IC Forum Archive

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

The population of Kirin Tor has actually gone down a bit, I think. Anyone who's account is suspended or cancelled isn't factored into the overal server population, and I know we just had a big exodus of people a while back.

extralife · Posts: 3316

My friend brought his laptop over today and I logged onto my old Shaman, which he respeced and got to level 40 (I was at 37), and I immediately killed three level 38's and a level 43 in Stranglethorn within like a minute of each other. And I pretty much suck at the game. I was chasing down one of the 38's after he polymorphed me, and I ran into another one that I killed without breaking stride. He literally died in less than a second. So don't nobody tell me Shaman's are hard to play as or Paladins make the game easier for alliance or whatever.

And no, I didn't have any good equipment.

haircute · Posts: 928

Dj: If you and your clan were on ThunderLord I would be down. Mostly because my sister could hook me up with mad help.

Only cool kids play horde BTW and FTW. Maybe FTW.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

extralife wrote:

So don't nobody tell me Shaman's are hard to play as or Paladins make the game easier for alliance or whatever.

Hop in the battlegrounds and see how well that works, dude. Take movie captures to this effect! I will eat lots of crow pie if you do.

extralife wrote:

I was chasing down one of the 38's after he polymorphed me, and I ran into another one that I killed without breaking stride.

And, uh, no offense, but I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that one, unless the 38 in question was a gnome. Wearing cloth. And already half-dead. And had his back turned.

And was AFK.

And you critted him.

With Windfury.

Twice.

Monochrome wrote:

extralife wrote:

killed without breaking stride

He must have had ressurection sickness. That happened to me once.

Or that!

Monochrome · Posts: 27

DeusJester wrote:

hilarious hunter story

What class was the NE, anyway? You'd think he'd do a Charge or a Sprint, or a ranged attack (I'm assuming the Hunter must have been in AotC to pull this off) or something.

On the topic of closing to melee range against a hunter: my main is an Orc Hunter with a lot of Survival talents. Dual Wield + orcish axe bonus + orcish Blood Fury + orcish pet damage bonus + (AotM + Deterrence) * (Mongoose Bite + Savage Strikes) + (immo trap that I was careful not to step away from + sqrt[Entrapment]) + "if you're a warrior or rogue all you have to do is run up to him and you'll win the fight, everybody knows that!" = endless source of entertainment. I can hardly wait until I get Counterattack.

DeusJester wrote:

Which is also why the Blood Elves are going Horde side come the expansion, so that the Horde will also have a pretty race.

I'm now officially predicting that Dranei are going to be the new Alliance race.

extralife wrote:

killed without breaking stride

He must have had ressurection sickness. That happened to me once.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Monochrome wrote:

What class was the NE, anyway?

Not a Nelf; Human Paladin. Dumb as a bag of rocks, too.

extralife · Posts: 3316

DeusJester wrote:

extralife wrote:

I was chasing down one of the 38's after he polymorphed me, and I ran into another one that I killed without breaking stride.

And, uh, no offense, but I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that one, unless the 38 in question was a gnome. Wearing cloth. And already half-dead. And had his back turned.

And was AFK.

And you critted him.

With Windfury.

Twice.

He was a full-health...Priest, I think? Maybe he was the Hunter? Either way, there were definetely some windfury crits going on. Someone else said he may have had res sickness, and that is a possibilty. Still, I took out a 43 Paladin with no mana. I killed a 'lock when I had ZERO health. Some dude finally killed me, and then they all fucking left. They wanted no part of that shit.

As much as this is making me sound like I'm making fun of the game (and I kind of am), I have to say, if there's anything that would ever get me back into the game, it'd be the ability to run amok in stranglethorn beasting Paladins.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

Even the Alliance fantasizes about running around in Stranglethorn killing Paladins after they've quested with enough dumb ones. And if you bring a party, you can actually manage to survive in STV long enough to do it!

StorminNorman · Posts: 70

I play Alliance on Lightning's blade. I have a human mage and NElf rogue, and recently decided that humans are the only class worth playing, as their +10% rep bonus makes end-game rep grinding so much easier.

Lately I've been rocking it up in the battlegrounds because I want some of the exalted rep rewards (especially from AV). WoW's PvP is utterly shitful, however. Blizzard has a really fucked up idea of what class balance is supposed to be, and while they claim that their PvP isn't designed around 1vs1 fights, what they don't mention is that it doesn't work too well in group PvP either.

The idea that some classes (warlocks and hunters, for example) should be totally impossible for other classes (mages and rogues, for example) to beat regardless of player skill or gear is so stupidly retarded I've not yet found a way to comprehend it.

A mage simply cannot defeat a warlock if the warlock has the felhunter out. At all. Ever. Unless the warlock is played by a braindead moron.

Go play Guild Wars if you want to see what PvP balance means.

BalbanesBeoulve · Posts: 2126

The felhunter is the anticaster pet. Period. So yeah.

benreed · Posts: 100

LegatoB wrote:

Even the Alliance fantasizes about running around in Stranglethorn killing Paladins after they've quested with enough dumb ones. And if you bring a party, you can actually manage to survive in STV long enough to do it!

Roaming group PvP in STV is always fun, particularly on low-pop/developing servers where you don't have to worry about those poor little level 35 Rogues that you steamrolled earlier logging on their decked-out mains and mowing you down like a thresher in a wheat field.

Guild Wars PvP is definitely deeper than WoW, there's no denying that. The difference is, GW PvP demands a LOT more skill and coordination, because one death can REALLY throw off your momentum. Burst damage is easily healed, mana burns out fast, enchantment defenses are very difficult to break down if you're careless, and you really have to manage your cooldowns so that you're ready to strike when their energy is low/ their enchants are down/they're in a bad position/whatever. Guild Wars has by far the steepest learning curve for a multiplayer team game I've seen in years. It puts even my old favorite Starsiege: Tribes to shame.

Unfortunately, unlike WoW PvP, Guild Wars also tends to lend its metagame very well to a rock-paper-scissors kind of affair, where a given team build may EXCEL at one aspect of the game and utterly CRUSH one kind of build not equipped to handle it, but that same build may itself be crushed by a build of a different extreme, conceived expressly to counter that build. One of the hard facts you have to come to terms with in GW PvP is that sometimes, barring a miracle or a really sucky opponent, you're just friggin' SCREWED because of the nature of your build.

WoW PvP is about as deep as a kiddie pool, but I personally enjoy it more than Guild Wars simply because it's a lot more laid-back and much less intense. The grueling pace and super-high stakes of GW PvP really burned me out, particularly with my reckless style of play.

benreed · Posts: 100

DeusJester wrote:

Three, you have to be amazingly careful where you lay it down, or it sends the hate to, say, your mages instead of your tanks, and then you're all proper fucked. If you don't have good spatial reasoning, you're going to get everyone killed. Even better, if everyone decides to change position while the totem is active, they can wipe the party anyway...And you'll still take the blame for it.

Yeah, I figured the positioning of the totem would have to be pretty nasty. On fights like Onyxia and Vael where everybody stays in the same place for the whole fight, I can see where it wouldn't be bad, but for fights where you have to adjust the mob's positioning frequently (Gehennas, Sulfuron, Domo in MC) or constantly pull him out of the caster camp when he aggro wipes (like Bloodlord in ZG), I can see where Tranquil Air would be a serious pain in the ass. I imagine you can't even use it on Rogues unless the mob you're fighting is huge like Onyxia or Nef, either, because on smaller bosses like Bloodlord all the melee are bunched together and the tanks would get caught in Tranquil Air, too.

But yeah, Shamans definitely look to me like a lot more fun to play in PvP than a Paladin. As a Shaman you can go wherever and do whatever as a true hybrid class, whereas as Paladin they're basically gonna stick you on the Lumber Mill or Mine node and all you'll get to do is solo the occasional Rogue (or maybe fight a Feral Druid who sneaks up in catform) unless things go bad at Farm and the Horde starts rolling in...in which case you just sit back and spam heals/Blessing of Freedom while your Rogues and Warriors go to town on the counterspell/silence classes.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

The best part about blessing of freedom is purging that motherfucker. GOD I love doing that.

"HAY GUYZ LUK @ ME I AM TEH IMMUNE TO URTHBIND LOLOL WAIT WTF HAX!1 OMG BULSHIT!!!!!!!!!" etc.

Most satisfying goddamn thing in the game.

benreed · Posts: 100

DeusJester wrote:

The best part about blessing of freedom is purging that motherfucker. GOD I love doing that.

"HAY GUYZ LUK @ ME I AM TEH IMMUNE TO URTHBIND LOLOL WAIT WTF HAX!1 OMG BULSHIT!!!!!!!!!" etc.

Purge is fun, yes.

Some Shaman in Western Plaguelands purged my Scarlet Crusade disguise once during the final part of the long-ass Fordring quest, and I was sad. :(

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

The best part is that it dispells potion effects. So those Agility Elixers you just spent 5 gold on that are supposed to last for an hour each? GONE. Yay!

I like think that I'm costing someone money every time I press the Purge hotkey. Especially Paladins. I have that fucker mapped to, like, the "E" key just so I can spam the shit out of it every chance I get. One of the few truly asshole things I do on a regular basis. And now that they've rigged the spell to not even fire unless it'll actually dispell something, I'm not even wasting mana by doing that.

Plus, a priest without buffs is a dead priest.

dizzyjosh · Posts: 87

ok dj, you've got one more

deleuze, an undead priest (i <3 support classes), is bumming around on kirin tor on weekday evenings and maybe weekends now.

my sixty shaman is unguilded, so i think i might actually play around here a lot. RP servers make for a lot of fun outside of the main game stuff, too.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Rock on. I'll actually be online in about ten minutes, so! Come say hi.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

So, uh, nobody else, eh? We've actually got webspace now and it looks like a minor influx of new people are en route.

If you wanna jump in, kids, now's the time!

(p.s. I just got a bunch of PvP reward gear, and my god is it fun)

Touran · Posts: 49

Normally I would Deus, but I've already got a lot invested in a 60 on Uldum. Doing MC and BWL and all that jazz, and fun times in the guld I'm in.
I'm running a 60 Paladin Hu male. I was originally attracted to the class, since that's the kind of character I usually enjoy role-playing. Unfortunatly, there seems to be something about them that attracts children, or morons. I'll just confirm that most paladins have no idea how to play, despite that a paladin is straight forward and uncomplicated.

It seems though that you hate paladins as much as I despise shamens though. Kinda funny how that works out.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Touran wrote:

It seems though that you hate paladins as much as I despise shamens though. Kinda funny how that works out.

Everyone hates Shamans. Besides maybe fear-bomb happy Priests/Warlocks, Shamans are easily the most irritating thing to have to fight.

Freedom of movement? Purge.
Mana Shield? Purge.
Stealth? Flame Shock.
Sprint? Frost Shock.
Spellcasting? Earthshock.
Fear? Tremor Totem.
Pet? Earthbind Totem.
Warrior? Frostshock, Frostshock, Frostshock.
Ranged? Windwall/Lightning Shield.
Moonfire? Nature Resistance totem.

And we still hit you in the face with that big axe (which has Windfury on it - there's 4x the damage right there at least) while slowing your movement rate on top of it. And we wear chainmail, and can buff ourselves and our party with +60(!!) to Agility and Strength. And we get our movement form at level 20.

If Paladins are the Ryu of Warcraft, then Shamans are the Yamazaki. Pure, unadultered counter-class. I love it.

Touran · Posts: 49

Huh.
I was starting to think that blizzard created these two classes with the intention that the players would learn to hate their counterparts.
The idea that blizzard planned out a way to create faction hatred so that the Warcraft Orcs Vs. Human mentality would be carried on by the players without being forced via quests or BG's would be too much to hope for I guess.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Dude. People won't even duel me unless they're a hunter or a warlock. Warriors just get fucked up the ass repeatedly if they even try.

A good Paladin can take down a Shaman (so can a good Priest), but be prepared to rely on something other than buffs. The only way I kill those classes is to assume they rely on their own self-buffing, which I can strip away at a very large distance and at practically no mana cost.

Nothing makes me happier in that game than a Priest who thinks she's all nice and safe 'cause she has some insane shield up, only to hear that telltale "Bzzzoing!" and take a full two or three seconds to figure out that that shield she just put up? You know, the one that makes her practically immune to damage for at least a good 20 seconds?

Yeah, that's gone.

And if she thinks she's getting another one up, I've got a nice Earthshock to the brain I'd like to introduce to her (which not only interrupts the spell being cast but locks it for a few seconds as well -- and does a shitload of damage to boot). This is all while she's getting threshed with Windfury and rooted in place with Earthbind, of course,

The one real downside to a Shaman? Their stats, to put it very lightly, suck. Suck really, really bad. I'm level 59, and I've got 2700 HP with my combat gear on. None of my stats break 200.

If we had normal stats, I'm pretty sure nobody would ever play the game.

Now: Do I feel guilty playing one? Hell no! Look at our server stats! Shamans are the least played class.

artifact · Posts: 86

Interesting. Shamans were, by far, the most played class on Darkspear in my day. Funny how times change with subsequent patches. Watch out for warlocks, DJ. The good ones will drop shamans with absolutely no problem. They'll incapacitate you suck your mana dry.

Also, I'll post this again: anyone want a level 60 rogue? He's so decked out in purples he looks like fucking Prince.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

I plan to pick WoW back up at the end of the week, right after finals. (I just can't stay away!) I'd be interested in joining you, Deus, but I'm not sure I'm really the "RP server" type. Or, I should say, I've never tried. What's the attitude on these servers typically like? Do people get mad if you don't have an innate knowledge of Warcraft lore and how a character of a given race "should" behave? I'd hate to ruin someone's fun because I missed some minute detail about the mating habits of Tauren or something.

(I am not, however, against ruining their fun by crushing them utterly in Battlegrounds.)

Touran · Posts: 49

Trust me Deus, I have enough knowledge on how the classes work to know how shamens like to work it. I've got a question though, do you have a lot of +spell dmg on, or do you rely on windfury and melee dmg? I might be able to root out a pic of a shamen doing a 6k crit with chain lightning.

Also, your health seems a little low. I know you said you don't do a lot of instances, but that's where all the gear is. The PvP stuff only goes so far.

I've done my share of PvP too, and it's probably the best part of the game when you're with a group of friends.

Does your guild run a vent or TS server? I'd reccomend it, if you guys don't.
It allows you to communicate effectivly in a BG.

I've probably spent too much time playing Warcraft actually, but it's hard to stop when you've already invested so much time into a character.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Touran wrote:

do you have a lot of +spell dmg on, or do you rely on windfury and melee dmg?

Melee's very much an afterthought. My shocks crit for about 1500, and crit often, so that with a few solid WF hits will drop pretty much anyone. Also, thanks to clearcasting, I get a lot of "free" casts. so the DPS just gets piled on.

The problem is, if I DON'T get lucky, I'm kinda fucked.

Good thing is, though, the Anticipation skill turned out to be a lot more useful than people though. I'm VERY hard to kill, way moreso that I was before I took that.

Funny thing is, nobody's sure what it really does. It says it just increases your defense, but a guy posted some graphs and statistics and shit that showed there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. So!

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

LegatoB wrote:

What's the attitude on these servers typically like? Do people get mad if you don't have an innate knowledge of Warcraft lore and how a character of a given race "should" behave? I'd hate to ruin someone's fun because I missed some minute detail about the mating habits of Tauren or something.

It's 90% making it up as you go along. Just, think of it as improv acting, as that's basically what it is. You wanna play the amnesiac Tauren who talks like a troll and likes to masturbate into the drinking water of Thunder Bluff, go for it -- just be consistent.

Also, my guild has an OOC channel, which we use for almost everything.

The way it works is that anything said out loud should be said in character. Anything said in private, though, whatever.

Nobody I've run into is super picky about it.

However, we DO use it to screen out the dumbasses. Anyone asking for entry into the guild gets to meet my character and gets asked questions in character, which they're expected to be able to answer in character. Anyone who can't handle even that much doesn't get in. Anyone who says anything to the effect of "just send teh invite lol" gets put on the ignore list.

It's less of an RP thing and more of an "are you smart/patient/laid-back enough to do this?" thing. Anyone too self conscious (or stupid) to not be able to play along is not going to get along with my guild, or me. That's just indicative of a personality I'd rather keep at arm's length, and so I do.

It's worked so far.

artifact · Posts: 86

DeusJester wrote:

Touran wrote:

do you have a lot of +spell dmg on, or do you rely on windfury and melee dmg?

Melee's very much an afterthought. My shocks crit for about 1500, and crit often, so that with a few solid WF hits will drop pretty much anyone. Also, thanks to clearcasting, I get a lot of "free" casts. so the DPS just gets piled on.

The problem is, if I DON'T get lucky, I'm kinda fucked.

Good thing is, though, the Anticipation skill turned out to be a lot more useful than people though. I'm VERY hard to kill, way moreso that I was before I took that.

Funny thing is, nobody's sure what it really does. It says it just increases your defense, but a guy posted some graphs and statistics and shit that showed there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. So!

You're on the right track. My guild leader was a shaman with [Sulfuras, the Legendary Hand of Ragnaros], which I'm sure you recognize as an excellent two-handed weapon. He couldn't be a viable melee threat in PvP, even with the weapon counter-weighted and with windfury procs. He was especially vulnerable against high agility classes. In PvE, he did a little better, though I've always thought it best if shamans stick to a support role in PvE with secondary melee.

We were the first guild in the game to make the [Ebon Hand] too. That and a shield are a pretty nice combo, preferably the one from Zul'Gurub or the [Malistar's Defender] from Ragnaros

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Yeah, see, I'm not raiding anything. I hate MC with a passion, and I've found I can make up for in skill what I lack in stats.

Not really much of a brag, either: You can tell a lot of the PvP kiddies in Warcraft have never played a fighting game. The concept of position or switching up your game a bit is totally foriegn to them. Find a way around their ONE tactic, and they're generally fucked.

Not ALL of them, but quite a few. Even just today I was dueling outside Orgrimmar. Took out four decked-out 60s one after the other, which surprised even me.

Then the priest said "lol how the fuk do you do that"

"Do what?"

"break my shelds so fast"

I will swear to who/whatever you want, I am not making that up. That was his actual spelling. And, yeah. The guy was hard to kill, but he was completely reliant on his shields. Take those away and he seriously had no idea what to do and just stood there letting me wail on him while he tried to put up more shields. Which, of course, I dispelled. He didn't even MOVE. You could tell this was his one plan, and if that didn't work, there really was no plan B.

Like, back to the Yamazaki thing. You're playing CvS2, and you're ryu. You throw a fireball, which I catch and throw back at you. What do you do? Probably not stand there and throw more fireballs, right?

Yeah.

This is why there's such a teeny percentage of people who actually PvP. Most of them have the strategic reasoning of a rock.

...This was a guy in a full tier 2 raid set.

I didn't know whether to laugh or just log off the game and go have a good cry.

Touran · Posts: 49

I'd cry.
Seriously, that makes me pretty upset.
I usually only do runs or instances with guild members or friends, and almost forgot how dumb a lot of the general populace in the game is. BG's are really unplayable for me unless it's in a full pre-set for that reason.

Although, there is a shamen build out there that when coupled with the hand of ragnaros makes for some truly impressive damage. Once again, there is a video of someone running around with it, but I don't have the link right now.

Deuling in tier 2 isn't a very smart idea, as most of the bonuses and stats are geared towards 40 man raid situations. Keeping the CvS2 theme running - It would be like ignoring your groove choice.

Talbain · Posts: 628

This is kind of why I hate this game so much.

It's amusing, however.

I don't really know much about CvS 2, but I will say I'm not a particularly good dueler. And it's not that I can't be (when I went at it with my friends for a couple of days, we had a win ratio of something like 10-1), it's just that I don't really like PvP that much. I joined a PvP server though because it's generally more relaxed. Or it is for me on Spirestone anyways. Why is this? I've no idea, maybe it's just the people.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Touran wrote:

Once again, there is a video of someone running around with it, but I don't have the link right now.

I've actually seen that.

That's...A weird thing about Shamans. There isn't a bad build. There just isn't. There are BETTER builds, but you have to try really hard to actually fuck up your build. If something seems like it'd work (i.e. crank everything you can into making a massive WindFury proc and just gear everything towards that) then it probably WILL work. It's one of, if not the only, class where that's really feasible.

If you're skilled at playing the game, you can have a HORRIBLE layout for your character and still do well.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

DeusJester wrote:

It's 90% making it up as you go along. Just, think of it as improv acting, as that's basically what it is. You wanna play the amnesiac Tauren who talks like a troll and likes to masturbate into the drinking water of Thunder Bluff, go for it -- just be consistent.

I guess it's something I'd have to try to know if I could pull it off, then.

Now, for the next important question - what class to play! I'm leaning toward Shaman just because it's different, but maybe I'll roll a rogue again; I enjoy lurking around and backstabbing things. Someone convince me to go one way or the other.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Talbain wrote:

I joined a PvP server though because it's generally more relaxed. Or it is for me on Spirestone anyways. Why is this? I've no idea, maybe it's just the people.

Uh. Wow. You should really try an RP server, dude. Everyone on ours bitches about how PvP servers are packed to the gills with l33t-tards and how trying to level is nearly impossible because of the roaming griefer squads who just run around ganking newbies all day.

Never been, though, so can't say personally. Hell, I don't even have an alt, let alone play on another server.

LegatoB wrote:

Now, for the next important question - what class to play! I'm leaning toward Shaman just because it's different, but maybe I'll roll a rogue again; I enjoy lurking around and backstabbing things. Someone convince me to go one way or the other.

Erm, let's see.

In discussion with my guild's second-in-command last night (a female troll rogue) she was talking about how rogues are comparatively less complicated than shamans in the sense that you really only need one action bar. To give you an idea, shamans (and a few other classes, for that matter) need three or four for the endgame. A rogue is basically going to have one or two things they're always going to do, without the need for much adaptation -- your targets need to adapt to you, not the other way around, which is nice. You're not a defense class, you don't need to heal, nobody's going to be relying on you to protect them for the most part.

If you're a shaman, you've got to pay more attention to the big picture (does this person need healing? Are these enemies bunched up so I can use chain lightning? Do we need strength, agility, or weapon buffs?), but at the same time you can be way less patient and be just as, if not much more, deadly.

If a rogue is a sniper rifle, then a shaman is a shotgun.

Also note that I'm looking at this basically in PvP terms. For PvE, I'd say shamans are way better. You can solo practically anything, you can heal yourself, and you can self-ressurect if things go sour. The only downside there is that shamans are forced to either wait very long periods for their mana to regenerate, or spend about five times as much as the other classes on water so they can drink in between fights.

BUT, Shamans are near useless for the endgame, at least at this point. Should you hit 60 as a rogue, you're going to be a lot more useful in an instance than a shaman will, who will be skipped over for a priest in two seconds flat. By 60, shamans are spread too thin to fit into the specialized roles needed for raids -- which is why I don't do them, and generally don't even try.

Also worth noting: Rogues are easily the most combat-powerful class in the early stages of the game. A level 25 rogue fighting a leve 25 anything else will generally end with the rogue triumphant. By 30-35, though, the other classes have caught up. Still, makes the early-stage Battlegrounds a lot of fun.

Still, I'm biased. Shamans are a ton of fun.

I have a somewhat-outdated screenshot of my interface here. My stats are significantly better currently (though that still ain't saying much), but take a look at the bottom of the screen to get an idea for just how much crap I have to juggle at once. All those buttons are needed, and I've got one that goes up the right side of the screen that I turn on as well.

artifact wrote:

Also, I'll post this again: anyone want a level 60 rogue? He's so decked out in purples he looks like fucking Prince.

Sell him. You'd get good money for that.

I'm one of those DIY guys. I can't play other people's characters. I can't even play my girlfriend's character. I don't know where anything is, nothing's tailored to where I want it, and bleh. Nevermind that I'd have to re-make new social contacts to make it worthwhile.

Thanks for the offer, though.

benreed · Posts: 100

Given that Legato will probably never make it to the endgame (I should know, I live with the guy), here's my input on the classes:

- If you wanna stick with what you know, do a Rogue. (This would be my first suggestion.)

You'll need to grind a lot of stuff as you level, of course (Lockpicking, Poisons, First Aid, Cooking for Thistle Tea), but given that you made it actually past level 40 last time you played a Rogue (I was always impressed with how fast you leveled compared with me), I'd say you can deal with that. You can stealth through lots of instances later on to farm blue gear for yourself, you can solo lots of elite mobs just by carefully stunlocking them, and the only things you really have to learn as a Rogue outside of raiding are:

1. How not to pull aggro off the tank on a really nasty boss like Drakkisath in UBRS, and when to back out on bosses with nasty AoE like Princess in Maraudon.

2. Stab healers in the eye first in PvP. Use Kick carefully so that they don't fake you out.

3. Stay the fuck away from Warriors, unless they're stupid. One Overpower = BAM! A third of a lifebar gone even with decent HP.

The only trouble with Rogues is that while they're VERY high-demand for raids, you're gonna be REALLY hard pressed to find a group for the high-level normal instances. Nobody wants a Rogue when they could have an extra Warrior to help tank, a Mage to help AoE or crowd control, a Priest/Paladin/Shaman/Druid to help heal, or even a Hunter to help pull/crowd control or a Warlock to summon, Soulstone, and CC in BRD. You are at the bottom of the food chain as PvE instances go come level 55 or so.

- If you play a Shaman, be prepared to heal. This isn't as big a deal in the non-raid dungeons, but there will always be that one group whose Priest/Druid leaves or they can't get one to begin with, and you'll have to crack out the ol' Healing Wave to keep the tank alive. Other than that, um, have fun. You're not nearly as unkillable as a Paladin, but you'll get to do a lot more stuff besides camping nodes in AB and soloing Rogues. Also, stay away from Stormstrike if you go Enhancement, it sucks ass at present. For leveling I'd probably do Enhancement down to Parry and then put the rest of my points into Elemental.

- If you want a class that's easy to play, play Warrior. They're kind of a dime a dozen these days, but as long as a party doesn't already have a Warrior (or two), you're pretty much guaranteed a spot in an instance group, because everybody needs a tank.

Tanking itself is pretty damn easy, too, and being a Warrior myself I can explain most of the little tricks pretty well. The first few levels are pretty rough (Warriors suck ass compared with pallies and shamans in 10-19 WSG), but once you hit around level 24 (and get Execute) you start becoming scarier, and once you hit 60 and get decent gear, you become one of the funnest, most brain-free PvP classes in the game.

- Druid's kinda fun, but you're gonna be asked to heal a LOT more than a Shaman in instances and PvP. 9 times out of ten, when a group lets you in, it's because they need extra healing, although since the Feral buffing, you actually make a pretty decent offtank in bearform (right behind Warriors, because like Warriors you actually have a taunt and spammable high-threat melee specials), and if you're heavy on healing, you can be a pretty decent pseudo-Rogue in catform as Feral. Still, more often than not, you'll be healing, so if you'd prefer to DPS, you probably want to avoid being a Druid.

So yeah, my vote is to stick with Rogue or play Shaman or Warrior.

benreed · Posts: 100

As for realms to play on, I personally vote you either come back to Illidan (so that I can help you ge to 60 and help me gank farmers in Silithus) or Gul'dan (so that I can fight you in Hillsbrad, assuming I haven't already been ganked by one of the many level 40-ish gank groups constantly running around the periphery of Tarren Mill). :)

Also, my Gul'dan Undead Warrior is Engineering, so if there's anybody on Alliance who pisses you off, you could always get me to Gnomish Mind Control Cap his ass so that you can shoot him in the mouth. ;o

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

benreed wrote:

As for realms to play on, I personally vote you either come back to Illidan (so that I can help you ge to 60 and help me gank farmers in Silithus) or Gul'dan (so that I can fight you in Hillsbrad, assuming I haven't already been ganked by one of the many level 40-ish gank groups constantly running around the periphery of Tarren Mill)

Dude! Kirin Tor! Come play with uuuuuuusss...

benreed wrote:

For leveling I'd probably do Enhancement down to Parry and then put the rest of my points into Elemental.

Yer, that's pretty much what I did. You have no idea how much shit I get from the "l33t" players about it, too. "Oh my God, you're not using Nature's Swiftness? LOL N00B". Well, fuck them. I'm a damage beast with this build, and in the battlegrounds, who cares if I can't get off a single insta-cast heal? Big fucking deal. This way I survive long enough to kill pretty much everyone, and they can't kill me half as easily otherwise.

But nooooo, I'm an idiot for not using the cookie-cutter build. Psssh. Blow me.

Here's my actual layout.

Elemental:

And, Enhance:

And Restoration can go to hell. Yay!

The final point I get at 60 is going into Windfury (the icon with the green border in Enhance) then that's it! I like this build a lot, and I'm probably going to stick with it for a while longer, until my complete uselessness for raids pisses me off to the point where I change my mind.

It also fits in with my character's personality beautifully. He's kind of become Spider Jerusalem in Warhammer Land, but whatever, he's a trip. Restoration, however, is shall we say, "not his thing".

ALSO: Orgrimmar is damn pretty. I always thought it'd be cool to see those towns I built in Warcraft from the perspective of one of the units. And now I can. It's neat.

And to anyone who hasn't been there: What you're seeing there is like maybe 10% of the whole town. It's pretty big.

Monochrome · Posts: 27

DeusJester wrote:

Uh. Wow. You should really try an RP server, dude. Everyone on ours bitches about how PvP servers are packed to the gills with l33t-tards and how trying to level is nearly impossible because of the roaming griefer squads who just run around ganking newbies all day.

Never been, though, so can't say personally.

Maybe this is relevant and maybe it isn't, but here are my RPPVP experiences:

Every once in a while you come across somebody of about your level. There's a moment out of a Clint Eastwood movie where you just look at each other, waiting for the other one to /wave, or gradually circling each other, keeping your distance and watching for any threatening moves. Occasionally the shit hits the fan and there's a relatively fair match of wits. There are also surprise attacks among similar-level players, which the victim has some chance of reversing or escaping from.

This aspect of a PVP server is awesome.

The other 80% of the time, non-consentual PvP means that some thirteen-year-old with twenty more levels one-shot-crits you because he can't maintain an erection without knowing that he has mildly inconvenienced somebody.

This aspect of a PVP server is sub-retarded. Thankfully, it only happens occasionally. Levelling isn't impossible at all, you just get pointlessly interrupted every few hours of play -- but again, I don't know about straight PVP servers. I suspect they're much worse.

I don't mind getting attacked when I have even a small chance of escape or victory, or when it's reasonable to say that I was asking for it (this is actually true when it's realistic to stay out of contested territories). But the vaulted thrill of danger doesn't really exist as such. Danger of what, besides having your quest interrupted by a two-minute jog to your corpse? Thrill of what, when there is no actual fight, defeat cannot be escaped or avoided by any means at all, and the victor gets nothing?

I will say that, despite the imbalance in BG's, I haven't run into anyone as clueless in PvP as these stories I'm hearing. Yes, Alliance in Arathi Basin is a joke, but that mostly has to do with disorganization and "fuck teamwork, I'm a NINJA!!!!", not out of a failure to understand basic combat strategy.

Talbain · Posts: 628

PvP servers remind me of that skit on family guy where Superman takes the "Plastic S" from his suit and throws it at the bad guy, stopping him cold in his tracks. The bad guy says: "Did you just throw a plastic S at me? Wow... that... that was a moderate inconvenience." Superman replies: "Yeah, well, slowed you down." Badguy: "I'll say."

That's kind of what PvP servers remind me of.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

StorminNorman wrote:

A mage simply cannot defeat a warlock if the warlock has the felhunter out. At all. Ever. Unless the warlock is played by a braindead moron.

Well, by the other token, a mage running around by themselves with no backup is a braindead mage. The mage is THE damage support class, just like a priest is THE healing support class. Either one of them running around in the Battlegrounds by themselves is gonna get fucked up right quick.

We have an alliance gnome mage on our server. Minny. Her name has literally become synonymous with "flag ninja". She does that one thing, and that one thing only.

She never, ever, ever stands her ground to fight. She's either running to the flag, or running away with it. If she has some backup, she usually captures it, too. All her spells go to slowing other people down and speeding her up, something mages excel at.

Obviously, I take great joy in catching her alone. There's something wonderfully poetic about this little pink-haired gnome in a turban trying run into the Warsong base all sneaky-like and seeing fucking ME standing there, cracking my knuncles and grinning.

extralife · Posts: 3316

Despite hating the damn game, I almost want to pick it up again. Fuck me good.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

extralife wrote:

Despite hating the damn game, I almost want to pick it up again. Fuck me good.

DO IT BITCH! You can use your shiny new graphics card.

extralife · Posts: 3316

I don't have the money. Fucking MMO's: I have a god damn box sitting here with a honest-to-god video game sitting inside that I cannot play.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

I am trying to decide if I should give Kirin Tor a shot. Would a relentlessly cheery and good-natured undead warrior being too "immersion breaking?" I can't help but think such a ludicrous choice would be the most fun to role-play (when necessary).

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

I really think you've got the wrong idea about what goes on on a roleplay server. There are no "rules" about who or what your character is. Nobody's going to get pissed if you wanna play a happy undead warrior. And it's not like you must be in character at all times or you're going to be banned OMG or anything like that. Some people never break character, but most people aren't nearly that picky about it.

I'm on Google Talk right now (deusjester at gmail dot com), so add me to the list and let me know if/when you're going to get on (if you don't have Gmail by now then something is clearly wrong with you). I'll ride out to Brill or wherever and pick you up, introduce you to the crew, etc. Stick around if you want, or don't, but at least take a look.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

DeusJester wrote:

I really think you've got the wrong idea about what goes on on a roleplay server. There are no "rules" about who or what your character is. Nobody's going to get pissed if you wanna play a happy undead warrior. And it's not like you must be in character at all times or you're going to be banned OMG or anything like that. Some people never break character, but most people aren't nearly that picky about it.

I blame my apprehension on the fact that the most vocal of these people are the ones who take this sort of thing Very Seriously. Guess I'll roll something up and see what it's like. I want to see how WoW runs on this new video card, anyway.

I'll leave Google Talk running (lord.of.pie at gmail) so you can feel free to send me spam and ask if I've gotten settled or whatever. Odds are I'll be on all night. I tried to add you but it seems to think you need to be invited (?) so I guess I entered your address wrong or something.

Edit: Ended up rolling a warrior named Brighton. Let's see how long I play him.

Talbain · Posts: 628

Hark my courted bailiwick, wouldst thou care for a grog?

GrimSweeper · Posts: 530

I think not, for thou hast poisoned the air with thine tarnished words. Speak plainly, dog!

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Note: I'm an Orc. My RP tends to be something along the lines of "Man, that fucking gnome stands outside the city and yells in her damned language at me one more fucking time and I'm going snap her head off and fuck the stump. Stupid pink-haired halfling cunt. I've taken shits bigger than her. *pounds a beer and farts loudly*"

Talbain · Posts: 628

GrimSweeper wrote:

Middle English.

Ok.