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Shifting Perspectives: PvP as a moving target
Every week, John Patricelli of Big Bear Butt presents a well-researched, educational, and entertaining look at the state of the Druid class in WoW today. This week we said, "Screw that," and got someone off the street. Veronica: Look at you, all helpful.Logan: Your peskiness being unleashed on Connor brings me joy. Annoy, tiny blonde one! Annoy like the wind!-- Veronica Mars, "An Echolls Family Christmas" With apologies to Diane Ruggiero, the writer of the episode quoted above, but I find Logan's snarky comment (did he even have another kind?) to be a perfect, albeit general, means of describing successful Druid PvP.Let us be frank; I am not, nor am ever likely to be, a hardcore PvPer, and to a great extent this post is directed mostly at people like myself. If you're one of those Druids carrying a 2K+ rating in full Vengeful, then I invite (nay, implore) you to leave comments and corrections based on your own experience, but the article's mostly for regular folks like me, who may not even particularly like PvP but recognize that it is desirable or perhaps necessary, given our ingame goals. As such, most of this applies to battlegrounds, and on a later date we're going to get into arena. Today, we are simply going to talk about how to avoid letting your PvP experience turn you into a miserably unhappy player who would rather undergo an appendectomy via Roto-Rooter than set foot in another EOTS.
WoW Insider Show Episode 35: Definitely penguin pets
On the show with me this past Saturday was John Patricelli (not Petricelli as I've been saying lately -- sorry again, BBB), Zach Yonzon, and Turpster, and the discussion went all over the place. As promised, we were able to sneak in a little bit of PvP talk (and just a smattering of Warsong Gulch arguing, unfortunately), as well as all the other biggest issues from the last week of Warcraft: We talked about the just-released patch 2.4.2 notes, as well as the undocumented changes, and what struck us from each. We took a look at this (revealed to be old) Wrath screenshots and why we expected them to be real. Zach commented on the Season 4 ratings and requirements, and let us know why he thought Blizzard was raising the bar in the Arenas. And we answered lots of reader email, including what we want to see in the Wrath collector's edition (we can haz penguin pets, please?), what listeners think about all the information that Blizzard has on us, and a couple more Warcraft jokes from last week. It's a fun listen, so either check it out over on WoW Radio's website or at our podcast page in iTunes (where you can also subscribe and get it automatically downloaded). And don't forget either that we do this every Saturday at 3:30pm EST over on WoW Radio, so mark your calendars to tune in next week for another great show.Update: Turpster reminds me that there was supposed to be a poll in this post, but we already did one. Go answer that one, and let us know what you're looking forward to in WotLK.
WoW Insider Show on the air tomorrow
Our weekly podcast returns to the Internets tomorrow afternoon -- Turpster and I will be on, along with John "BigBearButt" Patricelli, and Zach Yonzon, assuming he can reach us from his location in the Philippines. Since Zach's on, we'll get back into the PvP discussion that we planned a few weeks ago (including whether or not WSG is working the way it's supposed to now, and what's up with those new Arena changes), plus we'll chat about 2.4.2 of course, Rossi's reasons for not PuGing, and all the other most popular stories in the last week of Warcraft.We'll check our email inbox as well -- if you'd like to send us a note (or a joke), you can do so at theshow@wow.com. And we'll be on IRC as usual: in the #wowradio channel at irc.mmoirc.com (or you can just chat directly from WoW Radio's webpage).Should be a good one. See you there: tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm EST over on WoW Radio, it's the WoW Insider Show live on your PC.
15 Minutes of Fame: Inside PvP twinking
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.Despite grumbles from some players, PvP twinking – playing at max level of a particular PvP battlegrounds bracket, with the best available gear and enchants for that level – has been legitimized by Blizzard as a valid meta-game within WoW. While most players I've spoken with don't seem to have strong feelings about twinking one way or the other, neither do they seem to understand why someone would be interested in getting into it. What's the attraction?We at 15 Minutes of Fame have an undeniable curiosity when it comes to meta-gamers and players who've carved out their own niches in the immense world that is World of Warcraft. That's how we came across Angrenous of Shadow Council, a PvP-aholic who runs warriors in almost every PvP bracket. Here's a player with his eyes wide open to all the various restrictions and limitations of WoW's PvP experience – and having a blast careening around in it.
WoW, Casually: Finding groups fast (Reader Mail)
Each week or so, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.This week, I finally get around to answering an email from Mattilda: Hey Robin, I really enjoyed your article on WoW Insider. I recently got married and that basically killed my play time in WoW which probably isn't that bad of a thing, but I still like to play and it is normally only for a couple of hours in the evening. One of the biggest problems I have is getting a group for an instance. I have a decent guild but they are all normally busy in Kara or ZA when I'm on, and since I only play one or 2 nights a week I'm not high on the importance list to help. I like to do dailies and busy my self with solo stuff, but in order to get neutral with the Ogrila, there are some group quests. Looking for group is not always reliable and it seems that it basically puts you with 5 year olds most of the time. So my question is you can either put in in an article or just answer via e-mail, do you have any good ideas on how to get a reliable group in a short amount of time. There may not be a way, but just wanted to get your thoughts. Thanks, Mattilda, lvl 70 Draenei Shaman My answer and more are after the jump.
The Art of War(craft): Warsong Gulch reborn
I once wrote that Warsong Gulch was my favorite Battleground. To be quite honest, in the past couple of weeks prior to Patch 2.4, I had seriously begun to doubt that. I was grinding reputation with the Warsong Clan on my Blood Elf, and increasingly, the games became excruciatingly long and even though I often engaged in exciting combat, the protracted games would sometimes end in a 0-3 loss that would net 0 bonus Honor and 0 reputation. For many players, this is the prevailing experience. For many players, Warsong Gulch sucks. Despite how much I always enjoyed my WSG games, grinding it for reputation is a total pain. That hasn't quite changed with Patch 2.4, which still doesn't award any reputation whatsoever for losing games as opposed to Arathi Basin or Alterac Valley, but the games will no longer last for hours.Paradigm shiftI know that Mike speculated that the changes to Warsong Gulch might not have helped, but I have a dissimilar experience. The important thing to remember is there has to be a complete change of attitude because it's no longer possible to turtle. Yeah, I know that people have been groaning about the continued turtling. They're wrong. That's because when the Focused Assault debuff is on, there's absolutely no way healers can keep up the flag carrier. In some of the games that I've participated in, players going after the flag were still concerned about the healers and wasted time burning them down or crowd controlling them. One word: don't. Ignore the healers when the debuff is on. Unless they have nine guys spamming heals on the flag carrier, it will be next to impossible to keep up a flag carrier with the debuff on, even more so with Brutal Assault. Ever tried healing through an enraged raid boss? Or maybe Gruul at 20 grows (who even lets Gruul get to 20 grows?)? It's sorta kinda of like that. Enjoy.
Warsong Gulch changes may not have helped much
Aloud on the podcast last week, I wondered if the patch 2.4 changes to WSG had made a difference (I haven't been able to make it in there yet -- too busy writing about Hello Kitty Online, of course), and now maxomi is wondering the same thing: since the changes dropped, has WSG actually been fixed?Unfortunately, from what we're told, the answer is no. The changes, designed to cut off turtling and players who ran around with the flag without capturing it, first made the enemy flag carriers trackable after 45 seconds, and then gave a damage debuff to the flag carrier after ten minutes (which doubled at fifteen). But all the reports from players say that makes no difference -- people still turtle away, even with the tracking and debuff, and eventually both drop the flag and the whole thing resets.So what's the solution? If you crib some notes from other capture the flag games, a match timer sounds like the best option, and indeed, that's what most people are suggesting. Blizzard would have to determine how long to tune it, but the idea would be that after a given amount of time, if there was no winner, the match would end in a draw, with both sides losing in terms of a reward. It doesn't seem like Blizzard can force players to fight, so the best option overall might be to just call it in a time limit, and keep the matches from going on for long amounts of time.
Are we the bad guys of Azeroth?
After publishing a recent Breakfast Topic on whether there should be a sense of personal honor in PvP, I wasn't really all that surprised to see a few comments echoing the sentiments of "If it's red, it's dead" and "Don't roll on a PvP server if you don't want to get ganked." These crop up in any discussion about PvP, and while there's an undeniable sense to them -- why would you roll on a PvP realm unless you wanted to, I dunno, PvP? -- I've always felt that they did actual PvP a disservice. You can't frame ganking as true PvP. There's no such thing as strategy, skill, or even combat when a player one-shots another, so I've never considered ganking to be defensible along the same lines that actual PvP is.
Gamers on the Street: Who's winning AV and WSG now?
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.I'll admit it: I haven't hit the Sunwell yet. My new main is a fresh 70 ("virgin" might be an appropriate word to describe her, except that – well, I PvP), and my guildies and I are simply overwhelmed with the number of things on our to-do lists right now. None of us is much interested in braving the crowds to see the new content; we'll get there once the furor has died down. But 2.4 introduced more than just the Sunwell – we've got AV and WSG "fixes" in action! Did the fixes really fix these BGs? I have my own thoughts about AV (fine before, fine now; lots of imbalances still, but they don't prevent me from winning most instances when my team is with me), but I haven't had the time yet to get into WSG. Ever curious, I popped in on Wildhammer realm to chat with some of the folks gathered 'round the battlemasters and get their impressions.
PvP all day, everyday: Concerted Efforts (A) or For Great Honor (H)
It's back! Perhaps of all the new daily quests that have arrived with the goodness-filled Patch 2.4, arguably the most confusing and mysterious one is the repeatable quest called For Great Honor for the Horde and Concerted Efforts for the Alliance. It is a dinosaur quest from the days of the old Honor system but made its stealthy return last Tuesday with a few tweaks. It was so stealthy that it didn't even make it into the official patch notes. It is also not searchable in wowhead through filters (e.g. added in Patch 2.4, PvP, etc.) or by name (e.g. "For Great Honor"). The references to the quest in thottbot or allakhazam both refer to the old repeatable quest albeit the quest description themselves have been updated to include the new requirement -- an additional Mark of Honor from Eye of the Storm. Unlike the old quest, the new and improved For Great Honor -- which probably has the same ID tag (confusing poor old wowhead) as the original quest -- does not give any reputation for old world Battlegrounds. Players grinding Battlegrounds rep for the Conqueror or Justicar titles are flat of luck and must do it the hard way aside from being crazy for trying (yeah, okay, I'm one of those people). The very first time players complete the quest, it awards 11g 99s and 314 Honor points at Level 70. Subsequent turn-ins will only award the 314 Honor. Because of the removal of diminishing returns to Honorable Kills, Honor points are available for use immediately, making this quest the most efficient way to earn additional Honor. Because it is repeatable and not a daily quest, players with stacks of 100 Marks of Honor from all Battlegrounds can accrue 31,400 Honor points right away. Of course, it is possible to earn more Honor from more turn-ins. Winning in all four Battlegrounds, for example, can give an additional 942 Honor from Mark of Honor turn-ins. For the many players who have full unusable stacks of these items, it's an excellent way to free up space and gain Honor points at the same time. Needless to say... make sure to save some Marks for those welfare epics! On a final note, try to complete this quest in the less populated cities such as the Exodar or Thunder Bluff, specially if you're turning in a whopping 100 times. Less populated cities will have less lag and less chances of players zoning in from Arenas or Battlegrounds to get in the clickable way of your turn-ins.
Breakfast topic: The best parts of patch 2.4
Good morning, and welcome to the second day of the rest of your life. For better or for worse, patch 2.4 has gone live. I must say that progressive testing has made it a pretty wild ride. I look forward to the weekend when I'll have more time to explore the changes. We've all had time to read the notes and tinker around with the new changes. My plan for the day was to check out the notes and then head on in the battlegrounds. I must admit that I didn't get a chance to try out the new Warsong Gulch. I'm sure I'll get to it soon once the queue settles down. I did get a chance to arena, and that queue was popping incredibly fast.Apparently Bornakk spoke the truth about queue relief.
The Art of War(craft): An awesome patch for PvP
In its gestational stages, Patch 2.4 threatened to be a PvP landscape-changing patch with the controversial change to Life Tap and ill-advised buff to Flametongue. Those proposed changes won't make it live, however, and it looks like World of Warcraft PvP won't be drastically different than it was pre-patch. But there are several key changes that affect PvP, some classes more than others. Because there are no major significant changes to class mechanics or abilities, I don't expect the environment to change. But the best thing about PvP is that it's all about the little things, and Patch 2.4 brings a lot of little things into play.Class changes Most classes received changes that many felt were aimed towards balancing Arena play. Classes that were perceived to be over-represented in Arenas, such as Druids, received some nerfs while under-represented classes such as Shamans, received some buffs. Warlocks were initially thought to be on an upswing trend, prompting Blizzard to whip up the nerf bat. Fortunately, Blizzard noticed that the trend plateaued and eventually held off on the move. Despite the lack of radical changes, Patch 2.4 affects the PvP environment in a lot of ways, more for some classes than others.
Top 5 must-dos in Patch 2.4
Patch 2.4 is finally going live, and with all of the new content, it will be pretty overwhelming when you first log on and attempt to decide what you want to do. With new loot, new quests, and new areas to explore, there will be plenty to keep you busy!05. Regarding your User Interface: The default UI is changing, so along with updating and reconfiguring add-ons, you should learn more about the changes you're going to need to make.04. For the explorer: If you like to be prepared, check out our coverage of the maps for Sunwell Isle. If you'd rather dive right in and be surprised, then check out your own map of the Eastern Kingdoms. The little island at the very top is your new destination! Either way, the easiest way to get there is from the Ironforge (Alliance) or Silvermoon City (Horde) Flightmaster.For the rest of the countdown, hop through the break!
Breakfast Topic: First Things First
We know that patch 2.4 is on its way, sometime soon. The World of Warcraft page has been updated and the background downloader has appeared. Many of us are itching to experience the Fury of the Sunwell. Tomorrow was the second most frequently projected date in our "Guess the release day" contest. As always, Blizzard says it'll go live when it's ready, but tomorrow seems likely to me. The first thing I'm going to do when the patch goes live is check out the patch notes and see which changes were actually included, what's been rolled back, and what's been replaced. After that I'll be heading into Warsong Gulch to see if the developers have found a way to make the battleground experience a little better. I hope they did better than the promised debuff after five minutes of flag-carrying time. What's the first thing you're going to do once the patch drops?
Drysc talks about Battlegrounds and class balance in PvP
In a thread started by quitting player whose final rants include issues such as class balance and the limited number of Battlegrounds, Drysc responds with a rare, long explanation. He mentions that Blizzard understands that not all classes and specs are as viable in PvP, particularly in the extremely competitive Arena environment, and concedes that they are trying to make at least all classes contributive in some way. Protection Warriors, for example, should be able to jump into Battlegrounds or Arenas and "be able to do something with some small amount of success." The 'small amount' comes from the fact that he also unequivocally states that it is Blizzard's philosophy that they have to be ok with all specs not being as viable as others. He also explains that the dearth of new Battlegrounds or Battleground maps is not due to queue times (they have little to do with each other), but that each Battleground requires a fair amount of work on Blizzard's end and that most of their developmental focus lies in the expansion Wrath of the Lich King. He says that playtesting, balancing, and other efforts are extremely labor intensive. Oddly, Drysc mentions Warsong Gulch, the smallest of all the Battlegrounds, has "terrain issues here and there." Hopefully this isn't indicative of what Blizzard sees as the problems with WSG, as the game suffers from more than just some terrain issues. It's a good thing that Patch 2.4 promises changes to WSG, but it's even better that Drysc has been more vocal on the forums as of late.
The Art of War(craft): Twinkage part II
Last week, we discussed the matter of twinks and PvP. In many occasions, twinks exist purely to PvP, dominating lower-bracket Battlegrounds with their über-gear. In fact, there is no shortage of twink complaint threads on the World of Warcraft forums. Whatever one might feel about twinks, it's an ongoing phenomenon that shows no signs of letting up. I'm not a big fan of twinkage myself, but it's such a distinct subset of the PvP crowd that I feel compelled to write about it. Twice. Oh, and for the record, I am quite aware that 'twink' is a homosexual slang term. I prefer to think of the Hostess snack, though.So here we go, the second part of our look at twink PvP. Last week we discussed an overview of the potential items that twinks can obtain... I didn't make a comprehensive list since that's a considerable task. I did, however, give some pointers in the right direction. Considering that Resilience does not exist in lower level PvP, the key stat is Stamina, so get gear with loads of it. There are also ways to improve on gear, particularly using permanent item enchants. The most notorious of these is probably the Nethercleft Leg Armor, which requires Level 60 to apply, but has no item restriction. It might cost a bit of gold because it requires Primal Nether to craft, but the +40 Stamina is well worth it for twinks. Patch 2.4 also promises removing binding on nethers, which may or may not lower prices. For casters, the tailoring equivalents of Golden and Runic Spellthreads are also good investments, despite the 20 stamina hit.
PvP for the beginning HK: 11 rules for the starter weasel
It is not unusual for younger or less experienced players to approach me with questions on my PvP experience."Allie," they ask. "How can we avoid sucking like you?""Well, first it helps to have a functional mouse," I always say, favoring them with a benevolent smile whilst swirling a fine glass of port. "Click-to-move is usually impossible when neither your right mouse button nor scroll wheel actually work. You'd be amazed at the number of problems you can pin on your refusal to replace a relatively cheap piece of equipment. Never, ever, get rid of Mr. Gimpy if you want a ready excuse for being a keyboard turner."They scribble this and then look at me reverently, hopeful for any additional pearls of wisdom I might drop. However, after receiving so many queries and accidentally mistelling most of them with, "I can tank, but gimme a sec to get rid of this punk who's bugging me," I have decided, in the spirit of all gifted Machiavellians, to preserve my bad advice in a medium more lasting than /w.For beyond faulty mice, children, we get into more advanced and underhanded PvP tactics...
Gamers on the Street: Love trumps patch news
Gamers on the Street logs into U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.When we logged onto Aerie Peak to visit with players for this week's installment of Gamers on the Street, we thought we'd be in for a nice chat about patch 2.4, The Sunwell Isle. But that's not exactly what we got. It's not as if there weren't players to talk to. At prime time on this heavy-load server, there was plenty of hustle and bustle in the major cities. In fact, there was more activity than usual. But it wasn't an infusion of energy from reading about the new content now being tested on the PTRs that inspired all this activity: love was in the air.We gave up trying to make direct contact with players after being soundly ignored by an award-winning streak of more than 20 Horde players, all intent on curing their broken hearts. Most of the players who replied to a general query for their impressions on the patch reports responded with a question of their own: "Hey man, I heard about that patch thing. What exactly is gonna be in there?" In desperation, we finally shot a whisper to the lovely young troll who had been pelting us with rose petals for the past five minutes. She was generous enough to share her thoughts on what was ahead – and her rose petals cheered us up long enough to finish surveying several other players. Thus, we bring you this week's word on the street – such as it is – of what's on players' minds about the upcoming patch.
Open fire! PTR 2.4 battleground changes
We've recently featured several posts about player discontent with Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley battle grounds. It looks like Blizzard has been hard at work changing, if not fixing, some of the issues that players have been having in battlegrounds. Alterac Valley It sounds like Blizzard has been listening to the back and forth debate about which faction is favored most in Valley. In the test 2.4 they attempt to balance the distance and challenge of the faction captains. Hortus indicated that they want to focus on WSG first, so it will be a while before we can test out these changes.
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Addressing time issues with Warsong Gulch
As our own Zach Yonzon has pointed out, Warsong Gulch, the capture-the-flag battleground, is broken. Despite Warsong being his favorite battleground, there are several issues confronting PvP'ers.Here's the short version: WSG has the lowest honor gain per time played of the four battlegrounds, even on its holiday weekend. Warsong is the least effective battleground from which to farm honor. Warsong reputation is not necessary to acquire PvP gear. In addition, reputation gains with the faction are low. Games often last a very long time. Fortunately, Drysc commented this morning on a forum thread started by Moobert, designed to call attention to the issue and draw out a response. While Drysc confirms that the developers are aware of the problems with Warsong Gulch, and that in fact, several possible solutions are already being tested internally. Unfortunately, he cautions that these changes are not likely to be seen any time soon. How do you feel about Warsong right now? Do you love it or hate it and why?
