Monday, November 24, 2008

Ganking Fail

So, here we are, a couple of days before a nice long vacation with no WoW, but prospects of many fine German beers and we're at 79.25. Just a smidgen more of grinding to 80 and we're there.

In the past few days, we've been dutifully grinding through the remainder of Dragonblight and into the Grizzly Hills. For those of you who have done the Saurfang the Younger quest chain in Dragonblight, I've got to say, that scripted event was amazing and incredibly fun. I spent most of it trying to get the biggest crits possible to boost my Statistics (you know, that alternate tab to Achievements...). I think I'm up to 29k for a trinketed Mind Blast crit.

Hot.

The other half of the event was spent chiding my Shaman questing buddy (with whom we duo'd through all of the quests in Grizzly Hills) for not being a real Shaman like Thrall. I mean, look at Thrall, wearing his 'looks like level 40 gear' and telling the spirits what to do. He doesn't just ask them to clear the plague, he commands them to clear the area. Thrall's essentially the Chuck Norris of WoW.
  • When Thrall Earth Shocks you in the middle of a cast, you don't just get interrupted, you get disconnected.
  • TwentyFiveNovember was actually the second guild to clear all of WotLK content. Thrall was the first.
  • There actually 3 difficulty levels in WoW: Normal, Heroic and Thrall.
  • Thrall puts the 'laughter' in 'gnomeslaughter'
One of our conversations, while watching Thrall and Sylvanas mow through the Scourge, went something like this:

Thrall: Spirits of the Air, help us blah blah blah!
Me: See? Thrall is the man! Why can't you command your spirits better! I'm ditching you to duo with Thrall.
ShamanBuddy casts Fire Elemental Totem
ShamanBuddy: Spirit of Fire.. uh.. do stuff.
ShamanBuddy pokes Fire Elemental
ShamanBuddy: I think he's broken =(

Good times.

The other fun part of leveling has been dealing with Gankers. Ganking is an integral part of leveling on a PvP server and for the most part the ganking has been minimal. In addition to the minimal ganking, the gankers who have tried assert their egos have been terrible. Two such encounters stick out in my mind:

Encounter 1: I'm level 74 and finishing up the Murloc Quests in Northern Borean Tundra. As I'm starting to run across the water (Levitate ftw), a 72 Death Knight follows me into the water.

Hrm.. not good. I have no idea how to deal with a Death Knight and being in all PvE gear with no trinket means I'm kinda squishy. Maybe if I dive underwater, my Undead-ness of being able to sit underwater for 10 mins will deter him.

Mr. DK dives into the water and starts beating on me.

Figures. I swear, DK's are the new Huntards. Every little kid has one and wants to show off his big epeen.

I get a couple of dots on him, and try to hard cast a Vampiric Touch.

Strangulate. Um. I guess that's a silence effect because I'm now frantically mashing buttons to try to cast something but no glowy hands. Just a little Undead girl getting her face caved in by a big nasty runeblade. =(

Remembering that Dispersion can be used while silenced, we turn into a misty ball of purple stuff to mitigate the damage for a bit, pop out of Dispersion, and Psychic Scream Mr. DK to the surface of the water. Cool! Distance is good! A new set of dots get reapplied and we swim deeper. Poor Mr. DK finally gets out of the fear, feels a bruised ego and tries to swim down to exact vengeance but the Mindflay snare effect keeps him away for long enough to get the kill.

cheer!

I shift out of Shadowform and start to heal myself and Mr. DK decides that he should now turn into a ghoul and try to finish me off

Ruh, roh.

Shackle. /lol

Heal to full, pop a mana pot, shift back into Shadowform and proceed to rip that ghoul a new one.

We ran around a bit later completely unhindered by him as he meekly avoided any confrontation.

Bet you feel kinda silly there, Mr. No Gear DK, ganking kiddies who won't fight back. Sorry I made you keyboard turn to dive down after me into the water. That camera down button probably doesn't get used alot does it?

Scenario 2: I'm at level 78 and finishing up the quest chain in the Iron Dwarf area of South Eastern Grizzly Hills and as I finish a quest objective, I get Corruption'd. Spinning around, I get Curse of Agony'd and see a 76 Human Warlock charging up a Fear.

Crud, no trinket equipped

I counter by slamming my instant dots on him as fast as possible and Will of the Forsaken the first Fear. We love WotF.

Deathcoil into Fear #2 stops any chance of retaliation and by the time I'm out of the second Fear, I'm at 30%.

The good news is that I'm sporting the Glyph of Dispel Magic, which heals the target every time I dispel something off of the target (must be friendly to get the heal). The better news is that Mr. Haunt Warlock didn't put up Unstable Affliction. Good job, Stupid.

I mash Dispel Magic and *poof* there go all of his dots and debuffs.

This is pretty much the turning point as my trinket powered dots eat him alive while restoring hp via Vampiric Embrace as he frantically decides that now is the time to Drain Life some health back. Sorry, Buddy, that weak-ass drain isn't gonna help you now.

With me back at full health, he goes down pretty quickly and as I'm drinking, he must have been REALLY angry at his failed gank that he immediately rezzes and dots me up again.

Dispel. Dispel. Dispel.

Sorry, buddy, but this isn't a Battleground and your pet doesn't rez with you. With no Soul Link and a half full hp bar, he went down in a flurry of shadow magic and pointed laughter.

I corpse camped him for 3 more kills after that, until he went AFK, each time getting a lucky Blackout proc as he tried to ride away on his little pony ground mount as I landed next to him on my epic flyer.

Mr. Lock with only 12k hp at level 76, why would you pick on someone who can fly? Do you feel like an idiot? I'll bet you do after I flew alongside you across the entire zone spamming my /lol macro.

Tonight's goal? 80. I already have my full Frostsavage set crafted and ready to go. Wintergrasp, lets ROLL!