The Random Post

Gonna do a random post today and take a break from the Warrior series, which is taking way longer than I thought. A few simple thoughts (I'm good at simple) just doesn't seem to be enough! Anyhoo...

Competition Goodness

The Spirit of Competition thing in the Battlegrounds, in honor of the Olympics, is brilliant! Even if you don't normally like BGs, this is a great time to get in on the fun. And you get the cool Chinese Dragon pet. :) (And an ugly tabard that doesn't go with anything... guess you could wear it naked.) What's great about it is that, at least on the first day here on the U.S. realms, there was really a lot of people doing their best to win! On Saturday it was still goign strong, with the War Room in SW on Fenris packed full of people and dragons. There was the usual pre-made influx for the weekend, but even those battles were great. In one AB we were up against two teams from Darrowmere (double pre-made... ouch!) and we still held them 200 points. And it wasn't for a lack of trying on the pre-made's part. Our PuG just fought better than usual.

More stuff like this, Bliz! More More MORE!

In Battlegroup Whirlwind, the Alliance players are finally catching on to the Horde strategy of back-capping an RH-Rush. Thank you Horde. The sooner the RH/AS Rush dies the better. The Alli response is not perfect, yet, but it's a much better fight. Either deal with the back-cap, or die, turtle and get whittled down on reinforcements. Looks like the Allis are finally getting it, and they're winning more because of it. Well, that and the BG is WAY more fun than standing around waiting for the towers to burn. Even a loss is worth playing these days. WAY. MORE. FUN.

Death of the Hard Core

I'll probably do a whole separate post on this at some point. By hard core I'm referring to the WoW player that only plays to "finish" the game. These are the same guys that sit in front of Playstation for days on end to get the high score on Tekken. Seriously. (Okay, I did that too, but...) They aren't playing for fun, they're playing for ePeen. That in contrast to the "serious" WoW player that does high level content for fun and for the experience. And of course, contrasted against the 11 million players that actually *play* the game.

There's a LOT of QQ going around about how the game is getting "dumbed down." This kind of player is always going to think accessible means easy. These people are getting belligerent in-game, too. As the high-end raiders get more selective as their player base dwindles pre-Wrath release (this happens... no big, everyone will be back, of course), the ePeeners are running out of things to do. So they're hitting Heroics and PuGing, which just makes PuGs agonizing when you get one of these morons. Accessibly cuts into the ePeen factor. Sooner they bolt for the Next Big Peen the better. Buh-bye.

Worryiors

This post:

http://www.almostgaming.com/wow/article/warriors-are

I'd have responded on this guy's blog, but he requires registration and I just didn't want to fill out a form for an obvious troll. A good example of a common problem, though. Namely, class elitists that don't know... well, anything except their class.

I was in a PuG the other day helping two friends get their third Kara frag (the drunk Rogues from BF, actually!). The Pally healing was a Ret Pally who'd respec'd. I respec'd to tank. So not really an ideal set up. Still quite do'able. So we get to the first AoE fight and the Pally starts spam healing before the first cast. Of course he pulled aggro. He blames me for not holding aggo, of course.

After trying to ignore him for awhile, and him still pulling aggo, I ask him to turn on Omen to help control threat a little better. Now, this guy is in full badge/kara gear and I get "What's Omen? Who cares about threat? You need to hold aggro! What's your armor and defense?" So here we have a guy that got all that gear as a ret pally, doesn't understand threat, and can't use Inspect. Lovely.

Yah, he kept walking into or healing his way into aggro, and kept blaming me. First my gear (I have crap tank gear, but it's gotten better, and is way more than enough to tank Arc.) I even tanked the first boss against the wall so the death spots he dropped would line up nice and neat and I'd be the only one that had to avoid them. Yup, Pally ran right up to the boss, stepped in one and died. We wiped. Sigh. My fault for taking too much damage, apparently. :D

Another contrast: The mage who was there was seriously geared. Didn't recognize his stuff but he was doing massive Frost crits. First time he pulled aggro off me, he throttled back a bit. He outgeared the instance. Way out geared me. He adjusted accordingly and, after that first pull, maintined nice steady, appropriate DPS, AoE, and CC.

So the first Pally zones out, finally, and we get another to heal. This guy is a real Holy Pally decked out T5. He strolls on in with that "I could solo this shit" attitude, calm, cool and collected, and we start fighting. He's up on Omen. He's tossing out a heal now and then, but nothing major. Perfectly timed, of course. Never pulls. Get's into proper position. Pretty much flawless Healadin healing. The Rogues get their fragments. Done in 10 minutes.

But the MAIN difference was that the 2nd Pally knew how to work with a Warrior tank. He can't rely on AoE threat. He has to time his heals in concert with the Tank building aggro on each target. And because a Warrior tank can mitigate or flat out avoid much more damage than a Pally Tank, he heals less and didn't use top rank spam healing to get through it. That's knowing the classes you work with.

The post linked above is from the type of player like Pally #1. No clue, expects everything to be the way they like to play. Pally #2 understands that you don't always get what you want, but you better be able to get the job done with what you have. It's the difference between someone who plays a MMO with other people, and people who ePeen on Tekken.

Fury Love

I'm starting to get the hang of Fury. I'm getting much better DPS than I was at first. Still not THAT much higher than Arms, but very nice. And Rampage is the BEST in-combat human female emote ever. :D Bunch up the arms and legs, fire swirlies go flying about, and then burst out in a giant screaming temper tantrum! Love it! (The huge AP boost is nice, as well, I s'pose.)

Fury is fine in Battlegrounds. No, Arena isn't gonna work. But BGs are fine. Don't worry about it. You spend a lot more time working WITH other players rather than expecting them to work with you (as Arms). Arms is a lead role in PvP. Fury is an assist role. Go about it that way and it's very effective. Hell, stick with an Arms Warrior and DPS for him. It's great!

For more Fury love, check out this blog. Good stuff.

-Fri