Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Warcraft not winding down as quickly as I thought

I'm surprised to still be playing a lot of World of Warcraft, weeks after hitting the cap. What has sucked me back in is PvP battlegrounds, of all things. I tried PvP in WoW several times in the past, and quite frankly hated it. Trying to learn the ropes while also getting two shotted by players in gear that utterly outclasses yours is an exercise in frustration. However, the gear reset in Cataclysm seems to have alleviated this problem. Just hitting the cap, you are going to have 90K or more hit points, which means you don't go down nearly as quickly as you used to in PvP. Even on a very squishy mage, I'm consistently able to last long enough to at least be a distraction. I even hit the 1000 honorable kills achievement last night.

I'm working on the easy (from honor points) blue Bloodthirsty Gladiator's armor, which means I'll be losing a bit of crit (about a 2% loss to my chance overall if I've done the math right) to gain a ton of steady damage and much needed resilience. I'll be getting just enough of the core pieces for the 4 piece set bonus, because the hat I bought on the AH is actually decent for PvP (it has resilience on it), the Gladiator's hat would force me to give up yet more crit for no additional set bonus, and because it looks a bit dumb imo:


There are also better items to be gained from conquest points, including a staff that has me drooling. Unfortunately, at the rate I'm getting conquest points (25 a night) I won't even be able to buy the staff for ages. I'm almost up to enough points to get another staff from Tol Barod, and I'm planning to use that as a stop gap until I can get something better.

Finally, I started playing one of my alts, a Dwarf hunter, and I'm having a good bit of fun with him. Over the weekend I got him up to 60 and bought his first flying mount:

I went with the bald eagle looking one mainly because it's unpopular, but also so that I can cheaply get an armored one that looks the same at 70.

As a side effect of questing in the Outlands, I am now wearing horribly mismatched gear. I like getting nice looking armor sets together, but if I have to choose between looking like a hobo and gear with half the stats, I'll pick hobo every time:

Hobos of WoW unite!

The bird pet he uses was a unique spawn in a horde starting zone when I first got her. It's now a easy pet to get, but I've been using her for years and I've gotten attached. Plus watching a giant pink bird kill the heck out of stuff never gets old.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, that is excellent. I never had much luck in PvP, but it sounds like you found the right way to approach it. Have fun!

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  2. That's why I tend to stay away from PvP, even organized stuff like battlegrounds. Classes are always in a state of change as they struggle to constantly balance them. All it does it stress me out! :P

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  3. @Anjin: one thing that helps is getting over the fact that the horde is simply better at PvP on my server. As long I at least win at least one battle a night and get my 25 conquest points I'm happy.

    As an aside, the night that Rifts launched most of the better horde players were mysteriously absent, we actually won the bulk of scenarios that night.

    @Mmmogamerchick: I'm actually shocked to be enjoying it as much as I am, as I said I hated WoW PvP when I've tried it in the past. It gets to be a lot more fun when you know what you are supposed to be doing in most of the BGs.

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