I love Strand Of The Ancients...

Me and my Stormpike Ram have been running around the Strand of The Ancients a lot lately (Rams feel like they go quicker if you name them, incidentally, so mine is called Kenny Wilkins) . I've run through a lot of Alterac Valley, but now I have easily outdone myself in terms of gametime spent in one area, chasing a certain goal. I have all the achievements you will get if you aren't chasing achievements, and I'm proud of my abilities with a turret cannon. I got the "artillery expert" (100 vehicles destroyed with a cannon) in less than 20 games, which I feel is right on the money.

To begin a match, you are dropped on a boat on the open sea, with a Paladin and a Death knight for company. then, invariably a shaman will arrive, and it is brought home to you how much PVP relies on the awkward classes to make up the numbers. I thrive in PVP because of things that don't matter in PVE. A Holy paladin who's got more armour than the other healers, and a big Hammer of Justice shaped interrupt I'd never otherwise use.
my regular (or dayjob) spec of protection paladin is probably the most useless class in the battlegrounds, because our high end PVE game relies on a certain rotation heavy finger style, and a lot of static fighting, moving the camera and shuffling to find the inch perfect position in any given room, temple, glacier field, et cetera. Having a gazillion HP doesnt really help either, because people focus fire upon you any way, and theres no Resillience on anything you might choose to wear, (there used to be an odd prot pvp selection at 70, but now there really isn't one).

I'd like to digress here and say that the best class for the battlegrounds hands down is Druid, and I don't think that will ever change. I love it when we get a good alliance druid on the side, spamming moonfire, or doing that shapeshifting, healing-running-away thing. They make fantastic lynchpins in any protracted melee. I often have to remind myself that druids are all one class. Having defended a mine (for what felt like days) in Arathi with a stealthed, impossibly fast cat, and rolled in open combat with boomkins who only shapeshift in desperation, and been killed by a Tauren High Warlord who shifted through everything while he tore massive chunks out of me at a leisurely pace(I have a lot of respect for Mukharn, who defines a Horde Druid with too much time on his hands for me). Also, a lot of people don't like Tauren catform for the way it looks, but I personally feel that is the best graphics for feeling humiliated, like you're just a squeaky toy played with a bored animal, Its something about the dull facial expression.

So, you're on the boat. and it gets into dock, and if youve got a DK on board, you're off across the water with Path of Frost (wheee!), and into a tank and off up the slope. The Horde, if they are organised at this point, will destroy your vehicle before you've even started driving (I didnt even know this was possible for my first 30 games). If they are not organised, or have all gone to one side of the map, then there is no reason not to get through the first wall, and probably through the second, in that first tank. I feel, personally, if youre a DPS, you shouldn't be driving. You almost definitely shouldn't take a cannon when you're on defence. the dps output of the gun, and the offensive throughput of the vehicle, is much lower than what you should be capable of as a dps character. The exception being one of the mediocre Death Knights rolling Strand these days. You guys need to have more than Death Grip hotkeyed, and you're probably better off in the designated driver seat. Better yet finish levelling you're Hunter main, and go back to that.

Getting through the walls is easy. Provided you make it past the bends after walls 2 and 3, and across the long stretch of open ground that is the Courtyard of the Ancients, getting the walls down is straightforward. It should also be noted that once the final door is down, you have won, as the click on the titan relic is not like Wintergrasp, where you have to channel it, and any cooldown you've got - even if your vehicle is taken out - will get your hands on the prize.
The trick to getting round the bends is to keep driving, and if you aren't in the first vehicle straight off the beach, to roll through with a buddy vehicle as two targets will split their focus. If you're feeling chatty, or like handing out orders to the anonymous fourteen helpers you theoretically have, people defending the tank are worth their weight in S5 gear, getting in the way of any arcane Mages for example, or slowing down any BE Paladins chasing the tank. The tanks dont really stand up to a lot of punishment, but they will brazen through the cannon fire, if its only the cannons they have to worry about. Personally, I think this is one of the best planned bits of "balance" that Blizzard came up with in Northrend. Tanks are easily beaten if you work as a team, but not so if you take the more familiar path of solo engagement, merely hoping that the rest of your team joins in the same melee as you.

The most successful thing to do, research is telling me, is to drive through one side of the map with all the vehicles. This can feel a bit dull for anyone who disembarks on the side thats being ignored, but it is guaranteed to get the first gate down, and make good time on the second gate. If the Horde have split their forces, then their time will be lost regrouping, and your tanks with the longest journey can defend the first two tanks, and keep the demolition going as the first two fall apart like clown cars.
Typically, once the first gate is down in this manner, you then have a large melee in front of gate two, and people become despondent and go and take the first level gate that was deliberately ignored, as if this might somehow help. It doesnt help, and it is not economical to do this. there may be a small honor gain (unsure whether gates destroyed count towards anything so far) but you are far better off taking graveyards on level 2, and keeping up the pressure on the second gate. If you had halfway decent drivers in the first 4 cars, then gate 2 should go down very quickly. A decent driver is one who doesnt stop, and doesn't weave about trying to fire at pedestrians. I had a go at this, because I think my aim and timing are quite good, but have grown out of it now. Tanks are for walls, and are useless if not driving straight at the wall. Also note that the siege weapon has no effect on pedestrians, even the ones stood right in front of you. This again differs from Wintergrasp, where the siege weapon on the big Humvee will thump people and cause a knockback (although even this has strict criteria for enemy position in order to make contact).

You can have two passengers in each vehicle, and these guys need to be ranged DPS, because they can fire from the vehicle and usefully clear a path. I've only managed to get a mage in the chair for this once or twice, but it was utterly brilliant, and we cained it through 3 walls and took the relic like we were popping to the shops. If its developed into a big, slow moving melee in front of gate two, I like to jump into a passenger seat sometimes, and heal DPS from that temporarily secure position. If I'm in a passenger seat, I also like to be carrying a seaforium charge, as occasionally I will get to the drop off point even if the vehicle does not. Even more occasionally, you get 15 horde players who don't know that the seaforium exists, and don't bother to defuse it. On the whole, seaforium is one of those things that 90% of the player base can ignore, like the mines in Alterac Valley, and it will really have no effect on play. In abstract, for instance when they were developing the ideas before release, they could be game changing. I find it interesting that there are 3 achievements relating to extensive use of seaforium, but I don't think anyone apart from anally retentive rogues are going to get anywhere near achieving them. Unless nobody sees you dropping it until the last second, that seaforium isn't going off, and you probably arent going to get close enough on foot to do the dirty any way...

"I say Trevor, whats that guy still on his bear doing?... why, he must be lost, or indulging in some horseplay! hahaha get him someone!... no, wait, hes dropped off a small item, I wonder what that is?" is not how its going to go. Nope, the guy in the turret leading you with the scope is actively looking for you, and he or his mate will take you down, or simply jump out and hit defuse in the leisurely 10 seconds they have to do it in. I like to think that the Horde are all on the CB going "Charlie charlie delta, we have a breaker on a welfare bear at gate two, proceeeding to the hard deck to put him in neutral" as calm as you like.

The only thing to remember is that the quicker we get to the relic, the less time the opposition have to get to the relic. As Alliance always go first, we have the natural advantage here, as we will always have twelve minutes, and the Horde will have whatever time we give them. This is great news!
In the first round, they are fighting to give themselves time, and we are fighting for the relic. If we get to the relic with seven minutes on the clock, they have only five minutes to do it in. It takes five minutes without any opposition whatsoever, and if you can take out their first two vehicles, then they aren't getting to the relic. I really like this maths. These, as a proud alliance player, are good odds. If you do restrict them to five minutes, it is merely a duckshoot, and we all go home with another 1000 honour. 38 like this and I've got my Hateful Gladiators faux crystal tumblers, or bathtowel set.

I would recommend Strand of The Ancients to anyone, Its quick, there are explosions, and I rarely walk away with less than 600 honor for my twenty minutes. Furthermore, come Patch 3.08 I think we are going to get things to spend the marks on, and there will be even more seaforium available to get through the last two gates. Jump right in and kill a Death Knight today.

The Top of the World

Things have changed for the better since I wrote the bulk of the articles that started this blog. We now have Wrath of the Lich King, and the continent of Northrend, where everything is dealt with on a massive scale, my armour has been better quality right from the word go (I have mainly blues and an epic tank shield, only a month after release), and every action feels like it will have an impact on events. This last feeling is down to "phasing" where parts of the world change for you after the completion of certain quests. Its truly awesome to be swept along by a story, and quest chains don't feel like such a drag any more.

Being a paladin is still a huge draw for me, and I still haven't managed to spend more than a week with an alt or achieve an alt higher than level 29. I have also taken on the challenges of mass PVP in the battlegrounds, and for such activities I have respecced to healer. I am now regularly changing specs to either be a Tank or a PVP Healer, and I have built a wardrobe which has a full outfit for both occasions.
Northrend has assisted me greatly in this. Not only did I keep everything which might have been of use as I went along, so I could study it in leisure at 80, but the Blacksmith craftable gear is wonderfully diverse compared to how it used to be. you can now make a decent starter Tank set, a plate PVE Healer set and a resillience heavy plate healer set. Hurrah! I can now craft myself 200 resillience? excellent. this means I might survive the first ten seconds of a rogue or warlock encounter and therefore live to bubble, cleanse or otherwise find assistance.

On the PVE front, I have had some success tanking in Northrend, and hope to get stuck into Heroics and Naxx as the time allows. I have the gear, and I think that on a good day, I have the fingers and awareness for it too. This aspect of the game i would most like to enjoy with friends and associates from my guild, and as many are still in the late 70s, and have rep grinds and levelling to preoccupy them, I am happy to go heal strangers and fish up Dragonfin in the mean time. I am less keen to tank pugs, as my gear is going to take more damage, and it is harder to analyse what may be going wrong when you're knee deep in mobs or keeping a boss turning.