Killing Spree is one of those abilities that seems simple. It’s a major DPS cooldown for Combat. You want to line it up with damage-enhancing procs to squeeze out every last ounce of damage. In that vein, tons of Combat Rogue guides out there advise only using Killing Spree with Deep Insight. But is that really true?

Last raid I was chatting in our melee channel, and the topic of cooldowns came up. Vuez, our resident awesome-at-ALL-THE-THINGS Rogue, said something I’d never heard before: “Just use Killing Spree on cooldown.” Apparently, he saw Killars from <vodka> use Killing Spree as soon as it came up and adopted the mindset.

Then I came across a Rogue thread with experienced players citing Killing Spree on cooldown is better than sitting on it.

DM;HKS (Doesn’t Matter; Have Killing Spree)

The evidence suggests that Killing Spree- regardless of Insight level, trinket availability, procs, etc.- is best used immediately. The only exception to this rule is when Adrenaline Rush is active or you’re at high energy.

This makes sense. Deciding to wait usually keeps me from using Killing Spree for a good 10 seconds. If you consider that effect across the entirety of a fight, you’re potentially missing out on using it again at the end. There’ll be times in fights where I peel off the boss- Yor’sahj especially- and just let it sit unused in the hopes I’ll Redirect, stack Insight a little higher, and get off a massive DPS burst. But while I cunningly planned my damage, I failed to recognize Killing Spree was unused for 15 seconds.

Now this advice isn’t all-encompassing. If you know you’re coming up to a stars-align-and-angels-sing moment where Deep Insight, class racials, Tol’vir potions, and raid DPS cooldowns all come up at once, obviously save Killing Spree for that. So long as that magical moment is coming up soon, it’s fine to wait. For the curious, “soon” is approximately 8 seconds (the time it takes to stack combo points for a finisher).

So the logic is this: if you don’t see something awesome coming before your next Eviscerate, just use the cooldown. If you’re using Restless Blades correctly, Eviscerates lower your cooldowns by 10 seconds. That extra 10% damage from waiting for higher Insight will not outdo an additional cooldown later in the fight.

In Practice

Here’s how I’d use Killing Spree for Dragon Soul’s Heroic bosses, considering the tips above:

• Morchok – Irrelevant since you should be running Subtlety. But if you’re Combat, use on cooldown.
• Yor’sahj – Use on cooldown, especially if you can cleave off Black Ooze adds.
• Zon’ozz – Use on cooldown, especially when Zon’ozz is near claw and towards the end when damage taken is highest.
• Hagara – Use on cooldown, especially when near Ice Tombs (but be careful about getting stuck).
• Ultraxion – Use on cooldown, but there should be a stars-align moment around the 60% mark that Deep Insight, Killing Spree, Orc (and other class?) racials, and your Agility potion align. Save KS for this.
• Blackhorn – Use on cooldown, especially if adds are clumped up and can be cleaved.
• Spine of Deathwing - Irrelevant since you should be running Subtlety.
• Madness of Deathwing – Use on cooldown. This fight’s all kinds of messed up for Killing Spree and incorrect target swapping. Aim for using it against solo targets.

Chillax

There’s a lot of depth to this seemingly simple ability. But hopefully this will ease your mind if you’re the type that just uses abilities as they pop up. You’re inadvertently optimizing DPS by executing more cooldowns overall, you unintentional genius!

And to those of you waiting for that planets-align moment, reconsider your approach. Much like love prospects, it’s better to make a move than wait for the perfect moment. Inaction can be fatal.

Rogues entering PVP for the first time have to worry about gearing up. Part of gearing up is hitting the right stat caps. Last time we tackled the PVP hit cap (and how to calculate it). This time we’re going to look at expertise.

When you think of expertise, you probably think of PVE. You’re in raids to PUMP DAT DPS SON, and if you don’t cap the stats that make your weapons hit flesh you’re doing your raid a disservice. You’ll occasionally find yourself in front of a monster out of necessity, and you’ll be cursing the entire time as most of your special (and not-so-special) attacks get dodged and parried.

But PVP isn’t about DPS optimization. It’s about enemy control (with DPS bursts here and there). Hit plays a big role since it ensures stuff connects. But many people just leave it at that. And doing so leaves you open to having your stuns miss your target.

Bustin’ a Cap in Enemy Dodge Tables

The magical amount of expertise needed for PVP at level 85 is 5%, or 20 (601 rating). Reforge to that and you’re gold. Your CC ceases being Russian Roulette.

Noxxic and many Rogue PVP guides miss the mark with their stat priority recommendations. Rather, they overgeneralize the priorities. Yeah, you can argue that ignoring expertise and having a 95% chance for abilities to hit non-Rogue/Druid targets is “enough”… until that clutch Kidney Shot or Gouge on a healer gets dodged.

Do It for the Healbots

The point of PVP, especially in the coordination-centric world of arenas, is to control your enemy. Yes, your legendary daggers and Vial of Shadows can probably kill anyone during the opener. But for those times when they survive and the match turns long, the ability to control suddenly trumps stacking damage stats.

If you’re just spamming Random Battlegrounds, this is less mandatory. Your success is more meta- how you manage your nodes, players assigned per base, etc. But for small-scale engagements (and maybe even Rated Battlegrounds), that 5% expertise determines who lives and dies.

You’ll still encounter problems with Agility classes. Their Agility translates to dodge, and dodge raises the expertise cap. So when it comes to Rogues and Feral Druids you’re unable to out-stat RNG. But that’s okay, because those classes aren’t why you’re capping expertise in the first place.

For every other class- healers especially- you can have 100% confidence you will actually stop their cast. For all of you who failed interrupting a clutch sitting-at-1%-health heal because your stun got dodged, you know the pain I speak of. You do not want to be the guy who says “STUNNING PRIEST ………………. NVM DODGED.”

Don’t Be “That Guy”

It’s a reality that during PVP you’ll find yourself in front of your target. And you’ll often find yourself in high-pressure I-MUST-STOP-THIS-CAST situations. Expertise exists for that. Don’t neglect it.

What would you do if your GM told you your BiS (best-in-slot) Heroic DS loot had to be outfitted with epic gems in 48 hours or you were getting the boot from your raid team?

Well, Zivandrana on the WoW Forums is in that exact situation in his guild. And while it’s not surprising that the GM would push for a fully-optimized raid, it’s a jarring and sudden change for raiders.

Imagine you’re in a hard-mode raiding guild. Your raid leader and officers are preparing for this expansions’s massive DPS stress tests: H-Ultraxion and H-Spine of Deathwing. It’s understandable that they’d look at how to improve the bottom-line DPS. And the easiest way to do this is stack stats on every character. Boosting gems are a perfect solution!

But do the stat benefits outweigh the massive goldsink?

Pimpin’ Gear Ain’t Cheap

On Caelestrasz, we’re seeing uncut Queen’s Garnets sell for 4,000g on a good day. By now most hard-mode players are probably in 2 or 3 BiS ilvl 410 pieces, and each has 2-3 gem slots. How much would an average person have to pay to adhere to this new rule?

Let’s be generous and estimate the lower end: 2 BiS items x 2 slots per item x 4,000g Queen’s Garnets = 16,000g. Ouch.

You might’ve gotten lucky and snagged a few gems from Deathwing clears or guild trades. But you’ll eventually have 13 pieces of gear with gem slots to fill. If 2 pieces took 16,000g, imagine 13.

Oh, That’s Totally Reasonable

And what are you actually gaining from 10 more stat points per socket? Shadowcraft’s Combat simulation suggests epic gems are 50DPS better than blues. But you’ll only gain that full 50DPS assuming ideal simulator conditions (i.e. Ultraxion), so it’s fair to assume it’s only 80-90% of that. So let’s say 40DPS per socket.

If you’re fully outfitted, those gems will boost you ~1300DPS. All for a scant 104,000g. But Shadowcraft points out that any 2 upgrades would just as easily bump me up 1300DPS. It’s almost more cost-efficient to buy a Paragon or Blood Legion raid spot. Hell, asking them might even be cheaper.

Good Intentions, Poor Execution

Overall I think that the GM has good intentions at heart, and that the policy aligns with the guild’s classification. Hardcore guilds exist to min-max and tackle difficult content. But the cost-benefit ratio is extremely small. And they could be losing quality (albeit money-constricted) raiders.

If the guild was consistently facing sub-5%wipes on DPS races, I’d say this is a perfect approach to a solution. But forcing players to gem epics to keep their raid spot, when the problems probably lie with the players and not the gear? That’s like attaching a diamond aerodynamic hood to your car to make it run faster. It’s monetary overkill for nearly nothing.

Get It Elsewhere

Does seeing your own gear gemmed with blues make you cringe? It’s important to realize they’re only ~40DPS handicaps. Instead of investing gobs of money in epic gems, just spend 10 minutes cleaning up your rotation or watching a top player’s boss kill video.

You’ll gain a lot more than 40DPS. For free.

Combat Rogues! Hear my lamentations! Stacking haste leads to energy capping, energy capping leads to lost DPS, and lost DPS means KEYBOARD-DESTROYING FRUSTRATION.

With our gear (and stats) improving weekly, trinkets that can proc at the worst times (thanks for that extra haste during Heroism and my 2-piece bonus proc, Starcatcher Compass), glyphs that make abilities free, talents that proc energy, and cooldowns that either replenish energy at ridiculous rates or prevent us from spending it, there’s tons of factors that lead even the most sensible Rogue to think haste is an evil stat that should be avoided.

It’s legitimate to ask “How much haste is too much?”

What Good Is Haste Anyway?

Well, first let’s define what haste does for Combat Rogues. It replenishes energy faster. It increases your attack speed (more swings = more hits = more white damage). At its best, it provides you that perfectly-timed energy point to get off a finisher. At its worst, it taunts you by ticking up quicker than you can spend it (usually with the help of other unfortunate procs).

Guides everywhere say that after hit and expertise, haste is the stat to stack to infinity. But how can they say that when I’m sitting with a full energy bar screaming at my GCD?!

10,800

In reality, haste is only bad to stack when you can’t spend what it generates. And that number is ludicrously high. Rogues on the WoW Forums estimate the number’s around 10,800 haste (for reference, Kuriimu has 2442) at level 85. That’ll put your passive regen at 23 energy per second, which is about as fast as Rogues can pump it out with no procs or cooldowns.

The only other times you’d be capping is during Heroism (40 seconds once per fight), Adrenaline Rush (60-80 seconds of a 6-minute fight), or a horrendous string of energy procs during Killing Spree (10 seconds of a 6-minute fight at most). Boiled down, you’ll be in danger of energy-capping territory for 2 minutes of any fight. But there’s another 4 minutes you’ll be starving for that energy to execute more attacks.

Being frustrated for 33% of a fight is bad, but being frustrated for the remaining 66% is worse.

It’s Probably You

So if you’re panicking about stacking excessive haste, relax. Haste’s benefits far exceed its detriments, it comes with a fairly sexy white damage enhancing side-effect (I couldn’t get this line to not sound like an ExtenZe infomercial), and it is our DPS savior for 66% of any given fight. If anything is to blame for energy capping, it’s probably us for timing our coolodowns terribly.

10,800 haste. Good luck hitting that cap.

Crimson’s nearing a giant roadblock called Heroic Spine of Deathwing. It’s one of the most DPS-intensive, class-restrictive, optimization-focused fights ever put in the game. And I’m having doubts EPGP- our loot system- is going to let us defeat it.

I know what you’re probably thinking. “Why would you totally alter your loot system for one fight?!” Or maybe “That’s crazy, EPGP/works great for our guild and we progress fine!”

What’s So Scary?

But Heroic Spine of Deathwing is a different beast. In its current un-nerfed state, your only chance of downing this fight is out-gearing the damage check. Otherwise you’ll die from too much damage that stacks higher as the fight progresses. And what makes this fight different than any other is the fact the only thing between you and victory are these tiny little tendons that get exposed once every 2 minutes for a scant 20 seconds.

Now if you’re thinking like a DPSer, you know 20 seconds lasts about as long as APB. It’s certainly not enough time to gradually ramp up DPS. And these tendons are beast. And if you can’t meet the 2-burns-per-backplate pace, your raid’s dead.

Fairness and Kindness Don’t Kill Bosses

So what’s this got to do with EPGP (an otherwise fair and reasonable loot system)? There’s obvious class bias on this fight, and raid gearing inefficiencies are made glaringly apparent on H Spine.

Suddenly, passing around gear “fairly” and “equally” doesn’t apply. You’re bringing in all your Rogues, Rogue alts, Arcane Mages, Mage alts, and you’re benching a good 20% of your raid team to even make this fight feasible. All that awesome lewt and player skill benched? It’s suddenly moot.

EPGP would allow people to win loot who simply won’t be there next week on H Spine. Now, from their perspective they’ve earned the gear. But from a raid perspective, it’s holding us back from achieving a kill. What matters more here- players getting their due, or the raid getting a kill?

With enough time, H Spine will die even if we alter nothing. Enough weeks of gear drops, enough attempts to practice, enough epic gems slotted, the impending 5% nerfbat… it’ll all put us closer to that kill. But as we sacrifice nothing, other guilds vault above us and gain higher standings. Recruitment declines as rank declines. Players quit (primarily the bench team, if H Ragnaros was any indication) as we’re stuck on one boss. Being fair would make us take an arrow to the knee.

Suddenly, the EPGP is Now DIAMONDS

I proposed today that we temporarily suspend EPGP in favor of Loot Council for the upcoming weeks to overcome this raid wall. I have no idea who’ll support or decline the idea, but it’ll get discussed in due time. The benefit of Loot Council is making sure the classes who a) will be present b) will perform highest and c) aren’t ‘wasting’ stats get the gear ahead of others. H Spine was practically designed for guilds who employ Loot Council.

One example a fellow raider used was “Why would we give [Tier] gear to healers now if they’re capable of meeting the healing requirements? The gear is better sent to DPS. If the healers can keep us alive, then we need to redirect the gear.” And this is something EPGP can’t control or account for. But Loot Council can.

The Times, They’re A-Changin’

Crimson really went through a radical shift these past 2 patches. We went from moderate to competitive progression without vastly increasing our hours, losing our personality, or gutting our raid team.

But altered guild philosophies call for altered gearing strategies. If we’re keen to keep our pace, this is something we’ll have to fix.

Image Credit: icy-veins.com

Oh, Warlord Zon’ozz. How you make us bite our nails with your intimidating enrage timer on Heroic.

For those of you attempting this boss as DPS (melee especially), there’s a simple way to boost your DPS with zero penalty! It’s a bit counter-intuitive and seemingly risky, but it’s actually safe and the damage gains are substantial.

As a Combat Rogue, I get Deep Insight procs right as we’re told to spread out. So this is a huge boost.

On the final bounce before the black tentacle phase, check if he did his “I’M FIRIN’ MAH LASER” ability. If he did, it’s safe to move in front. Just run straight through the boss (so you’re facing his front), and DPS him from there. As long as the ball contacts Zon’ozz before any players, it explodes on him and the damage isn’t splashed.

This lets you keep your attacks on the boss without risking an AOE death. Most melee stop attacking for a good 5 seconds during this time. That’s a lot of damage lost.

From there, the fight executes as normal. Follow the boss to the middle as he casts (or tentacles, if you’re so assigned) and kill that hentai-copying bastard.

Got more small tips for boosting DPS on this guy? Comment!

Credit: wow.joystiq.com

Tons of people stop by my stream to ask me how I got to 180k gold. It’s not an easy question to answer, since my income comes from many places. But the majority comes from the Auction House.

The AH: Defined

The Auction House, or AH as it’s lovingly referred to, is an open marketplace where items are posted at breakneck speeds for all kinds of prices- sensible and ridiculous. You’ll find low-level items for a few copper (pennies), and rare epic world drops for tens of thousands of gold (Benjamins). Literally anything tradable in-game is posted for people to buy.

So What’s the Trick?

The best AHers don’t just study what and how much to post. They also analyze when to post.

Most profit doesn’t come from the items you sell, but the market price index and demand level when you post them. This is because prices skew up when demand is highest. Demand shoots up when tons of players identify a need for something.

And the magical day when this all happens is… Wednesday.

Aren’t All Days Created Equal?

Why is that? Because server downtime ends, raid lockouts reset, Conquest & Valor Point caps return to zero, and players clamor to get their gear up to snuff for upcoming raids. There’s a surge of players who suddenly need to get stuff done as quickly as possible, and bucketfuls of gear getting distributed across the server.

Tuesday is a strawman. Historically, Tuesdays are days when people expect WoW to be inaccessible or inconvenient. Very few raids are scheduled on Tuesdays because of extended downtime, server instability, addons breaking, and other factors. It goes duly so for Oceanic servers where maintenance begins during Tuesday prime time.

Many players mistakenly think that weekends are the best times to post auctions. There’s some logic to that- weekends are when WoW activity spikes! But weekends are when people do their farming, crafting, and leisure activities. All those people are throwing items on the AH all weekend driving down prices. There’s few raids going on, less mains acquiring gear, and more overall competition. Ew.

Weekends are when competition is at its peak, so prices are at their lowest. Why would you ever sell something when prices are low unless you’re trying to offload a something worthless?

AH Manipulation 101

My strategy is this:

• Buy tons of stock over the weekend at severely discounted prices (but not so much that I’m stuck with unsellable amounts of stock, making me unable to adjust to market trends).
• When the reset comes around on late Tuesday / early Wednesday, post and re-list aggressively to capture high-priced sales.
• For the rest of the week I stash the most profitable items and trickle down my low-profit inventory to prepare for next week.
• I constantly monitor the AH with my friends Auctionator & TradeSkill Master.

Wrapping It Up

If you’re having trouble making gold, re-evaluate when you post. It might be the only thing that’s holding you back.

Being a Combat Rogue for more than half of Dragon Soul’s encounters means I’m popping Adrenaline Rush (abbreviated AR) a lot during fights. It’s a bittersweet buff.

In a tier where we’re swimming in energy thanks to high amounts of haste on gear, raid buffs, fight buff mechanics, Heroism (toss in Bloodlust and Time Warp), energy refunds from talents, and trinket procs… AR can feel more like an annoyance than a buff.

(By writing this article I fully expect to have the worst energy starvation of this expansion tonight.)

A Point of Contention

One of the major debates going on right now is whether to stack AR and Heroism. On its face it’s not a hard decision- you’re going to energy cap way too much and lose out on the buff’s primary benefit! Of course you wouldn’t use it!

But it’s not that simple.

You’re Missing Out

Even though AR has a cooldown of 3 minutes, Combat’s talent tree contains Restless Blades that decreases it 2 seconds per combo point per finisher. That means on a 5-point Eviscerate, 10 seconds are chopped off AR’s downtime. So in reality, we’re hitting AR every 1.5 minutes on average.

Heroism lasts 40 seconds. That’s a significant chunk of time. If AR was up and ready to go when Heroism was procced, you’d be letting it sit for at least 40 seconds and Restless Blades wouldn’t be knocking off time from the cooldown. Then you need to account for the fact you’re missing out on Heroism and AR’s multiplicative attack speed stacking. Then you need to consider Heroism is typically where you blow most (if not all) of your cooldowns- potions, racials, profession abilities, etc. THEN you need to think about losing all this damage during Deep Insight periods.

Yep, suddenly the decision got more complex.

Oh God, I’ve Been DPSing Wrong My Whole Career

Don’t worry, though. According to Aldriana on Elitist Jerks, AR stackage for the sake of the attack speed buff is “minuscule”. But what’s not minuscule is missing out on a full AR because you held off. And you need to make that determination based on a few factors.

Let’s use two Dragon Soul fights as examples:

Heroic Ultraxion – Heroism is popped at the beginning of the fight, lasting until the 0:40 mark. Even assuming you spend the first 10 seconds getting your rotation started and rocking a quick Killing Spree, that’s still 30 seconds you’re not reducing AR’s cooldown. Down the road you’ll likely be sitting on both KS and AR off cooldown due to how the timers line up. Thus, even though you’ll energy cap like mad you’ll want to pop AR the first second you can to get that final cooldown at the end.

Heroic Zon’ozz – Because Zon’ozz takes more damage as the fight progresses, Heroism’s saved until the end to prevent an enrage wipe and maximize DPS. Here’s where the decision gets tricky. If AR just came off cooldown before Heroism, you’ll probably get 1 final use out of it before  Zon’ozz dies (HP% pending). If it’s still on cooldown but slated to come off mid-Heroism, there’s also chance you’ll use it… but there’s also a chance you won’t get off enough finishers before he dies.

The rule of thumb should be: If I can squeeze 1 more AR into this encounter, AR is worth stacking with Heroism. If not, I should save it until energy regen stabilizes.

AR + Heroism Doesn’t ALWAYS = Bad

This means you need to take a hard look at when your raid blows Heroism on each boss. On top of that, you need to keep an eye on AR’s timer and the boss’s HP (and have an idea of how fast it’ll drop). It’s no simple task, but the DPS gains will be significant.

So to everyone giving blanket statements that “popping AR during Heroism is DERRRRRRP”, point out it’s not quite that black-and-white. Best of all, we have one more little example to prove Combat is a deep spec if played correctly.

Image Credit: lastrogue.com

One of my gripes with PVP is trying to remember (and source) the proper combat caps for Rogues. Sadly, it’s the most important stat when fighting. You owe it to your team to make sure your abilities hit- especially your snares and stuns.

Being under hit cap effectively makes using crowd control a lottery. When you’re talking PVP, it’s all about control (especially for Rogues). So without further adieu, below are the hit caps you need to meet:

• Melee Hit Cap: 5% (600 Rating)
• Melee Hit Cap vs. Night Elves: 7% (840 Rating)
• Spell Hit Cap: N/A

Percentages… Numbers… How Read…?

Now, you might have a few questions.

How did I derive these numbers? Well, there’s multiple online tools that do this calculation (I used these tables), but you could easily fiddle with hit amounts on your character sheet until you hit 1% and jot down the number.

Why did I differentiate Melee vs. Spell hit caps? Because 1% for one is not 1% for the other. They follow different calculations. What matters for PVP Rogues is Melee Hit.

Should you reforge for the Night Elf hit cap or the normal 5% hit cap? That depends on how sure you are you’ll be against a Night Elf. At some ranks of arena, you’ll expect to face certain teams. If you can say with confidence you’ll be against a Night Elf composition and you’re relying on complete crowd control to execute your strategy, the extra 2% is worthwhile. In 99% of cases, 5% melee hit is enough.

Why is Spell Hit Cap marked N/A? Because the amount of hit needed to meet the Spell Hit Cap is an excessive 13% and can be substituted with other stats. Plus, those hit points could be appropriated elsewhere to deliver more pain. The only thing Rogues have that benefit from Spell Hit Cap is poisons, and poisons only notably contribute to DPS if you’re Assassination. Given that we stack Spell Penetration to keep our poisons from getting resisted, and with Shiv and our frequency of auto-attack, spell hit is negligible.

Why is PVP’s hit rating different than PVE’s? Because in PVE raids you’re facing skull-level bosses that are 3 levels higher than you. To account for these level differences, you need to raise your hit cap. But in endgame PVP, every player will be your level. This means we need significantly less hit.

How to Get There

First, gem your gear with +Agi/+Hit gems to meet +Agi socket bonus requirements. Second, reforge your weakest stat to Hit until you meet the cap at the Arcane Reforger.

If you can’t reach hit cap via gemming and reforging (make sure you do it in that order), you can enchant and put points into Precision (Combat tree, 1st tier). I recommend against these options as you’d be giving up important enchants and talents. The hit cap should be easily reachable from gems and reforging alone.

Wrapping Up

The idea of hit capping is to ensure your abilities work when you want them to so you can execute a greater deal of control in PVP. Failing to control in PVP (especially when burning 2-minute cooldowns) can be fatal. So double-check that hit cap every gear upgrade, and make sure you’re primed to fight.

For more help with other combat rating caps for PVP, check out Noxxic and ArenaJunkies.

Thought Jewelcrafting was the best DPS profession for your class in 4.3? If you’re sporting epic-quality gems, think again.

PVERogues tweeted an article yesterday announcing that Jewelcrafting shifted from one of the best DPS professions to the worst. I later heard from a few sources that a similar nerf befell Jewelcrafting last expansion. Being a progression raider, I understand the gravity of this change this time around.

The 29-Agility Nerf

The logic is we’d been using +40 Agi blue gems up till 4.3. Now we have +50 Agi purple gems. But Chimera’s Eyes (the profession benefit afforded to JC’ers) stayed the same at +67 Agi.

Where Delicate Chimera’s Eyes used to be +27 Agi better, they’re now only +17 Agi better. Multiply that across the 3 slots we’re afforded and that’s only a +51 Agi benefit, compared to other professions that continue to offer +80 Agility or more.

Patch 4.3.2′s notes don’t hint at an improved version of Chimera’s Eyes to make up for this reduced effectiveness, so moving forward you’ll want to move away from Jewelcrafting if you’re looking for a true min-max build for your raiding main.

Un-Nerfing (With Minimal Pain)

If Blizzard was interested in returning parity to professions, they could fix this problem. Here’s a few options:

• Upgrade Chimera’s Eye bonuses to account for the lost Agility. The downside of this is they’d be boosting the overall effectiveness of the entire profession, making it more overpowered for those who don’t have access to epic gems. So this probably wouldn’t sit well.

• Offer a stat bonus to each epic gem equipped that eventually adds up to 30 Agility. This makes epic gems that much more valuable for Jewelcrafters who want their effectiveness back, while ensuring new 85′s don’t get an immediate free stat boost. But this forces people to raid or spend exorbitant amounts of gold. Still, it’s probably a fair trade-off considering how gems are already being distributed.

• Provide an improved version of Chimera’s Eyes through the gem clusters in Dragon Soul. Blizzard would be taking the same gem acquisition method and simply inserting a new gem to the random drop system. This gem would have a chance to appear alongside another gem to not penalize non-JCers. This way new 85′s can’t boost their stats, it further enforces the new epic gem system, and there’s no profession-exclusive item drop coding necessary. It’s just one more database entry in the gem drop chance table.

There are quite a few potential implementations, and I hope Blizzard attempts to fix this before 4.3.2 goes live. Because at this point, the next patch I foresee is 5.0. But assuming they don’t fix the problem…

How Bad Is It?

Most of you will likely never notice this nerf, or won’t have justifiable reason to change. We’re really only talking a ~30 Agility difference for the final patch of Cataclysm. And gaining back that 30 Agility difference is going to cost you 3,000g or more as you re-learn an entire profession.

Let’s also not forget that Jewelcrafting is also one of the most profitable professions. You’d be potentially losing one of your biggest moneymakers for a scant 30 Agility boost. Not to mention all those patterns you farmed via dailies.

And there’s the looming potential this could all be some oversight that will get stealth-patched later on, rendering your profession swap moot.

What to Do

If you’re min-maxing, take the leap and just swap professions. Hedge your bets that Blizzard will let this sit as-is until Pandaria and achieve your DPS potential. If you’re raiding semi-seriously or casually, just imagine this change doesn’t exist. And if you’re a casual altoholic, this change would have zero impact in the first place unless you got into some lucky Dragon Soul normal PUGs or scored a ton of gold to burn on epic gems.

Hopefully Blizzard takes notes this time around, though. Having mid-expansion profession nerfs is fun for nobody.