Monday - (24 May) PvP Rises Again

Monday - (24 May) PvP Rises Again

Last week we changed our pvp night from Friday's to Monday's due to travel schedules and other real life considerations. We are also trying out a start time closer to 9pm than our usual 10pm to get in more matches with less bleary eyes the next morning.

It had been awhile since all three of us were able to pvp together and we were excited about getting back into action. We called on our level 30s team of Ando, Lao, and EZ. Ando keeps us alive with his healing, pesters the allies with moonfire and other damaging attacks, and specializes in running off with the alliance flag. Lao is a devastating shadow priest that leaves piles of corpses in her wake. Both are level 39s in the level 30-39 bracket, and over the course of the evening set the standard for high end healing and damage dealing. EZ . . . well, EZ makes for great bait. Alliance pvpers anxious to get horde kills quickly pick out level 31 EZ as easy bait. But EZ has a range of tricks to stay alive, and between Ando's support healing and Lao's deadly assault that allie, and often the allie's friends, wind up dead while EZ moves on to tempt another allie into the trap.

We got off to a slow start in Warsong Gulch with a horde team that couldn't get organized and spent most of the battle farming kills at midfield instead of capping flags. We lost. From there we won two out of our next three WSG matches in very convincing fashion, and with Lao and Ando leading the teams in damage and healing respectively. The second loss was a heartbreaker as the two teams were very evenly matched and very strong on defense. The allies managed to cap the horde flag only once. We successfully defended every subsequent attempt, and managed to grab their flag a couple of times, but could not hold it. As time was ticking down we had one last chance, taking their flag and getting all the way the entrance to our hold before time ran out and we lost 1-0.

We also had a spirited battle in the Arathi Basin, where winning requires taking and holding various key bases. The alliance seemed to forget this, massing their forces in one or two spots. They ignored the fact that we had captured one more base than they had and were accumulating resources faster than they were. That resulted in large, running, pitched battles, which was exciting and challenging. A couple of times Ando led EZ slipped way from the main battles and charged into alliance held bases intentionally as a diversion. The first time we did that, putting up a tough but eventually futile assault before getting killed, EZ lamented "that that didn't go so well," to which Ando responded, "it accomplished what we were after," which was to keep the allies on the defensive and maintain our advantage in the number of bases we held. We won. Actual strategy in a pvp match? It works. Will wonders never cease.

EZ was 96% of the way to level 32 when we called it an evening. EZ hung around and signed up for another match in order to get that last 4%, but forty minutes later and still no match and she also called it a night. I'm certain she'll get herself to level 32 before next week's adventures.