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

Any Sponsors Out There For Realz's Trade Chat Allstars? Unholy DKs Nerfed

Ming — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:30:08 -0500

When Realz's Trade Chat Allstars won ESL Philadelphia, I thought sponsors will all flock to them considering they get a guaranteed spot to the ESL global finals. ESL will be covering hotels and meals, and only having to pay airfare is a significant reduction in costs to send such a team to Germany. Unfortunately, the recent downturn in financial markets is hitting everyone. Several e-sport teams will probably go belly up over the next quarter or two when their current sponsorships expire, and no one is hiring aggressively.

A rookie team with no nerd sponsor winning it all on their first try? Why not cut them a short term contract instead of wasting money on players that haven't won anything in ages? It defies my logic that teams like Pandemic offer better security than government jobs. Realz said his team will attend the global finals in Germany and at least the first event of MLG 2009 no matter what, thanks to their recent tournament winnings.

I have no qualms with being un-sponsored. Either we're worth it or we're not. If we have to prove it by doing well at more than just a LOL 3.0 tourney, then so be it. - Realz

AP vs Agility Revisited

The DPS spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks pretty much confirmed my own AEP calculations. 2AP is worth roughly as much as 1.1 agility in DPS against zero resilience targets, and it is probably worth at least as much as 1.2 agility against full resilience targets, consider a significant portion of agility's DPS comes from crits. Blizzard's gems/enchants are all 2AP = 1 agility, you will simply get better sustained DPS from AP stacking.

However, after trying out all AP briefly, I am back to agility stacking going forward. Why? 15% dodge really sucks in PVP, that is why. Given the amount of expertise on PVE gears (-5% dodge / -5% parry is pretty easy to obtain), going up against other melees with only 10% avoidance is no fun. You get hit right through evasion half the times. Late in S3 and S4, a geared rogue could tank a warrior very easily, and high dodge was a big part of it. Mongoose proc + base dodge/parry and you could have hit 40%+, a ghostly strike and he is not going to land his mortal strike's. The extra armor from agility is also very underrated, given the amount of armor penetration items out there.

Finally, even against opponents with resilience, chain crits win games more than a few points of flat damage (especially after armor reduction) ever will. I won't be stacking full crit gems in yellow slots, but agility gems/enchants still make for most well-rounded PVP characters. And if you ever go deep subtlety with sinister calling, it is no contest.

Finally, Unholy DKs Nerfed

A warrior/warlock hybrid with more survivability than either, and better DPS? Thankfully, Blizzard managed to put together a list of changes BEFORE the arena season begins. Most of them are actually for PVE tanks but they addressed some of my biggest complaints about the class's dominance against melee in PVP.

1) Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield will be nerfed. I was wondering what hell were they smoking with bone shield offering 40% damage reduction. Icebound Fortitude will most likely be linked to defense rating, similar to how cheat death is linked to resilience rating. A PVP/DPS geared DK will not get anywhere near the mileage out of the ability.

2) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. Expect a reduction in weapon damage and increase in threat. I always felt dual-wielders pay way too heavy a price against talents like frost bite and retribution aura. With two daggers, a DK is going to dodge/parry a lot and 200% weapon damage that can not be dodged/parried is no joke. It is basically better than warrior's overpower in every way and I am glad this is being looked into.

I am sure more changes are on the way, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Like I said before, against a DK I feel like I am fighting a Sunwell-geared protection warrior back in S4, except he can kill me as fast as any other class can, despite my evasions and cloaks.

Playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix really makes me wondering why can't they make 1v1 balance as good as a 20-years old game? Duels should really be highlighted as one of the best aspects of WOW as an e-sport (see GOMTV's success in Korea, and Realz vs Ecilam, Happyminti vs Scoti of ESL tournaments), and it is really not THAT difficult to soften some of the hard counters.

With duel specs coming out, is it really necessary to give tanks/healers significant DPS despite their amazing survivability? Just go up against a protection warrior or restoration shaman sometimes, it is amazing how much damage they do given the durability they pack. I am trying to compile a dueling guide and it feels like early TBC all over again, when you can't touch anyone without prep, and even with prep you are still owned more often than not. Fortunately resilience won't pick up until at least two months from now, and mutilate + double CB evis burst is still enough to rush people down. Once everyone is in full resilience gear, I am not sure if we will be anywhere near as competitive as we have been in 1v1 throughout classic and TBC.

Hunters - lol

Jasi — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:15:27 -0500

It's no surprise in that damage at level 80 is still as overbearing as it was when 3.0 went live pre-WotLK, and aside from the fact that players have a little bit more HP (which is completely offset by the increase in damage from PVE gear) pretty much every class drops quickly if jumped or not prepared. If Blizzard stands by what they've been hinting at or saying for the past couple of months to even as far back as a year, Hunters will continue to receive buffs and go from borderline overpowered to completely out of control at level 80 from sheer damage output alone. When you take their utility into play, even your average clicking dimwit will be able to do relatively well in the Arena and everyone is going to be crying. Even those who cried for the buffs will cry when they can't handle the monstrous number of keybinds.

With this in mind, it might be wise for any class that has the option, to spec more defensively until further balance changes are made to classes such as Hunters, and players actually have a decent amount of resilience/HP to handle the damage.

Now that I'm nearing 80, I started thinking about what kind of PVP specs will be arena viable come the 16th, as well as what team makeups and pets will most likely be the most effective. Fortunately for Hunters, in addition to all of the positive (AKA outrageous damage increases) changes we've received since before 3.0, I feel we have some extremely promising defensive/utility specs available to us at 80. In addition, we'll be capable of pushing out some of the strongest burst from any class. I spent the last week or so brainstorming specs, as well as discussing ideas with other players such as Realz and Cherez. There were a couple of specs that were generally considered to be the most promising. The first spec, which is purely defensive is the following:

BM 44/14/13

This spec gives you not only the most annoying amount of utility and CC removals, and in combination with certain Glyphs, you will be incredibly hard to keep in place.

In terms of the player, you'll be looking at 10% extra health and armor, a sick dodge rate with Dragonhawk up, Surefooted for 30% extra snare reduction (even better bonus as Troll or Orc), Scatter Shot, 4 seconds off disengage, 10 seconds off of masters call, a reduction to the CD of BW, 10% more healing from spirit bond, 5% less damage from aspect mastery and 4% more from survival instincts.

Once you take Glyphs into account, you have a 30% runspeed increase when you dodge with DH up, 20 seconds off of BW (to a time of 1:04 with longevity), 5 more seconds off of the CD of Disengage, and 2 extra yards of radius on frost trap. A nightmare for any melee class.

In addition to the above, with Longevity, the cooldown on your pet special moves is reduced by 30%. That means Roar of Sacrifice goes from amazing to godly (12 second 30% pain suppression for anyone in your group on a 21 second cooldown), and intervene goes on a 21 second CD as well. Amazing for not just yourself, but everyone you play with.

A hunter with all of the above will be one of the most annoying things to face in the arena. In combination with the huge amount of random utility, hunters will become a legit MS class. Stupid frustrating. You won't be running around with the same kind of burst as MM hunters will with Chim shot, but you will be by far be a huge pain in the ass, and will still mow people down because of the simple fact that you are a hunter.

This next spec will be purely damaged based. Lots of burst, less utility/survivability.

0/52/19

The basic premise of this spec is trap > serpent sting > chim > readiness > chim > arcane > arcane, wild quiver or a some sort of variation. Lots of damage, some utility with disarms etc. However, chains will still be around, reducing the effectiveness like any disarm at 70. I'm worried about the survivability of this spec. Granted you still have deterrence, scatter shot, silence shot and entrapment, but the basic survivability is still lower when compared to BM for both you and your pet. It will really depend on your group makeup.

For even more damage, you could put the points from efficiency into Wild Quiver, Combat Experience, RWS etc.

The final spec is more of a damage BM hybrid.

41/21/9

This spec is purely gimmick. The lack of scatter shot is really painful, but even worse is the loss of longevity. Double BW will be great damage and burst, but you lose a lot of utility in the process with no cooldown reductions to either your abilities or pet abilities. I could see the extra damage of this spec being useful for 3v3/5v5 gimmick setups.

As for survival specs, I haven't really worked with them yet, and they will probably be very situational and useful for small scale pvp such as 2v2.

Pets

Any previous problems with pet survivability should no longer be an issue either. Before I get into that though, lets discuss what pets will most likely be viable at 80. Unless damage declines, it's probably safe to say that the best pet options will be those from the tenacity type; you just won't want to pass up their defensive capabilities and 40% extra healing talent.

Scorpid - For pretty much the same reasons as level 70, except being that its a tenacity pet, you have the added defense abilities such as last stand.

Crab - Tenacity + 4 second root. At this point you should be saying: Holy **** Hunters are going to be stupid.

Turtle - Tenacity + Shield wall (50% less damage for 12 seconds on a 42sec CD) Good luck focusing this pet with 50% extra healing, 20% more armor, tenacity talents etc etc. This will give your healer a ton of time to react to a focus. The only possible downside to a turtle is that the added Shield wall talent just might not be necessary. It all depends on what damage scales or declines to.

Overall hunters are going to be incredible once things are into motion with the new arena season. If Blizzard uses some sort of blind logic and discovers more reasons to buff them, it's going to be pure insanity.

Yep, this blog wasn't about Rogues - get with the times people, you'll want to befriend a Hunter or ditch your rogue and roll one yourself when you realize how dumb they'll be. Less you prefer a life of abandonment and rejection from your peers.

Neilyo vs Boozt: Can PVP Gear Compete? Time To Remove Diminishing Returns On Item Budget Blizzard!

Ming — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:08:27 -0500

This weekend I had a chance to quickly check up on rogue heroes worldwide. I was very concerned about our class's future as going from classic to WOTLK we lost significant talents. It is good to see the majority of well-known players leveled their characters to 80. The most glaring difference of all the profiles I saw had to be between the one and only Neilyo-kun, and Boozt-san the mutilate rogue hero who took Vengeful Gladiator in the best BG of Europe with mutilate rogue/shadowpriest.

Neilyo: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cho%27gall&n=Neilyolol

16/0/55 Shadow Dance (good to see him taking this spec, if anyone can make it better than mutilate/prep, it is Neilyo), mostly level 70 gear, 14474HP, 2178AP and 21.89 crit. If you are not willing to run instances, it is almost impossible to get any real gear for PVP at the moment, and this is what Neilyo is stuck with.

Boozt: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Boozt

15/51/5 standard combat fist/dagger at the moment, he was 43/5/23 mutilate/prep before with two level 80 epic daggers (by the time arena opens, expect people with two 156 DPS daggers, or even two 171 DPS daggers). 3078AP, 34.56% crit, and a ton of haste/expertise. Clearly, when the arena opens, Boozt will have every advantage in the world. He will hit a higher rating with less effort, and get more arena points per week in the process which snowballs into a greater advantage.

So what can PVPers do to compete?

1) Replace as many level 70 items as possible with heroic/quest/rep blues and spend your heroic badges on items that offer a significant upgrade in item level against your existing pieces. 99% of the world will be in sub-100 resilience gear when arena opens in two weeks. Fortunately as a double CB evis spec you can still dish out enough damage to quickly move through the initial ratings. Eviscerate still doesn't scale all that well with AP, 1000 AP gets you just 200 more damage per crit.

2) You can buy all of the Deadly Gladiator off-pieces with pure honor at 1750 rating. That's ring, cloak, neck, boots, bracer, and belt, and they only require honor points. Personally I would never buy anything from the Hateful Gladiator set (unless you get a piece or two from easy 10-men Wintergrasp raids) and just tough it out for the first a few weeks with heroic gear. The amount of honor and arena points you waste will only put you further behind as you need the deadly pieces to battle people with 25-men raid gear. You also want to stock up on arena points so by the time the next season finally opens, you no longer have to wait weeks before picking up the first piece of gear.

Fortunately, PVP Gear Is Actually Very Good

With the exception of the select few level 226 items that drop off the final bosses of 25 men raids, the 8 pieces of Deadly Gladiator Leather Armor are pretty much top of the chart in every slot. Even against the level 226 items and Valorous Bonescythe Battlegear, you have very competitive agility/crits, and even AP is pretty decent. Stats like haste rating makes a difference when you are behind a mob for 30 seconds at a time, but in PVP, it is far less of a factor than resilience. Realz proved that even in 3.0 S2/T5 gear, PVP gear ultimately beat PVE gear. I feel Deadly vs Valorous is a far more favorable situation than say, S3 vs T6 of TBC.

Unfortunately, instead of crafting unique rings, necks and capes for each class, Blizzard took the one size fits all solution, and crafted horribly underpowered PVP pieces for these slots. Instead of getting the rogue/feral druid version of these items like we do for boots, belt and bracer, we share it with all other physical DPS classes and a ring with only four stats (stamina, AP, crit, and resilience) is vastly inferior to a ring with five stats, aka rings you obtain from PVE.

Let's look at Blizzard's item budget (you can get this formula from gems):

1 agility = 2 AP = 1 crit = 1 hit = 1 haste = 1.5 stamina

Deadly Gladiator's Band of Victory (Item level 213): 187 points
Ring of Invisibility (Item Level 213): 202 points

Why such a glaring difference in item budget? Because Ring of Invisibility has 5 stats, while the PVP equivalent has only 4. Diminishing returns on stats allocation is a very old stats allocation mechanic that didn't make much sense to begin with. People should be able to stack stats (and let's face it, you are not going to make epic chest of 500 AP any way) and build their characters with more variety to maximize their specs. Why punish PVP gear? Is it really hard to make an item level 213 ring with agility on top of the four existing stats?

Dec. 16th Couldn't Come Any Sooner, Hope for PVE?

Jasi — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 01:57:48 -0500

I was honestly expecting WoW to really take off again once WotLK hit. With new content, a new level cap, and relatively substantial revamp for pretty much every class, it would make sense that the addiction would be resparked for many, and the game would feel fresh and new somewhat like when TBC was released. Not only that, but I was hoping the game would actually be exciting again, and there would be plenty of discussions all over Gameriot relative to class theorycrafting etc. At the moment it's just not happening, although I'm quite sure that will change once the next arena season is actually active next month. However, it seems like the lack of things to do is pushing away some of our most beloved and reputable WoW personas.

When Hoodrych decided to throw in the towel a couple of weeks ago, I'm sure a lot of Warriors were disappointed to see one of their best players drop everything and walk away. Considering the fact that he did or participated in pretty much everything this game has to offer, I guess it's not that surprising. As of now, the game isn't exactly going up in quality as much as necessary to keep the spark alive.

On top of that, you had GC. Although his personality and level of ******* weird was pretty much overboard and out of control for anyone and everyone, he was arguably one of the best Shaman that played WoW, so losing him was unfortunate as well. He at the very least, provided some drama and entertainment on those slow days for everyone, and his videos were always equally entertaining as they were informative.

Now I'm starting to hear that players like Yog (level 73) and Neilyo are having little to no interest in leveling. I know that Neilyo got really sick like myself, but a lot of players seem to be leveling at a much more casual pace. Was it the fact that so many players were so used to playing 10 games a week for most of their WoW playtime and now when faced with a long level grind to a disappointing end game when it comes to PVP, they just don't have the drive? It seems that everyone but the hardcore PVE players aren't really doing all that much. Even when you consider that all of the hardcore 70 arena players had to farm a relatively decent amount for some enchants/gear, most of the time they would end up selling PR to fund everything thus eliminating pretty much any grind whatsoever resulting in very little playtime outside of arena. Before it really didn't affect all that much and honestly made the game more enjoyable for those who only wanted PVP. Now...well, it's another story.

Even when you consider the fact that if you plan on being fully prepared for the release of the arena next month, you'll have to focus primarily on PVE, it seems as if most players don't care, and the fact that the system is completely asinine to all of them, it pushes them away even further. It's just absolutely ridiculous that prepping for arena equals doing heroic 10 mans where RNG is your enemy relative to drops. A 1300 player can technically get better arena/PVP gear than a 2400 player can, and a month earlier to boot. Blizzard might finally put in honor gear right before the season is released, but that doesn't do anything when the main pieces are only available via PVE. I just can't imagine those who really primarily only want to PVP, spending dozens of hours in 25 mans just to get them. Is there really that much to fear from the hardcore PVE players that collect it before the 2000+ rating PVP'ers do? Probably not, but it's still just ridiculous.

Has this in combination with the complete lack of any new type of content in the expansion pushed it to the limit and driven players away? It really seems to be the case. Even those most hardcore players who dedicate their lives to this game have already begun the trend of rerolling from sheer boredom just like what happened in TBC. Usually that took months, and now here it's happening mere weeks after the expansion was released. I'm really curious as to what Blizzards end goal is with this system, or if it's just a sheer scream of laziness on their behalf to just throw the gear on some random loot tables so the PVE players (the VAST majority of the playerbase) remain content with the game.

If you're reading this, and are one of those players who just seems to lack any drive to level, what do you think is your reason for a decline in interest? Will Dec 16th change that?

"Hardest" PVE Encounter Cleared

Personally, I enjoy some PVE content here and there. As long as I'm not spending 40 hours a week on it, I really don't mind it, and actually have fun. Apparently Method downed the "hardest" PVE encounter WotLK has to offer (with 10 players). and this is a fight that actually gives hope for some quality in future WotLK encounters.

For those who aren't familiar with the fight, you have the main mob, Sartharion, and his 3 minion drakes. By normal procedure, a group will kill the 3 minions, followed by killing Sartharion. The more minions you keep alive while killing Sartharion, the better loot you get (on both regular and heroic). Method appears to be the first guild to kill Sartharion on heroic while keeping all three drakes alive while using only 10 people.

To my knowledge, they didn't release a video of the encounter, but Vodka did previously. This fight looks pretty goddamn ridiculous with 25 people, I can't imagine the chaos with 10. Watching this fight actually makes me excited to attempt the encounter in the future. My only beef with it is that again, Blizzard is effing recycling certain aspects of old content (Kalecgos anyone?). I think we're all a little bit tired of it by now. I will admit that it definitely still looks fun though. Nax is always going to be great, but I know PVE players are looking for something equally as amazing and great as it was when it was first released. Patience is probably out the door at this point.

PVE Really Is Hard, Fan of Knives Revisited

Ming — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:24:21 -0500

Time flies when you are living the good life and when I woke up on Thanksgiving Day, I can't believe Estel has been here in NYC for two months already. So many changes have been made and they have all been very positive. Standard-issued bachelor's black leather couch? Some Tauren from Craigslist bought itandI now have a light grey set made of soft cloth, complete with colorful pads andcute stuffedanimals. Small office in the living room?She toredown the closet and made it into a real second bedroom. The apartment is so much classier since she came, that I think the property value went up at least 10% because of her decorations.

My WOW character? She quitthejoke guild I was in and gotme into the biggest Chinese guild on the server (and supposedly, one ofthetop Chinese guilds in North America).With arena still over two weeks away,I do need some sort of PVE gear to be competitive when the time comes. Heroics have been very smoothbut it wasn't until I actuallyhad a chance tocome off the bench and walk into Naxx-25,I realized how challenging PVE can be when you are actually trying to earn a raid spot by putting up good DPS numbers.

Mutilate: 51/13/7

This spec is just awful for PVP, but thankfully once Blizzard releases the double-spec feature, it willeliminate theanger of defending yourself in World PVP when you are caught with a raid DPS spec. What really annoys me, is to PVP with mutilate you need slow daggers, but to PVE you have to maximize poison procs and focused attacks, which means 1.3-1.4 speed daggers. Enchants/gems are actually not that bad as PVP rogues enchant their gear offensively anyway, and in WOTLK once you go above thepoison hit cap, stacking agility/crit is just as effective as stacking hit/haste, even in PVE.

On paper, mutilate puts uphighest possiblesingle DPS numbers. In reality, it is much harder than straight up combat sword/fist that I was familiar with when I raided seriously two years ago. You have to babysit slice and dice, rupture, deadly poisonstacksAND hunger for blood, which by itself is already a challenge to maintain over a 3-hourperiod even if you were hitting stationary dummies. Now throw in fights where you havemove in and out of positions (from my experience,mostof the encounters),and the fact that I never did Naxx at 60 and don't know any of the fights,staying competitive against the two 51 combat rogues in the guild felt every bit as challenging as trying to fight a 2400 team when your team is stuck at 2000.

Considering Estel will also be raiding/instancing with my character, I amtrying a dumbed-downversion of it (gave up poison talents and rupture for improved eviscerate, fleet footed and quick recovery). Just slice and dice once, then spam eviscerate honey, every 30 seconds refresh hunger for blood, that is it! Of course to actually top the meter in any competitive raid, you really have to know the encounters beyond not doing something stupid that will wipe the raid, between cloak/vanish(combat rogues also have killing spree)/evasion, you have plenty of tools to avoid ccs/knockbacks/AOE attacks so you can stay in there and dish out damage. When I let hunger of blood (who the hell came up with this talent in its current form? At least make it one stack 9% damage!) or slice and dice drop (or both because of some sort of boss CC, it feels just as bad as missing a kick or kidney shot in PVP. The amount of little things you do in a raid is no different than the little things you do that sets you apart in an arena match.

I also noticed how strong hunter DPS is, whether it be heroic instances or 25 men raids. The latest WWS parses had more hunters on top five than all other classes combined. Even with a Honor of the Thievesspec like 8/20/43 (get yourself a crit heavy group and spam eviscerates on every global) in a very specialized group, hunters are more than holding their own, without the drawbacks of being melee and/or needing teammates to stay alive in order to do his DPS.

Wound/Wound vs Wound/Mind-numbing

Running double wound, the wound poison itself is almost as much as 20% of my overall damage in a raid setting. In real PVP against mail/plate and heaven forbid bear/shield, with far less overall offensive stats, it is going to be even more significant. Can you really give up 10% of your overall damage for the mind-numbing debuff? Whileweaponswap into mind numbing poison is still very handy for shiv/fan of knives, I just can't see myself giving up thatmuch damagewhen most casters are relying on pure instants these days.

Fan of Knives, Finally A Worthy Special

Blizzard promised to remove the cooldown from this ability and also make itbased on weapon DPS(so dagger users can actually dish out the same damage using this move, it is called fan ofknives after all). I have to say I was wrong about this ability, even without the promised buffs, this movefills upquite afew holes in our arsenal.

As mutilate/prep with focused attacks, I can CB fan of knivesto get 4 energyback per target, if I hit more than 12 targets,it is energy free.Coupled with trick of trades it is an outstanding AOE pull. With deadly brew, if Iam running double wound, I have 75% chance to apply cripple poison to each mob. Once they remove the cooldown, I am sure with focused attacks and combat potency, a rogue can do respectable AOE damage in PVE. Not going to be a main AOE player by any means, but once you factor in poison procs, we will bring enough AOE damage to actually be a factor, especially consider our ability to pass aggro to the main tank. Blizzard can also add all sorts of encounters that require you to de-enrage / slow down casting speed on a large group of enemies, there is our unique raid utility.

What about PVP? Up until this point in WOW, if a rogue vanishes on you when you don't have a DOT on him already, you are the only class in the game that can'tdo anythingto hit him out of it. Not anymore, fan of knives alone adds areflex-based dimension torogue duels/arena mirrors. Italso fills our 5-8 dead zone, as you canhit people out of restealth attempts. But the one thing I really love this ability is thepiercing howl effect.Being able to snare a group of enemies is huge. We all know about running pass someone in arena and shiv him tosnare him for your teammate, butyou lose all combo points on your current target in the process. Despite the heavy energy cost, so many times you are runningpast someone with a full bar anyway, and mutilate/prep has 130 energy to boot. An AOE snare thatalso has 50% chance to apply cast speed increase (should you give up 10% of your damage for mind numbing)? It is definitely going to be a valuable addition to our arsenal. Last but not least, if combat or AR/prep ever becomesa top spec in PVP, you can count on AOE interrupt too.

It is notmirror image, but I certainly can't call it theworst level80 abilityanymore, it is at least middle of the road, and can potentially get much better with the upcoming changes. Not to mention it is a plain satisfying move to use.

New Gameriot Poll, Archavon, Hunter Leveling 70-80

Jasi — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:42:06 -0500

Firstly I'd like to say Happy Thanksgiving to the Gameriot Community. Hopefully you're able to spend time with your family, or at the very least, time with your friends.

There has been a lot of discussion so far about Wintergrasp and Blizzards future plans in regards to gearing before the next arena season is released. At this point, I think it's quite dumb that they haven't released honor based gear and gone with the system that has worked for years now, but I remain somewhat optimistic about the fact that PVE is required to get PVP gear. No, not in the sense that PVE is required in general as that is absolutely ridiculous, but just the fact that it will at least provide some sort of incentive for both PVE and PVP players to pile up in the same area and potentially bring back some great guild vs guild PVP.

What needs to change is the incentive. Change it so that the gear that drops is as equally good in PVE as it is in PVP (such as trinkets), not gear that resides on one complete side of the spectrum. Providing access to purely arena designed gear through a PVE instance is obviously entirely illogical, but the goal behind doing so is great. However, it's obviously not working as intended. Removing the arena gear and adding some sort of new hybrid gear that is decent, but not as good as the arena gear itself would at least a start towards a better alternative. This will keep the difficulty of at least breaking into the arena world easy, and avoid how ridiculously annoying it was to do in say, season 4. Add in gear that is slightly below the quality of savage. That is one option.

At the very least, jack up the difficulty significantly if you don't want to change it. Last I heard, the 10 man version was clearable with 4-6 people. Great; higher end arena gear that's ridiculously easy to get.

New Gameriot

Now that Gameriot 2.0 is here and has had some time to sink in, I'm curious as to how people generally feel about it. Keep in mind that it's still very early in release, and things like replying to comments will obviously be fixed in time, and in general, the whole thing will become more fluid and smooth as time goes on. I'd like to see first impressions though. Vote away.

Hunter Leveling 70-80

Now that I'm well underway with leveling my Hunter to 80, I'm slowly going to be adding in more discussions/theorycrafting about the class. Since level 80 arena is still pretty far away, I'm going to be starting with what I feel is the optimal leveling spec and some small PVE discussion for those that haven't hit 80, or will be playing the class as an alt. Considering the fact that some players are already leveling their alts due to lack of content at 80, hopefully it will be beneficial to some. Once arena is actually active, I'll naturally be focusing almost primarily on PVP based discussions.

I've tried a couple of different leveling specs so far, and I've decided that the following is probably the most effective.

51/11/0

This is your very beginning spec, which will eventually be filled out to the following (obviously you'll most likely swap to a more damaged based PVE spec/PVP spec at 80, but this is just a completed version of it):

53/18/0

The basic premise behind this spec is a pure pet based setup. There is virtually no focus on damage, and you're almost completely geared for elite quests and any large scale/multiple mob situations. This is probably the least effective PVP BM spec for leveling, but if you're like me and really just want the most effective leveling based spec possible, it doesn't matter. Again though, this is a build focused entirely on pet survivability. Initially your pet might be a little low on focus regeneration, but you shouldn't be worrying about your damage out generating threat compared to your pet until mid to high 70's when the spec will fill out and your pet will have the extra focus it needs anyway.

In terms of pet, your best option with this build is obviously a tenacity based pet. Depending on if you plan on AOE grinding or pulling massive packs of mobs, I feel the most optimal pets are a Gorilla (for AOE obviously due to the AOE aggro ability) or something like a Worm or Bear. Worms will give you the added benefit of a little extra damage from armor penetration, and have a little bit more group based utility because of this as well.

In terms of pet specs, I'd go with something like this with a possible floater point put into Taunt if you like the one extra aggro ability.

This gives you maximum stamina, avoidance for those extra fun mobs with AOE abilities, and spiked collar simply because more damage will always equal more aggro generation.

With the above build + a worm, I've been able to handle all of the more difficult elite quests I've ran into so far while leveling. To me this is one of the most effective ways to leveling. That's not to say there aren't alternatives that are just as good, but I prefer this style.

Death Knight First Impressions

Serennia — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:38:57 -0500

In short, I've put my warrior on the back burner for now (I'll probably still arena with it eventually) as I was fairly disappointed to say the least over Blizzard's vision for warriors and their continual insistence of maintaining the class with such a low skill-cap (inc comments of how I wasn't close to that cap). At the end of the day, although you could definitely discern a great warrior from an average one, you could also win matches against top players as an average one because the class allows for sped retards to play them and still be successful due to the overall simplicity of the basic class functions. That said, I've moved on to Death Knight for the time being and have my first impressions to report on them.

Death Knight First Impressions
I finally decided to level my own death knight for a variety of reasons (armory link here if you're curious who it is). Probably the reason most relevant to PvP is that I knew Death Knights would be a very strong and versatile class, but at the same time, there really wasn't anyone good on our server rerolling to one so I figure it might be fun to take on the challenge of learning and mastering the class myself; and I must say that it is definitely different than anything out there.

While many people tend to think that they're overpowered, do too much damage, or are impossible to kill, I'll try to give the reality of it all on the situation as best I can from experience so far.

Defensive capabilities: Despite DK being the class labeled by Blizzard as the ultimate "anti-caster" I almost want to say that DK's are stronger against melee now than they are against casters ever since the late round of beta nerfs to the Strangulate (now 2 min cd up from 45 secs) and Anti-Magic Shell (now 60 sec cd up from 15 secs). Depending on your spec, especially in regards to Mark of Blood and Lichborne, as well as factoring in some base abilities like Icebound Fortitude, a good and properly spec'd DK will be a huge pain in the ass to kill for melee.

Casters? It really depends how good you are, if you recognize the weaknesses of the DK class (and are able to exploit them), and if you get the jump on them or not. I'll detail strengths and weaknesses better later in this article, but frost mages especially have it very easy against DK's right now due to how badly roots and other movement impairs cripple the class. Once distance has been created between a DK and their target, the DK only really has one distance closer (Death Grip) which has a 25-second cooldown at best when talented. Sure you have chains of ice which is both dispellable and can be mirrored by frostbolts, curse of exhaustion, and other snares, and you also have a short duration ghoul stun, but any mage worth their salt can really make short work of a DK regardless of the DK's spec.

DK's have several "oh ****" buttons for PvP (not so many for PvE), and the people that learn what each of them do, how to react to them, and how to eventually negate them (especially Icebound Fortitude) will be the ones ahead of the game. Personally, I feel the class is very strong in regards to this. If I could change things, I would double the cooldown on Icebound Fortitude (making it 2 mins long), lower the cooldown on AMS (anti-magic shell) to half of what it is currently (making it 30 seconds), and making strangulate not cost a blood rune.

Offensive capabilities: This part widely depends on your spec, gear, and playstyle, but generally speaking, DK's can put out a ton of damage. The only problem is, unlike the other pure melee classes (rogues and warriors), they don't get a healing reduction. Fortunately for DK's, they're not a pure melee class and don't necessarily need one (I'll probably eat these words come arena though). The amount of pressure that they can apply to someone both physically and magically makes both a cloth caster/healer just as viable as a target in plate armor.

Chains of ice is both one of the best and worst snares in the game at the same time, depending on your talent spec (dispel resist and/or Endless Winter talent) and depending on if the target(s) that you're fighting have a magic dispel or not. Against teams without dispel, it's simply amazing, borderline overpowered. Being able to fully root someone initially then have it fade into virtually a crippling poison and being able to use this frequently (up to twice per 10 seconds typically) on any targets at will and it really opens the options a lot for a DK and their ability to peel in particular.

DK's are essentially a class that can deal warrior-like raw physical damage (especially if Blood spec'd), but can also almost come close to equalling that of a mage (when frost spec'd) or a warlock/shadow priest (when unholy spec'd). Blood plague is also an amazing HoT dispeller and DoT at the same time that has a chance to not only dispel a heal over time on application, but also a chance to dispel on every subsequent tick; and you don't even have to spec for this. Also keep in mind that if Lifebloom is removed by Blood Plague, it will not trigger the bloom because it is considered a remove, not a dispel. Dealing damage is obviously their forte, but all good things come with a price, as detailed in my next section.

Weaknesses: First and foremost, DK's live and die by their Runic Power. If they are able to build a consistent flow of it, they'll be pretty well off and be able to control the flow of the fight for the most part. However, if a player is able to prevent them from building RP and going on the offensive before the DK has any, then the momentum can easily be in favor of the other player. DK's rely on Runic Power most notably for Anti-Magic Shell (15rp), Icebound Fortitude (20rp unglyphed), Death Coil (40rp), as well as all of their 51-point talents (50+ rp each). This is probably the reason why the 4pc Gladiator Set bonus is the way it is (to help compensate for this), but if a player really understands when a targetted DK can and cannot build RP, then they're really boned for the most part.

Secondly, as I mentioned above, Chains of Ice is one of the best and worst snares. It can be the worst because of dispel cover (or lackthereof). It is the only magical debuff a DK can apply to a target except for Mark of Blood, and is easily targetted by dispel effects from Priests, Paladins, and Felhunters. Rogues have it better off in this regard because of not only having dispel resist (when vile spec'd), but they have dispel cover with at least another poison (two other poisons when mutilate spec'd). As people get into arena and begin to realize this, I can see the problem of keeping a target within melee range a real issue for any team with a DK as their only snare.

Silences also completely decimate a Death Knight. The amount of abilities a DK can use when silenced are basically limited to anything that is pure melee only. They can't strangulate, death grip, IBF (icebound fortitude), AMS, or really do much of anything when silenced. This is an interesting design decision by Blizzard and even more interesting will be to see how many teams decide to silence the enemy death knight instead of the enemy healer to prevent the use of vital abilities from the DK.

Finally, roots and snares. These are basically the bane of any DK and with good reason. As mentioned before, the only real distance closer a DK has is death grip which is 25 seconds at best for a cooldown (they'll also need a frost rune to snare them following it or the target can just run away) and that's basically it. DK's don't have any sprint, shadowstep, 15-second intercept, vanish/cloak snare breaks, or anything of that nature so it's pretty easy to see why a Frost Mage is one of the best counters to a Death Knight right now (at least when the DK does not have a magic dispel). Once mages even further perfect when to blink (to avoid being gripped into a chains of ice with no outs), DK's will basically be on farm status for them and even warlocks that are good at keeping their distance, getting off fears (which also destroy death knights), and knowing the best time to use cooldowns such as death coil and instant howl.

Summary: As with most new things in WotLK, it's hard to determine completely how good or bad something is until we see them in action in a real full-fledged arena season. DK's have several glaring weaknesses, but also have amazing potential and utility. Death Grip alone will change the face of PvP and arena as we know it, and that alone is almost reason enough to feel fortunate if you know a good PvP DK on your server that will play with you.

DK is no easy class to pick up. In fact, it is probably one of the more complex ones with how their rune system works and how to perfect using said runes in not only established "rotations" but as well as using them spontaneously when things don't always go as according to plan (which will be quite frequent in arena). If anything, I feel rogues will adapt best to DK's due to how rogues usually always have a 2-tracked mindset. Meaning before they execute an ability, they usually have a Plan A in the event that it goes off successfully and a Plan B in the event that it does not.

On a final note, hope everyone is having fun in Wrath. Feel free to post your comments on DK's and your continual experiences in expansion. And finally, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there today. Stay safe and enjoy the the turkey.

P.S. Does anyone really, really hate this new Gameriot layout besides me?

ESL Philadephia Aftermath, Team Noktyn Represents, Realz On His Team's Success

Ming — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:03:12 -0500

Hope you guys are enjoying the lovely new Gameriot 2.0 interface. We brought in some heavy weight developers and the results are dramatic. Expect to see explosive growth as the new interface will certainly allow us to attract other established communities to move over to Gameriot and we have quite a few big names down the pipeline.

Speaking of Heavy Weights

It is about time Jared "Noktyn" Fogle gets his own fan club, and Team Noktyn definitely brought their support for the Pandemic superstar at Philly, even if he didn't play any of the games. This is exactly the type of inspiration Noktyn can be for these with morechinsthan a Chinese phonebook, and I really hope he canembrace who he really is and play it to his strength. I still see him as the most marketable player outside of Hafu and the newkid on the block.

Realz, You Are My NE*RO

For the first time ever, an unseeded, unsponsored rookie team won a major tournament, and Realz is without a doubt the leader of his team and MVP of the tournament. His 1v1 match vs Ecilam will be remembered as a classic moment in professional WOW tournaments.

An incredible player but an even better leader, having played with Realz I can say he is every bit as good as Serennia-sama when it comes to strategies and innovations, and his ability to inspire and make other players on his team better is second to none. He actually showed me his shiv spec a long time ago but he made me promise to not reveal it until the tournament is over. Without the shiv glyph to cut it down to 30 energy, the spec is dead in WOTLK (mutilate with double wound is simply superior in most areas) so now is the time to reveal the best rogue spec of 3.0 as many teams assumed it was the arcane mage, and never knew what hit them.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fhe0oIgobroZ0xZebbbI0zb

After playing shadow dance in the first three series, some variation of the shiv spec was used rest of the tournament. The fillers were different, but the main attack is always shiv with instant poison. With deadly brew, you apply cripple poison along with the instant so the opponent can never really get away from you, and you get your burst from the two CB evis's, which is simply dominant at 70.

I feel the primary reason for our success wasn't 'THE BIG RED BUTTON' as Didy would put it, but the progressive elements of our strategy and our meta gaming decisions that no one else was doing, and no one really copied either (The only exception was Nitrana eventually mimicking my mounting nearly halfway across the map every game in the mirror). I don't even really think we outplayed people most of the time, but instead we realized or discovered some things about 3.0 that they didn't, and had them outsmarted going into the game. Throw in a smattering of luck (which EVERY tourney winner will need some of), and that's what all added up to give us the win.- Realz

The shiv spec gave Realz a HUGE advantage over all other rogues in evasion + toe-to-toe situations, as he still did most of his damage right through evasion. Realz varied his spec (dualwield was actually never picked up in any matches, he took master of subtely for games where he is going for a fast kill, and deadened nerves for games where he is the main target) depend on the opponent, and he simply bullied them with the shiv spec later in the game.

Contrary to popular belief, we didn't stack as much ridiculous offensive gear as possible to take advantage of ridiculous damage in 3.0... instead, we geared as defensively as we felt was reasonably possible, to give us the leeway we needed to play with an aggressive mindset. Mages didn't get targeted a lot in almost any of the 3.0 tourneys, but Scoti still wore a lot of PvP gear. We targeted Arcane Mages a lot and at least in a few games they felt overly squishy, probably wearing a lot of pve gear. I personally had nearly 300 resil on at all times, and 2pc t5 only just to get the 2pc bonus for Eviscerate which was an important move for every Rogue in the building.- Realz

Yes, defensive gears win 3.0 tournaments, believe it! Both Scoti and Realz took spell penetration on their cloak (and Scoti added additional gems/enchants while other mages complained about RNG in mirrors). Realz needed spell penetration for his instant poison to do full damage against mark of the wild, and he had 300+ resilience, stun duration reduction gem and significantly more health (as much as 1500) than all other rogues in the building.

Unlike other rogues who spend a lot of combo points on kidney shots, Realz almost never used it unless it is against a rogue with evasion up. He chose eviscerate 90% of the times and that is why he was so offensive with his playing style. Everyone is saving their trinket for kidney shot and given the pace of 3.0, the match may be over in 30 seconds. Eviscerate does so much damage at 70 it is the better finisher more often than not.

A lot of people were decrying Scoti and arcane mages just in general for seemingly being able to 'solo a Druid in 2 globals' which they thought Scoti did a couple times in the tourney... but the real reason Scoti successfully solo'd or nearly solo'd druids a couple times was because of smart play that no other mage was doing that I saw.

If a Druid made the mistake of getting out of position into big open space, Scoti knew he could punish them by Blast Combo'ing them, he'd lead in with an Arcane Blast much akin to the Frostbolt in a normal shatter combo and it would compact a lot more damage in a short time than just leading with a barrage and not using any cast time spell... while I agree that its dumb that a mage can outright solo a druid so quickly or even at all in 3.0, its not anywhere near the same as the supposedly 2 globals everyone is trying to make it out to be, and again I didnt see any other mage even try this when a Druid made that 'big open space' mistake. We planned for that possibility and we gave Scoti the green light to try it any time he thought he could get the Blast off on a non-HoT'd Druid, yell at us to let us know it was happening and we'd get there asap and usually it worked out to dps or stun the *end* of the silence as opposed to imp cs'ing the end of a cheap shot which is the 'normal' method for switching to druids. - Realz

So What Will Happen To The Team At Level 80?

I feel really confident about 80 because we are going to have some great versatility with the classes we're leveling for wotlk combined with the ones we already know, not to mention we really do have the best and most versatile healer in the game (Toez) who can play 3 out of 4 healer classes at a pro level with a positive outlook towards being able to play Shaman as well... and last I heard, no one thinks healers won't be viable. - Realz

Ecilam Suffers Career Ending Injury?

Arcane mage vs rogue is probably the most lopsided match-up of 3.0. Scoti wasted iceblock for no real reason and POM fireballed into cloak, and still killed Happyminti easily. For Ecilam (aka Malice) to choke so hard against Realz, losing a fight where he started at 85% and the new rogue hero was at 25%, psychologically you just don't recover from that. Like Ohnoes who never recovered from falling off the bridge against Pandemic in a pivotal game 5 back in 2007, Ecilam will never recover from it and now is the time for Team Pandemic to rebuild. Heck maybe they should pick up Realz's team.

Something for WoW Actually Worth Spending Your Money On

Jasi — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:50:29 -0500

If it isn't the constant gold spamming and powerleveling services via private messages, it's advertisements for leveling and farming guides; if it isn't advertisements for leveling and farming guides, it's ads for level 70/80 characters or or random WoW paraphernalia. One way or another, there are a ton of nonsense ads for crap that no one usually has any desire for, save for the lazy leveler or someone that lacks free time to the point where leveling without assistance isn't exactly optimal. These types of ads have been around for so long now that any average WoW player doesn't even think twice when some flashy animation or picture attempts at grabbing their attention, and if it somehow does, I'd be surprised if it is any more effective than your average late night male enlargement ad. However, for probably the first time since I began playing WoW at release, I have found something that is actually worth spending my money on.

If you happen to be a WoW player and aren't residing within the United States, you unfortunately almost always have to deal with some ridiculous latency levels. It's really not uncommon for the average Kiwi or Australian player to deal with ping levels of 4-500 or above. This makes it virtually impossible to compete against any players with ping levels of even 300 or below. Occasionally, even those that do live in the USA have to deal with higher than ideal latency levels as well. For example, I play on a west coast server while living in Chicago, and often deal with latency levels as high as 260, and rarely if ever do I drop below around 170. It's not nearly as significant or detrimental to my gaming as a ping of 300+ but there's still a difference when playing against those with latency in the 40's or 50's, and it sucks dealing with ping this high when in other games I'll drop as low as 40-50. Most of these people would do anything to get their ping to an equal level with California based players.

A little bit earlier this year there was an option. In case you don't remember, there was a link on MMO-Champion that Ming wrote on with some registry changes one could implement on their computer in order to lower the in-game ping of WoW. This had mixed results for most people - some it would help, others would barely notice a difference. Even then, the downside of having your network transfer and download speeds cut in half wasn't even worth it to some people. Soon after, similar changes were implemented into the 2.3.2 patch anyway, and this previous option was no longer viable. However, now it seems there is a new option.

If you were watching the arena during season 4, you might have seen a couple of top 20 teams with "Lowerping" as a part of their team name. When I originally saw this, I didn't think much about it and thought it was just another sponsor throwing their name around. However, after talking to Slappywag recently, he told me how outstanding the company was, and how effective this proposed "lower latency" program actually was. I was incredibly dubious at first. I decided to contact Reilly (aka Rangrang if you happen to remember the team Shut up Rangrang from season 2 5v5) to see if he'd be willing to let me test out their services to see if it was actually as good as people said it was. I was definitely surprised by what I experienced.

Again, I usually deal with ping in the 2-270 range on normal to bad days, and 150-190 on good days. I had heard this service was incredibly effective for Australian players (average drop from 450 to 170) as well as NZ players as well (500 to 160) so I was questioning whether or not it would be nearly as effective for a player within the states. Here were my results.

Note: Before and after

I honestly couldn't believe the results. Previous to running the application, the highest ping I saw was 267. After running it, the lowest I saw was 78. After experiencing this, I was curious as to results other players were getting and found this on their website. All of these players are well known Oceanic players that have broken top 20 consistently; and there's duckers for good measure.

The way the Lowerping server works is like this: from my understanding, Blizzard sets their system up in a way that it gives priority to those that live at a closer location to the server. Even if you have a 20mb/s connection, it won't do anything to make your latency better. In many other games, this priority system doesn't exist, so even if you're across the country, you still have a chance at getting a very good ping.

Basically, Lowerping provides a shorter path to the Blizzard servers by different routing and a few various network tweaks. The company has servers located within 10 minutes of, for example, the California location. In addition, the applications also set a Nodelay setting so that the data that you are sending to the server are sent straight away, instead of having to wait to be grouped up before been sent.

It might seem intimidating at first, but setting it up really couldn't be easier - a couple small program and setting adjustments here and there, and you're set. Set it up once, and you're set forever. There's handy tutorials on the website that bring it to a level that anyone could understand. It's also available for both Mac and PC.

So what is the best thing about the service aside from the results? It costs a whopping 4 dollars a month. That's less than one trip to Mcfatdonalds.

If you live on the east or west coast and play on a server residing on the opposite side of the country, I'd definitely recommend giving this a shot. Especially if you're tired of less than ideal ping. You can't argue with the results. For more information head to www.lowerping.com

ESL Philadelphia Live Blog Sunday: Realz Is Lebron James

Ming — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:18:43 -0500

Live At 12:30PM US Eastern Time: http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

Got Games East(RMD) vs Trade Chat Allstars(RMP): 0-3, 2-3

Two of my favorite players (Venruki and Realz) in grand finals, it is hard to pick a team to root for but everyone love an underdog. An unsponsored rookie team winning the big prize? That will certainly be a great story for our sport and encourages tournament participations. Coming out of loser bracket, TCA will need to win two series in a row to bring home the title.

Amazing opening round for TCA as Realz went with mutilate to maximize his offensive prowess. He was caught out of stealth by Venruki and opened on by Happyminti but managed to vanish away safely before delivering a 100-25% burst with his mage Scoti on Venruki. Venruki ice blocked which was mass dispeled but he blinked away to safety. TCA swapped to Sodah and dropped him for the win. Amazingly smooth target swaps despite Realz's disadvantage in mobility as mutilate.

An epic game 2 as both teams ran same plays. Venruki blew his ice block offensively and he was bursted down right after, but not before he took Toez with him. Rogue/mage vs rogue/druid and Realz did an incredible job kiting away from Minti as mutilate vs shadowstep, and they scored the kill on Sodah. But Realz was very low on health and Scoti the mage couldn't save him from Minti and we had a rogue vs mage 1v1. Happyminti was never known as a big dueler and 3.0 rogue vs arcane mage, if you watched the Korean tournaments you know it takes a VERY special rogue like Realz to win. He should have took advantage of Scoti's mana situation and pressed the issue, but instead he allowed Scoti to get back to full health full mana and full cooldown. Scoti is not exactly Korean mage as he blew ice block way too early, even POMing into a cloak of shadows but still won with 40% health left.

Clearly frustrated, GGE came out flat in game 3. Sodah was opened on right away, caught in a full improved kidney shot and nuked down in 10 seconds. Major props to Realz playing mutilate when many of the top rogues today still living in the past with shadowstep. You need a very offensive play to maximize the incredible pressure from mutilate and Realz is as good as it gets. Can GGE alter the momentum when TCA is running like a freight train?

The second set started with Venruki once again blowing his ice block way too early. They tried to rush the priest but Venruki without ice block just can't stand the burst of mutilate and POM fireball + arcane barrage. I think Venruki is not used to teams going for him anymore when 3.0 has always been about zerging the rogue. He went down and TCA priest was still at 40%.

A very funny ending to another epic game. Realz went on Venruki and GGE went on Realz. A double kill and we have priest/mage vs rogue/druid, two comps that can reset endlessly but I still believe a top priest/mage will win in the end, as they have the burst rogue/druid lacks. However, with TCA in full control in mana, Sodah managed to res Venruki! I guess they forgot Blizzard adding resurrection to druids in 3.0/WOTLK. TCA left the game right away and that put a smile on everyone's face.

GGE went for a strategic adjustment as they went on Scoti the mage instead and had a lead early. But mutilate burst damage is just too strong coupled with POM blast that once again Venruki went down in seconds after he used his first ice block. GGE still has their best chance to win when going on Realz since he is mutilate.

And they did went back to their bread and butter of training the rogue. As mutilate Realz is still very vulnerable to focus fire and while both he and Minti were at very low health, Minti had cheat death and it saved him. I am very impressed at how well Realz manages his defensive cooldowns, and I can't wait to see him as mutilate/prep at level 80 when that spec is complete.

Final match of the tournament! TCA went on Sodah and chased him around pillars before delivering the killing blow. Realz was very low in the process and went down as well and we had mage/priest vs mage/rogue. Scoti/Toez kited Minti around the corners and DPSed him down slowly, and Venruki couldn't score the kill on TCA priest and I can feel his pain when he was finally sheeped with TCA priest at 10%.

What an amazing journey for Realz and TCA. An unsponsored rookie team winning it all here in Philly! Realz played like Lebron James when he carried his team on his shoulders. Incredibly offensive delivery on top of a tactician of Serennia-sama's equal (minus boneheaded decisions), it took them a few series to get over the LAN play difference and what a joy ride it has been since then! You can bet a sponsor will pick them up right away with a title on their first tournament, plus a global final seat. MOB Godfather? Where are you?

Team EG(RLShaman) vs Trade Chat Allstars(RMP): 0-3

Team EG looked very indecisive out of the gate, as they went on TCA's priest off the start before making a half-baked swap attempt on Realz. That won't get it done as they never were in any position to score a kill. Zyz went down quickly as arcane mage burst is just so scary in 3.0.

Zyz is really struggling today against Minti and Realz as he was way behind on damage every match. A lot of it is because he has to deal with an arcane mage on the other side, and a demonlogy warlock can not put out anywhere near the same burst to assist him. Here he went on Realz and they played a little better, but Zyz went down again while Realz was still comfortably above 40% health.

The final match marked the start of a new dynasty as Realz's team simply ran circles around Team EG (Gravitas was probably watching and felt really stupid for losing to Team EG as RMP when TCA and GGE 3-0ed the same team). Realz waited in stealth for a very long time while his mage Scoti killed Azael's pet. Realz landed a beautiful sap on Kollectiv which triggered a second pet kill. Without soullink Azael was a sitting duck and went down quick as his team was knocked out of the tournament. Zyz did 800 damage the entire game as he was waiting for Realz to come out of stealth.

Known for his performance as a shadowpriest, it is amazing how strong Realz's rookie performance as a rogue is. He is probably the single most dominant tournament rogue today as his team relies on him to make all the offensive/defensive plays. It is very different from other rogue/caster/healer teams where the mage/lock is the one that controls the tempo. Can they win it all against Got Games East?

Gravitas Duelists(RMP) vs Trade Chat Allstars(RMP): 1-3

Prior to the tournament Realz told me rogue/mage/paladin beats rogue/mage/priest in 3.0 and I didn't really believe him. But here they are fighting for a spot in ESL global finals against Gravitas and they ran rogue/mage/paladin to train the priest of Gravitas. With divine shield on the paladin, Gravitas obviously can't do the same and they went on TCA's mage Scoti, arguably the weaker player of the three. Still, rogue/mage can bring down a priest so quickly and TCA took game 1 in a hurry. Gravitas didn't looked ready for the tactic and the element of surprised worked very well.

Game 2 saw a surprise comp change for TCA to RMP, and Gravitas outplayed them significantly as it is a much more experienced team in RMP mirrors. However, with significant mana advantage, Celex made a very questionable move of bandaging behind pillar and leaving his rogue in the open. In 3.0 especially against Realz, the most offensive rogues in the game today, you just can't make that kind of mistakes as TCA 100-0'ed Emolol in just a few globals. Can the rookie team upset the pre-tournament favorite?

In game 3 TCA went back to the RMPaladin team. They started out on Celex the mage which I believe was a mistake. They brought him to 50% before moving to the priest and for a while had both at 50% health but the valuable globals/cooldowns spend on the mage delayed the priest kill just long enough for Gravitas to drop Realz for a trade. 2v2 rogue/mage vs mage/paladin, Gravitas sheeped/CSed the paladin and they brought down the mage to avoid a sweep.

Game 4 was once again RMP mirror, and Realz just seems to be a step ahead in strategy. Instead of duking it out rogue vs rogue, he once again opted for Celex the mage. Is the arcane mage a better target to train in RMP mirror than shadow dance rogue? Realz thinks so and he proved his point by dropping Celex and eliminating Gravitas from the tournament as well as taking their spot in Global finals! Wow! I knew he was a special player/tactician, but he even exceeded my expectations with the joy ride, good luck against Team EG next round!

Got Games East (RMP) vs Team EG (RLShaman): 3-0

Very questionable choice of GGE to play RMP, their secondary line-up against Team EG's RMShaman when Gravitas, best overall RMP in America couldn't beat them the round before. However Team EG made an even more puzzling move to go on the priest instead of rogue like they usually do against RMP. With Happyminti all over him, Zyz could never put out enough pressure to finish the job before he was killed. Why not going on the rogue like they usually do in this match-up? They lost two games in a row WITHOUT playing the strategy they used to beat Gravitas. Why?

Game 3 Team EG finally played the strategy they used to beat Gravitas, and it worked out much better. But Zyz had an off-game as Happyminti pumped way more damage into him than the other way around. Even then when Zyz died, Minty had less than 50 health left and Kollectiv desperately tried to melee him to death (and failed) as casters were all out of mana. You can not play against a team as talented as Got Games East with plan B's. Sodah really impressed me with his strong performance on druid and priest but I still believe it would have been a totally different game had Team EG went on Minti all three games.

Got Games East (RMD) vs Trade Chat Allstars (RMP): 2-3

With Venruki the GGE mage playing arcane, TCA chose to focus fire him instead of going on the rogue like most rogue/mage/healer mirrors. It paid off as it freed up their mage and Realz coming out of a stun caught Venruki in a quick burst to score the kill.

Game 2 saw Got Games East playing much more defensively. Venruki was never in danger and was kiting at long range and Realz was forced to go back on Minti but they were already behind on healing and CCs. Realz went down shortly after and the series is 1-1.

Game 3 saw a very questionable move from Venruki as he used iceblock offensively just to DPS Realz who was really not that low on HP. This allowed TCA to drop him from 100-0 via POM fireball + assist DPS from Realz.

Game 4 Got Games East played much more offensively. Instead of going on Realz the rogue to control his damage, they went on TCA's priest Toez instead and with iceblock + blink + instant invisibility, Venruki stayed alive long enough for them to drop the priest.

Game 5 Got Games East continued to milk their going on priest strategy. Happyminti caught Toez in a sap and they had perfect opening. One round of burst later the priest was already below 10% and he tried to get around the pillar in desperation before he was finished off. I was surprised Realz the tactician did not call for a strategy adjustment, as you certainly can't drop a mage with ice block + instant invisibility faster than they can drop a a priest all else being equal. Venruki was still above 70% health when Toez went down.

Team Noktyn Represents!

Anyone caught the Team Noktyn interview? While Jared "Noktyn" Fogle didn't participate in this tournament, he had a crew of people with similar physiques supporting him from his hometown! Anyone got a pic!

Team EG (RLShaman) vs Gravitas Gaming (RMP): 3-2

Game 1 saw Gravitas going on Team EG's warlock Azael and Team EG going on Gravitas's rogue Emolol. Melee/warlock/healer teams came a long way since early 3.0 days and with the demon form Azael was able to survive the early bursts with a few nice interrupts via Felguard/blind/earthshock on Gravitas mage, and they brought down Emolol shortly after.

Game 2 both teams ran the same plays, but this time Gravitas had much better positioning and they did a good job CCing/counterspelling Kollectiv the EG shaman to score a quick kill on Azael.

Game 3 once again saw the same plays but this time we had a double-kill of Azael and Emolol. Mage/priest vs rogue/shaman mirror, Gravitas chose to fight at low mana situations instead of CC spam to reset the fight and they went down quickly. Celex/Ely really need to work on their 2v2 game as they had huge problems vs SK-EU in the last tournament and 2v2 is a very common situation nowadays.

Game 4 Kollectiv was caught in an early fear and chose to not break it. Azael was brought to very low level right away and jumped off the bridge before he was quickly killed. I definitely think Kollectiv underperformed in this match. Even NS wasn't used.

Game 5 was a repeat of game 1. Full DPS on Emolol, while hitting all of their CCs + interrupts on Celex/Ely. Shaman is a huge upgrade over druid for the rogue/lock healer set-up. He is not a viable target for the other team to swap to due to outstanding survivability via deep resto, he gives a huge boost for his team's damage and his interrupts are devastating. Compared to 3.0 druids that have to stay in tree form the entire time to survive, shaman is clearly the superior healer but we will see what happens at level 80.

Final Four Preview

Seems like my Friday preview was pretty on point with all three teams I picked going to the final four (and Team EG I had them going as well), but both Gravitas and TCA lost two series in group stage before winning their relegation matches 3-2 to advance.

After easily beating group fodder Emazing Gaming 3-0, Gravitas lost two series to rogue/lock/healer teams in Team EG and Got Games West, before eliminating Fnatic from the tournament in relegation matches. All three series came down to the 5th and final match and I believe they can still win it all if they can tighten their execution up a notch. RMP is all about momentum and they need to get hot on Sunday to beat a very fine Team EG.

But the star of the day was Realz who was left in a 1v1 against Pandemic mage Malice 25% health vs 85% health. and pulled out a win as rogue vs mage in 3.0! He was Neilyo-like with pillar kites and refused to die even with Ecilam had shadow sight buff on. Finally he got his cooldowns back and won the duel. It was one of the most impressive individual performances in tournament play I have ever seen. Realz's team already lost two series. He simply willed his rookie team to a victory before taking them to a 3-2 win over Got Games West for a final four spot. That is their first ever LAN performance against two veteran teams. I don't know if they are talented enough to beat Got Games East, but Realz is up there with Serennia-sama when it comes to coming up with new strategies, we will see what happens.

Team EG and Got Games East were undefeated. I have to say I like Venruki/Sodah/Minti's team a little better. They can play two drastically different teams with same three classes by simply swapping Sodah between full balance and deep resto. With no way of knowing Sodah's spec until he comes out of stealth, the element of surprise will always be on their side.

Fnatic needs to only look at Pandemic to see success is never guaranteed in professional sports. From champions to 0-3 exit, the same can happen to you as well Hafu-chan. I won't count them out until I see their performance at level 80, but I still doubt Hafu's ability to play anything other than druid at tournament level.

ESL Philadelphia Live Blogging Saturday

Jasi — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:36:21 -0500

Watch it Live: http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

Once they actually get to WoW stuff I'll be covering live. Stay tuned.

Got Game East vs. Pandemic

Round 1 - Nagrand R/M/D vs R/M/P

Nitrana caught Minti in stealth and managed to land a sap on him which put them ahead immediately when they focusd damage on him right after. After a couple of sheeps from Malice on Venruki in combination with the damage on minti, Pandemic swapped to Sodah when he was forced to expose himself in order to heal. Pandemic pulled a quick early first match win when they dropped Sodah within about 30 seconds of the match starting. Minti tried to stop the swap with a blind but it was slightly too late.

Round 2 - Blades Edge - Same makeups Pandemic 1-1

Both teams play extremele defensive, but minti lands a sap on Douja, the Priest of pandemic, and manages to catch Nitrana, the Rogue of Pandemic, out of stealth as well. GGE puts quite a bit of pressure on Nitrana, who misses a jump up onto the ramp of BE in an attempt to escape. While this was happening Douja is caught in a blind, and cannot save Nitrana before he was killed.

Round 3 - RoL - Same Makeups, Pandemic 1, GGE 1

Douja overextends himself early and is focused by the entire team of GGE. Nitrana was pushed into a position where had to peel Minti off of Douja because of this, forcing their team to really play defensively. Eventually a swap to focusing on Nitrana overwhelmed Douja who was behind after being focused since he had to dump pretty much every available cooldown he had to keep himself alive. GGE took advantage of this and stole the third match by finishing off Nitrana.

Round 4 - RoL - Same Makeups, GGE 2, Pandemic 1

GGE shows that they're really in control of this matchup and have consistently put much more pressure on Nitrana than Pandemic puts on Minti. Sodah is having quite an easy time keeping his team alive, and with a Duel between mages in terms of CC, Venruki has been relatively outplaying malice. A winning combination thus far.

GGE 3, Pandemic 1

Fnatic Vs. TradeChatAllstars

Round 1. Nagrand Arena TCA is Realz on Rogue (no Spriest =(), Scoti on Mage, plus a Shaman! Fnatic comes in as WLD

Although TCA does a wonderful job swapping and playing quite offensively for round 1, Glick shows his amazing play as a Warlock, once again, by spreading dots consitently, and CC'ing/debuffing better than any Warlock I've seen.

Hafu starts in tree form, while Glick ia CC'ed early but breaks with devour, Rhaegyn is focused first by TCA. Hafu manages to keep him up, so TCA begins swapping from Hafu, to Rhaegan. Glick manages to stay offensive with Rhaegyn, and while Hafu is overwhelmed and killed, both her and Scoti, the Mage of TCA fall at the same time. Down to a Shaman/Rogue vs Warrior/Lock. TCA is behind at this point, so Rhae and Glicks pull off the win.

Round 2 - Fnatic 1, TCA - 0 same comps

Although I missed a lot of this match, TCA is doing a very good job playing offensively in relation to the makeup they're running and whats an effective way of playing it. However, Fnatic is still an amazing team and while there was a scare of a potential first match loss, they're able to keep up and eventually win.

Round 3 - Fnatic 2, TCA - 0 Blades Edge,

I have to say Matt and Jay do the best job of the entire crew being entertaining inbetween matches.

This match wasn't broadcasted, but TCA swapped to RMP and was able to pull off their first win.

Round 4, Fnatic 2, TCA 1, - Blades Edge

TCA starts on Rhaegyn again as RMP and gets him to about 30% but then swaps to an exposed Hafu. Glickz CC's well, and peels Realz off of Hafu with a great fear. TCA goes back on Hafu, and this time, Rhaegyn peels with an intercept on Realz and really puts on the damage while TCA tried to take down Hafu. It really seemed like TCA had the momentum in this battle, but Realz falls in what seems like a mistargetted Pain Suppression could have saved him if it was on the right target.

Fnatic wins 3-1

TCA vs GGE

Round 1 - TCA goes holy Pally/Rogue/Mage vs GGE RMD

TCA opens on Venruki, and TCA manages to force an early iceblock. Realz then swaps to Minti, and GGE swaps to Realz who has blown a couple of defensive cooldowns at this point. However, it looks like inexperience from TCA playing Paladin might have cost them this match and Realz was killed almost immediately after the swap with a late bubble from the Pally of TCA.

Round 2 - GGE 1, TCA - 0 Same comps, RoL

REalz starts on Venruki again and forces another early ice block. This match is playing out exactly like the first match as GGE swaps to Realz after the block. However, this time he receives a BoP instead of death. However GGE swaps to the Paladin of TCA after the duration of his bubble is over and drops him within the blink of an eye.

Round 3, GGE 2, TCA - 0

Minti opens on Realz this time and sticks on him relentlessly. Realz makes his way to Sodah eventually, and puts pressure on him. However Realz was stopped in his tracks almost immediately as Venruki does well with CC's and lands a pretty clutch nova....and then the match was over - Paladin just seemed like a problem for TCA to really play well with as GGE again, absolutely destroys them in this final round and drops realz as their paladin (toes is it?) is caught with his pants down. Jay, the announcer, might have had a great point - why not go for ret? Their team dropped just as quickly even with the extra healing power and utility of Holy.

GGE 3, TCA - 0

Pandemic vs Fnatic

Round 1 Fnatic - Ret Pal/War/Rshaman Pandemic - RMP Nagrand arena

Hafu starts on Shaman this time - has her leveling experience from 1-80 been enough to allow her to play comfortably as the class? Nitrana opens up on Hafu on Shaman and she receives a bop almost instantly. Each team targets the opposing players healer, but Nitrana drops extremely low during this with a combination of Glick as usual and Rhaegyn actually taking advantage of Bladestorm. With perfect timing it tore Nitrana apart putting damage on pressure on both him and Douja. Douja blew his cooldowns to survive, and then Fnatic took full advantage and swapped entirely to Nitrana to drop him and take round 1.

Round 2 - Fnatic - 1, Pandemic - 0. Same makeups same map.

Rhaegyn starts offensively, but just like round 1, Pandemic goes on Hafu Instantly and drops her to 25~% causing Rhae and Glicks to turn back and help Hafu. Again she is bopped, and Ray + Glick attempt at peeling with offensive pressure and CC. Pandemic drops Hafu, who might possibly be overwhelmed with her inexperience as Shaman in combination with the burst of 3.0, but it actually ends up coming down to a 2v2 between Glickz/Rhae vs Malice/Nitrana. A couple of questionable calls here with Pandemic focusing on Rhaegyn the whole time who went defensive, reflected a couple spells and went on Nitrana while interrupting Malice with intercepts. Leaving the pally open allowed Glickz to heal, and I think that put Pandemic at quite the disadvantage. Fnatic pulls off the 2v2 win and goes up 2-0.

Round 3 - Fnatic, 2, Pandemic 0 - Nagrand

Fnatic goes back to WLD, pandemic stays as RMP. Rhaegyn sits on Douja who maintains consistent pressure even through two pollys. Glickz takes the focus of Pandemic, but they end up swapping to Hafu who is caught in caster form once she exposed herself to heal. Swap was very good and effective, and she was dropped very quickly.

Round 4 - Fnatic 2, Pandemic 1 - Nagrand

Nitrana and Malice open on Glickz again. Hafu is exposed and runs out to the middle of the arena, and is immediately swapped onto. Rhaegyn swaps to Nitrana and manages to peel him and Hafu escapes around a pillar. Pandemic swaps to Glickz, in response and blinds Hafu when she exposes herself to heal. Pandemic manages to take down Glickz for a second win within the duration of Blind. Redemption for Pandemic here.

Round 5 - Fnatic 2, Pandemic 2

Hafu goes back on Shaman and Glick goes back to Paladin. This seems to be effective as they drop Douja very quickly and Hafu survives from a 100-30 back up to 100. Fnatic plays extremely well and dominates this round entirely. Swapping back to their first comp worked incredibly well, and their LAN experience shows in their decision making here.

Fnatic wins, 3-2.

Fnatic vs GGE

Round 1 - Fnatic as WLD, GGE as RMP with sodah on Druid. Map: RoL

Minti is destealthed, and immediately starts on Rhaegyn. Rhae drops to about 30% and Minti, with a very very good dismantle to stop all spell reflects etc. in combination wtih control on hafu lead the momentum and GG destroyed fnatic in about 10 seconds. Inc QQ's about dismantle and Rogues.

Round 2, GGE - 1, Fnatic 0. Sodah goes back on Druid, ROL again.

Sodah turns out to be a balance spec, and within 10 seconds of the fight, he is killed. Amazingly, Hafu ends up being killed a mere split second later. Suddenly it's a 2v2. Almost immediately, Both Rhaegyn and Minti die as well. This all happens again, within about 15 seconds of the match starting. Incredibly quick paced and intense. At this point it was Glickz vs Venruki. Venruki was already at around 40% life, and Glickz had far too big of a head start going into the 1v1 battle. Venruki ends up losing, and Fnatic takes their first match.

Round 3, Fnatic 1, GGE 1. Same map same makeups.

My stream lagged really badly at this point and I came back mid-match. When I came in, Hafu and Venruki were dead and it was a 2v2 between Sodah and Minti and Glickz and Rhaegyn. Glickz and Minti die, and it turns into a 1v1 vs Sodah and Rhaegyn. Rhaegyn goes back for another healthstone, but gives Sodah, who was at 50% health and low mana time to drink and heal.

Rhaegyn completely outplays Sodah. He pummels an attempted cyclone, followed by a really key spell reflect. Sodah was in Boomkin form, and was dropped down to about 50%. In a panic, he ran away in caster form with heals, popped bear, but then was taken down by a bladestorm. Fnatic takes their second win in a 1v1 showdown.

Round 4, Fnatic 2, GGE 1. Sodah back on Priest, BE arena.

Minti opens up on Rhaegyn again with venruki putting out a lot of damage to support him in an attempt to most likely replicate their results on the last match on BE with the dismantle. GGE sits on Rhaegyn relentlessly with no target swaps, and Hafu cannot keep Rhaegyn up with Shield wall spell reflects and all the heals in the world from Hafu. However, Minti went back to multilate, and the extra damage was too much for Fnatic to keep up with. GGE takes down Rhaegyn for their second win.

Round 5, Fnatic 2, GGE 2 Fnatic swaps back to Paladin/Shaman/War

Glickz/Rhaegyn go offensive immediately and blow heroism before even dismounting. However, Glickz was sapped so their momentum was cut in half. Hafu is blinded early in addition to sheep and bop and uses her trinket. Rhaegyn is focused hard, and relenteless CC's on Hafu put her behind on healing. She was caught in a fear as well as a KS when Minti swapped over as Rhaegyn was dropping and since she had used her trinket in a CC chain earlier, she couldn't keep Rhaegyn alive.

GGE pulls away 3-2.

TCA vs Pandemic - TCA as Pal/R/M Pandemic as R/M/P

Round 1 Blades Edge

My stream came in when this match was down to a 2v2 of TCA as Paladin and Mage versus Mage and Rogue of Pandemic. TCA plays defensive enough that Pandemic was falling behind with the fact that they had no healer. However, Nitrana and Malice managed to retreat long enough to drink to near full hp/mana. However scoti came up to the top of BE where Malice/Nitrana were regrouping and took down Malice very quickly to secure the win.

Round 2 TCA 1, Pandemic 0 Same comps, BE

Realz and Nitrana both go offensive and blow sprint. Realz sits on Douja, but both a fear and poly land on him on top of BE out of any dispel LOS from the rest of his team. Malice does an excellent job with CC on both Realz and Scoti, and in combination with Realz being CC'ed they were able to take down Scoti for their first win.

Round 3, TCA 1, Pandemic 1 Same comps, Nagrand Arena

In this match, Realz is feared and sheeped right when he uses his opener. Douja gets caught behind a pillar, and is focused immediately and caught without an escape and is killed with an early mistake about 20 seconds into the match. However, the Paladin of TCA drops as almost exactly the same time. Again, it drops to a 2v2 match where in this case, it is a mirror of R/M vs R/M.

Realz is brought to 700 hp in the double dps duel, but Nitrana is being targeted as well and ends up being killed right as realz is on the border of death. At this point, both Realz and Scoti are sub 25% in life with Malice at almost full hp in a 1v2 battle. Realz escapes for a bandage, but Malice plays well and manages to come from behind to a position of advantage in a 1v1 battle versus Realz who sits at 25% life to malices 85. Realz delays the fight as long as possible to buy time for bandages/cooldowns, and manages to escape Malice every time, even with Shadowsight buffs. Eventually Realz finds an opportune moment and unleashes all his CD's for a win.

Round 4, TCA 2, Pandemic 1 TCA goes to RMP. RoL arena.

Nitrana opens up on the priest of TCA and drops him to around 20-40% repeatedly. On the other end, REalz sits on Malice and kills him through pain supression. Not sure where the block was.This pretty much sealed the match, and TCA takes the match and series after a questionable first series. Jay, the announcer noted that Douja only healed for 1.5k. Again, Douja comes under the spotlight as the most questionable player on Pandemic.

TCA takes the series 3-2

I believe Ming will be taking over from here for later matches.

ESL Philadelphia Preview: Will Gravitas Duelists Cap 2008 With A Win?

Ming — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:46:41 -0500

http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

Saturday: 10:00-19:00 EST

Sunday: 10:00-17:00 EST

Gravitas Gaming - WoW

fnaticMSI.WoW

GotGame East

Pandemic

eMazingGaming

Got Game West

Trade Chat All Stars

Evil Geniuses

With the global economy in deep recession and thousands of jobs cut everyday, will WOW be a safe haven for those seeking escape from the ugly truth? 2.8 million copies of WOTLK were sold on opening day, that is well over 50% of the WOW population who actually had access to the expansion. If Campbell Soup is the cheapest way to feed a family (the stock is performing extremely well versus rest of the S&P 500), then WOW is certainly the most cost effective way to keep them entertained. WOTLK took the term "casual friendly" to the next level and will certainly please the audience who actually made all these tournaments possible.

That is not saying there won't be some consolidations in the industry. CGS going out of business is just the first sign of trouble. The credit squeeze will make venture capital and sponsorship renewals that much harder to obtain. The hokage predicts 50% of the teams participating in this tournament won't be around this time next year. The battle of ESL vs MLG should end as well with one major WOW tournament sponsor left standing (excluding Blizzard itself of course).

This is it folks. It may be a 3.0 tournament with S2 gear, and WOTLK level 80 PVP is just around the corner. But these teams brought us a lot of memorable moments in 2008 and this may be the very last time we see this generation of WOW teams compete against each other. Don't miss the live blog coverage right here on WOM.

Gravitas:

With Fnatic a mere shadow of its former self, and RMP winning both of the 3.0 tournaments so far, this is their best chance for a championship. They are the best RMP team of the tournament and in theory, their teamwork should overcome any hard counter (and it is very hard to hard counter a team that can bring you down in 2-3 globals). They are the favorites here and definitely deserve a title after so many 2nd place finishes. Of course nothing is given on a silver platter, and with a spot for global finals on the line, they really have to earn it.

Fnatic:

A first round exit in the first 3.0 tournament doesn't bode well for a team that was so reliant on a singular comp. Very few believe Hafu-chan is capable of learning a new class/comp, especially not one as micro-intensive as shaman. Can they rebound? It is quite doubtful.

Pandemic:

Ecilam/Nitrana/Douja as RMP never worked in 2.4 but with the comp's strength in 3.0, they may have a small chance to crack top 4. I believe this team needs to be blow up and rebuilt from scratch. Sometimes it feels like Chris Lemley is running a soup kitchen but I guess that is what you need with big chief Nooktyn around.

Team EG:

Zyz/Azazael/Kollektiv since Spoh isn't on the team anymore. Most recently they've played Rogue/Metamorphos lock/resto shaman, but I think they might end up playing Rogue/Soullink destro lock/resto shaman. Not sure how kollektiv is working out for them but shaman is arguably the best healer of 3.0/WOTLK. I see a top four finish if they can click but Spoh's departure will definitely be a shadow looming over their collective hearts, just like when Azael left the team to play one tournament with Fnatic, the event that send them to the downward spiral.

Got Game West:

Didy/Greenranger/Vaux as RLD, yuck. They're playing mutilate/soullink destro lock/deep resto. Didy was getting very frustrated at not practicing for a while and is planning on dropping Greenranger AND possibly Vaux for a new team. At the very least it seems like he will DEFINITELY drop Greenranger - he gave Vaux the 'option' of coming with him to a new team but I think it's not really an option. We'll see. They say the RLD with the destro lock is an insanely good setup, I say it is an insanely good ticket for a quick exit especially with the chemistry issues.

Got Game East:

Minty/Venruki/Sodah as the same 3DPS comp from before. They say that even though they didn't really do that greatly last tournament, they've gotten alot better at it and expect to do very very well. I don't know if it is enough to win a championship, but this is a team that can win a series against anyone if they are hot. I see a top 4 finish for them.

Trade Chat Allstars:

Dark horse of the tournament. Realz is one of the best players at coming up with oddball teams (he took rogue/shadowpriest/resto shaman to top of BG9 in S2, during its golden era). I have no idea how well he will do on LAN, but this is the most exciting rookie team in a long time.

Prediction For Top Three

1) Gravitas
2) Got Game East
3) Trade Chat Allstars (very bold prediction, it all depends on if they can handle LAN pressure)

Your Thoughts on WotLK?

Jasi — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:05:03 -0500

Thanks to Slapnuts doing the research and finding that the total sales of WotLK on the first day, a remotely accurate number can be put together in terms of Blizzards total earnings. Sales alone exceeded 2.8 million copies on the release date, for a total of 112 million dollars in revenue generated. Even when you take development costs into consideration, that is an ungodly amount of money to make off of a video game and it's pretty safe to say that Blizzard won't be imploding when this country has it's next big depression. The big question remains though: Blizzard has obviously done an amazing job pulling in a playerbase to the level of severe addiction, but have they missed the mark when it comes to the actual content of this expansion?

Personally, for the first time since I originally bought this game years ago, I am enjoying leveling. Yeah, it's really not a big deal to hear that. However, that's coming from me, a person who literally was given money to buy my epic riding skill on my Priest because I had three gladiator netherdrakes and had never ridden any of them because I dread anything even remotely close to farming (thanks Fayth, if you read this). I absolutely detest leveling, and like I said, Wotlk has brought enjoyment for the first time ever when it comes to just that. I've spent the majority of my time doing instances with the officers and players of the guild I previously lead or have played with for years, and just leveling at a relaxed pace during free time from my RL. Granted, due to being sick and hitting finals all at the same time, I'm only level 75 - but I'm still having a good time playing relatively casual and not stressing out over the fact that, AMG, there are people that are actually level 80 when I'm not.

From what I've heard, the majority of players I talk to are enjoying it too (feel free to chime in about that, I'm curious). The problems come into play for the gross kids who hit 80 in some ridiculously short period of time after release and somehow, in their pathological liar like state of mind, believe that an achievement congratulating you for hitting 80 first on your entire server is something to be proud of - which brings me to my next point.

It seems there was a little bit of misinterpretation when I was speaking of Naxx the other day. First, I completely understand, as I said in that article, that Nihil/SK had seen the content during beta, and there's no reason to be surprised at the fact that they were able to down it so clearly. You must understand that they were just an example, and their opinion on difficult raid content should be highly considered by Blizzard when it comes to creating good content regardless of when they cleared it. However, it goes beyond just them. On my server, Naxx has been cleared by almost every decent guild that has hit 80. I'm talking about guilds that struggled to clear BT for what felt like years after release, or never finished it at all. There have been Pugs that have cleared it, even with the handful of "difficult" fights within. I could really go on for hours about this, but it's really just not that hard to see. Yeah, this is initial content, but you can't ignore the fact that even when half the playerbase hits 80, there won't be **** to do.

Blizzard just missed the mark on this instance. They took it from the original WoW because so many players ranted and raved about how impressive it was, and just didn't spend enough time balancing it to a respectable level in comparison to its original version. Now, where I relate the instance to achievements is that somehow, there are "elite" players actually trying to defend the instance and tell me I'm wrong or misinformed etc. just like they try to convince themselves that server first 5 trillion level jewelcrafting will make their balls drop. You know what that tells me? Blizzard has failed so badly with initial level 80 raid content that the elite players are trying to defend their "first clears" so adamantly because content is so lackluster that you have to resort to bragging about clearing it first because inflating your ego about beating difficult content isn't an option. Deep breath..... So far bragging rights in Wotlk come from either getting to 80 first and some other bull**** achievements that no one gives a damn about or...well...that's really it.

In regards to PVP, like I said in my last article, players are enjoying Wintergrasp. What they aren't enjoying is the complete lack of level 80 pvp gear, and the fact that there are so many "cheap" ways to get the gear aside from arena and honor farming. I don't need to tell you how many people have complained that "PVE nerds" can get the gear via instances, or the fact that instances at the moment are almost the best way to get PVP gear in the first place.

So then in the end, it seems like the ideas were there, but the execution and actual follow-through to releasing completed content is not. Did Blizzard feel slightly pressured by Warhammer (doubt it), or have they finally just stopped caring about the people who are extremely far ahead of the general curve?

Like I said above, I'm really enjoying leveling, and I'm sure I will enjoy doing an easy Naxx with friends. I will be disappointed by the lack of difficulty and content at 80, but not anytime soon. Even when it does happen, I can have hopes that it will be far enough along that new content will be released.

So now I'm curious - are you enjoying WotLK even when all the relative shortcomings are taken into consideration?