Pewpew

In the last few days, I have toppled out of a tower defense mood and firmly into a shooter mood. But not any old FPS. Nay, it is third-person shooter that I am currently fancying.

I have to blame in part, my Black Garden overdose last night. A vague desire to get the last baby alt away from the single-digit levels suddenly became a rampaging monster urge to dps and kill things when I took a break from harvesting nodes and crafting tin totems and yew wands and jumped into the Black Garden queue for fun.

Apparently, patch 1.2 might have fixed rogues. Or so they say. The marksman soul is causing the most QQ as it can apparently strip buffs with as much ease and energy expenditure as Garfield eating lasagna – which is to say an immense amount disappears in a very short time without the eater having expended much effort at all.

I wouldn’t know. I don’t pvp in the big leagues. I do little league pee vee pee. I haven’t any alternative souls unlocked yet, so my rogue has been queueing as ranger/nightblade/riftstalker. 

I’ve a good mix of points in both ranger and nightblade, with zero-point riftstalker. I’m not sure if this is an appropriately uber build, but it puts out very consistent ranged dps with spammable instants, buffed with a nightblade fiery blades enchantment and has an okay finisher in head shot for a little spike damage.

Sporting a nightblade soul lets me surprise (or at least trouble) the opponents who run in to close with my rogue, thinking that all my ranger skills will be nullified at close range (which they are), but then I pull out my dual daggers and go all Drizzt with fiery blades on them. Truth be told, if I’m not catching heals at this point, I have a better than average chance of dying, but it’s better than dying with my back facing them. At least they will have some holes and charred flesh in them this way. And I’ve pulled off a win enough times to make it worthwhile.

The riftstalker is my wishful thinking at wanting to tank, but I think it’s best saved for another role spec. What it does have as a zero-point stalker is a very nice 15m teleport ability. This does awfully good things in PvP, including close distance in a hurry to get into range of the fang carrier running away at top speed, but more often to beat feet back to our tree , zip away from a mage or just judder away from a melee class getting in my face (and spin and attempt to kite him.)

Lowbie PvP is fun. Mostly because everyone’s skill trees are not completely developed and 75% of the participants are new, inexperienced or amateurs (of which I count myself quite squarely in that category) so there is no horrific hardcore PvP gank squad to skew win/loss over much. Wolfsbane PvP queues also mix with Shadefallen, Faemist and Tearfall, which are servers all not really known for any ruthless PvP groups. (Briarcliff would be scarier.)

So Black Garden consists of this back-and-forth trading of blows, with people cowering behind their respective trees when they have the fang, or stepping near the center when they are winning or just have balls (Defiants do!) or running up the cliff to score +1 per tick in a manner calculated to piss people off and have them charge up the slope to be picked off one at a time (those scummy Guardians!)

My own self-chosen role is quite simple. Single-target ranged dps on a likely target until the thing pops and dies, or if it’s proving too unpoppable, to change targets and look for a likely heal0rz pumping him to full and apply pressure to it instead. (No fancy heal debuffs or silences at this stage, alas.)  If I can, prioritize the fang carrier. If I can’t, then eat away around the edges of the clump, preferably targetting heal0r types so that other teammates can jump the fang carrier while the heal0rs are busy self-healing. The boar pet just rampages in the opponent’s ranks on its own, while not exactly causing mass chaos, I’m sure it at least pisses off whoever it’s stuck on to.

I’m actually surprised that it doesn’t die more often. Somehow, people seemed WoW trained to ignore pets and just hit the pet owner instead. It takes 8 seconds to resummon the boar in Rift though, and that’s valuable time I’m spending hiding behind an obstacle or in the backline not dps’ing the fang carrier. I guess it’s just a fairly buff tank, though I admit I take apart boars that stick on to me in a prejudiced nightblade manner when I have the time to.

The main addiction hit when I progressed on from really basic Black Garden achievements such as Victory: Black Garden and Carrying Corruption and Carrier Down – which just requires you to participate in the game for a few rounds and mindfully stick to the game’s objectives instead of team deathmatching. 

In one crazy memorable game, I had picked up the fang twice already, the fang was flying back and forth between Defiants and Guardians and back again in a very close battle, and we had JUST managed to brutally brawl the fang out of the hands of the Guardians behind their tree for long enough for the fang to respawn in the center. I was already moving towards the center, instinctively guessing that it was about to respawn there. 

There was ONE Guardian just ahead of me, bending down to pick the fang up. But he was very low on hp and hadn’t stopped to heal. I hit V to teleport forward, barreled into the Guardian, sniped one quick arrow at him to build up a combo point, attempted to do a quick stab into him for another combo point (which I’m never sure whether it landed) and whacked down on my melee finisher. Down he went and bing, popped the purple fang in front of me. Hasty right-click on the fang, and I was off and running back to the Defiant tree, knowing the hounds of hell (the rest of the brawl, Defiants and Guardians alike) were right behind me.

Amusingly enough, a series of achievements popped up in laggy succession. Star Offense, Star Quarterback and Smash and Grab. Turns out that the fateful kill was my third kb on a fang carrier that game (Star Offense), it was my third fang carry (Star Quarterback) and I had snatched the flag up less than 10 seconds after offing the flag carrier (Smash and Grab.) Talk about feeling like the MVP for the game. :)

Shortly after that, the Guardians gave up hope for that game as the Defiant score was a bit too high, and settled down to shooting at things in the frontline (of which I was not, hiding behind the tree with my pocket healer and me). To rub salt into the wound, as the game ended, I scored Left Holding the Fang on that game too. It was delicious. And I was hooked.

I managed to discover the elusive power up and went for Strike Them Down during a few rounds where the Guardians were doing much better than the Defiants. Mostly thanks to having more healers. And the wussy (albeit effective) strategy of retreating to their cliffside. So though the team lost, it wasn’t a total wash as I got some personal goal achievement in.

Then passed a few games where I was playing properly and it so turned out that I happened to pick up the fang, the Defiants were in pretty good control that game, and the Guardians coming in dribs and drabs. Sensing an opportunity, I stood near the centre, flanked by 4-5 Defiants, and spammed quick shot at the oncoming red names, hitting my finisher when they looked near to dying. One died, another, and another… still no achievement yet, probably didn’t score the kb… One more guy… and badabing, Power from the Pain popped up. Followed shortly by Black Garden Domination – which was unexpected, but apparently that’s what you get when you complete the set. That was hilarious. In a lol, ugotpwned sort of juvenile manner. Or rather, it was akin to the manner of those old Quake games when the announcer would have those fancy sayings when people score too many kills “Rampage” “Dominated” “Slaughter” etc. 

Anyhow, scenarios (or warfronts rather, I am mixing them up with Warhammer) are fun. In that there is no lasting consequence beyond that temporary scoreboard for the game, and everything resets, and everyone earns some favor so everyone wins by participating regardless. Something that WoW’s Battlegrounds developed, which is excellent. Each skirmish is a new game, and points are just a way of keeping score.

About two hours later after a bevy of Defiant wins, the tide turned as the Defiant healers logged off, leaving us with a grand total of 0-1 healers, and more coordinated Guardian groups started showing up with 3-4+ healers providing a very strong healing wall that not even my dps was able to break. No hard feelings though. Such is random PUG PvP for you. And at the 11-19 level range, few will have all their soul changes in place. Heck, I didn’t have a bard soul so I couldn’t produce any offheals or support either.

There was again one rather classic win of teamwork from the Defiants. We had zero healers. Everyone was an offensive soul as marked by our little icons. The max healing output from our scoreboard barely topped 5000 (probably from self-heals, necromancer heals, pet heals, etc.) The Guardians had at least 2 healers who topped 22k and 26k in healing done. By suicidal dint of effort, we threw ourselves at the Guardian fang carrier, carried the fang back in a relay chain of toppling bodies (ok, only two, me and another guy), and took turns picking up the fang behind the tree while the fang damage did more killing of us than the Guardians. Presumably the Guardian healers were being pressured by the hordes of other dps’ers kamikazing them while the 3-5 of us sat around sacrificing ourselves hot potato’ing the exploding purple object. 

That was the exception though. Generally the odds were 3-4 Guardian wins to one Defiant, and with that, I decided to bow out for the night. No point throwing oneself into a meat grinder.  Just need to give it a while and stuff rebalances itself back and forth again.