Ming is currently working on updating the Class dueling guide. I beleive the latest patch has set a fire under his ass. I am looking forward to seeing the rest. Warriors and Rogues are currently the only two classes covered in the updated guide but I expect all the others to fill in quickly. ~Cerias Shadows

Can't hold back anymore so got on test to try stuff out. 1) Blind wipes paladin reckoning charges. In 1.8 this isn't all that great since you have to save blind for divine shield. In 1.9 however it is absolutely positively awesome. They only have one shield to begin with. 2) Hunter flare leaves a mark on the ground. You won't see the full radius of the flare but you will see the center of the flare so to speak. 3) 2 hand + reckoning bomb paladins got easier. They have to pick between Vengeance (+15% damage after a crit) and Repetence with the new talent tree. It is no longer possible to have both. A sulfuras paladin only reckoning bombed me for 2500 on test. 4) 1 hand + shield paladins got a lot nastier. I was on seal fate dagger when I fought this paladin (I have to test with combat spec) with the exact same gear (aurastone, engineering shield, full epic) as the guy I dueled countless times on live server. His DPS was amazing. It seems holy tree has a lot of damage buffs, I have to do further research. There was lag and I couldn't see exactly what he did but with 1 hand he took my health down as fast as a rank 14 2 hand paladin I beat on test server. 5) Riposte is finally fixed. In 1.8 it was literally a non-factor sometimes, I would duel a dagger rogue in a no-stealth no-timer fight and it would not go off even once in three duels. In 1.9 I actually get to riposte people again, feels very solid. 6) Blade flurry is finally fixed. Secondary target will take EXACT same amount of damage as first. The way it should be. This is already a very, very situational special in PVP, now it is actually a threat instead of something you laugh at. Unfortunately, this also means dagger rogues even with backstab 9 will not be able to beat a combat rogue in an entire MC/BWL run. There are just too many opportunities to spam this and paint the stat sheet. I love to save adrenaline rush for firelord + spawn and with blade flurry I will double the damage of a dagger rogue for that pull and it really adds up. 7) Fist spec appears to have been fixed. I went to Tyr's Hand and scored 14.5% miss rate with just +3 in items (400 hits). I have yet to miss any specials so hopefully we are good on this. 8) Sword procs appears to work just like I remembered it on live. I did see a sword proc into a hand of justice proc but I didn't see a sword porc into a sword proc. I only had it for a hour so not going to draw conclusions from that. 9) Mace spec is now a top spec, especially for rogues with faster maces. The stun doesn't seem to diminish. To make full use of it, you really need fast reflex and luck, there are times it procs perfectly and wins me the fight (right before a warrior with ashkandi is about to execute me), other times it procs in the middle of a kidney shot and is completely wasted. It messes up stunwatch hopefully the author will update that mod since stunwatch still thinks mace stuns diminishs your other stuns. In 1v1, you are trying to control your opponent and you will not gamble for mace procs. In group PVP it will probably be very effective. 10) Overall, fist spec was probably my favorite. Fixed fist spec, when you get those chain crits (and they happen often), absolutely tear people up. However I would say for the first time ever, the four weapon specs are all equal now. If you have one, don't bother go for the other. 11) New stone form kills my "zero cooldown" strategy against warriors. Dwarf warrior will be EXTREMELY nasty from this point on. I fought an Ashkandi dwarf warrior from Death & Taxes, while the AR + Evasion is still very hard for him to beat, stone form basically forces me to burn at least 1-2 CDs to stand a chance. Dagger rogues beware of dwarf warriors. 12) Gnome escape artist is now 0.5 second cast I believe. Someone please confirm this. Either way, this is now probably the best alliance racial in the game and easily on par with any horde racial. -Posted by Ming WoW Rogue Forums

Well with the opening of the recent server transfers my guild decided to move to Gorgannash. For some reason we felt like we would be welcomed with open arms. Well if by open arms your refering to the open end of a gun barrel then... yes ... we were. With in the first couple of days we managed to enrage the forums and even piss off our own faction resulting in about half of our raid being reported. Now I dont have anything against players on Gorgannash as I have met some very cool Rogues from that community. However the GM's seem a bit trigger happy. Like they haven't seen any action in forever. I want to say that I have been reported half a dozen times on Arthas with no action being taken. Here it took ... 10 minutes before I got an in game email with a warning on my account. Seems the rules are a bit different now. Instead of solving problems through the ruleset provided by the server or lack there of the fastest person to the /report command is the winner here. A couple of overwhelmingly enthusiastic forum posters even stated that our guild WILL FAIL. I beleive thier reasoning stemmed from the fact that some other annoying guilds failed on their server. We had a good chuckle about it over teamspeak and went back to recruiting some very choice players. If it wasn't for the fact that the guild I am in has been around for 8 years and had very strong leadership I would almost want to agree with the naysayers. As it stands I think I will stick it out. Welcome to Gorgonnash!

Patch 1.9 is going to add a bunch of new features to WoW. 2 new raid dungeons a 20 man and a 40 man precluded by a world event, linked auction houses for horde, alliance and neutral auction houses. Paladin enhancements and a bunch of other stuff. What's 1.9 bring for the Rogue? A whole lot of ... Nothing! They decided to refer to gouge, sap and blind with different names and if you happen to be a mace rogue then you might have reason to rejoice. As it stands right now we didn't get nerfed or buffed, which may be a good thing considering the recent trend to nerf first and ask questions later. However if you agree with me then your not to worried about all the nerfs. I still believe that Rogues will get the last laugh. Overall this patch is going to be significant for the game as far as all around improvements. Rogues themselves wont be seeing much love this patch but its coming. I can see the curve starting to happen and the direction of nerfs being reversed. Warriors got there enrage ability toned down significantly and I expect all the classes that were recently buffed to be adjusted (read nerfed) shortly. Its part of the balancing act that is MMO's ~Cerias Shadows

Would like to wish everyone in the Rogue community a Happy Thanksgiving... to all the other classes... I stole your cranberry sauce! I am finally back from several business trips to Alabama and Georgia. Ill be home for a while before I fly out to California for much needed vacation. At the moment I am busy moving and trying to sneak in some Alterac Valley rep at night. Looking forward to getting in some good updates soon though. Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at RogueSpot. ~Cerias Shadows

Well seeing as I have not been able to play wow for the last week or two I have been reading the forums alot! Mostly just the Rogue forums and working behind the scenes on RogueSpot. However I have three new features that I think blizzard should implement. 1) Time on page - The blizzard forums should require you to stay on the page where you type in your post for a certain amount of time. I think 5 minutes - 10 minutes would be great. Perhaps it would scale up with the length of the post. Writing a Novel? 15 minutes! This would slow down posters and frustrate the people writing flames or posts that dont contribute to the forums. 2) Forced Preview - When your time limit is up and are oked for approval blizzard should force you to preview your post. Right now you can simply click post and its done. I believe it should take you to the preview page and from there give you a confirmation dialog asking if you are sure you would like to post this. 3) Forced Rereading of post - You typed up your post? Do you have any idea what it says. I think blizzard should force you to reread your post. Simply take two words and swap them somewhere in the persons post. To continue the person must find the words that were switched and unswap them. Most likely causing them to reread what they wrote. Using these three steps I beleive we can put a serious dent into the trash that gets posted on the World of Warcraft forums. In particular I think the Rogue section of the forums would show significant improvement. :-D ~Cerias Shadows

I would like to welcome Brogetta to RogueSpot. He and Ming have been collaborating to improve his Rogue DPS calc utility and he has the passion for this game and for his class that we are looking for here at RogueSpot. I am looking foward to some great posts from Brogetta so keep checking in here. ~Cerias Shadows

Well it looks like we are staying in a nice hotel this time around and I will have access to the internet each nite. Maybe not to play wow but at least to update RogueSpot. I am looking to knock out some major updates to RogueSpot this week and next so stay tuned. ~Cerias Shadows

My plane leaves in 3 hours to once again take me to Anniston Alabama. Being that this is my second business trip and my second time flying (last week was my first) in over 5 years its all still kinda exciting. The travel at least. The destination .... not so much. If anyone knows Anniston well enough to tell me what there is to do at nite besides Wal-Mart and the Dollar Theatre please please let me know. After Alabama things start to get more interesting with a trip to California around the area of Avery for some Snow Boarding (and not to mention my first time seeing snow). Yes I was born in Florida and have yet to see more then Ice on the ground with a bunch of kids freaking out about how its Snowing... and that was in '89. I do my best to keep RogueSpot up to date but if you come across any useful information out there throw me an email cerias@gmail.com and ill check it out. I want to make sure that RogueSpot becomes the epicenter for Rogue Information in the World of Warcraft. ~Cerias Shadows

The Advanced Rogue Guide 1.9 has been posted to the blizzard forums. Click the header of this post to be taken directly there. I updated alot of the sections and added some new ones. One in particular for Rogue Trinkets. They dont have to be Rogue only but they should be very nice for a rogue to have. Check out what I have posted in the guide and then leave feed back here or in the ARG thread if you have a personal favorite you would like to see added. On top of getting ARG 1.9 out tontie I also finished up the move of RogueSpot. From now on you can get to the site by going to www.roguespot.com. I will be adding some out of the way advertising banners soon but they should not disrupt the flow of the site. I have one more business trip to Alabama for 10 days then I have to move from apartment to a new apartment and I will also be getting out to California for a week in december to do some snowboarding. Other then that I am gonna get cracking on the updates to RogueSpot as well as continue to bring in more of the community into making this a better site. I still have room for team members as well so shoot me an email with the basics who what where why and how plus a brief post of your own for me to evaluate to cerias@gmail.com. Lastly, thanks to all the Rogues out there that visit this site each day and those that continue to visit this site each day. ~Cerias Shadows

RogueSpot will be moving in the next couple of days. RogueSpot is growing and I would like to offer more features and make RogueSpot a more useful site. The new address will be http://roguespot.com http://www.roguespot.com either of those will take you to the new site when it is published. The site will still be published through blogger so I am still looking for new team members as well as GuestSpot posters. I hope to have the transition wrapped up by monday but thats if everything goes well. So update your bookmarks and look forward to more new stuff coming to RogueSpot. ~Cerias Shadows

Happy Birthday to Me! Now I cant wait to get home to Jax, Fl. and actually celebrate it. Check for updates soon folks as soon as I am back home and no longer hung over. :-) ~Cerias Shadows

Just to let you know I did not disappear I am sending in this Post from Anniston Alabama where I am stuck doing some field work for my job. There is absolutely nothing to do out here. Since I have no regular access to a computer I wont be able to update RogueSpot until the weekend. Looking forward to getting back to regular updates shortly. ~Cerias Shadows

Have something to say? Write an article, post or rant and email it to Cerias@gmail.com I will be looking through the emails and posting those that are worthy. Guests who get repeat posts will rank up much in the same way as the WoW PvP system. Make sure you include your Name / Server and Faction with any post you submit and Good Luck. ~Cerias Shadows

If you check the forums or RogueSpot you will see a lot of information on how to solo mob x or gank chest y. I have recently rediscovered farming and I have to say its my favorite thing to do when I am not raiding. The best farming is done with another friendly rogue. Between the two of us we can tear up BRD for lord Incendius pop down into LBRS for Arcanite Reaper plans and a chance at a chest or two. Part of the fun is figuring out how to defeat certain encounters with just 2-3 rogues or a rogue and a druid etc. I started the farming because I needed to get my fire resists up but a deck of Elementals later im addicted to hitting up the vent server with other guild rogues. I have even taken a couple of random rogues pharming. I also refer to it as Pharming simply because farming is bad. You have Chinese farmers, and gold farmers and farmers that ruin the game or ruin your chances at beating Alterac Valley. Being a farmer is looked down upon. But I am a Rogue Pharmer. I enjoy hitting up instances with other Rogues for personal enrichment and gear. I am not ruining the economy or ruining anyone's experience of the game. My favorite Pharms are Lord Incendius, Lethendris, Grimok plus a couple random Invokers in LBRS skillfully pulled for a chance at a greater fire resist recipe. Theres also the chest in LBRS near the ogres that I snag every once in a while. I have some others but I left em out. Have your own favorites? List em in the comments section of this article. Have a different opinion about Rogue Pharmers? Feel free to rant there too. ~Cerias Shadows

Im at work waiting for Blizzard to finish maintenance on the servers so I can see if I moved up or down in the rankings. I figured I would use this time to rant a bit about the people complaining about the new expansion. Even folks I know pretty well are up in arms over some hysteria that when they raise the level cap there will be green items that are better then their epics. Some of the people complaining are simply afraid that Molten Core will be 10 manned by noobs duel wielding rusty daggers. So many people are convinced that Blizzard is going to destroy the game with this expansion. But you have to look at it like this. If you had a winning lottery ticket would you leave it out on the table? Would you throw it in the trash or let it get flushed down the toilet? No... and Blizzard is not going to flush their winning lottery ticket down the drain either. If that's your thing that you like to play amazing games that are then ruined by huge corporations greediness go play EQ. So lets get back to facts. Will you have to upgrade your gear to stay at the top of your game? Yes. This is an MMO. I apologize to all you Diablo 2 fanbois that reached level 99 duped your uber set gear and sat back and destroyed people for years. Welcome to the World of Warcraft, welcome to the World of MMO's and welcome to a world that never sleeps. Theres more then 5 Levels here and some randomly created dungeons and it will take more then your buddies duped equipment to get anywhere in this game. When the new dungeon comes out next patch expect the uber guilds to hit it full force. Do not expect a single one to sit back and say "well im not going to gear up my guild because the new expansion is going to make it all irrelevant in a year anyway." Sadly the people that do sit back and wait to gear up into uber level 70 blues are going to be the same people or guilds that cannot raid the new content. That wont have the resist suits , teamwork or strategic knowledge of how to deal with encounters in this game. Last but not least what about the fun. I play WoW cause its addictivly fun for me. I love character progression and seeing my character gear up and become more powerful. Maybe its just me though? Maybe the people complaining are the people that wake up every morning and 9-5 this game and then come home and play it from 5-2. /RantOff In summary The Burning Crusade is not going to ruin WoW and Blizzard is not going to intentionally cut off the head of its Cash Cow. So please stop screaming the sky is falling Chicken Little. ~Cerias Shadows