Are you the Keymaster?

On September 21, 2010, in Achievements, by Cerias Shadows

So this achievement actually goes against my Roguely nature. By default I do not bother with key quests. Why would I when I can simply open most doors myself. However when going through my list of achievements it became apparent that this is one I would need to do. Simply because there were other achievements I could do along the way.

Most of these I had by default. If you have run SM you have the Scarlet Key. That sorta thing.  However surprisingly I did not have the Shattered Halls Key, Crescent Key, Workshop Key or Key to the City. Sometimes I look through my achievements and it pains me to realize that all the stuff I did before a certain date is not registered and I will have to run it again. Like raids…. The idea of me not having BWL achievement is laughable… how much time did I spend in there… how much gear did I have from that guy… wtf Blizz come on!

Anyway the biggest pain in the ass was definitly the Dire Maul key. That place is huge and then you have to follow an imp around as he speeds around the place. I really did want to kill that Imp by the time I caught him.

This quest did stimulate other memories in my past though…

[Dana, possessed by "The Gatekeeper," answers the door]
Dana Barrett: Are you the Keymaster?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Not that I know of.
[She slams the door in his face. Venkman knocks again]
Dana Barrett: Are you the Keymaster?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes. Actually I’m a friend of his, he asked me to meet him here.

Oh well brewfest is out and well seeing as I have never participated I have quite a bit to do.

~CS

 

Keepsakes

On September 20, 2010, in Monologue, by Cerias Shadows

What do you keep in your bags past its prime. What is your most rare / valuable / prized possession. Currently:

Ok technically the Tiger is not in my bags… but It is still prized and a possession. Theres also the Engineering Trinkets I do not leave home without.

Admittedly I used to have alot more precious items in my bags. However when I stopped playing wow… over a year ago my account was hacked. At the time I said to myself… screw it I am never coming back. Well you already know how that turned out… However when I got in contact with the GM’s they pretty much said: We thought you quit so we deleted all your stuffs!

The slightly longer version is that they only keep their logs for around 9 months… so if you quit the game cause your girl is pregnant your pretty much screwed. The funny part was the roller coaster ride of  the gm saying: Oh wait! I can recover Quest Items! Oh well thats not a quest Item thats a repeating quest item and we do n0t log repeating quest items forever.

Well I am getting sidetracked here. What are your most precious keepsakes?

 

PTR Realms FUBAR?

On September 20, 2010, in Cataclysm, Expansions, Monologue, by Cerias Shadows

Anyone having a terrible time with this. I have been on the PTR trying to try out some different builds and do a bit more testing with recuperate. Specifically I wanted to try a combat build out. Unfortunatly I kept getting killed by a friendly Chimera pet in Org. Looking around there were skeletons all over the place… to the point it looks like South Shore / Taren Mill right outside org bank. Anyway after the second death I was unable to click any buttons. (ie. Resurrect, Return to Graveyard, Exit Game, etc) I ended up CTRL-ALT-DEL to get out of the game. On top of that the first time I loaded in all my recently copied characters were gone, premades included. If anyone is familiar with the amount of time it takes to setup a premade char to be able to do anything… thats just kinda frustrating.

But hey its the PTR its expected. For now I will go back to the real World… of Warcraft and level my alt DK! Who knew tanking could be so much fun!

~CS

 

PTR Patch 4.0.1 (talents)

On September 18, 2010, in Cataclysm, Expansions, by Cerias Shadows

The first thing I did after logging on to the PTR was to check out the talents. Pretty much everything has a new window. Your character sheet / pvp window / etc. Talents are no exception and I definitely like the side by side approach so that you can see an entire build with out having to flip through 3 separate windows. My first instinct was to do a quick assassination build and test out the DPS. Now I am no great Rogue and my friends will tell you that I do not have the patience to properly test this stuff. However copying my rogue from Live to Test and using the following build I saw about a 500 dps increase.

A quick build I put up.

First off venomous wounds is really noticeable. Each time it ticks you get a good chunk of energy back.

You are definitely going to want to keep Rupture up on your target… and vanish to get garrote back up on the target as well. It feels like your going to want to go combat tree and pick up improved slice and dice to make rotations easier to manage. My instant poisons did about 28% of my  damage with my melee and deadly doing 17% each.  Granted this was from a very short test period so take it as a grain of salt.

Vendetta is great and all. But it does not last long enough imho. I would rather have Hunger for Blood. I personally think this talent should be in the Sub tree.

Overall a nice dps boost for doing nothing. I have not raided with this spec I simply attacked a dummy with 50 other people in org. If there any other Rogues that have started picking apart the science of this I would like to hear from you.

 

Top 5 Reasons I’m excited about Cataclysm!

On September 16, 2010, in Cataclysm, Expansions, Lists, by Cerias Shadows

As the new expansion ticks closer news is coming out left and right. New patch notes on the PTR etc. I can smell the smoldering ruins of Azeroth from here! So what am I most excited about in the upcoming expansion?

  • New Rogue Talent Tree
    I have always thought that Blizzard went a little to crazy with each expansion. To many extra levels, to much increase in stats, damage, etc. I think bringing talents back down and making each tree more meaningful is a great start. Also only raising the level cap to 85! Another pro move that I can get behind.
  • Heroic: Deadmines!
    One of my favorite dungeons of all time was when I was on my first Alliance Rogue! Being able to run a Heroic Deadmines has got so excited I made a mess in my leather pants.
  • Rated Battlegrounds
    While I am not very good at Arena Combat I do enjoy it and think its a very good system. I am definitely excited for Rated battlegrounds if not a bit apprehensive. I can see it now… [2: Trade] LFM Rated Battlegrounds PST GS / Spec / Achievement / Exp / Credit Score!
  • Guild Levels and Achievements
    Adding Depth to an MMO is a good thing. Guild Levels and Achievements is a great idea. I can see entire new guilds springing up around the sole purpose of reaching these achievements.  Adding more utility and value to the guild system is definitely needed. Maybe it will be more then a glorified chat channel / extra bank tab now!
  • Zul’Gurub Being Removed!
    Yep thats right… I am very excited about this. I just hope its executed right. I hope ZG is taken completely out… With out any of the mounts ever being obtainable again! Yea I am that ass that wants his Swift Zulian Tiger to become even more rare! Why? Because I need to validate my existence in this game and its one of the few ways I can laud it over others by whipping my tiger out.

Granted this is not the whole list! But its a good start. I really am looking forward to this expansion and revitalizing RogueSpot with it! WotLK has been out for so long that everything is stale. All the valid styles of play have been determined, all the bosses killed and achievements reached. Writing about any of it just gets you pointed and laughed at.

~Cerias Shadows

 

By Fire be Purged!

On September 14, 2010, in Monologue, by Cerias Shadows

So last nite about 2am while I was adding modules to the forum I managed to damage it to the point I could not recover it. Ended up doing a complete reinstall / data migration from scratch.

I took the do over as an opportunity. One of the things I have really wanted to do is get the user email confirmation working again.  Well I finally got it working! RogueSpot.com now uses google apps for the domain as well. All email confirmations are sent out via smtp through google servers and so far as I have tested are a ton more reliable!

This also brings up point number two. I have purged damn near every account on RogueSpot Forums. How could I possibly do this! It was easy! The moment we got the new forums up and unlocked spam bots started hitting them instantly with long dormant accounts controlled through the old spam acp mods. So as a premptive first strike I deleted all accounts from the users table where posts = 0. Pretty simple. If you have ever said anything on the RogueSpot forums in the nearly 5 years the forums have been online your account was preserved. If you have been the ultimate ninja lurker then I apologize but you will have to reregister your account.

Hopefully this will be significantly less painful then the last time around! User email verification should now work and our RogueSpot moderator team has new tools courtesy of the phpBB3 upgrade that should make administering the boards much easier. From what I can tell they can ban people much easier. :-)

Thats not to say I am done here. I have a ton of stuff that needs to happen for the forums. Which means theres the possibility I could blow them up again! I have to add some nice roguely templates and then see how bad the spammers hit the site. WordPress’ Akismet plugin is already owning up on potential spammers… and at least one member…

Sorry Heavendenies.

Just a note if you post a comment I have to approve it. If your comment is filled with sarcastic ridicule of the site I will probably post it.. If it is filled with links to porn… probably not. (I keep those for myself)

Like always this is THE Rogue Community! Any and all Rogue are welcome to contribute in anyway they see fit. Whether it be commenting on posts / posting in forums / blogging for RogueSpot / or just Lurking!

~Cerias Shadows

 

Forum Upgrade!

On September 13, 2010, in Notifications, by Cerias Shadows

I have started a forum upgrade which is currently in progress. We have installed PHPBB3 and are now backing up our PHPBB2 database. Hopefully everything will go as planned!

7:53pm EST Update: The forum upgrade has completed, you will be seeing theme and other changes to the forum over the next couple days but that shouldn’t cause any further interruption for the roguespot community. Thanks for your patience and welcome to the new and improved Roguespot. -Khormid (Admin)

 

For the Horde!

On September 13, 2010, in Achievements, by Cerias Shadows

This is an achievement that I really thought would not happen. I rarely see groups for this on my server and I am not that motivated to create my own. One nite however, bingo. Unfortunately the raid leader only needed Darnassus or something like that. Ok no worries I would take whatever I can get.

We formed up and ran into the Night Elf city. Dropped that sexy Nelf like I drop a Mac Snack Wrap from McDonalds. Gawd those are delicious and now they have the Angus wraps. Err…. back to the matter at hand. So Night Elf girly down. Our Raid Leader encouraged by his groups epicness says… ok lets do the next one. Back to the boats in Auberdine!

We did the little goat peoples leader in next and it was probably the most difficult he feared us all over the place. Mind you we have like 20 people so he dropped just the same. The war drums were going now. On to Stormwind! I start thinking positive thoughts… this is gonna happen tonite! But fate has a funny way of putting you in place.  10% left on Stormwind city leader guy… Dead! Awww… darn! I will just sit here on the ground til he goes down… and believe me hes going down … like a… oh well… you get the idea.

Then a flash of green lights distracts me… whats this… oh no… the cable modem… its stopped blinking… no… let it just be a hiccup… a single second of packet loss… No no no! Disconnected! Ok no worries… Loging in! I load up the game! Yes hes not down yet… but wait… I just auto released! What The F…

Thats right folks if you disconnect while dead the game helps you by auto releasing you to the nearest grave yard. In this case… somewhere in red ridge mountains. I missed the achievement. Well the rest of the nite went flawlessly got the Dorf King!

But my achievement is incomplete and everyone else in the raid is riding home on their Brown War Bears. This goes on for what feels like a month but was probably a solid week or two. Another For the Horde raid! And Luck! First and only stop is Stormwind! We get about 12 level 80s and head out. People are already starting to question the raid. Do we have enough?

Sure we do! We ride into Stormwind and wow… this is what it is to fail at life. Half the raid dies to guards and whatever else. Tank says screw it and engages…. and I have a split second to decide what to do… aww whatever we engage the 6-8 of us that actually got to the boss. Everything is going great til about 80 percent! Suddenly an 80 pally shows up to try and make things difficult. Then a resto druid. All in total we had about 2-3 players at all times during the fight from 80%-10% trying to kill us off.

The group is ticking along slowly but surely the bosses health is dropping and occasionally an alliance player gets deathgripped to us and pwned quickly before we return to the boss. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the Tank and Healer on this encounter as they did an amazing job.

What a great adrenaline rush! This is what I have been missing from wow for quite a while. Especially on the PVP side of things. The feel of my heart pounding in my chest! I was so pumped from that run I jumped on my Swift Zulian Tiger and ran around in circles in Dalaran! Damn good fights!

~Cerias Shadows

 

Unbelievable Luck!

On September 12, 2010, in Achievements, by Cerias Shadows

Since I have come back to WoW. I have had some great luck with a variety of loot rolls, drops, groups, acheivements, etc. However this one was pretty amazing and it was not just the drop but the circumstances leading up to it.

When I finally got a decent PVP gear set on me I started looking for fun things to do. Fun is a relative term folks. For me… camping a mob in everquest that spawned once every 18 hours and could skip spawns was the height of fun. Besides I have always wanted a kitty cat mount and felt slighted that I could not prove myself with the Wintersaber Trainers as a member of the Horde.

First I researched the fight. I somewhat remembered the fight from back in the day but I saw video after video of him being bugged and soloed by a rogue, mage, druid, etc. When I finally got to the instance I decided to clear the trash… no biggie… level 60 raid trash… hah. Pull… WIPE!

Ok so Axe throwers still pwn pretty hard in groups of three. With a perma knock down / stun. After a couple of attempts to glitch Thekal and then a couple of times trying to solo him straight up I started enlisting the help of people to Duo him.

The first Pally I did it with it took us damn near 20 minutes because we had both forgotten that you had to kill all three of the mobs at the same time. After that run I did it once or twice more with random people before I came across a Druid named Dribble that already had the tiger mount but wanted the raptor mount. So kill number 5 went flawlessly and then on kill 6… bam!

So not only did it drop for me on the 6th attempt I got it done with someone who already had the mount and did not roll against me. Someone who was in fact quite enraged at the speed at which I acquired my mount. To hear him tell the tale it took him the better part of a year and half.

So what now? I still run ZG helping Dribble try and complete his collection of mounts by obtaining a raptor mount. I have no desire for that mount as it is not nearly as cool as the Tiger. I have been attempting to get the Raven mount though.

~Cerias Shadows

 

A Fresh Start

On September 10, 2010, in Monologue, by Cerias Shadows

Well I had the intention of bringing RogueSpot back from the dead… Importing all the old articles from my blogger blog and moving forward with this shiny new fangled wordpress crap. I got the import working and imported 279 odd articles and started going through them. The first 20 I read were complete crap. Then I noticed that all the import links were broken. So the import was pointless. I scrapped it. Honestly if your still coming to RogueSpot… WTF is wrong with you, the site has been dead for 3 years with just the forum community keeping it together. K with that out of the way… Thank You for being ridiculously loyal.

So a fresh start it is. I have to admit I like how wordpress.org is put together and RogueSpot.com finally got migrated to a new server that takes full advantage of its features. So I have been pondering how to go about writing for RogueSpot.com again. The reason I started this whole blog in the first place was because I enjoyed doing it. Not because I was some l33t rogue but more because I was totally addicted to wow and needed a hobby that was wow related that didn’t involve being logged in. I think I have decided on telling stories, posting about achievements and maybe the random nugget of information I come across if its not to stale.

Since I am still gearing myself up after coming back to the game sitting at around 5.6k gs PVE / PVP some of the stuff I post might be a bit outdated… you may have already heard it… watched the movie… got the t shirt… literally. However, I find myself in a position where I need to write for my own entertainment first and if I manage that I just might entertain a few readers in the process.

With that said… I still want to have guest bloggers, resident bloggers, whatever… If you enjoy WoW, enjoy the Rogue class to the point where your other 80 is a Rogue and like to write, then I would love to post your articles.

~Cerias Shadows