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Istara's nostalgia threadFollow

#1 Aug 31 2011 at 12:44 AM Rating: Good
Hello everyone. It's been many years since I've played wow, but I was a regular pvper in the battlegroup Emberstorm. I fought on both sides with a few different characters, but I was primarily know through my Draenei Shaman, Istara, in the 39 bracket. I also played on the Drender server.

This thread will mostly be about me remembering the good 'ol days, when I battled against the best 39's Emberstorm had to offer, pve'ing in my pvp gear, and the first time I ever got hit with pryoblast. Why am I doing this, you ask? Because I miss it so damn much T.T I need an outlet. I am also posting this here in the pvp section, since this almost entirely battleground related.

Now to begin. I first started out as a Human Warlock. Hexenraven was the name of my character. The server was Shadowmoon, a pvp server. This was a time before battlegroups, when battlegrounds where fought against the opposing team on ones own server. Getting into a battleground the first time took forever. But once I got in, openings started happening much faster. My first few battlegrounds were a fight for survival. The trepidation of the opposing team coming at you. The rush of combat. The sweet taste of victory, and the bitterness of defeat. I was hooked. I wasn't terrible, but I still had a lot to learn.

At this time, Shamans were the top dogs. And jokes along the lines of "A bug where Shaman's occasionally die in combat" were common. Twinks were few, and far between. But a Shaman could still hit like one. Windfury was very powerful. It's hard to remember all the details, but as I got more into it, I began upgrading my gear, and working on making myself a better competitor, bit by bit. Doing things like not falling into tunnel vision, getting the right timing down with drain life, and using dots more effectively. I experimented with all sorts of different methods of fighting. And with this character, my biggest success, and biggest failure was going for pure shadow damage. If you're confused by this, I'll explain. My roommate played a Troll Mage, who's strategy I copied. He, himself was inspired by Faxmonkey. He went the route of gearing for pure spell/ice power, and could shoot insanely powerful ice bolts. This would later become to be known as a 'glass cannon'. Following this example, I ended up with super strong shadowbolts. This was a success, as no one could survive more then 4 hits from my character. The occasional twink included. Hexenraven was the hardest hitter in all her bg's. But she had zero survivability. Shamans, Rogues, and Hunters ate her alive. My character died often before being able to cast a single shadowbolt. I tried every method I could think of, or that was suggest to me in combating them, or avoiding them. But nothing worked. She could not fight, or evade them. For this reason, this was also my greatest failure.

Overtime it came to me that I was trying to play my Warlock like a Mage, when I should be playing it like a Warlock. This required major changes in my thinking, talent tree, and gear. Hexenraven did much better, but Rogues, and a good number of Hunters still could not be overcome. Around this time, Shaman's were no longer the top dogs. More on that later.

I mentioned earlier that Shadowmoon was a pvp server. I went to this server to play with a dear friend of mine. (She quit after awhile T.T) And I hated this place a lot. It was nearly impossible to do anything pve-wise, as I couldn't walk more then a few feet in any direction without getting ganked. Gankers were relentless, and were obsessive with corpse camping. Or tracking you down to begin anew if you chose to raise at the graveyard. The simplest of tasks took hours to do. There were a few threads that complained about this, but they were usually met with the standard phrase "PVP happened on a PVP server." A sound statement.

The rule of thumb was to not roll on a pvp server if you didn't want to put up with the headache. Perfectly sound advice, but I didn't have that choice. That's were my friend was, so that's where I had to go.

For world pvp proponents, the excitement was in the thrill of the constant danger. But no one I ever talked to found getting ganked for hours on end, either thrilling, or exciting. The true heart of the matter was the joy in killing players who couldn't fight back, and hounding them until they logged
out. On the rare occasions where gankers couldn't get to their intended targets, they'd get very offended. I never understood this, nor do I understand it now. Give me an adversary on equal footing, who knows his/her stuff. Now there's a fight worth having.

The only amusement I ever had out in the world on this server, was when I had to travel to Ratchet. (Is that the right name? It was the counterpart to Booty Bay) Would be gankers were so single mindedly throwing themselves at me, that they were constantly getting killed by the guards. In less then a minute, I was completely surrounded by corpses. To make it even more funny, it was the same people, getting themselves killed over, and over, and over again. Seeing things like this makes me think that sometimes natural selection really is the best way to go. Oh well.

I will paraphrase now, and say I made myself a Horde Warlock, and later- my Draenei Shaman. I didn't touch Hexenraven for awhile. It was very convenient being able to take care of pve stuff so I could dive back into battlegrounds. With no reason to endure Shadowmoon anymore, I eventually transfered Hexenraven to Drenden, where she could help fund Istara for twinking.

I believe this thread is now long enough, and will call it good here. If you made it this far, thanks for letting me indulge myself. And who knows, maybe one of the many, many players I fought with/against in the 39's still reads these forums, and will see this post.
#2 Aug 31 2011 at 10:32 PM Rating: Good
Fighting in the 19 bracket was difficult as a Shaman. I'd run out of magic to fast. But in general I put up a pretty good fight. At one point I had apparently put up such a fierce fight that the Horde team though I was a hacker o.O

There was a dark side however, and that was the twinks. One in particular was an undead Rogue named Stopnrob. There weren't many who could beat him at this time, and he prevented several flag captures from myself. Eventually I moved onto the 29 bracket. I would sometimes partner up with another player named Jovari. I forgot what class he was. He was a cool dude, and in WSG was dedicated to a radical concept. That being, trying to capture the enemy flag. This may seem standard for Horde, but Alliance was still working on it.

In general, the Alliance approach to WSG was to run out to meet the Horde midfield, hesitate, then get beat down. And of course, blame each other for their defeat. There were times though, when the Alliance did turn the tables on the Horde. I remember in one WSG match both teams were fighting a very close match. It was 2-2. At one point, the Horde killed most of my team, leaving three of us left. They cornered us, and were closing in. There was nothing to save us from joining our fallen brethren at the rez point. But I saw something that the Horde didn't see. An Alliance Druid running right behind them, with their final flag. I smile to myself, and then took the fight to the Horde, prepared to die a glorious death, while keeping their attention away from that Druid.

Surprisingly I didn't die. One of my teammates was a Dwarven Priest who was an excellent healer. I regret that I do not remember his name. The rest of my team did die, but thanks to him, I was able to kill all 10 Horde, keeping them diverted. Our Druid scored with the final flag, and we won the game.

I personally liked Arathi Basin much more then WSG. There was much more room to move around, and to slip passed the opposing team. Plus you couldn't get stuck in a long, drawn out stalemate. When moving into the 39 bracket, there was another Draenei Shaman I wanted to partner up with. Her name was Sulpher She was a regular pvper, and sometimes posted on the wow community site in our battlegroup. But by the time I got there, she went off to play alts on other servers. Figures. But anyways, in AB some basic tactics I would employ were as follows. First, I would follow the smallest group (usually to the mines) while the largest group went elsewhere (Usually to the Lumber Mill) In AB, the Alliance would mostly focus on the Lumber Mill, while the Horde focused on the Blacksmith. I always wanted to attack the Blacksmith, but it was futile to do on your own.

Once contact with the enemy was made, there were three strategies to choose from, depending on variables. The first, and most popular was to attack the weakest enemy in the group, thus thinning their numbers. The second, and mostly unknown, was to attack the strongest enemy in the group. This is counter intuitive for most people, but the advantage in killing the strongest player in the opposing group in they now have only their weaker players left. The third, was to go straight at the ranged attackers. Leave them unchallenged, and they'll pick off your team.

If the enemy group was to strong, I'd simply run away. >.>
Of course by that, I mean I turned to a different approach. That would be to run around to get behind the group, and as they'd run off to attack another flag, I'd move in on their now defenseless flag, and take it. I did this five time in a row once. I imagine the Horde hated me for that.

Now that I think about it, there was also another tactic used by a few players. I'd like to mention it before I forget. It was mostly for WSG. This tactic consisted of running ahead of your team, and straight into the enemy in a suicide run. It was known as the Kamikaze run. The point of this was to make as many enemy players as possible turn around to attack you. Thus turning their backs on your rapidly approaching team, so they can tear into them. It could be very effective if the Kamikaze runner could take a few hits. On this, I'd like to point out that it doesn't count as a Kamikaze run, if the lone player dives right into a zerg because he/she wasn't paying attention.

Another thing I did, was back in AB. If I was guarding a flag, I'd try to find a hiding spot. Thus I could ambush any enemy who attempted to take the flag. If a zerg came in, I'd run away. <.<
And, of course by that, I mean I'd run around them, and go to the flag they left unguarded, and take that. It's nice having travel forms.

In between battlegrounds, I'd work on my gathering crafts like made, while constantly upgrading my gear, and getting enchants. Like most Shamans, I went enhancement. There were only a few restro's, and one lone elemental. I was told that the mongoose enchant was the best to get for Shamans. But as I recall it had a low proc. rate, and personally felt it wasn't reliable. Instead, I went with the crusader enchant. I have now forgotten what crusader did, but I do remember that after I had gotten it, I quickly went into an AB to try it out. The first enemy player I ran into also happened to have a crusader enchant. And when we each dealt our first blow - his crusader proced. Mine did not. Not how I imagined it would go, but nonetheless, crusader did prove itself to be a worthy enchant.

I think I'll call it good once again from here. There'll be more to come later.
#3REDACTED, Posted: Aug 31 2011 at 11:47 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I don't play WOW anymore and I haven't since ToC was new, but when I saw this thread I had hopes that I could come and reminisce about good old 9 day long AV battles. But no. You sir, had to get my hopes up, only to be bludgeoned to death by the massive...thing....that is your thread.
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