Adaptation

So last night I was able to get in for a bit and do some frostweave farming in Sholazar. I haven't had much time to play recently, so it was good to be able to.

It was the first time where, for an extended period, I've had to deal with the Lock and Load CD, as well. Truthfully, it isn't as bad as I'd feared, but at times, it is still a pain in the ass.

During about mid TBC, I'd developed a two gear system utilising downranking, which enabled me to trap with a 1:1.5 rotation, and still maintain a reasonable (5-10%) rate of mana efficiency. If I was still able to do that, I truthfully wouldn't need Lock and Load at all, but unfortunately of course, I can't.

Last night I reflected that Lock and Load really needs to be given its' own button at this point; if it has to be on a CD at all, I'd greatly prefer to be able to choose directly when I use it.

What I eventually came up with was to start using Frost Trap as my staple in scenarios where I know I'm likely to be dealing with multiple adds, as opposed to Immolation. This way, even if I blow my Lock and Load proc entirely on the first mob, I will still be able to kite adds. I also never use Steady Shot, pretty much no matter what. Its' mana use is horrible.

BTW, if you ever need Frostweave, I recommend farming the undead around Freya, at the river delta in the Lost Lands. It's still fairly slow, but I got 5 stacks in probably 90 mins-2 hours, which isn't too bad.

Gundersson: How I almost became a Huntard.

(This is the first post from special guest blogger, Gundersson. In it, he brings up a number of issues which I've been having recently as well)

Yeah, so survival got buffed. Big time. We went through Naxramas theother day and I came out as top DPS in the entire 10 man by a wide margin. I'm not used to this. I'm not that well geared and I wouldn't call myself the most experienced player you've met. Even if all the time I've wasted at work poring over specs, gear and shot rotations has paid off, it still doesn't account for the ridiculously large difference between myself and the next highest DPS on Recount.

At first I was kind of bemused. As a survival hunter, being on top of the DPS charts was novel and totally unexpected. I'd heard about the buffs to Explosive Shot so I never really put it down to personal skill. The first thing that did occur to me was that if I let it go to my head I could very easily turn into the kind of player I hate. I reminded myself that this wasn't some new and incredible personal accomplishment; this was simply a dev on the other side of the world making a mistake when it came to game balance. My own personal awesomeness had as much to do with this as the weather.

Nevertheless, by the time we downed Gluth, my Ego was sitting in the chair next to me and had helped itself to a six pack from the fridge. When we hit the pre-Thadius DPS coordination it snidely mentioned to me, that I might have to reign in my awesomeness so that the other team could catch up.

After the raid my wife asked me how it went. I gave her a sly wink, and without an iota of shame, mentioned that I was on top of Recount. I think she saw the signs then, but I guess she just didn't know how to tell me. We did a few Heroics, and I pugged a bit. I respecced and dropped all my 'useless' chain trapping talents, in fact anything that didn't give me more DPS. I found myself losing my temper with pugs a lot more quickly because well, they just weren't bringing 100%. Why should I bring my Exploding Shot of Ultimate Awesome DPS to THEIR pug if they're going to let us wipe and make me pay repair bills? Granted, pugs are utterly vile and generally deserve every bad thing said about them, but that's no reason to be an outright arse.

Now, understand, a big part of the reason I went Survival, was because I believed it offered a challenge and brought something more to a group than just another DPS generator. It would keep me honest, keep me hungry and constantly looking to improve. My trapping and extra crowd control were there to help out the group. It made me a team player as opposed to a competitor. When they added the replenishment buff it was just icing on the cake for me. That's what Survival did; it helped everybody in the group. I was quite accepting of the fact that I wasn't bringing the most DPS. As long as it wasn't holding the group back, I felt I would be more than making up for it by keeping the group alive in other ways.

Unfortunately in the current PvE-Endgame/AOEfest/Celebration of Mediocrity, most players scoff at the concept of crowd control, yell 'yuck' when you mention marking, and go glassy eyed when you say there should be something more than spamming one button over and over.

This is why I love my guild, because most of them aren't like that. So half way through a guild Heroic Nexus run, our tank asks me to trap something. We all know he doesn't have to ask me to trap. Most of the time, you can roll through there with your eyes closed, if you're with guildies. So he explained on Vent, that he asks people to CC to keep them in practice; keep them on their toes. This is 'A Good Thing(tm),' or at least I've always believed it to be.

Thus I found it odd that my first reaction was one of panic. 3 Months ago if a tank had asked me to trap I would have been overjoyed at the chance to break out my skills. Now however, I panicked, and felt a little annoyed. For one, I'd specced out of my trap skills so I could maximize DPS. Additionally, I couldn't remember the last time I'd trapped anything... how did this go again?

So the pull went off and I trapped. The next one didn't go so well and the mob got away. No worries really, it's just for fun, right? On the third I broke my own trap. At another later point I dotted a mob I was supposed to trap and forgot I could just overwrite the DOT. I was getting tense. Tension gave way to anger and anger gave way to.. uhm, petulance.

However, I was still on top of Total Damage Done and DPS on Recount. This made me feel better. I looked at that Recount window with my name at the top and my lip stopped trembling. It made the bad stuff go away. I was still a man.

That was when it hit me. All the signs were there. Obsession with my position on Recount, inability to trap or do anything useful other than DPS. The Ego had taken up residence in the spare room where it came home at 3am with hookers, smelling of booze and cigarette smoke. Very soon I'd start having the irresistible urge to roll 'need' onloot that I couldn't use and yell stuff like 'LAWL' and 'N00B'. It was a slippery slope. How long till I was trolling the Wow Forums and criticizing posters based on their specs and their gear?

First thing I did was close recount. I made a deal with myself not tolook at it again. I've since removed it from my system. I'll installit if I need to troubleshoot something. It's a tool, not an expression of my masculinity and value as a human being, and that's what I'm going to tell myself every day.

Second thing I did was go and get my beloved boar back from the stable. He'd been languishing there ever since I'd started running around with that damned stupid cat to try and squeeze a few more points of DPS onto the charts.

Lastly, I'm respeccing. Those trap talents are coming back. I for one cannot friggin wait till they nerf Survival again. Good and hard. Seriously. Swing that puppy for me GC, I want to feel it.

TO THE GROUND BABY!

Offline Adventures

I have a legitimate excuse for neglecting the blog, for once.

I received my steel mailbox through my bedroom window at 4 AM last Saturday morning. (Two days ago)

My housemate woke me, (I'm unsure how I managed to sleep through it; he said that on hearing the noise, his initial suspicion was a traffic accident) and I woke up with the bed covered in broken glass, although somehow I was unscathed.

I'm not exactly certain what it was that I did, but I suspect I've managed to fairly grievously offend someone in Sunbury, because that wasn't the first time I've had such an incident occur. Less than a month ago, there was an attempted burglary, and the day after that, the house was set on fire by a driveby throwing of a cluster of fireworks at the roof.

I eventually came to suspect that someone was possibly trying to kill me, and in turn, concluded that leaving the neighbourhood might be a good idea. I have since, and fortunately very rapidly, been able to do so.

I still have a bit of setting up to do, but I will resume regular blog posting within a day or two. To tide of you over, Gundersson is possibly going to be a special guest poster here at the Lair, as well. He doesn't have her own blog as such, but is very much a kindred spirit in terms of his use of Survival and general philosophy with the game, and so I will welcome his material.

Being true to yourself isn't always simple

There's been some debate in the comments in an earlier post of mine, about BRK migrating to Survival.

Some say they think he is being true to himself; others say he isn't. While I will say that the decision, ultimately, is nobody's but his own to make, I will offer some observations.

For as long as I have read his writing, BRK has emphasised a consistent belief that the Hunter, first, last, and everything in between, is a DPS class. BRK has stated that he feels that our class's only real role in a group is to provide as much raw damage as possible, and up until the last patch, for several years, Beast Mastery as a tree was certainly the most effective means for him to practically implement this belief.

So on the surface, it could appear as though, now that Survival generates more raw damage, in switching to it, BRK is following his convictions about providing his groups or raids with as much damage as he can.

However, in a recent post of his, "Locked and Loaded," where he relates a conversation with himself, he offers a very important clue about his current, true internal state.

"Are you going to keep using 'we' even though your pet is a sad, pathetic thing compared to Beastmastery-spec?"

"We are. For in our heart, we remain BM." (Emphasis mine)

As I said at the top of this post, BRK, like all of us, has to do what he has to do. Ultimately the only person any of us must satisfy is the one we see when we look into a mirror.

However, I will say this.

In the near three years that I've been Survival, I haven't raided all that much. I have some, and yeah, occasionally it's even been fun, in a superficial, transitory kind of way.

I don't have a readership the size of BRK's, either. I'm not diplomatic enough, for that. I've said a lot of things which have offended a lot of people, and BRK himself is one of them. I know he won't read this post.

I have my 100. I know many of you by name, or at least the character names which you are willing to share with me on here. You're good people; many of you restore my faith in my species on a daily basis. If I go into the forums, or the game itself, or even into the offline world, there are times when I really need that.

The point is, that being true to myself hasn't got me accolades. It sure as hell doesn't get me raid slots, a lot of the time. It doesn't get my name in lights, or me in the global top 5/10/whatever guilds.

Pike, you've gone back to being BM. That is the choice you've made, and for you, it's been the right one.

However, because of that, you're about to enter my world in another way as well. You won't get into a lot of Heroics. You probably won't get into a lot of raids, either.

There will probably be days when a lot of the other people you used to know, who used to be BM, have jumped on the "new Survival" bandwagon, and looking in the Guild window, you'll see that they're all in Naxx, while you're maybe in the Borean Tundra, Zul'Drak, or somewhere else, farming.

Alone.

Here's another quote for you.

"I didn't know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with Champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops.

Oh, no! It's a choice, on the contrary and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting.

No Champagne. No friends raising their glasses as they look at you affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner's box before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face of others' judgment.

At the end of all, freedom is a court sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody."

-- Albert Camus

If being true to yourself, then, is so terrible, why would anyone do it? If seemingly all of the possible rewards are for compromising, for selling out, for going with the crowd, for being transitory...what is the point?

The point is simply this. If your outer surroundings are a barren desert, and you are true to yourself, you will know greater joy than if your external surroundings were the most opulent palace you could imagine, while you were not.

You could be in the top rated guild on the planet. You could play WoW for a living. You could be a billionaire. You could lead the most charmed life, in corporeal terms, that you can think of. Yet lie to yourself, and it will all be worth nothing. Surround yourself with money, and in total silence, you will hear yourself weep.

BRK, I know you won't read this post, so it almost certainly doesn't really matter. If you were going to read it hypothetically, however, I'd invite you to listen to a particular song by Michael Jackson; "Man in the Mirror."

Then go and find a mirror. Stand in front of it, and without thinking about what will get you into raids or satisfy anyone else, ask the guy looking back at you...really ask him...what spec he wants to be.

You might still make the same decision.

You might not.

The Lost One

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-- Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus; from the Statue of Liberty.

I was riding through northeastern Zul'Drak, in the early evening. It should rightfully have been considered a horrible place, with savage, biting cold, the mad remnants of the Drakkari, and the ever-present threat of being overrun with Scourge. Still, I found that somehow, I was able to like it.

I'd come here hunting the local raptors; their skins were more highly prized at the bazaar in Dalaran than most, and I was sorely in need of extra money, of late. However, as I was about to look for another raptor, I noticed a Tauren male who had already begun fighting one, only 30 yards or so in front of me.

He was a young bull. I could immediately tell from the speed of his movements and the lack of scars on his arms. It reminded me of old Tarukhe, and what he must have been like, at that age.

The Hunt was a thing of great wonder for the young, and they threw themselves into it with all the extra energy that came with their youth. It was, therefore, the most dangerous part of any Hunter's career, I realised ruefully, chuckling. Hunters who survived the taking of their first few beasts, generally slowed down and learned more respect for their prey.

This young one's fight began to go badly. Although he fired the rapid succession of smaller, lighter arrows that were a signature of the Beast school, for reasons that he could not understand, it was to no avail. The shots were deflected by the raptor's tough hide, and it continued its' attack.

The raptor had let much blood out of both him and his wolf, and as they panted with exhaustion, closed in for the kill. No doubt the creature thought he would be eating royally tonight, and that this prey would be the envy of the rest of his pack.

I rapidly drew one of the new black powder tipped arrows that we had recently learned to make, lit the fuse with a stone I carried for the purpose, and fired it at the raptor's feet, blowing a hole in the stone of the ruins. The beast was stunned momentarily, turned, looked at me, kicked both the Tauren and his wolf to the ground, and then ran off.

After a moment, the Tauren pulled himself up into a sitting position, but then simply sat for a long while. There was a look of confusion, shock, and great pain on his face, and as I watched, his dark eyes slowly filled with tears, and he began weeping, bellowing out his agony to the stars.

I understood, and averted my eyes, allowing him his dignity. This was not caused by the slashes which the raptor's claws had opened on his arms. This was from something far deeper.

The Hunters of Azeroth and Draenor had, over the course of many ages, discovered and refined three unique forms in which we could fight and hunt.

These were the way of the Beast, which allowed greater communion with animals, and which had traditionally been the first path of our young, as this Tauren was. They had grown to be called the Beast Masters. These had been the most numerous of the three, and their leader within the Hunters' Guild on Azeroth was a fierce and hot tempered, yet very wise and aged Dwarf, with an enormous red beard. His name was Briac.

There was also the way of the Bow, which my Draenei friend Romochka followed; they were called the Marksmen, due to their greater skill with the bow than the rest of us. The Marksmen were still great in number, but despite this, they had little formal representation within the Hunters' Guild. As such, Romochka had come to be recognised as master among them, although reluctantly, and he did not like it when others mentioned this.

Finally, there was the third path, of which I myself had been a native for many years. This was for those of us who embraced both of the above, but who, in addition, had developed a greater ability and will to avoid death. Because of this, we came to be called the Survivalists, and we had traditionally been the rarest of the three. The greatest of our elders, Arland, had simply walked away into the wilderness one day, never to be heard from again.

Followers of all three forms had various abilities which, not only kept us alive and allowed us to fight, but also literally defined who we were, and our sense of identity. When these abilities suddenly ceased to be reliable, we either died, or we experienced the kind of torment which the young Tauren before me was now. Our relationship with our animals, our prey, and the very land itself came into question.

I knew that the young Tauren's confusion and pain were due to this. He had been taught to fight in a particular way, and that if he did so, he would be successful. This had ceased to be true, and as a result, he doubted himself terribly. He had not learned anything else, but now, due to the strange curse which had recently befallen the Beast Masters, he would need to embrace another way.

As I considered what I was about to do, I was reminded of something else. I remembered the pain I had experienced, when in a meeting of the Hunters' Guild, I had finally been cast out. I remembered the Beast Masters' constant taunting and jeering of those of my form, about how we were inferior and always would be. I knew that this was partly why Arland had walked away, and another of our elders, Rakan, had gone back to his home in Desolace, to resume his life as a mystic. I also remembered how savagely yet another of us, Mekhilosio, had been attacked, when he described how he had been able to help others.

I knew that I could respond to this young Tauren now, as many of those of his form had often responded to me and mine, for years without stopping; with laughter, mockery, and insults. The time had come when I could repay cruelty for cruelty, and gloating for gloating. I could kick him when he was down, and in his current state, break his spirit such that he would no longer want to live at all. I had felt much anger towards many of his form before, and for a time, at least, I possibly could have deluded myself that to do that would have been an act of justice.

I also knew, however, that such was not the Survival way, but in fact, the direct opposite of it. That of everything else we might have known, there was ultimately nothing more important in the preservation of our own lives, and that of others, than compassion.

To be a true Survivalist was to be an outcast. It had always been that way. The Beast Masters and Marksmen carried some legitimacy, both in the eyes of each other, and in the rest of Azeroth and Draenor; but us, never. We were the dreamers, the insane; ridiculed, kicked, and spat on.

More than anything else, our path had required broad shoulders, thick skin, and a realisation that to be Survival was to be alone; but it was also to follow your conscience and your own identity. It wasn't something that was done because it was easy, or painless, or beautiful, because it was none of these. It was, however, something that was done for the love of it, despite all of the abuse we received.

And so, taking a deep breath, and closing my own eyes for a few seconds, I gathered together all of the pain that they had ever caused me...and let it go.

When the young Tauren had regained his composure, his vision was suddenly partly obscured by an open green hand. He took it, and I hauled him to his feet.

"What is your name, son of the Horde?" I asked him.

"Caurmahe," he answered. "I do not understand why it is now so much harder for me to kill my prey. They used to fall easily, but now they go from my wolf to me, and it is all we can do to avoid being eaten by them."

I offered him my shoulder, and his wolf began to limp along next to my cat as well, in the direction of the nearest settlement. The Argent Crusaders there would no doubt have a healer among them, who could take care of him for a few days.

"Well, Caurmahe," I replied, as we walked. "Did any of those who you spoke to, mention that we have traps which can produce fire, as well as frost and ice?"

The sickness within World of Warcraft

I just read Kruger's comments on my last post, and was depressed by what he described having happened to him.

"Well the inevitable happened to me today.

Was in LFG looking for a 'roic CoT:Strat group and a group was looking for dps, so I whisper "I'll come dps" and then I get what I'm going to be seeing alot of "If your BM we dont want you"......*expletive*

About 10 mins later I got another group "LF DPS", I whisper "I'll come, 80 hunter" and I get "What's your spec?" I of course being BM tell them and I get back "Oh you dont do enough dps"

So if this trend continues I guess I'll be running less and less and having to find stuff to do solo.

Anyways good post, I enjoy reading the SV side of things."

The above attitude, that these people expressed towards Kruger, is based on nothing objective or logical, whatsoever. It is pure, elitist bile. Pike mentioned being able to generate at least 1.7k DPS unbuffed with Beast Mastery, which is perfectly fine for a Heroic.

The necessary minimum to avoid a wipe with Patchwerk is 2k DPS, and the necessary minimum for Heroics is 1.5. Anyone who refuses to take a member of a class and spec which is capable of hitting those numbers is not acting from a position of anything other than vindictive, entirely subjective elitism. They are taking advantage both of the fact that online anonymity allows them to be casually hateful and avoid the usual consequences of doing so, and of the game's (and this planet's) currently overpopulated state, in order to have the attitude that anyone who does not match their preferences can simply be summarily replaced.

This attitude is dehumanising. It is unnecessary. It is utterly sociopathic, and devoid of empathy. Most of all, it is wrong. If for no other reason, it is wrong because the person doing the rejecting refuses to empathise with the person being rejected. Elitists rely on the idea that they will always be in a position of rejecting others; they do not try to imagine how it would feel if they were in a position where others were rejecting them.

This goes to the very heart of the reason why, for the most part, I refuse to raid. I refuse to raid because I refuse to be a party and an accessory to a moral crime which is committed against thousands, probably millions, of individuals within this game on a daily basis. As Martin Luther King said, passive acceptance towards evil is the same, on a moral level, as active participation.

I do not advocate people raiding if they are unable to reach, in purely mathematical terms, the DPS prerequisites to avoid wipes in raids. However, I will now also give you a demonstration of what I consider to be objective.

According to WoWWiki, Patchwerk has a total in a 10 man raid of 4,320,000 hit points. WoWWiki does not mention how long his Enrage timer is, but does mention that the total raid DPS necessary to kill him before he Enrages is 12,000. Dividing 4,320,000 by 12,000 gives us 360 seconds, or 6 minutes.

The minimum requirement for killing Patchwerk before his Enrage, and thus avoiding a group wipe, is for the 6 DPS classes in a 10 man raid (2 tanks, 2 healers) to maintain 2,000 DPS each (12,000 / 6) over that period of 6 minutes. This coefficient remains the same for the 25 man version, as well.

There is no DPS class or spec within this game, pure or hybrid, which is not capable of this goal, given sufficient gear. There is also no justifiable reason for excluding any individual from a raid, if they are capable of meeting this goal.

Survival was capable of it, pre-patch. I refuse to believe that Beast Mastery has been rendered incapable of it now. Marksmanship has always been capable of it. I am capable of it, unbuffed, in my current gear. It is not an excessively unreachable goal.

The reality is, I've come to realise, that a large number of the people who play World of Warcraft are fairly simply, emotionally and spiritually dead. There is a Chinese proverb which states that if you wish to learn the true nature of a person, to put them in an evironment where there are no constraints whatsoever on their behaviour, and then watch how they act.

People playing this game want to be exclusionary, and they will accept virtually any excuse or justification for it that they can find, whatsoever. The desire for elitism and exclusivity doesn't have anything to do with what is objectively or legitimately needed to progress at all. 2k DPS is not a difficult goal to reach.

Because of this, guilds and individuals who crave elitism actually raise the bar to a subjective, and entirely unnecessary level. Suddenly they're claiming that the needed minimum is 3k. That isn't the needed minimum for actually killing Patchwerk; it's the needed minimum for an individual to be accepted by them.

My own sense of moral outrage is triggered on a daily basis by the relentlessly hateful, genuinely inhuman attitudes of many of the people who play this game. Gundersson, writing to me through Gmail, only the other night asked me what had happened, for humanity as a species to get to the point that we routinely observe in World of Warcraft.

My answer is a deeper, more genuinely serious analysis of John Gabriel's "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory." As the above-quoted Chinese proverb states, what Gabriel fails to take into account is that the "fuckwad," transformation only occurs online because that level of ugliness is, in fact, the true internal state of the majority of human beings. It is therefore not so much a true transformation, as it is a simple unmasking of the genuine nature of the person in question.

For an example of the opposite (positive, friendly, inclusive) type of behavior on a consistent basis, look at Pike. She is, to quote Gabriel, a normal person, with both anonymity and an audience. Yet, for her, the transformation to the fuckwad state never occurs. The reason is because that is not who Pike truly is, internally.

It isn't always safe to be a fuckwad offline. Doing so can have a wide variety of consequences, from being afflicted with physical violence, to being arrested, depending on the severity of the aberrant behaviour in question.

Online, however, there are far less restrictions. Sure, WoW might have guidelines about acceptable behaviour, but these get violated literally on a minute by minute basis. Even when they are enforced, the most serious potential consequence to an offender will be that they need to buy another WoW account.

Thus, offline, people are forced to act with restraint, but online, where the consequences of their actions are minimal to non-existent, the mask falls away, and the true, hideous nature of most members of our species reveals itself. Raid and Heroic elitism and exclusion are only one way for this nature to express itself, and it is one of the most common in this game, because it is seen as the most justifiable, through the use of superficial, and flawed logic.

I'm not claiming to be anywhere near perfect, myself. I've alienated a lot of people associated with this game; some of them permanently. I also was once exposed as having said some truly terrible things on MSN, when speaking in anger. And even though my highest ideal when playing WoW is to try and have a positive effect on those I interact with, my volatile nature means that I fail to reach that objective probably more than 90% of the time.

The one thing I'm not going to do, however, is exclude anyone from a group I'm in, if in mathematical terms, they truly are able to perform sufficiently well that we can get through an encounter. Even if they aren't, human beings are not disposable. The appropriate response is to assist them in improving, in a manner which allows them to maintain their own dignity; and you generally find that that process causes you to improve as well.

I know; you want to progress, to see all the content, to get gear, and to have your epeen stroked. If you're any sort of conscious, feeling human being at all, however, ask yourself this:-

Is that really what's most important?

Suggestions for Pike

Got some suggestions for Pike, since in amongst random Orcish rages, trolling, and being deeply inappopriate and offensive, I occasionally like to try and help people if I can. ;-)

This Survival spec comes straight from the forums. According to WWS, it managed 6.7k DPS against Patchwerk. It wouldn't end up being my spec of choice full time, since I'm fond of Resourcefulness for farming, even with the LnL CD, but if I ever decide that I can be bothered going into Naxx again, I'd probably use it there.

As for rotation, the ex-BM crowd will tell you to use pure Steady as the only other thing with Explosive, but unless you are haste capped, I actually won't. I know my gear is universally considered garbage, but in Heroics last night with no group buffs and no consumables either, (I'm poor at the moment) I hit 2.1k; which by the standards of probably any other server in the known universe, would probably still get me shot, but by the standards of Saurfang, is generally enough to top meters in both Naxx raids and 5 mans...and would still actually be enough to ensure that a group I was in didn't wipe on Patchwerk, even though it'd probably still get me a /gkick afterwards. ;-)

The rotation I'm using though is actually a somewhat tighter (in terms of more Steadies) version of the old 1:1.5. Serpent, Steady, ES, Steady, Multi, Steady, Steady. (repeat; usually with Serpent as well, since it will often need it by then)

The only way my rotation changes for Lock and Load is to do Steady, Explosive, Steady, Explosive, Steady, Explosive, and then generally Steady, Multi again immediately after that.