Archive for March, 2011

4

Premature Emote-ation

By
Lufitoom
– March 21, 2011Posted in: PvP, Screenshots
Have you ever happened upon a member of the opposite faction and just known that you were going to be able to roll them? You get the opener, things are looking fantastic and then it goes horribly, horrible wrong? That’s just what happened to Wastedbeef of Emerald Dream [...]

Have you ever happened upon a member of the opposite faction and just known that you were going to be able to roll them? You get the opener, things are looking fantastic and then it goes horribly, horrible wrong? That’s just what happened to Wastedbeef of Emerald Dream today. I am not sure if it was all the nifty blues he was wearing, or those sparkling greens he still had equipped, but he felt the need to spam emotes at me, confident in his ability to win this confrontation in Tol Barad.

Sadly, this was a case of “Premature Emote-ation”, a terribly malady that seems to be showing its ugly face more and more during WPvP fights.

This, my friends, is the result of his emote frenzy:

Here is the full screenshot of me riding away, keeping it a 10, and you can see the text in all its glory.

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0

Garrosh Lives! (But We’ll Be Back)

By
Lufitoom
– March 21, 2011Posted in: Out of Character, PvP, Screenshots
Last night, No Mercy Mafia, Kingship of the East and Ashes of the Phoenix joined forces with a few other people in “The Federation” and made our way to Orgrimmar. It was relatively easy, since our guilds have the “Have Group, Will Travel” guild achievements. So, three full [...]

Last night, No Mercy Mafia, Kingship of the East and Ashes of the Phoenix joined forces with a few other people in “The Federation” and made our way to Orgrimmar. It was relatively easy, since our guilds have the “Have Group, Will Travel” guild achievements. So, three full raids descended upon Garrosh.

The fight was going to be long, fighting the immense lag was the worst part. At about 50%, we crashed the server and Garrosh reset.

We logged back in, and started again. Adjusting a few things but again at about 50%, the server crashed once again.

Maybe three times the charm? We log back in again, and start to fight. The Horde obviously are angered at this time and had given up trying to fight us in any honorable way, so a certain guild sent five or so of their most nefarious characters to crash our vent. Then, one logged on their unguilded Alliance toon and taunted Garrosh to pull him out and reset him.

We continued to fight, my raid barely lost a soul until the very end. ~500 honorable kills later, we went back to Stormwind, unsuccessful in achieving our objective, but very content with the hurting we put on the Horde.

The Horde retaliated with a 39 man raid on the Trade District in Stormwind where they were annihilated immediately. We flew swiftly out to the the graveyard, and camped it to punish them for their tomfoolery.

For the Alliance!

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3

World PvP is NOT Dead (Just On Life Support)

By
Lufitoom
– March 20, 2011Posted in: Out of Character, PvP, Screenshots
Recently there was a blue post about the state of World PvP at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2228418515?page=2#32 and after many a day stewing over this, I decided I needed to put in my 2 cents.  Sadly, it seems that when you disagree with “the blues” you tend to get banned for harassment or spam, [...]

Recently there was a blue post about the state of World PvP at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2228418515?page=2#32 and after many a day stewing over this, I decided I needed to put in my 2 cents.  Sadly, it seems that when you disagree with “the blues” you tend to get banned for harassment or spam, and since I have no problem in getting banned for much more fun things, I figured here would be a good place to put it.

Here is Bashiok’s quote:

Hrm, I reckon it’s rewards that ruined world PvP. Everyone harkens back to TM/SS as the holy grail of world PvP, and that was before and maybe slightly after the honor system was implemented (but before real rewards existed from it). I think you can encourage world PvP all you want, and if there aren’t rewards behind it you’ll keep people interested for about as long as it takes them to realize there are other things to do that give real power increases. Why would anyone spend any amount of time just pushing back and forth for no reason when you can spend your time toward actual rewards and character improvement? Maybe there are some of you, but I guarantee it’d be short lived.I mean shoot, you have Isle of Quel’Danas or even quest hubs in Cataclysm where people are literally forced together, and there’s complaints that they just want people to stop PvPing so they can get their stuff done so they can get their rewards. That’s kind of unfair because I know many did enjoy those situations, but somehow it never meets the awesomeness of TM/SS, and I reckon it just never could again.The best I can think that you could do is create a specific world PvP zone where you don’t allow flying mounts, give some objective to tug-o-war over, and so you can justify giving some semi-meaningful rewards and keep people interested you’d need to find some way to even up the sides (because world PvP is inherently going to be unfair). I think you do all that and you probably have the best working solution for bringing back world PvP.

Seriously?  Have you visited Emerald Dream-US in the past two expansions?  This has to be the most pants-on-head retarded post I have seen in a while from a blue.  Does Blizzard have a stash of pre-1978 vintage lead paint chips that they are offering as snacks to their employees?

Those of us who live for World PvP do it not for “rewards” but for bragging rights and for the fact that WE ARE AT FUCKING WAR WITH EACH OTHER NOT JUST NIFTY DRAGONS.  We eat, sleep and breathe WPvP on Emerald Dream.  If you think that people don’t keep an interest in WPvP, Bashiok, you really need to climb out of your hole and do some research.

Has flying hurt WPvP?  Immensely.  Sure, we can get into a city easier flying in, but then it’s more about PvE than PvP.  The sad thing is now we see our enemies just mount and fly away and even I find less of a reason to attempt to stay and fight.  So, yes, flying in the old world has been fun but I would gladly give it back for just the WPvP that it gives us.

When we do find some good WPvP, it is more PvE against NPCs than anything else.  We don’t have a problem downing the hard-as-a-truck hitting NPCs, but the insanely quick respawn timers take the fun out of it.  This is why many of us are enjoying another game (Cough. Rift. Cough).  There the NPCs in towns are killed by other NPCs if you don’t defend, not to mention the opposing faction.  It makes sense and promotes defending them if you want to get/turn in quests or just interact with them.  Please, make a note of this Blizzard.

It’s sad that World PvP and the PvPers that love it seem to be so far down on the priority list for Blizzard.  There are some really easy and fun ways that would fix this such as no-fly zones that have reasons for people to be there, guards that have reasonable HP and reasonable respawn timers, and just stopping catering to the people who want an easy game!


If players want an easy time questing, there are things out there called “PvE servers”.  Go there.  If you join a PvP server, don’t bitch.  Your difficulties will build character and when you hit 85, you can LOL at the carebears and know that you really worked for what you have.  I realize that instance and bg leveling make it less of an issue, but many people still quest a lot.

Max level WPvP is still important to many of us.  We do get the rewards from arena and RBGs to gear up just for the WPvP.  As for it being unfair, it’s a war, war isn’t always fair and we like it that way.  Sometimes you get rolled, sometimes you roll.  That’s the beauty of it

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0

Upcoming Nerfs and Moonkin Survivability

By
Lufitoom
– March 1, 2011Posted in: Moonkin, PvP, Spec
It had to happen.  I have been waiting for the nerf bat to be swung mightily in my direction and aimed directly at my Starsurge for a while now.  I guess the first clue might have been when I hit a Warrior in Tol Barad for 87k.  So what exactly [...]

It had to happen.  I have been waiting for the nerf bat to be swung mightily in my direction and aimed directly at my Starsurge for a while now.  I guess the first clue might have been when I hit a Warrior in Tol Barad for 87k.  So what exactly are they doing to it?  The patch notes can be found here.

Ok, so a 20% reduction in my Starsurge is not going to be game breaking for me in PvP.  The only thing that it might shrink other than the sexy big numbers is the size of my epeen and that still will be enormous with or without the big numbers.  But seriously, I’m a Moonkin, I’ve been through nerfs before.  I’ll still kick ass, take names, and make the Horde cry.

The nerfs that are going to be affecting me the most are not Balance specific.  These will be affecting all Druids and I believe are meant to be pointed at other specs and for PvE oriented characters.  Sadly, it will really hurt the survivability of us PvP Moonkin in a big way.

First, let’s talk about this nerf: Cyclone duration has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6. While that doesn’t sound like much, it’s a huge deal especially since they took out the glyph to make our roots instant, and nerfed our Thorns (due to melee classes that should have been licking the windows of short buses as opposed to PvPing).  Now, the one thing I have left to try and either give me enough time to get away to ranged distance or just GTFO in general, will disappear even faster.  This is will leave me extremely vulnerable.

The next nerf is supposed to be balancing things out between healers but it really affects me since most of my healing has already been nerfed to the point that I might as well not even roll a hot.  Lifebloom‘s bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. In addition, it now costs 11% of base mana, up from 7%.  While this might not seem like a lot, this is the only heal that was able to give me that extra survivability as I was running away like a scared little schoolgirl.  The mana increase will hurt Restoration Druids more than me, and I don’t think that PvE Moonkin will worry about this much at all.  It’s the bloom effect that will sting.

I know that these nerfs were needed in some capacity but Blizzard needs to look at the big picture.  It seems that when they make these changes, they are tunnel visioning PvE or PvP, one spec, or one issue.  They seem to forget that not everyone PvEs (or PvPs for that matter, because some nerfs have been brought on by PvP issues and completely gimped PvE focused specs.)

Qieth has an excellent post on his blog that brings to light another nerf that will most certainly affect those who are inclined to slay more dragons than I do.  What he highlights will affect me but not to the extreme that it will him.

Honestly, I’m not going to get my feathers into a ruffle, because it is early in the patch testing phase and hopefully things will be adjusted or evened out before it goes live.  I just hate to see that for the first time in a long time, being a PvP Moonkin was viable and now it seems that piece by piece I am being pushed back to the bad old days.


 

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