It’s not the most recent news, but news all the same, at least to me. In this post (read on before you click please) by Kalgan, there is some information about changes incoming for the different racials. Trolls getting buffed, Undeads getting nerfed and so on, pretty standard really.

Now, to the reason I even made a post about this so early after my latest one. Gnome racials!!

That’s right folks! No more resisting our Gnomish artistery of escaping tight spots.

Gnome

• Escape Artist: the freeing effect can no longer be resisted
• Arcane Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Arcane spells by 2%

More on Blizzard finally giving Gnomes some love in a planned future segment, keep your eyes peeled (not meant to be taken literally).

Take care! :D

Okay, beta version of WotLK seems to be leaking information like Titanic after it hit the iceberg.

So, seeing as I’m one of the brave souls that have ventured into the “Deep Ass” spec and picked up Mutilate as my main attack and so on, I thought I’d be one of the few to go through the changes based on my spec and not the overall Rogue class. Basically laughing at all other specs for the nerfs they get and cry about the nerfs that affect me. I have to say that it’s looking mighty good for me so far. I’ll make an as short as possible rundown for you. I’ve cut out those that doesn’t affect me at all, such as obvious PvE talents and skills  - since I’m a PvP’er more than PvE’er, and will spec accordingly. Basically I’ll just comment on what interests me, live with it. ;P

Assassination

Skills

•  Dismantle required level changed from 75 to 20. Max range changed to 5 Yards.

This doesn’t really affect me that much unless I plan on leveling a new Rogue. I might actually do that soon for a special reason which I might bring up in a future blog. ;)

Talents

• Hunger For Blood damage bonus reduced from 5% to 3%. Now works with any harmful physical effect affecting you.

QQ about the damage nerf, but horray about the any harmful physical effect. No more crying over warriors getting lucky crits or putting Rend on your Rogue bum. Just blind, activate it and vanish to reopen.

• Focused Attacks has been moved from Tier 9 to Tier 8.
• Turn the Tables has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 9.

Made life easier for me to spec pure PvP I guess, other than that nothing really big. Almost didn’t comment on this.

• Find Weakness changed from 5 points to 3 points. Now increases the damage of all offensive abilities by 3/6/9% (Old - Your finishing moves increase the damage of all your offensive abilities by 2/4/6/8/10% for 10 sec.)

Seriously huge buff to damage. Keep it, please! *prays to Blizzard*

• Vigor has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 3.

Have to say that I’m a bit disappointed about this change. Previously having 120 Energy was a “Deep Ass” thing only, but now every damn Rogue will have the chance to run around with that. So, yeah… thanks for making us less special. However with the latest changes to Mutilate, I’m guessing more people will spec it since it will now be easy without the positioning requirements. More on that further down though.

• Deadened Nerves changed from 5 points to 3 points. Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. (Old - 1/2/3/4/5%)

This may have made this viable, and might even shine more than the recent Murder buff in terms of talent choice. Depends on player style of course, and I’ve always liked killing something fast before they’re able to react. However, I might change that a bit since sooner or later someone will find me out of stealth. Very nice buff to an otherwise useless talent.

• Master Poisoner moved from Tier 6 to Tier 9 and changed from 2 to 3 ranks. Now Increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 17/34/50%. (Old - Reduces the chance your poisons will be resisted by 5/10% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 25/50%.)

I like this change a lot. Anything that buffs damage in my tree is a good thing, even at the cost of having to spend one extra talent point and having your poisons getting resisted more. I’ll be honest, I never did take this talent anyway, so I’ll just gain from this.

• Relentless Strikes has been removed. (And moved to Subtlety)

The most annoying change so far when it comes to the Assassination tree. And the fact that they increased it to 5 points and not 3 just added to the pain. Valenna from Parry! Dodge! Spin! put it very well in her, at the time of writing, latest beta update. Blizz made it more accessible but made it more expensive. That’s like taking a car that used to be purchasable only for people with a certain title (i.e. Sir, Lord, Lady, Earl, Countess, Duke etc), making it available for other people but at the same time making it so that only the rich people can buy them.

• Improved Expose Armor now Reduces the energy cost of your Expose Armor ability by 5/10. (Old - Increases the duration of your Expose Armor ability by 25/50%.)
• *New Talent* - Overkill (Tier 7) - Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.

Now, this is rather interesting. Seperated, only one of these seem great. Together, they seem like the perfect match. This will make the Sap>CS-withoutbreaking-sap>EA-without-breaking-sap>Restealth a bit funkier, if you’re able to pull it off.

• Lethality now increases the critical strike damage of all combo moves by 6/12/18/24/30%. (Old - Didn’t affect all skills)

Very grateful for this one and I hope it stays.

That was it for the actual Assassin tree. Now for what I believe affects me in the other trees, should be interesting - but can’t promise it will be. :P

Combat

Skills

• Sprint cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
• Evasion cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.

Obviously affect me as well, maybe a bit too obvious to comment - but still felt like stating my thanks. The lower cooldowns the better. Mohahaha! Fear me, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druid and… other Rogues? Meh, just fear me.

Talents

• Dagger Specialization has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3 and now affects Fist Weapons as well.
• Dual Wield Specialization has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 1.

This is what will make me change from going deeper than Tier 1 in Subtlety tree, to going Tier 3 in Combat for level 80. The notes that I copied and used didn’t mention the name change (if it will change, which does sound reasonable), hence the link saying something else.

• Improved Sprint changed from Tier 3 to Tier 4.

Sad to loose the possible 4th root-killer (Gnome ftw), but I’m happy with having “only” three. ;)

• Precision now also increases the hit chance of your poison attacks.

Really good for a poison dependant spec like “Deep Ass”.

Subtlety

Skills

• Cloak of Shadows cooldown increased from 1 to 1.5 minute.
• Vanish cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
• Disarm Trap increased from 5 to 20 yards. Casting time reduced from 2 to 1 second.

Ouch,  yay and cool. CloS nerf was bound to happen though, and it’s not as bad as 2-5 minutes I guess (knock on wood). Disarm Trap change is interesting and will be very useful against hunters… now if only CloS worked on Flare, hehe.

Talents

• Master of Deception Rank 4 and 5 have been removed.

I’m a bit confused by this. Saying they’ve removed it would imply to actually remove the effects of those last two ranks, compared to making it more concentrated (like detergents or orange syrup). If they in fact removed them, making it worth 9 “stealth points” at max (1 point from 2 extra levels worth of stealth), then I won’t even bother taking this and will instead go with either 3 point Relentless Strikes of fill up both Murder and Deadened Nerves.

• Opportunity has been changed from 5 points to 2 points. Now increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Mutilate, Garrote and Ambush abilities by 10/20%. (Old - 4/8/12/16/20%)

Love that I’ll be able to have this and Dual Wield Specialization. <3

I dinged 70 on September the 1st 2007. Here’s a little video of that happening. I copied the method of dinging from Chidori of Argent Dawn (EU), who makes the charming web-comic The Chronicles of The Flaming Ruby. Her video far surpasses mine, but this was more of a way for me to just mark it down and make a milestone of my own, so it doesn’t matter if it’s bad - it’s mine.

Excuse the boring prelude and long fight, and only providing one song. Hopefully someone will enjoy it anyway. And the first name on the “thank you” roll, that may not be seen because of the speed, is the lovely Aeiseth whom unfortunately missed the event although wanting to be there. <3

Roll the clip!

Ok, I’m back. I have been back for a while now actually, and a lot of things has been happening. I won’t go into any personal details, but I’ll just say that things has changed enough for me to have time to write consistently here - which is the main point here. By reading the previous post you can guess what changed anyway. :P

With that said, I have some posts that I’ve been meaning to write long ago but just didn’t find the time or didn’t know what to say really. I’ll redo the ‘About’ page and fix the blog up as I find the extra tidbits of time and know-how to do so.

After writing this I’ll fix the ‘About’ page, as mentioned, and then jump to my first post which I should have done a long time ago. Better late then never, right? ;)

I’ve officially taken a break from World of Warcraft for now. Will probably not be back until Wrath of the Lich King, and possibly not fully then either.

Long story short, lots of things are happening in my life and I need to take care of it before it goes out of hand and I’m standing there with nothing. I want to make everything work as smoothly as possible and that means I need to focus and do the work now before it’s too late to make it smooth. This probably won’t make any sense without details of the situation. So…

Details are:

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday the 2nd of May, a child was born.

Liesje, GM of Echoes of Lordaeron, and her Paladin in shiny armor Felidra created their own next generation a week ago. The little one is a healthy and well little baby girl called Lynn. I can’t imagine the feeling of something like this, but sometime in the far future I might (unless I’m sterile, lol).

All the best to the happy family!

For those that can understand it, here’s the little Lynn’s own webpage.
http://www.lynnkraak.babysite.nl/

And to gratulate the couple on their “epic loot”, you can either visit the Scarshield Legion EU realm forum or go here.

Hipp hipp horray! \o/

Firsly I’d like to say that with easy I don’t mean totally effortless nor something that will make it less of a grind, but was more focusing on the week part. This is just a thought that I had and something I felt like writing down, mostly for myself (no offence to anyone actually reading this). All this will do is maybe make it feel like less of a grind, in addition to being a fast way to cap honor awaiting season 4.

Never before has it beent this easy to grind honor. All you need is to be extremely bored, just like in the past, and just do Alterac Valley except when it’s the weekend of the other Battlegrounds, in which case you do those. Now the difference, and this isn’t new I just realized how easy it was yesterday (thus making this post now instead of when it was new), you see now you can turn in your marks for extra 314 honor per one mark of each Battleground.

Say you’ve grinded Alterac Valley to death and now have 100 marks, not that hard to get in two days with 50-50 win rate, and get your mailbox spammed with the marks, this is when you should switch Battleground, yes that’s right. Even if it won’t net you the biggest honor gain per hour at the moment, it will pay off in the end because of this new mark turn-in system. See, you won’t ever need 100 marks from one Battleground, that as well as marks always being easier to aquire in the amount needed for gear and weapons makes this system very honor grin friendly. First step with the switch is to do the daily PvP quest. If it was Alterac Valley then you’ve probably already finished it, so if it wasn’t Alterac Valley just do the quest in whatever Battleground it is. When done with that there’s two ways to do this.

1. Grind one battleground at a time, i.e. gather the 100 marks one Battleground at a time and then turn them in enmasse. This tactic will give you the most honor in a burst at the end, but will in turn feel more like a grind during the actual grind.

2. Do one Battleground, then the next. For example, let’s say that the daily PvP was Warsong Gulch and you needed 3 matches before a win you’ll now have 5 Warsong Gulch marks. This is when you switch battleground again and do the other ones until you can turn marks for honor and keep switching as needed, aiming at being able to turn in at least once between Battlegrounds while you’re waiting to join.

As you might ahve guessed my preferred method of doing this is the second method, as it will make it feel less of a grind and you’ll see the honor rise relatively fast too… though given not as fast as the burst int eh end of tactic one, but that’s something I’ll live with. Between the two it’s really just about whatever floats your boat as both will give you approximately the same honor. The second approach might make you need to grind further marks down teh road to be able to afford the gear and weapons, while the first will probably make you have what’s needed at the end of it. The downside of that will be that getting 100 marks of each Battleground before turning in will take a lot more time. So, first one will ensure you’ll be able to buy your gear and whatnot in the end of it, but will in turn take much longer time. Second approach will cap honor faster but will have you enter Battlegrounds just for the marks in the end.

For those that didn’t know, I made the spotlight for a split second some while ago.

I just randomly browsed through WoW Insider looking at their Moviewatch section and suddenly noticed that they had missed the second trailer of “Fury”, a World of Warcraft machinima. I casually filled in a form and made my point and directed themin the way to the new trailer. After that I didn’t really think about it.
Then, only a day or two later, when I go to WoW insider to get my dose of news - I suddenly read the big header:

WoW Moviewatch: Fury Trailer 2

I start reading and then get to the end. “Thanks Leaf”. Oh my, they mentioned me. That’s not the best part however. The best part is that they link to my blogg right here. If anything that’s been an insentive to start writing more and become a more active part of this whole gaming community. As a character to begin with though, for a start I mean.

That’s my 15 minutes in the spotlight. ;)

Bored easily, yes. It’s a fact, I get bored of a class when I’ve played it for a good while without any change. This has now happened, and I’m now pretty much tired of what my Warrior can offer me. I made another gnome. Made a guild. So now I’m playing that gnome (a mage) and everything is fine and dandy? Nope, I wish. I instead have renewed my love for my little “Gnogue” and have slowly made plans inside my head about gearing her up.

Trouble is… I’ll kind of leave my girlfriend behind on the Horde side of the fence. The question I keep asking myself, how much of my own playing happiness should I ignore so that she’s happy. Now, that sounds like I don’t like spending time with her in-game and that it’s some kind of job in my eyes, but that’s not the way I meant. What is like a job for me is playing on my Warrior, that my friends (as if anyone else reads this, lol) is where the dilemma lies. To what degree should I play a class I don’t enjoy playing to spend time with my partner? I honestly don’t know, so… here I stand, a man with millions of plans but a man nonetheless, with a woman… plans + woman = error, so what to do, eh? This is really mindboggling. All I can do for now is to hope that she won’t hate me too much and every now and then log on to my Warrior and spend some time with her.

There’s more to this though. I am now in one separate guild per high level character in my posession, this would be a bigger problem if the guilds I was in were very strict, but luckily for me they aren’t. Still it plays a riff in my head, as I don’t want to be the weak link in my guilds. Anywhooo… que sera, sera; right?

Now I’m going to make a wishlist for Leaf. ;)

Hehe, I always seem to do this. I start with one subject and then suddenly it turns into something else. Related, sure - but still something else. This started as a post about having two accounts on the same faction. This is what it evolved into.

—

I’ve recently started to help my girlfriend out by buying her some plans that she hasn’t learned yet, offering to help her grind reputation (despite me being way behind her in that department) and in return getting the chance of getting this gem cut or that necklace, you get the picture.

Most recently I gave her [item]Design: Thick Felsteel Necklace[/item] and she then made me that, putting me at 312 resilience and boosting my health a bit, for the cost of some random stats, but hey… you win some and you lose some, right? ;)

Now, with me planning on going Enchanting anyway to get my rings enchanted for PvP, we will really be able to help each other out. By obtaining the plans and formulas that we need, helping with the gathering of materials and so on. We would, simply put, be able to complement each other and both reach maximum potential - together, as a couple, and as World of Warcraft players.

Guess the sum of it all is that it’s good to have a second person that’s close to you, that’s willing to help you out with everything you may need help with, and then both grow with the other’s help. Whether that person is your partner, your best friend or as in my case; both - it’s something I would recommend to everyone out there.