2s Comps and Trying to Game the System

I've played 2s since season 1 for the same reason as everyone else: it's easy to coordinate 1 other friend to play regularly. And fun. It's one of the few truly co-op experiences WoW has when you're level-capped. Sure, there's raiding and all that shit, and yes, it's an MMO.. it's all co-op at some point, but I like playing with 1 or 2 friends, not 9-24. I like Army of Two, I loved Conflict: Desert Storm, I even got through Kain & Lynch; I love the 2-player experience. But 2s in WoW is about as balanced as a 1-legged giraffe. You can see the dominant comps here. And if you've ever tried to outplay any one of these comps with, say, a rogue/hunter team, you know why they're dominant.

I've run a lot of comps, having 10 80s at my disposal, but my partners are consistently a druid and a lock. Strong 2s partners, plenty of faceroll comps with those classes in them. Here's a quick break down of comps, successes, and failures over the years:

• Played an OP comp out of the gate: disc/afflic (if I remember correctly). This is back when DoTs weren't affected by resilience and it was OM NOM time. We played on BG9, fairly stiff competition as always, and got Duelist titles. We sucked, never juking anything, I'm not sure we ever mana-drained a single opponent, and I stacked my guy with green stamina gear. GREENS! I basically charged out, people tried to explode me, and by the time they realized I was literally a damage sponge, my lock had blown them up. I went shadow and we started just riding right out, fear-bombing, and nuking. But this is exactly what an OP comp in 2s can do: play TERRIBLY and win.
• The next comp I seriously played was frost mage / resto druid. A very tough comp it turned out. We got up to the 1400s (S7) maybe, but came up short. I don't raid, so I never have the spellpower to really gib anyone. I couldn't drain healers, so fights lasted forever as they would pole-hump, get just enough back, and keep things moving. Druid healers were nearly impossible for me to kill and we actually had one match end in a tie after 45 minutes... both teams lost points. It was a real "what are you doing with your life" moment. A better frost-mage druid partner would probably be either dps spec, but having a healer allows us to play terribly and slowly learn still. It's a deceptive crutch, but one we seem to always need.
• I switched up to a protpally, playing with the same resto druid, and it was a joke. Pallys are outrageously easy to play. We stopped around the same area, but the struggle to get there was nonexistent in comparison. Mages are always setting up their kills, always freezing, stunning, silencing, and unloading. Pallys, on the other hand, just rub their balls in your face until you die. They never stop, never run out of mana, never get snared, and basically can't get quicked.
• Disc/Boom. Not easy. No real overlapping strengths. As a disc, I can heal him, drain them, dispel away, that sort of thing, and turn on the offense when needed, but I still feel like I don't do enough. When left alone, I can't swing those fights, and that's a problem. Also, I get chain cc'd so easily, even if I SW:D the first sheep, 2 more are incoming and if I trinket one, some other form of cc, like a fear, is enough for them to send my partner to Mars. I always think you need either a mana drain or a mortal strike in your comp, and we have one of those two things, but it's not enough. Now, 99.9% of the problem is our skills but whatever... we're working on that.
• Disc/Afflic. Back to the beginning. It's solid expect the fears overlap diminishing returns and that blows a bit. But we play well together and have a good enough time.

So what should I be playing with my 2 available partners? Well, Warrior/Resto and Resto/Afflic would be the safest choices, I think. I've switched to Resto/Afflic for my lock's sake, we'll see how we adjust to that from Disc. Cyclone is outrageous and root is sneaky strong. Preventing damage beats healing it any day. As for playing my warrior with my resto brother? Holy crap am I bad at that class... Again, I don't raid, and I know it's a very gear-dependent build, but I just can't get anything going with that guy. I want to try it again, but it was embarrassing. Where my pally could blow people apart with his smoldering gaze and chiseled features, my warrior stands around snared (I know this is PEBKAC, stfu) and frail, looking like I've lagged out all the time. I'm going to try frost mage / boomkin next, but really, I should just L2P, take the supercomp, and get my gear on.

Where Wintergrasp is Broken

I transferred a few toons to one account and to Area 52 (which is like the Canal St. of horde servers) and got back into pvp. Not in that order, to be honest. I went to Area 52 for the pve, for the pug raiding, for the AH, for the usual benefits of a fucking massive population. But the pvp was so much easier than on BG9 that I started having fun again. Somehow, the level of competition doesn't detract in anyway from my satisfaction. Zat and I charge out with the OP comp of disc/boomkin and literally just skillfall two ungeared melees before I've cast my first shield... and it's fun! I am, in that way, a tool.

So I will be talking about our pvp climb up 2s and 3s (1550 and 1200 atm) and trying to make some videos w/ skype chat just for fun.

Oh, and Area 52's WG is dumb as shit. 1 alliance vs 80 horde, just standing in his spawn point, invincible, while people duel each other in catapults to complete their quests and everyone else spawn camps the bridge guards. It really is simply a chore.

My new To-Do

Well, my crews are basically geared to the 5k gearscore toon. All that means is that there isn't a bit of triumph badge gear I want, nor anything from ICC 5 mans. So what am I doing now? Well, the scepter of the shifting sands quest chain, of course. I was playing from day 1 and remember gates of AQ being opened. What I really remember is selling basic leathers and clothes for a mint during that time. Anyway, I haven't seen most of the old world raids so this seemed like a fun way to do that.

I cleared BWL (after buying 6 Ony scale cloaks...) with my brother in tow for Razorgore. I tried a handful of times to have 4 of my guys heal in the center of the room while I broke eggs with the fifth but they just got overrun eventually and it was a joke with one extra person on smash-duty. The rest of the instance was very cool. The suppression room is fucking brutal without a rogue though, and what the hell is up with that gate that looks like it should skip it after you defeat Lashlayer? I couldn't find any way to open that.

Now, I'm grinding up my Brood of Nozdormu rep by killing the first 2-3 pulls in AQ40. I did the repeatable quest once but I think this is a lot faster with 5 guys (and they all get the rep). I'm half-way through hated (15k+) and need about 15 or so more clears I think to advance (and then a few more to get through the more-trivial stages before neutral).

Also, I have completed all but one of the Glory of the Hero achievements. I'm missing Dehydration, which is driving me insane because I just can't seem to get lucky and get Ichoron when I try it each day. But, I should have five red proto-drakes soon enough. If anyone has any questions on how to multibox these, fire away while it's still fresh in my head. I needed help for only one, if I recall, which was Watch Him Die (had my brother tank the adds in the other room, just to make it trivial). Split Personality was the only one I seriously struggled with. I tried this one maybe 25-30 times before getting it, although it's very easy to reset, so you only have to worry about occasionally clearing re-popped trash again.

I've been looking at the BC raids to see what I could clear there and let me tell you... those places ain't no joke. I wiped in BT and SSC on bosses. I think if I put my mind to it, I could do much better of course, but since the loot is pointless, it makes it tough to invest a lot just for exploration purposes. I think I'll just join a full old-world raid to see these eventually.

That being said, I fished up the Lurker Below which started me thinking that maybe I'd try for the Salty title on my first toon ever (the only one with fishing and cooking leveled). So I spent a little while fishing, which is surprisingly enjoyable for me. I don't know why.

And that's the update. I really needed this post just to sort out what I was doing... I hate aimlessly playing.

• The scepter quest chain and finishing Glory of the Hero with the A-team
• Salty title with Padfoot
• Finish leveling up my 67 team