Ensidia is the real World First, XFX.Kate and coL.Sodah Video Blog, Shadow Priests and Prot Paladins Own, ESL Taipei: BB Advances, The Trance You've Been Waiting For

I posted a schedule for my blogs on "Best-in-Class", but I decided against posting them this week to mix up the content after Yog had posted his "Most Impressive" list. Your comments and feedback matter, and we'll be trying to change things up as much as possible. Expect those articles to come out in the near future.


Ensidia is still the real World First

Touching on the most popular news in the community, everyone that reads MMO-Champion has been informed that Ensidia received a 3-day ban for using Saronite Bombs on their World-First Arthas Kill. Kungen and crew should stop whining about a 3-day ban, at least their whole guild didn't get perma-banned like Overrated during AQ40 (Exploiting a wall to go straight to C'thun). You got slapped on the wrist for a World First, good for you. Blizzard was lenient due to your status and because your raid does the job of an in-house raid team they could be paying for. Regardless, I applaud Naihiko for his craftiness. If it was me.. I would have done the same thing.

Congratulations on your World First, Ensidia.


World of Ming Special Feature: XFX.Kate and coL.Sodah Video





Support Kate again by becoming a fan of XFX Girl on Facebook, and posting a comment for Kate! The contest ends February 8th, take a minute and help the WoW girl out!


Blizzard announces more PvP healing nerfs

Blizzard announced that absorb-shields and absorb effects are now effected by the 10% healing reduction aura in battlegrounds and arenas. I was just talking with Crysalid last night about how shields were overlooked.. That was quick, Blizzard. They're really paying attention to the state of arena right now.. I like it. Here's the official blue statement:

After further observations of the recent changes made to resilience and healing in PvP, we have made an additional change via an in-game fix so that the PvP healing debuff in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp now also lowers the effectiveness of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield by 10%. The majority of other strong shields or damage absorption mechanics are already affected by the healing change, so we feel this new adjustment is an appropriate step in balancing the effects of resilience versus healing. The ultimate goal is to find a better median between PvP encounters feeling too quick from burst damage, or too long from heals, shields, and absorption effects. We will continue to monitor the way these changes play out and let you know if we feel any further changes are needed. As always, feedback based on your PvP experience with these new changes is welcome. Source

Even with the nerfs to healing, Double Healer / Warrior seems to be the strongest 3s comp at the moment. I don't understand these teams that play 8 min games to get rating, though it's a good setup.. How are you having fun? I've played double healer teams in the past, playing 4 hours and going up 100 rating is not what I call a productive arena session. If you're aiming for points and PR, this is not a time efficient way to level a charter. Grow a sack and play something with some skill.

Shadow Priests and DoTs are amazing

After spending the first 2 days of the new patch killing dragons and idling in the lag-cesspool that is called Blackrock, I finally got to arena binge for 12 hours. I experimented in 5s with some 4DPS and RMPLS, we ran into Flexx/Venruki/Toes/Sodah and some random warrior running 2345(Warrior/Paladin/Priest/Shaman/Mage) with an enhance shaman. Their comp completely destroys RMPLS and they finished their first day of 5s going 33-3(playing multiple top calibur teams in the 2500+ range). Then, Minor and Reckful asked me to play some 3s with them and we ended up farming my team up to 2300 in a couple hours running UA Lock/Rogue/Disc Priest.

I also experimented with some Shadow Priest comps running Rogue/Spriest/Rsham and Hunter/Spriest/Rsham. DoTs seem very strong right now compared to direct damage casters. If I get my dots rolling on a target with Bloodlust/Hyper-speed Accelerators, I can pretty much solo someone with 1 interrupt on the healer.

After being raped as RMPLS last night in 5s, we reformed and made a 4DPS-Shadow Priest team. With my PVE gear, things became a whole lot more fun running this comp. 4DPS is such a hit-or-miss type of team. If your team isn't on point from the beginning, falling behind on damage pressure will result in you probably losing.  But, leaving the shadow priest alone is not a good idea; some teams can just get completely owned. I'm going to keep running with this team for awhile to see how we do versus different setups, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.


Prot/Ret Paladins = The New Lameness?

One thing that really stood out to me was the damage that Prot/Ret paladins are doing right now. While I was playing disc priest with Reckful/Minor, we ran into a DK/Double Paladin team. The prot/ret paladin sat on me with silences and forced me to blow cooldowns by himself while the dk was controlled by Reckful, eventually we swapped and killed the Holy Paladin.. But the Ret/Prot paladin killed me by himself in that swap. You can call me a scrub for being solo'd by this Ret/Prot Paladin(I've gotten gladiator every season since S1 as Disc/Holy), but his damage seemed way out of control. The paladin that I fought changed his gear on his armory, but he was wearing PVE gear with 4pc T10 Ret Set(the 4pc gives 10% damage to Seals/Judgements).

A paladin named Burnjob in Vicious Cycle is running the same spec with favorable results. He runs running Double Healer / ProtRet Paladin(Talk about lame...), which has to be the most annoying comp to ever play against.

Can't we just eliminate the Protection trees from arena? When in the history of MMOs has carrying a shield = big damage? This is getting out of hand.

ESL Taipai: Button Bashers Advance to Playoffs

While writing this blog, I just realized that ESL Taipei is in action right now at www.esl-world.net

Button Bashers has 3-0'd their first opponent in the first round and mousesports' new team dropped to an unsponsored non-korean team. Also, the announcers noted that Button Bashers' used a "unique technique" of killing the opposing team's mage, which caught everyone off-guard in the unusual RMP mirror strategy. What strategy did Reckful/Sodah/Venruki use to 4-0 BB at the MLG grand finals?

Other than that, ESL's website does not feature any details on the matches or what setups the teams play. For being a world tournament circuit, you'd think their coverage of their own tournament would be a selling point(Ala MLG?).  Can't ESL just hire one guy to update their english site so the WoW eSports fans can receive the details.. Sigh.

Coverage of ESL Taipei on ESL TV: http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

This weekend, Bodi will be covering ESL Taipei so stay tuned for that.


Finally, this is what you've all been waiting for

Since the start of TBC, I have used the alias "Trance" because of my obsession with the electronica music. I started listening to techno during middle school and have graduated into almost every form of electronic dance genre(House, DnB, Dub Step, Progressive House, and Progressive Trance are my favorites at the moment). I'd like to thank Mek of Ensidia for this idea, here are a few favorites of mine that I want someone to use in a PvP video someday:



Purple Haze- Bliksem


This one is a pretty popular in the progressive trance community and many consider it the song of the year. It has a dark melodic beat.. Pretty good to arena with.


Dub Fx - Love Someone


This dude is super talented and Mek posted him in his recent blog, the first minute of the video he shows you how he makes his beats, check him out.


Deadmau5 - The 16th Hour


This is the newest song from my favorite artist in the world, Deadmau5.


Coldplay - Talk(Junkie XL Remix


Avb featured this song on ASOT a couple years ago but not many people know about it, it's a remix of an old coldplay song. Slow beat, but it's one of those songs that's good to grind/farm to(About 4:10 or 5:30 is when it gets good).



This week, I experimented with posting my PVE and PVP streams on WOM.. I was going to keep them up, our 10man raid had Sindragosa with 15 attempts left and the strategy completely figured out. But, Toes and Flexx had to leave to practice for ESL.  And, my arena session with Ming/Bodi went sour because of the horrible lag on Blackrock. I'm not sure if I'll do that again, we're looking into making another section for pro streams on WOM.

I'm sorry to those who were looking forward to my Best-in-Class blogs, which will be more comprehensive than Yog's blogs. Two e-peen lists in a week would look pretty lame on WoM(I'm sure plenty of you could agree). I hope you enjoyed this blog and any feedback will be appreciated!