Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Ravenholdt's Honor Kill Ladder

It's time to update the list again. I think this time around it's very accurate (thanks for your tips and contributions, everyone). The current top Honor Killers of Ravenholdt are:

Rnnak  - 397160

Ufoz - 260941

Zylopfa - 260353

Wampyra - 231767

Parashade - 224165

Thibbledorf - 198009

Canarion - 182866

Tagrid - 178178

Kaitel - 169779

Arthurios - 155903

Do you know someone who belongs on the ladder? Post a comment or let me know ingame.

I have interviewed Rnnak, a level 70 feral/resto druid who has the most lifetime HKs on Ravenholdt. Grammar and overall sentence structure have been heavily edited for the sake of reading comprehension.

Rnnak, you have the most honorable kills on Ravenholdt - how did you go about accumulating such an impressive amount?

"This is the only character I play on since almost four years, and I just love doing battlegrounds."

You have a 2v2 team called 'wotlksux' and your character is level 70. Why did you choose not to purchase the Northrend expansion and stay at 70?

"The main reason I didn't upgrade to WotLK was to participate in more challenging battlegrounds which include more pvp and less honor grinding. There is also a feeling of overpower when you can solo a small group of enemies."

Rnnak continues, "But I would rather flame people who didn't know how to play their class. Two decent levelers could make a mess out of me if they knew how to counter feral."

Tell us a little about the guild you're in, Flame of Neltharion. It is made up of mostly level 80 characters who are raiding Icecrown Citadel - how do you fit into the picture?

"The guild was designed as level 70 only. At a time we had approximately eighty active accounts, and we would easily have between twenty and thirty players online for pure level 70 raids. Eventually people started to bring their [level 80] mains into the guild. The guild master got fond of Icecrown Citadel and that's how FoL started raiding that instance. Meanwhile the level 70s moved to a guild called 'Cupcake Crusaders' - but it fell apart and now they, too, are level 80."

Note: at the time of publishing this interview, Rnnak has moved to a little guild called 'Pessimistic Dominance' - good luck in there!

Cataclysm is around the corner. Do you plan on making an arena team called 'catasux' or will you purchase the new expansion?

"I will stay at level 70 for a while to see how things progress, and then I will level to 80". Rnnak adds, "By the way, 'wotlksux' was my teammate's idea, I dislike names of that kind."

Once you've hit 80, will you stay there or go further to the new level cap, 85?

"I will move on when I get fed up with Wrath of the Lich King content."

Could you give aspiring HK farmers some tips for reaching the top?

"It took almost three years at 60 and one year at 70 to get to where I am now. Just do battlegrounds and play WoW for fun, don't mess with achievements."

Thanks for your time, Rnnak!

Rnnak's 2v2 team reached rank 31 and a peak rating of 2057. The reason for sharing this is that the armory currently displays the rating as 0 as well as zero games played for all its members.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

What tomorrow brings

Putting out fires in Brill, collecting flimsy masks and countless hours spent ganking outside of Scarlet Monastery. It’s everyone’s favorite event: Hallow’s End! - But it might not be as great this time around. Ever since players could teleport to instances using the Dungeon Finder, world pvp has been dealt a critical blow. Many of you are already well aware of this, most notably from a Brewfest without any festive mind-controlling-people-into-the-lava bonanza.

Obtaining this mount will be painfully painless this year.
Out of the seasonal events Brewfest and especially Hallow’s End have stood out as great opportunities to participate in wpvp since the associated event bosses have offered loot desirable enough for players to visit them everyday.

It was as late as during Brewfest this year that I realized that all those moments spent in Blackrock Mountain and Tirisfal Glades are gone forever. When it became clear that meeting stone ganking was over with, I hadn’t even thought about the seasonal event pvp that we would be without.

Instance teleporting doesn’t just have a negative effect on pvp. The world becomes dull when it’s empty, and the effort put into the different zones seems almost for nothing when everyone is idling in Dalaran. I would be surprised if there isn’t at least a handful of developers at Blizzard who feel at unease with everyone teleporting to Scarlet Monastery instead of traveling there by more traditional means (those brooms are not for cleaning).

Pretty messy ui, huh.
Who knows how these events will look in Cataclysm; the development team is going in the right direction with Tol Barad as they acknowledged the demand for wpvp – they might just acknowledge seasonal wpvp, too.


Friday, October 15, 2010

4.01 - WPvP and rogue changes

Patch Day was celebrated by raging at steamrolling wizards and cheering when you could ambush + backstab someone to death (hello 40% health ambush, we've missed you so much!) - but that was all hotfixed by buffing resilience by 50% today.

Result?



So what are the big rogue changes? Maybe you noticed my 75k healing done. That's right, Recuperate - the ability that will change rogues forever. It can be used in stealth, which means you can easily find a nearby target, premeditate (for Subtlety rogues) and hit recuperate. Repeat a couple of times and you'll be back to full health in no time. I wouldn't be surprised to see this nerfed by causing you to exit stealth in a patch or two.


What else is new? The attribute system has received an overhaul, so now you will mostly be using agility gems au lieu de attack power. That is not all, however: haste now affects energy regeneration. As a result I have reforged all my gear, turning 40% of my crit into haste.

510 haste after reforging - and still at over 45% crit.
Furthermore, I have had my MH enchanted with mongoose - thanks for the tip, Sllythe!

This is my current spec. I've tried loads of different specs since 4.01 (including combat!), and this is the one I am the most satisfied with; well worth the ~300g spent respecing!

I have no Nightstalker points to allow for points to be spent in Sanguinary Vein, as well as no points in Waylay since I am using crippling poison on my OH.

That covers the rogue part for now. What about WPvP?
Well, there aren't any major changes, but they are interesting enough. First of all, guard spam in cities has been increased massively. Astartel mentioned the change (which for the record isn't mentioned anywhere in the patch notes) so we went into Stormwind's Trade District to investigate. I was killed within seconds with evasion up.

Cluster rats!
I was pretty upset until I found out about another City change. The guards aren't immune to vanish anymore! A welcome change indeed. City guards started being immune in patch 3.02, so it's appropriate that their vanish immunity is removed with its WotLK equivalent, 4.01.

We were hanging out by the Stormwind gates, ganking rats here and there. Eventually they had enough and enabled blueshielding. Don't worry though, once the odds were in their favor they started fighting again.

A typical turncoat rat - nothing out of the ordinary here
Congratulations to Astartel for the delicious rat whine, coming from above druid called Crysi (screenshot courtesy of Whiplásh):

Keep on making the rats rage, Fucking Retard Astartel!
With the new PvP interface (default key binding H) the readily available statistics for daily kills and honor gained are gone. It is a bit of a shame, but no great casualty - we will just have to consult the statistics page (default key binding shift Y).

I'm past 80000 HKs, which puts my average HK/day since I started blogging at a little over 700.

Got any delicious whines you'd like published on the blog? Let me know ingame.

Monday, October 11, 2010

These rats breed like rabbits!

Lately the rats of Ravenholdt participate in more pvp than usual. Some say that the Dark Saints are threatened by the presence of yet another Horde wpvp guild - personally I have a feeling that a large number of players feel the need to prove themselves in wpvp - and I'm content with facing a growing number of opponents.


The tenacious critters have issued a threat to King Zylopfa.
Here's some footage from a Barrens brawl taken by Lucrezzia (seen in image above). I wasn't there to witness the carnage myself, but according to an insider the clip comes to an abrupt end just as the Horde forces are about to royally steamroll the puny rats. Now, this isn't quite the music I would pick, but all in all it's an enjoyable video clip.

"Ravenholdt EU - Barrens Event"


Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Lucrezzia. In return I'll be sure to get you an appropriate thank you gift...

Most of the recent pvp has been occurring in Wintergrasp between battles, which is remarkable really, considering it's such an unattractive location for pvp design-wise. We've had quite a lot of good battles, then there's been those that have been tipped in either factions' favor, but we're used to those anyway.

It can always get worse.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Slaying in teh Wolrd

I was looking at my blog this morning and realized that it is rather starved of good WPvP screenshots. This is due to my disinterest in posting about the stuff that happens everyday (think 'THREAD ABOUT ME AND MY FOUR FRIENDS GOING TO STORMWIND THIS ONE TIME AND ENGAGING IN PVP').

I digress. In light of this dire situation, I will post recent (low quality) screenshots I like.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions rat bones.


Ratsu cornered.


Naïma and Zyl trying to decide how to prepare this iced rat. Brewest 2010

When there are no rats to eat, we like to pretend.

Last night in the Trade District - we faced little resistance considering it was only 11pm.
My favorite pastime: camping the bridge between the Mage Quarter and Trade District.


Zyl made a friend during a routine visit to the Auction House!
And now a video of some Wintergrasp slaying, related to the first screenshot. Courtesy of Fanatix!
"Ravenholdt Wintergrasp after party!"

Monday, October 4, 2010

Ravenholdt's Honor Kill Ladder

I had originally planned on updating the ladder every month or so, but the new statistics really deserve immediate attention. The current top Honor Killers of Ravenholdt are:

Rnnak  - 394967

Zylopfa - 256469

Ufoz - 251627

Wampyra - 228196

Parashade - 221011

Thibbledorf - 196364

Kaitel - 166753

Arthurios - 153079

Mindshatter - 127813

Sllythe - 126486


That's right, Rnnak sneaked his way onto the top - more about him later.
Do you know someone who belongs on the ladder? Post a comment or let me know ingame.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Good news everyone!

After a year or so of torment and doubt we finally get an answer. Finally we get something.

"There aren't plans to allow any flight on Tol Barad, whether during or in between battles."
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/27026373648/flying-on-tol-barad/


There has been much speculation around this subject, and I'd like to be smug enough to think that all those
who contributed to the Flying in Tol Barad thread have helped turn a tide that looked very grim at
the time. That said, nothing is written in stone - but I for one am happy to see the likely return of Isle of Quel'Danas-style PvP.


Future ratslaying ground.