Playing 3v3 with my mother, oops I meant Serennia

Playing an undead female rogue on PTR tournament server was actually the first time I have ever played a horde character. Serennia's tauren female druid had a certain charm to her that I couldn't really relate to in alliance characters. Her death sound followed by a four-letter word on vent from an angry whitie cracked me up every time I heard it, except I couldn't really laugh knowing the type of discussions we would be having following every Serennia death.

The training camp started out with me and Qazdia-senpai trying to gear up our characters but as anyone who attempted it would know, with hundreds of players trying to buy items at same time, it was a process that took many hours. During this entire time like Inactive-chan's mother who would kindly prepare gourmet food for her children, Serennia was helping us picking up gems and enchants even after he already decked out his own druid. Like a spoiled child I got frustrated with the lag and went to a one-hour dinner break, and when I came back there she was, still mashing right clicks on the vendors and the cow traded me a full bag of gems and enchants! Serennia is without a doubt the best possible arena captain you can have as long as you don't lose games. He really takes care of you with meticulous attention to details.

And if you lose, expect to get the same treatment. Serennia can heal the entire team, CCs their warrior all game, DPS when needed, AND still remembers exactly how many stacks of wound poison I had on when I popped cloak of shadows. And I thought my mother was a control freak before I went Itachi mode. Most rogues fight with an aura of ninja spirit. Yet playing with Qazdia-senpai I can't sense any fighting spirit at all. The guy is so mellow that I thought I was listening to Kabuto talking to Orochimaru when he responded to Serennia's post-game questionnaires.

Ever since the TBC PTR dueling video I have been playing hardcore rushdown style. My CD usage has always been very aggressive and I haven't touched a non-prep arena spec since mid-season 2 when I switched to AR/prep weeks before 2.3 went live. Playing a human rogue I also tend to use cloak of shadows to block things like psychic scream and of course vanish on all sort of incoming spells. With the shadowstep spec every 30 seconds you get an opportunity to anticipate the opponent's next move and immune it. And that is when I am at my best, driving to the basket and applying maximum pressure. When I joined the team and saw the seal fate AR spec Serennia asked me to play it felt like going from 5th Avenue Manhattan to Inactive-chan's hometown. I am sure I will do well with warglaives and T6 trinket but he said "you are not there to do damage" to one of the definitive rushdown rogues in the game. The alternative he gave me was even worse (0/27/34, ouch, I will take SF AR instead thank you very much) and he insisted that improved gouge, blade twisting and mace stuns are all needed for peeling. I argued that none of these are on-demand peeling options but since we are playing Serennia basketball I had no problem accepting the blue collar defender role that he gave me so off we went.

Contrary to my initial impression that a team with two rogues should be playing Phoenix Suns run-and-gun, Serennia's offense revolves half-court isolation plays. I am usually on someone with as little mobility as my spec (warlock, priest) and Qazdia-senpai will be the more mobile targets (druid, mage). And that opens up Serennia to play his CC game and even DPS away depend on the match-up. On RMP the combat rogue is on their rogue, the shadowstep rogue on their mage and it felt extremely strong, to the point I almost felt RMP can't really do anything against this strategy since it frees up the druid to do whatever he pleases and a 34/0/27 druid can do a LOT if left open. Serennia said they haven't lost to a RMP in a month and I am not surprised. On warrior/druid/lock or warrior/druid/priest, extremely nasty match-ups for RMP, again I am on the lock or priest, while shadowstep rogue will be on the druid. While the shadowstep rogue can not drop a restoration druid all by himself, he is just there to harass, take away the druid's CCs, and even force the druid to spend valuable GCDs on himself while the combat rogue and druid play rogue/druid with a very favorable mismatch. Against warrior/shaman/paladin, again each rogue will be on one healer, while the druid cyclones the warrior and assist DPS as well. Finally, just like how Pandemic and Mob beat Hamchook, rogue/rogue/druid is one of the best counters to hunter/lock teams in 3v3. 34/0/27 doesn't have the burst healing but it is the only true hybrid spec that can heal and DPS at same time.

Of course, every comp has counters and I really don't believe rogue/rogue/druid can beat warrior/retribution paladin/druid (and if Serennia decides to give up his druid someday I expect that to be his double melee comp). I really don't know what exactly we can do against that comp. Serennia called "both rogues on druid" which left me scratching my head. The team we played against was not even close to the level of Mounsif/Nick but with blessing of protection giving their druid a free reset, there is no way we can drop their druid faster than they can drop ours, especially considering our druid is 34/0/27. Even if Serennia gets away I can be killed in a single HOJ + avenging wrath once my trinket is down. I still don't see why we don't split up on retribution paladin and
druid just like the way we play against any warrior/DPS/healer teams.
Cyclone the warrior and assist DPS on paladin seems much better than
putting both rogues on their druid who is going to get BOPed.

Nition's warrior/rogue/druid also took advantage of my spec. If I stay too close to Serennia I get sapped. If I am far behind he eats an enormous amount of damage before I can open on the rogue and from there Serennia travel forms to get away, the rogue shadowsteps right after him and I am left piercing howled / hamstrung by the warrior. Nition soloed Serennia for a kill on top of the bridge when I got caught below the bridge by the warrior and couldn't get up there to assist. It is like Karl Malone trying to guard Tony Parker at the 3-point line. Serennia's plan is to have our shadowstep rogue on their druid, me on their rogue and he gets to CC the warrior. The truth is their warrior on me can shut me down a lot better than I can shut down a shadowstep rogue. Their shadowstep rogue can also apply so much more pressure on a 34/0/27 druid than our shadowstep rogue can do on a full resto. It felt like a clear mismatch to me.

Last but not least, we fought Venruki's warrior/mage/druid. Venruki was the best mage I dueled in 2.3. Unlike the rogue/mage/druid team where I can sit on the rogue, I can't win the 1v1 match-up against the warrior so all game long I am trying to walk toward their mage or druid while being snared/rooted/stunned 90% of the times. If I pop my cloak to break a root out of frustration they just switch to me and it is very ugly. Against targets that must sit there and eat full AR + CB with EA, SND and BF up, my spec is sensational. Against druid/mage I feel useless. In theory, I can just keep walking toward their druid in slow motion while their warrior gets CCed and eventually we run their druid out of mana healing the mage. In reality, once a shadowstep rogue is out of CDs, he really can't put any pressure on the mage with abolish poison at all. That is when the sheeps begin and Venruki plays his match-up against a shadowstep rogue better than anyone I have ever seen. We don't have any burst whatsoever while a well-timed mace stun followed by a couple of mage instants can drop me during a single cyclone on our druid.

To be honest, I just have so little options at my disposal. My damage is garbage outside of one AR+CB, I don't have any real advantage toe-to-toeing shadowstep rogues outside of my +20% healing from quick recovery. I feel so incredibly fragile with this spec and every game against another rogue (almost always shadowstep) I have to either stay far behind my teammates to avoid a sap or try to run in and get an opener right away (and get opened on and lose 50% of my health right off the bat). As much as mace stuns and blade twisting help slowing down a rogue, they are not on-demand options when your druid is about to take 4000+ damage. Most of the games I am trying to peel a shadowstep rogue with half of his cooldowns and if I get CCed at all by his teammate, he is gone. Heck when I played shadowstep myself, if some combat rogue is trying to guard me, I just shiv or gouge him and shadowstep to my target, there is no way he can keep up. I strongly feel SF/AR works better against teams you would beat anyway, and shadowstep helps a lot more against tougher match-ups. Prep in the hands of a great player yields great results. You are playing with Karl Malone and you shouldn't use him like Greg Ostertag.

Once everyone get their teams up and running on PTR, this will be one crazy server. Because the ratings mean nothing, no one will queue dodge and the level of competition will be unheard of. BG9 is not the only BG in the world and just because you beat X comp in BG9 at Y rating doesn't mean you can beat the same comp from another BG. We all remember the long debates Kintt and Inactive had with me about 2345/2346 vs Euro rogue comp and how "it just doesn't work in BG9". Oops I have a feeling we will see a rogue vs rogue 5v5 finals in BG9 just like we did in Cyclone months ago. This PTR tournament will improve the level of play in 3v3 for sure and I encourage everyone to get on and play. As painful as the character creation process can be, it is very much worth the effort.

P.S. According to Blizzard, S3 still has a lot of life left, but epic gems for as little as 15 badges? Today was a good day for PVPers indeed. I also believe S4 weapons will be the same DPS as Sunwell's final boss drops. Still, outside of premade tournaments, people who PVP and PVE at same time will still have an advantage over pure PVPers. I absolutely love my character on tournament server, with a delicious mix of PVP and PVE gear, he has as much offensive stats in S2/T5/blue gems as my full S3 / BT gemmed character on live, while giving up just 80 resilience.