Ten Most Memorable World of Warcraft Experiences

General, Player versus Player, Raiding, Roleplaying 1 comment.

One of the most recent Blog Azeroth shared topics seems to be the top ten memories of our entire World of Warcraft experience. While I’m not a member of the Blog Azeroth community, the large number of posts regarding this topic made me think of my own. As a result, I thought that I’d compose a list of my own top ten World of Warcraft experiences.

10. Being Chased Through Un’Goro Crater by a Devilsaur

As odd as it sounds, this is probably one of my most vivid memories for my huntress, Eszti “Iron Legs” Nightwing. The friend who originally coerced me to join the Feathermoon US server asked for my help in doing some quests in Un’Goro Crater. After a few hours there, he decided to escort me to Silithus so that we could participate in the events precipitating the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. However, our journey was was delayed indefinitely when somehow we were ambushed by an Ironhide Devilsaur. My friend, who played a human paladin at the time, was being mauled by the creature when I bravely jumped in and shot some paltry arrows into its nether region. Apparently this was enough to snag its attention, because the terrible lizard turned towards me and stepped implacably forward.

Listening to my friend’s frantic warnings, I bolted from the area, jumping over logs and avoiding the local creatures as the devilsaur chased me. For some odd reason the monster kept on my tail far longer than it should have and I literally had to run from one side of Un’Goro to the other before I finally lost sight of it.

09. The Tides of War

One of my most blissfully happy periods of time while playing World of Warcraft was that period of time in summer of 2006 when I participated in weekend Battlegrounds preforms with a number of friends. Every Saturday morning I would wake up early and log in, eagerly anticipating the bloodshed that was to come later in the day when everyone else had logged in. This was well before the time that cross-realm Battlegroups had been introduced and we used to see the same faces week after week after week. It became something beyond a mere competition and we shared a camaraderie that crossed the barriers of faction. We were the few, the unique, the proud, the elite, and we were lords of the battlefield.

I was especially fond of Warsong Gulch, where I had the reputation of being uncannily effective at defense. You see, our normal strategy for Warsong Gulch revolved around control of the midfield, where we often had any where between five and seven people who harried the Horde forces. The remainder were either on offensive or were delegated to what was often considered outside of our group as the lowly task of flag duty. Often, while I was in the preforms, I was the only person on defense. And it was my ultimate pride that I was the only person on defense because I was all that was needed.

You see, the idea wasn’t to prevent the Horde from stealing the flag. It was assumed that if the Horde somehow managed to breaking through our living barrier midfield, it would be comprised of a large number of highly skilled or highly geared individuals — far more than a single huntress could handle by herself. So it was unlikely that I’d be able to prevent them from taking the flag. Instead, my role revolved around flag return: I’d announce where the assault was coming from, where the flag was being taken from the base, and then try my damnedest to slow them down so that I could be reinforced by the middle vanguard. However, I frequently managed to return the flag solo and against what was often considered unsurmountable odds. In one game alone I somehow had some thirty-five flag returns — a feat that to my knowledge was ever broken on Feathermoon US.

Sadly, the preforms fell apart once the 50s bracket loomed overhead and we were facing a dearth of real competition.¹ Most of us went on to bigger and better things in the expansion, which some joining the top raiding guilds on the server and others focusing on Arena teams exclusively. I still run into a lot of them, but that tight bond we seemed to have shared during that summer has since vanished.

08. Roleplayer and Non-Roleplayers Collide in Wailing Caverns

My first tauren druid had an idiosyncrasy that was rather close to me: she was petrified of water over four inches.² This was a phobia that I shared with her until I decided to become a sailor and was required to overcome my fear to do so. For Lujza Spiritdancer, this meant that she couldn’t willingly do anything that required her to step hoof into water. She failed her aquatic form quest in spectacular fashion; she’d never ridden on any boat and relied on the zeppelins to get from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor; and she couldn’t ever consider stepping foot into Wailing Caverns — which required not only treading through relatively deep water but also putting her sizable head beneath the water to reach the entrance.

One evening I was questing in the Barrens when I stumbled across a group of friends who had recently rerolled together on Feathermoon US. The four knew each other in real life and were excited to begin playing together. When we spoke, however, they were adamant in warning me that they were not roleplayers and that they had little interest in ever roleplaying. While I was a bit put off by their attitude, I still joined them in doing a variety of quests and managed to have some fun while acquiring some valuable experience. An issue arose, however, when they decided that they wanted to go to Wailing Caverns and I was invited to heal as I was able.

So, we make our merry way to the entrance, laughing and joking and having fun until Lujza stumbles to a halt by the pool of water. The party asked what was wrong and, in true roleplaying fashion, I explained that I was terrified of the water and completely unable to go inside. Backing against the wall and shaking her head in fear, Lujza Spiritdancer made a declaration of her own: there was no way in the Twisting Nether that they were ever going to make her step hoof into the water. No way, no how, nuh uh, ain’t happening.

The four were initially dismayed and tried to convince Lujza to change her mind. When this didn’t work, they next attempted to coerce her, then threatened her, and finally cajole her into joining them — however Lujza was not going to change her mind and she made this clear with a stamp of her hoof. The four non-roleplayers then wandered off into a corner and had a heated conversation; minutes later they returned, grinning from ear to ear, mugs of Darkmoon Special Reserve in each grimy paw. They soothed her, handing her drink after drink as they explained how they understood and wouldn’t ever force her to do something that she wouldn’t want to do. And, when Lujza was roaring drunk and far too incoherent to understand what was happening around her much less what was happening to her, they grabbed her drunken and inert body and dragged it through the water.

I was so shocked by the efforts of these four self-avowed non-roleplayers that I laughed and played along. For the remainder of that evening, they turned to alcohol every time Lujza showed reticence related to water! As someone who actively tries to convince non-roleplayers to join in the fun every conceivable time, it was just a very awesome experience.

07. Never Give Up, Not Even in Gnomeregan!

I somehow ended up in my most memorable group for Gnomeregan one afternoon. I hadn’t considered the group too terrible, though it was clearly the Protection warrior who had the most skill of the group; even better, he was a roleplayer and he spent much of the instance roleplaying with me when I’m certain both of us would have otherwise throttled our fellow group members. Along the way to Mekgineer Thermaplugg, we encountered a bit of a problem prior to the gauntlet and the group promptly fell apart on the wipe.

While we watched our DPS bail with dismay, the warrior and I were far too stubborn to do the same and so we foolhardily decided to continue anyways. We resumed our fight by going through the back door, which brought up closer to the gauntlet than we had when we had had a full party. There was this one point that I recall in which we had a horrible string of runners and were fighting mob after mob after mob with me frantically hoping that I would get the mana required to heal sometime and the tank was frantically hoping that I would heal him sometime. I’m not quite sure how we managed it, but we went straight to the end, downed the boss, and then decided to fight our way out — the other way!

Hours later, we had managed to find our way to the hill looming over Kharanos, where we roleplayed for another couple of hours. He even took the opportunity to show me the outfit that he had created to look like the villain Sephiroth from the Final Fantasy 7 series. Somewhere along the line, the warrior decided that my robes will ill suited to Dun Morogh’s perpetual winter and dragged Csilla to the Auction House to buy something more suitable. So I spent quite a bit of time playing fashion model and roleplaying with this young gentlemen. This is how I met the best and most skilled tank in my entire World of Warcraft playing experience; sadly, transferred off the server some months later when he became distraught by the perceived lack of roleplaying on the server.

06. Goldshire Antics (Best Left Unshared!)

Though I had originally started roleplaying on a PvP server well before I decided to reroll on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server, I was initially very scared to roleplay. I felt that I had moved from the minor league to the major league and that the people I encountered would be overly critical of my best efforts. As a result, I very much tended to be a loner those first few months that I was on the server.

My friend Hiro ³, however, was not going to let that stand. With some vile combination of threats and pleading, he managed to convince me to join him one night with my huntress at Goldshire to meet up with some friends of his. I believe that I gave in to his wishes despite my reticence because I didn’t want to upset him further.

The evening began calmly enough. We sat around a small camp fire and shared stories of our adventures, told one another our innermost desires, and our hopes and dreams. Well, they did all of that; Eszt sat and listened and politely declined whenever someone passed her something to drink or something to smoke. Overall, it was rather benign and I was beginning to feel comfortable in this new roleplaying world where acting in character didn’t necessarily result in immediate derision.

This changed, however, when they decided to enter the Lion’s Pride Inn for further refreshment. Already inebriated from what they had imbued earlier that evening, the group grew rowdy as they continued to drink more. Eszti, who had little interest in hard drink and tended to be a bit of a loner, began to feel rather uncomfortable — especially when they started to remove their clothing. “We’re going streaking!” one exclaimed, while Hiro⁴ tried to pressure Eszti to do the same. When he couldn’t manage to do it alone, the paladin enlisted the aid of the rest of the bar. Within moments, a large crowd of half-naked humans, gnomes, dwarves, and even other kal’dorei had circle the huntress, chanting over and overt that she should get undressed. Eszti reacted to one of the most primal of instincts and fled on foot.

The rest decided to follow!

In the hour that followed, a twisted, perverted game of cat-and-mouse occurred, with Eszti running on foot from the inn and a gaggle of naked players — some roleplayers and others people that just wanted to join in on the fun — trailing behind. She quickly left those without mounts behind and led a raucous chase through Elwynn Forest, Duskwood, and Westfall, before cutting through Duskwood once again to return to Elywnn Forest. She eventually lost her pursuers when she dashed into the Fargodeep Mine, took an odd trail, doubled back, and took the opportunity to Shadowmeld. It was honestly one of the most bizarre roleplaying experiences that I have ever participated in and there are people who still recall that evening with unbecoming relish.

05. Epic Fail Against Lucifron

I’d always liked the fight against Lucifron in Molten Core while so many people used to lament that we had to do it at all. You see, I enjoy the fine art of dispelling. In fact, I’m very proud of my ability to quickly and efficiently dispel a debuff and competition frequently occurs within my perky priestess’s raid to see who can beat Csilla in the dispelling meters for that week.⁵ I considered it a badge of my skill that I had never downloaded Decursive, especially in light of the fact that many raids had made it a mandatory add on and that they were never able to distinguish if I had it or not.

This proficiency in dispelling without the aid of some third-party add on became important in December of 2006 when Blizzard made some significant changes to how macros were handled within the game, effectively destroying the then-current incarnation of Decursive. That first weekend we went up against Lucifron with my perky priestess’s raid was hellaciously difficult; of a raid of some forty people a grand total of three people were capable of decursing without relying on an add on: a mage, a Holy paladin, and myself. Of the raid, we were the only people who had never downloaded or used Decursive on a regular basis.

My raid leader’s tirade that evening was beyond description and he honestly had to remove himself from Vent because he was quite honestly that upset. And while I normally cringed when he went on one of his notorious rants, I was extremely pleased with myself that week because I knew — with absolute certainty — that for once I was in no way responsible for the current failure at hand!

04. Upon Realizing Goblin Guards Enjoy a Drink Now and Again

A very close friend of the family originally got me playing World of Warcraft in a more-than-casual manner. You see, I’d participated in the open-Beta⁶, but for the longest time I was an extremely casual player that logged on every couple of days. However, he used to regale us with tales of his antics in Azeroth and that ultimately got me back into the game.

One event in particular excited me beyond conceivable amounts. For Christmas that year, he managed to get his hands on the World of Warcraft roleplaying handbook and gave it to our family as a gift. We later used that self-same book to run a campaign that ultimately resulted in the creation of a character that current resides on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server. It involved a young Alliance warrior who was hiding a very disturbing secret from his group members; my character, a young Third War engineer who had hardened her heart to the Alliance following the disparity between the forces at Stormwind and those at Theramore, was oddly enamored with the young gentleman and tagged after him like a lost puppy. One of the key events of the campaign occurred in Stranglethorn Vale, where a huge arc was introduced by never fully explained.

Caught up in the fervor of that roleplaying session, I logged onto the first incarnation of my perky priestess and headed back down to Stranglethorn Vale, intent in further exploring the goblin port city of Booty Bay. I remember the exact day because it was the start of the new year: 1 January 2006. This was of some importance because at the time I was playing on the Arthas US PvP server and had up to that point avoided Stranglethorn Vale like the plague after initially acquiring the flight point. Imagine my surprise when I disembarked from my gryphon and noted that the goblin guards — usually rather stalwart and dedicated to their duty — were passed out on the dock, mugs of ale by their side. I was only able to note this fact for a moment, because at that exact moment four Horde rogues appeared from stealth and put numerous small holes into my priestess’s pretty red robes.

That encounter frightened me from ever heading back to Booty Bay on that particular incarnation of Csilla and I think that she still cowers somewhere within the safe looming walls of Stormwind proper.

03. Vengeance in the Eastern Plaguelands

I told this story once before in “Blissfully Bonded with Your Spec” but it warrants retelling. During the period of time I spent leveling my huntress and before I began raiding with my newly rerolled priestess I spent a lot of my time in-game with a group of gentlemen in the Shield of Dawn, a fledgling roleplaying guild of little note. We used to run amok in Azeroth flagged since we enjoyed the unexpected challenge.

While in the Eastern Plaguelands one evening, our group’s warlock wandered off on his own, most likely to pick yet another flower as he was apt to do.⁷ Somewhere along the line he was attacked by a cowardly Forsaken mage who leapt onto his mount after completing his deed. While our paladin friend ran to his side to care for his injuries, I instead took after the mounted mage on foot. I single-handedly took him down, slowing him with a combination of Concussive Shot and Wingclip, while the bird and I tore him apart. It was something that managed to garner me some notoriety within the guild and the story was often repeated to my secret pleasure and embarrassment.

02. Alterac Valley Rescue

The aforementioned warlock was someone that didn’t initially get along well with the character of my kal’dorei huntress. She was a five hundred year old woman who had spent the vast majority of her life hidden deep in the ancient groves of the Ashenvale while he was a young man in his twenties who had spent most of his life in the shadow of his paladin friend. She was intimately tied with her surroundings and disdained magic while he had embraced the shadowy arts and disdained the more primitive magics. In other words, the two got along as well as cats and dogs, and were only polite for the sake of their mutual friend, Tanriel Vassily.

Eszti’s efforts in avenging Timothy Mcdowl’s injuries in the Eastern Plaguelands were a small step on the long road to something close to friendship. What sealed their relationship, however, were the events that occurred on the battlefield late one winter. Tanriel and Eszti were fighting in Alterac Valley when they were seperated. This normally wouldn’t have been an issue, but the huntress was ambushed by three Horde defenders who were attempting their best to prevent her assault. Though Eszti managed to defeat two of them while getting close on the third, two others had arrived to reinforce them. Things started to look grim when something changed the tide of the fight.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Mcdowl appeared atop his fiery dreadsteed. Flinging himself from the mount, he scattered the group with a timely placed fear, finished them off, and then proceeded to bandage the kal’dorei’s wounds. It was something almost entirely out of a book or play or movie and I’m still awed by the fact that he had the gall to even consider trying to help — and the skill to succeed!

01. Soloing the Reginald Windsor Escort — As a Holy Priest!

For weeks on end, I begged my guild to help me complete the Windsor escort quest for my Onyxia attunement. At the time I had been invited to a raid group and one of the things that they were most looking forward to was eventually stepping into Onyxia’s Lair to take down the black dragon herself. Unfortunately, no one was willing or able to help me do so and I had to rely on a large number of very unsuccessful PuGs to hopefully complete the quest. The one time it was successful, however, I managed to somehow fail the quest because I paused too long to drink and the bastard strayed too far from me.

Delirious and perhaps half-mad, I took it upon myself to complete the quest one evening. I entered Blackrock Depths all by my lonesome, a single Holy priestess in a frenzy. Somehow, over the course of some three hours, I managed to clear the entire way to the exit and then escort Reginald Windsor. To this day I have no clue how I did it, but it was such a significant accomplishment that I eventually wove the event into Csilla’s story.

I’ve yet to down Onyxia with Csilla, meaning that I’ve yet to culminate that arc in her story. When I do manage to do so, my perky priestess will kick the foul dragoness in the head with one dainty foot, all in the memory of tha’ nice mister Reggie fellah, Light bless his soul.

Related Posts

1. Just the Way I Like ‘em
2. Seriously, What Are the Odds?
3. Medicinally-Induced Rambling

Suffering From ADHDPS

General, Player versus Player 6 comments.

As always, Saturday was an extremely busy in-game day for me. Within the span of the day, I managed to:

• Get roped into a full Karazhan run that took two hours and eighteen minutes (guild best!);
• Attend Serpentshrine Cavern on my perky priesty;
• Run Heroic Underbog with a Holy-turned-Protection paladin with 10,000 health buffed¹;
• Participated in our weekly Zul’Aman Amani War Bear run²; and
• Decided to return to my roots and hit the Battlegrounds with friends until too late that night.

In particular, hanging out in the Battlegrounds with my friends was a blast. I’ve mentioned in the past that I very much like the competitive nature of the Battlegrounds, enough so that I would spend every weekend in there rather than do constructive things in the game. In fact, I leveled through the 40s and 50s on Eszti entirely in the Battlegrounds and stringently avoided doing anything that would grant me experience because I was determined to stay in those brackets for a while!

Our fun in the Battlegrounds seemed endless, as we went from battlefield to battlefield and have mostly successful matches. I won one of the few Alterac Valley matches that I’ve won since they implemented the most recent batch of changes, we got thoroughly trounced in one match of Eye of the Storm, but then rallied the group in our second match for a smashing victory, and pummeled the everliving snot out of the Horde in Warsong Gulch due to our absolute supremacy in the midfield. In fact, we were doing so well that during the third flag cap³, our opponents lingered around the Horde graveyard rather than engage us.

Needless to say, awesome fun.

There was, however, one particular fight of note that occurred that evening. While accompanying our Affliction warlock to the base of the Horde graveyard during the battle for Warsong Gulch, our Holy priest friend and I stubbornly clung to his side and kept him alive through waves of stealthy rogues, recalcitrant shamans, one mean looking warrior, and a Survival hunter who pestered us to no end. For nearly ten minutes, we kept him alive as he dealt with each and every challenge, our Enhancement shaman⁴ in tow.

Shortly afterwards, a call went out saying that a small contingent of Horde had managed to break through our death-dealing barrier to reach the base of the Alliance flagroom; the Affliction warlock — his heart full of bloodlust — swiftly mounted up onto his dreadsteed, leaving the raid’s only two healers behind to replenish our mana. The Enhancement shaman long since departed, the sudden dearth of damage dealers meant that the Horde was finally free to crawl out of their hidey-holes and slaughter us. While our fight could only be described as epic⁵, we did eventually fall to their blows, prompting the other Holy priest to jokingly claim that the Affliction warlock suffered from ADHDPS.⁶

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Damage Per Second — or ADHDPS — is one of the most common disorders that develop in DPSers on the battlefield. Damage dealing classes with ADHDPS have impaired functioning in multiple settings, including the Arena, on the Battlegrounds, and even occasionally in a raid setting. If left untreated, the disorder can have long-term adverse effects.

Symptoms of ADHDPS will appear over the course of many fights, and can include:

• Impulsiveness: a DPSer who acts quickly without thinking first.
• Hyperactivity: a DPSer who can’t remain in one location for an extended period of time and finds himself moving from one place to another on whim.
• Inattention: a DPSer who is sidetracked by what is going on around him.

Effective treatments for ADHDPS are available, and include behavioral therapy and medications. If you or someone close to you is suffering from ADHDPS, immediately seek the help of a trained individual.

Please, think of the healers.

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Ildiko the Mighty Gets Stuck in Ashenvale

Ildiko, Player versus Player 2 comments.

I mentioned a while back in “There’s No Place Like Home” that I had recently rolled a new character n my first-ever PvP server since leaving Arthas US over two years ago. In particular, I noted that I was leveling up a troll mageling by the name of Ildiko on Shattered Hand US. Ildiko — or Ildiko the Mighty as my roleplaying-turned brain has dubbed her despite my attempts to get out of the habit of assigning personalities to my non-roleplaying characters¹ — managed to hit 25 a week or so ago, prompting me to enter my first contested territory: the ancient and lofty forests of Ashenvale.

In the past I’ve claimed to throughly enjoy the player versus player aspect of the game. In switching to a roleplaying server after being on a PvP server for so long, I found that I was missing the thrill of being in contested territories so much that I actually played the game for almost two year perma-flagged. Yes, I invited mine enemies to take a swing at me and I enjoyed these contests even when my carcass littered the ground. I further engaged in frequent Battlegrounds preforms, often getting up ridiculously early on Saturday mornings to gleefully log into the game and wait until my friends showed up for our weekly matches in Warsong Gulch. And, when Arena started rolling out and before they became the place for easy epics, I dutifully joined a team and had a blast.

While I have never claimed to be good at PvP², I don’t let that deter from my enjoyment of that aspect of the game.

In rerolling on a PvP server, one of the things that I was looking forward to most was that feeling that I used to get back in the days when there was a contested territory for me or when I bumbled around perma-flagged. That added danger of being attacked by a member of the opposite faction while questing dripped just enough adrenaline into my bloodstream that I was hooked. Perhaps it was nostalgia that prompted it, but I wanted that feeling back so much! In fact, I was looking forward to entering my first contested zone so much that I leveled in leaps and bounds, far surpassing my boyfriend’s newly rolled druid.

My first world PvP encounter was in Ashenvale that self-same afternoon I stepped into contested territory for the first time. It was not at all what I had hoped or even expected. This afternoon we’ll explore the tale of my fledgling mageling in “Ildiko the Mighty Gets Stuck in Ashenvale.”

One bright and sunny spring afternoon, a fledgling troll mage could be found deep in the ancient groves of Ashenvale. Known to her peers as Ildiko the Mighty, our young heroine was leaving Splintertree Post on a quest to slay some water elementals. Cheekily walking along the road west in defiance of common sense, she stumbled across a 70th season druid and a 50-something hunter also on the road. With an experienced eye, she examined the two. While the prospect of a fight intrigued her, Ildiko the Mighty decided to spare the kal’dorei of her wrath and continued on her jaunt at an unhurried pace.

Sadly, this was not to be, for the wretched kal’dorei druid, clothed in her paltry welfare epics, dismounted from her arguably mangy sabre cat and tossed the gauntlet. Wiggling her fingers in what could only be described as a desultory manner, she cast Entangling Roots on our heroic mageling. Egged on by the harsh words of her companion, the druid then proceeded to taunt her.

Ildiko the Mighty, however, was not moved by her paltry efforts; once the roots expired, she chose to turn the other cheek and continue on her way. Unfortunately, that’s when the wretched druid chose to attack, cowardly swinging her staff with enough force that when it did connect with the back of Ildiko the Mighty’s skull it managed to catapult her into the spirit world.

With a bealeagured sigh, Ildiko the Recently-Turned-Dead climbed back to her feel, carefully wiped the dust off of her incorporal robes, and began another jaunt — this time to reclaim her body.

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Arena Shape-Up — Redux!

Player versus Player, Priest 3 comments.

I’ve been horribly remiss. Back in May I described in Arena Shape-Up! the staple Discipline Arena build, which coupled the Discipline tree’s high survivability with some of the pertinent talents of the Holy tree that would allow an Arena healer to perform well, even under pressure. At the same time, however, I also mentioned that this was actually one of two builds I was considering in my glorious return to lackluster performance on the battlefield. Time passed and I never actually got around to describing that build.

I’d like to take the opportunity this afternoon to rectify that mistake.

45/16/0: Variation on a Theme

If you compare this build with the 42/19/0 Arena build mentioned in Arena Shape-Up!, you’d find a lot of similarities. It has the core survivability talents, such as Unbreakable Will and Improved Power Word: Shield, as well as keeping both Power Infusion and Pain Suppression, which are — of course — the crux of any Discipline Arena build. It also retained those fluff buffs¹ such as Blessed Recovery and even Martyrdom to some extent. And, of course, we still kept that dreaded Holy Nova so that we can spam rank 1 Holy Nova to break stealth, interrupt cast times, and prevent people from drinking or bandaging.

In fact, unless you look very carefully the two builds might even look identical.

There are, however, a few major changes to this build. First off, the entire point of this build is to pick up Reflective Shield. This talent allows 50% of the damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield to be reflected back onto your opponent. Prior to 2.4, this talent was almost entirely avoided by most Arena playing priests. The main problem lay in the fact that Reflective Shield had the nasty side effect of breaking those forms of crowd control that could be broken by damage. For example, if a warrior managed to get Rend on the priest just before her magely companion sheeped him, the first tick of the bleed effect would reflect half of the damage to the warrior and break the crowd control.

This was often considered a bad thing. We want to avoid breaking crowd control. This was especially a problem in 3v3 and 5v5, where teams are often built around select forms of crowd control.

This all changed in 2.4, when various changes were made to talents that in the past would break crowd control. If we take a moment to read the patch notes, we see:

Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Problem resolved! Suddenly numerous priests considered picking up Reflective Shield as a way of providing somewhat significant damage to their opponents without ever casting a spell on them. How significant? Let’s take a moment to examine that. A rank 12 Power Word: Shield is capable of absorbing 1,315 damage while benefiting from 30% of our Bonus Healing stat²; with three points in Improved Power Word: Shield, we can further increase the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield by 15%.

Now in my admittedly subpar Arena set, I currently have around 1,750 Bonus Healing unbuffed. How much damage absorbed does that translate to?

[1,315 + (0.30 × 1,750)] × 1.15 = 2,116 damage absorbed.

And half of that would be reflected back when Reflective Shield is applied, meaning that our target could reflect up to 1,058 damage to the person doing damage to him. Now, this isn’t like something to raise our collective nose at. In a fight where we’re playing a predominately healing role, even that little bit of damage could be enough to help us secure a win. That is a good thing. We like good things.

The problem with Reflective Shield, however, is the fact that the added damage has the nasty result of generating more rage for warriors, which those same warriors then use to smear our pancreases into the dusty floor. My hope with this build, however, is that the number of warriors that I come up against in the 2v2 bracket aren’t so overwhelmingly numerous that I run back to my friendly neighborhood priestly trainer for a quick — and costly — respec. Looking at the real time Arena ranking stats at SK Gaming, I see that warriors are pretty popular in my Battlegroup³, with the greatest percentage of players over a 2,200 rating favoring the classic Warrior-Druid combination with a grand total of 17.9%.

Fortunately, I’m an extremely casual Arena combatant and would be enough if I finally managed to break an 1,750 rating. This is in no way I’d ever find the time⁴ to make it to the 2,200 tier.

Another concern with this particular build is that I dropped the five points I invested for rank 5 Silent Resolve for a paltry rank 1 Silent Resolve. While many people tend to consider the ability as a strictly raiding talent and having little effect on player versus player combat, the 20% spell resistance can be a huge factor. As I noted before, any spell removal that is resisted means that your opponents have to spend more mana to remove it, sometimes resulting in them spending valuable mana that would have otherwise been spent on healing allies or damaging opponents. Furthermore, it may mean that an important ability stays up longer. We like that.

If I really felt the need I could snag those points out of Enlightenment and place them back into Silent Resolve where they rightfully belong.  However, in speaking with others who have considerably more talent, experience, and knowledge than I possess, I have the suspicion that Silent Resolve is a larger factor post-1,750 and in larger brackets, when dispelings and purgings become more frequent.  From my limited experience, I don’t recall running into it too much prior to 1,600; in fact, the main time I saw it was when we ended up against teams in Season 3 gear who — as my Arena partner and I guessed — we most likely either selling Arena points or blasting through the lower brackets to sell another high-ranked Arena team.

What’s the Verdict?

Overall, I’m leaning towards the 42/19/0 build I described in Arena Shape-Up! I think that it will serve me better and that overall I’ll be more successful with it. I might take an after or even a week to explore this other build just to get my grubby paws on Reflective Shield; I know that personally I’ve been eying the talent for quite some time now but hesitant to snag it due to the fact that in the past it would break crowd control.

And, no, I haven’t quite leveled my Discipline priest up to 70 yet. She’s languishing around 62 or so, which is so close to 70 that there’s no excuse why I haven’t gotten off of my butt to get the job done. I guess Rahel Isera’duna is doing what she does best — being a recalcitrant, cantankerous bitch.

Related Posts

1. Arena Shape-Up!
2. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
3. Priests — Examine Your Spirit Stat!

There’s No Place Like Home

General, Ildiko, Player versus Player 4 comments.

– unfortunately.

I logged in yesterday evening after a holiday weekend full of revelry, fun, and no World of Warcraft to find that my beloved roleplaying guild no longer existed. Shocked by this discovery, I spent almost an hour trying to find any information regarding The Paragon, but to no avail; not a single person I spoke to had any idea that the guild had disbanded, much less what had become of its wonderful and eclectic bunch of members.

I probably would have moped around the house for a bit after finding this out, but my younger sibling was a sufficient enough pest to somehow rope me into rolling a toon on his newer server. Until recently he was a long-standing member of Arthas Alliance raiding guild SECURITY, serving as the guild’s Restoration-turned-Feral-off-tank druid. In light of their recent poor performance and his diminished availability, however, he’d decided to take leave of the guild and rerolled on Shattered Hand with a number of friends from high school. Despite being rather morose and feeling dejected, I joined him yesterday evening.

This lovely piece of troll-flesh is Ildiko, my second-ever mage and yet-another-troll¹.

Shattered Hand is a very different environment than Feathermoon. For one, it’s a PvP server where Feathermoon is one of the first batch of roleplaying servers that were ever released. And while I originally started out on PvP servers, it’s important to note that I’ve been on Feathermoon almost exclusively for well over a year and a half now.

Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by my time on Feathermoon, but never before has the disparity between PvP and roleplaying servers seemed so apparent. The first thing I noticed were the slew of asinine names running rampant. Names that would have been balked at or looked down upon on Feathermoon where everywhere, prompting me to cringe noticeably when I stumbled across one — and they were everywhere. Public channels such as Trade and General were full of absolute stupidity, running the gamut from Chuck Norris jokes in the Barrens to what appeared to be a genuine debate concerning the virtues of pedophilia² spanning both Trade and General in Orgrimmar.

And that fails to take into account the Your Momma jokes, comments regarding people’s sexual preferences, and some of the most atrocious spelling I have ever had the displeasure of reading in my entire life.

All in all, it seemed like every vice, every stereotype of PvP servers were suitably justified. Which isn’t to say that I dislike PvP servers; in fact, I’d claim the opposite! I spent quite a bit of time on Arthas and I genuinely enjoy world PvP. However it just gave further weight to the phrase “There’s no place like home.”

Related Posts

1. Dispelling the Myth: Roleplaying Servers
2. Do or Death Knight
3. If Your Name is Listed Here, You Should be Ashamed