Improving PvP: Honorable Goals
In FPS type games, where there is a team vs team, there are roles in the match. You have medics, snipers, mechanics, etc. In these games, there is also a team leader. That leader frequently has extra options for Map Domination to assist the entire team in gaining a victory, or at least some sort of tool to separate his role from everyone else. Sometimes he has access to drop supplies, weapons, or bombs. One key point that I saw was that these games were helping the players to work together. The game set up a system where they were motivated to work together. It gave special abilities, it lured players where they needed to be, etc. It’s almost like the team leader is telling the team what to do, in one way or another, aside from chat.
Let’s take a step back and look at warcraft PvP. What WoW has done is implemented a system to encourage non-organized PvP! The Random BG system allows everyone to connect to a Random BG Team. The worst part is that it encourages going in as a Random rather than forming a Premade Team, via extra honor. (I form this comparison of cost and benefit by including the time and effort it takes to form a premade group through trade chat.) If you were on a decent server, you probably remember before Cataclysm was released, that there were many many Premades being formed in trade. There was a lot of Premade group activity. Why? This was because it was the best way to get honor. It wasn’t because the opponents were easy, because I remember going up against many premades. By the way, Premade vs Premade was actually extremely fun, in my opinion.
The effect that this has on the player and community a lackadaisical performance. You can see the same thing in Random Dungeon players. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems that the Random players are more likely to not care, leave group, ninja things, etc. There is no community. “It’s across servers who cares?” I would say this is the same principle in BG’s. “I’m going to get my honor win or lose. Who cares?” Have you experienced your team mates giving up and cowering in a corner at Stables or Farm? Or even worse, the base?
My suggestion is not to change the Random BG queuing system, as we all know Blizzard wouldn’t do that. What I am suggesting is that we add more to it. I think that we should add motivation for players to be in the right place at the right time. Let’s identify existing motives. Players don’t need to be told to kill each other. They know to do that on their own. If they are standing in front of an enemy, they will attempt to kill them. What we need to change is for them to stop cowering in a corner or retreating when they get pushed back. What we need to change is to force more strategy to be used. If we can achieve that, we can achieve longer, more challenging games (for opponents), resulting in more honor!
Blizzard should implement what I’m calling “Honorable Goals.” These would be quest type of goals that are achieved in a BG, that are BG related; not PvE related like Alterec Valley has. If there is a need to have extra resources at a node, the BG Leader will send an announcement that there is more needed. The first X amount of players to arrive receive a completed “quest” which awards them extra honor. This is the same principle Blizzard used to motivate players to help defend nodes, just used offensively.
I strongly believe that we should not just create a “Honorable Offender” type of aura, while attacking nodes. This will give free honor to a zerg, which doesn’t necessarily equate to a win. Winning is what we ultimately want to achieve to “teach” players how to PvP, in a sense. What we want to promote is communication and organization of efforts to build a better PvP community. The goal is have a PvP group of individuals control their resources and to identify where they are needed.
So going back to what I was outlining earlier with other teamwork oriented games. They have a Team Leader, similar to our BG Leader. However currently, our BG Leader does nothing, but rearrange players in groups. What we should have is some sort of control function to allow this BG leader to request players be sent to nodes that are being attacked, or nodes that were left undefended. Once again, the players that get there first, will be awarded extra honor, and others will not as we want to avoid an honor hungry zerg to form. Another restriction that would need to be set is that the BG Leader could only request players be sent to nodes that were being attacked. Perhaps Blizzard could implement some type of Proximity Checker to allow an Honorable Goal to be cast on the node if enemy units were seen within X amount of yards. I don’t want to suggest something too difficult, so I have an alternative suggestion. We could make the restriction be that an Honorable Goal could only be cast on a node if it is currently contested. This would eliminate the BG Leader abusing the Honorable Goal and just spamming it on let’s say Stables or Farm trying to get free honor.
What this type of function will bring, is teamwork. If the BG leader has the ability to award honor, players will scream in chat for communication and teamwork. They will essentially push to create opportunities to utilize the Honorable Goals function to achieve max honor. Since the Honorable Goal system has restrictions to force the BG to play the map correctly, we are building a better BG gamer by teaching them the path of success.
Keep in mind that the goal here is to build a better PvP Community. By luring players in with honor you are able to prove to them that games are not always lost. Motivating them to go through the known steps to win a match will get them more familiar with how to win, and thus make the PvP Community more knowledgeable. This will make for better Random games and will contribute to the Rated BG player base to grow larger. Players will see that it’s not that difficult to lead a BG, nor a big difference between what steps are taken to win in a regular BG compared to a Rated BG.
L2PvP: 5 Game-Changing Macros
Today I’m going to be discussing with you something called macros, a mechanism within World of Warcraft that allows you to run different game commands with a single click or button press. These actions range from normal spell casts all the way to console code commands. The use of the macros I have listed below have virtually changed the way I play the game, and it just might do the same for you!
To start, you can find your macro section by opening your Game Menu. The macro section is broken into two categories: General Macros, and Character Specific Macros. General Macros can be used on any character on any realm, and Character Specific Macros are… Well, only available to that character. There are a limited number of macros allowed for each category, and I will give suggestions for which category my specific macro examples should go into.
Macros can be highly useful in PvP, but I find that they are particularly useful in open-world combat, such as in World PvP, Battlegrounds, or Rated Battlegrounds. Below I outline some specific macros that I find most useful, but you may discover that they will be even more efficient when you have a full understanding of keybinding, a topic I mention here but will save for another article.
Note: All macro examples are exact text. To use these commands for macros, simply give them a name in your macros page, and copy/paste the text that is conveniently in dark grey boxes. Immediately above the macro text, you will find the category for the macro. Below the macro text, you will find a general description of what the macro does, as well as how you can modify it.
Without further ado, my five game-changing macros:
1.) UI Error Macro
General Macros
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent(“UI_ERROR_MESSAGE”);
This first macro is an optional UI macro that clears and prevents error messages from popping up on the screen. I don’t need to know that I can’t do that while silenced, I know that I’m silenced. The default error messages annoy me because they take up several lines of text right in the middle of the screen, and as a spell spammer, I like to get rid of these error messages on every character I have.
2.) Focus Macro
General Macros
/focus;
While this may seem like a very simple macro (it is), I use it quite often for focusing friendly targets. Simply select a target, click this macro, and they are your focus. When you don’t want that focus, either select another person to be the focus, or type “/clearfocus” in chat.
3.) Mouseover Focus Macro
General Macros
/focus [@mouseover];
This macro is like the one above, but uses the mouseover command to focus a target that your mouse is hovering over. I have this keybound to Shift + Right Click so that I can simply Shift + Right Click on anything on my screen and they become my focus. This is useful for creating a focus on the fly on the battlefield, and the next macro will be much easier to use if you can do this. Again, to clear your focus, type “/clearfocus” in chat.
4.) Silence Macro
Character Specific
/cast [@focus] Silence;
This macro can be modified so that it fits any kind of targeted crowd control that you may need on the battlefield. I have a mirror copy of this macro for Silence and Psychic Horror. All you need to do to make this macro customized for you is replace Silence with the ability that you want: Polymorph, Cyclone, Counterspell, Hex, etc. If you can’t seem to make the spell work, ensure that you spell the ability exactly as it is in your spellbook, including capitalization. You can further enhance these macros by key binding them to important (and close to your default finger position) buttons on the keyboard, like C, V, G, or X. This type of macro also becomes more useful the more comfortable you are fluidly changing your focus with the above mousover macro.
5) DP macro
Character Specific
/cast Stoneform;
/cast Desperate Prayer;
This particular macro my friends and I like to call the “DP” macro. The name was adapted specifically for emergency situations, particularly for me when I was healing and had double melee destroying me. This macro can REALLY save your life in many situations! Have you ever found yourself frozen and having a hard time responding in time to survive? Click this macro! You can mesh in any number of defensive abilities into this macro, including a Battlemaster trinket (“/cast Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Emblem of Tenacity” in the first line, for
example) or even your movement impairing trinket (i.e. “Vicious Gladiator’s Medallion of Cruelty”). Keep in mind the latter trinket now also clears silences, so it is a complete removal of all abilities that impair you from healing (except school lockouts!).
While you can put as many abilities as you want in this “defense” macro, keep in mind that the abilities will be cast in order and still follow the rules of cooldowns (including the global cooldown). This means that to get the most bang for your buck, you should try to put abilities without global cooldowns at the beginning (like Stoneform). The above macro works very well because Stoneform does not cause a global cooldown, so when pressing this button both abilities are cast simultaneously.
You can have multiple abilities on the macro to allow for the ease of just pressing one button, but keep in mind to use all of the abilities you have to use the macro multiple times (the number of times equal to the number of abilities you have that are on the global cooldown). A good example of this is a shaman or druid that wants to use Nature’s Swiftness followed by a big heal. This can be done with a macro similar to this macro, except that you must press it twice in order to cast both spells.
And there it is! Those are the five macros that have revolutionized the way that I play World of Warcraft PvP, and I hope they can help your gameplay as well. Thank you for reading Honorable Kill, and look out for more articles from me in the near future!
– Padagi of Conquest, located on US-Ner’zhul
You can find me on my personal World of Warcraft blog, titled Life of Warcraft, and you can follow me on twitter: @mjwood.
The Value of Arenas
I grew up on an RPPvP server. There was not much Arena matches going on among the overabundant PvP ignorance in my circles. I never got into Arena. When I did, it was not serious. What did this lack of serious Arena experience equate to for me? I ran around with a total of 12 Hit rating on my Mage, thought Stamina was the best stat to stay alive, and I thought it was always more productive to finish my cast than to Blink away from the warrior beating down on me. “If I could only finish my Pyroblast!! Awwww….” Basically, I was a noob. We all were at one point, right?
However, my ratio of Noob to Arena Experience still holds true today. Perhaps not to that extent or as black & white, but when you’re talking about high ratings in Rated BG’s, it’s value that cannot go overlooked. What Arena Experience gives you is an ongoing set of requirements for yourself. It requires that you learn the best way to play your class. It requires that you learn how to stay alive, while still engaged in the fight. It requires you learn the interworkings of other classes and their function related to your own. It requires that you find synergy with your partners and play style. There are countless benefits to Arena experience, these are just a few examples. All of this is just good knowledge in PvP. No matter where you take this, whether it be Rated BGs, Regular BGs, or World PvP.
Recently, I was able to review the top 100 players in Rated BG. The common factor was not faction, race, class, spec or server that put them at the top. It was Arena Ratings and what comes with it.
Ratings based on Top 100 Players:
Total Average 1996 Arena rating
Players over 1.8k 70%
Players under 1.8k 26%
Players not active 4.0%
What do these numbers tell us? The majority of the Top Rated Battleground players have the Arena experience and are consistently active in them. This supports the idea that there is a correlation between Arena experience and Rated BG success. An interesting point about these ratings is that the 2s bracket is rarely included. The reason is that the play style required for a 2′s bracket is very different from 3′s and 5′s. The basic difference is the more players you throw into the mix, the more coordination and communication you have to bring to the team to achieve a win.
As a leader in my Rated BG Team, I see a variety of responses when I ask my team or my applicants about arenas “I’m not into that..,” “..lookin’ for a good partner..,” “..Focusing on BG’s..” Whatever the reason, these answers are not acceptable if your goal is set high! As a leader or member of your Rated BG Team, you need to help enforce the standard for what you want. If you are looking to reach a 2400 Rated BG rating and achieve your Grand Marshal title, you’re not going to get there with players that know less than you! Your teammates, should be able to prove to you that they know how their classes work, how to take down specific group compositions, how to work with other classes to take down targets, …how to execute successful Crowd Control. These traits are necessary and are skills you learn in Arena matches.
This is not to say that there aren’t exceptions to the rule, but this is how it works most of the time. Not to mention that there are benefits from serious Arena competition. Such as Challenger, Rival, or Gladiator. How about more immediate benefits like raising your Conquest Point cap to accumulate more points per week. I’d hate to mention it, but you might also reach 2.2k weapon’s rating requirement much easier than through an Arena Team than with a Rated BG Team. Depending on your team.
Does your guild have an Arena activity requirement? What is your guild’s requirements to join your Rated BG Team? How has it affected your Win/Loss?
– Shockzula of Conquest, located on US-Ner’zhul
You can reach me via email, or follow my rants on Twitter: @wetakesthemoney …Because we take it all…
Ovaries, Snatches, and PvPness
Welcome to the Cutie Column! A place where I can write, vent, and blab about the PvP shenanigans of the guild I officer in. While HK.com is dedicated to giving you informative, factual thoughts on PvP, I’m here to tell stories of silliness and show the lighter side of PvP you rarely get to see. From ridiculous calls over Mumble, to awful strategy tests, to some flat out fails I’ve seen out on the field. I intend to offer some insights into strats, officering, and general discipline priestness as well.
I first got into PvP at the end of WoTLK when my guild Conquest began seeking recruits for a PvP division with the introduction of Rated Battlegrounds in Cataclysm. I began regularly running battlegrounds with my guild under the PvP leadership of Shockzula (Much dirt on him to come). As I got more involved with strategizing and group compilations, I was soon offered a position of leadership within our PvP division. I help run our division under Shock’s leadership – If I were left to myself we’d all be sporting floral track suits, sipping mimosas on Sundays, and painting our nails in-between queues. I assist with the recruitment process, the group compilation of our Rated Battlegrounds, and the always-fun paperwork such as attendance, DPS/healing spreadsheets, etc. I adore this job because I adore the people on my roster. Plus I get to yell at them and nobody questions my authority. Huzzah!
Aside from being the ovaries of the team, I play the role of a discipline priest. If there is one thing I love in this world, it is healing. In WoW, or other games. In this column I hope to touch on my thoughts of disc healing, my questions, my QQs when we get ridic nerfs that mean I get blown up in 3 seconds, and maybe even some advice. I will say, and will forewarn, that Leap of Faith is by far my favorite ability. I don’t know if it’s the novelty of the ability, or the fact that my team has adapted the word “snatch” to it that makes me enjoy it so much. We can’t help but giggle when I am screaming to the flag carrier over Mumble that my snatch is off cooldown and ready for you. Be prepared to read a lot about my snatch.
The PvP world can be a stressful environment when you cross the line from casual to competitive. I understand this all too well, and am here to write about it.
– Tralina is a PvP Disc Priest on US-Ner’zhul.
Patch Update: Reduced to 5 seconds, down from 8
Recently Blizzard changed the flag cap in Battle for Gilneas Battlegrounds from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
Your opinion may be differ from mine, but I believe this is will push the mechanics of Node control in Battlegrounds in the right direction. This leaves more opportunities for teams to assault a Node, encouraging more PvP action for Node Defenders and Rated BG Leaders.
This does make it harder for Node Defenders, as it presents more of a challenge. Challenging = Good! I personally think the challenging aspects of the game and competition are what keep it fun!
During my first Rated BG since Patch 4.0.6 was released, we fell victim to this change. We were not properly adapting to the new flag-cap timer, and it was taken right under our noses. What we did to avoid this was assign a Primary player to watch the flag for “Ninja Cappers.” Some advice on the matter: use a spam class. We used a Rogue because they can Fan of Knives all over the place without running out of resources. They also have the advantage of being able to Fan of Knives while using their damage mitigation cool-downs like Cloak of Shadows, just in case they were the focus of enemy DPS. You could also use a Warrior, Hunter, or Death Knight. The key common factor is that they have an energy source that is consistently recovering and their ability to damage quickly (every 1-2 seconds). You could also use a Mage because of their easily cast Ice Lance and low mana cost. Beware though, Mages are a good source of crowd control and burst damage. They may be of better use if their complete focus was in the fight. Some classes to avoid using are ones with cast times such as Elemental Shamans, Healers, or Balance Druids. To be clear, any class can do it, but I’m talking about group efficiency.
This is not to say that everyone else should tunnel-vision their target, but it does put a focused person to avoid as many mistakes as possible. This leaves everyone else as a backup. The reason we set it up this way is because when we left it up to the group fight at that node, they would either not catch it in time or over AoE the node, neglecting Focus Fire targets. Honestly, with this new change to 5 seconds for a Node Cap, we can expect Ninja Cappers galore. Which will be fun! Also, remember that these Node caps bring you closer to Bustin’ Caps to Make It Haps, One Two Three You Don’t Know About Me, Out of the Fog, Not Your Average PUG’er, etc.
This was just one ways we were able correct this new obstacle. What did you experience with your Rated BG? Any change in play style or strategy?
– Shockzula of Conquest, located on US-Ner’zhul
You can reach me via email, or follow my rants on Twitter: @wetakesthemoney …Because we take it all…