Feeling like the Pirates

Well, maybe not that bad. I did manage to go 0 for 20 in Eye of the Storm last night over the course of about four hours or so, though. I was a spell-stealing, slow-tossing, polymorphing, blinking, ice-blocking and arcane barraging little fiend. All of that wasn't near enough to get me close to a flag except for one time, when I had possession for about 15 seconds before a belf pally decided that I looked like lunch.

EotS is actually pretty fun to play (see? I *do* like PvP! Really!) - it's the whole "capture the flag when your class isn't designed for capturing the flag" thing that particularly sucks right now. I had a nice pally who offered to bring back a flag for me to cap in one match, but that was towards the end of the game so she never actually had a chance to do so. Que sera, sera, I guess.

I did my best to clue people in at the start of the matches:

"Achievement folks: capture towers first, stay to guard"

"A, B - take Draenei Ruins (DR) to the east, stay to guard"

"X, Y - take Mage Tower (MT) to the west"

"Ret pallies - rush for the Fell Reaver Ruins (FRR) across bridge from MT"

"Everyone else, control the center"

"Tower guards: watch and warn of for incoming"

"Flag carriers: if you don't need the achievement, and can drop the flag at the tower for someone who does, please do so - we'll love you for it and sing your praises"

"Oh - and kill the Hordies while you're at it :-)"

Here's what really freaked me out: for about a third of the battles, this was enough leadership that someone passed me the battleground leader position.

Me.

I mean... aside from one time I was in E0tS last year because I think I clicked on the wrong button somewhere, this was really my first time in the battleground. I must sound like I know what I'm doing, for some reason. I really don't - we lost every time I was lead. Well, we pretty much lost every time I wasn't lead, too, but all our wins were when somebody else was in charge.

Once it was obvious in any given match that I wasn't going to get a chance at the flag, I just cut loose and made life miserable for any Horde spellcaster I came across. Polymorph, repeated Spellsteal to strip them of all their buffs... then Slow, Presence of Mind + Arcane Blast to start whittling them down, then keep Slow up while peppering them with Arcane Barrage and Arcane Missiles when Missile Barrage proc'ed.

Best event of the evening: my mage-lady and two other mages taking back the flag spawn point from the Horde. Not just one guard, but about 6-7 of them. No, I am not kidding - we were in the groove at that point. There were sheep, penguins, and rabbits running hither and yon; there were healers stripped of all their buffs, then burned down by fire, frost and arcane energies; there were boomkins silenced, counterspelled, and turned into chicken fricasee in a matter of moments. When we were done, when the Horde bodies littered the ground, we looked around, and saw a lone pally watching us form their end of the bridge... and when we started heading towards him, he backed off.

Boo yeah. Go team mage! We lost the spawn point a minute later, but man, that was cool. Archmage Pants would have been proud of us.

Aside from that, I did my best to play a good supporting role. Flag carrier being pursued? Blink, frost nova, slow, poly... and yeah, I generally died from that, but someone got to capture the flag. By the end of the evening, I had something like 30 assists, and had yet to capture the flag myself.

The very bet match we had, when we were controlling the flag spawn and three towers, there was one druid who kept on capturing the flag, and absolutely refused to give anyone else a chance to do so. So, here we see the wonderful nature of the PvP player: we give him all the support he needs to win the battle, and in return, he repeatedly shafts us. Stay classy, dude! Hmm. I'll have to see if a battleground leader can kick people from the raid or not...

So I'll be continuing my mage-based EotS flag capture attempts tonight. I'm seriously considering putting together a group and offering a 500 or even a 1k gold bounty to the first person who drops the flag for me at a tower so I can capture it. Barring that, I guess I'll do my best to enjoy myself, rack up another 25k honor and 500 honorable kills, and maybe play around a bit and see if BG leaders can kick those uncooperative gits or not.