Controlling AV

After clearing 3 bosses in Hyjal last night a big group was up for some PvP in order to get their trinkets for the Archimonde fight on Thursday. We had 8 people at one point and let me tell you that was more than enough to completely control the battlefield. It's amazing that only 20% of the total raid can make such a huge impact but having such a well coordinated force (with plenty of healers) makes all the difference between an otherwise ragtag bunch.

We were rolling with:
Enhance Shaman (yours truly)
2x Hunters
Rogue
Holy Pally
Resto Shaman
Resto Druid
and after a he leveled his axe skill... a newly minted Enhance Shaman (guildie mentioned here who decided to roll with the true spec of hardcore gamers)

Yes that's 3 healers and 4.5 DPS (sorry Last, but with only 10% crit rating unbuffed you're only getting credit for 1/2 of a dps'er!!) What a difference having multiple healers makes. Here's what we did.

First few matches it was the textbook Alliance AV win strat. We rushed RH because you can count on everyone else going to Galv first. If there was no defense then we split up and capped the flag and the towers. If help was needed at IBT, TP, or FWGY after we capped the southern points then a few of us broke off to help, with the rest staying behind at the flag and the towers to prevent ninja capping. Then after the last or 2nd to last tower capped we'd call for ALL IN and take down Drek with ease.

This went on for maybe 5 matches. All lightning fast victories. It's great... for a while. Then it gets boring so we tried to mix it up. Next match we hopped between Stonehearth and Icewing. We actually went down to IBT first, capped it and chilled out down there until we saw SH get capped by the Horde. Then we rolled en-mass to SH and laid waste to the two defenders there. Of course at that point IW was capped so we went there and took that. We spent the rest of the fight bouncing between SH & IW, holding on to those for the duration of the fight. When Alliance was All In we ran back to Dun Baldar to mess with the Horde in Van's room. It was an outstanding victory with plenty of bonus honor for saving 2 towers.

For the next match we decided to have a bit more fun and defended Belinda. I think though we played our cards wrong and gave away not only that there were Alliance waiting in her room, but A LOT of Alliance. We only met sporadic resistance for a good five minutes in there. So we broadened our defensive strategy, moving between SH, IW, and Belinda. We let the Horde keep the SHGY because it not only gave us a bit of a challenge but also provided us with plenty of fresh HK's. In fact at one point we had both towers safe and decided to just farm people coming out of the GY.

But soon we realized that the Alliance had no forward graveyards... NONE. And the entire Alliance force was on defense. We had forced a turtle. The only ray of sunshine was that IBT & East FW tower were destroyed. Other than that, no other towers were taken by either side. This is where things got fun for us.

We popped back into Belinda's room to thrash the five or so Hordies that were trying to tackle her, recapped SH, then all eight of us rolled straight south. We picked up the Iceblood GY and asked two alliance there to guard it. More alliance were joining the offensive push and some took TP. As for us, we ran down and just completely mauled the resistance at FW. We got split up into two groups in inadvertently with two Hunters, rogue and Pally getting caught between FWGY and the bottleneck. Me, the resto shaman, and the resto druid rolled up into West, capped it and held it against two rogues and a pally. The other half caught up with us and the fighting was intense at this point. Horde had a Warrior, 2 Rogues (you know how I feel about rogues), Mage, Warlock, and Pally. We pushed them back deeper to the RH GY and then capped RH. They still had FW and were making a push on to us, but at this point a few more Alliance joined the fight and kept the horde busy down there.

With towers capped we would have called for the All-In but there was only the eight of us and one more resto Druid. We were feeling bold so the healers told me to strap on a shield and get to tanking! There was some horde resistance inside who we dispatched with ease. Our rogue and hunters pulled the dogs off and killed them. I saw misdirects from the hunters, and constant heals coming in from four different sources. It was brilliant! I had down Stoneskin, Grace of Air, Healing Stream, and Searing totems to help with the defense. I popped Heroism and Sham Rage right from the start to help with the initial chaos and until we got settled into position. I never dropped below 50% health with all the heals, and down went Drek.

Here are two screenshots of me tanking the Frostwolf Clan leader:

and



It was a 26 minute AV with 520 bonus honor and I must say it was the most fun I've had in that BG. I can honestly say in that instance the eight of us controlled the flow of that battle entirely.

RL > AV ...?

I woke up this morning and logged in to see that it was AV weekend. And here I've spent the majority of my weekend out in the sun enjoying the warm summer weather with my girlfriend. Why can't it be rainy and cold on AV weekend? Why!

Ah, maybe I'll bang out some bg's this morning and before I head out into another sunny 90 degree day. No gf today so I think I'll just grab my laptop and go from coffee bar to real bar to coffee bar back to real bar before settling in for the night to run our 3 hour Karathon tonight... followed inevitable by more AV's.

I hope your weekend was as beautiful as as mine was and that you found a nice balance between AV and RL.

Justice is Served in Boterac Valley

Blizzard unleashed massive bans on people that used the Glider program. Maybe now people will actually be playing in AV rather than AFKing.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/05/20/mass-bannings-strike-glider-users/

I Love My Shield

I love my shield. I picked up the Gladiator's Shieldwall a few weeks back and created a simple macro to swap between that and Fury. (Yes I still use that and not a S1 or S2 OH.) Recently in AV's I've found myself in small groups leading the charge to RH as 25 people go to Galv and 10 are botting/AFK. Being in the front of the charge means that the Frostwolf Bowman switch targets to me first. As soon as I hit IBT I pop on that shield and get ready to take some damage. By the time I'm past TP I usuaully dismount and heal myself then mount up again and keep moving. That's the first use of the shield I get in bg's.

Then throughout the rest of the bg as I'm facing off against Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, or Enhance Shaman I pop on that badboy and get to dropping the right totems. Boosting my armor up to 13k and my resilience to 329 makes a big difference in those fights.

If you are an enhance shaman you need a shield, period. I find myself using it over and over again. I use it as I'm running for my life (eqiup shield, Grounding Totem, Earthbind Totem, Insta-Ghostwolf and RUN!) and as I'm facing down one or more melee targets. Using that tactic I find I'm staying alive longer, which is always a good thing.

AV Timing

Just an observation, but WTH is with AV’s during the afternoon? I do my best to only do AV in the morning or late at night. Come 2pm server time (3pm EST) I stop playing bg’s altogether. I find the quality of alliance play dramatically decreases after 3pm EST. My guess: the kids are out of school and start joining bg’s before their dinner time. It’s the only thing I can come up with to explain the dramatic difference. Today I was waiting for a flight back to see my family so I had time to kill after my girlfriend left (she doesn’t game) and before my I had to leave for my flight (which got delayed two hours anyway). I braved the AV battleground for 2500 honor points worth-—it was AV weekend after all—-and tolerated some of the most colossal and spectacular losses.

Now at this point it’s worth mentioning that the arguments of “Alliance sucks at bg’s” and “Alliance PvP suxor” is just complete nonsense. My PvP record in all bg’s is above .500 meaning I’ve been in more winning bg’s than I have in losing ones. That counts both on the whole as well as individually per battleground. Yes even AB. But AV is the closest at only 56% wins, probably because I play it the most even when I know the kids are out of school and we’re going to lose. A losing AV on AV Weekend will net more honor than a winning WSG & AB… combined.

So I ask again, what’s with winning AV’s in the morning and losing in the afternoon? It’s not the Alliance sucking. I think it’s the kids coming out of school.

Turtling In the Turtle

Tonight I was PvPing with my late night PvP partners--normally a hunter, fire mage, MS warr, and drood. But tonight the MS Warrior was playing his wife's resto shaman and the drood was AFK.

First we grabbed the daily--Eye of the Storm--and hopped in. There was a larger premade than ours (we had 4) so I knew we were off to a good start. We stayed on offense the whole time and quickly 4-capped pushing the horde back to their starting gy where we just farmed kills until they broke through. Quick win.

Went for a second EotS and I was leader meaning we had the biggest group joining that instance. It started out bad with 2 towers each and most everyone fighting in the middle but horde always coming out with the flag. After some chasing and pleading to stop fighting on the flag--at this point we were behind in points--we got our first 3 cap and started to press the advantage. Again staying on offense the whole time and murauding across the battlefield we were able to hold at least a 2-1 and usually a 3-1 advantage. I think I had 9 kills on a single warlock, 9 on a mage, and another 7 on a priest. Another win for the night.

Next we popped into AV. For the first one we decided to ping pong between SH & IW, playing defense and trying to hold those two for the alliance as long as possible. We ended up losing IW but holding SH. Our MS warr playing his wife's resto shaman was really getting a feel for the OP-ness that is resto shammy. Meanwhile the hunter and I were having fun putting the pointy ends of sharp things in horde. Unfortunately we lost that AV due to the horde being able to take Van despite the extra battlemaster.

For the last AV of the night we lost the fire mage to sleep. So the three of us got the queue. In the bg I let the lock and resto drood know we were rushing RH. They were down. When we got to RH there was a huge defense so I called out over vent to take the east tower. Really I wanted to pop in there and use it for cover. That worked. Only a warrior, pally, and mage follwed us up to the top. In the close quarters the mage couldn't kite and fell quickly to my blades. The pally was squishy and I forced a bubble, switched to the warr. He must have been prot bc he was doing no damage and taking even less. Back to the pally... Windfury CRITS! Stormstrike, let him flash heal, wait for the Holy Ligtht, there it is EARTH SHOCK for the interrupt and WF for the finish.

At this point someone below took FWGY before RH ( /sigh ) so the turtle was only going to get worse. Wave after wave or horde crashed upon our shores. Spriest (2H Windfury procs ftw). Druid (purge purge purge). Pally back for more. But with 8 totems down the tremors tick fast, the poisons go byebye. We held the east tower in the midst of a nasty turtle. Then jumped down, grabbed west and did the same. The best part was that we eventually broke the turtle, got RH and took down Drek amidst half a dozen horde in his room.

All in all, a very satisfying night of PvP.