Hotlunch of Thunderlord has a bit of a problem - It seems she was out on the prowl recently, and found herself an AFK Warlock. However, despite the fact that she jumped out of hiding and wailed away at the poor Warlock, the Warlock's faithful Felguard came to his aid and killed her first.

To Hotlunch's credit, she didn't immediately chalk up the blame to overpowered Warlocks but, probably rightly, to her gear. It's pretty true that poorly geared Rogues aren't much trouble to your well geared Warlock. As long as you have the hp and armor to last through their barrage of stuns to get off a fear and trinket out of Crippling Poison, then kite them around while they burn through Cloak of Shadows and Cheat Death, they're pretty easy. It's when you get the well geared rogues with tons of armor penetration and resilience that you start feeling the sting of those blades.

Of course, some people in the thread rightfully pointed out that she should start looking at Opportunist's Battlegear for a quick leg up on PvP gear - it seems like her situation is exactly what it was implemented to help out with, and might have helped out a bit with the Felguard. Good luck to Hotlunch on getting geared up. With a little more preparation, I'm sure the next AFK Warlock won't be so lucky.

But thinking about the situation, I think it's also a good counter to those people who get caught in complaining about "welfare epics" and all that.

There's millions of people out there who play this game, after after all, and many of them are probably mostly like Hotlunch, working their way up, maybe on their first 70, maybe on the first 70 they've been serious on, looking for ways to close the gap, get in groups, contribute in battlegrounds, scrape their way up the Arena ladder starting at 1500, 0 Arena points, and no Season 2 or Season 3 gear. They have to be able to start the climb too, and all those Season 3 geared people staring them down, while they should rightly be on top, shouldn't be insurmountable obstacles.

So in that case, things like Reputation PvP gear and Gladiator gear for honor aren't just welfare epics, but a much needed hand up in making sure that people can get to the next step of the PvP game. After all, you can hone your skills and get good gear for PvE by slowly ramping up your game, going from Heroics to Karazhan to Gruul and so on, but when you PvP, even WoW's current matching system doesn't stop you from being throw up against full Season 3 wearing heavy hitters in Battlegrounds and Arena, and you'll certainly see them out in the world if you're on a PvP server - but if they're AFK, and they have a pet or a damage shield, maybe you should just leave them be until your gear's a bit better, as Hotlunch found out.

Tags: afk, cheat-death, cloak-of-shadows, crippling-poison, felguard, forum-post-of-the-day, gladiator-gear, hotlunch, opportunists-battlegear, reputation-gear, reputation-pvp-gear, thunderlord, welfare-epics

Filed under: Rogue, Warlock, Items, Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Forums