It is a dark TR opening week for the beloved rogue class as the tournament realm is literally filled with hunter teams.  If Blizzard still doesn't believe hunters need HEAVY nerfing, how about 17 out of top 20 teams has a hunter in it?  Even back in 2008, at the peak of druid dominance, no single class dominated the tournament realm like hunters are doing now. 

To make things worse, they are joined by in my opinion, the second strongest DPS class in the game right now in warlock.  With overpower…  More

Arena Tournament Realm
After the realm finally came up yesterday, it felt like days of old setting up characters once again, this time outfitted in the latest and greatest PvP and PvE gear. The TR's have always been fun, watching people look for stellar teams via trade chat, the paladins outfitting themselves in full tanking gear, and the mages that spec 71 fire. Even more surprising, however, are the sheer number of warlock teams that are playing right now.

People expected warlock teams to be out…  More

While I am sure we have only seen half of the PVP balance moves of 3.1, I am pleased with the rogue changes so far.  3.0.9 marked dead bottom of the beloved rogue class and from here we have nowhere to go but up.  Rogue PVE DPS is too low and I am glad some of the PVE changes will end up trickle over to our PVP game. 

Instant/Wound Poison Now Based On Proc-Per-Minute

And it was normalized to 1.4!  Oh yes!  This alone keeps mutilate/prep the overwhelming favorite so far, although I am sure more ch…  More

Sorry for this being slightly late, I'm covering for Ming this evening due to some RL issues he had to attend to. I owe him for last week anyway.

Within the last couple of hours, the full 3.1 patch notes were released on MMO-Champion. So far they're pretty typical of Blizzard in that there are changes such as removing Imp Wing Clip, Blackout and the stun effect on TNT, that are completely sane and in the right direction towards removing RNG from the game. Naturally though, there are changes that…  More

There's no denying that the general feelings over the current state of WoW are grim. Recent balance changes are at unprecedented levels of "what the **** were you thinking?", and the foundations and order in which Blizzard designs WoW are completely blatant at this point - which leads me to question why people are even surprised anymore at changes that clearly make no sense. One must only look at the current economy of the U.S or take a business 101 class to understand exactly what a billion dollar business such as Blizzard will do in a completely monopolized market in which they have complete control. It's unfortunate, and not for any personal biased reasons, that Warhammer and AoC did little to impact the market, as any form of serious competition could have pushed Blizzard into creating a finer product. Just look at Coke vs. Pepsi, Ben and Jerry's vs. Haagen Dazs; competition will always be better in a world of business as opposed to not.…  More

Had some connectivity issues last night hence the late article.  Changed my dying 7 years old router that simply refuse to connect to my cable modem again to a Linksys WRT54G2 and what an amazing difference!  Not only my ping is lower, the new router also allowed me to play WOW while Estel watches PPLIVE.  A quality router is just as important as a quality ISP.

This past week was a pretty frustrating arena week for me.  We played plenty of games but pretty much stuck with same ratings.  With hunt…  More

If there's any class that has been quiet in regards to their current representation compared to pre-WotLK, it's Druids. And with abilities being tossed around such as Plague Strike, it's completely understandable as to why. That's not to say that just like other struggling classes, there aren't those that can still perform well in a challenging environment, but the majority of the big-name Druid's that were around and so successful before, have seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Today I sat down with Spoh, one of the few top Druids still around, to discuss the current and future state of the class. Hope you enjoy!…  More

As predicted before the 3.0.9 patch was released, the beloved rogue class hit rock bottom on the prestigious SK-100 world rankings, tied with priest at 3%.  For the first time since the start of S5, a class is threatening paladins for the #1 throne, as with the rise of restoration shamans (who moved ahead of DKs for third place), hunters are now at 22% class presentation, only 2% behind paladins.

Paladin: 24%
Hunter: 22%
Shaman: 15%
Deathknight: 13%
Druid: 6%
Mage: 6%
Warlock: 4%
Warrior: 4%
Priest: 3%
Ro…  More

EM Global Finals Germany
ESL released the group brackets for the European Continental Finals yesterday here and a couple noteworthy surprises are two druids that were previously never-before seen on LAN having roster spots on the competing teams.

Many people knew that Nihilum Plasma couldn't bring their 3rd player that they have been practicing with and obviously wanted with Forteh (paladin), and the rumor going around was that they were going to get a paladin named Zalgradis instead for Germany. …  More

Like Ming delightfully shared with all of you, I had one hell of a weekend - actually not just the weekend, more like 5 days and counting. After numerous trips to two separate docs, both of which had their own respective looks ranging from cringes of disgust to nods of pity over my 104.1F temperature, I was diagnosed with a mild case of Pneumonia. What the ****? Yeah, that's exactly what I said. How, where, and when I somehow picked this **** up is beyond me, especially considering the fact that it feels like I just finished getting over the worst flu I've had in my life a few short months ago. All I know is that it sucks, bad. I've still got a ***** of a fever, and while I'm going to do my best, this might end up a little shorter than usual. That's assuming I don't somehow hallucinate to the point where there appears to be a lot more written than there actually is. …  More