Blog Posts from "World of Ming" - Gameriot.com

GOMTV Named Season 3 Grand Finals Video: Button Basher In Action! PTR 10835: Deadly Poison Change Won't Save Rogues From 344 DPS Legendary Two-Hander's

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:58:13 -0500

After watching BB losing to heavy armor, it was clear that as amazing as Hiren is, he just can't do enough damage to a heavy armor team like warrior/paladin/druid. Blizzard gave rogues a superb PVE change with improved poison now offering 20% chance to proc deadly poison, up from 10%, and deadly poison procs at max stack now proc poison from the other weapon (instant or wound)!

Fully talented, a rogue will have 50% chance to proc deadly poison off a 1.4 offhand, and off envenom procs it goes up to 65%. Cheap shot to kidney, spare combo points on slice and dice and you should be able to get 5 stack deadly in no time. From there the target is taking 1200 damage from deadly poison every 3 seconds, your offhand deadly will now proc wound poison damage, throw in the big envenoms and we will finally do respectable damage against plate. It should give rogue/affliction lock/shaman a nice boost although I would argue heavy armor was never that team's problem to begin with.

The new 44/2/25 spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0ecoIgoirR0uZ0bZebfbc0db

And remember, against hunter armor and above, a single stack of deadly poison allows envenom to outdamage eviscerate at equivalent combo points.

Of course, Blizzard can easily change their mind and make this a PVE only buff by limiting deadly poison proccing other poisons at max stack to instant poison only. Although given how combat relies on wound poison, they will probably leave it as is. To be fair, against druid/shaman teams it will be very hard to maintain 5 stacks considering how much you will be kited/cced. The buff to improved poisons alone should give envenom the edge over eviscerate for good, as the biggest problem I had with full time envenom 44/2/25 was lack of deadly poison procs when I really needed it.

Heavy plate teams are not that common these days compared to wizard cleave so this is not the huge PVP buff that makes rogues imbalanced, but it will finally make 44/2/25 the definitive spec. I remember when no one wanted to use shadowstep, and Blizzard buffed it again and again and again until it became THE spec. The same thing is happening to envenom here. It was $hit, now it is the $hit.

Considering 3.3 will come out before season 7 ends, I am wondering if there may be an alternative to RMP for rogues looking for gladiator titles. My rogue/ret/priest team is seriously feeling the ceiling right now, and watching Furious Gladiator Euneek out of gladiator range with this comp pains me. They tried the ultimate rushdown rogue in Enforcer and even his sideway keyboard couldn't prevent a 100 point drop.

I don't have access to a quality mage or warlock who would choose rogue over wizard cleave at the moment, and it is really late in the season to make much roster changes. I will see if I can find a quality feral but most likely I will have to stick to the same comp rest of the way.

Of course, none of this will matter once we are up against 344 DPS 2 handers. I sincerely hope this requires beating Arthas on hard mode, difficulty equivalent of Yogg +0. To be fair, the season 8 two-hands will be around 318 DPS, the legendary here is the equivalent of season 9 weapon with a crazy proc. Imagine TSG with two of these?

Racism and My Failed Journey to China, How Good Shaman Play, Residual MLG Thoughts

no.spam@gameriot.com (Bodi) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:13 -0500
I had the opportunity recently to play with someone very close to me in game and found myself in a situation where the person, while filled with great potential, was simply not used to playing the game at the level I'd become accustomed to. It's a common frustration many have expressed with real life friends, girlfriends and supposed Merciless Gladiators who actually bought their accounts.

So I'm left with the decision of continuing playing with this person and working with them to improve their play even as I strive to improve my own or....finding other people to play with who I'd be more comfortable with making that last minute Gladiator push with in coming months.

I'm already notorious for team hopping every week in 3s because I like to play with everyone so I decided to keep up with this, while concurrently keeping him on my list of players to rotate around with.

I'm far from being a perfect player. Having the opportunity to look over Douja and Tenderloin's shoulder at MLG it gave me a play by play view of how two of the best shaman play. I was shocked at how defensive they were to my (sometimes overly) offensive style. There were a few games where Douja barely shocked or purged at all, instead playing it low key and keeping his positioning to where it was very difficult for him to be switched to as he healed. There was a more deliberate patience to their shaman play that I found myself lacking.

You don't have to shock EVERY cast. You don't have to purge everything. But, when you do have the opportunity to safely play offensively, do so and do it better than anyone else. There have been times where I've been so tunnel visioned on shocking a warlock or mage and keeping myself in a constant position to do so and I end up in a bad spot to be switched to immediately. It was the first good lesson for me in what turned out to be a string of lessons in life for me this week.

I guess sometimes, when you feel like you're at the top of your game and you've never been this good before, that doesn't mean you stop improving and continuing to step it up.

I was talking to Vidra on AIM and he linked me to this video of some random white guy playing guitar. He's actually pretty ******* good.

And I found this link in Zilea's AIM comment. Fun facts about Zilea: he's made the dean's list several times before graduating college with a degree in poli sci and he reads The Huffington Post as his only news source.

Fighting RLS: A Mage's Role

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pookz) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:41:23 -0500

RLS is a hard comp for a mage to play against because of the many ways the RLS team can harass the mage's spells. With wind shear, spell lock, curse of tongues, kick, gouge, and grounding totem a Mage can easily feel useless against this setup. "Maybe I should just get burning determination.." you ask yourself bitterly. The truth is that it's not so bad if you learn to adapt to all the different interrupts of the RLS team. Let's start with your spec

Check yo' Spec

I like the traditional 20 points in arcane for Improved Counter Spell and Torment the Weak. Your frost tree can vary depending on your preference and also the spec of the enemy Warlock. If the warlock is destruction I like to get frost warding to potentially negate immo conflags on myself. If the warlock is Affliction I drop frost warding, and pick up Piercing Ice.

Your spec might look like this against an Affliction RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAI0IobuhcdMfkt

And like this against a Destro RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAIbuobuhcdMfkt

Suit Up

Just like fighting RMP you want to try and get 8% hit because of the rogue's heightened senses. Spell penetration can be important since the shaman can drop frost resistance totem and the fel hunter has spell resist. You don't want the fel hunter resisting key novas when you need them. I usually play 121 spell penetration which is the same number I use for RMP.

Try and balance your spell damage and haste by using 9 spellpower 8 haste as opposed to 16 haste gems in yellow. You won't be hard casting as many spells as you normally would so a balance of spell power and haste rather than stacking haste might benefit you more. You also won't need Battlemaster's most of the time since it's hard for the RLS to drop the mage, unless he's destro which is why frost warding helps.

Glyphed Out

Your glyph decision against this match up is actually pretty interesting. Glyph of Decurse adds a flare in your game play since you can essentially "Immune" incoming hexes from the enemy shaman. What the Glyph does is makes the target you decurse immune to all curses for 4 seconds.

As you see the enemy Shaman casting Hex you simply decurse the Curse of Elements, Curse of Agony, or Curse of Tongues that's either on you or your teammate. If you do it in time the incoming Hex should be immune.

The other Glyphs should include Polymorph and either Icy Veins or Mana gem. You could even use Evocation Glyph depending on your opinion of its benefit.

Armored Up

Your ideal armor for this matchup is obviously Mage Armor but if the rogue does swap to you feel free to swap to Ice Armor to proc some fingers.

Once you feel comfortable about your spec, gear glyphs and armor it's time to queue.

Hit the Ground

Dealing with Grounding Totem can be annoying especially if you're accustomed to killing them with Ice Lance. Ice lance is a great way to kill grounding totem, but when you have fingers of frost procs the last thing you want to do is waste them on a grounding totem. When you have a fingers of frost proc and you need to kill Grounding try using Spellsteal to get rid of it. Spell steal only costs a bit more mana than Icelance and it also kills the Grounding instantly, since there's no travel time.

Since Spellsteal kills Grounding instantly, it is key to use if a shaman drops Grounding before a lesser healing wave or a hex to avoid getting Counterspelled. If you use Ice Lance to kill a grounding in this situation the travel time of the lance may be too slow for the incoming Counterspell. Spellsteal will instantly drop the totem giving you plenty of time to interrupt the cast.

It's Shocking

The Shaman's Wind Shear can really set you back as the mage fighting against an RLS. Getting shocked cast after cast is not only annoying but it causes huge downtime and can lead to a loss.

Using range to your advantage is the easiest way to deny getting shocked since the Shaman simply can't shock the cast before getting close to you. Using minute LOS can also save you from getting shocked, this is where you just use little corners or angles of LOS to get a cast just before the shaman gets LOS of you. Finally, faking shocks is great as long as you don't cause downtime by trying to fake. It helps if you actually look at the enemy Shaman's character while faking just because it helps you “read” him.

Open Sesame

Your opener against an RLS team sets the pace for the game. It's best if you avoid getting sapped but not if it means sloppily running in and engaging combat. Depending on your partners you kind of want to “set up” your opener.

If you are playing with a rogue you should allow time for your rogue to get a sap on either the warlock or shaman. In this case you can even decide to just attack whoever your rogue doesn't get a sap on. For example, sap shaman go warlock or sap warlock go shaman.

If you are not playing with a rogue it may be best to run in and grab combat early before the sap run back a bit so your healer can get in combat from you then engage the fight.

Use Protection

Protecting your debuffs with trash debuffs like Winter's Chill ensures that your sheeps will stick when you want them to. I suggest binding focus Rank 1 Frostbolt in order to stack up debuffs before you focus sheep. Rank 1 Frostbolt is a quick way to put up winter's chill and the frostbolt debuff followed by Polymorph. This reduces the chance that Devour Magic will remove the Polymorph debuff.

There are times when you simply don't have the time to protect your sheeps and need the Polymorph to at least interrupt the incoming cast. This is fine, as long as you realize that your first sheep will most likely get devoured since there are no other debuffs.

Rogue Harass

Most of your snares and slows will stick on the rogue since Devour Magic is the only dispel and it's on an 8 second cooldown. Try and keep the enemy rogue snared throughout the entire match with nova and cone of cold since Crippling poison can be poison cleansed. If the enemy rogue is sapped, cone him out of the sap; if the enemy rogue is blinded cone him out of the blind. A snare like cone of cold out of a full CC can cause the rogue to sort of panic since he's been out of the match for so long, sometimes forcing a vanish. A vanish in this case is easily AOEd out since the rogue should still be near you.

It's important while trying to cone of cold the rogue to not get gouged, so be sure to max range cone the rogue and turn your character's back to the rogue the second you see him inch toward you.

Don't Lose your CC

If you open on the shaman try and counterspell a fear or a UA coming from the warlock to avoid him peeling. If the warlock is destro, counterspell the first Howl of Terror or fear since he's trying to peel at this point. Later in the game counterspelling Immolate or Chaos Bolt is good to do. If you do not have counterspell available sheeping Immolates or Chaos Bolts is extremely effective in preventing kills.

Your CC on the shaman is based around deep freeze, novas, sheeps and counterspells. Using deep freeze on the shaman can result in an easy full poly without worrying about it getting shocked. Novaing a shaman out of LOS of their low hp teammate causes problems for the RLS team. Counterspelling hex or heals can obviously lead to a kill.

Sheeping the enemy rogue's openers and kidney shots is key in this matchup. Prepare to fake cast the Polymorph since it's common for mages to try and sheep the enemy rogue's openers and shaman are aware of that.

Your positioning should be near the rogue to harass him and get him out of vanishes. Make sure to also be in the Shaman's LOS so he's afraid of polymorphs and CS.

DPS Rotation

You're probably thinking, “So if I can't cast, what do I do?” Well, you can cast you just have to take advantage of the few windows of opportunity against an RLS in which you can actually hard cast. Monitoring the warlocks spell lock, with a stop watch or an addon, helps to find this opportunity.

Try and use all your instants first like fireblast and cone of cold. It also helps to line up your cone of cold to hit everyone for max fingers procs, so you get two free ice lances which adds to your instant damage. After that you can either scorch for damage if the target is really low or attempt to waste the warlock's spell lock by faking frost bolts. After you fake spell lock call out for PI, lust and use Icy Veins and get those hard casts off while still being aware of shocks and grounding totems. Sometimes your best damage is CCing the Shaman unless you are attacking Shaman in which it is much easier to get casts off since you can just hard cast while he's stunned.

Thanks for the read, be back next week.

A Tournament Challenger Appears, SK US Drama Continues, The Return Of Glickz? Check6 Caption Contest

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:29:07 -0500

Over at Check6's website they are running a caption contest with some decent prizes for the amount of effort it will take to do an entry. The prizes consist of a Heroes of Newerth beta key and a Microsoft keyboard valued at $80. Not bad, so I'm going to go ahead and submit my caption with this photo (click the link for other possible photos to use)

"What the hell just happened?"

At any rate, I could really use a new keyboard, take a look at what I've been using for the past year:

On a final note, does anybody really want to me to host videos of paladin/priest/warrior? I got some really negative feedback last time and that is pretty much all I've been playing lately in 3v3.

Beware of Strangers On The Internet, Button Basher's Success Can Not Save Rogue/Mage/Priest On Live Servers, From Bodi to Obama: How Taurens Are Perceived In China

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:16:50 -0500
First of all, a sincere apology to all WOM readers about the 0.5 female blogger idea. Tosan, a popular movie producer (he made some amazing Naruto-style edits and plays multiple classes) gave me the idea of producing video blogs featuring arena footages of various classes and more importantly, his sister who also plays at a pretty high level. The idea was to have his sister do the voice commentaries for his video blogs, and maintain a real presence in his weekly article, hence the 0.5 female blogger concept.

Unfortunately, with RL issues, Tosan had to back out of the deal and I took a chance with what seemed to be a hot 17-year old chick. Normally, a WOM writer goes through rigorous interviews, background checks, drug tests and HIV exams. We take every step along the way to ensure the hot chick you are drooling over is actually a girl! However I was in a pinch this Sunday so I took someone on without running my normal routines.

Luckily, global champion Zileas caught on early, and informed me of my mistake. The blog was deleted and the contributor list was cleaned up. Serennia-sama couldn't believe I was going to replace him with a tranny, so it kind of fired him up to make a comeback. He is on probation and we will re-evaluate his performance at the end of season 7, if not sooner. Serennia the reality show still gets followings, but Serennia the Aion player is easier to replace than Serennia the WOW player, I believe we understand each other.

While I still plan on maintaining one female blogger on WOM at all times, I see heavy diminishing returns to adding additional female writers. Likewise, with Zilea, Azael and Pookz, I firmly believe WOM is already loaded with top arena talents. We are talking about three players from BG9's top 2 teams here. And Serennia, Bodi and myself also produce a lot of related stories. There is only so much WOW arena you can write about in a given week.

In any case, WOM strives to maintain the highest standard of journalistic integrity. Strong ethic is at the top of our code of conduct. We will continue to enhance the community by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment. Wowriot, in case you haven't noticed, covers quite a bit more than WOW, and we would like to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, while there are Gnome women who appreciate certain physical features from big black Taurens, it is still limited to one night stand's or short term relationships unless it is for money/green card. In term of social acceptance, the Gnome/Tauren relationship is still considered a major embarrassment to most Chinese parents. While a Gnome/Human or Gnome/Elf relationship is considered the pride of the family, and is the choice for many tier 1 actresses like Zhang Zi Yi.

A half-Gnome/half-Tauren girl won a beauty pageant in Shanghai recently and received massive criticisms for her background. A lot of the highlights were on her Gnome mother who was considered a cheap sell-out.

With Chieftain Barrack Obama in Gnomeregan this week, while he will certainly be treated like any other U.S. President, there is a certain aura missing from him compared to say, Bill Clinton or even the Bush's in the eyes of the Gnomes. America is at its lowest relative strength in many decades, and I believe Obama will have a very hard time establish any real respect deep in the heart of Asian leaders.

Done Trying To Be Korean, Balancing Melee: The Final Frontier

no.spam@gameriot.com (Serennia) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:05:47 -0500
Done With "Trying To Be Korean"
Not permanently... yet, but the game (Aion) has taken its toll on many a gamer. Although I initially found it surprising that almost the entirety of Voodoo participated in a mass exodus from Aion with numerous account sales, I can pretty much see where they're coming from lately. Although there are some really fun aspects to the game (primarily cosmetic aspects), there are also numerous problems that keep the game from ever becoming anything resembling a "WoW killer," most notably the incessant amount of grinding involved. So you hit level 50, you're done with the hard part, right? Ha, no. The game is Korean through and through and if people learned anything from Lineage 2, you'd know that the grinding has just begun.

Want the best PvE gear? No problem, you just need to run Dark Poeta about 3 billion times, camp the quest spawn NPC's, and farm legendary bosses that can either drop 4 of the best items in the game at a time or also drop absolutely nothing as a curve ball to keep you coming back for more. Or on the other hand, you can do full instance runs that take a bare minimum of 4 hours to complete in order to have a shot at equally entertaining final bosses that also have an equal chance to drop 0 loot.

Desire the best PvP gear? Piece of cake, all you have to do is farm fortress guards for 8+ hours a day until higher officer ranks at which point you're stuck doing mind numbing repeat turn-in quests for a measly amount of Abyss Points, all because the risk:reward for dying at high ranks is extremely against your favor. An elysean general ranked Ranger from JP Aion said it best when he stated, "Never. Ever. Strike unless you feel that you ahve 100% chance of winning. 95% isn’t good enough. The risk isn’t worth it." So basically in order to advance to the most prestige ranks on the PvP ladder, you basically need to avoid PvP entirely and slay dragons... I mean fortress guards... in order to do so, brilliant!

I think quite possibly the worst example of how bad of a grind this game is comes when I first got my level 30 piece of Daevonian armor. You get 1 piece out of a 5-piece set and upon completing the set, you can then get your Daevonian weapon. Well, in true NCsoft fashion, the only way to get any more than 1 piece of the armor is to level another character on your account up to level 30 and mail the armor piece to your main after doing the quest. Then again 3 more times... for a level 30 set of gear. And people find this fun?

Aion hasn't been a huge let-down in terms of being a break from 6 years of WoW and a graphically appealing time sink, but it is far from your perfect MMO. I'm not cancelling my subscription just yet, but if NCsoft doesn't do some sweeping changes within the next 1-2 major content patches, you can expect to see my account on Player Auctions like the rest of Voodoo.

Melee Classes: The Final Frontier
I'm bringing up this pseudo-random topic because after playing Aion for the last couple months, if I had to pinpoint the one thing that bothered me the most, it would be melee classes and how powerful, yet worthless they can be at the same time. Not in just Aion, but seemingly every MMO to date has yet to balance melee classes in-line with casters adequately, handle client-server latency well, and at the same time do it in the absence of collision detection (which only EverQuest had).

In Aion, melee classes scale extremely well, far better than casters, with end-game gear, particularly because of attack speed bonuses. They will simply wreck casters because of their health and offensive power scaling when casters don't get the same return from magic boost scaling. That said, however, melee are also extraordinarily worthless in this game when it comes to aerial combat (95% of Abyss PvP). This is primarily because the client-server interaction in Aion is sketchy at best when it comes to determining melee range with your target. Ranged classes have it infinitely easier when fighting in the air and even with extendable weapons and flight speed items/scrolls, melee often find themselves repeatedly "out of range" of their target even when flying ahead of them on their screen. It's probably the absolutely most game-breaking problem I have with Aion right now.

In WoW, melee classes also scale very well, often far better than caster/healer counterparts, due to gear. The client-server interaction is also much better but only in the presence of snares. When 2 un-snared targets are fighting with 1 kiting the other, you'll begin seeing the same problem that Aion has (no melee classes in Aion have reliable snares). For WoW's sake, I think they did a good job of giving almost every melee class a consistent snare (FU ret paladins, you don't deserve one) for the sake of keeping the client-server latency issue to a minimum. What Blizzard really just has to do at this point is figure out a way to have casters benefit more from having top-end gear in the way that melee classes do. When are we going to see a good caster weapon with a chance on spell hit? The datamined melee weapons out of 25-man Icecrown are looking ridiculous meanwhile casters are only getting another 50 spell power to show for their hard efforts.

Finally, I just wanted to conclude by saying that Dark Age of Camelot had by far the best melee balance in any MMORPG that I've played thus far. Their client-server interaction was almost flawless, allowing melee whenever you were in range even in the absence of snares, and almost perfect balance with melee/caster in that game. I won't go into too much detail on this because I know very few Gameriot readers have even played DAoC, but I honestly feel DAoC was and still could be the best PvP game on the market if not for New Frontiers killing the game. If anyone reading this played DAoC for years before/after NF, please let me know if you agree or disagree with this statement.

In other news, I'll be reactivating WoW soon most likely, so if any rivals out there are looking to push for duelist while carrying a Deadly/Furious Gladiator Death Knight, PM me!

Plays Like a Girl. Represent Thunderlord. Oh yea, pics (I deliver).

no.spam@gameriot.com (Garakskull) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:11:24 -0500

Hi boys, Ming did it again. First was Anna, then Verdak, and now me. You have yet another female to torment.

A little bit about me

I have played wow since release. Through the years, it has been the typical on-again, off-again love affair. I have had my fair share of ups and downs with the game. Like my predecessor, I have also met up with people here and there that I’ve played with. There will be more about that later.

When I’m not playing wow, I lead a pretty uneventful life. I spend time watching Star Trek, knitting, and I’ve just gotten into cosplay. In fact, I have plans to try to make it to Blizzcon this year – but I will need some suggestions on what to dress up as.

A little bit about my history with WOW

Throughout Burning Crusade, I spent most of my time in the arena circuit playing my shaman (resto). I will honestly say that BC was the most fun I had with the game. I did just enough pve to get trinkets, etc. and help out my buddies when they needed a healer.

I will be honest, I just returned to the game. Pvp has been calling me, just as it always has, and I look forward to getting that adrenaline rush that arena brings.

Represent Thunderlord

I have always played on Thunderlord and I am well aware it is a no name server. For this first blog post, I wanted to start with an interview close to home. Tonight I spent time talking to Rippar, a warrior who is currently rocking the 2s and 3s brackets on Vindication. Rippar is paired with Amoux (recently faction changed from alliance) playing warrior/druid 2s. Rippar’s 3s team includes Amoux and Dropdon, a prot ret pally. Neither of the comps he runs is overly common, so I sat down to talk with him about his experience with the current season.

Q: I have to ask, how was it taking Shinaniganz down the other day?
Rippar: If by fun you mean facerolled, then it was very fun.

In summary

I look forward to making this an interesting blog for you to read. I want to bring my own sense of humor regarding WOW to the WOM community to keep you boys entertained. I am also sure that some of you are wondering what I look like, so here goes:

MLG Anaheim, Soulja Boy & Kalgan,

no.spam@gameriot.com (FHazael) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:28:01 -0500
and although some of you have probably seen the picture floating around only a few of you have heard the story.

Soulja Boy was at the event representing Gunnar, and hanging out on a massive party bus type thing that Gunnar had there. I was on the bus doing an interview, and had heard he'd be on there as well so after I finished my interview I decided to try to get a picture with him thinking it'd probably be pretty funny. Unfortunately I really had no idea what he looked like, as I haven't really ever heard much of his music and don't watch any music videos really, and he was there with an entourage which made it a bit more tricky. I looked and saw a guy who I figured was probably him and asked the people I was with if that was Soulja Boy, and they thought it probably was too so I went over to ask for the picture. It pretty much went down like this -

Me - "Hey man, think I could grab a picture with you?"

The guy turns to me and just gives me the dirtiest look I've ever seen, like I was just the biggest idiot he'd ever met. It was pretty uncomfortable and I was kinda just sitting there not knowing what to say while I was getting stared down by them for a few seconds of awkward silence. Another one of the guys turns around and looks at me and goes..

"Uhhh.... yo, you mean me?"

Me - "Yeah... thanks"

Turned out I had the completely wrong person so I ended up looking pretty stupid in the process but I did end up getting a pretty funny picture / story so it was worth it in the end and the people I was with got to have a good laugh at me.

I was also able to chat with Kalgan a bit, and I really do think that he has a very strong sense of the game and is playing at a much higher level than people would expect. He's probably in the top 1% of arena players as far as rating goes which is impressive as far as I'm concerned, and also inspires some extra confidence in him and his decisions as far as the game goes. I definitely think it was cool that Kalgan as well as a ton of other Blizzard people showed up to not only enjoy the matches, but to get a better sense of the balance of the game at its highest levels. It really shows how much they care about the game, and that they're willing to go the extra mile to improve the game not only for its largely casual fanbase, but also for the hardcore players in order to make it a stronger E-Sport.

Whether or not you agree with the majority of decisions Blizzard makes for the game, it's impossible to argue that Blizzard being closer with MLG is not a great step in the right direction not only for the game in general, but also more specifically for the game as an E-Sport. Allowing the Blizzard staff to have access to the games top players, and to observe their matches and get the insight is a fantastic way for them to get an even better sense of the state of the game. I think that the next step would be to have certain players help to brainstorm or find new ways to implement the ideas and balance solutions which could come out of something like this. Personally that's something I would love to get involved in, as helping Blizzard not only helps the community and game as a whole, but helps me individually as the more the game improves the better it is for someone like me who has been fortunate enough to get as much as I have out of it.

That's it for this week!
Until next time....

A Gift Of Great Power: Reckful-kun Gets Hiren-san's Lucky Coin, Intel Extreme Masters American Championship Kicks Off In Style, 3.3 PVE Loot Table Revealed

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:12:48 -0500

So far Blizzard did a decent job making sure every piece of PVE loot has at least one PVE stat on it. As a result, PVPers who don't PVE can be quite competitive with PVP gear alone. But there are a few interesting rogue pieces:

Icecrown Reputation Ring: http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50376/ashen-band-of-vengeance/

Only requires friendly to get, and goes up in item level as you go up in reputation. The friendly version has 5 stats and is item level 251, easy upgrade over S7 ring which is 4 stats and item level 245.

5-Men Trinket: http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50198/needle-encrusted-scorpion/

Seems to be bugged now as 452 armor penetration proc for 10 seconds is very underpowered for item level 232. Even item level 213 Grim Toll has 613 armor penetration rating. I believe the correct armor penetration rating should be around 690 once this goes live, which is roughly 49% armor penetration or +20% physical damage on 2 hand warrior, +16% physical damage on a rogue. Much easier to obtain than the other two trinkets for armor penetration warriors, but for rogues it will probably require some sort of buff from Blizzard to take this over Battlemaster's.

Emblem of Frost Reward: http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50470/recovered-scarlet-onslaught-cape/

Most of the pieces are not that hot for PVP, but the cape is decent and should match-up well against S7 as it has 5 stats and suffer less from stats diminishing returns. Armor penetration is also for me, the best PVE stat for PVP as it increases flat damage similar to attack power.

Should be a relatively painless grind especially with daily BG quests offering 25 arena points! If you pace yourself out and stick to daily BG/weekly WG quests, honor grinding is not that bad although I wish they can up the cap a little so the cap can be used to buy two honor pieces. I am capped at 75K already and it buys just one honor piece. A larger cap will allow me to grind honor more gradually, throughout the season, taking full advantage of every WG.

Tom "Kalgan" Chilton Speaks on PvP, MLG and Game Balance Zen

no.spam@gameriot.com (Bodi) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:18:39 -0500
My first impression of Tom "Kalgan" Chilton was that he was a mixture of Yoda, Tyler Durden and Cain from Kung Fu. He's not the sort of guy to be in your face all the time, preferring to float around through the crowd as though he's just another face. If you aren't in the know, you don't know who he is. Yet for those who are in the know, he's the unmistakable game design legend, one of the power players behind much of WoW's success. As one out of six original game designers for World of Warcraft and is Blizzard's long-standing "PvP guru." While this label has certainly evolved as the game has evolved he still has a significant amount of input for PvP balance and changes that are made to that aspect of the game.

Kalgan was nice enough to agree to an interview with me at MLG Anaheim in Soulja Boy's bus. (Well technically, it was the Gunners' bus but it's where Soulja Boy was randomly playing Gears of War.) Unfortunately, I was unable to arrange an interview with them both at the same time for juxtapositional hilarity, but I'll take what I can get.

What's your official job title at Blizzard?

It Was a Good Run, Flash Back, A Few of Orange's Thoughts

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pookz) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:20:17 -0500

CU!

Thanks for reading, be back next week

The Fun Solution To Current Arena? MLG Aftermath, Who Will Be The New SK US? NS2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:59:02 -0500

Forgive me in advance if this article is very diary-esque.

Actual in-game screenshot (according to them)

I'm not sure how many people are aware of the Natural Selection 2 project, but it is a game developed by a company called Unknown Worlds Entertainment, headed by a guy named Charlie Cleveland. He was the lead designer of the original Natural Selection. The first Natural Selection was a half-life 1 modification that was a mix between FPS and RTS.

The game has two sides, Frontiersmen and Kharaa, with the Frontiersmen consisting of marines and the Kharaa consisting of the zerg. The marine side has something called a commander which basically get an aerial view of the entire map if the marines have vision of it (like in Starcraft). The commander's role is much like in Starcraft. He makes the commands (over the microphone), pings where the team should go, drops weapons for them, places buildings, etc. The marines actually build the buildings, take the weapons (they get dropped on the ground by the commander), and go out and try to kill stuff.

The Kharaa, on the other hand, is much like the zerg in Starcraft. You start off as a "Skulk", which is equivalent to a zergling. It has the ability to climb walls, leap, etc with some cool additions like being able to spit a target and parasite them, giving the entire Kharaa a sort of tracing dot that updates every second and every Kharaa player can see their location. Then there are other cool forms like the "Onos", which is the equivalent of an ultralisk in Starcraft with its own unique set of abilities. I don't want to drag on and on, but needless to say Natural Selection 1 was a really well-made game with a ton of replay value. I might also add it is a great tournament game

Anyway, Natural Selection 2 is the second project and this time it isn't a free modification. These guys have investors and it is now an official game being developed by an official company that plans on releasing their game via steam as a standalone product. Using their own unique engine too!

If you want to be a part of their community (which has been around for a very long time) head over to their website (or just click here). Their alpha is supposedly going to be coming out soon, so if you want to experience it go ahead and preorder their game. Or just go check out their website as their first game was amazing and I'm sure their second one will be too.

The period that I played Natural Selection 1 was one of the most fun periods of online gaming that I've ever had before WoW.

On a final note: Zilea part 7 has been pushed back a week because I was too busy over the weekend to really get any games frapsed.

The Ultimatum - Course of Action Decided

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:08:55 -0500

11/09 - Noon

Can you at least cover tonight's article?

I made an entry already last night to keep the momentum going. - Ming

11/09 - Afternoon

Yeah ill get it. sorry, the pain yesterday was brutal. had to get a wisdom tooth pulled. - Serennia

11/10 - 3AM

Considering i was busy most of today and missed most of MLG, and while I CAN put an article up now half-assed, i think it would be better if i got caught up on what happened at MLG before writing an article so im doing that tonight and tomorrow morning and ill have the article up soon after. if you can tell me what orangemarm did that was so amazing that would help too. - Serennia

11/10 - 9AM

Just put up whatever article you can, add some RL stories if possible on why you were so busy last two days. I need an article ASAP. - Ming

11/10 - 3PM

Hi, this is one of Vance's co-workers and he asked me to email you about not being able to write some article for your site because he's in the emergency room at Franklin Hospital right now being treated. He apologizes for any inconveniences and requested you email him to let him know the course of action following this.

I agree with some of the more sensible readers that given Serennia-sama's past contributions to WOM, there should be an ultimatum of some sort, but another chance given to a WOW legend. Also, if Serennia-sama did get into the emergency room somehow, I am not a heartless monster and I will excuse him.

Serennia-sama can hold onto his WOM writer spot if he can complete one of the following two quests by Sunday night (that is 12 Midnight US Eastern Time, not 3PM Monday):

1) He can send me a doctor's note with full contact information, along with an office number at Franklin Hospital of North Shore I can call to confirm his medical condition.

IF THE ABOVE IS TOO DIFFICULT CONSIDERING I HAVE BEEN SENDING ALL OF HIS ARTICLE PAYMENTS TO A CERTAIN LAN CAFE IN TEXAS

2) He can get back into WOW and level Serenn (he hasn't logged on since 10/16) to 2200+ in 3v3. And he must play at least 10 arena matches a week and not a single late blog again for the rest of season 7.

Two very reasonable quests. If you are really sick, the doctor's note excuses you, if you are not sick, start playing WOW again and take your readers seriously. Just pick one of the two, the readers will be watching your progress.

MLG Anaheim Post Game Wrap: BG9 Got Egged On, Blizzard Still Knows Their Game Better Than Anyone, Button Basher: Skill > All

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:06:28 -0500

An apology on missing the last a few games of the BB vs SK-EU grand finals. I waited and waited but I simply had to go escort my father-in-law back to his hotel to catch an early morning flight. Estel watched the matches and told me exactly what happened, and I am glad the best team won.

Serennia-sama was supposed to take over bracket play, but I got this message at 6PM:

Watching Button Basher playing RMP is like watching Daigo playing Ryu, the most balanced character that everyone plays, but no one can play like Daigo. His sheer talent may not be enough to win every tourney, but win or lose, he is the crowd favorite, and he wins enough tournaments to be considered a legend. When you lose to him, you feel outplayed, not outcomped.

While Reckful-kun has been busy streaming high light reels, launching Reckful.com, the Koreans played thousands of games, often wearing outdated gear to increase the difficulty level, handicapping themselves to perfect their swaps and defensive plays. When everyone thought S5 gear was too low in damage for RMP to do well, Button Basher scored kill after kill after kill on SK-EU's druid Enigma.

Hiren is an amazing rogue individually, ahead of any rogue in this tournament, but what made him special was the way he synced up with Orange. Always a clean cloak vanish CS when Orange made the swap. Always there to dish out a full bar of energy when Orange got his hard cast off. Always made the right peels when his team most needed it. And more importantly, patient enough to land 80% of his openers and vanish CS's. It is scary to play against BB. It is almost like going up against three Pain's with three Rinnegans. It is like the precision of one player with 800 APM micro managing three characters.

I am a big fan of Reckful-kun, but I think he is going down Neilyo-kun's path. Stop the Reckful.com project for a while, practice and practice some more with your team, you guys can do better, you just have to believe in the strength of RMP again. Time to stop watching your own streams, and watch the BB replays, you can do it too, believe it!

MLG Anaheim Live Blog Sunday: Button Basher Wins It All

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:43:51 -0500

Coverage on: http://www.gotfrag.com/

Saturday: 10AM PST
Sunday: 10AM PST

Current time of Anaheim: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=783

Day 1 and 2 are in the bag and a word of advice to MLG admins, it is time to tighten your broadcast schedule and drop the "play every game" stupidity. Nothing is more frustrating than a team winning the series 3-1, oops let's take a 15 minute break to play the fifth and final meaningless match before another 30 minute break for the next series! If there is ever a tie in records, you are using the head-to-head record anyway, and in the miracle of a 3-way tie of both head-to-head AND series wins/losses, you can still compare the number of net match wins and get a winner. Ever heard of quality over quantity?

The more games SK-EU plays against BB, more they are used to the swaps and pre-hots go a long way stopping it. Ring of Valor and BB couldn't capitalize on the open LOS as BB/SK-EU worn them down with incredible defensive plays from Enigma. BB's swap from Enigma to Another back to Enigma was just a second slow and Enigma stayed alive for his team to run Numberone out of mana.

Game 2 happened again on Ring of Valor, and BB was quicker on the swap this time around. Clean start on druid followed by DK swap and instant swap back to druid before he had a single hot on him. It sounds easy but it is up to everyone on the RMP to make plays so they can actually get this burst window. Sheep/fear from mage/priest and perfect LOS from rogue around pillars to avoid grip, the devil is in the details.

Game 3 is yet again on Ring of Valor! Again druid->Dk->back to druid worked wonders. Numberone put out tremendous damage as usual, and once again BB forced the issue on SK-EU druid but lost their rogue in the process. Low mana Mage/Priest vs DK/Lock, Button Basher played with amazing composure and Orange was able to finish off Another's DK.

Game 4 with one game away from sealing the deal, BB managed to do the same Druid to DK to Druid to DK again swap and dropped Another with Enigma complete out of mana. Amazing how an RMP can outlast a DK/Lock/Druid in mana with sheer damage pressure! You could hear the Koreans cheer for victory but Inflame/Another said not so fast and managed to drop the rogue as he had too many DOTs and the priest was at low mana too. Druid is complete dry and pressured but with pillar homping he got back to full. Long mage/priest vs lock/druid fight for 25 minutes and SK wins by damage.

Game 5 was on Ring of Valor yet again! How can this map be played four out of five times in the grand finals? BB's Druid-to-DK-to-Druid swap sealed the deal as they are the team of destiny! Getting ROV against DK/Lock/Druid, Nagrand against Beast Cleave was huge but you can not deny their impeccable skills.

Stay tuned for post game summary!

MLG Live Blog Saturday: Checksix vs The World, Rogue Strength At WOTLK Low

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:41:56 -0500

Can SK Gaming USA upset their counterpart of SK Gaming EU?

Round 1 on blade's edge arena. SK US puts pressure on Another of SK EU as there is too much peeling for them to sit on Inflame. SK EU responds by nearly killing Realz. SK US pulls a fast swap to Enigmaz who seemed unprepared, with Another dropping a good AMZ to keep Enigmaz alive. Once the AMZ comes down though Enigmaz dies. SK US up 1-0.

Round 2 on nagrand arena. Inflame gets opened on, getting him to around 30% before being topped off. SK EU responds by sitting on Realz and we have a near cross-kill as both Realz and Inflame gets extremely low. A string of some high damage numbers came in as SK EU takes down Enforcer. Series tied at 1-1.

Round 3 on blade's edge arena. Inflame gets opened on again as usual with Realz getting targeted. We see a switch as Pookz takes some damage before Enforcer gets swapped to, getting very low. A cyclone onto Realz is all it takes and Enforcer goes down.

Round 4 on dalaran arena. Enigmaz starts taking a lot of damage this round along with Realz. Enigmaz gets in a very bad position and AMZ gives him enough breathing room to survive. Once again Enforcer goes down from too much damage. SK EU takes the series 3-1 but there is still one more match.

Round 5 on ruins of lordaeron. Inflame gets sat on from start to finish and dies very quickly. Not sure what happened to all the defensive cooldowns... series in favor of SK EU 3-2.

That is it for today. The rest of the matches will be played tomorrow as it is pretty obvious that the MLG organization was way behind schedule and couldn't finish it all tonight. Goodnight everybody.

MLG Anaheim Live Blog Friday: Reckful vs Inflame On Opening Night

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:21:07 -0500

Will Fnatic be able to pull off a huge upset against the heavy tournament favorite? Will Checksix go with priest or paladin against a destruction warlock? Will the S7 to S5 gear's damage reduction give Fnatic a chance?

Game 1 looked ugly for Fnatic as Checksix charged in, split damage on Yog/Woundman for a couple of seconds followed by full DPS on Yog to drop him almost instantly. Yog did 5000 damage in that game, never got anything done compared to 50000 damage each from hunter/shaman, no chance for Fnatic.

Beautiful job from Fnatic in game 2. Heavy peels + chain disarms on enhancement shaman to keep him peeled and Yog was able to outlast the beast rush and enhancement shaman survivability became an issue once Yog got off his casts and the wolves were gone. Twix trinketed a fear and was caught in a blind which allowed Fnatic to get their burst off. The 10 second beast nerf allowed Woundman to blind Twix just a couple of seconds earlier, and gave his warlock the breathing room. 1-1.

Unfortunately in game 3, all it took was an instant hex from Checksix on Fnatic shaman Douja followed by a hammer of justice to drop Yog. The amount of damage pressure from Beast Cleave is just so ridiculous even with the lowest damage gear in the game. Blizzard dev, are you watching?

Ring of valor in game 4 and 5 and Yog was toasted in both games within seconds. All it takes is just a hammer of justice to interrupt one heal followed by arcane torrent, and Yog goes down. The strength of beast cleave is not just damage but how you are completely stuck in the frost trap and take it up the rear. Vs most other cleaves you can actually get away but vs this comp, even with the enhancement shaman completely locked down under most ideal scenarios, BM hunter + 3 pets are enough to drop you with ease.

Checksix wins 4-1 with ease and if they peace out SK-EU like I predicted (and I don't see how a druid can keep up against TWO offensive dispels), they will sweep through this tournament. Perhaps SK-EU will switch to lock/mage/druid vs Checksix? We will find out tomorrow!

See you guys tomorrow! It may be a depressing tournament but with the developers watching, I am sure the game will move in the right direction!

MLG Anaheim Live Blogs, Why I didn't like PVP and the moment you all have waited for!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Verdak) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:41:32 -0500

Just a heads up, as if you guys did not know already, but some of the bloggers from this site will be live blogging this weekend at MLG in Anaheim. I only know of Zilea, Ming and Bodi live blogging, not sure about anyone else. Bodi will be updating via twitter at twitter.com/swerveofshore. Make sure to check that out it should be fun. This will be the second year that I will be watching it on a live stream. I was very intrigued to see a female pvper, Hafu last year kicking some ass, even though she won’t be there this year. All I can really recall from last year is Hafu and some team kicking the **** out of three Chinese guys that were supposedly supposed to be really good. I think it is really awesome that ESPN and a whole lot of other companies sponsor events like this. I was doing some research about MLG because I honestly didn’t know anything about it, or should I say the history of it. I didn’t think competitive gaming was that big. I thought maybe just a few million, but over 40 million in North America alone caught me by surprise. Good luck to everyone competing at this years event. I am really excited to watch the Korean team Button Bashers. I have always been a very big Starcraft fan, and followed one player in particular. I loved Kim Taek-Young, otherwise known as Bisu-Shield. I played protoss, so it was amazing to see his pro strats. In particular, he had a very kick ass Dark Templar strat. Question, does X6 have a good Warcraft team? I saw them on the schedule and was a little shocked. I thought they mostly were into FPS’s.

I have gotten lot of questions as to why I think pvp sucks. I don’t ever think I said it sucks. I just got really frustrated playing my mage. I played my protection warrior, and found it was almost too easy, and I felt lame with prot warrior pally. When arena’s first came out, I actually pvp’d quite a bit. It was when having PVE gear really counted. I remember I had like full spellfire set and when you could use arcane power and POM pyroblast someone. They didn’t know what hit them! It was pretty fun. I then got to about 1850 in Season 3 with a very good rogue. I wanted the dagger to use for PVE purposes, to go with an offhand from Hyjal. I also played with a rogue and priest from DNT when I was on Korgath. We had some fun, but our rogue unfortunately was PVE ***** and didn’t know what PVP was. It was quite entertaining though. I got a little interested in PVP again when I saw an Undead mage named Pigvomit play. I thought he was pretty good and talented, but that’s just me. I don’t’ keep up with Elitist Jerks or anything, so I wouldn’t know.

I just like the PVE aspect of the game more. To all the people who are saying why I don’t have any significant PVE achievements, well here is my answer. I had hopped around to three different guilds. The first one, I was in for countless wipes on Yogg attempts. I was a trial I this guild, so unfortunately that means I have to sit for senior members. I then transferred to Forlorn Legacy. My first night in raid, we were at the door of Algalon, to get server first observed. I was so excited. Then, out of left field the other senior member mage logs on. Guess who had to sit? I was a little disappointed about that one, but life goes on. I could have gotten the server first Anub Heroic title, but I left the guild. I then joined Forgotten Heroes. They had a special setup already, and they downed him the day I transferred. When I was in Momentum, our guild unfortunately didn’t get any server firsts. I was in though for a lot of pre BC and BC server first kills, and to me that means a lot more than a lot of these boring instances out right now. So why do you pvp’ers hate PVE so much? Aren’t there a lot of good PVE items that are useful for you in arena? And I just found old world content much more enjoyable than the stuff they have in now. A few of the Icecrown fights have been fun though, and I take back what I said. Sindragosa reminds me a lot of Saphirron, and to me that was a fun fight. I especially loved being a mage so I could fake ice block and make people die sometimes.

Now the moment you all have been waiting for. I am not going to be blogging here for awhile, if not ever again if Ming doesn’t want me to. My step dad finally got his bid accepted for a huge solar project in the Virgin Islands. We are moving there in a few weeks, and the project could take 3-6 months to complete or longer depending on the criteria that has to be met. I do not have a laptop, and I am not going to lug a huge ass computer on a plane. I think not using the computer for a few months will do me a lot of good. And we had just recently went on vacation there, and there was so much to do. Plus, I will be walking everywhere so I am going to get in good shape again. Was fun while it lasted. I am queen of the trolls, and I think it is pathetic the hundreds of comments you all left me, when Zilea even told you not to. Good luck to everyone, and I hope your guys time in WoW was as fun as mine was!

P.S. Proofreading sucks, Yiska du bist sehr net, und

DU BIST ALLES BLÖD

Blizzard Devs Head to Anaheim, MLG Weekend, Tune In

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pookz) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:56:58 -0500

Casual Conversion Continues, MLG Picks, MLG Anaheim: The Insidiousness of Check6, Zilea Part 6

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:22:30 -0500

Enjoy.

MLG Anaheim Super Weekend Predictions, CWOW Down: 10% Of Activision's Net Earnings Gone? Will Blizzard Switch Business Model? Appreciate What You Have

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:56:31 -0500

Don't miss the MLG Anaheim super weekend!

Coverage on: http://www.gotfrag.com/

Friday: 7PM PST
Saturday: 10AM PST
Sunday: 10AM PST

Current time of Anaheim: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=783

WOM's own Azael/Pookz/Bodi will be at the event! Good luck to all competitors!

Looking at the final roster, as far as RMP mirrors go, Reckful-kun's Complexity has mental edge over Korean Button Bashers and SK-US as they beat both at the last MLG, including a humiliation 5-0 sweep of Realz's SK-US. Woundman/Yog/Douja has the better overall record in BG9 over Azael/Terderloin/Smatin. And I expect those two teams to finish in the top 4, representing the pride of rogue community to the best of their abilities.

However, they won't be the favorites of this tournament. Even with beast cleave nerfs, Microsoft's Checksix is still running the strongest overall comp today, with the highest margin for error as they took multiple high winning percentage teams to the top of the BG9 ladder with ease. Azael/Pookz's wizard cleave does stand a chance but for this tournament they are on separate teams.

Thankfully, the damage nerf from S7 to S5 is not the only thing that can hold hunter hero Twix back, Another/Inflame's DK/Lock/Druid with an amazing 89% win rate in Europe's finest BG will be a formidable opponent, taking full advantage of the slower pace in S5 gear. BG9 does have a quality DK/Lock/Druid team that will be at this tournament, although no one would consider them at Another/Inflame's level.

Of course, SK-EU haven't experienced anything like the original beast cleave either, so this will be the most exciting match-up at the tournament! With Toez being able to switch to priest for anti-DOT/HOT, shaman disease totem + priest dispel = low damage output for DK/Lock, double offensive dispel makes it VERY hard for the druid to stay alive. My money is on Checksix to win their second championship in a row, playing the best overall comp in the game today.

I was talking to Estel today on my cell phone outside of my day job in Midtown Manhattan, and this thing made a right turn on a very narrow street and a good portion of it got onto the curb.

I was standing still, about 2-3 feet away from the corner of the curb with my back turned. A co-worker (and a very close friend) of mine pulled me a step forward and I was out of its melee range. I also heard someone shouting out a warning. Would it be direct contact if I stood still? Hard to say, would have been a close call according to him. Needless to say, even a "gentle kiss" from this thing can have very serious consequences.

Throughout our lives, I am sure everyone got into similar situations, where the difference between life and death is just a few feet/seconds away. Of course nothing really bad happened, but you realize how lucky you were after the fact. My father was hit by a car once when he did delivery jobs for a Chinese restaurant when he was new to the U.S. Somehow the car hit his bike and never made direct contact with him. His bike was broken beyond repair, his body only had a few minor scratches. Had it been the other way around our family would have never got this far. Even then, my father never rode a bike ever again.

That is why sometimes I feel I should be satisfied about life in general. I have a beautiful wife and a lovely baby, a modest apartment with no mortgage, relatively stable job of decent income with growth potential (to a certain degree, it certainly won't get me to where I would like to be, but stability is very important right now), and our parents have no major health concerns. Throughout my life I never had any serious injury or illness that required more than a week's worth of rest. I should consider myself VERY lucky, as good health is something money can't buy, and it is something you appreciate a lot more when you just experienced a close call.

Yet with Estel's father coming to New York on a business trip this coming weekend, I know I have a lot to prove. While he will appreciate what I provided for his daughter (and I think he is going to like my genetics as well when he sees the baby, although he will give most of the credits to his daughter), I still have to defeat him in a duel to meet his expectations, as I am still very far from what he had in mind as a strong and capable husband. And the gap between our chakra levels hasn't shrunk. If anything with Chinese yuan poised to gain vs dollars, it may even increase as his investments are all hitting the right cylinders.

Still, at end of the day, I used to intern in World Trade Center a couple of years before 911, and I was working on Wall Street the day it collapsed. A safe and healthy life, no amount of money can buy that yet it is so easy to forget how good you have it! Life is so incredibly fragile as Orochimaru puts it, appreciate what you have and make good use of it!

Some Arena Tips, WotF Nerf Enough To Re-balance Factions?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Serennia) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:26:48 -0500

The 3.3 patch nerfing WotF (45 sec shared cooldown with pvp trinkets) has been discussed ad nauseum lately but the question that I haven't really seen answered is will this significant nerf be enough to re-balance the factions and send some of the horde zerg back to alliance? I think it really all depends on the reason why everyone went horde to begin with: was it WotF or was it just "the cool thing to do?"

I think it was fairly obvious how broken WotF is in arena currently, leaving it as far and away the best racial (since WG trinkets replicate human racial). Pretty much every player that faction-changed to horde went Undead if their class allowed for it, so how will they all react now that their precious racial is not-so-game-changing? I actually feel that Undead is one of the weaker horde races now with their other racials not stacking up to the benefits of stun reduction for orcs (as well as racial AP/SP trinket), nor even the snare reduction that trolls get (which is ridiculous when stacked with snare talents and snare meta).

As dumb as it may sound, if I were a DK going horde, I would honestly pick troll at this point and stack it with Toughness and an Enigmatic Skyflare Diamond. Warriors sure are going to love having to hamstring you every 2 gcd's and berserking isn't all too bad either. In any case, there probably won't be any massive return to alliance from all of the horde players (especially the ones on Blackrock) so I don't expect to see too many people going back, but instead possibly race-changing to a different horde race now that Undead are getting the nerf bat.

A Simple Guide To World of Warcraft Arena for New Players, pt 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Bodi) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:31:58 -0500
This entry is a continuation of my last entry found here in a short series which attempts to give new players to WoW PvP an introduction to concepts they should consider when attempting to begin playing. Today's subjects are broken down into: Maximizing Your Play, What Comps to Play and finally, an often asked about subject, How To Find People To Play With. As with anything PvP related, many of these concepts overlap and I'll try my best to keep them as categorized as possible to avoid confusion.

Maximizing your play
The first step to becoming good is realizing that you aren't good. From there, you tweak your play and practice like a madman until you are good. The first part is a difficult thing for many people, including myself. Here's what Glick had to say to me after fighting against me a few times and thoroughly kicking my ass this season:

Even if you play a healer, bind an AoE spell. Their snake traps give you deadly poison which stacks up to 5 times, crippling poison which slows you significantly, mind numbing poison which makes your casting slower and AIDS, which can't be cured by the things that clears poisons.

How To Find People to Play With
So now that we have the major comps down and you know what you'd like to play, the question becomes who do you play with? This is an easy question if you're on a high population PvP server, where the population consists of a significant percentage of bored male teenagers and college students willing to take out their pent up young male angst on a bunch of pixels. The challenge is if you're on an RP-PvE or PvE server, or if your server is low population so the pool of players is significantly lower. There are a number of solutions to this:
Transfer to another server
Make connections with like minded people by raiding
Duel a bunch of people to make a name for yourself
Write a Game Riot Blog to make yourself e-famous
Sleep your way to the top
Use Trade Chat to find people (be sure to subtract 200 from their claimed experience)
The first option may not be the most ideal for many people. After all, we have friends and significant emotional investment placed in not only our avatars but the avatars of others. It's difficult to leave that behind. Unfortunately, if the only high rated people on your server are your typical small-penis-having-big-fish-in-a-small-pond-douchebages then you may be SOL. Unless of course, you can somehow import a good player from another server then you're golden.

Other limitations of this option are if you DO transfer and you're not already known, you're starting from the bottom socially and you'll have to use the Trade Chat Random and Dueling strategy. Unless of course, you use Verdak's strategy of using your assets to get in-game swag.

All in all, as with any social setting it's about raising your profile. Your ability to do it depends directly on your ability to meet and interact with people who have similar ideals to you. The entirety of being introduced to arena comes from learning that the community is your biggest resource. With practice in your play, knowledge gained from research in this community, you'll raise your profile and arena ratings to eventually attain Gladiator.

First Impressions, Zilea is a douche bag(surprise!) LoL and Icecrown sucks

no.spam@gameriot.com (Verdak) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:58:18 -0400

Why are first impressions so important? For one, it defines you as a person to the people you are meeting. The first time someone sees or meets you will be a memory that they have of you. Say you knew a really preppy girl in high school, and she was known as the *****y popular girl. If you see her years later, the first thought you will have of her is that exact thing. It is the same in World of Warcraft. Whether it is in real life or through a video game, it really does matter. For instance, you applied to a top raiding guild that is recruiting your class. It is, at least for me, very exciting to have your application be accepted and to be on trial. You do everything you can to not be “that guy” in the raid that messes up.

I remember I was on trial for one of the top US guilds in the Black Temple Sunwell era, Momentum. This was also the guild that gave me a chance, even though they knew my extensive history. The fight that made me most nervous was The Eredar Twins and standing on that damn ledge with everyone else. I did not want to conflag the raid or fall off that ledge. I had never messed up yet on that fight, but had seen others do it and I remember getting so pissed at them. Well, I guess the night of my screw up was there. I had ice blocked to get the dark touch (I think that is what it is called) stacks off me, then at the same time I got the conflagration debuff. My camera messed up and I ended up jumping off the ledge. I ended up somehow Conflagrating the whole raid, ranged and melee. I remember everyone screaming “Touchdown”, because they had never seen someone get the whole raid. Almost everyone was laughing because of it, but I felt horrible. Luckily my dps was great at that time, so I passed recruitment.

Unfortunately I cannot take back the ***** things I have done in my past, so a lot of the time when people think or hear about me they are like “omg it’s that one e-*****”. Some people online have given me a fresh start though and I am appreciative of it. I have learned a lot from my mistakes, so I always try to have my first impressions in real life be successful ones. Honestly, I have stopped really trying to care about first impressions online, because nobody really cares anyways. I have been playing a new game though, so I try to do well on it with my team mates. What do you guys think about first impressions on video games? I know for some officers or hardcore pvp’ers , you do not want some morons screwing your raids up, or even worse your hard rating you have been working on.

Darling Zilea

Now I would like to address Zilea. It is pretty obvious that my blogs have gotten a lot of views the last few weeks, due to my past history and such, or maybe the trolls were just bored, who knows! If you really don’t like me Zilea, why even bother sending me messages to my inbox. I was here to help you get traffic to this site, so Ming can continue paying all the great people on here. I know you may not like what I am writing about, but I am only trying to help the site, even if it makes me look bad. You can at least be a little respectful. And by the way, you are no Brad Pitt or Antonio Banderas either there babe. You look like Prince on crack. I know maybe I could lose a few pounds or whatever, but you could go to gain some on your scrawny chicken bone ass. I thought you were actually being nice to me at first and helping me out, but I guess you are just using me to get traffic to your own blog. Thanks for using me to get views bro! This is a quote from someone else and what they think about Zilea, “Zilea is what you get when you take Prince's skeleton and add bad hair, acne with a dash of social awkwardness to round it all out.” I think you could be a great guy Zilea, but don’t be a faker or a douche bag even if it is online.

LoL > HoN

I forget who it was that wrote about Heroes of Newerth a few weeks ago. I was searching through the pages of blogs and it didn’t catch my eye, but I was searching pretty fast, so I probably just missed it. I am sure there are a lot of DoTa fans out there. If you do not know what DoTa is just go Google it! I remember playing DoTa during sit out nights, or with guild mates when we were done raiding for the week. I had always talked with people saying it be cool if DoTa had its own game outside of a Warcraft 3 Mod. Now there are two games that have this genre. Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends. These games are best described as a little bit of MMOrpg mixed with some RTS in there, otherwise known as a MOBA. I absolutely love RTS games, so this is right up my alley. I have tried both games, but LoL has won me over by far. Heroes of Newerth is going for a more realistic look, while LoL has the more cartoonish look like WoW does. I think having a realistic looking RTS style game is a bad decision. I was playing in a few HoN games and had a very hard time distinguishing who was my actual team mate, and who was my opponent. Everything just blended in so well, and on top of that, the terrain was very dark, making the mobs seem almost camouflage.

Also, it is a price thing for me. Being a college student, I do not have a lot of extra money lying around a majority of the time. HoN costs $30 just to buy the game and play it. LoL is free to play, and you earn points by playing and unlock more heroes. You can also buy extra skins, heroes and items in the online store they have available. Hey, LoL is free, so give it a try in my opinion.

PVE Raiding is boring Failcrown Glacier!

So, with Icecrown right around the corner, I have gotten to test the first few bosses that have been out on the PTR so far. Lord Marrowgar, Festergut, the Gunship encounter, Sindragosa, and Valithra Dreamwalker. I can say that I am falling asleep with these new bosses so far. It is like casualville. Look, there is fire move. It is so damn boring. I wish WoW could be like the good old raiding days of Molten Core, BWL, AQ and Naxx40. I guess they are making a lot of money, so they don’t really care what the hardcore gamers want anymore. The achievements are supposed to be more hardcore, but it is a pain in the ass to try and get people to do some of them. It’s almost like they just want to get in and raid and get out. Which I honestly don’t blame them. This game is so boring right now, content wise. And battlegrounds get repetitive as well. I can see why people arena, seems like it would be fun. They are the same arenas, but the situations are always changing. With raiding, you are in there and already know what to expect. I just hope WoW will get more enjoyable soon, and I pray to the WoW God that Arthas won’t be a Nancy!

One more thing I forgot to say. Thanks to Yiska for being nice and stuff so far. I expected you to be a douche bag, but you are a very nice person!

Small Fixes Make a BIG Difference, Interview With Complexity's Sodah

no.spam@gameriot.com (FHazael) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:26:47 -0400

That's it for this week!

WOTF Nerf Leaves Rogue Without Top 3v3 Comp, Furi: Rogue vs Wizard Cleave, Rogue/Ret/Priest Simplified

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:07:05 -0400
Even with my $30 faction change to horde, I still whole-heartly support the nerf to Will Of The Forsaken. Considering the 45 second shared cooldown with PVP trinkets, it is still up there as one of the better racials in the game, as matches between most comps do last longer than 45 seconds.

Neilyo-kun posted his thoughts about the racial change:

Everything being equal, you lose. Out of the four healers, druid is the hardest kill target thanks to glyphed improved barkskin + nature's swiftness heal + high armor, and he will be in full HOTs by the time his primary defensive CDs are down.

If he gets strong peels, big defensive CDs like BOP/pain suppression, you are forced into a late game and outside of lucky blind/repentance/fear chains (vastly inferior to what the other team can do when it comes to CCs), you really don't have a chance if he is not stupid and pre-hots himself.

Fortunately druid is not the most popular healer in arena today. Against teams with solo holy paladins, restoration shamans and discipline priests, you always have a chance if both ret/rogue can get on the healer for a few seconds. It is NOT easy to create that window against a top team, but doable with aggressive CD spam and proper positioning on the opener.

I suggest playing rogue/ret in 2v2 to practice the opening position, if both of you get to hit the kill target during the first cheap shot, your chance of winning goes up exponentially. Creating a clean opener is the key to any rushdown comps.

Stress Points, ESL Needs Teams, Tweet Twit Tw**, Just Get Rid of 'Em

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pookz) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:50:09 -0400

Stress Points in Arena

A “Stress Point” is a situation in arena where a player's decision has a more than usual type of pressure associated with it. It seems as if the player's decision is near desperate and if you can read these “Stress Points” it really can improve your game.

Here are a few situation's that explain what I'm talking about.

For example, you're a mage playing rmp your rogue just blinded the priest to force his trinket and you're a little bit late on your follow up sheep. You know the priest is capable of deathing your sheep since you were a bit late on your sheep into the blind. And you also know that the first thing on the priest's mind as soon as he trinkets is avoiding sheeps, so he's going to be extremely aware of your next sheep. This is a “Stress Point” that the mage can take advantage of and easily fake that death and get a full sheep because the priest is desperate to avoid it.

You're a Paladin at 4-5k HP against an RMP you know the mage has blink up but you're out of his LOS, and the rogue is CCd. You cast that Flash of Light at 4k hp with Holy Shock on cooldown

Paladin Lineups, Fomenting Hate, Death of Aion, Zilea Part 5

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:17:40 -0400

I heard the feedback on part 4 about how boring double healer is, so I decided that this will most likely be the last time you see double healer matches in my videos. Unless, of course, they are good matches. I decided that I wanted to start fresh for part 6 so part 5 is essentially going to be my way to unload the last remaining decent matches of the paladin/priest/warrior combo. You can probably expect a lot of paladin/warrior/warlock in the upcoming weeks.

Oh, and Hoodrych picked the first song in this video.

Filefront link here.

On a final note I also plan on doing a preview for MLG Anaheim next week along with my picks to win it all.

Switch To Horde And Win 25% More Arena Matches, Tough Time For Rogue Heroes At MLG Anaheim Ahead, Rogue/Lock/Druid Strategy Guide Part 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:49:17 -0400
First a quote of the day from hunter hero Hamchook:

This will usually be warrior/priest/druid or warrior/priest/paladin. Switch between warrior/priest when your CCs are all on DRs. Once warrior is out of cyclone DRs, start fearing/shadowfury the priest to deny mana burns and switch to the warrior. Once the warrior can be cycloned again, go for priest.

Your lock doesn't have to DPS much. Full DOT the priest, curse of tongue on the other healer if they don't have curse removal, mana drain the priest. If you lose felhunter go void walker as this is a long fight and you really don't need to spell lock a lot. With quality cyclone into disarm on the warrior your druid should be able to get drinks off. Your rogue doesn't have to stop priest heals, just full DPS and early blind the warrior. Kick the mana burns selectively.

You won't be able to drop the priest until he is out of mana, so the entire game is about wearing down the priest mana bar. This is why Korea got the 900 MP5 priest with 90% win rate, but against most double healer teams you should be able to wear them down.

(To be continued)

Shadowmourne Is Warglaive Deja Vu, Level 50 After A Month? Believe It! Too Late For A S7 Comeback?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Serennia) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:41:46 -0400

You can easily tell from armory that I haven't logged on since Aion launch which was right when s7 started, as well. Although gear isn't everything and honor gear is particularly easy to get, is it too late to make a comeback for this season and push for Relentless Gladiator? I'd be lying if I said that I knew what DK comps even worked right now nor if our damage is even acceptable anymore (my guess is that it is not), so is it even worth the time or is coming back for the start of s8 (final season of WotLK) more practical?

Just glancing at the SK-100, aside from seeing my boy Ryan (Hydra) dominating it, I see a grand total of one (1) death knight in the entire list and his ratings arn't even that impressive. I suppose the SK-100 might be a little flawed because not everyone does 2v2 anymore, but it does say something about the class representation now. Are DK's even a threat anymore in arena? Can DK's realistically push for rank 1 in a battlegroup and hold it? Is this season even worth playing or is waiting until 3.3 the best bet?

I'm honestly looking for input on this since I don't want to have to grind honor gear and such for s7 and then basically right away again for s8. So what does everyone think?