Elkagorasa the Casual

I love the Blizzard has been changing up PVP this expansion. I find these crazy brawls rather appealing to play and participate in. They make me want to do more PVP (not world) aspects of the game. Ref: Shadow-Pan Showdown Shadow-PanShowdown is a PVE players dream. You queue up as a 5 man dungeon team: tank, healer and 3 DPS. When the BG starts, you are faced against a similar 5-man party and race to the center. You will randomly be assigned to purple or gold team.  In the center of the dance floor are two bosses surrounded by a giant disco ring. The team with the most players at center, will enable their attackable boss. Winner is the team that takes down their boss first.  The bosses have 3 basic abilities.  Smash - knocks back attackable team to the wall of the arena if caught in it. Avoid ground with 'dust flying' AOE damage - circles appear on ground, avoid. One boss it's fire, one boss it's electricity. Healing - interrupt whenever possib...

Last expansion, I loved PVP. I was the healer in a 3-man arena group, the Backpedaling Clickers . We weren't that bad. If I remember correctly, last season we reached around 1800 area rating. Our worst problem, I am west coast and the two pallys are east coast. I'd just be getting home from work, when they were headed to bed. This expansion, with DPS so easy to get into a dungeon, my priest is still sitting in mostly PVE gear. I'd rather have the easy  job of blowing stuff up instead of having to deal with keeping the DPS alive. So, how is PVP this expansion? I see Blizzard is bringing out 2 new PVP instances with the 5.3 expansion. Fun? Not worth it? Need more discipline healers!?

Last night I started the Dominance Offense reputation quests.  There was a few things that I am really excited about this new faction. Already can buy upgrades from DO  Quartermaster . I am seriously considering replacing my alchemist stone with the trinket .  Mounted battle . Last night I ran the quest where you mount up (no kite) on my Charger and flew around blowing gyrocopters out of the air. As with questing being practice for dungeons, and dungeons being practice for raiding, I can see a new raid boss where you bring your own mount to the fight.  BOA rep . Yeah, unlike the daunting task of trying to get my disc priest rep for shoulder enchants in Cata (Hated to Exalted), now I can simply buy it. She'll gain rep at 2x the speed he does simply because of a BOA purchase. Grand Commendations becomes available for purchase at Revered reputation with a faction. The gain will affect that character's grind from Revered to Exalted as well as all future toons on th...

With the 4.3 patch, a number of my favorite add-ons have quit working "Out of Date". While I can simply work around the error pop-ups (or even suppress them), I'd rather not have that overhead, especially while in the middle of a battleground or dungeon. Nothing more irritating, than having that 'inspect' dialogue box popup while in the middle of a fight, over and over again. Unfortunately, as minor addons, I don't expect any updates on them very soon. TBag by Shefki Way back in BC, I had an issue with my install of Warcraft where my bags would not display correctly. Instead of simply reinstalling the software (it was on 4+ cds, plus all the patches up to BC and my internets were not very fast), I went with an addon. TBag is my absolute favorite for this purpose. It's biggest strength is that it SORTS . Yeah, sorts your bag view into areas. Food, drink, bandages and pots are at bottom, quest items at top, gear is along the right, and other miscellany...

I logged on earlier this afternoon to be greeted by one of OOT's resident altaholics, Taurohtar , finishing off the Winter Veil achievement A-Caroling We Will Go . This achievement has you fly around to each of your enemy's capitol cities and sing a little festive song . Intrigued, I joined her along on one instance of completeing this achievement. Funny enough on her warlock . Gratefully, Taur went through it one more time for me and sent along these instructions and screenies. So, here's Taurohtar un-edited. 1.       Take the portal to Dragonmaw port ( Equip your sweater! ) ( Don't leave it in the bank as I did ).  2.       Travel in an almost straight western direction 3.       Towards Ironforge 4.       When you pass through the wetlands, you’ll know you’re on the right track if you see these hills. 5. You’ll fly past the front of IF by way of the eastern side. 6. Hopefully you’ve been smar...

I have been excitedly running dungeons again. No more troll-fail-roics in my queues. Over the last few days, I believe I've hit each of the 3 dungeons about 3 times a piece. This has mean some wonderful upgrades and a good amount of valor points (~1500). I have slowly managed to upgrade all of my basic gear with i378 something-or-other. I currently have 2 items with spirit, but the the rest is all dps. Down to the trinkets, weapons and rings. Next adventure, LFR? On my disc priest I am still avoiding the new dungeons. Healing is much more demanding than PVP. She's at a gear score of 377 PVP gear. Tonight we are planning our first jump into Season 11 arena, I am hoping for the best, but considering she hasn't maxed out on Ruthless gear yet, I imagine she'll take a beating until we get adjusted for the right match-making index. So, are you morg-ing anything? For Elk, I went with a skull-cap, everything else is running the default model. I thought it matched the mo...

With the arena season ending later this month, my estimate is that it will correspond with the drop of 4.3. Numerous guilds have reached Ragnaros and are going to start getting bored. Players who can't reach Rag, like myself, will be excited when the new dungeon content comes about and the valor point system changes to 150 valor for all heroic dungeons. But my biggest reason why? The downloader has 15gb of data downloaded to my PC. Now, this means, my arena team has possibly two more nights before the season ends. I am hoping that my disc priest is able to reach an 1200 arena rating before end of season. My druid partner, thinks my arena skills are improving and we're definitely sticking around. He's already looking to start me in a 3's group next season. If only our timezones weren't so disparate.  Until then, time for some shopping.. 

This looks like fun, if you're interested in starting to play PVP. A bunch of Gnome Clones are going to take over. This based on a long forgotten run done by Alas and a few of her friends back in Vanilla. 5 gnome locks running battle grounds, both a cuteness and deadly combination.  If you're interested, head on over to  http://revengeofthegnomes.wordpress.com/  and signup. They have all the details and name variants taken. They're planning on all playing, shudder, mages! (Which based on my arena experience, is a good combination). I can just see hitting a battleground as Horde, being tagged constantly morphed into an animal (sheep then frog then cat...) or ice blocked. With 10 mages, all with their elementals out, ouch! 

I know this may seem obvious to the seasoned PVP vet, but I have only recently gotten back into PVP. Loving demo in the battlegrounds, but lately the horde hasn't been on a winning streak  anything. Maybe 1 lucky run in 10; making for frustratingly slow Honor point accumulation. So, I was wanting to grab a shiny Season 9 weapon, namly replace my 346 wand or PVE weapon with something new and fresh ( Vicious Gladiator Spellblade ?). Unfortunately, such shinies come with a hidden price tag. "Requires earning a total of 7250 Honor Points for the season." I hadn't been keeping track. No achievement tracked it. Not on the PVP interface. There must be a place to find this value. Finally, the other day I was fumbling around at the vendor, when I came up with the popup. Floating over the icon on the corner, I see that ... Ugh, 2100 more points to go. Well, if I don't buy anything else, at least I'll have the points to buy the weapon when I meet the pre-req....

Found this on WoW Insider. Only got one question.. Does the eye on the belt blink??  

UnderCT has posted a great article on Pillar Humping. Using this technique to maintain no-los with the enemy will help improve your arena performance. I use a variant of this in Eye of the Storm. My disc priest loves to sit in the little BE hut and maintain heals on who ever is outside guarding the flag. Go check it out. Great read..

Part of the reason is that Battlegrounds are like ducks. A duck looks like it effortlessly glides across the water, but their little feet are actually working madly beneath the surface to make it happen. Battlegrounds are the same way. They may look simple -- even static -- to a casual observer, but in reality there's an incredible number of very complicated processes going on behind the scenes. Part of the reason for this is due to a lot of technical hurdles that need to be jumped to make them perform as seamlessly as they do, battle after battle. As a result, it's actually extremely difficult to design Battlegrounds, partially due to the technical limitations that are currently in place. ( source ) I loved this blue comment posted on the forums the other day. For one it gave me this wonderful image of a mechanical duck swimming around a lake. Looks like a duck, swims like a duck, but really it's a robotic duck patented back in 1738. Second, it continues detailing the ...

(based off RL letter from my kid's daycare.) Dear Parent, Week of the Young Child is just around the corner, April 11-15th May1st-7th.  This is a special week where our school celebrates the families, children and teachers.  The schedule is as follows: We still have Sleepy available. Be a Bad Example for your kids at our All You Can Eat Candy and Sweets  breakfast. Show your mad fighting skills, by killing a Dwarf Mage in front of your child. ( Iron Dwarf not included) Adopt a new pet . Choices are limited. Kill an old boss . Take his loots. Teach your young-one the value of doing a few chores .  Music for the Infants, Toddler and Twos is as follows: Infants/Toddlers - Wednesday   Murlocs and Panderans - Tuesday Have a Great Week, If you have any questions, please feel free to call me or email me. Thanks, The Phoenix Schools Director

Last night after a fail raid. ( Magmaw 10, OOT 0), one of my trusted warlock guildies (playing the role of healer last night) said, "Hey Elk, ever consider running a Demonology build? You get some massive AOE damage." Had I? Actually never. 4 and a half years, and I've never, ever ran a demo build. So, after the excitement of 80k dps AOE's I thought "Now is the time". After clearing those 31 points out of my incomplete Affliction build, I pull up my guildie's Armory page and grab her Demo build. OK, some new spells, new priorities. Hand of Guldan? Fly up to the training dummies, summon my Felguard, "Thoosas" and try out a sample rotation . Shuffle my buttons a bit and try again. OK, rebuild my buttons to match closer to my Destro buttons (fel flame and soulburn on B4 and B5, etc.). Once, I get it where I think it should, queue for a PVP run, cuz battlegrounds are my spell rotation, talent build and gear testing ground. For once, I get...

This last week has been absolute PVP fail for me. I've tried numerous times this week to participate in the random battleground. Each time, it states ">10 minute queue", but then after 20 minutes, it still hasn't dropped. this can't be normal... :( I am thinking it's just me as a DPS on Malfurion, otherwise there'd be more griping. Maybe everyone in my battlegroup is now running guild/premade groups? Ah, well, back to grinding the Chemical Brothers for my hot rocket. Today, I got into the Call To Arms fight almost immediately, but the random battleground still is FOREVER.

Today I ran my first time through the Gilneas  battleground. This is a 10 man battleground new with Cataclysm that looks like something from Grizzly Hills (or I guess the Worgen starting area). It features 3 resources to control (AB style) and the first team to 2000 wins. The easy strategy for this BG is to maintain control of 2 resources the longest. Simply send 5 people to two different locations and defend. No running around, no dashing to the third and try to control all three. Personally I liked the Lighthouse and Mine. You start on the boat (upper right of map) and run out on dock, wait for the bell then race to the flag at the mine. 5 others head over the hillside to the lighthouse. Speaking of PVP, there's a chair bugged in the Hall of Legends . Try sitting in one of the largest throne chairs, and you'll find yourself transported to the inside of the building. Great if the city is being attacked and you're still tagged PVP. Lastly, the Warlock PVP set lo...

I have not a very good beta tester these last few weeks. Heck, it's been a good month since I last logged on. Just having too much fun running dungeons with my alt-priest. It seems like she's seen more low-level dungeons that Elk has. Ah, well.. Anyway. Yesterday Blizzard announced an in-game, beta test of the PVP realms, today (11/11/10) at 4PM PST. If you want to participate, all you have to do is form a raid group with nine other players and queue for Rated Battlegrounds. We'll be conducting this test in a 10- vs. 10-player setting using Warsong Gulch, Twin Peaks, and Battle for Gilneas as the locations, so be prepared for some sweet, sweet ownage. This sounds like a lot of fun. I read that Wintergrasp doesn't play the same way it was planned. Wrath beta only had a few regular testers, so the game zone played differently that real-life "production". People moved and used the area differently. That is why we had a number of patches soon after Wintergr...

For a comparison last night, I ran into the Horde Hall of Legends and checked in with the PVP Armor vendor, Blood Guard Zar'shi . I was curious what the currency conversion is going to mean for PVP upgrades. Here's what I found: CataElk decked out in Bloodthirsty Gladiator Gear. It appears that Bloodthirsty Gladiator is going to be the next entry level PVP gear. I am equating it to the Furious Gladiator set that you can get with Honor points, or Triumph badges. For example, Helm = 54,500 honor or 75 Triumph. For doing the random battleground (at max level), you get 90 Honor Points + 25 Justice ( fka arena ) points if you win. (less for 2nd, 3rd, etc. bgs). You randomly get honor points throughout the fight. Appeared to be with each HK. I ran a pre-built priest (see HolyCowCow) last night (Warsong Gulch) and netted 155 honor points for the one instance.(i.e. 65 honor from fighting) If my Math is correct, that means you'll need to win approximately 15 battlegrounds ...

In the next two Warcraft patches your existing badges and PVP tokens and honor will be converted to the new Cataclysm currency, gold or Catacylsm Honor and Justice Points. This means that if you had been looking forward to that last piece of your pvp arena gear, or that last tier piece... it maybe in your best interest to get it before the PTR build goes live.  Here's some information on how each of the currencies will be converted in the next content patch. Keep in mind these values may change, and they can get a bit math heavy. Just know that our intent is to appropriately value each mark and provide a conversion we feel is fair. The following items are immediately converted to gold: Emblem of Heroism = 5.5 gold each Emblem of Valor = 5.5 gold each Emblem of Conquest = 5.5 gold each Badge of Justice = 1.833 gold each Your New Honor Points total will be the sum of the following amounts: Old Honor * 0.024 Old Arena Points * 0.85 Battleground Mark of Honor * 2.976 W...