Testing, Testing

Although I wasn't able to get any sort of recount system to function, I was able to test out both my rogue and priest. I specced my priest into shadow and headed to Howling Fjord. I didn't do much, as I haven't got any mods running and it was very laggy. What I did find out is that a. Shadow does decent damage; and b. Healing is still pretty good because of the addition of the attribute, spellpower. It will take me a while to get used to playing a shadow priest again. I look forward to levelling on live.

Next, I specced my rogue to mutilate. Some things have changed, and some things have been added. Gouge and Kick must be relearned, as these have changed in some way. Also, you can no longer make poisons; you have to purchase them from a vendor. Crippling and Mind-Numbing are no longer ranked, either.

There is a new talent, Dismantle. My rogue also has a new Herbalism talent, Lifeblood. And finally, there is a new PvP trinket replacement talent, Every Man for Himself. Anything that replaces a trinket is good!

I went to Borean Tundra this time. It's where I took my mage when I first tried the beta. I must say, mutilate does pretty amazing damage. There's a lot going on at once, and the change to mana / energy / rage regeneration makes things a little tricky at first, but I do know that with mutilate, poisons are just crazy. Also, Hunger for Blood and Cut to the Chase are just amazing talents. You can keep the Enrage effect up pretty much indefinitely. It refreshes to a 3 stack of 30sec if you do it once while the three stacks are still active -- and you don't even notice the 30 energy cost. You don't even have to attack the target you select to refresh it. ;)

Slice and Dice is very easy to keep up, as you simply need to Envenom or Eviscerate your target to renew it. And since you will always have Deadly Poison ticking on your target because of Deadly Brew, you can Envenom just about whenever you like.

I think that with the change of dynamics, if I was to stick with mutilate, it would take a wee bit to get used to, in terms of energy management and skill rotations.

I headed back to SW and respecced combat. I don't have very good weapons, but even taking that into account, there was a noticeable decrease in DPS. I think that either I fail at being a combat rogue or it just isn't as good as mutilate. Once I have tried out a Shadow Dance build, I will have a better idea of what I want to spec when the expansion goes live. For now, I am strongly leaning towards mutilate.

For now, I want to continue levelling my paladin on live and maybe explore a little bit on beta. I don't want to do a whole lot of quests because then they won't be as fun when it all goes live. Also, the default game interface is very lacklustre. It's hard to play without my addons and ui customisation.

I have yet to try out frost or arcane on my mage, and still have to try some level 80 builds with the premades I transferred. So much to do, so little time!

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore