Zebra Guild

Hi,

I thought Ill make my PVP lock journey into a kind of project since there is many learnings and experiences gained. So here goes.

Day 1 - Wednesday 2nd of December
Have been grinding honor and WG marks for some time now and finaly got the head piece and have near 800 resilence. I have not done terrible well in BG's usualy placing in the middle of damage done/KB's but I have written it off as lack of gear and to some degree skills since as all know Desto lock are insanely OP and can nuke down a target in 2 globals. But now I had nearly 800 resilence so surely this middle position was a thing of the past and I would begin to do the nuke in 2 globals thingie?

Sadly not so, in fact in on AB I had 4 KB's and an alliance lock had 14 KB's. So naturaly I looked up this Lock uber meister on the Armory and lo and behold he had worse gear than and slightly more HK than me. After checking that all my spells in my keybinds was max rank (and actualy found one althrough not an important) I ran out of things to blame other than my skills. Talk about revelation time - big revelation time.

Day 2 - Thursday 3rd of December
The skill revelation realy bugged me so I began searching for articles for noob pvp locks and stumbled one in the Warlocks Den (http://wowmb.net/) which gave me the 2nd revelation. Destro chain is not Immolate, Chaos bolt, Conflag, Searing pain etc spam you have to interleave CC's in between. I also found 2 addons that I have been searching for, for some time, Lock Notes and CCtracker boht are highly recommended for regular pvp'ers.

So with the 2 addons installed and my new knowledge at the forefront of my mind I logged in grapped the daily PVP quests and started queing. Summoned the Succubus instead of the Felhunter and engaged into battle.

4 battle grounds later with 4 wins the new interleaved destro chain was beginning to show its effect as I died less and got more kills in cases where I would normaly have died my self. YES. In that regard, Retri pala's is lame, destro will be nerfed in 3.3 but retri should be nerfed as well as they can break nearly all my CC's. Agnar watch out, inc duel:)

Next is some more keybindings and removal of some old.

To be continued

Regards,

Darkglider

Gogo Black

Day 3 - Friday the 4th of December

Strand of the ancients as holiday BG. The new destro chain is beginning to show as I am climbing to the top of the charts. BG's are strange these days as Horde nearly always win. I think its due to the faction change and therefore I am glad of the inc nerf of will of the forsaken as this is getting trivial.

I unbinded S and bound to a stop casting macro for fake casting, which I btw is a giant noob at. There is many things to learn and master and so little time:) Strafe has been bound for some time so this is the end of my keyboard turning.

Also I made some arena targeting macros so was ready and set for som 3v3. But sadly the 3 old guys ones was all online but only 2 at a time so it will have to wait a bit.

I think Saturday is mostly for duels.

Saturday night is Chrismass party so entry at sunday will likely be very delayed

Darkglider

Day 4 - Saturday the 5th of December
Did several duels. In general its going better but not good enough yet. Starting to pown rogues - man they are whinners when they loose. I also had several duels against dpriests and I have yet to crack them open.

Day 5 - Sunday the 6th of December
Gods my head hurts. I am seriously to old to get drunk especialy the aftermatch. Chilling with a few BG's + WG. A pleasure to global a priest down, althrough its rare. Hoping for arena tonight.

Darkglider

imba diary. gogo Rage
i hope this will give inspiration to other locks in the guild (i guess it totals to zero) and non pvp players.

roar

Ty Agnar.

Day 6 - Monday the 7th of December
Big arena day. Ankh, Agnar and me are finaly online so its game time:) We played 25 or so matches. The first few matches we where learning how to play together, then we had some good games in the middle and I guess we played a bit to much as we lost more than we won in the end. Anyways +400 rating, not bad for 2-3 hours of play.

Main hinderance was that I was back to the good old days with robotic voice, in fact if you believe Agnar it was even worse:) So a new headset is comming up - I guess there is a limit to how many times you can run over the headset wire with your office chair and the headset still functions:)

We have loads of stuff to improve - mainly who is CC'ing what and swaps in game as well as setting up the kill op.

Day 7 - Tuesday the 8th of December
In the womens handball worldcup (a thing that is often popular in Denmark) Tuesday was a resting day with no matches. So I decided to follow suit - as I am near honor capped, so are only playing for arena and pratice (through duels and bg's).
As some have noted Wednesday is patch day and therefore also an inc nerf of destro locks - Conflag will do less direct but add a dot. I think its still good, but are also considering going afflication which will be boosted alot with the haste/dot thing as well as fear.

Please also note that daily bg's give 25 arena points now:)

Darkglider

G.A.M.E

Day 8 - Wednesday the 9th of December

Logged in addon's messed up. Got most of them working but still has some of them to iron out.

Did a few BG's as destro and yes the nerf can be feelt. Will change my other spec to afflication and glyph Howl, Corruption and the new decay. I think there will come a nerf again soon since the new decay glyph allows haste to affect dots and this also means nightfall - On AJ there is talk about machine gun style shadow bolts due to the speed up corruption dots => fast nightfall procs. Ofc Ill have to farm more WG's marks for the haste/resilence gear.

This will however change the 3v3 play slightly as 2 targets can't be sheeped (due to the massive dot's), but overall we should be fine as also my panic cc is 10 times better with instant howl.

Darkglider

Skipped some days but are now trying to get back on track.

Waited for Ankh and Agnar to join me for 3v3 last night, but never happend so instead did 6 BG's and 2 WG's. Result 7 wins (incl 1 WG as def:)) and 1 loss (WG as def).

The interleave destro chain is kicking and I generaly seem to have the upper hand against: Mages, Hunters, Warriors, Rogues, but are strugling mightly against retri pala's, Priests and somewhat DK's. Retri pala's are insane, insanely hard to cc and difficult to drop.

LF2v2 partner - semi serious: Druid preferred or healer, alternative rogue, dk or mage

Darglider

Damn i miss wow for the pvp part.............Zebra also ofc
Nice Diary m8 keep it going ^^

Hi,

Finaly got some 3v3 going with Agnar and Beh. Have played tons of AB this weekend so was starting to get the puke feeling when entering AB, so was realy motivated for arena. Arena didn't go that well but have loads of potential, with 3 CC heavy classes. I have to learn to run away in the beginning so I won't be focused as happens in many matches.

Highpoints were:
- Agnar's 1v1 duel against another frost mage that lasted 10+ min. Very evenly at a high skill level matched and in the end it was a resist that determined the out come.
- Seeing that frost mage weapon was a sword with sp, hit and haste that drops in FoS
- Making a FoS run afterwards with Agnar, Beh, Ilma and Kaverin where the sword dropped . Talk about being lucky

We primary have to improve our communication and cc. Ill play more defensive until opposing team is engaged. In general I think playing defensive and then focus nuke a target is the way forward.

Darkglider

Hello,

Had another go at 3v3 and a patern is begin to appear:
- Against caster cleave we generaly win
- Against melee cleave we generaly loose
- Against melee and caster we have mixed results

The melee cleave is extremely frustrating as they train one (usualy me) and boy do they drop me fast, one match yesterday, in the Ogrimar arena, 2 rogues jumped me at game start even through I at game rode in the other direction - dead in 5s.

Improvements would be to hot me up since its melee cleaves MO, or I might respec to try get some more surviability.

Darkglider

Will focus on bg a bit to gear up more, and will also try some duels to get the hang of it, after that we could try some 2 vs 2
Got about 530 resiliance atm, but a few more honor points and wg marks, and i will be able to get boots and trinket.

Edit. 600 resilience and 2780 dmg atm

Hey I dunno what setup ur running in 3s. But a easy setup to play would be u, a holy paladin and Elemental shaman (Aura mastery and Blessing of protection) = someone dies really really fast no interrupts and no physical dmg on the nuked target, and in that time u guys can EASILY take a target down with bloodlust up and paladin stunning either the healer or the nuked target so he wont be able to use survival CDs like Cloak of Shadow or Shield wall etc
but ofc, i dunno if u already have partners but imo, Killbunch, u and a paladin would work really good

Hello,

Did some 3v3 last night and we alot better than last times, even beat RPM:) We sorted out our basics tactics but still has some workings on cc rotations. What worked for us was to try to kill their healer early on. We could go for another target but going for their healer makes the play more uniform from game to game and we can evolve from thereon.

Agree about your comments Die. We play mage, rdruid and dlock, which is not the world strongest comp, but heavy on CC.

Else I am picking off bg achivements, have been trying some time for stormtropper but allies usualy suck at EoS so max they try and take flag 3 times and stormtropper requires 5 flag kills:(

KB looking forward to 2v2, just say when:)

Darkglider

Hello,

You thought the diary was dead? Think again:)

Season 8 has finaly started and as usual its very laggy. Most of the time has gone into gearing up to wrath gear. I have upgraded:
- Furious feet to relentless
- Furious belt to relentless
- Furious ring to wrath
- Furious neck to wrath
- Furious back to wrath

Saving up now for the battlemaster trinket + new medalion of the horde and wrath bracers. About 140k honor in total where of I have 40K:( After that its getting the haste equivalents for my affliction spec so thats 350k more honor ((((((

Just before the reset we did the 10 needed 3v3 games - we are Beh, Agnar and me in our usual wizard cleave/cc setup. It was very laggy and we was rusty (espicialy me) but still managed at 240 climb. At one of our last matches we meet a beast cleave team and the phrase "Who lets the dogs out" springs to mind as I was rushed by the hunters hound pet and 2 spirit wolf and even through I portaled away they ultimatly ate. So the comp is still very strong even through nerfed. Other than that rogues seems a bit less strong and palas especialy prot seems very good.

We plan do to many more matches in the comming week.

Keep you posted.

Darkglider

Gratz on the new gear, Dark.
Sounds like some hours were put into that project - keep it up!

Let's see you going bananas in season 8 and going through the roof with your arenarating

/Tarok/Missreaper

Hello,

Farming for the last destro wrath piece at my current rating. Then Ill collect the afflication set:(

Much to our surprise 2v2 with Agnar was much easier than last we tried it and we are now at a 18-6 so it will likely be some time before our win ratio curve flattens out:) Its amazing fun when we both opens up on a hapless target when the healer is cc'ed or silenced:)

Warriors and paladins are the kings of pvp atm. Especialy paladins when prot or holy are insane to take down. Below is a SS of an imba warrior


Dark

Finally complete with my destro set and started on the afflication set. Its realy a pain to farm the honor and to be honest if I do WSG the next week Ill likely puke.

Some tricks for honor farming:
1. Always do WG quests. They are the fastest income. Also the stone keeper shards can be turned in for honor
2. When queing for BG always queue for 2 different BG's. The one that you realy want to do (usualy the daily) and an other
2a. When queing queue for your primary and then wait X min and queue for the other. X is normaly 4 min for me but it depends on what the queue times
2b. When primary pops enter it and check out whenever its against a premade if so or if goes badly bail out when your secondary pops
3. Queue again as soon as you are out, so you always have 2 in queue when out
4. Try and even out marks and don't hestitate to turn them in IF you can by an item
5. BG's can be a bore, but I find that if I give my best its usualy more fun, also more awarding in terms of bonus honor and its also pratice for arena, so don't slack

Arena, 2v2 with Agnar is speeding a head. Props to the old mage:) for his ability to solo most classes (1v1). The opposing team focus me 99 out of 100 times and sadly often result in a dead darkglider + 1 dead opponent. Agnar whines about not having a healing spell and I whine about not having a real feign death or Ice block:). Other than that it goes realy well and we havn't reached our local maximum yet (for those of you that still remember some of the school book maths).

Darkglider

Hello,

Have been playing alot of arena lately and experimenting with Afflication and Destro specs and think Ill go destro for 2v2 and afflication for 3v3. For both 2v2 and 3v3 we have reached at least a local maximum and to take us higher requires me to skill up more:)

2 Interresting threads for 3v3 Mage/lock/druid
1. http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=154558&page=1
2. http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=157969&page=1

Still has much to learn. Where the biggest point is handling rouge 1v1

Yesterday added another chapter to Agnar's singing as he gave the kill targets as a song, sadly my frapsing take to much processing power else we would have had a very very memorable moment. Agnar I defiantly think you should try out X-factor (if available in Turkey) there is a hidden star in you

Darkglider

We very much would like to keep it hidden as long as possible, preferably forever

Admit that it was great song. I cant recall the lyrics and music except "lets kill the mage" part but it was really good.
Although we lost the game but i guess it s because the map not anything else.
P

Hello,

It has been some time, but here goes.

I have been doing alot of 2v2 with Agnar. Initialy we climbed rapidly to about 1100 as there is many realy bad teams and our MMR was low. Reaching 1300 took some doing, but we eventual got there. Next milestone was 1400 rating we played alot of games and our win ratio was always much better than our lost ratio, but still we failed to go drasticaly above 1300. Agnar made some studies on the web and concluded something like that "when we loose lower ranked team we loose more points than we win against a lower ranked team, and since we don't know prior to the arena match result which ranking the opposing team has we just have to win them all".

I can't disaggre with the logic here and we therefore set out to win them all yesterday as our new strategy. In total we did 13 games last night, end result 12 wins and 1 loss, so our strategy didn't 100% work:) Althrough we ended at 1400 and called the day to get the boots.

Joking aside we are doing realy well and some clues to get to that point has been:
- Do many many matches pr week, the play strategies needs to solid and semi static, so buy now we are mostly communicating when we divery from the strategy
- A good leader is needed to call the shoots and Agnar does an amazing job at this.
- As Lock/Mage the lock is trained 99% of the time, therefore I have tried out several specs and play styles to find what gives me the best surviablity. This has realy been hard earned experience and I have been about to revive my shaman or DK 10+ times in the process. But stick with it and ultimately the results will come.

I still has many things to master like fake casting, devour on agnar, how to handle a DK, but we are going in the right direction

Still to come Agnar's class advice:)

Regards,

Darkglider

So damn close to get the acheivment without a pocket healer



Dark