A Goal a Day

I'm going to start setting myself personal achievements to accomplish once a day.  Today, with the help of Fragilegoods and Shoryu of Serial Peacekeepers renown, I played the "Only One Must Die" mini-game.

This mini-game is best played in a resource style game, but can be played in any of the available battlegrounds.  So, here's the setup.

1.  The group (3 party members is what we did, you could do anywhere from 1 to 5) charges to the enemy spawn point.
2.  The party leader names the target.  In our particular case it was easy, "Mission" was our target.
3.  You spend the rest of the game guessing where they're going to ressurect after you've killed them and kill them again.
4.  If you win the battleground while doing this, bonus points.

And that's all there is to it.  Here's some twists you can do for flavour:

1.  See if you can get the same target a couple battlegrounds in a row and do a total deaths over the sum of the battlegrounds.

2.  See if you can pick consecutively more difficult to kill targets.

3.  See how many times you can successfully /dance with them prior to attacking and killing them before they leave the battleground.

4.  Shootout: Everyone in your party gets a turn to solo the target.  If they fail to solo it, its the next person's turn.  Person with the claim to the most deaths of the target wins.

Third Level 85

Got my paladin (Eatenyofood) to 85 today.  Only levelled through dungeons and PvP.  And other than one dungeon that I tanked to get from 80 to 81, I healed the entire way.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly and am looking forward to healing in arena and raids in addition to my previous repertoire.

Healing in Battlegrounds

Healing is not what it used to be.  Or so I've been told.  As I level my paladin through random cataclysm dungeons and battlegrounds, it doesn't seem too different.  My mana is essentially infinite as long as I'm not doing something stupid (lol-exorcismspam-ftw-rite?).  And if I get ignored in a battleground, I can keep myself and another guy alive indefinitely.

So where are the healers in battlegrounds? From brackets 10-19 to 85, healers have become more scarce than PvP-Tanks (Thanks largely to Protection being more fun than Retribution or Arms/Fury).  Are stress levels scaring people? Or lack of functionality?

Or perhaps people are lazy.  I'm not sure.

Theoretical Rated Battlegrounds

Back before Cataclysm came out, Blizzard made some general statements on rated battlegrounds and what they would bring to World of Warcraft.  I can't remember if my thinking on them is correct or based in fact, but I'll talk about what I thought they were.

You would have options to queue for a normal battleground and a rated battleground.  Normal battlegrounds you could do any time all week.  You could only participate in a set number of rated battlegrounds.  Your performance in that game would be rated by Killing Blows, Deaths, Honorable Kills, Damage Done, Healing Done, and Objectives completed (Capturing/Defending flags and nodes).  Your rating would go up or down depending on your performance, and go up or down more or less depending on if you won or lost the battleground.

Ultimately, Blizzard deemed that this would either be too much code or would be too prone to number inflation and greedy play (If every player is trying to capture the flag in WSG for a rating boost, what would stop them from ignoring the current flag carrier's well-being in hopes of being able to capture the flag?).  Perhaps this could be solved by making a win exponentially better for your rating than a loss.  I'm not sure.

I like the concept of rewarding players for solid efforts in a winning or losing battleground.  Sometimes players excel in a battleground, getting huge numbers of honorable kills and killing blows and capturing nodes, but are unable to be everywhere on the map.  This has happened to me, but I know that this has happened to a lot of above-average players.  They get stuck with uncoordinated or ignorant teams and are only able to do incredibly well in certain areas where the rest of the team flounders.  Those people deserve a little extra reward than 3 honor more than the next guy.

A couple things

I'm going to cover a couple things really quick.

Baradin Warden's Rep

At Mr. Popularity (Rank 2) or Guild Level 12, you receive an additional 10% reputation reward for killing monsters and completing quests.  That means that if you complete the 12 daily quests available through Tol Barad, 6 on the Peninsula and 6 on the Baradin Hold Island, you will get a total of  4050 reputation.  That means over the course of three days, you can move through the entirety of Revered. 

Matchmaking Value and Rating

 "If you win, Blizzard will drag your rating up to your Matchmaking Value.  If you lose, Blizzard will drag your Matchmaking Value to your Rating."  This is the simplest way I've been able to describe the system between Matchmaking Value and actual team Rating.  Your rating is what matters, it's what you get achievements from and allows you to access higher levels of gear.  Your matchmaking value is what allows you to ascend ratings faster or slower; if you beat teams at a higher matchmaking value, then your matchmaking value will rise and your rating will try to rise with it.

Recount

Recount is the only addon that I ever recommend to other players.  It is the quickest and best way to gauge how you are performing.  Let's say the following:

You are doing a boss fight in a dungeon with guild mates.  You are spec A.  You wipe on the boss fight.  Your Recount informs you that you did DPS-A.  After the wipe, your guild mate asks you to switch specs.  You are now spec B.  You wipe on the second attempt.  Your Recount informs you that you did DPS-B.

So, now you compare your Recounts.

On Damage Dealt, DPS-A was higher than DPS-B.  On Damage received, DPS-A took more damage than DPS-B.  On Interrupts, DPS-B was higher than DPS-A.  What does this tell us?

It tells us that DPS-B was able to take less damage likely due to the increased number of interrupts over DPS-A.  If another person were able to pick up on the interrupts, then you should respec back from DPS-B to DPS-A for the higher numbers.

So, that's a highly controlled situation but it covers why I love Recount.