Server second, Alliance first, and our guild now has another legendary.

It takes some dexterity when the proc appears:

Credit to Lyshra... damn you

I’ll have more to say about the weapon itself and the process to get it at another time–I have a lot of opinions on the matter, and that’s why I have a blog, isn’t it?

The achievement pops up over black because of a cut scene! Annoying.

But guildmate and friend Tzufit recently asked people to give a report card on how their classes are doing, particularly compared to their state at the end of Wrath (just before the Cataclysm patch dropped). 

Over the Cataclysm patches, rogues have remained surprisingly static. We’re a mature class, one with a well-defined role: the only pure melee in the game. Several more “onlys” apply to us: we’re the only class with a use for fast weapons (always daggers: a moment of silence for the death of the fast Combat off-hand sword), the only  class that can’t use two-handers, and as of Cataclysm, the only class that’s got a legendary that only we can use. Until recently I could have added, “the only class that uses the Combo point mechanic.”

Except that really isn’t true, is it? (Even ignoring cat druids, who are really just rogues with fur.) The story of Cataclysm is, in many ways, the story of Combo points by another name. One could argue it even began back in Wrath–what is Maelstrom Weapon, after all, but a five-point-finisher mechanic? Of course, in that case the points are procs, rather than activated abilities, but then of course, we have Combo-Points-Lite (pun intended) in the form of a Paladin’s Holy Power. 

In many ways, the Blizzard kit of class design seems to be “take Combo Points, and add varying degrees of RNG.” Which leaves Rogues as the class where Combo Points involve no RNG (apart from misses or dodges); you hit Sinister Strike, it’s always going to give you at least 1 combo point. 

So we’ve established that rogues are the one class to rule them all. Mission accomplished. 

Where we came from

As Wrath wound down, Rogues were in a good place, with two viable PvE specs (Subtlety being the laggard as it was for most of the expansion, except early Naxxramas when the Honor Among Thieves bug made it briefly the best DPS spec in the game). We were strong exactly where we were designed to be strong–fights where we could afford to remain on one mob for an extended period of time. 

I’d argue in fact that I should have written a postmortem piece on rogues as ICC wound down. There were so many changes that improved the rogue class during Wrath, from the beginning when poisons started to scale from attack power rather than spell power, to a set bonus that allowed Rupture to crit, bring that into our rotation during Ulduar and CC, then (on the Assassination side) completely revolutionalizing the Envenom mechanic by making it no longer consume Deadly Poison stacks–an idea first floated via a glyph that didn’t make it out of the PTR. 

What did we get with the Cataclysm patch? Well, notably, a self-heal: Recuperate became a life-saver for leveling, and a nice convenience for all rogues who never had enough bag space to carry food. Fan of Knives suddenly required a thrown weapon, but as a consequence we got to poison those weapons, making FoK spam an Assassination mainstay. Combat got a healthy dose of RNG with Bandit’s Guile, essentially a random trinket mechanic built into the talent spec, and Blade Flurry became a toggle rather than a cooldown. Subtlety became relatively viable, but at the cost of a punishingly complex rotation, and most rogues left it aside–according to parses during the T11 days, if you played Subtlety, you were by definition one of the top 100 subtlety rogues in the world. 

Then there was Mastery, the stat that was supposed to rule them all, and instead became essential for Assassination and useless for the other specs. Combat eventually got a fix that changed Main Gauche into Main Droit (changing its proc from a weak off-hand attack to a main-hand strike while also proving that no one at Blizzard speaks French) but mastery remains well behind expertise and haste as the go-to Combat stats, leading to immense frustration to rogues like yours truly, who would love to switch to Combat occasionally, but not at the expense of reforging every damn piece of gear. 

Assassination: He who Stabs Backs, Stabs Best

The game-changing talent for Assassination is Murderous Intent, or as I like to call it, Backsecute. It returns Mutilate rogues to the long-ago days where we had a positional requirement (Mutilate used to be a from-the-back-only attack), and thus frustrating us for fights where the back of the mob is inaccessible. However, on balance, I think it’s a good thing, and I’m sad to see it go away for MoP and be replaced by a similar attack without positioning issues. Only time will tell if we retain the frenetic, don’t-let-your-energy-cap sub-35% feel as we go forward, a play style I really enjoy.

In addition, Hunger for Blood turned into Vendetta, replacing a “click this every minute” button with a “click this every two minutes but line it up with Heroism/Bloodlust” button, as well as an additional poison and energy component to Rupture, making Assassination’s rotation the most set in stone of any rogue spec–you don’t keep Rupture rolling, you lose, but as a benefit, RNG almost never enters the picture. 

Combat: Swashbuckle More Often

In addition to the aforementioned Bandit’s Guile, Combat got Restless Blades, solidifying it as the Cooldown Spec by allowing you to hit those cooldowns quicker than the tooltips would indicate. Again, this inserts a little RNG unless you’re a machine who always hits 5-point finishers (and if you are, who am I to judge). It’s one of those skills that I expect separates the good rogues from the bad. I can’t comment much on how it changes the play style–I haven’t been able to spend much time on Combat during Cataclysm. 

Subtlety: Stepchild No Longer

One of the bigger stories of Cataclysm in general and Dragon Soul in particular is the sudden emergence of Subtlety as a difficult but absolutely viable spec. In fact, among the top guilds in the world Subtlety has huge importance as burst damage on Heroic Spine, with Shadow Dance and Ambush spam. The talent that makes it work–while also making it tough to manage–is Energetic Recovery, which gives you extra Energy as Recuperate ticks. The “combo points party” of Honor Among Thieves remains from Wrath, but in addition they make damn sure you wait for 5 CPs with Serrated Blades, which gives you a 100% chance to refresh Rupture if you Eviscerate with five. This, in addition to Hemhorrage‘s new bleed debuff, makes Subtlety the “bloody burst” spec of Cataclysm. 

The New High-Level Spells

Blizzard took some good measures to make sure rogues aren’t quite as penalized for switching targets as we used to be; chief among these are the level 83 spell, Redirect, which transfers all your combo points from one target to another, albeit only every two minutes. You can use this after a mob’s death or simply when target switching; together with the ability to use a dead mob’s remaining CPs on self-buffs like Slice and Dice or Recuperate, there’s not really any great need to worry about hitting a finishing move right when a mob is about to die. 

The other two new abilities have mostly seen use in PvP; Combat Readiness against other melee, and Smoke Bomb against casters and healers. Smoke Bomb in particular has been a bit of a PvE disappointment; such potential for a line-of-sight you carry around with you! Combat Readiness, however, at least had great value in the leveling days, not to mention in the time when Tol Barad dailies were still dangerous. 

The Rest is Silence

And over the rest of Cataclysm there’s been… nothing. Oh, I’m sure I could find a few balance issues here and there, but compared to other classes? (Resto Shamans got a new totem!) Does this mean we’re in good shape, as the least-played class at max level? Who knows. We are certainly in a good place as relates to the other pure DPS classes at fights that are our strength–stand in a spot and kill. On the whole, though, there aren’t that many of those fights in the Cataclysm raids. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Patchwerk fights are fun but not particularly challenging. Where they have their place are as a palate-cleanser among other fights, and as a chance to hone your rotation to its finest edged sheen without worrying about movement or standing in poop. It’s why I look forward to Ultraxion–it’s brainless and simple, but it’s also the only fight where I have a chance of beating our death knight on DPS. 

The Dagger in the Elephant

Of course, there’s one major bit of rogue information at the end of Cataclysm–these orange daggers you may have heard about. They are a big deal, certainly–but they’ll have to wait for a dedicated post. 

Gnomeageddon’s Big Idea ran as follows, and I quote:

• Go into your image folder
• Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
• Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
• Challenge six new bloggers.
• Link to them.

My first thought was “People organize their screenshots into sub-folders?!” and my second was, “Well, thank GOD no one reads Blame Squelchy who would ever tag me for this.”

I don’t use the WoW Screenshot utility much–in fact it’s only used by the Achievement Screenshotter add-on. I use the built-in Mac OS screenshot that dumps everything on the Desktop. So if we call the Desktop my sixth folder–it isn’t–and pick the sixth screenshot (the sixth file is just a text clipping that begins “Make a note of your username”–exciting, right?) what we see is this:

Clearly this wasn’t the first time I laid eyes on Algalon, unless a different raid group had been using his room to take dirt naps in.

Algalon is still one of my favorite fights even today. I wish I had been good enough to try it before outgearing it–but at least I fought and defeated him at 80. And any raid boss that fights with daggers is a hero in my book.

And now I need to tag people, yeah? Yeesh. Fine, okay, here come the rogues.

• Daraia (best written rogue ever, will probably not see the pingback)
• Trocar (a fellow gnome, even if he doesn’t admit it)
• Tikari (maybe this’ll get him to post again!)
• Garona (the heart of theorycrafters everywhere)
• Dinaer (blog royalty, also will ignore the pingback I suspect)
• Rep Grind (already tagged elsewhere, and not a rogue, but one of my longest, most loyal readers)

Sorry for the rushed, completely poorly written post. I really do take pride in my prose.  Just… not today.

Thanks to Hydra and Fimlys for being such kind and engaging hosts. Thanks also for their standing fast in the face of what I fear was my extreme incoherence, given we were recording about 3 hours past my bedtime after one of the most stressful (but exhilarating) weeks of my life. (If you want to know the details about that, sorry–real life is real.)

It has also come to my attention that there is someone else trying to shoulder blame. Remember, there is only one genuine Blame Squelchy–accept no substitutes. 

A few weeks back, a “bucket list” phenomenon swept the WoW blogosphere. Inspired by Cynwise, people asked themselves, “What do I want to do with my characters before Mists of Pandaria arrives?”

I looked on these posts with a mixture of amusement and regret. A bucket list is something I absolutely can’t afford to do right now, but it’s something that absolutely appeals to me–or at least, the “me” that existed prior to quitting and returning to WoW.

You may remember that I wrote a very public goodbye to Blame Squelchy in August. I also wrote a tearful (don’t read too much into that, I cry at Coke commercials) goodbye on my guild forums, even going so far as to say something like, “if I return, I will have failed” or some such highfalutin crap. Well, I obviously returned. Did I fail? Not really.

I would never go so far as to say I was addicted to WoW–other bloggers have spoken eloquently about what true WoW addiction entails–but I did play it, and think about it, too much for my comfort and mental health. I’m happy to say that doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue, as after [REDACTED] years on this Earth I finally have a career I care about and provides me with intellectual stimulation. But beyond that life change, I also set some limits on my WoW playing, and more importantly, on my WoW thinking.

Here is the deal I made with myself.

No alts, no leveling.

When I left WoW I had alts at various levels. I’ve always done this from Day One, although Squelchy was my bona fide first character. I’ve tried and deleted warlocks, warriors, priests, and paladins. In my WoW career, I’ve only had 2 max-level alts: Chaela the shaman during Wrath, and the wonderful warrior Greyflood now. When I left I had just rolled a paladin (I was quite proud of his name–Lightweight) and was happily attempting to level him via the Elwynn/Westfall/Redridge route. I also had a gnome priest (because come on–gnome priest–how could I resist) in the fifties, an ancient druid with the Defias Leather set in her bank, and even the aforementioned Chaela gathering dust at 83, doing transmutes in Uldum. It was my intention to revisit all of these old friends, and at the very least get back to raiding with the shaman and the priest. I have great admiration for my friends who can pinch-hit in all the needed roles–hell, our guild has a hunter who plays better on his alt healers and tanks than many players do on their mains.

But ultimately I had to throw those plans out the window. When I play now, I play on Squelchy. Even though I absolutely adore warrior tanking, I have not logged into Greyflood in multiple weeks. I did help out at the beginning of 4.3 when people wanted to run the new dungeons, but as demand for them has gone down, I have elected to not search for them on my own. And poor neglected Chaela will remain at 83, through the end of Cataclysm and probably beyond.

No more raid leading.

I’m a conscientious person by temperament. If there’s a role that needs filling, I’ll try to step up and fill it if at all possible. During Blackwing Descent et al, the role that needed filling was that of a run on Saturday night for alts and the few mains who weren’t available to raid on weekdays. So even though (to borrow a guildie’s turn of phrase) raid leading made me break out in hives, I did it. I’m glad I did it, although no one would ever call me good at it.

But conscientiousness only gets you so far. I love Dragon Soul and I wouldn’t at all mind running it on Greyflood occasionally, but I simply can’t deal with learning full strategies and herding cats. I feel bad about this, as it’s the only part of my deal that affects others and not me, but there’s no getting around it.

No WoW Insider.

I apologize for name-checking the most popular WoW website in particular. I think they do good work, and I have strong opinions, both good and bad, about their writers. But the sheer scope and reach of the topics they cover, and the speed at which they do so, meant I was checking their website multiple times daily. They took an inordinate amount of mindshare from my completionist brain, and I’ve moved to simpler, narrower sites like MMO-Champion, Icy Veins, and MMO Melting Pot.

No grinding, no holidays, and no dailies.

“What?! How can you even play without doing dailies?” Well, during the Molten Front days, you’re correct, and in the month I played then, I did indeed daily away, with the ultimate goal being the gear along the way and the mount at the end.

That mount? I’ll never have it. I live for mounts; they are the ultimate status symbol for me, with pets being a close second. Gear is a waaaaay distant third–after all, it’s going to be replaced in a few months no matter what you do (though transmog has changed this a bit). But mounts that involve grinding or farming are forever lost to me now.

I don’t stick to this part of the deal completely–it doesn’t take much time to nip down to Sethekk Halls and sneak to the bird and be disappointed again and again–but I ain’t camping the Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I am doing the occasional Darkmoon Faire because those dailies are actually fun–but I ignored it the first week it was out, and unless I log in today I’m probably ignoring it this week as well.

Holidays are also out. I did all the achievements on Squelchy during Wrath and I don’t care about getting them for my other characters. This means I’ll miss out on some rewards (though I was lucky enough to have 60 leftover Coins of Ancestry and got the new Alliance Lantern without any effort), but again, I can’t afford the time or the mindshare doing what is essentially cow-clicking for non-intrinsic rewards.

No podcasts.

Yeah, I’m gonna get in big trouble for this one tonight. I used to listen to the WoW Insider Show and The Instance religiously. It all comes back to thinking too much about WoW; I can’t afford it. Since then, if I’m in the mood, I pull up Stitcher on my iPhone and listen to Twisted Nether or Shade’s dulcet tones, but I don’t subscribe to any WoW podcasts anymore. Radiolab and This American Life make me smarter anyway. (I am NPR’s target demographic. Seriously, they have a big poster of me at their corporate headquarters.)

No blogging.

Uh huh. How’s that one working out for you, Squelch?

Well, now’s your chance! This Saturday night, at 8 P.M. Pacific/11 P.M. Eastern, I will be a guest at the Twisted Nether Blogcast, the official podcast of Blog Azeroth (so they say anyway, and I have no reason to doubt them). There is a bona fide chat room which you can join, and I’d love to see familiar readers hanging out there, cheering me on. (Note: do not actually cheer me on. My head will literally explode. Instead, insult me to bring me back down to earth.)

You can also download the podcast after the broadcast if you can’t make it. Either way, it should be a great show. And remember, if you show up in the chat room, you have a chance to win ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (Note: you do not actually have a chance to win one million dollars.)

After not trying it for several months, we finally downed Ultraxion in normal 25 last night.

It’s hard to argue we couldn’t have done it sooner. The bane of all casual raiding guilds is scheduling, and it’s hit us pretty hard recently. In the heyday of ICC, we had three nights of 25-mans, and often we had enough members online we could do two separate 25-man lockouts with a mixture of mains and alts. For Dragon Soul, we’ve only been able to manage a full 25 on Tuesdays, and so we had been farming people up to and including Hagara, then breaking into 10s for Ultraxion and beyond. We finally got enough DPSers who were able to pull the Ultraxion numbers a few weeks ago, but with poor turnout one week and an ill raid leader the last pre-nerf week, the stars didn’t align until yesterday.

And yeah, I’m going to argue that we would have done it without the 5% nerf. We beat the enrage timer by a full minute.

Perception is an interesting thing. I’m sure you’ve heard of the “tipping point” theory, which holds that something can grow slowly to a certain point, then the dam breaks and it grows at a thunderous rate. Well, I’m hoping Ultraxion will be a tipping point for our guild. I’m hoping schedule problems will work themselves out. I’m hoping people will be enthusiastic for new bosses. I’m hoping guild cohesion and morale will rise.

It certainly seems possible. After our Ultraxion two-shot, we followed up with a Blackhorn two-shot (a fight the 25 had never attempted before). Late in the Cataclysm game, we may yet get our groove back.

OK, I’ve had a day to think about the recent announcements regarding the Dragon Soul raid and the progressive nerfs that will be rolling out at the end of January. My thoughts on it have evolved from my initial confusion and even disbelief. I freely admit, when I first read that Blizzard was introducing an ICC-modeled debuff to the raid, I was incredulous. I didn’t see why it was necessary, and I said as much. Several of you then upbraided me on Twitter, and frankly, you gave me things to think about that I hadn’t considered. This dovetailed with recent statistics posted on MMO-Champion about who’d completed Dragon Soul in the Raid Finder vs. normal mode.

It’s really worth reading the whole thing. I generally agree with him and I think I come from generally the same perspective. I consider myself a middle-of-the-road raider and I pretty much despise elitism in all its forms–I’m all about getting the content to the people. Yet I’ve finished Dragon Soul and heroic Morchok on 10-man. (I say “10-man” for specific reasons, as you’ll see below.)

According to MMO-Champion’s statistics, that makes me one of a very few. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that Dragon Soul is an easier raid than any of the ones we’ve seen in Cataclysm before.

One of my favorite fallacies in which I partake is to extrapolate and generalize based on my own guild and raid team, but hell, I do it all the time, so here we go again. (Regular readers who have heard this before can feel free to skip ahead.) I’m not a progression raider and we’re not in a progression raiding guild, but we are the only Alliance-side 25-man raiding guild on our server. Much of the initial progression, however, gets done in 10-mans, and I’m lucky enough to be a member of a pretty good ten-man team. Though I wasn’t in on every first kill because of schedule and gear (I skipped over Firelands for the most part), the team in general cleared Dragon Soul within the first three weeks, possibly even the first two, and if I recall correctly, everything but Madness was down in the first week. Again: we are not the world’s best raiders. As evidence, I offer every other raid in Cataclysm. 

For instance, according to my guildmate Tzufit, Ragnaros (who I still haven’t killed thanks to my break) took about 175 pulls and wasn’t down until just before the Firelands nerfs took effect. Nefarian and Cho’gall were similar stories; Cho’gall went down relatively early when we had a weird ten-man comp and some RNG luck and didn’t go down again until 2 months later, and Nef was a long, hard slog with multiple comps over many weeks.

Now, to Rossi’s point, yes, many of us went into DS with heroic Firelands gear, but not that much. I had none, for instance. In fact, when I first cleared it I was barely able to scrape my way into the Raid Finder, which at the very least proves it was possible to carry me. Nevertheless, an order of magnitude of difference between DS and the previous two tiers tells me there’s something fishy.

Maybe we improved substantially while we bashed our heads against Firelands? More likely, perhaps the DS raid had mechanics that we are just plain better at handling. I recently read an insightful post from Boozekin which pointed out that the major mechanics in DS can be called out by one person, while the fights in Firelands are more baroque. Maybe a raid team that thrives on that sort of thing would clear to Rags in a week and still get stuck on Zon’ozz?

And yet…

Thus far I’ve talked about a ten-man team that, with only a few personnel changes, has been tackling tough stuff together since heroic Crusader’s Coliseum. Our 25-man raids, however, are a different story entirely.

If there’s one thing that’s holding our 25 back, it’s the simple DPS check of Ultraxion, which is hellishly frustrating. I don’t worry about the tanking–we have great tanks. I don’t really worry about the healing–we have fantastic healers as long as they show up. But to be held back because of a fight that’s pretty much “deal damage, stand in one place, and click a button once in a while” is infuriating. I do think, providing the schedules line up, we’ll get it done before the nerfs hit. We’ve had people going through the tens and we’ve got 17+ DPSers who have now beaten him.

So we’re in both places–completely shredding the place on tens, and stuck on twenty-fives. Will we kill Madness-25 with a nerf applied? Maybe. I hope so. If nothing else, it would do wonders for guild morale and cohesion. It may surprise some of my guildies, but I prefer the 25s, as long as everyone takes them seriously and does their jobs.

And yet, I can’t help feeling that Dragon Soul was easier than the previous tiers. If it hadn’t been? None of our teams would have killed Madness by now.