Argent Tournament

[Ingmar]

I liked Sunwell dailies better (and I didn't really like those that much.) I will probably keep at this long enough to get my Ironforge tabard and stop. If I make it that far. The jousting is really annoying.

BTW there's a simple 'guaranteed win' strategy where you just put up 3 shields, hit thrust while wait for them to back off, do your throw shield break thing as soon as they get far enough away and immediately follow them so they never get to do theirs or their charge, and you get a couple hits in on them while they're only at 2 shields. You will never lose, but it takes a while (and also kind of illustrates the lack of depth in the whole vehicle thing.)

Vehicle quests are cool when you're driving a badass storm giant around and smashing the shit out of hundreds of dudes, and you don't do it every day. They're not so cool when you very slowly grind people down in a 'joust' that doesn't even act like jousting when done optimally, and you have to do it over and over and over and over again.

[Koyasha]

The lore pretense is laughable too.  This is some kind of tournament to see who will be best at fighting the Lich King?  .....send EVERYONE.

Oh and I don't think the Lich King is going to come out and JOUST WITH US.

[kildorn]

My foolproof strat is:

start with shields up
spam thrust until they back up for a charge
Charge first, and pull a really tight loop on the carrythrough.
Spam shield breaker when you are pulling back around.
Repeat, add a defend to the thrust spam usually.

If you do it right, they will always be at 0-1 shields, and you'll never eat a shield breaker or charge (you keep the follow through loop tight enough that they're under range the whole time) and it doesn't take more than 20-30 seconds.

It's godawful boring however.

edit: and from the quest where you joust out front of the lich king's pad? Yeah, that's telling you that Icecrown will have a jousting event when it goes live. This is your Aces High, bitches.

[Xanthippe]

Not only that, but there is a marked difference in response from the joust vehicle.  Maybe it's lag.  But it's so freakin hard sometimes to joust, and  other times a piece of cake.  Today was easy, yesterday was monstrous, day before was easy, day before hard.

Either they're fucking with it still, or response time is impacted by how many people are around.  The times when it's been easy are the times when few are around.  

I don't mind the jousting the mobs, or the retrieve weapons thing.  It's the npc jousting that I really hate.

[Xanthippe]

This is your Aces High, bitches.

Don't they focus group this crap?

[K9]

My foolproof strat is:

start with shields up
spam thrust until they back up for a charge
Charge first, and pull a really tight loop on the carrythrough.
Spam shield breaker when you are pulling back around.
Repeat, add a defend to the thrust spam usually.

If you do it right, they will always be at 0-1 shields, and you'll never eat a shield breaker or charge (you keep the follow through loop tight enough that they're under range the whole time) and it doesn't take more than 20-30 seconds.

It's godawful boring however.

This is how I do it, it's pretty foolproof.

edit: and from the quest where you joust out front of the lich king's pad? Yeah, that's telling you that Icecrown will have a jousting event when it goes live. This is your Aces High, bitches.

 

[Oban]

They need to make the jousting part like phase four or something.  You know, so that people can wipe repeatedly on the vehicle part only after 5-15 minutes of flawless raiding.

That would make the Lich King encounter epic.

[Lakov_Sanite]

They need to make the jousting part like phase four or something.  You know, so that people can wipe repeatedly on the vehicle part only after 5-15 minutes of flawless raiding.

That would make the Lich King encounter epic.

oh don't worry, there's plenty of wiping in ulduar without vehicles.

[Evil Elvis]

My foolproof strat is:

start with shields up
spam thrust until they back up for a charge
Charge first, and pull a really tight loop on the carrythrough.
Spam shield breaker when you are pulling back around.
Repeat, add a defend to the thrust spam usually.

If you do it right, they will always be at 0-1 shields, and you'll never eat a shield breaker or charge (you keep the follow through loop tight enough that they're under range the whole time) and it doesn't take more than 20-30 seconds.

It's godawful boring however.

This is how I do it, it's pretty foolproof.

Same.  You can't shield-break => charge before the npc does it to you, so this is the way to go.

[LK]

The lore pretense is laughable too.  This is some kind of tournament to see who will be best at fighting the Lich King?  .....send EVERYONE.

Oh and I don't think the Lich King is going to come out and JOUST WITH US.

I mentioned this to a friend that I liked the concept of what was being done from a game mechanics perspective but that it felt like it was being hamfisted into the story. He totally supported the lore aspect of it. While I disagree, I do see the point (emphasized in the Ashbringer comic and Icecrown quests) that numbers aren't the key to victory against Arthas, but sending powerful individuals. If you deprive Arthas of the armies he needs (weak people slain by his forces who are raised to fight) , he'll be alone against other powerful figures.

[Oban]

5-man heroic-only Lich King would be terrific.

[Sjofn]

BTW there's a simple 'guaranteed win' strategy where you just put up 3 shields, hit thrust while wait for them to back off, do your throw shield break thing as soon as they get far enough away and immediately follow them so they never get to do theirs or their charge, and you get a couple hits in on them while they're only at 2 shields. You will never lose, but it takes a while (and also kind of illustrates the lack of depth in the whole vehicle thing.)

Vehicle quests are cool when you're driving a badass storm giant around and smashing the shit out of hundreds of dudes, and you don't do it every day. They're not so cool when you very slowly grind people down in a 'joust' that doesn't even act like jousting when done optimally, and you have to do it over and over and over and over again.

See, your method is the shitty way. I've gotten quite good at timing a charge/shield break when they try to get distance. Yes, sometimes they get a shield throw off or whatever, but that's a lot more interesting than doing nothing but thrust. And I still win. 

I would definitely prefer more storm giant riding though. I loved that quest.

[WindupAtheist]

Winning at jousting is trivial in general. It's just shitty.

Since this is supposed to eventually lead to Argent Crusade rep, I'm thumping away at it a little bit for the time being. (There's really no decent way to get AC rep other than instancing, which I plain refuse to do anymore.) I'll do the jousting, the monster killing, and the monster killing via jousting, but there is no motherfucking way I am bringing that asshole one more weapon. Expecting me to fly to two completely different zones and back for one shit little daily is obscene.

I am NOT sitting in front of Lord Whatshisface waiting in line to kill him at 3am like this is motherfucking Everquest. Fuck whoever designed that shit.

[Paelos]

Walk away now. I haven't done one quest up there, and I'm a happier man for it. 

[K9]

Just got to stormwind champion level, seems the cockstabs continue.

You can only get champion's seals quests from the Argent guys, so never more than 5 per day it seems, and 2 of those come from a 3-man daily. Decided to go for Gnomergan valiant, need another 25. I assume that because I already did the "kill 10 scourge quest" and the citadel scourge quest I cannot get those again from the gnomes, I only have a (different) sword quest to do. So 2 seals today, hopefully 5 tomorrow.

The argent dailies reward writs (only used to buy rep items) and purses. The pruse has 10g in them, so the dailies are a good source of gold if nothing else. The retarded thing is that you cannot buy Commendation Badges for writs until you are champion level with a faction, you can only champion your own faction to start off with, which most people will already be exalted with. So to get exalted with another city you need to grind to champion. Would be easier and quicker just to farm runecloth imo, even if I wasn't already exalted with all the home factions.

Champion jousting sucks, its exactly the same as the other jousting except they start out at 3 defend and reaply it faster. It's not harder, just slower. Also you need to kill 4 of them to complete the daily, rather than 3.

*yawn*

[Modern Angel]

This is the grindiest grind they have EVER put into this game. It's a pure fuck you to non-raiders and I'm a raider so I feel for those folks. Seriously, the time investment is retarded.

[kildorn]

This is the grindiest grind they have EVER put into this game. It's a pure fuck you to non-raiders and I'm a raider so I feel for those folks. Seriously, the time investment is retarded.

That's a bit silly to say. It's not that grindy, it's just limited in how long you can grind it. There's actually very little grind.

If we think back to shit like Timbermaw or those stupid MC factions, those were far grindier in actual amount of time spent doing them. It's just that you could hunker down for a weekend and do it for 12 hours straight instead of being forced to simply gain 5 widgets a day for X days.

[Xanthippe]

It may not be grindier than other stuff, but it's certainly shittier than grinding furbolgs.  At least there was no limit on how many furbolgs  you could kill in a day.

I'm already exalted with all the factions.  Why can't I start at Champion?

I prefer AQ turnins to this shitty shit.

[Modern Angel]

33 days to one colored mount. 255 days to clear all the Argent Tournament stuff. It's just kind of stuck there. Compare and contrast with Sunwell, where you got a five man and an entire zone, or AQ where you had all the unlock stuff. Even if it were less grindy it would FEEL more grindy due to the just kind of stuck in there as a sop feel

[Fordel]

At least there was no limit on how many furbolgs  you could kill in a day.

My sanity begs to differ!

[kildorn]

The grind cockblocks seem entirely there for the reason of preventing people from just sitting their asses down and grinding for 12 hours straight. It's essentially the game telling you to do something else now, and come back tomorrow.

It's grating in an "I want my shiney thing NOW" sense, but probably a bit healthier. I think I'd allow you to store 3 days of dailies for them though, to allow for a few days off without thinking you messed up your deadline.

[Nevermore]

I kind of like the jousting, as a change of pace.  What I don't like is having to do it every day and the horrid grind to get any rewards from it.  But the actual jousting I'm pretty good at, having discovered the same strategy Kild uses.

Well, pretty good at it when I'm not hit with the horrible latency spikes I've been getting with regularity since Thursday night.  Normal and green most of the time but a few times an hour it spikes up to unplayably red (1.5k+).  Pretty sure it's not Blizzard itself that's the problem, so it's either my router and/or modem (don't think so but not sure how to troubleshoot it beyond the unplug for a few minutes plug them back in method) or it's my ISP (good luck trying to troubleshoot it with them) or a problem between here and Blizzards servers.  Who knows.  I understand networking in a very broad sense but troubleshooting network problems is way beyond me.

Back to the actual Argent Tourney, the biggest problem I have with it besides the grind is how the dailies make you fly all the way to the other side of fucking Northrend to do them.  I'm looking at you, various Princesses in lakes with swords.  Otherwise I like the idea behind the sort of Ren Faire-ish atmosphere.

[kildorn]

Lake princess snipers are my favorite people in WoW. <3

Hover over the lake waiting for someone who did the quest to spawn her <3 <3

[Lantyssa]

The grind cockblocks seem entirely there for the reason of preventing people from just sitting their asses down and grinding for 12 hours straight. It's essentially the game telling you to do something else now, and come back tomorrow.

It's grating in an "I want my shiney thing NOW" sense, but probably a bit healthier. I think I'd allow you to store 3 days of dailies for them though, to allow for a few days off without thinking you messed up your deadline.

Maybe, but the response will be "Okay, I logged in today for ten minutes to do my quests.  Like I did for the past ten days and will for the next month.  Why am I doing this again?"

Allowing downtime is great.  Let the player decide when they use it.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, I can see breaking it up into dailies to prevent epic 72 hour poopsock grind sessions from being the ideal path to reward, but there has to be a balance point between that and "advance for five seconds per day for the next seven years".

[kildorn]

Oh trust me, I'd fine grindfests more fun than dailies. I HATE dailies. Ask me about my perma lack of head enchants and the amount of times thorgrim has bitched me out about it. <3

[Ingmar]

That has NOTHING TO DO with dailies you bitch. Get a tabard and run some dungeons. ><

[Xanthippe]

I don't raid, I do like to BG, but I hate arena.

I can't really progress my character in bgs anymore.

So I can do the argent tournament and fishing daily for 30 minutes a day, and play alts.

Battlegrounds aren't a lot of fun with DKs running around.  Are they half DKs yet?

[Ingmar]

I ran a few BGs lately and it seems to me the DK level has dropped off quite a bit, actually. I don't know if that is true in every battlegroup.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I ran a few BGs lately and it seems to me the DK level has dropped off quite a bit, actually. I don't know if that is true in every battlegroup.

It's because most dk's are alts so with the new content people are back to their mains again. Expect another wave of dk's in a couple months.

[kildorn]

I ran a few BGs lately and it seems to me the DK level has dropped off quite a bit, actually. I don't know if that is true in every battlegroup.

It's because most dk's are alts so with the new content people are back to their mains again. Expect another wave of dk's in a couple months.

DKs are a bit harder to play now, people have wandered off.

Completely anecdotal, but in all my recent WG runs (normal BGs? as a priest? AHAHAHAHAHAHA) all I've been seeing are warriors out the ass and rogues. The warriors have all been blatant prot-dual'd to fury and having fun with it.

[Rendakor]

I don't raid, I do like to BG, but I hate arena.

I can't really progress my character in bgs anymore.

So I can do the argent tournament and fishing daily for 30 minutes a day, and play alts.

Battlegrounds aren't a lot of fun with DKs running around.  Are they half DKs yet?

With Season 6 starting today, there's a lot of new Honor gear available with no rating required. There are also some new items on the Wintergrasp vendor that were put in last week. Should give you a bit more to do in BGs. Can't say anything about the DK zerg in there though, because I'm part of the problem.

[Merusk]

DK Zerg Ahoy!

I got yelled at by another DK for using Deathgrip in a battle yesterday.  "only bad DKs death grip. stop being bad." he said.  I think he was just pissed I killed the guy in 4 shots after he'd been fucking around for 10 seconds and only had him to 75% health.

Betrayer of Humanity is 

[kildorn]

DK Zerg Ahoy!

I got yelled at by another DK for using Deathgrip in a battle yesterday.  "only bad DKs death grip. stop being bad." he said.  I think he was just pissed I killed the guy in 4 shots after he'd been fucking around for 10 seconds and only had him to 75% health.

Betrayer of Humanity is 

Only bad DKs use DG? lol.

Only bad DKs DG something out of a melee pileon, which is my usual complaint. 5 people mauling a flag carrier, some idiot DG's him off to the left away from his impending doom. :(

[Lum]

The lore pretense is laughable too.  This is some kind of tournament to see who will be best at fighting the Lich King?  .....send EVERYONE.

Oh and I don't think the Lich King is going to come out and JOUST WITH US.

"We have finally broken through to the very gates of Mordo... the Lich King's Citadel! The cleansing of the evil that has plagued our world for so long is at hand! Build... an arena! Right next to the citadel of evil, that should work. I'm sure he'll wait."