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Authenticator Woes Part 2

Posted by on Jun 12, 2010 in Commentary | 5 comments

I contacted Blizzard support via email and was asked three questions to verify my account. I was unable to answer all of them. One question involved providing my vanilla WoW serial number, something that I no longer thanks to Typhoon Ketsana. The rep told me to email Account Services directly and provide a government-issued ID plus a scanned printout of a document they provided in the link. I submitted what was required two days later. After nearly three days, I got a response that Blizz has removed my authenticator and I was able to login.

It was a long and arduous process. I still can’t get over the fact that the one thing that was protecting my account also prevented me from accessing it. Overall, I was unable to play the game for about a week.

Pardon the short update. Real life is getting in the way again. If you want to hear about the new talent previews, WoW.com has those covered. I was supposed to write a post about gear stagnation but this week’s heroic drops have managed to shut me up. Imagine that?

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On Bloodlust, Rogues & Raiding

Posted by on May 7, 2009 in Commentary | 6 comments

Today’s post is more on commentary (and maybe a little QQ) than anything else. This article on WoW Insider by Eliah Hecht got me thinking about Rogues and the state of the class. I already touched a bit on the subject back when dual specs came to light by saying how it has less of an impact for pure DPS classes.

First of all, the idea of giving Bloodlust to Rogues (or coming up with a new or redesigned ability that will give a similar benefit) is great, but the article itself highlights a main weakness of the class: the lack of utility. Let’s enumerate the pure DPS classes: Mages have caster buffs, tables and portals. Warlocks have soulstones, summoning stones and soul wells. At least Hunters have their aspects. They’re not the greatest utility abilities by a long shot but at least they have one. Rogues have what? Tricks of the Trade? My proposal here is to provide a new ability instead, something that’s more in line with the class: a raid-wide buff that adds poison damage (or at least a chance to add it) to physical damage. Again, it’s just an idea. I’m sure that it will upset the delicate PvP balance that Blizzard is maintaining so I don’t expect anything to come out of it.

Another thing that’s been nagging me for the past two weeks is this question: why bring a Rogue to a raid? The question came from the fight with Kel’Thuzad and how melee DPS deals with it. If you don’t know about positioning for melee for that fight, here it is: KT’s freeze spell affects its target plus anyone within ten yards. To get around this, melee classes form a triangle around KT, with the main tank taking one corner and the other melee take one of the remaining two. The idea is to split up then stack on top of each other to minimize the damage and, more importantly, the freeze’s range. Because of this mechanic, it makes it difficult to join PUGs because almost all of them look for ranged DPS. I’d imagine that for the KT fight, the maximum melee DPS that you can bring is four. Since Rogues are the only pure DPS melee class, they offer the least value in terms of flexibility. So, why bring one to a raid?

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