Cataclysm: The First Things To Do for Alliance 80s

If you were like me, when the game came out, you were wondering, what do I do now? I've figured out a few things so here are my suggestions if you play Alliance.

• Get training for all your professions. If you are in Dalaran, you can do that here including the new Archeology profession. 
• If in Northrend, fly to Valiance Keep in Borean Tundra. This will take you to Stormwind Harbor. If someplace else, take the nearest boat or gryphon to Stormwind.
• When you arrive in Stormwind, you should get a pop up quest from a member of the Earthen Ring. Accept the quest. You will find the Shaman just outside the Stormwind Keep in a new park like area. The old park was destroyed by Deathwing.
• If you arrive, in Storwind Harbor, you will find a linking quest to the underwater city of Vash'ir (one of the starting zones). Pick that up. If you arrive via gryphon, run out to the harbor and pick it up.
• The other starting zone is Mount Hyjal. That quest can be picked up in the Stormwind Trade District at a sign next to the new auction house.
• Next, go to the Stormwind flight master and pick up the new flight training (about 200G). This will allow you to fly around to do anything else you need to.
• Set your hearth to an Inn in Stormwind. Stormwind will be your new questing hub for Cataclysm. There are a number of daily quests in Stormwind you need to come back for everyday.

With all that done, go see the Shaman outside Stormwind Keep and he will get things started with the first cinematic. From there, decide if you want to go to Mount Hyjal or Vash'ir. Once you go to a new zone, a portal is opened for you back in Stormwind. Once you hearth back to Stormwind, go back to the Shaman that gave you the first quest. A portal to the new zone should be near the stone circle he is standing in.

Note: One other important note, my alts did not start accumulating rest until I got them to Stormwind. So if you have alts, you need to get to Stormwind and do the starting quests. Maybe go to a starting area and hearth back. I'm not sure what triggers the rest. But if you do nothing, your alts will not get any rested credit.

Cataclysm and Other Tips

With the release of Cataclysm I think it is time to write a few tips again. So if you are like me and don't have much time to play, there are a few things I learned in my limited play time.

With only 1 toon to 81 so far, somehow I am guessing I am not going to be making any world firsts. lol.

Why is {Insert Faction Here} so Bad at PVP?

Why is my faction so bad at PVP? Well this article is my attempt to shed some light on the subject.

I used to think only the Alliance were bad at PVP. In reality, either the Horde or Alliance get to play target dummy, depending upon the Battlegroup. In my case, the Vengeance Battlegroup, the Alliance tends to garner the majority of the losses. Recently, I started PVPing again after taking a long break to do 10 man and 25 man raiding. Much to my surprise, we seemed to be losing more often than before! So I decided to collect some data on exactly how bad things had become.

The Data
To measure Alliance success or failure, I recorded the wins and losses for my random pick up groups for July and August. In addition, the ratio of honor kills (HKs) were recorded by comparing the winning teams HKs and to the losing teams HKs. HKs ratios of even (1 to 1), unbalanced (2 to 1), and extremely unbalanced (3 to 1 or greater) were recorded. The HK ratio seems to correlate pretty well to how unbalanced a battleground feels when one side dominates.

The classes and builds used for testing included in no particular order feral druid, discipline priest, shadow priest, arcane mage, prot pally and retribution pally. None of my toons had a resilience greater than 300 when I started the test. My PVP skills are decent and I am better at strategy and tactics than dueling.

The Results
Surprisingly, the data was not as bad as I thought it would be. However, it is still quite a ways from ideal. Based on 66 pick up groups, here are my results.

Alliance Record 24-42 (36.36% Winning Percentage)
Horde Record 42-24 (63.64% Winning Percentage)

Honor Kill Ratios were as follows:
Even (1 to 1): 24 (36.36%)
Unbalanced (2 to 1): 27 (40.91%)
Extremely Unbalanced (3 to 1 or greater) 15 (22.73%)

Ideally, each side would have a winning percentage of 50%. Trying to keep the win ratios between 45% and 55% is a more realistic goal. One side winning only 36% of the matches is not good, but not that far out really. I would have guessed we were only winning 15% to 20% of our matches before I started this little experiment.

The more troubling thing in my mind is how few of the matches are balanced. Getting beat is one thing. Getting crushed 60% of the time is just no fun. Eye of the Storm wins the prize for worst battleground for the alliance 1 win in 11 attempts (9%).


Why are we bad?
Now for the million dollar question. Why are we so bad? Well I think there are a few factors. Please note that much of analysis here is anecdotal. I simply don't have the time to be super rigorous.

(1) Gear
During my analysis, I installed gear score. Before a match, I tried to review alliance gear scores to get an idea of what we had. Then, after a match I would use the armory to review some of the horde player's gear. Generally, Alliance gear is between 4500 and 5500. About half the players have PVP sets. Most alliance pvp sets are level 232 sets obtained with honor and badges.

When the Alliance did get dominated in a battleground, the other team generally had high end raid sets (level 264 and level 277) or high end PVP sets (gear that requires an arena rating). When a team in 10 man raid gear or 232 heroic badge gear goes up against teams in 264 and 277 gear, the odds are stacked against you from the start.

(2) Player skill
So how did the better horde teams get all that level 264 and 277 gear? They earned it by playing. Consequently, they are generally better team players and better players in general.

Generally, the alliance players are terrible. They will not guard flags. They will not kill the other teams healers. They play without logic or reason. I have given up trying to figure out why. We are just bad.


(3) Healing

Horde teams always seem to have 2 or 3 good healers. The alliance seldom has more than 1 healer. With healing being so overpowered currently in the game, this is a big advantage.

One thing I did notice when I tried to PVP on my priest. When I queued as Disc spec, I would end up with 3 or 4 other healers!!!! When I went in as shadow, no healers. Since you can't change after the game starts, this can be really annoying. What the heck is the "matching" system matching?


(4) Group composition and classes
The Horde seems to be able to shift to the best PVP classes more quickly than the alliance. I think this relates back to 2. The better players are able to analyze patches and build toons that are best for PVP. Now horde teams have lots of warlocks, shadow priests, shamans and hunters. When Wrath came out, they were all Death Knights and Ret Pallies.


Possible Solutions
How can the game be improved to provide more PVP balance? Here are my thoughts.

(1) Identical Gear
Create a virtual set of gear that are the same for each class. When you go into PVP, the set is auto equipped. It would put everyone on a level playing field.


(2) Remove the Faction Wall
Remove the faction wall. When you go into a battleground, you get a little flag on your back and the horde and the alliance are all mixed up.


(3) A Real Matching System
Really match players based on their gear levels. Maybe give players a option to wait longer to play against someone at their level. Or give them an option to play against the best geared players if they want.


(4) Tenacity
Add a tenacity system to battlegrounds. If someone comes in with a 2500 gear score, buff them.


Conclusion
Losing all the time is not fun. Losing and having no chance to win is even less fun.

Tanking Balancing Discussion

There is a really lively discussion on the balancing of Tanking Classes on the WOW forums this week. Definitely worth a look if you are a tank.

The warriors are trying to make an argument that essentially, they suck compared to other tanks. Now in terms of DPS and AOE threat, this is probably true. But to what degree?  I'm sure a reasonably geared Warrior can tank any instance or raid in the game. Now those runs might flow a little bit differently than if they were tanked with a Pally or a DK.  However, warriors can still be successful. I think that is GhostCrawlers argument more or less.

He points to the fact that most elite raiding guilds still use warrior tanks as the reason warriors don't need to be buffed. However, I think this is a poor data set to use for the health of a class in the game. Raiding guilds exist to essentially serve the needs of its officers. More than likely, in those guilds, the main tanks are warriors and have been officers or GMs in those guilds for a long time. Given the amount of effort that would be required to gear a 25 man raid tank it seems unlikely they would be changed for another class. So if the raid guild started with mostly druids, they probably still have druids. If they started with warriors, they probably still have warriors.

In our heroic runs and 10 man raids, our groups are totally focused on AOE DPS and AOE threat. The best tanks for holding AOE aggro is by far a Paladin. The best tanks for DPS are Paladins and DKs. Thusly, as I have been leveling my Paladin tank, I have noticed I have a LOT of company. If I was gonna look at where tanking specs are headed, I think I would look at the demographics of tank classes who became 80s in the last 6 months. My guess is they are mostly Paladins with just a smattering of the rest.

I think Blizzard is really trying hard not to focus on 25 man raiding so much. But sometimes I think that focus still clouds their judgement.

The Disappearance of the Bear

Wow.com today ran a good piece on bear tanks: The Disappearance of the Bear. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. As bear tank, I was our guilds main tank throughout Burning Crusade and our Karazhan runs. However, after leveling my bear to 80 and running Naxx with my bear, I quickly became very disillusioned about my spec. Pally tanks were basically better at everything, especially AOE threat. So eventually, I switched to Resto and then Balance and stopped tanking on my druid altogether. That was a sad day for me. Balance is a lot of fun and I am doing well with the spec, but i will always be a bear tank in my heart.

I think the article hits on a lot of reasons why bear tanks are quickly becoming extinct on WOW, but it lacks focus. To me, there are only a few main reasons for the decline. In my opinion, the problems with bear tanks are pretty specific to 10 man raids and heroics.  Which is what the vast majority of players run in the game. Too often, Blizzard focuses is on 25 man raiding guilds which represents a vary small percentage of the player population.

Here are the reasons I see for the decline in bear tanks.

(1) Druid Tanks are Single Target Threat Tanks in an AOE World
No one uses crowd control any more. Ever! So AOE threat generation is a requirement to tank. Druid tanks have the weakest AOE threat of any tank in Wrath. Pally and DK tanks are vastly superior in this area.

(2) Lousy Itemization
I know you are supposed to get Rogue gear and tank with it. But it doesn't "feel" like tank gear. It feels like you are the red headed step child who gets everything as hand me downs. Plate tanking gear has a lot of stamina on it. Heck, feral tanking gear had a lot stamina. Rogue gear does not. So it just feels wrong for tanking.

Plus as pointed out in the article, it can be difficult to get when several people are rolling for the same thing.


(3) Nothing Outstanding about Bear Tanks
In Burning Crusade bear tanks had amazing health and physical damage mitigation. We were the preferred tank against magic wielding bosses because of that extra health. I don't think there is anything about a bear tank in Wrath that makes it superior as a tank. Pally's have really nice self healing abilities. Death Knights have all those cool anti-magic spells.

What did Druids get?  Some sort of invisible damage absorbing bubble that only procs on crits and last for 1 hit. Cool....  Not!!!! You can make all the excuses you want. But the bottom line is, Druid tanks are currently an inferior option in the game. While they remain one, their numbers will continue to shrink.

PVP Tip: Kill the Healer First

If you play Alliance in the Vengeance battle group you have probably heard this 100 times: Kill the *#!*ing healer. Now the reason it gets said so much is that pick up groups often fail to use this basic tactic when PVPing. Failing to kill an opposing healer quickly, usually leads to lost objectives and lost battlegrounds.

By ignoring a healer on an opposing team, you are essentially making all their DPS classes invincible.  I don't know how many times, I have seen team members ridiculously throwing their toon at a Warrior or Death Knight with a healer standing right behind their foe. It only takes 1 or 2 folks in a group to do this and your attack or defense of an objective will end in an epic fail. So what to do?

Detecting a Healer

The first step is to simply detect the healers presence. Green swirlies around an opposing toon is a dead give away. :)  Pay attention to the health bar, if it gets topped off, healer. Most melee classes have some sort of healing abilities, but only Palidins and healing classes typically can top of their health.

Targeting the Healer

Once you have figured out your current opponent is getting healed, you need to find the healer. Now a lot of healers can be pretty arrogant and will just stand in the open and heal. Thus, they are very easy to find and target. Good healers will try to hide themselves somehow. Behind some terrain, a building, whatever. In that case, your tab targeting should pick them up.

When starting a fight with another group, any DPS class should be looking for healing classes and targeting them first, period. You may want to CC other classes if you can, but eliminate the healer must come first.

Killing the Healer

Killing some healers in PVP can be extremely difficult, resto druids for example. But once you have targeted a healer, your primary goal should be to harass them. Make them put the focus on their toon and only. This will give other players a chance to actually kill a few of the opposing team. Also, since most players like to focus DPS other toons, by you attacking a healer, you are more likely to pick up help taking the healer down.

As far as making the actual kill, stuns are generally the most effective tactic against any healing class. If you can stun a healer at less than 20% health, you have a chance of bursting them down. Of course mortal strikes, silences, and such work well too.

So next time you PVP, remember the opposing teams are not invincible, they just have a healer. Find it and kill it first.

Resto Druid Pre-Naxx Gear - Part I

Recently, I was able to purchase the dual spec option for my Feral druid. After trying Boomkin and being very disappointed with their PVP survivability, I tried a Restoration (Resto) spec and love it. So over the past few weeks the gearing up process is in full swing. Here is some of the information discovered during that process.

With the new season of arena, last season's arena gear is purchasable with honor. And given the gear's quality, there are a number of items in this list. If you are not a PVPer, I highly recommend doing the Wintergrasp weekly quests. Usually, there are so many people in there, no one will notice you aren't into PVP. Just stay near the action to complete the quests and you will have enough honor to purchase something in a few weeks.

There are are only a few good items for each slot. Not a lot of itemization for druids. If you have a weak item in a slot, check out the Overcast crafted set. It includes very solid pieces that can be used as a baseline for building your set. Many of those pieces are included in this list.

Update 6/6: Rearranged the data a little bit. Comments at top, made list more tabular.

Head
Helm of Anomalus would seem the best overall. But the PVP and vendor options are also good.

Hateful Gladiator's Kodohide Helm - PVP Honor, 49600
Helm of Anomalus - Heroic Drop, 21%, Anomalus in The Nexus.
Helm of the Majestic Stag - Vendor, Honored with the Kirin Tor
Overcast Headguard - Leatherworking, AH

Shoulders
Not a lot of options for the shoulders.

Hateful Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders - PVP Honor, 31600
Silent Spectator Shoulderpads - Heroic Drop, 22%, Svala Sorrowgrave Utgarde Pinnacle.
Overcast Spaulders - Leatherworking, AH

Back
Really like the Deadly cloak here. But there are lots of options.

Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Deliverance - PVP Honor, 38000
Wispcloak - Tailoring. AH. Often found on auction house for 600G.
Reanimator's Cloak - Drop, low rate, Trash in Drak'theron Keep, BOE
Shroud of Moorabi - Heroic Drop, 24%, Gundrak, Moorabi
Subterranean Waterfall Shroud - Heroic Drop, 20%, Akn'kahet: The Old Kindgom, Jedoga Shadowseeker.

Wrist
There are some good options for the wrist. Really like Culling of Strat drop here.

Deadly Gladiator's Armwraps of Salvation - PVP Honor, 31600
Plague-Infected Bracers - Heroic Drop, 11%, Chest after Mal'ganis, Culling of Strat.
Handler's Arm Strap - Heroic Drop, 21%, King Drek, Drak'tharon Keep
Wound-Binder's Wristguards - Vendor, Honored Knights of the Ebon blade
Overcast Bracers - Leatherworking

Hands
Not a lot of options here. So I have included one cloth piece I actually use as well.

Hateful Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves - PVP Honor, 31,600
Grotto Mist Gloves - Heroic Drop, 21%, Hadronox, Azjul-Nerub
Gloves of Northern Lordaeron - Normal Drop, 18%, Chest after Mal'Ganis in Culling of Strat.
Overcast Handguards - Leatherworking
Moonshroud Gloves - Tailoring

Chest
Very limited options here. The UP drop is very good. BOE item so you may be able to buy at AH.

Hateful Gladiator's Kodohide Robes - PVP Honor, 49600
Ymirjar Physician's Robe - Drop, Low rate, Trash in Utgarde Pinnacle
Overcast Chestguard - Leatherworking


Waist
Another slot with pretty limited options. The PVP belt or Hall of Lightning belts seem to be he best options here. 40 Badges for a belt seems a little ridiculous to me.

Deadly Gladiator's Belt of Salvation - PVP Honor, 49600
Vine Belt of the Woodland Dryad - Vendor, 40 Heroism Badges
Belt of Vivacity - Heroic Drop, 21%, Halls of Lightning, Volkhan
Overcast Belt - Leatherworking


Legs
The Earthgiving legguards rock. Better start saving your gold now. :)

Earthgiving Legguards - Leatherworking.
Hateful Gladiator's Kodohide Legguards - PVP Honor, 49600
Kilt of the Forgotten One - Heroic Drop, 19%, Akn'kahet: The Old Kindgom, Herald Volazj
Overcast Leggings - Leatherworking


Feet
The crafted boots look like a good option here.

Deadly Gladiator's Boots of Salvation - PVP Honor, 39600
Earthgiving Boots - Leatherworking
Boots of Transformation - Heroic Drop, 20%, Gundrak, Gal'darah
Overcast Boots - Leatherworking

Summary

Hopefully, you can get some decent gear one way or the other. In part II, I will go over weapons and accessories to complete your set.