Honeslty, this expansion has been pretty stale for me. I’ve raided non-stop since vanilla WoW but hit a brick wall in Cataclysm when it came to finding a stable guild and/or a group of people that worked around my schedule. I’m finding myself becoming less interested in farming heroics when there is no chance of raiding at the end of that rainbow and I’ve become burnt out with PVP. My last few months have consisted of farming honor on my Death Knight and Warlock as well as doing 2′s and 3′s on my DK with my girlfriend’s Disc Priest and a buddies Arms Warrior. I had pretty much given up on raiding at that point since our guild leader was only interested in setting up raids around their own schedule which usually meant we raided once a week, which was fine by me, but the day was random and we were told maybe 1 or 2 days in advance. With no one wanting to plan their entire gaming lives around WoW, people stopping logging in or started playing alts, farming achievements etc., but it was generally the former.

WoW has definitely taken a back seat for me due to it’s overall lack of new content and my inability to find a steady raiding guild. I know that 4.2 just dropped on Tuesday and with it came a new raid and a bunch of new quests, but without raiding I’ve kind of lost my drive. I don’t want to farm achievements, spend another hour doing dailies in TB or leveling another alt. Not right now, anyway.

On the plus side, I’ve got a ton of console games I’ve picked up over the last few months (years even!) that I’ve been wanting to dig in to – Metroid Prime Corruption, Metroid: Other M, MadWorld, Dead Space Extraction and most recently Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned and Child of Eden.

So until next time, I guess?

I’m comfortable on my Rogue and pull between 10-14k dps, but the guild hasn’t raided yet so it’s going to be a giant learning experience for all of us. We’ll see how it goes!

So I’ve comprised a cliche list of things that I’ve learned that you’re most likely just going to skim over anyway. Maybe there is a little nugget of info that you’ll walk away with, or maybe I lose more readers because it’s a giant wall of text. I’ll be nice and break it up with some pretty amazing PVP videos that I have bookmarked here.

In PVP, it’s easiest to pick on cloth casters and Hunters. From all of the kills I have gotten, these two seem to be the easiest to get to do exactly what you want them to do – panic, blow their defensive cooldowns early and promptly set themselves up for failure with no way to deal with a Rogue who still has Cloak of Shadows, Blind, Kidney Shot, Gouge, Sprint, Kick, Shadowstep, Evasion and Preperation off cooldown. When a caster doesn’t see you coming (much like your girlfriend in the dark) and all of a sudden they’re silenced by Garrote, a majority of them will go in to panic mode the instant they realize they’re health is going down and they can’t cast anything. By this time, they’re balls have already dropped and they’ve already mentally lost. A Hunter is a different beast because you have to read them in one of two ways. First, if they’re standing still after the initial Ambush, chances are they’re AFK rubbing one out (highly unlikely) or dropping a trap to gain the distance advantage, so I generally use Cloak just to be safe and then go from there. The other thing I’ve seen is they also go in to panic mode and pop Disengage or Deterrence right out of the gate. This is brings up the 2nd thing I’ve learned so far..

Shadowstep isn’t always best used as an opener. If my PVP target (see above comment about casters and Hunters) is just standing there, why waste Shadowstep? Sure, you get a damage bonus from using it and it looks pretty rad, but Ambush stops one-shotting people eventually and you should be using Garrote as an opener against a caster anyway. Most casters and good Hunters know how to use their tricks to get away from the Rogue after the initial “oh shit, I’m getting fingered!” moment, and that is the perfect time to use Shadowstep – regaining your ground and unleashing the fury with Shadow Dance and/or your various CC abilities.

A Cloak of Shadows + Vanish macro and a mouse-over Blind macro is pretty much liquid OSSUM! I’ve failed enough times popping vanish and not noticing I had DoTs on me, only to be popped right back out of stealth. This prevents that from ever happening as long as Cloak is off cooldown. Having the mouse-over Blind macro comes in handy if you’re in a 2v1 position and need a quick CC without swapping targets or wasting combo points on a stun. Max First Aid is also a godsend if you need a quick heal since the duration of Blind is slightly longer than the duration it takes to bandage yourself back up. If you’re afraid you might have a DoT on you, make a Cloak + Bandage macro and flex your pro skills in the mirror when mom isn’t home.

Slower MH/Faster OH. With Assassination’s damage mostly coming in the form of poisons, I went in to it with the mindset that I’d want 2 fast daggers to apply the poisons as fast as possible. What I didn’t take in to consideration was that Mutilate and Backstab go by weapon damage, benefiting a lot more from a slower MH dagger. Having a faster OH dagger (1.4 generally) allows you to apply Deadly Poison much faster, which when at a full 5 stack will automatically proc your MH poison (Instant Poison) each time it’s reapplied, while the slower MH will give your 2 doof doof abilities a bit more doof.

What works in PVE doesn’t always work in PVP. Assassination is my leveling/PVE build while Subtlety is my PVP spec of choice for obvious reasons. I play on a PVP server so sometimes I end up in some random world PVP skirmishes with the opposing faction while I’m just trying to quest my little Worgen ass off. When someone tries to get the jump on me with my Assassination build, I’ve only got PVE on the brain so I’m trying to roll small point Ruptures, keep up Slice n’ Dice and usually wind up fucking dead because I’m only used to PVP’ing as Subtlety. It was much easier on my Warlock when Immolate, Chaos Bolt and Conflagrate cured just as many problems in PVE as it did PVP and whip cream poured like waterfalls.

All complaining aside, the Horde guild I was in pretty much fell apart. The friends that were left when the guild crumbled defected to the Alliance side of my server (where they originally played) to join their old WOTLK raiding guild. They’re chock full of tanks and ranged DPS but needed melee DPS and healers. My Rogue was 72 at the time, I was really enjoying leveling him and was looking to change it up a bit so I offered to go with them. It sucked because I had just leveled my Mage to 85 and started to get some gear, but they were pretty full on ranged DPS. Story of my life, though, right?

For once in my WoW tenure I am completely out of my comfort zone.. and I kinda like it! Outside of a 1 month stint back in TBC where I ran Zul’Aman as an Enhancement Shaman, I had never played a melee DPS class in my life. I started leveling my Rogue for low-bracket PVP but the more I leveled, the more abilities I unlocked, the better gear I got, the more damage I did and the more world PVP I did, the more I wanted to keep leveling. On top of learning a different role I was leveling in Alliance quest hubs which I haven’t seen in years, making it feel like a whole new game.

My Rogue is about 82 as of this post which clocks me in at about 10 levels gained in roughly 2 or 3 days. I maxed Skinning and started powerleveling LW with whatever spare time I have. If you would have asked me before Cataclysm came out what I’d be doing in-game in 2 months, I never would have said “playing a Rogue”, let alone “playing an Alliance Rogue”. But that’s the beauty of WoW – It’s an ever changing experience. I also play to play with people I enjoy the company of, regardless of faction, server or whatever class I play to fit in at the time.

Just to get to know the guild a little better, I faction changed my Mage to a male Human so I had an 85 to run randoms with them if they needed DPS. I also faction changed my 60 Hunter in to a male Night Elf to complete the cliche. The Rogue is a male Worgen which I really dig their melee animations. Their casting animations are terrible though, so I’ll never make a Worgen caster. This whole transition is still in the early stages, but if everything works out I’ll eventually faction change my 85 DK, 85 Warlock and 82 Ret Pally. I miss their professions >.>

The GM of the guild I’m in quit playing and handed it over to someone else. One of our DPS also hasn’t logged on in a month, another has a computer virus and won’t be on for 2 more weeks. Our healer is having internet issues and she also happens to be one of our tanks. It’s pretty dull right now in my WoW world. There are basically 3 core players right now in the guild, so we’re having to pug our heroics.. which has been a complete nightmare. I still have yet to complete a single heroic because groups disband after 1 or 2 wipes on a boss. I’ve talked to one of the other 2 core players about maybe joining a larger guild so we can still all play together, but we haven’t really decided what to do.

WoW isn’t fun right now for me.

Why did I choose to run diseaseless?

I’ve tried a disease tanking build, but in the time it takes me to grab a group, Death & Decay, disease my target with IT and PS, spread it with Pestilence and start attacking.. stuff runs all over the place. This can lead to complete chaos in groups with high single target DPS classes like Rogues or Mages.

Heart Strike attacks 3 targets as it is, Death & Decay is still the best AoE threat ability anyway, Blood Boil’s damage is laughable (even when talented and hitting diseased targets) and should only be used to spread and refresh Scarlet Fever & Death Strike no longer worries about diseases on the target to determine the amount healed. I’m looking for burst threat so my group can DPS as hard as possible without fear of pulling mobs and getting wrecked. So far, it’s worked out for me just fine.

I’m starting to tank Cataclysm dungeons on my DK now, so I’ve been a bit more interested in digging around the web for some good tank advice, and this article by PWNWEAR was exactly what I was looking for. It covers info on both disease & diseaseless builds, pro’s and con’s, etc.

Outside of tanking on the DK (who just hit 80 last night), my Mage is almost 83 and my Warlock has been doing heroics here and there with the guild when enough people are on. I’ve had terrible luck with PuGs so rather than wait 30 minutes for a fail group, I just wait until the guild runs them instead. Our guild is pretty small though, so that’s few and far between. I don’t see me raiding anytime here soon either, which is fine by me. I’m a raider, it’s what I do, but right now I’m just enjoying the expansion from a few different perspectives. I’d like to get my tank, Mage and Pally healer to 85 as well just to have all my bases covered. My guildmates are all altoholics so we like to keep things fresh ^_^.

I’m having a lot of fun in the dungeons so far now that I actually get to show off my CC skills. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but being able to Banish a target, glyphed Fear a target and Seduce a target in one pull makes me feel pretty awesome. I still run in to a lot of Wrath players* who just try to zerg everything and die, so I usually just offer to CC everything myself while keeping DoTs up on the zerg targets so they can do what they were going to do anyway.. not care or pay attention.

Now that I’ve ran all of the dungeons a pretty decent amount of times, I can go ahead and say that Blackrock Caverns is my favorite of the bunch. All of the boss fights are interesting and fun and there isn’t an overstock of trash like, say, Grim Batol. Halls of Origination did a good job of being a longer dungeon by including a hefty amount of bosses with a minimal amount of trash. Grim Batol on the other hand just seemed like an excess of trash pulls (especially in a PuG who sucks at bombing the adds) just to get to bosses who really weren’t that interesting..

Hopefully tonight I’ll get to run a few heroics and see how Affliction fares against my Destruction build. I’m looking forward to heroic VC and SFK the most since they’re two of my all-time favorites. How are heroics treating everyone else out there?

*By Wrath player, I mean people who got used to the pull and zerg method of WOTLK and haven’t changed their ways at all.

Just a short update of admitted failure! I have a new found respect for my Affliction Warlock brothers and sisters now.

After talking it over with some Warlock friends and reading around a little bit, Affliction seemed a little better for starting heroics since bosses have a ton of health and CC is needed for trash pulls. I dropped my Demo PVE build (since I wasn’t comfortable sending in Klekashak to whirlwind sheeps) in favor of Affliction to see how that goes. Once I get used to the new encounters and feel better as to when I can use the heavy AoE focus of Demonology, I’ll switch back, but for now it looks like I’ll be doing that whole Fulguralis DoT thingy.

When it comes to Affliction, do we use the Felhunter again for the Demon Soul bonus (+20% periodic damage) or does the glyphed Succubus (+10% shadowbolt damage) still provide more DPS? I’m hoping the Succubus since I could use her for Seduction as well, but either one works fine.

What about Improved Soul Fire? Take it and keep the buff up non stop? Just use it at the beginning and whenever Soul Burn is off cooldown? Not take it at all? Is Affliction retarded here!!! I haven’t really done THAT much research obviously, but I’d like to perform as best as I can.

EDIT: After lurking Warlock’s Den for a little bit, it appears that I need to redo my Affliction build to include ISF. According to the posts there, Felhunter’s are superior to the Succubus now thanks to Demon Soul, my Glyph selection is right, Improved Fear is pointless with the major glyph and like it or not, I need to cast Soul Fire every 15 seconds. I have work to do.