I achieved this milestone last Saturday night. Most of the achievements are pretty silly, but this one is great. It boldly says, “you’ve been playing this game way too much”… 😉
Actually, 50K over 3+ years is not really that hardcore, especially when you consider I’m a glutton for PvP. However, if you were to add up all of the honor kills I’ve amassed from all of my toons, I’d be well over 100K. I have a level 19 Hunter with over 30K alone.
Ever since I participated in my first Warsong Gulch battle somewhere around level 35, I became hooked on the PvP aspect of the game. I’ve always enjoyed pitting my skill against real life players, as opposed to predictable raid bosses and such.
Although I really enjoy the thrill of progressing through end-game raid content, it doesn’t grant me the same satisfaction as a well executed arena win, or a hard fought BG victory. PvE is “fun”, but to me it’s easy-mode compared to PvP. In PvP, you actually have to use most of your skills, not just a few of them. PvP is both fun and challenging, and the rewards are greater in my opinion.
With that said, I want a damn Gladiator mount someday!!!
Well that dream may be a little out of reach for me, but I’d at least like to hit Rival in Season 6. I’d like to be more competitive in arena, but as with anything else you want to achieve in this game, it requires sacrifices. Some of which I’m unable or unwilling to make, which is a huge reason why I’ll be hard pressed to crack a 2K rating.
I feel that in order to be successful in arena, you need to have a lot of things going for you, such as:
- You need to be a pretty skilled player who knows their class. This part I don’t really have a problem with. I know the Hunter class very well and I can hold my own against most anyone.
- You need to know the other classes’ abilities, cooldowns, strengths and weaknesses. I could use a little help here. While I am familiar with most of the fundamentals concerning the other classes, to truly be a stud in arena requires you to know your opponents’ capabilities backwards and forwards. I’m working on it though. 😉
- Your partner(s) must want to win. This is huge, because if you’re competitive, yet grouped with casuals, you’re going to have a tough time. Your teammate(s) must be willing to go over strategies, strive to be competitive and learn from the losses. My current teammate is a skilled and competitive guy, so no worries there.
- Your team should be balanced in such a way so that it can counteract many other opposing teams. I often fail here, because I almost always play with friends, as opposed to finding anonymous players who happen to play the ideal class for me to partner with. My guild is relatively small, and there are literally a handful of us that are active PvPers, so the pool from which I have to draw from is very small. My teams are typically fun, but we eventually hit a wall we can’t overcome at some point and it can become frustrating.
- You need to be familiar with the terrain in the arenas. I’m pretty good here. Apart from the 2 newer ones, Ogrimmar and Dalaran, I’ve been in the other 3 a zillion times. After having queued some in Season 5, I’ve gotten pretty familiar with the two new arenas though. It’s important to know your weaknesses concerning the given terrain, especially as a Hunter, with our horrible LoS issues.
- You should be pretty well geared. Unlike a good raid group, where folks in blues and greens can get carried on to success, arena requires each player to be fairly well geared. There have been some rare exceptions in the past, such as in earlier seasons when Druids were so ridiculously overpowered they could queue with some greens and still faceroll to 2k+ with a well geared Warrior. However, by now you should probably plan on having a decent amount of epics, with at least a few pieces of PvP gear thrown in for resilience and stamina. My gear isn’t fantastic, but I think I can be pretty competitive with it during the start of the season.
- You and your partner(s) should be on Ventrilo or Teamspeak. There is no way to be truly successful in arena without it. Having instant communication with your teammate(s) is key. This cannot be properly accomplished via the chat window. 😐 I usually try to be on Vent, but if I end up arena’ing into the late night hours, I usually try to go silent, as to not wake the sleeping wifey or baby. My present teammate dubbed me, “Whispers”.
There are many other points to cover, but those are some that come to mind first. I may elaborate on, or edit this post later, but for now I need some sleep. It’s late and I’m knackered.
I just wanted to have some babble for you to read this morning, since I’ve been having a hard time keeping things as updated as I’d like to lately. I didn’t want to let the site go yet another day without some fresh Gar’isms. I still have a lot to discuss, such as… what exotic pet I dumped, which new pet I tamed and why, why I specced the way I’ve specced, my first week of arena in Season 6, why I’m somewhat considering a return to Beast Mastery, …WHAT..?!
Stay tuned…
Zzzzzzzzzzz…
HaHa.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=14023
FTW!
That trinket was OP for duels back in the day.
Dalaila,
HA! What you described reminds me of myself when I began PVP’ing. I would forget to cast hunter’s mark, never use traps, casting SSting 3 times like you said, and then go into full blown panic mode by casting all my long cooldowns, and hitting trinkets with no knowledge of what I have equipped only to see 3 peasants appear and charge the guy (of course, that ALWAYS amused me 🙂 ).
Now, I am still not all that grand at PVP, but I am certainly improving. I can now at least say that the “fear” is gone and the n00b feeling is no longer there.
The times I have the panic mode come back is with duels. I hate duels, which is weird because I love going one to one with someone on a BG field.
First of all… GZ for the achievement! Now go outside and get some fresh air ;)))
That said, I admit I’ve been temped by PvP many times. The problem is: I enter a state of “fear” and start doing silly things like casting SSting 3 times, clicking random (useless) icons, etc. I usually die even before understanding who I am.
I feel like the last n00b on earth ready to be eaten by any other player (<15 years old). That just scares me 🙂
That addon is MikScrollingBattleText. Don’t log on without it.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mik-scrolling-battle-text.aspx
Garwulf,
Thanks for the suggestions!
I guess I should have linked my armory. A couple things to note. The Armory hasn’t updated since I respecced, and both the hand and wrist pieces have gems in them now. The link should allow you to see how far off I may be.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Nickolai
After moving to SV from BM, I have come to realize how important the trinket is, so that will be my next honor purchase (figure I’ll hit up the honor one for the RES).
I’m not too far off with the gems, but some will be switched out.
As luck has it, wowhead was taken down for maintenance as I was starting to do Swiftarrow comparisons to what I have and what should be switched out. I guess that’ll wait till I get home later.
As for the 2H, I was able to win a decent staff from a boss drop. It lacks the hit and ap that the Kalu’ak 2h has, but slightly better STM and AGI.
Lastly, my first hateful piece ended up being the boots as they benefitted me the most when looking at the 2 lower honor purchases.
Thanks again!
Great site, one of my new reads from work. /agree with Greenphlegm, lots of the blogs I read have been getting this “label” lately and the company filter has been blocking them. 🙁
A bit off topic, but what add-on is that in your screen shot that is displaying “Kill Shot Ready Now!”?
Greenphlegm,
I’m not entirely sure how sites get labeled as game sites, but with that said, I don’t plan to label my site in such a way that it could be blocked by browser securities. If it ever does, just know that I didn’t do it.
I started to theorize why I felt this happened to some sites and not others, but then I realized I was talking out my ass.
I’d really like to know how it is that some sites get labeled as such, while others don’t. If someone knows, I’d be glad to listen.
Oh, and thanks for the grats Joenutz!
icedtrip,
Here’s what I recommend:
Buy 4 pieces of Swiftarrow armor off of the auction house. I’d go with belt/boots/bracers/shoulders so that you can benefit from the 4 pc bonus, while still being able to benefit from the Hateful set bonus. Next, try and get 2 pcs of Hateful gear so you can get the 2 pc resilience bonus. After that, just try to knock out some Wintergrasps throughout the week and get the Titan-forged Breastplate of Triumph. It has excellent stats, including 51 hit.
I’m not sure what 2h you’re using, but I’d get the Kalu’ak 2h ASAP, if you don’t have it already.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44053
It’s a very decent PvP weapon, plus it has another 41 needed hit rating.
You should be able to reach the necessary PvP hit cap relying solely on gear. With your gemming, I’d go with pure agility for red slots, shifting gems for the blue slots, and glinting for the yellow. If you want even more survivability, you could even go with shifting for red and blue. SV gains 30% more ap from stamina, so it’s a nice dual purpose stat.
Slap a Jormungar or Frosthide armor on your legs, depending upon what you can afford. You could probably wait for epic pants before you go with the spendy leg kit, but that’s up to you. And no matter what you do, make sure you have a PvP trinket with the 2min cooldown. BM is spoiled with 18 second god-mode, but for MM and SV the trinket is invaluable. WG has some nice ones for 25 marks, or you can go for the Honor one which also has resilience, and had it’s price lowered I believe.
Other than that, just get out there and have fun. Deliver a headshot to an UD Rogue from me. 😉
Don’t EVER change your site to be labeled as a “Games” category. I have slowly had all my favorite blogs disappear one by one because they label themselves as “Games” which my employer blocks. That’s why I no longer read WHU. They switched last week and I am not able to access it at work. Please please!
I am still learning a lot about PVP. I started playing WoW well into TBC, hit 70 one week before WotLK came out, and just hit 80 about 3 weeks ago. That said, I have yet to be able to do much end game.
I’m trying to get into PVP as much as I can, but have had some problems due to my gear. I simply get 2-3 shotted easily, get in an endless session of being sapped, stunned, feared, etc, or simply can’t dish out enough damage to take out anyone. My kiting skills are quite good I must say, but kiting doesn’t do much good if it takes you so long to take someone out that backups arrive before you succeed.
OK, now I’m rambling, so let me get on to my questions. I have abandoned BM in favor of Surv within the past couple days to see if my survivability goes up and the increased burst damage helps me take people out. I am in mostly quest greens/blues, but have one piece of 70 epic PVP gear and one piece of 80 epic PVP gear. I also have my Nesingwary 4000 with loads of Mammoth Cutters.
What I have lacked up to this point have been Resilience and Hit Rating. Being PVP, I have been using Resilience gems to help out my low RES. I am now right at 100 RES. My hit is also very weak (only around 50).
Now, being a SV hunter, I know I need to aim for agility and crit. I’m sitting at close to 26% crit, but how should I focus with other stats. While trying to get the honor, etc to obtain more PVP pieces (I should have my second 80 piece by the weekend), should I ignore Hit in favor of RES? Should I ignore both Hit and RES in favor of AGI? How much attention should be given to STM?
I have done some searching, but have come up short as a lot of what I am finding is well outdated. Any help would be appreciated.
hehe GRATZ and welcome to the 50k club.I agree with you that 50k is an amazing accomplishment and milestone.The true hardcore you spoke of, earned this acheivement at 60 though,through sleepless knights and marraige counseling =)
A few years late is better than never when it comes to rolling face.SUPER huge gratz on reaching this commendable and respectable acheivement!Way to kick some ass =) /salute