Archive for the ‘Battlegrounds’ Category

It was a PvP morning for Gav. I joined a random battleground and ended up in Alterac Valley.

It was kind of sad for me because I followed a contingent to attack the Horde leader, and we did – and I died – but the Horde was just a little faster, and we lost. The next battle was Arathi Basin, where I’ve never won.

I want to point out that I went to AV as ret to try out my new axe, which failed miserably. I decided to go prot in AB, which made a huge difference.

I died once early on when I went into battle thinking I had backup (but I didn’t) and another time during a scrum near the lumber mill. Those were my only deaths though. Thanks to good durability, judicious use of my powers and superb healers, I pretty much locked down the farm. People came and left, but I held it down. A couple times I thought I was screwed only to be saved by the sudden appearance of a healer on our side. Thanks, guys! I ended the match with 2 deaths (least of anyone with at more then 1 kill), 5 killing blows (4th on our side) and 71 honorable kills (best on our side). Go Gav!

Oh, and thanks to running those dungeons last night, I got a mammoth reward.

My Black War Mammoth! Finally!

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 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 queued for a random battleground and as luck would have it, I wound up in Eye of the Storm again. I was again – as in my Arathi Basin battle  – a little killing machine. I’d bought up some Furious Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders and entered battle in my prot PvP spec. I ended up with six killing blows, 57 honorable kills and only five deaths. At one point, we were defending the mage’s tower and I ended basically tanking the horde. The horde all wanted me dead for whatever reason, so the healers kept me alive while our DPS (myself included) dropped them. It was impressive. If only we’d won.

Oh wait, that’s right  – we did. In fact, of the top 15 honorable kills leaders, 14 were of the Alliance (and I was one of them – #3, actually). Once out of the battleground, I bought a Greater Inscription of the Gladiator and a Kharmaa’s Grace gemstone for my new PvP shoulders. Nice.

I logged in this afternoon, post 3.3.3, and turned my handful of honor marks from the battlegrounds into emblems that I could then use to earn honor. Unfortunately, they could only be collected in stacks of 10. Therefore, everyone was collecting 10 emblems and converting them one by one, over and over again. Of course, some dumb ass thought this collection of players was the perfect place to pull out a train set. Jerk.

I then queued for my first random battleground, landing in Arathi Basin.

Bad memories of the Eye of the Storm battleground match I was in came flooding back. Like that match, the Alliance team was way overmatched. We lost, big time, but I had the best round this time of anyone on my side. With 9 killing blows and 31 honorable kills, I was the leading killer for the Alliance. Of course, two paladins on the horde combined for 34 killing blows and 114 honorable kills, dwarfing anything I did. I helped kill them each twice, though – not important, but fun nonetheless. I only died three times this battle, versus the 11 I had in that earlier EotS match. One anecdote from this match was myself, heading up two other paladins, convincing the two killer Horde pallys I mentioned earlier to hesitate instead of charging in, and when at last they did we killed them both. It was satisfying and I got both killing blows. Bonus!

Today I opted to join a battle in the Eye of the Storm battleground, and failed miserably. Oh, I got in a battle, I just died a resounding 11 times, second worst on the Alliance. This is how I saw most of the battle. I’d res, run to a fight, and die. I was good for 52 honorable kills, but I couldn’t hold my own when I’d get ganged up on constantly. In fact, my entire group sucked. To wit:

This was actually how most of us saw the battle. We had no chance. Apparently the Horde on my battlegroup are way better then the Horde on my server.

In response to the overwhelming success of the Random Dungeon system, Blizzard is unveiling the Random Battleground system in the forthcoming patch 3.3.3. I’ve only partaken in Isle of Conquest from patch 3.2 and most recently Strand of the Ancients, but I would like to try some of the older ones. My observation however, is that the battlegrounds are – by large – empty There’s not a huge contingent of battleground instances running these days, at least not on my battlegroup. This new Random Battleground system could change that. With the ease of the Random Dungeon setup and streamlined PvP rewards, this could make battlegrounds a big thing like they used to be when they were first introduced. I hope so, and I’m interested in the influx of newcomers to battlegrounds like there were to dungeons. Like with the dungeon system, those newcomers would include the likes of me, so I’m looking forward to seeing if the tolerance that eventually developed among these new-age PUGs shows up in battlegrounds. You had to come to terms that some folks – like, say, me – weren’t experienced dungeon delvers, so the hard-core instance runs of the past are often left at the door for random dungeons and heroics. That makes for a lower-pressure environment, and that makes more people take part. That, to me, is the big bonus of these new systems. More people = more fun in an MMO.