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.

Shandris Feathermoon in Orgrimmar

From my thread Thursday on Shandris Feathermoon came an email submission of the occasion happening again, as training her to Orgrimmar is apparently becoming a daily event on Bleeding Hollow. After checking Youtube for her – I guess we’re not the only ones unleashing elf hell on everyone.

Video by AfterLife:

Screens sent by Mandazar:

Garrosh Hellscream vs Shandris Feathermoon

• Title: “Warchief of the Horde”, formerly “Overlord of the Warsong Offensive”, “Leader of the Horde Expedition”, “Son of Hellscream”
• Gender: Male
• Race: Mag’har (Humanoid)
• Class: Warrior
• Health: 898,200 (103 Mp Cataclysm)
• Affiliation: Horde, Mag’har, Warsong Offensive
• Occupation: Warchief of the Horde
• Location: Orgrimmar

vs

• Title: “General of the Sentinel Army”
• Gender: Female
• Race: Night Elf
• Class: Warrior (RPG), Sentinel, Priestess (Novels)
• Health: ???
• Affiliation: Sentinels, Alliance
• Location: Feathermoon Stronghold, Feralas

Place your bets ladies and gentlemen for the greatest faction leader bout since Jaina Proudmoore fought Warchief Thrall nearly two years ago in Orgrimmar.

The result?

“whatwas with the ally elite boss in org today”

…the world may never know.

*EDIT 1-22-11*
Video & Screens

Last Images of Azeroth

Gazimoff of Mana Obscura watched during “The Shattering” yesterday as the American Twitter community reminisced about the Azeroth they knew for the last six years. He offered during the last 3 hours of EU uptime to screenshot anything we may wish to see again, and after thinking I was ready to see Azeroth A.D. (After Deathwing) I thought of one glaring omission that I couldn’t say I had a great screenshot of:

…the open grave of Invincible.

I’m an orc through and through. The furthest I think I have played an Undead is around level 10, I played a Blood Elf to level 30 and have never rolled a Tauren or Troll. I never leveled around Lordaeron and the closest I ever got to anything in the Horde-controlled portion of Eastern Kingdoms was the old world battles between Hillsbrad and Southshore. Albeit the lore of Arthas and his horse Invincible is still relatively fresh in my mind following finishing Arthas: Rise of the Lich King a month ago, I really had wished to look this scene up because I had heard that the grave existed in the game.

Well, Gaz did me a huge favor. Thanks!

Be sure to head on over to Mana Obscura to check out the rest of the post, filled with areas of interest from Azeroth requested by the blogging community.

World PvP Hub: Hellfire Peninsula

Throughout the first two weeks in Drunk PvP I have been amazed at the amount of time they spend in Hellfire Peninsula. Well, Sunday night before our premades a request for help was made and eight of us headed into Honor Hold to fight a large assortment of Alliance that was met with some resounding results.

I knew coming in that joining a large group of PvP-based players with the minimum requirement of achieving an 1800 rating in Arenas meant that me and the crew would be playing with exceptional people. What I didn’t know was that we would be able to camp Honor Hold and over 25 Alliance for more than a half-hour. Initially the fight took place right under the main statue in the center of the city, and after killing the defending crew the fight stretched out over a larger area involving the inn and wherever that 800k-health NPC comes from. Eventually we fell, our raid of 15 that was running battlegrounds that night to a very large crew of Alliance.

Following our fall the Alliance mounted up and headed to Thrallmar where the defense spam filled our chat windows. We grouped up southeast of Honor Hold, buffed, and commenced The Ride of the Valkyries:

…except it happened nothing like that. Yes, the collection of 15 drakes (well, 14 with Halomoo’s gimp-broom in the top left-hand corner) flew towards Thrallmar…

…but what we were met with was something we apparently failed to notice in our half-hour of owning Honor Hold – the Alliance force could’ve queued itself for Alterac Valley.

You can count the Alliance (guessing you won’t, I get 28) which also reside beyond the area my nameplates show in addition to being on my left – but you can read the reaction from the other guys in /raid. It was amazing. Alliance from every corner of Azeroth came to the defense of a worthless city in an outdated zone for no other reason than to engage in World PvP.

Ahh…ecstasy.

We regrouped at Falcon Watch and slaughtered about an even number that came after us (they apparently didn’t witness what our 15 did to their 25 earlier) before getting our first queue of the night, but for those questioning the passion for world pvp before the upcoming expansion – perhaps this post will provide a little hope for that inner-bloodlust in all of you.

Hallowed PvP

Sunday night Vexare got together for a little festive PvP, donning our looted helms and acquired mount drops that we would all certainly get throughout the 2-week event. Well, as Ciampo so eloquently stated:

14-day rimjob. 28 attempts, no mounts. What a piece of shit.

Referring naturally to having 2 characters. Well, I had 28 attempts as well. So did Halomoo, so did Snazz. The guy who gets one? 3500 gearscore disc priest Megachoo who hit 80 earlier in the month. Crock…of…

Anyway, we wanted to run through Azeroth and kill some people and Halloween seemed like a pretty alright time to do it. The Horseman’s Helm that Ciampo and I were wearing allows the Horseman to laugh through you with a 30-second cooldown, and I believe for a while we were alternating them to where one of them would laugh every 15 seconds. Nothing really says madness like maniacal laughter, does it?

We started in Undercity and rode our way Southshore without seeing a single Alliance character. I mean, ya, kind of figures, but one can dream amirite? While in Southshore we just started pulling the town when 3 level 80’s attacked us being a protection pally, boomkin and resto druid. In a testament to resilience, Halomoo essentially laughed while the entire town and their 2 damage dealing classes attacked him. The Alliance were dispatched easily (and maniacally?), and from there we went to Refuge Point and cleared every living character located within (I had such pent-up anger at these guards from vanilla).

From Refuge Point we went to Valiance Keep and pulled the entire fort for a while, and then took the boat to Stormwind and killed a few people and a lot of guards in route to the Stockades and our final destination of right in the middle of Stormwind. Let’s just say a Death Knight and Mage can light up a heavily populated area before their healers finally die.

World PvP is for the most part dead, however it was pretty fun to take to (undead) horseback and march across a once-heavily populated PvP area again. I can’t wait until Cataclysm to revisit many of these old zones, however being on the backs on the drakes and proto-dragons just won’t allow it to be the same as it once was when you were on your racial mount and were unable to fly away from combat. Ahh well, we’ll see.

50k Honorable Kills

50,000 honorable kills, the halfway point towards bearing the title of this site, was achieved last night during a 264 HK, 1 million+ damage done-Alterac Valley that appeared destined for a blitz run before some asshole captured Snowfall Graveyard and pinned the Alliance back at the  Stormpike graveyard (you’ll later notice my stats in this battleground and 1 GY captured).

In what began with the “Enlightenment” on June 6th, 2009, my pursuit of this title has seen me:

• completely shun PvE
• realize I needed to PvE to gear for PvP
• get really good at PvE
• & then to only completely shun it again in anticipation of Cataclysm.

This blog chronicling my experiences in World of Warcraft I feel is doing exactly what I wanted to do, being to keep a journal of my progression from a “lol nub DK” to the guy you see tearing it up now. The mark of obtaining this title has certainly never dominated my goals online – I mean, we’re all playing to have fun – but it serves as an obtainable, grind-worthy goal that I have set out to obtain whenever that may occur.

Glancing back to my first month of blogging is funny to see me waxing poetic about minute details, where now I report my experiences in ultra-summarized form in order to address various other topics to comprehensively keep my crew updated on anything we do. I guess I am just very happy to say that there isn’t really anything I would’ve done different to this point. I have stories galore of our times in Everquest and Shadowbane, yet nothing tangible – I’m just very glad I decided to do this.

I think for the first few months I was getting about 9 visitors a day, whereas 16 months later I am steadily sitting at about 260 per day despite really only being linked on Slice ‘n Dice (thanks Sam). 43,932 people have visited “of the Horde” for a variety of reasons, and of those people that chose to drop a comment, email a question or talk to me on Twitter I greatly appreciate you helping me formulate this hobby into such an enjoyable situation. Again, thanks.

Anyway, here’s to just as an enjoyable push to 100,000.

The way Alterac Valley should look every time.

The result, and of note the paladin above me was rocking Shadowmourne.

Within striking distance!

Incredible Warrior Tricks

In honor of finally leveling my warrior and my second level 80 character, I decided to post the original Swifty PvP video as a tribute/too lazy to post something else. For those not in the know, Swifty is a level 80 Night Elf Warrior from Darkspear/Cyclone that has been making videos since vanilla WoW and has inspired the play of countless numbers of warriors playing the game today. When I originally was playing Enzminger back in the vanilla days the first few Swifty videos had come out, and together with a few other warrior videos already linked on this blog it helped shape my character as I was grinding out my Centurion rank before quitting all together.

Well, Swifty made it to Rank #13 and has an incredible playing setup now, so perhaps had my PC not overheated so many years ago who knows?! Anyway, check the nostalgia in the video and then be sure to spend some time on his Youtube site linked above, you’re going to learn quite a bit about playing as a warrior in WoW.

The Time I Won Wintergrasp

I play in Wintergrasp a lot, and so much so that I achieved Veteran status in the zone 7 months ago. Well, being one of the best places to bank honor beyond your 75k cap I still queue for it whenever it is up. This past weekend while gearing up my warrior, I bought Wintergrasp commendations on Vikt to supply his PvP set that saw me turn in 1900 Stone Keeper Shards and 485 Marks of Honor. Ya, I participate in it a lot.

Well, never have I done what I accomplished today on my lunch break. As I noted on my Twitter account (@Viktdk), I ran home to re-list some auctions and a few Coren Direbrew instances. When I logged in I was faced with a 5-minute timer for an offensive Wintergrasp, so after queuing up and getting in I ran up to begin taking out the turrets as soon as possible.

Even 5 minutes into the raid, the Horde had just over 20 people in the total raid and the Alliance did not have Tenacity so it was apparently even-matched. I added my typical Death Knight-ranged damage assault (spamming Icy Touch & Death Coil…it isn’t much) and eventually just kind of stood in the distance wondering when someone was going to try and do something. I mean, I can’t do ranged damage on the casters and my rank was only Catapult-worthy, so I sat like a bump on a log for a while.

When I did finally achieve First Lieutenant (at 12 kills no less…seriously, dead instance this time around) I ran to the West Vehicle Park while the rest of the raid fought for the East, because on Bleeding Hollow it is somehow written in stone that the winning assault has to come from that particular base. Well, the shouting matches broke out, we lost bases, the “LOL WE LOSE” /shouts started coming but there was one person who had the presence of mind to take things upon himself to win.

(In case you missed it that’s me blowing smoke up my own ass)

(Oh and yoga ftw…)

Racing (well, as fast as a siege engine goes) north along the west side of the fortress I lined up away from the NPC guards and began pounding away with no gunner:

Where’s everyone at? I mean, you can hear a wall being hit, and when one gets damaged you get a message across your screen. Oh well, one down, let’s just skate around the Vehicle Depot and hit the inner wall:

Anyone home? I just took down the inner wall. SURELY someone is going to come up and notice me knock, knock-knocking on the relic door…

Nope! In fact, no one on the Horde side even knew I was in the courtyard. As I pounded on the door at a single-siege damage pace, eventually the other side of the door was caved in and the rest of the battleground made it just in time to see me knock the door down and capture the relic. I really had no idea there was actually a clicky to capture it, apparently I haven’t done that as many times as I thought.

So ya, I won Wintergrasp by my lonesome. Detailed pics of the assault path:

Unique Ironforge Raid

I’ve been known to don the occasional Gordok Ogre Suit in battlegrounds, but this city raid is the epitome of badass. Of particular note in this video is the setting up of camp in the throne room, the summoning spot on the ledge at the beginning of the video and then the firework and dance celebration at the end.

Organized World PvP events are just awesome.