Viable Tactics at the End of the Day

Ghostcrawler: "We understand that many players feel burst damage is too high
right now. We hear you. But when all is said and done, there still
needs to be a place for damage dealers. Killing a healer, even in the
absence of crowd control, silences or whatever, still needs to be a
viable tactic at the end of the day."

1)  Healers are always the target.  You hear it in BGs:  "Kill their
healers!"  Healers have always been the target.  You hear it from your
arena partner:  "Cyclone/root the warrior while I kill the healer." 
Killing the healer has always been a tactic in PVP.  Now, however, it
appears that healing is no longer viable tactic.

2)  Damage-dealing has always had a place in PVP.  I'm not sure I heard
of too many successful all-healer Arena teams.  And while certainly
"drain teams" were a good combination for a time, they did still
involve, ya know, damage.  A prot warrior in a raiding guild I was in
once asked if I wanted to be his 2s partner, as he thought it would be
hilarious to watch competitors struggle to kill him.  But after
watching him struggle to kill his Inner Demon in SSC, I politely
passed.  PVP isn't just about surviving damage; it's about inflicting
it.

3)  The four top classes in the arena right now —
Paladin, Death Knight, Rogue, and Mage — are not merely "burst"
classes; they have a wealth of crowd-control abilities to utilize. 
Cheap Shot. Kidney Shot. Strangulate. Hammer of Justice. Counterspell. Even with a two-minute trinket, you're dead.

I know GC has responded with some clarification:  Arenas shouldn't just be about healing, or just be about DPS, or just be about CC.  But damn, I think the "viable tactic at the end of the day" for me will be just opting out of this Arena season entirely.

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Farewell Maelstrom

When K- and I first started playing WoW, we joined a great guild:  The Shadow Watch.  It was either the first or second Alliance guild formed on Maelstrom, and it was full of a lot of wonderful people.  Kinolas and Khree were far far younger than the other characters in the guild, the majority of whom were level-capped.  But many members were very helpful, powerleveling us through instances and giving us free enchants and potions and gear, and lots of good advice on the game.  When the guild leaders of The Shadow Watch announced that the guild was rerolling on a PVE server, we were pretty shocked.  We had purposefully chosen to roll on a RP-PVP server and we enjoyed world PVP immensely.  At the time, we didn't understand why someone would opt to play in what we saw as a safer, "staler" environment.  We were still leveling then, and we only heard about the massacres on Isle of Quel-Danas second hand:  the Horde standing on quest NPCs so that unsuspecting Alliance would click on them and get wtfpwned by guards.  We heard frustrated guildies complain they were unable to complete their dailies, but we figured they must really just suck at PVP as we'd never had a problem fending for ourselves while leveling.

K- said to me yesterday, "I see now why TSW left the server."

Indeed.  Horde outnumber Alliance almost three-to-one on this server.  And while I do understand and even expect a certain amount of ganking on a PVP server, it has become ridiculous to the point of being unplayable here.  We cannot level alts.  We cannot solo.  We cannot do dailies.  We cannot get to instances.  We cannot get out of instances. 

So we're getting off the server.

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It Burns When I PVP

I love to PVP.  From the moment I had my first experience fighting the Horde, I've been hooked on the rush that comes from battling another player.  As we leveled Khree and Kinolas — druid and hunter — K- and I never shied away from it… until we entered the arena.  The mechanics of the hunter class, combined with the pressure to utilize (I won't say "exploit," but shiiiiit…) line-of-sight made 2v2 with our classes more struggle than it was really worth.

Leveling the priest, I did a lot of battlegrounds while waiting for the release of Wrath and for K- to roll his DK.  Indeed, the priest has the full level 60 Epic PVP set (incidentally, still some of the most bad-ass-looking gear I've seen in game).

In these BGs, I was specced shadow; and although I found it a lot of fun, I had limited survivability.  Dispersion, the talent that Koraa infamously asserted in Beta that would make shadowpriests PVP-viable, was lackluster at best.  In BGs, when focus-fired, I died quickly.  In world PVP, a far more frustrating circumstance, Horde sliced through me like I was butter.

It's no surprise that respeccing to Discipline increased my survivability.  I'm the first target when alongside the death knight, and now that I'm not smoky purple, I can actually live to fight or heal.  Of course, Discipline is allegedly the priest PVP tree.

But damn… there is still so little a clothie — even a clothie with shields and heals — can do.  I've had a run-in recently with a retadin who kept me stunned from 11K health to dead; and although I trinketed out of one stun, a rogue killed me almost instantly.

So, burst is king.  Sucks to be a healer or a DoT class, eh?

According to a post I read at The Hunter's Refuge, "If burst is the new king, Paladin's are the queen.  Their anti-burst bubble's make them the best class to counter burst (especially melee)."  Shaedon goes on to report that of the top 100 2s arena teams, 57% contain paladins.

God, I hate paladins.

But even more, I hate it that the arenas are looking decidedly un-fun for K- and me again.

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Random Observations from a Four-Day Weekend of WoW

• I wish I had an AOE.  (3 more levels!) Our guild ran a very bloobie Kara this afternoon, primarily to get some achievements for the death knights (and shadowpriest!) among us who'd never done the zone before.  Two of the raid were 80, and their AOEs made it so I could barely cast a spell on trash mobs before they were dead — let alone let my DoTs tick for any damage.  On bosses, I was fourth on the parse (behind an 80 moonkin, an 80 Blood DK, and a 75 rogue).  On trash, I was last.  QQ

• I don't mind healing when K- is tanking.  When guildies drag me into zones that with orange- and red-con mobs, have a non-tank-specced-DK tank and then the aggrowhore Moonkin says "Heal me!", I get frustrated.  (Again with the QQ, I know I know).  I was looking at Disc specs, but now I think I'll just stick with being a shitty healer.

• LOL @ Lonsdale, who for some reason decided to follow Kaleyen and Khæli across the Howling Fjord map ganking us repeatedly.  Better get your shots in now, kiddo.  Because once we can land spells on you (in perhaps 1 or 2 levels), our "/laugh" emote will be over your corpse.  But nice bubble hearth when I trained you to the guards at Westgarde Keep.  And thanks for reminding me that I absolutely have to write a chapter in Khæli's story about why she despises paladins.

• Only 30ish skill-ups til I get my flying carpet.  Screw the guildies that want me to level to make them bags.  But thanks for the frostweave! *cough*

• Caution:  Completing the Friend or Fowl achievement turns all neutral mobs hostile.  One very angry turkey followed Kaleyen back to Ebon Hold.  My insisting we do this achievement constitutes Reason 412 why K- gets to be group leader and I get to /follow.

• This expansion has exceeded all my expectations.  Granted, I say this after questing in one zone and running three instances.  But still.  The number of innovative quests continues to astound me.  (Favorites thus far include the holy bubble that sears through undead in the catacombs near Valgarde and riding the harpoon back to the docks at Valgarde.)  And I really do feel as though the Scourge Invasion, alongside the ongoing lore of the quest series, has helped me immerse myself in WotLK in ways no other MMO expansion has ever managed to do.

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Broken, Season 2

All I wanted to do was to log in and start testing DoT timers.  Instead, I heard word of a rush on the Hall of Champions the likes of which haven't been seen since the Great Cabbage Patch Kid Holiday Debacle of 1983.  Apparently, along with the mail bug, today's "maintenance" ushered in several others, including free Season 2 Priest gear.  (Zomg!  Free!)  After working my ass off to get my meager Level 60 Epics, I didn't really have the stomach to grab the set, whether or not Blizz takes it back in the morning.  But I did grab a screenshot of the chaos and wished, not for the first time either, that I could AOEkill members of the Alliance.

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The League of Arathor: Not Ready for the Majors

At first, I thought I'd do a nice little write-up today about the status of all our preparations for November 13.  I spent quite a bit of time on Khree this weekend, doing dailies for coin, and I was excited to report that I'd amassed almost 1500 gold to give to Kaleyen.

Today, however, I looked at Khæli's gear and decided that if I was going to grind out the honor for her level 60 PVP epics, it was now or never.  I needed around 9K honor and 25ish AB tokens for the chestpiece — my goal for the day.  Now sadly, 25 AB marks means 25 ABs as the Alliance in the Shadowburn battlegroup cannot defend a node to save their… well… yeah…

It was painful.

It was grueling.

And we lost darn near every time, many of them to 5-caps.

But I collected my 30 tokens.  /phew

It is mildly amusing that Khæli is exalted with the Stormpike Guard, and only neutral with the two other BG factions. 

Since the achievements first started recording battleground wins, she's won 83 AVs, 9 ABs, and 3 WSGs.

3 wins in WSG… damn.  That's going to be another terrible grind if I want those epic pants: 17 marks to go.  /whimper

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How will I spend my last weekend before WotLK?

Duh.  PVPing.

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Dispersion: Some Initial Thoughts at Level 60

It was one of those comments from Beta that made many players /facepalm:  Koraa's assertion that "without dispersion, shadowpriests would not be PVP viable."

Upon hitting level 60, I specced into Dispersion, despite the consensus among shadowpriests that the talent is, at best, lackluster and, at worst, worthless.

And granted, I am only level 60, so any assessment I make of the talent can be only partial, based on my honor-grinding in AV and my Deathcharger grinding in Stratholme.

Regardless — and sadly — I must echo most shadowpriests when I say of Dispersion, "meh."

Despite Koraa's contention that Dispersion is a PVP talent, it has come in handy far more often in PVE:

1.  when I pull aggro, fade + dispersion can be useful to live through Drek/Galv/the Baron.  I've heard this poo-pooed as the lazy shadowpriest way of "not getting out of the fire" but yeah, I lived so what…

2.  when I'm low on mana, dispersion is (and omfg, how sad is this for the class once responsible for regenerating everyone's mana?!) my best bet at quickly refilling my blue bar.

In PVP, I have cast dispersion and sure, as advertised, it blocks 90% of incoming damage.  However, a big-purple-sorta-power-word-shielded-but-silenced priest is a sad thing to behold — and an easy target at that.  Dispersion lasts such a short amount of time and does nothing to prevent or remove stuns or slows or fears, nor does it remove DoTs or debuffs.  So more often than not, dispersion merely extends the inevitable:  my death.

The beta forums have been full of suggestion to "fix" the shadowpriest 51-point talent — add some damage component to it; have it clear stuns; return the health regen component that was removed in early beta; lower its cooldown.

As I'm still leveling, I'll go with the cop-out response and say "the jury is still out" for Khæli.  Maybe I need to work on using it more effectively, on timing it better.  And maybe if I'm going to assess a so-called PVP talent, I should actually spec for PVP. 

But in the end, what makes me saddest about this talent right now is more the "zomg" factor than the theorycrafting one.  Dammit, even as a purple ball of dispersed shadow energy, this talent is nowhere near as cool as, say, Starfall, Khree's 51-point talent.  Starfall is situational too.  But when I cast it, I feel so badass.  When I cast Dispersion, I just hope I can GTFO before 10 ret paladins roflestomp me.

Khæli, dispersed

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Preparing for the Expansion

With just over two weeks til Wrath of the Lich King arrives, it's getting down to the wire to make those preparations for the expansion.  As K- and I are both switching classes, we have quite a lot to do.

Leveling the Shadow Priest:

Our goal was level 58, to coincide with the deathknight's level upon finishing his opening questline.  Khæli is now about 40% into level 60, and I'm a little concerned she'll hit 61 and level out of the AV bracket — the only BG in my battlegroup where the alliance consistently wins.

Honor:

I'd hoped to get all six pieces of my PVP Epic set, along with a weapon and maybe a jewelry item.  Of course this gear is made obsolete in the Outlands, but it is pretty badass looking, and the deathknight deserves a hot-lookin' shadow priest at his side.  I have about 3000 honor now and 3 of the six pieces.  So by my count, I need roughly 62,000 honor, 70 AB tokens, and 30 WSG tokens.  Ouch.

Faction items:

The shadow priest will go Aldor; the deathknight Scryer.  The dailies from the Isle have made collecting the latter quite easy.  We need to spend a bit more time farming the Aldor turn-in items.  We also have banked hundreds of the Unidentified Plant Parts for the CE rep, as well as a number of the spores and hibiscus parts for Sporeggar faction.  Lower City, Consortium, Sha'tar, Kurenai — all these will need to be earned via questing.  Whether we choose to do so will probably depend on crafting recipes.  At the least, of course, we'll get honored with all of them for the key to the heroics.

Tradeskills:

Khæli is in good stead for crafting.  She's over 300 with both enchanting and tailoring.  There are lots of recipes she'll have to track down, however, particularly if there aren't good upgrades in the expansion.  She hasn't learned cooking or fishing, however.  I don't think I have time before WotLK to level these.  We also have quite a bit of ore saved in the bank, along with some blacksmithing recipes, in preparation for the deathknight's professions.  And tons of cloth.  Seriously.  Tons.

Coin:

Ugh.  We have long felt at a deficit in this realm as relatively new players we do not have the large stash of gold that other players seem to.  We'd hoped to raise enough funds to buy epic flyers for Khæli and Kaleyen, but needless to say, I haven't amassed enough gold for one yet.

So much to do; so little time.

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