I’m back from vacation, and happy to say Eviscerate Arenas Vol. VII is finished and should be up soon (depends how long uploading takes).
Tournament Realm is up!
Let’s start things off with the Arena Tournament Realm. As we all know, the ATR is up and running. I’ve personally jumped on for a few games of Rogue/Lock/Druid and to make up some gearsets and specs for the future. I must say I’m disappointed with the ATR somewhat, purely because of where the server is located (East Coast). Everyone that’s from Australia/Oceania are at a major disadvantage this time around, it’s not uncommon for me to check my latency and see it spiking to 700-800ms. I can’t see myself taking this ATR seriously whatsoever, with how unplayable it is in it’s current form. The few games that I have played were absurd, we faced spellcleave game after game after game, and with trinkets like Dislodged Foreign Objectand Bauble of True Blood, it comes as no surprise that spellcleave is dominating the ATR. Melee classes without T2 (2200) Arena weapons make melee damage that much more manageable, this makes me question Blizzard’s motives. I mean, why are these trinkets available for use? In most people’s cases on Live, getting to Blood Queen and actually downing her is unrealistic, yet reaching 2200 is simple and can be done with ease, not letting the use of T2 weapons is essentially neutering the classes that need them, after all this is an “Arena Tournament Realm” so why isn’t all Arena gear available?
To recap, my prediction is that some form of spellcleave will take the #1 spot on ATR without much trouble, the damage from an Ele/Affliction/Holy Paladin setup is just unhealable. In a bad spot for a split second? Dead. Cloak down? Dead. Death Coiled with no trinket? Dead. It’s really that simple unfortunately. I applaud any Oceanic Rogues that are working around the terrible latency on the ATR, to the rest of us, suck it up boys.
Covering Dance. (read more…)
Just to keep updated re. Eviscerate Arenas Vol. VII, I’m almost done editing, but I didn’t want to rush things, and with upload time I’m not going to be able to release the video until I come back in a week, as I’ll be out of town. The good news is I’m happy thus far with how the video looks.
If you aren’t aware, the tournament realm is now open for registration. Whether you’re looking to qualify and compete or you just want a chance to play a geared 80 of any class, the tournament can be a lot of fun. I’ll be picking it up next week when I get back, as it’s always fun to see what other classes are like and what kind of learning curve they have without having to level them. Click here for the FAQ.
Messy Arena and AOE Everything, one of WOTLK’s Biggest Failures
One thing I’ve noted in the past, and something that we can hopefully avoid in cataclysm, is the fact that WOTLK was, at least in PvP terms, a messy expansion. Simply put, the Burning Crusade arena looked at lot less sloppy than the current one. It’s like Blizzard took the chess board and poured a bag of checkers all over it.
A lot of classes were given core damage abilities that are also aoe in nature. Deathknight’s desecration coupled with their ability to spread diseases across multiple targets so easily makes any game where you play a DK an absolute mess. Not only that, they have a ghoul and gargoyle as well, at all times. Mages have always had tons of novas, but WOTLK added mirror images and with elemental up as well, it’s blatantly annoying to look at my screen when facing a mage team. Another example would be enhancement shamans; until the wolves duration expires the arena is an absolute clusterfuck. I could go on, but I think anyone that has played WOTLK and BC will understand that things have gotten a lot more messy with the addition of a lot more pets and aoe abilities.
I hope Blizzard can take this into account when we move to Cataclysm. Not every ability needs to be AOE or spawn pets. Maybe I have OCD, but right now in arena, I much prefer playing teams without five pets and that don’t turn the arena into an ugly mess. I’ll also be a hypocrite here because I do like smoke bomb, but sometimes these are graphical decisions rather than game-play decisions. Bring back the single target aspect of WoW, and it will also serve to make PvE (especially 5 mans) a lot more challenging.
Can Cataclysm be as Epic as this Picture?
In actuality it’s not quite this extreme, but the stereotypical rogue encounter is that if they have (read more…)
Introduction
Hey everyone, welcome back to the RogueRogue.com guide for the Icecrown Citadel raid. This is Separation and I am going to be covering the Lady Deathwhisper encounter. Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss you will face on your journey through ICC. The fight mostly consists of your tank’s handling adds while splitting dps between the boss and adds. Typically a raid leader will assign two groups for doing this, both consisting of one tank each and the rest of the dps. There is alot of target switching as a melee class during this encounter which leads me to the next section, explaining spec and positioning.
Spec/Positioning For Abilities
As stated in the introduction, there are going to be multiple adds up at a time during the encounter. Target switching is something that really only one spec is built around, that would be the 20/51/0 combat spec. As combat you should try and hold your cooldowns for add phases so you can get dps back up on the boss as soon as possible. What is interesting about this boss is that she is encased in a Mana Barrier which has a little over 11 million mana in 25 man. The object of the fight is to kill adds that she spawns on the left and right of the room, while maintaining dps on her mana shield. It turns into a two phase fight once you deplete her mana shield.
As a rogue there are a few things you need to look out for during this encounter. She will drop a green “Death and Decay” on a random person in the room which covers an 8 yard radius and will tick for 4500 damage every second. Your tanks should move any existing adds out of this so the melee can continue to dps, so be on the lookout to move quickly.
Now all this talk about adds, lets get to them next. There are going to be 3 adds she spawns during phase one on both sides of the room, consisting of two types of adds “Cult Adherents and Cult Fanatics”. I like to have the tank on my side listed as my focus target for tricks of the trade so I can FoK all the adds to him, that way everything gets to him properly without ranged picking up one. The add you need to be taking care of as a rogue is the “Cult Adherent” they look like a caster and typically will stop in place once they spawn and start casting spells immediately.
“Deathchill Bolt” is the spell you want to be looking for to kick, there should be another rogue or melee with an interrupt on your side so make sure the other Adherent is interrupted as well once they spawn. Another ability they have is a 1 second cast “Curse of (read more…)