Best and Worst BG for Arena (Easiest vs. Toughest), Lag free WoW, Cataclysm Hunter info April 9th

 
Easiest vs. Toughest BattleGroups

If your like me and glaze over the forums and read blogs about WoW PvP you might stumble across discussion on the easiest or toughest BG's to play arena in.  Bloodlust (BG 9) is usually considered the toughest BG and Retaliation and Emberstorm are usually considered the easiest BG's.

I have actually played on three different BG's (Bloodlust, Nightfall and Retaliation) with the same comp and same players in 2's.  As far as 1800-2000 rating in 2's is concerned, Bloodlust did seem to be the toughest to get a high rating, but the other two were very similar.  Our 2's team was rated about 1750'ish on Bloodlust and after we moved to Nightfall are rating seemed to be about 1850'ish.  Our rating didn't change when moving from Nightfall to Retaliation.


The most significant change to our rating to get above 1950 was when I switched to Marksmanship and we were able to beat some Paladin teams that we absolutely had no chance against as a BM Hunter. 

Honestly, I agree with the statement that BG's aren't that much different except for the maybe the top 20 teams in each BG.  If your team is below 2500 switching BG's will probably not have much affect on your rating.  What will have more affect on your rating is switching your spec or just plain getting better at the comp your playing.



Lag Free WoW

If you live in the Continental U.S. and play WoW with a ping that is higher than 200ms than there is probably something you can do to improve your ping.  I used to play WoW with about 300ms on average, but now my ping averages 85ms.

The free lag fix:

This "addon" is not a true WoW addon but a folder that has a simple registry fix in it that can easily be reversed whenever wanted.  This registry fix is rather popular for any online game as it changes how TCP/IP requests are handled in Windows.  If you want to know more about just head over to the Leatrix Latency Fix on WoW Interface.

I've used this registry tweak for awhile now and it is totally legal and doesn't even seem to cause my internet to slow down in any other noticeable way.  I could care less if my downloads take 10% longer, since this fix alone decreased my ping from 300ms to about 150ms.

Another thing to consider when shooting for the lowest ping is to play on a server that is hosted in a location closest to where you live.  For example, I used to play on Blackrock, which has its physical server location in Los Angeles.  Now I play on Auchindoun, which has its physical server location in Boston.  This change from a Los Angeles server to a Boston server has reduced my ping by about 50-100ms.

Here is the list of U.S. servers and their physical locations.


Hunter Cataclysm Changes on April 9th

More detail about what is coming in Cataclysm for Hunters is suppose to appear sometime April 9th.  I should have a post about the changes with some comments over the weekend.