Tabard of the Scarlet Crusader

I completely forgot about this achievement and the fact that there was a tabard in the Scarlet Monastery.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Road to 2200

After about a month and a half of rated battlegrounds my crew has produced three 2200 ratings, with me being the most recent. A quick tale of Murphy’s Law taking over when I got close…

So ya, 2191 rating and completely dusting everyone as I rose from 2140 to the above mark. With a 3-0 record on the night and 9 more points needed, we queue into Gilneas and the above screenshot tells it all…Reckful again. Now for those all claiming that grinding long enough gets you to 2200, it is partially true but it’s very, very frustrating. Once you reach a certain point you begin losing rating, starting a vicious cycle of higher level players not wanting to play with newer ones because of the ratings loss they endure while those same newer players gain 91 points for a win and you lose 12 points for a loss.

Anyway (off my soapbox), running into a team like this is the epitome of what rateds should be from formidable players. Reckful is sitting around 250-50 W/L record in rateds and there is a good reason – they play with the same players and are a very, very good. Our healers would get burst at the initial waterworks fight until they hit a defensive cooldown, at which the entire offense would instantly be on another target. As soon as the defensive CD was over, the offense jumped right back on them – let’s just say there’s a reason they’re sitting on ratings like that. Having your ass handed to you like that from time to time is nice if you’re paying attention to things they do and try to emulate them.

Draxo and I did double team Reckful somewhere in the midst of mindless waves attacking various targets. I mean ya, whoopee shit amirite? Oh well, least we did something in the match.

Anyway, quick warning for those who may have kids around – the next image contains content unsuitable for people who hate FAIL:

Yes, we played to a 0-0 stalemate in Twin Peaks. I mean, 9 points to go and after drawing the previous game and surviving without a ratings loss we run into a decent rated squad and never manage to drop either flag carrier after 20 minutes. Full debuffs and everything – just no deaths. The Alliance sent Bajheera (Warrior), Skeetzlol (Rogue) and Macabra (Spriest) on offense – rest were on defense. Ya, 7 man defensive team with a protection warrior (Platefobrain), a warlock for fear bombs, a mage for CC and 4 freaking healers. Talk about insufferable…

I mean, it’s our own fault in a way – we didn’t send our defensive mage into the fight until the very end, and we actually killed the warrior as time expired but obviously couldn’t return the flag. I didn’t know the end result would be raid-wide ratings loss, but if you’re reading don’t make the same mistake we did.

But in the end the good guys prevailed (I actually think it was a few nights later as well) and I was able to get my rating after 3-0’ing this crappy Eredar team. I look sweet in the my new digs, and in case you were wondering – Yes, you have to trade in all of your gear and re-enchant, re-gem and re-reforge everything the way you had it before. Same goes for the weapon.

Just wanted to throw a few screens up and relay the information that I’m running around with a 372-weapon and I know how to use it. I’ll post some screens up of the carnage expressed thru random bg’s here fairly soon.

/Gasp

Ya, I”m one of those geek points guys.

Tons of R1’s

Just because I enjoy watching them means that anyone who frequents the blog should as well, right? I mean, no real way to add aesthetics to an RBG, but if you watch and listen carefully you’ll end up grabbing a little bit of strategy out of it in the end.

Shattered Hand (H) vs Magtheridon (A), uploaded on Dec 22, 2010.

Season #10 Death Knight Gladiator Set

Yesterday MMO Champion posted all the Season #10 Gladiator gear sets which will be live in Patch 4.2, and above is the male and female version of everyone’s favorite class. All in all I am pretty happy with the look, and while many are criticizing the horns as making DK’s look like the spawn of Satan I think it makes for a nice evolution from the Season #9 helm. Of course, I can’t ever remember displaying my helm graphic so take from that what you will.

Be sure to visit the MMO Champion link above to view your own class set as well.

Since the Last Update…

I only wrote 3 posts in February for an all-time low since I started this blog in 2009 (good god time flies), but don’t mistake my lack of posting for a feigning interest in the game. I am still active every night at or around 10pm EST and generally many more Alliance will click “Release Spirit” than I will.

Getting right into things, you may recall my brush with greatness (I guess if you could call it that) when Drunk PvP defeated a very high rated Mannoroth team that contained a few personalities – hell I may have even boasted about killing one, who knows. Anyway, bump that experience in favor of the game I played the other night against Reckful, who if you need an introduction can do so by simply Googling him.

Any time you log into a rated battleground and are facing Alliance-side on Tichondrius, I’ve found that you are probably going to lose. Now in this match we did get 3-capped in the end, but with mine belonging to Horde and the lighthouse belonging to the Alliance, the Alliance managed to cap waterworks and the ensuing 3-cap was essentially from us throwing all at another node. Yes it was an ass-kicking, but I certainly do not feel like we played bad.

The biggest thing I noticed with the team was their ability to switch targets. Sometimes in running BG’s I can call a target and not immediately notice a change in damage against them besides my own, and that’s not necessarily because people weren’t assisting – they were getting CC’d, weren’t right there with me or a variety of other reasons. Against this team, when they picked a target it was at half health in a second. Our healers are unbelievable and the strength of our BG team, but they always found themselves playing catch up against the Tichondrius team.

An example of coordination from that team, our druid Ipsi was cycloning a healer in trying to score a kill, and in the time of the first cyclone the realization to the healer was that he was going to eat the 2nd cyclone as well, and when the 2nd was cast it was stolen by a mage. So if you’re a hopeful 3k rated battleground player in the future, this is what I have to offer you in what you should be shooting for down the line.

As for Reckful, you would think a 3k+ rated player would be roaming the map mopping our shit up all over the place but he defended the lighthouse. Near the end of the match we rushed that node where he promptly put more than half of the damage you see he did into us in a span of about 2 minutes before the game over. Oh well, good times.

Besides that one epic game, my concentration since my last update post has almost been entirely in grinding rated battlegrounds. On nights where our consistent 6 players are not online I may resort to wrecking random BG’s (and good god have I apparently improved), grinding out a little guild reputation or finishing up steps on acquiring more geek points. I believe in my last post I stated I should be well over 300 wins in arena by now with a higher rating, but I think in the past 3 weeks I played 1 game for a conquest rating cap in 3’s per week and then the last was based on my BG rating. I finally understand the Arena guidelines and posts/articles that seem like good players are always switching servers and whatnot, and it’s because there are millions of reasons as to why teams don’t last which I’ve managed to witness often in my first real season of it.

After losing my warrior/paladin to a server transfer following a disagreement with the GM, the GM (leader of my 2’s and 5’s) essentially quit playing due to the lack of a connection. Well, 2’s sucks (and sucks hard), my 5’s has a decent ranking though said GM is in control of it and is never online, and before essentially spending most nights grinding BG’s I have picked up partners for a PHD 3’s team that just hasn’t taken off full-flight yet. I do enjoy arenas and plan on playing them more, but I’ve learned that when you find a good group of guys you enjoy playing with you may as well enjoy the fruits of those relationships while they last.

Anyway, the GM has been gone for over 3 weeks and there is no timetable for a return, so yesterday I left that guild in the capable hands of three others who were in charge of it alongside myself. I joined the group of guys that I have been grinding with lately, and the above screenshot represents the first BG I ran with their tag actually over my head (you can tell we’ve been a bit of a grab-bag type of group).

Finally, last night I hit 1900 to finally achieve the same PvP rank that my warrior in vanilla still carries to this day. Points are scarce as of now with games against very low teams awarding single digits and the higher ones awarding in the 20’s, but I do maintain hope of taking that rating over 2200 before Season #10 launches assuming with Patch 4.1.0.

Vikt in Everquest

I was searching through some old picture files this morning and ran across a folder of images from my Everquest days and just had to share this one. In the bottom/middle of the screen is yours truly, “Ciliz Scalebladez”, a level 60 Iksar Shadowknight clad in my overpowered Fungi Tunic and Temple of Veeshan lance.

The reason I needed to share this is for the funny comment made by Natiuri. In one of the expansions added on to Everquest characters at max level could begin acquiring additional abilities, sort of like leveling without leveling if you will. After 20+ of these additional talents Wizards in the game (think Mages in WoW) received the ability to Manaburn, which was essentially an hour cooldown spell that insta-killed a target. The Wizard would see the “darkie” (our server was a 4-team war that saw 3 teams unite against the “evil” team, or “darkies”), cast Manaburn for the insta-gib and then Gate (think hearthstone) back into a non-PvP zone – much like sanctuary cities in WoW.

On our PvP server, my guild “Torrent” was notorious for killing everyone and everything, and until this ability was added into the game many wizards in EQ did not see PvP until receiving it. Players unable to process consecutive thoughts in-game prior went out searching for PvP, only to exhibit their 1-spell talents, gate, and then alt-F4 to the message board to talk shit about other players while they waited on the cooldown.

Long story made slightly longer, a Torrent group out disturbing the dragon-slaying funseekers gated back to this universal hub in order to move onto another location. Upon entry we found 6, SIX wizards sitting in close proximity to where they enter the zone via Gate – thus prompting Natiuri’s smartass comment regarding their PvP prowess.

Patch 4.0.6 for Death Knights (w/ thoughts on 2H Frost)

For the full patch notes click here, but copied from that here’s how this patch will affect our class:

Death knights

• Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
• Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.
• Necrotic Strike’s absorption effect is now reduced by the target’s resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.
• The spell hit bonus previously given by Virulence (Unholy) has been rolled into the Runic Focus passive effect that all death knights possess.
• Talent specializations
  • Blood
    • Bone Shield now has 4 charges, up from 3
    • Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.
    • Heart Strike now deals 175% weapon damage plus 15% per disease, up from 120% plus 10% per disease.
    • Improved Death Strike now increases the damage of Death Strike by 30/60/90%, up from 15/30/45%.
    • If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.
    • Scarlet Fever now applies via Blood Plague, rather than Blood Boil.
    • Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap’s cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.
  • Frost
    • Chilblains now also causes Chains of Ice to root the target for 1.5/3 seconds.
    • Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.
    • Hungering Cold now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
    • Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.
  • Unholy
    • Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery.
    • Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
    • Death’s Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed.
    • Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.
    • The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.
    • Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
    • Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
    • Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
    • Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance.
    • Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.
    • Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage.
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.
  • Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.
• Runeforging
  • Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%.
• Death knight bug fixes
  • Blood of the North is no longer incorrectly increasing Blood Strike damage by 10%.
  • The tooltip for Blood Presence was giving an incorrect value and has been corrected.
  • The amount of bonus damage Blood Strike was receiving per disease was inconsistent with its tooltip and has been amended.
  • Crimson Scourge will no longer proc if Blood Plague is not present on the target.
  • Death Grip has a minimum range requirement of 8 yards against players, but this was not stated in the tooltip. The tooltip has been updated.
  • Desecration should stay in place while on the Alliance Gunship in Deepholm.
  • When a character is raised as a ghoul with Raise Ally, there is no longer a considerable pause after losing control of the ghoul before being returned to the corpse or graveyard.
  • The Scourge Strike tooltip is now correctly augmented by Rage of Rivendare.
  • The shadow portion of Scourge Strike was receiving more than 10% increased damage from Frost Presence and has been corrected.
  • The shadow portion of Scourge Strike no longer incorrectly still receives a 13% spell damage increase from Earth and Moon.
• Glyph fixes
  • The Chains of Ice tooltip is now correctly augmented by Glyph of Chains of Ice.
  • Glyph of Raise Ally now correctly affects the risen ally’s health.
  • The Vampiric Blood tooltip became awkwardly worded after applying Glyph of Vampiric Blood. We made the words less awkward.

Thoughts on Frost
In terms of PvP this patch does a lot for us, most notably being the change in Necrotic Strike (which was already in except for the Desecration) and for Frost DK’s the 40% reduction of damage to additional targets hit by Howling Blast. These 2 changes seem to be dominating a lot of the class threads right now and they do have good reason, however I think the most overlooked change is the addition of root to Chains of Ice.

One of the most important roles of Death Knights in PvP whether in Arena or Battlegrounds is as a utility role, and one of the things DK’s do as well as AE damage is to peel targets off of their primary target. With the 1.5-3 second root addition to CoI, the perpetual motion version of CoI that fails to create separation from healers many times due to Hamstring/Desecration-like abilities has changed to something almost guaranteed to get the benefactor out of melee range immediately. As of right now it appears not to suffer from diminishing returns, and if I were a betting man I would say that the ability will be changed again before it is all said and done. DK mobility issues were addressed by this and by the changes to Icebound Fortitude (removes  stuns, makes you unstunnable) – and frankly I feel it’s a little much. I actually feel dirty being able to root people right now.

If for some reason you were Unholy sub-spec prior to the patch, the Virulence change in my mind has been a long time coming as I feel like it was originally implemented to provide a way of reaching caps easier for a non-casting class. With the obvious changes to stats and different weights in available gear I think that this talent became worthless and in its implementation now becomes a favorable talent again.

The Unholy sub-spec is a possibility that some are talking about, though I still feel like having Hand of Doom (60 second Strangulate) is more important than Desecration. Strangulate is trinketable now, but in my opinion having that on a 1 minute timer and trinkets being on a 2 you still have a number of effects people will need to trinket out of to where strangulate should still be effective. Hungering Cold, Chains of Ice, Howling Blast and Strangulate should all go together nicely to keep people popping trinkets, just be careful not to have both on someone for a trinket pop.

Glyph of Dark Succor will be a glyph needing to be used by all DK’s. Without the ghetto Lay-on-Hands of Lichborne anymore the ability to regenerate 15% of your maximum health with a frost & blood rune will be a sort of change in methods for DK’s, as regenerating these in a rotation will likely prove more efficient than trying to heal to full after being considerably low. Death Striking twice at the end of the fight is hardly viable to staying alive, but I guess at the same time it could give you that extra chance to Death Pact or may provide time on Anti-Magic Shield…I dunno. I plan to replace the 5-yard Death Grip extension glyph in favor of Succor, though a popular idea has been to replace the 40 runic cost of Hungering Cold on account of frost dk’s always having runic power. I don’t like that but to each his own.

There are 2 new enchants on the Honor vendor in Orgrimmar (obviously Stormwind for you fluffy DK’s), and with them it isn’t out of the realm of possibility of reaching 3800 resilience – you know, essentially rendering you to godmode until everyone catches up in epics. I realize I didn’t copy this part of the patch notes on the blog entry, but consider this an FYI and something you should do right away.

My PvP Status

I wanted to start off this post with a really wise war quote, something like from “The Art of War” that I’ve seen elsewhere and could pretend that I’ve read it but I apparently lack that ability or desire to do so today. It’s really a shame too; this entry is going to cover about everything involving my DK existence to this point, largely in part because Snowpocalypse 2011 dumped 2” of ice and my power wavering in and out isn’t all that conducive to grinding arena ratings.

(Though I obviously did later find a Chinese translator and translate “Of The Horde”)

I think it’s nearly universal from the PvP community that this season has been amongst the most balanced that arena play has seen, and while not perfect many factors that have tilted odds one way or the other are the being addressed in the upcoming Patch 4.0.6. In terms of death knights I believe that Necrotic Strike did need an adjustment as its implementation likely led many players to be rated significantly higher than they should have been, though my thoughts on how it is being done (lower absorb, can drop Desecration) will have to wait until the change occurs. A successful silence chain previously could lead to a healer being dealt 40k worth of NS stacks to recoup, and at the rate DK’s could continually deal damage and stack more the ability was simply a royal pain in the ass.

The 2H Frost damage buff coming in the patch is a welcome addition, and while I do harbor that ounce of sympathy for those who spent more for DW I have to call bullshit on your forecasting ability that told you DW would do more damage. When looking at the frost talent tree you have mirror images to choose between MotFW and ToT, and under no pretense did you predict that DW damage would stack on your oblits. Sorry, you went DW because you 1) liked the look/idea or 2) copied off your favorite Arena DK. My idea certainly carried no more research to go 2H, my only thoughts were that if Frost didn’t compare with Unholy in arena that I at least purchased the right weapon to switch. Either way, I’m comfortable with the weapon decision being a choice in the Frost presence and I am even open to the idea that each spec excels in different areas, but in no way should DW outperform 2H consistently in everything.

Anyway, since Cataclysm I have ran a Blood spec for tanking and 2H Frost for PvP and initially could not be more happy with my decision. The Blood spec was a response to the constant need of tanks in end game PvE content, and thinking about every time I thought to myself that I would like to do an encounter (mostly VoA for me) I was cockblocked by several much more shitty DK’s. While not a raider, I rarely was beat out on DPS and even held more than my own earning my Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher – but even getting raids attempting to get my Brynntroll was next to impossible because of the abundance of DK dps. In Cataclysm, I vowed to devote the same amount of time to PvE as I did in Wrath – but the problem is I’m coming up on 2 months past release and I still could care less.

The Blood spec is fun, and while I haven’t tanked on it since mid-December I use it every day running dailies. I wear my full PvP setup (medallion and badge included) in Tol Barad, Deepholm and Uldum, and when Allies attack even 3-on-1 I have come up victorious. If the Blood spec had any Arena function at all I would keep it, but that said I am starting to lean heavily on the side that I want to try out Unholy instead of 2H Frost.

Ahh yes, this debate. Most “pros” will tell you that you need to run Unholy at higher levels and that Frost is the “nub” spec. Nah. Unholy provides constant pressure at all times, and when coordinated well can overwhelm teams with a transformed ghoul and a gargoyle. Frost can give insane damage almost instantly, but the higher I get in Arena I find my burst being peeled much more efficiently than it was at lower levels. My mind isn’t made up on what I am doing and will likely see how Frost performs following the content patch, but in the near future if you are an armory watcher you will likely see a change of some sort.

Speaking of “pros”, other than quickly claiming 1550 achievements across the board in Arenas and an 1800+ rating in 3’s, the highlight of my Cataclysm experience so far was beating this team from Mannoroth. In this scoreboard shot reveals some of the most revered players in the battlegroup, including Lopez, widely considered to be the best DK on the US-Ruin battlegroup (he runs Unholy if you’re wondering). Now in the past I have said that Strand of the Ancients victories should not hold a lot of weight because it is simply an awful battleground, but since our big victory occurred there I take all that back.

Kidding, but it was exciting to pair our guild up (we have a 1750+ achievement requirement for entry) against élite players and come out on top, even if they did let us steamroll to the orb after shutting them out in the first round.

Speaking of the 1750+ achievement, I never had it when I joined my current guild as I was let in without it because of some run-ins in battlegrounds and Wintergrasp with some of the members. I have always considered myself good at PvP, but if you’re reading this far into my post you know that people judge you almost solely upon your highest ratings as often as people mistake your gearscore for skill in a dungeon. It was refreshing to know that I have no difficulty grinding out this rating, though I am starting to understand why people get stuck at certain ratings. There is a noticeable difference in competition at 1800, and I have heard the same at every century interval after that. Now being that I only started season #9 with just over 100 wins, my recent addiction to rated arenas has me in line for the 300 win achievement within the next week or two.

Now with all that rating talk in Arenas, my goal this season was to acquire a ranking higher than 2200 in order to purchase the best weapons and armor. While I feel that I am going to be much better in arenas by the end of this season, I don’t believe that I will grind out a 2200+ rating in one of them. The best way in order to do this in the current implementation though is to via rated battlegrounds. In the above picture alone you see ___ players with a 2200+ ranking, and from all accounts that I have seen it is very difficult to lose points from a battleground, while every win seems to raise you without consequence. Many non-2200+ arena players are in line for the “heroic” Vicious Gladiator gear as of now because of rated battlegrounds, so my guild taking note has begun taking them a bit more serious. Vikt currently sits at 1096 (4 points from the “Scout” title) and is 17-7 so far in those.

Finally, if you already scoffed at the Vengefully Dedicated screenshot for Gladius being out of order with the Blizzard default, I am also in the process of changing my keybinds as well as my UI. So, the screens that you’ve seen for the better part of 2 years are going to change a bit as I’m working towards something a little more user friendly and using keybinds that are easier to manage – you know, now that I know what I actually need to use and how often. Before I was fine with having Empower Rune Weapon as Ctrl+C, however when bursting a target in arena I simply cannot pull this move off in the time, and thus need an easier keybind and then I need to make sure I don’t use it accidentally when I don’t need it…stuff like that.

Yay Warriors!

This was posted in a random bitch thread on Arena Junkies about the changes to warriors and the idea that Fury would be the talent spec of choice following Patch 4.0.6. To put this example in a quick perspective:

95800 damage in those 3 attacks * .2908 (res %) = 123658.64 damage

(yes I know I skipped a step in the math but it’s right)

Just throwing that out there for all the people that complain until soandso class gets nerfed. No matter what happens there is always going to be classes stronger than the curve, and in this case for the warriors upset with the changes do know that you potentially have an alternative that does not consist of finish leveling your mage alt.