As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been around much lately and there has been a lack of front page updates. There are a few reasons behind this… For starters, work has been extremely overwhelming lately and I haven’t had the time or energy to keep things in check here or play WoW myself.

Our regular PvP News reporter Magog has left us to pursuit greater happiness and between forums and creating other contents (articles/videos/strategies/podcast/new tools), we’re extremely under staffed. That said, I would be very happy to hear from anyone that is interested in writing about WoW PvP as well as providing general help to the site. You may contact me via PM on forums.

On another note, TTR(Tournament Test Realm) has been enjoyable as ever. I have a really good feeling about Shamans as well as Rogues in the upcoming tournament. Shamans have received by far the most buffs patch 2.4 and having tested one out myself, I must say it’s quite amazing. With totem GCD greatly reduced and Bloodlust reducing GCD (which grants you much faster Purges), instant Ghost Wolf combo with 50% reduction on snares are just icing on the cake. Getting away from Warriors is more than possible with Piercing Howl a joke at 2.5 seconds and Hamstring at 5 seconds, and the amount of Shivs you must spam just to keep Crippling up on a Shaman with Endurance causes as much as 25% in DPS decrease(with Shiv doing much less damage per energy than your primary attack). In the hands of an experienced player, I wouldn’t be surprised to see R.Shamans replacing R.Druids in many cases to create a more offensive version of the lineup (very close to a 3 DPS setup).

As for why I felt good about Rogues, you can get some very nice offensive stats with the right amount of PvE gear and if you choose to go with ShS it’s possible to sacrifice even more Resilience. A must have would be the Rod of the Sun King in main hand, this baby clocks at higher damage (not DPS) than even the season 3 ice cream cones and the lack of stats is some what covered by it’s nice little proc. I really enjoy the synergy 41 Combat Rogues have with Shamans, the amount of burst you can put out on someone after EA SnD BF AR and Bloodlust is unbelievable. A well timed shock with another interrupt (which leads to another shock) can secure you a kill very easily during this burst even if your 3rd member is locked down.

ShS Rogues however, do concern me very much in the mirror battle. Not only do they have the best stealth for Sap/openers, I have also noticed ShS sustained damage have surpassed every other spec (especially when the target ever gets in to Dirty Deeds range) with extreme PvE setups. Until fixed, Cheat Death can buy them more than enough time to survive on 200-300 Resilience when backed by competent Druid healer and the recent Shiv ‘bug fix’ only favors them further. Double Evasion will make it impossible to land combo points on opposing Rogues running Evasion in your face, especially without Prep for the extra Vanish > CS combos and Mutilate (without Renetaki or BT trinket on TTR, they’re quite weak) is completely screwed in the toe to toe match vs ShS. Now this would have been fine and dandy if ShS didn’t have so many weaknesses in the 3v3 environment. Unlike AR/Prep in it’s finer days, ShS does not function well in many lineups that are great with other Rogue specs.

One of the biggest advantages of the Rogue class I mentioned last July was how we had so many choices in terms of spec, hence we can maximize for the lineup we play for. This advantage is being destroyed by the importance blizzard have placed on stealth openers (the so called gimmick 3 DPS lineups isn’t so gimmick anymore when you just replace one of them with a Druid). Rogue class is being pigeon-holed into ShS as their only viable spec just because ShS Rogues counter other Rogue specs so hard. Even through I’m still fighting it, changes like the so called Shiv ‘bug fix’ definitely don’t help.

Tags: Rants

8 Responses to “Recent Slowdown and more TTR”

1. Deadx Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

   Good post.

2. Winter Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

   As a fire mage I have a feeling enhancement shaman are going to be a lot harder to beat (I’m gonna get owned). With blastwave and cone of cold lasting half as long and instant ghostwolf to close the distance … well it’s not going to be pretty.

3. Glave Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

   Ziss you are my sunshine.
   -Scrub

4. PvPLolDotCom Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

   Seriously, its time you just give up on this site. Your forums are completely dead and devoid of any useful information. Your features look and work like they were done as an elementary project. You are putting forth far too much effort for something that has and will continue to fail.
   Take back some of your life and quit wasting it on your terrible site.

   Ziss: Thank you for checking my site everyday, loyal fans like you puts a smile on my face

5. Deadx Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   @pvplol, no one cares what you say with your 1300 ratings.

6. dagnabber Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

   give me a break, he’s been busy…or he’s kidding himself

   Perhaps a merger with Roguespot?

7. PvPLolDotCom Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

   You are right Ziss. I enjoy checking your site every day like everyone in the world loves slowing down on the road to stare at a car wreck. It’s funny watching your pitiful attempts to make this terrible site function.

   Ziss: Whatever melts your butter

8. Winter Says:
   March 20th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

   This site is great, jealous much pvplol?

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