Posts Tagged ‘gear’

Relentless Weapons; New Guild

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I should be getting back to my regular posting now. I have been hunting every weekend and it doesn’t leave me time for much else. It will be nice to have a weekend without all the traveling. I am also starting a new guild (which I’ll talk about below) and that has been taking up my time. You can expect more posts in the next few weeks, so keep checking back.

1800

We have been pushing to get 1800 in our 2v2 team. The weapon boost is a big upgrade for Ballsagna for his DPS and also mine for the extra resilience allows me to gear more SP. We have been 1700+ for about a month now. We had saved up arena points to buy our weapons because our MMR was over 1800 long ago and we were expecting to hit 1800. Up until we hit a wall.

With my being gone every weekend and Ballsagna’s schedule, we were left with very few opportunities to play. This left us with late at night games on slow nights. Usually there were very few teams on for the night and most of them were not near our rating. Every time we got above 1750, we would get matched up against a geared team or a counter-comp and we would lose big points (17+).

We have gotten over 1775 nine seperate times in the past month and yet haven’t been able to get the right matchups to get that 1800. Hopefully it will just be a matter of time before we get the right matchups to hit 1800 and get our weapons.

Everyone Has Relentless Weapons

I recently saw a Paladin advertising in trade chat, “LF Disc Priest for 3v3 rated 1440 must have 230+ weapon”. I was floored. Our 3v3 rating is currently 1700 and none of us have 230 weapons. I am using a 219 MH and a level 78 OH. We started the season as fresh 80’s with no gear and have worked our way to where we are currently. Too often, I see bad players who have relentless weapons. It reminds me of a druid on my old server who, after 300 games, was rated 1200. He even has a relentless weapon.

This is especially true when you get around 1800 and you don’t have your weapons yet. Every team has relentless weapons and does double the damage that your team can. It is a lot of fun and encouraging to get there without gear. We play teams that should beat us because of the gear difference, but we outplay them for the win.

The only teams that I hate playing are the geared faceroll teams. We played a few last week that could drop me in a stun (25.2k health, 36% physical reduction, 1162 resilience, pain suppression, and other passive damage reduction talents). Even with our trying to stop their insane damage with every form of CC that we have at our disposal, there was no stopping them. I don’t even understand why people play those comps. To me, that wouldn’t be any fun.

Skill > Gear

While I generally subscribe to this statement, it is only true when gear isn’t a huge factor. If you took a veteran player with a fresh 80 against an ebay character that is full s7 gear, who would you bet on to win? While there are other factors that come into play, as long as the ebay character has basic knowledge of how to play, they will win because of their gear.

We would all like to say that skill is always more important than gear, but this is just not the case. The game does take skill to be good at, but it also takes gear. Just enjoy the times when you bear a mirror comp who has better gear or that 200-300+ rated team who you should never have played.

The best thing is to use your gear disadvantage to learn your class and comp more than the people who are pushing 3 buttons for wins. When you finally get the gear, you will be a much better player and your team will be playing like there is no gear difference instead of being used to outgearing everyone.

New Guild

When I transferred and faction changed, I was originally looking for a PvP oriented guild but instead joined a guild that my friend was in. I have never raided with them mainly because of the times that they raid and haven’t really gotten to know anyone. I decided to jump ship and join a PvP guild. The problem is that there aren’t any big PvP guilds left on Dragonmaw and the ones that I found are not that active anymore.

So I have decided to start a guild. We have some great ideas in store for events and how to make a PvP guild work and make it fun so people want to join. I still need to get signatures, but should be able to get those tonight and will start recruiting soon. I will be posting more details about the guild in future posts so check back here for news. Also, if you are interested in joining the guild, let me know. We always welcome new recruits.

PUGs; Arena Pacing

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

PUGs

We’ve all seen it; Someone is starting a PUG raid and needs a few healers, dps, or tanks. They say in LFG: “LF 2 healers, 3 dps, and 1 tank for VoA25. PST stats and achievement or no reply.” The key point they are trying to make is that they want only quality players who have experience at the fights.

You have been looking for that group all day. Finally you get a chance to join a raid to do that instance. Except there is a problem… You have never done the instance before on this character. Like me, you have done it dozens of times on other characters and know the fight backwards and forwards. You could contribute to the kill with your eyes closed. Your character has the gear and you have the experience but you will never get an invite because you don’t have the achievement.

The sad fact is that bad players ruin raids. Sometimes it only takes one bad apple to spoil an otherwise good raid. This causes a fear and a bad stigma of new players. Very few people want to invite a new player or help them out which makes new players lie to get groups. So the resounding solution is to make sure people have done the fights before, and the achievement is proof of this.

The problem with this thinking is that achievements are not an accurate measurement of how competent a player is. I have played WoW for almost 5 years and have 3 level 80’s, yet I can’t get invites on certain characters because I haven’t done those fights on that particular character. I have also seen people with the achievements stink up a raid because they were carried there by a guild or a random PUG.

IMO, a more accurate representation of how well a player knows his/her class is their gem choices/spec. It is pretty common for a bad player to not know how to gem/spec for their class. It just takes a bit of knowledge by the raid leader to see these mistakes and make a more accurate decision on who gets an invite. The main problem with this is that a lot of people don’t have this knowledge. They know how they themselves should gear and spec, but any other class is like a foreign language.

So is there a solution for new players, veteran players with new 80’s, and raid leaders alike? I would say the best option is for new players to work at getting gear with a guild. Blizzard always offers options for more casual ways of getting gear. So get in that Naxx PUG or get a few friends together and farm ToC. Raid leaders should be a little more generous with who they let come to their raids. Most players aren’t going to ruin your raid and if you aren’t capable of seeing which players will be a hindrance, leave the raid leading to someone else.

Arena Pacing

I have recently gotten my resilience up to an amount that is respectable for arenas (1063 on my priest). Just the increase of 200 points over last week is a night and day difference so far. I am able to stand my ground against faceroll comps and actually stand a chance even if Pain Suppression is on cooldown.

Overall, I am enjoying the changes to resilience for this season. With the new season of gear scaling and all the damage numbers higher than ever, it is nice to have a tool to reduce that dps. There have been very few situations where I get dropped in a GCD (it still happens once in a while). This allows us to play to our class strengths and makes skill and coordination ever more important in arenas. A very good change over previous WotLK seasons where cleave teams were dominant due to high burst damage.

For anyone who plays a healer class, if you have the time and resources, gather a high resilience set of gear and try it out in BGs. At times, you will feel like a raid boss because 4-5 players can’t kill you. It sure gives BGs a whole new dimension when you are tanking half the opposing team. If you happen to be one of the many who is trying to kill Ferngully, be sure to /salute and let me know you’re a reader.