f13.net

Ok, I've spent nearly 3 years playing this game without even touching the PvP.  Yes, I'm on a normal server.  Ok, I did try the BG's when they were first introduced, but after seeing the queue wait times I never looked back.  It was so bad that I didn't even think to try after they invented the battle groups.

So, I join my guild in one of their premade rounds of BG's Friday just on a Lark and had nothing better to do.

I don't know what the hell I was thinking.  I should have done this a long long time ago.  I loved it.

Now I can't get enough.  I have 4 lvl 70's that I now want fully outfitted in PvP gear.

I have a lot of work/fun to do.  Although, now that I've been doing mostly PUG's, I'm really missing the premade night.  5x more fun and 10x more effective.  You can really really tell if you have two PUGs, or two premades, or a lop-sided battle.

I'm getting to find the guys that sit and bitch during the battle about how bad we are funny.  I guess it never dawns on them that just perhaps the other side are all on voice/chat?

Sorry for the new thread.  I just had to share my epiphany.

*Edit:  Of course after I posted this I finally noticed the other thread on BG's.  My bad.  Merge if you want.

If you're enjoying it try to get on an arena team, or start a new arena team with another newb or two. Even the low score newb vs newb level teams make a couple of hundred points a week. It adds up and you can get a few S2/S3 pieces and save yourself some honor grinding.

Yes, and it's always "U guys suk!" - it's never "we suck."

I hate arena fighting because it's so artificial, but it's an excellent way to get gear.

I really wish Blizzard would put far less into junk like Sunwell, that many players won't ever see, and put in more different kinds of battlegrounds, or even just more pve content available to people of limited time.  Battlegrounds are perfect for people who want to play an hour or two at a time.

Yep, trying to do that now with my guild.  Trouble is most are in groups that are quite active now.  Going to be hard to break in on those groups I think.  We'll see.

Right now it isn't a grind for me to do BG's since it is all new.  I'm enjoying it.  It really helps that it fits into my playstyle which is short periods of playtime (15 minutes or so.)  Hell, some matches are over (for good or bad) in less than 5 minutes!  The longest I've waited for a match is maybe 1 minute.  So far, it has been perfect for me except for some of the crappy PUG's I've been in.

I think it really comes down to whether you just have bad luck and get put into a group that is just as new and itemless as me!  Although, I read through those summaries at the end of matches and find that many people just don't try very hard.  I mean, if my paladin is not only able to out heal other healers, out damage rogues, and get more kills than anybody....something is wrong.  Especially that damage part.  I'm a healadin!  My damage is all from 40 hp hammer strikes, consecration, and my judgements basically.  WTF?

I get that a lot on my pally when healadin specced, too.  Thing is, if you're at a heavily-defended node (on attk or def.) AND you're sitting at the flag tossing out conc, you're racking up a lot of damage.  It's got no limit to the # of people you can hit with it, and check out your +spelldam since the equipment changes.  At 1508+ healing in my PVP gear, I've got +452 spelldamage; nothing to sneeze at for bonus damage when you're also healing like a fiend.  I think Conc also gets the full bonus of the +dam, since it's a DoT.   Fucking nice damage for a spell you only have to toss out every 10 seconds or so.

Yeah, in my full healing gear (PvE since I haven't built up my PvP gear at all yet,) I have 1705 healing and nearly 800 damage (mainly Kara dropped lewtz.)  It must have been conc. rakcing up the damage for me.  Yes, I would basically position myself at every big fight to lend the damage from conc and my heals for obvious reasons.

I was worried at first about mana conservation, but quickly realized that if you are sitting there fighting for more than 3-4 minutes at the flag, things are going to well.  I got a lot better results from going out like a flame rather than sitting there doing nothing.  Cap the node and you res right there anyway, so it pays to go all out I think.  Plus, it is a lot more fun.

Yes, I do heal and heal a lot!  I seriously love watching the enemy get extremely pissed off at me for screwing up their ganking.  I usually turn into target #1 about mid-way through the battle, especially against teams using voice.  Those guys target me almost right away.

Bah, making me want to roll a paladin but I might kill myself if I have to level all the way from 1 again.

I'm having a hard time really appreciating pvp in this game after having played DAoC for 5+ years.  The amount of difference that gear makes necessitates farming to a ridiculous degree.  I mean if two people are comparable in ability, the one with the better gear has a HUGE advantage.  While an advantage also existed in DAoC, it was still pretty small.  I think this and all of the gray gankers has really decreased my desire to play.  It's discouraging to outplay someone in a pvp situation and still get crushed by their gear. 

At least (I haven't run into them anyways) there's no buffbots in WoW  :awesome_for_real:

I love when I get told that I play a rogue in the BG really well... because I don't. I spam hemo, hit kidney shot every now and then, then I move to the next target. It's not even all about the gear, it's about the enchants on that gear.

Gear dependancy really depends on the class too, I think.  I noticed a huge issue with my Warlock for instance.  I kept seeing Warlocks owning in the BG and then I took mine in with pretty good gear, but nothing on the level for PvP.  Holy crap did I get owned over and over.  The lack of armor and stamina was very apparent.

Basically it came down to rogues and druids sitting invis waiting for me to come close enough to the flags.  Then they'd stun lock me and tear my cloth self up before I could even think about popping fear.  I think my spec is warped at the moment, so I'll fix that.  Plus, I should have had that demon out that senses hidden and kills spells.  That would have probably helped.

Both my Paladin and Priest did quite well for how lacking I am for gear.  My paladin does the best, but has the best gear too.

I haven't tried my rogue yet.  He has great daggers, but nothing for armor.  It should be interesting.

As for getting discouraged due to lack of gear:  I'm finding I'm just getting too old to get upset about losses.  Dieing really doesn't have a concequence, so that is good.  I'm on Alliance, so losing battles is old hat at this point.  I'm numb to that.  I really look at it as an exciting way of passing the time and slowly build up to get more lewtz.  It sure as hell beats farming any day of the week!

The only thing I find amusing is that you have to basically degrade yourself when first starting out because you don't have the gear.  You don't do better (besides basic player skill) until you lose enough to get the gear you need.  Then you get to own the newbs like you were owned...  It is almost like Fraternity hazing. 

It be nice if they made tiers in the BG's where you didn't advance to the next tier until you have more points/gear.  That way, you'd have more fights with even odds?  There are a lot of issues with that though, including the problem of playing with friends when they are at different tiers, etc.  I guess the hazing isn't THAT bad.

I did two night of hardcore PvP with my Pally and have nearly 10,000 honor points about 20 EoTS badges.  I should be able to get my first piece soon.  I wouldn't say that's a huge hurdle to overcome.

Just to be contrary. My blood elf lock did her succy quest this last weekend and was required to kill a npc in the wetlands. The feeling running through those high level  (to me) zones was quite different that my human lock going to the barrens on a PvE server.

Contrary to what?   I agree with what you said, but it doesn't look like it has anything to do with what I said.

I think the overall feeling on a PvP server is more tense, at least in the contested zones. It reminds me of the days when I played DAoC and was running around the frontiers, or even more like Darkness Falls. Not only was it an awesome dungeon, but was shared by all three realms. It made for some fun encounters when fighting mobs and encountering enemy realms. Good good fun. I have not had the opportunity to try WoW PvP, so I don't know what survivability is like comparatively, but in DAoC, most classes were fairly durable in combat so you could have some fun before dropping dead. One and two shot deaths are never fun and tend to drive me away from the PvP game rather than propel me to do more.

Similar levels (1-3 difference) can be fought with fun.  More than that, coupled with waiting until you are fighting a mob, make for not so much fun.

I started playing again on my rogue (L67) and was killing in outland.  I had several similar levels not even attack me.  I was like, wtf man.  So I killed them.

THIS.IS.OUTLAAAAND.

Personally, I am not liking the world PvP much at all.  There have been a few fun fights (and by fun, I mean not infuriatingly unbalanced, not "this is awesome" fun), but they are outnumbered about 10:1 by "Dwarf riding past on horse decides to one-shot me" kind of crap.  On the up side, I do think it's helped me get a lot better at 1v1 PvP, but on the downside, it's killing my faith in humanity.

Battlegrounds PvP I am enjoying, though.  I wouldn't mind trying out the Arena if I ever get to that level.  It's also becoming apparent to me that things like "BG PvP" are very different, in terms of gameplay and skill, than things like "World PvP".

And therein lies the reason that BG RvR was so successful in DAoC. Some may have disliked the fact that it was contrived, but some of us appreciated the fact that there was a level range within the instance that allowed for fun fights, avoidance of grief, and a chance to try out new classes in RvR before grinding to max level.

I completely recognize the thrill factor that comes with a PvP server.  It is much the same as the feeling I got from UO in the early days.  I enjoy it in small doses though, not all the time.  That attitude has gotten moreso as I've gotten older too.  I really cherish the ability to choose when I PvP and when I just brainlessly solo and ignore the world around me.

Playing BG's on a normal server suits my playstyle these days just right.  Do I miss out on those days of fearing a death that has consequences (time away from questing, etc.?)  Sure, but the thrill I got from being successfull typically is uneven with losses.  I get 1-2 hours per play session and I really don't want to have somebody else block me from it unless I specifically allow it (BG's.) 

Even with the gear imbalance in BG's,  you can still serve a role.  I can definitely serve a role as a healer.  I just have to keep it on the down low or I become target number 1 everytime.  With other roles, wars always need the infantry to keep the enemy busy and distracted from the real goals.  I'm doing that right now while learning the ropes of PvP in WoW.

For instance, I have GOT to find a way to counter spell-steal.  I am soooo sick of dieing to that dumb spell or those like it.

Um.  What are they stealing ?

You're probably thinking counter spell. Since everything a healadin does is holy once you get hit with counter spell and it blocks the casting of holy spells you're bricked till it wears off.

Ganked my first rogue last night as a stealthy druid.  He was my level.  Of course I waited until he pulled a mob. 

(Some people call that dirty pvp.  I don't understand how that's dirty pvp, since he has stuns and I don't.)

Can't count the number of times rogues have ganked me on various toons.  I really hate getting cheatshotted off my mount.

Do you enjoy it when people hit you while fighting a mob?  The answer to that may address your question. 

This strategy has been proved to be usefull (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat)

It's what I use.

Most of the time ...

 :awesome_for_real:

I tend to live more by the quote:


It's a game.  Do what you like. 

It's a right of passage to get ganked while fighting a mob. It happens to you as you level, in turn when you get the chance it's in the PvP server creed to make others suffer as well.

For me it depends on what level and what class I came across. Warlocks, Hunters and anything that's a Night Elf is KOS... or attemp to at least. I generally don't wait for them to pull a mob though, I just attack ASAP.

YES, that is it.  The time I'm away from my spells is just long enough for a mage to take me from full health to dead while I can do nothing about it.  EVERYTHING I have other than whacking them with my mace that does around 45 hp damage per hit is dead to me during that time.  Even my ranged stun won't work.  Even my bubble, my lovely lovely bubble.

Nearly everyone has something like this.  Shaman = Earth Shock.  Mage = counter spell.  Warlock = demon dog ability.  Warrior = shield bash.  Rogues = Kick.  

There must be an add-on out there that immediately targets me when I start to heal or something.  Nearly 75% of the time in any BG fight, as soon as I start to cast somebody hits me with one of those and I just have to either sit there and wait it out or get pummelled to death.  I don't ever seem to resist it either.  There must be a way to at least make so 1/2 the time I can actually do something.  Other than gear, I haven't figured it out.

Rock: "Scissors are fine, nerf paper".  :grin:

I tend to not be able to kill anyone in the 6 seconds (I think it is) that Counterspell is active     :uhrr:

The interesting thing about CS is that you have to catch the person casting to get the primary effect (though there is a shorter, complete silence effect if they have the improved version).  One thing you can do if you have a mage in the area you think might try it is to either a) use Flash of Light instead of holy light for the shorter cast time, and thus smaller window for them to target, or b) start casting holy light and cancelling it at random.  If you're lucky they will hit you after you've cancelled the spell and they waste it.

That is why I said they must have an add-on that helps them because I tested this.  I kept running over to the same mage over and over trying to figure this out last night.  Each time the same thing would happen, no matter how I did it.  I'd start to attack (pathetic  DPS and all) and she would start casting on me (Ice Mage.)  I would start using flash heal (my heals are pretty big now at about 1300-1400 per on flash, so it works well to stay alive.)  She would instantly stop casting whatever she had going and counterspell me.  There is no casting time to it, so I can't see it and stop casting other than from luck.

The only thing I figured out was to start healing myself right at the beginning.  That actually tricked her or her add-on instantly kicked in and she counter spelled me.  She could only get me down to 1/4 health before it wore off and I fully healed with a full heal.  Then I did ok, except I do not have enough DPS to even take out a mage before help arrives and takes me out anyway.

I'm fine with not having DPS.  I can't really kill anybody without help in a time frame that means anything in BG's.  I'm fine with that.  I've given that up to be a healer.  There is no way I can play those kinds of games when I'm in a group fight at a flag to try and avoid being a useless lump for 8 seconds or more depending on how many people are in line to counterspell me.

I constantly hear bitching about no healing in BG's, but I can tell you from experience that it isn't because people don't want to.  It is because most of the time, they can't, so why spec it?  I'll perservere though.  I'm still liking it and will find a solution at some point.  I'm just thinking it will be all about getting my resilience up so I can at least have a chance of resisting couterspell attacks part of the time.

Current Resilience? = Zippo.

They've completly broken you, haven't they Neb?   :sad:

Well, WAR is due out this year (maybe...) perhaps that'll go better.

My point was (and I hope the article stated that) that I (almost) never kill a lowbie alliance player unprovoked. If his friends try to gank me, it's open season.

BUT I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE ON SOUTHSHORE !!!

The guy was a rogue.  I don't think I've ever been killed by a rogue when I was expecting to be.  That's what rogues do.  They pop up on you unexpectedly, and frequently keep you stunned until they kill you.  That's the whole stealth/stun thing.

If it bothered me that people hit me while fighting a mob, I'd be back on the server I started on and spent only 2 months on, a pve server.  But I was so bored on that server because of the entirely weird "opt in/opt out" form of pvp that I almost quit playing entirely.  Then I moved to a pvp server and never looked back.

As a rogue, I follow players around until they inevitably try to gank someone. That's when I strike!

So good. So deadly.  :)



(and very satisfying)

You know, Gandhi gets a fuckload of credit for the civility of the British.  Imagine what would have happened had he been facing someone less polite. 

Probably wouldn't have even heard of him, in fact, were that the case.

Every time I get jumped while fighting a mob by someone higher level when I'm already at half life, I swear that there is no more mercy, I'm just going to gank every person I come across at their point of highest vulnerability.

Then I get the chance and I just don't have the heart.  I'm a natural born sheep I guess.

That's exactly it for me.  I used to gank people without mercy in UO and DAoC until I saw something.  I watched my daughter playing Runescape and someone killed her in a bad spot.  She cried.  I mean, she really took it personally and cried.  My fun in a game just isn't worth having that kind of effect on someone else.  I think that my days on pvp servers are about done.  I just don't have the heart to ruin the fun of others anymore. 

     :sad_panda:


That would have an effect on me too.

I get big kicks out of answering Local Defense calls, when possible (I'm still only a 39). Gathering intel on a corpse camper and then plunging in when the player is distracted by a resurrection always brightens my day.

(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/PBF181-Woolves.jpg)

I can understand that - death in Runescape has penalties.  But death in WoW doesn't, other than a time penalty.  No looting, no xp loss, no durability loss even.

For me, that's what alts are for (laundry too!) - if I'm being camped, and I can't call on friends to help out for whatever reason, I play an alt or go fold my laundry.

One of the things I really enjoy about The Venture Co. server is that so many people are willing to help out.  On my other pvp server, if someone says anything about getting ganked, they're greeted with "yeah, so? This is a pvp server noob" or "the pve servers are that way."

Contested zones are fun, with support.  Getting camped sucks, but revenge is sweet if your friends can help out.

Last night, there was a 70 watching over all the noobs in Hillsbrad levelling up.  He owned the 70 alliance who came to gank.  It was
 quite fun!

To expound on my previous post, I have the same response to it as Xanthippe, not Nebu.

I can't see playing on a PvE server.  I don't know if it'd be boring (last time I tried a PvE sort of game was years ago) but I still like the danger, and I still like that if an Alliance gives you a break, he or she just genuinely did you a favor - not because the game restricts it.

I agree to a degree as well, which is why I usually play on PvP servers.  My real point was that I can't understand why my not being an asshole suddenly makes me a pussy.  I don't gank people.  I don't hit people fighting mobs.  I don't hit people below me in level.  Somehow this makes me less of a person because I don't stoop to tit for tat or revenge or whatever.  The culture of the server is more what bugs me than the mechanics of it. 

I just remember that's it's a PvP server and if they wanted to level in peace, they should join one of the MANY PvE servers. I also don't get upset about getting ganked for the same reason. A big part of the fun for me isn't necessarily ganking someone, it's getting away from that level 70 that has already killed me, or is patrolling the area looking for someone to kill. I had a lot of fun in STV avoiding the roaming level 70s.

edit: This isn't an attack on Nebu either, I can totally understand not wanting to be a part of a pvp server. There's a LOT of dickheads on the server, both sides. You can tell when school gets out in the afternoon too... All of sudden there's lvl 70s all over n00b zones, but I just can't imagine going back to a PvE server now.

I play on both kinds of servers.  For some reason, PvE servers inspire me to grind crafting levels more.  With my hour or so a week, however, I don't level often.   :oh_i_see:

I usually prefer PvE servers. I would rather not allow random people to waste my time as they see fit.

Ditto, which is why I only alt on the PvP server.  If I get ganked trying to do what I want, looks like it's a PvE server day.  As a result, I don't expect I'll hit 70 prior to the next x-pack.

That's the part I'm trying to come to grips with.  I love the tension of a pvp server, but having entire evenings wasted by 12 year olds just gets on my nerves after a while. 

On the plus side, our server is freakishly active, so I end up running a lot of instances.  This has the bonus of dropping me into an instance where I can't be ganked, as well as giving me t3h ph4t l3wtz to dispense righteous justice when I AM ganked.  So, whenever I'm feeling pissed off at being ganked, I just head back to Orgrimmar and hang out in LFG for a while, and spend the night getting obscenely powerful items and money.

If they add more bgs the queues get longer so it stops being perfect for people who want to play an hour or two at a time.  They are adding a new one for the expansion though.

...plus the "will spend 95+ percent of its time totally unused" world-pvp zone. Hell, the Sunwell instances will probably get more use between now and WotLK than that zone will ever.

I got pulled out of the first BG I started to do for the night last night to help my guild out and heal Karazhan.  I ended up sitting around for nearly an hour before we got started.  The whole time I kept thinking, "I could be gaining honor and marks right now..."

I took my alt healing priest and took down Attumen and Moroes with no deaths.  I also got no lewtz!  Hey, I got a few badges though!

The more I think about it and consider the very limited time I have each night, BG's just make a lot of sense.  I can tell I'm going to have a hard time choosing between the two each night.  I do have to choose, because I don't have enough time to do both in one night.

IMO, start a new account, txf off the toons that would be used to raid.  Then sell it.

I'm more than happy to engage in random world PvP, but I never attack first unless I know the target is a jackass.  I just can't do it.

I just don't understand the thrill of ganking someone thirty levels lower than me, I guess.  Or why the Horde needs to destroy Southshore 23 hours out of the day.  Or why stealth classes exist at all for PvP :P

Yeah, similar. I used to play on a pvp server, and eventually got fed up that there was so much time I simply wasn't able to play due to people who had nothing better to do than kill everything that walks in lowbie zones. Playing in that environment where there is simply nothing you can do in response is just masochism.

Because of this, I have an enormous hatred of max level rogues, and would never hesitate to attack one when he was fighting a mob.

For all that, I do find the pve server a bit tame. I miss open pvp in the SB or even UO style.

While I'm on a normal server, we do have world pvp days sometimes.  The last one was pretty fun.  It was basically huge numbers of people flagging pvp and attacking each other either at the world PvP points or just attacking each others NPC town for giggles.

For the most part, most people participated that were in the area.  We had most of our guild together in Vent and raided so it was a great excercise in planning, tactics, and strategy.

I'm looking forward to the next one.

This is good point, however, I would love to see a classic AV option.  If AV was changed so that every AV was like version 1.0, a lot of people would complain - however, there are some people who want to play version 1.0 (like me!) and who don't mind playing a 2 hour (and what could be a 4 or 8 hour game).

Having a classic AV option would not increase the queue time - in fact, I bet the queue time on it would be shorter than it is for the current version 3 of AV, since alliance in some battlegroups refuse to queue for it at all.

This is surprisingly - to me anyway - different across servers.

My old server had little world pvp, but The Venture Co. has stuff happening every evening.  It's pretty cool (and I don't mean just level 70s ganking lowers).

Yeah, VC has been interesting.  I think part of that is it's a little bit smaller server and is newer, so all of the 'hardcorez, yo' are on other, older servers. Plus the A:H ratio is damn near 1:1 if you can believe wowcensus and that HAS to help things out.

Classic AV would work fine IF they came up with a graceful way to leave -- grant you honor (bonus and otherwise) and tokens for your time spent. I'd say bonus armor for the things like upgrades (and set it so that you could continue to upgrade AFTER you capped out, just for bonus honor), ram charges, etc. Tokens maybe for time spent?

Classic AV is coming back in spirit, (In theory), with the PvP zone in WoTLK.

I think I've said before on this board - wouldn't it be cool if there were the hour or days-long AVs of old, which you could join or leave at will.  You'd get honor and tokens for time spent, objectives capped or defended, kills, heals, etc.  Then when (maybe days later) the battle was won or lost, you get another cut of the overall honor based on how long you were and how much you contributed, especially if your side won.

DAoC does a good job with this mechanic and Blizzard could learn a thing or two from them.  If you're near when an objective is taken, you get rps.  Help with a kill, rps.  Heal a wounded target?  rps.  Sure, it's not perfect but with some blizzard polish it could be much better for the BG's and eliminate the afk crowd.

Someone would abuse it.

9 million people, there will be 10 that break the system, and 1 that posts how on a forum.

Actually, that COULD be an interesting concept.

Make a "Perpetual War" battleground, that has NO Win or Lose goal, and reward players for their Actual Performance during their time spent in the battle.  I envision this something like those swarm battle scenes during the credits in WC3, where you just have an endless tide of Orcs spawning on one end of the map, and Humans on the other, and they meet in the middle, endlessly killing each other.

- 40 people per side, Map about the size of AV.
- Each side has continuous waves of fairly weak NPC's that spawn deep in their side, and move towards the other side untill they encounter a Player or another NPC to fight.

- Put in Contested Areas, with control mechanics similar to the cap points in EotS.
- Have say 6 alliance ones, and 6 horde ones (for arguements sake, imagine them where the towers / bunkers / graveyards are in AV), which give benefits in the form of slight but persistant damage buffs, health / mana regen buffs and the like for the side that takes them from the enemy (think galvagers damage buff).
- You dont get buffs for controlling your OWN points, only for controlling the Enemy ones.
- Make the "capping area" for these areas fairly large
- HOWEVER, each enemy point your side controls has the corresponding side effect of increasing the rate of (or level strength of) enemy reinforcement spawns (NPC's).

- Put in a couple of resource gathering quests (like the AV mines / Blood Turn-ins) which allow your side to summon a "hero" style critter to rally around and assist with pushes, think AV Icelord, but slightly weaker (however make it slightly easier for the disadvantaged team to summon faster)

- You gain normal honor for PvP kills, subject to diminishing returns etc.
- You gain "Bonus" Honor based on things like how long you can hold contested areas (the more areas you hold nets you cumulatively more honor per tick, but you face a rising tide of Enemy Reinforcements the more you hold), how long you keep your "hero" creeps alive, and things like that.
- The KEY to the Battleground would be you are only allowed in for a FIXED MAXIMUM length of time, say 30 minutes or an hour, each day (say you get auto kicked due to "Battle Fatigue" after time is up, to prevent people from staying in there forever), and the bonus honor awarded is directly based off your overall performance (damage / healing done, quests run, whatever) over your timed stay and is ONLY awarded when you LEAVE the BG.
- It could give a running total of "bonus honor earned" during ticks or stuff, so people know they ARE earning it, but no fucking cave camper is going to get ANYTHING, because his 0 damage, 0 healing done, 0 quests run performance record will dictate a 0 Bonus honor grant.

So in your hour, you can make x amount of honor from just killing stuff, but if your side manages a good push, and controls 4 of the 6 enemy contested points for the duration of the fight, and keeps it's "hero" alive for 20 minutes, you get LOADS more bonus honor when you leave.

Don't even have it award tokens, or maybe have it award a generic token redeemable for x amount of tokens of your choice for ANY battleground for simply having been "through the grinder" since you can only do it once a day.

-----------------------------------

The overall idea being you are actually in a BIGASS epic battle, with multitudes of units killing eachother, and capping and holding all 6 enemy points would be a monumental fight because you would be facing literally overwelming odds to hold them for more then a few minute.  It would be like actually being in one of those glorious meles from crazy WC3 Battles.

TL;DR

DotA + AV + Daily Quest Timer Limit thing.

This is basically what I'm hoping the foretold siege zone is going to look like.  24/7 carnage, hopefully the most efficient way to grind honor (get those AFKers out of AV and into a non-instanced zone where they can't fuck everything up), with just a bunch of crazy crap going on all over the place, people earning tokens Halaa-style for doing whatever needs doing, and then redoing it in five minutes when it needs doing again.

What I'm afraid of is it turning out to be Eastern Plaguelands II: Revenge of the non-battle.

The largest issue with the EPL/Hellfire/Marsh towers, is there is almost no benefit to actually holding the objectives. There is a quest in EPL to capture the towers. Which on my server, the alliance can't actually do, since they haven't lost the towers outside of 5 min windows when the horde take them for their version of the quest, since they've been up.

In Hellfire, we trade the towers, since capturing them is how you get the bonus marks, not holding them. We form up a group/raid, go to the first tower while the horde goes to the last one. They fly across to ours and we move to the middle. Then we go to the far one while they take the middle. A endless loop of tower trading until you complete the quest enough to get enough marks for your item.

The Marsh towers, people forget those even exist 50% of the time and they remain unclaimed.


Halaa actually gets some action on my server, fairly regularly. Despite the fact the rewards/cost are completely out of sync with the rest of the game, the actual game play is fun enough to cause people to scrounge it up every so often. It still suffers from the same issue though. There is little benefit to actually defending it. All the fun game play is on the offensive side. Pretty much no incentive to hold onto the place.



When you compare it to something like a DaoC keep assault. Their is incentive for both the offense and the defense to show up and preform. More importantly, it's actually fun for 90% of both sides. Everyone has a role, or a mechanic to use. The Range DPS play ping-pong on the walls, the melee DPS works to breach the doors/wall, or scale them to pressure the enemy range. Healers get a rare opportunity to heal from 'safe' spots instead of being directly trained down. But everyone has a job, and most everyone has a 'toy' to use if they don't have a job. Be it some siege equipment, or a special mechanic (/recall to keep lords for the non-stealth melee for example). 

Even playing a buffbot was kinda humorously fun when you sat at the keep lord and rezzed all the /recalled melee.



But say in Halaa, defending mostly constitutes going to the active flight node, burning it, then killing the landing enemy one at a time after their run. Fish in a barrel and all that. The most intriguing battle I've had at Halaa, was the one we created artificially over a bridge. Some folks on the horde side and our side were in the same vent channel, and worked out some rough 'rules' and we had two small zergs fighting over a single bridge for nearly an hour. Once one side actually fought their way across, they would pull back, everyone would rez and we would do it again.



What I am hoping for the new zone, is the more 'in depth' style of assault DaoC had, less of the 'Sit on this flag' AV and etc have. As much as I could bitch about keep doors at times in DaoC, I really do miss them in WoW. So much of the pvp in WoW is about riding past or going around to reach that all important flag node. It isn't generating the kind of conflict that gets people fighting over and over. If anything, it's generating non-conflict.


Seems all ass backwards.


fake edit- I wrote half of this post an hour before the other half, I wonder how much I contradict myself  :oh_i_see:

See, that's the problem. Almost all of the old (launch & soon after - ) are strongly skewed towards Alliance, meaning that world-PvP is broken. The 'middle-aged' servers (post-launch, pre-TBC) are more-or-less balanced ratio wise (so world-PvP mostly works), and almost all of the TBC-launch servers are strongly Horde-biased...so world-pvp is broken.

They did this ;  it was called Tarren Mill.


It was shite.

I assume it will be full of level 80 daily quests. I bet it will be pretty busy.

I've been recently leveling another character on my PvP server. I don't do the alt thing very much, but I wanted to see the Dranei lowbie zones and the new Dustswallow tipped me over the edge. He's currently level 45.

I have the good fortune of having a really nasty level 70 warlock, so when somebody messes with my mage, I can wreck them. I've seen people who are capable of harming me in the BGs and arenas of course, and also in Skettis and on Netherwing ledge, but nobody who has tangled with my alt in the old world has been much more than roadkill for the warlock.

There seems to be a contingent of really crappy players who hang out in high-traffic lowbie zones and 2-shot people to feel big. Stranglethorn Vale and Tanaris are big offenders, especially since people on the way to CoT will pop lowbies in Tanaris without thinking twice.

I would never roll on a non pvp server though. All the ganking in the world pisses me off less than seeing an opposing character picking an herb node I want, and not being able to knock them off of it. Level 70 ganking is way better than lowbie ganking though. with an epic flying mount, you can corpse camp everyone of the opposing faction in a zone. I really like flying around SMV, where there are a lot of long corpse runs, and killing everyone while picking all the valuable terocone and nightmare vines that spawn there.

Now I know that I don't belong on a pvp server.  Does this really irritate you?  I mean... really? 

I would chew my tongue out in a frothing nerd rage if I just spent the last 2 or 3 minutes clearing the mobs off of an ore node i wanted only to have some opposite faction fucker merrily run up and steal it right out from under me.  Believe me, i have literally suicided my crappy geared shaman miner against fully decked out season 2/3 alliance characters who come in to try to take my node because i would rather attempt to kill them and die then just let them have it.

I've wanted to kill my own side when I'm killing the mob that is on the node and someone runs up to steal it while I'm fighting.

Dont even get me started on THOSE assholes.

I think its safe to say that this has nothing to do with the PvP mechanics of the realm, and everything to do with a culture of greed and entitlement fostered by modern capitalist society and gloriously amplified by hordes of uncouth youths playing achievement oriented MMOGs 'together'. :)

Which is funny, because last night I ran up to a node after having cleared a few mobs near it only to discover a BE warrior was already there (hidden from view).  He offered to let me mine it once for the skill gain, which I did.  Then I sold him 2 iron ore I had for 3G.  Sometimes people can surprise you.

I almost always leave herb nodes on my druid to the slow mount people, regardless of side, even if I was 'first'. By the time he'll pick the node and take off again, I'll have taken another 5 :p

I think this is a mistake, and a fairly common one.  PvP is not for teaching cretins a lesson, because much of the time you find that the cretins are more powerful than you, and what does that teach them?  That they can do what they want with impunity because they're more catassed out or better at PvP?

WoW PvP is only for fun, not player policing.  It's not designed for policing.  Even if fun consists of the sense of danger that comes from knowing cretins are lurking in the area :eek3:

WoW pvp is for finding any reason at all to spend as much time as you want to repeatedly killing the opposite faction and making them hate their lives. Or in my opinion, the best kind, competing with the opposite faction for quest spawns. I think I have the most fun in that sort of random non-escalating engagement.

Ok, after week 2 of working BG's like a dog I've figured out the reason Alliance can't seem to win a majority of BG's.  This is probably a problem on Horde side too, but I can't speak for them.

Most people (without experience and maturity) will attack and try to kill any opponent no matter where they are on the BG map.  So, they basically are getting kills or getting killed without any attempt at winning the actual game.  They will also completely ignore sound advice from others not only on the basic good sense of fighting on the flags, but to any sense of strategy at all.  They just ignore it or have /BG shut off.

This has a rolling effect because once those that are giving advice realize it isn't being taken and we are being in score, they continue to stand there berating everyone instead of fighting.  You notice by the number of people that either won't res (dead bodies laying around) or those standing in one place on their mount with battles waging all around them.

Lack of common sense and too much pride seems to be the ingredients for our failures.  However, I sometimes get into sync with a good group of people hitting PUG BG's and everything just clicks for 4-5 games in a row.  Seriously, the feeling and success is immediately noticeable win you are in a group of experienced BG PvP'ers.  I think I continue to play them just for the chance at getting into those on occasion.

You should try to join BG premade groups. They have a lower idiot rate. Even a /trade channel premade is better than a PUG because you don't have to worry about AFKs and bots.

I also know a lot of people who let their kids play wow. So some of those people in your BG who act like a little kid really are little kids.

And before someone launches into the the alliance is all little kids line I'd like to mention I see the same sort of thing on the horde side when I play my horde alt.

Could you explain how they are created, the article I found on the blizzard homepage was not very informative.

I actually just now started delving into this myself.  I heard the same advice from many of my guildmates.  On our server there is a chat room named /pvpkillers.  Somebody will create a raid and start adding people to it.  They call it a "list" for some reason.  It might be because they start creating a list of people waiting to get into their raid.

It is kind of a PUG for a Premade.  The best solution is a guild premade, but this is the next best thing.  I actually think of the times we just blew away the horde was when I accidentally got added to a BG that was 75% premade.  You can tell because everyone is from the same server....but you.  Whenever that happens it just seems like everyone clicks and things get done.  I'm telling you the difference is amazing.

You find a bunch of people who want to go into a particular battleground, then group and form a raid.  The raid leader gets an option at the NPC for "join as group"  when they pick that it queues everyone and you'll all get into the next BG that starts-up.  (I have no idea what happens if you queue, say, 20 people for Warsong.. probably only the first 10 folks in the raid get queued.)

Not called a list on my server, but much the same thing. We have a pvp channel which is kind of an open secret /allianceunited. The people in such channels tend to be a little more keen and serious about their pvp in terms of being team players and able to follow simple instructions. You still get asshats of course, but far fewer that a trade channel premade and of course tons fewer than a solo-queue PUG.

That's neat, that idea of a channel for bgers.

There is little difference between the horde and the alliance.  And yes, plenty of people playing wow today are real kids, not just acting like kids.  The crowd seems much younger than it was at launch - many teenagers these days (and younger!).

The only battleground you can't group queue for is AV.  There is a mod called Stinkyqueue (and others, I'm sure) that is used to group queue for AV but basically what it does is automatically tells your raid which AV you are queued for.  So you have to queue simultaneously on someone's count, and then if you don't get in the one the majority of the group gets into, you have to force join it (queue for the particular number).

I blame the WoW commercials. They're snappy and play on teen and "tween" (I hate that word) oriented channels a lot.  Well, at least the ones my daughter watches. 

This is really becoming a problem for me.  I had two occasions that this has struck home for me.

1.  Brother and Sister in-law were here for a long weekend.  I played WoW off and on when nothing was going on.  They travelled back and stopped at some friends' house for dinner (old college friends.)  One of their kids (17) plays WoW and made the statement that, "Yeah, most the people in my guild are old men with kids."  STRIKE ONE.

2.  My boss stopped by to drop something off at the house.  He had his 10 year old son and his friend with him.  They basically catch me while I'm in a Karazhan raid so I can't really just drop and go afk in the middle of a pull...I'm the healer!  The son comes around and looks at my screen.  He says, "What level are you?"  I respond, "I have multiple level 70s."  With complete and real awe he says, "Whooooaaa, I'm only at level 50!"

My wife then asks him if he plays the game to which he says yes and his friend plays too.  My boss says he's addicted (HA, level 50? Go home NEWB!)  Anyway, my boss says, "Oh, I didn't know you were into that game...."  And my wife says, "SEEEEEEE!"

Strike 2 and 3.  Get out of my damned game you rotten kids!

Benefit?  Everytime I see his son (hockey practice) he looks at me like I'm the coolest adult he knows.

Finally got a chance at 2v2 arenas last night.

F.U.N.

Healadin/Lock combo.  We lost 2 and won 1 before heading into BGs for the daily and then logging.  Was a lot of fun and lasted quite longer than I expected.  The first one went probably 8 minutes.  The real issue was that the lock is not geared very well yet and was demon specced.  We think if he goes back to Affliction we can get the dps up to where we needed.

I knew my lack of dps was going to be a big issue especially paired with a somewhat gimped dps character.  We'll turn it around.  We also had an issue with strategy on first target, etc.  That will eventually click.  We should have gotten on Vent too. 

Between BGs and Arenas I have a lot of pvp to do and it is all very fresh to me as a newb.  This will more than out last my need for something to do before the expansion.

Actually, as a warlock/pally combo, you're probably better off with the warlock as soul link (either felguard or 24/37 aka. siphonlife/soullink). Otherwise he will be way too squishy against rogues/warriors/hunters while your heals get interrupted by the rogue/warrior/hunter's partner. Demonology has less dps (though felguard is quite formidable), but it's a heck of a lot more survivable. :P

In arenas, it's typically not a problem if only one of the classes does "steady" damage. The basic tactic then is to outlast the enemies, and depending if the enemy composition is dps+dps or dps+healer, killing one of them asap while fearing/stunning/etc the other, or controlling the dps while mana draining the healer (while keeping the pet and the warlock up, etc).


-- Z.

SL/SL locks might be the absolute most frustrating things to fight in the game currently. Certainly in the small scale fights. They never OOM, they can force you to OOM, they are a a giant bitch to kill and they have CC coming out of their ass.

The problem is that he's paired with a healadin.  I have no dps to mention except as finishers with shock and my hammer.  I can CC some with stuns, but that's it.  We kept getting into these matches of who can outlast the other and while the lock can outlast anyone, my mana pool is limited.  It takes forever and day to find the bottom, but I get there.

Typically we've found that there is a melee/helar combo for 2v2 teams.  I've got enough staying power to get past stuns and the like to heal my partner and myself, so I really need the DPS from the lock or we'll just get tapped out on mana from my end.

After writing that last post, I dualled up with the other guy in the team, a feral druid.  We did much better at 6 wins and 3 losses.  The 3 losses were mainly due to the other team out gearing us and eventually winning out over time. 

It's been fun either way.  We're looking to start up a 3v3 now too.  I've got my two pieces of Gladiator gear now, so I got a huge jump in res. with limited to no loss in other attributes.  I think my healing actually gained while my mp5 went down a bit.  Now I just have to save up for my trinket.  Hopefully my arena fighting will net me some other fun and fabulous prizes too!

That's the thing, SL warlocks always have a healadin or resto druid (not contributing much dps either) as a partner, very rarely a discipline priest or a 2nd dps class like a rogue/shadowpriest (in that case the warlock is specced UA). The warlock basically locks down the DPS (curse of exhaustion + blessing of freedom combo on melee, curse of tongues and LOSing on casters) and either CCs the healer and dots + drains / nukes the dps (curse of tongues and fear spam on the healer, along with counterspell from the felhunter should secure a kill), or CCs the dps and mana drains the healer. The DOTs are going to do hideous amounts of damage over time [I was in an EOTS a few days ago where a sl/sl warlock was #1 in damage done by the end, and he had twice as much damage done as the next person] and even if they get dispelled, the warlock can just reapply them and indirectly drain healer mana.

All this time the felhunter/voidwalker is beating on the healer, keeping them in combat; if the other team doesn't have a pet, the paladin can run away and drink to full mana at any time (a SL warlock will stay alive long enough) by using the "Star's Tears" you can buy from the pvp vendors. In an endurance match, the warlock/pally team should come out ahead thanks to drinking, blessing of wisdom, fel armor and either blessing of light or blessing of sacrifice... and that's assuming the opponents are smart and stay on the warlock while trying to CC the pally. Otherwise the warlock will have free reign to spam CC, dots, and high-damage nukes (shadowbolt and searing pain actually hit for a decent amount with a SL build). The weak point of the team is if the enemies focus onl the pet and drop it before it can get heals, but SL warlocks can just instant-summon another.

Here's a summary page (not sure how accurate it is, as I never arena'd on my warlock as soul link) -- http://arenajunkies.com/strategy/2v2/Pal_Wlk/
Of course this isn't the ZOMG BEST 2v2 combo, but it's very competitive and was popular in season1 and season2. Nowadays every warlock seems to prefer resto druids, though. (no vulnerability to counterspells, mobile, cyclone, roots, curse removal, what's not to like?)

Healer+feraldruid isn't that powerful as it might seem; it's basically healer+rogue without any essential rogue stuff (poisons, stuns, blind, sap, cloak of shadows) and with occasional emergency cyclones and a bit more survivability on the druid's part. The lack of direct (MS, wound poison, aimed shot) or indirect (curse of tongues, mind numbing poison, fast recharge spell interrupts) healing reduction means that against teams with a healer the healer can recover quickly after the initial strike (which probably won't do enough damage to take out a typical DPS class). There's a feral druid in my guild who complains about this a lot. :P (probably the same with enhancement shaman, though at least they have quick heal interrupts)
It could be pretty fun to play though, and would probably catch a lot of teams by surprise. (the cat hit me for HOW MUCH?)



-- Z.

i do a 2v2 on a feral druid with a rogue, then switch to my rogue so it is rogue rogue.  against some teams the feral /rogue combo works well.  I chortle with glee at times:  Sap healer, jump on dps, cyclone healer, finnish off the dps target.  But as you mentioned it is just a rogue with bigger crits but without some very important tools. I am an OT in my guild but am hoping this other druid catches up to me in gear, as being feral in pvp is essentially a dead end.  At least in arenas.  In world and bg pvp i am a monster, but in arenas the limitations of a feral druid are huge. 

give me duel wield and poisons plz  :grin:

You should be able to outlast most teams as sl/sl lock + healadin.  You need to constantly fear and mana drain while slowly dpsing the other team down.  Between your pet on their healer and your dots on everyone + you ccing the hell out of them with fears and draining you should have an easy time with most teams until at least the 1700s.

Which is part of the frustration!


You'll be fighting a SL/SL Lock, *thinking* you're doing well, holding your own. Then a little time goes by and now your OOM and the damn lock hasn't budged either way  :ye_gods:

A SL lock killing you doesn't actually look like it's killing you, but your dead, make no mistake about it :(.

The lock in my 2v2 group is finally getting the hang of it.  We went 4 and 0 last night with ease.  I did my respecs as discussed in the other thread (healadin.)  The added healing/damage power I have now is nice and I do not notice any change losing improved conc. aura.  That thing is busted I think.

We haven't had a chance to get our 3v3 gonig yet, but that should be fun.

I am still amazed to see so many 2v2 teams that go in without a character that can heal.  A mage/hunter team has a lot of nice DPS, but if you don't have the gear to ownzor the other team right away, you're just toast.  Between our warlock life drainining and me healing, we really are in no risk.  Those kinds of match-ups are easy.

One question I have is why the hell are the queue times so long for 2v2.  Then, you consistently get the same group you fought the last time!  Are they purposely putting a time sink into this thing and only allowing 5 queues at any given time?

Oh, 2dps is very, very viable, they just need to be coordinated and not let up on CC -- still, unless one of 'em is a rogue, they won't be able to nuke the warlock before one of them dies, probably. Typical 2-dps pairings are mage/rogue, rogue/rogue, shadowpriest/UAlock, shadowpriest/rogue and some wackiness like warrior/warlock (there is a 2000-rated combo in our battlegroup!!), retpally/mage, moonkin/eleshaman, etc.
What they do is basically CC you [the paladin] and obliterate the warlock before the CCs wear off. With well-timed counterspells, sheeps, fears, mass dispels (if one of them is a shadowpriest), blinds / saps and such, it's definitely doable.

2v2 queue times are tricky. Either too few people are queuing (the system tries to match you with a team around your rating), or too many (there IS a limit to the number of arena instances open at any one time). If you both have flexible-ish schedules, try queuing at different times during the week and get your games in when the queues are shortest.


-- Z.

Well some of those combos have characters that CAN heal.  They may or may not typically.  If their initial drive to kill the weakest link doesn't succeed, they at least have a way to recover and try again.  The warlock's are a bit different in that they CAN heal themselves with health drain, so that's a bit of a grey area.  I can see a warrior/lock team being good just for the fact that it will take forever to take the warrior down and a well played and geared warlock is just always hard to take down fast.

As for CC on me, those really don't work until you have me on all my cooldowns.  I can trinket and bubble to stop the initial drive.  I've seen opponent teams just fall apart because they don't keep me out of the equation fast enough.  If they stay alive 20-30 seconds into the fight, then I'm in trouble.  Although I can still use BoP on my partner and for a last minute effort use Lay on Hands.

The smart teams actually fake me out by only seeming to go all out dps at the beginning.  If they can scare me into blowing my anti-cc powers early, they can rally back and whip me.  That has happened many times.  My only hope at that point is that my partner takes up the slack and kills one of them quickly.  The good thing about that is that if all cc is used up on me, then the Warlock is free and clear to do maximum carnage.

You can use Lay on Hands in arena?  :ye_gods:

Ok, now to my latest experiences with BGs:

I've become somewhat burned out on them right now.  I think, for the most part, my main reason for this is that on my server Alliance gets owned over and over when it comes to PUGs.

I'm told, "Join the server's pvp channel get organized young man!"  So, I do just that.  I get into several premades.  Life gets better, but something becomes crystal clear and explained a lot of the losses I experienced in PUGs.  Not only are premades obviously better due to the use of voice chat and a ton more organization before even going into a BG, but the fact that the system is used to "fish" for instances that don't have premades on the other side of the BG!

I had often wondered in the past why many times (I'd say at least 50% of the time,) I would enter a BG and less than half of our team would be populated while facing a premade on the other end of the field.  The gates open and within 2 minutes we are completely devastated and being camped in our own graveyard.  NOW I KNOW.  That is the result of premades putting a few spies into one BG, let's say AB.  Then, if the other side is made up of a premade, the leader of the raid queues up for EoTS.  Once that queue comes up, the spies go over to that BG.  This happens until the other side is obviously a PUG and everyone joins at once.

THAT annoyed me.  While I was getting lots of wins and points it just felt stupid.  We were playing the system to get honor and marks as fast as we could.  The fun of PvP was left behind way way behind.  The really troubling thing was that both sides and multiple servers were doing this constantly!

Now that is one thing that bothered me.  The other is that for some reason our horde side is way better equipped than Alliance.  Even with all of our shenanigans we got beat a couple times.  Once was because we decided to fight against a horde premade from our own server.  We got nailed.  Our organization was there, but we just couldn't execute because they could outlast and out damage us at every battle.

The other was a PUG that just happened to be made up of a bunch of really well geared and smart AB players.  While we had the communications, they had the ability and understanding of the flags that we didn't.  I have a lot of complaints about AB being all about CC and nothing to do with kills or dominating the opponent and that one fight just showed it.

I constantly am getting into PUG's, noticing our equipment and then getting waxed by a horde side (PUG even) that is decked out in full pvp epics.  I'm thinking this is the old issue of Alliance having the masses so we work with the LCD in addition to being on the light end of a pvp balance that continue to become more and more unbalanced as Horde get more and more pvp equipped and Alliance doesn't.  I haven't even mentioned the fact that even our premade teams can't seem to win AV and I have several items I want with AV marks!  My current plan at this rate is to get those slots filled by Arena prizes.

I'm not about to quit.  I just have to let my discouragement cool down, but dang if this isn't all annoying.

Yes, and even better, it gets reset at the beginning of each match.  It is still the last ditch effort though because it takes ALL of my mana even if full to execute.  The best way to do it is wait until  you are near zero on mana and cast it either on myself or my partner.  Then you pray that your partner can use the full health to finish off the opponent quickly because a Paladin without mana is pretty useless.

Wait, I thought the cooldown with talents on that is like 40 mins.

The way arenas work is that you lose all buffs and reset all cooldowns upon entry.  You also can't use most consumables.

Yeah but the abilities you are able to use in BGs are limited based up their base cooldown time. I guess they just decided to throw pallies a bone or something.

Right, I'm fairly certain that any skill with a cooldown over 15 mins isn't allowed to be used in Arena play.

Im guessing hes confusing bgs with arenas, you cant use loh in arenas.

I was told I could use it, but haven't yet.  Most of the time I die with plenty of mana left so I don't even attempt it.

I didn't know about the limitation on long cooldown abilities.  If that limit is true, then yes, LoH would be out because it is between 40-60 minutes (depending on talents.)

Edit:  I really only have trinket and bubble then.  BoP is ok, but only helps with melee (white damage) and that is a very small fraction of the damage that kills me in PvP.

Edit Edit:  Actually, I've found that blessing of freedom is a really nice PvP ability.  I'm using it more and more these days.  I hardly ever did in PvE.

Don't forget blessing of sacrifice. It will cause you to unsheep, unsap, and pop out of ice blocks when they hit your partner.

Son.of.a.bitch.

Seriously, sonofabitch!

Duly noted.

Oh wow.  Nice.

I'm still pissed at myself for not knowing this...  Well, I knew it, just didn't put two and two together!  Hell, we use that exact strategy to down Maiden in Karazhan.  Ugh.

I am so putting that into healbot tonight.  When I'm going into a situation I just know I'm going to be cc'ed, I'll just pop that onto whoever is close.  Brilliant!

Yup. The problem is, of course, that most enemies who'd sheep/seduce/freeze you can dispel it off your teammate (frost mages are notorious for spellsteal spamming till they hit it), or have their partner dispel it; and it has a 1min cooldown now.


-- Z.

Where does the damage go when the mage spellsteals it?  If the mage gets Blessing of Sacrifice, wouldn't the damage dealt to HIM get redirected somewhere?

Yeah, but mages can just cancel the buff off themselves [via macro or manual right-clicking] right after they spellsteal it. Of course this doesn't hold true for EVERY mage, but I've seen plenty of 'em do it. :p


-- Z.

I'm willing to take the risk.  It is WAY better than nothing.

Interesting, I wonder if a Prot/Holy paladin with stoicism would help mitigate this.. 30% reduction on spell dispells would be nice.. or does that not apply to Spellsteal?

I hope so.  I have that.

Tangent: Guildmate of mine had an interesting experience with spell steal the other day. He was fighting those nether-wraith-thingy mobs in Netherstorm and tried to spell steal the wraith's "Spell Reflect" ability. Instead, the spell steal got bounced back, and he ended up stealing his own arcane intellect.

Yup. Once on my warrior in a 2v2 against a spellsteal-happy frost mage + rogue duo, he spellstole my blessing of freedom, then I hit spell reflect, reflected his next spellsteal, and stole it back. It was fairly amusing, if not too productive. :P

I've also had similar experiences purging Temporus in heroic black morass [he casts a spell reflect buff on himself occasionally], it'd reflect the purge and kill my watershield, returning me a ton of mana. 'Course that's highly situational and I had to focus on healing the tank most of the time, but still...


-- Z.

I'm back to report that Blessing of Sacrifice IS a good thing for PvP.  It has been helping me a lot in terms of sheep, blind, sap, etc.

One thing I've noticed quite a bit is being matched up with teams in Arenas that are obviously better geared than us.  Now, I thought the system was supposed to try and match us to more even level, no?

Is there an exploit in the system that lets you queue up without armor on.  Then, get the notification to enter the arena.  Then, put your PvP gear on and finally enter battle?  Would that let people continue to just fight lower geared teams and boost their ratings up artificially?  Or does the system search your backpack/banks for those items too?  I'm guessing the system isn't that robust.

Maybe it is just going by team scores and we just keep getting veteran arena individuals in new teams...  I'm baffled.

One other questions:

Is there ANY counter to cyclone?  Whoever had the briilliant idea of making that spell's cooldown short so you could cast it over and over again should be shot.  I was held for 30 seconds yesterday.  I could do absolutely nothing about it.

I'm not even sure that the system looks at your items at all for matches.

Somebody in-game told me that.  I really doubt it happens.  I'm sure it is just by the numbers.  Which makes it really hard to get a decent team rating when gear maxed people create new teams.

We just started a 5v5 with severely gear handicapped people and just got stomped 9 times.  We won once though...woot?

Our 3v3 had some of this issue, but we actually didn't do too badly.  Our 2v2 is still doing ok, but, again, we will eventually run into a string of matches with people wearing full season 3.  It just makes it hard to bolster your ratings when you get hit with bombs like that. 

I'd love for the system to add up your total gear value somehow and rank you accordingly.  Since WoW PvP is so gear dependent, it only makes sense.  I'm just not sure that is realistically possible.

The arena system is broken. Indeed, there is no gear matching (there IS rudimentary gear matching in BGs... rudimentary), it only looks at the team's rating.

What you experienced is one of two separate 'exploits' [or 'creative use of game mechanics' if you will], I'll explain them in 2v2 terms:

1) Personal Rating Tanking
This was partially 'fixed' by a recent patch, but the problem is still there. Basically, get 4 people in the 2v2, two alts and two mains. Use the alts to tank the rating VERY low [1200-ish?], then build it back up to 1600-1700-ish (legitly) with the mains. Since personal rating is relative, you will get 2000 personal rating easily and can now buy shoulders / weapons. HOWEVER, now you also need the team rating to be 1850/2000, so there's an extra step -- hire two "professionals" (see next section) to replace the two alts on the roster and bring your team to 2000 rating. Your personal rating won't change if you don't play, and once the team rating hits 2000, you're home free.

2) Team Selling (much more frequent)
Two uber-geared easily-combo'd classes (warrior+druid, warlock+druid...) start a new team using their full season3 gear they earned in earlier 2v2 games or other brackets, farm their rating up to 1800-2000 easily [depending on skill], then sell spots on the team for gold. The 'buyers' play 30% of all games (this means 3) per week usually. Sometimes a 'selling team' can be persistent, but they are usually just turned over to the buyers and the sellers start a new 1500 team, doing this 3-4 times a week for a LOT of gold. I see a lot of people doing this on my server, horde and alliance.

There's also a third option:

3) Getting Unlucky
New [legit] teams are formed throughout the seasons, old ones break up due to drama and whatnot. These teams all start at 1500, since the system has no way to 'assign' a new rating to older players. Thus you get geared people in the 1500s. Thankfully, they typically level out of the bracket quickly and you won't see them again.

Sadly you can get a bad streak and end up playing point seller team after point seller team. It's happened to me before -- the only 'solution' is to queue up another day, but that's a lot of extra organization, especially if it's a larger bracket. :/

Re Cyclone: it is annoying, but there are ways around it. You can line-of-sight it (not always possible), interrupt it (HOJ if the druid is close, spell lock / deathcoil otherwise), and have your warlock apply curse of tongues to make it easier to interrupt (can use fear to interrupt if the druid has COT on) / LOS. Of course druids can decurse, but depending on the situation, it might be worth it to keep curse of tongues on, nonetheless. :P


-- Z.

Played a ton over the weekend and learned a few things.  The biggest is to position my healadin so that the enemy can't see me.  My biggest revelation is that the objects at most flags/towers don't block LOS.  Hell even the hills in EOTS don't block LOS!  I finally noticed ranged dps and healers hugging the hills and casting freely.  You can't see them from the tower so people aren't targetting them!  I started doing this and am 100% more effective now.

I do have one question though:

Is there a trick that people can use to cap a node in AB while stealthed?  I was sitting right at one on Monday night protecting it during the fight and somebody capped it right in front of me even with my AE damage effect up.  They didn't show up on my screen until they moved away from the flag!  So, they not only didn't get interrupted by my damage, I couldn't even see or target them.

I'm still trying to figure out if I was just blind or what...

Consecration doesn't interrupt caps. You need direct damage - this'd be holy shock, or a judgement of righteousness if they're close.

There is a slight lag with stealthers capping flags: they only unstealth one-two seconds into the animation, but you should still be able to catch them in time. Other things to watch for are mages blinking / slow falling on top or inside the flag (and being invisible when they approach so you can't see them), but you should have line-of-sight to them in both cases still. (my feral drood guildie is a notorious node ninja in AB, stole more than one node from under the less-than-watchful eyes of the horde guards by literally standing inside them in cat-form while capping)


-- Z.

I knew Conc wouldn't keep people from capping, but use it to get stealthers out in the open.  I guess I just wasn't paying close enough attention.  That's hard to do when trying to keep 5-8 people alive.

Again it just shows that certain classes have distinct advantages in both capping and keeping caps from happening.  The truly biggest class for keeping nodes from capping are mages and shaman.  The AE's the mages have and the chain lightening the Shaman have are crazy useful.

I have several things to use, but they are are one target only and all have long cool-downs.  A good shield toss would be perfect, but that is so damned deep into protection, I'd be useless in PvP.