Fight on the Flag

Fighting over the weekend, especially Saturday, was awesome. Destro really wanted to get into Land of the Dead, but Flags in Space wouldn’t let them! Rumbles at the Battlefield Objectives were pretty good for our tiny server:

Several times we attacked the Destruction in Praag. Most of the time we were repelled by their sheer numbers. This is how fighting should be all of the time. I did take a video of a small fight. I would post more videos but the view from my Archmage is pretty boring.

Sunday we explored Land of the Dead. The officers talked and we discussed how much we want to be chasing gear vs fighting Destruction. Initially we chased gear because we were getting flat-out owned. But now, we seem to do just fine against Destro. We decided that we only want to chase gear when there is no fighting going on (usually early on Saturday/Sunday).

Personally the little I’ve seen of the Tyrant set, I really want it for my Archmage. But the bosses don’t drop the pieces every time /sigh. I really wish Mythic would realize that most people who play this game for PVP do not want to do endless equipment grinds. A few of our members have been running Lost Vale since our very first attempt, and they only need one piece to finish their set.

PVP this weekend was very off and on. We didn’t have any action Saturday until well after noon. Sunday in the morning, we thwarted what I think was a Destruction attempt to push zones in preparation for a later city push. They had a couple (or more) warbands out.

It was a lot of fun in Praag fighting in the middle and at the graveyard. The only problem is the fights would be awesome for maybe an hour, then Destro would leave and go hide for a few hours. This was great for our guild rank because we started powerleveling necessary alts. But it was terrible for morale.

Our high points were really high. One fight on Sunday, we had seven people near the east keep in Caledor. Destruction was headed toward the East BO maybe? I forget why they were there, but we wiped them with our seven people. Nobody else was around.

After that, they came back again and again. We used the terrain to our advantage, and I hugged trees and rocks to stay away from those pesky Squig Herders.

We then made the tactical mistake of getting impatient and chasing one group. We got sandwiched by another warband that had been hiding in the keep.

N’Kari Keeper of Secrets defeated!

Congratulations to FOTF, we finally finished Lost Vale! Not that it was that hard, really, as long as we had at least four wards. This was our third or fourth foray into the zone. Our first attempts were made before our tanks had 5/5 wards. Unfortunately during the previous two runs, we had two Slayer pieces drop, one before the class was even in the game. To everyone’s disappointment, I managed to get 5/6 of my Darkpromise set. I was personally hoping for a Bright Wizard chest because ours doesn’t have his Sentinel piece yet.

The encounter took us about two hours to learn, and if you include the 10-minute run back to the encounter (until we figured out how to reset it) that’s not too bad.

Anyway, enough of that PVE crap. We also took the Inevitable City again. This will make it three for Order, zero for Destruction.

After sacking the statue area.

 We had a good group, but unfortunately we did not have the tanks to complete the second stage. We did confirm that we can tank the hero with a 5/5 Sentinal-warded tank. Unfortunately the only tank there with the wards was Andora. At least we learned something.

On the leader boards, as of Monday morning Grilar got #1 renown for the week in Engineers, bringing him to #9 of all time.

Finally a /wave report, which we haven’t had in a really long time.

I think much of the reason FOTF tries to push Dragonwake is because Caledor Woods and the zone Caledor are so much fun. The scenario is like the Temple of Isha scenario from T3.

Massive fights at the center BO in Caledor are also worthwhile. This doesn’t ever seem to happen in Dragonwake, where the warcamps are separated by the length of the zone.

Caledor, middle BO, awesome fight!

Last night, we had the opportunity to participate in a fortress seige. Apparently some pretty significant changes went into effect for the fortresses, all of which was completely lost on me because I don’t obsess over the patch notes. Well, other’s dont either, because when we went up, a bunch of people died and started crying for a res. I don’t mind people crying for a res, because I like to res them. But one of the changes was to prevent healers from ressing while the fortress lord was aggro. Doh!

Fortress Destro tank wall, ur doin it… pretti well, akshully.

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After Fight on the Flag got roflstomped in a Serpent’s Passage, we checked out the gear of our foes. Damn. Lost Vale gear. Fortunately we found that sentinal gear is a breeze to get. After a few hesitant tries, we got through Sigmar Crypts without wiping the second time we went. Warpblade Tunnels also seems easy. I’m not sure what everyone was complaining about.

It was so easy I was able to mock someone else’s guild name while we were pulling.

Fortunately we cleared both by Friday so we can PVP all weekend! Enough about that boring PVE. Order has been reliably pushing to Caledor recently. Yes, we do lock zones. That means we can go to Caledor Woods, by far and away our favorite scenario.

There was a whole lot more waving going on than this. I was almost embarrassed.

Basically for those familiar with T3 scenarios, it’s just like Temple of Isha, except you can’t pick up the ball that gives you bonus to DPS. It’s just one node to take over, and this is super easy with a coordinated group and someone yelling at nubs to kill healers and witch elves.

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In the past two weeks there has been a mind-numbing amount of PVE in this guild. We’ve leveled up a new KOTBS and a new Bright Wizard. Each time we do this I swear I am never doing it again, and each time someone asks, I help anyway. When will I ever learn!

I wish this montage could adequately express the boredom.

Needless to say we are more than ready to PVP again. Look for FOTF in scenarios and, my favorite, open RVR. We goofed off earlier this week by choosing our own objective in scenarios: kill a random person over and over again.

If deaths > killing blows, we win.

We won’t do this all the time, but it’s more fun than carrying the part. Leaderboards are again down. We wouldn’t have much to report anyway since we haven’t PVPd much in the past week.

Not much RVR to report this weekend. Instead, we were powerleveling our new Knight of the Blazing Sun: Riamin. Riamin used to play Pylith, and so Saaz, who was a Swordmaster, is now playing a Bright, Khaevil.

The recent patch that created the KOTBS left Saaz/Khaevil wondering why even have a Swordmaster? He already sat in the back lines guarding the Brights and other squishy targets. So instead, Pylith is going to be guard bot and Khaevil will do rDPS.

Anyway, here is a screen of our group effort to level Riamin and Khaevil:

This was in chapter 12 of Avelorn. Riamin and Khaevil were in one group and myself and Organdonar were in the other. Organ and I healed the other two from out of group so they could hog all of the experience and influence.

The PVE was so boring there was hardly any chat on vent (except when Khaevil or Raimin died). Usually we’re a pretty talkative bunch, but not this time. OMG it felt like it was taking forever. I started listening to my Wierd Al collection (White and Nerdy was incredibly appropriate) but stopped at my Garth Brooks “complete hits” CD.

We did PVP when Dworf and Andora were online, but it was only delaying the inevitable. (Grats on 40 sometime this week, Andora.)

By the way, there are, like, no powerleveling guides for AE grinding on the net. What the heck? I’m almost of a mind to create one except I would see the popular places FOTF has come to know and love suddenly become more populated.

Anyway, here’s to hoping that our incredibly tedious boredom will end KOTBS and BW will be leveled to 28 by the weekend so we can do T4 scenarios together.

Herald was down when I tried to look for leaderboards, but it’s just as well. We didn’t PVP for more than four hours anyway.

There are times when the battles are hard fought, when I can be proud of our performance. And then there are times like these:

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.

Ugh, the 20s are slooooww leveling! And boring if the PVP queues aren’t popping. A few of us decided to push the envelope and return to a tried and true method: AE grinding.

There’s not much out there by way of information, if anyone was wondering. There are no guides to grinding AE style yet (though there are other guides to leveling). For those who came from Warcraft and are wondering: mob grinding and scenario queues are the fastest way to level from what I hear. Quests, as the fellow in the link says, are not worth the time and effort if you want to maximize your experience per hour.

AE grinding goes waaay back for long-time FotF members. One of our members has a video of a rather large pull from Avalon City in our DAOC days (I’ll ask around and put it on YouTube). Throughout the weekend we did some AE grinding, which was a heck of a lot faster than questing, mixed in with scenarios.

I’ve not been as great a photographer in recent weeks. We just moved and I just reinstalled photoshop, so now we’re in business. Expect a weekly report, since we mostly play on weekends anyway.

PVP report below the fold:

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This weekend is sort of a downer as many of us have to work (booo!). But in that downtime, if you are leveling an alt (or your main for that matter), check out Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. Yes, you pay for it, but it’s an amazing guide if you just want to level as fast as humanely possible. I’ve leveled two characters using this guide, and I am leveling a third (Starling, my warlock). It’s great, especially because Joana gives updates to the guide, even after the 2.3 leveling changes.

I also get a cut to defray the costs of the Web site and the Ventrilo server, so if you’re thinking about using the guide, click on the above link (or the side link) and I’ll get about half of what you pay for it.