1661

Holy crap, that’s a lot of time spent on one fight. Gratz!!

1662

Grats on your progress, jeffd. If your rogue isn’t running H HoR there’s a good offhand sword from the chest at the end that’s a solid upgrade, though it will put him over the expertise cap. The damn thing seems to drops every single time I run it, so it might be worth taking the time to do.

1663

DO NOT listen to intruder’s rogue advice as it’s terribly flawed.

  1. Poisons
    Wtf instant?
    -> Deadly on OH
    -> Wound on MH

Combat Rogues haven’t used Wound on MH since 3.3 launched. Instant MH/Deadly OH is the correct choice.

Feet should be 24 AP instead of Icewalker (since she is over hit cap)
Icewalker was good but is useless now since everyone in decent gear is over hit now.

Icewalker is a perfectably acceptable choice for a boot enchant (he’s not over the hit cap, only over the poison hit cap, so hit rating is still valuable). That said, Cat’s Swiftness has been shown by the theorycrafters at EJ to be the best boot enchant for most melee dps classes since faster run speed = more time attacking your target on movement-heavy fights.

  1. Rotation

I see a “Garrote”?
Her rotation should be:

  • Tricks of the Trade on tank
  • 3 Sinister Strike for Slice and Dice
  • Adrenaline Rush
  • 5 Sinister Strikes -> Rupture
  • 5 Sinister Strikes -> Envenom
  • 5 Sinister Strikes -> Slice and Dice
  • When beasts are down -> Killing Spree
  • Next time when beasts are down -> Blade Fury

Keep this rotation + use Tricks of the Trade on tanks / melee dps

Rupture and Envenom should not be used at all. Rupture hasn’t been part of any rogue’s cycle since the T9 days (although it might be making a come-back in the next minor patch). Using Envenom is a bad choice because it consumes your Deadly Poison stack unless you have a talent deep in the Assassination tree, which he won’t have as Combat. He should use Eviscerate instead.

His cycle should be to maintain near-100% uptime on Slice & Dice, build combo points with Sinister Strike, and only use Eviscerate if he has five CPs and more than 8s remaining on S&D (if he has 5 CPs and fewer than 8s remaining, then auto-attack while his energy builds up to 90 then refersh S&D).

[Edit]
The Rogue 3.3 FAQ at Elitist Jerks is a very valuable source of info for all this stuff.

http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t37183-pocket_guide_wotlk_updated_3_3_a/

1664

Nice! We just downed Sindragosa this week on 10, so we spent yesterday on Lich King attempts. We got Phase 1 down, mostly, but we’re having some problems with the Raging Spirits in the second phase one-shotting people.

I agree about the tediousness - first you have to listen to a minute of RP, then (for us) 7 minutes until the second phase. And there’s the crappy run back.

1665

Are they killing people right off the bat, or after they have been active for a bit? My technique, as the tank who was primarily responsible for dealing with them, is to wait a few moments when they spawn (but aren’t active), then hit them with a taunt. The taunt will put a fixate on them for a few seconds, which should be enough time for the tank to get reasonable aggro. You have to wait a few moments to taunt to make sure the fixate is still up when the spirit activates.

One thing that helps is to have the person who is going to get the spirit run over to the tank so the tank can get aggro right away. We also had occasional problems with a warrior pulling aggro off me, but I’m not sure what the deal with that was.

I agree about the tediousness - first you have to listen to a minute of RP, then (for us) 7 minutes until the second phase. And there’s the crappy run back.

Yeah. One of my raid members was hoping that you’d be able to skip the RP once you defeat him, but I don’t think that’s the case. ;) Using DI on a person who can rez speeds up the reset a bit.

1666

jeff, please give my sincere congratulations to Halix. That’s a fantastic improvement! Her DoT uptimes are much higher (though she let SW:P drop once or twice and her DP uptime could be a ilttle higher, but whatever!). Also, she’s clipping FAR fewer Mind Flays. She should continue to work on her uptimes and not clipping, but she’s improved a lot, very obviously.

How were her mana issues? Were they alleviated as compared to previous weeks? She certainly did far more damage!

1667

Sadly I wasn’t there this week; so I can’t say. I think she’s doing better; which means she can start freeing up some of her wimpy healer gear for more proper facemelting stuff. :D

1668

I can report that I didn’t have to innervate her once this time around. I saw her get a bit low during our first Saurfang attempt towards the end of the fight, but that was it.

1669

That’s good to hear.

Once she dumps her mp5 gear for actual DPS gear, she’ll dramatically increase both her Crit and her Spirit, giving her much higher IST uptime. That’ll help her mana problems, too.

1670

Yeah; if she keeps this up she’s going to be our top DPS. She’ll top 6k on Festergut pretty easily, I think.

It’s kinda fun, watching the raid respond to my feedback & improve. Satisfying!

1671

Hm ok granted I’m not that crazy in theorycraft than I once was.
I mean we are at the Lich King so not much to improve any more.

Still most of my points stand.
I’m a bit zealous when it comes to rogues because some out there are incredibly bad / lazy and give the whole class a bad touch.

I argue that Rupture has a valid reason on some of the movement fights in ICC when I have to switch targets a lot and run (Rotface, Purticide, Blood Queen, Sindrigosa) since it ticks as DoT.

Will switch my poison to Instant + use evis all the time on Saurfang tomorrow and report back.

Thanks for the heads-up and yes nice improvement on the priest!

1672

Since I posted this on 2/23, I started playing around in the jewelcrafting market. I’ve done epic gem transmutes almost every day for 2 weeks and gotten zero bonus gems. If I didn’t know better, I’d start wondering if they introduced a bug, but it’s almost cliche to do so.

1673

Cardinal Ruby x4 yesterday. I’d say RNG likes me, but I lost T10.5 pants with a 1 roll in VoA yesterday as well.

1674

Both, unfortunately. I’ll see how it goes this week. Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with the fallout of all those raiders leaving to get their Kingslayer titles from Horde guilds working on Lich King, so raids have been up and down. Also, the server keeps dying.

Yesterday we were trying some Ulduar 25 hard modes with pugs and recruits to get some drakes. That’s actually the first time I’ve ever fought Freya, and her hard mode seems surprisingly brutal. We always lose at least 1-2 people after every ground tremor.

1675

I’ve been transmuting on two toons daily (mostly) for several months now (since about last June?). Between them both, I am lucky if I see one extra proc a week, and even then it is only for one extra gem. A single time so far, I got a x3 proc for two extra gems. Never have seen these legendary x4 or x5 procs, despite maybe 500 transmutes?

1676

Damn few procs for me in my short career as a transmute master. Only one thus far, I think.

1677

I’m starting to get annoyed with attitudes in PUG Heroics runs. I’ll admit my DK isn’t my optimal play-style (his GS is around 4500 and I usually do about 2700 overall, worse if I’m having a bad day or the tank isn’t keeping the mobs rooted). I usually play a hunter and I’m more used to a ranged DPS role. The whole “fight from the rear” thing is still something I have issues getting used to.

In two out of 5 heroic runs this weekend, people have been rude jerks about it. One guy posted the recounts after a boss fight and said, “You just suck and gear isn’t going to help you.” Last night I’m doing a Nexus run and I remark about that one boss that ping-pongs us around that “that fight makes me barf” and the healer goes “UR DPS makes me want to barf” and posts the recounts.

I get the whole Internet Anonymous Asshole thing, but, jeez would it kill people to either ignore it, or to make a valid suggestion.

FOr what it’s worth, I’m posting his armory here to see if there’s something immediate I’m doing wrong. I usually start with my two diseases, pest, and then DND, then SS,BS and dump, and I gargoyle on boss fights. I’m not inclined to spend money gemming him since I doubt he’ll see the light of day in a raid.

My hunter’s GS is about 200 less than his, and overall DPS about ~500 higher – boss DPS a LOT higher. I’m not sure if it’s just the DKs overall are the latest whipping boys. I’m just not getting the low dps hate on instances that are farm mode.

1678

You just have to keep in mind that what they are doing is all about them and has nothing to do with you. As I said earlier, posting recounts in heroics is just being an asshole.

On the other hand, I’ve cancelled my sub for WoW, it’s just boring, I don’t have a guild, and I don’t feel like mindlessly running heroics for enough emblems to get me to 5k gs so I would be more likely to get into a decent guild.

1679

Mark,

Typically in PUGS, dps death knights, and unholy ones in particular are pretty likely to be near the top on DPS in my experience as a tank. I don’t play one though so I’m not the best person to comment on spec/glyphs/rotation/etc. Gemming strength/crit/ap will certainly help your damage go up with the same gearscore mod score.

That said, your gear is plenty solid for heroics. I’d make sure to do gems and enchants though. Even cheap gems are better than no gems. On my server no one goes by the gearscore mod because it gives no points for gems or enchants, which can be a pretty fair part of your gear score using wowhead or wow-heroes. If I see someone that hasn’t bothered with doing so I tend to think they’re lazy, but regardless, 2700 is more than adequate for heroics. The only one I’d really like to see more dps on is halls of reflection due to its difficulty.

Rudeness may be something about the culture on your particular battlegroup. Pugging on alliance/retaliation BG is way more fun and laid back then puggingon horde/retaliation BG where everyone is telling you that you play your class wrong. I wouldn’t sweat 2700 dps though. I’d be happy if I could count on people on my BG reliably doing that much.

1680

Yeah, I’m willing to bet a good chunk of the issue is “you’re doing it wrong.” Some of it’s simply unavoidable. I’m color blind, and the red “you’re facing the wrong way/you’re out of range” messages blend in to the background and I tend to lose sight of the mobs. That problem is lessened on the hunter since it’s easier to react to.

Not gemming right now is a conscious decision. I never got epic flying on any if my characters and right now, that’s a higher priority than gemming for something that’s still on farm mode; as the hunter gets closer to 5.5k GS and needs the push for ICC groups I’ll likely revisit this.

I’m in a catch 22 with the DK. I need practice to get the hang of him, but getting the practice involves issues like this weekend. I dunno maybe a disclaimer at the start “haven’t played the DK in a while, DPS is likely to be a little low. Don’t give me crap about it, but suggestions are welcome.”