Thursday (25 Feb) - A Little Bit of PvP

Thursday (25 Feb) - A Little Bit of PvP

Until the MM group gets itself together, Wild doesn't have a raid on Thursday nights. Philly was out and about, though, getting her dailies done, including her JC daily, which has become a fun expedition. She has seen some six separate quests for the daily, and so far all but one have been solo-able. Today Philly will spend the four JC tokens she's accumulated so far this week and learn Bold Cardinal Ruby, the +20 strength gem that will save DER and Melasahnd a lot of gold. Wild scarfed up a bunch of cardinal rubies early in the week (3 of them for his new weapon and shoulders), but JB keeps grinding out one per day, so there will be a few available when needed. Philly also does an Icy Prism, a once a day crafting that sometimes drops a cardinal ruby and other gems. Happy keeps the mats needed for all this crafting coming, despite the downturn in the market.

Philly is 64% of the way to level 75. While she loves shadow priest spec, she knows she has to have a viable healing spec as well. Philly's +hit set is poor, so in dungeons and raids she's most useful as a healer, at least for now. Philly made some adjustments to her talent specs, and changed a glyph. I also set up a 3x3 grid of mouseover spells that correspond with the number pad on the keyboard so that Philly can use a casting system similar to what Wild uses. The spells are all different, of course, but they have a similar flavor - instant heals, bigger heals, emergency heals, special spells.

Priests have two healing specs, holy and discipline (disc). The holy spec is very like most other healing specs, and is a versatile raid healing spec as well as a tank support spec. Philly is specced disc. The disc spec is a bit different. Instead of the focus being on healing damage caused, disc spec focuses on anticipating and avoiding damage from being done. The primary healing weapon of a disc priest is a Shield, which she can cast on multiple players. Shields do have some healing ability (if glyphed for it, which Philly is) but it's main advantage is that the Shield absorbs incoming damage so that it doesn't get to the target. Disc priests have a number of pre-heals that heal damage as it comes in, instead of being cast after it hits the player. Disc priests are best at single target healing (tank healing) but can also raid heal.

Disc priests are better accepted now than in the past, but they are still misunderstood if folks don't understand how they heal. The damage absorbed by a Shield, for example, does not show up on a healing meter, so disc priest healing numbers can look low in comparison with other healers. Before there was a Shield glyph that provided some healing along with the damage absorption, uninformed players complained that they weren't getting healed because their health bar was not getting better, when in fact the Shield was absorbing the incoming damage and keeping that bar from falling.

Philly has read up on the strats for disc priest healing and feels she is ready to give it a try. Her gear stats are in the range for healing the types of dungeons that Dungeon Finder would give her, but she's a little nervous about jumping in with a bunch of strangers without getting in a little practice on friendlier turf. On a night when Philly, DER, and Sis can get together, Philly hopes to do a little dungeon crawling with them so she can assess just how ready she really is.

Later in the evening Ando popped in and offered some pvp fun. Mery was happy to oblige, and the two girls made a fine looking pair as they made their grand entrance at the opening bell of Warsong Gulch. At level 37 (Ando) and 38 (Mery) the two were pretty senior among the rest of the horde, and it showed. Ando's combination of healing, quick strikes with moonfire, and knack for swiping the allie flag out from under their noses baffled and enraged the allie forces. Mery ranged the field, first attacking the allie base, and then, once we secured two flags, defending our own base. Mery's combat pet Fleshrypper was in heaven, aggressively flapping in the faces of the enemy, screeching and diving at them, and even getting in a stun when Mery needed to back away. Mery poured hundreds of arrows into allie attackers. Mery does not yet have the survival ability of a really good hunter, so she died a lot - but she took a lot of allies with her. We won, 3-1 I believe. Mery was second in overall damage among the horde, and was #1 in Killing Blows with 11.

In between matches we worked on Ando's user interface. Ando is a druid, and can change forms between caster, bear, cat, and other forms. The main combat bar changes depending on what form Ando is in - or at least it's supposed to. Wild is a druid, of course, so he also came in game for awhile to help out in deciphering what the problem was. We were still working on it when we got the call to head for the Arathi Basin.

This AB match was the strangest I have seen. Mery and Ando rode out, going to the mining area, the stables, and others, setting the flag at each to make it a horde area. In AB you win by collecting resources, and the more areas you have under your control, the more resources you collect. Ando and Mery did not run across a single alliance attacker in all that running around. There was one allie that briefly took control of the mine, but fled when he saw us coming. We won the battle with Mery never having fired a single shot.

More troubleshooting with Ando's interface followed, and then we got another WSG match. We got off to a good start, capturing a flag and getting a 1-0 lead. Then things fell apart. The allies converged on the horde base, and essentially forced us to defend. With a heavy team keeping the allies at bay, we thought that taking their flag should be easy. But we couldn't do it. Mostly we couldn't get the three or four players we needed together to make a concerted attack.

Mery found herself leading one attack on the base with two others tagging along behind her. As we headed up the hillside to the upper level of their base (where flag carriers often hide) it initially appeared that they weren't there. But Mery could see them with her Track Humanoids ability, and then Fleshrypper caught their foul human stench and attacked, swooping up the hillside to engage. Mery and the mage with her charged up the hill, but the paladin that had also been by our side did not follow. There were three allies defending. When it was over Mery was the only player standing, but the allie flag carrier had fled and escaped when the battle turned in our favor. We lost that battle, but Mery was at least pleased that she led the horde team in overall damage dealing.

It was getting pretty late, and the matches were coming farther apart, so Ando and Mery dueled each other outside Orgrimmar while Wild chimed in with advice on the user interface. Ando eventually did get it figured out, all the while beating the daylights out of Mery in our duels. I did beat him once, when I surprised him with a melee assault instead of the usual ranged bowshot attack. Ando is extremely hard to kill, and he just wears players down. Mery can appreciate how those allies feel when up against him.

Ando dinged to level 38 during the pvp matches, and Mery is 94% of the way to level 39. The magic level 40, when Mery can start wearing mail armor instead of leather, is not that far off.