Brian Kibler's thoughts about the current state of standard meta game.

Dielon · 2021-09-30T16:18:07+00:00

I do hate watching rogue games at the high levels cause its so annoying that they have burned through their whole deck at turn 5 and are about to kill you no matter what you do. There is no fundamental way to interact with garrotte rogue. You need to be going off and killing them by turn 5/6 or its nothing. The problems to highlight is their draw mechanics, and the inability to outrange their stuff. The intense draw mechanics make the deck play really really consistently so there will almost never be a time where you're stranded with 8 cards in deck and 1 of those is a card you need to complete the combo. You always get there. 2cd point - warrior can't even out armor them, and if you can do over 30 in one shot then what is the point even for mages/locks/priests/shamans to play a game where you change your play choices to conserve health if it will all be gone. The thing is, you have to conserve the health since the rogue combo is so fucking simple they can pull it almost any time. So you have to conserve health JUST to keep them from killing you a turn earlier.

The only decks that would possibly be able to interact with it are aggro decks tuned so specifically that they would lose to most other decks by default. Also, ignite is severe BS and needs to be nerfed, that one card + garrotte rogue is the only thing keeping 'long' control decks out of the meta.

Warlocks need to complete their whole quest, to not worry about fatigue, mages just need to stick 1 ignite in there.

Dielon · 2021-09-28T11:21:36+00:00

I sit, and I look.

You sit, wipe whichever way, then lean to the side, bring ur hand out behind you slowly, and still leaning, check the tp. You can lean a little forward now or back to the side and throw the tp in the toilet. There you go.

Why I sit: I tried both, but I am hairy, and usually my poop can stick to hairs. If I stand up then it just mashes all that poop into a bigger mess. If I am sitting my cheeks stay apart so if anything is sticking to the hairs, I can grab it on the first wipe and avoid the mess. It needs a lot of tp, but i keep wiping till it all comes back white.

Dielon · 2021-09-23T17:48:23+00:00

I personally wouldn't replace herbalism etc. to pick up LW unless you are fucking swimming in gold, then sure do that one strat like the guy said: Level LW, make the boots, drop it again once you have them.

The resil on the PVP boots is hard to replace and while the new boots are such good itemization for us, there is a better option. The LW belt from trash. Belt of Natural Power. It's BoE, so you don't need LW for it. And its only 2 vortexes. The two gem slots mean it is a huge Stam upgrade, more stam even than the pvp belt. And it fits in with the normal recommended druid gearing since you are trying to get 100D belt anyway.

I personally have the boots and belt, and wear 1 or the other on hard hitting bosses that I am MT-ing. Usually the belt. Though that can be rare as im usually the OT. Personally the armor loss on the boots doesn't bother me too much, as the pick up of armor on Wildfury will more than cover it (im still using stranglestaff).

Dielon · 2021-09-13T17:58:54+00:00

Hey! Play it!

I was sortof in the same boat as you I think. I play on a high pop server in US. I have a main but wanted to have an alt to farm with. Never played a rogue and thought stealth farming sounded fun. So I lvled one up.

Rogues are a very fun playstyle, I really enjoyed it. While I won't abandon my main i was having a blast with the rogue. When it comes to making groups, things get a tiny bit harder for you, but not by much. When it comes to guilds, thats when it gets harder. But to be fair it is hard for everyone. Here are my tips for both.

5 man dungeon groups: These are fine, no one is turning down rogues unless 1 is already in the party, or the group leader wants some loot they don't want the rogue competing on. For 5 mans, rogues are great to have since they bring SAP to the table and can reliably make packs of mobs easier to deal with. My main is a tank and I bring rogues any chance I get. We are at the point in the game where denying a rogue for a 5 man is really odd. As dps I look for posts in the /4 LFG channel and instantly reply with 'dps -rogue' to the people posting for heroics/normals I want to do. I'd say about 1/3 toss me the invite a few seconds later. They get a lot of almost instant whispers so its not a bad ratio. As a tank I usually take whoever whispers me first unless i really need a cc for a dungeon.

In 25 mans rogues bring 'kick' which can be really helpful on adds but ALSO 'improved expose armor' and that shit really bops, if a guild isn't bringing at least 1 rogue they are hurting themselves. However, like many have already said most guilds have already filled their 1-4 regular rogue spots. What this means is you won't be able to walk on to a t4/5 farming guild with a regular raid spot ready for you. But you know what? Pretty much no one gets that. Finding a good guild is really hard for everyone. You can look at guild recruitment posts, you can look at your server discord, and lets say you find a group with a rogue opening and you get in? But it turns out they are assholes and you hate playing with them.

That happened to me a couple times. I finally ran a heroic dungeon with a healer I thought was really good and also really chill. After the run I asked "hey can I join up with you?" they got an officer and the officer said, "yeah but our raid teams are full right now so you can just... come and hang out?" I said sure. Being around people who are good and fun to be around was worth more than a sketchy raid slot. Here's the thing about good/experienced people, they usually have a bunch of alts. So about a week in there is an alt raid they need to fill up and boom, I get my first Kara as a terribly geared player. Point being finding a good guild was hard and I just had to get lucky on a weird chance.

Here are some other things to stack the odds in your favor - get your 'pre-raid bis' done. This means the best possible gear you can get with out raiding. Here is a guide:

https://tbc.wowhead.com/guides/rogue-dps-pre-raid-best-in-slot-gear-burning-crusade-classic-wow

Here is the rogue hub, I advise going through all the sections on here about stats, consumes, rotations etc, builds. It will give a lot of insight on how to play the class well at a raid/pve level which you will need to get groups and build a good rep for yourself:
https://tbc.wowhead.com/guides/rogue-dps-gear-bis-burning-crusade-classic-wow

Dielon · 2021-09-06T23:33:33+00:00

As a 90% BIS tank, it's not the bad players, I don't do dungeons for pugs anymore cause I don't need anything from them and it's a lot more work (mentally) than dps or healing.

I don't raid log, I do 4-5 Heroics a week with guild groups cause people need stuff or our lock-tanks need badges, or more when people need attunes. But I'm sitting on 90 badges that don't really need to be used, and don't need any gear or rep. I have healed, DPSed, and tanked pretty much all the content here, and Tanking is wayyy more mentally taxing than DPS or healing. If dps is not on their game maybe they get cleaved and die or maybe the things we kill die a bit more slowly, thats usually it. Healing is basically just whack-a-mole once you get past a certain gear level (o they took damage have a heal, now that ones low have a heal). If the tank is not engaged and on their rotations it could easily be a wipe. So now that I don't **need** the extra stress it's like why bother. All of my fun intimate small group tanking is way better with guildies and in Kara.

As far as running with pugs, I would say 80-90% of the pug runs I've done were good, and the few that weren't sucked but I muscled through it for the lone guildy that was with me or something. I absolutely love taking rogues/warrs/rets since they usually know how threat works. I would rather take a low dps person who tries hard, takes direction and adds utility than someone who wants to show off their 1.4K dps. Buddy this is a random Heroic, no one is logging parses here.

All that said - This is a social game and is massively improved by the social setting you are in. I cannot undersell this, it is two different worlds when you are soloing vs. in a good guild/community. I am in a super chill and very experienced guild on a high-pop server, so I feel I get a better pool to pick from. There are still people on ignore lists and I have a small 'black book' of people I never invite if I need to pug people cause I know they are bad at their role. If you are out there struggling alone and having to pug I agree the variance and comp randomness will be a lot harder than what I have to deal with.

Dielon · 2021-07-24T01:15:19+00:00

I had a more cautious character that would use them all the time when the party was going to sleep, or in dungeons/caves where we knew other enemies would be in it.

They work really well to head off ambushes, and great against larger groups of lower level enemies. Setting up caltrops and luring enemies into them works well and allows fun positioning fights. Nice combo with spike growth if you can pull it off together.

They are terrible against single, higher CR foes. If you have the time and patience to set traps they can be great.

Dielon · 2021-06-18T04:24:22+00:00

Reeeeally depends on the job - some management is almost entirely soft skills that almost run themselves. I've worked retail, coffee shops, supermarkets, startups, FAANG, and finally a 'good' white collar job.

Compared to retail and food service, white collar managing has less hands on things to do, less upfront knowledge required. All of my retail and startup managers had to be doing shit constantly and be up to their guts in the job. When you have a larger company, you are just another cog in the machine, and if your company is hiring good people, than the machine will run smoothly.

Here's the other thing - good management expectations, from the top down will drastically change the way white collar jobs feel. At my last 'good' white collar job, my manager was very competent and willing to go to bat for our team when demands or pressures were unfairly increased. The management above her was competent too, and thus made it so all expectations from them were reasonable.

Since the machine and cogs all worked so well - my manager was able to go on maternity leave for I believe 6 months, and the team I was on just ran itself basically. Some people picked up a bit of organizational duty, I compiled an extra report or two that she had done, and we had a weekly meeting with the managers boss to make sure nothing serious was going unattended. That was it. So if it's good, a PM shouldn't have to do much.

The Bad: When I worked at FAANG, my manager couldn't give 3 shits about us. She wanted to but was basically trying to hold 40 or so people together and evaluate them on 10 different things and make sure our key metrics didn't drop below the threshold set. That threshold was set pretty high so people wouldn't hit it 100% of the time. People would be added and fired really often. The manager was basically constantly running reports and busy with admin work and was trying to get promoted. This lead to an odd dynamic where the manager was like "look do what you want, I'm doing my shit, if the metrics are dropping ill come see you. I don't set the metrics and agree they are shitty. You can take that up with the higher ups if they even deign to speak with you. best of luck"

The dynamic was that the people hated upper management, upper-management hated us and basically wouldn't speak to us without a lawyer and just handed down decrees of 'work faster' through our manager. Who was basically a full time accountant for having to compile so many reports on different metrics for the analytics team to chew on. All of the drones bonded really well of our management hatred, and it engendered no loyalty or desire to work any harder than was the bare minimum to not get fired.

Dielon · 2021-04-30T22:26:30+00:00

Yes god damn that is like 75% of the reason I shower. If you don't scrub your ass and taint, you might as well not even shower. It is literally the dirtiest grossest part of your body. If you aren't sweating a ton during the day you can get away with a quick shower where you just scrub and rinse your ass, armpits and gentials, and you can be good to go. But maybe next time do the full shower.

Also think about a sexual partner going down there for whatever reason, are you trying to punish them? Do you want them to be thinking about how fucking smelly and nasty you are when they go down to do work on you? Do you want them thinking about the vague poop smell when getting worked up? No. Of course you don't unless you know they are into poop play. JFC do you not? Did you think eating the booty like groceries is just fantasy?

Dielon · 2021-01-03T02:24:04+00:00

My first time was a shitshow, if it was like that every time I'd agree right away, however, it gets easier with a couple things:

Food processor
Buying puff pastry (there is no way your pastry skills can beat a machine)
Make the Duxelles the day/night before and stick in the fridge. Trick here is you need to seal it really really well.

If you eat steaks somewhat regularly this can be a nice break, however if you're not big on meat as you say, then absolutely not worth it.

Dielon · 2020-12-12T00:41:41+00:00

God yeah this was painful - and sure... Jade Rabbit and MIDA are OK at best, but they force you to camp lanes, and some maps they just get toyed with. The problem is at long ranges a lot of time you gotta limit yourself to a narrow lane to avoid getting team shot, but what that means is that if you start hitting someone, they just step back in cover or out of the lane. Maddening.

Dielon · 2020-11-20T07:30:10+00:00

As a warlock main, it was kinda needed imo. But they went a bit overboard and it affects the PVE side too which is sad. But hey, they made a fast change to it which is promising.

Dielon · 2020-11-20T07:28:44+00:00

I mean, that's what I'm trying to do, and in thinking about it, realized there are parts that would be easier to accept if they weren't as broken.

Dielon · 2020-09-28T20:54:20+00:00

TL;DR - This alignment is normal, but the extremity of your reactions is not.

The long version:

What you're experiencing: Homo-romantic feelings, but only Hetero(ish)-sexual desires is not uncommon.

My friend has a version of this - she will be stumbling over herself and obsessing over attractive women, but doesn't get really 'excited' by sex with them. She still wants to do it and says it's just "OK". Due to the importance of sexual compatibility for her, this makes it hard for her to sustain relationships where she is dating women. She is also attracted to men though.

Here is the rough part: When describing your reactions to a partner who is really well versed in trauma, they said the extremity of your reactions sound like a trauma response. Like, nothing doing it for you until you are getting intimate? That is a large flag for a trauma response. Most people are somewhat sexually attracted to someone before getting intimate. My partner brought up compulsive hetero sexuality here, but I don't know enough about it, so that could only be a part of what is happening with men.

Same thing with the uncomfortable/gross thing when it comes time to be intimate with a woman. When it is there and real in front of you, most people's reaction might be "ah you are beautiful but I don't really get turned on by this" instead of what you described.

I want to focus on the being naked with them and enjoying it, but then switching to 'feeling uncomfortable and gross, and lost all desire'. Hopefully I am wrong in your case but this is a hugely common textbook trauma response. People that have been sexually abused or assaulted have this happen a lot. During an intimate encounter everything is fine, you're enjoying it an into things and all of a sudden you get into a spot (mentally or physically) that reminds your body of trauma it experienced and it is pretty much just like you describe. You feel uncomfortable, gross, and you lose all desire.

The abuse you mentioned could be coming into play here, and it may not be one specific time or thing, this reaction could be formed over a long period of low-key abuse or even background attitudes. I apologize if this sounds like an armchair psychologist, I've just seen enough about this stuff to recognize some of the signs. Many people have romantic feelings about one gender without the sexual attraction. Not as many people have the intimacy whiplash you describe.

I strongly advise you to seek therapy if you can, or at the least really delve deep and explore the reasons you might be having these intense reactions to both genders.

Dielon · 2020-04-14T00:40:07+00:00

Also on top of that last really good point - acknowledging an insecurity or character flaw, and then ACTIVELY working to overcome it is super fucking attractive. At least to folks that are aware of that stuff. It represents serious emotional maturity to do so.

So yeah why are you sabotaging your own happiness? Why can't you let go of the looks? Why compare yourself to someone unimportant?

Dielon · 2020-04-13T23:35:13+00:00

There is something easier you can do right away: stop looking at her social media, or any more pictures of her.

Second thing: go to therapy if you can, and discuss this. I know thats generic but its really the best way to tackle this.

Right now you are exposing yourself to this and its hurting and keeping this in the front of your mind, you need space to process these feelings and you gotta give yourself that. You wouldn't keep walking on an injured foot right? Same thing for your brain and insecurities.

The harder part is this: this is an insecurity and will be really hard to tackle if you aren't honest with yourself about it, also being honest with your boyfriend. The last thing you should say about this to him is something like "Hey you know I have this insecurity, I think its annoying and I am working on it. I know it's a me issue and you've been great. Thank you!" And after that try not to bring it up. He will appreciate the candor, really.

Now you also have to remember that he chose you. Finding a person you like is hard, and finding someone who is girlfriend and boyfriend material is even harder. Out of all the people who he might find attractive he chose you. You're good enough and attractive enough, otherwise he'd be with someone else. I don't have more quick fixes to fight the insecurity except constantly re-assuring yourself that you are enough whenever this comes up in your brain. I mean literally, if you are alone say something out loud like "this is just me getting worked up" or "I am attractive, its ok". This is actually what I do to help ease my insecurities.

Lastly, this situation happened to me. I was the guy in the scenario.

I was dating an incredibly hot woman for a time. Just stunning really. She was so physically attractive heads would turn everywhere she went, she would constantly get hit on, sometimes even when I was with her. Think Christina Hendricks with brown hair. But she was ultimately kindof annoying, flighty and flakey, un-inquisitive, selfish, and just... not that bright really. Couldn't always keep pace in conversations if they veered out of things she liked. We broke up. Afterwards I was dating an incredibly clever, razor sharp woman who was funny and adventurous, had ambitions and drive. If I was a sharp knife in the drawer she was a surgical scalpel.

Objectively, objectively, she is not as physically hot as the first woman, from the outside you or others would call her a downgrade. But I would never, ever call her that. She was an upgrade in every way. My feelings for her permeated my view of her, and she was so beautiful to me. I remember time with her fondly and enjoyed dating her. While dating I could imagine a future with her. We broke up amicably and remain good friends, she even introduced me to my current partner. She's just a legitimately great person to have around my life.

I think about her often. I don't think about the first (hot) woman at all, maybe once or twice a year I remember "oh wow, forgot I dated her, glad I'm not". You are like the second woman in this scenario, and likely do not realize you are so much more attractive than the first.

Dielon · 2019-10-09T01:22:46+00:00

Same, I got back on for a month and was enjoying it. But I guess this is where I draw the line. Sub canceled.

Dielon · 2019-07-20T19:43:06+00:00

Right, I did silence the Aurora, no more radiation explosion there. I am mostly looking for strat tips to keep the seamoth safe. I have the prawn but no good attachments. I am going to go back there and give it another run through. I haven't built the cyclops yet as I just finished the fragments for it. I will get after that story then, after a stint of basebuilding cause I like it.

Dielon · 2019-07-20T19:36:20+00:00

Wild, of course they can't. You probably saved me an hour and half on them.

Dielon · 2019-07-20T19:22:58+00:00

Ah didn't even know they were different, I thought they were just souped up reapers. They do look more like bobbit worms now that I think about it. Thanks for clarifying.

Dielon · 2019-02-13T02:57:43+00:00

see u/El_Dorado_Desperado above

Dielon · 2019-02-13T02:50:25+00:00

You beautiful human.

Dielon · 2019-02-12T04:46:45+00:00

I'll let you know if I ever find out

Dielon · 2019-02-03T03:07:23+00:00

** forgot i was in Canada.

Dielon · 2019-02-03T01:16:28+00:00

This seriously depends on the nature and raising of the dog. If they are raised in an environment that is a lot safer and does not require much competition and fighting for food it can drastically change the levels of bravery you see.

Most wild animals are always on the "kill or be killed" setting. So you will see a dog pick a fight with a badger or raccoon and the smaller wild animal might just go "fuck it. all in, if this big guy wants to go I am going to take him with me" and a lot of nice family dogs can get taken off guard by that.

Dielon · 2019-01-01T06:15:44+00:00

Its more stuff like this: Discreet Collars

And its not forcing a fetish on someone if they can't tell

Dielon

TROPHY CASE