Reports from the Front: I Am Jack’s Complete Lack of Surprise

So, a blog post went up today about item upgrades returning in patch 5.3. Take a moment to read through it if you haven’t already.

In summary, upgrades are coming back for PvE (at a hefty discount), but mercifully staying away from PvP gear. Mercifully, you ask? Why wouldn’t you want to make your gear better? Well, this farce is a good start:

Season 13 honour, season 12 conquest (2/2 upgrades), season 13 conquest. See the immediate issue? If you earned enough conquest for fully upgraded gear last season, then you essentially have this season’s conquest set already; a 2 ilevel jump isn’t a tremendous leap. They’ve addressed this a little by upping the item level of the Tyrannical weapons, but it’s still a bit silly. Newcomers to season 13 who only have access to this season’s gear are at a colossal disadvantage until they have time to earn enough conquest for the Tyrannical set – so, for the next couple of months, everyone who has upgraded gear is massively ahead of the gear curve in PvP. It’s that old feeling of fighting someone in arena gear in your BG gear, but you get it right from the very start, this season! Previously, you could jump in to a new season and farm honour for last season’s arena set (while the people who got conquest gear were farming this season’s). Item upgrades have ensured that isn’t possible this time around.

So, yes, I won’t be mourning the loss of this system for PvP gear. This is a very positive change, really. It also means the Tyrannical set’s ilevel probably won’t need to be dropped in 5.4 to stop it being the best choice to get in to the last raid’s LFR (which will probably require ilevel 500, I’m guessing?)

And no, I couldn’t get those images to play nice. Noob blogger, l2p.

Reports from the Front: This Happened

… and we all have to live with that fact. Remember to focus fire those healers, folks!

Reports from the Front: Wreckin’

So, this happened last night. Warsong Gulch, the Rogue 5.2 buffs have gone in, we have a lot of healers/hybrids and the Alliance team is a bit ropey. Why not try for a big score, Illirica?

Deathmatching in midfield dot Joint Photographics Experts Group

Massive thanks to the healers here, particularly Místy-Thunderhorn who spam healed me through a Cheat Death proc while I was throwing caution to the wind to get the last couple of kills before the timer ran out. Shout out to Kalue-Frostwhisper for delaying his cap long enough for me to finish it off, too!

The Assassination buffs are amazing – 5% passive damage through Assassin’s Resolve on top of the extra 20% on Envenom and 15% on Dispatch is great. Combined with the extra talents and abilities I’ve unlocked on the last few levels, I feel capable of winning (or at least drawing) 1v1 fights reliably. All in all, PvP is looking up, after dragging a bit through the 40s.