Friday, February 09, 2007

I feel like garbage. I'll try to keep the health stuff to a minimum, though. I may be starting a new RA treatment soon, since the Humira failed to do, well, anything. I'm also having a lot of trouble remembering to take my meds, which is unusual for me.

So, since I'm trying to make myself, you know, write stuff, and don't want to talk about feeling like garbage, WoW update time. I hit 70 last week; people are still sending me "grats" messages, and it always surprises me because it feels like it happened a long time ago. I've been working on getting various attunements/keys, because I'm going a little loopy from lack of raiding. I'm not having much luck getting into 5-man groups, though, which is discouraging. I'm a good rogue, but rogues have certain PvE issues which don't make them really desirable for 5-mans.

For starters: we take a lot of damage. We can't do damage from range, so we get smacked with all kinds of AoE attacks (both physical and magical), and our armor is only leather. We require a lot of healing. Also, on fights that require kiting a boss, it can be tricky to get enough face time with the mob to contribute significant DPS.

Our crowd control, sap, is currently the most reliable CC in the game--Blizzard removed the heartbeat resists, so it lasts the full duration. However, you can only apply it once, because it can only be applied from stealth and while a mob is not in combat. And for some reason, Blizzard has decided to start including packs of mobs that are already engaged in combat, thus rendering them unsappable. Not just one or two mobs in a pack, but the full pack--I shudder to think what these guys will do, un-CC-d, in heroic mode.

There are other significant issues for rogues in the expansion, but others have already covered them well and in detail, and nothing has come of it.

And last but not least--Blizzard's LFG interface is just bad. You can only look for groups for instances your level (so no going farming on an alt while monitoring LFG); you can only look for 3 groups at a time; you can't look while in a group (so if I decide to go run some lowbie friends through something to pass the time, it drops me); and last, but not least--so few people use it, you may see one or two people looking for an instance at any time. People find groups through a mishmosh of adhoc channels, general in-city chat, friends/guild lists instead.

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