To gank, or not to gank, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of the opposing faction,

Or to take arms against a sea of horde,

And by opposing end them?

What I’ve learned playing on a PVP server:

Chose your battles wisely, 

Do not charge openly into an overwhelming number of enemies,

For you will die in vain, and embolden your enemies seek revenge.

Pick the time and place of your battles.

Que for battlegrounds, hone your skills. 

When defeated by superior player, acknowledge their victory,

But learn from your mistakes.

There will come a time when you will be faced with a difficult decision. 

To Gank or not to Gank.

This morning I was presented with an opportunity to attack an AFK member of the opposing faction.  A level 85 Paladin who appeared to have gone AFK while waiting with his level 40 something companion near a summoning stone.   While I was on my level 82 Druid, I simply let them be when I first saw them.  I was working on finding the elders for the Lunar Festival, and was not interested in PVPing at the time, especially not against a level 85 Paladin and his buddy.  However, after completing my goals within the area, and having had a cup of coffee, I noticed that they had not moved from their spot for maybe 20 minutes or more.  Well, this level of complacency about these two hordies on a horde dominated PVP server seemed to demand some type of action on my part. Soooooo, while I prefer even/balanced PVP or even the opportunity to win against overwhelming odds, I decided to gank the Paladin.  But I did not touch his companion.  I hope that I gave them something to think about when they returned to their characters.  As it turns out, despite the moral dilemma I experienced about ganking an AFK player, I feel as though it was the right thing to do.  When I first started playing on a PVP server, I would have let it go.  I guess over time I’ve become more accustomed to the PVP code of conduct on the server.   Or I have simply been ganked enough to feel the need to take some revenge.  Either way, it was in fact the highlight of my morning and it reminded me of the conversation between Captain Jack Sparrow and William Turner.

[Will draws his sword.]

Jack Sparrow:  Put it away, son.  It’s not worth you getting beat again.

Will Turner:  You didn’t beat me:  you ignored the rules of engagement.  In a fair fight, I’d kill you.

Jack Sparrow:  That’s not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?

My first toon was a Warrior.

After watching my kids play for over a year, trying to get them to get off the game and do something else, I logged on and decided to give it a try.  I spent a lot of time on the character creation screen.  I wanted him to be something that I could connect with.  Coming up with a name was of course a sticking point.  It needed to represent who he was and indirectly how I would approach the game.  Thinking of the Disney movie about Halloween, I remembered the one witch who was talking about running amok and another witch repeating the word “Amok Amok Amok”.  Well the name Amok was taken.  And Amuk was taken.  But then I typed in Amukamukamuk and all was good.  It felt right.  I have many fond noob memories of leveling Amuk and I believe you have to be a bit of a Masochist to play and level a warrior, but that is who I feel best personifies my real life experiences.  I get beat on a lot, but thorough perseverance, I will eventually succeed.   When I started playing, my daughter and my son were playing – all sharing one account.  Well that was hard enough with just the two of them, so I started up a second account and moved my son’s toon over to that server.  So then they could play together and I could play when one of them were not playing.  Well with a second account, I made a Night Elf Druid.  I had watched my daughter playing her Druid and thought it looked like something I would enjoy.  Plus as a bear, it shared the same rage mechanic as the warrior and it felt familiar to a degree, but mostly I loved the look of the cat.   

That’s a longish explanation of why I will be talking about playing a Druid on a blog that appears to be about Warriors.  Well now, it’s my blog so I’ll write about what interests me.  But it’s all related because the way I approach the game, I believe you need to have some understanding of what the other classes bring in order to work well together.   And there is no better way of learning about the other classes than to play one yourself.  I am pretty sure that the most abusive comments I received from players about my tanking, were from players who never tried to tank.

This last week I rolled a troll druid.  I named him Mythstaken, after my other Druid.  I like the name.  It’s a bit of a personal reference to where I am in my life, reflecting on the many things that I believed to be true but I have come to understand that was just not so.  It’s a bit of a playful combination of “Myths” and “mistaken” understandings of what I knew to be the way things are and the way things ought to be.

Now I have played alliance since I started over 2 years ago.  So it is a new experience for me to have a horde character that I actually like.  Some friends I made when I first started playing switched to horde over a year ago and I hated leveling so much that I didn’t want to go through that again.  And I liked my alliance toons the way they were.  I didn’t want to pay for a faction change.  So when they asked me to join their new guild to help them level it a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d give it a go.  I had leveled a Night Elf Druid to 80 in Wrath and am slowly leveling him to 85 and I enjoy playing him so I thought I’d see what it was like with a troll druid.  Besides, I love the look of the troll cat form.  Leveling a druid now is so much easier than it was 2 years ago.  I’m sure that part of that reason is that I have 2 years of experience and that makes a big difference.  But I thought it was a great change to get the cat form at lvl 8 and the bear form at lvl 15.  Why, because I enjoy DPSing in cat form and getting to experience more of what the druid can do at the lower levels means that people can try things out easier with less wasted time it they don’t enjoy it.  So this is my new project in WoW, leveling my troll druid.  I’ll write about some of the experiences, good or bad, along the way.  I have no heirlooms on this toon.  Everything I’m using is from either quest rewards or the Auction House.  The gold I have is mostly from selling ore and herbs and drops I don’t need on the Auction House.

This last Friday, I got him to level 15 and joined my first looking for dungeon with him.  Since I have tanked quite a bit with my Warrior and Bear, I was looking forward to seeing what it was like in the lowbie dungeons.  Remember what it was like before the LFD tool?  You had to form your own groups, travel to the dungeons and hope you had a good group.  Well because of that I ended up leveling mostly through questing before that.  Unless you were in a guild that had players your level, you got runs through dungeons to get gear.  It felt like you had to hurry up to get to the max level so that you could get groups with other players.  I never liked being run through a dungeon.  “Stay here till I clear the room then come in and loot the corpses” – Not the heroic adventure that I was hoping for.  So the LFD tool is in my opinion one of the best changes Blizzard implemented in the last expansion.  It let you get groups for the dungeons with folks your level and learn to play your role in the group.  It made playing the game enjoyable without burdening your guild mates for runs.  Anyway, I managed to tank my way to level 19 over the course of the weekend and enjoy the challenges in the low level dungeons without being over geared or over the appropriate level.  Not a lot of attacks available at that level, just Maul, and Mangle, a taunt, and Demoralizing Roar, but learning to tank with the basics again was a great time.  I have key bound the target markings of Skull, X, Moon, and Square.  Do you know what a big difference it makes when folks are attacking the same target you are?  I had very little trouble keeping agro.  The best group was in Wailing Caverns.  I had a mage in the group and I asked if he could sheep yet.  He said yep and I told him to sheep the targets marked with a moon.  Worked great even if it wasn’t needed throughout the instance, by the time we got to the larger groups, we were used to doing that and it made things that much easier.  Imagine how good we will all be at 85, if we learned to start marking targets and communicating in pugs at level 18. 

Good luck to you all in your own journey!