Rngrofl and Luen At Their Finest

A couple of days ago when I was speaking with Zilea, he had mentioned that he had a video in progress portraying the wonderful Paladin/Rogue duo at it's finest (or lack thereof). Apparently, as part of his video, he had fought against Ming's Mutilate hero, Rngrofl, and caught the whole 12 minute fight on Fraps.

Rngrofl, in case you don't know, in combination with his Druid partner Luen, reached an impressive 2300 rating on BG9 as Mutilate Rogue/Druid. There was some initial debate as to whether or not they obtained that high of a rating legitimately or not, but it was later confirmed a couple of times that it was accomplished without trading etc, and on the surface, it appears that they were just that good after all.

Now there is footage available to really answer that question. Zilea provided me with an uncut, unedited version of the match from his perspective as a Paladin in the match. As if that wasn't enough, I also have footage���  from the perspective of Luen that happens to include a nifty vent recording as well.

Zilea's Perspective

My first impression after watching this video was 'WTF'?

Zilea is wearing nine total pieces of PVE gear, resulting in a total of 241 resilience and he is still getting outmanaed by a Druid who isn't drinking at every available opportunity. Even when drink exploiting after many many casts. In addition, as you can see first hand in the video, Luen doesn't cast a single cyclone until over 3 and a half minutes into the fight. Zilea told me he thought the guy had disconnected at around 50 seconds into the video because he was pretty much standing completely idle doing nothing for 10-15 seconds with Zilea spamming FoL right in front of him. In addition, if Luen had starfied Kazel after the first cyclone chain, who had zero CD's at the time, he would have assuredly died.

With the success of Mutilate relying heavily on pushing a ton of pressure on your opponents, you would think that casting cyclone would be a necessary part of the equation. Especially when Rnglol has 2/5 imp poison and most likely has to shiv pretty consistently over mutilates. When Luen does actually cast it, such as when Zilea bubbles and BoP's Kazel, it's never instinctual and purely reactionary based which is evident by how late it is. Apparently not cycloning is "part of their strat" though. What do people think of that very "strat" you might ask? Well, here's your answer.

~~

Ohnoes: [quote from rnglol] My strategy revolves around sticking to my target as much as possible and doing so much damage that they can't afford to cast abolish.

Ohnoes: LMAO~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I think thats the dumbest quote i've ever heard a rogue say. He's so cocky too.

Ohnoes: he's basically saying that imp snd dual wield is going to apply more pressure then having 5 wound stack up at all times. I don't see the logic in that at all

"I spend all my time dpsing"

Ohnoes: YA GRATS ON VILE POISONS. He'll probably spend more energy on wasted shivs than mut's.

~~

The fight itself is heavily weighed in the favor of Druid/Rogue, and Zilea seems to have done the best he could in his situation. Granted, he ate a couple of unnecessary feral charges, but it's obvious that he has to fake cast constantly as it is.

Based on all of the random, often back and forth target swapping, it's obvious that Rnglol/Luen are not exactly used to playing against Pally/Rogue. It's usually never a good idea to sit on a Paladin, even with Zilea wearing low resilience. As you can see it doesn't work for Rngrofl in the video either. He basically wastes over a minute trying to down Zilea in the starting area, runs half way accross the map, and then comes right back to zilea again, basically destroying any progress he had made on taking him down in the first place. It's just not going to be easy to take down a Paladin solo, especially with no help from your Druid unless you land every interrupt perfectly. More on this later.

After I watched Zilea's video, I was linked this one as well. This, again, is from the perspective of Luen, with the vent recording of the match as well.

Luen's Perspective (with ventrilo)

This is where the real mistakes are revealed. First of all, you can completely tell that Rngrofl pretty much dictates Luen's every move. None of Luen's actions are instinctual, rather completely reactionary based on what he's seeing, not predicting.

Even after this, Rngrofl makes some pretty interesting (note: hilarious) moves.

Such things as telling Luen to "watch for the drink exploit" when Luen is KS'ed and Zilea is drinking 2 feet away from Rng. He also fails to restealth and get an opener a couple of times, and vanishes and accidentally CS's a cyclone (which you can hear him say "oops!" to during the video). And in the end, you can't come up with an excuse for mutilating when your target has no poison debuffs.

Then again, with the indecisiveness in target choices, there were definitely a couple of opportunities for him to take down Zilea, but running back and forth like a chicken with your head cut off will definitely work against your cause. Not to mention, neglecting to use deadly throw successfully more than a single time to interrupt won't help you either. Even when he made the mistake of going on Zilea, he again, probably could have killed him if he used deadly throw when he missed with kick.

They also let kazel restealth on more than one occasion, which can be attributed to Luen not using faerie fire for the majority of the fight. Granted, he's normally a mage named Sithonos and only went Druid during season 3, but I wouldn't expect this from someone at a 2300 level.

So the big question comes into play, what's with the terrible spec? Well, when you have to deal with the following kind of response when suggesting an alternative, you might be able to understand why it's impossible to convince Rngrofl of trying anything else.

Rngrofl: Quit ******* with my spec [Used my quote from a previous article here to insult Luen] "In addition, most of the thoughts on Luen as a player so far is that he's carried by Rngrofl, but at this point, everyone is carried by someone, so going with actual evidence of skill, or lackthereof over speculation will hopefully give him a shot"

And at this point, Luen offers to pay for the respec in hopes that Rngrofl will be okay with just "humoring him". Here's Rngrofl's response:

Rngrofl: YOU HAVE NO IDEA

Rngrofl: WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT

Rngrofl: drop it. if i wanted to be a stupid poison *****, i'd be shadowstep.

Rngrofl: the reason people dont do well with mutilate IS BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN TOLD THEY HAVE TO BE POISON MUTILATE TO DO WELL and poison mutilate is a gimp shs

Rngrofl: if you want to keep pushing me, you can go get sponsored on your own.

Rngrofl: because you have no ******* clue about the spec. you've been told by someone who is no where near experienced enough that it's a better spec and keep pushing it after ive told you it's wrong.

it's not my spec

it's not my playstyle

IT WILL NOT BE BETTER, YOU HAVE NO ******* IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT

I've played them all, this is the best, drop it.

Rngrofl: if you enjoy trying to outheal a warrior i'm feeding rage because i can't focus a druid if you enjoy me getting kited ALL ******* OVER THE PLACE by any rogue or warrior team because i don't have imp sprint

[imp sprint on a 5 min c/d, mind you because he doesn't have endurance]

if you like me dropping a good 30% in damage, then yes poison spec is better.

~~~~~~~~~

You also might recall some rumors (well, fact in the end) of Rngrofl and Luen losing to Warlock/Druid as Rogue/Druid. Apparently Hoodyrich and Serennia wanted to go up against Rngrofl and Luen, but Rngrofl wanted to skirmish instead of doing a rated match. Serennia tried to contact HR, who was afk at the time, and based on HR not responding, Rngrofl thought HR was scared and would make a blog on gameriot potraying just that. It's interesting to think that HR was scared when Rngrofl wanted a skirmish to begin with.

At this point I'm just disappointed that this is now what BG9's best have to offer, and I feel terrible for Luen having to deal with Rngrofl.