Rough Night

You won't see me claiming to be anything special PVP wise in this blog. Arena ratings are the yard stick by which any player can be judged, and using that system of measurement it's pretty safe to say that I must not be very good. Like I've said previously, during the first season neither my 2v2 or 3v3 team ever broke the 1700 barrier. I believe 1680 something is the closest we got. I played a warrior all season 1, and didn't finish leveling my priest until the last couple of weeks of the season.

As a warrior, I sometimes feel limited in terms of the impact I have on a match. In both my teams, my job is primarily to dps our assist target, and in 2v2 I am the sole source of dps. I try to make myself useful by keeping dps off of my healer, hamstringing opponents, and interrupting with Int Shout and Intercept, but at times I feel that the fight just doesn't rely on me. I do my dps, I interrupt, and hope for the best. The main reason that I rolled a priest is that I always felt that good healing can turn the tide of a fight and wanted to be the one to do so.

While I think that last season has shown that I may not be the best PVPer in the world, I still enjoy it immensely, and also feel qualified to write about it, even if I'm not playing at the top levels. I've played a lot of WoW since 11/04, and feel that I have a lot to say about the game.

Last night we played our first matches of the season with our 3v3 team. Our team is decently geared and we run a Warrior/Mage/Druid setup. The mage is Heavy Arcane (Slow) / Fire, and the druid is Resto. We started the night of great, going 7-2 and getting up around a 1600 rating. Spirits were high and the queue time was virtually instant. We should have quit while we were ahead. We suffered several losses to the same two teams. One was comprised of Shaman/Hunter/Warrior and the other was Frost Mage/SPriest/Lock. Against each of these teams we were vitually powerless. The hunter made excellent use of frost trap which made it very difficult for me to stay on my target, and the shaman was nigh un-killable. Against the second team, the Frost mage used his elemental to restrict my movement, and the team was able to drop me from 100-0 in the blink of an eye. Much faster than my druid was able to keep up with. Plus, with the warlock spam fearing and spriest silence, he was lucky to even get an NS heal off before I went down. Still, there were a few close games against that team, but in the end I think we went 0-4. Against the first team we went 0-3.

That many losses is devastating to morale. As I said, I enjoy PVP immensely but I am also very competitive. Losing bothers me a great deal and even though the mage is my brother and the druid is someone I've known for more than 20 years tensions can still get out of hand. I try to avoid playing the blame game and always will be the first to admin when I make a mistake. During a losing streak like that it can become very easy to lose focus. When this happens we tend to find ourselves arguing right into the start of the next match, making us unprepared for the fight at hand as we continue to argue about the previous one. It's a bad cycle to get into, and the smart thing to do is to simply stop queuing until everyone has had a chance to calm down. Unfortunately pride often wins out over smarts. We finished the night with a dismal 1521 rating and the general feeling of "omg we suck". Sad as it is to say, it pretty much ruined my night and I'm still upset about it now. My druid friend is actually coming into town to visit with a couple of other friends this weekend, so our 3v3 team is done for the week. I still need to get 10 games on my priest, and hopefully that goes a little better.

What a weekend.

I stayed true to my goal and played WoW all night Friday, all day and night Saturday, and a few hours on Sunday. I managed to come out with about 13-14k honor farmed. This number would have been significantly higher, but I was forced to play enough AB on my priest to get 40 marks, because the next pieces on my list were the blue shoulders and the epic cloak. Had those games been AV matches instead of AB, my honor would have come in several thousand higher. That's the breaks when gearing up a new character though.

This morning I bought my fourth piece of S1 armor for my warrior. Our team was pretty pathetic, never once breaking 1700 although we came close a couple of times. Still, I feel some sense of accomplishment finally having 15 second intercepts, which was something that I always wanted. It should be interesting to see if I notice a difference at all this week. If you interrupt a spell with a pummel it gives you a four second lockout. If I'm beating on a healing class, I will usually pummel a heal, get another regular swing off (3.8) and then when pummel is about to wear off I get range and intercept. Now the guy is stunned for three seconds, allowing me to get another regular swing off and at least an MS. By the time he comes out of intercept, pummel should be just about to cool down, allowing me to interupt his 3rd healing attempt. At this point I'm pretty much out of interrupts unless I feel like blowing int. shout just to interrupt a heal but to be honest if I've pulled this tactic off flawlessly we usually have won the fight. In addition to the anti-kiting benefits of a 15 second intercept, it should help with my interrupts as well.

The trinket change last week definitely helps my warrior out. Although I'm pretty good at getting a hunter's pet to break freezing trap (via challenging shout), sometimes you just get stuck in those fuckers and have to sit there while the rest of your team gets owned. It's really a horrible feeling and sometimes it just feels like the god damned trap is never going to end. I cried tears of joy this week as I trinketed out of freezing trap and proceeded to beat hunters down left and right. Ahhhhhh.

After starting the week off with a bad loss and then a left queue which somehow resulted in us taking another loss, we came back and gained about 100 points to finish around 1600 for the week. Not a bad start considering that all the ratings were brought to 1500 and you end up running into some really good teams.

As for the priest, my gear is still a huge problem in arena, although now I have a whopping 80 resilience (look out). I'm sitting at around 9k hp buffed, 9k mana and 500 healing, kill me. Despite my assy gear, we still managed to finish positive for the week, at around 1540. We faced a shadow priest/lock team 3 times and probably gave them around 45 points. They owned us so hard that I wanted to log off and quit video games. Non-affliction warlocks I can heal though with pretty much no problem, but when faced with an aflliction lock + spriest we're talking about a lot of damage for one undergeared priest to heal. Add a felhunter into the mix and it's g fucking g. The first fight they kept my partner (41 Arc/Fire) locked down with silience and spell lock. At least this fight I was able to heal and even though we didn't do a lot of damage it still felt like a decent fight. After that they kept the felhunter on me, which limited the amount of healing I could do and made the fights extremely short and ugly. I wonder if it isn't worth trying to kill the felhunter in this matchup, but at the time we pretty much just had to bend over and take it.

Holy/Disc revisited

Switched the spec up to drop absolution in favor of mediation & divine spirit. New spec is:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMrzhguMZfAth0MoV0h

Dropped a point in mental strength to pick up DS. Right now I"m getting back 26 a tick while casting, it feels better. Some fights are dispel heavy and in those instances absolution could win out, but sometimes you barely dispel at all and Meditation & DS works in both situations. Plus DS is something that your whole team can benefit from, and it also serves as buff fodder for offensive dispellers.

I also recently created a macro that will cast some of my Rank 1 buff spells in a cycle. This allows me to throw up several buffs quickly for almost no mana to serve as buff fodder using the /castsequence command:

/castsequence reset=2 Renew(Rank 1), Touch of Weakness(Rank 1), Fade(Rank 1)

Sometimes it gets caught up on the fade cooldown which is why I added the "reset=2" which will basically start the sequence from the beginning if you don't press it for 2 seconds. Good against Felhunters too!

Holy/Disc talent choices

If you're not a shadow priest and you PVP, chances are that you're specced 28/33 for Blessed Resilience. Some people favor a Disc build, and I've heard people say that it's a very viable 2v2 spec but currently it looks like the dispel resistance on PS is broken, and you're still looking at only 8 seconds of damage reduction whereas BR will proc several times over the course of a fight. It's really been Blizzard's style over the years to implement some half assed fix to a broken ability and then not even get the code right. As a programmer I sympathize with them but ffs they're supposed to be professionals. How does shit like that even make it into a patch?

Even if PS was fixed, I still don't think that heavy disc will be considered the PVP survivability build. I've always looked at heavy disc as the lolsmite build with some added survivability. I personally am interested in healing and not doing damage so many of the high end disc talents don't appeal to me.

So even though most non-shadow arena priests spec 28/33 there's a lot of disparity between the filler points that you just don't have with the warrior class. Warrior PVP builds are called "cookie-cutter" for a reason. You tell me what someone is specced and I can probably rattle off every one of their talents with only variation coming in the first 10 points in fury, or possibly how many points they put into 2h spec. On my way to 70 as a priest I looked at a lot of 28/33 builds from top arena priests. Some of their decisions I understood, and some left me scratching my head.

My current spec is: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMru0gLMZfAth0MoV0h

The major way in which my spec deviates from most builds is that I chose Absolution over Meditation. I am probably going to spec into meditation next time I get on, so lets look at some of the numbers. Assuming a passive regen from spirit of 70 mana per tick, over a 2 minute fight Meditation would net me somewhere in the area of 660 mana (60 ticks of 11 mana). If I specced into Meditation it would probably make sense to throw a point into DS for the boost to regen, but sitting here at work I don't know what kind of increase that would give. Dispel Magic costs around 270 mana (I think) and Mass Dispel is up around 900 (I think). This means that absolution saves 40 and 135 mana on both spells respectively. Assuming no Mass Dispels are cast in a fight I would have to cast 16 dispel magics to break even. I'm prepared to say that in most 2v2 fights I don't cast 16 dispel magics. Even with a Mass Dispel thrown in it's still 13 dispel magics to break even. Yea, I'm pretty sure I'll be dropping Absolution later today.

The other major way that my spec deviates from the norm is that I don't pick up Improved Healing. Instead, I opt for three points in Holy Specialization. Improved healing will save you about 130 mana on a GHeal cast. I would say that at most, I cast 2 or 3 greater heals in a given fight, and some fights I don't cast it at all. I cast Flash Heal much more frequently, and therefore I feel that the extra 3% crit on both flash and gheal is worth more to me than _possibly_ saving 300 mana.

New PVP rings from PVE

By way of MMO Champion comes news of new epic rings available in SSC. The healing ring (no wowhead yet) is hot, 33 sta, 21 spell crit, 21 res, and 46 healing.....very nice. The melee ring is missing crit but packing a whopping 50 atk. Compared to the other two PVP rings you get from PVE, there are definitely better, but of course come from raid content and not farming five mans for spirit shards.

I still haven't been able to pick up Band of the Exorcist on my warrior due to my inability to run instances, however the group of people that I play with is about to have a fifth 70 so we may be able to schedule some runs in the near future to pick it up. I really think it's great that Blizzard has made it possible for PVPers to gear up without having to PVE. I don't really mind them throwing the occasional nice PVP item into PVE as long as they don't get carried away with it. Since guilds can now raid SSC without going through the attunement process the barrier to obtaining these rings isn't as bad as it could be anyway. I'm sure for the majority of serious players getting these rings won't be too much of a struggle.

Season 2 is underway and I'm still just trying to farm honor on my priest. I went out to Halaa last night in hopes that there would be a little more activity due to the patch but once again the place was empty. My girlfriend is going away this weekend so I'm going to try and pull off a marathon WoW weekend. Hopefully sometime during the marathon some alliance with go to Halaa and I can at least get the belt.

Priest PVP Survivability: First Impressions

Ok so it's been a couple of weeks as a holy/disc priest, and I've been spending all my time in BGs and Arena. After the patch today I should be purchasing my first PVP pieces, which will be nice, but I still have a LONG way to go. As I said in my last post, I'm sitting at around 8700 hp buffed with 0 resilience. Since I'm kind of limited in my play time I'm trying to take the shortest path to 200 resilience. The first two pieces that I will be picking up are the blue PVP mooncloth gloves & shoulders. For the paltry sum of 20200 honor I will be getting around 65 resilience and some added HP and +heal. Not that it really makes that much of a difference but you have to start somewhere.

I would very much like to grab the Halaa belt + legs to hold me over until I can get something better. As I mentioned previously, going to Halaa can be a huge waste of time, and almost every time I go out there I come back with nothing to show for it. I only have three of those stupid marks and I need 60. The patch today may have provided me with an opportunity to make this happen, believe it or not. A new gem recipe was added that gives +res and apparently it's a Halaa item. I wouldn't be suprised if there was some increased activity at Halaa this week, as jewelcrafters scramble to pick up the new recipe. This will probably be my best chance to add another 40 or so resilience to my gear.

The last front that I'm working on to gear up is Arena. As I said, I started a 2v2 team with my brother to get the ball rolling on some points. He's a decently geared mage and so far it's been going better than I thought. Our rating is still ass (1550) but compared to the horror stories I've heard and to some degree experienced I have to say that I'm pleasently suprised. My main is a warrior. Not exceptionally geared but well enough, after this week I will have 4/5 S1 glad with most of the PVP epics and a T1 BS axe. Not impressive by any means but decent. I play on a 3v3 team with my brother's mage and a resto druid. I can say from my experience that priest is without a doubt the easiest class for us to kill. When we see a priest we drop him right away and rarely ever have a problem with it. I love seeing a priest on my warrior, and we take them out real quick.

It was because of my experience on my warrior that I was seriously concerned about how my priest would hold up. Granted, I haven't taken him into 3v3 yet, and I haven't really fought to many well geared warriors or rogues (a few) , but so far in 2v2 and also in BGs I've been pretty hard to kill. There's been a lot of fights where I've really suprised myself by tanking some high DPS opponents. Using the combination of renew, shield, and prom I can withstand a beating pretty well. The only times I get killed before going OOM is when I get stunlocked (or the unfortunate CS lockout). I'm sure as I fight better opponents and experience more focus fire in 3v3, I will start to understand the survivability issues that I always hear priests complain about but right now I'm enjoying myself immensly.

Holy Priest PVP wtfux?

So I finally finshed leveling my priest alt last weekend. When it comes to WoW, it's not that I don't have a lot of time to play, because I probably log ~20 hours a week or so, it's that at any moment I may be forced to drop what I'm doing and walk away from the computer. My girlfriend is pretty forgiving of my nerdly addictions but she doesn't like to be kept waiting because of WoW. This has made it virtually impossible for me to participate in the PVE side of the game. I can never make a 3 hour commitment because I will most likely be pulled away from the computer during that time, and my girlfriend doesn't care if I'm right in the middle of tanking a boss fight. I'm actually ok with this, because the primary reason I play the game is for PVP, and you can now gear yourself up pretty well exclusively through PVP. Basically, I leveled my priest by playing in the morning before work while I ate breakfast, almost the whole thing was rested and I think it took me around 10 days played to get to 70. Not breaking records by any means but as shadow it was pretty painless. I took all the gold he had on him at 70 (Around 1K) and gave it to my main. Epic flying mount pls.

After PVPing with a warrior for 2+ years you really appreciate the value of a good healer. Since no one I play with seemed to interested in rolling a healing class I figured I would make a priest. Ever since I leveled my main back in 2004-2005 with my priest friend JBlaze I've had a soft spot for the priest class, and he was definitely my inspiration for starting the character. Even though I knew at the time that the horde was getting pallies, I couldn't wait until TBC to start leveling my alt. Plus, this was before the Prayer of Mending nerf so priests at the time were looking pretty strong as PVP healers. As soon as I hit 70 I specced 28/33, which is the pretty standard holy/disc build for PVP priests.

I deviate from most specs in a few areas, most notably taking 3/5 holy spec instead of improved healing and taking 3/3 absolution instead of meditation. The jury is still out on the the absolution decision, but in fights where I'm casting a lot of dispel magic and mass dispel (mage/lock, pally/lock, pally/war) I'm sure that I'm at least breaking even mana wise. Also, .5 second mass dispel is hot and my 2v2 team is already clowning pallies with it.

Right now, my gear is total ass, pretty much the absolute worst you can get. I had my brother make me some imbued netherweave stuff, but aside from that it's pretty much all physician stuff with a couple of random pieces. In arena as a priest, I'm going to be stacking resilience and stamina, with int coming in a close 3rd. Right now, buffed, I have 8700hp and 0 resilience. Clearly this is unacceptable. So I've been in BGs and started an arena team and after Tuesday's patch I should have enought for the honor gloves + shoulders and about 600 arena points. Not much but it's a start. I want to pick up a Halaa piece or two but as a holy priest I can't PVP solo and it can be a real pain in the ass to find the right balance between horde and alliance that actually makes that place work.