A legacy ends, vote for me!, 2s changes, impersonation

Anyone who has followed competitive WoW since the beginning...    knows the name Pandemic. They were the dominating force in early days of competition, taking home title after title, completely dominating WSVG, and all events held abroad.  There is one name that is synonymous with the Pandemic brand, and that name is Kintt.  He has been Pandemic's cornerstone player since the start of competitive arena play, moving from Priest, to Paladin, and more recently to Druid, and although they have not been as strong in recent times, no one can take away the massive amount of success and tournament wins that he has racked up over the years. 

That is why I was so surprised to hear that a player like Kintt with that kind of history would be moving over to eMg, running a comp which many people do not think will be sticking around with 3.2.  eMg burst onto the scene with a second place finish at MLG Columbus, with Flexxorz as their DK, and more recently finished 4th at the Warcraft Regional Finals in Cologne with Neiro on the DK who they had qualified with on the Tournament Realm.  There had been rumblings that Neiro was a weaker player, and caused their fall in placing at the Regional tournament, so many people felt that the most likely course of action was simply for Neiro to be put on the bench in favour of Flexx, and everything else to stay the same. 

However, from what I have been told BOTH Flexxorz and Neiro are refusing to play with Payce any longer because of the attitude he brings to LAN events, questioning and discouraging his teammates, blaming losses on them, and other actions detrimental to their team's success.  I personally had not really seen this, but then again I hadn't really been watching, and I suppose that their team knows best.  Anyway, that led to them looking for a new Paladin, and arriving at Kintt.

Although Kintt has not had success at LAN on his druid (they have yet to win a series as shadowcleave between Columbus and Cologne), he did quite well on his Priest running the Priest , DK, Rogue cleave in Columbus, and also did very well on his Paladin running Shadowcleave on the Tournament Realm.  With this change it gives eMg some much needed versatility for the upcoming patch, because with Kintt being able to play the three strongest healers at the moment, they will pretty much be able to run whatever they want, assuming Twixz, Neiro and Flexxorz can adapt to new classes or specs with the upcoming patch.

This however leaves the obvious question of what will happen to Pandemic. Will Beast, Ohnoes, and Shinanigans continue on with a new healer?  Will Pandemic choose to sponsor a new team?  Or will the best known name in competitive PvP choose to move away from the game that made Pandemic a huge name in esports, and pass on WoW altogether?  It will be interesting to see what happens.  I know Ohnoes at least is interested in continuing on, and would be a great addition to any team, as he was a very top mage for a long time before moving over to rogue where he has also found great success, so I would not be surprised to see him on another team sometime very soon.  Only time will tell though, and I wish them all the best of luck going forward - be it with a revamped team, or a new sponsor.



Vote for me!  Surprisingly enough, I have been nominated for the... North American Esports Player of the Year Award, which is pretty flattering, and unexpected.  I honestly don't expect to win, and wouldn't be surprised to see fellow EG member, Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbert, a CS prodigy take home the award, as he's EXTREMELY popular within the CS community.  It would however be pretty cool even if I finished decently up there in the voting, so if you're so inclined, head on over to HERE and cast your vote, every one is appreciated!

I don't really know anything about the awards, if you get a trip to go to some ceremony if you win, or if there are even prizes, but since it's not something that I was expecting anyway, I don't really care, and am just happy to have been recognized in some way.



I have mixed feelings on the upcoming 2v2 changes... I was of the mindset that the original changes went too far, and I am happy to see that Blizzard has come to some middle ground, although I would still like to see people receive titles from the bracket, as I really see no harm in that.  The way I look at it, Blizzard is in kind of an awkward position with the 2v2 bracket because if they reward it equally with the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets, then people will expect an equal amount of attention to be paid to balance within the bracket (think dk / paladin crying, then more recently priest / rogue). 

Obviously Blizzard is gearing competitive play to the 3v3 bracket, and balancing for 2v2 creates issues for 3v3, which is the root of the problem.  Even though Blizzard has stated they don't really want to balance around 2v2, as long as it is still a competitive bracket, on similar footing with the other ones, people will continue to expect balance regardless of what blue posts say - which puts them in a situation where people will be unhappy regardless of what they do.

However, the way I see it is that 2v2 should be a viable option. Finding one solid teammate can be hard enough, and finding 2, or 4 can be impossible for certain players, especially on lower population servers.  It is obviously much more of an issue for casual players who enjoy arena as well, when you only have a certain amount of hours you can play each week, it's tough to find multiple people who fit the same schedule.  Even for the more hardcore player, I see 2v2 as a great introduction to a new class, as well as a fun way to pass the time, and mess around with other players, because with the introduction of personal rating, leaving teams became much less desirable, making team hopping less of an option for the majority of players.  The progression I usually take when learning a new class is: dueling and battlegrounds -> 2v2 -> 3v3. The obvious reason being that gear is a big problem in larger brackets, and you're less likely to find two players who want to be burdened by an undergeared character than you are to find one.

However if you're not even able to get weapons from 2v2, the progression becomes much more difficult, especially for melee classes, as trying to find a 3v3 team when you're running around with a Titansteel Destroyer won't be easy, which either forces you into PvE to get a better weapon, or to struggle to the weapon ratings with garbage gear.  Even though imbalance plagues 2v2, and has always done so, I enjoy playing in the bracket from time to time, with friends, to pass the time, or just to mess around.  If you go into the bracket with the understanding of what it is, it can be quite fun. Its slower pace can be pretty relaxing, and a good way to have some fun without stressing about how you're doing, or having to deal with two melee with insane PvE gear and t2 furious weapons cleaving you.

Recently I started playing some two's with Efy, a druid in Deus Vox (the guild I transferred to not long ago) to pass some time, and mess around with Destruction in 2s.  I joined the team when it was about 2200, and honestly I wasn't expecting it to go very well, but we were able to get up to ~2650 within a week quite quickly by beating mostly Druid + Melee teams, as between the warlock and the druid, you can really lock down one target quite hard, and basically just keep setting up bursts on one or the other until you get a long enough CC chain, or enough crits for a kill.  It's a pretty fun comp, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to play some Destruction in 2s, but obviously like any 2s comp it's not without its weaknesses. 

The biggest problem by far (which we ran into the second week), is Priest teams. After having ~80% win to 2650 we went 12-14 or something like that down to ~2450 vs almost exclusively Priest / Rogue teams where the priest really has to only stay more than 20 yards away (fear range), and spam dispel on the rogue for a guaranteed win.  As frustrating as it can be if you let it get to you, it's what I came into the bracket expecting, so it really didn't bug me, as I'm sure we can work our way back up throughout the rest of the season.

The point is, 2s really can be a lot of fun if you go into it with the right mindset: expect to lose to certain comps, and just look to have some fun. Basically, don't take it too seriously.  The upside is that it can really be rewarding when you're able to figure out a way to beat the counter comps, or even if you can win once then promptly log over to their server to **** talk them about how badly they got outplayed by a 20k destruction burst.



For whatever reason, people are still impersonating me... quite frequently, so if you see someone with my name and tag on IRC, X-Fire, MSN, Vent or even posting as me on Arena Junkies and other community websites, take it with a grain of salt, as there's a 99% chance it's not me.  I log into IRC a few times a year, don't use X-Fire, and my vent / MSN accounts aren't named anything like EGAZAEL, so I wouldn't be too quick to trust anyone claiming to be me unless you're talking to me on Laughing Skull, or PMing me on EG's website or here on Gameriot.  I don't really know why they're doing it, but it seems to be somewhat of an obsession as I get multiple messages every day about it now, from things ranging to me creating a European EG team, offering random people sponsorships, playing with people on servers I don't play on, getting people to play with them by posing as me, even giving an interview as me.

Anyway, just a heads up, don't trust anyone saying they're me!



The past weekend in Cologne was a lot of fun... meeting and hanging out with all the new and old faces is definitely cool.  It obviously sucked to come one round away from qualifying for Blizzcon and not making it, but I was happy with how we played, so I came away not really minding, especially since TSG was very gracious in victory, and SK US is obviously extremely deserving with the way they have been playing.

I tried to make the day in the life of video, but really didn't end up wanting to carry the camera around everywhere to record enough stuff to make it interesting, so I might end up just posting a random clip or two, or something along those lines as it's honestly not worth releasing as a full video since it will just be bad.  Besides that, our hotel was right by the event which was convenient, and the event itself was really well setup, and quite a lot of fun. Blizzard's tournaments are really how Esports should be run, and I hope that they can hold them more frequently in the future.  The last night there 2GD, who lives in Cologne, rounded up a few of his friends and showed a few of us the downtown, some good bars, good food and a lot of fun, so a big thanks to him for an awesome final night.

The downside to that last night was that I ended up getting about an hour and a half of sleep before what turned out to be a 30 hour trip home due to delays, and cancellations with my flights. So I ended up sleeping about 24 of the first 28 hours I was home.  Anyway, I think I will still end up going to Blizzcon because the event is always a ton of fun. There are a huge amount of awesome nerd parties, and it's pretty cool meeting a ton of people who you have known online over the years, so it's definitely worth the trip to anyone who can make it.

That's it for this week... until next time.