Eye of the Storm - Daily Battleground 11/30/09

Eye of the Storm was my daily battleground again today. After yesterdays episode I wasn't too excited but it worked out well. I did it on Wranngar and we won the first one I was in. We were doing a lot better today by the looks of things. I always say there is a good time of the day to be in certain battlegrounds and I hit the right time today. Yesterday is an example of the wrong time.

To put it simply, we dominated. We took all 4 towers and held them. I came off the rock and went directly to FRR. There were only a couple other people that came there right from the rock, but one of them was a healer and with him healing we were able to take it. It was quite a fight though. We were outnumbered 2 to 1 but eventually killed all of them and capped the tower. When they were finally dead I had time to look around and that's when I saw we had a 4 cap going on, no Flagtards in that group. I did notice DR was unguarded and that could have caused a problem but fortunately it didn't.

That was my daily done and I went and turned it in for 19g86s and 1241 bonus honor. If only all the daily battlegrounds went that well.

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The Battle for Eye of the Storm - Daily Battleground 11/29/09

The Alliance was having a really bad day in Eye of the Storm today. It was some of the worst play I have seen bar none. I will say on occasion that it is some of the worst play I have seen in awhile, but this was just sickening. It took me 5 battles to get the daily done on Wranngar, 4 losses and 1 win. We will lose in EoS but usually we are able to put up a fight. Not today. It was like all the people in there just picked up their toon off eBay that morning.

I have prepared a little list of 5 ways to lose at EoS, they were all put into play today. Repeatedly. If you want to lose in EoS just follow this list, it is tried and proven.

1. Be a Flagtard. Focus on the flag and block everything else out. Just keep your eyes on the flag and don't notice any calls of incoming, don't notice if we have any towers or not, just keep your eyes on that flag.

2. Fight in the roads. This accomplishes nothing. You are not clocking the tower over while you are fighting in the road. Don't listen when someone says "stop fighting on the road, get up to the tower". Make sure you let the Horde come right up to your tower before you engage them though.

3. Leave your nodes unguarded. One single Horde probably won't come and clock it over while it is unguarded anyway. It should be safe...

4. Don't call incoming until you are dead, in the graveyard, and the flag has already burned. Someone will probably notice you are getting ganked by 5 Horde, assuming they are not focused on the flag. You can't type when you're stunned anyway...

5. Ignore calls of incoming. The one squishy you left to guard the node can probably handle it, they are just overreacting. The Horde usually only attack in ones anyway...

In the 3rd battle I came into, which was already in progress and almost over, none of the first 4 lasted long, we had the flag! WhooHoo! The major problem was, we didn't have any towers, the Horde had a 4 cap. The Flagtard with the flag was way up by the Horde rock, the Horde starting point. They were rezzing on the rock AND RUNNING RIGHT BACK TO THE FLAG TO TRY AND GET IT AGAIN!!! WITH NO TOWERS!!! These were the kind of idiots I was dealing with in the first 4 battles. A Flagtard is a scary thing.

Finally, in the 5th battle, I got in with a good group and we had a 3 cap the whole time with some flag running. The Horde weren't all that good in the first 4 battles but the Alliance was worse. In this battle we were all over them. We kept them pinned down defending their one tower with very little trouble holding our 3 towers. I finally got my daily done and turned it in for 19g86s and 1241 bonus honor. EoS used to be one of my favorite battlegrounds but with play like this I don't know anymore.

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The Battle for Alterac Valley - Another sad day for the Alliance 11/29/09

The battle for Alterac Valley goes on, I can't really say it rages on the way the Alliance have been fighting in there the last couple days. I fought in 4 battles on Wranngar, 2 wins and 2 losses.

Once again there were a lot of problems. People were not working together as a team, there is nothing new there. There was a lot of placing the blame when the zerg we were trying to do failed. The thing was though, the people that were complaining about the fail were the ones who didn't go straight to Drek without stopping for anything including Galv where they got wiped out by the Horde who were waiting for them in there. It is best to have someone who can track humanoids check to see if the place is full of Horde before everyone runs in. By everyone I mean 10+ people. We have checked in the past and when we saw it was full we just went on by and left them standing there waiting lol.

The best plan still seems to be, don't take SHGY early in the battle. Especially don't take SHGY early in the battle if we are also controlling SFGY. That really keeps all the Horde in front of us and we can't advance. Put at least 5 people in a tower and keep them there until it burns. I don't know if that is ever going to happen, a lot of these players are ADHD kids and they can't sit still that long. I can just see them bouncing off the walls. Most people are good for about 1 minute then they jump down and go somewhere else. Another thing is, if you cap a tower, guard it. I have started just leaving when someone caps a tower then jumps down and moves on. I figure screw it, I am not going to stay there by myself guarding a tower someone else capped then left because they didn't want to be bothered waiting, so I move on to more action too.

Still having the problem of people starting a cap on the East and West Frostwolf Towers, and Relief Hut, then going to hang out on the hill in front of the keep. Time and time again the Horde just have one Rogue or Druid stealth in and cap them back. It happens again and again but no one learns. I usually go into either the east or west tower, which is empty, and stay until it burns because no one else will. I always say something to the effect of how many times are we going to have to recap them before they learn. I don't think they ever will. How long has AV been going on?

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The Battle for Wintergrasp 11/29/09

The battle for Wintergrasp Fortress rages on. I fought in one battle for Wintergrasp today on Wranngar, it was a win.

We were defending the Fortress from the Horde and managed to hang onto it. I finally grabbed a catapult today and helped take down the southeastern tower. That was a lot of fun and pretty easy. There is really nothing you can screw up but it makes you a prime target for the Horde which are way overpowered with their Tenacity. I tried to get over to the southwestern tower but got my catapult destroyed and myself killed twice. After the second time I rezzed behind the Fortress and they were calling people to come back and defend the Fortress so I stuck around there and killed Horde. That turned out to be the wrong call though because people had to go back out towards the end of the battle and finish destroying the southwestern tower which was the last one up. The southern tower had already been destroyed. When that last tower went down we won.

I stuck around afterwards to kill some Horde with everyone else. It is nice to be able to get at them when they don't have 50,000 to 100,000 hp, they lose the Tenacity when the battle ends.

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The Battle for Strand of the Ancients - Daily Battleground 11/28/09

The daily battleground today was Strand of the Ancients. I fought in 3 battles on Wranngar, 1 win and 2 losses. We won the second one I was in so I completed my daily. Then I decided to do another one which we lost. I received 19g86s and 1241 bonus honor for fighting in a winning battle in the daily battleground.

The Strand of the Ancients is a pretty nice battleground. There are 2 rounds in each battle, one with the Horde defending and the Alliance on offense and then we do it again with the Alliance defending and the Horde on offense. We are fighting for control of a relic. You have siege equipment in there like Wintergrasp that you have to use to break through gates. There are gun emplacements on the gates to use to try and repel the attackers. There are 2 paths to the last gate which is your goal so the attacking team can choose to attack one or both of the starting gates. The defending team has to either guess which gate the attacking team will attack or split their forces between the gates.

SoA can be a lot of fun, win or lose, and I like fighting in there. Not as much as Alterac Valley though.

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Alterac Valley - A sad day for the Alliance 11/28/09

I fought in 25 Alterac Valley battles tonight on Wranngar tonight, 11 wins and 14 losses. There was some pretty bad playing even by Alliance standards. There was no teamwork and I am surprised we won any battles at all. I don't know what was going on, some days you can't lose and get great groups and other days it's like the Special Olympics in there except most of the people don't have any talent.

We tried to Blitz a few times, there was one person that was insisting on it, but it never worked out. Most of the people in there seem incapable of following the simplest of instructions, "Everyone straight to Drek, don't stop at Galv, don't stop for anything". Half the group would stop at Galv and wipe, because half the Horde team was in there waiting for them, so they would end up back at Dun Baldar where they would get trapped by the Horde at the choke point trying to come out. You have to consider them gone. In one battle 1/4 of our team was AFK in the Valley of Harpies..... We had a lot of AFK in all the battles I was in but that is usual. They don't get many marks or much honor when I'm there, I remind people to report them and point them out.

The problem with doing the Blitz, once again, is that no one bothers to check to see if we have a tank and heals before everyone runs to Drek. In one battle I asked at the start if we had a tank and heals when everyone wanted to do the Blitz and no one answered. Half way there someone else asked again and I said "We don't worry about that until we get there, then we will have a Mage or someone tank him, all die, and end up back in Dun Baldar". I swear that is the way it goes in half these Blitz's.

We did have a couple good battles though, the ones where we are head to head with the Horde just fighting it out. I love those. A lot of kills and a lot of honor, not that I need the honor, I am in it for the kills at this point. We had a couple turtles and the Horde had quite a few turtles. The Horde love to turtle in there because the reinforcement system is set up to their advantage so they usually win. I don't think we won any on reinforcements tonight while the Horde won quite a few on reinforcements.

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The Battle for Wintergrasp 11/28/09

I only got to fight in one Wintergrasp battle on Wranngar tonight but it was enough. We won and I got my new trinket, Anvil of Titans. The Tenacity the Horde gets is incredible. Tonight they had Boss level health. I came across a Paladin with 104,000 hp... How are you supposed to kill someone like that? I mean as if the plate and the bubble isn't enough, 104,000 hp? I have attached a screen shot. We slaughtered them anyway. We ended up running the timer out.

I got all the quests today so I got another 40 Stone Keeper's Shard's. I was on tower detail in this battle. When I got in I headed right down to the southeast tower and started killing the guards there. I took out a couple of the gun emplacements and by then the siege equipment was there and they destroyed the tower. I saw someone there shooting hand held rockets at it and doing damage, I wasn't aware you could do that so next time I will pick up a rocket launcher before I head over there. We destroyed all 3 of the Hordes southern towers and had all the workshops by the end. I have 2 marks left and am not sure what, if anything, I will use my marks for in the future. I can get some of the heirloom gear, the gear that levels with you, but those pieces cost shards not marks.

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The Battle for Eye of the Storm - Daily Battleground 11/27/09

The daily battleground today was Eye of the Storm. I did it on Wranngar. We won the first one I was in and that was the only one I fought in. We didn't do great, we barely won it as a matter of fact.

We had a 2 cap most the time and a 3 cap for a little bit. We also ran the flag a lot. The secret to winning at EoS is to take and hold at least 3 towers. If you can take and hold 3 towers throughout the entire battle you will win. People don't like to do that though, they would rather fight over the flag in the middle. That costs us more wins.

One thing I have noticed in EoS is when the Horde come to capture one of the towers the Alliance are holding they come right up to the tower and fight and the Alliance waits for them to get there. When the Alliance tries to take a tower the Horde are holding the Horde come way out to fight on the road. I constantly tell people not to fight on the road, go up to the tower to fight and you hear other people saying it all the time too but no one listens. When you are fighting at the tower it is clocking over, when you are fighting in the road all you're doing is wasting time. Another thing is you rarely ever go up to one of the Horde's towers and find it empty but the Alliance leave their towers unguarded all the time...

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The Battle for Alterac Valley 11/27/09

I fought in 25 Alterac Valley battles on Wranngar tonight, 20 wins and 5 losses. I got a lot of honor, over 35,000, and a lot of kills, over 1500.

We were doing great in there tonight. We had a few dumb moves where people would take SHGY too early and where people wanted to Blitz but when we got to Drek there was no tank or we didn't have heals. I had a great time in there tonight though. We had a few battles with the Horde where we were just face to face battling it out. I love it when we push them all the way back into Frostwolf Keep then take that away from them and they are rezzing in their cave. I am sure they love it when they do it to us too lol. People are starting to learn, or we just had a group of veterans in a couple battles, that you need to stack the towers when we have SFGY and SHGY because the Horde are all over the place around there. That is why it is a bad idea to take SHGY early and a really bad idea to take both SHGY and SFGY early. We got about 10 people in IBT though and burned it down, then we did the same for TP. We won a bunch of games on reinforcements too which is unusual for the Alliance, it is usually the Horde that win on reinforcements. We killed Drek in a lot of battles.

I helped a Shaman, Bettarex, in the Field of Strife in one battle when she got attacked by a Deathknight and we stuck together after that. She was a healer and had Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth so I would hop on and when we got to the Horde she would heal me, it was great. That was one of the battles where we were going at it head to head and I was unstoppable. I told her it wasn't just a job healing me it was an adventure. I would just jump into the middle of a group and go to town with the heals pouring in.

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The Battle for Wintergrasp 11/27/09

The Battle for Wintergrasp Fortress rages on in Northrend. I fought in 3 battles tonight on Wranngar, all wins. The Alliance seems to do fairly well in there even though the Horde have Tenacity. That gives them one hell of a buff, I saw a Warlock in there tonight with over 57,000 health. He was one shotting people.

We took Wintergrasp Fortress back from the Horde once and defended it twice. I could have fought in more but I always miss them. In the 2 battles where we were defending we destroyed all 3 of the Hordes southern towers and in the battle where we were attacking we defended ours. Even with the Tenacity the Horde still do really poorly in there, they still run around in packs so they are able to kill someone. That Lock was something else though, he must have been well geared before the buff. I need one more mark to get my trinket, Anvil of Titans, I finally remembered what it was I was saving my marks for. I thought it was 15 marks but it is 25. After that there is really nothing I need out of there for gear but I will keep fighting and get the Reins of the Black War Mammoth. That costs 300 Stone Keeper's Shards. I get them from doing quests in there. The quests are only available to you every 3 days.

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The Battle for Eye of the Storm 11/26/09

The Alliance was sucking worse than usual in Eye of the Storm tonight. I fought in 4 battles on Wranngar tonight, 1 win and 3 losses. Eye of the Storm is another battleground I have spent a lot of time in.

The problem didn't really seem to be Flagtards tonight, it seemed to be lack of experience. I always say there is a time to do EoS and the time frame I was in tonight wasn't it. We do really good in there during certain times of the day, and other times we do really bad. One thing you have to do in EoS is leave at least one person on a node after it has completely capped. I'm not talking the flags showing up, I am talking fully capped. That wasn't happening tonight so when one Horde would ride into an unguarded node, that's right, unguarded, the flags would burn in 4 or 5 seconds or so. Another problem was people not calling incoming, you have to call incoming. You can see a long ways from every node and you need to call incoming when you see them coming a long ways off so people have time to get there. Not that they will come but they have time to get there if they do. Fighting on the roads instead of the nodes was a big problem tonight, you can actually clock over a tower while you are in combat if you outnumber the Horde and you are actually fighting on the tower, they do it to us all the time. The Alliance seems to prefer fighting on the roads. There was one Druid that would run right through the Alliance every time they came to try and take FRR tonight. Of course 3/4 of the people that were coming to get FRR would turn around and follow her trying to kill her. She was bringing them all the way back to our rock before they killed her. The Horde at FRR would wipe out what was left.... All of this makes me think there were a lot of inexperienced people in there tonight. It was almost like a battleground holiday weekend in there.

In one battle they had a 50k HP Warrior running their flag, he was geared. He wasn't having any trouble at all running it.

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The Battle for Alterac Valley - Daily Battleground 11/26/09

The daily battleground was Alterac Valley again. I love it when the daily is AV, it is my favorite battleground by far. It is the first one I ever fought in, that was back when I used to PvP on Gomorra, and I can't get enough of it. Even when we are screwing up horribly I would rather be there than a winning Warsong Gulch. I hate WSG. I could spend a lot of time going on about how much I hate WSG but that's another story.

We won the first one I did after I got the daily. I did a few before the daily's rolled over too. Altogether I fought in 13 battles in AV on Wranngar, 9 wins and 4 losses. We were doing pretty good in there today.

We had the usual problems, people holding onto SHGY at the start, will they ever learn? We got wiped at Galv once or twice when the Horde decided to surprise us by stacking his room, people starting something clocking then leaving, a lot of AFK and some just plain bad playing. We did have some great battles though. I love it when we come head to head with the Horde and just fight it out. Except on a hill, I hate fighting on a hill, your point of view doesn't change fast enough and you can't see the person you are trying to kill half the time when you are going up and down fast. I am pretty much in it for the kills now, I have one more piece I want to upgrade but I only need a couple thousand more honor and I can get that in a couple battles. What I need now are the kills so I can hit 100,000 and get my "of the Alliance" title. We had a lot of those today, I got around 785 I think by the time I called it a night. We killed Drek, the Horde killed Vann, a good time was had by all, except the AFK which I encourage people to report so they get booted. I really hate AFK in the battlegrounds. All the purple dots are AFK. People have been pretty good about reporting them lately. It is nice now that they get booted after 60 seconds so you can get someone in there who will, hopefully, fight.

One thing the Alliance really needs to work on is guarding the East and West Frostwolf Towers. People like to start them clocking then jump down and stand on the hill in front of the keep. The Horde know this and, in almost every single battle, a Rogue or Druid will stealth in there and cap them back. It doesn't matter if we have 30 people at the keep, if no one is in the towers one person can back cap them before they burn. Sometimes they do it 2 or 3 times before they burn... They need to leave more people in TP and IBT when they are capping too, one or two people doesn't cut it especially when 4 or 5 Horde show up to cap it back. I have put in a lot of hours in AV and I think I've seen it all. You can't tell people anything though, the Alliance does what it wants and that's it.

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The Battle for Wintergrasp 11/26/09

I only got to fight in one battle in Wintergrasp on Wranngar tonight and it was a loss. The Horde controlled Wintergrasp Fortress and they hung onto it. I am still kind of new to Wintergrasp so I am still learning and am not sure what we did wrong. From what people were saying though we didn't guard our southern towers and that's what killed us. People were saying, and I quote, "While all you idiots were milling around in front of the keep, the Horde went down and demolished our towers". I am not sure where they were while this was going on but I know when we demolish all the Hordes southern towers it is pretty much going to be a win for us, so I guess they were right. I know we defended them last time we took the keep away from the Horde and we won so it makes sense.

It was about a 20 minute battle, at least that is how long I was in it, I got in late, and I got some good kills out of it. I haven't commandeered a vehicle yet because I don't want to screw up so I am pretty much infantry. I am getting ready to though. There seems to be no shortage of drivers anyway so it isn't essential that I commandeer one. As soon as the Horde won I switched to flight form and got out of there. When we win I like to stick around and kill Horde but that is only fun when you win.

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The Battle for Alterac Valley 11/25/09

I fought in 6 battles in Alterac Valley on Wranngar tonight, 3 wins and 3 losses. AV was my daily today. We had a few pretty good battles and a couple turtles. Even some of the ones we lost were good, a lot of fighting and a lot of kills. We tried to do one Blitz but no one bothered to check to see if we had a tank that could tank Drek at 200% health with 4 Warmasters. We didn't.

The last battle I was in we had Stormpike Perfection. We didn't lose a tower and Bal was still up. We had all the Horde towers, all the Graveyards and the Horde were rezzing in their cave. We pushed them all the way back from SHGY to Frostwolf Keep, then into their cave. Everyone around me got the achievement Stormpike Perfection but I didn't..... This is the second screw up I have had in the battlegrounds this week. The other one was in Wintergrasp when we won and I only got one mark. I have a ticket in but it is going on 3 days now for that one and no reply yet. They are experiencing a high volume of petitions. I bet they are.

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The Battle for Eye of the Storm 11/25/09

I fought in 5 Eye of the Storm battles tonight on Wranngar, 2 wins and 3 losses.

One of the losses was close, and we lost because the Horde ran the flag more than us. In the other 2 losses, well, we can write those off to Flagtards. When over half your team comes off the rock and goes directly to the flag, you know you're gonna lose. When you don't even have a tower but you have 8 people in the middle fighting for the flag, you know you're gonna lose. When you have people that are leaving towers before they even finish capping, you know you're gonna lose. The list of stupidity goes on and on. It is a wonder we win anything in there. The one thing people just don't seem to get is, 3 towers win over running the flag every time. Also, if you don't have a tower the flag is useless. I get a kick out of these idiots that grab the flag then say "quick, get a tower!". There are certain times of the day when you can do ok in EoS, the time I happened to be in there wasn't one of them.

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The Battle for Wintergrasp 11/25/09

I only got to fight in one battle for Wintergrasp on Wranngar tonight. The Horde was in control of the keep and we took it away from them. It was a pretty good battle and it really didn't take us long. We still had one and a half towers up when we won, it seemed to be a pretty sad group. We controlled everything except the keep right before we won. One more win or two more losses and I will have enough to get my next item but I don't remember what it is right now lol.

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Wranngar - 75,000 Lifetime Kills

I passed the 75,000 lifetime kills mark on Wranngar tonight, that puts me over three quarters of the way to the achievement 100000 Honorable Kills and my title, "of the Alliance". I have been doing between 10 and 30 battlegrounds a day lately. That is giving me between 700 and 1,500 kills a day. I will have my title this year I'm sure. That is the last achievement you get for quantity of kills. After that I will work on getting all the rest of the PvP and battleground achievements done.

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The Battle for Alterac Valley 11/24/09

I fought in 26 battles tonight in Alterac Valley on Wranngar. We had 16 wins and 10 losses. The Alliance was doing Ok in there tonight for the most part. Alterac Valley was also my daily battleground today.

We had one battle we won on reinforcements, we were just slaughtering the Horde. We drove them back from SHGY all the way to the Frostwolf Relief Hut then we took that away from them too, they were rezzing in their cave :). That was a great battle, I ended up getting 276 honorable kills out of that one. I got a lot of honor tonight too. We did a few Blitz's and a few almost Blitz's where we won fast but didn't do it in under 6 minutes. The Horde did a few Blitz's as well. Lately they seem to be trying to Blitz a lot. Over 3/4 of the battles I was in I would say they tried the Blitz. They were not successful on all of them, obviously, but we did have some pretty short battles we lost.

In one of the battles I was in we had an alleged Warrior 'Tank' tanking Drek. They said I was taunting Drek off of them. What I used was Demoralizing Roar which reduces his armor but no real threat. It gives the lightning bolt over his head when I do it and they thought I was taunting him off them. The problem was they were just a crap tank that couldn't hold him. He kept getting away from them and killing the healers. If Demoralizing Roar can pull a mob off you when you're tanking you should just stick to defending towers or DPS and leave the tanking to someone who can hold him. And if I was pulling him off he would have been on me, not the healers. Just some sorry excuse for a player trying to blame someone else for their incompetence.

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The Battle For Wintergrasp 11/24/09

I fought in 3 Wintergrasp battles tonight on Wranngar, 2 wins and 1 loss.

In one of the wins we were defending and in the loss we were also defending. In the last battle I fought in the Horde were defending the keep and we won that one. The secret when the Horde are defending the keep seems to be to get their southern towers down as fast as possible. Once you have those 3 towers down it is pretty much wrapped up from what I can see. All that's left after that is clean up. Of course the Horde are trying to destroy the southern towers when we are defending the keep so we have to defend those as best we can as well.

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