Back Again
I just got back from holidays and finishing my first week of the new semester. With a full course load and the pressure of my final stretch of university, I’m finding less time to play games than before. Compared to my definition of hardcore, I’d say I’m playing casual right now. I have no serious arena teams, still looking for a good fit, and in the current state of rogue that seems to be hard to find. It feels like not only do you need top skilled teammates and all having high level gear to succeed, there are very few comps that work with rogues. So while I continue my search, I’m just working on keeping my gear level up and PvP’ing a bit to stay sharp.
What I’m learning is that even casually playing WoW can be a huge timesink. On Sunday evening I logged on to work on my rep grind and do a heroic daily, 6 hours later it’s 2 am and I still have an assignment to do, and my rep grind isn’t even near being finished. I’m doing my best to manage attending all classes, going to the gym, writing for this site, taking care of those extras that come up in life and trying to dip my ladle in a few bowls of soup along the way. But enough bitching about busy life, how about some bitching about WoW!
A Lesson in Humility, Losing a 500g Series to Massive Today, Thoughts on Dueling DKs
Today I thought I’d have a quick series of duels against massive for 500g (i know that’s not much for most people but I haven’t been farming much lately), which he broadcast for about 500 or so people on xfire. I thought I had a pretty good chance, and we had some practice duels that were extremely close. I should have realized in the last practice duel that he figured out the trick to beating me, trinketing the KS. If you’re wondering, Massive is the DK I dueled in Eviscerate X. He’s played competitively with complexity and has multiple rank 1 titles, he’s a huge scumbag and a friend. He also recently made the switch to tauren, which means additional HP and warstomp which is pretty huge, it means you can’t trinket either gnaw or stomp.
In the first 3 duels I was swept. Two of the duels were close and one of the duels was lost due to a stupid error with me not having focus blind on my bar. Regardless, we continued after for a bit more. The series ended at 4-1, and in the subsequent 20 or so practice duels I think I was winning about a third. Other than how to throw away gold, here’s some things I learned.
The strat he found to beating me was trinketing the initial KS. This is important because it’s very hard to get clean cloak+vanishes off against him. He can deathgrip my vanish at least half the time. Like blinding a rogue out of vanish, there is a grace period after vanish where the DK can still deathgrip you out. I know a lot of people will say “lol I shit on dks you suck”, but while I feel like I have an advantage against 99 percent of the DKs that I duel, at the highest skill and gear level it’s a very different fight. What massive does differently than other DKs, I find, is his timing with CD use (garg, ghoul sac, AMZ + AMS, ETC). He also is smart enough to try to spin to avoid my gouge when he trinkets. That and he has the best possible gear.
Anyway here is a tip that was working fairly well. If a DK trinkets your KS, and later pops gargoyle, you’ll probably need to get a cloak and vanish off to win. The trick to doing this is to either catch them at a global or at a time they aren’t suspecting it. Once you get a cloak and vanish off, be patient and if gargoyle is out, wait for it to go away. You can now focus the ghoul. Sap the dk and immediately focus blind the ghoul and start bandaging, you now have a clean opener on the DK for a full duration stun, although when the DK has 1100 resil this doesn’t always mean a victory.
Other things that seem to work better against DKs include, firstly, being standard mut 41/5/25. Initially you might think envenom is better because of the increased poison damage against plate, but in the span of a duel AMS and AMZ can really shut down all of your poison damage and burst, and you lose your double cripple which means a lot against a DK that is trying desperately to kite you. I watched litre try some envenom rush down and it didn’t seem to be very effective. Also, prep glyph is great for this duel for double dismantle, you should always be able to have dismantle or evasion during the fight.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this match up?
That’s all for today but I should be back with some articles these week. Hope everyone had a great new year!