Well a little bit later then expected but this is part 1 of a
multipart review. How many parts... I have no idea. Consider this an
overview from my perspective. My counterpart Cardnyl Sin will be going
into the n52 in more depth and testing more rigorously. My job though
is to tell you if this pad is manageable... Happily I can report that
most of the rumors I heard about this pad being unbalanced or that the
manufacturing was not up to snuff are false. After 2 weeks of testing
my only real gripe is the thumb button that doesn't seem to be as
responsive when mashed from different angles. I have fairly large
hands which places my thumb towards the outside of button 15.
The n52 was much easier to depress at any angle then the n52te. I have
found that Adjusting the hand rest of the n52te does help with this
problem. Simply pull up on the molded hand rest and move it back a
notch. Not perfect but I have noticed that I am much more accurate on
that button now. Adjusting the hand rest is something we never even
knew the n52 was capable of... and it took Cardnyl prying it apart
before we discovered what the box meant by adjustable.

My other gripe with the n52te was the software. Surprisingly missing a
shift state is not really that noticeable. The first version of the
software we received was a pain in the ass though. Took me several
tries to get everything synced up on the pad... and I was very unsure
how everything worked. However Joseph Lu from the Belkin Team has been
very responsive getting us new versions of the software as well as
taking in our concerns which we have actually seen corrected in later
versions. This is a huge change from the n52 which was simply released
and ideas and suggestions simply met the black hole of the internet and
disappeared. I love the fact that they have a dev team actively working
on their software... granted I still think it needs some usability
polish.

Now that I have my gripes out of the way I can go into what I like
about this pad. On the software end I love being able to set my
profile for World of Warcraft or Eve Online and forget it... If I take
it over to the girlfriends house or to a Lan and plug it in it works as advertised...
recognizes the game loads the profile and your playing. I love the
onboard storage idea. I used to keep a memory key with all the n52
drivers and software and my profiles on it so I could do much the same
thing. Especially since I found that once you use the n52 you find
yourself unable to play the game as effectively without it. The same is
true for the n52te given a week or two to adapt to the keys.

The new n52te is back lit and while it looks cool as hell its not all that
necessary after you have adapted to the pad. After about a week of
using this pad you will become very used to the key placements and
looking down to make sure your on the wrong key will be a thing of the past.
In addition the force required to press the keys is much lighter. This gives
the pad a more fluid feeling to it. As if you could press a combination of keys
quicker and more accurately then before. This is not just a feeling though, the
travel of each key you pressed has also been reduced.

Overall I when I first got this pad in the mail I flipped back and forth
between the it and the n52... I still felt more comfortable on it for a good
week or so and used it for Arena matches in World of Warcraft. After the
acclimation period this pad was just as deadly as the my old n52.

Stay tuned as we are talking to Belkin and may be able to get some
n52te's to users on the Forums. I am not sure how we will pick and
choose but I imagine a contest of some type. Next up... Cardnyls
indepth review which may take a bit longer to get out as he has been
talking back and forth with belkin and seeing improvements. If you have
recently purchased an n52te join us on the forums. We have at least
one good discussion going for those testing the n52te.


~Cerias Shadows.

Curtesy of the Gaming Business Unit at Belkin and Joseph Lu the Assistant Product Manager working on the n52te RogueSpot snagged 3 of their new gamepads. Cerias, Jairek and Cardnyl will put the unit through its paces with a variety of different games from MMO's to RTS's and FPS's

A small cross section of the games the new n52te will be put up against:

• World of Warcraft
• Eve Online
• Warcraft 3
  
• Half Life 2
• Age of Conan

If you want to hear more on how our 2 week review of this product goes check back here for updates. Feel free to leave comments, ask questions and pose suggestions in this thread http://forums.roguespot.com/viewtopic.php?p=80180#80180. You must be a Cloak and Dagger member to get to it though.

~CS

Labels: n52te

While this mod is not specifically for the Rogue class it does rock. I remember since the early days of raiding the guild event planning was done through some guild or 3rd party website. This addon allows you to manage upcoming raids and player events directly through the game. It syncs everyones data and the guild leader / officer does not need to be on for updates to get through.



It allows you to setup raids with role based signup. This is perfect for when you need DPS but don't really care who the hell is wacking the mob... just that they wack is hard... and wack is fast. lol.

Even if you dont have a guild just a group of friends that want to coordinate nights to run Kara and other instances this is a great mod. It can be configured so that any player can add an event from a 25 man raid to their birthday.

Heres a quick list of new features in Group Calendar 4 from the curse website:

• FEATURE: New networking code designed for better reliability and scalability
• FEATURE: Role-based signups for more flexibility in forming groups
• FEATURE: You can now edit your own events and get tradeskill cooldown messages while on another realm or faction
• FEATURE: Whisper-based UI allows players not running GC to view and sign up for events
• FEATURE: Backups (both automatic and manual) of your event data to help recover if something goes wrong
• FEATURE: Circled dates and times for events you're attending are now color-coded: yellow for pending, green for confirmed and blue for standby
• FEATURE: Event templates remember up to the last five variations on an event type (you can schedule "Karazhan Alpha" and "Karazhan Beta" and it will remember your setting preferences for both)
• FEATURE: /cal slash command added -- same as /calendar, just shorter, and /calendar still works too
• FEATURE: /cal command now shows help by default (use "/cal show" to show the GUI)
• FEATURE: New '/cal history numdays' command to set the number of days to keep events
• FEATURE: History length is stored in the auto-config data so it can be set for the entire guild at once
• FEATURE: MD5 hash protection to detect damaged event or attendance updates
• FEATURE: Date and time settings are verified by comparing clocks with other users on the network
• FEATURE: Players can now sign up for events as a standby
• FEATURE: Event titles now auto-complete
• FEATURE: Synch period is now two minutes long instead of five
• FEATURE: Database version info in About tab now shows the total number of databases known
• FEATURE: Event attendance list now shows separate totals for accepted and standby players
• FEATURE: Dungeons with a 7 day reset cycle now only show the next reset instead of the next four
• FEATURE: All localization files are UTF8 and all escape sequences have been replaced by their real characters
• FEATURE: /cal reset now resets only the current character, with a new parameter of "realm" to reset the databases for the realm
• FEATURE: Tradeskill reminder messages are smaller
• FEATURE: Brilliant Glass added to tradeskill cooldown reminders

Labels: addons

Welcome to RogueSpot's new home. Please bare with us as services are transferred over. The new servers will allow for some truly awesome changes to the site in the near future.

Stumbled upon this macro a week or so ago. This is very nice if you run a lot of groups
and find yourself not wanting to open chests with auto loot on but do like to auto loot
your pick pocket window.


/script SetAutoLootDefault(1)
/cast Pick Pocket
/in 1 /script SetAutoLootDefault(0)


The /in 1 section of the macro adds a pause telling it to wait 1 second before turning
auto loot off. With out this you turn auto loot off before you can finish looting the
pick pocket loot window.

This is another find off the wowwiki.com useful macros page.

Labels: macro

This is one of those add ons that you can do with out but I don't reccomend it. Currently when I am unlocking boxes for myself I have to right click the skill and then click the box I am unlocking. It is not the most efficient method and takes up a convenient spot on one of my side hot bars. A quick search of any add on site will reveal more then one solution for opening lock boxes. Easy Unlock is my current favorite as it works on your trade window as well as in your inventory simply by right clicking on the boxes you want to unlock.



If you do not already have your lockpicking maxed for your current level you should be ashamed. You are also loosing money. I know what you are thinking... you are only losing money when someone tips you. However if you have a quick macro that says:

/2 Opening lock boxes on top of Org Bank!

Hit that every time you swing through the city and the tips really start to add up. Not only have I made over 1000g off a single junk box I pick pocketed off a level 67 mob. I have also been tipped upwards of 20g for picking around 15 lock boxes. It is very common to receive tips ranging from 50s to 2g per box. Generosity of the client usually depends on what they get in their box but you never know.

If you are opening lock boxes as often as possible then you should definitely be using this mod.

Labels: addons

About a week ago I was writing a rant on world of ming. I decided not to publish that initially. Why send him more traffic. However I guess I am not the only one Ming has touched off recently. Nitrana of WSG fame has written a blog / rant on World of Ming.

http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/CantBeStopped/Aint-no-thing-but-a-Chkn-Ming/

The blog is in response to a MySpace Music song made by the character Shaunconnery. Absolutely hilarious. Even if your Ming's fav fan boy you should listen to this song just for a good laugh. After all the hate he's been getting lately I don't think I could write it up any better. Please humbly accept these links to the lollerink!

http://www.myspace.com/shaunconnery

Labels: rant

General awareness is the name of the game, and in arena it is a matter of win or lose. You're geared to the teeth, you can down a priest like a fatty downs a 64 piece KFC bucket...so why are you still stuck in the 1500s with no release? Awareness. While you were dropping that clothie your teammates were getting slaughtered, mercilessly. We're talking Nagrand Chainsaw Massacre. So now it's basically 1v4 and you're looking straight down the smoking barrel of 4 bloodlusted double-barrelled shotguns.

Rather than dish out more literary works of art, let's get right to the point. It is better to be more focused on what your partner's buddies are up to, than what your target himself is up to. Knowing what's going on around you in an arena match more or less will decide the game. You can see that paladin gearing up a 4 second downie holy light (lol curse of tongues), but what do you do about it? Do you stop casting that frostbolt that *might* kill your target, except the paladin is likely to get a crit 10k heal off beforehand, or do you stop and counterspell him? Well if you're stuck in the 1500's the answer is very obvious.

1. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. It's particularly common for melee to suffer from serious tunnel vision, because of their need to be in close quarters to do damage, but still, survey your surroundings. Keep a mental note of what your partner can do, and how you can counter it.

2. Think twice about what your opponent's partner(s) are capable of. If there is a warlock that you are not on, you should be watching him very carefully for a potential fear, or watching that mage for a polymorph. Watching that healer for a heal that could decide the game.

3. Think three times about what you have at your disposal to prevent predictable outcomes. You know that paladin isn't here to holy shock you to death (well maybe if you're already at 1k hp and your healer is blinded), so you just might want to focus the majority of your attention on stopping his heals constantly, but keeping DPS on your main target. Preemptively cloaking a poly or a fear might buy you just enough time to finish your target.

4. Preemptiveness is key. Be one step ahead of your opponent(s). You know after 3 years of PVP'ing in this game (most players) you should be familiar with every other class's abilities and how to counter them. It's almost autonomous to some people. It sparks through their mind the second they see certain triggers. "Mage has glowy white hands! VANISH!" "Hunter just went red, EVASION!", the same goes for watching your enemy's teammates. Instead of just watching your target remember: "Main target's low, and the healer already wasted trinket, BLIND!".

5. Defend your teammates. Sure you might think you're some kind of Indiana Jones and might be able to 1v3 a fully coordinated team. I might just think you're full of complete bull-poo. Maybe. You often can predict who will be the main target 90% of your games in arena. Be ready to peel opponents off them because even losing one person usually means you lose. There are very rare circumstances where this is an exception, but in most cases once one goes down, the game is over.

Lately I have been looking for Ideas for contests and the prizes I should award the winners of those contests. I have decided I definitely want the outcome to benefit the site overall. One of the members of the Cloak-and-Dagger, Rokzilla, posted a video that instructs clearly how to perform Sap, Cheap Shot your opponent while sapped with out breaking the sap and then restealthing. Here is the video:




This raises a couple of questions. First what is the point of this move? Second would anyone let you finish the sequence before trinketing? Third what could you do with this?

Well the obvious purpose of Cheap shotting a target while sapped and restealthing is to stack combo points. If you are using premed and Initiative then you are usually starting with 5 to begin with. But if you don't have premed this is a great poor man's premed.

The second question is would any class let you do this... the quick answer is maybe. Most classes will not trinket your sap because you are doing no damage and they would rather save it for say a kidney shot. Now since you are not damaging them it is in their best interest to save that trinket for later. A more experienced player may realize what you are doing and try and stop you. But it is likely in a 1v1 situation that this can be executed cleanly.

The third point is what will you do with the combo pts. Against a high armor target you can open with Garrote / Rupture / Vanish and allow your dots to tick your targets health away before reapplying sap and opening with cheapshot / kidneyshot sequence. Getting a solid 5 pt Expose Armor off on your target could also be a beneficial way to start the fight. Would it be possible to Sap / Cheapshot / Expose Armor / Restealth /Resap / Cheapshot / Kidneyshot. Only a 3 pts Expose Armor but on a cloth target it might be well worth it.

Just some things to consider. This move is relegated to duels and 1v1 situations but executed properly can definitely stack the deck and combo points in your favor.

Labels: notebook, pvp, sap