Editorial - Competitive PvE

Recently there has been a heavy focus on PvP from Blizzard. This started way back with the release of battlegrounds. It was followed up with the arena system, and very recently the Arena Tournament realms. All in an effort to take the World of Warcraft and turn it into a valid e-sport. I do not think that you could find many people that would disagree that it has been very successful, and now PvP players can focus on what they enjoy and still enjoy the gear and rewards that were once limited to only PvE raiders.

A significant portion of the Warcraft audience has been left out of this competitive e-sport though, simply because they dislike PvP. To many players they play an MMOG for the social and cooperative aspects. These are the player that constantly seek out groups or raids and try to better their group play abilities. Why should they be left out?

This is the very question that a few guild mates and I battled with a little while ago. We have many players that are extremely competitive and we constantly vie for that top spot on damage while running instances and raids. We spend 1000's on minor upgrades just to eek out that extra 2 or 3 DPS

Recently we found that outlet for our competitive nature. We came up with a method for several of the guilds players to group up and compete against each other in a PvE environment. We did it completely for fun, joking around to start with, but then after a while, someone made the comment, "Why doesn't Blizzard arrange something like this for non-Arena players?". That comment got me thinking about it more and now write this editorial as a result. I would like to discuss and propose in this week's editorial is competitive PvE - timed heroics.

Timed Heroics?

That's right, we started doing timed heroic instances for fun and competition. We started this by accident, when we noticed one day that we were blazing thought heroic Hellfire Ramparts. Someone looked at the time when we were done and said "Cool we did that in 45 minutes". Being a competitive group, one of us bragged "Betcha' we could do in less than 35 tomorrow". Needless to say, everyone was online early the next day eagerly awaiting the others to try. We did it in 34 minutes, then 30 the next day and then 26, which is our current record.

A few days later, heroic Slave Pens was the daily heroic, and I arrived late for the start. My usual group had literally just started. I asked where they were, hoping to get in on another heroic later that night, and they said, they had just started and I could probably catch up with another group and get it done by the same time. I took up the challenge (and so did they) and found a group quickly from in guild, explaining that group one said we couldn't catch them. Group one started and quickly started sending vent and guild chat updates like we're at X, we're at first boss, etc. By the time we got there, they were about 1/2 to the second boss. We thought it was over before it started.

We raced through and a few minutes later heard "Oh, crap!". They got feared into a second group and wiped. We had time to catch up now. We blazed ahead and pulled the last boss after being in the instance for just 26 minutes, seconds before they did, and downed him first.

Both groups had a blast bantering back and forth as we raced through the instance. The cool thing is even if it is just the same team doing it over and over again, you can aim to improve, you don't even need another team to compete against. Competing against another team makes it all the more fun though.

The Rules

Now that we have started doing this on a little more regular basis, although usually just one team. I suggested some basic rules.

All buffs be completed outside the instance before entering. Only buffs from consumables or party members are allowed. Meaning you can not bring your friends druid for a buff and then not have them in the group. Once you enter the timer starts. All time while dead counts as well, so if you wipe, all the time you spend running back and rebuffing counts towards your time. The timer ends once the last boss dies.

Other than that, pretty much anything goes.

Group Composition

As we get faster and more competitive with each other group composition became critical. At first it was just to see how fast we could push ourselves, since we just wanted the badges. Once we say how fast we could do it and started timing it got more serious. Given that we have run a huge number of heroics very quickly in the last month or two, here is what we learned.

As with any instance group you obviously need a tank, healer and 3 DPS. However here is where it gets different. The fastest way through is to use big DPS and no CC. CC takes time and effort to setup, coordinate and implement. Therefore, you want to ignore it as much as possible to keep moving. This also means you will be dealing with more MOBs at once than many players are used to, so you need either really heavy single target DPS or heavy AOE.

Tank - Really when looking for a tank to do speed runs, you want a Paladin tank. They can race through grabbing whole rooms and holding aggro while you kill them off. While a very skilled warrior or druid can pull it off, it is harder for them and it will take a little longer. On instances with small groups it is possible though.

Healer - A healer that can focus on multiple targets is a great thing for speed runs. This means either a Shaman healer if you have lots of melee so that chain heal can bounce around, or a druid healer for their HOT's if you have lots of ranged DPS. A Priest is a good choice as well with their HOT, shield, and big heals. The hardest to use is a Paladin healer as they do not have any HOTs and it takes time to switch targets. They are very mana efficient though, so are workable and can keep going forever.

DPS - For DPS an emphasis is put on pure damage output, but buffs, CC and AoE are all important as well. Some of the best choices are Mage's, Warlocks, Shadow Priests, and Hunters. However Rogues and Shaman also work extremely well.

So what has been out most successful group? It seems to change all the time, as I know a enhancement Shaman and retribution Paladin that both put out big DPS numbers and we like running together. However, the ideal group seems to be: Protection Paladin, Shaman or Druid Healer, Shadow Priest, Mage, and Warlock.

Messiah's Take On It

As you can hopefully see, the group that I run with has had some serious fun with this. We have taken a need to collect badges and turned it into a competitive e-sport for ourselves and our friends. In fact last week we collected 100 badges in the space of 10 days, with no runs on 2 of those days.

After doing this for a while, and still having fun with it, we had the idea to share it.

So, instead of ending with my personal rant, since this whole editorial has been once, I want to end off by asking what everyone who reads this thinks.

If Blizzard implemented something like this with a built in timer and start mechanism so that players could compete, would you? Is competition against the same preset event, truly competition? Is this a valid idea to offer as an e-sport for players that just do not like PvP?

The Messiah has had his say, what’s yours?  What are your thoughts on playing competitively in PvE? Would you participate? I want to hear your comments and questions.

Email me at: Byron Mudry - (Messiah@TenTonHammer.com) or post in our forums thread!