PvP and Me

So, not only did I give in and go ahead and start PvPing, but I now think I might be a full-fledged PvP addict. Yes, I get angry when I'm not winning and yes it can be frustrating when people are being stupid, but all in all, I've been having fun with it! No one is more surprised than I am.

Not only that, but I have my Gladiator's Quickblade and, after long and arduous AH farming, I have my Vindicator's Brand. Of course, right after I get those, Edge of the Cosmos drops out of Mech and THREE Blinkstrikes show up on the AH.

I haven't hit up Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm since getting them, but I'm thinking it can only be an improvement. I've decided that I hate, hate, hate Warsong Gulch, because of a horrible match in which the other team simply refused to cap the flag and farmed kills instead. I didn't think we'd ever get out of there. Alterac Valley just takes forever to wait for. I only attempted one 2v2 Arena with Martin and we got killed in record time. I think, after some gearing, we'll try 3v3 with our Pally pal.

Meanwhile, I've made a comprehensive list of all of the pre-Kara upgrades I want to get and where to get them. This just means finding people willing to run things like Old Hillsbrad repeatedly until I get what I want. At least that one's easy. (Heh. Easy. I never thought I'd say that of an instance.) Not like running Heroic Mech. That...sucked.

The pointy end goes into the other man!

Today I was talking with a guildmate who was attempting to choose a helm for his shadow priest. I told him I couldn't be much help, as casters completely confound me. He said that rogues confound him. Now, personally, I don't see much confounding about rogues. Ok, maybe there's stealth and finesse and timing, but really I think it boils down to that quote from Zorro. "You know how to use a sword, don't you?" "Yes, the pointy end goes into the other man!" I mean, c'mon, it's that simple. Put your blade where it's supposed to go and try not to get tagged by the bad thingie. Try to say it ain't so!

I've almost assembled most of the mats for my Shadowprowler's Chestguard. I've seen some discussions about this with people saying it's not good for rogue's at all, that druids should have it, ha ha you stupid rogues wearing gear that's not for you! Well, thhhhpppttt. Bite me. It has the stats I need right now and the list starts at Stamina. My AP is currently almost 1400, but my hit and health need help to reach the point where I can hit some heroics, start collecting badges and start working towards getting better weapons which is a huge thing for me right now.

So huge, in fact, that Martin and I have decided to switch to Aldor. Me, so I can get the Vindicator's Brand and him for...I don't know, something or other. Other than that, I've finally given in on the whole PvP thing. Yes, I hate it. After trying it, I can't stand it, it's no fun and it gives me a headache. But there are swords. I figure if I just keep going and hope everyone else doesn't suck as much as I do, I'll eventually grind the honor/marks to get a decent offhand weapon.

Meantime, instances, instances, instances. That part of the game I love. I like the shared experience, the teamwork aspect and the general laughter and talk that goes on during them. Even when I die six times (like in Mech the other night), I still have a good time. Plus, there's loots. I like loots.

Respeccing and Flying High

I finally figured out that I don't get to have my cake and eat it too. I can't have the DPS and energy regen talents and have the stealth talents that I've come to love so much for leveling with Martin. I have to make a choice and, well, since we're coming up to lots and lots of instance running, I'm going with the uber-DPS. Especially since Martin and I have decided to get that Fel Leather gear made, I should be able to slice through bad guys like they were made of cream cheese, just like in my dreams! No, really, I have those dreams. It's so sad.

Enter the respec. I'm tweaking the standard combat rogue 20/41/0 spec just a bit, because I want to have more deflection, so I'm going with a 19/42/0. I don't know if this is optimal or right, but it's what I'm going to try for now. If it tanks, well, back to the drawing board and all of that. I'm hoping that this respec will do what I'm looking for it to do, though. We'll see! I don't really have a combat swords friendly mentor to give me any noteworthy input, as the only other regularly-on rogue in the guild is dagger specced and does a ton of PvP, which I'm currently avoiding. I'd actually also like to know from someone's firsthand experience what PvP as a combat swords rogue is like.

In other news, I finally broke down and let someone lend me the money for my epic flyer, as did Martin. This friend, yes, has tons of money on his other character, but I still hate borrowing cash. He doesn't care when we pay it back, but I do feel compelled to try to do it as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, though, I can fly! I can fly fast! I did a turn around Nagrand hunting for Adamantite today and, man, was it a ball. Then Wot and I practiced some silly flying tricks like loops and barrel rolls. Stupid, but fun! I can see that having a flier is going to spoil me rotten. Which is just how it should be.

70! ...wait, what?

So...70. Wow. I'd say it's been a long haul, but it doesn't seem like it's been that long at all. In fact, I don't feel ready to be 70 in any way, shape, form or fashion. My gear isn't up to snuff and I'm not entirely sure on where to go from here. Everyone says "Arena! PvP! It's awesome" and others, who I'm inclined to listen to because I don't think I like PvP very much say that PvP gear is good for short fights, but not good for the sustained DPS that I like. Honestly, I'm not sure that I feel like I know how to play the damned class anyway. I thought that, at 70, I'd be comfortable with what I was doing and have all kinds of awesome gear. My gear is semi-alright and I still feel like I'm banging away in the dark. I don't want to be known as a "Noob Roguetard", which what I'm deathly afraid of.

I have decided to try out the more conventional sword specs, maybe with slight tweaking, and see how I like those. However, I need spiffy new weapons. You get those from instances and whatnot and there have been precious few of those. Move on to Martin's post about wanting to run instances and....there ya go. I guess I have to start banging out those instances we missed if I want to have a chance at the phat lootz, as they say. Of course, that could mean multiple runs and I hope everyone's ready for THAT, because I want some specific items. I have another friend who swears we should start churning out heroics as soon as possible, because THAT is the way to get awesome gear. Meanwhile, I'll keep farming up the 40 primal shadows Martin and I need to get some interim gear made. (And, ohmygod, do I HATE Collapsing Voidwalkers.)

In other news, I have my flier. The regular one, so it's painfully slow, but at least I can get up high now. We did some stuff in Skettis (Skeksies, anyone?) and I managed to only get dismounted and killed once. I think I might get the hang of this flying thing. If I can only get together the rest of the dough for my epic. And then special rep-based mounts. And, oh, farming rep for enchanting formulas, don't forget that.

Hey...I DO have stuff to do at 70 after all!

Brass Tacks

I guess it's finally time to get down to them. I've been avoiding this. Really I have.

A week ago, maybe, Martin sent me an email containing links to Rogue-centric blogs, intending that I should start looking them over for end-game information. Builds and gear and that sort of thing. I balked. Who wants a hobby that you have to work that hard on? Math? Are you serious? I wasn't good at math in school. I even hated doing pro-rate calculations and making change at my dad's office. Now I'm going to try to figure out what makes the best DPS and damage meters and I don't know what all? I don't even know where to begin, honestly. I sorta snapped at him and he snapped back and it was never spoken of again...until now. And now we shall speak of that part of it no more. Shhh.

Anyway, the last couple of days, after some disasterous PvP I decided that maybe I will put some minimal effort into this. In other words, I'll find someone who has already done the work and copy them! Genius! I am Brain and all others are Pinky or below!

One problem, though. When we first started playing, and really up until now, I've counted on Martin to tell me where to spend my talent points. Now, he's never leveled a rogue and I've never leveled a...well, anything, so we were sort of flying blind, popping points in willy nilly. That worked well enough for a while, but I'm starting to think that it won't cut the mustard at 70. Two things I DO know, however. One, I want to stay combat sword specced, but the issue I see there is that everyone says it's a bad PvP build and Martin wants us to start doing some PvP (plus I hear the reward gear is awesomeness). Two, we plopped 14 points into Subtlety with Master of Deception, Camouflage and Initiative and I don't really want to lose those. I really like the extra combo points and the better Stealth. However, from what I can see, those are better for a combat dagger specced rogue who PvPs.

Gah, I'm all messed up and unsure of where to go from here. I don't know if I should just go ahead and try one or two of the "standard" combat sword builds and see how they go, or try to customize my own build and risk screwing it all up like crazy. To make matters MORE complicated, I picked up the Ceremonial Warmaul Blood-Blade last night and, since it outstripped my offhand sword, I switched to it, which makes my sword speccing a bit useless at the moment. I'm going to wait until I pick up another sword to replace it to try experimenting with builds, but I'd like to know a place to start, for Pete's sake!

Ideas, suggestions, complaints, tar and feathers?

Pimps and Ho's, Y'all!

Martin and I decided to do the Love is in the Air quests this morning, just for fun. We were rewarded with these foine looking outfits here. Possibly THE sluttiest female clothing in the game. Martin wanted matching outfits, however, and don't we look splendiferous?

Meanwhile, he brought to my attention that I haven't put up a current picture of Ally since level 63, so I'll have that up later. I'm also trying to convince Martin that we would be much more effective, blog-wise, if we combined our efforts into one uberblog of his experience and my newbiness. He's thinking it over. I think that's guy-speak for "I don't really want to, but I still want to get laid, so I'll pretend I'm considering it." You tell me!

Ramparts

So we ran Ramparts tonight with a group from our guild. Really odd thing, since we had people playing alts, but I think I got lucky because the Rogue that was going with us had to play his alt Shaman for heals...which freed up the awesome Rogue gear drops for me! I managed to get Bracers of Finesse, Shifting Sash of Midnight, and Sure-Step Boots from the actual quest turn in. Not a bad haul for the evening. And the belt (eeeeeeee, the belt the belt!) is my very first actual piece of socketed gear!! I got two beeeeeeeyutiful shiny red baubles to go in it and I'm so excited! I even picked up a couple of other items to Disenchant and I can start throwing some Enchants around again.

I didn't think the run went that badly, except for two things. One, Martin's video card overheated (still not entirely sure why, we think it was power supply) and started beeping and flickering his monitor. Made it hard to finish, since he was tanking. Second, the last boss, Vazruden and his mount, was a hard fight. The first time we wiped and the healer, who didn't seem to have healed anybody during the fight, tried to take him on by himself. It went poorly. The second time, though, we managed to get our shit together and take his ass down. Score belt. Awwww, yeah.