Hey guys, Tiraffe here with part 2 of my rated PVP guide. If you haven’t read intro guide to rated pvp, it’s recommended, but not necessary. This will cover more of the advanced concepts for higher rated PVP matches. (Think 1600-1800+cr). They’re still useful for all kinds of rated PVP, so feel free to keep reading.

List of WoW PVP terms:

https://www.wowhead.com/glossary-to-wow-pvp-terms

General PVP goals/requirements:

  • Combatant: Requires reaching 1400 in a rated bracket (2’s, 3’s or RBGs)
    • This is also the minimum rating needed to start progress towards the season’s PVP mount, which shows as a progress bar on the rated PVP tab in group finder
    • Hitting 1400 also means you start getting the option to pick rated PVP pieces from the Great Vault that around the same ilvl as gear from normal raid, in addition to any other parts of the Great Vault you’ve unlocked for the week. Increasing your rating beyond that will increase the ilvl when you hit the next bracket of rated pvp.
    • There is no separate Weekly PVP chest to worry about. Each Rated PVP section of the Great Vault requires earning an increasing amount of honor from rated PVP, which doubles as currency to purchase gear from the new PVP vendors.
  • In addition, those seeking the Elite PVP tmogs can get specific parts of the tmog at different rating brackets.

Table of Contents

  1. The Opener and Momentum
  2. The Line-of-Sight and Connecting to Your Target
  3. Going for a Drink
  4. The Arena Itself (Which Arenas Favor What)
  5. Pugging and Communication
  6. Arena Addons/Macros
  7. The Meta

Advanced Concepts:
This will cover most of the actual action within a single match, rather than most of the set-up seen earlier.

Continue reading →

The Warlords met and discussed some of the questions that came up during the raid meeting that we didn’t have an answer to, as well as nailed down clarifications on others.

Revisited Q&A:

Q: If a Mythic person has a permanent character on the Heroic team, is that character considered an “alt” or a “main” for the purposes of loot rolling?
A: If a Mythic-roster player has a character on the weekend roster that attends at least 66% of the weekend raid days, that character is considered a “main” for the purpose of loot rolling. If the character doesn’t attend at least 2/3 of the weekend raids, they will be considered an alt, and will fall into line on the loot rolls as such. If you want to keep a permanent weekend-roster character, you must let Lineda know that your character is considered a “main” weekend character. Otherwise, mythic players on the weekend team will be considered visitors (alts) and will not have attendance logged and will not be assumed to be main roster for rolling loot.

Q: Can we donate gold instead of raw materials for Vanguard donations?
A: Yes. If you do not want to spend the time farming materials, you can send 5k gold directly to Urostek. This will be used to purchase more expensive items like vantus runes, pricey herbs, etc.

Mythic Clarifications:

Main swapping:

Any character who intends to swap needs to provide performance logs (either from the weekend team or a pug). A character who is ‘visiting’ the weekend team only for the purpose of getting logs is required to pass on loot rolls during this time (it would not be fair to join the weekend group, take BiS loot, and then leave them forever). The weekend team does not exist to feed the mythic team.

There is still a 2-week notice in effect. You must provide performance logs at the time you tell us you want to swap. You can not tell us you want to swap, raid for 2 weeks on the weekend team, hand us logs on Monday, and expect to come to Mythic raid on Thursday. We will need time to look at the logs and analyze that you are performing to a similar standard.

Time / Schedule:

The new raid times are 8-10pm EST Thursday, 8-11pm EST Friday. We realize that not everyone is going to be able to make the 11pm night on Friday, however there will not be a penalty for dipping early. Normal and Heroic are flex, and anyone who needs to leave early during Mythic gives a chance for weekend raiders to get Mythic experience.

Hey guys, Tiraffe here with another guide. This guide was originally written back in September/October during patch 8.2, but school got in the way and was eventually posted near the start of 8.3. For credentials, I hit 2400+ once in BFA season 2 and got the gladiator mount/title for that season, for those that care about that sort of thing.

In BFA, the goal of this guide was to help folks get Combatant or get the rank 2/3 of the Conflict and Strife Essence, with this being a ‘short’ guide to go over some basics. In Shadowlands, the goal of this guide is largely the same, introduce and familiarize those new to PVP to make their way to Combatant and beyond. Rated PVP in Shadowlands is less mandatory for those focused on PvE, as essences don’t work in the Shadowlands, but can still provide an alternative method to gearing and acquiring certain conduits and legendary recipes.

Arenas can be hard to get into, since pugs are usually looking for specific team comps, even if they’re looking to just get the conquest cap; pugs are are usually looking for someone that has similar or greater experience, similar to Raider.io scores for mythic+ dungeons. In addition, arenas have much smaller team comps consisting of either 2 or 3 players per team, so individual performance is just as important as knowing class matchups. This guide can help give some names to things you may have already seen in rated PVP.

Disclaimer: Reading a single guide won’t instantly guarantee success. Once you think you’ve got a handle on the concepts, go out and give them a try in a match.

If you’re new to rated pvp, make sure to get familiar with some of the pvp terms beforehand: https://www.wowhead.com/glossary-to-wow-pvp-terms

The requirements for the goals above are listed as follows:

  • Combatant: Requires reaching 1400 in a rated bracket (2’s, 3’s or RBGs)
    • This is also the minimum rating needed to start progress towards the season’s PVP mount, which shows as a progress bar on the rated PVP tab in group finder
    • Hitting 1400 also means you start getting the option to pick rated PVP pieces from the Great Vault that around the same ilvl as gear from normal raid, in addition to any other parts of the Great Vault you’ve unlocked for the week. Increasing your rating beyond that will increase the ilvl when you hit the next bracket of rated pvp.
    • There is no separate Weekly PVP chest to worry about. Each Rated PVP section of the Great Vault requires earning an increasing amount of honor from rated PVP, which doubles as currency to purchase gear from the new PVP vendors.
  • In addition, those seeking the Elite PVP tmogs can get specific parts of the tmog at different rating brackets.

Continue reading →

Raid Pre-Planning Meeting Agenda:

  • Introduction from the Warlords
  • Rules and Regulations changes
    • DPS Requirements
    • Raid Confirmation
    • Feasts VS Personal Food
    • Requirements for Ny’alotha
    • Sign-up Sheet
    • Moving from Heroic to Mythic
  • Old Rule Reminders
    • Coming on Time
    • Confirming and Coming to Raids
    • Discord / Communication
    • Discord Bots
    • Vanguard status
    • Loot
    • Respect
  • Pre-Ny’alotha reading & videos (WIP)
  • Q&A

Continue reading →

8.3 releases on January 14th, and with it comes a bunch of game-changing mechanics, zones, and scenarios. Although 8.3 took a while to get here, it brings a huge amount of content. It can be a bit much to process all at once, so this guide will give a TL;DR of all the new stuff coming in Visions of N’zoth, along with general tips along the way for raiders who want to maximize their efficiency when the new raid becomes available.

Patch/Raid Release Schedule

January 14 – Visions of N’zoth Goes Live
January 21 – Normal and Heroic Difficulties
January 28 – Mythic Ny’alotha, Raid Finder Wing 1 (Vision of Destiny)
February 11 – Raid Finder Wing 2 (Halls of Devotion)
February 25 – Raid Finder Wing 3 (Gift of Flesh)
March 10 – Raid Finder Wing 4 (The Waking Dream)

New Legendary Cloak – Ashjra’kamas

When you’re going through the 8.3 questline, you will eventually get a 470 ilvl legendary cloak, Ashjra’kamas. This cloak will most definitely be an upgrade of whatever you have on, and it gives two major bonuses; corruption resistance and reduced sanity drain. The corruption resistance helps you negate the negative effects on corruption gear (more on that later), and the sanity drain reduction helps in Horrific and Lesser Visions of N’zoth. To upgrade the cloak, you have to complete certain sections in Horrific Visions based on how much your cloak has leveled up. When you start off with your cloak, you’ll want to always make sure you kill the “major” boss in the Horrific Vision in every run. If you don’t kill the major boss, even if you defeated bosses in side zones, you will NOT get the items to upgrade your cloak. When your cloak reaches rank 6, it gains an active effect that allows you to remove all corruption debuffs on you currently and for the next 6 seconds. Rank 12 gives a mainstat proc.

More information on the legendary cloak can be found in Wowhead’s legendary cloak guide.

Continue reading →

Check out Ministry of Defense’s Weekly Guild Activities Schedule effective Patch 8.3 launch!!

Sunday 6pm EST: Old Raids and Achievements
Sunday 8pm EST: PVP Rated Battlegrounds
Tuesday 8pm EST: PVP for Fun!
Wednesday 8pm EST: PVP Islands
Wednesday 9pm EST: Rated Arenas
Thursday/Friday 8pm EST: Mythic Raid Team Progression
Saturday 5pm/Monday 8pm EST: Heroic Raid Team Progression

For those who have not heard the terrible news, Bellelina’s grandmother lost her home in a devastating fire on November 16th. Belle and Harm live right next door. The house was in the family for over sixty years, and more than 3 generations grew up in that home. It is a total loss and must be torn down. The fire destroyed many personal belongings and necessities, though thankfully, everyone made it out alive and well.

Belle and Harm have been important members in the Ministry of Defense family for a long time now. They have freely given their time and energy to running guild events, gearing new players or veterans alike, and farming resources so we have all the supplies we need for successful events. We’ve loved having them in our raids, dungeons, PvP, and more, and we think they’re the helpful sort of folks we should all aspire to be, both in game and out.

Understandably, this is an incredibly difficult time for Bellelina and Harmesi’s family. It’s an awful thing to happen at any time of year, but downright tragic that it occurred so close to the holidays. In the spirit of thankfulness and subsequent season of giving, I will be accepting and forwarding donations given via my stream to their family. My stream has been given a facelift and the description contains links to donate, so I hope this makes things easy for everyone to contribute.

While we can’t replace what was lost, I hope we can repay just a little of the kindness they have given us, and start to help their family recover.

You can find my stream at https://www.twitch.tv/raefwolfe

You can donate at https://streamlabs.com/raefwolfe/tip

If you are not comfortable donating via the stream, you can contribute to their gofundme page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/efamm-family-tragedy

I have received permission from Harm & Belle to set this up; I am using my stream links / donate function so as not to ‘doxx’ the family’s personal information. 

In light of the personal nature of this event, I will not be posting stream incentive games like I did with my fundraiser in March. Likewise, I will not be streaming a public ‘donator scoreboard’ or have a ‘list of donations’ active. The only alerts will be on-stream popups for individual donations, which may contain names, or may be anonymous, at the givers’ choosing. I do not want anyone to feel pressured into giving, nor guilty if they are not able to give as much as others are able.

Secret Santa

For those of you in the giving and getting spirit for the upcoming Holidays, Ministry of Defense will be hosting a Secret Santa for its members. A sign up sheet will appear in Discord shortly, and gifting partners will be randomized. There is a 10,000G suggested maximum for your gifts, but you can also use pet charms, darkmoon faire currency, or any other in game currency to purchase your gifts. When you sign up/receive your giftee, you can also utilize the WoW website/armory to see what the person you are gifting to needs concerning mounts/pets.

We have a discussion channel in the discord server for your use as well.

The votes are in!

Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who voted. Some of these races were amazingly close – we have SEVERAL ties for placements and there are very few categories with one “stand out” winner! In fact, we had over 50 votes in every category, with over 60 votes in the “Best in Show” category!

As mentioned, the prizes per category are as follows:

BEST IN SHOW and THE UROSTEK have in-store mount prizes

GUILD PRIDE and OPTIMUM OPULENCE have in-store pet prizes

HORDE PRIDE and ALLIANCE SPIES will 50k gold each in prizes

However, there is a bonus: I (Quetzie) was personally so impressed with the entries that I am adding in 5000g to any second-place winners and 1000g to any third-place winners. This includes tied entries!

Without further ado…

Continue reading →

All the images are submitted and the voting pages are up!

You get 3 votes per category, but you can only vote one time – no take-backsies!

Navigate to the individual pages below, or head to the Hallow’s End Costume Contest main page and click the headings.

Best in Show
The Urostek
Guild Pride
Optimum Opulence
Horde Pride
Alliance Spies

Voting ends at 1pm PST / 4pm EST November 1!

Did you find any bugs with the voting pages? Is something amiss in the galleries? Please let Quetzie know ASAP so that she can fix any problems and ensure fair voting to all participants!