, rather than a warrior without the heavy armor, or a backstabber who could never seem to get behind anyone or crit often enough to kill things.Once The Burning Crusade was released, I felt terribly disappointed to learn that there were few if any more very slow main-hand weapons at the new level cap. Today there are still very few with a 2.7 weapon speed, and even fewer with 2.8, which, before the expansion, was really the minimum weapon speed you needed to start making use of Hemo successfully. This is because Hemo is not "nomalized" like other abilities; it does progressively more damage the more time passes between weapon swings. With only one high-level 2.9 speed weapon in the game (and that a legendary), and all 2.8-speeds being either too low-level to be useful or to far out of my reach to attain, I feared my preferred playstyle would be dead and useless by the time my rogue reached 70.But now I'm not so sure. I still don't know why Blizzard didn't add more slow weapons like they used to have in the old days, but I'm hoping these buffs to Hemo will make up for the loss, both in raids and in PvP. Still, I'm hardly the best rogue theorycrafter out there. Are any of you good mathematicians able to speak authoritatively on whether this change is enough to raise Hemo from the dead?Update: Our commenter, Rick, shared with us a link to an Elitist Jerks discussion in which they provide some good research about this change to Hemo. Among other things, it seems this new version of Hemo is now normalized, meaning that, like Sinister Strike, it won't matter what weapon speed you have when you use it -- it'll still do the same amount of damage. Many of them are eager to try it out.
