Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Adventures and Misadventures in PvP

I finally switched my offspec to marksman and put on the PvP gear.  I have enough now for it to be somewhat useful.  While it is not great gear, mostly 496 gear with a couple of 522, 483 and 476 pieces it is a start.  Only missing one trinket and one ring and of course the weapon.

The transformation to PvP is almost complete as I work to fill in those last pieces of gear but we all need to start somewhere.  At least now I could gem and enchant and reforge for PvP and actually work on my PvP binds and get used to them again.

It has been a long time since I played marksman so that would take some getting used to again and it has been an even longer time since I played it in PvP.  But, as I said, we all start somewhere, and might as well start getting some play time on it.

So while I still need a fair deal of PvP gear I decided to do some arenas as it is a much more controlled place to work on setting up my keys so I can get comfortable with them.  I will get back to battlegrounds to fill out those honor pieces while collecting conquest to start getting some 550s.

I thought it would be fun to share some of my successes and failures when it comes to PvP thus far.

My New Bane:

I am at a complete loss when it comes to feral druids and I do not remember it ever being like that when I used to PvP.  Rogues were always my issue, still are to some extent, but I have been getting my ass handed to me by ferals whenever I see them lately.

After having countless one on ones with a feral in battlegrounds and arenas and never once seeing myself get the upper hand of a battle I finally got my revenge on one last night.  Not once but twice.  When all was said and done he won the war taking me out later a few times and won the battleground because, well, he was horde so of course he would win, but at least I finally had my one little moment of victory.

After taking the lumber mill everyone ran away and I was left alone to defend.  As tempted as I was to run with everyone else to keep in the fight I wanted to stay until we got the flag, at least.  I did what I normally do and threw a flare on the flag and an explosive trap in "just the right spot".

Not sure how he managed it but the druid got the jump on me, did not even see him from the flare, did not hear the woosh sound you hear when there is someone stealth around you and he had me on the defensive immediately, as in I was heading off the cliff and I needed to save my life.

A quick turn and disengage and I was back on the ledge and on the druid.  I do not think he expected that at all, most times when you knock someone off the ledge they are gone, but not so with a hunter.  He had a shaman come up behind him, so it was me and him but he had a healer.

A quick glance to the flag and I noticed my explosive trap expired.  So while I was beating on my, trying to control the healer, and basically making it nowhere and idea came to mind.  Trick him into killing himself.  I fired a new explosive at the flag and kited him to the area between the flag and the ledge.  Then positioning myself inward again, I hit deterrence and just turned tail and ran.

The druid did exactly what I was hoping he would do.  He ran straight into the flag to take it but my explosive trap made sure the only thing he would take is a short flight down.  When my deterrence wore off I turned to the shaman, now alone without this druid beating on my and made him regret ever deciding the help the druid in the first place.

The druid did not die from the fall, damn cat form, but he came running right back up as fast as he could.  By the time he got to me the shaman was dead, he was still at around half life and had no healer, and I was feeling awesome about myself for that one moment where I tricked him to throwing himself off the cliff.  I killed him quite easily by lining up an aimed followed by chimera and double kill shot.  I stood victorious for once against a druid, against a druid with a healer.

It would not last long however.  The druid and I met again up there three more times, but not really alone, or mostly alone, like we had been.  He got the better of me every single time.  And a priest in his group really got the better of me.  I managed to trick the druid again.  Put the explosive at my feet and backpedaled over it.  People will always follow you if you are backpedaling, remember that.  He walked right into the trap and went flying again.  I could swear I heard him yell, at least in my mind, but a priest life gripped him back on.  Awesome freaking reaction speed from the priest.  That is something you can not teach, plan or even practice.  That type of reaction is why I am going thought my paces here practicing, so I can get that good.  Props to the priest, nice job.  But why did you have to save a freaking feral druid.  Yeah, he came back and killed me.  Bastard.

My Flag:

Last week, while still only PvE geared doing some battlegrounds with my friends we got into a twin peaks.  Three went to the light house and myself and a healer ran to mines.  When we got to mines there were three horde there.  They all went for the healer, which worked out well being as he is fully PvP geared and I am not.  If they all went after me they could have killed me and then taken out the healer.  Their mistake for ignoring the extremely, as in no geared, under geared hunter.

He managed to keep himself up, I managed to keep pressure off him as best I could with binding, traps, scatter, whatever I could, as I picked off one at a time that was trying to kill him.  Oddly enough, after I killed 2 of them the third one decided to come after me.  Ever heard of too little to late buddy.  With a healer at my back even PvE geared I was able to rip him a new one.

We took the mine and my friend said, lets stay here and try to keep it.  Who am I to complain, he is the experienced PvPer.  Then something odd happened, something that I could not refer to as anything other than one of those old karate movies.

The horde kept coming at us, but they kept coming at us one at a time, sometimes two.  But never once in full force or even with enough to come close to taking us.  They would come up, I would take them out one at a time.  They would always go for the healer first, I would always kill them before they could even put a dent in his armor.

This continued over and over and I wish it had continued more so I could have gotten the achievement for 50 kills and no deaths because I never died.  Heck I do not think I ever dipped before 90% life.  Neither me or the healer.  You would think we were playing an allaince team with as poorly organized as these people where.

No one ever came to mines to help us, we did not need it.  And horde never made a real effort to get it.  But toward the end of the match we were having quite a laugh as people would revive and start running out, see us, and then turn to run along the beach.  It became quite clear that no one on the horde side wanted anything to do with us.  Me and my healer.  My flag, and you can't have it.

Kill The Healer:

Often I hear that.  Be it battlegrounds or be it arena.  Kill the healer.  Well, it is a lot easier said than done, healers are god mode if played well, even more so if played well against someone of my limited PvP skilled and gear.

A few times however I get lucky, where everything seems to fall into place and timing is perfect and I can get the upper hand on a healer.  I have two such stories from arena last night that fit that description.

I was told to go all out on the healer, our healer was going to stay back and the other DPS was going to try and peel for him.  My job was to pressure the healer as much as possible that they could not get in range of the DPS so we could pick off the DPS and healer at the same time.   It is a good strat and one I used to use when I did do arenas.  The idea is to make the healer forget about others and force them to worry about themselves.

One fight, with a holy priest, I think the only one I have seen in PvP arena or battleground, I went in hard, using my spider I land locked them so we could quickly get the distance where they could not heal their team mates that were going after my healer.

I think kept him slowed with concussive so he could not get in range and put on the pressure. Aimed, stampede, crows, fervor, aimed, aimed.  Okay, healer is now successfully only worried about himself.  Now time to take him out mixing control with shots.  Scatter interrupts a heal, steady, silencing shot interrupts a heal, chimera, steady, explosive trap knocks him back to interrupt a heal, aimed, freezing trap interrupts a heal, I know he just called for help because my healer says on voice chat they just left him alone and are heading for me.  Too late, healer is dead.

There is no greater feeling than taking out a healer in PvP nowadays being they are so damn powerful.  At this stage in the game I think when I beat a healer it is more then doing something wrong than it is me doing something right.  But it still feels good.

Another fun healer kill was with a druid healer.  Myself and the other damage dealer went after their healer.  The others went after ours.  Whoever gets their healer dead first wins.  This is what it seems arenas are all about now.  Whoever kills or controls the healer wins.

We did have a lot of fun with this druid however.  Using the pillar in the arena the druid kept trying to LoS us.  But I kept throwing a trap on one side and circling the other.  While the melee would chase him, I would run right into his face.  He would go here, there and everywhere around the pillar but it seemed he was always running into one of us.  At least until he had the bright idea to go cat and run.  Scare beast baby.  Not exactly bound in a very friendly place for me right now being I do not use it often but Alt - and the healer was effectively dead. Stopped his get away dead in its tracks.  And as luck would have it, he was scared directly into both of us who then unloaded together for once and killed him and then, of course, went on to win the match.  Whoever kills the healer first wins, so kill the healer.

I've been having fun with a little PvP here and there lately.  I could post failures, but that is not fun.  Just be aware, there were a lot more failures than there were successes like these.  I am still learning and that is the fun of it all.  At least now there is some new gear for me to aim for.  And wow, I love the conquest catch up system and my 11K cap.  Awesome.

16 comments:

  1. Nice, indeed. :-)

    In arenas, what was the setup? I'd suggest a newb-friendly setup for while you are learning, but since you are a hunter... there's a limit on how newb-friendly this can get, you are always expected to CC a lot and hold up to pressure when your healer is CCd. Still, some setups are more, shall we say, linear, than others. If you are into fast pressure games, choose ret-hunt-disc (hunter spec might vary), for example. You can switch a ret to a rogue, too (there's a limit to how high this setup can go, but up until that ceiling it is very deadly and playing it is pretty straightforward).

    Also, if you haven't been doing this yet, do duels. They help a ton. Plus, they are going to be ever more fun for you since hunters potential in duels is very high. Ferals will, I suppose, be one of the harder opponents still, but they are totally doable.

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    1. MM Hunter, Feral Druid, Resto Shaman.

      I do not have a lot of options as to who to PvP with. Not many in my guild are into it. We have tried to recruit often to get into it more and our PvP officer is always on and always willing to run (he is one that is helping me) but it is like people will not join a guild to PvP unless they already have a bunch of PvPers. Guess the same could be said for raiding guilds. I know I would not join a guild "looking to raid" but I would join one that had a spot and was going to run right away. Such is life.

      I used to love dueling on my hunter. One on one a hunter is unbeatable by an equally skilled player. Maybe even a slightly higher skilled player with a little luck on their side.

      I am still not comfortable enough with my new MM set up and binds to duel. I was forever hitting the wrong keys last night. I will want to play around with it and get used to it a little bit before I go dueling otherwise I will make a fool of myself, I mean bigger than I am already trying to PvP. :P

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    2. Hunter-feral-rshaman ain't a bad comp, actually. It was played widely before and still makes quite some sense today.

      Both feral and, to a slightly lesser extent, yourself, would benefit if the other one changed to a warrior, but that's a different story. :-)

      Practice cyclone into scatter-trap (the other way is way easier) - that's your bread and butter. And concentrate on creating very high pressure in the opener, forcing a trinket right there - for that you will have to make the feral who is now peeling sure you won't die easily (and for that you have to master LoS and watching the other team's buffs - that's where duels come handy, btw), because it is the feral who has to initiate the opener, if it is to be any good, not you.

      For 2s, btw, if any of your 3s teammates are up for it, go with them (anyone: rshaman or feral, or even boomkin if the feral is feeling like playing it) - you will understand each other better.

      Good luck. Fun times! :-)

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    3. One of the things we have been having a ton of fun with is binding shot and knock back. I bind them, feral blows them back, binding stuns them for 4 seconds for moving 10 yards away.

      Guess we can add clone / scatter to the mix as well. Nice little goodies to think about.

      I am going to wait until I get my PvP weapon before doing 2s, in 2s I need to do better. At least in threes I can some time get away with being the weak link as long as I can keep my control end up, but in 2s I need to put the numbers out as well more so.

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  2. Hunters are OP in pvp right now. They have way too much cc and on top of that they do a lot of damage.

    It's common to see Hunters top damage and top killing blows in random BGs. It's also common to see 3,4 or even 5 hunters in a random BG team at the moment.


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    1. Yes and No on the OP comment.

      Hunter have the potential to be OP but are absolutely not OP. OP means you run in, hit anything, win. The level you need to play a hunter at to be OP is insanely high and playing at that level is harder than any other class. When they use the saying "easy to play hard to master" it is referring to hunters in PvP.

      When I used to PvP back in wrath I had 104 key binds and I wasn't even using everything. I was never very good because I never put in enough time to get good enough to do everything I needed to do. There is just too much to do as a hunter. It is part of the fun and part of the frustration.

      From what I have seen in RBGs and the few I ran into in arenas hunters seem to do piss poor damage compared to all other classes, at least as I have seen as I said. I still look at any hunter I see in a battleground as a free kill. I only need to be marginally better and I will win because they have no ability to put any pressure on me and if I mix in control and they do not it is an easy win.

      At low levels, yes, I see hunters ruling the charts just hitting anything, they are truly OP there. Not at max level. Perhaps in RBGs with the skilled players because a skilled hunter will rule that is true, but at least in the BGs I have seen I've never seen a hunter rule the numbers.

      I am climbing up the charts however. Now that I am in my PvP gear, only 515 because I have mostly 496 stuff, I am now good for top 5 damage done in most randoms. But I think that is more so because the others are bad than I am getting better. It is still a nice place to practice, at least while I still need honor. Once I no longer need honor I can not see myself doing BGs any longer. Why would any alliance in their right mind do a random? It is suicide. lol

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    2. On damage - hunters won't be top damage in rated BGs, that place belongs to DKs and locks / boomkins. If a hunter is top damage, it's the fault of other specs.

      Obviously, in random BGs, anything can happen.

      For top damage, go surv, find the biggest ball of people (so, prefer AV and IOC), then Multishot to abuse Serpent Spread + Viper Venom. That's it. If the entire BG is one big ball of people against the other, then yes, you will beat everyone.

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    3. I am not about top damage myself. I am about winning and as I am going to do MM in arena I want to practice in MM.

      I went into undercity last night, just me and one friend, figured we could pick up some fights in a lesser populated city. We got owned. Maybe next time we should bring a few more people to play around. It was fun however, but the run back there is dreadful. I'm not going there again.

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    4. In RBGs I have played, Hunters are typically on node defence, where all their cc is extremely useful, so unless it's a flag game I would not expect to see them spamming aoe in mid.

      Certainly you would expect a DK to be doing high damage, but they don't bring a lot else to the table. Having high damage AND a ton of CC is what makes Hunters if not OP then very dominant in the hands of a good player.

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    5. I usually get stuck on defense myself. Guess I am getting practice for later then it seems.

      And yes, said that way you are 100% right, hunter are very dominant in the hands of a good player. Now to just learn to become one myself. ;)

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    6. Sure, hunters are much better when they are on defending nodes (the other thing they have for this apart from CC is invis) than when they are trying to top damage, no disagreement.

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    7. I was so pissed when I noticed AoC does not work in PvP. I was looking forward to shorter cooldowns and overlapping camos. :(

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  3. Take it from a hunter 2 pieces away from full prideful. You can top the charts in RBGs.

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    1. Even if I have no experience in that matter I have to agree with what PvP anon said. It will all depend on the group.

      Equal gear and equal skill, a hunter should not be topping it. That is speaking purely from a math perspective.

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  4. First, it's good to see you back posting, I always look forward to them.

    Second, I'm always amazed at your skill in playing hunter, your reflexes are way better than mine. That disengage to get back on the bluff is something I couldn't do, even if I thought of it in time. Good work. I finally have learned hunter well enough to get my hunter at theoretical max for her equipment in pve. I run my equipment though SimC just for reference, but I don't have your reflexes. It's good to hear how you do things, I learn from reading how you do it, also, the different abilities you use in pvp vs pve are nice to hear, it's been a while since I did pvp as well, and I've never really done it on my hunter. My fave has always been my feral druid :D The inability to switch from tank to dps and back instantly though pisses me off and made me not want to pvp anymore. After your glowing review of feral druids, I think I'll have to revisit that decision :)

    Third, I *love* when the opponents come at your one at a time, spaced out nicely so you can keep killing one just as another shows up. Nice way to rack up killing blows. :D

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    1. Thanks. I think I missed posting more than I did playing.

      I've missed with that disengage trick as many times I have hit with it. When you get it right it is really fun. I remember once on they trash before rag in firelands one worm picked me up to throw me and I jumped back and the entire raid was amazed. I played it off like "I do this all the time" and I try all the time, but don't always get it. Bind disengage to something you can get to quick and if you mouse turn with that you can do it. Just takes a little practice and a little luck. I mouse turn being I use a track ball which makes it super easy. My problem is I often over turn and end up doing a 360 and still mess up. But like I said, when you get it, it is awesome.

      Feral is great in PvP right now. If you are quick at getting up your bleeds once you are in all PvP gear your bleeds can kill someone alone. The ferals kill me a lot lately and the one on my 3s is a beast. But he is just that good of a player. Top 5 WoL in PvE as well. Skill seems to transfer over, for some.

      That was funny. It was like once of those movies where it was me vs an army and they send them in one at a time. I always wondered in the movies why they do not all attack at once, said, that is not the way real people would act. Well, these are real people and they really do it, I guess the movie was right. Surprise to me. But it makes it so much easier for me. :)

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