Week 7: There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going

Matches: 86 ( W 50 - L 36 )

A few seasons ago...

Ever since I started playing a Warlock (I have played a Warrior, Rogue and Priestess as well) I have preferred the Affliction tree. From leveling builds, battlegrounds and now arena-- I've always loved dotting stuff up and just running around and away from people while laughing evilly. There isn't anything more pleasing, to me, as an affliction warlock than to have a fight with someone who manages to kill you and yet you stick around in your corpse waiting for those precious dot ticks to go through just to have your opponent fall to the ground dead as well, bliss! 

When WOTLK started I used an Affliction/Demonology spec to grind and level up fast then quickly changed into Affliction/Ruin for my early PvE undertakings. When Ulduar rolled out Affliction lost its power to a myriad of nerfs, "simplifications" as some call it and encounter design philosophy; it was then when I had to switch in favor of Destruction to earn my spot in our raid group. I was still PvPing, and to some extent, attempting to do arena as Affliction; this was Season 6, I had a handful of resilience and a good PvE weapon but I also had a low chance of winning based upon the popularity of compositions that would literally blow me up in seconds combined with my lack of general arena-game experience. 

It is sufficient to say that I didn't have the best of times learning the arena game when players would walk up to me and kill me in 2 shots; I was ready to give up, clearly this game was not for someone who wanted to learn, MMR or not. Then something magical happened the Tournament Realm opened and with it the offer of a Murloc in-game pet for the price of a meager 200 matches played, this was absolutely perfect; I was given the chance to play arena with any kind of gear combination with an attainable reward not dependant on skill level-- just dedication and of that I had plenty. 

During the Tournament Realm span I had a great time, I however didn't have the luxury of having a real composition-- running Warrior, Warlock and Rogue-- but something key was slowly changing, I started having fun again. Even when getting 2 shot I found myself wondering what I had done wrong at the time (Not rerolling a DK being my first thought naturally) and also counting down the matches I had left to do to get my pet-- so in essence that was a win-win situation for me. 

After my TR matches I gave arena in my server a try again and I must deeply thank my friends Nevada and Vegaz who had infinite patience and put up with my terrible play, decisions, positioning, everything (<3 you guys lots!). I also tormented Verty and Sargaz who carried me through what must have been painful 2s experiences and let me slowly earn up points beyond the 1700s-1800s ratings I usually stumbled around in. 

MLG and Blizzcon tournament streams 

This was the best thing that could have happened to aspiring arena players around the world, live tournament streaming of the top arena players. I remember my friends chatting on vent about watching this stream because a former guildie, Pookz, was playing and doing terrific along with his teammates. I loaded up the site and to my fortune I was delighted with an array of amazing fights and top-notch performances. Watching these guys play was very entertaining, I particularly remember looking forward to seeing Fnatic and their warlock Yog play as affliction. It was mind blowing to see someone do so amazingly well even against the toughest of matchups. 

Watching the fights through the perspective of a class pro is something very empowering, this type of vicarious exposure provides us with great motivation and inspiration. It was then that I decided that I wanted to learn properly and really set a goal for the next arena season. I was chatting with Verty on MSN when I said something along the lines of: "I want to reach 2200 rating and get shoulders this next season!" a big goal but something I felt I could strongly attempt to reach. To which Verty replied: "You should just get Glad". The conversation went back and forth for a while mostly about me telling him he was crazy and him telling me that it could be done. 

 This week's games or TL;DR 

Now I should really get to this week's games, we played a ton, 86 games in one day. So why the whole trip down memory lane? I'm back now playing as an Affliction lock and did most of this week as such. Playing as Affliction is way more fun than Destruction but it also much more demanding. As destruction I had a simple strategy: blow someone up real fast; hardly innovative but extremely effective. 

As affliction I had to throw that out of the window and make myself comfortable to the idea of having longer fights full of action and control. I must admit that coming back to this spec was and still is something difficult, the learning curve and skill cap is more than Destruction and certainly more in the MMR we currently reside in. We did allright in the first 30 fights or so but shortly after that, as fights got longer, I started doing poorly; the longer a fight goes the more exposed I am to make mistakes, I am sure that with practice I will improve on this but it is something to think about. 

Out of those things the one that I'd like to learn more of is proper Trinket management, it would be a great article for a blog on this site if we had a knowledgeable player (a pro would be even more lovely!) who could write about proper trinket usage. Or in the worst case scenario I could try to collect information around and interview a few of them in hopes of producing a good article for everyone of us. Would this be something you guys would be interested in? Let me know in the comments! 

One more bit before I go, I have a quote I wanted to share with you and someone in particular who I presume will know who it is. 

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." from Eleanor Roosevelt. 

So hang in there and do your best!

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