Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds, in order of most favorite to least favorite:

1. Arathi Basin

2. Alterac Valley

3. Eye of the Storm

4. Warsong Gulch

I don’t understand people who enjoy WSG. It’s awful. It sucks. Also, it blows. I would rather do EotS than do WSG. Yeah, it’s that bad.

I’ve found that communication is non-existant in WSG. Granted, most alliance players in a pug BG have trouble with basic communication, along with spelling and grammar. “BUFZ PLOX!!!!!11oneone.” Nuh-uh, bitch, no buffs for you. L2type, and then maybe I’ll throw you a MotW. You know what, I’m even gonna go out of my way to individually buff thirty-nine other people in an AV, just so that you don’t get the raid-wide buff. Eat it.

Back to WSG. Communication is nil, people fight in the middle of the BG (this is not an objective people! There is no possible way to win if you only fight in the middle of the field!). (And I know that people fight in the road in AB and EotS, but in my experience, WSG middle-fighting trumps both of ‘em). (No more parantheses for a bit). (Sorry).

The basic strat: A strong offense runs to the other base, gets the flag, heals the flag carrier as he runs back, and burns down the opposing team’s flag carrier as he comes back. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Every single time I’m in WSG, the flag carrier totally eats it on the way back cause he decided to go on a suicide run with no healer with him, and he’s oh, I don’t know, a mage or something. Mages wear cloth. And can’t heal themselves. And can’t run fast (correct me if I’m wrong - I don’t play a 70 mage or anything - but mages are crappy flag carriers, right? Not cause they suck at playing, just cause of their build?). OR, everyone fights in the field and ignores said flag carrier as his health slowly dwindles to nothing, OR, everyone fights in the field and ignores the other team’s flag carrier as he merrily skips by everyone to his home base. Or (and most likely), all of the above. Every single time.

Pretty much the only reason I’d ever do WSG is for the small rush of adrenaline I get when I’m the flag carrier. Other than that, I’d rather set babies on fire.

(Ok, really though, I wouldn’t do that. Really. Don’t call child protective services for all the kids who live in my neighborhood. Thanks.)

Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley are pretty rad, because 1: We tend to win them. And 2: See 1.

Before everyone gets all wrahhhh on me here, honestly, I think it’s a coincidence. I know many people who are just as good players as me, if not better, who report losing quite often in AB and AV. I think I’ve just had good groups and some good runs. I find that communication is better in AB than in WSG. I don’t know why. Anyone care to explain, or beg to differ? And in AV, you don’t necessarily have to talk all that much until it’s time to go all in, so communication is less of an issue to begin with.

So. What’s YOUR favorite battleground?

Resilience

When I first started doing battlegrounds at level 70, I topped the charts all the time. On deaths. I was so awesome. At dying. I had more deaths in a battleground than the 2 other top diers (is that a word?) combined. I remember finishing a battleground, sorting by damage (aw man, third to last again? At least I beat out that guy … oh wait, he was that afker), then sorting by healing (middle of the pack there, well, priests and holy pallys are just OP! QQ), and then sorting by deaths (ZOMG I’m on the top!!! ….. wait. What am I sorting by? Awww maaan….. /leave battleground). Granted, I had no idea how to PvP at the time. I had just finished leveling and was far too used to just hitting a stand-still mob (what do you mean, the horde run around? Come back! Why is he running away? Oh. Wait, now he’s pew pewing the crap out of me and - aw man, I just died). Plus, any time I got ganked while leveling, I just kind of stood there and took it. I figured the faster they kill me, the faster I can get back to my body, and the faster I can keep on leveling. I avoided world PvP like the plague.

So now that I’m fairly well geared, have practiced in some 2v2 arenas, and have Led2usebarkskin, I’m not as afraid of the PvP aspect anymore. In fact, battlegrounds are, dare I say, fun! And I’m not too bad at it! (All those people out there who suck at PvP? It’s ok. I was there once, too. You CAN L2play! Have faith!)

And what makes PvP MUCH easier, is resilience. Now that I’m starting to build up a PvP gear set, I’m realizing how wonderful resil really is. I used to overlook it in favor of stam, or int, but damn, resil is an AWESOME stat.

Let’s turn to Wowwiki.com to help us out here. According to the site (which is an awesome website, btw, and you all should check it out for your world of warcraft questions), 1% of resilience does this:

-chance to be critted on is reduced by 1%.

-damage from crits that DO hit is reduced by 2.2%.

-damage from any and all DoTs is reduced by 1%.

-amount of mana that’s drained by debuffs or spells is reduced by 2%.

Another good thing to know: 1% resilience = 39.4 resilience rating. So take this for example: I have 150 resil in my PvP gear. That’s almost 4% resilience. So an enemy’s chance to crit on me is reduced by 4%, damage from crits that do hit is reduced by 8.8%, damage from DoTs is reduced by 4%, and amount of mana drained is reduced by 8%.

Sweet stuff, huh.

I just acquired this new PvP gear with more resil last night, and my resil rating jumped from 60 to 150. So I’ve only done a few battlegrounds with it, but already I can totally notice it. I just die less. A pally and a rogue can be wailing on me, and instead of lifeblooming and rejuving the hell out of myself and staying alive for 9 seconds, I lifebloom and rejuv the hell out of me and stay alive for 13 seconds. And sometimes those extra few seconds are enough for dps to burn down whoever is on me. Which means I stay alive more. Which means I can heal more people. Which means less people die, which means more damage is put out, which means we usually win more.

Yay.

Moral of the story: don’t overlook resilience.

Obviously, one could make this argument for any stat: More stam, for instance = less dying = more heals on people = more dps staying alive = more win. Or, perhaps, more spell power = better heals = more dps staying alive = more win.

However, my point is that the increase in my resilience showed a noticeable change.

Think about it this way. My 150 resil mitigates: 8.8% of a 4,000 damage crit (which is 350 damage), and 4% of a DoT that does, say, 1500 damage over time (so that’s 60 damage). So 150 resilience mitigates exactly 410 damage just in this situation. Sure, +41 stam would mitigate the same amount. But resil is far easier to get, mitigates mana drained, AND gives me a chance to not have these crits land in the first place.

Seems pretty sweet, right?

Sidenote: One thing that’s good to know is that resilience scales with your level. So to get the same amount of crit and DoT damage reduction that my 150 resil rating gives me at level 70, I would have to have a 300 resil rating at level 80. (At level 70, 39.4 resil rating = 1% resil; at level 80, 82.0 resil rating = 1% resil. At level 60, 25.0 resil rating = 1% resil. Make sense?)

Waiting

At this point, we’ve got less than two weeks left until the xpac hits on November 13th. Many guilds, my own included, are somewhat at a standstill as we wait for Northrend. In lieu of raiding, I’ve found that many people have been busy leveling alts.

When I first began leveling my (now 70) druid, I remember starting in Aldrassil, trash talking the level 1 and 2 Starving Baby Dire Wolves (or whatever those mobs were). Moonfire! Ha! Take THAT, beeotch! Oh, you want some wrath? Huh, huh? You want it? Bam! My boyfriend, a then (and now) level 70 hunter, thought it was pretty hilarious.

Now that my main toon is 70, and I’m starting to level some other alts, the initial wonder of the game has sort of been lost. However, I felt as though I’d be able to get it back by starting a new race (specifically, draenei), which begins in a different starting zone: Auzuremyst Isle.

So I started my draenei paladin with the intent of bringing that “new” feeling back. Little did I know that this particular class would PLOW THROUGH EVERYTHING.

Ok, seriously guys, paladins are SO OVERPOWERED. And I’m not even going to get into endgame battleground/raiding content. (/start tangent: Ok, I lied, I am gonna get into it. In battlegrounds, I top the healing charts literally about 80% of the time. I’m not bragging. I’m just stating a fact. So I’m pretty good about keeping myself and others up and alive. I used to get owned by rogues in PvP, but now I’m finally learning how to pop a faerie fire on them, and then barkskin on myself. I was so pumped that I finally was able to ‘beat’ rogues (or, at least survive them) in PvP. Then the new patch hits - and suddenly rogues are not my problem. Ret pallys are critting on me for 5k damage. And then hitting on me for 2k, followed by 3k. All in the space of about mmmm… .8 seconds. I have a little over 8k health. THEY KILL ME IN .8 SECONDS. I don’t even have TIME to get a HoT on myself. It’s disgusting. /end tangent). However, right now I’m just talking about low level leveling. And CHRIST. This thing is a beast. I know it’s nothing new; paladins have been absurdly OP since the patch hit a couple weeks ago. And then Blizzard nerfed them (whoops, sorry guys! Fun’s over), and they’re *still* OP. Everyone has QQed on the forums, everyone has talked about it. I realize. I know. It’s old news. Old news is old.

But is anyone else who’s leveling a pally just *totally* blown away by it? Ok - seriously - she’s level 17 right now. I can take on mobs that are 7 LEVELS HIGHER THAN ME with NO PROBLEM. This isn’t a testament to how awesome a player I am - although I’m pretty decent, I certainly am not The Best player out there. She isn’t even GEARED all that well. She never runs out of mana, never runs out of health, bubbles when she needs to, Lay on Hands is a SICK heal, and - and - AND she gets Gift of the Naaru cause she’s a Draenei. Ok, I just barfed a little bit of overpowered up into my mouth. Excuse me while I go spit it up.

But really, to be honest? I’m having a total blast leveling this toon. =P

Anyone else having fun with alts?