End of the Great Hold

Lots of different things going on this weekend. We knew this would probably be the last weekend of holding at 39, with some hope that Firegrin would level up 40 with the rest of us. So that meant either battleground, crafting, or alts for the rest of us. For Alamein, I was most interested to get her the [Highlander's Lizardhide Boots] as a battleground reward.

Friday night then was a battleground night for us. I think I did about five battles, at some times with our whole crowd. And, for the first time, I was on a winning team in the BG. It was quite close — I believe the Horde had about 1850 points when we crested 2000 — but fairly solid for that. The first half of the match was pretty balanced, with both sides holding 2 nodes and fighting over a third here or there. The second half saw the Alliance grab that third node, and mount assaults on others. So we spent a lot of time at either 3-1 or 3-2. So that gave us a solid lead that we nicely held on to.

I had a rather good game there, as did quite a few people. I think I spent most of the time near the lumber mill, with one or two others. (I did write down one name, I'll look it up later in the day. But I do remember his "For FRODO!" yells.) Some of the early attacks got up near the mill itself, but most of the second half was fought near the crossroads below. The sight lines from the lumber mill are great, and allow you to see what's going on at the blacksmith and the farm. It's nice when you're able to control the approaches rather than fighting desperate battles at the node itself.

That battle also marked the end of the Great Hold. I had flown to Refuge Point to buy rations, and joined the group there. Wyrmm happened to notice that he'd received a quest there, which he could complete, and those few points pushed him over 40. I've never heard someone so disappointed to ding a level. Seeing Wyrmm jump up pushed Eric over the edge, so he brought Cargarios to 40 on Saturday. Then last night, I took Alamein up to 40. Wyrmm's already at 41. Firegrin is still at 37, so he didn't make it all the way. But at least it's better than the 5-level gap we had before.

Last night I played two more Arathi Basin battles to get my my 20 honor marks for the boots. And these were the complete opposite spectrum; I've never played in such lopsided battles. The Alliance side were normal pick-up groups; I'm not sure if the Horde were a premade team or not but they were definitely much more aware of what they needed to do. It was sad how quickly they were able to bottle the Alliance up at the stables, and before long they were fighting us right in the graveyard of Trollbane Hall. When one team has all five nodes, well, the game finishes very quickly. The second game went even quicker, mostly because I joined in halfway through. I suspect that many of the Alliance had bailed out. It was 3-2 when I joined but complete chaos for the Alliance, and once again we were fighting out of our graveyard. A rather disheartening experience.

Still, I got my last two marks and flew to Refuge Point to buy the boots. Sweet!

The other thing I did on Sunday was pick up the Wild Leatherworking quests. The quests themselves are easy enough, but the hard part is getting materials. I think it comes to 64 thick leather, which is a lot of grinding, not to mention the 22 turtle scales needed. I took Alamein to Dustwallow Marsh last night to hunt for the turtles; it was while grinding them that she dinged 40. She's still short on both scales and leather, so it's going to take a little while.

A fun weekend though, with promises of more to come. I believe a trip to Razorfen Downs is in order...

A Trip to Arathi Basin

Run to the gate. Watch the other Allies come in. Buff up everyone with Mark of the Wild. Start to drink. Notice that I forgot to buff myself. Also put on Omen of Clarity. Stand, buff, and drink again.

30 seconds.

Watch /bg channel for a plan. See no plan. "/bg strategy?" Wait. Finally see a message: "G1 to mine, G2 stable, G3 LM, HOLD YOUR POSITION, STAY WITH YOUR GROUP and we can win this thing!!!" (Yeah, that'll happen.) Type "g1 mine, check".

Horn sounds and gate opens. Pop into cheetah form and run for mine. Take wrong turn and start heading for blacksmith. Cut across and rejoin group, which is amazingly five at this point. Watch three people trying to take flag, decide to scout up the road a bit. Get to top of hill and see several Horde massing. Try to type "inc mine from farm" at the same time as switching to normal form. Struggle through it at the same time as a hunter's pet shows up. Select hunter and hit Moonfire, then try for Wrath. Watch my cast bar jiggle back and forth as I take shots from two hunters.

Realize that scouting was a bad idea. Die.

Rez at mine graveyard. See fighting around mine and jump in with a couple quick buffs. See a Tauren warrior running amok. Hit with Entangling Roots and smile as he gets double-teamed and killed. Try to find next Horde. Get backstabbed by rogue and stunlocked. Fortunately teammate tackles rogue and I break free. Hit him with Moonfire and then Roots. Realize I'm getting fire from hunter again, duck around building. Select other hunter and start Starfire cast. Finish the cast unmolested and watch a nice crit on the spell. Now taking fire again, try to run but see hunter die just before me.

See two allies leave battleground.

Rez again at mine. Battle seems to be over with two allies left at mine. Heal both up quickly. Quick glance at map, see fighting at both stables and lumber mill. (Thanks, Cartographer!) Mill is contested, farm and blacksmith are Horde, mine and stable are Alliance. Switch off map to see Horde waiting at top of hill again. Remember to cast Nature's Grasp. Wait in line with two other Allies. Select warrior in distance. Watch him get close, drop Moonfire and then try for Roots again. Warrior charges and stuns me. I'm dead, no wait, Nature's Grasp fires and I back away, heal myself, run across to attack hunter. Pet attacks but gets sleeped by my Green Whelp Armor. Heh, love that! Send Wrath on hunter but see an ally go down and free up the warrior, coming my way. Desperately spam Moonfire, burning as much mana as possible before my inevitable death.

Rez at stables. Realize mine is now contested. Check map and don't see any allies at mine. Fighting at lumber mill and stables. Decide to help at stables until more of the mine group rez. See battle, select an ally paladin and drop a heal on him. Select another druid and prepare a heal, but get hit with a warlock's Fear and run around aimlessly. Pop out of that when I'm hit with arrows again, get stunlocked by a warrior, and die once more.

Get message in BG channel: "stay with your groups! FFS!" Thanks for the advice...

Rez at stables again. Now the map shows that Horde controls mine, blacksmith, and farm, with Stables contested and lumber mill Alliance. Also see group of allies heading for mine. Pop into cheetah and skirt left to avoid stables battle, and try to join with group attacking mine. Get close in time to see three allies fighting two Horde; pop into elf form and hit one with Moonfire in time to see them die, then attack the other with Wrath. He goes down too. Mine moves back to contested.

See another ally leave battleground. See score is now about 1000 Horde to 450 Alliance. Heal up the group at the mines, just in time to see a rez-wave of Horde coming back in. Root the lead warrior and then get hit with Moonfire, locate the druid and tap him back (just saying hi, you know). Circle around and reselect the warrior, who's now battling with a hunter, and hit him with a Moonfire and a Wrath. Satisfied to see him go down but now taking fire again from the druid. Mana is starting to run low -- uh-oh. Drop a Moonfire and then change into Cat, and try to take the druid along with a paladin in the area. Druid is pretty healthy and takes me out quickly.

Rez at stables again. Check the map: now the Horde have three nodes, and are contesting both lumber mill and stables. Score stands at 1500 Horde to 600 Alliance.

Two more allies leave the battleground.

I'm sure that the Horde nodes are lightly defended, but they're able to camp the stables graveyard and it's a struggle to get out. We need to mount an attack somewhere, anywhere to take back nodes but it's impossible to get organized enough to make that happen. The horn sounds, and the match is over.

Return to Stormwind. Speak to battlemaster. Join queue. Repeat.

Battleground Noob

I made my first venture into the battlegrounds last night.

I got online after dinner and got an instant /whisper from Cargarios: "You have to come here and try this!" We'd talked about doing it before, but that was right when we leveled to 30 and we decided to wait until we were higher in our zone. Last night, Wyrmm and Cargarios decided to give it a try. They loved it and so I jumped in too.

We started in Arathi Basin. DK was eating dinner, so Cargarios and Alamein jumped in. Compared to PvE, it was simple chaos. The Horde were attacking from all over, and it was all I could do to find a reasonable fight and try to get off some damage before death. The first couple fights quickly devolved into a desperate battle to keep the Horde off the stables, and in each case we more or less quickly lost.

Fundamentally, the Horde were much more organized and capable than the Alliance. Some of it was a better level of PvP tactics; they knew how to fight well. It's taken me time to develop my PvE skills -- the druid is flexible enough to be complicated -- and I'm going to have to learn things all over again for PvP. But a lot of it was much better team tactics. They had a plan and a mission and knew what they were trying to do; we had maybe one or two chat messages ("take lumber mill??") followed by lots of improvisation. In the end, we were just overwhelmed; we went in a second time and lost even faster.

We tried that a few times, and then switched to Warsong Gulch to see what that was like. The good news was that it was a bit simpler to figure out, and the Alliance was able to do better, but still the Horde just had better strategy and tactics. So we lost there too, but at least I started to get a better sense for how I needed to fight. I started to show up near the top of the rankings at the end of the match -- below many Horde players, of course, but at least looking respectable from an Alliance perspective.

It's amazing to me how fast these games evolve. I've played a very small amount of online FPS games against human opposition, and frankly I suck at it. I'm probably too old to have the twitch reflexes to match my opponents' speed; I don't play enough to have the tactics; and my hardware is slow enough that I can run into lag problems too. In PvE, I can find a place to stand and work from there, maybe backing up to kite a mob, but no more. In PvP it's imperative to stay constantly moving, and that in itself is a big challenge for me.

Key realizations:

• I figured out I was going to die so fast that mana efficiency just didn't matter. So: spam Moonfire. Towards the end of the night I was living long enough where this became a small issue, but frankly I didn't have a better strategy to switch to.
  
• Rogues suck. Many of my deaths came while I was stunlocked by a Rogue. Hence it became very important to keep Nature's Grasp up as often as possible. That's my best defense against stunlock.
  
• Warriors were a problem too; they would Charge me and establish stunlock from there. But if I could Root them then I had a very good chance to deal with them.
  
• I don't have a good strategy for hunters. Hibernate can be useful against the pets, but only if I have enough time to cast it without interrupution, AND if the pet is unlikely to get attacked by someone else. On the other hand I can reach out to them with Moonfire and Wrath, so at least I can fight back.
  
• The casters present unique challenges, particularly because of their DoTs and curses rather than their nukes.
  
• As much as I've played WoW at this point, my biggest enemy is situational awareness. Figuring out what's going on is challenge #1, and sometime that starts with "what direction am I facing?" and "where are they coming from?"

We played for a while in Warsong Gulch, and then switched back to Arathi for a last go. And this fight went rather better than the others. I was able to do some real damage, and take down a few Horde. The pinnacle was when I came up on a single level 37 Tauren warrior coming up the road.

We saw each other and knew the battle was on; nobody had surprise. I didn't have Nature's Grasp up (still on cooldown) so it was going to be a challenge, but I got off my first Roots before he could lock me up, and from there I was able to kite him and heal myself. It worked beautifully, and I saw him crumple... a split second before my screen went black. My worst time yet for a system crash. By the time I got rebooted and logged in, the match was over. So I didn't even have a chance to check my stats. Frustrating; but I know that I did better and that we came much closer to actually winning the match.

Of course, I was exhausted and sweating by the time I finished. It was... intense. But also a lot of fun. I'll be trying that again soon.

Westfall Invasion

So there we were...

The four of us* spent Friday evening wandering up and down Longshore and the Gold Coast in Westfall, completing quests in the area and generally beating up on various poor murlocs. It was relatively amusing though not to challenging; we used the time to get used to group dynamics and on dealing with various mob situations (with a caster; with several casters; with several pets, and so forth).

As we came towards the end of the evening, we started to see several messages come across chat:

[3. Local Defense]: Westfall is under attack!
[3. Local Defense]: Sentinel Hill is under attack!

It's not unusual to find a Hordie or two going after Westfall, so we weren't too shocked. Still, there were quite a few of the messages, so we were curious to see what was going on.

Well, it was more than the usual three or five hunters making a nuisance. This was a full-on assault. Somewhere between 25 and 40 Horde had taken over Sentinel Hill. The crowd was composed of all races and classes; it was a milling mob. We couldn't see what levels anyone was, but they were obviously up there. All the killable NPCs were killed as soon as they spawned -- and that included Thor, the gryphon-master. It was impressive to see the massed Horde mob taking on Thor and his twin Enraged Gryphons.

This is actually pretty annoying, since that removes any way for players to easily exist the zone, save for a longish run to Stormwind. But I think Blizzard has taken a good approach with this. If the Alliance is going to just let the Horde run rampant in Alliance territory, they should pay a price. The gryphon masters and the enraged gryphons aren't pushovers, and it takes a lot to kill them. But it can be done, and it happened multiple times on the night.

I can only imagine what this is like on a PvP server. As it was, Eric's Draenei paladin, Cargarios, was the only one of us who had the guts to flag PvP and charge in. He knew what the result would be, but thought it would be a hoot. There weren't that many PvP characters around, so when he flagged, he got a lot of attention. What he didn't realize was the 5-min timeout on unflagging PvP; the repeated deaths started to get a bit annoying for him.

He had another key misconception: that the inns were safe zones. He finally was able to run into the inn without dying, only to get hit by a last shot from a hunter's gun. I must say, Draenei die very impressively.

Stormwind was either unable or unwilling to mount an effective response. We watched for a while, in the hopes that a huge melee would erupt, but nothing was forthcoming. So, we left -- I forget whether we ran back or waited for Thor to live for long enough to fly us home.

It was fun, in a way. But I'll keep this in mind as my characters level up. There will come a time when I'll repay the favor...

*We've added a fourth player to our team -- Danny. He's currently playing a night-elf hunter named Firegrin. He started a bit behind us, so he's slowly leveling up to catch us.