That I can’t solo a battleground?
I mean it’s quite obvious really, but when I rush to a node and only find 5 opponents, my 1st thought isn’t to run to a safe distance and pick them off…
No…
My 1st thought is whether I can hurt them all in my 1st move.
When I see 10 players battling over a node, do I join them?
No!
I race to the seemingly undefended one. Often it is, when I get there. However as soon as…
Gnomeaggedon has assaulted your honor by ninja’ing your node
…appears on the screen I get a horde of, well of bellowing (often mooing) Horde charging me down.
The post Battleground Leadership makes some good points.
A losing strategy may become a winning strategy if you are all following the plan. Maybe by brute force you can dint the opposition enough for them to doubt their own strategy and either try a new one giving you the chance to capitalize, or fall apart at the seams giving you the chance to dominate.
Of course they may just group up and farm you.. Well, they will group up and farm you. If no single person is threatening their nodes, they can afford to commit their full force to destroying you constantly depleted one.
What happens next?
To my mind it’s what happens when the lemming strat actually tips the balance. Do you sit there and congratulate yourselves, or do you push on and overwhelm tactical brilliance via thoughtless-yet-overpowering force?
Maybe I need to reread my own posts, like yesterdays one. Rather than trying to solo nodes, maybe I need to find someone else with suicidal instincts to come with me, maybe we will pick up a couple more meat shields for me to cast around.
If this succeeds then I just need to remember…
I AM NOT A MELEE MAGE!
Yeah, I know I said I was.
Unfortunately between my stupid weapon achievements and my arsenal of up close and personal death bombs, I often forget that my true place in any fight is at the back.
I see someone casting and my ranged interrupts are on cooldown – I can’t help myself, I’ve got something to counter that… If I can just get close enough.
I see a bunch of Horde owning my healer…
Hey over here beefcake2000 I got a Dragons Breath just for you!
Why do I blink ahead of my melée to get the 1st punch?
Why don’t I just hold back?
The reason is unfortunately simple.
People hesitate… I don’t!
People may follow, but someone has to lead… Unfortunately I often forget I can lead from the back, with words, but so often with pugs it’s bodies that seem to indicate determination to sack a node.
Ever raced from MT to FRR with 4 team mates only to find they have stopped at the foot of the bridge because… Shock horror… There are Horde up there?
That’s why I end up trying to solo them, because the bridge won’t win the node.
PvP Paralysis
Speaking of PvP Paralysis, a strange thing happened to Squidly on the way to EoE the other day…
I got the blind raid invite, jumped on a taxi and as I was flying over Wintergrasp, asked a simple question…
Ummm what raid are we doing?
VoA10 was the response.
Damn, you will need to summon me off the taxi then, otherwise it will be a long wait for me to arrive.
But the summons didn’t come.
Then I saw these words come up in raid chat.
We can’t summon. You will need to fly directly into the VoA portal.
Why not? I asked.
There are 2 Horde rogues next to the summoning stone.
Momentarily stunned, I replied…
But there are 9 of you against 2 of them… Just go out and hand them their arses!
We don’t PvP!
We PvE!
I replied…
Why are you doing a “PvP” raid if you don’t raid.
I admit it, I was a little annoyed. I know it isn’t a “PvP raid” as it’s all PvE inside the instance, but it is the fruit of the PvP labors that makes it available.
I was nearly at VoA when one of the raid members annoyed by both the wait and my annoyance (that they wouldn’t just go out and pwn the rogues to shave 5 minutes off my flight), said…
Will you just hurry up!!
So being me, I took the most appropriate action…
I /raidquit
I nearly went to see if I could take the rogues out myself… But I would have struggled as Resto and I couldn’t be bothered respecing and 2 rogues will do unspeakable things to a solo shaman.
Instead I threw myself back into LFR and 30 seconds later got my EoE raid.
Don’t get me started on the For The Alliance raid the other day…
Geez u think I might have rambled a bit there… Ohh well…
Did I have a point?
Mmm maybe somewhere…
In other news we cocked up last week with the Arena stuff… only got 3 battles in because some guy by the name of Arthas was taunting my mates.
Who the hell does he think he is?
So we made up for it last night (errr.. last night for me… today for you) (Whatever happened to the Arena stuff being sorted during weekly maintenance.. I mean that was hours away…).
We were doing OK too.
I may yet have found my “BG”… I’m a pretty target, but not all that easy to kill (yeah, I find that hard to believe too!) and somehow in the chaos, we are taking our opponents down (about 50% of the time so far this week.. it was looking better… but we can afford some losses right now).
I was cut when my RetPally mate got 3 killing blows… but a couple of Arenas later and the killing blows were all mine.
To be honest I don’t really care..
I’m happy being the Gnomish pin cushion.. let’s face it, while 3 fools are trying to take me down, there is a big nasty Paladin behind them with a mace that is looking for a dark place to hide… better yet, they aren’t focusing on our healer who does a wonderful job of keeping me alive… ever seen a Gnome jump manically… how about one that is also blinking about the place, running under bridges, over bridges, behind pillars.. anywhere is OK (for me!). I am getting better though, and I do come when I’m called, and I kind of focus.. it might not be the right target, but they are all targets, right?
Gnomer and Out!
PS: Yes, that’s 3 posts in 3 days… I’m past 666 and I can feel the (creative) juices flowing. I might even knock one up tomorrow… errr today… errr you’ll see.
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busy gnome is busy!
(again!)
still…
Haha, I totally do the same thing in terms of running ahead and going in solo to nodes which we need, NOT the ones that already have 5,6,7 folks at. And I’m a healer. So I can’t even do dmg but I’ll stand there and heal the crap out of myself and keep them occupied as long as I can.
I really don’t mind having high death counts in BGs.
I used to do that a bit with Squidly… throw heals on myself, then a lightning bolt at them.
I was usually still standing when help arrived and the hordey would be completely frustrated.
For me a high death count is more often than not (the rest of the time you are being farmed) a fair sign that you are in there fighting the good fight.
It may not be the best tactic… cause living means you win (and you aren’t waiting at that spirit healer listening to elevator muzak), but it really doesn’t help to dwell on it.
use your 1-30 seconds for a quick recap on what went right, what went wrong… then go out and repeat the same mistakes all over.
Busy gnome is still not allowed in BGs!
No Mum.. just doing my homework..
I’m researching an epic viking battle between the Gnomes and this freakish race of cow-men…
I promise I’m not playing that World of Weirdcraft thing…
Ill be your second – supporting your strats! ( if I see you in a bg again.. and you don’t try and ninja a bike ride
)
I promise I will run alongside your bike like a good little puppy-Gnome…
Though I might try to bite chucks off your tyres!
Yoooo Gnome,
Many thanks for the read ,found ya thru TyphoonAndrew’s (and to a lesser extent Clearcasting’s) blog.
Amazing read and coz of YOU i did my first PvP BG yesterday.
Let me quote first 2 lines typed in chat:
/bg <- healer
/bg who wants lead?
Sounds familiar? =P
It was EotS quick recep:
We captured 2 nodes and then after much midfield brawling we landed 3 flag caps. I stayed on guard duty but found we had two uber teams at the towers, i try to force another cap on a third tower but only got torn a new one by a rogue and shammy.
But we won, 3rd on healin but with a major gap
I'm Nelf disc priest on anchronos-EU battlegroup nightfall (sometimes ironically called "Nightfail") with full PvE average ilvl 240 gear, bubbling the meat.
Think a lil resilience wouldn't hurt and some practice.
Just a quick question: If a hunter send his (spider) pet after ya, what should i do? heal thru it or does fade work on those?
Keep at it, love the read (@work =P)
Big up from Belgium
The Belgian Dude
No fade is not going to do you any good. You can fear them maybe. Healing through works only if he does not have aimed shot (50% less healing to the target) or does not think to get it off. But bubbles work because aimed shot works on healing, not avoided damage.
I think you just made my day!
/shame at my negative posts… now Cynwise will have another reason to point that finger at me while the head shakes…
But really, it makes it all worth while… I badgered Prelimar into PvP and you have gone of your own free will!
mmm that “macro” does ring a bell.
Suicide runs will lower your damage or heals in a BG, but as ReversionLFM says below, there is a time and a place for that.
The important thing is that you were there to share the heals around, and as a Disc Priest, well, HPS is less important anyway.
The reason I often top the heals with Squidly is Chain heals just fly everywhere – does it make me a good BG healer (not really, subtle healing is usually better) – but it makes me a generous healer.
If the hunter was sending his spider pet at me, I would doing my best to close the distance with the hunter no matter what. If possible I would be frost novaing one or both of them in place, possibly popping my trinket on the spiders web (or escape artist) and just generally try to mess the hunter up at close range with my burning stuns.
In your case, the closing is still important. preferably getting in range of both spider and hunter for a fear so you can whistle through the webbed time.
Most importantly, if the hunter is the only one at the base, I would be pinging the mini map to get others attention and typing (madly and badly)
“1 hunter at FRR”
The resilience will help a ton… and these days with the honor flowing like wine, it wont take long. As a healer you hope to never use it, but watching my Priestly mate cry as he gets “one-shot” as soon as they see the priest even in his ICC gear, tells me you are a prime target (if they are smart), it may only give you 5 seconds more, but with assistance that 5 second might win the fight.
PS: Grats on your win… 1/1 is a nice way to start in BGs
There is a time for the suicidal solo rush. If you have a blanced match where you are winning, even a little, you want to keep the pressure on them so more of them defend than attack. There is a fine line. If you tie up several of them for more time than what you waste being dead then it makes sense. If you die so fast you are only denying your guys another ally then it doesn’t. In the advice of ‘only do strats that help the whole plan’ there is a place for solo charges to tie them up on defense. Usually works better if you are a pally or something though…
Half of my leadership post was aimed at myself. Just getting back int BGs afer a long time and I tend to do the solo suicidal rush on my hunter more often than I should.
as half my bitch posts are really aimed at me
I must have enough resilience to annoy, but not necessarily enough spell power to destroy.
But annoy I do well.
We were struggling in AB the other night and I was crashing against the 3-4 that were at the stables solo.
I called out:
“A little help at the stables wouldn’t hurt”
but a few seconds later I realized what I was doing.
1 stupid Mage was tying up close to 1/3 of their forces while we crept to a win.
So I called them off.. told them to have some fun.
I’m sure the Druid, Shaman and Paladin were having fun taking down the solo mage (I normally got one of them each time), but in reality, I had them by the balls + 1 or 2 others that would spawn at ST and come to the rescue…
They won each battle…
We won the war!
I find nothing gets a group past the foot of the bridge to FRR better than a lone Mage without Ice Barrier charging in and lighting everything on fire.
It hurts, but for the greater good, eh?