Balance druid first steps in pvp
I dinged 70 last night, and decided to have a little dabble in Battlegrounds. So stepped in to my first Alterac valley.
I didn’t have high expectations - I had a grand total of 51 resilience, about 7k health and 6-7k of mana but I was pleasantly surprised.
A bit of background - I’ve battlegrounds extensively on a horde Warlock, hunter and shaman at 70. I’m not incredible at pvp, but get to know how to play the class well enough that I’m a handful. I do alright despite mediocre gear. In the past I found I went through the following stages.
Stage 1.
Nervous and useless. I actually used to get Buterflies the first time I pvped on my characters. It was worse with the warlock (the first) but I still got it on my shaman. In this one I would basically die quickly. I mash buttons, never quite sure of what I’m doing. I seem to get a mindfreeze that locks me out of doing anything useful until after I’m dead. This is probably the steepest part of the learning curve for me.
Stage 2.
No longer nervous, slightly better than useless. This is where I start to figure out what on earth I’m doing. I start working out approaches against different classes. My action bars have my main assault spells keybound and all extra abillities I require accessible.
I’ve worked out which is my spammable spell (This is the one that does decent damage, doesn’t use excessive mana and has a short cast time). I’m starting to get to the point where I know what to do, but gear issues results in lots of deaths despite doing things right.
Stage 3.
Competent. At this point my casting and approaches to different classes are second nature and my gear is starting to improve so that I am harder to kill and I get some great fights.
With the druid I went straight to stage 2. No nerves and I was at least able to try to make a fight of it. However I made a ton of noob mistakes.
1. Starfire. Great opener from stealth, or from distance or when the opponent is focused on someone else, but this is not the spammable spell I was treating it as. It has a whopping huge cast time, which leaves me open for stuns, silences, counterspells and spell locks. Silly me.
2. Cyclone. This is a great spell - now I just must remember to use it. crowd controlling a target even for just 6 seconds can be vital. I didn’t cast this once, and should have been using it .
3. Entangling roots and natures grasp. I was having trouble with two warlocks yesterday mainly due to the pesky felhunters. One warlock was correctly spell locking me , the other wasn’t so good. I should at the very least have rooted the felhunter outside of spell lock range or whacked on natures grasp, so when he hit me he would be rooted in place.
4. Multiple forms and mobility. I love moonkin form - unfortunately a bit too much. I have a number of forms at my disposal and should use them effectively. For example, against casters such as the affliction locks I faced I should really stick in caster form. Keep heal over times up on myself whilst dealing damage. I made the mistake of figuring I could pop out and heal when needed, but forgot to factor in fear. Without any pvp trinket I ran around like a headless chicken and the dots were ticking away. If only I had rejuvination and lifebloom mitigating some of that damage. I should also have used cheetah form a bit more. Swap to cheetah, run off out of range, pop a big heal and some HoTs and run back in to battle.
I don’t mind making mistakes - it’s a way of learning, and I feel I’ve learnt a shed load in just 1 little battleground.
I’ll do a bit of pvp - but I’m not even bothering to farm honour for gear, as WotLK is just around the corner and the level to 80. I’ll save what honour I get.
However if I was to pvp more I’d definitely swap a load of points about - certainly getting moonkin frenzy.
Add comment October 28th, 2008