Warrior Won't Even Notice The Juggernaut/Charge Change, Mutilate Vs Combat In Rogue/Priest Mirror, Korean 1v1/3v3 Tournament Results

Another patch hit the PTR, as the warrior charge cooldown with glyph was increased from 12 to 14 seconds, and the juggernaut ability grants +25% crit chance to mortal strike as opposed to making it an auto-crit. 

Warrior, already second place on SK-100 in presentation, probably won't even notice those changes.  15 to 12 second charge is barely noticeable when warrior is already the most mobile melee class in the game, warriors will simply drop the rapid charge glyph for hamstring for 25% chance to root the target or blade storm for 15 second shorter CD (glyph of mortal strike's +10% damage is no-brainer).  The auto-crit mortal strike after charge nerf does reduce their on-demand burst (although they will still crit 60% of the time with axe spec) somewhat, but the real strength of the class was left untouched.  -75% healing debuff, sustained damage pressure and insanely hard to kite.  Warrior dominance is the main reason for low hunter presentation on SK-100 this season, and they will probably take the top spot in a few more weeks. You know warrior is overpowered when even Laintime came out of retirement to play one.

Warrior/druid finally caught up to rogue/priest on SK-100 2v2 presentation, and there are many rogue/priest teams up there because of the momentum of week 1/2.  The 2882 rogue/priest team from my own BG (#1 rated 2v2 team in the world) for example, there is no question they are one of the very best rogue/priest teams out there, with a 2300+ rating as RMP too.  But they seriously have nothing to gain and everything to lose going forward against heavy melee / druid teams.  I am not sure if the rating they have is enough to lock down furious gladiator, but Blizzard does need to look at the way that team gained points, as I believe it definitely revealed a flaw in the MMR system.  You simply shouldn't be able to hit that kind of rating even with a 80% win rate in less than 200 games, at least not that early in the season.

I fully expect rogue/priest to turn back into a second tier 2v2 comp by mid-season.  And the sad part is outside of rogue/rogue (a big part of its success relies on the high number of priest teams), it is probably the only choice we have.  It will be extremely difficult to beat heavy melee druid teams, and even heavy melee/paladin teams should be able to go at least 50-50 against rogue/priest as well.  Rogue/mage really struggled this season as with virtually all other double DPS teams.  Akrioss had a difficult time breaking 2350 with rogue/mage and a 51% win rate.  Deadly Gladiator Reckful also gave up on the comp, he played rogue/priest to 2600+ early and tanked hard when he tried to get his mage's PR above 2350, although the shadow dance hero still managed to carry his mage over the finish line he was clearly frustrated.  It is just extremely hard when you are up against trees that don't die.  Heavy melee/druid not only has a significant edge  against rogue/priest, they also have much bigger margin for error against double DPS as well.

I team hopped to help someone on my 2v2 team, before realizing rogue/paladin and rogue/shaman simply won't cut it this season.  And I was grateful we only ran into one good DK/druid team when I tried to get my PR back on rogue/priest.  It won't be long before every heavy melee druid plays this match-up properly and it will be a nightmare to go up the 2v2 ladder as a rogue.

I Wish Killing Spree Is More Reliable

Last week I ran into the only other rogue playing killing spree in 2v2, shadow dance hero Reckful.  At the time he didn't have a slow offhand to swap double wound with, and my killing spree did 4000 more damage than his and that gave us a small edge in the series.  As much as Reckful-san loves shadow dance, even he can't make it work in 2v2 with a healer, so he went combat and will be getting a fist weapon tomorrow for shadow dance hemo.  There is very little doubt in my mind that if he sells out and goes mainstream mutilate/prep, he can perform better than he did in the tournament realm qualifiers.  But when you can already obtain merciless/vengeful/brutal/deadly gladiator title every season playing a spec you enjoy, why not?

Since then I had to ditch killing spree for mutilate in 3v3/5v5, and with me getting the 188 DPS dagger tomorrow, I will be playing it for 2v2 as well.  On Sunday we ran into Reckful again, and like me he bought the ghetto 2.7 blue sword from Icecrown and the first match he killed me in a single killing spree into eviscerate.  I had 75% health, shield and battlemaster, didn't matter, with his priest assisting, I went down in 3 seconds.  There were matches where he 3 point kidney shot me, I had shield up and high health, decided not to trinket, dead.

We were 2 and 8 against them out of the gate, but that is when my priest told me to be more aggressive and push for early kills with CD spams.  I played killing spree myself against countless mutilate rogues before, and I know how annoying it is to eat a guaranteed CS into KS to start and get disarmed for 5 seconds.  You have done zero damage to him so far, your priest has to heal, his already started on DPS/mana burns.  He is breathing down your neck with evasion rush, to build combo points you have to shiv him and waste your first energy bar and usually a low energy kidney shot.  It is not a fun place to be. 

Of course, the strength of combat comes from the guaranteed kidney shot.  If you can force trinket, adrenaline rush -> kidney shot + AR/Killing Spree on the mutilate rogue is devastating.  There were times I went down even with pain suppression up.  However, as the series went on, Killing Spree's inconsistency started to tip the scale in our favor.  Unless you have blade flurry up (both me and priest ate a killing spree + blade flurry once, brought us both down to 25%, not fun, but we still won somehow), you can't use killing spree if there is anyone other than your primary target within 10 yard.  It is god awful against DK/Hunter, and renders the spec totally useless in 3v3/5v5. 

Also, if you ever try to killing spree a fast moving target like warrior with charge/intercept or rogue with sprint, you will waste most of it even when this is the fastest tracking ability in the game at 0.5 second per attack.  What really messed Reckful up was the known bug that unless you stand still yourself before casting killing spree, you can lose a lot of potential attacks from it.  He tested this on target dummies and confirmed this bug (which will be very hard to fix given the net code issues).  Sometimes in the heat of battle it is too easy to forget, you move your feet while you cast killing spree, and you just wasted your most powerful CD.  There were games when I had less than 50% health and still survived the killing spree.

Against combat rogue and feral cat druid with 30% damage reduction in stuns, I sometimes wait until they get out of kidney shot before unloading CB eviscerating -> mutilate for a very nasty surprise.With 20% healing from quick recovery, set-up to get combo points when dodging attacks, 2x the CDs, and of course the opening advantage, mutilate can toe to toe full combat rogues in rogue/priest mirror amazingly well, especially if the combat rogue gave up points in assassination for subtlety (the 5/51/15 type of specs).  Mutilate can burst any time sitting on a full energy bar (like coming out of a stun/disarm/gouge), combat needs killing spree and pain suppression usually counters the first one.     

Thanks to blind/fear changes, the double-UD racial is not as dominant as before.  There are times my priest gets feared and must trinket to save me, he eats a blind in the face but at 5 seconds it is not nearly as game breaking.  Human racial gives me a slight edge in openers against other mutilate rogues.  While the opening sap may not be as dominant as rogue vs rogue duels, I still believe all else being equal, the momentum from the opener is at least 20% of your winning chance, when one priest has to heal, the other is free to burn/dispel as much as he wants.

Korean 1v1/3v3 Tournament Results

What's up with HON's new name, Button Bashers?  HON sounds so much cooler (first letter of each original member's character name), and I am not sure what was their sponsor thinking.  Name changes will always result in loss of branding power, that is why you will never see me working under a brand other than World of Ming.

In any case, Spit, the red hot anti-RMP team (warlock/paladin/druid) took 1st place in TR ladders, and they beat both Kill EA and SK-Korea, also known as Council of Mages.  They are up against Button Bashers aka HON next.  They were able to completely destroy Kill EA, but SK-Asia took two matches from them.  Perhaps the RMP once again adapted to find a counter for its counter?  As much as it hurts to have a world finals without HON or SK-Asia, seeing a non-RMP Korean team in action would be really refreshing.  You can see the bracket here.  The final result won't be known for a few more weeks.

Koreans love dueling tournaments, and after a SL/SL warlock winning the 2008 INVEN NAMED dueling tournament (so predictable) back in S2, I was definitely surprised by the 2009 winners.

1st: Minegi(Frost Mage)
2nd: Mingz (Frost Mage)
3rd: 자고나니정우성 (Retribution Paladin)
4th: Coilmaster(Death Knight)

The tournament featured a group play and the most famous Korean players, including Laintime himself (who went 1-3 in group play against druid, shaman, shaman and paladin in his group).  I have yet to find a working stream but expect a big video release of the footages.



I have to say the Korean 1v1 dueling tournament is much more interesting than "rogue hero vs the world" tournaments.  I will definitely try to host something like this next time TR is up.  Still don't know how Minegi managed to beat the pillars, I can't wait to watch the video.