Are you ready to Rumble?! (PvP and the Lunar Festival)

This time of year breads PvP, the holiday achievements are helping to drive people into a rage against the opposing faction.  Why?  You need to go into the Arathi Basin BG for a Love Fool Achievement, and you now need to say “hi” to 3 elders in the opposite factions cities for the Elder Achievements.  In most cases to get the title achievement you need to be level 80, here are some tips and advice on how to accomplish the PvP part of these holidays.

We will start in Arathi Basin:
It’s a simple game and one that has brought me back to loving PvP. Basically you and your force need to control 5 different resource producing areas like the blacksmith, and the farm. If you control that area you gain resources as the fight goes on. The first faction to get to 1600 resources wins! If you are a holy paladin, don’t worry about not having any PvP gear. Go in and follow the raid group from spot to spot and keep them alive, Beacon/Sacred Shield yourself and heal your ass off! If someone keys in on you as the healer and comes at you, use your defensive spells, hand of freedom, bubble, stun and LoH. Remember that if you use LoH on yourself it will cause forbearance and you will not be able to bubble for 2 min, but if you have beaconed yourself, you can LoH anyone within range and that heal will be put through to you with no forbearance penalty.

For the love fool achievement, you need to /pity the love fool in the blacksmith, it doesn’t matter if you control it or not. The blacksmith is in the middle of the zone, run right in there and have your love fool on a hot key, drop it and /pity. If the area is filled with bad guys you can always bubble and then /pity to make sure you get the achievement.  If you liked this battle ground (my favorite) check out the rest of the BG's in game. This is an older guide to BG's but for the original 3 it is great

Now it’s time to honor your elders!
This is very LoTR like, with all the wandering around for days and sneaking into enemy lands. The big part of gaining the title “Elder” is talking to all of the elders throughout all of the lands of Azeroth. This includes some that are in instances, some that are in Northrend, and even more daunting, 3 that are in the opposing faction’s city. You are going to see the opposing factions attacking your citys a lot.
Some tips to getting to the 3 elders in enemy territory:

You can visit all 3 of the needed elders by using your classes defensive abilities. Some it will be easy for, like rogues who can vanish thru most of the zone. Others you will need to do some planning for before trying to solo. I have yet to do it but my plan on my pally is, find out on the map where the elder is that I need to reach. Throw up Sacrid Shield and Crusader Aura and drive as far in as I can. Most of the guards can’t catch you, so as long as you do not get knocked off your mount you should be fine, they drop agro and return to their post relatively fast. In the event that you do get dismounted or you are engaged by a player, you will have to use your fight or flight instincts! Depending on what spec you plan to do it in you will have to plan accordingly, if you are ret and have repentance, you can repent the player then bubble and keep running, this obviously won’t work if there are multiple players there but you get the idea. I plan to do as holy, if I get dismounted I will bubble and run, if im not to the Elder by then I will fight, and if the hordies is worth his weight I will die. I can run back rez and bubble and run some more, these elders are not that far into the zones so you should be able to reach on the second bubble. Then you can hearth or run or die, whatever you want, bubble hearth ftw!

The easier and better way to do this is as part of a group or a raid. Just yesterday alone I saw 4 raids forming to do For The Alliance with a side of hitting the elders up. I also defended my beloved Dwarven King from the likes of the horde two times in the two hours I was on. To help you defend your cities, join the world defense channel, to do so type /join worlddefense. You will now be notified every time one of your cities or PvP objectives are attacked. Stand ready at the Dalaran portals to jump down into the fray at any time! There are a lot of cool achievements for PvP and you can even get a Black War Bear mount for killing all 4 of the opposing faction’s leaders. These raids are a ton of fun and I highly recommend any one in the 70-80 range to jump in on one and enjoy the ride.

A note on defending, if you are not in a group or a raid, and are defending your city, it will be hard to heal your comrades, ask/shout to see if you can get an invite to the group/raid (if their is one) or if you are dual speced, enter the battle in your ret or prot spec.

Here is a great guide to hit up all of the elders. The only note I have is to hold off on doing the elders in the Northrend dungeons. The reason is that you now have 3 weeks to do this holiday this year, and you will probably hit them all when you are doing your daily for the frost emblems. If not you can always queue for them from Dalaran later on.

This means nothing, I just love Bacon!

Please feel free to add any tips for new PvPers, other than to jump in the pool and see if you can swim!