Cassandri roars with bestial vigor!

I’ve been slaughtered by Horde in the most deserted parts of Azeroth. I got killed many times while working on Loremaster. I think I rage quit when I ran around one of those giant red hills in the Badlands looking for a certain type of creature only to find… a level 80 Undead Warlock. The Badlands must be the most deserted territory in the game. Deserted, except for me, and some Warlock determined to kill me.

Unfortunately I don’t see one-on-one PVP as some kind of honorable challenge. I see it as a waste of time. Upon being attacked – I’m almost never the aggressor – I can’t help but think “why did you hurt me?!”. My neighbors are strangers to me, but if one of them walked up to me and slapped me on the sidewalk outside my gate I think I’d feel about the same.

My state of mind while I’m playing World of Warcraft is just not suited to PVP. Call me a care-bear, a pacifist or a big fluffy marshmallow.

The strange thing is, if I’m particularly pissed off (I’m thinking back to an incident when I had been desperate to tag mobs for a Sons of Hodir quest early in the expansion) and a member of the Horde gives me a second look (or, in this case, drops a couple totems nearby) … I tend to play aggressively.

And I also tend to win.

On Monday night everything was going wrong. I was feeling frustrated and annoyed and put-upon.  I announced over Vent, as we were winding up raid for the night, “I want to go and kill some Horde. And I really don’t care right now if I live or die.”

I was in the right state of mind for PVP. After a six month absence from the battlegrounds, I was ready to return.

I knew that a section of raiders in my guild enjoy the occasional battleground or arena skirmish together but I had never been tempted to join them before. But on Monday night those raiders easily convinced me to stay up past my bed time in order to get in a bit of PVP.

Raiding is fun but raiding with friends is really fun. So I don’t know why I was so surprised to discover that BG-ing alone is fun but BG-ing with friends is really fun too.*

We could only group as a party of 5, which was a shame because there was really a group of about 8 who wanted to participate. Our group of 5 consisted of me (Disc Priest) and another Disc Priest, a Enhance Shaman and a couple Ret Paladins.

The first queue, Warsong Gulch, was a bit of a throw away because I’d inadvertently stuffed up the queue while I ran to the bank to mangle together something resembling a PVP set. I wish I had a pocket mentor to sift through my bank and tell me what’s worth keeping from my PVE treasure chest. I didn’t. So I ended up just putting on my 3.2 Equipment Manager set and dumping everything else except my dagger in the bank.

Once we’d managed to get out of Warsong Gulch before the graveyard camping became intolerable (2/0 in their favor), we ended up in Arathi Basin. Surely, this is a map that we could really contribute to as a group of 5?!

Unfortunately I think we probably caused a bit more harm than good. We lost that Arathi Basin, but at least it was a close call. We also did our best to recruit a Gnome Warlock that we stumbled across at the Lumber Mill – he wasn’t an excellent PVPer, but we’re getting desperate – so we might have been somewhat distracted.

As a group we never really went off 5 vs The Horde, it was really more like 7 vs The Horde because we tended to move as a consolidated group this meant that we had stragglers that followed us. Or perhaps they were following the healers. Or perhaps they were thinking like fish and we appeared to be the quick decision makers. I’m not quite sure.

We took the Blacksmith right off the bat to the war cry of Heroism. Then we fumbled. Five is way too many to defend a node and as a group we wanted to stick together. Even though sticking together I think probably wasn’t helping the Alliance side all that much.

If, as a group of 5, we queue more and more battlegrounds together perhaps we’ll eventually figure out how to play as one entity. But for that night, we either slaughtered our opponents as a giant, undefeated mob, or weakened our team by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

We went on to play an Isle of Conquest map and then finally an Alterac Valley. We won both. The IoC match was a near thing and the rest of my party were giving me percentage updates on the Horde boss’s health while the Horde were simultaneously driving the last remaining Alliance defenders (me included) back to the graveyard. Horde got into our Keep long before we were able to drive down the Horde Keep doors, but I think they paused to farm some honor kills. I can’t see how else we ended up winning.

Alterac Valley was also very enjoyable. As a group we took and held Tower Point. The match was drawn out and somehow most of the participants, Horde and Alliance, ended up fighting over the southern most flag at Frostwolf Graveyard. It was chaotic, but ultimately we managed to wear down their reinforcements and still quickly kill off Drek’Thar.

I ended the night, half past midnight, much happier than when I had logged in. Battlegrounds as a stress reliever. It totally worked.

***

On a side note, it worries me that my initial experiences in Battlegrounds was almost always with strangers, queuing via a Battleground Master in a capital city. In other words, I played the PVP side of the game essentially on my own. And I didn’t find it very much fun.

I first ran dungeons like the Deadmines mostly with friends, perhaps with just one stranger in the party. And I’ve always loved PVE and cherished the PVE teamwork mentality. And I found it very fun.

Perhaps the Dungeon Finder is breeding new players whose first experience of PVE content is with strangers and they might not find it very fun at all?

Bizzul's Demise: Noxn (as Lipstick) gets the better of a fellow guildie

It’s almost Christmas and if you’re anything like me you’re way too busy to squeeze in much time playing World of Warcraft. So it’s just a very short post today, featuring two videos, but I think you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.

Noxn, an Undead Shadow Priest (who also plays a Dwarf Shadow Priest and Blood Elf Death Knight) on Mannoroth, has created two great World PVP videos. In the first video he griefs a guild member as his Alliance Shadow Priest. Unfortunately the guild member has no idea that Lipstick is Noxn and the guild chat included in the video is priceless. In the second he stalks a Night Elf Druid with a bounty on his head.

Video 1 – Bizzul’s Demise

Download Bizzul’s Demise by Noxn from Filefront

From Noxn’s blog – The 8 Steps to Making Friends on WoW:

Step 1: Don’t be a downy when it comes to PvP.
Step 2: Have an 80 character on the opposite faction.
Step 3: Double box your main and your opposite-faction alt.
Step 4: Pay attention to guild chat and spam your “o” tab, figure out where people in your guild are and what they are doing.
Step 5: Find someone in an open PvP area.
Step 6: Eliminate them swiftly.
Step 7: Listen to them cry about it in guild chat, not knowing it’s you.
Step 8: Make a video out of it.

Video 2 – Furtastic‘s Demise

Download Furtastic’s Demise by Noxn from Filefront

When Furtastic, a Night Elf Druid, posted a message on the Mannoroth forums to say that he would kill anyone who dared attack him, he inadvertently put a bounty on his own head. The first reply said succinctly:

I guess Noxn took up the challenge. And this video is even more fun than the first because, well, Noxn describes it best:

To scout him out, I stuck to my strengths: manipulation and lying. Unfortunately, not everything went as I had originally planned, but they were pretty close.

By the way, the Death Knight in the video is Noxn (Pidgen) as are all the other various Alliance characters that conveniently strike up conversation with Furtastic throughout the video. Noxn is everywhere!

30 seconds til the battle starts!

This story doesn’t start in a Battleground. It starts in a PuG run of Old Kingdom. I was the last member to join. Skimming over the other party member names I noticed that we had one Paladin from our server’s number #1 raiding guild. Prot? Holy? Ret? I hovered over their frame in VuhDo to check out their mana/heath and read this instead:

Level 80 Paladin
Bad DK Alt of <Gigantor>

This struck me as quite amusing. Sure it’s funny to have a guild rank called “Bad DK Alt” but it’s even funnier to stick one of your Paladins on this rank. And it does seem like every player has a Death Knight Alt ready for some VoA action if you even mention that you’re short on DPS. They’ve logged off to change characters before you can say “wait! we already have 5 in the raid”.

In the Burning Crusade my guild had a special rank called “God of Nightbane” purely to humor one of our Warlocks who demanded to be the one to summon Nightbane whenever we ran Karazhan. It wasn’t the lowest rank in the guild, but it was close. And it was definitely lower than Member rank. And it didn’t include any privileges – you couldn’t even type in Guild chat.

When I joined my current guild the lowest guild rank was “FIRE STARTER”. Eventually I got the full story out of one of the long term members. The rank had been so named for a guild member who lost central heating during a raid and had to AFK to “start a fire”. Perhaps this is a legitimate reason to make your raid wait in some parts of the world but when you’re part of a predominantly Australian/New Zealand raiding guild during the height of summer (in other words, sitting at their computer in their swimmers with a fan on) the rest of us think it’s pretty darn strange.

This rank was renamed to “Special Mage” not long after I joined. Anyone who had a tantrum got demoted down to this rank. And yes, usually it was the Mages having hissy fits. Oh how I wanted to be granted this rank. I was eventually demoted down (after much begging) only to discover that Special Mages don’t get to repair using Guild Bank funds. Shame that.

Back to the story. With VuhDo, if they’re in my raid and in range, I can see their guild rank. That includes Battlegrounds. Yes, that’s right. This is now my favourite Battleground preparation game. While you’re buffing, I’m scrolling over my frames.

Who has the most bizarre, non-sensical or comical Guild Rank/Guild Name in the group?

I don’t think I’ve found anything quite as amusing as that Paladin on Bad DK Alt rank. And some rank titles are downright confusing – punishment or reward? I did once ask a Mage on the rank of “Audi TT” if that was a position of power in his guild, but he didn’t reply.

Here are some of my favourites:

Mercenaries for hire?

Yup, he won himself a healer for that AB match

Full of win: A strange mage name, a strange guild rank, and an awesome guild name

Hey! I promise this guy is NOT affliated in any way with www.hotsdots.com

Mages and their beverages...

Craaaaazy

I guess he's not the first person to aspire to be Britney

Madsnakelol. LOL. I just like the character name.

Anti patch 3.2.0? What do you think?

Ah, I thought this position was already taken?

We are young! Heartache to heartache...

Now this is a rank every raiding guild needs! Keep those teens in line!

Only a Gnome Warrior would consider Bladestorm "cute"

Read that one again. Slowly. Is this one for real?

* Myer is the name of a chain of department stores in Australia.

A tower is left undefended by the enemy. I can do nothing.

I’m going through a phase of Battleground discontent. Playing Discipline is fun. But I’m certainly not a one-man-killing-machine. More and more often I watch my map, stuck “defending” a node on my own. Of course, I can’t really defend it on my own, I can only hope to scare off attackers who assume that my back is being guarded by a stealthed Rogue.

And I watch as a single Alliance mounts up and takes to the road picking off unsuspecting passerbys. You know the type. I’ve started to think of them as Lone Rangers. They can operate independently. They rarely stay with the group.

They can lead an attack. As a healer, I can only follow.

Who is mostly likely to be the Lone Ranger in your battleground? Forever riding off into the sunset with just his trusty horse as his companion?

• Paladins
• Druids (well, the ones that switch between all the forms and can deal a lot of damage… so not the Tree Form ones)
• Death Knights
• and these days even Warlocks

Notice that these are the classes that can deal quite a lot of damage while regenerating their own health or healing? These players don’t need other players to run around behind them healing them or helping them kill their target. Sure it will speed things up. But one on one, playing aggressively, they will usually come out on top.

As a healer, it doesn’t matter if I can spot the weak points in the enemy’s defense. Sure, I can point them out in battleground chat, and I always usually do, but I can’t run off and attack.

And when I get so frustrated that I do just run off on my own, it always goes badly. I can draw out combat with one other player for a good long time (assuming they are light on the stuns) but I won’t be able to kill them. That is, I won’t be able to kill them before help arrives. By then the element of surprise is well and truly gone and you’ve just highlighted to your enemy the weak point in their defense.

As a healer, I’m of best use to the group when I’m actually, well, healing. Not defending a node on my own. So often I’m lumped up with 90% of my team while we all attack one point. Even though I can see that we’re going to lose our other 2 nodes while we capture one. I can wish that 3 or 4 of our offense would break away and head back to defend our nodes. But I can’t make that happen. If I get truly frustrated, I’ll break away… and then remember I’m not a Lone Ranger.

I think this problem was hammered home in a Eye of the Storm match. I was stuck at Fel Rever Ruins with a Death Knight that I was pretty sure was AFK. They had parked their butt at the node closest to the graveyard. But I was still grateful. Just having another person next to me might deter the enemy from attacking. However as time went on, and we were losing, I could see that the Mage Tower, under Horde control, was apparently undefended. And most of the participants were squabbling over at the Blood Elf Tower.

So I suggested several times that we should try to capture MT over chat, both /battleground and, unsuccessfully, via /say to the Death Knight next to me.

Minutes go past. And I figure, fuck it. That AFK Death Knight can defend on their own. And I mount up and rush over that bridge. And who do I find single handedly trying to take on a Druid?

Another Priest. Another Discipline Priest at that.

[Battleground][Cassandri]Help MT need dpw

That’s meant to read “dps” but it’s bloody hard to type properly when you’re under attack.

The Druid wears us down and our cavalry never arrives. Within minutes I’m back to try my luck again. And so is the other Priest. Screw healing. I’m Smiting and Penancing my ass off. I think we actually did kill the Druid. Didn’t cap the tower though. But that Priest and I were buddies for the rest of the match.

Is that smart? To have two of your healing Priests trying to DPS their opponents side by side, far away from the rest of the group, keeping all the golden glowing goodness to ourselves? I don’t think so either.

I’m left pondering my place, as a healer, in Battlegrounds. I don’t feel that it is my job to defend a node. Certainly not on my own. But I can’t initiate an attack and expect to win. The best battlegrounds that I’ve played have been where I’ve, through chance, hooked up with a partner that can dish out the hurt.

As time goes on, and I become even more discontent with Battlegrounds, I’m becoming more active in my quest to find a partner. Sometimes I’ll just flat out ask in Battleground chat at the start of the match for a partner. This seems crazy, I usually join the queue to join a battleground because it’s one of the few activities at level 80 that doesn’t require you to organise a party beforehand.

Mr Lone Ranger… can I join you? Ride your coat-tails?

Holding Snowfall Graveyard is important, especially at the beginning of the game.

I’m no expert at Alterac Valley (AV) strategy. But I think it’s time I shared some small, but critical, slivers of  knowledge that I’ve learned over time. These are the things I wish someone else had told me when I first queued Alterac Valley as a total noob.

Master these concepts and you’ll no longer be confused by the strange, and often contradictory, advice provided by the “helpful” people in your battlegroup raid.

Oh yeah, this is for the Alliance. I don’t know much about how to AV as Horde, I only know how they beat us.

1. Don’t Leave Until the Tower Goes Up In Flames

Trust me: this type of fire is good!

If you, and 5 others, run into a tower (say Iceblood Tower, which starts out under Horde control) and it has a Horde looking flag you can click on that flag to “cap” it for the Alliance. Doing so turns it into a contested state. It’ll go half-blue on your map.

If you run away with those 5 players, a sole Horde player can sneak up behind you and click the same flag to win it back immediately. You’ve just completely wasted your time as have the 5 others with you. And backtracking isn’t fun at all, is it?

You need to hold the contested tower for a couple minutes. It will burn all around you when you’re successful. Only then is it yours (well, technically it’s neutralised, but the Horde still lost it). And it’ll stay that way for the duration of the game. The fire doesn’t hurt. So stick around.

2. Drek’thar isn’t just an Elite. He’s an Elite with Friends.

Those 2 medium sized dudes on his left and right are *optional*

He’s a big, ugly green Orc wearing a blindfold. He’s an Elite. He has wolves and he has generals. He probably kisses Thrall’s toes when he goes on annual leave.

If you pull Drek’thar (accidentally or on purpose) while he has his mates with him usually one of two things happen:

1. Some plate wearer does their best to tank all the Elites and doesn’t survive the first whirlwind (thank you for trying, though)
2. Nobody tanks Drek’s friends and they happily eat your healers’ faces (the people trying to help you)

See how neither option kills Drek’thar?

Those Elite generals will simply disappear if your team successfully captures and burns down the East and West Frostwolf Towers thus removing them from Horde control. Personally, I think the Elite Generals should bloody well stand in their respective towers (I would have made the connection about a year ago: Tower = Elite General) but whatever.

3. Zerging Drek’thar Works. If the Horde let you.

I.e. hardly ever.

Zerging means your entire team just rides, hellbent for leather, all the way south to the stone cave where Drek’thar lives. Sure an Alliance player might click a flag here and there, but nobody will actually stick around and try and defend the towers.

A typical zerg group only stops to capture:

1. the East and West Frostwolf Towers and waiting until they have been won
2. the Frostwolf Relief Hut graveyard (just in case the first attack on Drek fails, thus significantly shortening the run back for the next attempt)

Waiting til you win the East and West Frostwolf Towers removes some of Drek’s Elite friends (see item #2), thus significantly increasing your chances of success.

Usually this strategy doesn’t work because a small group of Horde players can pick off a significant portion of your raid group while you ride south, take back all their towers, leave you with no graveyards, and send most of your offensive back to the starting point where the Horde offensive can farm Alliance honor kills endlessly.

Don’t even think about zerging when it’s the holiday weekend.

4. Snowfall Graveyard is Something You Want to Own

Snowfall Graveyard located west of the Field of Strife

Snowfall Graveyard lies mid-map on the west side of the battleground. Horde don’t path this way as they travel north. All the Alliance battleground action (capping Towers, mini-bosses and the like) is going to happen south of this graveyard.

If you don’t capture it as soon as possible anyone who dies on your team is going to be sent all the way back to the start of the map. Where the Horde will do their best to ensure they never rejoin the Alliance teammates until they cry and give up.

Ok, this bit is important. Pay attention! Defend Snowfall until you win it. Hold it until you hold a graveyard further south.

Just like you do with a Tower you need to click the flag at the graveyard to turn it into an Alliance-contested point. If nobody defends the graveyard flag for the next couple of minutes Horde can capture it.

And Horde usually do double back to capture it just before Alliance win it – with one or two players at most. Five minutes into the game and every single Alliance player who has died is stuck at the northern most spawn point.

Once you win this graveyard you get a group of NPCs who will help you defend it. This can deter Horde (sometimes) but if your Horde opposition seems to be playing dirty you might want to stick around and defend it until you have another graveyard right near Drek’thar.

5. Iceblood Graveyard is Not Something You Want to Own

Ok, this one is hard to put into words.

Iceblood Graveyard is the furthest graveyard away from where Horde want to be, but still allows them to resurrect and run due North without unduly blocking the way of the Alliance offensive as we capture Iceblood Tower and Tower Point (which we want).

Consider the situations below and how resurrecting members of either faction will try to rejoin their team:

3 Graveyard Senarios (click to expand)

If in doubt, don’t capture Iceblood Graveyard!

6. Spirit Running is Totally Pro

Run out of range quickly if you don't want to auto-ressurect

Ok, so you died. You’ll get ported to the closest graveyard and have a few seconds before auto-ressurection kicks in.

If you died somewhere on the southern half of the map, got ported way up north, and you know the Horde army is somewhere between you and your corpse, run out of range of the Spirit Healer ASAP. You have options:

1. Spirit Run all the way back to where you died. Only works if Horde haven’t taken your insignia (thus forcing you to resurrect at a graveyard).
2. Wait until your team captures another graveyard further south and spirit run to that graveyard and stand under a different Spirit Healer. You’ll join the auto-resurrection timer when you get in range. Works even if Horde have taken your insignia.

Option number 2 is the ideal method to rejoin your offensive team if you died early on when Snowfall Graveyard was contested, but not yet captured, by your team.

Congratulations you just successfully avoided facing the entire Horde army on your own.

Good Luck!

Unfortunately it takes 39 other people to win Alterac Valley. I hope that your next teammates are smart and have 1000 resilience each.

If nothing else, I hope that these tips will make you feel a little more in control of what’s happening in your next Alterac Valley game. And the Spirit Running tip is totally awesome. I’m sure it’ll save you a lot of angst. I just wish I knew about that one a year ago!

Horde can take a trip to the Beach to bring down the west wall or...

Horde can park their Glaive here, also out of reach

A word of advice. If the Isle of Conquest is your PVP Daily too, don’t bother.

I used to think protecting the weak west wall from the Northwest Tower (as best you can, not much is in range, I know) was the best defense but lately the Horde have been throwing up groups of 3 or four to kill the gunners and their cannons too. Now I just don’t know.

Sometimes you get lucky and 5 Alliance will break free and capture the Hangar, and, if you are supremely lucky, they will jump right into the Horde fortress and win the Battleground for you, assuming there are zero Horde on defense, while the Horde are having a picnic inside your keep.

That did happen to me once, I swear.

If you've ever been left to defend on your own... this story is for you.

For the last several of weeks I’ve been trying to do at least one Wintergrasp per day to save up for the PVP trinkets purchasable with Wintergrasp Tokens. If the timer is on less than 45 minutes I’ll do a battleground or two to fill in time. I’ve participated in some good and bad battlegrounds and I think I have the general strategy down, but I still have a hell of a long way to go and a lot to learn.

This story takes place in Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Wintergrasp. And it all started with a 30 minute Wintergrasp Timer.

The Warsong Gulch Debacle

I started this block out in Warsong Gulch and about 10 minutes in realised that nobody else on the team seemed to be interested in capturing the Horde Flag whatsoever. I was standing above the Horde Flag room (losing 2-0) when I realised no other allies were coming to help me beat the Resto Druid and Warrior on defence. A minute or so passed and a Warlock came in, somehow we got the flag, made them drop theirs and brought it home (score 2-1). Well I tried to stick to the Warlock like glue but somehow near the Horde graveyard I ended up on my own with the Horde flag stuck in the ground just waiting for a carrier.

I picked it up. And immediately regretted it. I have never carried a flag before. Swamped by enemy players I tried to move towards my allies desperately looking over my interface for some button to drop the flag before death. Could Horde pick it up if I dropped it? Would it despawn? Those were some bad moments. Then I died.

We lost that battle less than 1 minute later. I felt like such a noob.

Wintergrasp is about 15 minutes off. Time for 1 more. I queue up Arathi Basin, not ready to face Warsong Gulch again for some time.

Hello Arathi Basin

I go right into Arathi Basin, a few seconds behind the start of the match, no time to buff up. Soon enough I find myself alone, a Discipline Priest, at the Gold Mine while my team mates ride off into the distance to capture another resource (or whatever you call them). I cannot tell you how often this happens to me.

[Battleground] [Cassandri] WTB partner to defend GM

No reply. A skinny Mage (Undead/Blood Elf or something) comes walking down from the cliffs to wipe the floor with me. Where’s my defence?, I’m thinking! Well my comment in Battleground chat must have made some impression because before the Mage got the better of me I had 4 Alliance come and rescue me.

[Battleground] [Cassandri] Ok… so what do I owe you guys for that?
[Battleground] [Arviel] 38 copper
[Battleground] [Arviel] defence is cheap

This time when everyone rides off into the sunset, the Death Knight sticks around. And suddenly there is that red, bloody mess underneath the Alliance Flag (try and ambush me now Mr Rogue!).

Now this is the type of Arathi Basin I like to play.

For the next 15 minutes we successfully fend off very persistent Death Knights, a Mage, a healy Priest even some flavor of Druid (I’m happy to say he died in Tauren form with green swirls around his massive body so I’m not quite sure what beast form was his best). I was polymorphed long enough, and often enough, that I could actually see the benefit in diminishing returns.

The Human Death Knight on defence with me just wouldn’t die! I barely even healed him, just kept myself up and annoyed the enemy with the occasional DoT or Shadowfiend. As you can imagine, I’m having a great time. We’re not 5 capping here, we’re barely holding 3 bases – a solid, steady win in my book.

With only a couple minutes left a Tauren Death Knight approaches on his Kodo for what feels like the 10th time.

[Arviel] says: he really hates you

We kill the Tauren. Unfortunately 4 or 5 other enemies drop down from the Blacksmith and eventually I go down. My Death Knight buddy doesn’t last the 28 seconds I need to resurrect. We resurrect together, but the battle is over. I thank everyone in /bg chat and whisper my new DK buddy to say goodbye before we leave the Battlegroup.

[Battleground] [Cassandri] Thx nice job
To [Arviel]: Ciao!

Then I’m back on my own server, Barthilas, and I run straight down the stairs from the BG portals to the Battle-Mage to queue Wintergrasp.

Oh No. Wintergrasp

I hate Wintergrasp. I hate the lag. I don’t get the strategy. I don’t get the vehicles. And we always lose on my server (at least when I’m involved).

So I’m making my way to the south half of Wintergrasp to try and find some small-scale PVP activity when a Priesty friend of mine logs in and whispers me:

[Tand] has come online.
[Tand] whispers: You’re very annoying to kill, you know
[Tand] whispers: I was in that AB on my horde
[Tand] whispers: You should have heard the whinging in chat

Well it turns out that the Horde Death Knight who was so persistent in attacking me was actually a friend. I couldn’t believe it!

I don’t think I could have asked for a nicer compliment. Even if I think I suck at PVP I must be doing something right to annoy the enemy that much.

Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later.

Someone left the phone off the hook, hey? So how come I’ve never ever run into this problem? I play on a busy server, in the busy Bloodlust battlegroup (even if it is named after a stupid Horde-only thing, still a cool name right?) at peak time. Dalaran is near unbearable. That’s how busy it is.

I’ve always kind of assumed the instance servers are battlegroup-wide. I run lots of instances. Well at least the daily heroic each day. It doesn’t take long to get a group going from LFM. But obviously we’re not doing enough to bring down our instance servers.

See you at VH at 7.30pm ST - good luck! ps. I wasn't lying when I said I like to show up in PVP gear to scare my tanks.

If that’s the case we need to organise a mass instance-launching assault while we still can. Before Blizzard fix it. How hard could it be? At 7.30pm ST I think we should all walk those 20 yards and pop into Violet Hold. And not in groups of 5. Oh no, each individual should be launching their own instance.

And we’re running out of time! With the very next Patch Blizzard are going to fix the issue and also introduce a cross-battlegroup LFG. A concept I can’t quite wrap my mind around.

Cross Battlegroup Looking For More

Overall I’m looking forward to meeting and playing with others from Bloodlust. How bad can your average PuG be? Half the battlegroup are “Oceanic” and half are normal “US” servers so I think we’ve got a nice mix of crazy right there.

Not quite sure what I’m going to do when I come across another Cassandri. I might have to (a) join their party and stalk them or (b) get out so fast you don’t even see the duplicate. Won’t know until it happens I suppose.

Identity Crisis... and it's going to happen more often!

As it is I already have a somewhat warped view of my fellow Bloodlust-ers from Battleground chat and, yes you heard it right, meeting fellow Oceanic players in RL. Some notables:

Blackrock: a bunch of tough, tough cookies. These are the crazy Aussies who started playing WoW before Oceanic servers were assigned and then got stubborn and refused to move. On WoWiki I think their server motto is described as “Blackrock is full. GTFO”. Shudder. Actually met a Mage in RL from this server. Nice guy. Totally weird.

Frostmourne: Slightly less angry than the first wave of WoW Oceanic players (but still angry), these guys rolled on the first PVP Oceanic server. Lathere’s first character was on Frostmourne. Then she got tired of 1 hour queues to log into the server.

Thaurissan: A truly rare breed – the Alliance who stuck it out on a PVP realm so overrun with Horde that they took over Ironforge. The server that opened up the PVE -> PVP realm transfer option across all US servers to try and fix its faction imbalance. They’re on a “comfortable” 1:3.5 Ally to Horde ratio at the moment. Hey that’s not bad for Thaurissan.

Caelestraez: Holds a special place in my heart because my Shaman, Xata, lives there. It’s a peaceful word (PVE) where I find most of the players are keen to battleground alot. Probably because they weren’t ganked “from birth” and still believe in “honourable” kills. Plus Keeva lives there so how bad can it be?

Proudmoore: Tend to be the ones to declare the winning battleground strategy and anyone who thinks otherwise is, of course, an idiot. I think these guys have been around the block a few times. Not a very polite attitude to have considering your server is named after a girl.

If, like me, you get easily confused by many many different conversations going on at once you might not want to attempt to follow the conversation/s in my screen capture above.

Who would have thought there’s a crazy flag-capping, PVP junkie, achievement-mad Cassandri wandering around the Bloodlust battlegrounds? Not me!

Note: The stuff at the start about intentionally trying to bring down the instance servers is meant in jest. Although I do believe in experiencing all this game has to offer!

Update: Went back again this week and video captured the fight and vent conversation for you. We organise CC and determine so much of the fight “strategy” during combat, it seems incomplete to watch it without Vent. The rest of this article describes our first kill (not video captured).

Last night we killed the Horde Faction Champions in Trial of the Crusader (third boss). I loved it. I loved it so much that not only did I forget to hit record, I completely forgot to take a screen capture.

The Faction Champions fight is chaos. It’s a simulated Arena/BG fight where you face off against 10 of the opposite faction (since I play Alliance I get to kill Tauren and Trolls and stuff). 25v10. In 10 man it’s 10v6.

Their Team

The enemy team of 10 is randomly selected from a pool of 15 champions and has a bit of everything and includes  healers (Resto Shaman, Disc Priest, Holy Pally and Resto Druid), armored melee-ers (DK and Ret Pally) and some extra casters and dps.

Strategy

The general strategy is to keep a couple of their healers under CC constantly, kill off at least 1 healer and then take out the most damaging/dangerous dudes. We found it necessary to kill 2 healers up front, CCing the last one for the rest of the fight. Our kill order was something like:

1. Resto Shaman
2. Discipline Priest (CCed)
3. Rogue
4. the rest of the damage dealers
5. Resto Druid (CCed)
6. Warrior (CCed by 1 DK with Chains of Ice)

Leaving the Discipline Priest or Resto Druid up and about will get you nowhere fast – these guys are a problem and will easily keep your kill target alive so keep them under control.

We didn’t wear Resilience gear or PVP gear and I’m not completely sure if those defensive stats do make a difference in this fight.

In general be aware of your class/spec abilities that you may not use in PVE all that much and be ready to adapt. Keep away from the Rogue/DK/Warrior as much as possible and use your Kick, Silence, Earth Shock, Hex, Polymorph, Cyclone, Fear etc all the time.

A Word of Caution

No strategy I read gave this piece of advice:

Before someone begins the fight (by talking to the NPC on the Arena floor), move your entire raid to stand underneath where your Faction Leaders are above you. So, if you to play Alliance, move and stand underneath Tirion and Jaina. When the fight begins your enemy jumps down from where they are on the bleachers and if a player is nearby they’re going to get slammed. We learnt this the hard way and I was the victim. If you’re on the other side of the room you have time to quickly mark up some targets.

Raid Symbols Please!

On our first attempt (described above) we had no targets raid marked with {skull} etc.  With the second attempt we marked up some on the fly which is better than nothing. With our third, and successful attempt, our Raid Leader had a macro that threw up our kill order and priority CC targets and this made a HUGE difference.

Our macro was something like:

/tar Thrakgar
/script SetRaidTarget("target", 8);
/tar Caiphus
/script SetRaidTarget("target", 7);
/tar Erin
/script SetRaidTarget("target", 4);
/tar Liandra
/script SetRaidTarget("target", 1);

This selects and marks the first two kill targets (Resto Shaman = skull and Disc Priest = cross) and the other two healers (Druid = triangle and Pally = star) to be permanently CCed. The rest were marked on the fly.

Why I Loved It So Much

It’s random, it’s about adaptability. But most importantly, the  reason I loved this fight is because it’s a bit like a crazy BG but it’s actually a team sport. I was playing with a team of people who are genuinely trying to keep the whole team alive, playing smartly, in order to succeed.

I also thought it was amusing that so many of the current class/spec strengths and weaknesses come across in this fight. At one point our GM was convinced we had to kill the Shadow Priest because a guide he read said to. Which made all us Shadow Priests pipe up and sarcastically reply “what’s he going to do? Mind Flay us? Fear us every 30 seconds?”. We had hunters yelling “kill the hunter’s pets!” with glee – for once exploiting their own class’s weaknesses.

Just like it often is in a battleground the Resto Druid is way too hard to kill, the Discipline Priest is hard to wear down and the Pally and DK are true forces to be reckoned with. The Shamans are easy kills (sorry guys but it’s true), as is the Shadow Priest, and the Warrior, once deadly, isn’t your biggest concern.

I played this fight in my Shadow PVE spec and it was really strange. I had no idea what to do! I tried to keep Mind Blast (now it has the reduced healing debuff) on cooldown and used Psychic Scream and Mass Dispel to help. I did try Mind Control on one of our targets at one point but it was immune. You can also Fade and some classes were taunting with some success so it’s not exactly like a BG.

I wonder if next time I can try it as Discipline? I think it’s a sign that the encounter really does feel like a PvP encounter because I was so uncomfortable as Shadow (I never PvP as Shadow spec) and kept hovering over my Raid Frames to start healing!

Welcome to Warsong Gulch

I ventured into Warsong Gulch the other day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Why? Well it wasn’t because we won, although we did. And it wasn’t the 11 minute battle duration timer either, although that was something of a relief.

I tend to pick a Paladin or Death Knight at the start of the small battlegrounds and latch onto them. If the partnership works they’ll give me some protection when I’m attacked, survive while I’m chain CCed and between the two of us we’re pretty much unstoppable (ok, so like 4 or 5 could probably take us). Pallies and DKs also tend to operate as 1 man fighting machines in battlegrounds and tend to wander away from the pack and need heals.

So somehow I picked this Death Knight who seemed to be proceeding at a swift pace towards the Horde keep the other night. It wasn’t until the two of us were alone, rushing through the tunnel to the Horde flag room, that I looked down and realised… he was a Gnome Death Knight.

And he was soooooo cute! His head was covered in miniature plate armor with a couple little spikes sticking out of it. And he could run really fast. Then he popped some Baby Spice and we danced.

Awwwwwww so cute!

Sure sure, strategically it’s great to be a really really small target when you’re holding the flag. Perhaps the player behind the character is some tough guy who’s just really dedicated to PVP flag carrying.

I hope I come across this guy again.

We won with 3 flags by the 11 minute mark, did I mention that?

Is that the tiniest flag you've ever seen, or what?