I've been a little quiet lately - and with reason. There hasn't really been much going on. People in my guild have been on vacation or just haven't been logging on because, what's the point? We're going to have a gear reset in 3 months anyway. I liken it to inflation in that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people believe there will be inflation in the future, they will buy things now. An increase in demand without an increase in supply will drive prices up. Tada!!! Inflation!!! Same thing here. If people don't feel like there will be people signing on, they won't sign on. Which, in turn, leads to other people not signing on and the next thing you know, no one is signing on.
So more often than not lately, I'm the only person in the guild who is logged on. It will be like that for hours. Maybe someone who doesn't generally do instances will log on to play a couple of rounds of Alterac Valley or something but, for the most part, no one. We didn't even have anyone on for Arena night (which I was disappointed about because I just need 50 more points on Kaylee to get that last pice of season 3 gear and she never has to do arenas again).
I haven't felt like doing an instance with other people much lately. The ones I'm interested in require a lot of communication (Karazhan and heroics, for the most part) and... I haven't felt particularly social. I did a couple of Black Morass runs last week to grind some Keepers of Time rep so I can get the teleport on my mage (I gots to be mobile). I did a Karazhan run on my paladin a couple of weeks ago and we cleared everything but Nightbane because nobody could summon him. I brought Hiahotah in because he has the urn. We wiped a couple of times and decided to take a dinner break. A bunch of people didn't come back, so we ended up filling out with three people from my guild who'd never seen Nightbane before. The warrior who was leading the raid had tanked everything else so I let him tank Nightbane. The other three people from my guild died pretty early. I battle rezzed the priest (Pater) so we had 8 people up - 3 healers, 4 DPS (one of them being Hiahotah in his tanking gear... just in case) and a tank. The tank went down just after the last flying phase and took out two more DPSers before I could pick him up. We did the last 24% with two holy priest, a holy paladin, a hunter and a druid tank. The whole thing took 17 minutes. It did, however, demonstrate how incredible a tank Hiahotah is. The healers couldn't keep the warrior up but their mana was actually going up after Hiahotah took over.
But other than that and some 2 manning of Mana Tombs for the +12 stamina to boots enchant... I've been playing solo. But I'm also feeling the malaise that's affecting the rest of the guild. I mean... What's the point of collecting hundreds of badges of justice when I'm going to be replacing all that gear in a few levels anyway. Plus... The rumor is that the gear reset won't be as steep so I may be wearing some of my current gear well into the late 70's - possibly even 80. Well that's no fun. A lot of the thrill of leveling and questing is getting new gear. Gifteye had a lot of that with his tier two gear but still replaced everything by 66. So I'm not overly excited about gearing up for the next few months.
So what does that leave? I mean... There hasn't been a day in the last two and a half years that I haven't found a few minutes to log in - even if it was only to check my mail or the AH. Here are some things I've been working on and some other possible ways to burn three months:
1) I've decided that I want to use the name of one of my bank alts (Zoealleyne) as my Death Knight. So I started liquidating her inventory. It turns out that most of what she was holding was enchanting mats... Mats that were going to have no value in three months so... Why hold them? The first round of auctions netted me 2200 gold... And I don't _need_ gold.
So I decided to give the warlock I've been leveling some better gear. She'd been rocking about 34 spell damage and while I could kill things, it seemed like it should be easier. So I bought her a Staff of Jordan (apparently the official weapon of warlock twinks everywhere) and... Oh!! It's level 35 and I've got some shards lying around. So I put a +40 spell damage enchant on it. Once you start down that path and you still have 1700 bonus gold lying around... Well... I decided to twink her and do some battlegrounds. I still haven't enchanted most of her gear but... Yow. She's fun. She's sitting at 178 shadow damage and consistently tops the damage and healing done meters. Plus, having a single twink can really shift the tide of a fight... Particularly one who can DPS 5 people while she's dead.
2) I'm leveling a shadow priest. The original intent was to level the warlock to catch up to a fried who is at 49 so we can quest together, but the twinking process put a stop to that. So I'm working on my priest. He'd been at level 13 for a while. Last night he got to 30 which means he gets Vampiric Embrace and a mount.
3) Get a Justicar or Conqueror title. This is really tough without being able to turn in marks for rep any more. Gifteye (who already has a rank 10 title) is already exalted with AV and WSG (the tough one by all accounts) so he'd just have to do Arathi Basin... But he's only 1700/12000 to revered with them, so I'd have to grind out over 31k rep on a character I don't play much any more. The alternative would be Hiahotah who is over half way to revered with AB but only 3k/12 to revered with WSG. That would be a lot of WSG. Plus...
4) Hiahotah is very close to the Champion of the Naaru title. He just needs to get into a Magtheridon's Lair raid and he'd be pretty much done - just a quick trip into heroic Slave Pens to turn in another quest and he'd be finished.
So... That's how I'll spend a lot of _my_ time over the next couple of months. Maybe people will start logging on again after school starts up again.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Nostalgia
I downloaded a mod that lets me cruise the LFG channel without actually being in a queue for a group and I saw something... Interesting. There was someone who was looking for a tank for Ony. Whowhat? Seriously... He was looking for a tank for Onyxia's Lair.
Onyxia's Lair... Man... Takes me back. When I first joined Crucify, one of the conditions was that you had to be attuned for Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Onyxia's Lair. The MC and BWL attunements were pretty simple and the guys I was hanging out with at the time were stumbling through the attunements and I'd actually done those. But Onyxia... Well now... That was something else entirely.
We'd actually done most of the questline but I hadn't done the precursors... In fact, we did the absolutely godawful Jail Break! quest twice (three times if you count the wipe) before I even knew what it was for. So I had to do it again. And soloing those elites in the Burning Steppes was brutal in my PvP blues. It took a few lucky crits to get the black drake down.
Then I did Jail Break! a third time with one of Crucify's officers tanking it on his rogue... I was pretty sick of BRD by the time we were done... Plus that tunnel in Winterspring... Oy. Plus the three runs through UBRS to get the blood. But I got the attunement and in my first real week in the guild, I got an invite to an Onyxia raid. I'd just gotten to rank 10 and got my PvP helm just two days earlier. And in my first Onyxia raid, two of the mage helms dropped... And only two mages didn't have it. So I replaced the helm I had spent 5 hours a day trying to get within two days... Not to mention the only other epic I had was also a head piece. But I wore my Tier 2 helm with pride right up until Burning Crusade. It's still in my bank and I put it on every now and then.
Over the months, we got pretty blase about Onyxia. If we took her out, it was on an off raid night (possibly a ZG or AQ20 night) and we'd do it with alts and newbies and one time we did it with 22 people. But I'll always have fond memories of that place. Like how our guild leader would put all the mages except himself in the even groups and then draw aggro and get himself killed so I'd always whisper the other mages that I was going on the odd side. Or the time when all the mages got themselves killed but me during phase three and we got some whelps.... On the other side. So I blinked through Onyxia and started kiting them. A paladin whispered me that he had me so I just went to town and downed them. I basically saved the raid and got a number of tells along those lines after the fight was over.
We've tried to 4 and 5 man her a few times in my horde guild at level 70 but we didn't have enough ranged DPS to get through phase two. So when I saw the call for a tank for Onyxia... I couldn't resist. On the first attempt, we were wiped out by a deap breath. The second one was a combination of deep breath and whelps. But the third attempt we had the mage lay off on phase one and blow all his cooldowns on phase two and we managed to get through it. On phase three, the warritard two hand tanked her until I finally had to tell him to stop attacking. We finally straightened it out and got her down.
I know she's been soloed but still... It was nice trip down memory lane.
Onyxia's Lair... Man... Takes me back. When I first joined Crucify, one of the conditions was that you had to be attuned for Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Onyxia's Lair. The MC and BWL attunements were pretty simple and the guys I was hanging out with at the time were stumbling through the attunements and I'd actually done those. But Onyxia... Well now... That was something else entirely.
We'd actually done most of the questline but I hadn't done the precursors... In fact, we did the absolutely godawful Jail Break! quest twice (three times if you count the wipe) before I even knew what it was for. So I had to do it again. And soloing those elites in the Burning Steppes was brutal in my PvP blues. It took a few lucky crits to get the black drake down.
Then I did Jail Break! a third time with one of Crucify's officers tanking it on his rogue... I was pretty sick of BRD by the time we were done... Plus that tunnel in Winterspring... Oy. Plus the three runs through UBRS to get the blood. But I got the attunement and in my first real week in the guild, I got an invite to an Onyxia raid. I'd just gotten to rank 10 and got my PvP helm just two days earlier. And in my first Onyxia raid, two of the mage helms dropped... And only two mages didn't have it. So I replaced the helm I had spent 5 hours a day trying to get within two days... Not to mention the only other epic I had was also a head piece. But I wore my Tier 2 helm with pride right up until Burning Crusade. It's still in my bank and I put it on every now and then.
Over the months, we got pretty blase about Onyxia. If we took her out, it was on an off raid night (possibly a ZG or AQ20 night) and we'd do it with alts and newbies and one time we did it with 22 people. But I'll always have fond memories of that place. Like how our guild leader would put all the mages except himself in the even groups and then draw aggro and get himself killed so I'd always whisper the other mages that I was going on the odd side. Or the time when all the mages got themselves killed but me during phase three and we got some whelps.... On the other side. So I blinked through Onyxia and started kiting them. A paladin whispered me that he had me so I just went to town and downed them. I basically saved the raid and got a number of tells along those lines after the fight was over.
We've tried to 4 and 5 man her a few times in my horde guild at level 70 but we didn't have enough ranged DPS to get through phase two. So when I saw the call for a tank for Onyxia... I couldn't resist. On the first attempt, we were wiped out by a deap breath. The second one was a combination of deep breath and whelps. But the third attempt we had the mage lay off on phase one and blow all his cooldowns on phase two and we managed to get through it. On phase three, the warritard two hand tanked her until I finally had to tell him to stop attacking. We finally straightened it out and got her down.
I know she's been soloed but still... It was nice trip down memory lane.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A Little Redemption
Hiahotah has a few raid quests outstanding (Kill Gruul, run Heroic Arcatraz and Heroic Shadow Labyrinth) so I put myself into LFG for those three instances and did a few rounds of Alterac Valley (man... The horde is hapless sometimes... They have no hap). About half way through the third straight game where the horde didn't even bother slowing the Alliance rush down, I got a tell asking me if I wanted to do Gruul's Lair. Strangely, my +healing was judged to be satisfactory so I was invited.
After about a half hour of trying to get a raid together, they only needed a couple of tanks. I'd rather do new content as ranged DPS or as a healer - it gives me a better idea what is going on. But the last time I tried this, the group wiped because the tanks couldn't take the beating dished out and I kind of wanted this over. I have a longstanding grudge against this instance: It broke up my Alliance guild. We were falling apart and it was thought that if we could pull off a 25 man raid, we'd save the guild. The High King schooled us and within a couple of weeks, the guild was no more. So I whispered the raid leader that I could respec feral if he wanted. When I told him what my bear stats were, he asked me to respec. Everybody loves a tank.
It took another few minutes to get the raid going and I thought it was going to fall apart (and I'd be out the 25 gold for the respec) but they managed to pull it together. While I was waiting, I started putting my feral talents back where they belong... You're home fellas. Hello Feral Faerie Fire, my old friend. Ah... Mangle... I've missed you so. Then I went out and tanked a few mobs because it had been a while. Then I went back and read my tooltips and put the right mangle in my bear form bar.
The first trash pulls were uneventful (and by "uneventful" I mean "a mage got tired of waiting, pulled the first mob, left the raid and logged out just before I zoned in and I was in bear form so I just picked it up"). I was assigned to tank Olm the Summoner with a paladin OT. I could have done without the fears... But I kept him on me most of the time. The group was pretty balanced (and the warrior main tank was, in a word, godly. His healers were complaining because they didn't leave him anything to do and he had more health than I did - only by a couple hundred but it still counts. He and I were a good 3k above everyone else. It was obvious who the main and off tanks were) and we downed him. Take that "boss who broke up Crucify"!!!
There were some issues with the trash pulls on the way to Gruul (namely, a three pull when we weren't expecting any mobs at all) so we had to rebuff before Gruul. I was assigned to OT to eat something they called the Hateful (actually Hurtful) Strikes. Those tickle (I missed being indestructible). We lost a few people early and I saw an angel of failure in there at one point. I found that the middle was a good place to hang out for the shadows so I mashed flying bear when we got knocked in the air and was only close to the main tank. He got to 15 grows and there were only about 13 people still standing and we had him to 7%. We threw everything we had at him. Calls went out to blow all cooldowns (I didn't pop Bearvasion because I didn't think it would help much) and we managed to get him down. I don't think I embarassed myself - I was second on Omen for the majority of the fight (in fact, the raid leader was telling the ranged they could pass me in threat... I don't think he checked to see how much PvP gear I was wearing. I generate a LOT of threat). He dropped a resto druid helm and no one wanted it, so... I took it. I mean... When I _started_ the raid I was resto. It's a minor upgrade for PvE healing so... What the hell, right?
I also got the last item in the attunement quest for SSC - I just have to get back to the questgiver in Heroic Slave Pens to turn it in. LF4M just need heals and 3 DPS and gtg.
After about a half hour of trying to get a raid together, they only needed a couple of tanks. I'd rather do new content as ranged DPS or as a healer - it gives me a better idea what is going on. But the last time I tried this, the group wiped because the tanks couldn't take the beating dished out and I kind of wanted this over. I have a longstanding grudge against this instance: It broke up my Alliance guild. We were falling apart and it was thought that if we could pull off a 25 man raid, we'd save the guild. The High King schooled us and within a couple of weeks, the guild was no more. So I whispered the raid leader that I could respec feral if he wanted. When I told him what my bear stats were, he asked me to respec. Everybody loves a tank.
It took another few minutes to get the raid going and I thought it was going to fall apart (and I'd be out the 25 gold for the respec) but they managed to pull it together. While I was waiting, I started putting my feral talents back where they belong... You're home fellas. Hello Feral Faerie Fire, my old friend. Ah... Mangle... I've missed you so. Then I went out and tanked a few mobs because it had been a while. Then I went back and read my tooltips and put the right mangle in my bear form bar.
The first trash pulls were uneventful (and by "uneventful" I mean "a mage got tired of waiting, pulled the first mob, left the raid and logged out just before I zoned in and I was in bear form so I just picked it up"). I was assigned to tank Olm the Summoner with a paladin OT. I could have done without the fears... But I kept him on me most of the time. The group was pretty balanced (and the warrior main tank was, in a word, godly. His healers were complaining because they didn't leave him anything to do and he had more health than I did - only by a couple hundred but it still counts. He and I were a good 3k above everyone else. It was obvious who the main and off tanks were) and we downed him. Take that "boss who broke up Crucify"!!!
There were some issues with the trash pulls on the way to Gruul (namely, a three pull when we weren't expecting any mobs at all) so we had to rebuff before Gruul. I was assigned to OT to eat something they called the Hateful (actually Hurtful) Strikes. Those tickle (I missed being indestructible). We lost a few people early and I saw an angel of failure in there at one point. I found that the middle was a good place to hang out for the shadows so I mashed flying bear when we got knocked in the air and was only close to the main tank. He got to 15 grows and there were only about 13 people still standing and we had him to 7%. We threw everything we had at him. Calls went out to blow all cooldowns (I didn't pop Bearvasion because I didn't think it would help much) and we managed to get him down. I don't think I embarassed myself - I was second on Omen for the majority of the fight (in fact, the raid leader was telling the ranged they could pass me in threat... I don't think he checked to see how much PvP gear I was wearing. I generate a LOT of threat). He dropped a resto druid helm and no one wanted it, so... I took it. I mean... When I _started_ the raid I was resto. It's a minor upgrade for PvE healing so... What the hell, right?
I also got the last item in the attunement quest for SSC - I just have to get back to the questgiver in Heroic Slave Pens to turn it in. LF4M just need heals and 3 DPS and gtg.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Druids Dance with So Little Provocation
A couple of nights ago, there was a call out for all druids to come to the Scryer bank and dance. And, as a druid, I can't resist a good bear dance party (It's true. Try it yourself. If you don't have a druid of your own, roll one, get to level 10 and do the bear form quest line. Then go to Stormwind or Orgrimmar, walk up to the first druid you see and /dance. You don't even have to target them... Odds are they'll start dancing with you). I actually had to log off my mage and log onto my druid. I rushed over to to the Scryer bank, dropped into bear form, got in formation and started dancing.
Of course, with any druid activity, there will be a certain number of rogues, warlocks and hunters (who have nothing else to do. They certainly can't get into instance groups... Oh!!! Did I say that?!?!? Yep. Sure did) who ruin the screenshots:
Then some of the trees went to the front to add a little sparkle...
The bank started to get a little crowded with onlookers, so we rolled over to hang out with Alar:
Of course, with any druid activity, there will be a certain number of rogues, warlocks and hunters (who have nothing else to do. They certainly can't get into instance groups... Oh!!! Did I say that?!?!? Yep. Sure did) who ruin the screenshots:
Then some of the trees went to the front to add a little sparkle...
The bank started to get a little crowded with onlookers, so we rolled over to hang out with Alar:
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Cheating Death
Man-oh-mangoberry has there been an uproar about the nerf to Cheat Death yesterday. Most of the people complaining about it acknowledge that it was overpowered but that the nerf went too far. Here's what my Cheat Death experiences were like:
Kaylee (frost mage with Shatter) catches a rogue (at about 1/3 health) in a frost nova and gets off a shatter combo. The frostbolt is completely absorbed. Experience tells me that my frostbolts crit for about 3200 in battlegrounds. Rogue _still_ has 1/3 health. Then my ice lance hits for 200 and frost nova breaks. Then comes a fireblast for 100. Ice lance for 30. Now the rogue is in melee range, pops Cloak of Skill and... Oh... Some healer has noticed that the rogue is low on health. Dead mage. Or...
Same frost nova shatter combo gets the rogue down to 1500 hit points or so but there are no healers so the rogue runs (grrr... Pussies). I follow the rogue spamming ice lance because as soon as Cheat Death wears off, he'll drop. 100 here. 30 there... Then rogue pops sprint and Cloak of Skill. Resist, resist, resist, Out of range. Meanwhile, I've stumbled into the main Alliance force. Dead mage.
And with cheat death, it didn't matter if you had any resilience. Hell, the bigger the crit that would have killed you, the more invulnerable you became. Might as well wear your all DPS all the time PvE gear.
But that has been changed. Now a blow that would kill that rogue drops them to 10% health. Subsequent attacks have their damage reduced by an amount that is dependent on their resilience but not to exceed 90%. To get to 90% it would take (from what I've seen) 442-443 resilience. That's pretty much getting every piece of PvP gear and having it enchanted/gemmed for resilience.
Last night in the one AV I did with Kaylee, I got my shatter combo set up on a low health rogue. Frostbolt takes the rogue down to 10% health (yay. A spell actually did something to a rogue) and the followup ice lance did about 800 damage. The fireblast that followed hit for about 600. Dead rogue!!! I'm guessing that rogue had enough resilience to reduce the amount of incoming damage by about 60%. But with the initial blow not being resisted completely and that extra 30% damage, I had a fighting chance.
Yesterday was a very good day to die... For rogues.
Kaylee (frost mage with Shatter) catches a rogue (at about 1/3 health) in a frost nova and gets off a shatter combo. The frostbolt is completely absorbed. Experience tells me that my frostbolts crit for about 3200 in battlegrounds. Rogue _still_ has 1/3 health. Then my ice lance hits for 200 and frost nova breaks. Then comes a fireblast for 100. Ice lance for 30. Now the rogue is in melee range, pops Cloak of Skill and... Oh... Some healer has noticed that the rogue is low on health. Dead mage. Or...
Same frost nova shatter combo gets the rogue down to 1500 hit points or so but there are no healers so the rogue runs (grrr... Pussies). I follow the rogue spamming ice lance because as soon as Cheat Death wears off, he'll drop. 100 here. 30 there... Then rogue pops sprint and Cloak of Skill. Resist, resist, resist, Out of range. Meanwhile, I've stumbled into the main Alliance force. Dead mage.
And with cheat death, it didn't matter if you had any resilience. Hell, the bigger the crit that would have killed you, the more invulnerable you became. Might as well wear your all DPS all the time PvE gear.
But that has been changed. Now a blow that would kill that rogue drops them to 10% health. Subsequent attacks have their damage reduced by an amount that is dependent on their resilience but not to exceed 90%. To get to 90% it would take (from what I've seen) 442-443 resilience. That's pretty much getting every piece of PvP gear and having it enchanted/gemmed for resilience.
Last night in the one AV I did with Kaylee, I got my shatter combo set up on a low health rogue. Frostbolt takes the rogue down to 10% health (yay. A spell actually did something to a rogue) and the followup ice lance did about 800 damage. The fireblast that followed hit for about 600. Dead rogue!!! I'm guessing that rogue had enough resilience to reduce the amount of incoming damage by about 60%. But with the initial blow not being resisted completely and that extra 30% damage, I had a fighting chance.
Yesterday was a very good day to die... For rogues.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
My rant on PvP gear.
One of my blogging heroes - the Big Bear Butt - had a rant about PvP gear a couple of weeks ago and while I don't completely disagree with him, I don't completely agree with him either.
Back in the day, I had an Alliance mage (Gifteye) who I got to Rank 10 for the blue PvP gear so that I wouldn't embarass myself when I went on raids with my new guild. Two days (not kidding, two days) after I got Rank 10, I got a Tier 2 helm from Onyxia. After a while, he started getting more and more and more PvE gear... To the point where I didn't even have any of the PvP gear any more. I'd go into a battleground with 7/8 Tier 2 and blast the horde to hell. One time, I got jumped by a Grand Marshall hunter in the Eastern Plaguelands and completely handed him his hat. Whenever I got jumped by a warrior, I'd school them. Get them down to about 5% health and sheep them until they healed to full (back when sheep didn't break after 10 seconds in PvP) and then polish them off... Just because I could. I'd pick a fight with anyone. I killed every undead of every level I saw. I killed each and every rogue I saw out in the wild. Why? Because I could. My gear was just that good and unless you were raiding, you couldn't compete. To get gear that good, you had to PvP 20 hours a day for months on end and get the High Warlord gear and even then there were probably only 60 or 70 horde with that kind of gear on the server... Hell, even the Grand Marshals in our guild ditched their PvP gear for raiding drops.
I'll say it... It was imbalanced. If I could polymorph you or hit you with a pyroblast-fireblast combo when you weren't expecting it, there was really nothing you could do. On a PvP server, things had to change.
And they did. It started with the release of the GM/HWL gear for honor points just before Burning Crusade. Then with BC came Gladiator gear. The first set was OK (but I missed most of that, I was leveling my horde druid during most of season one) but the second set... That was nice. I had saved some points from the first season (I started playing the last few weeks) and I was just starting to main tank for my guild for 5 mans. When I joined they were stuck on the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. I got a smattering of instance drop blues and some quest rewards and had an OK tanking set. But I'd been using a set of green shoulders that +57 stamina and no other stats for... Ever, basically.
So I spent my first 1400 or so arena points on the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders. After gems, I lost a little stamina, but I gained about 1000 armor (after the dire bear form multiplier), some dodge, crit, threat generation and crit immunity. Plus, I could justify getting one of the good shoulder enchants from the Scryers so I gained a little more crit immunity and even more dodge. Suddenly, I went from being a solid tank to a crit immune, hard to hit, damage mitigating, threat generating machine. Over the last few months, I've replaced every piece of gear two or three times... But not those. I still wear them and they're still awesome.
I ground out arena points for 5-6 weeks to get those. Now you can get them in 3 days of battlegrounds... Two if you happen to catch a couple of rainy days on an Alterac Valley weekend. And that gear is a LOT better than anything you can get out of Karazhan AND it's a lot more predictable. We have someone who has been waiting for the Shard of the Virtuous for months. He could PvP for two weeks and get something even better now. _I_ would prefer to do Karazhan because even though I have a nearly full set of PvP epics for all three of my horde toons, after a while, PvP gets boring. The Alliance zergs the horde base in AV and steamrolls the two mages who stayed back to defend for an instant win time after time after time. The horde taps the farm and then runs to wherever the fighting is and doesn't defend what they've captured in AB. The horde rushes to the middle to grab the flag (and all too frequently fail) while the Alliance sends 6 people to the Fel Reaver Ruins in EotS. Warriors (R 4 fite) running the flag in Warsong run headlong into the Alliance zerg (or run out the tunnel to find them waiting for us or just fight in the middle and don't try to grab their flag or return ours). I'm sick of the battlegrounds.
Here's _my_ problem with the PvP gear being so easily available: I can't get my guild to Karazhan because it's too hard. It's a committment of 3 hours to maybe down 5 bosses in Karazhan and maybe get to roll on something that isn't exactly an upgrade to something they "earned" through PvP or arenas. I have to find a night where 10 people are willing and available. PvP is something they can do on their own time and even 20 minutes a day will get you a noticeable return.
So... I don't have a problem with PvP gear being availble for non-raiders. PvP wouldn't be fun for everyone otherwise. I don't mind the demise of the old honor system with decaying points (I _did_ mind the first day when they opened the Officer's quarters up to everyone and some 12 year old kid playing a druid sat on the one vendor I wanted to buy something from and refused to move until someone asked him to move and said please. I swore at him for 20 minutes. Not kidding) because that was just insane. I'm surprised no one died of malnutrition or exhaustion trying to get to rank 14. What I do mind is that there's no incentive to raid. Hell... Even I really have no incentive to raid on my druid or my mage. They're both geared to the teeth. In fact, the druid has a great tanking set AND a great healing set. There aren't upgrades for either one of them until about Tier 6 and even those are nominal upgrades.
What's REALLY frustrating is that with all of these awesome PvP epics floating around the guild, we could steamroll Karazhan if we could just get people there.
Back in the day, I had an Alliance mage (Gifteye) who I got to Rank 10 for the blue PvP gear so that I wouldn't embarass myself when I went on raids with my new guild. Two days (not kidding, two days) after I got Rank 10, I got a Tier 2 helm from Onyxia. After a while, he started getting more and more and more PvE gear... To the point where I didn't even have any of the PvP gear any more. I'd go into a battleground with 7/8 Tier 2 and blast the horde to hell. One time, I got jumped by a Grand Marshall hunter in the Eastern Plaguelands and completely handed him his hat. Whenever I got jumped by a warrior, I'd school them. Get them down to about 5% health and sheep them until they healed to full (back when sheep didn't break after 10 seconds in PvP) and then polish them off... Just because I could. I'd pick a fight with anyone. I killed every undead of every level I saw. I killed each and every rogue I saw out in the wild. Why? Because I could. My gear was just that good and unless you were raiding, you couldn't compete. To get gear that good, you had to PvP 20 hours a day for months on end and get the High Warlord gear and even then there were probably only 60 or 70 horde with that kind of gear on the server... Hell, even the Grand Marshals in our guild ditched their PvP gear for raiding drops.
I'll say it... It was imbalanced. If I could polymorph you or hit you with a pyroblast-fireblast combo when you weren't expecting it, there was really nothing you could do. On a PvP server, things had to change.
And they did. It started with the release of the GM/HWL gear for honor points just before Burning Crusade. Then with BC came Gladiator gear. The first set was OK (but I missed most of that, I was leveling my horde druid during most of season one) but the second set... That was nice. I had saved some points from the first season (I started playing the last few weeks) and I was just starting to main tank for my guild for 5 mans. When I joined they were stuck on the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. I got a smattering of instance drop blues and some quest rewards and had an OK tanking set. But I'd been using a set of green shoulders that +57 stamina and no other stats for... Ever, basically.
So I spent my first 1400 or so arena points on the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders. After gems, I lost a little stamina, but I gained about 1000 armor (after the dire bear form multiplier), some dodge, crit, threat generation and crit immunity. Plus, I could justify getting one of the good shoulder enchants from the Scryers so I gained a little more crit immunity and even more dodge. Suddenly, I went from being a solid tank to a crit immune, hard to hit, damage mitigating, threat generating machine. Over the last few months, I've replaced every piece of gear two or three times... But not those. I still wear them and they're still awesome.
I ground out arena points for 5-6 weeks to get those. Now you can get them in 3 days of battlegrounds... Two if you happen to catch a couple of rainy days on an Alterac Valley weekend. And that gear is a LOT better than anything you can get out of Karazhan AND it's a lot more predictable. We have someone who has been waiting for the Shard of the Virtuous for months. He could PvP for two weeks and get something even better now. _I_ would prefer to do Karazhan because even though I have a nearly full set of PvP epics for all three of my horde toons, after a while, PvP gets boring. The Alliance zergs the horde base in AV and steamrolls the two mages who stayed back to defend for an instant win time after time after time. The horde taps the farm and then runs to wherever the fighting is and doesn't defend what they've captured in AB. The horde rushes to the middle to grab the flag (and all too frequently fail) while the Alliance sends 6 people to the Fel Reaver Ruins in EotS. Warriors (R 4 fite) running the flag in Warsong run headlong into the Alliance zerg (or run out the tunnel to find them waiting for us or just fight in the middle and don't try to grab their flag or return ours). I'm sick of the battlegrounds.
Here's _my_ problem with the PvP gear being so easily available: I can't get my guild to Karazhan because it's too hard. It's a committment of 3 hours to maybe down 5 bosses in Karazhan and maybe get to roll on something that isn't exactly an upgrade to something they "earned" through PvP or arenas. I have to find a night where 10 people are willing and available. PvP is something they can do on their own time and even 20 minutes a day will get you a noticeable return.
So... I don't have a problem with PvP gear being availble for non-raiders. PvP wouldn't be fun for everyone otherwise. I don't mind the demise of the old honor system with decaying points (I _did_ mind the first day when they opened the Officer's quarters up to everyone and some 12 year old kid playing a druid sat on the one vendor I wanted to buy something from and refused to move until someone asked him to move and said please. I swore at him for 20 minutes. Not kidding) because that was just insane. I'm surprised no one died of malnutrition or exhaustion trying to get to rank 14. What I do mind is that there's no incentive to raid. Hell... Even I really have no incentive to raid on my druid or my mage. They're both geared to the teeth. In fact, the druid has a great tanking set AND a great healing set. There aren't upgrades for either one of them until about Tier 6 and even those are nominal upgrades.
What's REALLY frustrating is that with all of these awesome PvP epics floating around the guild, we could steamroll Karazhan if we could just get people there.
Friday, July 11, 2008
2v2 Cherry
Well... I finally did some 2v2 on my druid with his resto kit. I couldn't find a warritard but one of our rogues respecced to shadowstep and we tried it out. Without having played before and without using Teamspeak, we went 5-6. The last game was against a warrior/resto druid and it took 25 minutes for them to beat us - and the warrior had season 3 shoulders. The rogue I played with still uses a lot of PvE gear and season one gladiator gear so it wasn't a bad performance.
I'd still like to try it with a warritard though.
I'd still like to try it with a warritard though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)