Posts Tagged ‘Priest’

Arena Footage

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

As promised, here is some video captured during our arena matches last weekend. The matches are between 1850 and 1900 rating. We played many comps like beast cleave, mirror, spell cleave, TSG, etc. I spent a lot of time during these matches doing offensive dispelling, more than usual. The challenge of playing a disc priest is the balance between defensive and offensive play. I have had teammates get global’d during a holy fire cast.

RMP is a lot of fun because of the diverse strategies vs the various comps. We don’t just pick a target to try and global, we pick our CC targets and damage targets and switch when needed. Hopefully these matches offer some strategies for your RMP or other comp.

Match Breakdown:

Match 1: RMP

Get in combat early to prevent sap. Play very aggressive from the start. Offensive dispels on the mage/priest. Mage will CC the rogue while you hit their priest. If the priest doesn’t go down, switch to mage. Throw some defensive dispels on your rogue to help him stay in range. I wasn’t paying attention to the mage and got polymorphed and blinded (the reason Ballsagna went down).

Match 2: Beastcleave

Use CC early. Avoid the initial burst with bloodlust at all costs. I have been killed through pain suppression against this setup. Burn the shaman and CC the paladin. Try to pillar hump to keep hunter off of you. Dispel bloodlust if you have any extra globals.

Match 3: Double Healer (Druid/Disc Priest)/Warrior

CC the priest to take him out of the game and burn the warrior. Dismantle him before shield wall. If the initial burst fails, hard switch to the druid. They will try to outlast you (and they will) so burst is the key.

Match 4-5: TSG

The initial burst will usually be on you. Avoid it as long as you can. Be ready with pain suppression so you have a chance to last through strangulate. Hit the warrior HARD as he comes in to force him to go defensive and avoid a bladstorm on top of the damage. Shackle the DK’s gargoyle if possible. If the warrior gets a bladestorm on top of the strangulate, it is usually game over. Keep abolish disease up on everyone.

Match 6: Disc Priest/Mage/Paladin

We always go for the ret paladin against these comps. Try to force the bubble early and hope a Mass Dispel gets it off in one try. We started with a sap and full dispel of his buffs, then railed him.

Match 7: Warlock/Rogue/Disc Priest

CC on the rogue and dispel priest and burn. Priest can’t keep himself up through the burst.

Match 8: RMP (Shadowplay)

Hit their rogue. GG

Match 9: TSG

Watch the burst as before and hit the warrior hard. Don’t blow fear into a bubble like I do. Predict the burst and PS yourself before it happens. All damage on the Warrior while CC on the pally.

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Featured Addon: Snowfall Keypress

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

It may never have affected you, you might not even have realized it, but keybound abilities in World of Warcraft do not activate until you release the key. This is usually a millisecond difference in most situations, but there may be a time where your key release isn’t instantaneous and the ability will come late.

In your arena matches, that little amount of time could be too late. We’ve all had that moment where a heal just barely didn’t go off in time or a CC didn’t hit quite fast enough.

The addon Snowfall Keypress aims to fix this problem. It makes all of your hotkeys activate abilities on key press not key release. Even if you feel that the little amount of time between pressing and releasing a key will make no difference to you, I would encourage you to download this addon and try it out for a week. Really, what can it hurt?

Head over to the downloads section or to WoWInterface to download this addon.

Playing another character

I have been wanting to start playing another character for some time now. I don’t mean quit playing my disc priest, I just need another character to work on during the “filler” time between arena matches where I just play another game as of late.

I have been thinking of leveling my horde paladin on Dragonmaw and doing some PvE tanking on him. On the other hand, it is pretty late in the expansion and I haven’t taken raiding seriously since early WotLK. Not to mention that I haven’t been in a raiding guild in quite some time.

I think I might go back to my holy paladin and get some PvP gear and maybe find a decent team to PvP with. If I do, I’ll probably have to transfer due to the lack of talent on Dalvengyr.

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Think Outside the Box

Friday, December 4th, 2009

A large part of what makes Arenas fun for me is the amount of competition. The same thing that turns people away from Arenas because they are too competitive, is the same thing that I like about them. The changing competition and inability to fully predict what the enemy will do next is what keeps me coming back. If you are more into raiding, imagine if your guild finally got to Anub’Arak except he changed tactics every time you tried to down him. There are no more phases, no more emotes or timers to predict when he’ll use his abilities; only raw teamwork can even come close to beating him. How many of you would still raid? How many wouldn’t fall asleep like you normally do when you run old content?

Playing RMP is the epitome of this competition. If you go into every arena match with set strategies and aren’t ready to break from those strategies, you will end up losing a fair amount of matches. It forces you to think outside the box, to come up with different strategies for each comp that you face and ultimately makes you create strategies on the fly. For example, when we face a mirror comp, we always have the same opening strategy but it rarely ends the same. Some RMPs will focus the rogue, some the mage, some the priest. Not to mention the many variations between. You have to be able to adjust your strategies on the fly and react/predict what your opponent is going to do.

How Casual is Casual?

I keep reading articles here and there about ex-WoW players or current WoW players who feel that the game is too hardcore for them. Whenever I run into a random person in RL who plays WoW, it seems like they don’t have any max level characters. The rare ones who do seem to have a single 80 that doesn’t have any gear let alone knows much about the game.

It would be fun to see statistics on how many players are really that casual. What percentage of accounts have 80s and how many of them actually see endgame PvE/PvP content. Just hearing that I have 3 level 80s makes these people look at me like I must play 24/7 and not have a job or a life. In actuality, I currently play WoW roughly 3-5 hours per week on average and could easily hold my PvP status with playing much less (1-2 hours per week).

On one hand, many would consider me casual because I play little every week. On the other hand, many would consider me hardcore because I have 3 level 80s all of which are in full Epic gear. Being a Hardcore WoW player is nothing what it used to mean. In 2005, I read a statistic that said less than 10% of level 60’s even saw MC let alone killed Ragnaros. Think about the old ranked PvP system where 1 person would get rank 14 per week per realm. Thats only ~52 people per realm per faction per year.

If the game gets to a point where epics are handed out freely without any work or any value, I will no longer have interest in the game. Take away that competition and the game will be a MMO version of peggle.

Live Stream

Lately, I have been streaming my play through Xfire. Add me as a friend or check out my stream at http://www.xfire.com/live_video/ferngully You can usually check out all of our Arena games and some other PvP that I do.

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How Long Will You Play WoW?

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I’ve always wondered how long I would play World of Warcraft. From the first few moments that I played it, I know that it would hold my attention for a while. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have predicted that I would still be playing it 4-5 years later. I probably would have laughed at the notion at the time. The longest I had ever played a single game was only for a few months at the time. In fact, I have “quit” WoW multiple times (more like took a hiatus). The 4-5 years of playing might never have happened.

The first time that I quit, it was some time before TBC. The game had the honor system for the super hardcore and raiding for the hardcore. Obtaining R13 wasn’t an option due to the massive amount of time needed to reach that rank. Also, I wasn’t able to spend enough time playing while in college to raid and actually get gear. There came a point where I realized that my gear was as good as it possibly could be without me raiding. Since I did not have time to raid, and had no other options of getting gear, I decided to quit. I really still wanted to play WoW, but couldn’t justify playing and not getting anywhere. That all changed a couple months later when Blizzard announced most of TBC changes. It was like they had read my mind and I started playing again. Coincidentally, I started raiding shortly after the game became more casual.

I played through much of TBC before taking another hiatus from WoW, this time for completely different reasons. It was during season 4 and I was playing my paladin. Our main focus was 3’s and our team makeup was Disc Priest, Ret Paladin, Ret Paladin. If you can remember season 4, you will see where our difficulties came from. The lack of a healing debuff or any real interrupts during a season where drain teams and double healers ruled the arenas left a sour taste in our mouths. At the time, ret paladin damage was lackluster at best. I had a lot more fun healing through hours in Zul’Aman with my guild than I did playing PvP. This was a low point in the history of paladins and I was tired of not having a good comp to play in arenas, so I quit again.

During this time, I ran a Counter Strike: Source server that grew to be one of the most popular servers in the world (top 100 out of 30000+ tracked servers). It was all a lot of fun, but ultimately I still wanted to play WoW, just didn’t enjoy it the way that it was. Yet again, Blizzard made changes that drew me back to the game. I have taken breaks from playing many times. Each varied from a couple weeks to a few months and had various other reasons (too busy, gone a lot, trying AoC, other MMOs, etc). Some of those times I was sure that I wouldn’t play again. Each time I was wrong.

So that brings me to to my original question. How long will I play WoW? I don’t think this question can really be answered. Whether another MMO steals my interest or if I just get tired after 5 years, I couldn’t say. Ultimately I’ll at least quit by the time the servers are shut off (which judging by the fact that Everquest is still going, could be another decade or so). Whether I play that long or not depends on if I continue to have fun playing a great game with friends.

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PUGs; Arena Pacing

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

PUGs

We’ve all seen it; Someone is starting a PUG raid and needs a few healers, dps, or tanks. They say in LFG: “LF 2 healers, 3 dps, and 1 tank for VoA25. PST stats and achievement or no reply.” The key point they are trying to make is that they want only quality players who have experience at the fights.

You have been looking for that group all day. Finally you get a chance to join a raid to do that instance. Except there is a problem… You have never done the instance before on this character. Like me, you have done it dozens of times on other characters and know the fight backwards and forwards. You could contribute to the kill with your eyes closed. Your character has the gear and you have the experience but you will never get an invite because you don’t have the achievement.

The sad fact is that bad players ruin raids. Sometimes it only takes one bad apple to spoil an otherwise good raid. This causes a fear and a bad stigma of new players. Very few people want to invite a new player or help them out which makes new players lie to get groups. So the resounding solution is to make sure people have done the fights before, and the achievement is proof of this.

The problem with this thinking is that achievements are not an accurate measurement of how competent a player is. I have played WoW for almost 5 years and have 3 level 80’s, yet I can’t get invites on certain characters because I haven’t done those fights on that particular character. I have also seen people with the achievements stink up a raid because they were carried there by a guild or a random PUG.

IMO, a more accurate representation of how well a player knows his/her class is their gem choices/spec. It is pretty common for a bad player to not know how to gem/spec for their class. It just takes a bit of knowledge by the raid leader to see these mistakes and make a more accurate decision on who gets an invite. The main problem with this is that a lot of people don’t have this knowledge. They know how they themselves should gear and spec, but any other class is like a foreign language.

So is there a solution for new players, veteran players with new 80’s, and raid leaders alike? I would say the best option is for new players to work at getting gear with a guild. Blizzard always offers options for more casual ways of getting gear. So get in that Naxx PUG or get a few friends together and farm ToC. Raid leaders should be a little more generous with who they let come to their raids. Most players aren’t going to ruin your raid and if you aren’t capable of seeing which players will be a hindrance, leave the raid leading to someone else.

Arena Pacing

I have recently gotten my resilience up to an amount that is respectable for arenas (1063 on my priest). Just the increase of 200 points over last week is a night and day difference so far. I am able to stand my ground against faceroll comps and actually stand a chance even if Pain Suppression is on cooldown.

Overall, I am enjoying the changes to resilience for this season. With the new season of gear scaling and all the damage numbers higher than ever, it is nice to have a tool to reduce that dps. There have been very few situations where I get dropped in a GCD (it still happens once in a while). This allows us to play to our class strengths and makes skill and coordination ever more important in arenas. A very good change over previous WotLK seasons where cleave teams were dominant due to high burst damage.

For anyone who plays a healer class, if you have the time and resources, gather a high resilience set of gear and try it out in BGs. At times, you will feel like a raid boss because 4-5 players can’t kill you. It sure gives BGs a whole new dimension when you are tanking half the opposing team. If you happen to be one of the many who is trying to kill Ferngully, be sure to /salute and let me know you’re a reader.

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Current and Future Battlegrounds

Monday, October 12th, 2009

The State of Battlegrounds

I was grinding some honor this weekend so I can switch out my trinkets with a Medallion of the Horde and a Battlemaster’s trinket. The PvP daily for Sunday was Alterac Valley. I tried multiple times during the day to complete the daily, but every AV that I was in turned into a turtle with Alliance winning. I gave up after multiple games and tried playing some WSG and AB to get the marks that I need for turn-ins. We lost so horribly in both, that I gave up all together. The honor grind is bad enough without the current problems with BGs. This made me think about the current state of battlegrounds and how they can be improved.

I guess it isn’t really a matter of winning or losing. Sure, winning games technically makes your honor grind 1/3 of what it would be if you lost every game. I wasn’t in a preform, so I wasn’t going in *expecting* to win every game. The problem was that I had to wait 12 minutes for a que to pop and then we not only lost, but we dragged the loss out. The last WSG that I tried, the alliance had a Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, Disc Priest, and a geared Prot Warrior. This would take a decent group of people to kill them, let alone a team of random scrubs. After a ton of turtling and losing the game because time ran out, it really got me thinking about the current state of battlegrounds and where it could go in the future.

Battlegrounds have come a long way

If you were around when battlegrounds were first introduced, you can remember having to run all the way to Ashenvale to play them (a particularly time consuming task for Alliance when the closest port was Darnassus). Those were the days that premades reigned supreme. If you were unlucky enough to play against one, your team didn’t stand a chance. At the time, many players were complaining about battlegrounds and how it took away from World PvP. Compared to today’s battlegrounds, those starting WSG matches did not even compare to how easy/fast/convenient battlegrounds are today. Whether you think that is a good thing or not.

Before arenas, battlegrounds were the only way for a player to get good PvP gear outside of raiding. It was for hardcore players only, nobody got GM without having 2-3 friends play on their account while they worked/slept/ate. For many people, it was a turn off because of the sheer amount of time required to get anywhere.

Cut ahead to today where battleground honor grinds is THE way for casuals to get gear. The current system is great because it opens up the opportunity for the whole playerbase to get PvP gear. The downside is that it opens the opportunity for the whole playerbase to get PvP gear. The same upside to the system is the same thing as it’s main downfall.

With all the improvements, I will outline some problems that I currently see and outlooks on fixing them.

Que Times

Depending on where you play and which faction you play as, these problems might not be existent or as noticeable. As it currently stands for my battlegroup, during peak hours of the day, a horde player can expect to wait in the que for 10+ minutes before playing anything other than AV. This has been a problem for a while. There does not seem to be enough horde players queuing for anything other than AV. I can see merging of battlegroups to fix the long que times, but this will bring up other issues such as lag and overpopulation of battlegroups.

The solution for this problem is a complicated one. It isn’t necessarily a problem with how queues work, it is more a problem of players not wanting to play battlegrounds. Blizzard needs to simultaneously keep working on the queues and somehow make Battlegrounds more worthwhile to those who take it seriously. With the announcement of rated battlegrounds, I can see an opportunity to take battlegrounds where they should be: A place for casuals to play PvP but yet not interfere with more serious PvPers.

Bad Players

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the quality of the playerbase seems to be declining. It used to be a fairly rare occurrence that I would find a truly bad player and have a good laugh about it with my guildies. Now it is such a common occurrence that we don’t really even point them out anymore. We all know who I’m talking about; It is the warrior with spirit gear, or the hunter with the spec that looks like he closed his eyes and clicked wildly, or even the player who has decent gear/spec and still can’t seem to break 1000 dps. There is always the independent player who never seems to want to contribute to the team and the loner who tries to contribute but wants to do so by himself.

When you get stuck on a team with a bunch of bad players, it is frustrating. We’ve all been there. You are grinding out 62000 honor for your next Relentless offpiece and there are multiple people in the group who are going for their first deadly piece. In WSG, your team can’t seem to kill the FC who has one healer on him because everyone is just that bad. Frustrating to say the least.

Luckily, this problem should be solved with rated battlegrounds. Hopefully the low geared players will stay at lower ranks and will not end up playing the higher geared and skilled players. The change to battlegrounds in TBC where gear affected who you played against was a step in the right direction. Moving to rated battlegrounds is another great step.

Away from Keyboard

Over the history of battlegrounds, AFK’ing has been a problem. There have been many improvements to players combating AFK players in battlegrounds. We have the deserter debuff and AFK flagging as a result to the number of complaints there were of players in the AV grind. It seems like Blizzard has run out of solutions for this.

The first problem with the current system is that it takes too much effort from players to police the AFKers. You don’t always notice that player who AFKed in a spot that looks like they are participating. I am usually too into the fight and don’t want to take the time to look around for AFK players. The bright side is that if someone notices an AFKer and points them out, it is not hard to get them reported.

The second problem with the current system is that it doesn’t have very steep of a penalty. If a player is reported AFK over multiple battlegrounds and keeps doing that, then Blizzard will investigate and might ban their account for a short period of time. Really, that is no deterrence for the problem. The player still ends up taking up a slot for the remainder of the battleground match and in some matches can make a difference.

I think that the current measures would be adequate if two things were to happen: Battleground honor grinds need to be either shorter or more fun and the penalty needs to be steeper. If a players grind of 370000+ honor that it takes to get the season’s off pieces was more variant, I think people would AFK less. Also, if reported players had 1 minute to get into combat otherwise they would be removed from the battleground and given a 30 minute deserter debuff, that would stop many of the players who use a bot to AFK.

Future of Battlegrounds

I think anyone can get excited for the changes that are planned for battlegrounds in Cataclysm. I plan on being there and experiencing it all. For right now, we can just play together and make the best of the current system. So if you play on the Reckoning battlegroup and see me on my character Ferngully, be sure to give me a shout out (or a friendly /wave as I kill you if you are Alliance).

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