Ask World of Ming

Still can't get over how SK-gaming defeated Ensidia 3-1 in RMP mirror, and Ensidia could not beat Emazing's PHD with three attempts (two of them after they saw SK's strategy), while SK held a winning record against Emazing in all three meetings.  WOW is a lot deeper than people give it credit for, and it is amazing how big the gap is even at the very top of the food chain.  A lot of it has nothing to do with individual talents, but rather how good Realz is as a coach.

Anyway, we can talk about this tournament all night but after live blogging almost 40+ games in 48 hours, even the staff of WOM need some rest.  Besides, we won't be able to get the juicy details until we talk to some of those players from the tournament, after they come home.  So expect a post tournament wrap on Monday from the hokage, and I am sure Anna will talk to Hydra for his perspective as well.

Tonight I want to try the first ever "Ask World Of Ming" session, and I will probably run it every time we do a live blog to get our writers some rest (and in Serennia-sama's case, some Aion playing time). 

Over the next 24 hours, you can ask any question you like, personal or professional, to any of World of Ming's bloggers.  Serennia-sama, Anna-chan, Bodi-kun, and the Hokage himself will try to answer as many questions as possible in comments.  The best questions and answers will be updated on this blog.

This is not a real time Q&A as I will probably go to bed myself in a few minutes, as I am completely exhausted.  Anna is also on a totally different time zone so she may not be able to get to those until later.  But we will try to get to as many questions as possible.  Bodi said he will try to use a video blog to answer some of those questions, so go for it! 

Extra spicy questions, I will leave them to our writer's discretion.  They have the choice of ignoring questions they find offensive or inappropriate.

Top 5 Questions & Answers:

Ming, what are your long term WOM plans?  Do you hope to retire from the game/writing some day and have other writers carry your flagship as you take a manager sort of role? - Slapnuts

I don't think you can be successful at something without actually enjoying it, and I do enjoy running WOM on days like today.  For now I still have enough time to enjoy the game and be an active writer, I try to take it a day at a time. - Ming

After todays games where do you think the lolcleave teams stand up against the classic RMP builds. People have *****ed cried pulled hair yet the most OP team didnt come on top. Is it just they are easy to play and dominate the lower rated matches? - Jublie

Almost everyone that ran cleave was running it as a secondary setup except emg and pandemic. pandemic's cleave shouldn't really lose to rmp in a series so no excuses there, and emg's definitely shouldn't.  emg was simply trying to fix something that wasn't broken (instead of just analyzing their strategy) in the last series when going frost and it didnt work out at all. - Serennia

Serennia What do you think of the play of Flex during the tournament and do you believe the loss in the final round was his fault entirely? - MissnL1nk

I think he did what a DK is needed to do for the most part in that comp in most of the series leading up to the end. However, the final series was a huge mistake to go frost. Reasons why I think this:

-Chains of Ice overrides chilblains, therefore if he uses CoI to stop the rogue, and the rogue is dispelled, the rogue has no snare at all anymore. If he uses Icy Touch to apply chilblains, its only a 50% snare on a rogue thats sprinting most the game and has crippling on his target that is being spam dispelled if they ever get freedom.
-Frost is weak without the Ulduar sigil
-PvE gear does not make that much of a difference for DK's because t7 and deadly gear have identical strength values on them at same item levels and str is the most important stat. PvE gear simply adds some PvE stats such as haste in exchange for losing the resilience and stamina from deadly gear.
-When every game will end in under 60 seconds or so, Hungering Cold does absolutely nothing because it will be the only thing that the other team needs to trinket. HC would only help if the game actually went long enough for the second HC to come up, but they never did.
-Losing Gargoyle and ghoul stun for that comp really loses a ton of the pressure. - Serennia

Anna:  What was the reason for your move from competitive CS play to WoW?  Do you still play CS or any other games at a competitive level and will you be attending any other events in the future?  (also, weren't you guys on some bad Mtv show a while back?) - Terarchy

Well, I've been playing competitive CS since the first female tournament. Since it's only one really big event/year for the girls, its not really worth it.

Females can't compete with guys in CS, and it has always been that way.  A lot of CS friends started to play WoW, and I tried it out as well, and here I am.  I don't have time for playing on a top level again, not right now, with uni and stuff.

I will admin the WoW tour at Dreamhack and will also admin at the Regionals in the end of June in Germany.  I will probably go to BlizzCon as well, but since GamesCon is att the same dates I haven't really decided yet.

About the MTW show, yes. It was my former team Les Seules who had a show called PlayUS. I wasn't in there though since I was already retired ;D  - Anna

Dear Serennia, If you could turn back time, would you have let realz be the team leader on your SK PHD team? - Amazingplayer

Realz approached me about that PHD. Most people forget that he wouldn't have been able to attend ESL Germany without us because Scoti and Toez weren't playing with him anymore (competitively at least). He even tried to play with Brayzee and his paladin first but said he wasn't impressed with them, etc. We talked about what comps we could make work and came to the consensus that PHD would be best because Realz personally felt that he could play a hunter at a top level. We scouted out some paladins and when Sck contacted me about it, we ran with it. No one was really the "team leader" or anything like you think making all the calls. The extent of what I lead on the team was calling targets for the most part in games. We only ran PHD at Germany. Things didn't work out with PHD, Realz goes back to priest after hunters go to **** (not blaming him, just saying), and he gets a good RMP together. That's basically how it went down. - Serennia

Too many great questions and answers I didn't get to pick from!  Read the comments for more!  The first ever Ask WOM was definitely a success, I will be running this again in the future, most likely after every live blog.