Arena Cheating

There have been a couple of posts on WowInsider on the practice of Win Trading. Basically, you setup a team of alts that you purposefully lose to. Then you arrange off hour matches so you can ensure that your teams will be matched against each other. You win 10 matches a week they lose 10. Then, simply buy a new charter for the losing team every week so you will always go up against a 1500 rated team. According to the second story, a player from my battlegroup (Vengeance) had the top rating in 5v5, 3v3, and 2v2 using this method. Here are the story links:

Arena Cheating 1
Arena Cheating 2

I have suspected for some time that something like this could be possible if you had enough time. That's why I think the whole season 3 rating requirements for certain rewards is such a joke. You want to reward the teams with the most "skill"? Skill at what, cheating? lol.

It is not the cheaters that bother me so much. Its that Blizzard keeps building systems that are so easy to exploit if you have the time to do it. You would think the AFKer problem in Alterac Valley would have made them look more closely at Arena and all BGs. But alas, they continually seem to stick their head in the sand and never acknowledge problems. After these stories circulate, the number of teams doing this is gonna skyrocket. lol.

Arena is a great way for casual players to have fun and get some decent gear. But the least Blizz can do is make it fair for everyone playing.

Down Moroes without a Priest

Grats to my guild, Exalted Exiles for downing Moroes this Saturday! As we are a new guild and new to Karazhan, we are still a bit thin when it comes to tanks and healers. We have 3 tanks including myself and one of the tank's main is a hunter that runs with us. We have a primary Pally(Kilena) healer, but have been rotating in Druids and another Pally as the 2nd healer. On Saturday, we had the Pally and a Druid.

We downed Attuneman with 9, picked up a DPS and then downed Maiden on the first try. So off to Moroes.

We have been told that Moroes is impossible to down without either 2 priests, or 3 healers. Well we don't have either and probably won't yet for a while. lol. So here is how we did it.

Group composition: Dwarf Warrior, Druid Tank(Me), Hunter, Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Warlock, Mage, Pally, Resto Druid

Moroes Adds: Shadow Priest, Holy Pally, Retribution Pally, Prot Warrior

DPS Order: Shadow Priest, Holy Pally, Moroes

Our Strategy

• The dwarf warrior tank (Sythyr) took Moroes


• The two hunters (DubsTwo, Idril) grab the Ret Pally and alternate freeze traps on him. This worked great has he was frozen the whole time.


• Our main rogue (Erikes) jumps the Shadow Priest and keeps her from casting. This is very key as we have tried it without a rogue and she just mana drains the entire group. I don't think she got a spell off.


• The Druid tank picks up the protection warrior, builds a little agro, then drags him around like a pet. Then picks up the holy pally. Got a swipe or two on the priest, but the rest of the group downed her fast.

So basically, the priest and the pally go down fast and then the crowd control becomes easy. The hunters lay traps at a set interval and the prot warrior blunts his sword on my armor. Everyone can focus on Moroes. It worked great. The healers were awesome (Kilena and a druid who's name I forget), zero deaths from the fight.

Don't ever let anyone convince you that you must have X group to take down Y boss. All these encounters are a puzzle that you just need to figure out. It may take 10 or 12 attempts (about what it took us), but if you keep an open mind, talk to each other, and just have fun, you will succeed.

Alterac Valley and Patch 2.3, What a Rush!

Well when I first heard about the changes to Alterac Valley in patch 2.3, I thought the battleground would turn into a big slow turtle. Boy was I wrong. It's even more of a race than it was before.

Since there are no Commanders or Lieutenants guarding the graveyards and towers, you can really fly right to the enemy base. You still need to leave a few on defense to cap the towers, as this removes Warmasters defending Drek'thar. Most of the matches last night were around 12-15 minutes each! For the same honor! Seems like most matches were around 20-30 minutes before.

The biggest change you are gonna notice is that there is no more pulling. Drek'thar and his Warmasters are linked. They will not run out. So you have to fight them in the base. Thus the need to capture towers and eliminate as many Warmasters as possible. Trying to tank Drek and more than 1 warmaster would be pretty tough.

The Maiden is Down

On Monday night my guild downed the Maiden for the first time. Grats everyone!

Pretty good a accomplishment for a new guild and only our second week in Kara.

Proof of the Blizz Warlock Conspiracy

In my third and final installment on why Undead Warlocks are Blizz developers favorite PVP class, I provide proof. The conspiracy in all its ugliness is laid bare for the world to see! :) Bwahhahahahahaha. You cannot hide the truth from me Blizz.

Here is my proof point by point

#1: Warrior Nerf
In the coming 2.3 patch, Blizzard is switching Sweeping Strings and Death Wish in the Warrior talent tree. This is a huge nerf to Mortal Strike Warriors. I play with one and he does do well against most cloth wearers. But by no means is victory assured in every match. And if our team is defeated, it is usually by a team with either a Warlock, a Pally or a Frost Mage. I would put MS Warriors 3rd or 4th on the overpowered list. But alas, some Warlocks might actually be killed so the Nerf must be made.

#2: Drain life "bug"
Warlocks can cast the Drain Life spell which damages their target and heals the Warlock. The spell has been "bugged" for quite some time and the healing effect has not been affected by mortal strike. Apparently, this is the only healing spell with this "bug". Blizz is grudgingly going to fix this in patch 2.3.

#3: Night Elf Cat Form Range Bug
Night Elf druids have a bug in catform where if your target runs, you basically can't hit it. Your supposed 5 yard range is effectively 1 yard. This bug has existed for over a year and Blizz has not fixed it. Supposedly it was fixed in 2.2, but it seems to be pretty much unfixed from what I can tell. Why no love on such a basic and important bug? Because Druids aren't Warlocks.

#4: Fear Ward Nerf
In patch 2.3, Blizzard will be "giving" the Fear Ward spell to all Priests. But the new spell will be severely nerfed. Instead of being able to put the 10 min duration spell on a toon every 30 seconds, you will only be able to put the spell on 1 toon every 3 minutes. So what class would be affected by Fear Ward? Hmmmm. The only class that Fear Ward provides any real protection from is Warlocks. That is the only class that can spam fear spells. All other classes fear spells have like a 5 minute cooldown. So why the nerf? Its obvious, too many Warlocks were being killed by Shadow Priests. Can't have that. Take away the spell. Warlocks must have easy mode.

#5: Big "DOTs" nerf
Blizz added this cool new stat called resilience to the game. Resilience reduces the chance that any attack will crit and then when the attack does crit, it reduces the damage taken from the crit. So resilience gear helps you stay alive in PVP. Except the Damage over Time spells (DoTs) were not affected by resilience. What is the only class that relies primarily on DoTs for the majority of their damage? Warlocks. Hmmmm.

So finally, after much complaining Blizz actually relented and allowed DoT's to be reduced by the crit rating from your resilience gear. So now instead of a Warlock's Dots killing me in 15 seconds. I got to die in 18 seconds. Woo hoo! Thanks Blizz.

Conclusion
The conclusion is obvious, Blizzard developers play Undead Warlocks.