Treading water

Okay, so my last post was of the warm and fuzzy, “feel good” variety. This one, not so much.

Last night, Heroes came together to do our monthly Naxx 25 run. I’m usually somewhat excited about these runs because it’s an opportunity to raid and hang out with players from the other team, it’s a chance to collect Emblems of Valor for the ongoing gear improvement effort, and I like what 25-man raid buffs do to Ofn’s dps. This particular evening, I had a heightened interest in what I would be able to accomplish damage-wise with Ofn, as so much of his gear has changed since we last did our 25 man Naxx.

The short of it is, though there were some bright spots, I came away from the raid disappointed, again, at the state of combat rogue dps.

Yes, I know Ofn placed well in overall dps. But that’s only because of Fan of Knives, which annoys me. It may be fun to use it, and it’s nice to have an aoe, but fundamentally, a rogue should be one of the best single-target damage dealers and right now, they’re not.

This was evidenced more than once last night as I watched other pure dps classes and some hybrids repeatedly out-dps Ofn on boss fights. It was particularly noticeable on Loatheb. Seeing this while knowing (per a tell earlier in the raid) that Ofn is supposedly the best-geared toon in Heroes (per warcrafter.net) was very disappointing. FoK is fraudulent because it misrepresents what rogues can do. It inflates the numbers on trash, setting up a fall on bosses. It’s a crutch, and I don’t like that.

I had more to say, but I know that most of it is immature QQing, and I’ve done enough of that already. Blizz is bringing some positive changes to the combat tree for rogues in 3.1 and I am looking forward to them. Until then, I will continue to work on improving Ofn’s dps, but I think I’ve done about as much as I can right now regarding gear and self-buffs. I think I do pretty well with maximizing his abilities and rotations, but I’m always open to suggestions if anyone has some to make. I would especially like it if Lakini would tell me more about how to noob things up.

Perhaps I will revisit mutilate spec now that I have 2x Webbed Death (the preferred dagger for mut spec rogues). I prefer the combat playstyle, and I certainly wouldn’t stay mut when 3.1 hits, but it might be interesting to give it another go and see what happens.

It’s 40° F and sunny in southern Maine.