Apologies for flaunting social conventions and doing a "throwback" style post on Wednesday instead of Thursday, but I think you all will make it.
I've gotten a couple of comments recently that I hadn't done a fitness post in a while! I was surprised, I didn't think anyone really enjoyed reading about that sort of stuff. I mostly started posting about it as a way to keep myself accountable; at the time, I had just switched from cutting (losing weight) to maintenance / bulking (I did maintenance for a month then bulked - gaining weight). Switching from having such a clear goal in my mind while cutting to bulking because ... because that's what everyone says you should do, left me feeling like I was spinning my wheels. That, combined with starting WoW back up, made me concerned that I'd start skipping the gym and lose everything I had worked hard for over the past 4-6 months. Once I got into a good groove with the gym and found my motivation again, I didn't feel compelled to post about it every week.
Here's what happened over the past however many months since I last posted about fitness stuff:
I started off using a program that I kind of cobbled together that was focused on both strength and hypertrophy (muscle size) gains. This program was based on principles from other popular programs that had the same goal. Since I didn't have any social sports over the winter, I added a 4th day at the gym, and originally I had planned on running 3 times a week. At some point my hip started bothering me and I took a couple weeks off of running to let it heal. Of course, this break from running also happened to coincide with the cold weather, and as much as I love running in the cold (it's awful), I ended up just not running over the winter at all.
At some point I changed my rep scheme up on my strength day. Initially I had been following the 5/3/1 scheme, but I felt like only doing this on a single day didn't make a ton of sense. I went to 4 sets of 3, and then if I succeeded at that, the next week I'd do 4 sets of 4. All of this went swimmingly until ...
Ok, so back in the fall, one night during kickball my right knee was kind of bothering me. I am 98% certain I hurt it while running around the bases; I'm not sure if I planted at a funny angle or what, but the outside of my knee hurt, and it was even worse when I rounded the bases. I didn't think much of it at the time, and indeed, the pain was largely gone the next day. I've had similar twinges in the past, things I just jot down as landing awkwardly and needing to rest to recuperate.
But at some point the pain would come back after lifting. It never hurt while I was doing the exercises so I wasn't even sure what was causing it. It went from kind of bothering me every once in a while if I stood up quickly (awkwardly?) to being painful every day after the gym, even when walking. Along the way I tried changing up my form on Squats in various ways - feet closer together, feet farther apart, lighter weights, etc. The only thing that succeeded in doing was injuring my hip (not in the same place as before). I took a 3 week break from Squats, but continued deadlifting, etc. The knee seemed better so I tried lower weights with Squats ... the pain returned. It even had started to bother me while I was lifting. Deadlifts and even bent over rows were now causing me issues.
Looking back I probably should have just stopped sooner. In the moment though, it's hard to convince yourself to stop and lose most of the progress you've made over the past 6-8 months. I kept thinking that if I just found the right form it would stop hurting. I never did find that form. So I stopped doing deadlifts and squats altogether. At my "peak" I had done 4 sets of 4 squats at 285 lbs and 3 sets of 4 deadlifts at 335. Those numbers aren't earth shattering for most serious lifters, but there were very few people at my gym that lifted more than I did on those exercises. Even some guys that were clearly bigger than me weren't lifting as much as I was. I took pride in that and that is part of what made it so difficult to stop. What finally really forced me to stop is that we started running again, having signed up for several races.
My knee didn't usually bother me while running, but sometimes it would bother me afterward. Having some occasional knee pain while at work after lifting didn't seem terribly awful ... having knee pain during / after running or playing sports seemed like a terrible idea though. So I stopped squatting and deadlifting and told myself that if I was still having knee pain in a month, I'd go to the doctor.
Pause here because I know some people will be reading this thinking, "why didn't you go to the doctor sooner?!" And the answer to that is - if I had gone to the doctor and said, "hey I'm having a lot of knee pain while doing squats and deadlifts at the gym, what should I do?" the doctor would have said, "stop squatting and deadlifting, wait a month, see if it still hurts."
At this point, the knee pain is mostly gone. We have a half marathon this coming Sunday and I will be interested to see how well I do! I'll let you know how it goes.
At any rate, when I finished my cut last fall, I was ~176 lbs. I spent 4 weeks at maintenance and then 18 weeks bulking - I finished my bulk at around 190 lbs. 14 lbs over 18 weeks is pretty good! Assuming ideal conditions, you can gain about a half pound of muscle every week; that would put me at 9 lbs of muscle gained and 5 lbs of fat. If that's actually the case, that would be awesome ... but somehow I doubt that's how much I really gained. I guess we'll find out when I finish my cut!
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
But wait, we're not done yet!
After we hit 2k, we decided to stop and bask in our achievement (as well as buy the transmog gear that you can only purchase if you are higher than 2k). We tried to find a 3s partner but were unable to, so we goofed around in a 5v5 group and then my priest partner had to log for the night.
I wasn't quite ready for bed, so I tried to find a group to do Rated Battlegrounds with. I only needed 2 more wins to get to 75 total, which gives you the Vicious Wolf mount and the title, "Veteran of the Horde." I applied to 3 groups, 2 of which were using voice chat and 1 which was not. Of course the one that wasn't using chat invited me, and I admit that I was skeptical about our chances because of it.
The first map we had was Eye of the Storm - not one of my favorites. I have had really bad luck on this map and I thought this might be a one-and-done kind of group. Much to my surprise, we managed to wipe the opposing team in the middle and grab the flag (EotS has 4 bases around the perimeter and a flag in the middle; the amount of points you get for capping the flag is based on how many bases you control. If you're unsure of your ability to repeatedly wipe the opposing team in mid, one strategy is simply to hold the flag until the very end of the game and then cap it, giving you a close win). We capped it, wiped them again, and the game was essentially over. Nice!
It was at that point that I realized 4-5 of the members were from the same server. I'm not sure if they were on voice or not, but that probably helped. The next match was in Arathi Basin. This game was pretty one-sided, and at one point we even held all 5 of the bases (not for long, but still!)! 75 wins, a new title, and a new mount. Woohoo!
I decided to stick with the group because we had been playing so well. The next map was Warsong Gulch and ... wow. Just total domination. They didn't even get a single kill! At this point both team's MMR was up around 1800 so I was quite surprised how easily we won. This game also happened to get me to exalted with the Warsong faction, giving me a new title of Conqueror (exalted with Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, and Warsong Gulch)!
Unfortunately, the group broke up after this. Even more unfortunate is that I was trying to add the leader as a friend, but he left right before I clicked the button ... and now I can't remember his name. Ah well. I finished the week a tidy 7-0 in RBGs, bringing my rating up to 1734!
Editor's note: Wow, you know ... I wrote this before I had uploaded the images to imgur. I had forgotten his name, but then while proofreading this post before publishing it ... I realized it's in the screenshots I took!
I wasn't quite ready for bed, so I tried to find a group to do Rated Battlegrounds with. I only needed 2 more wins to get to 75 total, which gives you the Vicious Wolf mount and the title, "Veteran of the Horde." I applied to 3 groups, 2 of which were using voice chat and 1 which was not. Of course the one that wasn't using chat invited me, and I admit that I was skeptical about our chances because of it.
The first map we had was Eye of the Storm - not one of my favorites. I have had really bad luck on this map and I thought this might be a one-and-done kind of group. Much to my surprise, we managed to wipe the opposing team in the middle and grab the flag (EotS has 4 bases around the perimeter and a flag in the middle; the amount of points you get for capping the flag is based on how many bases you control. If you're unsure of your ability to repeatedly wipe the opposing team in mid, one strategy is simply to hold the flag until the very end of the game and then cap it, giving you a close win). We capped it, wiped them again, and the game was essentially over. Nice!
It was at that point that I realized 4-5 of the members were from the same server. I'm not sure if they were on voice or not, but that probably helped. The next match was in Arathi Basin. This game was pretty one-sided, and at one point we even held all 5 of the bases (not for long, but still!)! 75 wins, a new title, and a new mount. Woohoo!
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| Vicious War Wolf |
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| No kills for you! |
Editor's note: Wow, you know ... I wrote this before I had uploaded the images to imgur. I had forgotten his name, but then while proofreading this post before publishing it ... I realized it's in the screenshots I took!
Monday, April 27, 2015
Your Monday Arena Update
So last week I mentioned that we had gotten oh-so-close to hitting 2k in 2v2 arenas, getting to 1988 before finishing on a losing streak and falling all the way back down to the 1930s. On Friday night our hunter for 3s wasn't around so we went back to 2s again.
We started off with a couple of wins and a couple of losses, including one against a hunter/druid combination that was so disheartening that after the game I actually said, "Well we could always just try and find a hunter in LFG for 3s ..." Most matches we have are pretty close, with both teams having moments where they are able to apply pressure, forcing the other team to use defensive cooldowns. While some games do end early on during one team's burst CDs, the vast majority end up being fairly long, with dampening (dampening reduces healing effectiveness and gradually increases as the game goes along) reaching a high enough point that the healers simply cannot keep up with the damage output. And then you have some games where one team is just clearly in control - forcing all the defensive cooldowns of the other team, not having to use any of their own. The druid/hunter combo match was the latter type of game; it seemed like we simply had no chance.
The games after that went pretty well though. We had one wild game against a priest/rogue where I was somehow able to take the priest down very early on in the game with my first cycle of burst CDs. Most teams know to use defensive cooldowns / CC when they see Incarnation popped ... but it's possible to use Incarnation first, bait those cooldowns, and then pop Berserk afterward. This is exactly what I did with the priest in this match and it worked amazingly well. It always shocks me when I kill a healer this quickly because it is a rather rare occurrence - I actually yelled out loud when it happened!
We faced some double DPS teams and did well against them, as we usually do (apparently Disc Priests really shine against double DPS). One of the teams was a rogue/shadow priest comp that ... well, this was possibly the funniest game of the night. The rogue opened on our priest, I opened on the rogue, and got a 5 point rip (DoT) on him before getting blinded. The shadow priest hadn't really engaged yet so I didn't trinket and just sat in blind (7 seconds?). The rogue got feared (and didn't trinket or cloak it) and was still in fear when blind wore off. I was able to get stealth back, opened on the rogue and he dropped in a matter of seconds. The game was over, just like that. I don't even think the shadow priest ever tried to drop shadowform and heal the rogue. Both of us laughed and puzzled about what they were doing. Still no idea.
We had an interesting fight against a Warlock / Paladin team, too. We haven't done well against this comp in the past. In fact, I am not sure we've ever beaten this comp. Warlocks in this comp essentially play a long-term, wear you down style. You don't need to worry about any burst damage, but at the same time, their survivability makes it so it's hard to burst them down, too. The past couple times we've faced a team like this, I've tried adding my dots to both the paladin and warlock, trying to beat them at their own game. It hasn't been successful yet, but we have done better than when I just focused on one or the other. This game it worked pretty well - so well, in fact, that the Paladin had to go and drink a couple of times. The fact that he was able to drink was a failure on our part; we hadn't really seen a paladin need to do that before so were not ready for it and couldn't stop him. I think had he not gotten any drinks in we would have won. As it turned out, I managed to kill the warlock with me and my priest at about 30% health. Dampening was so high at this point that despite trying to spam heals on my priest, his health barely budged. The paladin, at full health, was able to kill my priest. I got stealth back and was going to wait for my passive healing to bring my health up (and wait for my cds to come back), but the Paladin started to res the warlock. Knowing that couldn't happen, I had to open up on him ... and ended up losing, just barely. Definitely closer overall though, and made me feel confident we might be able to beat those teams going forward with more focus on the opposing healer's mana.
As our rating crept up, we started facing more and more hunter teams. We saw hunter teams with just about every single healer type - monk (lost), shaman (won), priest (won). I'm going to be honest - monks just confused me. I don't understand which of their abilities is interruptable or the length of their CDs or anything. That game was much closer than the druid/hunter match we had earlier, but I'm still not sure they were ever in real danger. The shaman and priest teams both made the same mistake - switching from focusing me to focusing the priest. I honestly have no idea why they did it, but in both cases that pushed the match in our favor (in my mind, at least). Switching from me to the healer does 2 things:
1) it takes away one of the main CCs the hunter has, as priests can dispel ice trap but feral druids cannot. So instead of trapping the priest and forcing him to sit in it, they would trap me and then I would get immediately dispelled
2) it allows the priest to "pillar hump." Pillar humping describes a defensive behavior that basically boils down to running around one of the objects on the map that you cannot run/shoot through. The healer, trying to get away from the hunter, can focus on healing himself and running around the pillar, trying to LoS (line of sight) the hunter and reduce his damage. When the hunter focuses me, on the other hand, I can't just run away from him because then I can't do any damage - I have to try and keep up with him (or the healer).
I usually try not to check our rating after we win as I don't want to jinx myself or get too amped up about what a win/loss could mean, but we had been doing pretty well and it was hard to refrain from checking.
1994. One win away 2000. At this point it was kind of hard to ignore it and not mention in chat, "one win away!" Of course, this led to jokes about another hunter/druid team. And as we entered the arena we saw it ... another hunter/healer team. This time the healer was a paladin, just to complete the full spectrum of healers we'd seen that night. Paladins would seem to have some decent synergy with hunters, especially with Blessing of Freedom keeping the player on which it is placed free from snares (it's hard enough to keep up with a hunter even when you can snare them!). I figured we were in for a long, painful game.
As the game started, I was able to move over and open on the Paladin without getting hit by the Hunter's flare (this doesn't happen often, but when it does ... oh man, brutal). As I opened, I got two lucky clearcasting procs (allows you to use an ability without using any energy) and got the Paladin down to 30% health without even using any of my CDs. He didn't bubble (makes him immune to damage for a certain amount of time, basically their big defensive "oh crap!" button), but he did use some of his big heal defensive CDs (I don't know what they are really called). Back to full health. Ugh. I waited for energy / minor CDs to regen and then popped my own burst cooldowns. I was able to keep him stunned until he was below half health, at which point stuns were on DR, and he started running. As his health went lower and lower, I waited for his bubble to come up. Priests are able to dispel it if they are glyphed a certain way, so I wanted to make sure I called out for it immediately (and also not use a finisher on him while he was bubbled ... goodbye combo points!). 25% health ... no bubble yet. 15% health ... screw it, I'm using my finisher. BOOM.
A chorus of cheers and laughter was heard in chat, as well as some remarks, "wait, what? did he not bubble?"
Incredible.
We started off with a couple of wins and a couple of losses, including one against a hunter/druid combination that was so disheartening that after the game I actually said, "Well we could always just try and find a hunter in LFG for 3s ..." Most matches we have are pretty close, with both teams having moments where they are able to apply pressure, forcing the other team to use defensive cooldowns. While some games do end early on during one team's burst CDs, the vast majority end up being fairly long, with dampening (dampening reduces healing effectiveness and gradually increases as the game goes along) reaching a high enough point that the healers simply cannot keep up with the damage output. And then you have some games where one team is just clearly in control - forcing all the defensive cooldowns of the other team, not having to use any of their own. The druid/hunter combo match was the latter type of game; it seemed like we simply had no chance.
The games after that went pretty well though. We had one wild game against a priest/rogue where I was somehow able to take the priest down very early on in the game with my first cycle of burst CDs. Most teams know to use defensive cooldowns / CC when they see Incarnation popped ... but it's possible to use Incarnation first, bait those cooldowns, and then pop Berserk afterward. This is exactly what I did with the priest in this match and it worked amazingly well. It always shocks me when I kill a healer this quickly because it is a rather rare occurrence - I actually yelled out loud when it happened!
We faced some double DPS teams and did well against them, as we usually do (apparently Disc Priests really shine against double DPS). One of the teams was a rogue/shadow priest comp that ... well, this was possibly the funniest game of the night. The rogue opened on our priest, I opened on the rogue, and got a 5 point rip (DoT) on him before getting blinded. The shadow priest hadn't really engaged yet so I didn't trinket and just sat in blind (7 seconds?). The rogue got feared (and didn't trinket or cloak it) and was still in fear when blind wore off. I was able to get stealth back, opened on the rogue and he dropped in a matter of seconds. The game was over, just like that. I don't even think the shadow priest ever tried to drop shadowform and heal the rogue. Both of us laughed and puzzled about what they were doing. Still no idea.
We had an interesting fight against a Warlock / Paladin team, too. We haven't done well against this comp in the past. In fact, I am not sure we've ever beaten this comp. Warlocks in this comp essentially play a long-term, wear you down style. You don't need to worry about any burst damage, but at the same time, their survivability makes it so it's hard to burst them down, too. The past couple times we've faced a team like this, I've tried adding my dots to both the paladin and warlock, trying to beat them at their own game. It hasn't been successful yet, but we have done better than when I just focused on one or the other. This game it worked pretty well - so well, in fact, that the Paladin had to go and drink a couple of times. The fact that he was able to drink was a failure on our part; we hadn't really seen a paladin need to do that before so were not ready for it and couldn't stop him. I think had he not gotten any drinks in we would have won. As it turned out, I managed to kill the warlock with me and my priest at about 30% health. Dampening was so high at this point that despite trying to spam heals on my priest, his health barely budged. The paladin, at full health, was able to kill my priest. I got stealth back and was going to wait for my passive healing to bring my health up (and wait for my cds to come back), but the Paladin started to res the warlock. Knowing that couldn't happen, I had to open up on him ... and ended up losing, just barely. Definitely closer overall though, and made me feel confident we might be able to beat those teams going forward with more focus on the opposing healer's mana.
As our rating crept up, we started facing more and more hunter teams. We saw hunter teams with just about every single healer type - monk (lost), shaman (won), priest (won). I'm going to be honest - monks just confused me. I don't understand which of their abilities is interruptable or the length of their CDs or anything. That game was much closer than the druid/hunter match we had earlier, but I'm still not sure they were ever in real danger. The shaman and priest teams both made the same mistake - switching from focusing me to focusing the priest. I honestly have no idea why they did it, but in both cases that pushed the match in our favor (in my mind, at least). Switching from me to the healer does 2 things:
1) it takes away one of the main CCs the hunter has, as priests can dispel ice trap but feral druids cannot. So instead of trapping the priest and forcing him to sit in it, they would trap me and then I would get immediately dispelled
2) it allows the priest to "pillar hump." Pillar humping describes a defensive behavior that basically boils down to running around one of the objects on the map that you cannot run/shoot through. The healer, trying to get away from the hunter, can focus on healing himself and running around the pillar, trying to LoS (line of sight) the hunter and reduce his damage. When the hunter focuses me, on the other hand, I can't just run away from him because then I can't do any damage - I have to try and keep up with him (or the healer).
I usually try not to check our rating after we win as I don't want to jinx myself or get too amped up about what a win/loss could mean, but we had been doing pretty well and it was hard to refrain from checking.
1994. One win away 2000. At this point it was kind of hard to ignore it and not mention in chat, "one win away!" Of course, this led to jokes about another hunter/druid team. And as we entered the arena we saw it ... another hunter/healer team. This time the healer was a paladin, just to complete the full spectrum of healers we'd seen that night. Paladins would seem to have some decent synergy with hunters, especially with Blessing of Freedom keeping the player on which it is placed free from snares (it's hard enough to keep up with a hunter even when you can snare them!). I figured we were in for a long, painful game.
As the game started, I was able to move over and open on the Paladin without getting hit by the Hunter's flare (this doesn't happen often, but when it does ... oh man, brutal). As I opened, I got two lucky clearcasting procs (allows you to use an ability without using any energy) and got the Paladin down to 30% health without even using any of my CDs. He didn't bubble (makes him immune to damage for a certain amount of time, basically their big defensive "oh crap!" button), but he did use some of his big heal defensive CDs (I don't know what they are really called). Back to full health. Ugh. I waited for energy / minor CDs to regen and then popped my own burst cooldowns. I was able to keep him stunned until he was below half health, at which point stuns were on DR, and he started running. As his health went lower and lower, I waited for his bubble to come up. Priests are able to dispel it if they are glyphed a certain way, so I wanted to make sure I called out for it immediately (and also not use a finisher on him while he was bubbled ... goodbye combo points!). 25% health ... no bubble yet. 15% health ... screw it, I'm using my finisher. BOOM.
A chorus of cheers and laughter was heard in chat, as well as some remarks, "wait, what? did he not bubble?"
Incredible.
Monday, April 20, 2015
So close and yet ... so far!
Continuing with the PvP theme from Friday ... over the weekend we made some pretty good progress in 2s. Friday night we had a little time and were able to finally break the 1900 barrier! That was exciting. I think we got as high as 1911 and finished at 1899; we didn't have a ton of time to play so were only able to get a handful of games in.
I didn't think my partner would be around for the rest of the weekend so I spent some time leveling up my priest and he is up to 91! One more level and I can get some useful stuff in my garrison, theoretically increasing my gold income by 50% (he has enchanting and tailoring; I'm not sure how well enchanting stuff really sells).
Much to my surprise though, my 2s partner popped in on Sunday and we were able to get some games in. Sadly, our hunter was not around so we weren't able to do any 3s (we might have to start looking for a new hunter!). We played some games, did fairly well ... ran into a bunch of double dps teams, not too many hunters, and even managed to beat a couple resto druid / rogue teams (one of which even had the 2k transmogs). Before we knew it our rating was up to 1988 and our matchmaking rating was over 2100 (!!). Most wins are in the 9-14 range, but given the discrepancy between our personal rating and mmr, one more win would have likely bumped us over 2k.
The game to go above 2k, we actually ended up facing a team we had already beaten - resto druid and rogue, their matchmaking rating was ~2100. The first game, I managed to open up on the rogue before he opened on my healer (a rarity), and then the majority of the match was spent with both DPS trying to kill the opposing healer. In the second game, I was unable to find the rogue before he opened, which was a little unfortunate but shouldn't have mattered too much in the long run. This game proceeded similarly to the first - both DPS chasing the opposing healer. There were a couple times I got the druid pretty low ... and then they switched up their strategy. The rogue switched onto me and with the bevy of stuns and snares (poisons), I was unable to keep up with the druid as easily as I had before. This change of strategy on their part was crucial and ended up costing us the game. I couldn't keep up with the druid with the rogue harassing me, but leaving the druid alone left him free to cast CCs on my priest.
Of course, after this loss we ran into a string of tough comps for us (hunter/healer, warrior/druid) and ended up losing our way back down to 1950. Almost all of these games were very close, coming down to the very end. It was frustrating that there ended up being such a discrepancy between our personal rating and matchmaking rating. It seemed as though our matchmaking rating would go up significantly upon beating a highly rated team while our personal rating went up more slowly. Had they gone up equally, we would have easily broken 2k.
Overall, both a frustrating and encouraging experience. Frustrating to have gotten so close and then watched it slip away, but encouraging because it now seems as though it might be possible to break 2k after all!
I didn't think my partner would be around for the rest of the weekend so I spent some time leveling up my priest and he is up to 91! One more level and I can get some useful stuff in my garrison, theoretically increasing my gold income by 50% (he has enchanting and tailoring; I'm not sure how well enchanting stuff really sells).
Much to my surprise though, my 2s partner popped in on Sunday and we were able to get some games in. Sadly, our hunter was not around so we weren't able to do any 3s (we might have to start looking for a new hunter!). We played some games, did fairly well ... ran into a bunch of double dps teams, not too many hunters, and even managed to beat a couple resto druid / rogue teams (one of which even had the 2k transmogs). Before we knew it our rating was up to 1988 and our matchmaking rating was over 2100 (!!). Most wins are in the 9-14 range, but given the discrepancy between our personal rating and mmr, one more win would have likely bumped us over 2k.
The game to go above 2k, we actually ended up facing a team we had already beaten - resto druid and rogue, their matchmaking rating was ~2100. The first game, I managed to open up on the rogue before he opened on my healer (a rarity), and then the majority of the match was spent with both DPS trying to kill the opposing healer. In the second game, I was unable to find the rogue before he opened, which was a little unfortunate but shouldn't have mattered too much in the long run. This game proceeded similarly to the first - both DPS chasing the opposing healer. There were a couple times I got the druid pretty low ... and then they switched up their strategy. The rogue switched onto me and with the bevy of stuns and snares (poisons), I was unable to keep up with the druid as easily as I had before. This change of strategy on their part was crucial and ended up costing us the game. I couldn't keep up with the druid with the rogue harassing me, but leaving the druid alone left him free to cast CCs on my priest.
Of course, after this loss we ran into a string of tough comps for us (hunter/healer, warrior/druid) and ended up losing our way back down to 1950. Almost all of these games were very close, coming down to the very end. It was frustrating that there ended up being such a discrepancy between our personal rating and matchmaking rating. It seemed as though our matchmaking rating would go up significantly upon beating a highly rated team while our personal rating went up more slowly. Had they gone up equally, we would have easily broken 2k.
Overall, both a frustrating and encouraging experience. Frustrating to have gotten so close and then watched it slip away, but encouraging because it now seems as though it might be possible to break 2k after all!
Thursday, April 16, 2015
PvP update and ruminations
When I first started doing RBGs, it was hard to get into groups as Feral. I thought maybe I could put together a half-decent set of gear for Boomkin and queue that way, and it did end up being easier to find groups willing to take a Boomkin than Feral (which is kind of weird, since Feral is pretty strong at the moment). But I am a terrible Boomkin. I did fine in group settings, but 1 on 1? Awful.
So I scrapped that idea and decided to try resto out. I have actually really enjoyed healing in RBGs. So much so that I went ahead and spent Conquest points on a full set of ilvl 660 gear for Resto! I now have full gear sets for both Feral and Resto (how unfortunate is it that not all of the pieces overlap?! ugh).
I actually find that I prefer healing in RBGs to dpsing. It makes me feel like I have more control over the outcome of the match as one of three healers as opposed to one of 7 dps. Plus the play-style is a lot of fun - throw hots on everything, run away, throw out some CCs. It probably doesn't hurt that my record as resto is worlds better than as feral. I muddled my way through a lot of games as feral, sometimes going .500 for the week. As resto, my winning % has got to be fairly close to .900. Part of that might just be that I am able to be more picky when it comes to choosing groups as a healer than as an unwanted dps spec. My RBG rating is up to 1670, the highest it has ever been.
In arenas I've stuck to Feral though. This is largely due to the fact that my partner is a priest, and while Disc priest is (unfortunately) one of the lower tier healers, shadow might be in an even worse place (at least for 2v2s). As feral/disc we've gotten pretty close to 1900 a couple times ... we'll get to 1890, a win away from 1900, and then face a bunch of teams that give us matchup troubles. It is remarkably unfortunate that Hunter/Healer basically counters us since Hunters are the most represented class at the moment. It is disheartening to start a game and know that unless you play perfectly and the other team screws up, you're going to lose. Our rating hovers between 1850-1900, though with more practice we might be able to break through 1900.
Due to the lack of balance in 2s, we gave 3s a try. Starting with a base of Priest and Druid, there are a couple common 3s comps that are popular and doing quite well in the current meta. The two most popular are God Comp (mage, shadow priest, resto druid) and Jungle (hunter, disc priest, feral druid); Jungle can be played with just about any healer, while God Comp generally restricts itself to Druid. This past weekend we decided to give either one a try and ended up finding a hunter before we found a mage. With varying levels of rating between the 3 of us, we started off around 1600 matchmaking rating and went 8-2 all the way up to 1800. The two losses were due to disconnects from our hunter. Given our immediate success in a mode we were largely unfamiliar with (3s), a comp we hadn't really played (jungle), a third teammate with whom we had never played before (the hunter), I felt really confident we could get up to 2k pretty easily.
Of course, then we had some time to play on Monday night and that did not go as well. We went roughly .500, and though I got my own personal rating up over 1700, I'm not sure our team MMR went much past 1800. This was a little disappointing, but understandable. But it also led me to wonder what would be the best possible comp we could play with once our alts (my priest, my partner's rogue, levels 88 and 93 respectively) are 100 and geared?
Of the two possible healing combinations we have, priest and druid, druid is currently much stronger. Priests lack the mobility and healing power that druids have, and you could certainly argue that druid's have stronger CC with cyclone, roots, and a stun compared to a priest's fear OR roots. So if we go resto druid then that leaves either shadow priest (god comp) or rogue (a variety of comps) as the DPS. In 2s, rogue would be the clear choice. Rogues are quite strong right now, though they are getting a pretty big nerf to the main PvP spec in the upcoming patch. For 3s, I don't have enough experience with either comp to know whether shadow priest or rogue would be better overall. One thing to consider is that shadow priests are basically limited to a mage (in rare cases feral, sp, and resto shaman have done well, but it would be harder to find a healer than DPS, I think) as the third partner while rogue has 2 top tier combos (mage or warlock) and another high tier combo (hunter).
Of course, all those hypotheticals never address an important question - would we want to ditch the specs (or classes?) we used for all of season 1?
So I scrapped that idea and decided to try resto out. I have actually really enjoyed healing in RBGs. So much so that I went ahead and spent Conquest points on a full set of ilvl 660 gear for Resto! I now have full gear sets for both Feral and Resto (how unfortunate is it that not all of the pieces overlap?! ugh).
I actually find that I prefer healing in RBGs to dpsing. It makes me feel like I have more control over the outcome of the match as one of three healers as opposed to one of 7 dps. Plus the play-style is a lot of fun - throw hots on everything, run away, throw out some CCs. It probably doesn't hurt that my record as resto is worlds better than as feral. I muddled my way through a lot of games as feral, sometimes going .500 for the week. As resto, my winning % has got to be fairly close to .900. Part of that might just be that I am able to be more picky when it comes to choosing groups as a healer than as an unwanted dps spec. My RBG rating is up to 1670, the highest it has ever been.
In arenas I've stuck to Feral though. This is largely due to the fact that my partner is a priest, and while Disc priest is (unfortunately) one of the lower tier healers, shadow might be in an even worse place (at least for 2v2s). As feral/disc we've gotten pretty close to 1900 a couple times ... we'll get to 1890, a win away from 1900, and then face a bunch of teams that give us matchup troubles. It is remarkably unfortunate that Hunter/Healer basically counters us since Hunters are the most represented class at the moment. It is disheartening to start a game and know that unless you play perfectly and the other team screws up, you're going to lose. Our rating hovers between 1850-1900, though with more practice we might be able to break through 1900.
Due to the lack of balance in 2s, we gave 3s a try. Starting with a base of Priest and Druid, there are a couple common 3s comps that are popular and doing quite well in the current meta. The two most popular are God Comp (mage, shadow priest, resto druid) and Jungle (hunter, disc priest, feral druid); Jungle can be played with just about any healer, while God Comp generally restricts itself to Druid. This past weekend we decided to give either one a try and ended up finding a hunter before we found a mage. With varying levels of rating between the 3 of us, we started off around 1600 matchmaking rating and went 8-2 all the way up to 1800. The two losses were due to disconnects from our hunter. Given our immediate success in a mode we were largely unfamiliar with (3s), a comp we hadn't really played (jungle), a third teammate with whom we had never played before (the hunter), I felt really confident we could get up to 2k pretty easily.
Of course, then we had some time to play on Monday night and that did not go as well. We went roughly .500, and though I got my own personal rating up over 1700, I'm not sure our team MMR went much past 1800. This was a little disappointing, but understandable. But it also led me to wonder what would be the best possible comp we could play with once our alts (my priest, my partner's rogue, levels 88 and 93 respectively) are 100 and geared?
Of the two possible healing combinations we have, priest and druid, druid is currently much stronger. Priests lack the mobility and healing power that druids have, and you could certainly argue that druid's have stronger CC with cyclone, roots, and a stun compared to a priest's fear OR roots. So if we go resto druid then that leaves either shadow priest (god comp) or rogue (a variety of comps) as the DPS. In 2s, rogue would be the clear choice. Rogues are quite strong right now, though they are getting a pretty big nerf to the main PvP spec in the upcoming patch. For 3s, I don't have enough experience with either comp to know whether shadow priest or rogue would be better overall. One thing to consider is that shadow priests are basically limited to a mage (in rare cases feral, sp, and resto shaman have done well, but it would be harder to find a healer than DPS, I think) as the third partner while rogue has 2 top tier combos (mage or warlock) and another high tier combo (hunter).
Of course, all those hypotheticals never address an important question - would we want to ditch the specs (or classes?) we used for all of season 1?
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Playing with the WoW Armory app and transmogs
I spent some time last night changing how my gear looks while waiting for RBG queues and kind of like how it turned out. I actually went into the transmog shop with a different idea in mind and accidentally clicked on a couple of pieces that I thought went together pretty well. One thing that kind of stinks about the WoW Armory App is that you can't get a good picture of your character with his weapon sheathed. I tried to turn the character a bit to get it to fit in, but I'm not sure that actually helped much. I also think that the weapon is potentially the weakest part here, but I also think it kind of ties in with the whole bone / blue aspect thing.
Looking at this screenshot, the gloves actually look a bit more purple than I had realized! I was going back and forth between that pair and another but settled on that one because of the blue circle that seemed to fit with the other blue eyes / circles on my gear. Anyway. One of the cool things you can do in the 3D viewer is select an emote action and your character will do it! Here he is flexing:
Here he is in the casting animation, from behind so you can see the cloak:
I was also torn about the cloak. I couldn't decide if that teal was close enough to the rest to look good, or if I should have gone with another option (white, royal blue, something else entirely?).
 |
| So many blue circle/eye things! |
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| So strong! |
I was also torn about the cloak. I couldn't decide if that teal was close enough to the rest to look good, or if I should have gone with another option (white, royal blue, something else entirely?).
Friday, April 10, 2015
How to get carried like a pro
In most of the groups I've been in for Highmaul, I am competitive for the top spot in DPS. Every once in a while though, you see someone in the group who vastly outgears the content. Then you see stuff like this:
This was at the beginning of the fight, when everyone had just popped their cooldowns. This was the first time I'd ever seen anybody that high. He ended the fight at a cool 38k dps; the funny part about this mage is that he was there specifically with a guildmate, Douding, who couldn't pull his own weight. I never saw another DPS carrying an under-geared friend, but there were a number of other folks with great gear. One of them was even a feral druid!
The sad thing about this group was that we downed one boss, Brackenspore, and then on the very next boss, I was too focused on my cooldowns at the start and wasn't paying attention to ground effects. I died 5 seconds into the fight and then got kicked when they wiped, ha.
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though. I then found a group that was led by several guild members who were 10/10 Mythic in BRF. What does that mumbo jumbo mean? BRF means Blackrock Foundry, which is the raid zone after Highmaul; it drops better gear. 10/10 means that they had defeated all 10 bosses and Mythic describes the level at which they were successful. Mythic is the difficulty level above Heroic, which equates to gear that is 710 ilvl! With their help, I was finally able to defeat the final boss of Highmaul on Heroic:
There are several things worth noting about this picture. First is that I earned Ahead of the Curve - I'm not sure why, since BRF has been released. There are some groups that require members to have AotC before accepting them (to ensure you've done the fight before), so that will make it easier to get into groups. Second, my dps is only 10k because I died halfway through the fight (not exactly my fault; someone let an effect too high and then I didn't get heals when it went off), which was a little disappointing because the previous two attempts I was one of the last DPS alive. And yea, you read that right - even with some folks who vastly outgeared the content, we wiped twice! They removed multiple people each time, so I was glad to have made that cut.
And the third and final point, the one that I think is the most impressive ... is the top two DPSers? They were both tanks!! Well, the paladin had tanked the first two fights and switched to DPS with Brunz switching to tank, but he had been in the top 2 regardless. The tank putting out 46k dps is crazy! I am generally able to put out ~25-27k depending on how melee friendly the fight is ... so the tank is basically worth two of me. And tanking. This still blows my mind!
There have been some questions about PvP progress, so I'll do an update on that next week.
This was at the beginning of the fight, when everyone had just popped their cooldowns. This was the first time I'd ever seen anybody that high. He ended the fight at a cool 38k dps; the funny part about this mage is that he was there specifically with a guildmate, Douding, who couldn't pull his own weight. I never saw another DPS carrying an under-geared friend, but there were a number of other folks with great gear. One of them was even a feral druid!
The sad thing about this group was that we downed one boss, Brackenspore, and then on the very next boss, I was too focused on my cooldowns at the start and wasn't paying attention to ground effects. I died 5 seconds into the fight and then got kicked when they wiped, ha.
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though. I then found a group that was led by several guild members who were 10/10 Mythic in BRF. What does that mumbo jumbo mean? BRF means Blackrock Foundry, which is the raid zone after Highmaul; it drops better gear. 10/10 means that they had defeated all 10 bosses and Mythic describes the level at which they were successful. Mythic is the difficulty level above Heroic, which equates to gear that is 710 ilvl! With their help, I was finally able to defeat the final boss of Highmaul on Heroic:
There are several things worth noting about this picture. First is that I earned Ahead of the Curve - I'm not sure why, since BRF has been released. There are some groups that require members to have AotC before accepting them (to ensure you've done the fight before), so that will make it easier to get into groups. Second, my dps is only 10k because I died halfway through the fight (not exactly my fault; someone let an effect too high and then I didn't get heals when it went off), which was a little disappointing because the previous two attempts I was one of the last DPS alive. And yea, you read that right - even with some folks who vastly outgeared the content, we wiped twice! They removed multiple people each time, so I was glad to have made that cut.
And the third and final point, the one that I think is the most impressive ... is the top two DPSers? They were both tanks!! Well, the paladin had tanked the first two fights and switched to DPS with Brunz switching to tank, but he had been in the top 2 regardless. The tank putting out 46k dps is crazy! I am generally able to put out ~25-27k depending on how melee friendly the fight is ... so the tank is basically worth two of me. And tanking. This still blows my mind!
There have been some questions about PvP progress, so I'll do an update on that next week.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
WoW has officially gone F2P!
Sort of.
In the most recent patch they added what they are calling WoW Tokens. These tokens provide a month's worth of game-time, and can be purchased from their website for $20 and then sold in-game for a certain amount of gold that varies depending on Supply/Demand. So Blizzard has gone the route that other games like EVE and Wildstar went and allowed players to essentially buy/sell gold in-game. The price opened at 30,000 gold each and after a short bump in cost, have since cratered to around 20k.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the price of these tokens. Having browsed through a variety of comment threads on the subject, some people believe the price will continue to drop as it approaches the cost of gold from 3rd party sites while others believe it will rebound and settle in once the initial rush is over.
For my part I've got about 200,000 gold which would equate to about 10 months of game time should I decide to cash them in on game tokens. I think, for now, I'll just hold onto it.
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