A Highway to Hell; More Pain in the Battlegrounds

I hadn’t planned on posting about this, since I already gripe enough about BGs, but I responded to a post over on Gnomageddon’s blog http://gnomeaggedon.net/ and he, in turn, made a brief mention of it. And, being the type of guy I am, I wanted to “put up” and show the numbers that I mentioned.

Anyhow…

Another day, another rough fight in Warsong Gulch. With all the changes in patch 3.2 (I was cautiously optimistic about playing the Battlegrounds (BGs)) the biggest boons should be that most Twinks will stay in non-exp matches, as well as the “full battle only” and not starting with half a team, whicle the other side is fully loaded. My biggest concern was the recent addition of faction change.

So what would this do to the balance of play on Velen?

I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t have much luck in BGs on Velen. I’ve lost exact count, but, pre-patch, I think I’ve won once out of ~25 games. This is Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (I stopped playing in BGs at level 39, so I never played Alterac Valley) In all those losses, I’m not sure if it was due to Twink imbalance, or just general skill/level balance.

Since the patch I have played 2 BGs and lost both (rather soundly) I was level 62 at the time, so I knew that I personally was going to perform poorly. After all, the hit tables for a level 62 trying to hit a level 69 are poor at best.

The first one I played was my “new one”, Alterac Valley. I was completely lost. We lost by ~125 reinforcements, and I did “ok” (mid pack on the alliance side) Due to the level issue, I’m not sure if there were any Twinks or not, but it went as well as I had expected: an Alliance loss. The strange thing is that I have since read that the Alliance usually wins this BG due to layout. So the loss is not just a bit frustrating, it’s also a tad pathetic…

So, I went over to play the one BGI am pretty familiar with; Warsong Gulch.

We got spanked, HARD. We lost 0-3. Again, not a COMPLETE surprise, until I looked at the end of game stats. (click on the title picture and you can see the actual screen cap)

I was a tad annoyed how the game went down, I wanted to see if maybe the other team was really loaded or something... So, I went through the player list and got info on everyone on the list. Here's the level, class, etc for each team:


Here’s how people did (in decreasing order – Alliance names are changed since this is kinda dissing them) I’m leaving the Horde names in since this isn’t nasty about them. They beat us, and no chicanery was involved.

Alliance
************* - lvl 67 - arcane mage - Velen
************* - lvl 65 - frost mage - The Underbog
***Me****** - lvl 62 - Ret pally - Velen
************* - lvl 69 - blood DK - Velen
************* - lvl 68 - arms warrior - Underbog
************* - lvl 65 - Feral Druid - terrokar
************* - lvl 62 - ret pally - fizzcrank
************* - lvl 69 - marks hunter - blade's edge
************* - lvl 69 - fire mage - The Scryers
************* - lvl 62 - ret pally- underbog
Average level 65.8

Horde
Grimslugg - lvl 65 - BM hunter - Underbog
Shamysorus - lvl 64 - enhance shammy - Velen
Vicdadic - lvl 69 - UNTALENTED DK - underbog
Hanzoo - lvl 69 - assas rogue - azuremist
Khalëd - lvl 67 - prot pally - zangermarsh
Kirai - lvl 64 - blood DK - zangermarsh
Abidoze - lvl 60 - blood DK - grizzly hills
Dotrix - lvl 64 - affliction lock - dawnbringer
Specialops - lvl 69 - combat rogue
Sacredponko - lvl 69 disc priest - arrea 52
Average level - 65.4


We were almost identical level wise...


Yep, that's right, I did better than a frikkin 69 DK in honor points, and wasn’t TOO much lower than him in DPS.

Granted, there was the usual enter/leave game, so the final results are not perfect, but still.

Per the results:

I was 3rd highest damage at 67k (strange, Recount had me at highest, with 94,000)
According to recount, the person I damaged most was Grimslugg, with nearly 27,000 damage to him alone.

An Untalented DK did pretty frikkin awesome! (even if he was on the other side)

Grimslugg is wearing a matched set of purples, so he was equipped pretty well.

It was the textbook example of a zerg fight on our part. (everyone just runs around doing what THEY want to do, with no organization or plan) The Horde had a number of folks that “zerged” as well, but they had several players that grouped up and ran together, which is how they won, and won

Now, I want to point out that I am NOT very good at PvP. Also, this was my second time back into PvP in a couple months, so I was rusty on top of everything.

What does this mean?

A few vague things… The fact that I was near the top COULD suggest that Ret Paladins are overpowered (“OP”) but since there were a couple other Pallies on my team that were near the bottom, possibly not. And it’s not like I kicked Horde butt either.

Overall, I’d say that the Alliance team was, well, sub par. Myself included.

I am now sitting at level 66, I’ve learned a bit more about playing a Pally than I did 4 levels ago (a topic for my next post) and I have also geared myself up quite a bit. At the time I played this BG, I was getting ~ 300 DPS against level 60 Test Dummies. Prior to a couple upgrades while I was still level 64, I had bumped that to 600 DPS in a long fight, and I have hit 700 DPS occasionally in “real world” fights against level 63 mobs. (I also have Seal of Vengeance and Divine Storm now as well) I may have to go back into the BGs before I hit level 70, just to see how much better I can do.

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!