Breakfast Topic: The ardent Argent
by Mike Schramm 
May 25th 2009 at 8:00AM
Just in case you hadn't realized already, the news we got last week about patch 3.2 made it clear that the Argent Tournament is going to play a sizable role in our future Wrath of the Lich King activities, so if you, like me, have been lazy about completing all of the various tasks the tournament offers, now might be the time to change that outlook and get to work over there. By the time 3.2 rolls around, there will be even more rewards to be attained by champions of the various cities, so if having a squire of your own hasn't been temptation enough, maybe the promise of future content has helped.And speaking of help, in case you need some, we've got you covered as always, from guides to the various dailies to a review of the rewards available. The question today is: have you been convinced yet? A good number of you have probably been rolling in the AT since 3.1 dropped, and probably have a whole stack of Seals already (if not the Hippogryph mount itself). But for those of you who've been lagging behind, has the promise of new AT-related content in 3.2 lit a fire under your Stabled Quel'dorei Steed? Or are you meh on on the idea of grinding out daily quests just to get more PvE content to grind out?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Zarfay May 25th 2009 8:03AM
I found the mounted combat too difficult. I did the aspirant chain and reached valiant and stopped there.
Charlie May 25th 2009 8:19AM
I smell a troll.
If not, here's what you do. make sure you got 3x defend up at all times. Wait for him to run away, then charge him. While you turn around try to throw in a shield breaker. Other than that just spam attack.
Amaxe-1 May 25th 2009 9:00AM
Latency = not being able to do the jousts.
Blizz needs to give new ways to advance for those of us who can't do the combats.
Hal May 25th 2009 9:14AM
It took me a really long time to get used to it. The problem that I had was that the jousting areas were always so crowded that I lost my opponent in the crowd and got pummeled. I eventually figured out how to deal with that, but it put me off to the tournament for a while.
Itanius May 25th 2009 11:57AM
Once you learn how to *flank* and use keyboard shortcuts efficiently, the mounted combat jousts are pretty simple. Like anything in life, a little practice and experimentation goes a long way.
One can never succeed after giving up.
Eisengel May 25th 2009 2:43PM
If you've ever PvPed as melee against a Hunter in vanilla WoW it makes the tournament a lot easier. To add to what was said before:
3x Defend (spam 4 three times)
enter combat
Attack (spam 1) until they run away
Back up and turn to face them
Charge (3)
Here comes the Hunter PvP part. Hunters need to be a minimum distance away from you to use their ranged attack, and they have a maximum distance over which they can melee. Back in vanilla, fighting a Hunter as a melee class was very much about exploiting the dead zone between their melee and ranged attack areas. You can destroy champions using the same type of reasoning.
Charge: requires line of sight, requires minimum distance from the target
Shield Breaker: requires line of sight, requires minimum distance from the target
Once you charge your mount will continue running for a few seconds. What you don't want is for your opponent to turn, face you, and unload a charge+shield breaker on you while you're running. If you are clever about it, however, you can disable their attacks while keeping them in place.
The first thing to do is make sure you don't get charged, so as soon as you charge, run through your opponent and immediately start turning back toward them. Whenever you or the AI is mounted you can't click-turn, you have to turn slowly. You can exploit that by forcing the AI to waste time turning to face you while you get too close to charge.
Once the AI faces you, you'll be about halfway through a circle, and it will really want to charge you. Now you have to do something a little odd, and not run toward them. If you continue your circle and turn into and toward the AI, it will run away to get range and will hit you. You need to keep it in that spot, so don't run at it, but run parallel to it. The AI will not run away, but will sit there and track you, since you are on the edge of its charge range. You only need to run parallel to the AI for a moment, then start turning back in to the AI. If you continue running parallel, it will let you gain range and charge you. It takes some time and finesse to figure out when to stop turning and where to start turning again. Once you get it down though, you're made.
As you turn back toward the AI, try to run directly into its mount's rear or side. As soon as you get under charge range, the AI will try to toss a shield-breaker at you. You can't defend with range, but you can defend with positioning. If you run behind it or to its side, it can't toss a shield-breaker at you.
If you can pull that off without getting hit by a charge or a shield-breaker, the next step is to try to throw a shield-breaker of your own while you're in the second turn. It is a little difficult to set it up right, because you have to be facing the AI, at long enough range and have your cooldown up, however, if you can pull it off, you'll take down two of their defend stacks. Since the AI usually is only able to refresh about one defend stack between the times it runs away, and you can remove two, eventually you'll be able to get a couple shots on the AI with no defense stacks, which do a load more damage.
Once you have the AI down to one red shield, you don't have to do this complex maneuver anymore. When the AI runs away, just let it get into shield-breaker range, toss a shield-breaker, then close up and start meleeing. They'll never get more than 1 shield up, and you'll get about 3 unshielded hits on them.
The whole game is reducing their defences while keeping yours, so, in other words, getting in your own charges/shield-breakers while keeping the AI from pulling any on you. Even if you can't get the shield-breaker in, if you can just charge the AI and avoid being charged, you'll win handily.
Cyanea May 25th 2009 8:04AM
I usually grind out a quest or two before I realize how bored I am, and go back to levelling my priest.
Shadowform by the end of the day!
Axolotl May 25th 2009 8:16AM
I'm mostly working on leveling alts the casual way, one of them is doing the Quel'Danas Dailies for a nice reward that will help leveling in Northrend (so far it's a level 72 that hasn't finished the Blades Edge Mountains quests yet) I haven't even seen the Argent Tournament yet
On my level 80 Deathknight, I only do the cooking dailies and some gathering if one of my alts needs something. Each alt that climbs up to 80 makes the gold that will be needed for the next alt that has to start leveling to 80 (and that includes epic flying at level 70 considering I finish most of outland before going to Northrend)
Maybe by the time they announce the next expansion, I'll start working towards the gear-rewards I'm going to need to level in , after all, the PVP-gear I got from Burning Crusade is getting my Paladin to level 80 just fine.
dasime May 25th 2009 8:21AM
I've been grinding them out for ages, both my 80s have championed all Alliance fractions except Exodar and I have over 40 Valiant's Seals on both; I wish blizz would do something with them as if I hand in the last fraction I loose all those dailies they offer (like 50g a day which does add up if you do them every day!) and I still have a shed full of Valiant Seals left.
Charlie May 25th 2009 8:24AM
A 5 vailiant = 1 champion seal trade-in would be super nice. A full day of vailiant dailies for 1 champ seal is a fair trade i think.
Arguljesus May 25th 2009 9:09AM
A blue poster said at one point that they didn't like how you had to not turn in the last one to continue to get those dailies so they plan on reworking them somehow. The 5 = 1 idea isn't that great for the moment being because it screws over anyone who wants the title rather than the gold.
Shilling May 25th 2009 9:25AM
There are other dailies in Northrend with equal gold, enough to fill up your 25-a-day.
thevitruvianman May 25th 2009 10:27AM
@shilling
True, there are other plenty of other dailies, but you can't do those at the SAME TIME as the champion dailies. If you are doing the champion daily to kill 15 scourge in icecrown, in killing those 15 scourge, you will also (obviously) fulfil the requirement to kill 10 scourge for one of the valiant dailies. You are literally completing 2 quests for the effort of 1. The same goes for the quest in front of icecrown citadel to kill a bunch of scourge from horseback, there are both champion and valiant level quests for that, and you can complete them both at the same time (both quests update each time you kill an enemy).
The other thing is the convenience of having all the quests in the same place. One of the reasons why quel'danas was so popular back in BC was because you could go to one 'hub' and quickly complete a bunch of dailies all in the same area. Nobody likes having to fly around all over the place to complete 2 or 3 dailies at a time.
Charlie May 25th 2009 8:23AM
I've been lagging behind like mad. There was a three week period where i didn't do any dailies. I am, of course, now broke. Lol.
I have 2 goals. 1) I want a mistsaber for my gnome (i've had the same mechstrider for 2 years, getting a bit old). and 2) I want the "Crusader" title. The second is alot harder for me, as when i started the grind I was still barely revered with most of the factions. I am now exalted w/ gnomer and sw, and am halfway w/ darn and if. just hit revered w/ exodar, so 42000 total rep to go with those 5. Then after that its just grinding crusade rep.
Oh, and i have 3 champions so far. Darn, SW, Gnomer.
And speaking of the AT Dailies. I forgot to do them yesterday. Opps!
Colin May 25th 2009 8:28AM
I have to be honest, I'm not thrilled with where the AT seems to be going. I'm a solo player, and I rarely group with anyone. I don't even kill Chillmaw because it's a group quest. So the news that the Coliseum is going to be five man and above content? Not that great for me.
I know a lot of folks were whining about how the AT was a massive handout to casual players, but for people like me it was a chance to get sweet new mounts and personally the first time I've ever actually equipped a purple item, and I've been playing since a few months after launch.
Who knows, maybe the new AT thing will actually get me to group or maybe even join a guild, but more likely I'll just find somewhere else to spend my time.
Gunt May 25th 2009 11:11AM
Maybe you should be a little more sociable when playing an MMO. It's not like it's hard to find 2 people to group with to kill Chillmaw...
Vandal May 25th 2009 11:17AM
Real easy to get 5 (not that you need that many) for Chillmaw and the Citadel missions. Even at "weird" times of the day you can usualy get someone. You don't have to talk to them, just group, do the mission, say thanks and leave. BOOM.
Colin May 25th 2009 11:23AM
I'm not saying it makes sense that I do everything solo, but I do anyway. Mostly it's just because I'm so used to playing by myself now that when I'm in a group I have very little idea of what to do. I know how to play the game a certain way, and I'm pretty good at it.
Gunt May 25th 2009 11:53AM
I'm sorry, but how can you then complain that Blizzard don't cater to your bizarre way of playing an MMO. It's your perogative not to ever group with other players, but you have no leg to stand on when you then whine about there being group quests in the game. It doesn't affect you being able to get Champion marks, it will just take you a little longer.
Colin May 25th 2009 12:26PM
I'm sorry if I seemed whiny about it, because I really didn't mean to. When the AT stuff was first announced it felt like they were designing something I could really get in to, and that was pretty great. It was content that I could do and not just sit and think about how awesome it was for everyone who happened to be actually doing it.
I understand that group quests are a huge part of this game, and I certainly don't think that WoW should be a single player thing. I like the story, the lore, and the fact that the story actually seems to be progressing along with you as the player. You can play it your way and I'll play it my way, but I really like the AT as it is, and I was hoping that when the Coliseum got finished I could head in there on my own and do something else than watch from the stands.
Plus, I can't be the only one who hopes the AT isn't going to be the only new raid in 3.2. I was hoping for Grim Batol or some other undeveloped area.