My Battlegroup sucks... or is it me?

[Boseefus]

Well, I hit 70 on my 4 shamans on Friday and hit AV for Bonus weekend and found that the Horde loses about 80% of the time on Shadowburn. Yesterday and this morning, I ran some EotS and lost every single match, I could hold an area for a while, but then just get totally zerged. Ouch. Now I know that I'm squishy as a new 70, but wow, it is frustrating to keep fighting loss after loss. Should I look into a transfer? I don't know, I love PvP but I made a stupid decision to reroll servers to be with some RL friends. Now I think that was a bad idea =(

What is ideal is about a 50/50 Battlegroup with quick ques on the BGs. I was in Embertorm when I singleboxed, maybe I should move back there. Anyone have recommendations? Should I stay and tough it out? Should I move? I'm looking for some peer support =)

errr... I'm frustrated.

[merujo]

improve ur gear to see some results.
in av, u can have a great impact, but ur team must work as well.
on any other bg, u must be geared, and do ur work, just dont expect great things on ab or wsg.

i was in the same boat for a while. loss's and more loss's. but then the gear started to change, and once u enter one AV and tottaly make the difference, u know it was worth it. man i still remember how horrible it was to get those wsg and ab marks...

don't be frustrated. it's a mix between ur gear and the ppl u play with. but i can tell u this, once u have ur gear, u can turn the tide of battle

[EvilSqueegee]

My 5 shamans are sitting with s2 shields/gloves/shoulders, the rest being rep set and next to that... quest greens. I can't tell you how often I go into EotS and GANK for the first two minutes or so. And then it allll just goes downhill. I've been analysing my own play to see if there's anything I can do to help fix the problem. I've noticed a few things:

1) I often times heal too much: I don't spend enough time nuking enemies, and I waste too much mana chainhealing.
2) I have a REALLY bad habit of tossing a group-wide chainheal when a single-target Lesser Healing Wave will do. I lose shamans to this habit constantly.
3) tremor, tremor, TREMOR. I have it set to round-robin for the constant AOE fear-break... well, when I drop them, anyways. I need to drop them regardless of what I'm fighting in the BG's. Can't count the number of times a warlock has run through out of NOWHERE and fearbombed me -repeatedly-.
4) I pick the wrong targets consistantly. Mages die. Boomkins die, especially with their new AOE talent. And dear god it's annoying to get AOE interrupted by Thunderstorm, though much less annoying than I thought it would be. Bladestorm is a PAIN IN THE REAR. Rogues really screw me up. So many choices... I'm just not used to the PVP yet so I have a hard time picking which ones need to die the quickest.
5) Poorly-timed cooldowns. Fire elementals are HILLARIOUS in bg's, but I waste them all the time on just trying to survive one ret pally, or by dropping them in the graveyard of a node I then run over to cap in EoTS, to handle rezzers.
6) I have yet to find a method of countering Blizzard. That one single spell has cost me more games than I can count. I figured it was PVP, nobody would take improved blizzard, right? ...I was horribly, horribly wrong. Every mage and their MOTHER has it, and I can't quite find the right counter for the aoe freeze. My best options tend to be turning the offending parties into piles of crispy lightning-struck honor points. -if- I can locate the thing casting it at me.

I notice the following things in the other players of the BG that -really- tick me off:

1) what I've begun to call SHINY syndrome: "Oh wow, the multiboxer... look at him go! lol, nuked that hunter really good. Freaky, that, the way they all cast at once. Man, he's taking people out in seconds! Thunderstorm is pretty." And never something like, "Oh snap, there's 7 alliance to this one fiveboxed shaman in crap gear. Perhaps I should dismount and maybe attack someone, or heal, or CC or do something other than sit and stare like a retard."
2) Team-clumping. I tend to rush towers and cycle through them, to snag point leads where I can. The problem is that if I stay to D, 3 other people stick with me. 8 to a node is not a winning strategy in EotS. If I then leave to take another node, those 3 move with me and there's 0 D at the node, which is also a losing strategy. I can't shake these 3 idiots no matter what I do.
3) People who pay no attention to information posted in QQ threads see a multiboxer in the BG and *assume* they've won because multiboxing is unfair. They sit around and goof off the whole game, expecting me to carry them to victory (as if playing with a full team of 10 other morons was easy, playing with a team of 6 or 7 other morons is a pain in the ass.)


My gameplay tends to improve when:

1) Heals. God I love getting heals. It means I can focus on the enemy and not on myself. My attention isn't nearly as split, and that lets me spend more energy assessing threats and noticing incoming adds to a fight along with spending less time monitoring healthbars. I find it easier to watch for CC on the drones and leader like this, as well.
2) People leave me alone. When my team moves AWAY from me, letting me take nodes and intercept rushes to the middle, I tend to do a -lot- better. Sure, I die more often, but we win games like that. When people leave me alone in BG's they're more focused on doing other crap - the type of stuff that helps the whole team and not the one zerg with which I'm running.

I hope this helps. Nice to find a spot to organize my thoughts.

[heyaz]

Shadowburn does suck, that's why I left it. I don't remember ever winning eots there (or anything really). I'm convinced it's one of the worst battlegroups for horde.

[Meathead]

Shadowburn does suck, that's why I left it. I don't remember ever winning eots there (or anything really). I'm convinced it's one of the worst battlegroups for horde.

Yea that sucks since im on BR Blackrock and they are giving away free transfers but.....its ot shadowburn lol no thx im staying on my full server!

[Boseefus]

Thank you for the great feedback!

I think you are both right, hehe. I need to work on my Multi-boxing skeelz and Shadowburn sucks.
I have thought about it more, and now I think that the best thing for me to do is wait it out. We have a new Xpac on the way, server transfers, gear “reset”, etc… I’ll just wait until I level to 80 and see how things are going then.
BTW, EvilSqueegee , I loved your write up. It has some very good points and made me laugh.

[Tamu]

Heh, I guess I need to try out AV again. I have an Alliance team on Shadowburn. I stopped playing AV back when Horde rolled Alliance every game I played a few months back.

If I were you I'd wait to see how the Horde does with the expansion before I shell out $$ to xfer. It could be that a lot of the good PVP players are just taking a break until the xpac is out.

[Nmagrig]

Tamu, its a bit of an evolution of sorts.

I went through the same things you went through. I would say it was a 50-50 split on my part. 50% of it being my fault, 50% being my teams fault. Often they will follow you around and just stare at you. Or better yet, they will follow you and stay with you so while you have 15 people at one node, the opposing faction is free to get the rest. (That has happened to me.)

For WSG I let teams know upfront that this was my weaksauce bg and any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I would often play mid d and ran the flag on occassion. When my wsg grind was over, I found I didnt do half bad.

Most people will tend to say that we have a multiboxer so its a instant loss. Your just gonna have to roll through it.

The other 50% was me. And that encompasses just learning what I can do as my own team and what I cant do. For example, macros and totems. I couldnt tell you how many times a single mage (SINGLE) would come in and just destroy me because I didnt know how to combat them. I am not by far the most advanced as of writing this but I am leaps and bounds beyond where I have come from.

Gear is also a horrid check point. It takes time to get the gear and yes your gonna get handled while you do it. But for me once I got that shield and weapon, things started to get better. Piece by piece things got better. I am at like 280 res right now and I feel like I am a force to be contended with.

All in all, your gonna have to take your lumps and just evolve your game play. I learn alot just by watching what other players do and getting my arse kicked. I went up against Aelli shamans mkII in av a few times. And we had similar gear for the most part and I still think overall he beat me pretty good with 4 shamans vs my 5. While I was scared fighting him I learned alot just by watching what he dropped, how he moved ect. So I have retrofitted my setup to move more seemlessly myself.

[robtest]

I haven't gotten to AV yet on Frostmourne, but at the lower levels it does seem stereotypical of the two other battlegroups I have played in.

Basically, Horde dominates everything except for 61-70 AV, which Ally wins the majority of...

[EvilSqueegee]

@ Boseefus: No problem. I like to give insight where I can - and considering I'm really new at MB PVP, Figured I'd toss in my two cents while I still could :O

Tamu, its a bit of an evolution of sorts.

I went through the same things you went through. I would say it was a 50-50 split on my part. 50% of it being my fault, 50% being my teams fault. Often they will follow you around and just stare at you. Or better yet, they will follow you and stay with you so while you have 15 people at one node, the opposing faction is free to get the rest. (That has happened to me.)

For WSG I let teams know upfront that this was my weaksauce bg and any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I would often play mid d and ran the flag on occassion. When my wsg grind was over, I found I didnt do half bad.

Most people will tend to say that we have a multiboxer so its a instant loss. Your just gonna have to roll through it.

The other 50% was me. And that encompasses just learning what I can do as my own team and what I cant do. For example, macros and totems. I couldnt tell you how many times a single mage (SINGLE) would come in and just destroy me because I didnt know how to combat them. I am not by far the most advanced as of writing this but I am leaps and bounds beyond where I have come from.

Gear is also a horrid check point. It takes time to get the gear and yes your gonna get handled while you do it. But for me once I got that shield and weapon, things started to get better. Piece by piece things got better. I am at like 280 res right now and I feel like I am a force to be contended with.

All in all, your gonna have to take your lumps and just evolve your game play. I learn alot just by watching what other players do and getting my arse kicked. I went up against Aelli shamans mkII in av a few times. And we had similar gear for the most part and I still think overall he beat me pretty good with 4 shamans vs my 5. While I was scared fighting him I learned alot just by watching what he dropped, how he moved ect. So I have retrofitted my setup to move more seemlessly myself.

If you don't mind my asking, how did you change your setup? Like, what was it that you learned about moving and so forth that lead you to a setup change? The whats/whys/hows of what is learned are a big boon to me, since I can put those into practice. Personally, I'm on the Whirlwind battlecircle. Around these parts, it's Alliance Valley, but it's Player Versus Raidboss in the other BG's for me (which I'm beginning to think may be gear. Shamans do a lot of dying and not too much killing. >.<) Either way I have an easy time telling when I fail the game or when the game fails me, and it tends to waver back and forth. 50/50, I lose it or the rest of the team loses it. as an MBer, I'm doing a LOT more losing than I'm comfortable with.