RRRRamble and 3.3.3

I spent my evenings of the weekend doing some PvP of a different kind... in the form of Settlers of Catan. A great board game, possibly made better because I won 50% of the games I played (ok so I only played 2 games, but 50% sounds better).

Patch 3.3.3, otherwise currently known as the economy disrupting PvP patch dropped last week with a number of changes - most notably the introduction of a vendor for all those excess Frozen Orbs (with an appropriate change to the dungeon loot so you can only choose greed for Frozen Orbs) and the change to the battleground marks and honor and the introduction of Looking for Battleground (the slightly odd younger sibling of the Looking for Dungeon tool)

I've only had limited time to play with any of the changes... I haven't even looked for Frozo but I was most happy to notice when I switched specs with Keluin - that Righteous Fury costs no mana!!! Yay for undocumented changes - and about the only Paladin love for this patch. I've always hated the mana cost because you have to have it up if you are tanking (it is basically defensive stance for Paladins) and I tend to have it up in both my tank and my healing spec and it used to eat a chunk of mana.

The other change that I've drooled over was the change to Revenge and Improved Revenge (and Thunder Clap becoming a ranged attack, and to a lesser extent the boost to Vitality). My first Revenge was a 7456 crit and my gear is pretty average now days (iLevel 200 Naxx/Heroics gear)! I really haven't had the chance to test out the warrior changes - I tried to get a quick run in before tonight's maintenance and somehow ended up in Forge of Souls (it also seems to me they might have lowered the gear requirements to end up there via the LFD tool - I ended up in Heroic Halls of Reflection as a tank the other day on Keluin which was a first - although I did queue in my healing gear). However I managed to show how rusty I was but stuffing up a pull with my heroic throwing and then charging the same target instead of the one I meant to - watching the rest of the mobs peel off to the healer. This was followed by some weird bug where the mobs didn't lose aggro in the wipe causing another wipe as the DK and I arrived outside the room where we had died. Then just as I was about to pull my happily asleep daughter woke up screaming (which was particularly unusual for that time). I returned to see half the group disappeared and 3 minutes left before shutdown. My apologies to the group! However, up to that point I was happy to see my DPS as a warrior tank already better than I had done previously... still not up to my Paladin's level but even as a chronically under-geared tank I wasn't having many aggro problems, although I did miss having a second true taunt - I've really grown attached to Righteous Defense and using Challenging Shout and not seeing the mobs plates turn green was a bit confusing (green because I've started using the Tidy Plates Threat Plates add-on which turns the health of the mobs green when you have aggro).

The other major change was the PvP changes - namely the introduction of the Looking for Battleground (or Random Battleground) tool that gives greater rewards if you choose to do a random battleground (and win) much the same as doing the random dungeons. Along with this the honor returns from honor kills has been doubled, and there are no longer marks for battlegrounds with the marks being redeemable for honor and all the items now being available for honor only. The word around the traps is the turn in process is painful (and also that you get better honor reward for turning the Concerted Efforts quest - so do that if you have the appropriate marks - I think that is the right quest name).

I haven't tried out the PvP changes - but I really want to - I've always enjoyed the PvP in the battlegrounds and I think this will make it an interesting change from when I last seriously did any battlegrounds - which was during the welfare epics stage of the Burning Crusades on my hunter (grinding out the honor for x Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow) when I spent hours in Alterac Valley in hour long turtles ... which almost always ended when Horde summoned the Frost Lord. I'm seriously thinking about getting my hunter back into the battlegrounds now and seeing how it goes - but be nice to the real PvP folk and do some prep before going into the battlegrounds. Have a read of Gnomeaggedon's post, and you'll find a lot of good info (along with maps) over at Cynwise's Battlefield Manual (I was surprised how much I didn't know about Alterac Valley given how much I've played it).

So I'm going to add more PvP to my todo... which was something like this:

1. Run on more dungeon with 3 random pug members to get my pug
   
   Sit dog - good boy!
2. Get my tier 9 holy paladin chest
   I actually have the emblems for this - I got them yesterday (yay for heroic Oculus as the second random daily - the emblem fountain coming in at 8 emblems of Triumph) but baulked when I saw how little of an upgrade from Tier 8 it was... and it has no haste (which I'm lacking a bit at the moment)! I think I might be better off healing H HoR for Chestpiece of High Treason and maybe getting the crafted bracers first instead.
3. Get Keluin's Crusader title (and spiffy mount) - only 9 more tokens required and maybe a tiny bit of reputation with Darnassus!
4. Tank on my warrior (partially done, must do more)
5. Gear up my hunter - which I'm partially doing by leatherworking but I've been slow with there not being much (affordable) leather on the auction house.
6. Get the plate heirloom chest and shoulders for my DK and try some Outlands tanking - have the shards for the PvP shoulders... now for the chest.
7. more PvP
8. Play more with SAN over on Argent Dawn
9. Do some Roleplay (also on Argent Dawn)
10. Play some of my little horde shammy (or any other low level alt) I've been neglecting.

That list is too long - particularly as it is normally interleaved with 'do the raid weekly' and possibly 'do the daily dungeon' for at least Keluin, if not my other level 80s.

Last thing in my ramble - I'm officially declaring yesterday as Vote-kick Monday. I ran a couple of dungeons and came across a couple of vote kick occasions. The first - I somehow ended up joining a group to tank H HoR and we wiped (I think my taunt off the healer was resisted and they went splat). The healer then promptly went AFK as a ghost not to return... so after waiting an appropriate period we tried to votekick them - only to be met with a 'You have initiated too many vote kicks'. The previous tank had disconnected and they vote kicked him to make space for me... and apparently you can't vote kick more than once now.

The second incident was in Heroic Oculus - were the DPS warrior was (I'm guessing) relatively new to the instance and was a bit slow in keeping up with the group. It really wasn't a problem because we were find 4 manning stuff... but we were with in the group with a go girl rogue (I'm coining that phrase if someone hasn't already) who was extremely impatient. Eventually they initiated a vote kick (without reason I might add) and before I had a chance to click no the warrior was kicked. Nothing had been said within range of the warrior (apart from the catch phrase 'gogogogogo'). So I'm guessing they were sitting there bewildered at their loading screen as it came up.

Thus endeth the ramble.

Note: Image at the top of post is from the official Settler of Catan site.