Hey guys, and welcome back to Lacanoz day!
I’d like to begin today’s blog by adding my apologies to those of Yiska’s over the whole Dreamhack incident. However, I must stress that all information in my blog was speculation based upon facts, and that the Eurospective team did spend time investigating before I stated anything.

Your Lacanoz Day

This is not just “Lacanoz day”, this is your “Lacanoz day” [tm]
And therefore, I genuinely want to do whatever I can to make my blogs more enjoyable for YOU to read, as recently my like count seems to have fallen.
Did you prefer my blogs when they were on specific issues, more general play, or even comp guides? Perhaps you’d prefer me to analyse patch notes more?
Well, I’m asking you, the readers, to tell me what you want from me, and how I can bring back the likes.

Moonkin Buffs?

Balance in Arenas

I'm going to talk mostly about Arenas here, because I think that's where most of you are coming from. BG balance is a surprisingly different beast, and the one on one "ganked in Stranglethorn" or duel situation is just a lot less important.

The way I approach Balance balance (rimshot) in Arena is in terms of comps. If I'm putting together a 3-player team, why do I want the Balance druid? You can joke about how you're a free kill or whatever, but I honestly don't really think that's the issue. Druids have CC and survival tools and a great debuff and I don't think it's just as simple as buffing those (unless they were silly OP like Stunfall was).

I think the issue is comps. What does a Balance druid bring to the table? Why have one instead of just getting e.g. a mage, hunter or shaman? Yeah the obvious answer is to give everyone some form of Mortal Strike. We don't think that's the only answer though. Even if you assume MS is mandatory, there are enough classes that have it now that you should be able to bring MS and a healer and have room for a Boomkin as your third. That won't mean within the matrix of classes that every possible class combo makes sense, but it should mean that there are some comps that make sense.

So what do Balance druids need before they look super attractive for a 3-player team? One answer is that they aren't bringing enough unique utility that druids themselves don't bring. Cyclone is awesome, but Resto druids and especially Feral druids have it. Another answer is that they probably need a little more on-demand burst. I'll argue with anyone who thinks Balance druids don't bring a ton of damage when they are left unmolested. However, they don't always have that on-demand big hit to finish someone off when they're low.

TL:DR?
Basically, he thinks moonkin need something to deal with being sat on, a finisher, and perhaps a more effective way to use CC. At the current point in time, why bring a moonkin when you can have a mage? The mage brings better kiting, better control and as good if not better burst. You also get counterspell rather than typhoon.

My suggestions:

1: Druids need a spell comparative to Lava Burst that ISN’T on a 3second cast time. The only way to get a fast-cast Starfire is using the 4set bonus (which I’ll come onto later). I’d suggest moving that into a talent that means whenever whenever a DoT expires, your starfire cast time is reduced.

2: Therefore we need a new 4-set bonus. Possibly buff kiting by making it reduce the cooldown of Nature’s Grasp to as little as 10 seconds? To be honest, it’s not like Nature’s Grasp is particularly good compared to an Elemental Shaman’s earthbind totem roots effect at the moment.

3: I would also advise a buff to Owlkin Frenzy. Its a good mechanic, but the returns are too low to compare to a mage's mana gems, for example.

4: Finally, I'd advocate doing something like making it possible to "consume" your nature's grace buff for an instantcast cyclone.

In my opinion, these changes would go a long way towards helping moonkin viability in arena, although they would remain the only caster without a silence/interrupt ability.

Lacanoz's new comp - WMD!

Not too long ago, I blogged about running RMD and made some rather preposterous claims about the comp's viability. However, it seems from my testing so far that WMD doesn't suffer as much from the problems. It could just be that the players I'm playing with are better, and have top notch PvE gear as well, but the comp seems kinda strong.

However, what I've noticed is that the main weakness of the comp seems to be that it only has a mediocre game against dualdispeller teams and cleave teams with a dispeller.

That said, it seems to be reasonably viable - has a good enough match against RMP and mancleave, and reasonable against castercleave. With the filming of my PvP movie coming soon, it will likely be as WMD as its an enjoyable comp to play and watch.

Decision-making, what to do when everything is wrong?

*Lacanos is in Deep Freeze, has all his CDs available at 10k health. His warrior is nova'd just between the two enemy mages. He has three options:
1) Trinket, lifeblood, aura mastery and divine favor a holy shock. This brings him up to 18k with SS up but means eating the incoming double shatter combo. His warrior may be fast enough using intimidating shout to interrupt this though.
2) Trinket, lifeblood, hand of freedom. There's no LoS near, but it prevents being shattered. He can see that one mage has fingers of frost up. Again, there is the possibility of an intimidating shout.
3) Just bubble and not have another out later.

Which do you think?
In retrospect decision 3 seems obvious. I took decision 1 and died. However, I stand by that decision as what seemed right at the time.
This brings me onto: does playing it safe win?

At lower levels of arena, sure. You just need to do enough. But against a competent team that'll put you in that situation (or possibly a worse one) multiple times, do you risk being burst hard and play option 1? Or do you go with option 3 and guarantee survival, temporarily at least.

Who is the Best Warlock in the World?

There's been a lot of controversy around Inflame; sorry, Divine Inflame's behaviour recently. He's calling out the bads as he sees them, and as a result is getting a lot of stick. No-one wants to be told that their idol is crap.

In a recent interview, when asked this exact question, Orangemarmalade had this answer:
"Inflame, ofcourse! Hehe."

So there we have it. From the mouth of the Marmalade himself, Inflame is officially the best warlock in the world.

More seriously though, for the whole interview, click here.

That's it for today guys, thanks for reading and remember, enter Yiska's competition!