Wednesday, January 9, 2008

PeeVeePee



Well, I hit 48. With all five Shaman. It's time to PvP.

As you may remember, I first attempted to multibox PvP back when the boys were 19. I headed into Warsong Gulch with 4 of my Shaman, lead by my 19 Twink Rogue. It was a disaster. Here's a quick recap why: Twinks.

A Twink is a low level toon that has been maxed out on gear and stats. This is done by strategically dragging him/her through instances, getting them the best gear possible, and then abusing the hell out of the ability to enchant low level items with high level enchants. The end result, super powerful toon for their level.

This effect is magnified the lower you go. So a level 19 twink may actually have nearly triple the health your 19 does, and the melee twinks can likely kill you in 1-2 shots. Melee, is actually where twinking shines at low level. So seeing as my Shaman are casters, I was tossed around WSG like a bunch of beanbags. This twinking effect becomes less of an issue as you go up to higher brackets.

The 40s, I figured, would be a good place to try PvP again. I wanted to wait until everyone was 48, because that's when we get Chain Lightning Rank 2. So here I am. Before I headed into combat, I knew I needed to look at my interface and macros a bit closer. But I didn't. I wanted to PvP, so I queued up.... wonderful.



After 28 minutes of getting my bearings, we won 3-0, and my boys held 5 of the top 7 spots on the killing blows charts. I was freak'n out. This was what I was waiting for. Bliss.

The actual gameplay was rather interesting. When players first saw me, they wouldn't hesitate to attack. I don't think they could tell how many toons were there. But after dying to 5 simultanious Chain Lightnings, they learned their lesson. Most folks simply ran the other way when I came up a ramp. Hilarious.

At one point, I followed a teammate into the Alliance Flag Room. There were 4 guards. I killed them all within a few seconds. I did so by first coming in to "Tier 2", the level between the flag room floor, and the roof, and dragged my guys along the edge of the drop off. This allowed me to target one of the Alliance standing guard, and send 5 Chain Lightnings down into the room, which proceeded to kill the first guy, and seriously mame the two next to him. A few Lightning Bolts later, everyone was dead, and my guys were left untouched. Beautiful.

As I followed the flag carrier outside, he headed towards the Alliance Ramp, and I followed. I noticed that all the guys I had just wiped out were rezing, and two mounted to follow us. I dropped off my own mounts at the top of their ramp, and started dropping totems. I fanned my boys out into formation, and we were quite the sight... if I do say so myself. The two mounted pursuers stopped dead in their tracks... walked backwards for a few steps then turned around and ran. Joy.

Everything just seemed to work out. As with any WSG match, you'll be more effective if you pick your fights, and avoid rushing into a melee fest. So I did. I stayed back, and went in when I knew I could safely unleash some damage. When one of my boys would die, I'd leave them at the GY until I was done with the current fight. Then I'd have the one at the GY mount, then autorun forward. I'd meet them half way, tell them to follow, then head back to the battle a full team again.

My Totems were all wrong. I was still using a group macro which was dropping totems designed for PvE, not PvP. So I decided to setup a new PvP Totem Macro. I started dropping Grounding Totems first, as they wipe out any and all casters by absorbing everything they cast. Then my healing/mana totems, to help sustain me. Then Earthbind, Tremor and Stoneskin totems. And finally some Searing Totems for good measure.

This worked ok, but it became evident that I need quick and easy access to Earthbind for catching those who choose to run away, and Tremor because sometimes you need it to stop those kamikaze Priests who figure they can just aoe fear me to death. So I added these to my Shift-x keys on the Nostromo.

Then I headed into Arathi Basin... it didn't go too well. For three reasons.


1. Killing a Multiboxer is fun.

Why? Because if you're playing against one, you've likely died to him several times already, feel he's cheating, with you were him, and seeing him die just might make you feel better about being you.

The problem is, you need several guys to kill one, and it's hard to organize enough when you're playing with only 9 other pugs. But in AB, you're playing with 14, so it's easier to form a lynch mob and head after the multiboxer.


2. Multiboxers are cool.

This guarantees you have at least 2-3 fans follow you around to watch the magic. Therefore, at any given time, I'm responsible for 8 of 15 players being in the same spot. It's just too hard to hold 3 flags.



3. Rotating Graveyards.

In AB your spawn point is rarely the same, and if a flag is captured while you await resurrection, you may even move to another yet. At one point, I had guys at 3 different GYs, and it took a LONG time to get them all back together again. That means we have 3 players out of 15 that aren't doing anything for the team until I can get to them. It sucks.


So we didn't win, and I decided AB can wait.

I went back into Warsong late that night, fully expecting to rule the roost again... but it didn't turn out so well. But that's another story... stay tuned.

Boom

1 comment:

Despotia said...

Awesome post, it was a nice read again, can't wait to finish up a few more levels and head there myself aswell.