Archive for the ‘PvP’ Category

Back at it Again

Would you believe it? I’m playing WoW again. Damned game. So, what am I up to?

WoW 2012-04-19 22-29-30-57

For one thing, I’m toying with the Mists of Pandaria beta. Cool so far, but anything other then the new Pandaran areas crash on me.

Wow-64 2012-04-25 04-44-27-03

I’m also playing allot of pvp. Recently I’ve had a good run, with (I believe) my first win in Arathi Basin – which  I also happened to film, so I have record – and back-to-back wins in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp. The AB match was one of my best. I was lethal and only died once, and that was from falling off a ledge near the lumber mill to my doom.

Wow-64 2012-04-27 10-11-02-57

I was in Tol Barad the other morning, and with us on defense is wasn’t all that hard. I died three times but we won handily. One of the group called for us all to rush to Wintergrasp, and who am I to say no to that? I love Wintergrasp.

Wow-64 2012-04-27 10-41-56-55

We won that handily, too. There were only about five of us there total but the dumb group leader I was with insisted I had invite privileges (which I didn’t) so I couldn’t group with the rest of the bunch. I died once when I got ganged up on in the fort and another time to a tough Blood Elf pally, but I respawned quickly right nearby so I came back and killed her while she fought an ally.

So, I’m playing WoW now and  again. You can also go to Chaos is Gaming and read an article on me introducing a friend of mine to the game. Later!

Peaking in Twin Peaks

TP_Buff

It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a better picture from my recent Twin Peaks match. I went Holy and holy crap did I have a hell of a time.

I was credited with the third most honorable kills and was a healing beast.I don’t have great gear or skill but for whatever reason I keeping folks ticking throughout the fight. It got to the point where I was the primary target of the Horde. They’d blitz past the DPS and tank to try and kill me. At one point I had over half their team (six total) beating on me in a corner of our base. I didn’t really care since that was six less trying to win the match. I held out for over a minute there before dying. My conclusion? We were up against sucky Horde players. It was as if they died if we so much as sneezed on them. My holy shock was taking sizeable chunks off of their health bars, which was nice. It’s not going to happen very often, but it was nice to see – even just this once.

Best of all, we won the match 2-0 when time ran out. Hell yeah!

Fireworks Galore

Happy4th

Happy belated 4th of July, everyone. I slept thought most of the holiday because I’m a lazy dumbass, but I got up in time to see some fireworks in Stormwind this morning. Later I saw more fireworks, this time in Tol Barad.

TB_Achiev

I didn’t do great, as usual, but I got an achievement. We were on defense and were within a second or so of saving the match. The Horde had 2 building and was converting a third (Slagworks) and we were racing to convert Ironclad Garrison. We were literally just on the cusp of pulling control away from them – seriously, mere seconds – and they grabbed Slags and won. Dammit.

One of my guildies, Luciditii invited me to go run a heroic, and I agreed. I’d not run a Cataclysm heroic yet so I didn’t know how I’d fare. Another guild mate, Drannen joined as well so it was officially a guild run. Drannen (an elemental shaman) had pumped his DPS up and was eager to put his 10-14k to use, and I was eager to see it. Luciditii (resto shaman) came as heals, and I was my usual ret spec. It was, as I said, a learning experience to see if I was capable of running a heroic. Let’s see how it went.

StC_Group

Pâmëløt (an arcane mage) and Jaconsus (a prot warrior) rounded out the group. We cruised up to Corborus who wiped us once. I died because I got hit when he resurfaced which made me feel kinda dumb. Anyway, we killed him on try #2. I also died on Slashhide but the group took him out. Yay for teamwork!

StC_Ozruk

This is where it got interesting. We took time to prepare for Ozruk so I read up on his moves in the dungeon journal. We did ok for a while, but back luck got our tank killed, and soon it was down to Drannen and I to kill him. Yup, two DPS against a boss. The funny part is that we were doing pretty well. I kept myself relatively healed, Drannen pitched in, and with me dodging and striking I swear we could have pulled it off if I hadn’t backed into a second group of mobs. That turned out to be too much and I died. Try #2 was a win and we moved on.

StC_Journal

Our first assault on Azil didn’t go so well/ Between getting overwhelmed by adds, Luciditii’s  mouse going AWOL, and  those accursed Seismic Shards, we wiped. While waiting for Luciditii to find a new mouse I was back in the dungeon journal. Eventually I got bored and called out, “Luci! Luci, you better get back here, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!” It got a chuckle from Pâmëløt, anyway.

StC_WeWin

Round two, as in the last post-wipe battles was a rousing success. I ultimately didn’t get what I really wanted (a chaos orb). Jaconsus and I both rolled need and he got it.  Damn. I guess I’ll have to run a few more to make my goggles. In any case it was a good time and I look forward to doing it again sometime. Thanks guys for taking me!

PvP Mania

AV_Start

It’s been PvP Mania lately, I guess. I went to Tol Barad but we lost that in record time so we’re not going to discuss that. Instead, let’s talk about my recent Alterac Valley match. I arrived and buffed up, including a Flask of Draconic Mind. After the match started I noticed something I’d not noticed in prior battles here.

AV_HordeCrossing

Here you can (sort of) see the Horde passing us on the far side of the valley. It was kind of interesting, the symmetry. When my group arrived on the far side, we cleared out around the Horde’s boss’s building while the rest of our team gobbled up capture sites. Finally we began the assault.

AV_V

I did my job and we won again. Yeah! Thanks to being on the front lines I accrued the most honorable kills on my faction and we dominated the match.

Later on, my guild hit level 19, so now we’ve got Honorable Mention, which should help me in the battlegrounds.  Not a bad night.

Patch 4.2 and PvP Madness

Chaos

The first news from Gav’s recent exploits is that patch 4.2’s new quests and quest hubs are fun. Some are total chaos,

TP_Run

Other then that it’s been PvP for me. I went ret to Twin Peaks and while I died a few times we won, 3-0. That was a nice change.

TB_Skelly

In contrast, it was a blood bath in Tol Barad, as you can see.

TB_Dammit2

TB_Dammit

I was obviously a casualty. A repeat casualty. Dammit. We kept getting beat and killed and someone commented that we could really use some heals.

Uh oh. Can it be?

HolyGav

Yup, it’s the rebirth of the holy-s***-adin! I spent over a thousand gold on gear and glyphs, respecced my prot spec, and now I’m ready to heal! First up, this week’s Call to Arms, Alterac Valley.

AV_HolyGav

Did  I know what I was doing? Hell no! Did I let that stop me? Hell no!! I wound up 2nd on our team in heals and we won. Yay! The bad part is that over 50% of my heals were done to myself. In the 2nd half of the battle I got caught fighting a never-ending swarm of NPCs and didn’t have much of a chance to heal anyone else. I caught a Tauren warrior out by himself, and with some help brought him down, too. Not a bad start. We’ll see how it holds up to Tol Barad later.

Ahune and My Big Mouth

SumFF_Ahune

I logged into the game last night for some quick questing and auction-monitoring and my guild asked me to pitch in on a Summer Fire Festival boss run. Ahune was being a pain in the ass so they brought me along for some extra DPS. We did it, but I almost died three times. Twice from overdrawing those water/air elementals and once after getting launched sky-high while badly hurt (thanks, bubble!). However I more then made up for my lack of death there by going to Tol Barad.

TB_Ded1

TB_Ded2

TB_Ded3

Do you notice a trend in the above pictures? Yes, I’m the only one from my side in any of them. I’m not sure why I only caught pictures of me on my own because I spent a good deal of time in large groups and got a good number of kills but ultimately we lost again and I died something like eight times.

Think about this: ever since I said that my server’s Horde sucked at Tol Barad they’ve beat my ass time and again. That’ll teach me to open my mouth!

The Tale of Death

TB_lookouts

This is a bloody post of death and murder. Well, attempted murder anyways. As you can see above, I returned to Tol Barad, but it was an ill-fated venture. We lost, I died, and it wasn’t allot of fun. I did get one good thing out of it, though.

TB_allstar

Hey now, you’re an All-Star, go… slay.. ahem (I hate that song, btw). Yeah, so I got that achievement. It was only a notch on my belt of death this day.

Ded_1freefall

Here I am, dead in Stranglethorn Vale of all places. I almost don’t want to tell anyone how I died here, but here it goes.  I was doing archeology and flying around STV. There were three in the STV zones and after doing the northern two I flew to Gurubashi Arena for the third one. Can you see it? Me, flying into the arena and getting PvP’d to death? Well, that’s not what happened. What did happen was I was flying in above the trees and got to where I wanted to start – and promptly dismounted. Yes, I dismounted for whatever reason, some 100+ feet in the air. I was so stunned at my stupidity that I forgot to bubble to survive. I was stared, dumbfounded. I have no idea what prompted me to dismount. I’m shamed by my stupidity.

Ded_2IFPVP

Now I’m sitting, watching over my corpse in Ironforge. Yup, I died in two places I shouldn’t die. Here I tried to fend off a Tauren paladin trying to attack the Midsummer Festival fire. He was originally just healing a goblin hunter, but once I attacked (with a dwarven priest behind me two ran away after buffing me) and our back-and-forth took us from the Hall of Explorers through Tinker Town to the entrance to the Deep Run Tram, back to Hall of Explorers, and finally headed towards  the Military District before I finally fell. I was working on a razors edge with my health most of the  fight but the moo-cow wasn’t. Looking at Recount afterwards showed that he was much, much more efficient then me. Way more standard hits, more crusader strikes, and he took less damage overall. He was a retadin too, but a much better, way more geared one then I. Dammit.

This wasn’t the most rewarding day.

Flatlining in Arathi Basin

Dying again in Arathi Basin

I’m so sick of Arathi Basin. It and Eye of the Storm are my two least favorite PvP battlegrounds. I’d rather wind up in Isle of Conquest, which I also don’t really like these days. I recently hopped into an AB battle for the weekly battleground and had a poor match. I had the third most honorable kills for the Alliance (that modifier is important, more in a minute), but died four times and only got 2 killing blows in under 19 minutes.  Whereas I had 16 HKs, over half of the Horde had 50+. The most killing blows on our side was 4, while three of the Horde had more then 10. Part of it is my lack of gear, but the big part is my dearth of skill. I’m not a raider so I use PvP as my aggressive outlet but the Horde on my battlegroup (not my server, so much, but the battlegroup as a whole) are really good. Either that or the Alliance on my battlegroup are really lousy. It’s frustrating.

I don’t do nearly this badly in Tol Barad, nor was Wintergrasp ever this hard. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Bad, Bad Tol Barad

TB_Chaos

Either Tol Barad has gotten easier since launch, or the Horde on my server still sucks like they did during the heyday of Lake Wintergrasp. I’ve been in two more TB battles since my win, and the first we nearly won and the second (today) we dominated. I didn’t contribute a ton to today’s battle for whatever reason but we did win. Oddly, I’ve never fought in a defensive match, so maybe it’s more even then it looks.

I’ve been working around the clock on my engineering and finally maxed it the other day. Today I spent about half an hour flying around Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge, gathering mithril. I came back with 106 pieces, some of which I smelted before auctioning and some I didn’t. I’m running on the assumption that established folks want to power-level a profession and don’t want to mine ore themselves, so I’m providing some for them. My thorium auctions sold in no time, so I’m trying it with mithril now.

Other then that it’s been quiet lately. I’ll check back in if anything interesting happens.

Engineering (and) a Win

EleHunt

I spent a good hour or so in Uldum this morning hunting for Elementium in Uldum.  I came back with over 100 ore, enough for five of the hard stuff. I even came back with a bar of Pyrium and a few gems, which was a nice bonus. I spent another half hour or so working on my engineering skill (which is why I was hunting Elementium). It finally dawned on me that I had been hoarding money (only about 2k gold, but still) towards nothing so I decided to put a chunk of it towards power-leveling engineering.  I made a Volatile Thunderstick, a Finely-Tuned Throat Needler and a handful of Heat-Treated Spinning Lures, upping my skill to 515. It cost me over a thousand gold but I wasn’t using it anyway.

After that, I noticed that a battle had broken out, so I lent my axe to the cause.

TB_ToBattle

For Tol Barad! I joined shortly after the battle broke out this time so I was an active participant. Almost too active. At one point I fought an Orc death knight and a Troll hunter for over a minute before I finally fell. They must have taken notice because the Horde would swarm me in team battles over and over, but rarely killed me thanks to timely healing and fighting by me and some serious help from my allies.

TB_Ready

I was swarmed over and over! It got frustrating, being no.1 target but since half of the time I lived (yes, only 50% of the time) I went with it. I helped kill quite a few Hordies, but got no honorable kills of my own. Dammit. I was too busy tanking them all to kill anyone, I guess. Thankfully it all turned out worth it.

TB_Win1

Yes, we won. Yay! I like to think that my keeping the Horde busy was key to the win, but in reality it was more likely that I didn’t greatly impact the battle either way. In any case, I’ve won my first battle, and you know I’ll be back.

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