LOLVent

So it's been a while, but I never said I'd post regularly...

Last night I logged on late due to RL stuff and my mage was immediately invited to join one of the Guild Kara runs. They were just about up to Aran, just with a bit of trash to clear first. While we waited for a couple of other joiners I got on vent with the rest of the team. Usual levels of hilarity and madness I've come to expect, which was great.

So, we clear the trash uneventfully and get to Aran's room. The Raid Leader and Guild Leader recap for everyone the basic rules:

• Flame Wrath - DON'T MOVE, DON'T EVEN TURN!
• Blizzard - run to the middle (opinions vary on whether that's a good idea, but let's run with that for now)
• Pulled to middle - run to the walls
• When elementals spawn, banish one, fear one, MT tank one, DPS War tank the other.

So, that's all clear. MT runs in and gets started building aggro.

DPS starts to wind up and things are going well. I'm there or thereabouts on the damage meter, survive a couple of Flame Wreaths, a Blizzard or two (with attendant silences from standing in the middle) and get to the walls in time. So, standing by the wall, DPS'ing away, another Flame Wreath comes along. All good, standing still, Flame Wreath nearly finished and suddenly on Vent someone shouts "Move, move! It's a trap!". So hell, I was clearly open to suggestion and I moved. Boom! 40k friendly fire and shortly afterwards we wipe. Damn!

Normal post-mortem. "Why did you move?" "Erm, my bad, but someone said move, move! Sorry." Turns out the offender was another Guildy, not currently in the Raid but on the Vent channel while grinding his toon in Shadowmoon Valley. He knew we were on Aran and clearly thought it would be funny. Wasn't totally amused at the time, but with hindsight I think it's a funny story. I'll definitely be more wary in future.

Horde Strategy for the new look Alterac Valley

More of a note to self than anything, as no one is reading this, but I wanted to capture some thoughts on what worked well.

I've now had the opportunity to see a properly functioning Horde team at work in AV, and feel a little more positive about the average honor gains - 2300 honor from 3 games in 90 mins starts to make up for some of the nightmare games of the previous night.

So, here are some of the things that worked well for us, from a Horde perpective:

• At least 15 go to defend Galv and the surrounding towers, defending Galv inside so he can take an active part. Stay here until the initial Alliance attacks are thwarted and they are fragmented. Some can then move up to support the offence.
• 1 or 2 stealthers go and ninja Dun Baldar north/south
• 5 or so go to take SH bunker and stay to defend it til burned
• Rest go to take our Balinda and SH gy, then onto IW.- Push up to SP, especially if stealthers have been able to take SP Aid Station
• Some defence stays on Galv, TP and IB, and be ready to trinket home to stop stealth attacks on FW towers.
• Minor priority given to protecting mine and taking theirs - makes a marginal difference to reinforcements.
• Push through to Vanndar, and win.

With this approach, we twice killed Vanndar, finishing with 500-550 reinforcements remaining (the second time, Alliance had 5 reinforcements left when we killed Vann, so we stopped killing Alliance PCs), gaining 600-650 bonus honor in 30 mins.

More twink PvP

The weekend of PvP didn't improve significantly on Saturday evening, and I finished up the day 6-12 in AB overall. Not great at all. However, Sunday was a different matter. My brother was back from his camping jaunt, so we did some AB together... and it was great. It's amazing the difference in my mood just having one known, competent team member. I assumed the BG Leader role, coordinating a much less dysfunctional group than the previous evenings and with some solid defending and some great individual performances at various times we went 5-0 for the evening, bringing me back to 11-12. In the process I earned enough AB Marks of Honor to get my L38 Defiler's Leather Boots. Now the challenge of finding an enchanter capable of +12 AGI on boots - not an easy task on my server, for some reason.

PvP woes

As I posted yesterday, I'm in the process of twinking my Blood-Elf Rogue, Demoth. He's level 38 now, which I consider to be about the lowest level that should be entering the 30-39 BGs (sore subject which we may come back to), and I found myself short of Arathi Basin Marks of Honor. As my server is woefully short of premades in the bracket I had no option but to dive into a PuG (pick-up group) of players from various servers in our Battlegroup. Well, the first two were good - there actually turned out to be 5 players from Burning Blade in the BG, and all seemed to be pulling their weight, especially Darkhornus, a warlock from S K I N S, one of our better Guilds. But the later games were another story...

... anyone who gets into a BG with me will tell you that I take them rather seriously. I like to win. Battlegrounds reward players with both honor and medals, which enable us to buy equipment for our characters. It's a fact that the winning team will get a whole lot more honor than the losers, and 3 medals against the losers' 1. So, what possibly can be the point of going in and not trying to win? Yet time after time I see players doing the dumb things, especially in Arathi Basin. Taking a flag and failing to defend it. Leaving a lone clothie on defence. Chasing after the Stables while the Blacksmith, Mine and Mill are held by the Alliance. Getting strung out miles from the flag and picked off one by one. I really need macros for "/bg Defend at Farm/BS/LM/GM!", "/bg Fight at flag!" and "/bg Get away from the bl**dy stables!". But, as I was told last night - don't try to lead in PuGs... half of them will ignore you, and the other half won't understand you anyway. So, from 2-0, I finished the evening 3-6. Not an illustrious start to my twink PvP career.

Equipping a Blood-Elf Rogue Twink

I'm probably inviting a flaming here, because "everyone knows twink Horde Rogues should be Undead". However, I have made my choice and, crucially, started paying my money.

Demoth was my second character, created for sneaky fun and as a contrast to the metal-clad brutality of Korsk. I've been fortunate enough to always have decent equipment available to me, so found myself at L29 with a semi-twinked Rogue and enjoyed playing AB / WSG battles with him. And that's where he stayed for a while, whilst I started playing Eldárwen more seriously. Now I'm ready to move Eldárwen to higher levels, and my bro's Rogue is L39, so I've decided to quickly add 10 levels and do a proper job of twinking Demoth. We'll be an awesome team in either of the battlegrounds available in the 30-39 bracket.

Equipment is what twinking is all about, and my view of the best available L39 Rogue equipment is shown below:

Head: Nocturnal Cap of the Monkey
Neck: Sentinel's Medallion
Shoulders: Flintrock Shoulders
Back: Battlehard Cape (with +12 AGI)
Chest: Huntsman's Armor of the Monkey (with +150 Health)
Wrist: Imposing Bracers of the Monkey (with +24 AP)
Hands: Gloves of Holy Might (with +15 AGI)
Waist: Defiler's Leather Girdle
Legs: Basilisk Hide Pants (with Nethercleft +40 STA +12 AGI)
Feet: Defiler's Leather Boots (with +15 AGI)
Finger: Assault Band
Finger: Aquamarine Signet of the Monkey (the +7 STA +8 AGI one)

As for weapons, that's a huge quandary for me. I now have the Vanquisher's Sword for my off-hand, but need to make some decisions about talent spec and play style before I work out what goes in the main hand. More to follow on this subject over the next couple of weeks.

And of course, great gear is only half the story in PvP, and only time will tell whether I have the skills to match.

A productive evening...

... assuming one shares the view that achievements in WoW can be considered "productive". From here on, I'm going to make that assumption and would invite those who disagree to humour me.

So, I'm not a RAIDer, nor even an avid "instancer". This is more to do with my real-life constraints than anything at the moment. Having young children, night-time interruptions are commonplace, and it's hard to find groups patient enough to take 5 minutes out while I comfort a crying baby or whatever. Anyway I therefore advance my toons mostly through non-instance questing, and a little plain ol' xp grinding, as often as possible with my brother's similar levelled toons. Last night was only a little different:

Demoth: Ran through Razorfen Downs with my bro's L60 Paladin to kill Amnennar the Coldbringer and complete the Bring the End quest as means of obtaining my new off-hand, the Vanquisher's Sword. The run took about 30 mins, with a couple of interruptions and judicious use of Stealth and Distract. Now to find an enchanter who can do Mongoose.

Korsk: 500k xp to level seemed a daunting task when I hit 60, especially as the introductory instances in Outland appear challenging with L60+ Elites commonplace. However, I have found that when Rested I can grind 80k-100k xp per hour on the L58-59 mobs just outside Thrallmar, picking up a few gold and some Uncommon items in the process. 100k xp gained in about an hour last night and we're half-way to L61.

Eldárwen: Having been hanging around L38/39 for several weeks in order to take part in Arathi Basic (AB) and Warsong Gulch (WSG) battlegrounds (BGs), she was fully rested and about 40k xp from L40. The levelling guide I use said I should be going to Badlands, but I really couldn't face the long run, so I decided to bring forward a few quests in Stranglethorn Vale and ding 40 there. It took me about an hour to take out Sin'dall, a bunch of Jungle Stalkers and the (Elite) Tethis for the remaining quests at Nesingwary's camp. Level 40! Hooray!

So, good progress made on three fronts, hence "productive". Of course, now there's not a lot to look forward for a while.

Meet the toons

So, now it's time to meet the real stars of this blog - my WoW characters, or toons as they seem to be commonly referred to. Character separation isn't as important in WoW as I was used to in previous games - in text-based adventures, passing equipment between your own characters was a deletable offence, whereas in WoW it seems to be positively encouraged*. As of today, the team are:

Korsk - L60 Orc Warrior
Eldárwen - L39 Blood Elf Mage
Demoth - L37 Blood Elf Rogue
Kemojin - L8 Tauren Druid

I also have a host of trade and storage characters whose identities shall remain secret, but they're integral to how I play - and gain enjoyment from - this game.

* as evidenced by the recent change to instant transfer of equipment, not just gold, between your own toons.

By way of introduction...

I'm a comparative noob to WoW, having only been playing since around April 2007, and I've never known life pre-The Burning Crusade. I was introduced to the game by my brother and will never forgive him for condemning me to a life with no "spare" time. Before WoW I dabbled in various other forms of gaming, including online FPS, offline RTS and RPG, but my last great addiction was a text-based (M)MORPG called The Final Challenge MUD... a not particularly massive, but multiplayer, definitely online and occasionally role-playing game. I quit that game some time back, citing a desire to rediscover my "real life" and dedicate myself to spending time improving that. Oh well, that didn't last long...

... so, now I've switched my addiction.

What's all this about?

This blog is almost certainly going to be neglected, or at least posted to erratically and irregularly pretty much as the whim takes me, but at least I'll try. The primary topic will be World of Warcraft (WoW), and more specifically my Horde faction toons/characters, presently on the EU Burning Blade server.