Something odd is happening...

Alliance actually won a wintergrasp this week... and in less than 5 minutes to boot! After which, I received my three marks from the battle, and turned them in (along with another 37) and got some fancy new pvp shoulders on my warrior.

The night after that, the Alliance were back to business as usual and I had a spectacular losing streak of battle grounds, but gained enough honor to purchase the wrathful cloak. So hooray for losing matches with the quickness. I did get the chance to get a bit of excitement, though. Tenacity x8 makes blaaaaaaade stoooooorm a LOT of fun. I had 76,000 health, and could drop an enemy player in 4 hits (a LOT less than that if they had no resilience).

I figured I'd try to get one battleground in tonight and WSG was what came up. Holy crap, was I astonished to see 5 other players pretty well outfitted in pvp gear, and not a single heirloom weapon to be seen anywhere! It was pretty much a steamroll in favor of the Alliance.

It's interesting to see the various battlegrounds now from two perspectives. The horde truly does seem intimidating, and the alliance has no flippin clue what they're doing. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen half the team go straight for the flag in Eye of the Storm, or the entire team sans 1 person at the stables go to the mine in Arathi.

It's an odd feeling to just look at battlegrounds as a way to farm honor, instead of actually playing the game and trying to win. At points, when the team is just SO BAD I don't even feel like trying, because it would be a suicide mission to do so, I have to admit: I've given up and just stayed at a spawn point for a while until the match ends.

Come to think of it, I used to laugh about the crazy suicidal Allinace "I'm a hero - I'll kill you all with one fell swoop of my *gurgle - flop - overly dramatic death animation*" Who knew? They're not suicidal, they were just the only poor bastard on the team who actually was trying. And now it's me!?

I'm wondering if the attitudes of the players has changed a bit with all of the instant gratification we're seeing. "Oh, crap. The horde took three flags. Ok, that just means it'll be over quicker."

Honest to goodness, I have seen Alliance players justify their lack of effort as "the horde has 20 minute queues, and we can get in battlegrounds instantly." Which, coming from the Horde as I did, I know is completely untrue. It totally depends on the server / battlegroup.

And to further the topic, Blizzard is making regional cross battlegrounds, meaning all of North America will the thrust into the pool of players waiting to play matches. Which, should speed up the queue times for the Horde.

So all you Horde players rejoice! You'll be queuing up faster, and winning the same amount as always, because the Alliance just sucks at rational thought and organized fights; they'd much rather follow the safety of the herd and just defend one node.

Yep, we sure got stables here. No foul hordie is gonna take my flag! Yep, horses... Such a shame we can't give them any shoes or any work to do such as hauling ore, or even timber around because we'd rather just let the Horde have the mine, lumberyard and blacksmith. And we can't feed em either; no farm.

With treatment like that, I surprised the horses don't leave. Maybe that's what we're all there for? In fact, I think I'll start organizing an equestrian guard squad in the games from now on. Our battle cry will be "Hold your horses!"

Where the greener is grass

Wow.com did an article recently that talked about when your alt become your main.  I find myself in this boat.  My deathknight is pretty well geared, and has around 5600 achievement points.

However, I've been playing my warrior a LOT more than my deathknight recently.  And I've been wondering if I really just enjoy the warrior class more, or is it more enjoyable because it's new to me? 

Each class has it's advantages and disadvantages.  Such as the Sindgragosa fight we're working on in ICC (8% grrrrr).  The DK is at an obvious advantage here because of anti magic shell, ice bound fortitude, vampiric blood, blood tap... there's just so many tools to keep myself up and fighting, where as the warrior has a shield wall, last stand, and enraged regeneration which are nice abilites, but not excatcly great for this fight.  There are fights though, that it's the otherway around.

I am enjoying the charge / intercept / intervene skills versus the pull method of the deathgrip.  And I enjoy the DPS offspec of the warrior a lot more than I do the DK.  There's just something enjoyable about the brutality of the warrior, either my target dies, or I do, either way I can and will put up one hell of a fight.  I get those moments on the DK too, but it feels some what artificial.  Like I expect to win most fights, and with the warrior I really have to work at it.

And I also must admit, my 2v2 arena team as resto shaman / unholy death knight really suffers against teams with a healing limiting mechanic (mortal strike or poisons).  This may get fixed with one of the new spells coming in the expansion for DKs, though.

So while we're in the current expansion, I'm still raiding and keeping my main as my death knight.  I just don't know about the expansion yet.  We've gotten plenty of info on DK changes, but a lot of it seems to be RNGish... but it's too early to tell.

I suppose if the changes to the DK mechanics make the playstyle feel more warrior-like, and less rogue-like I'd be happier.  If the current systems of using an ability every GCD slowed down a little bit to allow for the proc-type abilites it would bring some variation and thought to the rotation, which would be nice.

So I'm looking at either going with the pretty same as always warrior (with a small change to the rage system), or the DK who's getting mostly a complete mechanic overhual, talent tree overhaul, and more than likely months of rebalancing while they fine tune (aka nerf the shit out of) the changes they did.

How about everyone else?  Are any of the class mechanic changes making you leery about your current main?  How many of you are changing main characters in the coming expansion?

Class Attachment

So, as we're nearing the next expansion, I've had a nagging feeling lately to finish leveling my warrior.  Currently, he's level 73.  This guy originally started out as a level 29 Tauren warrior who was a BEAST in the level 29 bracket.  This was back when having a "twinked" character was just becoming popular.  I did so much Warsong Gulch with him that he earned the rank of Sargent in the old ranking system, while  my main character was a stone guard.

My point being, the warrior has been around for a while, but has NEVER been at max level and doing end game stuff.

I've always had a sort of fondness for warrior tanks, as being a squishy rogue raiding Molten Core, I was amazed when our main tank could take up to two of the giants at the same time!

And not only that, but watching old pvp videos like those of High Warlord Pat, just gave me an awesome feeling. (It's funny, now, how small those numbers in the video are)

Warriors are raw, they fully commit to the fight or they die.  There's no nifty get out of jail free card.

So what's holding me back from leveling it out fully?  The frustrations I get when tanking.  It has to be a world of difference once you get geared up, but tanking at my level (while I can do it successfully) seems to be more work than it's worth.  It's not so much that you have to change targets and weave in some cleaves and a devastate or revenge here and there, it's feels like a constant struggle to keep everything focused on me.

Maybe I've been spoiled with my DK's abilities like placing an AOE anywhere I want to grab incoming enemies and having a spiffy pulling mechanic to get casters all lined up nice and pretty for AOE.

I'm thinking now's the time to at least max out level and wait and see how the DK revisions are panning out.  I still love playing my DK, but with a reworking of the entire mechanic, a reworking of the DK talent trees to make blood THE tanking tree, and a reworking of the vital tanking stats, I'm afraid of another brutal balancing act by Blizzard.  At least this way I'll have options once Cataclysm is released.

But this all raises an interesting question; and one I've been thinking about recently.  What drives you to play a certain class?  It is role choice?  FOTM?  One ability you love and can't do without?