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