Arenas and Rated BG Experience - A Healthy Relationship

This is what Mr. Bigglesworth Got for Doing Arenas

In our rated BGs, we have started requiring an arena requirement in 3 vs. 3 or 5 vs. 5 of 1100 for all our rated BG members.  (Yes, we are recruiting for the rest of this season and next season.  See sidebar for more.)  The reason we are requiring this rating is because all of the BG leaders, myself included, see the value of having arena experience in rated BGs.  However, I also see the value of having rated BG experience in arenas.  Here are the links that I personally see between arena and rated BGs.

Arena Experience in Rated BGs

1) CC - Playing in arena gets you used to your different forms of CC.  For druids, we only have 2 plus one ability we can combine with roots.  However, it gives the experience of when to use the CC and when not to. Having experience with this in arenas will directly translate to being able to do it in a rated BG setting.

2) Focus Firing - A major part of arena is learning to focus fire.  Not only focus firing, but also being able to CC while focus firing.  This takes a lot of using focus frames, finding targets quickly, and changing targets quickly.  All of this experience in arena will help in rated BGs where you have to do many of the same things.

3) LOS - While learning how to use line of sight is vital in arenas, there are not a lot of times you can use it in rated BGs.  When you can though, it helps out.  Let me give an example from our rated BGs.  We were in a Twin Peaks.  We had the enemy flag and they had ours.  Our flag carrier had 3 healers with him.  In each of the bases of Twin Peaks, there are several places you can use line of site.  You can go upstairs, around the walls, around the outside, etc.  This was vital in keeping our flag carrier up.  Being able to line of sight in arenas is critical and comes in handy occassionally during rated BGs. 

4) Cooldown Management - The difference between a win and a loss in a closely contested arena match could be when a trinket is ready to proc and how it is utilized.  If you are busy applying CC, you may want to wait a few seconds before popping your trinket while you control the enemy.  However, there are more than trinket cooldowns.  You also have to think about healer cooldowns.  For example, if you are a resto druid, if you see another healer go down in a rated BG, that may be the time to pop Tree of Life to keep your flag carrier up until the other healer can come back in.  When to use cooldowns is something you learn initially in the small scale arenas and then apply it to the large scale rated BGs.

5) Calling Targets - If you see a priest, a mage, and a rogue, do you know who you should kill first?  Well, if you do arenas, you should.  First, you look at their HP.  Is anybody a little less than the others?  If they are, that may indicate some PvE gear on that person which means their resilience is less.  Are they controllable?  A priest would probably be the easiest to CC since mages can blink out of snares and rogues can get out of combat and go invisible.  What do you have available to you?  If you have lots of CC, you may want to CC the mage and rogue while you burn the priest.  If you don't, you may want to CC the priest and kill the mage.  While this is a typical arena setting, there are many times where you run into identical situtions in rated BGs.  Doing arena helps with target calling.

Rated BG Experience In Arenas

1) Saving Fights - In arenas, you usually have a designated healer.  In BGs, there may be times that you don't have a healer in your group.  If that is the case, you better know what abilities can save yourself.  Do you have a melee on you, pop Thorns and pop Nature's Grasp and root him while you heal yourself.  Are you running with a group and you are all in trouble?  Pop Tranquility and heal them.  While you see more of this in rated BGs, this knowledge can come in handy in arenas.

2) Different Comps - While in arena, you see some popular comps like mage, rogue, priest.  In rated BGs, you see comps that you wouldn't normally see anywhere in arena.  However, this is when you can practice against those odd comps.  For example, you never usually see a 4 healer, 1 DPS comp in arenas.  However, if you are trying to get the flag back in Warsong or Twin Peaks, you may run into that exact comp.  This will give you a broader experience on what different classes can bring to the table, classes that you may only see once in a while in arenas.  This experience can help you in arenas when you face similar compositions.

3)  Field Awareness - Arenas are smaller scale.  Usually, you can see what is going on pretty easily.  However, in rated BGs, you may need to know what is going on at the other side of the field.  For example, if you are in the middle trying to control the enemy from getting to your flag and you see people break off towards your flag carrier, you may need to go assist your flag carrier.  You are not doing anybody any good if you are in the middle and just keep killing things while your flag carrier is going down.  This translates to arena since you may need to get people off of your healer or give yourself some extra time or heal somebody while a healer is CCed.

So as you can see, doing arenas in addition with rated BGs can give you a lot of benefits for both.  I would encourage you to do both to become a well rounded PvPer.

Also, for winners of the Header contest.  I have not forgotten you.  I have  had a lot of stuff going on lately, but I should be sending them out by the end of this week.          

Sunday Humor: Must Read Web Comics

I have been thinking about this one for a while, but here is a list of 5 gaming comics that every WoW player should be reading regularly.

1) NPC (Non Player Character) - A comic about a woman, her husband/boyfriend (They never really say which, but I'm thinking husband), and her 2 cats who all play WoW.  It is cute and funny.  You will fall in love with Chloe and Bink from the first time you read it.  She also talks about life outside of WoW including Dungeons and Dragons, their neighbors, their coworkers, and a lot of Nintendo DS talk early in the comic life.  They also just celebrated their 2 year anniversery yesterday.  Highly recommend you check them out.  Here is a personal favorite from the comic. (Mainly because my cats come and lick my face all the time.) 

2) Dark Legacy - This comic, which has been around for about 4 years, is almost exclusively about characters in WoW.  They have pretty much every stereotype in WoW player that you can think of.  There is the overbearing raid leader (Krom), the lackey you bring along because you need people (Donald), gnomes bent on world domination, and regular players.  Really one of the funniest WoW comics around.  Here is their latest comic.

3) Extra Life - By Scott Johnson of The Instance, this is a general geek comic covering some WoW stuff, but mostly gaming in general as well as some situational comedy stuck in there.  Here is a personal favorite from the collection.

4) Penny Arcade - The granddaddy of web comics, this comic covers the opinions of Gabe and Tycho, fascimilies of the real life owners of Penny Arcade.   And thankfully, Gabe plays World of Warcraft regularly so they do cover WoW topics.  It is mostly general gaming topics, but WoW is covered.

5) The Daily Blink - This comic is another comic completely about WoW, however, it is not a comic in the traditional sense.  It is usually a one block comic that is satiring something in WoW, whether it is gameplay, lore, opposing factions, and even patch notes.  Here is a fine example of their work.

So please support these comics by going to their sites.  They are some of the funniest comics around the net right now.

7 Habits of Highly Effective PvPers

In the very early days of this blog, I had a post called "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Raiders".  Well since that original post, I have moved from a raider to a PvP BG leader.  Given this change, I decided it was time to rework those habits into being effective PvPers.  And not suprisingly, the main title of each of the seven habits are going to be identical.  The only difference is what you do with each of the habits.

1) Prepare - In rated BGs, this is probably the most different than PvE.  You can't use flask.  You can't use the Goblin Barbeque or the Seafood Magnifique.  But you still have to prepare yourself.  Be in full PvP gear.  Be gemmed, enchanted, etc. with the best possible enchants for PvP.  Some enchants are different.  Some enchants are the same.  Make sure you are in a proper spec for PvP.  All these things are things that should be done before stepping into PvP.

2) Readiness - Make sure you are on time and are prepared to come in.  With the elimination of 15 vs. 15 rated BGs, there may be a chance you will have to sit.  If you do, be on standby.  Be in Vent or Mumble if your leaders need someone.

3) Optimize - While it is still important to make sure your computer is in top shape and won't disconnect during fights, the strain is a little less in BGs compared to 25 man rating because the BGs are spread out.  If you had 20 people in an arena BG, I'm sure that it would lag like anything.  Also, as I mentioned earlier, you should optimize your gear.  Buy the blue honor gear to get started and go from there by using Conquest points to buy the epic PvP gear.

4) Research - While PvP is alot more fluid than a PvE setting where bosses have certain mechanics, you can still research.  First, and the most important, is to know your class inside and out.  You should know what CCs you have, who they are the most effective against, what things can maximize your DPS output in BGs.  Also, know the BGs inside and out.  Know where the power ups, like Beserker and Heals, are since they can turn the tide of battle.

5) Learn - As I mentioned in the original post, learning comes from education and experience.  If you find a PvPer of the same class who is doing better than you, ask them to help you out and figure out what you are doing wrong.  However, experience is the biggest teacher in BGs.  You will find out which targets are the healers or are the most dangerous.  You will figure out kill orders.  You will figure out what strategies work and which ones don't.  Best way to get experience is to run random BGs and arenas.  BGs will help you understand your DPS rotation.  Arenas will help you learn coordination and CCing.

In addition, there is two type of experienced learning in BGs.  Short term experienced learning is something you need to learn in this BG for this BG only.  For example, if you have Mage X who is CCing your healers and killing your DPS, you know that he is a high priority target so you will need to CC healers to kill the mage first.  The other type of experienced learning is long term experienced learning.  This would be overarching principles such as kill or CC healers first, how not to allow ninja caps, how to tell if someone is squishy by looking at HP, etc.  The only way you get that type of experience is doing BGs and arena.

6)  Observe - I thought that PvE raid awareness was something you had to get used to and it took a while.  Awareness in BGs takes it to a whole other level.  Let me give an example.  We typically have 3 healers on the flag carriers in Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks.  If all 4 healers are around our flag carrier, I can back off and use CC to get melee off of our flag carrier.  There are many instances where this can occur.  If you see a healer healing your target, kill them or CC them to kill your target.  Sometimes, you really almost need eyes in the back of your head to have PvP awareness.

7) Communicate - If I was going to reorder my list from the original list, I would have put this as number 1 easily.  Communication is the single biggest key in PvP.  The team that does not communicate loses.  What should you communicate?  Let me count the ways:  kill targets, CCed targets, nodes being attacked, flag carriers being attacked, healers protecting flag carriers die, flag carrier dies, enemy flag carrier dies, enemy flag carrier's location, our flag carrier's location, strategy, and reporting what is occuring at nodes.  And this is just with the 3 BGs currently available for 10 vs. 10 rated BGs.  The place this is best learned at is in arenas.  Learning this type of communication is vital in arenas and it translates very well over to rated BGs.  The more comfortable you can get with communicating, the better your team will be.  This also means that if you are on a rated BG team, you have to get comfortable with Ventrilo or Mumble and speaking because you talk a whole lot more in BGs than you do in raids.

PvE vs. PvP Moonkin Rotations - Yes, There is a Difference

I just recently got promoted to a rated BG leader in my guild, Conquest. (Yes, usual disclaimer.  We are recruiting for both our PvP division and PvE division.) Another BG leader and myself were talking after rated BGs last night and we were talking about DPS and how to increase it in a BG setting.  When you hear DPS rotations, you mostly think about PvE enviroments where you stand, cast spells in a certain order, and then accomadate movement.  However, when it comes to PvP enviroments, there may or may not be rotations based on the situation.  There are some things that are similar, but there are a lot different.  Here are just a few things that I thought of that are different between a PvE and PvP rotation for moonkins.

1) Most DPS Does Not Come From Nukes - In rated BGs, you don't have the luxury of standing there and just endlessly casting your usual moonkin rotation.  That is why good DPS in PvE are around 15k DPS, but good DPS in PvP are usually around 3-5k.  There are several factors behind this.  One of the biggest is resilience lessens any damage that occurs anyway.  However, the second is that no opposing player is going to let you stand there while you cast away killing their teammates.  We also shouldn't be standing in stuff like Death and Decay, Consecration, Ring of Frost, etc. while PvPing.  This means being able to do DPS while mobile is more important.  While I haven't done in depth analysis, I'm almost certain most of my DPS in BGs come from 4 spells.  Those spells are Moonfire/Sunfire, Insect Swarm, Starfall, and Starsurge on Shooting Star procs.  Now don't get me wrong.  If the opposing team is cool with me just standing there and casting my usual moonkin rotation to kill their players, I will do it all day long until they stop me.

2) Wild Mushrooms Are Much More Useful - Since I haven't done any PvE after patch 4.0.6, I don't know how reliable they have become in PvE, however, in PvP they are useful.  However, it is not necessarily for damage.  It is more useful if you have Fungal Growth and can slow their players down.

3) Thorns: The Silent Killer - I cannot tell you how many times I have seen rogues, warriors, and DKs kill themselves because I popped Thorns on myself.  It is incredible to see them just continue to hit you and whack at you while you are not dying but they are slowly losing health. 

4) Typhoon is Not for Damage - Typhoon has never been meant to do enough damage to kill a player.  It is meant to either keep players off of flags or get melee off of you so you can root them and kill them.  In addition, if you see an enemy Efforvescence or Healing Rain or Healing Circle, you can use Typhoon to knock them out of it so you can kill them as well.  Of course, if you can knock players off of ledges with Typhoon, it is kind of fun.

5) Treants: A Minor Annoyance - Treants should be used on cooldown, but for two different reasons than in PvE.  One, they are affected by Fungal Growth, which will still slow people down.  Second, they are almost like a gnat.  They won't hurt anything, (unless you use them during a Solar Eclipse) but they will be annoying as hell.  Also, it is just additional damage they may help take something down.

6) Our 4S9 Bonus - Yes, I'm trying to set up a new nomenclature to match PvE's 4T11.  Our 4 piece bonus for Season 9 is almost necessary for moonkins.  While 400 more resilience would be great for PvP by doing 2 piece balance, 2 piece resto, the ability to gain Solar and Lunar Energy from people attacking us is incredible.  This also plays a role if we actually get to do our moonkin rotation because it determines which nuke to actually cast. 

7) Moonfire/Sunfire Do More Damage When Moving - This is the major reason why it is in my top 4 damage causing spells in PvP.  If I have to move, they will do more damage if they are on a target or if I'm spamming it while moving.   Plus, having that and Insect Swarm increases the chances for Shooting Stars.  If it is in an Eclipse, even better since its damage is increased by Eclipse.

8) PvP Rotation - Although technically a misnomer, I do have a certain rotation I like to use when going against opponents in PvP.  Usually, if there is a caster, I will try to roots and solar beam them, especially if they are the kill target.  Why?  Because other casters can be controlled by Cyclone better.  With the new 8 second duration, we can kill a healer while a caster is just watching us.  If it is melee, typhoon then roots.  Also, if my Solar Beam is on cooldown, I will try to DoT up anybody in the area.  The main reason is that if the healer is focused on healing everybody else, he might just forget to heal himself which will lead to his death.  Starfall does a very similar process.  Starfall alone won't kill anybody, but it will hit everybody and put them in a panic.  If Shooting Stars procs, use the instant Starsurge on the kill target.  If everybody is controlled or left with just a few targets, I will start my PvE moonkin rotation. (DoTs, Starsurge, move towards the closest Eclipse with Wrath or Starfire, re-DoT, move back towards the other eclipse.)

9)  Reasons and  Counters for Why You Are Not DPSing - There are just a few reasons why you shouldn't be DPSing targets and there is a counter for each of them.  The most obvious is that you are silenced.  If you are in  Solar Beam, move out of it.  If it is a spell, ask for a cleanse.  Also, you may be locked downed with CC.  You may want to invest in the trinket for your faction to help you get out of movement impairing effects.  Also, cleanses may work as well depending on what it is.  Snares can be shapeshifted out of because you are a moonkin.  The only other reason you shouldn't be on a kill target is you are CCing something.  This is where having good timer mods comes in handy.  I personally recommend Forte Exorcist because you can set it up to list the player's name and tells you how long you have left on the cyclone.  That way, you can DPS the kill target and keep him CCed.  Using some sort of focus frames helps a lot with this too so you can switch targets quickly.  Set your focus on your kill target and switch to the CC target when CC is up.  Also, when you hit diminishing returns, call for another CC unless your CC target is now the kill target.

10) Remember Your Goal - Your goal is to win the BG.  If you are DPSing when you should be protecting a node or carrying a flag, then you are failing.  There is a time to DPS, but it is not all the time.  Sometimes, it is just a matter of keeping people off of a flag carrier so they can get to your base and be protected or even cap it. 

While all of these tips are more moonkin specific, there are things for every DPS that can help improve your DPS in BGs.  You just have to find the differences between how you play your class in PvP and PvE.  The best way to do that is to do some random BGs to get used to your PvP rotation in a setting where it won't hurt your rated team.

An Auction House Failure Story - A Personal Experience

I'm sure you have heard the phrase, "The best laid plans of mice and men."  Yeah, I thought my plan to make buttloads of gold was genius.  Let me tell you how this little escapade cost me about 3k gold.

It was the Tuesday of 4.0.6.  I was personally excited because the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond was finally being fixed to make it actually usable. What I thought would occur is that the demand for this meta would be initially high, at least until the new meta gem recipes hit the market.  I decided on the day that the patch hit as soon as the servers opened up, I would get on my remote AH app on my phone, buy out all the Chaotics and relist them for about 10x their initial price.  When I bought them, there were about 15 for about 120 gold a piece.  I bought all of them and relisted them for approximately 1000 gold a piece. 

No sooner than 15 minutes after reposting all these gems, someone comes in and puts 3 up for 400 gold a piece.  It amazed me that I was undercut that quickly.  So I did the only reasonable thing, I bought him out.  I thought I still would make 600 gold profit and there is no way he could have anymore.

So help me God, no more than 5 minutes later, the same player posted 3 more at the same price.  In addition, someone had already came in and undercut him even further.  At this point, I decided to pull about 5 of my original auctions to try to undercut them.  I thought with all the Chaotics I bought at 120 gold, I still would make triple profit off of them.

Again, no more than 5 minutes from there, somebody undercut me again. (I did sell one of them though before I was undercut again.)  At this point, I decided that I would leave my gems up until they expired.  The way I thought it would work out would be that as players logged on, they would be changing their metas out to the Chaotics and I would still make profit at the rate people bought them.  However, here is the catch.  A lot of people preferred to hold on to their current meta gems until the new pattern dropped.  Why spend 350 gold to just turn around and buy one of the new meta gems when they become available?

So, where am I today?  Starting off, I have 3k gold less on my bank character, though I have made some of it back from other sales.  I also have approximately 25 Chaotic meta gems that I don't know if they are going to sell or not.  Also, the lowest prices for Chaotics on my server are back to the 120 gold per gem, so even if they sell, I will be making even money back. 

So let this be a lesson.  Never overestimate a market after a patch, especially if there is going to be something that will replace what you are trying to control anyway.  If I would have posted them for about 300 gold a piece, I would have turned a profit and likely have had less loss.  Also, be careful when trying to predict player's expectations.  They may not be thinking the way you are thinking. 

Sharing the Love - WoW Style

With today being Valentine's Day, I thought about the things that we could do as players to share the love to our guildmates and other players on this day of love. (And I don't mean doing the stupid holiday stuff)  Here are a few things that I have thought of that would be great ways to share the love. 

1) Help a Lower Level Alt - If you have a player that you know or who is within a reasonable level of your main or alt, help get them through a dungeon or two to get some gear or help them level up.  This would especially help level 82-85 players since they need gear to be able to do heroics.  Also, this could include helping a lower level player who is getting ganked.  Go there and kick some ass for them.

2) Buy Some Extra  Consumables For Your Raid - Maybe get a couple extra consumables for players in your raid and help them save some gold for other things, like enchants or gems.

3) Farm Mats for Guild Items - If you need food for raid or herbs, just take an hour or two and go farm some mats to help your guild bank out a little bit.

4) Help Level Professions - If you know somebody who is a lower level jewelcrafter and you don't need your uncut green quality gems, send the items to them to help them level up.  You can do something like this with any profession in the game.

5)  Offer Chaos Orbs for Free - Since only a certain number of professions can even roll on them right now, go ahead and hit trade chat and say you are willing to make some gear using your chaos orbs for free or at the very least, a very reduced price.  I have seen people saying they will use their chaos orbs for 500 gold + per orb. 

6) /Hug a Gnome - Gnomes need love too.  Besides, we all know that short people got nobody.

7) Don't Be a Douche in LFG - You have 364 other days to be a douche to PUGs in LFG.  Just take today off. 

8) Comfort a Night Elf Druid - Just because they are now the minority doesn't mean they are bad, they are just different. 

9) Donate Gold to a Level 1 - Yes, even the beggers.  Then give them a /hug and say today only.

10) Give a Friend a Non-Combat Companion - I mean something cheap, like a cat.  Not a $10 pet store pet.     

Meta Druid Gemming in a 4.0.6 World

With all the new meta gems that are out, you may be asking yourself which gems should I use for which situation.   This is especially true of druids since there are so many roles they can take.  Let me go through different roles and tell you what I feel is the best meta for each.

Feral Bear Tank - If you are a feral druid tank, your meta gem did not change in the patch.  You will still be using the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond as your preferred meta gem.  Since your tank set should be different from a feral kitty DPS set, there should be no sharing options due to the increased armor percentage.

Feral Kitty DPS - You get a new meta gem with 4.0.6, which is the Agile Shadowspirit Diamond, which gives Agility and a Critical Damage Increase.  Unfotunately, it may not have dropped yet for anybody on your server.  If that is the case, you can go with the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond until the new one drops.

PvP Feral Druid - This is gonna be a tough call and usually will be personal choice, but I would stick with the metas you use for PvE for PvP.  The point of feral bears in PvP is to be unkillable so you will need more armor and health.  For PvP kitties, you will want to do as much damage as quickly as possible.

PvE Moonkin without a Healing Offspec - The one you will ultimately want is the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond, which is Intellect plus Critical Strike Damage.  Until then, you will want to use the newly redesigned Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond.

PvE Resto without a Balance Offspec - The one thing with restoration druids is that if you don't run out of mana, you can heal people.  That is why the preferred meta gem for restoration druids is the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. (Intellect + 2% More Mana)

PvE Moonkin/Resto with a Healing/Balance Offspec But Different Helms - If you are not using the same helm for both balance and restoration, then you just follow the normal PvE guidelines for moonkins and resto druids.

PvE Moonkin/Resto with a Healing/Balance Offspec and Shared Helm - If you are using the same helm for both healing and balance, you will want the meta gem with the most bang for the buck.  In this case, I prefer the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond.  The Ember Shadowspirit Diamond.  This will give you what you need in both specs.

PvP Caster (Balance or Resto)  - This is probably the toughest call of all of them.  A lot of them have things that can help in PvP, between reduced snares to reduced silences.  As a caster, I chose to go with the one thing I cannot shapeshift out of, silences.  I went with the Forlorn Shadowspirit Diamond, which is spellpower plus reduces silence duration.

Hopefully, this guide will help you in deciding what meta gems you would like.  You are probably wondering why I covered restoration druids when I have never covered restoration druids on this blog.  I just recently have changed my offspec from feral tank to restoration druid.  Since I have a set of gear for moonkin, I thought it would be great to try out doing some restoration healing.  I really only had to replace a ring and a trinket with hit on it.  The most I can say so far is that I'm learning.  Not perfect by any means, but learning.

The Best Parts of 4.0.6

Every blog out there is going to take a fine tooth comb to the patch notes.  While I may do that in my  own time, I'm not gonna bore you with that.  Let me tell you the things I'm most excited about for in this patch.

1) More than any spell, change, or anything else, the biggest thing I'm personally excited for is the moonkin can mount normally now.  It has been annoying since patch 4.0.1 that I have not been able to mount correctly.  I have to either shift out of form and then mount or I have to move and then mount to get flight form.  Speaking of flight form...

2) Worgens get their own swift flight form to differentiate us from those dirty, dirty night elfs.

3) Moonkins have become the primary druid flag carriers in PvP.  We can break roots and snares by shapeshifting in and out of moonkin form.  It will primarily go druid travel form, snared or rooted, moonkin form, back to druid travel form, continue running.

4) This is huge for PvE, but Starfall only affects targets that are in combat.  This means I can use Starfall all the time on trash, bosses, anytime. 

5) All our CC last longer now, up to 8 seconds.  This should make our CC more viable in dungeons, but it will really shine in PvP when trying to control a melee or caster.  I also get to laugh at resto druids having to get out of caster form to break roots while they are stuck in a Solar Beam.

6) Moonkins get a 15% damage reduction automatically.  Good luck trying to kill us if we have a healer on us.  This is more valuable than armor.

7) Wild Mushroom is usable finally.  Instant cast, which means we can cast it on the move.  It also has more damage behind it and a wider range.  Add in the buffs to Fungal Growth and it makes it incredible.

8) Our other spells we used on the move cost less mana.  If we are running from something, our Typhoon and Moonfire/Sunfire are significantly less mana.  This is good since the one thing that seems to deplete my mana faster than anything is Moonfire/Sunfire spam while on the move.

9) Our 4 piece PvP bonus got a buff.  I love the 4 piece PvP bonus in the first place because it moves you towards one of the Eclipses when you don't have an Eclipse.  Considering our three main nukes normally have cast times, this helps us to hit Eclipses quicker and then maximize our PvP damage.

10) Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond is finally fixed.  Not that it will be our BiS for either PvP or PvE, but the fact that it is correct is much better.

No More 15 vs. 15 Rated BGs - My Rant...I Mean, Opinion

WTF Blizzard?  Seriously...you wanted to start this great thing with finally making battlegrounds matter in Cataclysm and then you go and pull this shit.  10 vs. 10 rated BGs is just another frickin arena bracket at this point with Twin Peaks, Warsong Gulch, and Battle of Gilneas as the arenas.  It is basically objective based arenas.

On top of that, your explanation as to why you are doing this is shit.  "People don't play 15 vs. 15 brackets."  Yeah, it is the same reason why most guilds don't run 25 man PvE content anymore.  What's the point of it?  You get the same rewards for running 10 mans so whats the point.  If you were smart, you could do 10 vs. 10 or 15 vs. 15 rated battlegrounds every week.  It will be just like some guilds that prefer to run 25 man PvE content.  Some rated BGs groups will run 15 vs. 15 all the time if given the chance.  However, you just took that chance away.  Hell, throw 25 vs. 25 back in the mix and give us some Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest rated BGs.   I know my guild would do it in a heartbeat.

This has pretty much destroyed any desire to do rated BGs anymore.  Yes, they are going to modify Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, and Strands of the Ancients to fit 10 mans.  I will continue doing it to improve my rating, but I just want to let you know that this is bullshit.  And every major content patch in Cataclysm better include a new BG.  I personally wouldn't mind an underwater BG in Vashj'ir.  It would be an interesting mechanic at least. 

But for the love of God, open up 15 vs. 15 to an every week option.  That way, on nights were we are having trouble getting 15 people on to run rated, we can run 10's, just like the PvE raiders can do now.  I thought when the announcements for Cataclysm came across, they were finally taking PvP seriously.  Unfotunately, right now, I see that is not the case at all.