Chronicles of Raivyne, Rogue of Thunderhorn

Glancing Blows in tBC

2006-11-03T14:51:00.000-06:00

This article is a work in progress... for now i'll just post the formulas relevant to Glancing blows.

formulas:

Chance of Glancing Blow:

(NPC level - Character level -1)*15 + 10

Damage lost on a Glancing Blow:

(NPC Defense Skill - Your Weapon Skill - 5)*.03

The Burning Crusade Combat Ratings

2006-11-03T09:48:00.000-06:00

I've put this all up on roguespot.com in the secret forum that hasn't gone live yet... posting it here too. also including a post by koeppen with some other numbers, set totals, etc.

Raivyne wrote:

OK here's the info i have and the math i come up with.
hope it's useful here cause its not doing anyone any
good just sticking in my head! I'm not going into
spell stuff or defense... just what i consider the 4
basics for rogues (i'll look at resilience ratings
later!)

At level 60...

Weapon Skill Rating: 2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill
Hit Rating: 10 rating grants 1% hit chance
Critical Strike Rating: 14 rating grants 1% critical
strike chance
Dodge Rating: 12 rating grants 1% dodge

At level 70

Weapon Skill Rating: 3.9 rating grants 1 weapon skill
Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance
Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical
strike chance
Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge

~~~~~~

Blue post said that combat ratings were rounded to the
nearest .1, which accounts for the ~.01 descrepancies
i'm finding in some of my conversions.

~~~~~~

rating point scaling from 60 - 70

Weapon Skill - @ lvl 60 +1 = +.6410 @ lvl 70
Hit % - @ lvl 60 1% = +.6329 @ lvl 70
Crit % - @ lvl 60 1% = +.6334 @ lvl 70
Dodge % - @ lvl 60 1% = +.6349 @ lvl 70

the average of these conversions is @ lvl 60 1 =
.63555 @ lvl 70

~~~~~~~

Agility Conversions

1) We have to assume that blizzard is going to allow
the current lvl 60 gear to keep its value (i.e. 1%
crit on t1/2/3 level 60 required armor is still going
to be worth 1% crit).

2) This means that once BC hits your 1% crit will
read: 14 Crit Rating or something to that effect. Your
Maladeth would say 10 Weapon Skill Rating, etc, etc.

So, given these assumptions this is how agility will
be weighed on a level 70 player:

Crit %

if 29.5 agi = 14 RPs; then 46.5678 agi = 22.1 RPs = 1%
crit

(oddly enough the conversion figure here is .6334;
just like the conversion above for the rating points)

Dodge %

if 15 agi = 12 RPs; then 23.6220 agi = 18.9 RPs = 1%
dodge

(again the conversion figure here is .6349 just as the
rating point conversion above)

~~~~~~~~~

Maladath weapon skill rating on a lvl 70

Maladath receives 10 weapon skill RPs on a level 60
character (4*2.5).

In the hands of a level 70 the 10 RPs will only garner
2.5641 weapon skill (2.5641*3.9 = 9.99999).

~~~~~~~~~~

for every +1% hit on lvl 60 required armor/weapons a
level 70 character will receive +.6329% hit.

~~~~~~~~~~

i hope this makes the T1/2/3 conversions easier!!!

for an approximation i would just use the average
figure for scaling (from above it was .63555). using
the .63555 as the figure for a 10 level change, you
can guesstimate that each level any given stat/bonus
becomes .063555 LESS effective than it was the
previous level. whether or not blizzard has made each
level scale perfectly is an entirely different matter.
for now the approximation should suffice.

i tend to think that each conversion above worked out
slightly different because of the .1 rounding in RPs.
so, given the fact that a blue stated for 2% crit on a
level 60 a level 70 would receive 1.27% and this
conversion works out to be .635 (very close to the
average conversion above), i think it is safe to
assume that .635 is indeed the conversion figure to be
used.

Therefore @ level 70

1% crit = 46.4566 = ~46.5
1% dodge = 23.6220 = ~ 23.6

both match (within at least .1) of the figures
obtained via the original conversions i calculated.

~~~~~~~~~

sorry big huge brainstorm post!!! LOL

______________________________________________________

Koeppen wrote:

Given the current know values of:

14 Rp= 1%crit at 60

22.1 Rp = 1%crit at 70

The scale is .81 Rp per level and 1.7Agi increase
needed to get 1% crit

LEVEL Rp Agi
60 14.00 29.50

61 14.81 31.20

62 15.62 32.90

63 16.43 34.60

64 17.24 36.30

65 18.05 38.00

66 18.86 39.70

67 19.67 41.40

68 20.48 43.10

69 21.29 44.80

70 22.10 46.50

Dodge scaling is .69 Rp increase per level and .833
Agi increase per level to get 1%.

LEVEL Rp Agi

60 12.00 14.50

61 12.69 15.33

62 13.38 16.17

63 14.07 17.00

64 14.76 17.83

65 15.45 18.67

66 16.14 19.50

67 16.83 20.33

68 17.52 21.16

69 18.21 22.00

70 18.90 22.83

----------------------------------

I prefer the following values for Dodge...

1% dodge =
LEVEL RPs AGI
60 12.00 15.00
61 12.69 15.86
62 13.38 16.73
63 14.07 17.59
64 14.76 18.45
65 15.45 19.32
66 16.14 20.18
67 16.83 21.04
68 17.52 21.90
69 18.21 22.77
70 18.90 23.63

-----------------------------------

Raivyne:

i've got data for itemized values on T.5 - T3... the format sucks in copy/paste mode though... so going to upload the excel files somewhere and put the link on the blog.

here's the set values i come out with:

T3:
Complete Set Dodge (60) 10.87%
Complete Set Dodge (70) 6.90%
Complete Set Crit (60) 15.53%
Complete Set Crit (70) 9.86%
Complete Set Hit (60) 7.00%
Complete Set Hit (70) 4.45%

T2.5:

Complete Set Dodge (60) 10.47%
Complete Set Dodge (70) 6.65%
Complete Set Crit (60) 8.32%
Complete Set Crit (70) 5.29%
Complete Set Hit (60) 4.00%
Complete Set Hit (70) 2.54%

T2:

Complete Set Dodge (60) 15.53%
Complete Set Dodge (70) 9.86%
Complete Set Crit (60) 10.88%
Complete Set Crit (70) 6.91%
Complete Set Hit (60) 3.00%
Complete Set Hit (70) 1.91%

T1:

Complete Set Dodge (60) 12.60%
Complete Set Dodge (70) 8.00%
Complete Set Crit (60) 11.41%
Complete Set Crit (70) 7.25%
Complete Set Hit (60) 2.00%
Complete Set Hit (70) 1.27%

T.5:

Complete Set Dodge (60) 12.27%
Complete Set Dodge (70) 7.79%
Complete Set Crit (60) 7.24%
Complete Set Crit (70) 4.60%
Complete Set Hit (60) 2.00%
Complete Set Hit (70) 1.27%

...

2006-09-25T13:48:00.000-05:00

Still working on a hemo v. ss comparison (been busy at work, where most of my genius happens...)

After that i'll be crunching SnD and Evis numbers (thanks to a friend for shaking his finger at me for NOT using SnD; thus prompting me to investigate it's merit further).

A rogue's work is never done.

Update

2006-09-14T11:51:00.000-05:00

Haven't forgot about the blog again... will work on update this weekend!

Blood Clot

2006-09-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

I am happy to announce that on Thursday, August 31st, after two whole days, the bleeding has stopped!

So what if I wasted 95g?

The Story:

On Tuesday night in MC, I hated Hemo. Call me egotistical if you want, but I just couldn’t stand not out-damaging people. Granted I’m not #1 on the damage meters anyway – I don’t have the gear for that, but I just couldn’t handle #10ish. Yeah, /wrists… I know, I know.

Anyway, I went into Tuesday’s MC raid prepared for my new role as a utility class. I was really having a crummy day all around anyway, so I was a bit downhearted about it. Things perked up when Garr dropped a nice, shiny Brutality Blade though! A warrior and another rogue also rolled for it. The warrior almost immediately passed it to me (<3)… the dagger rogue almost took it…

Almost…

I almost stabbed him in the eyeballs and ripped his throat out.

Almost.

I did manage to restrain my angst and just type a mere “G-D it!” (/gasp!) I don’t say GD often.

Lucky for me, he too decided to pass. I’m not sure what prompted him to pass, as he had already been congratulated and told me sorry… I am thankful all the same.

I was as giddy as a schoolgirl with a new dress! My Nelf toon was flipping around for the rest of the night, non-stop. All the while there was a nagging question in my head that just wouldn’t stop repeating itself…

I wonder how hard I can hit stuff now…

Followed by the **spuelch** sound each time I mashed my “Sinister Strike” key…

Day…
…yam

You see, I like to hit stuff. The harder I hit it, the better I feel. I do love the sound effect for Hemo though… It sounds like you just opened a few vital organs. Unfortunately, its bark is better than its bite.

The next day I headed to BWL only to find out that one of our top two damagers left the guild. He took a huge chunk of damage with him when he went… making the lack of damage I was doing even more prominent in my mind.

After the raid, I spec’d back to my beloved Combat Swords. I kept the same Combat Sword spec from the freebee, with one change… I dropped Endurance to fill out aggression. Now I’m back up on the damage meters (even with my constant disconnects… I hate you blizzard!!).

I’m a happy rogue.

~raiv

Raivyne Is Hemorrhaging!! Get a Doctor – STAT!

2006-08-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

Raivyne Is Hemorrhaging!! Get a Doctor – STAT!

Ruh? WTH? Does this mean what I think it means?!?!? I’m afraid so good citizens of Azeroth… Your trusty Combat Sword Rogue has gone soft err ahh umm Subtle.

ZOMG WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!??

Psst… I am still asking myself the same thing…

Anyway, I’m an adventurous sort of gal so when some rogue said, “man I wish one of us was Hemo” I thought hmm… I’ve been hemo before, and I kinda liked it… Why not try it out again? There was also some mention of raid damage being increased by @ 35% if we had a Hemo rogue. Now, I don’t know about all that… the figure sounds kind of high to me considering Hemo only affects Physical damage. However, I’m too lazy to run the numbers myself, so I’ll accept the figure.

Hey, what the heck – right?

On Tuesday, August 29, 2006 I showed up to raid Hemo – 16/5/30

Assassination Tree: Same as my original 1.12 spec

Combat Tree: 3/3 Imp Gouge and 2/2 Imp SS (oops… meant 2/5 Lightning Reflexes… force of habit)

Subtlety Tree:
MoD – 5/5
Sleight of Hand – 2/2 (Reduces the chance you are hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2% and increases the threat reduced by your feint ability by 20%)
Elusiveness – 2/2 (Reduces the cool down of your vanish and blind abilities by 1.5 minutes)
Camouflage – 2/5 (Increases speed in stealth by 6% and reduces stealth cool down by 2 seconds)
Initiative – 3/3 (75% chance to add an extra combo point when using ambush, garrote or cheap shot)
Ghostly Strike – 1/1 (does 125% weapon damage and increases dodge chance by 15% for 7 seconds)
Imp Sap – 3/3 (90% chance to return to stealth after sapping a target)
Serrated Blades – 3/3 (ignores 5 armor/per level of your target’s armor and increases rupture damage 30%)
Heightened Senses – 2/2 (Increased stealth detection and reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4%)
Preparation – 1/1
Hemorrhage – 1/1
Deadliness – 5/5 (AP increased by 10%)

What I like:

Sleight of Hand – Assuming your feint normally reduces 100 pts of threat (pulled a number out of thin air for argument’s sake) then it would reduce 120 pts with this talent. Reduced chance to be hit by a crit is just the frosting.

Elusiveness – I always did like this talent, it’s saved my butt a few times!

Ghostly Strike – I love this attack! It crits for like 800 damage (for me) and increases my survivability for 7 seconds, every 20 seconds… It crits a lot btw! (could have just been luck…)

Serrated Blades – any attack that increases my damage to enemies – I like. Increased rupture damage… meh I don’t care.

Heightened Senses – Increases stealth detection (great PvP talent!!) Reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4% (I barely got hit by firemaw’s spells with this – could have just been a coincidence, but I don’t really believe in coincidences…)

Deadliness – I LOVE THIS!! I have always been a believer in AP (yes AP over crit for me. AP in the form of AGI? even better), so this talent just made me drool. With the 1.12 changes I hunger for AP even more.

What I hated

Talents I had to use just to get to hemo. It’s like this – hemo does better damage with swords, but most of the talents going down are completely useless for a sword rogue in PvE (and PvP for a lot of them). I mean how many times do you cheap shot or garrote anything in a 40 man? Garrote, ok maybe… Cheap Shot – fuhgeddaboudit 90%+ of mobs are immune to it.

Imp Sap is fun for PvP, but for 40 raids its completely useless. Camo could be useful (help get to traps in suppression room faster) but there are so many more rogue talents more useful for raiding.

As for a LOT of the other talents on the way down…

Daggers much?

Ick.

My conclusion?

**News Flash**

Going hemo as a raider makes you a 100% utility class FIRST, damage class last.

Duh.

It’s not that your damage is so horrible that you aren’t even on the meters, in fact I was surprised with how much damage I do as a hemo spec. However, it’s a big shocker going from top 3 – 5 to top 10 –15 as a ROGUE. I went from watching yellow ticks of mostly 500+ to yellow ticks of 200ish. My white damage MH crits were in the 700 – 800’s.

That hurt.

A lot.

Hold me… Please?

~raiv

Holy, FREEEEEEEEEE RESPEC!!!! Batman!

2006-08-31T14:18:00.000-05:00

16/35/0

The Breakdown:

Assassination Talents – 16 pts
Improved Eviscerate – 3/3 (+15% damage to Eviscerate)
Malice – 5/5 (+5% to crit)
Murder – 2/2 (+2% (all) damage to Humanoids, Giants, Dragonkin…)
Relentless Strikes – 1/1 (20% chance per combo point to resore 25 energy on finishers)
Lethality – 5/5 (+30% crit damage for Sinister Strike*)
*yes there are more, but they don’t concern me…

Combat Talents – 35 pts
Improved Gouge – 3/3 (Increases the duration of gouge by 1.5seconds)
Improved Sinister Strike – 2/2 (Decreases the energy cost of Sinister Strike by 5)
Deflection – 5/5 (+5% chance to parry)
Riposte – 1/1 (Deals 150% weapon damage and disarms the opponent for 6 seconds)
Precision – 5/5 (+5% chance to hit)
Endurance – 2/2 (Decreases the cool down of Sprint and Evasion by 1.5 minutes)
Improved Sprint – 2/2 (100% chance to remove movement impairing effects when sprint is activated)
Dual Wield Specialization – 5/5 (Increases the damage of your OH weapon by 50%)
Blade Flurry – 1/1 (Increases attack speed by 20%; attacks hit up to other 2 nearby enemies – lasts 15 seconds)
Sword Specialization – 5/5 (5% chance to gain an extra attack)
Weapon Expertise – 2/2 (+5 to weapon skill)
Aggression – 1/3 (+2% damage to Sinister Strike and Eviscerate)
Adrenaline Rush – 1/1 (+100% energy regeneration for 15 seconds)

What I changed…
Assassination Tree: Picked up 2 pts in murder and dropped 3 in Ruthlessness.

Why? Ruthlessness was a 60% chance to award a combo point after a finisher… Murder ALWAYS does 2% more damage…

Murder Math
Assume – SS = 500 damage/1000 crit
Assume – 5 pt Evis – 1000/2000 crit
Assume – 15 SS + 3 – 5 pt Evis per minute (ideal conditions)
Assume – 25% crit chance

Average SS damage over 100 hits = 625
Average Evis damage over 20 hits = 1250

SS damage over 1 min = 9375 (625*15)
Evis damage over 1 min = 3750 (1250*3)

Average SS damage with Murder = 637.5
Average Evis damage with Murder = 1275

SS damage over 1 min with Murder = 9562.5 (637.5*15)
Evis damage over 1 min with Murder = 3825 (1275*3)

The difference:
1 min damage without murder = 13,125
1 min damage with murder = 13,387.5

That’s 262.5 more damage in one minute with murder than without which = @ 4.38 DPS

Gamebreaking?

Nope, but I doubt the math for 1 to 2 extra combo point(s) per minute (based on 60% chance and 3 finishers a min) comes close to that…

AND I saved a point with Murder…

Combat Tree: Dumped Improved Kick for Endurance. Dumped 2 pts of Aggression for Weapon Expertise. Last but not least… with my extra point from dropping Ruthlessness and my spare point I always have with a combat build I took Improved Sprint.

Why? Endurance > Improved Kick IMO for PvE or PvP. I really only took the 2 pts from Aggression for lack of anything better to dump. Lastly… Improved Sprint rocks! That is all.

Seriously though, I dumped some damage ability for some PvP talents, so I could play with them. They were just too tempting to resist…

All in all this is a nice little spec. I saw some decent improvement in damage from 1.11 to 1.12, despite dropping 2 points of aggression. What can I say? I love the combat tree almost as much as I <3 my swords!

Greetings Sports Fans!!!

2006-08-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

I am for real going to update this blog! (really this time) I have lots of things to write about, just haven’t made the time to do it.

Articles to follow (in no particular order):

What I did with my free 1.12 respec
What I did with my 40g 1.12 respec and why
The xpac rogue
Guild Premades
Thoughts on AB (might not do this one…)
Darnassus: The low level horde invasion. (Illidan server)
Nefarian Gets Neutered by the new Destined
Down to business with Discord
Photoshop Journey
A New Chapter for Shadow Guard

I will try to finish one a night for the next week or so.

~raiv

Update coming soon!

2006-08-11T09:30:00.000-05:00

OMG I had no idea it had been over a month since my last entry! I went on vacation for two weeks and everything just went to shit! lol anyway i'll write up and update this weekend from home. And i'll try to do weekly updates from now on.

~raiv

Updates Galore!

2006-07-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

OK maybe not galore, but I do a have a two.

1. Raivyne has left Shadow Guard and joined Destined. Destined up until a couple of weeks ago was one of the best guilds on the server, and probably still are really. A couple of weeks ago, the guild Hâted disbanded and a lot of the members from Destined left to form Hâvok (with some of the Hâted people). I have been wanting to raid more than the once a week that Shadow Guard does, and happened to have a friend in Destined (you may remember Mal from previous posts). Lo and behold they needed rogues! I was amazed, nobody ever needs a rogue. LOL

I went on my first raid with them last night and had a great time! We did Ony and MC up to Shaz. Everyone seemed really nice and I think we worked well together for having quite a few new recruits. Tonight we finish it off.

Oh got my Nightslayer pants last night! J I was happy, I really didn’t expect to get anything for a month or more. I also got the Aged Core Leather Gloves after I saw no dagger rogues wanted them and they are now part of my FR gear! Handy too cause I didn’t have any FR gloves yet. The nightslayer gloves also dropped, but I passed on them so the other rogue recruit that lost the roll on the pants could have them.

2. Maudalyne is level 40 now, never did really get around to power leveling her… LOL I’ll be working on her on my off nights from destined.

Onward Ho!

2006-06-16T13:25:00.000-05:00

Shadow Guard to enter MC Saturday June 17th. I scheduled a MC run for the guild and I’m hoping for a big turnout. We will see though, attendance has been pretty low lately. We will basically just be rep and mat farming as we don’t have 40 level 60s that are active. We have somewhere between 20 and 30. Hopefully it will be a good raid and will renew some interest in raiding that we seem to have lost lately. I’ve been raiding ZG and AQ20 with some other guilds recently. Its been fun. Got some really good experience on the bosses for when I lead raids in those zones. In AQ I’ve done kurinaxx, the 8 wave encounter – forget the boss’s name on that one, the big bug in the water and Moan. In ZG I’ve done every boss now I believe including Hakkar. I really like AQ btw… Hope to start writing more soon, but unfortunately I can’t write at work as much as I could when I started the blog… writing at home takes up WoW, school and family time…

~raiv

P.S. Maudalyne is level 35 now. Slow but steady on the leveling. Thinking about just digging in to level her though.

Next article comming soon

2006-05-24T11:38:00.000-05:00

Been kinda busy lately and short on inspiration to write. Will do my level best to have an article up sometime this coming weekend (3 day holiday - HOORAY!!!). I should have plenty of time to write something, and plenty of adventure to write about!

Thinking about putting a mage, rogue and preist (maybe) up on the test realm this weekend, so maybe there will be something there. I'd love to get into Naxx!!!

~raiv

One Shot’d

2006-05-16T13:05:00.000-05:00

This past Friday night (May 12th) the guild went to ZG again w/high hopes of downing Venoxis, Jeklik and taking a crack at the Bloodlord. No such luck. We had 10 people that had not been in there before (some had been in, but not with us), so that slowed our set up time (a whole lot). We had to reset him a few million times as well because of little things. By the time we killed the Snake Boy it had gotten so late that peeps had to go. I was pretty drained anyway and ready for a respite, so when the raid broke for the night I was kinda relieved.

We went back the next day for our revenge. Yes, I know the three day timer… well when we got in Friday night the reset time was 7 hrs, so something was screwy. This was fine, it gave us an opportunity to kill Venoxis again. We one-shot’d him and he dropped the same boots that he’s dropped 3 of the 4 times we’ve downed him… ugh.

Then we moved on to the Bat Lady. We lost one of our tanks (surprise family visit), so I got to drag my friend NSND down to ZG!!! (and his guild kindly let him come) After another long set up we one shotted her too. Our first kill on her, although we’ve gotten her to 1% before. I’ll upload a Screenie when I get home today.

Next raid is next Saturday, and I took the liberty of penciling in an MC trash mob run in June… (bout time!)

Madness and Mayhem in Maraudon

2006-05-16T10:15:00.000-05:00

This weeks players:

NSND: The Little Person
Raivyne: Elf One
Kights: Elf Two
Shady: Elf Three
Mal: The Human

After a hard day in AQ NSND finally decided he should get to work on his Nature Resist gear. Apparently Stoneform, while very useful, just isn’t enough (go figure), even with uber tanking skills. So, he asked if I would like to join him and kights on their quest to Mara. Naturally, I said yes. However, before I logged off of my mage I spotted our friend Shady and talked him into coming with us as well. Our warlock friend, Mal (he just can’t get enough abuse!) had inquired about our plans for the night, so we drug him with us to Mara as well. Everyone was 60, except kights’ rogue who was 56. We weren’t terribly worried about healing, so Mal brought his main (lock) instead of his priest. Once the party was fully formed, we had a warrior, 2 rogues, a hunter and a lock.

We did a full boss clear twice, but the exact order escapes me right now. After all, I’ve slept since then (I think). Since the chronological order of events is a bit skewed, I’m going to make up the boss order as I need to.

Our first trip in we went to the purple side first, so we could get to Meshlok (rare spawn). Meshlok wasn’t home just then, so we visited Celebras.

**We interrupt this article for a brief yawn**

A lot of boring stuff happened, and then we began to make our way out. Kights managed to aggro almost a whole room, with only me and shady around to help him. By the time the others made it back we had lost Kights – RIP friend. After this I didn’t see Kights for a while (I think he had trouble getting back to us). In retrospect, I don’t know why we didn’t just summon him to us. Once we finally stopped losing Kights, we started losing Shady.

At one point, Shady says “OK I’m going to walk through and aggro this group, you guys follow me and then I’ll feign death.” It was just about then that he noticed I had already skirted around them without aggroing and without using stealth. He sounded very disappointed when he said “Oh, you made it.” However he decided to do continue his scheme anyway. It wasn’t too long after that when we heard him say “RESISTED?!?”. As soon as I heard the resisted call I hit my stealth button. It was somewhere around this time when Mal and NSND put on their nekkid set and kept on trucking. Of course we all [s]laughed at[/s] mourned the loss of our compadre. RIP Shady, oh and btw – you’re fired. I lost sight of Mal and NSND during this, and I think Kights was still trying to make it back to us… Next thing I know I hear an uh-oh over my speakers, followed by the words keep running! A few laughs, ZOMG’s and one “If I had my armor on I would have made it” later I was staring at 4 dead character portraits in my party. So, I did what any responsible friend would do – I took a Screen Shot of the gimps. (Oh, did I mention that earlier that very day, NSND died in Gnomer – repeatedly? rofl) I’ll upload the screenie when I get home tonight so that everyone can join me in [s]laughing at[/s] mourning the loss of my friends.

Well after I made it out (alive of course) everyone rez’d on the orange side, still nekkid. We all did the obligatory dancing. Night elf men dancing in just a tabard is very entertaining. Suddenly, I had an idea (at this point they all should have ran). I thought it would be neat if we killed the bosses only wearing our weapons and a couple of other pieces of equipment. Mal and NSND readily agreed, but shady and kights were being party poopers. Shady agreed after a little while though, but I don’t think kights ever agreed (can you say square?) So, we headed to Noxxion eager for battle. We killed noxxion with no problems really, but our tank was actually taking damage (I think he got to ½ health or something) and decided he didn’t want to play nekkid anymore. I think everyone else must have agreed, because pretty soon I was the only one left in my skivvies. I reluctantly put my armor back on. It’s amazing how much whining can go on in these kinds of situations…

On our way between bosses I fell behind (again), and what’s even worse – I aggro’d the lil grub worms. I tried to vanish, but for some reason it didn’t work properly and they were still chasing me. So, I did what any good rogue would do, I hit my sprint and ran roughshod through the instance until I caught up with the fellas (FYI the rogue creed is “Live to fight another day”). I think I ended up getting Mal killed (sorry friend), but at least I kept the rogue creed.

While we were making our way to the Giant rock boss (Landslide or some such nonsense), we lost shady (again). Naturally, being the good friends that we are, we summoned him… Into a pack of crocs… which was soon added by a pat of rock elementals… After hearing a few yelps out of him we decided to help him. Of course, we had no choice because the lil bugger FD’d and they aggro’d us. Next thing we know he’s pulling giants into us and FD’ing… and to think, we tried to [s]kill[/s] help him out. Well, I never!

At the end of our Mara event, NSND got a few NR pieces, and shady and I both made out w/a NR trinket. We all made out with a repair bill… well everyone but me… and a ton of laughs.

The fun didn’t end there however, we decided to do a quick run through BRD so Mal could get his key, I could turn in “A Crumpled Up Note, and kights could get some equip (nothing he wanted dropped in Mara – poor kights, his luck didn’t improve in BRD). More about our PvP adventure and my BRD deaths later (yeah, I finally died in BRD).

P.S. I know that nekkid is not actually spelled nekkid. That is all.

Maudalyne the Mage

2006-05-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

So, I took a break from my rogue for most of the weekend. Instead, I leveled up my mage. I gotta tell you… I hated my mage. At first. Now that she’s almost lvl 18, and I’ve got someone lvling a rogue right beside me, I like her. It’s definitely a different aspect of the game. I’ve never been a caster before.

Needing to break for mana was a bit difficult to get used to. I kept mashing my arcane missiles and wondering why they weren’t channeling…! Welcome to the wonderful world of OOM Raivyne. Of course, I can always use my wand a.k.a. mana in a stick, but that’s not nearly as fun. I love AE (Arcane Explosion). I don’t really care for the fire spells so much. They take a bit longer to cast it seems, and don’t look nearly as cool as my arcane ones… Flamestrike is cool though but it’s a 3 second cast. I also can’t decide between frost or fire with arcane. I’m filling out my arcane tree first since I’ve been using arcane spells the most.

Polymorph is very fun. If I were on a PvP server I would just spend all of my time Polymorphing people and running down the road to poly some more. I detest dueling, I’d much rather do some PvP. However, I would like to duel my friends with my mage just so I can /sheep, /point, /poke and /laugh. These duels would have the potential to go on for days – or until I lost all of my friends... Sheeping rats is fun, because they attack you after they come unsheeped. I just think its funny that this happens. Squirrels just run away. :/ very disappointing that.

Now I’d like to take a moment to discuss Troggs. I hate troggs, and so do all of my friends. Admit it, you hate troggs too. Why do we hate troggs? Well because they run so they don’t have to fight you one on one when you are beating them. Nor do they let you fight them 5 on 1! How rude. Of course, this is assuming you can begin the fight against just one, more often than not you get 3 or so, and then those run to bring more. Oh, and lest we forget their aggro range seems to be 20 times that of other mobs, so you almost certainly end up fighting the group behind your target group. I’m glad my rogue doesn’t have to fight troggs anymore, her repair bills would put a serious damper on my potion habit!

I'm sure Maudalyne will have many more adventures to share with everyone (all 3 of you) that reads my blog. Viva la squishie!

Playtime in Azeroth

2006-05-03T12:46:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I started what was a simple quest. Somehow during the completion of this quest, it became an eight hour extravaganza full of advernture, antics and plenty of killing. It also turned out to be a fairly profitable farming expedition.

We started out by going to Silithus to kill the Duke of Cinders for part of the upgrade quests. As you may have imagined, it turned out to be a bit more complicated that just arriving in the zone, summoning him and killing him. We had to get items to summon lesser elementals that dropped the items to turn in to be able to summon the four greater ones (i.e. the duke). By the time we actually got him summoned and killed we were having such a time that we just kept right on summoning and killing, and getting more summoning mats to summon more and kill them.

We also had some PvP encounters, most of them involving the same stupid hunter… Alone + Flagged = GG. Every once in a while he would find one of us alone and he would try to kill us. Foolish! I’m not really sure what made him think he could kill any of us before the rest of the crew caught up to him. So, needless to say he died a few times. We were very surprised to run across the same hunter more than an hour later. Yep, you guessed still flagged and still alone. GG. More fun for us.

I also got really tired of swapping clothes during this affair so my rogue ended up spending a lot of the time ½ naked, or in a purple dress, or w/just a guild tabard on top. It was mildly amusing I suppose, particularly to the guys I think. I just really need to get a wardrobe mod… heh.

Somewhere during the adventure we picked up a warlock that we met when we picked him up for a “45 min Baron Run” on his priest a couple weeks prior. The Baron run ended up becoming more of a marathon and one of those “we never speak of this to anyone” events. We had one heck of a time though! I think we ended up clearing out every single mob in the place. Why would we do this, you ask? Well best laid plans… Somehow or another we ended up aggroing every single mob that we were supposed to be skipping. Blame it on bad luck, a drunk hunter, an overtired warrior, or a stupid rogue, but that’s what happened. Apparently the Priest had a good time during the debacle though, because he didn’t hesitate to join our adventure in Silithus.

I don’t really think I’ve illustrated the fun that we had, but well it’s just so hard to recreate those moments and do them justice. I’ll just leave you with this little equation: Good friends + Ventrilo + Evening off = Good Times.

Raivyne's New Gear (Screens)

2006-05-01T20:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I got my Shadowcraft Legs, Shoulders and Boots upgraded this weekend! FINALLY! I really like the dark blue and black better than the old grey and black. It even matches my guild tabard - which i'm sporting to hide my non-matching tunic. I've had a great time with the upgrade quests too, and I don't really mind the time or money I've invested into them. My guild isn't in MC, and I can always make more money. The Darkmantle set is a good option for me now. I may or may not upgrade some of it to ZG gear at a later date... I really like the energy proc!

Champions of the Arena

2006-05-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

So, I had 3 goals for this weekend; 1) Complete “The Challenge” (BRD Arena fight for the Tier .5 upgrades) 2) Get my Shadowcraft Head piece and 3) Get a Painweaver Band from General Drakk in UBRS.

Well, I never made it to UBRS – unless you count the “UBRS” group I joined that somehow ended up in LBRS… /quit raid.

As for the Shadowcraft Cap, well Dark Master Gandling was less than accommodating on that one. /pout. I swear if one more Beaststalker BoP set item drops when there is no hunter in the group I’m just gonna lose it! OK, so really I won’t, but I will make sure to yell in /guild “#@$*%^ BEASTSTALKER @#&%!!!!!!!!!!!” in the same manner I did Sunday. I wasn’t so upset when Valor dropped because it went to the warrior in the group. Not that he needed it, as he has his full Tier 1 set (Might), but he’s collecting it for solo play gear (I think he thinks his protection spec butt will do more damage w/it when he farms… you know I <3 ya enes!) After that second run it was tough to get a group so I said heck with it and bummed around for a few hours until I went to Strat – Baron side – with some guildies. I was soo tired, or I may have enjoyed this run more.

I managed to complete the Arena fight and turn in my old Shadowcraft Legs, Boots and Shoulder pieces for the Darkmantle ones. Woot!!! I’m pretty damned happy about that one. We beat Theldren’s Army without “The Unholy Trinity”, which was pretty darn cool because everything I’ve read said “OMG YOU HAVE TO HAVE A MAGE!!” “ZOMG TAKE TWO!!!” We had a prot spec warrior, a lock, a priest and two rogues. My rogue pal was skeptical as to whether we could get it done w/out a mage, but I had no doubts. We had the lock seduce the goblin, the other rogue sapped the rogue class, I believe we had the lock keep fear on the healer class, or we may have MC’d the healer class (fuzzy I’ve slept since then), our warrior tanked the warrior class and the mage died first. All credit to everyone in the group, if they hadn’t known how to play their class it would have never worked. The poor warlock was seducing, fearing and dotting different targets and he did an outstanding job. The warrior kept saying how useless he was, because he couldn’t taunt or DPS a lot, but I would have rather done the quest with him than without him. More fun with friends. We ended up doing the whole fight another time for fun.

After the arena fight I should have went to Scholo to score my cap, but instead we went to Silithus to work on the next part of the Tier .5 upgrade quest. I had more fun doing this anyway! More on Playtime later…

Oh, and I’m finally wearing my guild tabard, it hides my unmatching armor and matches my new set pieces very well! I’ll upload some pictures later.

Toodles

Venoxis! Sit! Roll Over! Play dead! Good Boy…

2006-05-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

So, in the end once the Guard came together, snake boy was a puddy tat. We had to reset him one time because we had melee run in, but didn’t think about where they were coming from. So, we lost a few healers and casters to the chain lightning effect…

The next time I suggested melee stay to the right of the room away from the casters, that way when they ran in, it would be less likely that the chain connected to the casters. It worked and we had no problems downing him! Everyone was very happy. Here’s a screenie of the crew (we had to borrow a few people from another guild 2 mages and a pally).

Onward to the Bat Cave!!! We attempted the Bat Lady 3 times, and she was at 1% when everyone died the third time. Unfortunately one of the mages had to leave, and we didn’t get another attempt. I’m confident that she would have died had we tried again. I’m also confident that next time I bring a Greater Fire Protection Potion! You see, she would have died if I had not got caught by a fire bomb in mid-bandage when she was at only 30% health… **kick, kick, kick**

Unfortunately I don’t have any screen shot of her near death as I was too busy rooting for the team, and watching everything unravel before my wisp eyes… **kick kick**

Next raid set for Friday night, and I expect we will have the snake, bat and hopefully Bloodlord. If we get the Bloodlord we’ll head to the Spider – Ouch! Not only do I hate spiders, but this spider is particularly nasty. I’m confident that Shadow Guard will figure her out in the near future though.

Now, I bid you adieu.

The Unholy Trinity

2006-04-28T10:09:00.000-05:00

The combination of a Mage, a Warrior and a Priest make what some of us refer to as the Unholy Trinity. It seems that in the WoW world you almost always “need” these three classes. At least 100 times per night I see one of the following in the “Looking For Group” Channel: LF2M for “xyz” need tank and healer; “LF1M for “abc” need a mage”; or similar variations of the same. This seems particularly true for Baron runs. I hear “ZOMG need a mage to AoE the skele adds!!!” “Can’t do Baron w/out a mage!” Sure, a mage makes it a lot easier to complete the run, but are they absolutely necessary? Of course not! If you don’t have a mage, then do you have to have a lock for it? Negatory. You just have to make new plans…

Last night we did a baron run with the following group: Fury spec warrior, Priest, me (sword rogue), beast-master hunter and a feral/resto Druid. I’d done more groups w/out a mage than I had with one – but we always had a lock. So, I admit that I was skeptical about whether or not we could take the Baron and deal w/his skeles before he used them to heal. I’m glad I was wrong. We had the priest handle the AoE w/her holy nova spell and the druid main heal the tanks. It worked beautifully.

Now, I just need to figure out how to complete “The Challenge” without one or two mages. “The Challenge” is the BRD Arena fight that was recently added as part of the Tier 0.5 Upgrade quest line. I can sap one of them, a priest can MC one and a lock could charm one… *Sigh* it’s a conundrum I am puzzling out. Mages are not normally available to me, so I must find a solution.

***Disclaimer*** This article was, short, sweet and had no point - other than for me, the blogger, to think out-loud. Sorry for any inconvenience and/or waste of time. Refunds are not available. Tips are welcome and you may deposit them in the “Comments” section.

Enter Raivyne

2006-04-27T12:27:00.000-05:00

Hello blogosphere, I am Raivyne. A young, lvl 60, female, nelf rogue playing on the Thunderhorn server. Yes, that’s right another rogue… and worse yet – a nelf! Ugh. I’ve never really chronicled anything, because I always decide to start from the middle, and realize there’s so much I’ve missed. Who has the time to catch up? Well turns out work’s full of time. Anyway, we will see where this journey leads.

First of all, forgive my writing style as it sometimes mirrors my thoughts – here there and everywhere. Lack of continuity. I’ve not written much for about two years now, so hopefully the clarity and charm of my writing will improve with time.

A bit about the name. When I played the original Diablo game, I picked Raivyn as my name. Since these many years, others have caught on to the spelling and I've been forced to add the "e" at the end. Why Raivyne? Well, what is a raven? A big ugly crow... Not quite. corvus corax is the Latin name for the common raven. The following is an excerpt from http://www.ravenfamily.org/nascakiyetl/obs/rav1.html : "Raven in America, particularly the Northwest coast region, is both demiurge and trickster, both hero and villain, and often at one and the same time." In Europe the Raven is viewed as a messenger, and often a harbinger of death. Actually the study of the raven in different mythologies is quite fascinating, but then again Mythology is one of my things.

My guild is Shadow Guard. . I love the guild and have made many friends there. I have some friends outside the guild as well. The guild leaders are my sister and her fiancé. This works out well mostly, but sometimes its **duck and cover**. Aside from minor incidents, the game has actually helped my sister and I strengthen our relationship. She has earned my respect in this game, and somehow it has carried into the real world. (You mean WoW’s not real? Pfft.) Our misunderstandings seem fewer now and this is a good thing.

Enough of the chit chat. Why a rogue, you may ask… The answer should be simple, but its really not. I’ve always been drawn to the rogue class, since I picked up my first pencil and rolled my first old school DnD character. She was an elf rogue, because I was an elf rogue. Long, small, lithe and sly. (Granted, I’m not 6’ tall, but everything else is there) Delicate in appearance, but rough as rawhide inside. Perhaps she was an intimate reflection of all my devious tendencies, the inner spy and rapscallion. I really cannot say why, but the rogue class has always just “fit”. Even physically. “Toothpick”, oh how I loathed that name, but I thrived on it. Martial Arts came natural too me, in fact so natural that they rarely held my interest for more than a year at a time. I’m no master, but the forms and balance were always there for me. I could look at something and mimic it.

I’m a sword rogue, because I have practiced with Bokken and made forms with Katana (albeit not dual wielded). I use throwing weapons most of the time because I have Shuriken IRL. I’m also proficient w/guns and bows IRL, but neither of which do I consider very rogue-like. If my toon could wield a Jo, I would carry one, because I can use one. The Sai and fist weapons are appealing as well. I’ve played w/dual Sai before and loved them, but I have never gotten my hands on a fist weapon. I hide in the shadows because I wish to remain anonymous.

I always aligned myself as Chaotic – Good (IIRC). This is how I see myself and how I identify with the world around me. Besides what fun is life if you can’t get your hands dirty every so often? In the name of a good cause, natch. I’m no delinquent but if I want to sneak onto an ostrich farm and have a go at riding one, what’s the harm in that?

I think that’s all for now. I will try and upload a picture of my toon and link a current profile. First I have to find the program that changes WoW SS to .jpg form… Anyone?

Actually this should be my profile by the end of the weekend: http://www.hitpoints.org/equip/viewtemplate.php?tempid=24633