Show 5, Season 1, 2 March 2015.
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The past week I have been mostly....
I've started 2 whacky WoW projects this week the 1st is levelling my shaman through Draenor without a garrison, so far it has been quite difficult as there are not many quests once you hit the point where the next step is to build the garrison. Getting around is also difficult as I have no quick way to get to Shadowmoon Valley from Ashran which is where I decided to set my hearthstone. The 2nd is levelling a new druid but only via PVP. Very early days on this one.
In my raiding I missed a guild first kill of Kromog because I was working but was able to be there as Exhumed went 7/10 HC with an Oregorger kill.
The guild has taken a fair chunk of my time out of game lately as we've had a few retirements through people becoming bored with the content and the great white hope that was 6.1 failed to deliver any new content. This means we're needing 2 mêlée DPS, 2 ranged DPS and a healer so if you're interested in raiding Wednesday and Thursday 2100-midnight in the EU apply at exhumed-guild.co.uk, tweet me @evlyxx or email me evlyxx@evlyxx.co.uk.
General News
• Realm connections are complete, for the moment at least.
• Some dungeons have had shortcuts blocked off in undocumented changes in patch 6.1 and this may lead to the resetting of some Challenge Mode dungeon leaderboard times.
• Players are now able to whisper or send party invites to players on any realm.
Raid News
• Paragon have joined Method in being 10/10 in Mythic Blackrock Foundry, the US 1st and Alliance firsts are still up for grabs with MidWinter in pole position to claim both with Blood Legion and ScrubBusters close behind them.
• Drak'Tharon Keep: Fixed an issue where Novos the Summoner was unkillable on Heroic difficulty.
• Culling of Stratholme: Fixed an issue where the Dark Runed Chest after defeating Mal'Ganis could not be looted on Heroic difficulty.
Priest News
• Saving Grace (Disc, Holy) now heals for 34% less in PvP combat and now correctly reduce absorbs done (absorption taken).
• PvP 2-piece set bonus effect for Shadow Priests is now removed at the beginning of a boss encounter. The set bonus will still work during the encounter.
• The Glyph of Purification is no longer bind on pickup
Talk Talk
What is Ashran
The ultimate objective of this battleground is for each faction is to kill the opposing faction's leader. When the Battleground is won by either side, there is a 5 minute pause; after which, the Battleground simply restarts fresh at the Crossroads.
Before you can defeat the enemy faction's leader, you must win several "battles" along the Road to Glory (NOT the side events)
In every Ashran instance, the population of both factions is tightly controlled to maintain equal numbers.
Ashran Design Goals
Blizzard's primary goal with Ashran was to create a zone where two factions were competing against each other throughout the zone. Players entering Ashran have two motivations: earn 200 conquest to fulfill the Ashran bonus portion of their conquest cap, and kill the faction boss for their daily chance at loot from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox.
The problem pre-6.1
There was the ability for both sides to get the same reward at two different places at the same time as players could earn that conquest by either killing the faction boss or by doing events, and there was this unofficial player defined rule that Alliance did one and the Horde did the other, which faction did what was generally dependent on the server cluster you were on.
Ashran simply was devoid of real PvP and both sides earned their reward.
Blizzard's Fix
Blizz removed conquest from the bosses knowing full well this meant the Alliance and Horde would be forced to compete against each other in events for conquest. They also "knew" that facing new opposition at events, the Horde would once again engage in the central road. Quite how they "knew" this fact is beyond me as there is no reward for killing the opposing factions boss.
Blizz acknowledged that killing a faction boss only to receive the 600 ilvl Aspirant gear wasn’t motivating so they removed that from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox so it will always award either Combatant (ilevel 620) or Gladiator (ilevel 660) gear. But the drop rate is pathetically small for a once a day shot.
The Problem post-6.1
In sort there is no PVP in Ashran, the epic tug of war along the Road to Glory just simply doesn't happen often enough because after the first kill where every got rewarded with their Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox and failed to get their epic players move to the events as here lies their Conquest points and when new people join the "battle" nobody goes to help these guys get their Strongbox, which means everyone is now sat at the the events.
But, I hear you cry, surely that means there is PVP there? Well Blizz claim there is increased competition between the two factions in both events and the main road. But maybe my luck is bad or my timing is off because I'm not seeing that at all.
What I'm seeing is queue times have droped, no main raid group killing the faction bosses and the Alliance camping the quarry and burial grounds while the Horde are camping the Stadium and the Ogre event. As an Alliance player if we move to the Horde event areas, we get butchered because of the tunneling effect of each arena and if the Horde try to come to Alliance events the same happens to them.
My biggest issue is that the whole purpose of Ashran has been removed, killing the faction bosses because the events are where the guaranteed rewards are.
I cannot understand why the events are not simply a way of boosting your factions chance of success in killing the faction bosses. For example when the faction bosses are reset each event generates some bonus and only once all 4 events have occurred are the faction bosses spawned. Once spawned the side events stop until one faction boss is defeated and the winner of that battle gets Conquest and a Gleaming Ashran Stronbox and then after 5 minutes the events start again.
This would encourage both factions to do everything in Ashran, because each thing happens once per battle and the faction that wins most events has the better chance of killing the opposing faction boss, sure this sounds like Alterac Valley but wasn't the overall goal of Ashran to reproduce the epic AV battles of vanilla?
Mail Time
So this week I've got my first real e-mail, makes me feel a little bit humble as previously it has come from people I knew before the show started.
Bruce (@btarro2) asked 3 questions:
1. What drew you to the priest class above all others?
I was told by the friend that got me interested in WoW, that a healer was the best thing to play as you always found a group easy and that priests were the best healers. In D&D I'd also played mainly clerics and this was the nearest thing to that in WoW so I stuck went with it and have never looked back.
2. Do you have any plans on complementing the priest information in the podcast with youtube content as well?
In a perfect world, I'd love to do this, but real world commitments and wanting to play wow means the time isn't there to do it regularly. Also, having a slow (2meg) connection means that streaming is impossible so until British Telecom put the infrastructure in to give me fibre speeds that is merely a dream. But when that happens I may start streaming as I can play and do the videos live which removes the need for editing which in itself is time consuming.
3. Maybe some recorded raid/pvp footage as an overlay to your podcast you publish on youtube.
This is something I hadn't considered but I may try that for this show and see how long the upload takes as this is something I can do while I sleep and/or while I'm at work.
This is How We Do It
This week what we're looking at the tier 4 or level 60 talents. Like the tier 1 & 2 talents, the choices are the same regardless of role and spec.
Void Tendrils root upto 5 targets for 20 seconds or until the tendril is killed, this is my default choice for PvE because if I have aggro on an enemy I can kite it to my tank and root it in place while I return to the safety of range which will force mêlée mobs to hit the nearest target.
Void Tendrils also are much safer to use in PvE than Psychic Scream, an AoE fear that causes upto 5 enemies with 8 yards to run away for 8 seconds. There are times when fear is safe to use though so it can be useful. However, it is exceptional in PvP and depending on the group your in can be much better than the third option, Mind Control.
Mind Control is now known as Dominate Mind and it allows a priest to control an enemy for upto 30 seconds as long as that enemy isn't mechanical. MC has uses in PvE and has been needed on certain fights Razuvious in Naxxramas was the biggest one where all a priest would do on the fight was MC adds that would off-tank the boss. However, the most common use for MC is in PvP and is exceptionally good at removing enemies off of cliffs, like the lumber mill in Arathi Basin and the central flag area in Eye of the Storm. I also had great fun throwing adds off the edge in Vortex Pinnacle during early Cataclysm but eventually this got hot fixed as I discovered when the 4 adds that I had MCd off the edge came running into the fight on the last boss. Which caused a lot of laughs on TS with my guildmates. Thankfully it wasn't pug.
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