Blog Posts from "Burnt Mana" - Gameriot.com

The Rundown on Hunter Glyphs

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:57:51 -0400

Since all the other cool kids are making glyph review posts, I thought I'd try my hand at it as well for my class of choice. Let's see what hunters get:

Â Â Â * Glyph of Aimed Shot - Decreases the cooldown of Aimed Shot by 1 sec.
Can only be assumed to be a sick joke.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Arcane Shot - Your Arcane Shot refunds 20% of its mana cost if the target has one of your Stings active on it.
Surprisingly decent, considering arcane shot's mana cost at 80, though nothing spectacular. Might be worth taking as a minor glyph.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Aspect of the Beast - Increases the attack power bonus of Aspect of the Beast for you and your pet by an additional 2%.
For those who don't know, Aspect of the Beast was changed to add 10% melee attack power to the hunter and the hunter's pet as well as being untrackable. Why in God's name any dev thought this would be a good idea is unknown, but this is for all the melee hunter wannabes out there. Otherwise, worthless.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey - While Aspect of the Moneky is active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
This is... Surprisingly a decent PvP glyph. Considering aspects no longer cost mana (I can't remember if they still activate GCD in wotlk, anyone want to refresh my memory?), throwing on monkey when you're being meleed in combination with Surefooted can let you make a speedy getaway, especially since there will be more melee classes throwing their weight around than your standard Warrior and Rogue; for example, Feral Druids, Ret Paladins, Enhancement Shaman and the dreaded Aspect of the Beast Hunter. Also, warlock/hunter pets.

Definitely a must-have, unless a better greater glyph pops up in the future.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Aspect of the Viper - You regenerate mana from Aspect of the Viper as if you had 15% less mana in your current mana pool.
Pretty nice to help get the mana flowing a lot earlier in a fight if you're the guy who jumps out of the gate with Viper on instead of Hawk because you can't be arsed to switch 20 seconds into a fight.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Bestial Wrath - Decreases the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 20 sec.
Useful for BM in tandem with Longevity, bringing Bestial Wrath's cooldown down to a mere 64 seconds, almost half the original cooldown. Every BM hunter's going to want it.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Deterrence - Decreases the cooldown of Deterrence by 20 sec.
Too bad Deterrence is a 3 minute cooldown and this is the only thing that's going to change that. Not as useful as I'd hoped, as it's not as if you're banking on your Deterrence cooldown to pop up in order to save your life that often.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Disenegage - Decreases the cooldown of Disengage by 5 sec.
With Survival Tactics, this brings the cooldown of Flying Hunters to 21 seconds. Not bad, but I dare you to find a hunter that's going to take Survival Tactics in its current form anyways.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Freezing Trap - When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim is afflicted with a 40% snare, recovering 10% per sec. for 4 sec.
Interesting, but ultimately not as good as it could be, considering any melee you're trapping are going to charge/intercept/shadowstep to their target, or hell, even freedom it off (or just rely on toughness/surefooted/what-have-you to bring it down to 2 seconds). Not that great.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Frost Trap - Increases the radius of the effect from your Frost Trap by 1 to 0 yards.
Obviously NYI, should be interesting to see if we can blanket an entire arena floor in a frost trap though. Frost trap as it is can go through pillars, this could make a single frost trap cover an entire pillar.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Hunter's Mark - Increases the attack power bonus of your Hunter's Mark by 20%.
Doesn't say that it's the BASE bonus of Hunter's Mark, which means that it's a 60 RAP bonus if it's base, up to a 240 RAP bonus if it stacks with additional shots. Possibly worth investing in for bonus AP.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Immolation Trap - Decreases the duration of the effect from your Immolation Trap by -6000 sec., but damage while active is increased by 100%.
Thank GOD! It's about time Blizzard gave us a way to reduce our Immolation Trap durations from their current hour-and-a-half length forms.

I'm going to take a guess and say it's NYI. Doesn't matter, as no one uses Immolation Trap anyways.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk - Increases the effect of Improved Aspect of the Hawk by an additional 6.
15% haste to 21% haste. Nothing game-breaking, useful for PvE I suppose.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Multi-Shot - Decreases the cooldown of Multi-Shot by 1 sec.
4 piece PvP set bonus being converted to a glyph? One that we can finally ditch? Hallelujah.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Rapid Fire - Increases the haste from Rapid Fire by an additional 8%.
Rapid Fire isn't up often enough for this to be remotely useful.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Serpent Sting - Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 3 sec.
Normally I'd toss this glyph in with the other pile of dicks, but considering Blizzard is buffing Serpent Sting all over the place with synergy talents and trying to get us to use the damned ability, I'll reserve my judgement for now.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Snake Trap - Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes.
Same 100-hp snakes that die in a single AE/Nova/what-have-you. No thanks.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Steady Shot - Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when your target is afflicted with Serpent Sting.
See above for Serpent Sting synergy. Could be handy for PvE, not so much PvP.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Trueshot Aura - Increases the attack power bonus of Trueshot Aura by an additional 2%.
2% of 225 is 8 and a half ******* AP. Whoop-de-****.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Volley - Decreases the mana cost of Volley by -20%.
PILE OF DICKS.

Â Â Â * Glyph of Wyvern Sting - Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 0 sec., but decreases the damage it deals by 1 to 0%.
Oh hello, what's this? Broken tooltip, but reduces the cooldown (and damage) of Wyvern Sting? By how much, I wonder. Potentially a viable Glyph. Time will tell, as it's NYI.

There we have it. Overall, a slim selection of great glyphs mixed with an abundance of decent ones and a couple absolutely worthless glyphs. Too bad we weren't as lucky as mages. Thank God we weren't as unlucky as warlocks.

Celex Speaks Out Against DGFG Haters

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:30:03 -0400

Hunter Brainstorming and Rambling, Let's Talk WotLK Talents

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:04:02 -0400

Need to write this down before I forget about it. Brainstorming for possible sting improvements in WotLK.

Tranquilizing Shot changed to Tranquilizing Sting. Slows target's attack speed by 30% for 8 seconds, drains 3 rage/5 energy per second over duration. 15 second cooldown.

Viper Sting, mana reduction reduced by approximately 20%, slows target cast speed by 30% (possibly increases GCD to accomadate instant-spam?)

Serpent Sting damage scaled to be more potent earlier in the DoT, scaling off towards the end. Sort of a reverse CoA

Scorpid Sting reduces the damage of the next physical attack upon application by 50%, though this kinda interferes with the new Chimera Shot (which is a LOL WUT talent at best).

Wyvern Sting is already shaky at best. Leave it as it is, let the SV hunters believe their 31 pointer is adequate.

While we're on the subject, let's talk Survival. Clearly, the new talents have absolutely nothing to do with survival (HEY I KNOW, LET'S GIVE THEM A NEW DAMAGE SHOT! ALL ABOUT SURVIVING LOLZ), though bear trap is an interesting addition. I can only imagine how easily it's own bleed dot is going to force it to break on damage, though. Hunting party seems interesting for playing an outlast team, especially since PvP geared SV hunters have at least 40-45% crit. Wyvern Sting damage got scaled up from about 950ish at 70 to 2500 at 80 (before Improved Stings), compared to Serpent Sting's 700ish to 1300ish. Wyvern Sting is now more useful for damage than it is as a CC. GOOD JOB! Wyvern could potentially hit for 3200 over 12 seconds with Improved Stings, if it weren't for resilience raping DoT damage.

Deterrence cooldown is now 3 minutes, and drumroll please? ...Increases spell resist chance by 60% for the duration! Survival now has a more survive-y cooldown! For the record, this also applies to poison procs off skills like, say, shiv. Surefooted now reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 30%. Cool change, but I'm going to miss 25% chance to resist hamstrings after intercept and deadly throws when shadowstep is down. Oh, and Trap Mastery is gone. Expcet to see more Freezing trap resists.

I'm not sure what to make of Explosive Shot. Is it only ticking twice? Does it tick on initial application (I.E., 0, 1, 2 seconds for 3 ticks), does it do any bonus upfront damage? Will it share a cooldown with Arcane Shot? It's not what I want, but it could Survival into a hardcore damage tree if it doesn't share cooldowns with Arcane.

As for MM, Focused Aim is more of an "ABOUT ******* TIME" talent that both hunters and shadow priests lacked. Careful Aim is going to be absolutely nuts. Dual wielding 30 int enchants is going to become mainstream, and this talent is WAY too strong to be first tier. But nobody tell Blizzard that. Improved Concussive Shot is now completely useless. Chimera shot is cool, but costs way too much mana.

BM gets a few neat tricks. Cobra Strikes + Invigoration = infinite mana, further securing the spec's PvE superiority. Master's Call replaces Bestial Swiftness, which is almost guaranteed to be moved to the new pet talent trees which have yet to be seen by myself. Also, what's this about new "exotic" pets that only BM hunters can tame?

As far as general changes go, Steady Shot finally uses ammo, so it is now worth it to actually buy expensive arrows. Pets are also now less of a chore to raise. Automatic skill training, automatic levelling to 5 levels below you if they aren't already, and no more mucking about with pet loyalty.

Personally, I think hunters need something like Strafe from D2. Except make it like arcane missiles so we can deal with Pillar Armor. One target, not broken by LoS. The arrows are magic, mother*******.

Countdown to Mystery Game Appears on Square Enix Website

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:38:36 -0400

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/ctds/

With the Nintendo DS logo in plain view and the ominous clock ticking, I'm sure it won't take long for many gamers to be hit with a wave of nostalgia as they figure out what the "ct" in the URL stands for. Now, show of hands; who else is as rabidly excited about this as I am?

Tournament Realm 1 Qualifying Class Statistics

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:26:07 -0400

I was browsing around the WoW forums and took a look at all the qualifiers for the regional events from the first Tournament Realm, and decided to count up and list what classes were most prevalent. So, without further ado...

(Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=7116578458&sid=1)

Priest: 10
Rogue: 10
Druid: 9
Warrior: 6
Mage: 6
Warlock: 5
Shaman: 1
Hunter: 1
Paladin: 0

Number of Rogue/Mage/Priest teams: 5 (and 1 rogue/mage/druid, accounting for all the mages).

The verdict? Rogue/Mage synergy is crazy, as expected, and is also apparently the only way Mages can succeed.
Priests have their versatility, showing up in Shadowplay, 3 double healer/Warrior teams, and a Hunter/Lock/Priest as well as those 5 RMPs.
Druids are in a multitude of teams as well, 3 Double Heals, 3 Lock/Druid/Melee, 2 double melee and a Rogue/Mage team.
Warriors are ALWAYS with druids, with the variable partner being a priest, rogue, or warlock. Seems they can't function without lifebloom support.
Warlocks are pretty scarce, only showing up in 3 Druid/Melee teams, a HLP drain team, and Shadowplay's comp. Too weak to the amount of Rogues and Priests about, one would imagine.
Only 1 Shaman, and he plays for Shadowplay. Is it any surprise?
Honestly, I was surprised to see even 1 Hunter qualify. Perhaps the Koreans can drain their way to victory with Hunter/Lock/Priest?
Paladins are the only class not in any of the 16 teams. Not really that much of a shock.

Thoughts?

Wavedashing Confirmed in Brawl!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:51:16 -0400

We interrupt this WoW-centric blog to bring you the following; Super Wavedashing.

Rejoice, all.

To Hell With Skill, Double Melee is Awesome

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:07:04 -0400

Where to begin? In the past few weeks my old teammates and I have decided to reform for a shot at the 3v3 tournament (like every other 2k scrubs out there lololol), and as such have spent significant amounts of time practicing (ganking) on the TTR. One of our amazingly skillful comps is Warr/Retpal/Rsham, classes which we have barely ever laid eyes on before and all I can say is WOW. The ease of dropping someone with this setup is retarded -- we've managed to RNG a Soul Link Warlock with 2 healers down from 90% to 0 before he could even react. It's ridiculous.

In case you aren't familiar with the team, it operates on the premise that warlocks are filled with tasty candy and you must beat it out of them as fast as humanly possible. The team itself holds an advantage over almost every warlock and double melee team, except in extreme cases where the Ret(ard) Paladin decides to ignore the affliction warlock sitting two feet from him and charge the shadow priest 50 yards in the back, getting his dumb ass killed three seconds into the match with some well-timed angel wings. (That loss courtesy of Kintt, Glickz and some retard who rolled a troll with their Spriest/Alock/Rsham comp).

Regardless of how bad our paladin is, I still think the comp will work as a decent backup provided we get enough practice in. I'm still excited to run a Rogue-centric comp with an old teammate as well, but with the limit on classes and players available on the teams it doesn't seem too likely that we'll be able to run all 3 comps with the same team.

In other news, I ganked Radikal outside Stormwind when he was trying to kill a resto druid (Silly mages!). Does that make me efamous now?

Proposed Shaman Buffs

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:22:53 -0500

Lawl wut? I made a post yesterday telling shaman to stop whining, and now I want to buff them? Well, I never said I hated the class. Hell, I love playing a shaman in arena, even if it is a bit frustrating at times.

Now, yesterday I made a post that I caught a lot of heat for from the shaman forums, and I wanted to try something new today to make it up to the shaman community, by thinking up a few small buffs the class could use to improve their overall play. Thus, I've revised a couple talents I think could help all shaman perform better overall.

These changes address a few issues: The fact that earth shock locks out the shaman nearly as long as the shockee, totem retardation, and a few issues with elemental shields. A long range stun for up to 1.5 seconds on a 15 second cooldown with a reasonable mana cost, an Earth Shield instant heal with decent cost that scales with charges remaining, and a PvE debuff for enhancement shaman, assuming the tank doesn't know what thunderclap is.

Will add more throughout the day if I get any other bright ideas.

Shaman Shouldn't be Complaining About Anti-CC

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:16:15 -0500

The History of Hunter/Shaman and it's Future.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:55:50 -0500

"wtf, did we accidentally queue skirmish?"

One of the most common phrases I would hear shortly before beating 2200+ teams when I played Hunter/Shaman in 2v2, coming from the opponent. Fact of the matter is, it's not exactly a popular comp. Or at least, it wasn't.

Early season 2, Goodoopile and Murtdragon dropped a bombshell on whatever-battlegroup-they're-on-because-armory-is-down by breaking the 2300 wall. For the two least-played classes in 2k+ 2v2, this was huge. Moreso that the hunter, Goodoopile, had engineered up a never before seen spec in the form of the 0/26/35 survival hybrid designed to, well, survive. Bear in mind this was done before the aimed shot, arcane shot, and deadzone buffs that hunters received, as well as the water shield buff for shaman.

Now, very few teams have followed the example that these two brave Forum Warriors created (short of some scrubs on Whirlwind who hit 2350), but all that could very easily change with the huge shaman changes next patch. As it stands, the combo has incredible survivability in the form of traps, scatter shot, counterattack/deterrence for the hunter, earth shield, wyvern sting, nature's guardian, and the kitchen sink. Now with not one but two on-demand MS effects (pet annoying my shaman? Smack him with a flametongue attack + earthbind + regular hunter DPS, none of this "charge up an aimed shot" BS.), faster totem drops for shaman, and a cheaper earth shield that's less susceptible to dispel spam (in the form of the less charges/mana cost, Nature's Grace is still worthless), the combo can easily be considered top tier, even over Hunter/Druid. The problem is simply finding a shaman and hunter both competent enough to play it.

If the combo can hit 2300 on two different battlegroups with two different sets of players, it has potential. We know of hunters who can hit this rating very easily, we must simply wait for a hero of the shaman community to step up to the challenge, team up with a strong hunter, and bring the team to BG9 so players will actually take the team seriously. To Karl and Murtdragon: the ability to revive your class's success is within your reach, will you extend your hand to grasp that which you can hold so easily? The choice is yours.

Healers = Breakfast

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:52:36 -0500

Holy Paladins are buttered toast. Simple, filling, but there's no real flair to entice you to grab one.

Disc/Holy Priests are a bagel with cream cheese. It's got that slight tang that's missing from the toast, but it doesn't fill you up as much.

Resto Druids are french toast. Sweet, delicious, incredibly filling and too good to be true.

Resto Shaman are a two-day old apple fritter sitting in your fridge. It looks so bad, but you can't figure out why it tastes so good.

Added bonus: Warlocks are Milk. It was good a little while ago, but now it smells kinda funny and you should probably throw it out.

Karma: Why the Pats lost. Also, Enhancement in high end arena.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:21:34 -0500

Karma, and the fact that the Pat's defense was asleep during the Giants' last drive. Honestly, Manning was sitting right in at least two players' grips for the sack and they let him get away for a 30+ yard pass. What the ****?

Now I'm no fan of either team. Or the NFL. Or football, for that matter. But God damnit I turned on the T.V. and watched that damn game for two-ish hours because it was my duty. And to fap at the Super Bowl commercials, because everyone seems to cream themselves over those. Actually, I lied; I just tuned in to watch the new episode of House afterwards, but that's not the point. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan, so don't take this as biased hating on the Pats. It's not; it's unbiased hating on the Pats. Because when you talk that much **** before the biggest game of the year, you can only blame yourself when something like this happens.

Don't get me wrong, the Giants' defense really stepped up to hold the Pats to 14 points. Brady made his fair share of blunders, possibly because he was drunk off his own bull****, we'll never know. But ouch. When the highest scoring team in history gets held to 14 points in the Super Bowl after drumming up incredible amounts of hype? What was the New England offense smoking before the game?

At any rate, no one can argue that the Giants didn't deserve that win after plowing through the Buccaneers, Cowboys, and Packers. It's a Cinderella story for sure. They've been the underdogs the whole time, and have shown nothing but sportsmanship, while New England was boastful and arrogant. That's karma.

In WoW news, After losing 7 games straight to War/Sham as Survival/RestoSham because we do not know how to quit, Karl and I respecced to Enhancement and BM respectively. We went 7-1 for the rest of the night against the same warrior/shaman (demolished the shaman in mere seconds), as well as some 2200+ lock/druid (3-0), spriest/rogue (2-0), and hunter/druid (1-1) teams. I guess Whirlwind really is terribad. Damn.

YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH THEM THEY'RE NOT ON THE SAME SIDE AS YOU

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:07:25 -0500

I've been doing a little thinking lately on how screwy the exp/gear grind is, and I'm getting overly frustrated, quite honestly. Now, I'm quite happy with the characters I have and the teammates I've played with. But up until just recently I haven't been aware of how truly limitted I am, as far as who I can play with.

I play a hunter as a heavy Survival/MM build in the arena with a Resto Shaman (ALL HAIL LORD KARL) in 2v2 (highest rated hunter/shaman in the world, kthx). I've been having a good time, trying to find an awesome 3rd player for us to 3v3 with, but otherwise pretty satisfied with my team(s). Karl, however, has another character on Maiev, a dorf priest.

His priest plays on Ten Drink Minimum, one of the top5 5v5 teams on Whirlwind, who are incidentally the rank 1 2v2/3v3 d00dz. Thing is, they're getting ready to up and transfer to BG9, supposedly to play with 2 of the guys from CLC is what I heard. Only problem I have is that Karl is also prepared to more-or-less chuck his shaman in the garbage and get rid of him entirely when he transfers. Which would leave me with precisely dick back on Vashj (the talent pool is... incredibly shallow. Not to say I couldn't find another healer and sit around 2100, but no healers on the server can honestly compare to Karl. He makes GC look like a clicker, but GC is a toolbox anyways.)

Now that I've established the backstory, let me get to the meat of this post. More specifically, my options. Like I said, I could find another healer, but with what I have readily available on my server, I'm not even going to be able to come close to the ratings we had before. My first instinct was, naturally, to transfer with these guys and hook up with them on BG9. Everything's good, we're all happy. Except, no wait, they're alliance. ****. Well, I could level up a new character and take months to get a dwarf to 70 and at a pvp-ready level, assuming these guys would wait that long to have me (spoiler: they wouldn't, and I don't want to pull that grind for the second time in a row when I JUST finished it on my first hunter).

Option C is resorting to EBay -- sell my old hunter and buy an alliance one, but this doesn't guarantee that Blizzard won't go ape**** on me and my accounts, resulting in me getting permab& because I want to play with GOOD players.

I have no idea where the **** I'm going with this article anymore, but suffice to say my original point was supposed to lead to a conclusion as such: Make pvp-only servers with fully geared premade 70s, no repair costs, and no quests/instances/raids, with non-limitted factions.

**** I'm tired, I probably shouldn't have been up 36 hours straight.

A Not-So-Brief History

no.spam@gameriot.com (Katashu) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:48:01 -0500

Warning: Wall of text. There is no tl;dr version. This post contains no strategies or insight into the arena. Too bad.

I would like to think that I am good at this game. I've been playing since a few months after release, focusing on PvP and largely ignoring raiding for most of my career. When The Burning Crusade released and the arena seasons started, I jumped on the opportunity to compete in ladder PvP.

From the second week of season 1 on through the very end of the season, I (as a shadow priest) and my SL/SL Warlock partner maintained our position as rank 1 in Whirlwind's 2v2 bracket. Our 3v3 took off in the middle of the season, soaring to the top 10 when we acquired a balance druid as our 3rd player, finishing the season at rank 1. Weeks from the end of the season, we added an elemental shaman and holy paladin to our setup, and finished in rank 5 with that team.

When season 2 rolled around, we did it all again. In the middle of selling a 2000 rated 2v2 arena team, Psyphon (my partner, at the time) and I got wind of the 2v2 tournament that was coming up and were no less than ecstatic. We finished up with the team and launched our way back to the top of the ladder with more than enough time to spare before the qualifications. Only we got screwed, because the qualifying teams were taken 2 weeks earlier than Blizzard said they would be. Whoops.

At this time, our already-dead server, Vashj, was having a mass exodus of transfers to Dragonmaw, Gurubashi, BG9, etc. Not ones to be left out, our 3v3 jumped ship to play with some friends on Dethecus in the Rampage battlegroup. Within a week of arriving, we'd jumped into top 10 in 2v2 and 3v3, and hit rank 1 for an inconsequential amount of time in 3v3. Shadow resist gear in Rampage, however, was rampant. Thus, we got our ***** handed to us on a silver platter before we were even out of the gate most of the time.

Our 3v3 showed up at WSVG Toronto during this season, being most notable for tearing the team Trounce a new ******* in a 3-0 series that showed our dominance over Rogue/Mage/Priest as Spriest/Lock/Furrypenguin. After a heartbreaking 3-1 loss to Rupture, ruinating our hopes for taking on Pandemic, we went on to finish the tournament in a 9th place showing, knocked out 3-2, our last match coming down to 1v2 between me as a rogue against a holy priest and a resto druid with 5% health. Looking back on that tournament, I can say with complete confidence that, had we not been running a completely wacky ******* setup from the start, we would have gone a lot further than we did.

After WSVG, willpower to arena for our team quickly evaporated. We trashed the 3v3, making new teams on an almost weekly basis to try and work a rogue into our setup, seeing as they caused us the most grief. Our 2v2 lived, and the power of a SL/SL lock with a Boomkin partner propelled the team to a Rank 1 contender. On the last day of the season, with a win trading team in rank 1 by a good 50 rating, Psyphon and Lewt played a total of 15 games against the Rank 2 and 3 teams at the time, and won 13 out of them, taking 1st place. Only, the team got deleted and they were 3-day banned. We each had our "LOL WUT" moments over vent, tried to contest it, but Blizzard was far from willing to listen. Oh well, **** happens.

During late season 2, when our druid had subbed in for me in the 2v2, I had been back on Vashj, madly leveling a hunter of indiscriminate gender (read: Blood Elf) to 70, hoping to rake in arena points as fast as humanly possible. Daellis, was his name, after the badass NPC in Netherstorm who hit me with Improved Wing Clip and strafed away to blow me up when I was levelling my priest. Minutes after hitting 70, I tamed a scorpid (like every hunter should) and hounded a shaman buddy (Karl) to let me ride his 2v2 team for points, seeing as his warrior partner was AWOL in the middle of the Atlantic (my memory is a little foggy on this, but it's more or less true). The team was 2150 or so at the time, and within one day my green gear had dropped it down to around 2k. This kept on until the end of the season when I'd just barely capped 5000 arena points. We finished with a 2100 rating, and I scored a duelist title for running away spamming viper sting for 10 games a week.

Onward to season 3; back on Dethecus, my 3v3 team had decided to screw off the server in favour of Black Dragonflight (to play with some high school dropout and his gay little 'kingdom'. Ernor, was it?), so I had no teammates left on the server. I resolved to afkbot my hunter to an arena-worthy level, and take the 2v2 as high as we could.

Fast-forward to today. I'm in full PvP gear, sporting a 2322 rating in the 2v2 bracket, with the other brackets floating around 2k due to Karl's lack of willingness to compete and his 2 other characters he has to arena with constantly on other servers. I am the 3rd highest 2v2 Hunter in North America, and Karl is the highest rated 2v2 Shaman in the WORLD. Awesome.

But all that **** doesn't matter, because my battlegroup is ****. Transfer to BG9, scrub, your rating on your crap battlegroup means nothing.

I just can't catch a ******* break.