Archive for the ‘PvP’ Category

Lug, Gav and WG

I’m back at last with a non-Cataclysm-related post. I wanted to catch folks up on where my characters are.

LugAndPig29 Lug and Pig are now level 29. I’m almost to my current goal, level 30! Lug still has those heirloom shoulders so leveling hasn’t been real bad. He’s been in the Hillsbrad Foothills allot lately, taking a break from Thousand Needles. That place is not allot of fun to me.

WGYay Gav was in Wintergrasp again today. I did ok, dying twice – once one-on-one to an Orc rogue, which never should have happened except that I was 90% asleep at the time. I had him dead to rights and couldn’t finish him off. Dammit. While running back after that death, WoW froze and crashed. When I logged back in, the battle was down to 45 seconds and everyone was just chilling in the courtyard. WTF happened to the Horde? No one was fighting, and I had been standing in one of the side areas of the fortress when my game froze and came back to find myself alive. Weird.

BlackMechanoStriderWith the honor I earned in WG, I went to Stormwind and bought a mount I’ve wanted for a long, long time – a Black Battlestrider. I wanted one the first time I saw one but they used to cost Battleground tokens. No more! A mere 50k honor and it’s mine. Gav’s happy now.

Picking up a Pug

I ran Azjol’ Nerub tonight with a decent PUG, but the final boss gave us trouble. At one point our tank was dying and the healer (a dwarf priest) was struggling to keep up with the damage, so I pitched in with my Flash of Light spell. On another occasion, after a wave of mobs in that battle, our DPS warrior was down to 20% health. Our healer was busy doing who-knows-what (he seemed to think that healing the tank was his only job) so I was going to hit the warrior with a Sacred Shield and then a Flash of Light, but then the boss popped back up. With no time left, I fired off my Lay on Hands spell to put the warrior right. We then finished off the boss as I activated Avenging Wrath to lay the ‘smack down’, as they say.

This was after a Wintergrasp match where I notched a slew of kills and only died once. With a rather balanced match, the Horde had little to no tenacity, making the battles easier. The other day I was in Wintergrasp to see about buying some stuff with my Stone Keeper’s Shards when I was jumped by a Tauren shaman. He hit me with Thunderstorm and caught me off guard. When I finally realized what was happening, I was down to 40% health. Fortunately, I was still on my gryphon so I flew away to heal. When I got back, he was pulling the same trick on a few other players. I landed behind him, and it was Hammer of Justice, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath, game over. Seriously, it was one of those kills where it was over before the stun wore off. I hate those when I’m on the receiving end, but proud when I pull it off. This after whopping that Orc warrior in WG the other day. I think I can somewhat hold my own one-on-one with an average-skill or lower PvP player these days. Not bad, says I.

Oh yeah, and that PUG I mentioned at the start? I got a Pug for that PUG, thanks to an achievement. Nice!

Not Quite Noble, but Very Deadly

I just spent three and half hours playing WoW, and still didn’t accomplish what I set out to do. My goal was to complete the Noblegarden meta, but I came up one Blushing Bride short. I thought that Dressed for the Occasion was needed for the meta, so I spent two-plus hours farming eggs around Kharanos, outside Ironforge. When I finally figured out it wasn’t needed, I’d gotten 275 chocolates, two white tux shirts, a pair of black tux pants, three spring circlets, four spring flowers, three blossoming branches and five spring robes, but zero elegant dresses. I had found my spring rabbit’s foot earlier, so I got that achievement, and I met some random dwarf priest out in Un’Goro Crater and we helped each other get hard boiled.

I then wandered back into Dalaran, and opted to go to Wintergrasp and see about maybe joining a Vault of Archavon raid. I didn’t, but while I was sitting peacefully in Wintergrasp Fortress’ inner sanctum, I was jumped by an Orc warrior. He got me pretty beat up, but I got to the transporter and  escaped outside the inner room to heal. I buffed myself up and then headed back in to face him one-on-one in a fair match. He was pounding on an AFK dwarven hunter, so I hit him with Hammer of Justice and promptly beat him down. Yes! The dwarf gave me a high five as he got back to his keys while I was finishing the Orc. With healing spells, a good stun, and strong melee powers (plus the ever-popular bubble), some days it’s good to be a paladin.

Return to Wintergrasp

Gundrak-Group

This morning was rather boring. I ran three heroics – Oculus, Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom and Gundrak. The Oculus run was interesting since there was no synergy in our group – everyone was kind of doing their own thing, but it came together to make a win. In Ahn’Kahet, I nabbed the achievement Volazj’s Quick Demise for my troubles. In Gundrak, we stormed the place and were done in no time. Then the most interesting part of my morning happened: I went to Wintergrasp.

For the first time in quite a while, I queued up for a Wintergrasp match. The battle saw the Alliance with a near full raid while the Horde attack consisted of – no lie! – less then 10 players.  They wound up with Tenacity x20, which made things harder. I was getting crit for 15k a shot! We eventually got our act together and moved in large packs since the Horde players weren’t going in groups. I don’t care how much tenacity you have – 10 on 1 is bad odds. Or good odds. Depends on which side your on.

In any case, our battle took around 10 minutes, but that’s all I needed to die four times. It was odd, really, that most of the Horde were Blood Elf paladins. They had like one warlock and a warrior, and then a handful of Blood Elf pallys. One in particular was really vicious, accounting for half of my deaths and a ton of other player kills. Still, even he folded under our massive population advantage. Death to the Horde! lol

Alterac Valley, PvE?

AV-Death

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!

Night of the Battlegrounds

 IoC1 ABAttackSotA2 

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.

Fury of the Storm

EotSZapp 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.

EotSView

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.

Rocking the Strand

SotABoats

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.

Alterac Valley Attack

AV1

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.

Eye of the Tiger in the Eye of the Storm

EotSWin

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.

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