Kevin's Watch

I'm very excited that last night, Jhemtar, became my first character to make it to 100 Gold.

Who'd you steal it from, rogue?

My new grinding shield.

Damelon wrote:Who'd you steal it from, rogue?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to ...



I still haven't cracked level 30, and seem hopelessly behind you guys, but PART of it is because I'm playing two characters at once. I can't settle on who is my favorite.

That's some of the reason I'm at 45. My main alt is at 24.

On The Scryers I have a lev 27, and a lev 15, so perhaps our alts could be quest buddies.

My main alt, or at least the one I've been playing lately is on Dalvengyr, a PVP server, and is Horde.

Adolar, a NE rogue is on The Scryers, but is lvl 13.

i may wow a bit later on if sea doesn't mind.
i miss azeroth.

No WoW for me until I get a new job. Please scream at me if you see me on for more than five minutes. Not too much danger of that right now, my lovely new schedule is 7AM-11PM, and it's been three years since I worked nights.

Does that include the commute? Ugh!

Sorus wrote:No WoW for me until I get a new job. Please scream at me if you see me on for more than five minutes. Not too much danger of that right now, my lovely new schedule is 7AM-11PM, and it's been three years since I worked nights.

OUCH!!! That schedule AND your commute!!

Any other dual-dagger wielding rogues out there? I have a question:

When picking which dagger to go in your main-hand, would you choose your faster blade, or your more powerful blade? Anyone know how the dynamics of how two blades work?

Can't you use a one handed sword for your main hand and a dagger for your off hand?

Syl wrote:If any of you have any spare meat (in the 60s item level), I'll take it off your hands.

heh. that raptor hungry Sheriff???

yeah i'm low on meat too but i figure to be questing tonight a bit so i'll send any extra your way. gotta stock up for ray too!

Damelon wrote:Does that include the commute? Ugh!

Yeah, if I was working 22-hour days I would have killed myself by now. As it is it's going to be really difficult to interview. Especially since my boss will fire me on the spot if she finds out I am trying to leave. And since panic at the thought of being unemployed without medical insurance is what got me into this in the first place... If anyone should happen to notice a halfway decent (hell, quarter decent) job opening around the city...

Thanks for letting me vent, sorry for the off-topic. Good luck with all of your WoW endeavors, hopefully I will be back before all of you are 70 - and if not, we can raid something. Just don't clear Black Temple without me; I have a score to settle there.

Web Monkey wrote:Any other dual-dagger wielding rogues out there? I have a question:

When picking which dagger to go in your main-hand, would you choose your faster blade, or your more powerful blade? Anyone know how the dynamics of how two blades work?

Damelon wrote:Can't you use a one handed sword for your main hand and a dagger for your off hand?

I've read that rogues who use Sinister Strike like to have a big, slow main hand weapon (slow weapons do more damage with SS)--that's why the epic sword I found was in such high demand.

Web Monkey wrote:Any other dual-dagger wielding rogues out there? I have a question:

When picking which dagger to go in your main-hand, would you choose your faster blade, or your more powerful blade? Anyone know how the dynamics of how two blades work?

I have some experience of this! Murrin is about right, basically even though a fast and a slow weapon may give the same dps, this only applies to your 'white' damage (the damage from your character's automatic melee strikes). Where slow weapons come into their own is with your 'instant' attacks, the ones you push a button to perform and which are represented as 'yellow' damage on the UI.

Instant attacks take their damage values from the damage range a weapon has. If a weapon has a damage range of 75-100 and a speed of 2.0, it's damage per second would be 43.8, compare that to a weapon that has a range of 32-57, but a speed of 1.0 would have a dps of 44.5. This would give the faster weapon an advantage, but only if you were to right click on a mob and then go and make a sandwich.

In normal rogue fighting, you'll be spamming away on Sinister Strike and SS calculates it's damage like this:
(Attack Power / 14) x Normalized Weapon Speed + Weapon Damage + 98* = Damage

*Damage bonus given by Sinister Strike at rank 10.

You'll see pretty quickly that having a higher (i.e. slower) weapon speed and damage range (the actual damage for each strike is picked at random from within that range) will increase the damage from a Sinister Strike significantly. One thing to note is that word 'normalized' in the formula above. Some time ago now, Blizzard decided to nerf the uber-slow, uber-hard hitting weapons and gave each weapon type a 'normalized' speed. For daggers it's 1.7, for swords, maces and fist weapons it's 2.4. This takes away some of the advantage of using a slow main hand weapon, but not all because slow weapons will always have a higher damage range.

You might be forgiven for thinking that this makes fast weapons useless, but this is not so. Fast weapons strike your target a lot more frequently than slow weapons and in Warcraft, a lot of events, such as enchantments and trinket abilities, trigger based on a percentage chance per hit. This is especially valid for rogues, as you can guarantee that the poison on your faster dagger will hit the target far more often than on a slower one. This is great when combined with the stackable Deadly Poison (and the useful but very situational Wound Poison) and the high level finishing move Envenom. There is also a high level rogue attack called Shiv, which is like Sinister Strike for your off-hand and automatically applies your poison and grants a combo point. The slower your off-hand weapon is, the more energy Shiv uses, so with a fast off hand you can quickly rack up your five combo points and five Deadly Poisons to do a big Envenom!

If you look closely, I think you can tell I used to be Rogue Class Leader for a raiding Guild!

I don't know if it applies to Rogues, but I've read that some of the "chance on hit" effects are actually calculated as chance per minute, which effectively reverses the advantages of fast or slow weapons. I know that with Paladins, a slow enough weapon will guarantee that Seal of Vengeace (stacking damage-over-time effect) triggers on every hit, whereas for things like Seal of Light/Wisdom (for restoring hp/mana) a fast weapon gets better results.

Great stuff! Thanks so much for the information. I hate making guesses about how things work when I buy new gear. I also love to know about the math involved!

I definitely spam away at the SS while fighting, but I am leery to abandon daggers, as I have an addiction to Ambush (it's just so fun!). Sooo, I think I will use this knowledge when upgrading my daggers.

As far as the dagger in my second hand, I will put the one with the lower damage range, regardless of speed.

sigh. i am seriously jonesin here. everyone will be lvl 70 by the
time i get to wow again.

i'll have to seriously solo to catch up. arrrrgh.

sigh.

heavy sigh.

wow withdrawal.

i talked to daniella for two hours tonight explaining all about wow.
(recruiting attempt)
i talked to her about it till her eyelids started to droop.
i guess i'll go look up quest maps on thottbot.

i'm so jonesin.