Thank You

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has followed my posts over the past year. That support has given me the ability and desire to take this site to a new level.

We're Moving!

Don't worry, I wont be changing the site or shutting it down. We're just moving. The new site has a fresh new look and feel with the same videos and posts you've all come to expect from me. I'm very excited by this move and hope you will come and take a look at what I've done with the place!

The new site is http://www.duckproducktions.com/. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Duck

Battle Ground XP

So as many of you know, characters gain experience in the battlegrounds now. You don't gain it for killing players, but for accomplishing objectives such as capturing a base in Arathi Basin. The idea that Blizzard gave behind this was to help deal with twinks. They said that a twink would end up leveling out of the bracket they were in unless they turn off their xp gain. Once you turn off your xp gain, you can only do battlegrounds with other players who have done the same thing thus leaving the normal battlegrounds twink free. On paper it sounds like an amazing idea. I'll admit I've been excited to be able to level a character using pvp and to be able to enjoy the pvp since I wont be dealing with twinks. Now that the patch has been out for a couple weeks, did their vision work?

I would have to answer no. I love getting xp from playing pvp but it hasn't stopped the twinks. I've played a few days worth of battlegrounds on my mage alt and I was surprised at what I saw. First of all, the twinks are still running strong. There is no shortage of people out there who are more than willing to two shot my poor little mage. Now let me tell you why I think this plan isn't working and what needs to be done to make it work.

Twinks aren't turning off their xp or leveling out of the bracket because the xp gains from this are so minimal that it wont effect them for months. There have been some matches that I wasn't able to get any xp at all because you have to be in the right place at the right time. Adding experience to the battle grounds is still an amazing idea but needs to be approached differently. Blizzard for some reason has decided that you MUST level from doing quests or dungeons but why? Why shouldn't you be able to level from pvp? I think it's perfectly fair and will only add another dimension of fun to the game that would draw more players. What they need to do is make it so that you do get experience from killing players. Make killing a player worth just as much if not more than killing some mindless npc. It makes perfect sense and wont throw off any mechanics of the game at all. There are only two things that I can see coming out of a change like this. One is that people will be more willing and have more fun leveling new characters, whether they're current players or someone brand new to the game. Second, it will solve the issue of twinks once and for all!

Making a change to allow people to actually level through pvp wont break the game but it will solve some issues that people have had with enjoying the game at lower levels. I truly believe that with this one easy change we can make the game more enjoyable for thousands if not millions of people and that has to be something that Blizzard is interested in.

First of Many

This video has a collection of clips from Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. Parts of the video may look strange to some people and that's because I have a little different play style than some other shadow priests. I play more for the team as a "utility" player than someone looking to top the damage chart. You'll see me use mind flay in a few situations, but you'll notice that I'm not using it for damage but for the slow instead so that someone else can either damage the target or get away. I find that more battle grounds are won when people work as a team. For any new players to pvp, there are a couple good examples of kiting and a few of playing my utility style as I call it.

One key to being successful in the battle grounds as a caster, no matter what caster class you are, is kiting. If someone is on you, kiting in this game can be difficult. The key is to try and make sure they don't get on you in the first place. Their are two ways of doing this that work for me. First, always try to make sure that you don't look like an easy target. What I mean is you have to keep your distance. Stay as far back as possible and try not to be the closest caster to the melee classes. Second, keep moving. Circling around makes it more difficult for melee classes to keep track of you and less likely that they'll attack you. So make sure you stay back and keep moving as much as possible and you'll maximize the abilities of your team.

Good luck out there and I hope you enjoy the video.

Ducky

3.2 has arrived

So as the title says, 3.2 is finally here. I've been looking forward to this for awhile now. From a Shadow Priest point of view this is a great patch. I'm totally in love with the change to Dispersion. I use the glyph so the amount of times you can use it in a single BG is amazing. With people respawning in BG's a single fight can go on for what seems like forever. I've had times where I've gotten to use it three times in a single fight. Between using it for mana and using it for survivability, it's got to be one of the best tools in the game for any class.

The other major change for the shadow priest was the buff to Vampiric Touch. When this gets dispelled now I'm seeing pretty constant 6k numbers without crits. I haven't had it crit yet, or haven't been paying attention when it did, so I dont' know for sure what those numbers look like but it has to be good. That should give us a nice advantage in the arenas for those couple players who still play shadow in there. As for the rest of the shadow community who sticks to the BG's, it's still a great buff. Finally a way to keep a little extra damage on paladins!

Well, that's my take on 3.2 so far. I wanted to give a quick post to let everyone know that I'm still here and still playing the game. Just haven't had a lot of time for posting the past couple weeks. I'm going to check out the Isle of Conquest battle ground this weekend and I'll let you know what I think. Until next time...

Ducky

Gear Update

I'm sure that most of you know from reading old posts that I only hit 80 a few weeks ago. Well I've done a little upgrading to the gear finally. I've been playing in Season 3 arena gear since I hit 80 and thought it was time for a change. I've saved honor points and some gold and managed to replace a few things this week. Here's a list of what I've picked up so far.

Hateful Gladiator's Satin Robe
Hateful Gladiator's Satin Mantle
Hateful Gladiator's Satin Gloves
Deadly Gladiator's Band of Ascendancy
Darkmoon Card: Death
Titan-forged Rune of Audacity
Titansteel Guardian

It's not everything, but it's a pretty good start. You can see all my gear on the Armory if you want to keep up with what I've got in between updates, or if you want to check out my spec. I've had a lot of people look at my spec and say that it's wrong, but what makes it wrong? Your spec and your gear is all about finding what fits for your playstyle so don't let people push you around about it. I've found a spec that works for mine. In my opinion, if it makes you a better player, it's right! Keep checking back for more gear updates.

Ducky

Priest changes in 3.2

The priest class is getting a few changes in the upcoming patch. The full notes are available Here but I'm going to shorten it up a bit for you. If you play disc for pvp your going to notice that the only real change you have is that the cool down on penance has gone from 10 up to 12sec. Not a huge deal but I'm sure we'll see a good number of people crying about it.

Now onto the true test of a priest in pvp, shadow. Shadow has gotten two major changes to talents, first is Dispersion. The cool down has been reduced from 3min to 2min. and there is nothing in the notes that says they are changing the Glyph of Dispersion either. That would mean that the cool down would be 75sec or 1:15sec with the glyph equipped. That is a HUGE difference from the current 2:25sec that we have now and it makes the spell a very useful advantage for anyone with Shadow spec. The second talent change the shadow tree is getting is to Improved Mind Blast. In it's current form, the talent reduces the cool down on Mind Blast by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 sec. The new version of this talent will still have that but it also adding a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 20% for 10 sec. That doesn't sound like much to some people but that could be just what we need to be able to finish off classes that heal or even another class who has a healer with them. I've already changed up my spec a little to make use of this.

There is also a little bonus change that Shadow gets and it's to Vampiric Touch. The amount of damage done when the DoT is dispelled has been doubled. This puts it's damage much much closer to what locks get from UA. That alone can be a huge boost to our class.

Overall, the changes to our class look to be a positive. I'll update this post if I find any new information for you guys, Take care.

Ducky

New Love for AV

I want to start this by saying that I have started a new guild on my server. Actually it's an old guild but we just formed it on this game. Some of my new guild members and I went out last night to do some BG's and we ended up in AV. Now, everyone had their opinion of where to go. Some said we should go straight for Vann and some said we should go take towers. My opinion was to just hang back and play some defense and that's just what we did. I usually don't like playing AV because while it gives decent honor, it's like getting honor for doing pve. You race to a tower and kill some trash, then you race up to the king and fight him. Not my cup of tea but last night was a different story.

We stayed back on defense (the only place to find any real pvp). There was five of us total from the guild. We all stayed inside the kings room. We let the Alliance come and take the towers and the RH there and just kept ourselves hidden. Once they decided to come in to fight the king, that's when the real fun started! We had a warrior, warlock and myself (priest) fearing the oncoming Alliance into the kings room well before they were ready to fight him. This caused them to wipe over and over and over.... you get the idea. Needless to say, we were able to hold them off for a long time, long enough that our team managed to win.

We had no deaths that round and we decided to keep doing this. We ended up running this about four more times. Each time through we came up with a more interesting way to do it and what's better is that we never lost a single round and none of us ever died. I picked up a few gigs of footage from it that I'll share with you guys as soon as I can put it together. Until next time...

Ducky

Farming Honor

Since I've been 80 and trying to get as much honor gear as I can in a short time I've been trying to figure out what the fastest way is. I tend to do a few different things that yield a good amount of honor but I'm looking for some opinions from other players. I like doing Wintergrasp when it's up and I like doing all of the BG's, not just one. My approach so far has been to play Wintergrasp when I can and in the meantime, play a rotation of all the BG's so that I can collect all the different marks needed to turn in for honor. I also know that some people like to just farm AV since it gives a high amount of honor each time.

I have posted a poll on the sidebar of this page to try to find out what everyone else thinks is best. Also, please leave comments on here if you have an option that maybe I didn't get into. I look forward to hearing what you all think, until next time....

Ducky

It's been awhile / Duck update

Hi everyone, sorry for the long break. I've had some RL issues that needed to be taken care of. Now that everything is taken care of I'll be able to get back to getting you some updates.

One update I wanted to share with everyone is that I finally made it to 80! Since making it to 80 I've played my share of battle grounds and I've managed to pick up a few pieces of gear. Instead of running around in my season 3 arena gear I'm now in 3/5 Hateful Gladiator gear. I know that's not the best gear by any means but it's a huge upgrade from where I was. I'm going to continue to keep you up to date on my gear as it advances. I've noticed that I have the ability to compete and have a ton more fun with pvp now.

As part of that fun, I've started a 2v2 arena team with my warlock friend Zeromaz. We're having a lot of fun so far and I think that combo is highly underrated. We managed to make it over 1k rating in our first ten games. Now I know your thinking, "1k rating sux!!", but you have to admit that reaching that rating in ten games with two classes that supposedly suck together and are both in season 3 gear is pretty good!

I'll keep you updated on how the team is doing, but more importantly I'll start putting together the battle ground footage that I have for you. I want everyone to see how much fun a battle ground can be when you have even just one player along side you playing the correct playstyle. Until next time.....

Ducky

How far can you Jump?

The new poll is titled, "How far can you Jump?" It's at the bottom of this page. I have a fun short video to go along with it that will be up shortly. Be sure to vote before you watch the video, and I encourage you to try this at home! I'll be back soon with the video.

Ducky

Gem Poll Closed

Just wanted to let everyone know the results of the poll over the armor gems. We had a pretty good number of votes and everyone agreed that the gems would work as long as they were for at least 100 armor or more per gem. Please read the previous post about this to get all the info on what this discussion was all about. Here is a LINK to it for you to read.

The poll for this week will be posted up tomorrow so be sue to check back.

So Close

I wanted to let everyone know that I hit 79 last night and I'm hoping that today will be the day I ding 80. I have some footage recorded that I'm going to post up this weekend of the spots that I used to aoe grind my way through Northrend. It'll be quick and to the point and it'll end with me being level 80. Can't wait to ding so I can start working on the pvp videos for everyone. Until next time.

Ducky

Armor Gems

I saw a recent discussion on the WoW forums that was posted by a good friend of mine about Armor gems. Here is a Link to it if you want to read it and I think you should. He talks about how casters (his class specifically) have a hard time with melee and he thinks that having armor gems in the game would give casters a way to enhance their play style by using them. There is some good talk in the post as well as the usual BS, but give it a read. You can post on the thread and also you can vote in my poll here.

I have posted a poll on this topic at the bottom of this page. Please take the time to vote on this. I really would like to know where people stand on this topic and what you think would or wouldn't work.

Going Up!

So in my last post I told you that I hit 76. Well over the weekend I also hit 77. I managed to get two levels in two days with minimal playtime. I have to recommend that if anyone wants to level as fast as possible to focus on grinding. I'm going to put together a full write up of where I found to go for the best results. I still have not been able to get to a good spot in icecrown to continue up to 80. That is my next task and I'll be doing that shortly so that I can get a decent guide out there for you. After that grinding guide is out, I'll be hitting the pvp videos hard.

I managed to play a bit of pvp over the weekend too. My friend Zeromaz and I had some great runs in Strand of the Ancients and Eye of the Storm. We didn't focus too much on Arathi Basin even though it was it's Holiday Weekend. We were going more for the marks that we didn't have. Overall we ended up getting about 20k honor over the weekend and getting our marks almost full. It was great fun and I'm looking forward to sharing my pvp experiences with everyone. Until next time.

Ducky

Fastest Level Ever

I just wanted to share with everyone that I was 75 and picked up Mind Sear the other day. That spell makes aoe grinding so easy! I started playing yesterday and within 2.5 hours I was 76. I found a great spot in Dragonblight (not the one from my last video) that had 3 camps of mobs. I came up with a good rotation so that I could work my way through the camps and never have any down time. With Dispersion and Shadow Fiend I never had to stop for mana, and I made a good amount of gold while up there also. I managed to bring in (after repairs) about 150 gold in just coin, no greys. I had to go in and empty my bags out twice and with all the grey items I picked up another 102 gold. I still have about 2 bags full of greens and a couple blues that I need to DE and put on the auction house so we'll see where I end up after everything is said and done. I'll put together a quick video of the camp rotation just to show everyone.

Also, I had a 74 Death Knight jump me right after a pull. I was at half life and had almost no mana. I used Dispersion to get the mana back and then proceded to kick the crap out of him. Why do Death Knights seem so easy to kill? I thought they were going to be tough but I'm not seeing it yet. Maybe it changes at 80 and for their sake I hope it does!

Ducky

Found a new Blog

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that I found a blog/podcast that's been around since 2005. It is an entertaining and informative podcast. If you get the chance check it out at
www.worldofwarcast.com or look them up on itunes.

PvP Poll Closed

My first poll on this site has closed. I put it up to find out what kind of pvp people were most interested in and the results were just what I thought they would be. We had a tie between the battlegrounds and world pvp and a big 0 for arena! I'm working on putting together my first of many pvp videos which is going to be a number of situations from the battlegrounds and world pvp so keep checking back for that one.

Also, I will be doing a weekly poll to get a feel for where the community stands on different topics in World of Warcraft so be sure to come and vote in those. Feedback from the polls could influence what type of material I put into my videos.

Thanks to everyone for your input so far and I look forward to much more.

Ducky

Dragonblight grinding

This is my first video. Dont be too hard on me. I hope you all enjoy the video and I'll take care of the quality issues in the next one. Hope you enjoy and please subscribe.

Ducky

A quick update

I just wanted to drop a note here and let everyone know that I'm working on a video right now. It's going to be a quick video about a great spot I found to do a little grinding and make some pretty decent gold in the process. I don't want to get into too much detail right now so make sure you come and check out the video later tonight.

Ducky

Enjoying the Pace

So I've been doing some playing the past few days. I'm at level 74 now but I've been doing a lot of pvp. I'm taking my time leveling to 80 so that I can enjoy Northrend and also build up some honor for when I finally do hit 80. I've been finding that the BG's are pretty good fun at these lower levels. I really enjoy being toward the bottom of the bracket right now. It presents more of a challenge when people higher level than me come along. I've been getting through just fine against everyone but pally's. Those guys are pretty rough and especially when they are a few levels higher than you.

I have a video I'm working on right now. I have some clips from the BG's that I want to show you all. It's not a video to show you how good I am (because I'm not the best) but it's a video to show pvp strategy in the BG's.

I'm sure I've talked about the video enough in the last couple posts so I'm going to get to work on it and get it posted for you as soon as I can. In the meantime I might put up a quick pve video just to show some good questing and grinding spots for people who might be new to Northrend and wondering where to go. Keep checking back and I should have an update in the next couple of days. Also, check out the new link in the Blogroll to the right for Shadow Ashey. It's another good Shadow Priest blog for everyone.

Ducky

Another Return to WoW

I'm sure some of you have heard of Zeromaz before and I'm sure some of you haven't. He is warlock on my server and my friend IRL (in real life). He has decided to make the change with me back to WoW. Those of you that know him can find him in game again, and throw him an invite to your vent sometime when you're looking for a laugh. He never disappoints on that one.

I've had some questions online as well as in game from people who knew both of us and to answer your questions, yes. He is also back in the game again. Look him up and myself anytime. He has a huge wealth of knowledge about Warlock PvP.

Ducky

First Couple Days

So I've been back on the game now for a couple days and I've seen some amazing changes. First of all, I'm level 73 now. Leveling isn't going as fast as I want but that's because I'm taking a lot of time out for the BG's. My favorite is AB for sure. I've never played or seen the new one yet so I can't compare that one just yet but like I said, AB is my favorite at the moment.

I put in a lot of time there the past few days and I have to say that I'm impressed with the changes made to my Priest since I last played before Litch King. I have had no trouble killing almost every class solo and in a group I feel much more useful than I used to. My dots hit much harder now and I love that Devouring Plague has been changed and the new Psychic Horror. That ability is amazing for pvp. Most people you run into in the BG's are melee classes, and for good reason. However, now us priests have a good defense against them. Psychic Horror stuns them for 3 seconds which gives us time to get some distance, then it also disarms them for 10 seconds. The target loses a their main hand weapon which severely cripples them for 10 seconds. That could be one of the best things added to the priest class.

I am putting together some pvp footage for my first video. I want to start at low level and show some of where I'm leveling but mostly give some advice on pvp. We've all seen tons of how-to videos for raiding and tons of pvp videos with music over them. I will say that I really enjoy watching Hobbs youtube videos (If you don't know him go check him out) and I also love a good pvp video. Most pvp videos are arena videos, and not everyone enjoys the arena so I'm going to show and discuss the battle grounds in my videos. I see a lot of people running around the BG's that don't really know much about the style of gameplay that pvp requires. My videos will be aimed at the casual pvp player who may not be getting the full fun factor from they're play time. Keep checking back for updates and I'll let everyone know when the first video will be ready to go.

Thanks for reading

Ducky

Down to Business

This is the first of many posts to come. The purpose of this blog will be to track the progress of my character as well as try to keep up on things happening in the WoW community. I'm just getting this blog up and running so give me a couple of days and I'll start posting some content for everyone.