Holy Paladin PVP Stuff

So, I was reading a post on WORLD OF MING yesterday. While I don’t really follow the “arena” scene and all the top players and stuff, there’s a lot of good information floating around on GameRiot. Case in point, the above mentioned post.

Amid a bunch of other stuff, was footage of a 2v2 game from Zilea’s perspective. Zilea is a top ranked Holy Paladin. The footage can be downloaded here: http://files.filefront.com/DruidRogueRNGROFLwmv/;11528941;/fileinfo.html. It’s Pally/Rogue (Zilea’s team) vs. a very high rated Rogue/Druid comp.

Overall, I don’t really watch WoW videos because it’s just mostly people showcasing their sick crits and stuff. But in this case it’s a full 12min match from Zilea’s. I can’t say how INVALUABLE this was for me, to see just a normal game from the perspective of a top rated player.  I know a lot of it is just casting Flash of Light (that’s what we do, dawg), but the most interesting things to me are first of all, how he sets up his keybindings (one of my biggest problem areas) and how he handles bad situations and still keeps his partner alive.

I’ve been doing a lot of losing in BGs lately, to the point that I’ve been very frustrated. To the point that I haven’t been playing the past couple of days. But, I was motivated by that video. In fact, I was up pretty late last night trying to get all the games I could in.

I’m looking for more Holy Paladin PVP videos at the moment. I’m hoping someone can point me in the direction of some good ones.

My progress is stalled by 2 things. Playing with PuGs and being undergeared. It’s hard to learn anything when you are getting focus fire’d and taken down in seconds cause you don’t have 10k health. So until I’m on equal ground with other players, I’m not sure how much I can improve.

Farming honor is hard when you play on a limited time schedule. I earned about 3000 honor last night, and I played for about 3 hours. AND that includes turn-ins. I’m not sure if I want to go for the s2 legs or helm next. Either would be a huge upgrade for me. But to get the legplates means I’d probably have to suffer through 20 losses in WSG. I HATE WSG.

ZOMG WARHAMMER!!!!

This isn’t really a post about Warhammer news or anything.

So I guess the Warhammer NDA has been lifted. I was kind of hoping it’d be like opening the floodgates on Warhammer info, yet pretty much all the sites I turn to for MMO news/opinions are pretty silent. The majority of the posts are simply “NDA HAS BEEN LIFTED!” but no actual news/impressions/thoughts/concerns. So I guess I’d just add myself to the list of people posting that the NDA has been lifted.

GUYS THE NDA HAS BEEN LIFTED! LET THE INTERNET PIPES OVERFLOW WITH THE NECTAR OF INFORMATION.

I had a bunch of thoughts on PVP at this point. But I figured I’d save them for a future post I had planned on PVP theories and stuff. Mostly, I’m excited about RvR in WARHAMMER. I never played DAoC, and I’ve heard mixed reviews of that game, but it “sounds” cool.

I’m trying not to get too excited, because City of Heroes, Vanguard, Final Fantasy XI, Fury, Age of Conan, Hellgate London, RF Online, Guild Wars, and Star Wars Galaxies all “sounded” cool too. And I bought all of those. And I don’t play those games. ((Unfunny and costly story – I’ve got a 10 month veteran rewards for Vanguard even though I never played that game for more than 15 minutes.)

So yeah, here’s to hoping.

A Good Weekend (Crunch Time and Flying Mounts)

It’s currently crunch time at the office, which means sacrificing your weekend to GSD (Get Shit Done). For once, this did not include me. In my current role as a producer, I oversee one aspect of the project we are working on, mostly working with an external developer who makes the majority of our art. The real bottleneck of my workload is waiting for this external developer to send me art files. They are currently about a month behind. This means I have very little work to do right now. So, there was no reason for me to come this weekend.

This is both good and bad. It is good because I had a relaxing weekend. I’m pretty motivated right now to GSD, and as such I’ve been blowing through the few lingering tasks still on my plate. This is bad however, because I am now an “outsider.” Every job I’ve worked in the game industry, crunch time is when a team really comes together. This is because everyone shares a common experience of suffering through long hours, exhausting, and fits of insanity. My favorite memories of past jobs are the result of crazy things we’ve done during crunch time. You don’t know true suffering until its 5am and you realize you’ve been quoting Street Fighter: The Movie for the past 6 hours.

PVP, Downranking, Hitting Goals

I respec’d to the standard PVP healing cookie cutter build last night. No more SHOCKADIN L. I’m really feeling the lack of DPS when I do my dailies, but at this point, I need all the survivability I can get from the protection tree.

This really kills my DPS, but I feel like I’m not going to get anywhere unless I make a full commitment to achieving my goal. I think my next step is finding a real PVP guild that I can group up to do BGs with. The guild I’m currently in has some friendly players, but I’m just not interested in running Kara. I need to play with people who are more focused on PVP.

I’m hesitant to transfer servers, even though I have 3 possible servers to play on, with 3 RL friends who also do PVP. I think part of it is just me buying into the whole hype of “BG9.”

Downranking is big news these days. I don’t have much to say about it myself (for better analysis, check out http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2008/08/14/beta-the-dawning-of-the-death-of-downranking/ for info on that).

The only thing I can contribute to the DOWNRANKING discussion is that for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using Rank 10 Holy Light and Rank 6 Flash of Light (as opposed to Rank 11 and Rank 7). Of course, this is only because I am a fucking n00b who didn’t update his Clique settings when he hit 70 and trained new ranks. (Clique + Grid FTW).

I’m happy that I realized this because I was wondering why I wasn’t healing for that much, LOL. But I’m worried because now my pitiful mana pool will run out even faster.

I also decided to level up my 42 Hunter. He’s on a different server than my Paladin though, and currently has 1g to his name. As you can see, I’m going to need to transfer him. However, this goes back to my original problem of figuring out where I want to transfer.

So, my current GOALS:

1. Find a PVP guild who is looking for a n00b Holy Paladin (order of preference Tichondrius > BG9 > Other servers). If I can’t find a guild by the end of the month, I will transfer.
2. Level my 42 Hunter for the expansion. I took a look at the various options I had, and I decided that I wanted to play a ranged DPS class. Ranged because I primarily played melee in the past. And DPS cause I’m fucking sick of getting GANKED.
3. Buy a flying mount. Yeah

0 for 5

I haven’t been PVPing that much lately. Even though I still need about 62,000 more honor points for all the gear I want/need. Awesome.

I’m just sick of losing BGs.

Yesterday’s BG daily was WSG. Normally I avoid WSG like the plague. But, I decided I was going to get that quest done.

I logged off and went to watch some TV after I went 0-5 on WSG.

I made a number of costly mistakes, and I don’t think I contributed to my teams as much as I could have. But I’m improving. However, I think I might have reached the limit of how much I can learn doing PUG groups. I rarely see other Holy Paladins anymore, and even still, I’m usually at the top of the “Healing Done” chart. I know that doesn’t mean anything really, BUT, if I’m the only one on my team healing, who am I supposed to look to for advice/guidance.

So I’m looking for two things:

A BG premade team – A support player is only as good as the people he supports. I’d really like to be able to play with a set team. I’m looking for an opportunity to learn proper strategy and working with a team.

HOLY Paladin Mentor – Someone who can show me how to maximize my game as a Holy Paladin.

If anyone on Tichondrius is looking for a Holy Paladin for PVP, let me know J

I’m determined to stick with this though. This has happened to me before on every character I’ve played. At some point, I just get so discouraged because I’m not “pwning face” in BGs that I go, “man, XXXXXX class sucks, I’m rolling a XXXXXXX.” So even though Druids are totally awesome, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to stick it out. Because running to another class has gotten me nowhere in the past.

Blizzcon, Community and In Game Goals

Yesterday, I said I felt bad for people who couldn’t get tickets to Blizzcon. But, they really know how take things to a ‘HO NUTHA LEVEL.

It’s reached a point where people are overreacting about this whole situation. There are multiple “F**K U BLIZZ” threads. There are multiple, “Let’s take legal action against BLIZZARD!” threads. Everyone is posting their sob story about how Blizzard ruined their Christmas because all they wanted in the world was a little peace, hope, and Blizzcon “goodies.”

Reading the forums, most threads come across as some dude who just found out his girlfriend was cheating on him. Nearly every thread I saw last night was titled something like “Blizzard, we need to talk,” or “Blizzard, I’m so hurt and disappointed.”

And of course, this means everyone who did get a ticket has to act like the dick new boyfriend. “Tough luck, should have tried harder.” “Better luck next year, CHUMP” “Don’t worry, I’m gonna take REAL good care of Blizzard at the con this year. Maybe I’ll send you a postcard.”

And of course, the reason most people are disappointed is they aren’t getting free crap. “Blizzard, I’m a cancer survivor, and the only thing that kept me going was the hope that I would see my next Blizzcon and get a goody bag. But now . . . I don’t have anything left in me.” No joke.

Challenging Games and Horror Movies

Horror movies don’t scare me. Horror games even less so.

I finally got around to watching The Orphanage (El Orfanato) the other night. It’s not a “horror” movie per-say, at least not the type of horror movie that’s been released lately. It shares a lot with Guillermo Del Toro’s films (rightfully so, since he produced The Orphanage), combining elements of The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.

There’s very little blood or gore. There are no monsters or psycho killers. But there were a couple of moments where I said to myself, “wow, this will haunt my nightmares.”

I really sat down and started to think about what scares me. I guess as you grow up, you are more scared by situations and ideas rather than things or people.

Then I thought about video games. And I thought about the failure of video games to capture those kinds of “scary” moments. I don’t really understand why I fail to have emotional moments in games. The truly “scary” movies are ones that make me confront a hard decision, or force me to imagine myself in a situation where I’m truly alone. Yet in games, I’m not “imagining” I’m in the game, I’m actually a part of the world. I’m controlling a character. Yet games continue to fail to engage me.

Blizzcon, Walmart and McDonalds

Who’s going to BLIZZCON?

Not many people apparently. At least, that’s what Blizzard must have assumed.

I’m pretty sure that by now, most people are familiar with the legendary FAIL that has become the Blizzcon ticket ordering system. In an apparent lack of foresight, the servers hosting the Blizzard online store were crushed under the might of thousands of rabid fans. The store was taken down and subsequently reopened about 3 or 4 times yesterday, each time prompting a flood of angry posts to the official website forums.

I was one of the lucky ones.

Multiboxin’

So . . .  this new Recruit-A-Friend scheme from Blizzard.

It sounds VERY tempting.  BUT, I think I’m going to have to restrain myself or I stand to lose quite a bit of money.

Reading some blue posts, it appears as if Blizzard isn’t 100% clear on the level cap for the free levels and triple XP.  Triple XP for the 1-60 grind is nothing, really.  I would just want the triple XP bonus in Outlands, since Outlands is a bitch for me to level.

I guess the limiting factor is how long it takes me to level up my first character.  If I could get a new character from 1-70, with my limited playtime, in around a week, I’d probably hop on this.  I already have 2 accounts (I’m lame, I know), so I would create a third account.  I’d link Account 2 with Account 3 using Refer-A-Friend, then use my Paladin to level them up.

What would be cool is if you could give out gift levels to characters past 60, LOL.  I’d level a character to 60 if I could use those 30 free gift levels to level up my warrior and rogue from 60 to 70 instantly.

But overall, I’m 99.9% sure I’m NOT going to do any of this, since I don’t have the time, PLUS, honestly, with the upcoming WARHAMMER release, who knows if I’ll even be playing WoW?

A Gentle Reminder

Amusing screenshot from my 60-69 Arathi Basin days:

Its funny and true.