[Rogue-OT] Sandy's 14 and I'm rogue bitten

Sandy turned 14 without me even noticing. I'm in the middle of some "whack trolls and collect x jujus" quest and WHAM, the sparkly colors are flying. Leveling combat rogues is, after your third point in Sinister Strike, E-Z.

I know some of this is simply because I want to start playing "for real" again, but I've got to say, Sandy finally got me hooked on Combat Rogues. The DPS is insane. After dropping a third point into improved sinister strike, she's hemorrhaging DPS. Greens have started dropping like crazy too. Before, I had trouble with yellow mobs, now oranges and yellow elites are no problem. And, as I read later is common, she doesn't even really have to rest or stealth any more with all this DPS and recuperate. She just waxes one mob after another, leveling like mad.

But though I'm not wasting any time researching quest rewards or items, I am taking a few seconds to maximize stats with what I've got (duh). One thing that was weird -- my 9.1 DPS green sword is in her off-hand, and 5.8 DPS grey is in the main. Huh? When I tried to swap, I was told I wasn't a high enough level to swap hands. But I could drop the green in the main. I just couldn't get the grey into the off. ARGH.

And I'm WoWHeading and WoWWikiing (hello, out of date). Amazing the simple stuff you don't have to know playing different classes. As any n00b rogue (or any n00b dual weilder) knows, there are main hand, off-hand, and one-hand weapons. The first only goes in the main, etc etc.

The formula for DPS is apparently...

Dual Wield: Effective DPS =
0.76 x ( [Main Hand Weapon's DPS] +
( 0.5 x [Off-Hand Weapon's DPS] ) )

Also important: The power of Ambidexterity. It looks like that gives you 87.5% of normal DPS with your off hand. I'm missing something there, though, b/c that gives you more DPS with your off-hand (87.5) than your main (76)?

Anyway, BAM, rogue theorycrafting. Nothing boggling, but I have hit WoWHead and friends pretty hard. I'm looking at lists of twink weapons (not too useful), quests with decent rewards I can use in either hand, searching good drops, finding craftables, and performing weapon searches, you know, just to see what's out there, like this one that I'll never get, or this one that I could grab if I wax enough murlocs.

And at level 22, heeeeello Slice and Dice. No wonder folks love to play these guys. Though I have to remind myself that Mists kills talents. /sigh I hardly knew ye.

These spells and abilities will be trained in the field, appearing immediately in players' spellbooks once they reach the appropriate level. As a result, there will no longer be a need to visit class trainers save to re-spec or purchase Dual Specialization, keeping players engaged and doing what they enjoy.

The more things change, the more crufty old players like have to complain about.

She reminds me of Jal now -- a character I started playing just to see what things were like, no real time spent investigating playstyles, no time wasted (particularly with Sandy) comparing items or figuring out builds. Just grabbing what seemed to make the most sense until, surprise!, you turn the corner and are addicted. I even spent time leveling her cooking. We've bonded.

And finally, I won't keep posting this stuff any more, but here's one final "Sandy's vanishing wardrobe" post. Perhaps I'll follow up with a more sustained post later, but let's just say I didn't really notice Jal's clothes being quite as annoyingly bare.

Before and after...

Who designed this stuff? If you don't want your daughter wearing it, it shouldn't be something a game for kids is using as an easily achieved, low level item either. I'd say it shouldn't be a higher level item either, but I'm betting the number of under fifteen year-olds with tiered armor is much lower than the general WoW population. If you must be crass, do it responsibly [as if that wasn't oxymoronic].

Dev Watercooler discusses questing past 85

It's an interesting discussion, and good to see (duh) that Blizzard realizes there are people who enjoy questing more than instancing -- or at least those whose lifestyles support 20 minutes (sometimes 2 minutes!) of questing, not and hour or five of instancing and raiding. There should be multiple endgames.

Here's some of their take:

In the absence of gaining levels, there are still ways to reward players who want to continue questing or playing through quest-like experiences. Here are some things (there may be more) that might encourage players like this to stick around:

Participation in an epic story
A sense of progress
Discovery of something new or unexpected each day
Earning character customization (including cool mounts!)
Earning fun toys
Making your character more powerful

That's a good start. Story and gear are certainly my two. I want something memorable. That's been rare. I also want to be able to run instances without detracting from the party. The Catch-22 of having to run an instance to get instance-ready gear is a real pita. And when you don't get to instance that much, you want to overgear slightly to make up for your gameplay. I can PvE with the best of 'em. Not so much run Shadowfang.

We've grappled with this problem before, and we'll continue to tinker with solutions. The Isle of Quel'Danas provided people with a great sense of progression, at least on a realm-wide level, and it sure felt epic. The Argent Tournament definitely gave players a sense of personal progress, as well as lots of fun toys.

Ewww. The Argent Tournament stunk. STUNK. Not fun. The Isle was at least an easy, visually impressive grind, and I got to put my items to good use waxing demons, so there was a little strat going from quest to quest, but it was still more grindy than epic storyline. They're overselling themselves here.

The Guardians of Hyjal are getting smart in patch 4.2. They're not just assaulting the Firelands with hardcore raiding guilds… they're attacking that place with everything they've got. That includes you, solo players! We've created a whole zone dedicated to daily questing. There are some 60 new quests in total -- that's about half a zone's worth of quest content. While the raiders are concentrating on taking down the likes of Ragnaros, you'll be securing the rest of his fiery domain.

There's also a story here, a chronicle of a vicious, knock-down, drag-out fight that begins in Hyjal and progresses -- over the course of weeks -- across the mountaintop and then into the Firelands themselves...

The progression is personal: you won’t see it happen until you make it happen.

Well, let's hope. I did enjoy the story in HyJal the most, though Therazane was the most visually impressive and the Wildhammer Clan the most memorable. The developers essentially beg you to beta test Firelands in the Watercooler piece, asking you to tell them where the storyline ain't hot. W[hy]tf do I want to see the storyline to tell you how to make the storyline better? The whole point of being a causal quester is that I like to run through the stuff once. If I just loved questing and didn't mind seeing content over again, I'd be an alt-a-holic.

And though Matlocker, prot-boy extraordinaire is now 21, I realized this week that it's been six years since I last quested in Duskwood. SIX YEARS. That's how long I like between doing and repeating my quests. I hope they go PTR to roll-out for Firelands in less than 6 years. And even then I want a cataclysm in between and a good reason -- Recruit-a-Friend and a friend -- before I'll run it.

Much of the motivation here is nostalgia. Just look at my complaints about what they did to Stitches and Acheus. I'm upset about a sword I never used, for heaven's sake. I'm not replaying just for fun. I'm not going to run the PTR and then run Firelands again when it's released. I've no interest in "What If" Jalindrine. I want good story and gear that rewards my serious questing and allows me to enjoy the periodic instance the first time.

/thus ends the lesson ;^)

Alt Ding -- Prot 20 19

Not real exciting, but I did grab the MacBook to log back into my alt account for a few minutes last night and dinged my prot warrior to 20 19. I think this means I'm nearly ready for a mount (apparently supposed to get a letter about it soon when I hit 20). Wow, I know I'm a "walked to and from school in the snow, uphill both ways, pelted with tiny rocks" kind of guy here, but sheesh, nerf. That's quick, and I'm not even using heirlooms. He's already half-way to Revered with Darn, but that still means he's far enough away that he's going to have to get a mount from someone else. It's been so long since I had to check this out... and before I had a guildie have pity on me, as I remember being 40 without a mount because I kept putting money into new weapons.


Darkshore was actually quite fun this go through, though I'm not quite done. Some lame stuff, sure, but the quests culminating around the vortex in the middle of the zone was a good lore mnemonic. I really don't remember much from the first go with Jal other than Gubber, the Highborne (and the fairly spooky shrieks), some Naga-ish guys, killing crabs, and the corrupted fauna. I guess there was that mechno-something on the beach I had to wax too. But as far as lore or storyline, the new Darkshore does much better. Good elemental invasion/Twilight Hammer tie-in, we see the Highborne again, and the early appearance of Malfurion is nice. Visuals are more impressive (see fire, above), though they would have killed my iBook G4 in 2005.

I feel a little like a tourist playing it as a gnome, but when your buddy's a night elf, well...

Slowly getting Jal's life up at Picasa. Levels 14-28 are up now. Not sure I have anything earlier. Feel like I should be getting Archeology points for doing this.

Guess that's all. Enjoy the Tuesday downtime.

Ah yes, one more update. Got a new monitor for my office to go dual monitor. Bagged a nice dual monitor stand, and have one in portrait now to preview webpages as I code them. It's a good monitor out of the box, fwiw. Very clear. Much better than my previous monitor's LCD. Speakers can barely be heard over my office fan, but I took the externals off of my desk immediately to save space. The price of the monitor is back up to $130, but it was a steal at $110 shipped.

But the upshot for you, of course, is that Jal'll be going to 1920x1080 screenshots when I'm playing on the tower.