Not Impressed

Today, I saw 2 full Order Warbands, after pushing us around the lake for a while, hole our one WB up in Mandred's Hold. I then saw them break through the door in about no time flat. I then saw them pull the Keep Lord down to the ground floor. In Tier 2. Even though they clearly had the upper hand. We prevented them from getting their loot bags, but they still wiped us pretty quickly anyways. I have to say I wasn't impressed. I didn't think people were still doing this In Tier 2 of all places.

Ragtag Defense Success Story Can't Do Anything Else. Then Mopes.

I failed to take a keep today. Three keeps. Let me start from the beginning. I'm good at being on the alert and starting a group for quick, impromptu keep defense, which is what happened. Successfully. Once we wiped order though, I figured, we have almost a full warband: about 10 tanks too. We should take some keeps back. So I put out the call again and we rush to the other Empire keep. There was about 5 defenders. The thing about having ten tanks is that with having that many and an unfull warband, we only had 3 healers. That's not a lot of heals to spread around. We never made it past the oil.

I do not have a picture as it would be full of shame

So we dusted ourselves off and went for some dwarf keeps. We got pushed back by meager defenses twice more there as well. I definitely need more getting used to how T3 works, and general Warband leading as I didn't do a terribly productive job of anything. Granted it wasn't an ideal set-up, but we could have succeeded in something

Why Mythic? Why are defended T3 keeps so hard to take by a small force with an unbalanced healer/tank/DPS ratio? You ruined my afternoon and I think I need to go for a nap.

There's Something About Mandred. Hiding In The Forest With Witch Elves

This is my last experience before leaving T2 and it was a pretty great one. Taking Mandred's Hold. You may not understand what this is like for Destruction on my server, but here's why it was so great. See, Order seems to have a special to-do list when it comes to oRvR and this is what it is:

• Take undefended keeps and BOs while avoiding any kind of resistance.


• If Mandred's is lit up on the map, you must drop everything as no other zone matters.


• Defend Mandred's at all costs. Pack all of tier 2 in there. Don't even bother with Stonetroll Keep. It's not important. Neither is trying to take back any other zone, because as long as we hunker down here, destruction has no choice but to feed us kills for three hours.
  

"Mine! All Mine! Destruction cannot have it! Everything else though? Fair game."

Finally capturing it took forever. Like, 9 till 2am forever. The offense tick for finally taking the keep was insane. The night was a long chain of trying to beat down the door, being pushed to our warcamp (then I would take one of the camp siege weapons and pick people off which was much fun), pushing them back to the keep, then someone would take BOs, and then it would start again. To mix things up during the open field battles, I sent tells to a few Witch Elves in the warband to follow me. A plan was in motion.


While the warbands fought each other as blobs of RDPS that wouldn't dare get close lest they catch cooties, my little group of me and three Witch Elves (big pimpin, eh?) moved off to the side a bit and hid in the trees. Correction; they hid in the trees, while I goaded Witch Hunters and White Lions to come attack me. They would then get jumped while we shared a laugh. Sometimes a WP and/or a tank would tag along to make our lives more difficult, but we could always run into our safe, happy zerg. This was the best of both worlds: being part of the large, epic battle, and fighting the small, quick and intense skirmishes that feel oh so rewarding.

We actually only took Mandred's because there were about 5 Order left still logged in by that time. The lesson here is that winners never sleep.

Obligatory scoreboard screenshot #46

I also came 1st in contribution, because I was siegeing it the whole time. Then I rolled a 178. But who needs chestpeices right?

The Challenge so Far. A Parting Story for Dok Karaz.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been leveling a Zealot by doing the RvR-Only-Challenge. This means that you can only collect xp through scenarios, open RvR, grit, determination, and waiting around a lot. It has been quite the experience. I think I'm going to regale you with my experiences.

Tier 1 flew by. I gained a level every two or three scenarios at the start, then started mixing it up with some RvR lake action. By lake I literally mean only one lake: Empire/Chaos. I had still managed to max out my influence in the other two zones, but that was entirely from musical BOs. Actual oRvR kills came from Festenplatz zergs, and the winner was decided solely on which side was fielding more people at the time. Most of my time was spent camping warcamps, or being camped at my warcamp. As a healer, T1 was boring except for scenarios. Except Khaine's Embrace. That one can suck my nuts for all I care.

Tier 2 took place in all of the zones. Musical keeps was in abundant supply, but never constant. Whenever we owned most of the tier, Order would keep a death grip on Mandred's Hold and never give it up. A lot of my time was spent looking up at that keep. I did a lot more scenarios this time, but I enjoy all of the T2 ones. Especially as a healer, because they're rarer and you just feel extra useful and loved.

*sigh*Just another zone cap against no defense.

If you're wondering about what gear I've gotten out of all of this it is: the Obliterator set (the boots were given to me though), oRvR influence rewards, and jewelry from renown vendors (I've picked up no drops). Out of the 25 keeps I took part in taking (I only know this because of the title I just got), I'd received 5 gold bags. Oddly, none of them came from when I placed in the top three for contribution. I am a terrible roller.

If you keep turning in kill quests and are constantly queued for scenarios, you'll level at a pretty good clip. The problem is that you can't play during off hours. At all. If there's no one in a lake, and no scenarios are popping, your only option is to... make potions? This is my only gripe with the challenge. I can't do anything when it's not prime time. During prime time is great (hence the word prime) but sometimes I still want to play after hours.

All...By...My...SeEelf

So I'll use an alt to get my PvE questing fix (I love reading the quest text and the sometimes odd objectives). This didn't last very long. I just couldn't do it. AI mobs just weren't cutting it for me. I could feel myself getting sleepy every time I repeated an attack rotation. I'm also very tired of T1 right now (so many alts in so short a time.) PvPing for so long has spoiled me, with its constantly changing partners, enemies and situations. The ups and downs are just incomparable. It isn't that PvEing is boring, it just doesn't compare to pitting yourself against a live opponent. There's a lot of intangibles involved, but it mostly comes down to "am I having fun?" The answer is a resounding yes. I'm gonna miss being the big dog on campus but here's hoping for more tales in T3.

I'll finish with a true story about my undying passion for a keep.


Dok Karaz. O how I love You Dok Karaz. I made it a personal mission to attack or defend you every time there was a hint of action taking place. There was no real reason for this, other than after having defended it once, I didn't want to give it up until I had too. There were three times where I didn't start defending you until your door was already broken in, rallying murderous fighters along with me, forming a stalwart platoon of 7-10 people each time. We'd rush through the ranks of Order massed on the ramp so that we could stave them off from your Lord's room.

Sometimes they had already gotten past that, and they were trying to fight your Lord out on your ranged siege equipment pad. Well my platoon was having none of that and we whisked them off of your walls with steel, spittle, and more stalwartness. When they tried for a second go before we could rebuild your door, we pushed them back again. Best of all, when they tried to gain reinforcements from the dwarven ironclad, We chased them down and stalwartly killed them there too. Twas a great day to not be a dwarf.

This is only like, a fifth of the attackers. Swear to god. I beat them with just my bare hands

*Update* War'nPieces also has his writeup of the rvr challenge, while linking to yours truly. It may not be a race, but I have to say, my toon's farther than his toon. Well his twoons. I still win alright?

A Plan fails. The Oil is The Most Fun You Will Ever Have.

Wasn't planning on posting today but I had quite the oRvR experience and I do believe you are going to hear about it. There's really nothing you can do to stop it as it's already to late.

So Dok Karaz (T2 keep) lights up and I run over to see what the deal is. A couple other destros follow me so I open up the party menu to see if there's already a warband going. Lucky me there wasn't so I hatched a plan. A plan to lead my first warband and have it not take part in musical keeps.

I started an open party, made it a warband (it filled up insanely fast) and sent out a call to arms to defend our keep. I figured if there wasn't actually any order there then we would go around and take BOs and keeps until they decided to muster a force up, and then we would fight them, win or lose. Turns out there was two Order bands versus our one. We wiped and not wanting to lose my warband, I suggested (with tears in my eyes) that we take another keep, which we did. We then went back to Dok Karaz and took it back.

This is when I tried to salvage my original plan. "Wait here," I said, "The Order zerg will be here soon and then we can farm them." It was a reasonable suggestion. Too bad nobody listened to their esteemed leader, with cries of "There's too many of them," "we can take Mandred's,"and "I want my influence and chestpiece." Fighting all of a sudden became a bad thing. I let them leave but I stayed.

Me and the rest of the defenders

Let them play musical BOs, I thought, I can wait. Eventually, Order did come. I manned the oil and got more than a few kills. They eventually broke through obliterated me, but not in the good way. In the end I probably got more renown than them, but most important of all, I had a lot more fun.

Keep Chaos. I'm Not Sorry

Last night there was some intense T2 keep taking on the Badlands server. It was great fun, but also impossible for either side to take a keep that had a defense up. The picture on the right there shows how all of the sieges ended. The defense ticks were worth a lot though.

So our Warband went to take an undefended keep. I single-handedly caused all of the planning to go out the window. It was going fine until half the group rushed the lord while the other half ran to the balcony. The thing is that the lord and a champion decided to follow the balcony group, of which I was a part. So the lord finished off a bunch of us before running back to the middle, where everyone was wiped. Thankfully a healer was alive and slowly, everybody got rezzed. But that wasn't where I messed up. No, my Story starts now.

See the group was all planning about who to pull, when and whatnot. I, being bored, decided to look in on the lord room to, you know, scout the going-ons and happenings and stuff. I also happened to walk into the Lord room because that's where the best view is. After getting my eyeful I then decided to report back to the group so they could finish their plans. Little did I know, I had attracted some followers who didn't want me alive. They then proceeded to attack my group, who fought back valiantly to win the day, with me as the only casualty. The chat after that was hilarious. Cries of "Who did that?" "don't pull yet! stop fighting" "FUKKEN NOOBS!" were the order of the day.

Nobody appreciates scouts these days.