World of Warcraft

[Relambrien]

So all of the significant Yogg+0 firsts have been taken. Stars got the world first, Paragon got the EU first, and Premonition got the US first. I still marvel at the coordination required to pull off this kind of thing.

Anyway, on an unrelated but much more hilarious note, the fastest win in Wintergrasp ever just recently occurred. The time? Under two minutes. The culprits? Goon Squad on Mal'ganis, the official Horde guild for the goons of Something Awful. The strategy? Stand on top of the keep door before the fight begins, jump down, blow up the door with Engineering.

Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm03136FTI4

Anyway, my guild's taking on Vezax in both 10- and 25-man again tomorrow. Hope we manage to down him!

[devonin]

Originally Posted by bender5

You have almost 10 times what I had racked up, and I quit because it was taking up too much time. I feel almost sorry for you sir.

I have 100 days on my main, but more tellingly as to my computer habits, my character on another online game (Albiet one I've played for a full decade now) is at 259 days.

[Squeek]

Some fail DK posted a fail thread on the official forums about how the DK nerfs are going to make them the weakest class in the game as they already have a hard time killing any other class (it turns out the problem is L2P as he gemmed for spellpower and attackpower). A lot of the posts there were like "if you think it's hard playing a DK in pvp (which it isn't), you would go insane trying to pvp on a shaman". People who weren't even shaman understood that shaman were the worst pvp class ever.

So, in light of posting in that thread since I don't post on the official forums, here's my rendering of the typical fight in a battleground.

Enemy approaches. Try to figure out if he's going to attack me or not.

1) Try to drop Stoneclaw before the first CC goes off.
a) It works. Go to 2.
b) It doesn't work. Go to 10.

2) Stoneclaw has been dropped and I have a small shield on me thanks to the glyph. This allows me to partially survive the CC.
a) The CC is a melee stun and I can Thunderstorm the person away from me. This saves 1-2 seconds. Go to 3.
b) The CC is a blind/disorient/silence/etc. Go to 10.

3) The CC has ended and I am at 9k health or so. I drop Earthbind if it's a melee and Grounding if it's a caster and cast Fire Nova Totem one second later. Then I use Flame Shock one second later as I strafe away from them a bit. I start to cast Lava Burst once the GCD is off.
a) It casts. Go to 4.
b) It is interrupted/silenced. Go to 10.

4) Lava Burst crits for 5-9k damage based on whether I'm in pvp or pve gear and whether the target has high Resilience. Target has taken anywhere from 6k to 10k damage so far and their bleeds/dots/poisons have taken me down to 4k or so. Roots has worn off and they are back on my ass.

5) Fire Nova Totem explodes. They take 1-3k damage and are stunned for 2 seconds. They have taken 7k to 13k damage so far.
a) I am CCd again so this puts us both at 'not able to attack' mode, though his is likely shorter.
b) I am not CCd but I have no skills left to use as everything is on cooldown.

6) Try to pop a quick heal. Currently at 2-3k HP.
a) It works, I heal 2-4k.
b) It is interrupted/silenced. Go to 10.

7) Spam lightning bolt. Go to 10.

8) Ghost Wolf. Go to 10.

9) Hex. Go to 10.

10) I am dead.

Compare this to a DK:

1) Death Grip
2) Chains of Win
3) Faceroll

I have fourteen totems that I have to use situationally in pvp on the fly, and all 14 trigger the GCD. All fourteen must be on your hotbar. Six of these totems (the pvp totems) are on cooldowns. 11 of them can be destroyed by as little damage as a healer hitting them with their melee attack.

I have a grand total of seven attacks, six of which are on cooldowns. Four are instant, but three of the four share cooldowns and they all have unique ranges at which they can be used. My damage is entirely based upon placing a dot on a target and then casting a spell immediately after. This dot is magic and can be cleansed by any priest or paladin (and usually is).

I have several abilities that can be considered "escape" tricks, but none of them work. Ghost Wolf is affected by speed debuffs and cannot shift out like druids can. Thunderstorm will keep them away for a short while, but most of the time I have a movement debuff on me, or they'll just Charge / Hammer / Chains. Hex is not a true CC as it only makes you unable to attack. You can still move, and thus, you can still follow me. Oh and it has a nice 45s cooldown, like all of my "tricks" do.

This isn't a QQ post. I do very well in PVP because I know the shortcomings of my class and play intelligently. I am merely comparing how things are as a Shaman to every other class. Most importantly, DKs. I'm glad nobody here mains a DK because in my honest opinion, they shouldn't be in the game. I say this despite the fact that our two main tanks are DKs. They're overpowered and have caused the influx of the largest number of idiots to the game.

In other news, I got Alterac Valley All-Star tonight. The absolute hardest part about this was killing a person in the middle ground. Very few people run past there and I have a hard time solo-killing any one class. As it turns out, the typical push forward/pushback occured up at the Alliance bridge, except the pushback was MASSIVE. They pushed all the way down the hill, down the road, up the hill next to the bunker, and to the Field of Strife. Since I was camping there waiting for someone to run by, I just joined in the offensive push to get back to their base and got the achievement, along with The Sickly Gazelle.

We ended up winning by making them run out of reinforcements. Third time that kind of ending happened that night. It was enough to get me my Howler, so there's another achievement there. I need 147 more Marks to get the five PVP mounts now. Busy busy busy.

Oh and Tsugo's gonna kill Yogg tomorrow.

[Tokzic]

Originally Posted by Squeek

Oh and Tsugo's gonna kill Yogg tomorrow.

NO I AM ;_;

We finally got two 25s in a row in and we got two attempts at Yogg last night. Both got to Phase 3. WE CAN DO THIS.

[Squeek]

Try 1 was warmup. We had 3 new people in the run who had at least seen phase 1, but very little of 2 and none of 3.

Try 2 was a perfect success. No death, no insane.

We then tried Steelbreaker last and failed. His level 2 ability is a nightmare.

[Squeek]

BUMP TO RUMORMONGER!

People who are examining the game data constantly have noticed that the Halloween masks in the game data have four odd new additions in the latest PTR build. They have added male/female Goblins and Worgens.

Many people speculate that Blizzard does not have ANY Female Worgen in the game at all and that they only create female forms of a race when they're playable, so they think this means Goblins = new Horde race, Worgen = new Alliance race. They're already speculating how it works too. With the expansion, we're going to the goblin city in the Maelstrom most likely, and Greymane's Wall is coming down for the Alliance.

The same guys who examined all this data also noticed that a lot of the old Emerald Dream maps that were already in the game just got updated maps in the 3.2 PTR build.

[Brycexx]

i wish they would make both playable on both sides but i like the choices for the races

[tsugomaru]

There were already some female blood elves in the game when they introduced the blood elf race. The draenai came from out of the blue and as far as I know, none existed in the game before then.

And yes, I did kill Yogg. =X

The easiest class to face roll with will always have the most idiots. A long time ago, everyone had hunters because it was easy to faceroll with that class until they nerfed them every patch till they were no longer the best class (only intelligent people could make hunters look good). When BC came out, everyone rolled warlock because they were the best across the board. They were best PVE and PVP. When WotLK came out, DKs became the new overpowered class.

~Tsugomaru

[Grandiagod]

Actually hunters are better now than they ever have been. And Warlocks were OP in pvp for the first half of BC, then they nerfed warlock pvp down pretty hard, and changed the destro tree a bit and pumped up their pve dps. Warrior/druid combo was the OP pvp combo for the last half of BC.

It's just that dumb people always seemed to play hunter, hence the term "huntard". Now all the dumb people play DK.

[tsugomaru]

k

~Tsugomaru

[Tokzic]

Originally Posted by Squeek

BUMP TO RUMORMONGER!

People who are examining the game data constantly have noticed that the Halloween masks in the game data have four odd new additions in the latest PTR build. They have added male/female Goblins and Worgens.

I read about this. Two problems:

1) There's no way they're releasing the expansion before Halloween.

2) The Worgen masks - the male one, at any rate - is a cat, not a wolf.

[devonin]

To say nothing for all the lore that says goblins will never, ever, under any circumstances, pick sides again.

[Squeek]

Originally Posted by Tokzic

I read about this. Two problems:

1) There's no way they're releasing the expansion before Halloween.

2) The Worgen masks - the male one, at any rate - is a cat, not a wolf.

1) Obviously.

2) Learn 2-D imaging. At the risk of sounding like an absolute nerd, it's clearly a wolf. The game data even has it listed as "Wo" (Goblin is "Go").

[devonin]

I must say though, that I just flat-out disagree with characterizing both worgen as alliance -and- goblins as horde. Both of those claims are just wrong.

[Brycexx]

Originally Posted by devonin

I must say though, that I just flat-out disagree with characterizing both worgen as alliance -and- goblins as horde. Both of those claims are just wrong.

i very much agree with ya on this one. I personally think they will be playable as both but who knows.

[Grandiagod]

I'd rather have a hero class with a healing tree rather than another two races.

[StyleKrong]

Tinker/Alchemist for next hero class

[Squeek]

I'm thinking no. Why would a profession become a hero class?

In better news, I hit 6k achievement points. Following that, I got Wrecking Ball. It was damn hard just to set up. Had to get one of those AVs where we fight endlessly at every choke point the Alliance has (seriously why is this map so imbalanced it's totally unfair). Without dying, of course. It meant being far less aggressive than I normally am, which also usually means a loss. Forcing their hand on something you want them to do to distract them is how to win BGs.

Anyway, so it gets to that point in the fight and I haven't died so I put it on the old achievement tracker and start racking up the kills. Once they saw me get the achievement, they all ganged up on me and I died in the space of a second. It was pretty funny. I ended up with 41 killing blows in the battleground and 200 HKs.

[tsugomaru]

I'd actually like something completely ground breaking in this new expansion. New races and classes are nice, but pretty much MMO has already done that. By groundbreaking, I mean something as amazing like the introduction of flying mounts or arenas in BC. Sure, there were already several MMOs that had flying mounts and arena style PVP, but, well, they just weren't as fun to play as WoW and didn't have the some revolutionary feel with the release of BC.

Also, Blizzard said something about needing a lot of time to introduce a new class. A lot of effort into balancing the classes has to be done every single time they do so and they don't think it would be feasible if they introduced a new class every expansion.

~Tsugomaru

[Grandiagod]

I don't really think flying mounts were that revolutionary. Basically all they are is a way for people to bypass terrain. When battlegrounds first came out, onyxia, etc.

Then BC came out, and I have to say probably the best and most revolutionary feature BC had were heroics. Those were amazing.