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Totem Talk: Falling in love with PVP Healing
Every other week, WoW Insider brings you Totem talk for the shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. With the end of season 14 announced, and the imminent arrival of Patch 5.4.7, I thought I would take some time and get involved in some PVP action. I've always had a fondness for PVP, but raiding always took so much of my time in game, that between out of game things and raiding I just didn't have the time to invest into any amount of PVP. That's changed with a new guild, a new raiding schedule and a new work schedule out of game, so when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to start PVPing again, well I jumped at the chance. While I'm not nearly as well versed in PVP as my fellow shaman of awesomeness Oliva Grace, I still manage to have a lot of fun in both Arenas and Battle Grounds. That said, I've been away from the PVP scene for a while, not setting foot in an arena since the middle of Cataclysm. I thought I would share my experiences and thoughts from this past week.
World War WoW
World of Warcraft has received its fair share of criticism concerning the necessity of having the best gear. Casual players often find it impossible to acquire. Raiders spend hours getting their sets built. PvPers can't live. Often times, your ability to fight and win is not dictated by your cleverness or strategy. It is determined by just how much your Frost Bolt can crit for.As a few articles on PvP in World of Warcraft note, PvP is a meaningless struggle that simply makes that poor little level thirty gnome wish he never walked through STV. This form of PvP, commonly known as the gank, occurs mainly in the open world, in between the great cities and towns, where quests are painstakingly completed. Players will leave a neutral city only to be bombarded by hostiles ambushing unlucky travelers right outside the gates. Though Horde and Alliance die in droves in this manner, no one tends to care. The sun still shines upon Stormwind, the plague remains untouched, and the banners of war seem to have been furled up and forgotten. Yet the one defining moment after a kill, be it hard or easy, Arena or BG, is the receipt of the honor point.By turning in honor points, players can work their way up the ranks to acquire Tier 6 gear. The more honor points, the bigger the sword. With this system in place, Blizzard has managed to make another aspect of the game quite gear dependent. Players with more time wielding the blade have a definite advantage over those who are just starting out in the realm of combat. Fighting in the WoW Arena quite often resembles reaching for a carrot on a stick. You may read Patton when you wake up, you may watch old war movies and study game footage, but you may not own that elite sword of gnome crushing and without that, you're toast.
