Did another normal with the guildies on Warmheart. Fun to heal again. Still not comfortable with it, which is part of the fun.
Also did the Thrall-is-split-into-elements quests to get her a better cloak. Fairly rough to solo in shadow spec.
Also did half an arena session with Skove, rogue-rogue. We didn’t do well–rust on this comp is a killer–but it was still fun.
Paranoid did great this weekend. We took down our usual four bosses quickly, then worked on Alysrazor. We have now gotten through as many as two cycles, so we are quite likely to take it down soon.
It is quite a dance to learn, and even minor lag will kill you during the second (tornado) phase. But I am enjoying the fight.
Zooe and I did some 2v2, first frost DK/resto Druid, then mage/rogue. Both about .500. But lots of fun.
I am still farming Wailing Caverns on Chilldeed for Deviate Hatchlings and for horde rep. Lots of runs, only three hatchlings so far. Also getting some interesting low-level gear, some of which I will use or sell for transmogrification purposes.
SWTOR’s update was very minor. It was about animation design. Interesting on a game design theory level, but little of interest to me as a player.
Skove and I got a partial arena session in. It went fairly well. We are getting better at switches and cc in general.
One of the better combos is Smoke Bomb with Blind. While slicing up a DPS, we keep the healer back with the threat of Blind. But if they stay back, we can prevent them healing their teammate with Smoke Bomb. It is learning details like this that make rogue-rogue a fun combo.
Played a bit yesterday. Despite my entry yesterday, Zooe and I did some 2v2, my DK and his resto druid. I was short on time, but we got several wins in.
Also did some BGs. Horde was playing so poorly that it took me multiple tries to get my win on Chilldeed. I didn’t even get onto Chillpaw.
Did a ZA random with the guildies. That was good.
Also did arena with Kaiser’s BM hunter and my resto druid. Went about .500. Good stuff, got my weapon slot items. Major difference, about 500 more spellpower and a lot of other stats.
I noticed we did fairly well attacking DPSers and cc’ing the healer. Except when the healer was a priest; that tended to give too many opportunities for the priest to Mana Burn me.
But mostly we saw cleave teams. Wow are there a lot of cleave teams out there. And half seem to be the wildly overpowered ferals, doing 10k DPS with ticks. Yikes.
Three arena teams yesterday.
First up was Kaiser on his hunter and me on my resto druid. We started rough–really rough–but ended up about 8-11. Probably a function of rust as much as anything.
Second was Oni (disc priest), Zooe (rogue) and me on Chillmon the frost mage. 8-0! We were tearing it up. Our best new tactic was cc’ing the healer while burning a DPSer down.
The cc was largely handled by me, sheeping and counterspelling. This was because of range. When possible Zooe would blind or Oni would fear. Then it was burn, baby, burn.
Finally it was Skove and Chilldeed, going 2-rogue. I think we went 8-6, but it was better than that looks because both of us suffered lags. Probably 3 of the losses were lag-related. I did not notice any wins coming because they lagged.
Skove and I have gotten good at switching. A common example: burn DPS until the healer blows cooldowns, then switch to the healer.
If there is a stealther one of us opens on the visible enemy and the other waits to open on his little friend.
In other news: a stock analyst estimates Star Wars: The Old Republic to sell 3m copies in its first year, with 2m subscriptions resulting. Sounds good if true!
Did my Firelands dailies like a good raider should.
Did a couple of randoms. Not much to report there.
Did arena with Skove. That went much better, and in fact we restarted our team. Good stuff. We cc’ed much better, tricks’ed more often, and generally tore things up. That said, feral druids are way overpowered. I was getting 5k on me even when the cat wasn’t even touching me from bleeds.
Fun but rough night of arena last night.
Did two teams, and both went about .500.
Did rogue/mage/priest with Zooe and Oni, with me on my mage. Virtually every team was focusing hard on Oni, and we were having trouble getting enough cc on their DPS to get him some breathing room. We will regroup and go at it again soon, I am sure.
I also did 2v2 with Kaiser on his hunter and me on my resto druid. Again as many losses as wins, but it didn’t feel too bad. Most losses were from teams simply bursting me down. I checked gear and realized that I don’t have many purples on him. I will run some BGs and hopefully that problem will clear itself up.
Did arena with Skove, 2v2 rogue. We tore it up, going 8-1.
Probably our best win was vs a resto shammy and an afflic lock. Several times we had to have one of us break off, cloak or let the dots drop, bandage and return. Or in one case where the shammy redotted me, I had to let recuperate work for a while. Finally Skove got the shammy low just as I was returning, and we took him down.
We also had an interesting fight with a hunter and resto druid. Skove was on the druid, as was I, but the hunter got me low. I called it out and vanished, but the druid dotted me and the hunter then followed.
I retreated to our starting nook hoping to bandage in a few seconds when the moonfire wore off. The hunter followed but had to get close to get LOS. At 10% health I alerted Skove that I was flushed out and followed the hunter to reduce his pressure.
Skove came across the map and we tore into the hunter. Shortly thereafter, and with a smoke bomb dropped, the hunter fell and the fight was won. I’m pretty sure Skove had forced the druid to use his healing cooldowns during the time I was retreating to our starting nook, which helped.
Aside from the Firelands dailies–yawn–I did arena with Skove.
Now that was fun. We went 8-1. The only team we couldn’t answer to was a holy pally-DK combo. Even then I think we both would like to meet them again. In fact we went up against a different holy pally/DK combo and took them easily.
The nice thing about rogues is, first, you decide (mostly) when to start the fight. They decide where.
Second, they have cooldowns useful specifically for casters (cloak, smoke bomb) and for melee (evasion, disarm). Combat Readiness is no longer a cooldown. I can only imagine ever using it against two melee teams, and only if cloak is unglyphed. The sharing of its cooldown with Cloak has truly killed it.
Third, if you are subtlety, you have solid pressure, escapes, and self-healing.
In other news, Chillshot is now 83 and doing solid damage. Still love Beast Mastery, still could care less about the other specs.
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