June 07, 2006
Healing in Alterac Valley
I've been swinging into PvP a bit with my Priest lately. I suppose the old adage is true, that you can't really change a man. Once a PvP beast, always a PvP beast. Of course, the streams of viewer mail of, "Thanks for the new ZG stuff, but I read your blog for PvP" kinda helps too.
Today I'd like to talk about the role of an Alliance Priest in Alterac Valley. The biggest challenge for the you Priests is finding who to heal. Even if everyone is in the same raid group, chances are, people are running all over the place, and your four immediate group mates are no where near you. As you watch the health bars drop in CTRaid, you'll find that you are often presented with the, "Out of Range" dialog. As you stand there trying to heal out-of-range people, a rogue sneaks up behind you and two shots you with his Perditions Blade (ow, I thought 4K hp was enough to PvP with a Priest o_O).
The priest needs to be conscious of his immediate surroundings. It's time to turn those name bars back on, if you've turned them off, and I recommend.... not having CTRaid windows up. Instead, use the Blizzard provided class windows. Now as you look at your immediate peers, and who's getting smacked around, you can easily correlate that to a class window and name, and heal appropriately.
The other option, if you happen to be in with a bunch of friends, is to focus healing on your immediate four group peers. This is especially valuable if you are achieving a PvE goal in AV, like attacking the mine.
In closing, healing is very important in all PvP situations, a good heal can make a blue equipped Warrior more effective than an Epically equipped Warrior that doesn't get that nice heal.
Posted by mrh176 at 08:34 AM
November 03, 2005
The Grapes of Wrath
Okay Okay, the title of today's entry has nothing to do with anything, I just felt like referring to literature.
A few things to talk about today, again, feel free to contact me at mrh176@mail.usask.ca. I'm also pretty stoked about getting some new look and feel to the BLOG, as well as posting some pics of my Avatar, and the Avatars of my guildmates, and my PvP Team-mates.
I haven't been PvP'ing enough the past few days, I ran Zul'Gurub with "The Leftovers", and that was fun. In other words, I've been gearing up. Now that I'm a member of the lvl 60 bracket in the PvP world, I've come to realize the importance of gear. If I had Destroyer of Worlds, for example, I would more effectively chop through those who stand in my way.
This weekend brought me to a 9-hour Alterac Valley match, my first, and what an introduction. The Gods were summoned three times, and I went from the beginning of "Neutral" to a few points shy of "Honoured" with the stormpike dwarves, I also managed to personally ensure the death of 1200 members of the Horde, as well as achieve the killing stroke on over 100 of them. (That 3300 damage crit hurt I bet, eh Ris!)
Alterac Valley is a blast, it's very Epic. This battle ground pits 40 Alliance vs 40 Horde, and allows them to engage in PvP with PvE strategy elements. Shortly after the battle started, the horde were pounding on our door. Only when we gathered enough Rams, and Hides for Barding, were we able to push them out, by sending a host of Ram Riders to plow over top of the horde. We managed to drive them to their base.
I strongly recommend playing Alterac Valley. One key strategy element is to have a large Zerg group, but to also have two groups of five that do "Battle Ground Preparation". These people capture nodes that are distant from the Zerg, gather Rams to send Ram riders, or resources to send commandos.
We eventually won the match because we sent our God, the Rams, and the commandos all at once, and pushed into the Horde base virtually unopposed.
That's all the insight I have for you today! I hope to see some of you online. I'll be in Arathi Basin this week. In the future, I'll have a post about the Molten Core when I go to "Gear Up" some more.
Posted by mrh176 at 11:49 AM