Bitching About Line of Sight

LoS.

Line of Sight.

Every class knows about this.

For some, it is a blessing. For others, it is a curse. Every solid PvP player knows how to exploit LoS to their advantage. This is why warriors love the Blade’s Edge Arenas, and Hunters loathe it for the same reason.

For mages, we depend a great deal on having Line of Sight on our target, but we are not gimped as badly as hunters are. We can still cast at point blank range, but hunters lose a lot of their prowess at that range.
Breaking LoS with a mage is almost a surefire way to gain some time. It will cancel most casts, only spells in flight and Arcane Missiles are not interrupted by this.
In the arenas, there are many opportunities to break LoS and prevent a mage from getting a spell off, horribly gimping their damage and forcing them to chase you.
Smart players know this, and exploit it with the same amount of vehemence as mages exploit the hunters deadzone.
So, I am here to talk about LoS in arenas, as me and vox experienced this a great deal tonight.
(If anyone cares, 70% wins).

The first thing we noticed with LoS was a warlock who, in the Blades Edge arenas, was an incredibly good player.
Earlier today in AV, I fought a warlock in full S2 arena gear. Upon CS’ing Fear, he stood there and did nothing until, 8 seconds later, be began casting Fear again.
This warlock, in the arena, casually blew Vox’s entire Arcane Power cooldown with LoS kiting. This warlock literally took one step to avoid the opening PoM + Pyro, and proceded to kite Vox silly, by using a ramp and a single pillar. It was infuriatingly hard to pin this ‘lock down.
And the warlock in question was wearing a couple of PvP epics, D3, and a single piece of S1 arena gear.

Now, we came up against this team again, but in the Lordaeron arena. Lordaeron has only one LoS breaker, the little smashed altar thingy in the middle. Quite simply, LoS kiting was impossible. They bit the dust HARD.

The difference? Blade’s Edge is full of LoS breaks. This is why, as a mage, I loathe this arena far more than any other. A shaman can duck behind a pillar and fire off a Lesser Healing Wave, and I can’t react fast enough to stop them. On the same note, Hunters in Blade’s Edge are laughably easy to fight. They cannot get range to use their bows, and even if they do, I can quickly duck behind something and be free from harm.
Lordaeron, on the other hand, is a terrible place for healers. There is almost nowhere to hide, and it is incredibly easy to kill one. No Healing Waves for you! By the same token, hunters do very well (by comparison) in this arena. There is lots of room for manuevering, and it is very hard to break LoS.

So. If you want to kill a mage in the arena, break LoS. We cannot cast, we cannot use instants. It is very hard for us to hurt you when we can’t “see” you. The game doesn’t care if you’re a Tauren, and I can clearly see your left arm. I cannot aim spells anywhere else but right below your head.

We mages love range. We love having lots of room to manuever. We love our targets to be unable to break LoS, so we can destroy their shiny behinds.

We mages hate melee combat. We hate having almost no room to manuever. We loathe our targets to be practically in our faces, able to break LoS with a few buttons.

I, personally, believe some arenas need some work, to avoid favoritism amongst the various classes.

Blade’s Edge (Circle of Blood) is incredibly easy to break LoS with. Any class that uses ranged attacks, whether they be spells or bows&arrers is at a serious disadvantage.
Warrios, Rogues, Feral Druids, etc, are at a huge advantage here. Good healers are right at home here, they can break LoS and survive the usual “KAJOOM” attacks ranged would do to them (Paladins will whine if you break LoS on their heals, though. Be careful you don’t up and anger them into speccing Ret). Mages, l4z3rch1ck3n dr00ds, warlocks, shadow priests, etc, and ESPECIALLY hunters are at a major disadvantage here, usually being forced to fight far closer than comfort.

Lordaeron is pretty much the opposite of Blade’s Edge. It is very, very hard to break LoS here, only the center altar provides that, and that is laughably easy to counteract. Melee classes be afraid, you are food for the ranged ones. Healers beware, you are very much at risk here. Picture EotS, and try to remember the last time you felt safe from max range attacks there…
Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, cheer in triumph, this arena is where you shine.

The Nagrand arena (Ring of Trials) is the most balanced of the three arenas. There are four pillars, all capable of breaking LoS. However, these are the only ways to break LoS, and they are spaced apart by a good distance. There is both open spaces and close spaces here. Melee does better when near the outside (i.e. by the pillars), ranged fares better in the middle, with plenty of room. Overall, Nagrand is a very well-designed arena, and is our personal favorite arena to fight in.

In other news, most of Lost Cause has been invited to join the guild Anathema.
LC is basically a casual guild, we don’t do much besides goof off. Anathema is a far more “serious” guild, having actually SEEN some high level content. They’ve actually downed Lurker, FFS. Lost Cause did Shattered Halls once.
I don’t think its an “IF” LC signs up, its a “WHEN”. And when we do, foxy voxy ain’t gonna be speccing frost.
He’s going to stay arcane, and he’ll probably be gleefully killing stuff in Karazhan whilst I lament the loss of Resilience in S3 mage gear.

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AV Weekend (Free Honor)

Alterac Valley holiday weekend has hit, and anyone who has any interest in PvP is there.

There is honor to be had! In vast quantities! For little effort!

And also the somewhat awesome fact that S1 arena gear is going onto the honor system to consider.
Obviously, you, the proud mage, have some choices to make. Do you go with the flow, and dick around in AV, harvesting honor for no real effort?
Or do you step up to the challenge, and go find a commander and solo it?

This is a guide to the Alliance commanders and lieutenants in AV, and how to kill them. If there are any readers on alliance side reading this, a guide on how to kill the horde military folk would be appreciated.

Anyway.

On with the killing!

In the following write-up, when I use the word “Kite”, I am referring to (roughly) the following procedure:

1) Slow the target (Any frost slow effects, Blastwave daze, Slow, whatever works for you)
2) If frost, max-rank frostbolts will keep him occupied. When he gets close, run away, continue. Use frost nova whenever it is up, to get range and a free shatter. If not frost, use rank 1 frostbolt whenever the slow timer is up to keep him moving slowly. Again, frost nova whenever it is up and get some range. Use blink if you’re having trouble keeping range.
3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 until target falls over, thus awarding you 20 honor.

Lieutenant Spencer
He guards the Stonehearth Graveyard.

This fight is simple, once you get the hand of it. Pull any one of the guards, and all four of them and Spencer will be pulled. Gather them up, and AoE the guards down. Arcane Explosion, Blastwave, Cone of Cold, whatever you have. Once all four guards are down, slow Spencer by any means necessary. Frostbolt, Slow, whatever. Bonus points for using CoC earlier and having him already slowed.
Then, kite him. You must kite him away from the alliance guard tower, otherwise those archers will tear you apart.

Lieutenant Largent
One of the guards of Stonehearth Outpost, along with the gnomish lieutenant.

Approach from either the south or the east. Pull him, and kite. You have more manuevering room from the south end, lots of flat spaces. From the east, you have various hills, which are amazing for kiting when properly used. If you jump down from one, you can instantly gain (effectively) 10-15 yards of kite time in a couple seconds.
Again, do not kite into the archers up the hill. That’s just asking to be killed.

Lieutenant Stouthandle
Patrols between Stonehearth Outpost and Stonehearth Bunker.

On his own, Stouthandle is easy. You have lots of room to kite, having both open spaces and hills to use to your advantage. However, as Stouthandle is the type of guy who wanders around on his male sheep, he can jump you while you’re kiting a different Lieutenant. If that happens, fire off a polymorph, and make him wander around as a female sheep.
Watch the timer closely, you do not want to have him running lose on you. These guys hit for about 1k damage, don’t let them get crazy on yeh.

Lieutenant Greywand
Largent’s best buddy, helps guard the Stonehearth Outpost.

Same as Largent, kite and kill.

Lieutenant Lonadin
Rides around on a giant kitty by Stonehearth.

This guy can be tricky, due to his proximity to the archers in the bunker. Kite him back into the area where you killed Spencer. You should have lots of room there by now, having killed off the other lieutenants in that area. Kite as usual once you are in the clear.

Lieutenant Mancuso
Patrols north of Stonehearth Bunker. Stupid name.

The very first alliance bunker you reach houses Commander Randoplh. There is one archer here you need to worry about. He/she’s the one standing above the entrance. Before attempting to kite any lieutentants here, KILL THIS ARCHER. It will make your life so much easier. Mancuso is easy to kite once this archer is dead, you have lots of room you can use.

Commaner Randolph
In Stonehearth Bunker.

As I said before, KILL THE ARCHER OVER THE ENTRANCE. It will make things far less painful. Run into the bunker, take a couple steps up the first flight of stairs. Then whirl around and head out the door. Randolph will have aggrod. He will follow you out, and once your in the open air, kite as a lieutenant. If you killed the archer this will be easy.
If you have not, you need to kite him up the hill to where Mancuso is. Lose LoS with the bunker, and use the open area up there. If Mancuso joins in, sheep him. It’s harder to do things this way, you’ll probably take around 4k damage from the archer kiting up the hill.

Commander Karl Phillips
In Icewing Bunker.

This one is a little more difficult to solo. You must kill every archer in the tower first to give yourself room to kite. There are also a couple of rams and a dwarf with some owls who patrols past here. You don’t need to kill them, but it is highly recommended that you do. You do not want multiple adds showing up. One is fine.
If you don’t clear the adds, then kite Phillips down the path leading towards Stonehearth. That will avoid any patrolling mobs, and give you some room.

Commander Duffy
Guards the Stormpike Graveyard.

Remember Spencer? Same thing, except with a dwarf. AoE down the guards, then kite Duffy back the way you came. You cannot kite Duffy where he forst spawns, you don’t have nearly enough room. Do not try and kite over the bridge, the archers will tear you several new ones. You have to go back the way you came in, and get yourself some valuable kiting room.

Commander Mortimer
Patrols in Dun Baldar.

This one can be very tough to solo, fortunately, the chances you will have to are very slim. All the archers need to be dead, as well as Mountaineer Boombellow and Corporal-whats-is-face. if you need even more room, kill the guards at the Aid Station graveyard as well. ‘Course, you’ll probably need to keep Mortimer sheeped for that, as you’re probably going to aggro him befoire you get to the graveyard. Once these threats are removed, he is easy enough to kite, you just have to be alert here. This is a dwarf town, there are tanks and walls placed at random. There are numerous NPCs that only aggro when you get really close to them, so watch yourself.
Do not kite over any NPC vendor types, and avoid backing yourself into a corner. If you stay alert to your surroundings, this will not be hard.

And there you go. You just garnered a couple hundred honor and some respect while at it. And if there’s anything the general WoW community needs, its more respect for mages.

Some random stories:

I had brought Randolph outside, and begun kiting him. A druid came along, popped into Bear, and tried to tank. It took him a couple of seconds before he realized it was hopeless and pointless to try and pull aggro off me… so he morphed kitty and began DPS’ing the crap out of boor Randoplh. I kited in a large circle, so Randolph always had his back turned towards the druid.

Another time, whilst solo’ing Randolph again, a holy priest came by, with every intention of healing me.
20 seconds in later, the priest had done nothing but stand there.
I got a /sigh sent in my direction, then a /s “What am I supposed to do? You aren’t taking damage”

“Melee the bugger” says I.

Good times had by all.

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