When I start pvp-ing.
Although this has been true for almost every other patch (i.e., after we kill the final boss of whatever raid is current), this time around, I pvp'ed for a different reason - gear.
Up till now pvp gear has been crappy for pve except in instances of extreme ilvl differences and/or lucky secondary itemization. I personally don't think I've ever resorted to using pvp gear...until now.
The itemization in Highmaul is so silly in that exactly one piece of gear for each slot for each class drops from a single boss. Which means that only one dagger (a decent one, not some LFR crap) drops in the whole instance, and that from just one single boss. And so for almost two months now we've been downing Ko'ragh over and over, and I've been using my bonus roll token every single time, even pugging him on different difficulties, and all with no luck. Mind you, that's like going 0 for 30-40 possible chances of getting a dagger.
Why not craft one, you say? Well, I've thought about it. But every reset I told myself, 'Surely this is the week that I get my dagger', and instead used my resources to upgrade other gear. And now two months into Highmaul I find myself wearing mostly heroic/WF pieces and still using a blue dagger. The tragedy.
I was lamenting this when a guildie offered to do some arenas with me so I can get pvp daggers. And that's when it dawned on me for the first time in this whole xpac - they removed resilience from pvp! Except for the fact that ilvls change outside of pvp, that dagger is every bit as good as a pve dagger. And even then the conquest dagger is ilvl 660 - a whopping 30 ilvl increase!
Of course, the very thought of arena made me want to vomit, so I looked around for easy ways to get conquest. Everyone pointed to ashran, so I decided to give it a try.
The que was about an hour to get in, but boy once I got in, I could see why. It was utter insanity. It was like alterac valley on crack. It was the craziest thing I've seen in wow. And I got about 1000 conquest points in my first hour there.
The minute I entered I got invited to an event group. From there it was a constant and hilarious back and forth between 40 people intensely focused on a sole objective and 40 people participating in an utterly chaotic, disorganized, AoE-fest of honor kill/broken bone/nemesis farming.
I mean, literally. Whenever the event notification was announced at least 10 people would announce it over raid chat, and immediately an entire 40-man group would sprint off towards the designated area. And then no one said a word as we waited for the event to pop, and the moment it did all 40 people would simultaneously try to complete the objective. As soon as it was done we would all sprint towards the next event.
After completing all four within 5-10 minutes, the RL would say, "lets go clear base" and then we would all rush into our base where allies were GY camping and killing our faction leader. What ensued then was not something that I could call actual pvp - it was just more a mess of everyone laying down their biggest aoes possible over as many allies are possible. As for me, I just ran around with evasion/combat readiness one while spamming FoK/crimson tempest. Sometimes a large tree would be there and everyone would focus it down within a matter of seconds.
When the base was clear of allies, then began the long, excruciating push all the way down the road to the ally base. People would get hopeful and say things like, "we got this, let's get a kill and win ashran". And then just as we were about to make the push across the bridge into the ally base, would come the inevitable zone-wide message: [Amphitheater of Anguish] begins in 3 minutes!
Everyone suddenly disengaged and booked it to the next event destination. A few stragglers would complain and say "we got this one guys, keep fighting, rush their marshall" but it was all in vain. All anyone cared about were events - and the 125 conquest points it awarded.
Sometimes at the event spot we would find a ragtag team of allies trying to complete the objective, but we basically just zerged them and took over. And during the 4 or so hours I spent in ashran, the allies never got a single event. And the horde didn't win ashran once.
After two days, with a total of 10-12 hours devoted to ashran (I had to leave once in a while because I was capping honor after 2 hours), I had a full set of 675 blue pvp gear, and two purple pvp daggers. The joy of finally sharding that crappy blue dagger! Not to mention I was able to rack up about 5000 broken bones for my gladiator's sanctum.
I hear Ashran is getting nerfed because obviously, if you want to do actual pvp, you'd be mad at the fact that the zone is overrun with asshats farming events. All I have to say about that is, I better get cap my conquest points before the nerf!
