(Just in case you cannot read the text in the picture, “Altdorf stands strong! The city is Recovering. No mercy for the straggling Order.”)

For those who haven’t surfed the forums relentlessly, Istaflyiii on Gorfang discovered a bug that basically hands Destruction the keys to Altdorf three times a day. By just respirating oxygen into carbon dioxide, Destruction can flip zones and get to Altdorf.

And order can do nothing about it. In fact, if Order tries to do something, it actually works in Destruction’s favor.

Wow. What a disincentive for RVR if you have any shred of realm pride. Fortunately, Mythic says they are working on the bug, though the timeline for a fix is sketchy at best.

One player on Gorfang wanted to try to quantify the gear and renown haul due to the VP bug, and Destro of course, say it’s not a big deal (though there are the few who are calling attention to this).

Case in point: Cald noticed that Order owned one keep in Thunder Mountain. We claimed it, noticed we had about six people and called in T4 channel for help. Anyone who wanted to defend with Ventrilo could join our warband and we could try to prevent Destro from taking the keep.

I wish I had taken screenshots of what some said to me (and I would blur the names to prevent too much humiliation). I got several tells from people saying “Don’t defend it only flips to the city faster” who were actually ANGRY at me trying to defend our lands!

Of course I didn’t listen, and we led about three groups from TM to KV to try to defend. It was all in vain. We were up against 5 warbands at one point (90 on the keep and another warband defending BOs).

Morale on Order side is very low. Let’s hope they fix this bug soon.

Who wants to roast some hotdogs?

*sigh* I love a fair, equal fight, but sometimes we’re just too organized for our own good. Most of the weekend we ran scenarios with Pylith, Saaz, Organdonar, Banofir, Vanhellings, myself and our newest member, Cal. A good time was had by all, except the Destruction, I suppose.

But our goal was to get many more of us to level 40, and that wasn’t happening as quickly as we would have liked with mere scenarios. We decided instead to PVE our way (ie. AE grind a chapter 22 quest in Caledor). However, my husband, Saaz, and I have a hard time staying awake when PVEing. We trekked to Fred Meyer and bought our first ever coffee pot:

Well, we figured out how to use it (I still feel dumb typing this) and we also got to stay up until past midnight because we drank way too much coffee after 3 p.m. Ugh. That sucked. At some point we also made a brief appearance at Bastion Stair, which we weren’t terribly impressed with and we aren’t sure if we really want to go back.

Cal made an interesting post regarding Bastion Stair and other PVE-oriented loot on our forums. He explained to us die-hard PVPers what the PVE gear is for (because we don’t really want to PVE our way to victory in any game). I, for one, am hoping Cal’s predictions hold true:

The fun part is that this all changes in 1.1, if rumors are to be believed. No one is quite sure how that’s going to happen, at this point. If I were a gambling man, I’d gamble on all pieces in a set dropping in PvP from someone of that level renown rank. At least, that’s what makes the most sense to me.

I would love Mythic so much if they did this.

We have no idea when patch 2.4 is coming out. But we might as well brace ourselves for the crap we’re going to have to do to be competitive in PVP. Throughout this post, I am going to talk about spell haste, because my main is a paladin. But there is also melee haste with the same values.

(EDIT: Haste rating also reduces global cooldown)

According to a post by Blizzard, haste rating is as follows:

Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1 percent haste

Spell Haste Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1 percent spell haste

It is inevitable that we will have to pve to get pvp gear. Take these items for instance:

Complicated maths below.

With those two items alone, a player gets 56 haste rating which is 3.54 spell haste. What does it take to get these? Brace yourself, because there’s a lot of PVE in your future: 75 badges for the trinket and 60 badges for the cloak.

Side rant: What a rip eh? I can’t say I’m surprised. I have three characters that I’m trying to gear up (Perle, Xorena and Kinare). No way in hell I’m going to pve that much. I’ll have to pick one character and I’m pretty sure that’s going to be Perle. This also means that we’re going to have to help each other out. Warriors/druids will have to spec tank. I’ll gladly help pay for the respec for a few heroic runs this weekend. We have a couple of healers too, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

OK so aside from the cloak and trinket, what else can you get that doesn’t hit too hard on the resilience?

Gems. Quick Dawnstone, Forceful Talasite and Reckless Noble Topaz.

For my paladin, this means I have to cut down on the mp5 gems. I’m not so sure I like that. But let’s assume I get all of the new gems in yellow slots and try to keep my meta.

I use mystical skyfire diamond, which requires more blue than yellow gems. I would replace 3 of my gems (2 gems of 9 heal/4 int and 1 gem of 4 int and 2mp5) with a quick dawnstone = 24 spell haste rating. When combined with the above 56 haste rating I get 5.06 percent haste rating. My 2.5 second cast time Holy Light will cast in 2.374 seconds. If I use all eight gem slots (and get a new meta) for quick dawnstones (120 haste rating), I would have a total of 7.6 percent reduced cast time. My Holy Light would cast in 2.31 seconds.

But there are other haste items, and you can search for them if you go here on WoWhead. For a paladin, the items would be Lightbringer Belt (24 spell haste) and Lightbringer Treads (24 spell haste). If I wanted to whore myself out to a 25 man guild then I would have a total (with gems and the aforementioned items) I would have 168 haste rating and 10.6 percent haste rating, and a cast time on Holy Light of 2.235.

And to get those, I would have to join a guild that does 25 man instances. No thanks! I don’t have the time, and less than a 10th of a second reduction in cast time (PVP only vs PVP and PVE) is not worth it.

For more pvp related changes, visit PVP Source.

I’ll tell you the most efficient way to get your gear. This guide assumes you have access to an arena team and that you enjoy pvp.

In a nutshell, my reasoning is thus: Get the best pvp gear you can as fast as you can. In order, buy your rings (2), bracer, neck, belt, boots and battlemaster trinket (if necessary) before you buy any gladiator’s gear. That’s what your arena team is for.

First off, the vendors for all but the latest two seasons of pvp gear are in the Hall of Heroes in Orgrimmar. Once you get inside there are several vendors. I will focus on two of them. First is Doris Volanthius, a blood-elf chick in the middle of the room:

She sells the items I mentioned above:

This is the paladin set but the premise is the same for all. Pay attention to the mark requirements as well.

At some point you also want to get your pvp trinket, the one that breaks you from all movement-imparing effects. Buy that from Brave Stonehide, to the left of the other vendor.

She also sells potions for marks.

The two trinkets are easily confused. One has a five-minute cooldown, the other has a two-minute cooldown.

See the difference? I hope so. Don’t waste your honor on the bad trinket.

As far as gladiator gear goes, don’t buy any until all of the aforementioned items are purchased. Yes, I know the 4-set bonus is tempting and the gear is slightly cheaper. But you’ll spend less time sucking if you buy this gear first. After you have bought all of this, fill out your stuff with season 1 gear.

Good luck, and for the Horde!