Dkatisis and the Lich King...

The Lich King made this troll into a sexy death knight like me! Woot!

Dkatisis Enters the Tundra..

The first set of armor in Northrend actually looks good, and is a great upgrade if you didn't level up on arena gear!

Dkatisis... the Death Knight...

Well, at least I got in earlier in the evening.  30 minute queue times really kill the enthusiasm.

Dkati gets some new lootz...

Holy crap. ZA was good to me tonight. Too bad it'll all be obsolete in a couple weeks. But, it sure is scary looking! Dkati has TUSKS for goodness sake!

Dkati and Tang do Kara...

And, compared to the last time I did Kara ( a loooong while a ago ) this was super easy.  I think Hroda coined the term "Kara Light".  Indeed it was.

Maiden went down in 41 seconds.   Whoa.

Kyi and the guild take down ZA bosses!

Yeahmanman did wicked damage, and Kyi did not. But, seeing as how she lacks the +hit gear needed to do PVE, it's nice of the guild to let her go along! Awfully fun to own content that was previously too difficult. Yeah Blizzard!

Dkati immortalized!!!

Courtesy of Figure Prints, my little Dkati becomes immortal.

That dome sure does make it hard to take a picture of though. I spent enough on her that I could have had a really good dinner, or 3 PS3 video games. Ah well, I don't play any other games besides WoW, and haven't for a very long time.

She's so cute!

Dkati and the latest patch...

So, the (pvp) world turned upside down in the 3.0 patch. Of course, it was somewhat expected when you think of all the new talents, the big consolidation of +dam +heal to the sole +spellpower.

However, what I didn't expect was the sudden "burst" change. The new 51 point talents, and the consolidation across trees have made me quite powerful. If my target doesn't have 15k hp, he's going down in one stun cycle with the new and improved mutilate spec.

With that said, I'm sporting +420 res and 11k hp, and I'm routinely stun locked to death within 3 seconds by paladins and mages.

The DPS folks are supremely powerful right now.

Like others have said, it doesn't even pay to be a healer... especially a HoTing druid, because your heal target is obliterated too quickly -- even if only two people are attacking him.

I hear there's some RetPally nerfs incoming before the WotLK release.. but I think Blizzard is happy with a new burstyness. I can't 100% disagree.. but healing and burstyness seem to be polar opposite in philosophies. Warhammer battles take forever, mostly because healers are so strong. Slow allows tactics to develop, and allow players a chance to make those decisions. Healers on the back line? Find a way to sneak dps through to kill them -- or at least force them to heal themselves instead of the tanks.

Warcraft seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Quick, decisive, individual action over team tactics.

Fun? If your a DPS class, sure. It plays a bit like a FPS with some gibbing -- that's fine and good with me -- but it isn't what it was before. Well, fine, except for the RetPally. You shouldn't be able to stun+top dps+go immune+make others immune+become unsnarable+heal. That's stupid.

Kyi, the druid, can do all of that except go immune and stun (consistently), and I think balance druids are a tad overpowered. Pallies are the only class that can survive the burst currently. Mages can ice-block, but they can't deal the DPS and heal up through their immunity.

It'll be an interesting road to 80, to see how all this shakes out.

Dkati and the Lich King...

A whole lot of scary people running around, but the Lich King was happy to spout of his propaganda the whole time I was there.

Crazy!

Dkati rants about Arathi Basin...

Arathi Basin has been around for a long time. One would think that years of playing the same battlegrounds over (and over and over) again would yield upon the general Azuremyst alliance population a clue as to how to be competitive.

Ends up, one would be wrong.

Many times, the alliance team will split to take three nodes - the Stables, the Mine, and the Lumber Mill. Technically, half the time they split to 4 nodes, and leave stables open... but that's a whole different rant.

The problem with taking these three nodes is that they are entirely difficult to defend against the zerg. If horde zerg mine, and alliance actually manage to defend by getting enough bodies there... then horde respawn at farm (or blacksmith) and have a quick path to the lumber mill. The distance they have to travel to get there is about half as far as the defenders at the gold mine have to go.

Simply stated: The LM and GM are too far apart to effectively defend against a zerg.

This is why, the single most important node in the game to capture and defend is the blacksmith. But, don't you dare speak this theory in the battleground channel. You'll be immediately bombarded with "That's the worst node ever!" and "Shut up n00b."

The number one argument that's constantly regurgitated is this: "But, Dkati, the blacksmith has too many points of entry and is too difficult to defend!"

Let me debunk this right here. This isn't a game of tactical positions on such a micro level. There is no way to effectively block someone from getting to ANY flag. Traps and AOE frost spells, at best, slow people down... but nothing will stop 5 people from mounting up and running right past a "choke" point.

And, if you're playing AB correctly, and are spending the vast majority of your time in the vicinity of the flag (you are, aren't you? You aren't letting some stink rogue ninja your node, are you!?) then choke points -- even if they existed -- are inconsequential.

So, if I had my druthers, I'd take LM, ST, BS every time. Why LM over mine? I can see more of the battlefield. Mine's a lot harder to see what's going on.

Dkati will soon be immortalized...

Well, after months of sitting in a random lottery to get a chance at becoming a little statue, it has finally happened. Figure Prints has given me the opprotunity to turn Dkati into a little piece of art.

There were many interesting choices, and at $150 after shipping and tax, I took a good week to think about it. One of the largest decisions was which weapons should she wield? I haven't used daggers for ages, but Dkati grew up using them. But, the color in the daggers is much less than my swords (I have maces too.. but man, those are ugly...)

Ultimatly, I went with the daggers. I also chose to keep the helm on. It will be interesting to see if the statue finishers actually correct the hair that clips through the season 3 helm.

We'll see! I'm excited, and Dkati is too.

Kyi gets a new pet...

My druid alter-ego received a neato pet in the mail today.  Note the sexy Brutal Gladiator Leggings as well! Woot!

Dkati is a Challenger...

It's amazing! We actually achieved Challenger!

Now, this of course means we're "that team" that's in the 1500 bracket at the start of season who has "no business being there".

Man, we cursed those team out last season.

Bwahahhahahahahaa!

Dkati is still alive...

While I haven't posted in a long while now, I'm still alive and kicking. Here's a good synopsis of what has been happening in my corner of the world.

Hroda and I started our own little guild. We have, besides us, two other people, and we're 100% PvP focused. No drama, just a laid back attitude with no real structure. It's really nice.

In the arena, our 2v2 has been working hard to improve. And, after a couple of bad weeks, we seemed to be on fire this last week. When we called DPS switches during CC rotations, going for the kill, Hroda was on the ball... instantly dropping some massive damage. It was sexy.

For the first time ever, we ended above 1600 (1611 to be exact). And, while many will deem us scrubs still (and rightly so) we are very proud and happy. In fact, there's is a minuscule chance that we will get the "Challenger" title for season 3. We're not holding out breath though.

Dkati posts a test message...

This is a test of live writer with a picture!

Dkati giggles.... a lot...

This really needs no explanation. It makes me giggle a whole lot.

Credit to lolcat.com, of course.

Dkati gets some maces...

Sure,they may not be pointy and sharp, but I bet I'll have fun crushing warlock heads in!

 

Dkati Points to the Obvious...

With the Eye of the Storm weekend coming up, I ran across a nice post on the strategy that should be utilized.

The article is of decent length, but can be summarized into the following [what should be] obvious points:

1. Control at least 2 towers. If you're only holding one, stop doing everything else and get another tower.
2. Try to get 3 towers. If you can, get the fourth for the steamroll.
3. If you can't get three, stop banging your head against the opposing team's defense, and start controlling the middle for the flag runs.

I'd like to add that an important part of controlling 3 towers is to attack the fourth to preoccupy the horde from regrouping and sneaking out to get your other towers. Of course, you hopefully have a token defense on your other towers, at a minimum.

Likewise, and important part of controlling the middle is to apply some pressure to the horde's one or two towers. This keeps them from zerging the flag --- or one of your two towers.

If both teams follow this strategy, it comes down to who outplays the other team, or in some instances, who significantly out-gears the other team.

As an example of pure catastrophe for the alliance, if you're in a 2-tower-capped-control-the-flag mode, but the horde has a nice team of five, with supporting healers, and a wild mace-wielding-warrior-of-season-3-doom, and you don't have an equal defense.. they're gonna continually strip you of a tower, knocking you to one.

This has the effect of either (A) causing you to lose because you don't recap the tower, or (B) cause you to lose because you stopped controlling the middle to send 10 people to take on their 50-man-tower-capping-team.

So, you can take a third point of of this:

If you can get a coordinated, well-balanced, 5-man team into EotS, you'll probably win it for your team.

I've seen the horde execute this nicely.

Dkati goes HD with Stage6...

Having given up on YouTube because of it's horrible quality, I found Stage6 to be more receptive to large, high resolution files.

The amount of time it takes to buffer is rough, but the quality you gain is enormous.

Anyway, feel free to laugh very hard, because I had my inventory open the entire match! Honestly, I didn't even notice... I was too busy paying attention to the match... honestly!

Makes me feel awfully naked and exposed, since you now know exactly what's in my bags! Eeeep!

Dkati and the Illegal Danish

Seriously, I can't believe I'd never seen this. Yeah, yeah, they came out with #2 in this series, but this one is hilarious. The scene with where Rossi, the druid, and the paladin are on the start of their quest... holy crap. This is funny.

These guys should charge cash or have a contest to have a person's character make a cameo in a film.

[DivX web player stuff will need to be loaded for this video to work properly]

Dkati and Another Poor Quality Video...

I tell ya, I really have begun to hate YouTube.  Originally, I thought that my video compression selections were the cause of the poor look on YouTube.  However, YouTube samples things down quite a bit.

For example, this video looked awesome locally.  At full screen, it was nearly as good as watching the screen while it was happening live.  As you can see, it doesn't come anywhere close to that.

With that said, I think I've found a DivX based hosting site that we'll try in the future (I've already deleted the source AVI to this file).

Until then, enjoy this little fight where the druid played a horrible game, and allowed us to take down the fairly well geared warlock.  If they had both combined on my priest to begin with, it also would have gone differently.  But, I'll gladly take the points.