Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My Week in Arena and WOTF Nerf

First, I watched the MLG tournament this weekend, and it was great! It sucks that yet another RMP team won though. I'm getting pretty tired of that over-represented comp in 3's that's for sure. The amount of CC the comp has is just ridiculous. I'm hoping that blizzard makes a change soon, maybe putting sheep on DR with blind or something similar.

That said, my week in arena was fairly productive. On my warlock, I managed a 1500 rating in 2v2 with a disc priest, using nothing but 5/5 hateful and 2 PVP rings and PVP trinket. I managed to pick up a couple more pieces this week after that, so my gear upgrades are underway. My goal is to get 1800 in 2v2, then find a decent 3's team, playing as an affliction lock. Next week I'm starting 2v2 with a resto shaman in my guild. I've never played 2v2 with a resto shammy, so I'm hoping that goes well. I've been watching vids, and reading up on guides to try and get a handle on the nuances of using a resto shaman healer.

On my druid, I'm currently doing 2v2 with an affliction warlock. He's very experienced, and was about 50 points off of gladiator several seasons ago. This team is also at 1500, and we're getting a lot of nice upgrades for the warlock. He's very skilled and really knows what to do without it needing to be said. I'm hopeful we'll go far on our 2's, and eventually find a good DK to run DKLD for 3v3.

Lastly, I cannot cheer enough for the will of the forsaken nerf. This nerf is long overdue. There's a reason any time any team has to go up against another team that has a fear in arena tournaments that they all choose undead. It's pretty OP, so the fact that WOTF will now incur a 45 second cooldown on your regular PVP trinket and vice versa will be a very welcomed change. No more UD rogues using trinket/wotf. Many locks are excited about that I'm sure! I'm now glad my rogue is a BELF. :p

Battle.net Merge and PVP UI

First, I want to apologize for the delay in getting my UI posted. I actually just got done redoing my entire UI, which is the main reason I delayed the post.

That said, this post about battle.net probably comes a bit late. I want to make sure people fully understand, that BEFORE you merge to battle.net, you MUST to a full virus scan shakedown of your computer. Many people have had keyloggers on their machines that have remained dormant and undetected for quite some time. Since merging to battle.net requires you to enter all full account information, these keyloggers are activating and sending this information to the gold selling hackers.

Battle.net is SAFE. So, before you merge, I strongly advice you to check out THIS THREAD. Malwarebytes has been a very good malware scanner for many people, finding stuff other things find. You should be running antivirus, so make sure that is up to date, but also run malwarebytes free scanner to look for anything your AV might have missed. Remember you should only have ONE antivirus active scanning program on your machine. (active scanning, meaning it runs all the time every time a file is touched or accessed) Malwarebytes free version, spybot, etc, are NOT active scanners.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Warlock 2v2 Season 7

So it's been about 4 or 5 seasons since I've done competitive PVP on a warlock in Arena. Strangely enough, it still feels about the same strategy and playstyle that's required for an affliction warlock now as it did back then. I am seeing a lot of destro locks in arena too though. I gave that a try, and it's definitely not my cup of tea.

That said, destro is easier in arena for sure. At least in the early brackets. While I have yet to get there on my lock, I'm guessing that 1800+ is probably where the good locks will show up vs the bad locks leaning on destro to get them there. As for affliction, I'm enjoying it so far, and have been doing 2v2 with an insect swarm resto druid. We don't do a lot of games each week, but it's nice to get back on the old warlock saddle.

Also, look for another post later this week to see my warlock UI setup, along with the addons and macros I'm using on my lock.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Why Gear Scores Are Useless

The newest "fad" in pugs and even in guild recruiting is "gear score". So, to start, I'm going to list reasons why gear score fails hard. In this blog I'm referring to gear scores obtained either via the addon, and/or via websites such as... well actually, I'm not going to list the websites, because we don't really need any more mouth breathers going to them.

1. Gear score says that my warlock's destro PVP spec is better and gives a higher score than my warlock's PVE spec.
2. If I use my resto gear on my druid, and spec feral, gear score still gives me the same score as I had as resto. However, my dps would be terrible in my resto gear.
3. Gear score says that my warlock has a higher gear score in PVP gear where I have less spell power, and I'm not hit capped, and I have less crit.
4. Gear score can't tell you if someone has gemmed appropriately, or enchanted appropriately. Example, the 15 spirit to chest enchant is the best PVE enchant for warlocks, but gear score says it sucks and that +10 stats is better.
5. Every pug I've joined where the leader is looking at gear score typically fails, or takes many wipes to down something. Onyxia is a great example of this. "Hey guys, everyone has great gear scores so this should be easy". Meanwhile we wipe 20 times because no one can understand the concept of "deep breaths".

Gear score is a crutch that only perpetuates the terrible. If you have to rely on an inaccurate arbitrary number generated by a website or addon to run your pug, then you have no business running a pug. Gear is ridiculously easy to get in warcraft these days. As someone leading a pug, you need to learn how to sift through the morons and the bad players. Focus more on enchants and gemming. Do their enchants and gemming choices make sense? How about their itemization and gearing selections? Did they prioritize the right stats? How does their spec look? If you know what you're doing, it'll take a few seconds looking at each person you invite to see these things. And yes, this means you need to know other classes besides the one you play. If you don't, then you have no business running a pug.

If I knew how to write addons, I'd try to create one that focused on gemming choices, enchant choices, and itemization for each class, based upon ratios of stats. Using these factors will assist you in weeding out drooling idiots who don't know how to get out of fire. I will gladly take someone who has less gear, but has the right gems, enchants, etc, than someone with more gear who looks like they threw darts to decide what gems to buy.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Welcome to the new Fallenman Blog

Welcome to my new blog home. For those who knew of me from The Warlock's Den, Elitist Jerks, or the regular WoW forums, a short story of where I've been is warranted. To start, I quit/retired from raiding with Casual of Scilla back in roughly July/August of this year. I cannot say enough about how awesome that guild is, and how much I miss raiding with them. However, with a now 10-month old, and a wife, I simply don't have the kind of time to devote a set schedule of 4+ days raiding anymore. Regardless, grats to them to moving up to number 15 in the world and 7 in the US as of the time of this writing.

So, what have you missed in the past few months? My warlock is now an undead horde and resides on the Kil'Jaeden server. He still has the name Fallenman. I also am actively playing my belf rogue named Tiernaa, and my tauren druid named Moojerk. For all intents and purposes, my Druid is currently my main character. But, as you can see, I have switched to doing mostly PVP these days. It works out better for me as I can play when I have the time or when I want, without having to be restricted to a schedule.

On Fallenman, I am PVP'ing on him when I have the time. He only has 5/5 hateful and a couple rings for PVP, so I have a long way to go on him. On Tiernaa, she has semi decent PVP gear, but she desperately needs some weapons. Unfortunately I have no raid gear, and you pretty much have to raid to get decent daggers as a rogue currently, or you have to hit 1800 in arena. On Moojerk, he is quite geared for PVP, and I'm working out a 3v3 comp right now, in hopes we can hit 2200 eventually. I'm over 2000 on my 2v2 team, and have the privilege of being partnered with one of the best hunters I've ever seen.

As for my intent with this blog, I'll be posting on all things warcraft, rather than just warlocks. PVP, raids, gear, classes, etc and so on. Thanks for stopping by.