Jousting can be really frickin’ annoying.  I’m not gonna lie.  Oh, it gets fun when you get the hang of it, but for the *omitted* weeks it took me to learn it, I know I found it to be a HUGE pain in the butt.  I used to lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, absentmindedly petting my cat so she wouldn’t poke me, and ask, “WTF, Tirion?  WTF, Blizzard?  What were you on when you came up with this idea, and can I have some?”

Okay, so it didn’t really keep me up at night.  But it did make me not want to do the dailies, and that is sad, because those dailies are a nice source of gold, reputation, and achievement points.  And heirlooms.  And pets.  And mounts.  And hippogryphs.  And titles.  Plus, I get really annoyed when there’s something I can’t do in game, unless it’s pvp, which I gave up on sometime near the end of BC.  So eventually, I took a deep breath, grabbed my lance, and figured out how to poke people into submission while riding a horse.

This is how Shizu jousts.

First, shields up!  Put all three layers up, make sure your mount is fully healed, and then talk to your opponent.  When the opponent runs away, hit them with a shield breaker as soon as they’re at range (yes, shield breaker range is shorter than charge range), then immediately follow them and get them back into melee range so they can’t charge you.  Continue to spam thrust on them until they turn and run.  Shield breaker as they’re running from you, run in immediately after you hit shield breaker, don’t get charged.  Charge is bad, y’all.

If this sounds like a lot of thrust/shield breaker kiting – it is!  It’s a little slow, I won’t lie, but as long as you keep your shields up and don’t let the guy charge you, you’ll totally win.  Then you can heal your mount, reapply your shields, and go for the next guy.

“But Shizu,” you might say, “there’s this shiny ‘Charge’ button!  And it does a lot of damage!  It’s obviously an I WIN button.  Shouldn’t I be using that?”

The answer, for a newbie jouster, is not yet.  Why?  Because if you’re like me – that is to say, not terribly great at vehicle combat, can’t quite remember which of those weird buttons is which skill, and have the reflexes of a snail until you’ve really learned an encounter – you’re going to have to look down and hunt for that button, and they’ll charge you and be poking you with their lance before you can find said button and hit it.

However, when you’ve gotten the hang of it and can beat the valiants/champions consistently with thrust/shield breaker kiting, then you can start experimenting with charge.  All you have to do is strafe to the side a bit as the run off to give yourself that little bit of room, then hit that charge button.  Bam!  Off goes a layer of their shields.  Do keep in mind that this works best if you’ve got them down to one layer – or, better yet, their shields are totally off.  At full shields, you’ll only do about 800 damage, which isn’t much payoff for all that fancy fingerwork.  Also, keep in mind that they’re likely to charge you at the same time that you’re charging them, because they like the shiny charge damage too.  Use the thrust/shield breaker kiting until you’ve got them to one or two layers, then you can start thinking about charge.

So, in summary:

1.  Shields up

2.  Shield breaker as they trot out to the field

3.  Run in and force a little thrust battle

4.  Keep shields up

5.  They run off in hopes of charging you

6.  Shield breaker

7.  Rinse and repeat

8.  Win!

Believe me, you will rock the jousting once you’ve championed all five of your cities.  Plus, there’s a whole new set of dailies that opens up when you hit exalted with the Silver Covenant, and still more open up when you earn Crusader.  They’re more condensed and a lot less annoying than the Valiant quests, which you will be utterly sick of by the time you’ve championed all five cities.

Happy jousting!

*A full listing of the Argent Tournament quests can be found here.