I Can't Get no Satisfaction: I Just Suck in BGs...

Ding Dong the Witch aint dead...

I don't know what that incessant ringing is during raids & BGs is caused by, but for me, it's a signal of FAIL. Whenever the enemy is ringing that bell, my DPS (effective) for that fight drops to about zero. (I don't watch Recount, but I *do* watch the health bar - and it isn't moving!)

Stuns/interrupts don't seem to do anything (and it doesn't help that I have no clue who's doing it)

*sigh*

*deep breath*

People gripe that Ret Pallies are "faceroll easy" and "impossible to kill".

They must REALLY suck. Especially if they are part of a group. Kiting, stuns, traps, blinks, fears are essentially impossible for a Retpal do get out of. Yeah, I can blow a trinket, or Hand of Freedom, but most classes have more stuns than we have ways to break them.

Throw in that damnable ringing bell, and even with bubbles and all my long cool downs (my CDs) and I'm still dead in 14 - 16 seconds.

And while I may be less than skilled at PvP, I *NEVER* see a paladin in the top spots for killing blows, damage, honor or anything else.

What *do* i see at the top of the aggressive side (as opposed to healers)?

Warlocks
Hunters
Rogues
Shaman (pretty rate, though)
The occasional Warrior

*huff*

My games in Arathi Basin last night were PAINful. My general tactic is to go where the Horde isn't. Slogging it out, 8 v 8 isn't really a way to win the game. And if 8 folks are in one place, it means they aren't elsewhere, so off I go.

And get overwhelmed 1 v 4, 1 v 6 or something equally lopsided.

I'm not sure if its people respawing where I go, but 1 person explodes into 3 - 6 with amazing quickness. the only goodness is that, on occasion, I can keep a large group occupied with trying to kill me, so they aren't trying to kill my team mates. I die, so they may live. I'm generous like that. *cough*sucks*cough*

OK, done ranting about that.

Because Recount was MIA during my BG work, I can't say what sort of things were going on. I know I was near the bottom of the list, both combined and Alliance alone. But, I learned a few things:

If I keyboard turn, I have trouble casting/attacking. My fingers miss their mark, and I end up button mashing or looking down at the keyboard. NOTeffective.

If I mouse turn, I can't pick targets effectively. ([TAB] rarely picks who I want to kill) That's less than ideal, but at least I am efficiently attacking a target, albeit the wrong one.

For better or worse, my first games on PC were all first person shooters (FPSs), so keyboard turning/moving and mouse aiming is deeply ingrained in me.

Incapatacitations (repentance, sap) are nearly worthless for anything other than interrupts. UNLESS you are on a well organized team. In that case, they are super deadly. I don't think anyone I "Repented" lasted more than 0.5 seconds before someone ran up and kit them.

All that added armor & health really DOES improve survivability. Just not enough lol

The Horde on our server seem to be better at being where they need to be. When I attempt to pick up a straggler, 1 v 1, within 5 seconds or so, it ends up 1 v 3 or worse. And lets be honest, if I have 3, 4, or more guys attacking me, it's suicide for any one or two Ally guys to try to help.

I can "feel" the difference in healing with my "tanky" armor set. The loss of Haste is noticable.

Now, if I can only get myself to play the game, and try to learn without getting unbelievably frustrated, I might get better. But I doubt that'll happen any time soon.

And what the hell IS that damned ringing bell?

Back in the Saddle, and out of BGs for Now

EDIT- Not sure why, but Blogspot is screwing up my formatting, so this could look strange. I had to use the "-" to force paragraph breaks. SORRY!

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After one more loss last night in Warsong Gulch, I'm done camping at level 39. I will run through a few more times just to get the honor marks, but it will probably be as a level 40 or 41. I still want my Trinket and Protector's Sword.

I also learned something that is a bit of a "Doh!" thing for me:
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Judge based on which seal you use.
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So, for me, since I use "Seal of Justice" most of the time, I should be Judging with Justice. Why? Did you ever seee this little tidbit in the Seal description?
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Unleashing this Seal's energy will deal 75 (or whatever number)
Holy damage to an enemy.

I never knew what that meant unti lI asked someone in a forum. I wondered; is it a proc? do you have to actually target someone else when you put the Seal on?

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Nope: when you cast a Judgement for the correct seal, THEN it does the extra damage. So, cast Justice with Justice, Light with Light, and Wisdom with Wisdom. So obvious... *facepalm*

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In other news, I picked up a couple recommended Add-ons: Pally Power and Recount.

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Pally Power is an Add-on that is intended to allow pallies to keep everyone in the group/raid with the proper blessing, and keep it up to date. I can't figure the damned thing out. And now when I tried to minimize it, it went away completely, but still shows up on my other (non-paladin) toons. ugh.

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Recount allows you to keep track of the damage you & other group/party raid members do. It's also a good way to measure DPS (damage per second) both during battle and as an after report. DPS numbers aren't really that important at lower levels, but they are a good indicator of how well optimized you are. Run one fight with one setup/gear/spell rotation and note your value. Then try a different routine and see how they compare. THAT is a huge deal. Also note that DPS values for Paladins will be different in PvE compared to PvP. (also note that DPS can't realy be measured in short fights, it should only be taken over a long fight)

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DPS Stuff

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For example, I soloed all the way thorugh Dead Mines the other night. I wanted to get some "greens" for my Enchanter to disenchant. (and it's low enough level that I wouldn't get any EXP)

In the longer fights, I was getting multiple 114 DPS results, with a couple of 131 fights. Shorter fights were in the 95-95 range. (Overall, I'd say I was getting about a 100 average)

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In comparison, in my last couple PvP matches, my best average DPS was 52. (since BGs are so dynamic and active, I never took the time to hunt down my numbers, fight by fight) I had a couple in the low/mid 30s and one game was only 14.

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If you are "in a fight" (your level indicator is replaced by 2 crossed swords) it is measuring time. And if you are chasing someone across the valley and not hitting them, you are spending lots of seconds doing nothing, and your DPS will drop significantly.

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Aside from the dynamic running aspect of the PvP compared to the PvE, the biggest "loss" to DPS in a PvP fight is due to not having Exorcism. For me, Exorcism hits for 300-350 points, and it hits for 600+ when it crits. (which for some reason is almost half the time) If we take a rough average, I'd say my average is about 450 points per use. Since it has a 15 second cool down, that means I can cast it that often. 450 points every 15 seconds (450/15) is 30 damage per second (DPS) Not having this spell is a HUUUGE loss in damage potential in PvP.

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When patch 3.2 is released, we will once again be able to use xorcism in PvP. The "hitch" is that it will require 1.5 seconds to cast. I believe it will be the same for PvP and PvE.

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That means it will be on a 16.5 second rotation (15 second cooldown, + 1.5 sec to cast). Doing the same math from the previous PvE example, that means 450 points in 16.5 seconds, or 27.3 DPS. That's nearly a 10% loss. FUCK!!!! Now, since it's not all the damage I do - only part of it - the final loss in DPS won't be 10% (probably closer to 4%) but every bit hurts. After-all, Pallies, especially Ret pallies, are hybrids, so we are never going to be the best at anything, and this will hinder our cross functional "jack of all trades" abilities.

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Yes, it will be a nice tool to help fight the ranged players, EXCEPT you need to stop for 1.5 seconds to cast it. Which means they can keep running (out of range), melee you to slow down the cast, or stun/interrupt it completely. Is it better than a sharp stick in the eye? Yes. Am I happy with the implimentation? No. Then again, I guess it's better to get it "pre-nerfed" than to get a neat new PvP toy/ability, and then to have Blizzard take it away again.

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But it's going to really screw up the PvE damage I can do.

Another One Bites the Dust: 11 Losses in a Row on Warsong Gulch

Seems like the story of my WoW life, at the moment...

(Sorry for the rambling here...I have a bunch of small things that tie in to my main thought, but are hardly worth their own post)

You would think that the random PUG nature of most Battleground (BG) fights would lead to a more random outcome. But, for whatever reason, the Horde always kicks out butt. While I'm not the best BG player on the world, I regularly end up in the mid to upper end of my team's score (with killing blows, honorable kills AND healing) Since I'm so "average", I doubt it's simply my being inept that is causing us to lose so much. The only thing I can say is that going up against teams of 3-5 Rogues, a couple Warlocks, Hunters and Druids seems to be a tough thing to beat.

The Rogues in particular cause my team (me) fits in most games. It seems to take 3 "normal" players to kill just one skilled Rogue. And if you have 2-3 skilled Rogues on the other team, (not to mention the REST of their team) it feels like you're playing short handed the entire match.

The "best" game recently was the last one. We actually had 2 flag caps (I GOT ONE MYSELF!!!) and had a fighting chance. In the end, the other guys just played better. This game was odd in that it wasn't a blow-out.

I'm not sure why wowarmory.com shows my current record as it does: 31 games on Warsong Gulch (WG) with 13 victories. Assuming the total number of games is correct, I've won 10 times: I have received a total of 51 Marks of Honor. I get 3 for each win, and 1 for each loss. If you do the algebra, that works out to 10 wins (which still feels better than I've done)

Anyhow, Balthazario is now a level 39 Paladin and should be at the "top of the heap" for the 30-39th level bracket. I am FAR from twinked at this level ( the only "NICE" piece of equipment I have is my shield:

Salbac Shield - A 1400 armor shield.

And as much as I would like to "twink out" and upgrade everything to the maximum so I could do better in WG, I have to save my money. At level 40 I get to use Plate Armor, which means that in another 20,000 EXP, every piece of armor I have will be way sub par.

The good news is that a couple pieces will be things I can make as a Blacksmith (plate helm and a couple mithril pieces) Blacksmithing for the win!!!

Also, on the topic of upgrading your armor & weapons: Scrolls of Enchanting are the bomb, if you can find the right one, for the right price. They are relatively new to the game, and they allow Enchanters to make an "Enchant to go". They don't have to buy armor/weapons, enchant them, and hope they guessed right.

You the buyer don't have to spend hours on the trade channel finding someonewith the recipie, etc to enchant the item you have. They simply put the enchant on a scroll, put it on the AH, and we the buyers, simply buy it and apply it to our item of interest. WIN-WIN!