So, in the wake of the ‘great Kara PUG loot whoring of 2008′, Cassie and I sat down and reevaluated our gear goals.
We both still want to do Kara runs, but now we are both on the same page of wanting to run for fun and Badges, not out of anticipation for loots.
Weird thing about being a Shadow Priest, or a regular priest as far as I know, is Tier 4 would be a downgrade for me. My current crafted gear is just better. The one item that was really an upgrade, the gloves from Attumen, are now mine. From here on out, it’s all about collecting Badges. Many, many Badges.
We both still want to run Magister’s, for fun and some chances at loot. I guess for Cassie, there are epic shoulders that Kael’thas can drop on Heroic that are way better than most anything else we could see. So she’s hot to get in there. Me, I’d like Timbal’s Focusing Crystal, but who wouldn’t? But I can live without it. Quagmirren’s Eye is fairly acccessible, so I’m not worried.
But we both agree that the single greatest upgrade we could both make is in our weapons.
I am using the Eternium Runed Blade, which was easy for me to farm mats for, and have crafted and waiting for me at 70. It is a solid piece of gear for starting out as a Shadow Priest.
Cassie is using Blinkstrike, which we got from the AH at a very low price, and Latros’ Shifting Sword as an offhand from Black Morass. Both have Mongoose on ‘em, and they are matched in terms of looks, so they are a kickass pair of swords to both use and admire in appearance.
BUT… we could both know where better weapons can be found.
Season 4 has been announced to start on June 24th. When Season 4 gear becomes available, season 2 gear is supposed to be purchaseable with Honor and BG marks.
For Cassie, the Season 2 main hand weapon, the Merciless Gladiator’s Slicer and the offhand weapon, the Merciless Gladiator’s Quickblade, are both huge upgrades.
And for me, the Season 2 Merciless Gladiator’s Spellblade is also a huge jump.
Basically, looking at the rankings, these weapons are simply the best items, short of hardcore raiding or Arena PvP, that we could possibly get. And for PvE, they would last us well into Wrath of the Lich King.
So… to get them, requires us to do the one thing we dread most. PvP.
Well, that I dread, anyway. Cassie simply is afraid of the unknown.
It is supposed, at the moment, that the costs for Season 2 weapons are going to be the same as the Season 1 are now. That would be 25,200 Honor and 20 Eye of the Storm marks for the Spellblade, 18,000 Honor and 20 Eye of the Storm marks for the Slicer, and 9,000 Honor and 20 Eye of the Storm marks for the Quickblade.
So… how quickly do you build up Honor these days? I know this is gonna date my playtime, but I still find it hard to believe that Honor doesn’t decay and you can store it forever. I think I still have 7,000 or so Honor on Windshadow the Druid.
But I have, in the time since the Burning Crusade was released, done exactly ONE battleground. I remember it well, I did Arathi Basin once as part of a Legatum Ignavis group, all on vent, and had fun stealth camping a flag at the Mill. Lurking and waiting for a poor Horde rogue to try and grab the apparently defenseless flag and then Pouncing and tearing the poor guy down was delightful. I love Maim. Sigh.
Anyway, that was it. But I DID do battlegrounds a bit before BC. And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember exactly why I held this deep seated antipathy towards doing them.
So when Cassie was pushing me last night to go do a BG so we could see what it was like, I found it weird but I was the one resisting the urge to go. I just dreaded it, even though I couldn’t remember why.
The daily BG yesterday on Kael’thas (US) was Eye of the Storm, and since we need those marks anyway, we went there first. Neither of us had ever stepped in there before.
Cassie actually went to WoWwiki and looked it up so she could see the layout and learn what the goals were before we noobed it all up in there. She is so organised and thoughtful it brings a tear to my eye.
But we went in, the freshest, noobiest PvPers you ever saw in your entire life. Yes, we both had good Kara quality gear for PvE, but of course neither of us had a shred of Resilience. I have no idea if I should go grab the PvP set pieces from the reputation quartermasters for Windburn or not. But we went in with our PvE stuff last night.
We did two Eye of the Storm runs. The first one lasted about 2 minutes. The Horde just steamrolled us. It was so fast it wasn’t even demoralizing. We blinked, and a couple deaths and kills later, it was all over. I think we got a grand total of 27 honor for the entire match.
At that rate, yeah, we’re gonna be doing BG a lot. Ick.
But we went in a second time right away, and this time the fight lasted a good bit longer, and we both got to have fun nailing Horde. We were on Vent, trying to coordinate and support each other, but we spent most of it in our own little parts of the map.
On our second fight the Alliance won, so we got to turn in the daily and get the extra honor. So, woot! Good times.
So okay, now what to do?
I remember that I despise Warsong Gulch. And Arathi Basin is fun, but I remember enjoying Alterac Valley the most. So I suggest we try that. And, of course, the new ‘Join as group’ feature kicks ass.
So far, I can’t remember why I fear BGs so much. So what if you die lots, it’s not like you’re taking tons of durability damage. And these matches literally started within seconds of queuing up. Seconds. I remember it taking 15 to 45 minutes in queue waiting for each BG to start back in the day. This shit is FAST.
So in we go to Alterac Valley. And as it’s our first time in the map together, I suggest we whip around the corner and seize Irondeep Mine, and then move forward to help play defense at the chokepoint instead of rushing to the offense. On my druid, I always played offense and usually took a solid part in the push through and final kill of the General as a tank. But since neither my priest nor Cassie’s Rogue have the trinket to be able to port back, I figure let’s do the defense thing.
We did two AV runs last night. We won one, and we lost one. Both were fairly short, incredibly short compared to what I remembered.
And I now remember why I hated BG PvP.
Because I’d find myself screaming and cursing into vent, as if the other players could hear me, my venomous comments and ranting and raving. About what?
Small unit tactics, that’s what.
What in the name of all that’s holy makes people think that they’re best bet, when there are 6 of you facing two horde on the bridge in front of Dun Balder, is to back the hell up so they can get off the bridge and have room to manuever? Haven’t you ever heard of fucking choke points? Avenues of approach? Line of sight, maybe? Capturing the high ground? Just OMIGOD!!!
I am swearing and frothing at the mouth, as alliance players are running away from the bridge leaving me all alone against the few horde that are trickling in, apparently because of a defense plan I have never heard of called ‘let the horde get into the Dun Balder courtyard, so they can run around and get into the huts and climb onto high ledges where they can direct ranged attacks at will from two converging fields of fire and then fall back to break LOS and bandage at their hearts content’.
I mean, CRAP!!! Over and over! It’s just, yes, grrr! Retake the graveyard if you can, but if you can’t at least hold the Bridge! Especially when you have overwhelming numbers on your side!
Anyway, it was still fun.
And boy did I feel like an utter noob at PvP.
I tried to concentrate on burst damage, and would DOT up all opponents I could reach, use my PW: Death whenever I could, and run into the middle and Psychic Scream to make people blow cooldowns and trinkets. I used Mind Flay to slow down runners and I generally had a blast. I had no idea what I was doing, but I sure burned down a lot of Mages.
One thing that confused me was there would be non-Paladins that would suddenly be ‘immune’ to attacks over and over… not sure what that was. I think they were Warlocks… and now that I think of it, I wonder if that was a Blueberry sacrifice effect. Didn’t think of that at the time, just nkow that I’d be whacking away at a Warlock and suddenly ‘immune… immune… immune’.
But I never used Mind Control, and I really want to see if it’s any good in these fur flying free for alls.
All told, we got over 1600 honor last night, after two EotS runs and two AV runs. And it was short, fast and fun. That seems like a ton of honor to me… at that rate, Cassie could easily have the Quickblade when Season 4 starts.
I can see us having a blast doing these, especially Alterac Valley, as long as I can keep my rage in check. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find out what there was a purpose to letting the Horde all come in and form up in the bunkers.
Entries (RSS)
June 16th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Well as i can see there would be no reason to let the horde into your base, but i rarely play defence being a resto drood, i just run up and kill rogues with my thorns, and the immune thing from warlocks is a talent in destruction which gives a chance on hit by shadow/fire spells to become immune to that school of magic for 4 seconds
June 16th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Warlocks are immune due to Nether Protection
Never done PvP as a shadow priest. I’d say that you should grab the reputation set just for the set bonuses. You can get around 100 resilience total, and the 4 set bonus isn’t bad at all (shorter Weakened Soul effect).
When my hunter roommate and I do battlegrounds together it’s really hard to stick together mostly because I can stealth and escape so much better as a druid than he can as a hunter. I imagine its much of the same with Cassie being a rogue. Most of the time when he calls for help I’m halfway across the map and by the time I get there the importance of getting there is diminished. At least it’s good to know there’s one less clueless person in the group, even if I’m never near him
June 16th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Not sure why my link didn’t work, but I was trying to link to Nether Protection, a warlock skill in the destruction tree.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I can tell you, from my experience on the alliance with my rogue, that there is truly no good purpose for letting the horde over the bridge. Just like in EoTS when the Horde holds 3 bases and you still have a group of 5 or 6 running after the flag or in WSG where the flag is being capped over and over while people randomly fight in the middle (okay, that part is just a tad fun).
I think it’s just a mechanic of WoW. Each BG has 3 or 4 good player to every 6 or 7 asshats. The asshats just do whatever seems like a good idea (like backing off of the best defensive chokepoint for the alliance because they are trying to avoid getting killed).
June 16th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Small unit tactics! I wish that my Alliance BG-mates would grasp that concept. So long have I tried to hold chokepoints, force the Horde into narrow passageways, and use LoS wisely, but every time I suggest or implement those tactics, the rest of the BG is either a) AFK, or b) yelling “RUSH FW! RUSH THE RELIEF HUT! OMGWTFBBQ!”
/sigh
June 16th, 2008 at 7:26 am
The best honor comes from doing organized battlegrounds. Even trade channel PUG orgs, with a good leader, can completely steamroll the opposite side. You can generally find out who the good org leaders are on your server by asking around or paying close attention to the forums/trade chat.
Good orgs have very few losses to their name, use a pre-defined strategy, and can win AV in 12-14 minutes. You will, however, have to use Preform AV 2.0 and the leader’s Vent.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I wanna go! /cry
June 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Once my mage is a little bigger, I’ll be glad to go to BG with ya. I plan to farm up enough honor to get the Merciless Gladiator’s War Staff. I suppose we could let Doodle come with us. =D
June 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Hee hee hee…. the BGs make me yell and curse quite a bit, too. They are fun though. I’m with you — I really like AV and AB, and I’m just starting to appreciate EotS after some really good, close matches in there this past weekend. WSG is annoying.
I go through phases where I play the BGs a lot, and then not at all for many weeks. They are a nice break from the rest of the game, and somewhat cathartic.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:08 am
AV has changed greatly since you last played. Strategy has gone out the window. Days of the Alliance putting together a strong defense at the bridge appear to be gone in my battlegroup… Fine with me, I rolled Horde.
Horde will still put up a modest defense at Frostwolf, but the initial stand at Galv is a joke since you have all 40 alliance zerging him. We can defend our choke point at IBGY from time to time, but more often than not it’s fall back to FW, and make enough of a nuisance to give our offense a bit of time.
Really it boils down to a race anymore. One stupid mistake will wipe you and pretty much assure a win for the other side. On the plus side I probably did 7-10 AV’s this weekend and died once on my modestly geared 68 druid. We screwed up once, and wiped on Van, without SPGY or the RH and lost, but otherwise won all the others. All thanks to Alliance not taking advantage of their choke point on the bridge.
Most are done in under 15 minutes and it’s quick honor, but not nearly as fun as the drawn out battles that used to take place.
Hate WSG? Druids, Priests and Pallies own that BG. If you have a priest/pally combo, you can run the flag all day. Just a couple players coordinating there can tilt the scales.
The only BG I just hate is EoTS. For some reason Horde in our battle group just can’t figure out how to win that one consistently. It ends up being an exercise in frustration.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:50 am
If you’re just after honor and BG tokens for gear, then here are few suggestions:
1. AV is the honor farm. Just grit your teeth and avoid looking at the battleground chat channel too much if you want to keep your sanity. Back in the day, this was really an epic BG that went for hours (even days) at a time where control points and strategy mattered. Now, its mainly a race with very little PVP at all. The winning strategy tends to be send 30 people to capture the other base, have a couple people capture and hold towers along the way (every time people leave captured towers undefended a puppy dies!), and the rest play a delaying action at the logical chokes points near their home base (the sp gy and bridge for Alliance, fw gy and that towers for Horde). Winners should walk away with 300-500 honor each time + any pvp player kills, so the best games honor-wise are over fast. Rinse and repeat. Turtle-fests, where 40 people defend each base and there’s no offense, are terribly honor-inefficient and should be avoided at all costs. Win or lose, a fast game is always better than a slow one.
2. All the other BGs stink honor-wise, unless you have a premade group that can roll and win in a few mins. A 30 min AB game that nets you 50 honor < a 15 min AV game that gives 300. Keep your eye on your goal and queue back up for another teeth-grinding AV. The others are there for battleground tokens.
2. The daily BG is worth doing for the extra XP and gold, especially if it’s a BG you need tokens from.
3. BG weekends give double honor from Fri - Mon for a particular BG. Very, very nice when its an AV weekend.
4. One last thing about AV, you get rep pretty quickly if you’re working towards gear. Go see the AV NPCs in the Arathi highlands and in your home base for quests that will give more rep and gold. After you get your AV trinket stop back each time your rep hits a new level and you can trade it in for a better version for free.
Even if you’re all about PVE, hitting the BGs can be a very rewarding diversion. There’s some great gear that can fill holes while you’re waiting for your ideal drop or that are better than gear you’d normally have access to. And it’s a great way to get a new char up to speed (as long as you remember that a full PVP set is not ideal for purely PVE activities). For example, I’m right there with you gathering some honor so when Season 4 comes out I can get the Season 2 shoulders and gloves for my wet-behind-the-ears druid.
Good luck!
June 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Tips for BG PVP as a Spriest with no resilience:
1. When you get focus fired, you will die, accept that and move on.
2. Find the sweet spot on enemy’s health where Mind Blast+Shadow Word: Death will drop enemies in 1.5 seconds. This is usually from 25%-40% health depending on gear (both yours and theirs). This is saving your burst for when it will count.
3. Mobility, when you arent casting Vampiric Touch, Mind Blast, or slowing with Mindflay, be mobile. Get into position to make Mindflay count, just jump around randomly like an idiot, or any combonation of the two can make melee cry, and may just buy enough time for your DoTs to tick them to the sweet spot before they crit you into a mushy purple puddle.
4. Pick your fights. If you get VT+SW:P up before an opponent knows you’re there, with a bit of practice you can win against anyone. If not, you will likely die.
5. Rogues eat you. If they have a warglaive (or 2), just run, you cant win, because you cant survive the stunlock without a dedicated healer that stays far away enough to avoid blind. For lesser geared adversaries, if they’re at range, get your DoTs up and Mindflay, they will likely blow Cloak of Shadows, and bring the pain. PW:S and straife away for a few seconds, then fear and bring your own pain. Be sure to Mindflay on their way back (or if they try to run and wait for cooldowns). If you have PW:S and/or weakened soul and a rogue blows Cloak of Shadows, wand them, it can prevent the vanish/stunlock, and is better than standing there waiting for them to strike.
6. Its a game, have fun. If what you’re doing isn’t fun, be sure that it will lead to or facilitate something that is fun.
June 16th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I’ve never really gotten into BGs all that much. I had a stint where I was trying to get the S1 hat of “Good Grief It’s an Ugly Bugger; Good Thing I Can Disable Helms”ness and played about six AV games in a row a day. My biggest issue with PvP is that I cannot improve.
I go in, and I die. Was it a death I could have prevented? Did I die because I was simply outgeared, or was it a tactical issue? Should I have stayed with the group, or was attempting to defend this point the right thing to do? Am I doing anything wrong at all, or more worryingly, am I doing right at all?
In PvE, I can sit down and figure out how to improve myself. But with PvP, I just keep going in there without the slightest clue how to even figure out where I’m going wrong, and I hate feeling powerless and stupid like that.
So I just stick to shooting at stuff that’s dumb enough to be distracted by my kitty.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I’ve actually been running BGs like a madman over the last few days and just posted about it myself. As far as small unit tactics go in AV, don’t count on ever really seeing them. People back up away from the bridge (or away from the little entrance way to the Horde camp between the towers) because they don’t want to be the only one in range when 15-20 enemies decide to open fire.
The latest strategy I’ve seen teh Alliance using in my battlegroup is to allow over the bridge and pick us of one by one as we try to run up to the graveyard. This works well if the enemy hasn’t capped a nearby graveyard yet and it takes them a minute or two to run back into the fight. I do agree with you though, holding the choke points with overwhelming numbers is a much more effective strategy for winning in AV. Too bad everyone is worried about zerging to the enemy generals to actually engage in pvp with the opposite faction.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:44 am
YOUR PODCAST IS UP
June 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I was actually surprised to find out that I could enjoy PvP after several years of avoiding it. This time around, instead of trying to pvp with my raid spec’d prot warrior (eep nightmare!) I’ve focused all my pvp energy on my hunter (BM) and rogue. It’s a great way to escape the daily quest grind, and it’s nothing like raiding.
I’m not sure I can advise doing it with a spooky priest though, mine dies too much!
June 16th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I’ve always been a fan of the BGs, especially on my rogue and druid. A quick start for gearing up for the BGs in terms or resilience and survivability are the rep base sets.
Priests:
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=740
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=739
Rogue:
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=745
These should make a little less painful. Of course mixing and matching PvP and PvE gear are a must. In general, anything more than 300 resilience for the BGs are overkill, high resilience sets only really matter in Arena play.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Get the rep sets. The resilience will do more than anything to improve your survivability in 70s BGs.
AV is the honor farm. You’ll do the BGs you need the tokens for and AV. Queue up in a group of 5 if you can. Then you can all do the same thing and do the small group tactics thing.
And get the quick 8k honor to get your medallions of the Alliance. The 2 minute cooldown is great and you need the stun break for basic PvP play.
Do the daily for the quick boost in honor and try to queue in groups if at all possible.
WSG isn’t too bad if you go in in a group. You occassionally run into an honor farming group, but not nearly as often as if youare doing low level BGs on twinks.
The only BG that I really get tired of quickly is EOTS because it varies so wildly. Sometimes, you just get stuck in a group that won’t defend and just fights over the middle for HKs. But when you get a good group, it’s fun.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Wow, lot’s fo great suggestions! Thanks guys… I don’t mind dying as long as I feel I’m hurting some other schmoes and I’d say I was doing some good damage out there.
I totally think I’m gonna spend more time in AV on my Druid once my priest gets the knife. I think having fun team-ganking someone with Cassie would be sweet…
June 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
For whatever reason I can’t peel myself away from Hybrid type of Characters. Itok (Feral Druid) was my first to 70. Now that I have Sonofitok (Shaman) at 70 too I have been partaking in many a battle ground. Unfortunately I have already obtained two chunks of the healing set that will be replaced with the Season 2 gear when it becomes available.
I have a secret that helps me out quite a bit. I don’t try to farm honor in AB, EOS or WSG I save that for AV. I usually park myself by a node and wait to fight as its only tokens that I am after. However more importantly, I make a separate chat window that will only display Guild and Whispers. This way I am free of the main reason why I don’t like BG’s the “Asshats”. The ones who only have one strategy “All in or we lose”. I also tend to avoid the weekend BG unless its AV, well that is until I am free of the greens and blues.
Itok
June 16th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
PVP as a Feral Druid is a blast (BARE iz for fun!) I go in the tanking set and just run interferance while others DPS or capture flags/GY’s. For some reason we are hard to kill. Something about a health pool the size of 3 clothies tons of armor and Frenzied Regeneration. Get a healer to follow you and you will grab a flag in WSG sit down in the middle of the BG and just get mad that the fire mages keep burning your playing cards while you play solitaire.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Whoa, you’re on Kael’Thas? I got really excited…then remembered you’re Alliance
Anyway I’ll keep my eye out for you… my main’s a druid named Fearghas.
In response to Qzz above, imo WSG pvp as any druid is fun. Can’t beat travel form. Either you have a ton of health since you’re feral, or (hopefully) a decent amount of health and a lot of +healing if you’re resto. If you’re boomkin… well I can’t help you there…haven’t rolled boom since level 30
Being the bear able to tank at the end of AV is sweet too.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:30 am
EoTS is pretty good for us, AV is usually bad unless it’s late, WSG is useless (long matches, low honor), AB is usually decent honor. Good to know you’re getting into bg’s, it’s a good way to fix holes in feral gear:) If only prot paladins could do the same;)
June 17th, 2008 at 3:20 am
I feel with you. I also do not like playing the battlegrounds. First, my reaction times are far too slow to be able to compete with those that are 20+ years younger than me. Second, the lack of strategy and common sense can be frustrating. Third, the battleground chat is often a nuisance.
Still, despite my reservations I am sitting at 60,000 honour points. I only do the daily battleground which gives an additional 400 honour points or so if you win it (which is a lot). If I loose then I try once again and if I loose again, I just leave it for the day. This strategy results in 500 to 900 honour points per day depending on the battleground. I have acquired the 60,000 honour points in little over two months but it did not feel like I was doing PVP much. Just a little every day.
I realize that you want your honour faster but for future seasons this is a fairly painless way to accumulate honour.
About not being well geared for battlegrounds - I have always found that a badly geared player who simply stands at the flag (Arathi or EotS) and calls out incoming attacks makes a more valuable contribution than many S3-geared players that zerg in the centre.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:28 am
The last sentence of my previous comment should read “…..the flag or tower (Arathi or EotS)….”
June 17th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Well, this is interesting to read, because I only play Horde. In fact, I love to play BG’s with my Rogue. Rogues are not the best choice in some bg’s like WSG or EotS, but we still can compete with the rest. Plus stealth is a major plus.
It is just pure fun in epic battles in AV. Normally you have something like a defined frontier and players tend to fall back on low health or mana. The perfect thing for a rogue.
1. select your target (the weak ones)
2. use shadow step
3. cheap shot
4. dps
5. kidney shot
6. final dps
7. vanish
8. repeat
Although there are only few hordes in this blog, I must cry a little bit. Allies have an easier game in AV.
a) your bridge is something we cannot avoid, but you can sneak by our two towers on the way up to the base;
b) our NPCs standing somewhere not in the way to pass by, your’s are normally good adds to help defend the base;
c) it is very difficult for us to take your bunkers because the archers see us almost always, this is truly not the case with our towers. although you get hit by them, once you are inside you can easily take them
But there are some interesting aspects, too. Before the last change to AV, many players on alliance side complained that the horde is starting to far in the north, i.e. they could reach sh bunker before the allies. Now Blizzard has changed this and we start way more south. However, this forces us to defend more the before, because we normally face the first allies on IB tower level. And since defense wins AV’s we tend to win a lot of games. Very funny!
But besides this I can only agree with previous comments. Do the daily quest and you’ll be fine on a long term basis.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I play Horde and enjoy AV, but I honestly wonder every time, how we possibly win. If our side had that long bridge with archers that could shoot away from basically the bridge all the way to van, I just can’t see how we’d lose.
And then the ally back the heck up off the bridge, and allow us into the towers to kill the archers.. like every single time! Woot!
June 17th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
AV is my fav and it can be a good honor sink. However you need to figure out if your side wins or loses. On one server, (both of them i play alliance), we always win, and the other, we always lose (9-1 and 1-9 respectively). Its best if both sides zerg all the time, even if its boring, because the honor gains if you lose even, are pretty nice (ie 300 honor for 15 minutes). If you win its typically 500-600. Try to be the one to cap towers and hold them. As a druid you can stealth and cap the towers near the general fairly well, since nobody ever guards them (well usually).
However, if the other side is skilled, you wont get a single point of honor. They will retake your tower caps and leave you with nothing but pain. Then they will farm honor for 15 min or so. At this point, avoid the BG for a while. You are better off doing anything else.