PvP

[Dren]

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

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

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

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

[Arrrgh]

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

[Dren]

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

Son.of.a.bitch.

Seriously, sonofabitch!

Duly noted.

[MrHat]

Oh wow.  Nice.

[Dren]

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

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

[Zetor]

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


-- Z.

[Valmorian]

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


-- Z.

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

[Zetor]

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


-- Z.

[Dren]

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

[Valmorian]

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


-- Z.

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

[Dren]

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


-- Z.

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

I hope so.  I have that.

[Simond]

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

[Zetor]

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

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


-- Z.

[Dren]

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

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

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

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

[Dren]

One other questions:

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

[MrHat]

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

[Dren]

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

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

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

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

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

[Zetor]

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

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

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

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

There's also a third option:

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

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

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


-- Z.

[Dren]

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

I do have one question though:

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

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

[Zetor]

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

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


-- Z.

[Dren]

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

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

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