Preparing for 3.2

I know I've read this over the past couple days, but darned if I can't find the reference now. But I'm gonna press forward and tell everybody what to do anyway. lol.

For those that have paid attention to the PTR or the patch notes or any Wow reporting site lately, you'll know that there's a new patch coming out, probably soon, and in that patch, among other things, there will be a new 5-man instance called Trial of the Champion.

This instance will drop a ton of purples on both normal and heroic modes. From my understanding (and again, not even having transferred a single toon over to the PTR this time), there are 3 events that drop one purple each. The first event starts out with jousting, so you may want to brush up on your skills there. Normal mode drops ilvl 200 and Heroic is ilvl 213.

Also on Heroic, each encounter awards you with a Champion's Seal. BUT... (and this is the part I can't find a reference for) you only get the Seals if you are a champion already. So, if you haven't done anything at all, you'll need to do the 4 daily quest for 5 days so that you can be knighted by your race. (Up to you if you want to be knighted by the other 4 factions as well.) And while the Champion's Seals won't buy you Tier 9 gear, they may provide some upgrades, or at the very least a pet you can sell on the AH. :)

So... if you've done nothing for the Tournament, you need to start today. You'll complete you're 5th set of dailies on Tuesday and then you can go do the Trial of Champion and get your Seals. Then again, that's assumming that 3.2 is going live on Tuesday. And being that they haven't closed the PTR yet, I'm guessing you probably have at least another week. But don't procrastinate too long.

Reputation Leveling: aka Argent Tournament Dailies

Another great side bonus of doing the Argent Tournament dailies is the crazy amount of reputation and gold you get from doing those quests. Assuming that you haven't gotten the Champion Title with all of the factions yet (which I don't think is possible just yet since it takes 5 days for each one) here's what you get:

• Each of the 4 daily quests for the home city that you're currently working on give 13g at level 80 and 250 reputation for that city, and 25% of that towards the other home cities.
• Each of the 4 daily Champion quests give you 250 Argent Crusade reputation, and either a Champion's Purse or Champion's Writ.

So, if you do these 8 dailies (2 sets of 2 can actually be done at the same time, so really it's more like 6), you get 1000 reputation for the city you're working for plus 250 reputation for all other cities, 1000 reputation for the Argent Crusade, 52g, 5 Champion Seals, and then either 40 more gold from the Purses (4 x 10g each) or another 1000 reputation plus 250 for other cities once you become champion if you get the Writs.

Let me sum it up another way:

Either up to 5000 total reputation and 52g - or up to 3000 total reputation and 92g.

At least those are the totals while you're working all for home city reps to Champion. Not sure what happens when you're Champion with everybody. Still, on the path there, you can get up to 100,000 reputation! (Don't check my math on that last one, I already know it's a bit off since you're not completing Champion Quests on your first path to Champion.) Oh, and that's about 1,000g as well. Granted, we're talking about 20 days of dailies, but since I still find them fun, I don't mind that as much.

Argent Tournament: Jousting Strategy Complete

So, I've had a number of comments on my original post about jousting. I really intended that more of a post on both NPC's and PC's. And that strategy pretty much works. If you get ahead of a PC at the beginning of a duel, you're guaranteed a win if you just stick by him and keep your shields up. But the NPC's do a few things slightly different than another player would. I figured I'd give a more complete guide to jousting and completing the daily quests.

First the skills during the duel:
1: Thrust
2: Shield-Breaker
3: Charge
4: Defend
By default, these are bound to the number keys as listed. You also have a heal (5) that will heal you to full out of combat only, and, in the tournament area, a duel (6).

Here's the steps:

1. Stack the Defend until you have 3 stacks, and it is no longer on cooldown. (Remember, this buff has a 60-second duration, so you must recast it within 60 seconds even if you haven't lost a stack.
2. Talk to the NPC to start the fight.
3. He'll start to walk away, so with him targeted, you start spamming your Charge attack (3).
4. Your momentum will usually carry you through the enemy, so you can make a circle to turn around and walk back to your opponent.
5. Now here's the trick that I haven't seen mentioned other places: as you are turning around, spam the Shield-Breaker (2) ability as you walk back to your opponent. It doesn't usually get to cast (due to shared cool-down with Charge and/or range), but in some instances it will. If it goes off, great! You've knocked him down another shield. If not, no big deal. Either way, make sure you close the gap to get in range of your Thrust.
   
6. At this point, you should be back next to your opponent and using the Thrust (1) ability. Spam the Thrust until your opponent starts walking away.
7. If during that foray, you lost a shield, make sure you cast Defend, to bring it back up to 3 stacks (while spamming Thrust).
   
8. When he starts walking away, stay in place. Now go back to step 3 (spamming your Charge ability) and go through all the steps again until your opponent is vanquished.

There's probably faster ways to do this, but I'm guessing they're riskier. If I'm paying attention (and not responding to tells), I'm generally at about 50% health when finished. The races that like to back off more often (Blood Elf and Gnome come to mind first), I'm usually left at about 70%.

And there you have it: Quick, easy, and reliable wins against the other tournament participants.

Argent Tournament: The Insult

I'm a little taken aback right now. I've perused the official Wow forums enough to know that there's a lot of jerks out there on the Internet. I'm sure it's partially a function of the anonymity of the Internet, and partially a reflection of a lot of parents that have done a horrible job at teaching their children respect.

I've mostly written this blog for myself, and hopefully there's a person or two that has learned something or at least been entertained by my writing a time or two. Heck, I've been pretty diligent about posting over the past almost 2 years.

But this is something new. I actually got a vulgar insult as a comment to my Jousting Strategy Post. I deleted the post since I found the insult crude, unimaginative, and quite frankly, unhelpful.

So, I went to my my traffic counter tools to see "who" this person was. (As a side note, I was surprised just how many people were looking for information about the Argent Tournament on my site.* Don't they know about Wowwiki?) The question now is... how much fun should I have with somebody's IP address from Newburyport, MA?

*Looks like I'm #1 on a Google Search for Argent Tournament Jousting. LOL

Argent Tournament: Champion

Last night I stayed up way too late to finish up my last few quests to become Champion of SW after the raid. (I didn't have time before the raid.) I was expecting that the defeat the Black Knight quest would open up and then just the other faction quests. I didn't realize that I'd be faced with a bunch of other dailies for the Champion Badges. Sure, that makes sense, I just didn't think about that one.

I'm getting to the point where I'm almost starting to get burned out on these quests. It's taken a bit longer than the rest of the dailies I've suffered through, but I also haven't gotten burned out yet. The small motivator now is to complete quests and become champion for the other factions so that I can get Champion's Writs and then get exalted with my home factions. I guess just something inside me figures that I've done enough stuff for cities like IF and SW especially, that I really should be exalted with them. But no, I'm still only revered. I'm only about 2k away from SW rep, but I might as well focus on another one and get the SW rep with the 25% extra they give to all other factions.

So, will I be champion of all factions? I'm thinking I probably will... but not at the consistent rate I did it with SW. But I now have an Argent Squire. Of course... for somebody that's not really a fan of "pets", I'm not really excited about this one either. But at least it's not some smelly skunk pet.

Argent Tournament: Improved Jousting Strategy

I'm not one day away from becoming a Champion for Stormwind. Why am I so pumped about these quests? I honestly have no idea. All I can say is I'm having fun doing it. Heck, I even logged some hours to improve reputations (Dranei starting area ftw) with the home cities. They're now all Revered.

BUT... as I was jousting this weekend to continue the dailies, I realized that there's a different component that I use when jousting. For the NPC's, I actually let the walk away so I can charge them. (Spam that 3 button!) Sometimes they take down one of my shields, but I just put it back up. Circle around, and then spam that melee attack again. It makes the almost stale-mate strategy move just a little bit faster.

Another word on the shields. They last for 60 seconds. That's it. If you don't lose a shield, you have to remember to refresh them. I almost lost a duel yesterday because I forgot to refresh my shields (even though I had all 3). So, I ended up with no protection and saw my health quickly declining. The NPC was actually even ahead at around 20% health. But I just kept to the charge-spamming and steady decrease in his health.

Argent Tournament: Jousting Strategy

As I mentioned in my last post, I've really been enjoying the whole Argent Tournament area. I've even been enjoying "dueling" other jousters. (*gasp*) This may come as a shock to those few people I've actually dueled. Generally when I get annoyed enough that somebody wants to duel me, I accept the duel, and then just run away. For whatever reason (probably mostly because I usually get schooled), I just don't enjoy dueling as a mage.

But dueling as a jouster is a different story. Probably because I win. So, today I'll break my little secret as to how I win every duel since I implemented this strategy. It's essentially a game of get ahead and stay ahead. That's it. So here's what you do:

1. Make sure you have all 3 sheilds up when you start and your shield action button isn't on cooldown.
2. Get far enough away to charge your opponent immediately. Maybe it's my latency, but I've always been the one to charge first.
3. This should drop a shield from your opponent and put his health lower than yours. If he doesn't immediately put up his 3rd shield, then you get to get even further ahead.
4. Now simply stay close, make sure your shield stay up, and spam-attack him with the melee attack.

That's it. If you're ahead of him at health at this point, which you should be, then just keep attacking. I know it will take awhile, but it's pretty much a guaranteed win. Sure, your opponent will attempt to get far enough away to shield break you, but as long as you shadow him, then you don't have to worry about it. Just stay close and keep attacking. I'm sure it's the training that the quests give us that you have to get rid of all of somebody's shields... but really... you don't!