WoW's 5 Most Ridiciulous Imbalances, ArenaCast On Gotfrag, German Voting System *heart*

Due to elections I wasn't able to blog yesterday. As I walked to the place where I had to hand in my vote, I saw all kinds of different people who I generally wouldn't expect to be very interested in politics and they probably weren't. While it makes me sad, I can at least appreciate that they take the opportunity they have been given. Germany has one of the best voting systems in the world which is constantly being reviewed if it's conforming to the law. It even has to be changed until November 10 for a possible situation that never really has occurred to date but still might be possible even though it's highly likely. Going to an election takes maybe a bit more preparation than in the US but that is simply because we have so many parties which make the cut into the parliament. This time we only had one party above 25% and that is the conservative party (CDU) which will form a coalition with the FDP, the libertarian party. I regularly read on Gameriot that for example libertarians don't feel represented by the republicans anymore and that absolutely makes sense. Unless you butcher your opinions and values after one party, you're lucky if you can agree with 50% of one of the two parties in the US. Not only the two party "system" but also the electoral law in the US is mediocre compared to the German, especially when you look at the elector part which often is very unbalanced in relation to the number of voters. While we Germans have an element of this in our voting system, it's not anywhere near as significant and also electoral districts are constantly being monitored on the population in it and if the district grows over a certain number actions will be taken. You see, as a law student I'm a bit in love with our constitution basic law and our law in general (over 50% of all written text that has to do with law is written in German by the way, we are obsessed with it), so before you submit a comment/rant, keep in mind that I'm not talking about politics here.

So much for the stuff that has been important to me lately, let's get WoW related, shall we?


WoW's five most ridiculous imbalances of all time

This list is probably very subjective and I'm probably missing tons. Feel free to make your own list in the comments. I'm an e-sports gramps, cut me some slack if I forgot the most obvious ones. Let's go.

5. Arcane Mages
Arcane Mages are the masters of one-shotting. While I feel that 3.0 Arcane Mages weren't totally out of control, they still deserve a spot in this list, considering they have been pretty retarded back in vanilla. Some of you might still remember Gegon's double use trinket AP pom pyro movie in WSG that pretty always one-hitted the flag carrier. Blizzard reacted by giving spellpower on use trinkets a shared cooldown. I remember respeccing AP Frost for WSG weekends and every time we'd go in the big battle, my leader always told me to grab the berserker buff and just kill the enemy flag carrier which was successful about 80% of the time. Fun times, but I have to admit that we were totally out of control which makes them my personal #5

4. Death Knights of S5
Do I really need to say more? I remember how people made up these fake dialogues with the head developer and his son who caught his dad cheating on his mom and blackmailed him into buffing his class, which was Shaman. Looking at DK back in S5, this story sounded way more probable. Waterwalk for the entire group, self heals, a ranged 1/4 life damaging ability that also puts a dot on the target (Icy Touch) plus two pets of which one had high utility while the other one was an unreal damage source and on top of that being able to completely shut down with an ability that they use in their normal damage rotation. Laugh out loud. I didn't even mention Deathgrip, AMS, Lichborne and IB. The reason this is not higher on the list, is because of the period the have been this overpowered. In season 6 I felt they weren't such a force anymore and because of that they are my number 4 on the list of the most ridiculous imbalances of all time.

3. Top Notch PvE rogues / Rogues before Dagger normalization
Some of you might not remember but if you had an early rank 14 rogue before the dagger normalization, this **** was absolutely retarded. They didn't even stealth anymore. Sadly I lost the video but I had footage of a full rank 14 rogue going 50-0 in AB just standing at the spawn doing one back stab and their enemy fell over. Every single one of them. It was a song of dying Orcs and Undeads. Maybe you remember the Shanker every Rogue ran around with because the dagger speed wasn't normalized yet. Now think of the grand marshal/high warlord weapon which had quite some more DPS and was even slower as far as I remember. While it never got as ridiculous again, Season 3 & 4 with 4/4 and glaive set were pretty close. Insane mobility, MS, control to a point where Threk's were on the edge of committing suicide and still being able to out damage anyone on the battlefield over two seasons. Granted, you had to PvE for it, but those who did were absolutely out of control making them my 3rd spot.

2. Macestun Warrior / Resto druids
This is kind of an odd one, but I feel they are weaved together as one of the most retarded **** ever. (and top 6 doesn't sound as good as top 5, heh). The reign of their synergy began in Season 2 when people found out that Paladins actually weren't even that good and on top of that the got in some pretty heavy nerfs with shorter duration for Blessing of Freedom, etc. The era of Resto Druids and Mace stun Warriors began and shouldn't stop until the very end of TBC. Be it WLD or WRD in the tournament scene, these comps were pretty much out of control for a long time. Not only were Warriors extremely overpowered, even more in the later seasons with the introduction of armor penetration, but also they have been the kings of RNG and quite some matches in the offline tournament scene were won by the infamous well timed mace stuns and also their ability to constantly sit on a target like Noktyn on a box of donuts (High five? I missed that phrase so much). This coupled with the inability to go oom, to be chain CC'd or die if played properly (sup Hafu), these two classes absolutely dominated the living **** out of WoW in TBC making them my #2 on the list of the most ridiculous imbalances in WoW.


1. Gimmick Paladins of Wrath till 3.2.2
As you might know I played Mage a couple of years until Season 5 when the retardation that were Paladin (gimmick) specs started and I rerolled as fast as Noktyn. It all started with retribution of 3.0 and even Fotm/(now Milf)-Hunter Kintt Arthur saw himself forced into creating one for himself to cheese it up in an offline tournament. (Side note: Rumours say, if you searched for "Kintt%" on the US Armory and rerolled the most recently created character, you were always surfing on top of the imbalance wave.) The front load damage that Retribution Paladins were able to ditch out in relation to the HP pool were absolutely out of control and that remained for quite a bit until the changes to judgements. Casino procs weren't as devastating anymore and people learned how to deal with Retribution Paladins, which moved them in a state of being "broken". While Ret lost some pace, the Ret/Holy spec was running at full speed, especially in the 2vs2 bracket. Un-oom'able and pretty good synergy with the kings of season 5 - Hunters, DK's and Feral Druids. On top of that they were the best healer to deal with the insane burst that were coming out of pretty much everybody. Blizzard took action and moved Infusion of Light higher in the tree, making them easier to kill. Paladins, as creative as they are, came up with one of the most skill-less specs of all time: Prot/Holy. Being able to survive a single DPS no matter what he does by simply pressing their flash of light button on top of Sacred Shield with 4t8 bonus while being countered in every possible cast, that was something not even druids were capable off in TBC. Add a relatively high damage instant silence and a 20 sec hammer on top of it, plus the inability to go oom while only being limited due to the 50% Healing reduction of Divine Plea and you got yourself a fine faceroll class. Surely some players play the class way better than others, but never was it so easy to get high ranked in 2vs2 and Blizzard gave in. "Paladins of Wrath, you are too creative, we need to remove their 2s bracket for good" Ghostcrawler said while swinging around the white flag and the #1 of my most ridiculous imbalances in WoW was crowned.

Honorable mentions: SL/SL Locks, Survival Hunters of S5, Double BM Hunters, Feral Druid of S5, Priests of End S5 beginning S6.


ArenaCast goes Gotfrag

They finally made the move and while other misinformed bloggers proclaimed death on ArenaCast, sly hosts JP McDaniel and Keith Trahan knew better as you can see here. One line caught my interest:

"Well, this means we’ll be able to broadcast matches (not sure about the frequency of this yet) on the MLG Tournament Realm."

With both hosts of ArenaCast also being a major part of MLG's WoW tournament coverage, this move not only made sense, but also might be a hint to the qualification tournament that Eurospective reported about earlier. Shoutcasting for their qualification tournament? According to Eurospective's sources they are ahead of the ESL here as currently it's not sure who or if the ESL qualifying tournament will be broadcasted at all as far as I am informed.
Now if both could learn from each other we would have two top notch tournaments, with fair conditions for every continent while at the same time being broad- & shoutcasted making it a nice way to cover the year with sweet WoW events.

Back to topic, I hope Kintt will be up for at least a couple of shows, since I always thought he provided great insight while at the same time being very enjoyable to listen to, even more when Serennia was on air as well.

No matter how it turns out, listening to ArenaCast while I'm sitting in the train to the city were I study always was great way to spend the time and I caught myself smirking quite a bit, while other passengers were looking at me like I was high or drunk. I'm pretty sure as long as both hosts are on board, the show will be fun to listen to, essentially covering everything you need to know especially about the American WoW scene in an hour per week.

Maybe I will put it on while jogging, which I of course still do if you were wondering if I'm still sticking to my word. Soon I will provide the ultimate evidence. Yiska out.

PS. If you were thinking about watching Jennifer's Body: DON'T! It's awful.