Armaggedon's coming!

This is a guide for two groups of people, and you may fit into both groups.

1. Players from Oceanic, or high latency servers, and
2. Players that find themselves twitch deficient.

There are plenty of great guides out there on the blogs, much better than this one, but if you are struggling, then maybe this will help.

I will get to the strategy, but first some background rambling.

I have been playing WoW for a fair while, from before the Oceanic servers came into existence.

I play on PvE servers for a very good reason:

LAG

Err I mean latency.

Old Skool Latency

Back when I first started, on an US server, PvP and dueling went a little like this.

Can’t even see a target.

You have Aggro!

You target is out of range

You are facing the wrong way

You target is out of range

You are facing the wrong way

You target is out of range

You are facing the wrong way

You can’t do that while stunned

You target is out of range

You are facing the wrong way

Time to release 2 min: Release Spirit

Now admittedly PvE isn’t much better, imagine if you will (and can remember) Shade of Aran

You have died

DON’T MOVE FLAMEWREATH

you take xxxx damage

Time to release 2 min: Release Spirit

Back to the Tournament

Which brings me back to Argent Tournament Jousting against anyone, but particularly NPCs.

The 1st two strategies are the popularly accepted strategies, the last one is my justifiable haxxor.

Correct

Assuming you actually won the last fight (yeah right, without cheating?)

Press:5 Refresh Mount – quickest path to disillusionment is to forget this step.

Press: 4 3 times to build 3 Defend shields

Talk to opponent/squire then target opponent

Things are slightly different depending on whether you are doing the daily, or challenging a champion… I will mention difference below this strategy.

When they get to charge range,Press: 2 Shield Breaker

Then Press: 3 Charge.

You are now in melee range so Press: 1 to hit them, then

Press: 4 to refresh your shield then spam 1 when (if ever) it is off cooldown.

When the opponent turns repeat 2, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1 etc

Rinse and repeat.

Note:  4 shares a cooldown with 2 and 3, so only refresh your shield while in melee, as 4 doesn’t share a cooldown with 1 (apart from GCD)

Difference between opponents:

Daily: They will charge to range immediately, as they run off 2 shield breaker

Champion: The champion will exchange a few hits before getting range, so engage in melee until they run off.

Medium latency

Similar to the correct stray above, but don’t charge.

After you do 2 stick on your opponents butt like the glue your mount will become if you fail!

Chase that bugger down! You don’t want him getting the opportunity to charge.

If you get your 2, 4 & 1‘s in you will stay just ahead of your opponent on damage and win.

Slow but effective.

Cheating

Same as medium latency, but bring a mate, or two.

Get your mate to do normal damage to the opponent, yes, they can do damage.

You will win, maybe feel a little dirty, but you will win!

Now I know, this is kinda cheating, but I figure the NPCs are cheating anyway with thier latency advantage.

Difference between US servers and Oceanic Servers

Let me explain the difference between US and Oceanic servers, this may get a little technical, so try to keep up.

The difference is:

A label

Yep, that’s it, just a label on a US west coast server. Allegedly Oz Internet providers offered to host Blizzard servers (something promised before game release) but allegedly Blizzard didn’t want to pay the cost.

So after much bitching and moaning (and trolling by people that either didn’t care, didn’t understand or had something to loose (ie: duels and pvp)) Blizzard finally labeled half a dozen servers as Oceanic, ohhh and to be fair, changed the server time to AEST.

So what does this mean in latency terms.

300+ is average these days, 3,000+ not unusual, and 150+ something to party about for the 5-10 seconds you have it (as you disconnect).

Of course Blizzard was concerned that we would never fill the servers, so they also made them the default destination for trial accounts, so we got 3,000 latency and 3,000 queues.

Things are better now, we now have a pile of full servers and an optimal latency that would cause the average US based gamer to quit in despair.

If you are bad PvPer on US  servers, come to Oz

So if you are a bad US based PvPer and want a 0.5, 1,0 or even 1.5 second advantage over your opponent, reroll or transfer to an Oceanic server.

Think of it this way, in the time you are waiting on your GCD, we don’t even know we are in combat and you are casting your 3rd spell!

Alleviating some of the guilt

OK, so that’s my justification for accepting unsolicited help from random strangers, and my justification for suggesting you bring some friendly fire.

If you feel guilty about helping out a mate, think of it this way. The big problem with practice dummies is that they don’t reflect real, fast paced mobile combat so if you really want to perfect your spell rotations under high movement scenarios, go kill a couple of Argent Champions!

Note, I think I did all but 4 or maybe 5 of my jousts solo, but I did appreciate the assistance of that random hunter the other day that was taking pot shots at everyone’s opponents, and the shaman last night dancing with blades, that brought me one step closer to this…

Gnomer and Out!

Note: I am referring to Oceanic servers, which don’t just house Aussies.. I know this so please insert your non-US home country every time you see Australia or Oz.  I just wasn’t going to list you all out…

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/04/30/winning-the-argent-tournament-from-australia/