f13.net

I have to make an embarassing admission here.  Despite having played on a pvp server, I know nothing about getting into the PvP side of WoW.  Can any of you experts help me? 

I'm a fresh 80 in blue/green gear with no guild and no hope for doing dungeons.  What is the best way to get into the pvp game with the least amount of pain on a blue server? 

Links to sites spelling this out would be equally appreciated.

Thanks!

Wintergrasp for honor and marks.  The trick is to stay alive at all costs for maximum honor.  This is your hunter your talking about, right?

There are craftable BoE armor sets for all classes and many specs you can use to start out. RES and bonuses.

I agree with Drubear, pick up the crafted PVP set for your class for some entry level resilience. Buy the WG Legs, Ring, and Wrist first with your marks; spend your honor on filling out the rest of your slots with PVP-oriented pieces (another ring, neck, pvp trinket, etc). You're SOL on an epic weapon from PVP, so find one that drops in a heroic for your class (H UK has a crossbow, if you're a hunter as Sheepherder said) or grind the Argent Tournament.

For maximum honor, you have to do all the BGs for the For Great Honor! turn ins; always queue up for 3, that way if you get in one where you are outnumbered 15:10 or something, you can bail for greener pastures. Try and PUG premades if possible; just knowing that you have people who care about winning and can listen helps a lot, and usually someone will offer a vent server which makes winning a lot easier.

If you're going for your Hateful Gladiator set, you should try to find an arena team and just play 10 games a week for points; the Hateful doesn't require any rating, and costs much less honor if you use arena points as well.

Just get that level 78 crafted set people keep mentioning, dive right into battlegrounds and Wintergrasp, and learn by doing. If you don't know the specifics of how a particular battle works then just follow the zerg, attack any enemies you see, and you'll get the hang of it eventually. Sticking near teammates will keep you out of 1-on-1 fights against people with much better gear anyway. Go look at the honor vendor in Stormwind/Orgrimmar and the Wintergrasp Keep vendor when you control it, and look over what's available.

The nice thing about being a solo casual PVPer is that there's no repair costs associated with your hobby, and no guildies to worry about looking stupid in front of. Just go nuts. The game isn't going to punish you for doing it wrong.

Bleh, had a long reply explaining everything but lost it by going back...

In a nutshell, run BGs for honour, and use that honour to buy PvP gear. Either from the apprentice Arena Vendor in Dalaran Sewers, or from the quartermasters in Stormwind on Orgrimmar. Ignore Arenas unless you have other people to run with as they require a team.

Hunter PvP Sets (http://www.wowhead.com/?search=Gladiator%27s+Pursuit#item-sets:0-2+1)

Horde (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=34036) and Alliance (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=34073) quartermasters

The apprentice arena vendor (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=33923)

Crafted PvP set (for hunters and enhance shamen) (http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=818)

Wintergrasp quartermaster (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=32296)

The easiest route to good gear is Wintergrasp Marks of Honour (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43589), but it's not the quickest route. The quickets route is the crafted gear, but it's not the best. The best route to gear is whoring arenas for hours a day, but that's the least practical.

Whatever you do, you will never get PvP weapons unless you start putting your heart into arenas. So your best bet is to run the new heroic (Trial of the Crusader) for the rifle that drops there (ilvl219 epic). Or buy the crafted engineering rifle. The rest of your gear slots can be filled out with gear from honour and wintergrasp marks.

PvP gear is characterised by resilience, a stat which reduces your chance to be crit and damage taken from crits, DoTs and mana burns/drains. PvP gear typically also has higher stamina. You will do less damage in PvP gear, but your survivability will improve. WUA can give you a far better perspective on running BGs solo as a DPS. I play a semi-geared priest and as a healer I have to stack resilience to be competitive, otherwise I'm just a free kill to any DPS. DPS can generally do better without PvP gear, however in your situation PvP gear may well outstrip the quality of your PvP gear, so it won't be a consideration.

If you want to do BGs, start with Isle of Conquest, or Arathi basin (imo) as those are the most fun. Strand of the Ancients and Eye of the Storm are the worst. Get involved with Wintergrasp too; it only happens every two hours. You get one mark for a loss, and 1-3 marks for a win, depending on your in-battle rank, which rises as you are involved in combat and assist in kills.

I don't know anything about hunters, but the fact that they're neither melee nor outrageously squishy should make life easier on a relatively undergeared PVP newb. Just get in there, follow the zerg, and shoot people in the back who are engaged in melee with someone else. Shoot people with crappy gear and that one under-leveled guy who's always running around for some reason. Fight dirty and prey on low-hanging fruit because, fuck it, you're starting out at the bottom of the food chain.

As your gear improves along with your PVP skill and general understanding of what's going on, you'll just sort of naturally find yourself taking more of a hand in things, going after objectives and calling out incoming enemies. Basically just macro some cool taunts (I like /scoff and /facepalm personally) and pick the rest up as you go. There isn't much "pain" to be had.

There are weekly quests in Wintergrasp that give decent honor and some bonus shards, and in each capital's "war room" there's a "win (random battleground)" daily and an infinitely repeatable "bring me 1 mark from each of the oldschool BGs" quest that give some bonus honor. Those can be nice, although sometimes I just plain don't feel like doing Warsong Gulch or whatever.

The Wintergrasp quests actually reset every 3 days, and on Tuesday. So if you do them Tuesday, they'll reset Friday, and you can do them again Monday before they reset on tuesday. 

Isle of Conquest is dandy for a hunter that has no idea wtf she's doing in PvP anymore for what it's worth.

Good stuff here.  Thanks!  I think I'm going to focus on Wintergrasp.  It may be slow, but I rather enjoy world-like pvp better anyway. 


WONDERFUL!  This is a great start.  Thank you!


Excellent.  I won't have the opportunity top run instances, so I became an engineer.  My crafting skill is nearly capped, so I'll have that weapon with a decent scope at least.  

Thanks to everyone for the input.  I'm going to give this a shot on my hunter as soon as I can afford the pvp crafted gear set.  I'm set back a tad as I just bough my fast flier.  I have realistic expectations as gear seems to rule this game, so I'm just going to go in and have a little fun.  If it gets ugly, I'll just reroll another class and give that a try.  

So that's where you've been.  :oh_i_see:  :why_so_serious:

Also don't get discouraged when you get owned a lot to start with. You're joining fairly late in the gear race so people are going to have a very big head start on you in terms of resilience. Closing that resilience gap will make more of a difference, IMO, than changing classes, unless you're playing something very strange.

If some class seems to be fucking you up and you're not sure how they're doing it, ask on your guild chat.  You can't be realistically expected to understand why that fucking warrior was taking less than 500 damage per hit from you while stunlocking you and what the christ WHY AM I FLYING OFF THIS CLIFF WHO IS RESPONSIBLE

The Giant Laser Chicken is responsible.

I don't get the hate for EOTS.. do folks just lose at that a lot?  All my BG hate is reserved for WSG and SOTA.  EOTS is one of my favorites.

EOTS is about initial momentum more than any other BG (except SOTA... maybe). You can be 3-capped in AB and turn it around into a 4-cap for you if your team is good (even in a pug) and the other team messes up; but if EOTS starts off with a solid 3-cap for a side and they just assault the last base en masse, that's probably all she wrote. It's a combination of no flag ninjaing, at-the-node rezzing, etc.

I can understand people hating EOTS for that reason; starting 5v10 isn't pretty in any BG, but it's especially painful in EOTS (sure, it's also bad in AB, but at least it turns into a 5-cap and is over quickly).

You can totally ninja a flag in EoTS, it just takes longer.  :grin:


A lot of people hate EoTS because it's the BG more then any other, that really is about which side can kill the other the best. The others, you can win with better tactics, or trickery, or even just a little dumb luck. EoTS is 90% decided by who can kill the other side better, the end.


I've been in AV's where we've won with a clever GY cap that sent the other side all the way back to nowhere.

I've been in AB's where I've essentially suicided myself every 30 seconds, but held the node for 10 damn minutes.

I've been in WSG's where I've seen the flag sneak across the field *inside* a enemy zerg. (that was lulz etc. A Gnome mage had like every "shrink" debuff in game on her and just ran inside Tauren feet)

I've been in Strands where we've won at the last minute because we just reversed sides catching the enemy off guard.


EoTS is almost always about which side has more DK's and Tree Druids. Can't kill them? You won't win, the end. No way around it.

The bases have quite a large capture range and don't switch until everyone is dead, so they are very hard to turn against defensive minded players. EoTS would be better with an AB style of base capping, as then the druid ro paladin kiting around the edge of the base would have a harder tiem stopping 3 opponents from capping. As it stands I feel the base capping mechanic emphasizes gear disparities and encourages zerging; I think the narrow routes between each base also emphasize this. The relative lack of space also means that ocne you are on the bck foot it is ver very hard to get anywehre to make a difference.

Isle of Conquest is lots of fun now, and you can get involved in multiple ways. Sitting in a turret guarding your own base will see you rack up a ton of kills and your gear is irrelevant to your effectiveness. Alternatively you can drive a vehicle against the enemy base, or kill the enemies' vehicles on foot. It's a battleground with a lot of layers that do smooth out gear inequalities. Since they adjusted the length of time it takes to knock down the gates you see quite a bit of back and forth in games, at least in the ones I have been playing. It also has the least grindy set of achievements of any BG, so you will pick up several achievements of the course of your first 10-20 games; whereas in other BGs the achievements are all [Do X, Y times] where X is generally annoying and Y is large.

I also like ABm, because it provides the greatest amount of entertaining PvP action. In good games it's lots of small fights, as people tend to be spread out and mobile. However the need to cover bases tends to discourage too much zerging; although the importance of the Blacksmith as the most important node will probably never change.

One thing that happened to me is that (in BC) when I reached max level, the gear slope got a LOT higher.  Vertical even.  This is because of the impact of the arena gear and stuff.

I have a lot more PvP fun during leveling up.  At least then, if someone is approximately your level, they are likely to have about the same gear as you.  At max level, the differences between a fresh 80 and someone that's been there a while are extreme.

Which is why you should buy your pvp set at 78 and bask in your ridiculously overpowered awesomeness for those two levels, while also accruing a decent amount of honor.

Soloing a priest made me crabby.  I'll come back to horde eventually.  For now, I'm enjoying the overpowered PvE joy of being a hunter.

The funny thing I'm seeing now is that WSG has totally switched over to Alliance on my battlegroup. The Horde now dominate EoTS and the new BG, while AB, AV, and WSG have flipped to us. Strand of the Ancients seems to be totally dependent on who starts on D.

What the hell is up with deathgrip?  Didn't Blizzard notice how much magus pulls sucked in WAR? 

Sorry... I'm still learning the post-DK pvp game. 

I don't think Blizzard noticed WAR at all.

 :rimshot:

Yeah, I imagine deathgrip must be a lot more annoying as a hunter than as a pally. Occasionally I'd get yanked off clothies I was bashing, or into huge ganks, but the average DK who just reflexively death gripped me to start was just saving me a walk.

I just immediately start whirlwinding. So far it's worked out for the better.

I seriously fought a DK on my hunter who never deathgripped me. I guess it's possible it missed but I didn't see the graphic. He also didn't root me or anything else, so I merrily kited him to death. It was totally  :awesome_for_real: .

Doesn't disengage put you back roughly the same distance? I may be way off since I don't play a hunter.

Generally not.

But most people you meet in pvp are stupid anyways.

DK's that use DG as an opener are just button mashing for the most part. You want to close with Chains of Ice, then when they use there "get out of jail" ability, you DG them.


Most classes are generally boned at that point, since they'll end up snared/stunned beside the DK.

The arena season ends on the 25th, and the new honor items will go on sale shortly thereafter. You might want to hold off on shopping till then.

That's why you wait until after they disengage (or blink) before using deathgrip.

I simply can't put out enough burst damage on my DK to kill anyone, am I doing it wrong ?  :awesome_for_real:

Well, let's start with the obvious causes.

Did you forget to spend your talent points?

Are you less than level 80?

Are you wearing greens?

Do you have downs?

OK, played two Wintergrasp battles last night.  We lost both.  I'm still not sure what the hell is going on in there.  My initial impression is that it's a) noobs running around randomly and/or b) assholes using it as the opportunity to verbally abuse noobs.  I learned that gear matters more than skill and that paladins are a pain in the ass.  I also felt like my lone cc clearing trinket isn't going to be enough.  Soooooo much cc. 

Anyone have any suggestions on strategy in there?  Not for my class, more in terms of objectives. 

Also, I heard that there were dailies involved with the BG's.  Is there a circuit of BG's I should do nightly to maximize my honor?

Sorry for all the questions.  I've been looking at Thotbott, but I'm not even sure where to start.

Wowwiki is a better resource for questions like this, though probably not as in-depth as someone here can tell you.

Does anyone even use Thottbot any more?

Thottbot has not been updated in a long time. Use wowhead for all your thottbot needs, it's virtually the same.

In a nutshell:

If your side does not already control Wintergrasp, your goal is to capture the relic inside the keep within 30 minutes of the event starting.  If your side already contols WG, then obviously your goal is to prevent the capture of the relic until time runs out.

Besides the keep itself, there are also 4 vehicle workshops and 3 towers arranged around the zone.  There are also towers and a couple of workshops in the keep itself.  All the keep walls and towers can be destroyed by vehicles.  The non-keep workshops can be captured using the 'we have more people here than you do' capture mechanic (rather than the 'click the flag to capture' mechanic). 

Each workshop gives the side that controls it the ability to use up to 4 vehicles.  There are three kinds of vehicles: catapults (which kind of suck, at least when you're on offense since they take up a vehicle 'slot' and aren't good at taking down walls), demolishers and siege engines.  The latter two are the key for the offense winning since those are used to knock down the keep walls so the attackers can get to the relic.  Defense generally revolves around destroying enemy siege and/or capturing workshops to limit the number of vehicles the offensive side can make.

When the game first starts, no one is able to build a vehicle (this is somewhat buggy though, as it's sometimes possible to kill NPCs before the event actually starts to get vehicle credit).  You gain the ability to make vehicles by getting honor kills or killing enemy faction NPCs.  Unless you're out in the middle of nowhere with your thumb up your butt you should get the ability to make vehicles pretty quickly.

In my experience both sides tend to ignore the three offense controlled towers on the opposite side of the zone from the keep, but for each one the defense destroys the offense's vehicles do less damage and the defense's do more.  Not only that, but if the defense can destroy all three of the towers, the game instantly shortens by 10 minutes which can reallly screw the offense.

I think that covers the basics.  There's also something called 'tenacity' but I don't know much about the mechanics of that other than it seems like it's always the other side that has it.

That's a big help.  Thanks for taking the time. 

Next dumb question: Should I be playing the BG's for honor or will the Wintergrasp gear be all that I need?  I'm doing alright with the crafted blue resilience set and not dying as fast as I had anticipated.  I'm willing to be patient, so it's not about getting average stuff fast.  I'm just interested in getting stuff that will help most.

Thanks again.

No.

No.

No. I am in the process of replacing the savage saronite armor with honor (non-arena) and WG purples.

I am sure you thought you were really clever and funny when you wrote that. You are not.

edit: I am speaking about 1v1 fights, I get HKs and even some killing blows just fine in big melees, but against a single target, random button smashing does not work.

Tenacity in Wintergrasp is a buff given to the side that is outnumbered, to give them a fighting chance. The more unbalanced the sides are, the more stacks of tenacity the outnumbered side will have. It increases HP, damage done, etc.

The PVP daily refers to a single quest given out to win a single battleground. The battleground chosen each day is random, but it's worth trying to complete each day as it rewards some bonus honor.

Considering that the season is almost over, you should probably just stockpile honor right now. The WG rewards aren't likely to be updated, but the honor gear will be. That said, the WG gear alone will not be enough, simply because it doesn't cover every slot, so you'll need to fill the remaining slots with honor gear. I'd recommend picking up your pvp set gloves first with honor, as they usually have some interesting effect on them (the shaman one increases the range on all shocks by 5 yards, for example).

That's very helpful.  I appreciate the tip.

Wait, so a Flame Shock from an Elemental Shaman with those gloves would have a range of 45 yards?  Would that be the longest ranged attack in the game?

Definitely BGs for honour. You can also trade the Stone Keepers' Shards you recieve for doing the WG weeklies for Wintergrasp Commendations, which give you 2000 honour a pop. Stockpile your honour now, because when S7 comes all the armour sets drop down a peg; so hateful will no longer be available for honour, deadly will require just honour, fruious will be hnour and arena points, and relentless will be arena points and team rating. Look at the WG rewards and try to figure out which are the best investment of marks, since the old items don't get cheaper over time, but are generally inferior in terms of item level.

Wintergrasp also has the best selection of trinkets, although as a human I am slightly spoiled as I do not need to use a pvp trinket (racials heyo!)

Stick to the BGs you enjoy, but it's worth dropping into the ones you enjoy less every so often to pick up marks for the "Concerted Efforts" quest, which gives you a bunch of honour.

I'm not sure if the range increase stacks with the Ele shaman talent; my shaman's enhance. Here are the gloves in question though: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41006

Armory link. Now.

I'm glad. I'm not a hateful person, I'm more deadly and/or furious.

Good idea. (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Venture+Co&n=Hlem)  :awesome_for_real:

Hm. I am pretty sure I have Glyphs for my Blood spec (which I use for PvP atm), but they don't show up. vOv

Why are you using a sigil that increases Scourge Strike damage?

Also, you, for some reason, skipped a lot of terrific DPS talents. Annihilation doesn't even make a lot of sense, since you'll mainly be using DS.
As blood, I couldn't see myself ever letting go of morbidity. I'd also spec unholy for pvp, and get quite a bit more resilience.
You really need to grab an edge of ruin.

Mix of tank and DPS gear, no gems, almost all enchants missing  :ye_gods:

There's a lot of very basic stuff you can fix easily here that will get you up to speed fast.

Using a runeforge (fallen crusader, maybe cinderglacier in some odd builds; stoneskin gargoyle for tanking) is almost always better than a 2h weapon enchant.

And yeah, ditch that tanking gear for some dps stuff (pref. the other pieces of the saronite set for pvp) and get some green-quality gems, they're way cheap. I'd also buy a titansteel destroyer / grind for the argent championship 2h / get lucky with the axe from heroic halls of lightning.

(edit -- I didn't look at the spec; I still use 0/10/61 on my DK since it does well with bad gear, but doesn't scale well. If you like blood, go 51/0/20 imo; I prefer using a standard dps spec for pvp instead of speccing for pvp, since I don't arena, and those specs do just fine in battlegrounds)

Update: Got myself setup with the crafted pvp suit and some crafted jewelry so that my resiliance is about 402.  Took all the pvp daily quests that I could find and hit BG's while Wintergrasp was down. 

Some of the BG's seem very odd and chaotic.  While I could make sense of a few the first time through, some were very strange.  I have come to realize that success seems mostly based on pre-made groups, good gear, and not getting picked off solo.  The Eye of Storms still makes no sense to me at all.  I'm not sure I'll play that one beyond the daily quest that requires them all. 

I also wanted to say that the help in the thread has been very helpful.  The only thing I need to do now is to learn how to play my class better.  Seems that hunters are pretty weak in pvp.  Oh... trinkets.  I have two right now.  One has a 2k heal on it and the other I got in BC and it has a cc purge on a 5 min timer.  I'll look at the wintergrasp rewards, but wondered what folks here thought would be most useful. 

Eye of the Storm is simple enough. There are 4 objectives, and the more of them your team holds, the faster your score goes up. There is also a flag in the middle of the place. Bringing the flag to an objective you hold is worth bonus points. First one to 2k wins. The flag is usually retard bait for people who'd be better off capturing an objective.

Eye of the Storm sucks.  That's the BG I dislike the most by far.  Alterac Valley probably has the most non-intuitive goals (pro-tip: it's more than just zerg the commander guy).  It's linear enough that you should do ok just following around the zerg and shoot stuff until you learn the various objectives.

One of your first goals should be to buy the improved version of that CC breaker trinket when you have enough honor.  The better version has a 2 minute cooldown instead of 5 minutes.

Edit: as far as hunters go, I only have a very low level one but I can tell you from fighting them that while they are extremely strong in the low level BGs (so much so they earned the name 'huntards'), by the time everyone is 80 they're much more of a challenge to play.  From the viewpoint of a melee character, I have by far the most difficulty dealing with hunters that know how to use Frost Trap well.

Definitely want the trinket with CC removal on a 2min cd and dps stats (190 attack power?) as your first trinket upgrade.  Trinketing out of CC/snares every 2 min vs. every 5 min is a huge difference, not to mention the one you have from TBC has no other beneficial stats in addition to the CC removal.

Your other trinket slot can be pretty flexible once you have the CC removal covered and there are several good options.  You can use a pure dps trinket if you ever pick a good one up in PvE for maximum damage/burst.  If you want maximum survivability you can get the other wintergrasp trinket with Resilience and a dps proc.  If you want a good mix of dps/survivability you can get the Battlemaster trinket from honor that has dps stats and an on use health increase.

I have to confess that I'm still on the learning curve with my hunter, but my experience in the solo game in DAoC is helping.  I'm currently trying to get used to kiting in such a cc heavy game, but find a well-played druid, warrior, or rogue to be more than I can handle.  Most well-geared rogues can kill me before their stuns wear off.  I'm hoping that a gear improvement will help with this, especially a faster reuse timer on my trinket. 

By far the best buy is the PVP trinket.  That is, one of those that clears CC on a 2 minute cooldown.  You can either get one via honor for ~36k?(I forget) or you can buy one through WG that trade the resilience on the trinket for DPS stats.

If you haven't already, pick up a second spec for PVP.  Most hunters are survival these days.  Something like this. (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cZzeV0oZf0hiofIhedAMou:k0NM)

Looking at the vendor charts, it seems the honor trinket is on a 3 min timer while the WG trinket is on a 2 min.  I think I'll use my honor for a cloak with resiliance and my WG tokens for the 2 min refresh.  Seems a logical way to get started. 

As for survival, I will use that when I can afford the 1k for the extra spec.  I went broke buying resiliance gear. 

Thanks for the input!

I slotted the gems very recently, they now show up on the armory.

I am in the process of replacing the tanking gear with Honor/WG rewards. Most where lucky drops from heroic instances or ToC.

Still wondering if it is worthwile to put enchants on my  gear.  :awesome_for_real:

The 3 minute cd on the honor trinket (battlemasters) is a health increase (not cc removal) and thus on a separate cd from the WG trinket.  Just a FYI as the cloak may still be a better upgrade.

Some additional thoughts:

You should also get a pet specifically for pvp, and spec the pet for it.  Last I knew crabs were a popular choice with the ability to pin someone in place for a few seconds, any extra CC that helps you kite/survive is a welcome addition.  Tank pets overall are fairly popular because of the talents/skills they can learn, like Intervene and the one that splits damage from a target with the pet similar to Soul Link for warlocks.  Both of those can be used situationally to boost your survivability or even on a friend/healer/flag carrier.

Blizzard was supposedly planning to improve Cunning pets with an eye towards PvP but I haven't been paying enough attention over the last few months to notice if they've improved them enough for serious PvP hunters to chose them over the tank type pets.

Also, you should familiarize yourself with using Master's Call (?) I think it's called, which is a stun/snare removal and short immunity you learn at 75 or so.  It's based on your pet and it's target or something strange though so you'll most likely need to look up a good macro for it (to have your pet target you, cast the spell, then switch back to your intended target all in one key press).

Titan-Forged Rune of Determination (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46082) is the PvP trinket he is referring to. The honour trinkets (Battlemaster trinkets) have an on-use that grants you 3.8K extra HP, which is effectively a 3.8K heal. In the short term the WG trinket is a big upgrade, as you can't get the 2-min free anywhere else on your gear.

As far as BGs go, you need to strike a balance between sticking with people and not just following the zerg around. If you're solo and not a Rogue, Feral or DK you're pretty suicidal; although you can make some mileage in killing other solo players, particularly undergeared healers. I guess the biggest problem with hunters in PvP is that they need space to manouvre which is a rare commodity.

The only tip I have for rogues is to get an addon that shows buffs more clearly, and trinket out of kidney shot, not cheap shot. All rogues will cheap shot you, then build combo points during cheap shot for a longer kidney shot stun (+1s per combo point). If you trinket the cheap shot, then they'll just kidney shot you and you're back where you started.

Another decent trinket (imo) is the Darkmoon Card: Bezerker (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42989), it gives +105 crit and +105 resilience at 3 stacks, which proc almost instantly, and it's usually pretty cheap to buy on the AH (~200g on my server). Might be worth grabbing until you have honour or marks for a better item.

Another thing to consider is that the PvP set boni all give +50 resilience for two-pieces, so aiming for two pieces of hateful (or deadly in about 2 weeks time) will give you an extra 50 resilience on top of what you get from the gear. So the first two set pieces often work out to be better value. I'd be inclined to save and wait for Deadly to be available for honour if you decide to go this route.

Great stuff. 

So, I should save my honor for the next set to release?  I'm in no hurry to spend points as I'm a delayed gratification guy anyway.  I also am fine with dying a lot for the next month or so until I get better geared and learn the mechanics of my class. 

Well you have to weight everything up based on what you have currently. The gloves and shoulders are the cheapest pieces, at 31,600 honour each, and aren't mirrored by any equivalent from the WG vendors. So those are the two pieces I'd go for first from the set.

Overall, Arena Season 7 is very close, and everything available for honour will jump up a tier when it starts. So now is the time to horde honour, and go all-out on deadly pieces (armour, rings, cloaks etc) at the get-go of the next season. They usually reset arena points between seasons, but I don't think they reset honour. Someone else might be able to confirm that though.

I can confirm that they do not reset honor between seasons.

And just FYI the honor-purchased CC removal trinket (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42123) is also on a 2m cooldown. The WG one is not better, just different stats.

True, as a DPS I'd probably pick the WG one though, as it has offensive stats.

Der Helm:

1. Abomination's Might
2. Improved Blood Presence
3. Unholy sub-spec for blood, the Obliterate rotation has been nerfed.

So... since PvP is the last set of achievements I have to accomplish and do it mostly solo, what advice would you give for a mage?  The last time I PvP'd was back in vanilla when you wanted to grind out rep in AV for the nifty purples and mount in addition to maintaining that Seargent rank.  Obviously resilience is now important, but should I just give up on a mage ever being anything but free honor for other people or would I be able to decently compete?

As an outsider looking in, frost mages seem to do pretty well in BGs.  Arcane is probably a bit easier but more likely to die horribly.  Don't try and PVP as fire unless you enjoy setting yourself on fire.

Some of the PVP achievements are going to be really, really 'fun'.  I can only imagine the amount of NERD RAGE Ironman would be for a clothy.

Iron man isn't that hard for a clothy.. it's the SOLOING clothy who will go mad trying it. 

Thinking ahead, I got Ironman on my lowbie spriest at 28 in a PUG. Capped twice and asked the team if they minded; someone brought the flag midfield for me and passed it.

Frost > Arcane > Fireball > Frostfire (lolbad)

The blue craftable pvp cloth is your friend if you don't have epics.  Arcane is the build of choice if you want pvp and pve in the same build.

Played in the BG's and WG the past three days.  I'm learning quite a lot and doing better thanks to the suggestions here.  I picked up a pair of gloves from the honor merchant in Stormwind immediately since that was the only slot I could find crafted pvp stuff for.  I'm going to buy my purge trinket with WG points as soon as I have enough (only up to 10). 

I have blown al of my cash on armor and a darkmoon: berserker trinket (which is wonderful!) so haven't had enough to buy a second spec page.  I've been playing as BM and there are some plusses to it.  My pet is a Wyyvern that has a ranged dd with a 5s snare on it.  It works great for kiting in conjunction with frost trap and concussion.  Sadly, I seem to be a punching bag for warriors, rogues, and paladins.  When confronted with any of those classes, it seems that no matter how well I play it that I'm toast. 

I'm looking at speccing MM once my gear gets looking solid.  If I'm going to be a glass cannon, I want to play the part.  I also like the ability to not only mana tap, but also decrease the rate of heals on my target.   

Pretty much all of my high level PvP experience comes from the viewpoint of melee characters so I've been wanting to get a ranged character I'm comfortable with up to higher level for a change of pace. 

One thing I'm learning though is you can't really use lower level BGs to get an idea of how a class will play at higher levels.  Sure this is also true to an extent in PvE as well, but some classes change so much in PvP as they get higher in level that you just can't use the lower levels to get an idea if that class is the right fit. 

Mage is a perfect example of this.  Mage was my first choice to try for a caster class because on paper Frost seems to fit my play style very well.  Lots of CC and some survivability.  But at lower levels, Mages suuuuuuck.  Now, I'm not the world's best player but I'm fairly competent and I've been able to hold my own reasonably well in PvP with other classes.  And I realize there's a learning curve involved with any new class, and some can be much steeper than others.  But under level 40 Mages are burdened with the following disadvantages I just have trouble overcoming:

• Low survivability - Wards are only helpful basically against other Mages and the Mana shield not only doesn't absorb much damage, but it also eats up your mana at a fast rate.  Frost Armor has the built in snare but then every melee class has a way to either snare you as well or remove snares from themselves (or both) so that's generally a wash unless you Blink, but I try to save Blinks for the inevitable stun that every class has.  Frost Nova is a great help, though.
• Mana inefficient - I'm always running out of mana.  Always.
• Low damage - This was one of the bigger disappointments.  Frost Bolts hit like wet noodles, which leads to having to cast a lot of them which leads to running out of mana and having to stand in place too much.  Shatter comboes seem to be few and far between.
• Long ass cast times - This is the most frustrating.  Snare or not, Frost Bolt doesn't hit hard enough to justify taking so long to cast, especially with so many other classes that have faster casting nukes and/or heals.  There are also no talents that provide passive pushback reduction for casting when you're being hit.  Icy Veins helps a bit but with the long cooldown it's not up nearly enough.  Long cast times means standing in place for too long which leads to death.

Now a lot of this stuff looks like it'll get better as a Mage levels up.  40 looks to be huge for a Frost Mage since you finally get Ice Barrier, which all by itself helps to alleviate problems with survivability and pushback issues.  It could possibly be the single biggest turning point for a Frost mage, at least the way things look on paper.  If Ice Barrier turns out to be a disappointment, then late bloomer or not Frost Mage probably isn't the class for me.

As for the other problems, mana looks like it'll be less of an issue as gear gets better and more talents are taken.  Damage will hopefully go up as it becomes possible to stack more spellpower.  The one issue that looks like it's insurmountable, at least until close to 80 when haste can finally be stacked, is the cast time issue.  In this I'd love to hear the opinions a high level Frost Mage.  How do you overcome the long Frost Bolt cast time?  I've experimented with using the level 1 Frost Bolt with its fast cast time just for applying the snare (and hopefully the all too infrequent Freeze proc) but that's extrodinarily mana inefficient.

At the risk of making this post even more of a novel, I would like to say that my experience with a low level Warlock has been the exact opposite of the Mage.  Warlock survivability is very high (Void Sac, Drain Life) and damage is quickly applied (two instant DoTs and a quick casting third DoT).  Ironically I expect Warlocks to actually scale up worse than most classes, at least relative to their power at low level.  A lot of new abilities that Warlocks receive get added to the different pets, which means choices between CC (Succubus), survivability (Void) or counter abilities (Fel Hunter).  High level Warlocks can be very effective from what I've seen, though.

I guess my point to all of this, besides venting some Frost frustration and asking for Frost advice, is that it's not easy figuring out what class is the right fit when you can't really get an idea of how a class plays first-hand without committing to leveling up all the way to 80.  Elemental Shaman is another class I'm wanting to try in PvP but it also looks like another very late bloomer (Lava Burst at 75, Hex at 80).  Luckily I want to level up my Shaman anyway.

I would really recommend Survival for pvp, even now in crappy gear.  It's dps is just as good if not superior to MM and BM (explosive shot being magic dmg isn't mitigated by the high armor of most mele classes, especially if you run into tank spec'd players in BG's). 

The main reason to go Survival though is it enhances all of your baseline utility spells/abilities while adding several more, all without sacrificing any dps.

It enhances your traps with reduced cd's and additional CC if you spec entrapment (even in it's nerfed current form it is still useful).

It reduces the cd on disengage letting you get out of mele and gain range more often.

It boosts you health and converts a % of health into attack power, very helpful since you will be stacking tons of stamina in pvp gear often at the expense of better dps, this gives you the best of both worlds.

The usefulness of Scatter Shot and Wyvern Sting is pretty much immeasurable for pvp and is one of the main reasons Survival is a step above MM and BM spec for pvp.  Adding two additional CC tools on fairly short cooldowns to your arsenal simply can't be matched by the other two specs.

Even in crap gear, the combination of Pet, Traps, Wyvern Sting, Scatter Shot, Mortal Strike debuff from aimed shot, Detterence, and Disengage all make for at the very least a major annoyance.  With better gear and improved skills this quickly becomes a major headache and major pvp force.

Mages in general and especially for pvp are pretty late bloomers, unless they are heavily twinked or you happen to be a kiting god (rank 1 frostbolt and cone of cold).  This is especially true of frost due mainly to the issues you brought up.

Level 40 and Ice barrier is a key turning point for a frost mage, especially when you get shattered barrier as well since that will help to produce a lot more shatter combo setups and help keep you away from mele.

Level 50 is another key milestone when you get your water elemental.  Not only is it's damage very respectable but you get a ranged targetable frost nova for even more shatter opportunities and kiting help.

60-70 is really the biggest turning point, moving you into your endgame playstyle, and where a frost mage makes exponential leaps in power.  The major reason for this is Ice Lance which makes major changes to your playstyle.  You're no longer sitting around trying to chain cast frostbolts, instead your only casting them as openers or when you have plenty of room and/or want to go for a huge shatter combo.  Ice lance gives you true mobility w/o making major damage sacrifices and it's basically the most efficient mage damage spell as well.  It makes your shatters better as well since now you can actually do combos by casting  it immediately after a frostbolt.

The synergy of fingers of frost and brain freeze really start to take effect in that level range as well.

Pre-40 your relying on Frost armor + frostbite + permafrost to make you the most annoying snare/root machine in the game with polymorph for additional annoyance, but the damage and survivability to back it up isn't really there yet.  With twink gear you can boost your damage and overcome the survivability hurdle somewhat, but barring that you basically have to accept your role as a CC/support class which doesn't really work too well in disorganized Pugs.

Thanks for that.  Even though I could see how things should improve at higher levels, it was still getting a bit disheartening being such a punching bag where I'm at now.  It's good to read someone with firsthand knowledge saying things should eventually get even better than I thought.  For the cast time issue, Ice Lance was the missing ingredient I was overlooking.  Am I reading it correctly that it's an instant with the only cooldown being the GCD?

I had considered this.  Survival seems very much like my DAoC hunter in playstyle.  Sadly, I've not played the survival tree at all since hitting 80 and am pretty ignorant about it.  I guess I'll head over to elitest jerks and get myself an education.   I can say that BM sure feels weak in terms of both cc and utility.  I like the fact that my pet is more robust, but hate being reliant on the pet for my escape.  I also have to confess that I often forget to use disengage as much as I should, so many of my deaths come at the expense of my own newness to WoW pvp.  I'm learning... it's only been a few days.

Not sure how robust Eliteist Jerks is with the PvP aspects of WoW, if you just want a quick look at the specs some top PvP hunters use you can head over to Arenajunkies.com and check out the top rated Hunters.  No idea how helpful the forums there would be for you to look over, would most likely depend on your tolerance level for leet speak and trolling.

Imitating top-ranked people is a very hit and miss exercise, as they often have some very odd specs that are tuned for high-end arenas.

What I always did was, if I can get the jump on someone I would frost bolt them, then if they were frozen repeatedly Ice Lance them (triple damage vs. frozen, no cast time).  Frost nova, repeat ice lance technique.  Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze are also great talents as well, extra damage and free insta-cast fireballs can really extend your mana pool and damage delivering abilities.

Paladins and rogues were always my main enemy.  Paladins because they could stun you for 15s or whatever from a distance and rogues because they could sneak up to you and stunlock you until you died.  Hunters were quite easy as my mage.  The hunter would hope I would focus on the pet, but I always went after the player first.

The biggest issue I had with a mage was being surprised by multiple people.  In PvE I was godlike (and still prefer it to arcane and fire for leveling or questing), in PvP depending on classes I could put up a struggle (against similar level classes) but most often bit it when surprised and already dropped to half life by the time I start casting and manuevering.  Character is here (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Runetotem&cn=Magra) with the frost spec I've used and had decent success with.  Stacking haste is another thing to get your cast times down.  Accessible trinkets that periodically give you haste also work well for me.  That's why I was curious if I stood a chance at any of the Battle Grounds or if I was just going to be farmed over and over again since I only have the PvP chestpiece and no other resilience gear.

Eh, I'm having a hard time thinking of examples of that.  They're tuned for PvP to be sure and may not be very friendly/optimal if you want to do some PvE on the side without changing specs (especially glyphs), but for the most part what works in Arena is equally suited for general PvP play in BG's and Wintergrasp.

PvP specs are slightly less cookie cutter than PvE in that there are usually a few talent points that come down to personal choice/playstyle or what class your teaming up with.

However, most tend to emphasize some combination of CC/survivability/burst damage/extra cooldowns/mobility which is just as useful to any type of PvP as it is to Arena play, even high end.

Priest specs are very highly tuned at the high end, and aren't always optimal for BGing.

I've seen a lot of freedom in Priest PvP healing specs (disc) that mostly come down to personal choice / team comp / typical enemy team comp/ arena bracket, at all levels.

The one example that comes to mind is Spell warding vs. Divine Fury.  A purely defensive priest or one who plays more 3's and 5's might go spell warding for added survival, whereas a more offensive style priest who plays more 2's may choose Divine Fury for faster casting smites/holy fires and reduced cast time on greater heal if they occasionally use it.

There's a lot of choice in the middle and deeper parts of the disc tree too; Absolution, Enlightenment, Imp Flash Heal, Grace, Renewed Hope, Divine Aegis.  After picking up the core Disc and pvp focused Disc talents you'll only have enough talents left to pick up some of those.  Which ones a particular PvP priest gets can vary a good amount, even at the highest level of competition.

As for a healer spec not being useful/optimal in BG's, I find it hard to believe.  You could be spec'd 0/0/0 and still contribute if you managed to heal at all and cap/defend objectives or use vehicles/turrets effectively.  Lets be honest and admit that BG's are just for fun/farming and not having a spec 100% optimized for them isn't gonna be a huge dealbreaker and definitely not the deciding factor in any given match.

I haven't done any PvP since weeks prior to 3.2  (struggling arena team leaving me with no available gear upgrades combined with impending Penance nerf killed my motivation) but this thread, the new BG, and the upcoming New Arena season are all starting to give me the PvP itch again.  I'll probably go try my new PvP spec (crazy Holy/Disc hybrid) soon now that the frenzy over the new patch and badge revamp is starting to die down.

So is there any way yet to upgrade from a Titansteel Destroyer without sitting through some shitass raid for 3 hours only to have some Deathknight or something get it IF it drops?

A lot of the high-end arena guys, especially the ones in twos and threes, take a pretty offensive approach, with talents like searing light and the glyph of holy fire; for a general fucking around in BGs spec I'd take a much more defensive build. However this is a bit of a techincal argument that can be found done to death on ArenaJunkies or EJ, so I'll just leave it there.

Edge of Ruin (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47493) from heroic Trial of the Crusader (the 5-man).

It's really the only upgrade you can get, unless they decide to allow arena weapons for honour.

I'm not at all interested in arenas.  Like zero.  I guess that I'll be best served by experience rather than the word of another.  I know how I play and what works best for me.  I'll just build my spec to emphasize the things I do well and say to hell with conventional wisdom.  

This (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47493#comments) would probably be the easiest replacement to get.  It's from the 5 man heroic Trial of the Champion.

Fake edit: screw you K9, I'm still hitting Post!

I don't even want to mention how many times I've DE'd that...

The same dungeon also drops this (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47522), so you've 2 shots at great weapons per day.

Any suggestions on what to do with these stonekeeper's shards I seem to be collecting?  I have about 100 of them.  I'm not sure if the gear is worth buying if I'm planning to buy it with WG marks.  Should I just trade it all in for honor?

You'll want a few set aside to get the PvP specific shoulder/head enchants. Also a decent Meta Gem selection.


Otherwise they are for alt/twink items and that big mammoth mount or just extra honour.

There is also a stam/resil PvP shoulder enchant bought for 10K honour, the stone keeper's shards are only really useful for the PvP head enchant and the pvp meta gems, although better versions can be purchased off the AH. The WG shoulder enchants offer you AP/resil though, so they may be preferable to you. So basically use them for the enchants and burn the rest for honour.

I've had a good week.  I've learned a ton about my class and have made some significant gear gains.  I've made close to 100k honor mostly doing WG and each BG enough to turn in the repeatable multiple times.  On your suggestions, I've purchased the gloves and shoulders from the honor merchant, a nice shoulder and resiliance yellow gem using shards, and finally got my 25th WG token to get my 2 min purge trinket.  I also had the cash to buy a better weapon which I made a scope for. 

I'm playing as BM for the time being, but can definately see the benefits of survival's utility.  I'll probably respec as soon as I get another 1k for dual speccing.  I really want to stay BM for solo/daily pve and will go survival for pvp. 

So thanks for all the help.  Between you guys and a hunter that I met on the server I've come a long way in a short time. 

I also saw a guy named Lum in WG last night.  I'm guessing it isn't Scott, but it still made me chuckle.

Good to hear your having fun. I've been having a blast trying to do some of the various BG achievements, so you might want to look into those two. The IoC ones are broadly interesting, and keep you involved in the battle but aren't grindy like a lot of the other ones.

Nebu, survival is at rough parity with marks for PvE DPS.

This I'm aware of.  I've been BM to solo dungeons.  I need to relearn my toon. 

Since I started this thread as a way to learn more about the game, perhaps I could ask a few other stupid noob questions:

1) What's up with Paladins and Feral druids?  Last night in WG it took 6 of us to kill a paladin and that only happened because I finally managed to drain him of mana.  They seem like unkillable beasts in pvp and no matter how well I play my hunter, I can only ever solo the stupid ones.  I've been using a gorrilla pet to deal with paladins and casters, but that leaves me weak to warriors and rogues.

2) Warriors.  I subdue them to reduce rage and try my best to kite them, but still can't do anything when they close if disengage is down.  Is this just a rock-paper-scissors thing?

3) Rogues: a well geared rogue can kill me entirely before cc wears off.  They stun from stealth.  If I purge that they vanish and re-apply or sap me.  I can't seem to get any distance from them and usually just resign myself to death when 2 hit me. 

So... if I want to kill paladins and casters my gorilla pet seems best.  If I want to kill warriors and rogues, I prefer my wyvvern or spider pets.  Am I doing something drastically wrong or is this just a circle I should learn to live with.  I guess this is a byproduct of pvp being tacked onto a pve game. 


Note: I dont' mean to complain here.  I'm really just asking if I'm missing something obvious or there really exists some unbalanced classes in pvp.  Warriros, druids, and warlocks seem to do very well out there and when I'm in a crowd, I notice that enemy will run right at me.  I'm guessing it's because hunters represent a squishy, easy to kill target?  That or I'm doing something right. I can say that when I have a decent healer in my group I tend to be near the top of the kills list, which makes me happy being that I'm in mostly blue gear. 

I'll check out arena junkies for some strategy ideas. 

There aren't many people an adequately geared rogue can't kill if they get the drop on them.  The one thing you can try is wait to trinket the kidney shot.  That is the second stun.  Even then its iffy.  Get them marked if you can as that shows through stealth and keep them dot'd to break the inevitable vanish restunlock attempt.

Warriors are beasts.  Different specs have different things to watch out for.  When you see the spinning thing that continues, you just need to run for six seconds.  That's really nasty and while they are doing that they can't be slowed, stopped or anything.  You need to do your best to slow them down and increase the range to just outside the deadzone.  You can still be remarkably close and get off most instant shots.  Work on jump turning.  That's running forward, jumping, mouse turning quickly to be facing for a shot and then mouse turning back before you land.  You really need a boot enchant or run speed talent to make it work best.

What kind of pally were you having trouble with?  Ret's are the most susceptible to kiting.  Be ready to trinket the Hammer.  Repentance is just a sap like CC so it breaks on damage.  When you see the bubble, just kite that out.  Well played holy pallys can be a very tough nut to crack.  Make sure to keep the aimed shot MS debuff up.  That's the key.  You need to do your beat to slow their throughput. 

Feral druids are much like rogues, if they get the drop on you, odds are you die.

People run at hunters to negate their range.  If you can keep on top of a hunter, they can have real trouble getting to range to shoot and do much damage.

Great stuff.  I'm going to work on that. 

I'm really enjoying hunter because they have so many tools at their disposal.  There are just times that I get overwhelmed by the number of options.  Each time I die, I tend to analyze what I did wrong.  Often, the list is long. 

This has been rogues since after release.  They've always been tops on PvP lists.  Paladins are up there too and have been for a while.  Really it comes down to getting the drop on someone as to how much of a chance you have.

I find that my fun level is entirely dependant on staying with the pack.  When I go off on my own, I just end up as free honor to anyone but bad players.  Much of that is my own fault, but that doesn't make it less frustrating.

That's the way to be unless you massively overgear your opponents.  One thing that helped my pvp game, what there is of it, is playing alts up of the classes I have trouble against.  That way I can see what they can do.  This helped with playing my DK.  I was having a terrible time against ret pallys.  They were rocking me hard.  So, I had a pally at 70 I leveled up and I focused on trying to kill DKs to see how they responded.  Then I started noticing my troubles with warriors, so, up goes the warrior, though in this case I am seeing that warriors can be really RNG dependant. 

You need to stike a balance between sticking with people and mindlessly following the zerg to a loss. Really until you are supremely geared, or if you happen to be a rogue/feral/DK then you are pretty vulnerable solo. As a healer I'll often find a sensible DPS to pocket heal around; or ideally I'll BG with my 2v2 partner (a ret paladin). The difference between solo and a duo or trio working together with each other in mind is amazing. It's not an exact science, but trying to show you care about healers (CC someone on them, attack whoever is attacking them, even maybe whipsering them and asking if you can follow them around) can reap huge benefits. As a healer, if I know I have a DPS who will look out for me, I'll do my best to care for them, even if they don't have amazing gear.

Do you have the minimap on in BGs? (default key is Shift+M). I find the minimap very useful to track what's going on.



Holy paladins like all healers are PvP tanks. They won't kill anyone, but well played they can tie plenty of people up. In an uncoordinated group, they only way to kill them is to run them down, or put up a massive assist train. If you keep viper sting up on them they will have to split GCDs between healing and cleansing. You should have enemy cast bars turned on, or get an addon that shows enemy cast bars and then time stuns and such to interrupt their heals. Healers solo go down very fast against coordinated opposition, but can last a long time against an uncoordinated rabble who aren't purging their buffs, interrupting their heals, draining their mana and CCing them. Snaring the healer will also help as good ones will try to block line of sight between them and the people hitting on them, so abilities like Wing Clip and Frost Trap can really help. Lastly, going 11 points into Marks for Aimed Shot for the -50% healing debuff will really help. As a healer -heal% debuffs are hell and make the difference between outlasting and getting wrecked very quick.

Paladins will be about 45% holy, 45% ret and 10% prot. Rets can be run OOM pretty fast, and tend to rely on high opening burst to put you on the back foot. Most Rets will let you get them low, then bubble to heal. The time when they bubble is your time to gain distance on them. Prot paladins I have no idea. Their mana sucks but they take fuck all damage; probably treat them similar to rets.

My encounters with Ferals are fortunately rare; but invariably nasty. You can fear them with scare beast while they are in cat or bear form. Otherwise I don't have many ideas.


Warriors are a nightmare once they are glued to you. Getting a stam+speed enchant for your boots will help with the kiting, but with charge and intercept so available now it's very hard to get distance on a good Warrior.


Trinket out of kidney shot. Rogues will open with cheap shot (a 4s stun) then build 3 more combo points for a 6s kidney shot. At this point they are usually out of energy and have no combo points on you. You trinket now and start kiting away, if you can trinket and stun the rogue using your pet more the better. They can only sap you while you are out of combat, so if you kite away at speed (and your trinket should have removed most or all stacks of crippling poison that may have been applied) then you should be ok. Remember to use flare and traps when defending to force rogues to face you where you want them to. Smart rogues will disarm your traps, but these are a bit rare.

If the rogue blinds you then you're in for a rougher time, but getting more resilience and HP will help this. With around 500 resilience, 20K HP and 9K armour I can live through a trinketed kidney shot followed by a blind around 75% of the time. Using pet abilities such as roar of sacrifice would probably help here, although I'm not an expert on hunter PvP


Your experiences aren't out of the ordinary, some classes counter others very hard. It sounds like you are doing the right things, but suffer from a lack of survivability through gear. PvP in WoW also requires you to use a lot of abilities that you never use in PvE, and knowing the right ability and time to use it against each given class is something you learn through experience. PvP healers are always going to be hard to kill, but as a healer myself you can deal with it. Healers were free kills for the longest time, and the only viability we have is as tanks. On the flip side, healers do make or break many BGs, especially AB and WSG, where the numbers are small. Situational awareness is something most WoW players lack, and not killing someone's pocket healer(s) in PvP is equivalent to the people who stand in the fire in PvE. If you see someone getting heals it is almost always not worth fighting them until the healer is dead. Sometimes you can out DPS heals, but a good healer left alone can keep a DPS up against 3-4 people without too much trouble usually.

Melee will probably pick on you because you have fewer escape mechanisms than other ranged classes; but also when they compare HP between you and the mage with 24K HP, you're probably the more tempting target. As you gear up people will see you as less of a target of opportunity.

Gear things that might help:
 - Get a meta gem with +stamina and either -stun or -snare duration depending on what bothers you more. I generally find stuns more annoying, but for a kiting class -snares might have some value
 - Get a boot enchant that adds speed (Tuskarr's Vitality (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47901)) You can get +speed from a meta gem (doesn't stack with the enchant) but you can't get stun or snare duration reduction anywhere else except talents (which stack with the meta gem) so the boot enchant is the best idea.


Out of interest, what classes are you finding easier to manage?

K9: Great help there.  I can not thank you enough for the time and effort.  I'm noticing that as I improve gear, I also improve my survival. 

Dumb question: I've been playing all of the BG's for the concerted efforts quest but it got me wondering what else the marks are good for?  I assume that they can be used for low level armor, but are they good for anything besides the quest at level 80?  Can I buy stuff with Isle of Conquest marks or is that worse than honor gear?

Last I checked there is no gear to be bought with IoC marks - so they are just for the Concerted Effort turnin.

I think most people use the other marks (at 80) to get the mounts. Check Wow Head for vendors. The are (used to be?) a little tricky as the BG faction vendors are actually outside the entrance, so you don't really (easily) see what can be bought. But as I recall they are itemized to 70 but after that you need to go to the Officer's Club in Org (or SW) and check out the honor gear.

As for the latter, as was said, the items there are about to shift with the new arena season, so holding off seems best.

You can use marks for Major Healing and Mana potions from the one of the vendors in Stormwind.  You can also use them to buy tabards and the war mounts.

Major Combat Healing Potion -http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31839

Here's the wowhead link for what you can use the AV tokens for.  Go to the end of the list to see the non gear items.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20560#currency-for:0+1

Next dumb questions:

- Why do they drop you into groups in the BG's?  Noone heals.  Noone ever buffs.  There's no way to coordinate group action in a pug. 

- Can you queue for a BG as a group?  If yes, doesn't that give one side a HUGE advantage?

They force-group you because many years ago people would drop out to solo in BGs to avoid sharing honor, kills, etc. (Mythic are you paying attention?)

You can queue for BGs as a group, but that's actually pretty rare. But yes, when you happen to come up against a premade it usually makes for a short brutal match.

Ingmar covered part of this, the other reason is for those healers that do actually heal, having people in their group/raid lets them actually see them in raid frames and heal normally instead of trying to invite/get groups going or heal out of group, both a pain in the ass.  Not to mention all the group/raid buffs and procs classes are designed to share and the significant amount of abilities that require the target to be in your party/raid to work (priest shields for example).

People should at least be buffing 30 min buffs at the start of every game ( everyone has the preparation buff, it costs them no mana and the subsequent food/drink if it did).  Generous folks or people with so much money it doesn't matter will often use 60 minute buffs (30 min for pally blessings) that cost a reagent just for convenience / time savings.

You can queue as a group, but if you queue as a group, especially with more than 5 people (aka a raid) the match making system will TRY to match you against other groups who queue together.  This also has the added bonus of making your queue take much longer.  Since your advantage of grouping with people you know is nullified by this system and it takes you longer to get into BG's most people don't bother queueing as groups very often these days, especially full pre-made groups.

Plenty of people Buff and Heal and Coordinate. I would argue most people do, just many are inept at it. "Thanks for giving the warlocks blessing of might sir!" :awesome_for_real:


Most people who queue as a group are 5 or less, notably you'll see a LOT of 2-3 man 'teams' working together in smaller BGs and yes, they can pretty much sway the entire battle.

I watched a WSG where on our side, a 3 man arena team basically took on the entirety of the horde team on their own the entire match. They asked us to simply defend our own flag at the start, that they would get the horde one. We won 3-0 in roughly 10 minutes. Most of that was simple travel time.



But the real reason they auto group you, is because it took 10 mins at the start of every AV to make sure everyone was in the same fucking raid, to the point where people just made Mods that auto invited everyone in AV. If there was more then one auto-inviter, the mods would be able to communicate with each other and sort themselves out.

This, and to help the poor sots who'd get the extra slots of a premade BG group that only had 8/10 or 12/15.  You'd run around the whole time getting no kill credit unless you somehow managed to tag an enemy player first.   There was also the inverse of this.. the 2-4 players who'd run around tagging enemy players and letting the rest of the group kill so the tagging group would get max honor.

BGing in a duo or trio with a healer + DPS is really a ton of fun. Against the uncoordinated horde its scary how much more effective you can be. As fordel says, a coordinated 3s Arena team can more or less win WSG or AB or EoTS for you. People generally buff at the start of BGs; but given the mana cost of buffs; even with the free-buff-after-rezz period, I can rarely afford or be bothered to rebuff people. Buffing a bunch of ungrateful people then having to drink for 30s isn't maximising my enjoyment.

Generally the only buffs you really want are Fortitude and Kings; so find yourself a priest or paladin buddy who wants to run BGs with you.

Blizzard have implemented some voodoo algorithm that attempts to match premades vs other premades. This only really seems to kick in for larger teams; and pairs and trios are generally mixed in with the randoms. This was done because for the longest time you would have PvP and Raid guilds that would fill a BD as a premade; and really no PuG would ever beat them. It does give you a massive advantage to be coordinated, but Blizz have made quite a lot of effort to balance that advantage out bu forcing premades to face other premades.

I've always wondered why they don't have NPC's auto-cast all the buffs when you zone-in/rez.  It's not like they still subscribe to the notion that you bring the pally exclusively for his buffs anymore.

I rebuff people who defend nodes with me. I also rebuff people who rez at the node I am defending if business is slow.


It's the beauty of MotW, it's universal!

If I had competent friends to play with, I wouldn't be troubling you guys with so many questions.  I miss having my set 8 man as I did in DAoC.  Being a lone adult in WoW is really taking the fun out of gaming.  It's incredibly tough to find mature adults, let alone adults willing to take a chance on a new addition to their guild.  I'm trying to stay with it, but every night I'm finding myself quitting earlier.  

I appreciate the help you've all given me.  You've been generous with the advice. 

This.  I've been looking on my server for this but haven't found it yet.  I think the only way will just be to join random guilds who claim to be mature till one sticks.  Or form my own  :uhrr:

If you create a guild, send me a PM here.  I will happily start over if I have someone to play with. 

If alliance, just pay the 25 and transfer to doomhammer, Ingmar and Sojfn are too nice to turn people away  :why_so_serious:

I guess I'm missing the humor here.

Like half the F13 WoW players that post here have ended up in our little guild. Even Itto was let in  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, a good chunk of f13 people plan on that server.

I may say hi when the expansion hits to try the newbie worgen zone.  Until then, I think I can safely avoid the temptation to play on the Alliance side.

Come back to Shu'Halo, Neb. I need more people to bug while I hide from the server.  :awesome_for_real:

There's no humor, they're an extremely nice bunch, and you'd fit in perfectly. Just remember to avoid Zam like the plague.

Rasix, I'm still bummed you jumped servers.  :heartbreak: Although to be fair, my guild quit a few years back, then re-subbed right before WOTLK kicked in; we re-rolled and went Horde on a PVP server, which has been an iinteresting experience.

Best of all, looks like Broken went back to Shadowsong a while back, and re-rolled Alliance.  Dunno if they're still a force to be reckoned with, or what.


As for PVP tips, I roll a Warlock.  I also am incredibly bad at PVP.  I die a lot.  That being said, I still like doing it, on the off chance I actually learn something someday.

If it's an invitation, I'll come.  I'm happy to play any toon that will let me see the end game 5 and 10 man content.  I doubt transferring my hunter over will help much and I closed my other account with the shammy, mage, rogue, warrior, etc on it.  

Otherwise I'll just go back to bugging Rasix.

The choice to go to Shu'Halo was made purely to avoid queues with the new expansion.  With Broken gone off to Black Dragonflight (which kicked their asses, told them it was a bad idea), it wasn't a tough decision.  From the looks of guildprogress.com, Ulduar broke them again.  Amazing that Defiance (looks like they're dying too) and other guilds I recognize are still around.

Killing or getting killed by your warrior was always fun. Don't really miss the server though, lots of dickheads Horde side.

People looking to just hang out horde side are always welcome to my guild's awesome tabbard.  I don't do much, however.  :awesome_for_real:

I'll never realistically do it, at least until my kids get older and I have time to administrate a guild, though it's sort of a long term goal of mine.

I'm more likely to turn up on Doomhammer one day if the people I supposedly play with now get bored and wander off, which sometimes happens  :grin:

Oh, sure, come on over! Play what you like or make a new character, it doesn't really matter, although we're pretty thin in the lowbie ranks.

Itto is lying, though, we're totally mean. Raar! Mean!

Sjofn hits me. :sad:

We once spent two hours making fun of a guildie's name. We're total dicks.

All women hit.

I'm sure he can catch up to Lantyssa and group with her for like, 3 hours before passing her!

Yeah, what was the deal with the Black Dragonflight re-roll?  By the time that had come about, I had quit for a few months. My guild now is extremely casual and plate-filled.  My Warlock does well gearing up  :awesome_for_real:, but we have basically no caster buffs.  We're definitely on the low-end of progression though, which is just fine with my erratic play hours.

I seem to recall not really ever killing you with my warrior.  I vaguely remember madly charging you, then realizing that healers/support where all the way behind me, to my chagrin.  I don't really miss the old server too much either; PVP servers tend to be a bit more pleasant /active; although I'm interested to see how that evolves when Cataclysm comes out.  I have to imagine having plenty of 80s within flying distance + plenty of re-rolls = camping galore.

That was the first thing my buddy said when I described the expansion to him. New leveling content + flying in old word + PVP server = newbageddon.

It was the first PVE->PVP transfer. Broken was having internal issues and their solutions to it eventually led to the dissolution.  First we got more hardcore (mandatory attendance for progression, new loot restrictions based on attendance), which pissed people off when Twin Emps kept squashing us.  AQ40 broke us pretty hard.  Then the brain trust running the show decided a server transfer would fix everything, because moving problems to a new location magically makes them go away.  Grim, Burk, and others thought they were pretty hardcore and the PVP server would be no big deal.  Heh, wrong.   


Yah, I don't think you managed to kill my shaman, but in your defense I was probably one of the best equipped on the server outside of Samuseva (retarded Hawaiian ftl) or Massy.  You squashed my rogue quite a few times though. 

So I'm throwing together a holy pally PVP set, starting with the level 78 crafted blue set for that spec. What are some good weapons/shields to go with it? Any guides on this sorta stuff? What kind of enchants do I want? I've never played a casty spec before.

Titansteel guardian would probably be a perfect mace for you.

Been a while for me, but as far as I can recall, the big stats you'll be looking for as a pally are int (to increase your return on Divine Plea) and crit (to work with the Illumination talent).  After that, spellpower or haste.  Mp5 is meh, spirit is garbage.

There's a solid sword you can get from the Tournament (http://www.wowwiki.com/Blade_of_the_Keening_Banshee), if you don't mind jousting.  Shields, I forget... I know there's one on the badge vendor, other than that, I don't know.

Weapon options (in no particular order):

• (If you're patient): War Mace of Unrequited Love (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37169):  Epic, found in the Heroic Nexus final boss loot.  Intellect means bigger mana pool and scales some with Spellpower.  408 Spellpower means powerful heals.  Mana/5 sec is actually worth keeping an eye on now, due to Illumination being nerfed.
  
  
• (If you're an alt): The Blessed Hammer of Grace: (http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Blessed_Hammer_of_Grace) Heirloom item, purchasable for Stone Keeper's Shards.  Stamina means slightly mrore surviability, not as much spell power, has resilience (which you do want to have some of now, to improve your surviability).  It's probably not as strong as the War Mace raw stats wise, but if you have an 80 alt that has a lot of Stone Keeper's shards, it's a very quick and easy weapon to have right off the bat.
  
  
• (If you're patient part II): Mariel's Sorrow: (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47509) Trumps the War Mace of Unrequited Love across the board.  Only found in Heroic TOC 5-man. Due to the fact that Heroic TOC is slightly harder to finish than Heroic Nexus, there's a caveat here.
  
  
• (If you know a miner/blacksmith): Titansteel Guardian (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41384) No int, but Crit strike and stamina and SP. Takes 6 Saronite Bars, 2 Frozen Orbs, and 6 Titansteel Bars. Due to the fact that Titanium is currently in high demand to Jewelcrafters, Titansteel bars may be slightly more out of reach cash wise than before.  If however, you have the mats lying around and you know someone who can make it, then it's a quick epic.
  
  
• (If you like jousting!): Blade of the Keening Banshee (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45208) Stamina and Intellect are nice, decent-ish SP. Hit Rating is somewhat useful, because you occasionally want to hit your opponent with something (Hammer of Wrath, Judgements, etc etc).
  
  
• Totally totally boned: Gavel of the Brewing Storm. (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44199) Doesn't have the raw Spell Power of the other items, but all you need to be is Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord.

In terms of what stats are more important in a PVP capacity, I honestly have no idea. My general suggestion is to get the Blessed Hammer of Grace early if you have an alt that PVPs a lot.  Then Shoot for either the Titansteel Guardian or the Blade of the Keening Banshee depending on what you can get your hands on faster, Titansteel Bars/Frozen Orbs or Crusader Seals.  Then once you're pretty good at grinding in 5 mans, do H TOC 5 man until your eyes bleed for the Mariel's Sorrow.

Shields:

Eh, shields aren't really easy to get your hands on.  Much like weapons, you're not going to get your hands on any of the PVP variety unless you Arena. 

The options here are even less if you're not willing to just do a lot of 5 man/Raid for emblems.

1 (If you're rich): Zom's Crackling Bulwark, BOE drop.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44313#dropped-by

2 (If you're a miner/BS): Saronite Protector
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41117

3 (All else fails): Warsong Stormshield (Horde) or Lordaeron's Resolve (Alliance):  Picked up by getting revered with the Horde Expedition/Alliance Vanguard. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=38463

Honestly, save your badges for a shield. As you can see, incredibly slim pickings to work with. http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.6&filter=qu=3:4;minrl=73;cr=123:79;crs=1:3;crv=1:0#0-2+1

 

Bummer.  I heard that some of the first PVE -> PVP transfers were a bit shady as to some servers maybe getting some preferential treatment.  Thankfully our guild was never very hardcore, as the core group of people knew each other personally.  On the flip side, even the entry level MC raid hurt us pretty hard.

Ironically, when we flipped over to a PVP server, we got accustomed to it just fine.  I think a lot of it was that most of us were guys who played shooters off and on, and weren't afraid of getting ganked from time to time.  Plus we all re-subbed at the tail end of TBC, and were generally left alone.


Yeah, Rogues were delicious warrior candy in Vanilla between hamstring, overpower, and execute.  Considering our guild leader (and my friend) was a priest, I became very accustomed to doing a Seek and Destroy on Rogues.  Other classes, my strategy was a bit.. uh, spottier. In fact, I was pretty terrible until I picked this (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=17073) up. I think the first few times it procced, I got at least one furious string of angry horde shouts from one of the mouthier horde rogues.. you know, the one that no one on either side liked.  :awesome_for_real:

Plus this was during the part of vanilla where you could get away with a few points in Protection tree as a warrior and call yourself a tank, so I was a bit gimped all the way around.  Not quite PVP, not quite a tank! As someone who was semi-serious in Vanilla and now casual in WOTLK, let me just say that I love the new changes.

Thanks for the list. :)

I'll just buy the Titansteel mace off the AH when it turns up, and... some shield, whatever. I hate instance PVE. Also, LFG is still 3949393047453843 DPS that nobody wants and when I try, it's pointless.

Is there a way to measure DPS in this game?  Elitest jerks has a few spreadsheets, but I was hoping their might be a mod that does this.  I looked on curse, but couldn't find anything. 

Any suggestions?

Recount (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recount.aspx) is the addon you want. Low-weight and very comprehensive. Great for gauging personal performance; although DPS isn't a great metric for PvP success.

I don't want it as a metric for pvp success.  Play is the only thing that will do that.  Having played pvp mmos for as long as their have been pvp mmos, it's how you use your tools that measures effectiveness.

I'm just trying to better assess tradeoffs.  In WG my role is almost entirely dps.  In the BG's, I need a better balance of damage and utility/survivability.  In PvE, it's a dps situation.  Getting information on the fly is helping me to understand things better. 

Thanks for the link. 

Rawr is good for looking for upgrades.

Aw screw it, healing is for girls anyway. I'm not doing jousting bullshit or running some dumbshit instance over and over.

I just did the Amphitheater with friends. The healy mace from there will do me good enough until I decide if I wanna stick with this, I guess.

Nebu, the actual DPS listed in recount can often be misleading. A much more concrete stat is the damage done ranking.

That's good to know.  Thanks!

To be more specific, the problem with recount is largely within the way it calculates DPS down-time.  Namely, it doesn't until three seconds after your last combat log event (AFAIK, I was pretty tired the last time I looked at the code).  Which means anything with DoTs or instant casts that can be deployed on the move is actually being punished if they exercise this capacity compared to a stand still and nuke caster, as Recount continues to increment DPS uptime while the character is contributing a fraction of their normal DPS.  Then, to pile on more issues: the fact that it is on the client-side makes it susceptible to latency and framerate problems.

It's still the most accurate combat log parser though.

So, I was by Light's Hope on my 55 Orc Shaman when I saw a couple of guys flagged out in front of LHC.  Naturally I went and flagged myself, thinking that perhaps one might bite.  Eight honorable kills from five different people later I had come to the inevitable conclusion that the usual crowd on PvE servers is fucking stupid.  The best part was the one who got pissed at me the second or third time he tried to take a swing and got instagibbed by guards and started spamming emotes like it was my fault that he was retarded.

So, I reupped my account, and decided to get my warlock (undead, Andorhal server) to 80 and slog through some BGs and Wintergrasp.  It sounds like people are recommending to use the crafted PvP armor, but I was thinking of ditching Tailoring on her and leveling Engineering instead (she's Enchanting, so hopefully that and my dk who's a miner can mitigate the costs).  Thoughts?

My hunter has 450 engineering.  The only good I see coming from it are a) I get AH access in Dalaran, b) I get a portable vendor/bank, c) I get a northrend wormhole, and d) I can make my own ammo.  If you aren't a hunter, I don't see much point in slogging through engineering.  Go alchemy.  It's both easy and useful. 

Rocket gloves are just awesome.

You should be able to buy pretty much any crafted pvp gear off the AH, though depending on the server it may cost you a decent chunk of change.  Barring that you could buy/gather the materials yourself and then find a tailor to craft the set for you.  Someone leveling tailoring would prob craft it for free if they were getting skill ups from it.

Basically, take whatever professions you want, you'll have access to the pvp crafted gear regardless.  Making it yourself is just a convenience/cost saver if you already have a crafting profession at a high level.

There's a cloak agility/parachute enchantment for engineers which is both a good stat for hunters and has its uses in certain battlegrounds too - its 1 better than the regular agility enchant for cloaks, I think. Casters have a spellpower version, which isn't bad itself. You can totally SAVE THE DAY jumping off the lumber mill to save the blacksmith with that thing! Plus it is insurance if you're like me and have a tendency to use disengage even if you forgot there was a cliff right behind you. Sadly my higher level hunter isn't an engineer.

The crit rating from the nitro boost boot enchant is better than anything else you can put on boots as a dps class too, unless you need the hit rating from icewalker. Plus, NITRO BOOST.

Engineers also have the best glove enchant for tanking (almost +900 armor).

I'm not sure if the mind amplification head enchant is worth using, but it should be noted it is the highest +stamina enchant available for the head, which has its uses in pvp.

The frag belt has a cast time but is apparently usable while moving, so that's another little trick up your sleeve - its a long cooldown (6 min) and not high damage but it does have the standard 3 second incapacitate, which can be useful. BG/world pvp only though, can't use it in arena. No opportunity cost since nobody has a belt enchant (I believe it stacks with the belt buckle.)

Engineering has definitely improved in the last couple patches, basically.

So imagine my surprise - the 'awesome' protection warrior/moonkin 2v2 arena team that Fordel and I made was apparently 'good' enough for us to get the Challenger title/achievement, which is for the top 35% of teams in a given bracket/battlegroup. We topped out at around a 1450 arena rating.  :awesome_for_real:

There must have been a lot of played-for-one-week-and-totally-sucked teams.

Got that in my DK/Lock team too; our high was 1500ish.

Does that officially make us elitist now?  :oh_i_see:

There was an error that assigned S6 titles/ achieves to folks who earned them in previous seasons.  Were any members of your teams in this group?  If so, your titles may be going away.

Neither of us had ever made an arena title before, so I doubt it, but it sounds like there have been a few other odd title bugs cropping up so I'm sure its possible we will lose them.

I can't go back! I've tasted the fringes of the top and can't settle for any less!  :cry2:

In previous season, IIRC, challenger was typically in the high 1500's/low 1600's.  The cut-off for rival hasn't changed at all.  It's always been wherever PVP weapons become available.

Anyway.  Your experience matches up with what was predicted by Arena Junkies title calculator (not linking the site; they've had issues with installing trojans via flash).  You'll just have to take my word for it because of the new season, but when I looked it up, the Challenger cut off on Nightfall was like ~1400.

There are a lot of people that think arena sounds great in theory. So they put together a team, and then the reality that it's nothing but a gear contest at most levels hits home hard. They quit after two weeks.

That is about 90% of my guild who ever tried it right there.

If we are in the 35% range, that just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.

The place: Hellfire Peninsula

The opposition: A couple of dumbass level 80 blood elf rogues with full PVE epics and a combined 0-23 arena record, stealthing around one of the PVP towers on our stupid RP server, trawling for lowbies to kill.

The result: I fall out of the sky onto them before they know WTF is going on, and waste them both without even needing to bubble. Then they rezzed and brought some friend who was at least semi-competent and ganged up on me, but who cares?

Man, was it ever satisfying. They were so bad that I had to look them up on the armory. I hardly regard arena stats as the end-all of PVP since I don't even DO arena myself, but 0-23 speaks for itself. Fucking dipshit posers.

(We need a random PVP blabber thread, and this seems as good a place as any.)

2x rogue fights are my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE thing to fight in 2v2 arena. <3

If you survive the first 10s or so of double rogue you've basically won the fight. It's an interesting comp to fight.

Gobbeldygook and I earned challenger titles with prot warrior and prot/holy paladin.   :oh_i_see:

We never did make it above 1480 or so, mostly because we had a few matches go for 20+ minutes, and I got really frustrated/bored with it.

Its not very difficult to do that as a protection warrior!

STOP HITTING ME FOR 50 PER HIT OH GOD

Hah; I really haven't seen many people playing prot in Arena's, it must be interesting.

For me it's an issue of whether my Ret can give me HoP fast enough.

There are some fun things you can do, especially to casters; charge->shockwave->shield bash->concussion blow->heroic throw as a prot warrior is something like 11-12 seconds of stun alternating with silence and then you can fear them at the end of it if you need to lock someone down even longer. The burst is better than it was with the block gear all getting its block value doubled, and improved disarm is +10% damage which is nice too.

We haven't taken the field yet this season though, so I dunno what the current state of things is. The problem in 2s is that healers are just overpowered in the format, we always struggled a lot with those when they were played well.

We've only played 20 or so games, but I'm feeling that damage is a lot higher, although part of this may be early season jitters as the good people haven't siphoned up yet. I'm not feeling so powerful this season as a priest I have to say.

Our fastest death was to an Elemental Shaman - Lock team of all things. Wierd comp, crazy burst.

There is some pretty good rabble rabble drama happening on various WoW forums atm. Some Arena E-Star got accused of botting with some fairly convincing evidence.


I would link a thread, but they are all being deleted faster then I can read them.

An Arena E-Star botting?  Perish the thought!  I cannot possibly remember the last time I read an Arena Junkies poster openly discussing using Pirox to farm honor or to level an alt.

...wait.

Yea, but this time the general populace caught wind to it.  :awesome_for_real:

Just in the two afflix threads on AJ:

"kinda sucks and all ive afk'd / bot before glad i didnt get caught lol"
"I farmed full deadly+relentless off pieces on my shaman over the course of two weeks, got banned twice in the process, didn't remove any gear though."
"I support Affix and botting, just because all of "I AM HERE TO SAVE THE DAY" retards that posted in that topic.

<3 pirox <3"
"Everybody bots because the honor grind is dumb. Sucks famous people get called out."
"i will read this entire thread while botting for added irony"
"rogue is almost 80, thx AV"
"zzzzzzzz botted 12 hours a day when i still played, who gives a fuck"
"the amount of characters I've gotten their full honor set or leveled with a bot and never even gotten a warning is sad."
"Botting is almost necessary I'm not going to spend 5 hours a day for a week for 2 pieces of fucking gear. Cut the honor grind in half and make it so 3 marks of one bg = 1k honor and I would do bgs probably and enjoy it."
"Grinding is a part of MMOs (although it doesn't have to be, at all), and botting is a method of grinding. Your point?"
"everyone bots, why waste hours farming hours when a program can do it for you"

Seriously, that's just in TWO THREADS and only the out-right confessions.  I didn't include the people that were attacking the person posting the screenshots that undoubtably bot.  Every single post was done by someone with a link to their WoW account.

You mean a format where time is a cockblock means people will automate it? Perish the thought!

Too bad Blizzard does do something useful like ban afkers in battlegrounds, or better yet, put all arena fighters into identical arena equipment.  

Rewarding people who do well with better gear so they can beat people faster is kinda silly and backward, isn't it?  But that's the entire system, I suppose.  Handicaps make sense; wow arena is like reverse handicap.

Edited to add:  It really pisses me off to see afkers in battlegrounds leeching off everyone else's efforts.  Particularly the elite who can't be bothered to actually play with the hoi polloi.  What's worse are the morons who tell everyone what to do from the cave, while adding nothing to the effort. 

Remove gear progression and you will see a huge spike in arena participation followed by an even larger decline.  People will start playing arenas because they can finally compete with those catasses who have been carried by their gear all this time.  Then they'll find out they still can't unless they put in the hours it takes to learn to play.  They'll show up, lose 4 matches, and go run Nexus again for more emblems.  You can even see this in the arena ladder; once people get the reward they want (usually a weapon at 1800 but sometimes a safe rating for a title), they stop playing for the rest of the season.

If your answer is,. "Your reward is gear you can use in BGs and highly meaningful WORLD PVP!": Unless it's better than what you can get while 'guarding' flags in AV (aka watching a movie and pressing the jump button every now and then), no one will participate.  If it is, enjoy the screams of "FORCED TO ARENA TO ENJOY BGS AND WORLD PVP".  People always take the path of least resistance to improving their character.

They could put in more PVP mounts or pets (show up and play 20 matches = pet, challenger = small ground mount, rival = huge ground mount, duelist = 280% flyer?), but I'm not sure how much that would motivate people to queue up in the first place.  The real trick is getting people to persevere through the learning process.

So basically what you're saying is that people won't arena for fun, and won't use arena.

I fail to see the problem with that.

I think the fix for the arena is for it to give only arena-benefitting gear as a reward.  It's sport pvp.  If people want to do it, give them rewards that only pertain to it (i.e. arena gear is only wearable in the arena).  They have a gear manager that would make this easy. 

No, I am saying people will, as a general rule, only engage in activities that actually improve their character.  Given a choice of activities they will do whatever is most efficient.  People they show up in the arena, lose their first couple matches, think it's a waste of time that will never get them any gear, and never do them again.  Yet people spend hours wiping in instances in hopes of an epic they want dropping or 310% mounts, but if I ask someone to come wipe in arena's they react like I asked them for a kidney.  The question is how to structure the rewards to get people to queue up and put in the effort to learn to play instead of losing 10 matches a week or not participating at all.

I thought the question was how to make it fun.

Indeed.

Since fun in WoW is almost entirely based on character gear and ability progression rather than player skill progression, the only thing that convinces players to do much of anything is the promise of improved gear or skills. Without something to aspire to, there's very little reason to play at all.

Worse yet, wiping in an arena not only hurts.. it helps the jerk who just beat you. That smirking rogue, immortal druid, and drooling death knight just got one step closer to gear. In an instance your inability to play may get you kicked out of the group... but probably not. In battlegrounds there are enough players that you can convince yourself you're helping in your own quadrant of the map somehow. In the Arenas, your inability to play wins gear (pretty much the entire point of the game) the people who kick your ass.

Finally, in an instance once you figure the game out you can play it over and over again and get it right. In the arenas you may still be screwed because you've chosen the wrong spec or you're wearing the wrong gear or you're playing the wrong class combination. Oops. You get to die this time. Gear balancing would fix some of this, but not the fact that World of Warcraft has never been and shall never be truly class-balanced around group PvP capability.

The fix for the arena is for it to be removed entirely.

I don't think it should be, or needs to be removed. That's just "I don't enjoy this, everyone who does is having badwrongfun" talk.

The "fix" for arenas is providing a better weapon upgrade path for BG pvpers.

2v2 arena is sort of fun; although now they have made 2v2 arena serve next to no useful purpose I'm back wondering what the point of arenas are.

For 95% of players, nothing has changed.  You can get everything from 2's except for the tier 2 weapons, the relentlentless shoulders, and the Gladiator title(ie the 310% mount).  You can still get the tier 1, ilevel 245 weapons at 1800.  Blizzard's just no longer going to care about balance in 2s.

Ah my bad, I thought they had changed it so that 2's rating meant absolutely fuck all.

Blizzard did change it to that until people whinged incessantly about it.

Arena just isn't fun.  It's the least fun when you encounter a counter-comp for your composition, or worse yet, face a mirror comp.  I've suffered through games like that, which lasted up to half an hour.  I don't even care at that point whether I win or lose, the match itself has already taken entirely too long.

Sometimes the mirror comp works out in your favor.  At one point we fought a mirror comp 2x, took forever for us to win, and the next two times we came up against them, they simply quit out and let us have our points.

Sometimes I think about going back into the arena, but then I remember all the miserable garbage that goes on in the arenas, the re-gearing requirement which will stick me in BGs for the next 2-3 weeks, plus my hatred for DALARAN SEWERS oh god that one is just horrible.


-edit:  also, I forgot to mention, but I would be way behind something like "turn in 3 marks of a particular BG and get 1k honor".  Being forced into Isle of Conquest in order to do For Great Honor turnins (or whatever it's called) is damned annoying.  Yes, you think your new BG is very clever.  I don't.  Please let me just AV or AB.

Good lord is this true.  Did my first Isle last night.  There are so many things to do that its worse than AB for uncoordination.  And fuck that castle.  Having to actually defend it from people that can get in makes the AFK just that much more appealing.

I want a murderball game.  Get the guy, with the thing.  It concentrates people.  No dumbass rambos wandering around. "But I am helping by stealthing into the house at the farm."  Everyone concentrates in on spot.  Wholesale slaughter.

Or another control the flag game with fewer closer points.  Heck, I just want Mourkain Temple, Gates of Erklund and Nordenwatch from War.

I'd rather do IoC all day than do another Strand.

Nordenwatch would be something I'd love to have emulated in WoW.  That was possibly my favorite pvp scenario in any game to date.  Three control points in a tight space with enough geographic relief to add a small tactical element. 

Not me, I  :heart: Strand. It is my favorite one of all.

I hate trying to kill siege vehicles in strand.


Cast, run run run run run, Cast.

Why are you behind them!  :oh_i_see:

Who says I am?

Now that mounts are allowed at 20, AB level cap needs dropped.  AV is permanently broken, but I've hit exalted with 3 toons and I still play it over and over.  IoC I like for it's size, but it may never get coordianted. 

WSG, EotS and Strand need to die.  They're going to reach point where players are spread too thin across the amount of BGs they have if they keep introducing new ones. 

I like Eye too! Why do you people hate my BGs.  :cry:

They could reinvigorate each BG with new maps using the same rules and terrain templates. I mean, you'd hardly be thrilled if a FPS only came with 6 maps.

Very few people play the BG's for fun.  It's an honor/token machine.  Blizzard designed it this way.  I think the way to increase participation would be to give huge xp/honor bonuses to the people that contribute to the progress within the BG's.  If you enter a BG and do nothing, you get almost no honor and your 1 token. 

I play for fun, but I'm an admitted freak.

Of course, since i play for fun I'm always insanely frustrated because Alliance on my BG can't even manage to win AB after 4 capping for the first 3 mins.  Losing time and again to stupid fucks farming HKs isn't fun.