Stay on Target

In the battlegrounds, you’ll often find yourself pit against a group of enemies (hopefully alongside a group of allies…if you’re off by yourself somewhere against a full group of opponents you’re probably in the wrong place).  Scanning over them you can make out the various classes and races…”lesee, a mage there, hunter over there…no rogues, but that’s not to say they’re not there”…generally by examining prominent pieces of gear.  This is why the shoulder items from the arena have the highest rating requirement…Blizzard decided that you should be able to glance at someone and think, “I know that person is high-rated.”

However, this tells you something.  You know things about your opponents by examining their armor.  Which brings me to my point:

If I see a priest in Primal Mooncloth, or a mage in Spellfire, or a warlock in Frozen Shadowweave, they become priority #1 as a kill target.

These sets all have very little stamina at best, and zero resilience.  Their wearers will drop quickly, even with heal support.  Especially with healing debuffs in place.  The same goes for rogues and hunters in quest greens, as made obvious usually by bright yellow or green colors and exposed toes on the boots.

It’s the shoulders that make them obvious, but sometimes lending to that are helms, depending on whether or not the graphic is enabled.

Regardless, everyone, no matter how recently it was you hit 70, should buy the level 70 blue pvp gear from the various rep vendors.  This will give you a base-line 100 resilience or so to start with rather than being (rather useless, sometimes) fodder for the other team and a waste of mana for your team’s healers.

Also, when considering gear upgrades for pvp after hitting 70 and obtaining said gear, weigh heavily items that would increase your stamina the most.  If you have any items with 0 stamina, get those replaced first.  This applies heavily to caster wands and jewelry obtained from quests, which often give less consideration to stamina than other pieces of gear would.

Also, until you have a decent amount of resilience on your gear, gear heavily in the direction of stamina and resilience.  As a dps clothie, your best bets are probably all Glowing Nightseye and Steady Talasite, matching socket colors to maximize itemization and overall character potency in addition to obtaining some survivability.  Taking into account the fact that talasites are freakin dirt cheap (at least on Skywall…<10g per), it’s not a terribly expensive way to gem up either.

In short, please don’t come into the BGs with less than 8k hp…seriously…

2.4 AV and lawl040108

I likes it.

Horde still don’t play enough defense enough of the time.  But when we can hold at Galv, IB, etc, it’s a very fun game win or lose.  The changes have brought some PvP back into that battleground.

Also, because each individual person is worth 1 “reinforcement” running off and doing solo things is not conducive to winning.  Nor is not defending!  Holding off the opposing team at your initial general can stymmy them for the rest of the game.  It’s an important part of the map now, and too often people are still blithely running right by it.

At any rate, I do find it more enjoyable.

And also, I love Guitar Hero.  The new class is going to be great!  Unfortunately I don’t have a system capable of running the new Molten Core game.  Those graphics are something else.

Another PvP Fury Build, and some thoughts on pvp prot

I haven’t spec’d this, but I was toying with the idea.  9/31/21.  Parrying and Stun Resistance from Arms, Bloodthirst in Fury, and Concussion Blow in Prot.

This all goes back to the lack of viability of prot specs in the BGs though.  Sure, you’re hard to kill, but you’re not a threat.  You can’t physically get in anyone’s way, and you’re at best a nuisance.  You might be a really good nuisance, one capable of some crazy, even fun, stuff, but pvp threat is applied to the people that die easiest, or the ones wreaking the most havoc…not the ones with the most hit points and least damage output.

So, I know this won’t work in arenas, but I had a thought…something prot specs can do in the Battlegrounds.  These are the folks who it takes 5 people half a minute or more to kill, stuns and fears in all.  Just run around and purposefully engage people away from the objectives.  If they stop to try and fight you, you’ve more than done your job by keeping them busy for so long, taking them out of the fight for long enough for your teammates to do what they need to do, hopefully.  Just a thought, but I know that people in the battlegrounds are notorious for fighting in areas that are not relevant to winning the game.  Another place they can really make a stand are as solo flag defenders in AB.  (Not so much in AV, as you’re more likely to get overwhelmed quickly there.)  You by yourself can probably hold off 1-3 people for a good long while until reinforcements show.

If they show.  /grumble.

PvP, Arenas: Advice, Theory, and Discussion

And not by me! Megan has some interesting posts I’m goint to link to here, give them a read if you’re at all interested in arena or pvp in general!

Initiative, Momentum, and Parity
PvP Outs
PvP Tanking

Maulgar dead again, and zomg

Killed the bugger again, with another quite massive turnout of healers. 9 this time. Also, fully raid buffed: almost 13.4k mana. Woot! It’s nice to cast a couple Holy Lights and still have 10k sitting around.

We gave a couple serious attempts at Gruul yesterday. Our best was 40-some percent I think. We were getting better at dealing with the shatters quite quickly. I believe though that we’ll need to swap some healers for dps, both so we can work on less overhealing for Maulgar (and make the fight faster) and make sure we’re doing enough damage to Gruul. We’ve got some raiders needing some way better gear to put out the 500 dps per person required, but I think we’ll get it with time. I’m going to start leveling my warlock more seriously for that I think.

However, my hat is tipped to the one warlock we had for the Maulgar attempt, doing his job enslaving and banishing and all that jazz. Our wipes were more due to the shaman’s arcane explosion hitting his balance druid tank, something he wasn’t ready for. We got it under control eventually and beat them down.

Speaking of alts though, I’ve been watching more pvp movies lately and saw a couple good ice mage ones (namely by Agramar (Agromar? Agramor? some guy on Frostmane-EU)). It’s inspired me to want to get more practice in on my mage and see what she can do. It hasn’t gone so well so far, but my only place to practice so far has been in the battlegounds, not exactly the most forgiving of locales. But I’ve got a shopping list of pvp gear set up for her, hopefully that will make up some slack while I build up my skill with it.

The Battlegrounds

I’ve been playing my rogue a bit more lately, and it’s come to the forefront of my attention again just how inattentive people are to the bigger picture that is the game.

The objective of AB, for instance, is to collect 2000 resources faster than the opposing team. The more nodes you have, the faster you get points. If you have no nodes, you get no points, and your enemies get them very fast.

However, far too often in AB do you see people not playing that game. They are playing the game of winning at the final scoreboard for most kills or most damage done. They aren’t playing to win the map, and yet /bg is full of complaints about how we’re losing. As though their leet KB stats are an indication of their skill and talent.

As a rogue, I feel I’ve done a lot for my team in using stealth to capture flags. People can’t see me approach, so in getting to the node undetected, I can attempt to dispatch to the defense (if there isn’t much of it), or try to wait until some of the defense leaves (an inevitable occurence in AB). Alternatively, I can try to cap the flag while the defense isn’t paying attention. I’ve tapped nodes with 3 people on defense, and then did a lot of cooldown mashing to hold it until it capped. There was one rogue actually watching the flag…I sapped him, and while the other two warriors there were busy looking somewhere else, I turned the flag over. Thankfully, the communication must not have been very sound…and I can only imagine how embarrassed the warriors were.

Anyway enough about me. The point is, yes, killing your opponents in the BGs is important, but only as a means to an end: capturing the nodes or flags or whatever the objective of the battleground is. Eliminate the opposition as quickly as possible so you can finish the game and get your honor and/or marks. Winning > HKs.

On with the stabbing!

Ok, more slashy, less stabby. Zultheah, my rogue, did about 5 hours of Warsong Gulch yesterday. Needed 15 more marks to get the gear I wanted for progression into the 40+ areas. Let me tell you, WSG gets mind-numbing after so long.

It was hard to settle on a spec for this alt pvp stint. I like a lot of the rogue talents, many of them have so much potential. In the end, I went with a 0/25/5 build (down to Sword Spec), and I think I will keep this spec, continuing down to 36 in Subtlety. I like the cooldown abuse this build would make available. I might switch to maces at 70. Or 80, depending on how long this takes. :)

Playing this char as a combat build harkens back to my warrior’s early days. I had the same pair of swords (Vanquisher’s and the Sword of Omen), and the play style is actually quite similar. Large focus on white damage. However, I think Luth had more hit points, or more damage capability…

…as Zul felt very squishy. I preferred to shy away from combat with other melee-based classes and engage hunters/casters when possible. I know this is what rogues do already, but the “why” of it all only became known to me recently.

Also, I find myself quite decent at just running away. Being able to escape as a rogue is generally easy, especially if no one’s put any sort of DoT effect on you to ruin your Vanish. I applied 2 of my points into Improved Sprint, which in conjunction with WotF and my PvP trinket allow me to break a large variety of cc effects.

This made flag-carrying viable as long as I could keep moving. I feel that flag-carrying in WSG relies too heavily on the flag carrier not moving and trying to “hide.” This is the oldest and most-played battleground, hiding is an iffy proposition at best, and when you’re an only semi-well-geared rogue, doesn’t work too well, given how quickly a twinked character will destroy me if they can get to me. So I keep myself mobile. It is then up to the enemy team to catch me, as opposed to find me. And from experience, it is much more difficult for them to catch than find. Can’t wait til I get to try this as my druid. :)

Tut tut, looks like PvP

EotS weekend. I think for the first time I will step into it with Zerei and do some healing. This will be a new experience for me. It should be similar to AB, but the differences in mechanics between the two BGs being what they are, I may be in store for something frustrating or way more fun.

I’ve run around in EotS on my warrior a couple times and wasn’t completely sure what to do. Defense certainly didn’t seem as necessary, as even a good trio of defenders against an overwhelming force will lose the point. This is contrary to AB where defenders could hold an enemy force at bay long enough to either claim victory or at least hold out until reinforcements arrive. This is due to the 10-second uninterrupted capturing sequence the attackers must go through in order to claim a node in AB. In EotS, an overwhelming force will start running down the node ownership meter simply by fighting you there.

As well, offense at a node was short-lived. You run in, cap the base, and move on. Long, drawn-out fights at resource nodes are not as common. It seems most of the fighting is done between nodes in a more realistic “line” fashion…the line gets pushed back as you defeat them in combat or vice versa. This makes it somewhat like AV if nothing else as you push your opponents back to their nodes and attempt to take it with superior numbers.

One last thing is the flag in the center of the map. This flag is interesting…it does not add enough points to be very significant, but it does matter in the long run, especially given the way victory can swing from one side to the other in this battleground. Your best bet as a team is to take and hold 3 nodes for the majority of the game. This will net you way more points than a series of flag caps, and will make the game easier for you as you force your opponents to come at you from one graveyard, enabling some degree of predictability.

So as a healer, where does this put me? Due to the unreliable nature of defense in this bg, I may not be at the nodes. I might help in the melee, tossing my heals with (hopeful) impunity. Wishful thinking, I know. He who generally ignores the paladin healer enjoys difficulty in achieving victory.

Anyway, hoping to get maybe 6k honor this weekend (I don’t like to PvP for hours on end like I used to on Luth…it’s a bit dreary anymore) and however many badges that comes with.

Just read some nice tips on playing in EotS here at Out of Mana.

Healing in Warsong Gulch

Keeping your teammates alive in WSG (or any of the battlegrounds) can be a rewarding task. Rewarding in the sense that your team has a much greater chance for victory because those health bars are being refilled through your efforts.

However, healing as a paladin in WSG can be difficult because of how mobile combat is. Since your main heal spells have cast times, it makes healing targets on the move an iffy proposition. You have to stand in place to cast. When there is a lot of fighting midfield and the combat is essentially staying near you, you can throw heals to your heart’s content. But when your team’s flag carrier is trying to cross the field, each heal you toss them (unless they actively try to stay near you) puts you farther behind. In many cases I just toss them Blessing of Freedom and hope for the best. (Often that is all I get to do anyway as the enemy team turns their attention to me.)

However, when the flag stops in our base in those stalemate situations where both flags are taken, we do decently well. Less movement. I mean, we have Holy Shock when we’re moving, but that’s not very much healing at all. We can basically just BoF and spam cleanse. As for CC, we can HoJ someone once every minute. (Or a bit less with talents.)

So in those situations, it would seem that a priest or a druid would be better. For a priest, you have shield, Renew, and Prayer of Mending to cast while you’re moving…and their quick cast heal is a decent-sized heal. Druids have a number of HoTs, and while their better heals do have cast times they have the added benefit of Travel Form to allow them catch up (and escape when they’re targetted). In addition, priests have instant AoE fear to send 5 targets running away, and druids can root/cyclone (root/cyclone again, have cast times, but yay Travel Form).

Shaman seem to be in the same boat as paladins. They can get them darn rogue poisons/hunters stings off and cast Earth Shield (if spec’d all the way into Resto), but their real healing spells take time to use. They can also drop Earthbind and Grounding Totems though, which can help keep the carrier safe.

And that’s about it. I’ve often felt useless when trying to heal a flag carrier as a paladin, especially when they opt to leave me behind when I’m healing them. I feel I shine best as a healer in those mass melees where the combat isn’t moving too much…I’m always a target, but hey, 13.5k armor, 8.5k health…I’m no protection tank, but I’m no easy kill either. It’s good fun. It’s actually quite enjoyable to heal someone up from low health and then seeing Shadow Word: Death land, or stymying a warlock trying to cast Drain Soul…or seeing some other paladin trying to cast Hammer of Wrath stop casting it because the target isn’t valid anymore. Of course, it’s probably just as gratifying for them to kill my allies through my healing. /sadface

This is data collected from an interesting site. It’s really kind of a facebook/myspace for your WoW characters, but the addon you can download collects a lot of data from in-game and uploads it to this site. There’s other info in there, like data from our raids, what’s in my bags, etc. If I got the link wrong I’ll update it later, you can access it from here at least, click on the “Battles” tab.