Welcome to the world....

Our new family member decided to show up Tuesday night, September 28th at 6:30 pm. All 6 lbs 2 oz of her. I think she's got my good looks.....

PvP: Some Basics

Here are some basic ideas for someone who hasn't done alot of PvP yet and wants to. Very simple. Very basic. I am by no means a pro. Just some observations as I've continued my PvP trek.

Maybe a brief foray into stats:

Resilience: This stat essentially reduces the chance that your opponent will hit you critically, reduce the amount of critical damage and reduce the overall damage received. You need a lot of this! As far as I am aware, the latest cap is 1414.5 (.5? Yes, .5) So functionally lets call it 1414 or 1415. I think many still think the cap is 1230 but it was increased since 3.3.3. The difference between PvP gear and PvE gear is resilience. If you have high resilience, things are a lot easier. Get as much as you can.

Stamina: In my opinion, the next most important stat. Why? Longevity. The more you have, the longer you live. That’s why PvP gear has so much more stam than PvE gear. Think about it. In PvE, provided your tank does his job, the monsters never seem to clue in to the fact that the fancypants girl in the back wearing the long flowing robes and waving her arms about as leaves and stars and flashes of holy light go off around the party is keeping everyone alive. Note to monster….KILL THE HEALER! Unfortunately for the healer, PvP is a different situation. You have a bullseye on you from the opening shot. Any player worth his/her salt should know to kill the healer. You see it in BG chat all the time. “Kill the healer you *&%$’n noobs!!” The more stam you have, the longer you stay alive, the longer your teammates stay alive. That being said, I don’t do a lot of additional stam. When I have a blue slot, I put a stam gem. The PvP gear has quite a bit already. Just wanted to point out the difference between gear.

The beauty of PvP gear is that it does this for you already. Not a lot of thinking. Your other stat priorities depend upon your class.

In my case today, I’m talking about my resto-sham. The stats I focus on for her are haste then a tie between crit and MP5 (maybe 60% MP5 and 40% crit…). Spellpower is on the gear already and it’s more than enough to heal what I need to heal. I don’t really go out looking for more than is on the gear. Crit is nice because it gives you those big hits. MP5 is nice because even as a resto-sham, you’re gonna run dry eventually (more on that later). How you decide to balance those is up to you. You’ll find out during some drawn out battle in AB whether your MP5 is sufficient! This is simply my opinion and I’m sure others have varying ideas. I gem and enchant haste wherever I can (much like PvE). The point is that I know with my regular gear and no added SP, that I can provide more than adequate healing power without a problem. The key is do my slow spells hit in time. Nothing is worse than watching the cast bar for your slow-as-hell chain heal hoping it goes off before everyone near you dies. Haste reduces that cast time and allows you to get off a lot more healing.

In summary, when preparing to PvP there are a few things you should do. Get appropriate gear. Resilience and stamina are key differences in gear stats for PvP vs. PvE gear. Get what you can. Accept that you’re gonna get eaten alive until you get some more. In my opinion, how you gem and enchant is up to you. Whatever keeps you alive longer on the battlefield is good (just not hit gems…okay?). I think next I’ll go into a little more detail on techniques that I use as a resto-sham and after that maybe look at how that changes with the specific BG’s. Talk to you later.

Resto PvP

So recent changes in schedule and life in general have changed my WOW habits quite a bit. I may be lucky to sit down for even thirty minutes a few times a week. Unfortunately, this is not all that conducive to playing WOW in general. Certainly it allows for some grinding/farming. Instances are pretty much out because I don’t like to join a group and leave half way through. Dailies have gone the way of the dodo as I prefer not to waste the few minutes I have on them. I usually jump on my bank alt real quick, check auctions, buy supplies if the price is right, send them to my more creative alts, make stuff, send it back, put it on the AH….you know the drill. That leaves about 20-25 minutes now. What’s a bored resto shammy to do with 20 minutes? Battlegrounds!

Generally speaking I can get into a battleground within about 3-5 minutes and BG’s are usually over within 15 minutes…..usually. Battlegrounds have always been an enjoyable diversion….something a might have done once or twice a week. Leveling my hunter in battlegrounds was a blast. She was covered in heirloom gear and it was great fun topping the damage charts while gaining xp very quickly! I lost touch with that little hunter at 80 though. Admittedly BG’s are way more fun when you have decent gear but getting trashed everytime I rezzed wasn’t the only reason. I just seem to have lost interest. Then I got hacked. Yes that’s right, hacked. How did that change my BG experience? The little bastards took everything but I was left with a decent PvP set for my shammy. I didn’t want to respec my elemental talents, so I decided to go in as a healer, and that was all she wrote.

Battleground healing can be a thankless task. It can also be a lot of fun! Nothing beats throwing out heals left and right, keeping your comrades alive and winning the node….awesome! In future posts I’m going to start talking about strategy, specific BG’s, gear and spec basics, etc. As of now I’ve only healed as a shammy and recently as a disc. priest (yes Miss Medicina, I finally switched!). I’m planning to work on my drood, but that takes time (which I have little of!) so for now I’ll have to be content with resto sham and disc. priest!

Not Dead......yet

Greeting all! Yes...it's true...I am not dead. Actually some changes at work, some changes in the jobsite's internet policy and a new little monkey due in just a few weeks have left my blog at just about the lowest peg on my priority board (one notch below dailies). I do log on to my toons a couple times a week for 30 minutes or so but that's about it. I'm off of work this week and once my little beast hatches (mid-October)I'll be on family leave for 4 weeks. I plan on getting a little more playing and blogging done. Of course posts will still more than likely be few and far between but I'd like to shoot for at least one per week. The majority of my time has been spent healing battlegrounds on my resto-shammy so I'm thinking a focus on battleground healing may be in order, but we'll see. Anyway, glad to be back and hope to get through my feedreader within the next year or so! Adieu, adios, sayonara, aloha! for now