PvP progression

First, this isn't any sort of a guide, nor informative post. If that's what you thought or seek, there's plenty of other bloggers more capable than myself with PvP playstyle. Such as: Cynwise's Battlefield Manual and Arena Junkies.


This post is more about that little dwarven bm hunter, Khrox, and his current state of affairs learning to be fairly good in bg's while trying to progress into some arena and rbg action.

Now then, Khrox has not yet experienced many of the regular battlegrounds. He's still stretching his wings so to say, or flexing his muscles perhaps. lol. So, a little recap here to bring everybody up to the same page.

Khrox's first attempt at bg's was WSG. Not the best choice judgeing from that experience. He was horribus bad, spent the whole battle unable to leave the graveyard, and was the reciepiant of such chat box abuse it was weeks before a second attempt appeared. The second attempt was AB. At the very least, he managed to do some fighting. Enough so to gain some of the groups' praise for being a "huntard." Heck, any improvement was acceptable at this point. It was like, okay, at least people know I'm there...rofl!

With no pvp gear, no real experience and little more than a simple desire to learn, those random gods finally smiled upon Khrox. Along came a guild mate experienced in pvp. He took Khrox on an "in-battle tour" of Tol Barad. He advised doing all the battles and all the dailys for gearing up fairly quickly. Now, this, was his real beginning.

To start with, Khrox was pointed in the direction of his own profession, leather working. Whoa there! He actually had two beginning pvp mail pieces of gear there he was unaware of. (it's okay, you can yell "noob" if you feel the urge) I never really thought about the time span of all this, Khrox just jumped into the advice whole-heartedly. Before too awful long, he became completely geared in the Bloodthirsty stuff. Less than a month I'm sure. He still died often enough, but was finally killing a fair amount as well and dealing a lot of enemy damage in the meantime. New gear at least every other day, where comes the current point of being about fully outfitted in Vicious gear along with some stuff from the Molten Front-Firelands zone. And if the bg chat box is any measure of success, then Khrox must have some sort of reputation amidst the enemy ranks. The constant flow of /spit, /makes rude gestures, and un-translatable orcish langage being tossed his way would be clues. Then there's that fact that healers run like all get out when he comes into a node, and groups of horde suddenly find him a very interesting target.


Khrox decked out in Vicious pvp gear

Back to the bg's list though. Tol Barad has been about milked for all it's worth for some time. Khrox's gear is capped out with honor point stuff, he can't get any better there. He has his pvp Drake, and is a short time away from the spectral steed mount for his collection. AB is one of his favorites at the moment, though it began as a filler inbetween TB battles. He has been in SotA one time, and really needs to become more familar with that bg and it's objectives. This weekend though has found him trying out the Call to Arms: Twin Peaks. This is a faily simple zone in so far as layout, but simplicity stops there. The battles are fierce. Never having done this bg before, it's been interesting to find his place in being useful to the group. So far, it would seem he works best at being a peeler for his teams flag carrier, although several other options have shown promise. As usual, targeting horde healers always produces some gruesome yet fun situations. Especially if they're trailing behind a small group trying to protect someone who has grabbed our flag. LOL! Talk about an instant group peel!

Enough rambling on now. Khrox is at that point where he needs to progress into arenas and rbg's. This means better gear is needed, the kind that comes from conquest points. This also means Khrox needs to team up with some people. Now we have a small problem. The "guild."

Some may remember me generally speaking about some problems the guild has been in. Well, things haven't become any better over the past three weeks. Many key, active players have left the guild. The guild leader? As much as I have taken a likeing to her over the time of my membership, has never been a really strong leader in so far as focusing on some sort of guild direction, and currently fails at "leading" anything. (my personal opinion) In my fragmented mind, a guild leader is suppossed to actually "lead." At least, in some way, shape or form. The officer core? Well, pretty much gone or non-existant from what I can see. I actually got started on forming a 2v2 team with one of the guild mates. We got as far as deciding to use skype, and I haven't seen him in-game since. A week now.

As much as I dislike some of the options and regret the whole situation, if Khrox is going to progress in his pvp play, he will have to change guilds. The ship is sinking. I can either sink with it or swim over to the next boat and survive. At this point, drowning, is not how I wish to see Khrox go down. The time has come. *ties lifeline to all pets* /cast DoggyPaddle

"Go with honor, friends"

BTW: that is the infamous Lava Bolt Crossbow Khrox is armed with, the one that does sound like a gun!!!

BG's, Healers, and Khrox

*be prepared dear reader-wall of text post ahead!

Vidyala, over at Manalicious, recently posted "What your healer wants you to know about bg's." It's a good post and if you're a battleground dps'er, I suggest you give it a read.


Perhaps the reason this caught my eye tonight has to do with Khrox, and his rampaging urge to enjoy battlegrounds, after the frustrating grind through his Firelands dailys. (and we all know what a world pvp gank zone those have been)

Khrox is relatively new to battlegrounds, maybe two months? Can't say for sure though it doesn't feel like it 's been all that long. He began with the simple thought of gearing up better, and pvp gear seemed to fill the bill for "quickly available." He has since come to really enjoy bg's though, and is working hard with being good at them.

In the past couple of weeks his focus has been on taking out enemy healers, since the horde always seem to come fully outfitted with them and bg chat is constantly screaming for their healers to die. So he's taken it upon himself to remedy all this fuss by going for the throat, er, healers.

~I'm getting to the healer part of this, albeit slowly. Note though, if you are a healer reading this, feel free to offer your thoughts~

Picking out enemy healers, at least for me, is a chore in itself. Remember, I'm a little bit older now and two dozen players bunched up under a flag just looks like one big ball of blazing damnation to me, lol. Anyways, I love friendly healers. I do notice when my falling health bar takes sudden jumps upwards, and usually try to get a "thanks" out to the healer, if I can find them in the mess. So this led to me learning about HHTD, and promptly/dutifully installing such. First time out for a run, not only could I easily find and target enemy healers, but my own bore nice big green marks so I could actually keep one eye their way. But now I had another little glitch. Way too many nameplates cluttering the screen for one. And everybody's bars who weren't healers. well they all kinda looked the same to me. Every one was class colored for sure and there didn't seem to be any distinction between friend or foe. Result, turn off friendly name tags, only enemy shows. It also cleared up the playing field such as it is. Better, but not quite right in my eyes.

There's these really good little /y's that come up in the chat box. To the effect, friendly healer is being attacked by so-and-so. With no real marking to help me spot the healer as I scan the outer edges, I feel like I just have to get lucky and spot the enemy name tag. And of coarse, I'm usually in the middle of trying to save my own rear as well. Mostly because a detachment of horde are on me for beating on their healers. Hey, when I say it's a mess in there, it's a MESS!!!

Khrox was a small, tiny little horde magnet before all this. He did and does a ton of damage to the enemy, and they respond in kind by sending forth several killers to end his assualt on them. But since he's been focusing on their healers, and killing them, he's become a rather large horde magnet. I'm quite sure that their healer is screaming just as loudly at them since I've been known to chase them down until they die.

What this all leads to, is that there exists in bg's this kind of unspoken vendetta aimed at healers. Friend or enemy, I'm sure they're feeling all this attention coming at them. And I'm just as sure they're sometimes at wit's end thinking they have no protection from the dps'ers. I fully agree that more needs to be done by us, to help protect them. ~I must note here that I can only speak from my own experiences in bg's-the milage of others may vary~

As a fairly strong dps'er, I'm looking at a couple of options to help my healers. In the background, there's still adjustments needed to be made to the HHTD mod so that I can get full benefit from it. Up front in action, I've taken the coarse for now to know who the healers are by name. I've either had the opportunity to speak with them at some point, or, some actually mark themselves in the raid frames as a healer. In Vidyala's post and comments somewhere, I recall thoughts about healers adopting a pet dps, and dps adopting a pet healer. As humorous as it sounds, I think it's really a good option as well. Khrox certainly finds himself in the process of such, though it seems to be coming about in a natural way rather than formal agreement. But there is one regular healer he sees quite often, and has chatted with on occasion. So when he does jump into one of those balls of flag ownership disputes, he naturally looks around first to see if that healer is also there. If so, he makes determined efforts to try and keep her in LoS.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough here, surely more than I should have. If you're still with me though and you happen to be a healer, feel free to add your thoughts or suggestions for they are most welcome. This is one dps'er who happens to think about you quite a bit...

after all...

my life usually depends upon you.

"Go with honor, friend."

On today's menu: fresh killed Horde

I have been a bit absent from the blog here for a bit. What with Firelands looming on the near horizon, I've been deep into the game gearing and making ready Khrox, our dwarven BM hunter. Yes, Sol has gone AWOL for the time being, choosing instead to follow up on some long grinding achievements. Things which he is particulary well suited for.

On the other hand, isn't Khrox just about the most fearsome looking BM hunter you've ever seen? He's so tough, he don't need any shirt padding underneath his armor! Even his eyes are a pierceing green. Okay, maybe that's a touch egotisical, but for the past week he's been camped out in Tol Barad spreading death and mayhem towards the horde.

It all started rather innocently enough. Khrox had only done a couple of Cata 5-man norms with some guild mates, and was looking for ways to gear up faster. Pugging was not an option, I hate pugging, especially this late into an expansion. DUT is an Aussie guild, I'm east coast US. This is a bit of a time zone challenge, even with a fair number of US members.

None the less, with most everyone being friendly and helpful, two guild mates stepped forward and offered Khrox various bits of advice. One helped out with macros, rotations, cd's and pet choices. (naturally, spirit beasts were high on the list!)

The other half of this great team, and greatly experienced vet, advised hitting Tol Barad battles, and all the dailys from inside and out. Making this a possible 18 dailys. That's a good chunk of commendations each day. Khrox is a relatively fresh lvl 85. I mentioned to this vet that I'd never done TB. That did it. Next thing I know we're grouped together and que'd for the upcoming battle. Talk about a nervous breakdown in process! We zone into the battle, Ally is attacking. He pops this chopper thingy with a side car and says jump in. Proceeds to take me on a tour of the battleground at high speed, stopping only to rescue some allys in need. Then some serious warring with the horde ensued.

I must make note here that right before this eye-opening event took place, the same mentor suggested that with my LW prof, I make a couple of pvp pieces, which I did. So, I wasn't going in completely naked. (so-to-say) Thank goodness for bloodied dragonscales!

I followed my mentor around, fighting like a rabid, gone-crazy dwarf. I died a couple of times when ganged up on. All in all though, it was quite the experience, and a lot of fun besides. Khrox did end up with a few kills, extra commendations, and a bunch of honor points. Ally won that battle, so introductions to the inside dailys were in order. (didn't think I was ready for the raid)

Day two saw me hesitate to jump into the battles alone. I did take advantage of the inside dailys though when they were available. Day three...heck with it...jump in! Khrox spread blood throughout four battles that day, solidly becoming a force to be reckoned with. It was great! I can killz Horde, big time.

In all seriousness now, even though I would prefer being great at pve content and still hope to be, all this past weeks pvp activity has taught me many things about my class and spec. It has also taught me about quick thinking movements, on the spot trapping, kiteing and a feeling of "no fear." Khrox will now tango with any horde, or two, (3 ?) who cares to chance dancing with him. This past week has also provided him with some other goodies. Like this great crossbow, and these fearsome looking shoulders. Although he is mostly decked out in pvp gear for now, he is finally heroic dungeon ilvl'd geared, and not that far from being able to get into ZA/ZG. Does the gear choice bother him? Not any more. For as an over-achieveing vet told Khrox, "They laughed at me for zoning in with pvp gear. But I out dps'd everybody, every time. They don't laugh anymore."