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FAZ HAS PORTED

Patch 2.0.7

Downloaded the patch today. Work's be a little mental and I haven't been playing on since Sunday. Few interesting updates from the 2.0.7 patch notes:

The items required to complete the Karazhan key quest can now only be looted by the first group in the instance to reach them.
I am glad I've finished mine since I did ninja two cleared instances to get it. But I guess it's not that much more work because I ended up clearing those instances again to help other people. LOL

Players can no longer send gift wrapped packages via COD.
Quite a slow response from Blizzard actually. This was due to a scam that was circulating. I got one as well, it was a letter claiming to be from Argent Dawn rewarding you with 65g and a present. It was actually a COD thing. Not sure if the 'accept' item for Xg window popped up or not, I returned the mail. Then it hit me in-game mails from NPCs cannot technically be returned. GG.

Many creatures within Coilfang Resevoir and Mana Tombs have been slightly retuned.
Wonder if its easier or harder or just a different sort of encounter now.

Stability improvements in Multi-Threaded OpenGL support on future OS X releases.
Anything that improves WoW performance on OS X is a go! (I play on a Mac)

The talent "Combat Potency" no longer causes rogues to have a chance to gain energy when other players hit them with off-hand attacks.
Reported to be a bug. I actually didn't realise this one - although I did think the proc rate was quite high.

The amount of haste granted by a point of haste rating has been increased by about 50%.
Yay.

I heard that Wound Poison no longer stacks with Mortal Strikes as of 2.0.7 but I didn't see it up on the patch notes. Pity though, if it was the case. Up to a -75% healing debuff is absolutely lethal in a 5v5.. ;)

Karazhan

Grats to Scalp and his Alliance guild on Gorgonash for clearing all of Karazhan ;) Good stuff! And now we're awaiting WDK's turn. I blame Viktor for not being the uber 70 paladin he should be! Hee hee hee.

The place sounds scary already. Was just reading up on wowwiki on the trash mobs, ie:

Ghostly Steward (71 Elite Undead). 1200-2000 melee damage. 3500-5000 melee damage when enraged. Immune to shackle. "Drunken Skull Crack" hits for 2250 with a non-cleansable stun for ~3 seconds.

This is against a 16k armor (60% reduction) tank.. I think it will one-shot me if I ever pull aggro. Being a healer in there would be a challenging (albeit crazy) role indeed.

Onyxia

It's been a while since I've seen the inside of Onyxia's Lair. This screenshot was from WDK's 17-man attempt shortly after we left Thundermare pre-Burning Crusade. We wiped at 1%. Ah, the good old days :)

At least I'm still using my Bloodfang Hood - although I've been very tempted to replace it. In fact, I've already given up my Bloodfang Spaulders for something that looks like a gold version of Shadowcraft. Bleh.

I wonder how many of us it takes to down Onyxia now that most of us are 70.

Fazhira gets The Master's Key

Zeken getting whipped.. hehe!

Finally got my Karazhan key quest chain complete. Ninjaed The Steamvaults (Coilfang Reservoir) for the 2nd Key Fragment with Choco and Scalp's help, and went to Arcatraz (Tempest Keep) to get the 3rd Key Fragment. After that I got lucky and ninjaed a cleared Black Morass (Caverns of Time) instance to speak to Medivh, so I have my Karazhan key now~!

Had to do the Old Hillsbrad's Escape from Durnhold quest where the party had to rescue the young Thrall as part of entry event of the opening of the Dark Portal to get into the Black Morass. It was really fun — after you release Thrall from prison things are really fast-paced, the dude hardly stops and you get to see the Tarren Mill area before the Scourge. You also become human form when you enter the instance, it's part of the whole story line which I'm just barely following. The Epoch Hunter (Old Hillsbrad's last boss) dropped leather shoulders for me last night. Went again today because Zeken didn't take his quest from Thrall. Now I need to farm for rep to do heroic instances.

Mutated plants at the Botanica are scary >.<

Replaced Kren at the Botanica yesterday. The Botanica is another instance located at the Tempest Keep. Clearing in from where Kren left seemed quite straightforward. Some of the mobs in there are pretty weak, especially the satyr pulls before the 3rd boss, Thorngrin the Tender. The boss itself was all right, what made it a right nightmare were the respawns, and the pulls right after Thorngrin. Our class composition wasn't the most ideal - no forms of crowd control asides Sap. Holy crap, I was so glad to get out of there. I think the original group pretty much cleared up to Thorngrin twice!!

Did two straight runs of Shadow Labyrinth yesterday. We were on the quest to get the key fragments. At 70, the quest to kill the last boss, Murmur, pays 27g. Murmur dropped Leggings of Assassination for me the second time. Both runs went pretty smoothly, we had two priests the whole time, one warrior and me, the first run we had Crazeir (warlock) doing crazy DPS and putting me in my place, and I think Auggy was stressed out tanking for three nutters who didn't care much for aggro on trash pulls. We <3 Zeken~!

Murmur. Is is just me or does this guy sound like a broken accordion when engaged? Grats Blizzard, for making a 5-man version of Ragnaros. LOL.

LFG Steamvaults...

The Arcatraz and Shattered Halls

Ventured into Arcatraz today. First time there. It's in Tempest Keep, a place only accessible by flying mounts. I thought that was quite a nice concept. Had fun, except Wrath-Scryer Soccothrates was kind of hard to get close to.. the fire damage hurt alot.

Then joined my guildies for the last boss in Shattered Halls. First time there also. Warchief Kargath is a tough guy to beat. Maybe we'll get him down the next time >.<

I actually prefer running instances more than anything else in the game. Still hard to get a group with all the 5 mans though, seems like everyone has the same idea and we have limited healing classes in our guild. We're such carebears!

LFG Black Morass

After what feels almost like rolling a new character, the rogue is 70. Maybe it’s just me, I’m done with questing for a while. Immediately respecced to Combat Daggers, being the PvE carebear that I am. Still have Imp Sap as it comes in handy in 5-mans, however, without all the poison related talents Envenom is no longer worth it blowing 5CPs on and I’m going to miss it :(

Further objectives, with the first one (getting to 70) out of the way:

Checking out the new content Sooooo many instances, sooooo little time.

Alchemy Specialisation Have not decided between Elixir Mastery or Transmutation Mastery. Most likely will go into Elixir, as I hardly transmute things. The elixir quest takes you into the Black Morass. But on the other hand, popping an extra Primal Might or Skyfire Diamond while selling a transmute would be a nice bonus!

Key Quests Obtain the Master’s Key for Karazhan. Not sure where it starts, Crazeir tells me the quest giver is at Deadwind Pass. Will check it out some time later this week when I’m free (busy week at work).

Faction reputations So many things to farm rep for. At the moment I will focus on Scryer (inscriptions, dagger, alchemy recipes), Cenarion Expedition (alchemy recipes, Coilfang Key) and Mag’har (Talbuk mounts! So cute!)

Later on, the Sha’tar (for Alchemist’s Stone) and perhaps Lower City for the Auchindon Key… zzz.

I’m only exalted with one faction (ZG) so all this will take a while. LOL. Am honoured for most factions above except the Mag’har whom I’m revered with.

Gear Gunning for more +hit gear and going to farm blue dungeon set for now so at least I don’t look (in Scalp’s words) like a clown shat on me. Contrary to what Bends says, boho is not in! Bye bye Bloodfang /cryAlmost don’t remember what Orgrimmar looks like now. Spending too much time in Outlands :/

Bloodelves

Been so busy leveling I forgot to make myself the requisite blood elf mule. They're so cute. I wish I had the patience to level a blood elf priest.. but I already have a priest to play with.

Arye

At 69 now, one more level to go. Skipped part of Blade's Edge quests and am now at Netherstorm. Wandering around that place makes me feel like I'm going to fall off the edge any time. But I love Area 52!!

The long road to 70

I think getting to 70 this weekend might actually be achievable. Am 5 bars away from 68 now. Then it's really just a slow grind/instance running to 70. And then start on reputation grinds and wait for everyone to get to 70 so we can raid. I still haven't picked a faction: Scryer or Aldor? At the moment I'm leaning toward Scryer, but Aldor has more PvE stuff. Scryer has an off-hand dagger - I've decided to remain a dagger rogue - and alchemy stuff. Doesn't matter too much, I guess. What I don't get from enchants I can balance out in gear. Which is ridiculously stacking A LOT of stam/AP at the moment.. I'm hitting 7k hp unbuffed. Hit and Crit ratings are suffering as a result. The rating scaling and lack of crit gear makes it much harder to maintain it at around 28%.. at 67 my crit chance is about 22%.. and trying to balance hit and AP. I'll worry about gear when I hit 70.. pfft.

Envenom is turning out to be quite a useful skill to have. I find it indispensable on boss fights, especially when Evis isn't critting as much as it used to, and Envenom does more non-crit damage. And especially since it ignores armor.

A 3k Envenom crit on Tavarok

Had a little run through Auchenai Crypts tonight. Shirrak (first boss) was a little tricky. I think it was the lack of range DPS and HOTs that did us in but we got him down to 8% before calling it a night. We'll be back!

Shirrak the Dead Watcher

Other recent screenshots:

And my fav - a lesson from the Rogue Academy: Real Rogues don't feint. But of course!

BC over the weekend

Busy being a geek adventuring in Outlands since the release. Love the new scenery. Haven't had time to play with my mods and UI yet since the expansion. Managed to tweak Stunwatch to work with BC. This build does nice damage as far as I can see but I don't have Damage Meters or SW Stats up yet so it's hard to tell. And I miss my macros. Will make it a point to find all my mods next weekend. I need Energy Watch back desperately! One bar from 65. One! But I need to sleep :/

Someone landed on top of me in Terrokar Forest today with a flying mount and said "Do you know Bergkamp?" Dude, what have you been telling people about me?

Burning Crusade and my rogue

The long awaited expansion pack is finally out! Reloaded my account tonight to check out what’s going on in Tichondrius. About 40 people are Level 61 already. Spent my time in AV collecting the 3 more tokens I needed.. I now have a Red Skeletal Mount for my rogue as well as the HWL dagger. I know I said I wanted the MH sword but have been doing some serious thinking and will be sticking to a dagger rogue for now. Been testing out my new Assassination spec; Mutilate is so much fun! Assassination build lacks the crazy survivability of the Subtlety spec (Cheat Death, Cloak of Shadows - but now the 41pt skill in that tree is now ShadowStep, Enveloping Shadows, Heightened Senses, Elusiveness etc) but I find it a much more balanced build.. sure Combat will always be a stronger overall PvE build but these days I PvP a little. Imp Backstab has been switched over to the Assassination tree to replace Imp S&D. I now have Cold Blood again (I leveled with an CB-Prep spec) which is really fun to use with Mutilate because both attacks land as crits. And Lethality affects Mutilate as well, so its doing 230% base damage with CB.

CS-CB-Mutilate-KS-Mutilate-Tea-Mutilate-Evis… mwahahaha. Die!!

I have a ton of Thistle Tea and Blinding Powder to spare thanks to Bends.. <3

The thing I miss about my old Combat spec is my crazy crit chance. But I suppose CB somewhat makes up for it.. the insanely fast CP generation from Seal Fate is great though. I find I often have to decide between blowing 4CP on Evis, or wasting 1CP if I throw in another Mutilate. But in zerg PvP that doesn’t really matter I guess! The 10% damage increase from Find Weakness in long fights with S&D (no more Imp S&D) thrown in should be pretty decent energy investment. Haven’t had a chance to PvE with it yet, and I’m too tired to calculate. But now I’m wondering if the 3 talent points I put in Imp BS is worth it at all, since Mutilate almost replaces that skill entirely. I almost always use poisons anyway. Eventually I will fine-tune my spec, but for now I’m just going to enjoy running around with my new horse and mutilating people from behind.

Remember, rogues do it from behind. Bwahahhaha.