Archive for the ‘Wintergrasp’ Category

The other day I was in a very offensive Wintergrasp defense. In this battle, we – the Alliance – were on defense but spent the whole battle on the attack. We quickly dropped the towers and began to choke the Horde off at the workshops. As you can see here, we were assaulting the western workshop when the battle ended. It was fun, what with the Horde being constantly on the run from the masses of Alliance heroes. Death to the Horde!

Here we see Ineveitable taking his pet Mistsabre out for a flight. How nice. Now if druids were supposed to be able to ride their land mount in flight form, that’d make this a boring shot. Instead, it makes Sights Seen. Sometimes glitches are more fun then features.

Ah, my raid. I’m so proud of ‘em.

What happened was that I was in Wintergrasp this morning to try out a new prot PvP spec. I’d built it not long after getting my subscription started back up, and had spent about an hour practicing my spell rotations on the hapless wildlife in Storm Peaks. I got to Wintergrasp right after the queue started (15 minutes before the match), and stayed until the match began. When it did, I noticed this little icon near the top of my name, like a little crown. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I let it go. As the battle wound down, I got a faux achievement from my Wintertime plug in. I was curious, but didn’t have time to look it up at the moment. When we won Wintertime gave me another shamchievement.  I congratulated the raid on the win, and came through in chat with the prefix [RL]. Raid leader? Oh, so that’s what the icon meant. The two notices from Wintertime were for leading a full raid and leading a defensive victory. Big deal.

I died five times early on (really out of practice), but was alive through the last half of the battle. I actually went the first 2/3rds of the fight before remembering to use my talented Hammer of Justice on the horde. Oops.

Well, I did nothing of note, and got the job via random dumb luck, but I can at least claim – in all honesty – to have lead a successful defense of Wintergrasp. I’ll just leave out the part about not knowing about it until the match was over.

That kinda ruins the moment.

Recently Gav dropped his Holy spec for a PvP Prot spec. The reasons are many, but chief among them are my dislike of healing’s stress and my desire to do better in Wintergrasp. However, it seems I may be wasting my time. Most of the time now, the Horde on my server hardly even contests Wintergrasp. Case in point: the other morning I took my new PvP Prot spec to Wintergrasp (after spending upwards of an hour leveling my one-handed axe skill) and was shocked to see everyone getting their butts kicked by a few random Horde. They had, it turned out, a Tenacity of more then 15. However, there seems to be very, very few of them. We estimated there were about six Horde total in Wintergrasp. With those paltry numbers they were easy enough to beat back, tenacity or no. It was to the point where I was recognizing the same Hordies over and over again. They were decimating our ranks early as we tried to go in small groups, but once we started hanging around in large numbers even a tenacity of x17 wasn’t that big a deal. They’d ride a vehicle up to the keep and 10-20 of us would decimate it. They actually got into the main courtyard while we were still disorganized early on, as you can see. Death to the Horde!

I had bought up some new Prot gear for Gav prior to the battle, including a Teldrassil Protector and Titan-Forged Bracers of Triumph. Since I’m not planning on using this spec for PvE, I’m stocking it up with Resilience. Hopefully this will keep my dumb butt alive longer.

Last night saw an interesting shift in Gavelier’s adventuring career. My guild leader made mention that we only had one healer in our 60+ members, so I opted to drop my prot spec for holy. I’d never actually healed before, but Gav was holy spec through his 20s, so it wasn’t a totally alien concept. So, with great anticipation, I went to Ironforge and respecced my prot to holy.

The first thing that struck me is that I knew next to nothing about the talents in the holy tree. I spent a good half hour just reading them and seeing how they would affect me. Once I was set on my talents, I spent another hour arranging them on my action bars for ease of use. Out went most of my damaging spells and in went healing powers. I moved Flash of Light and Holy Light to prominent positions on my main action bar, and put Holy Shock center stage. However, the spell sucked. I wondered if it was just my gear that was causing it to do only 519 healing/340 damage. I finally remembered I had to go train it, at which point it hit full stride.  I was scared to leave town, though, since I was effectively damage-neutered. What I needed was someone to heal. I logged for the night without firing even one of my new spells once.

Popping in this morning, I swapped back to ret to run some dailies. When I got back to Dalaran, I was ready to queue with the masses for Wintergrasp when I had an epiphany: Take Holy to WG! There’s allot of healing to be done there! And so it was.

My biggest problem was my severe lack of caster gear. I had only managed to secure some new glyphs, and that was it. I was hamstrung with less then 7k mana, which seemed way short. I held strong to my conviction, though, and went for it. Holy Shock became my primary healing spell, with Flash of Light during HS’s cool downs and Holy Light for big heals. I was following the front line when I noticed a death knight with under 1k HP. I fired off my Lay on Hands spell for them, setting them right. I also cleansed quite a few players, keeping them alive. In the end, I was the third most successful healer in the raid, having healed over 176k HP of damage. I also wasn’t on the leader board for overheals, meaning I wasn’t wasting my time or mana.

It was a fairly successful trial by fire, I felt. There was a big ‘yeah, healers!’ after the battle, so I felt good. Maybe I’ve found my niche at last.

In my latest Wintergrasp match tonight, I was again on defense. Allot of defensive battles for the Alliance on my server, to be honest. Anyway, it went haywire about ten minutes in. I spent the first 8-10 minutes on a northwestern cannon, and did fairly well. Around 10 minutes in, though, the Horde made their push, and broke down most of the western walls.

You can see where I marked my cannon, but the important parts are all of the red x’s. Those were parts of the fort that the Horde dropped. Yup, half of the fort was down. I’m not sure about the far eastern half, since I was so preoccupied with the west. Anyway, we won again, this time destroying their towers and cutting their attack short. The last tower fell as we were being swamped at the gate with mere minutes to go. I actually didn’t die, either, thanks to lots of healing spells and good luck. I went in as a retadin for a change, and enjoyed being a little killing machine again. I was happy to take on a siege engine, one-on-one, because they were easy, slow-moving prey to me. According to the game, I helped account for 178 kills this match. Hell yeah!

In respect to my prot spec, I bought a Titansteel Bonecrusher today, and spent about an hour or two leveling my one-handed mace skills. Hopefully that’ll up my prot DPS a little.

I was back in Wintergrasp today and had my ineptitude driven home. We won another close defensive battle by blockading the one broken wall to the inner section of the fort where the inner sanctum’s wall/door is. We’re getting good at that, it seems.  Anyway, what I was saying about my ineptitude was that afterwards, a couple people posted their recount stats. The leaders showed players with 13k+ total damage done. I checked mine (I recently switched to Recount instead of Skada), and I had done less then 1.2k. I also died three times. I guess that’s my answer then. I really can’t compete there any more. Keep in mind that I was prot again (I think I fit a better utility role that way), not ret, so my damage was down from that alone, when you factor in stats, talents, and gear. My only bright spots were holding my own against a swarm of Hordies on more then one occasion. Once, I was fighting an Orc, when a Blood Elf came in, another Orc, and finally someone’s pet (a Devilsaur, of all things) before I had to bubble and heal. The bubble wore off, and I was again assailed, this time by the first Orc, a Tauren, and that Devilsaur again, at which point I finally fell. Not bad holding their attention that long, but c’mon, is it really worth bragging about taking longer to die? I’m supposed to kill them, not take solace in being a difficult target. Anytime I went to the front lines I died (or nearly did) in seconds. A few times I was able to run back and heal, or use my Lay on Hands or bubble spells, but that meant I was occupied and not doing anything to help.

I mentioned filling a utility role when specced prot. That’s because I can use Avenger’s Shield, augmented with Shield of the Templar, to silence three foes at once at a distance. My Titan-forged Rune of Determination helped allot, cutting down on time I spent stunned. I guess if I’m satisfied not being a key part of the attack, I can keep coming back. I just can’t expect to be anything more then a utility player/distraction.

I hate Wintergrasp. I hate is sooo bad. Not because I keep dying, but because I can’t let it go. I joined a defensive battle today, this time going prot instead of ret. I died twice, killed about three people, and then… the game crashed. I was back at the desktop. We were being steamrolled at the time, and the Horde was already in the first front gate with just under 20 minutes to go. I logged back in, expecting to be in a Horde-infested fortress, but instead, I arrived in the game to my corpse. Once rezzed at the graveyard, I was in for a shock: there was under four minutes to go and we were holding! WTF?! I bolted to the front lines and we held those last couple minutes and won. Wow. I told everyone I was very impressed.

What now? I was going to give Wintergrasp up, but now… I’m not so sure. It’s like golf that way; I’ll have a terrible round and be ready to put my clubs on eBay, but there’ll be a good shot or two at the end that brings me back. It happens every time, and Wintergrasp seems the same. I’m elated that we won, but I’m torn on my conviction to leave WG and never look back. We’ll see what happens.

Today’s another big day in the adventures of Gavelier. I’m now able to be known to the world as Gavelier of Gnomeregan, as I’m now an Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan. I got to exalted status with the gnomes via the Draenei Argent Valiant dailies, actually, as the Draenei are now the only Alliance race I’m not exalted with. Of course, with exalted status comes mounts, so Gav finally has his Mechanostrider, as seen here.

Of course, since I’m now working on Leading the Cavalry, the achievement for 50 mounts, I bought all the available m-striders. That added up to almost 300g spent in a one stop (4x normal land mounts at 8g each – 32g – and 3x epic land mounts at 80g each – 240g – makes for 272g total). Fortunately, all the dailies I’m doing are making it easier for me to spend money on trivial things now. BTW, I’m now at 32 mounts, with six Elelks yet to earn and four more gryphons to buy. That would put my at 42, meaning I still need to find eight more somewhere. I really hate grinding rep with the Kurenai in Nagrand, but their Tabulks may be my best option, as there’s eight of ‘em.

In unrelated news, I’m about ready to swear off Wintergrasp. I’ve been really ineffective there lately, dying allot and not killing much of anyone. I actually resorted to healing in a recent match because no one would die for me. Geez, and I was doing so well for a while. What gives? I can only imagine that allot of other players have gear from Ulduar now, putting me even further behind the curve, with that Argent Tournament dungeon opening up soon to seal my fate. Oh, that and the Horde gets a ton of Tenacity every stupid match. That’s just not fair for me, since I’m already at a disadvantage by not running dungeons or raids. Like I said, I may just swear off Wintergrasp. It’s not everyone else’s problem, it’s mine, so I may just give it up rather then fight it.

Lastly, tonight I re-ran Scarlet Monastery: Armory (for a Scarlet Tabard) and Stratholme: Undead (for Rivendare’s Deathcharger), and came up empty on both counts. Dammit.

I rode to battle in Wintergrasp again today, for the first time in quite a while. Anyway, I started the raid, but was a lousy leader as far as getting people organized, so I willingly passed the reigns to another player at the behest of one Measjajabink.  The battle started, and it took me a few minutes to get ranked up to make catapults. My first one was destroyed, but I survived thanks to my bubble. A funny anecdote involves an undead rogue attempting to kill me, but he gets killed himself just via my Retribution Aura (he attacked me while already fairly hurt).

I finally earned enough kills to make Siege Engines, and after I made my first, Measjajabink recommended I get out of it and make another. I soon began a Siege Engine production line, churning out one after another. Thanks to this endless supply of Siege Engines, we took the keep with 12 minutes to spare. Afterwards, a number of people thanked me, including Meas. I felt that, while it was rather boring, it helped us win and that’s what mattered. Down with the Horde!