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I loved my shadow priest when I was leveling up. So, I created a 29 Shadow Priest after my main turned Holy. While that was fun, we had an army of alts that were all level 20 for transmutes and I decided one day to turn Ibjammin into a twink rogue. The first 7k kills on him were gotten while I was level 28, without the better offhand dagger, and without any enchants. The next 3k kills were a lot of fun, and in the last two weeks of my WoW membership, we leveled up a guildmate’s Blood Elf Warlock, farmed a few items and twinked him. Our last two weeks were a lot of fun — more fun than playing my main. I figured I would rejoin when Wrath of the Lich King comes out so we’ve been preparing a list of items to get for a flexible Shammy that could carry, dps or heal. Shammy’s are one of the few classes that I had trouble with. On Rampage, there was a shammy pair that would just kite me and slow me when I ran solo D in WSG. One on one, no problem, but, if they played smart, they would usually make it out of the flag room, and if they could get past the GY, it was up to the players in midfield.

At that point, I decided to make a shammy twink for the 29 bracket. My guildie was going to make a Pally twink and we decided to make a druid twink for him as well.

Twinking was something that I really hated when I leveled up. I ran battlegrounds in the 20-29 bracket and 30-39 bracket and was completely dominated. I’m sure it was my quest obtained gear or partially that I was following questlines and didn’t learn how to PvP. Other players fight much differently than a pulled mob. But, to get the PvP mount at 60, you have to grind 30 WSG, 30 AB and 30 AV tokens. We figured, since the battlegrounds in those two brackets pop frequently, it would be easier just to slug through 30 games of each. My experience of AV at 59 was just awful. Horde on our battlegroup was steamrolled every time and it was so bad that I vowed never to play AV again. When I hit 70, queue times on Rampage for AV were close to two hours and I didn’t care. When it came time to gear for Kara and the other instances, things changed. I didn’t have the time to do much more than Pug instances, and while our server did have a number of Kara Pugs, to get geared for Kara you needed some battlegrounds gear for healing that were easier to obtain and better than any quest gear/instance gear that could be obtained at that point.

So, I hit the battlegrounds, doing my dailies to get the honor bonuses, Blizzard made a change to AV and all of the sudden, we had 2 minute queues. It took no time at all to get my boots and bracers and I sort of enjoyed it. I never did arena, but, got almost the full S1 gear through honor (my welfare epics) before getting really bored with the honor grind.

But, 70 became a grind. Every day you had to run your dailies to get your marks and honor to buy the next item, and then gear up a little more, then arena gear came out that was a little better and you continued to have to earn points to buy that. I saw an endless honor grind — preform groups were running to eliminate the time factor almost taking things down to a mechanical 12 minute AV win for 630 honor, but that took the fun out of it. Honor weekends had several groups running preforms for the quick honor — steamrolling the other side while everyone was on vent coordinating the mass attack. It wasn’t fun.

I saw an interesting signature on the WoW forums that really hit home.

70’s play the system, twinks play the game

Truer words were never spoken.

My Shadow Priest and Rogue twinks became my salvation. I didn’t really like steamrolling the other side’s weaker players, but, there was a certain honor in doing what most people didn’t want to do. For some reason, in our battlegroup, Horde classes that can heal, even when they are watching their teammates die, will not heal because they are not ‘specced’ for healing. My guildmate was a Shadow Priest running AVs in the 60s and often times topped the healing charts while hitting the upper end of the damage charts. Horde hates to heal, Horde hates to defend. On my shadow priest, I would often outheal and outdps most of the team. Escorting the FC was the same old, renew, bubble, dispel if needed, prep for the incoming attack. When I started my rogue, I figured I would be on the front lines. I found defending the flag room or defending nodes to be much more rewarding. I didn’t top the HKs or damage meters, but, when I ran D, Horde had a tendency to win a little more frequently. I would run O, sometimes carry the flag, but, usually, I would play D.

The one thing Horde lacks in our battlegroup are versatile utility players. We have the hunters that know how to play, know when to take the Free Action Potion, how to kite properly and in general are great at assisting the FC and killing the EFC. I’ve got a 38 Hunter, but, it wasn’t that much fun. I figured, why not pick the one class I had problems with. I have a number of alts so that I could figure out how to play each class and I know how I can best take down each of them because I’ve played those classes in battlegrounds. I watch what other people do, I know how to attack, what to attack – I’ve had rogues that outgeared me by a long shot that would have to call in another teammate to take me down — and I didn’t go down quietly. Often times when I saw a twink down a potion, I was that much more determined to not take a potion. That is when you generate some serious aggro. I’ve had games where their twinks were so focused on me that they completely forgot about the rest of the game. I started to recognize names from time to time — Cogman was one of the few that really had it in for me it seemed.

I was defending Mine one time with my guildmate on his lock. Cogman drops down from BS with his parachute cloak, gets to the ground, I ambush him, nail him, boom, he’s dead. Ok, he won’t try that again, but, here comes a hunter inbound from the sky, he lands, he dies. I don’t know how many times we killed him while he tried to take the mine, but, it was more than a handful. Thank goodness for no diminishing returns.

One on one, cogman was tough. Two on one, cogman was tough. But, the battle generally was very close and a lot of fun. There were a number of notable twinks that we played against somewhat frequently, and it seemed that there was an innate honor for twinks to battle twinks and let the rest of the people run the battleground. I can remember one game where I let our 20 shammy pick up the Alliance flag rather than me carrying it and the gnome rogue twink I had killed to get in there left our FC alone and went after me. I don’t know if he told everyone to ignore us, but, its was a 1v1 duel in the middle of a game. After he killed me, he didn’t /spit, he /bow’ed. Our 20 shammy FC got all 3 caps that game and he loved it. He didn’t have the totems, he didn’t have the gear, he didn’t have the heals to keep up with the damage that was dished out, but, the thanks we got for letting him carry the flag not once, but three times for the win made it all worth while. I find it strange that when its 4v1, the alliance have the audacity to /spit on me after two or three of them are dead and only one or two survive. I’m sure horde do the same thing.

I’m not the kind of twink that goes out just to kill the lowbies. I’ll actually let a lowbie pass and go after the twinks if I’m doing battle. Get near my flag or my node and I’ll kill you dead — twink or not. There isn’t much real honor out there, but, once in a while you do run into it.

I could care less about the tokens or the honor. I love the battles and I love fighting in the face of sure defeat, and somehow, with a trinket or cooldown that I saved for just the right instant turning it around. Maybe I’m dead, but it took three or four of you to take me down — and we just capped the flag while you spent 40% of your team taking me down.