Daddy Is A BG9 Gladiator, 2v2/5v5 Woes, Is 2012 Around The Corner?

Before I joined BG9, I could barely break .500 and 2200 as RMP.  Last week, we finished 2709 and ranked 9th in the BG, my best rating ever and best rank since season 1, all in the most active BG in the world.  I will probably be one of the few, if not the only fathers to obtain gladiator assuming this rating is enough for title at season end. 

What changed?  Did I suddenly found a fountain of youth?  I can say with confidence that you can probably find literally, 100+ rogues in BG9 who can play at my current level or better.  My playing time is extremely limited and my timing/reaction are nowhere peak level.  My sharingan is losing its light. 

The difference is I have Chumpjohn on my team, someone with not one but THREE characters above 2600 (and once his rogue gets another 100 points, it will be THREE characters above 2700).  And what is even scarier is his three characters are melee/caster/healer.  It is one thing to play multiple DPS classes or multiple healer classes, but to be able to play classes of such amazingly different roles on such a crappy laptop, he is probably one of, if not the best multi-class players today. 

The difference is I have Zunniyaki on my team, who hit 2700 plus with Chumpjohn in 2v2 and calls our plays/strats in 3v3.  A vocal leader and probably one of the most underrated players in BG9.  I really feel with the right teammates he would be a tournament level priest.  Leadership is THE most important ingredient of any top arena team.  It doesn't matter how talented your team is, without strong leadership you will never win anything. 

And Zunniyaki called plays around my style of play and found ways to work around my weaknesses.  You will never have a team that beats the other team from 1-3, you have to manage your strength and weakness and that is exactly what he did.  My cooldown management and defensive plays are simply not up to the standard of top 10 BG9 rogues.  However my rush down is still competitive so when we played in say RMP mirror, we always went on the priest instead of rogue on rogue.  Against anything with a shaman we went on the shaman and so forth. 

Like Michael Finley who went from Superstar to role player with San Antonio Spurs and won a championship, I understand my role perfectly on this team and do exactly what I am told.  We have seen many big name players try to make a comeback and fail miserably in all kind of sports.  The sooner you realize your limitations, drop your ego and accept your new role, the better it is for your team.  You no longer have the explosiveness to drive to the basket, so step back and make some open 3's!



Toward the last 100 points or so of the push, I actually did quite a bit of duels on PTR and it really improved my reaction/timing.  When you have other people on your team covering for your mistakes, you can get away with a lot of things.  Dueling as shadow dance really restored my passion for the rogue class, it is truly the way our class should be played.

2v2/5v5 Woes

With gladiator in 3v3 (hopefully) locked up I will be playing shadow dance next patch in 2v2/5v5 for fun.  I sincerely hope waylay will apply to hemo hits as well so we can do wound/deadly to get some very needed dispel protection, backstab as your only snare is too unreliable even at 100% proc chance.  I also hope they will make hemo debuff scalable with gear and give shadow dance a little bit of anti-CC properties.       

Have to say my respect for any top shadow priest / rogue 2v2 team went up a big notch after playing the comp with fellow WOM writer Trance.  We were hovering at .500 and it was against 2000-2100 MMR teams!  The margin of error feels paper thin as we have no spammable CCs, fear/blind share DR and we both go down very quickly.

5v5 started with a bang as we copied the Reckful comp of double UA warlock and restoration shaman.  Reckful-kun himself got on his priest and led us graciously when we could not find a a paladin.  We were undefeated first 10 games before we started to lose to everyone.  While he is probably a little rusty on priest, Reckful's dispels are insanely fast and he is probably the only elite player I have played with who always look for faults in his own play, even if it had very little to do with the outcome.  He is probably the most athletically gifted player I have played with in term of raw physical speed, combine that with an amazing attitude, it is easy to see why BG9's best talents all love to play with him.  When we stopped after a bad streak, he actually apologized for his "poor play", even if it was clear that our offense did not dish out the same damage pressure as err, Reckful/Azael/Snutz playing this comp the way it should be played.  In theory you are just spreading DOTs and dishing out pressure while the rogue locks someone down, in practice it is not so easy to handle the burst from 4DPS teams zerging any one guy from your team.  Hopefully we will be able to try it with a paladin soon.

We tried a little RMPLS next day.  Everyone on the team has at least one 2300+ team yet we went 0 and 7 . . . For some reason our MMR was 2500 when none of us played 5v5 for a while . . . Our offense could not dip anyone low and we were constantly pressured regardless of the teams we are up against.  Half the time the team had no clue what it is supposed to do and we really need someone who can coach . . .

Is 2012 Around The Corner?

http://www.december212012.com/ is now a top 50K Alexa site and they are picking up a lot of momentum.  It seems like every other day, there is an earthquake somewhere and it is chilling how much of this feels like the movie itself.  How ironic would it be if the movie turned out to be real?  Or perhaps they know something we don't?  Blizzard's next expansion is also Cataclysm, coincidence or fate?

Chile, Taiwan, Haiti, Turkey and Japan all have had 6-plus earthquakes in the last week. Whatever is going on, it's now clear to many that the world is experiencing large earthquakes at a greater rate. 

Anyone packing the bags for mountain top yet?  Supposedly it is one of the best hopes of survival if it does go down.  Those of you in CA, I pray for you.  Even those of us in New York don't feel safe as our infrastructure won't be able to handle something as mild as a 6.0. 

As a father, I just hope my daughter gets a spot on the boat when the time comes.  She is 97% in height/weight and should be very intelligent as well with our genetics.  You need quality genes to reproduce with, she is got it!  It may sound like a cruel joke right now, but for some reason that movie really disturbed Estel when she watched it, and I don't blame her with all the quakes going on . . .

P.S. Is it me or is malware getting out of control?

And a lot more sophisticated too.  Estel's computer got hit by a Google redirect one that also blocked her Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware access.  I had to go as far as using Combofix to kill the rootkit thing, and I had to use my computer to look for tips until I finally found Combofix to fix it.  Anyone have any recommendations?  My computer seems to have a redirect too although it seems to redirect my google search's once every 10 minutes or so, Estel's was doing it 4 out of 5 searches.  There is no way average mom/pop users will be able to deal with this.