All Things Gaming
Here’s a video of me getting the Wrecking Ball achievement on my 90 hunter. I cut out some of the slow parts from the battle ground and mixed it with some (hopefully legally used) music. I’ve gotten this once or twice on old characters before, but it’s still fun to see, particularly at max level. Check it out! Also, follow my youtube, cause.., why not? It doesn’t bite.
I’ve PVP’d on my hunter a bit in the past, but it’s always been just random battlegrounds or pretty casual arenas. Recently however, my friend Sixin has convinced me to start trying things a little more seriously. So I joined his PVP guild in a few rated battlegrounds. Well… it was awesome. We won several matches, lost very few, and I was near the top of the charts each time. I decided to move that character over to the guild and did some more with them (even landed on one of their rated teams). A handful more matches in and I find myself sitting at 1600 rating with the Stone Guard title and think maybe it’s time to take this a little more seriously. Then I started looking at where I can improve and found some horrible things. (more…)
Blizzard has really been doing an awesome job this expansion bringing us consistent, frequent, and meaningful patches. Upcoming patch 5.3 appears to be no exception so far. While, there are a lot of strange data mining discoveries so far (such as a spell for a third talent specialization) the biggest changes I’m seeing are to PVP. First off… hunters – gone! Second, resilience is being removed from gear. Finally, PVP will now feature gear scaling similar to challenge modes. Okay, so only two of those things is true. Follow after the break to see which and also the rest of the patch notes relating to PVP.
The two most interesting changes recently to me are:
The ability for players to retain a second queue for a Battleground after they’ve already entered one has been removed. Previously, players were able to queue for two Battlegrounds, have one queue pop and retain their second queue while they decided if they wanted to join the one that was ready. This is no longer the case. When a Battleground queue pops players will automatically be removed from all other active queues. To queue for a different Battleground it will be necessary to finish the match and queue again. This solves a design issue in that the old system gave players an opening to abandon their teammates if things weren’t going as well as they’d hoped; and it also solves some queue system inconsistencies that were being caused as a side effect of how the old system functioned.
It will be nice to see (hopefully) fewer people disappearing in the middle of BG’s, particularly while I’m trying to kill them. Also,
The goblin racial Best Deals Anywhere should now only be applying to vendors with associated reputations. It no longer incorrectly applies to vendors with no attached reputations, nor does it apply to flight path costs. (Note: the displayed costs for flight paths require a client-side patch to update and are not currently reflecting this racial change). In addition, it is no longer possible for goblin characters exalted with their guild to receive an extra discount on top of the exalted faction discount from guild vendors.
I hear this means there is no longer a discount for the mats for the Vial of the Sands drake, someone should leave a comment if they can verify that. Death Knights also just got a bit of a frost DPS nerf, fortunately the left blood alone which is my main spec on that guy. It does make me a little sad that my warrior friend can out DPS me now. Full recently 4.1 hotfix notes after the break and a full list of all of their 4.1 hot fixes can be found on Blizzard’s site HERE.
Yes, fear the reaper. My rogue hit 78 last night and although he isn’t the one-shotting-everything-that-moves powerhouse that he was through most of the leveling process, he is still a stealthy ninja-like force to be reckoned with. I can top the meters in instances in my combat spec, but what I really want to focus on today is the fun of the subtlety spec and the new PVP brackets.
PVP as a Subtlety rogue is fun. Sub is the spec that has always played the way I feel a rogue should. Sub emphasises effectiveness and deadliness from the shadows. We get the +30% to stealth movement speed in sub, which is absolutely essential to not being horribly frustrated trying to catch people in a battleground. Of course, we can’t forget to mention sub’s signature ability: Shadow Step. It is buckets of fun to teleport behind an unsuspecting victim and slash him with Ambush, using the increase damage bonus from SS. Further, SS gives a run speed bonus for a few seconds after it’s used, making it a mini sprint that talents to a 20 second cooldown. Not only does this make Shadow Step a great offensive skill, but it can be used when running away from a large pack of enemies by teleporting to the furthest player and then using the run speed to get away. Hopefully this gives you time for Vanish to come off cooldown. Sub rogues just have such a cool toolbox for pvp play, but they suck at PVE right?