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.