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!

-

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:
-
Judge based on which seal you use.
-
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?
-

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?

-

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*

-

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

-

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.

-

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)

-

DPS Stuff

-

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)

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Bad Sportsmanship Continued

My post the other day about jerks in PvP (the spawn campers and others) was done on a phone, and unfortunately, when I clicked "Save", it ended up publishing, and not just saving a draft. Doh.

So , I made a small edit, and just left it as it lay. However, I still had more to say and questions to ask, so here's the continuation:

As I mentioned a while ago, I play a ton of console games, such as HALO, Gears of War, Forza and others. With all the time I spend on XBOX Live (XBL), I see/saw a bunch of amazingly offensive assholes during games. Sexist, racist and any other nasty "-ist" or "-phobe"you can think of. If you don't have a group of friends to play with, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of value in playing long term. (unless you're one of those amazingly annoying assholes)

I know that you can /ignore idiots that won't shut up, but I wish there was more that could be done. On XBL I can "avoid this player" which (in theory) makes it so that you are less likely to get stuck playing with the jerk, but it DOES have one distinctly real world result: your "Reputation". Any time anyone looks up your gamertag (your "handle" on XBL) it shows your card (see below) that has your gamerscore (total points for your achievements) your recent games and rep(utation).

I have 5 stars (5 all white stars) which means I have a good reputation. People that act like jerks will have lower reputations, and are stuck with a bad reputation. It's your badge of behavior, good or bad.

In WoW, the /ignore is nice, but the bad apple will never realize they've been ignored, unless everyone on their server ignores them.

So how do we deal with this in the PvP portions of WoW? I guess make sure you have a group of friends when you play (be it just friends or your guild) so that you can avoid PUGs (pick up group) At the very least, try to bring ONE friend with you into the fray...