Archive for March, 2010

Here you can see what happens whenever I set foot in a scrum in a battleground. I die. Quickly. This time, though, in a quick Alterac Valley match, I somehow got started following a female ret pally named Angelical. We tore through some of the smaller villages on the Horde’s end of the map, slaying NPCs for God knows why. The two of us, followed by a priest for heals, took down a ton of NPCs and elite NPCs, which ultimately nabbed us  the top two spots in damage done (her first, myself second). It was kind of relaxing, actually, killing NPCs rather then players. We died twice apiece once the reality of facing actual PvP combat became a factor. In the end, though, we won. For the Alliance!

It’s finally happened – I’ve snapped. I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when. What am I talking about?

I’ve gone back to Alazar’s roots. Well, color scheme-wise, anyway.

Other then an old, old ‘written on papyrus’ look Alazar once had, this bl0g has long sported a blue-and-gold look. I tried to go to a more neutral red-and-brown look, but I finally had to go back to what Alazar was for so long. And y’know what? I think I like the results.

In my continuing efforts to increase my DPS and therefore my usefulness to groups, I ran a series of Heroics again this morning. First came Hall of Stone, which was uneventful up to and after the Tribunal of Ages part, where we had to hold out against wave after wave of baddies. I nearly died, and was down to 4.7 HP (with my bubble on cool down from earlier in the fight) and had to chug a runic healing potion to stay alive, but stay alive I did. In fact, it wasn’t until the chaos was over that I learned that only the tank and I had survived. I rezzed everyone else and we completed the rest of dungeon with little fanfare.

As you can see above, I also made it into Culling of Stratholme. This run sticks in my craw and makes me mad thinking about it. The run itself was extremely fast and smooth, but when we killed the Infinite Corruptor, he dropped the Reins of the Bronze Drake. We all greeded on it, except for one jerk  who needed and got it. No one seemed to care but me. I’m still pissed that I didn’t even get a shot at that cool mount.

Finally I landed in the Trial of the Crusader with another good group. We had a little trouble with the Grand Champion jousting portion (we lost track of downed baddies and they each hopped back on a mount at least once). I lost my mount twice, but was wise enough to do so near a new horse so I was back in the saddle – so to speak – in no time. We then killed the Grand Champions on foot with little effort. The rest of the dungeon was a cakewalk. When we defeated Eadric the Pure, he dropped the Legplates of Relentless Onslaught. I wanted to need them because they were better then what I had, but I greeded when it dawned on me that I was getting a new, better piece of leg armor once I left the dungeon. When we were done, I finally had the Emblems of Triumph I needed to buy myself Turalyon’s Legplates of Conquest. I socketed it with a Bold Cardinal Ruby for strength and a Smooth Kings Amber for crit rating. Finally I bought some Icescale Leg Armor to complete the piece. Now I’m ready to work on my next part. Let’s get it on!

I wound up in Gundrak again tonight, and I have to say that with a decent group, it’s not a bad instance. I was with three members from one same guild and a boomkin druid with an odd play style. We quickly blitzed the first boss of two, but when we killed Eck the Ferocious, we had two problems. For one, one of our DPS – one of the trio from the same guild – dropped group. We found out later that he thought that Eck was the final boss (for whatever reason), and once he learned otherwise he joined back up. The bigger problem was that our dumb-bunny druid decided to go sightseeing on his own and got himself killed. I actually noticed him go off on his own and was debating who to follow, the healer and the tank or the druid before opting for the safety of the healer/tank combo. Once we were all back together, we quickly swept through Gal’Darah and finished the run. I say quickly, but between waiting for the one DPS to rejoin, the druid to rez, and the druid constantly making us wait for his cool downs to be up (“oh no, I need three minutes to get my cool downs up. Lets just stand here and wait!”), it took us close to a half an hour to clear the place, and we clearly out-geared it. I had fun though, and I wouldn’t mind running with that bunch again.

As I was flying about Northrend, running dailies, a guildie was getting achievement in Ulduar. I congratulated him, of course, which set off a chain reaction that was fun and educational. You see, he was trying to kill Ignis the Furnace Master for the weekly raid quest. As fate would have it, his 25-man raid had a DPS spot open, so I was invited. I was unsure about how much help I could be, but I joined in anyway.

This is about where I found everybody, right at Ignis’ doorstep. We got our act together and – after some random arguing over engineering loot –  we set forth to slay the beast.

We did it, obviously, and I got an achievement, to boot. I thanked my guildie for inviting me, and then a weird thing happened. We got talking about my DPS and my gear, and he started lending me advice on how to improve them. I paid attention as best I could and he helped me set an upgrade path via emblems. I found out that for my first upgrade, I need 50 Emblems of Triumph, and – at that point – I had 12. I ran a string of heroics to try and get some more, and it was interesting to say the least.

First up was Azjol-Nerub, which progressed as one would expect a dungeon to go – steady and uneventful. The second one I ran was wild. A pair of players from the same guild were heading up the run and they were trying to break some kind of world speed record, it seemed. They were blitzing through mobs, gathering a ton in one place before turning to fight. This caught the rest of us off guard, but we kept up. Once Keristrasza was dead, I had was up to 27 total Emblems of Triumph, only 23 short of my goal. I queued up again, this time with the server due to go down for Tuesday maintenance in about half an hour. I ended up in Gundrak for the first time, and died on the first set of mobs. Our tank wasn’t very good, our healer had lag issues and our mage went AFK right at the start. We killed the first boss (with the healer and the mage dead), but then the server announced it was going down in 15 minutes. Soon, everybody began bailing and left me alone in the dungeon.

I ‘ported out and logged off as well, with 28 Emblems of Triumph, plus an achievement from the first Gundrak boss. Tonight I hope to get the lost 22 emblems for my new gear. Onwards and upwards!

It was a battleground-filled night for Gav tonight. My first battle was in an already in progress Isle of Conquest match. When I got there, the Alliance was on the verge of losing their keep. At one point I died and wound up rezzing in the Horde keep, which we had just taken. A contingent of Alliance heroes and myself charged into the Horde keep and killed their leader, winning the match. It would be the only bright spot on the night.

My next random BG found me in Arathi Basin. We got our butts kicked to the tune of 1600-346 or so. Ouch. I – along with a number of other players – swore there were more Horde then Alliance players in the match because they had a large number of defenders at each capture point, preventing us from taking anything back. I did cap the Lumber Mill early in the match – my first ever capture, but with 10 honorable kills to 7 deaths, it was a terrible match.

My third (and so far final) match landed me back in the Strand of the Ancients. We got our butts kicked and were unable to drop even a single wall on our attack, while the Horde rolled up to the relic gate almost unimpeded. I did lead us in killing blows and honorable kills, but I only had 3 killing blows and 10 honorable kills, so it was more that our team sucked then me being really good.

Some days I hate my battlegroup.

Stupid random battleground thingamajig. It stuck me in my least favorite – to date – battleground today, Eye of the Storm. We got our heads handed to us, which is par for the course in EotS matches I’ve been in. Once it was over, I re-queued, and guess where I ended up.

Eye of the freaking Storm. This time the match was almost half over, with the horde again overrunning the map. I’m tired of getting ganged up on in these matches, and I’m also sick and tired of the jerk in every match who blames everyone else for any mistakes and seems to think that all the other players are holding him down. He can do no wrong in his mind, and he pisses me off. Someone in each random battleground always fills that roll, and I’m tired of listening to them.

Will I quit the random battlegrounds due to these struggles? Probably not. It’s a good time waster and when things do go well, it’s allot of fun. We’ll see what happens in the near future.

Bored this morning, I queued for another random battleground and landed in Strand of the Ancients. Again, I seemed to be a prime target, with the Horde stopping everything else to kill me. I must have some kind of ‘Kill Me Please’ sign on my forehead in Horde-speak. Overall though, I was wicked this match. I landed in the top 10 in killing blows (9), top 15 in honorable kills (62) and damage done (429.1k), and died only five times. Oh, and those ranks? That was Horde and Alliance combined. As far as just the Alliance goes, I was #5 in damage done and #1 in honorable kills. First in Honorable Kills! That’s something I’m proud of. I also got the Drop it Now and Ancient Protector achievements while there as we won the match. Not a bad morning.

Today was near the end of the Call to Arms: Alterac Valley battleground weekend, so I opted to give it a go. What I found was my favorite battleground yet. It’s tough, no doubt, with 40 players per side creating chaos, but it’s also the easiest to understand for me. It reminds me allot of the Battlefield series of games in style. You eliminate your opponents reinforcements via either killing players or taking control of territory to choke their supply.

I had a mediocre match, partially because it looked like everyone wanted me dead for whatever reason. About halfway through the match, anytime I’d show my head near a scrum, the Horde would drop what they were doing and pile on me. What, did I look like easy prey? I wasn’t, mind you – I nabbed the Damage Control achievement and was in the top 15 in both honorable kills (85) and damage done (430.5k) for he Alliance. I also assaulted a graveyard to help our war efforts. We won too, which was a nice bonus. An odd note is that I now have 50 Arena Points. What the heck do I with these, and why give them to players for fighting in battlegrounds? The cheapest things I can find that are buyable with Arena Points are worth a couple thousand Arena Points, so doling them out in 25 per day is kind of stingy. Of course, I’m of the opinion that they should not be part of the Random Battleground deal anyway. BGs =/= Arenas.

I mentioned last post that I got a new axe. I like it, but it has presented some problems. For one, my two-handed axe skill was at 378 (out of 400) so that needed work. However, the axe itself lacked the hit rating of my former sword, so that was a problem. I was soon found myself over 40 points shy of being hit-capped, which meant that any damage I was going to do would be tempered with misses. I thought about redoing some of my gems or enchants when it hit me – I could swap out my goggles for that Spiked Titansteel Helmet I’ve been lugging around for months and make up almost all of the hit rating I would lose by going to the axe. Nice! Now I just need to enchant my axe and finish grinding my 2H axe skill (I’m at 283 or so right now) and I’ll be set.