DING! 80

Ok, here is the back story, I had a mage and rogue hovering and the 70's for a really long time accumulating millions worth of double exp, so I decided to level my mage as I already had an enhancement shaman to for melee.

So, now that you have the story, here is the point. 80 hurts! Getting to 80 is easy but can be costly if your like me and try avoid quest grinds. So when I dinged I realized I was 80, with no hit no spell no stamina and by god no gear ( all relative to what I should have of course). Foo helped out with some moonshroud gear, and I have grinded heroics day and night to get 3/5th's of my Tier 9 set. I have spent more time in the BG's as I have found honor can be faster to gain and is easier to get into a BG than a heroic queuing alone. So I have some PVP gear mixed with PVE, but hey who cares the stats where better and until I can suitably replace them they will stay. Now granted I will not be walking into ICC laden in PVP gear, however for heroics I think the Odd piece simply because it has better stats than a PVE counterpart you are able to use, is ok.

Maybe I am wrong, but my shaman started healing Heroics in the 78 PVP set, no one noticed or cared. Now my mage uses some hard earned honor to bolster his gear where I cannot find a tank or healer to chain with me to get the preferred items. So is this acceptable for a new 80? Is it ok to use PVP gear to help with stats while you chain heroics in the effort to get the right piece?

As far as I am concerned PVP gear only carries one useless stat in the form of resilience and maybe the abundant health, which in a raid is of negligible use. However as many are aware there is PVP style fights in raids today. For example the faction champs of Trial of the Champion are a PVP battle and I know that people bring there PVP sets to this fight. ICC also has some PVP battles (correct me if I am wrong but it is what I have been told by raid leaders) and yet PVP gear has no place in a PVE raid environment in many peoples eyes. While I do not believe taking a full pvp set rings/trinks and all to ICC is a great idea, there are times where it has some merit, or atleast a hint of usefulness. So for 80 as a DPS it is much easier and quicker for me to farm honor than triumph, unless I get a tank or healer I mite as well Quest for the 15 minutes I will wait.

If anyone has a view on this please let us all know...

Can PVP gear be used for stats in heroics?
Can PVP gear be used in any PVE raids?

OP, is there such a thing?

What makes a class/spec over powered (OP) ? A warlocks ability to easily dispatch mages, or a rogues ability to easily dispatch warlocks? These are class counters, and in many cases spec Dependant.

Examples of this is that a Subtlety rogue would suffer greatly against a Arms or fury, hell any to most warriors with half the brain power they should have, but a combat or mutilate rogue could go toe to toe a lot longer with more success. So does this mean that Warriors are overpowered because they killed that sub rogue with ease? Nope, does it mean warlocks are overpowered because a Chaos bolt critted for 15K+, surely not. A frost mage can kite a kill alot of melee classes but other casters, warlocks with felpuppy's and even other mages, or even a priest, can knock that mage down.

So OP, what does this really mean, and when can it be used? Well in the case of the Retadin, it can, Blizzard has themselves stated that Retadins are not where they should be damage wise. While a rogue is a glass cannon that can kill you quickly or control you quite well, they are a cooldown Dependant class, everyone can admit that there main abilities are on arguably long timers. So a rogue one shots half your health, a chaos bolt takes you to the grave, a divine storm messes up your hair, each class has a way to deal significant damage, just because it happened does not make them OP.....well not always... There is so many factors as it stands such as dodge, resilience, Health, block, crit, spell/attack power, expertise, hit, etc etc that if someone has enough of each and you lack in one, you could be facing a dire end.

PVP is all about that balance, you want to kill fast, but you risk the result of your EPIC PWN's to be a lack of survivability. So we stack, stamina, spell power, enchant for the flavor and so on to try to achieve enough damage to kill without it becoming a maim, and take a big enough hit to still have time to activate that fight or flight spell we all have. So balance it up we do, in arena this is more important, and also more varying than in BG's. In a BG you can get away with damage orientated stat stacks, where as arena you need to mix it up based on group composition, which will again change in 2's,3's and 5's and you may be there just to rain damage on a healer, or to survive and distract there damage dealer.

So back to the original Question, is there such thing as OP in PVP, there certainly is, some classes and specs are designed to over power some classes and spec compositions, where as others as is the Retadin, are really just a jack of all trades. Head over to WOW.com and have a look at there take on fighting a Retadin, there is also some blue posts about the Retadin and it's need to be beaten with the Nerf bat.

In PVE the OP situation thickens, as there is some fights like in ICC that are not friendly to all DPS, and as such people geared for ICC25 still struggle to get over 4-4.5k DPS on some bosses, casters mostly. However this can be spec Dependant as I have seen warlocks with over 5.5k GS (if you follow that) of different specs (destro and affliction) pull numbers that are 2-3k apart. So, in ICC affliction looks to be better for warlocks due to movement, or is Destro in need of buffs?

More later....

Time management?

I play wow for a couple of hours a night, most nights I like to relax after work by handing some horde there entrails. However this results in me losing gold, I try to farm, but have to be in the right "mood" to do it. I try to quests but its so monotone I log off.

So, managing my time to get Gold, level toons, kill those dark bastardly horde, and ultimately get to 80, is proving somewhat harder than I would like. My solution? Well basically I have a mage with herbalism and alchemy maxed, spend 1hour flying around northrend or even lower areas I can make a few 100 gold. I have a maxed miner, and again same situation 1 hour a few hundred gold. I do not play the AH game, I want that instant reward for my labor, so I have Foo now taking a cut, and selling everything for me.

Time management is not something I can do with an 80 two near 80 toons, and up and coming tanks etc, so I need to work out one thing per day to focus on, make a gold day a pvp day a this toon that toon day and so on. But..... I do not, I play for what I feel like, Killing horde on my rogue (the cooldown class, please head to wow.com to see what I mean) or freezing them to oblivion as my mage, Farming just is not on the books for the few hours a night I get. The weekend however after 3 hours of morning raiding, farming is just the ticket, still get to satisfy that craving to play feed the addiction if you will, and yet its not something that will make me so mad or stressed I want to uninstall. So I raid, I farm, and then when I get over farming, I PVP or quest, or move on to something else.

Managing your time on wow around goals, and real life can be more stress than its worth, playing for what you want helps yourself, but not the in game world. Even though you are there to hide from politics, money, religion and all of life's other BS, you actually just move from one active society to another. So if your not like me and can actually farm on queue that is great, however if you log on to PVP and then wonder what idiot has his headlights shining through the window at OH S**T IT'S MORNING!.... you are probably like me.

I Farm I have enough gold (if there is such a thing) but it never goes up for long, and never goes down for long. So like all my posts there centered around me and nothing.... that is right I do not help much with these ramblings.... or do I.... Think about it.

Egamad that anti gold farmer.

In the Defence of Rogues.

Now before I even start typing I can hear the protests about rogues, but are they really that bad? Warlocks generally chain fear, paladins stun and bubble, Druids hope in out of HOT's, and so on. But the rogue takes the most flak even though they are the melee equal of a mage.

Now what is the problem people have with rogues? Well in certain specs they can open on you with a massive crit, but after that a subtlety spec is useless for damage. They can stun lock to death, is this any different to being feared to death? A stun lock rogue is generally going to try to keep the rotation going as long as they can and if they miss there basically in the s**t and so have to re-stealth in combat which is a 2minute - 3 minute cooldown depending on spec. A combat rogue has the greatest chance out of stealth to survive while doing good damage, however they lack the stun lock prowess of the assassination tree, and the stealth prowess of subtlety.

While a rogue of any spec will mess up your day and while you level they can and will be a BG problem, just remember anyone can kill anyone, you all have the counters to do it. I can drop warlocks on my mage with ease, and on my rogue, but I have yet to master the demise of the paladin, my rogue however stands a better chance. While everyone cries and complains about rogues and curses there existence in pvp, they are not as bad as everyone wants you to believe and a fight with a rogue is essential focused on the opening in most specs. If you see a rogue before he gets you most will run away once there stealth is broken, others will try to salvage the fight, and most classes, would agree that getting the first shot in is generally a match decider.

So are rogues the Anti-Christ? Should we complain and winge about there stuns, and yet do nothing about warlock fear, paladin bubbles, frost mage snares, shadow priests DOT's fear and mindflaying deathmaker? There has to be a line, each class has its own strategy, and each class has a way to fight back, so less crying about that rogue that spills your blood, and instead work on a way to counteract them. Long cooldowns, stealth dependent glass cannons, warriors would drop a rogue without them using there cooldowns, frost mages aswell, preist etc etc.

In closing, Rogues are not EVIL! BAD! OVERPOWERED! and really they are in leather, they just have and use there tools more class dependently then my mage either will, and that is what makes them deadly in the right hands, or just really annoying.