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ESL Qualification Rounds End, ArenaCast - Twilight Edition...Wait, Dreamhack & WoW, Ghingis Guide pt. 2

no.spam@gameriot.com (Yiska) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:50:20 -0500

I've been nerding it up lately with L4D2 and a couple of striking realizations occurred to me:

1. Playing an FPS game from time to time doesn't betray your love for WoW
2. Germany sucks in terms of media law
3. Slapnuts is a gigantic *****

While the first two points explain themselves, our beloved conehead outed himself as a slave of reality. Yes, you get that right gameriot. Slapnuts didn't want to play computer games till 8am even though he had the best "HUNTER, HUNTER, HUNTER!!!"-screamer of all time on his team (needless to say I didn't realise my headset was broken). Someone really got his nuts slapped. Anyway...WoW blog.

ESL Qualification Rounds end - Confusing among the American teams

The ESL Qualification round ended and Europe got a really healthy mix of all kinds of different comps going, even including Felic - a fellow PROT BEATZ player. Overall there are only two RMPs in the top 8 of the ladder qualification and that is of course also because most of the quality RMPs were already invited before. I hope all invited teams get back in shape for the European top 16 round and we can see some natural selection take place to only send the strongest European teams to the Global Finals. It so happens that the ESL released the European top 16 groups. Here they are:

A
Godmode (Hydra, Flyn, Kalimist) RMP
The End Come So Far (Nathalol, Gnomew, Mastah) RMP
SK Sansibar (Fraki, Noonia, Moldran) DK/War/Druid, TSG
RNG Party (Draintrain, Blade, Iopakodoo) WLD

B
x6tence (Siler, Souler, Falcon) PHD, TSG
aAa (Thorkin, Khuna, Pheonix) RMP
rocknroll pigtails (Bloodx, Evleh, Exerion) Feral Rogue Priest
BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK (Sanchez, Instance, Yunisha) Shadowcleave

C
iNNERFiRE (Desis, Coold, Stg) RMP
No Surprises (Defiancex, Joker, Keyn) RMP
pwning noobs all day (Maitoh, Nushz, Valkyriee) Ret/Rogue/Priest
Pincho Gaming (Anika, Dev, Jetz) H/Lock/Pal

D
SK Gaming EU (Another, Inflame, Enigmz) Shadowcleave
plan-B (Texi, Kajn, Daisyduke) RMP
Emo Whoopass Patrol (Felic, m0jjen, Sonija) PROT BEATZ/War/Druid
Death Row (Botti, Tokash, Yurito) Sham/War/Pal

3rd and 2nd of each group have to battle it out against the 2nd and 3rd of another group. Group A&D 1st place should be Godmode & SK.EU but other than that, the competition seems really healthy. You can see the whole news here.

On the dark side of the WoW community (heh), things don't look as bright at all. Players report that the US TR had only about 15 teams playing and the whole qualification round was a mess with vendors not being available for two weeks, queues taking ages not only because nobody is on there, but also because there was a bug that limited the realm to only host one 3vs3 rated arena at a time. The continental finals in Edmonton are mere three weeks away and teams still aren't able to safely buy plane tickets and get their hotel room reservations as they don't even know if they will qualify for the tournament.

On top of that, 3.3 is around the corner and the teams which qualify for North America might not be the deal at the global finals next year. You want to hear more about that topic? Read on.

ArenaCast - Twilight edition

Yet again JP&Keith made the mistake to invite me to their show. We talk a good chunk about MLG and the meaning for WoW as an esports. Moreover we talk about the ESL problems mentioned above, about Rob Pardo's statement about WoW, about the latest GomTV event and about...Twilight?

I can honestly say, I have no idea who Edward Cullen is and I was forced to use his name! Add in my general awkwardness and you got yourself a statement that will make you want to put on your mom's panties. I promise. I hope you like tanga. Why do I know that your mom wears strings? Yes, exactly.

You can check out the episode here. You really should. Trust me. I'm a...drinker?

Dreamhack & WoW

What if it is time for Dream Hack winter and nobody attends?

That is of course a false statement as far as the overall event goes. A sick amount of CS teams have been invited and the competition in other games such as Quake will surely be amazing.

On the WoW side of things, the price money has been announced and it's 2800 Euro for the first place finisher. That is not much of a problem in itself but the reason why this is very problematic for the WoW tournament is that it was announced so late. Flight & Hotel prices significantly increases the longer you have to wait for the booking and it so happens that I haven't heard of a single quality team going to Dream hack so far.

Yours truly thought about attending the event, but only a flight both ways is already 600 Euro from Düsseldorf to Jönköping. A month ago, the prices were probably around half of this. The alternative of going by train is not that much cheaper, but takes 24 hours for me to get there. In conclusion, no Yiska at Dream Hack.

SK.EU probably won't go and as it looks Hydra's team of Godmode won't be able to attend as well. If you go there on your own expenses and even if you finish 1st, chances are you spend more than you won in that tournament if you aren't a local. It's simply not worth it, not even for sponsors as the coverage and the community interest in Dream hack is really not that high.

The only rumoured known name so far seems to be Bloodx and his team. If you know Bloodx or rather his reputation, you understand why this might become a "fun" tournament. Let's just say Bloodx makes Inflame look like Harry Humble or Mike Modest.

It's just sad that so many amazing teams will have to miss out on those events (both ESL NA continentals and Dream hack) just because the way these tournaments were set up up were not really player or sponsor friendly. Getting your stuff together a month before the tournament starts goes a long way.

Ghingis with a new guide

Ghingis the great released another part of his guide over at Bartov gaming. Most Europeans will agree that Ghingis is a very good warlock who not only knows how to play the game, but also understands how to talk about it. I had the pleasure of having him in ventrilo during MLG Anaheim and his insight was spot on.

If only Trig wasn't such a ***** and Nx such a slacker and their team could really make things going. They are currently 5th on Cyclone EU with their Wizard cleave and very solid 84% winratio. Therefore his guide is mainly about their line up of MLS and how especially a warlock should play against the most common comps.

You can check out his guide here. It's pretty long, but definitely worth a read.

As I'm about to visit my family, I don't have the time to wait for le shader to proof read this. Yiska out.

Mods & Why You Shouldn't Use Them, The Prince Of Qatar, IEM In Dire Straits

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:39:09 -0500

Mods & Why You Shouldn't Use Them

This week I came back to 2v2 because I was bored (and because my 3v3 team got reset so I had nothing better to do) and I was hit with a revelation of why nobody should use mods.

After sitting through 3 minute queues I was getting matched up against a lot of really bizarre teams like enhancement shaman/priest, feral druid/priest, the list goes on. These matches were frustrating not just because of the team lineups we were running up against, but because of the mods.

Against these teams, whenever I needed or decided to divine plea, I would get it purged immediately (before even a single tick). Even if I strafed out of line of sight right when I used it, it was too late as it got taken off within 2 seconds of being used. The funny part about this is that against the top players like Kollektiv, if I decide to pop divine plea out in the open, I will typically be able to get at least 2 divine plea ticks off, sometimes even a full divine plea. Against 2200 rated teams? Divine plea is off without a single tick if I am not already sitting behind a pillar. It may not sound like a big deal and people will argue that I should just stay behind a pillar, but sometimes a paladin can not afford to do that and has to be in line of sight to cleanse, freedom, heal, you name it.

As anybody knows, a lot of players get carried heavily by mods. I'll admit I was one of these people. With my spellalerter, afflicted and gladius, I was able to keep an eye on everything simply by looking at a mod. For those that aren't aware, these mods can easily carry you through tough spots by letting you know everything without actually keeping track of anything yourself. Actually, this is where the criticism of "always looking at mods, never the battle field" spawned.

Generally speaking, I've been pleased that significantly less people use mods than they used to. I look at streams on an infrequent basis but I see a lot of people running with few or no mods at all, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, however, some people, like Affix, are notorious for using mods. In Affix's case, he's actually getting more mods, not less. Frightening to think that this guy could have very well gone to a tournament (although I admit the hilarity of watching somebody adjust from all those mods to zero is entertaining).

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my problems with mods as people can have similar mods to tell them when counterspell, kick, pummel, etc are off cooldown.

Don't do it, kids! Turn off those mods! It builds character! It also helps you play better in the long run by forcing you to watch everything around you in an arena match.

WoW Sideshow - The Prince of Qatar

For those that may not be involved in the esports scene, you may not be aware of a guy named "Ooi", also known as the prince of Qatar. Pretty much every top or high-recognition arena player has been in contact with this guy at one point or another. Basically, he is the prince of Qatar and has an absurd amount of money due to, obviously, being a part of the royal family.

What he is most known for is giving players an exorbitant amount of money to play with or for him to get arena points every week (and, incidentally, proving why a lot of middle eastern countries are failed or collapsed states; use all of that oil money on infrastructure and jobs and not on the elites you dimbulbs).

Nobody really knows why he hands money out like this. Maybe he is just a lonely individual, but the cash he gives out is a lot higher than you may think as Yog, Sonydigital, Pookz, Twix, Valrath, Veev and many others including myself have all been paid to be a part of this cartel. Although I haven't really been involved with the guy in a while, the amount of money paid out is easily close to a grand just for playing 10 games a week. For end-of-season gladiator titles? Over $500. For rank 1 titles? Over $2000.

If you play on Blackrock and have been wondering why Pookz, Valrath and several other players have transferred off, the reason is money. An insider reported to me recently that Yog was paid $4000 to transfer his character to Ooi's server and has been getting paid $800 a week for some time now.

God only knows how much account sharing is going on as not everybody always transfers their characters to play with/for Ooi for money.

Does the prince of Qatar have the resources to pay off Blizzard employees from account action?

IEM In Dire Straits

The Intel Extreme Masters tournament, hosted by ESL, has been going on for a while now, and a lot of people are really interested to see what the competition will look like. As you may remember from my previous articles, I've been reporting on a lot of internal problems within the organization when it comes to their WoW tournaments, and this one is no different.

To give an update on how this tournament is supposed to play out, I'll explain: 8 teams (sponsored teams) were automatically invited, with 8 spots remaining, which would be designated to the top 8 teams in an online qualifier which would last severel weeks (the past severel weeks were this perio) with teams signing up to compete for a chance to go to the regionals event in Edmonton, Canada, followed by the global finals event in Hannover.

After the online qualifier, the top 8 teams from the online ladder will compete against the 8 invited teams, with the top 8 teams representing the US being invited to the IEM US.

That is where we stand today. Tonight the qualifiers entered the phase where the 8 sponsored teams would compete with the top 8 teams from the previous phase. By the end of the weekend the top 8 of those 16 would be granted invitation to the regionals on December 11 in Edmonton.

However, word is from several teams actually participating in the tournament that the ESL tournament realms have been barren, with virtually nobody queueing. A few players from some of the notable teams told me that people in the previous phase were grinding to the top of the ladder by beating random no name players because everybody's MMR was extremely low due to lack of activity on the realms.

"well the event is supposed to be december 11th but the online ladder was super inactive the whole time and there's supposed to be the top 8 teams from ladder vs the top 8 invited to qualify for the event but there won't even be 8 real teams and the US ladder was completely dead, no one played.
theres probably not even 8 US teams that can get to edmenton, especially on this short notice"

It also appears that the entire tournament is really unorganized, with the qualified teams not even having been notified yet nor have matches even been scheduled for this weekend.

The current standing, as some speculate, has the team consisting of players named Lafu, Lyricals and Fadingaway in first place running beastcleave and paladin/dk/hunter. Many people do not even know who these players are, giving credit to the previous claim that random teams are getting to the top. The reason, as already explained is due to such low activity on the tournament realms with people farming off of really bad, low teams and getting a lot of points. Remember, the ESL realm isn't live; teams aren't 2800 rated.

The core of the problem is that few unsponsored teams want to bother competing for a tournament when the flight fees, room and board, etc are not covered by anyone other than the actual team, making them front the bill. We're talking about over a thousand dollars here and remember, the prize money won't even begin to cover all of these fees unless you place well.

After these "US Regionals" in Edmonton, Canada, which is scheduled for December 11, the top teams of that event will go to the global finals in Hannover. Again, nothing is paid for by ESL so you are on your own.

What a bad idea. The regionals on December 11? I know for a fact that final examinations for me, Sodah and a bunch of other players is the week following directly after that.

There is much speculation that we will see either very bad teams appear at the regionals in Edmonton or there will simply be a shortage of teams (and it could very well just be the exact same teams that participated at MLG Anaheim).

Midnight Riders DLC coming to Left 4 Dead 2?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:51:19 -0500

My Left 4 Dead 2 review should be coming early next week but in the mean time you can hold yourself over with some awesome news regarding the southern-rock quartet, the Midnight Riders.

Those of you that have played through Dead Carnival may have had the joy of playing the finale featuring the rocker's stage act and pyrotechnics show at the end of the campaign. There are numerous references to the band through the course of the campaign and it all peaks with you slaughtering the zombie horde on the stage where the band was supposed to rock out.

So what does that have to do with the above motley collection of rockers? It seems our good friends at Valve opened up a website dedicated to the band at Midnight-Riders.com. What happens when Valve opens up game-related websites? Generally we end up getting some form of DLC. This isn't your typical one page class update ala Team Fortress 2 either. It is a full-fledged mock-band site with tour dates, blog, about the band, and a shop which interestingly leads to an awesome Midnight Riders shirt at the Valve Store.

I suspect this is a quasi-announcement for some future DLC featuring the band. Normally when Valve drops a web update like this the DLC is isn't very far out. Left 4 Dead 2 just came out however so I don't think we will see whatever this content may be right off the bat. What exactly Valve has in store for us has yet to be revealed. I presume we will at least be getting new character skins and considering the detail they put in to the website I suspect this will be a new campaign as well featuring the band. Don't fillet me for being wrong as this is just an educated guess.

It seems the "platform" they have promising with this game may finally come to fruition. The news will surely get even better for those of us who own this on PC as it will most likely be free content per typical Valve updates. Those of you on the 360 can enjoy busting out the debit card to get your hands on the probable new content.

But if this is the future of Left 4 Dead 2, with new characters and campaigns, consider me sold. Now if only they get around to porting over and bringing the original maps and characters to the Left 4 Dead 2 engine like some crafty modders have pulled off. That is something I would really like to see. I can see it now, Zoey chainsawing a Spitter on the wing of an airplane in Dead Air. Yup, sold!

The Life On The Outside, A Perspective From The Real World

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:21:32 -0500

Because I just can't take this **** anymore. There's no point. It's not even fun.

August 8, 2009. My last blog until this one.

I doubt anyone who read that thought I was being serious. Like everyone else, you probably thought to yourselves: "*sigh* Another one having an emo-rage after facing a prot-pally"

And yeah, that's what I had. But, things took a strange turn.

After this date, I just stopped logging into the World of Warcraft. And this is my story since. A story about IRL.

But let me start from the beginning.

So I once again started the university after failing due to WoW the first time. This time I figured "Currently I'm in a cool social guild with friends so I can keep it on a casual level and still handle my studies".

Well, Wotlk was ****, so I really had no excuse not to follow my plan, but just like you, I am a WoW-aholic. I just can't log out. I need to find that perfect partner for my PvP-teams and I need that gold to enchant that gear for the minor PvE-there is, so I don't have to focus on mana when healing, aka don't have to focus at all when PvEing.

But after that x.x.x patch something, when Prot Pallys was still viable, I just gave up. I wrote that blog and just stopped logging in. I didn't really think I would quit WoW, but I didn't log in for a while.

It hit me one day, about a week after I stopped loggin, when I was at my uni and noticed this familiar girl sitting at a computer close to me. She was asian, and I knew I recognized
her from somewhere... I thought to myself.. "Is it from WoW... MING!?.. No, can't be.. It's a girl.. or can it? no... ESTEL!?... Hmm, no, that doesn't seem realistic since I havn't seen a pic of her yet..."

Then it hit me.. Yes...!
It was sk-aNNa!

sk-*******-aNNa was sitting next to me noobing at a computer.

I immidiatly thought to myself "OMFG; this'll definatly win me those $500 for the top blog.". I could see it in front of my eyes. "Stalking sk-aNNa. +374 likes".

But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't give a ****. I didn't care about writing anymore, I didn't care about expressing my opinions about WoW (Yes, you can be sure I would put in some pala-hatred in that entry such as "She was as real as the Pala-3-key-2k-arena-point-method"). And I just realized that it was over.

The 4 years of prison had finally ended. I didn't want to log into my account.

Wow. WoW. Wow. It's over.

So what's IRL like?

Well, first off, I want to say that this is in no way an entry where I'm trying to say "I'm better than you, I don't play WoW, you shouldn't either, nerd!". I know just as well as you do that when I played WoW, that was what I wanted to do. That was what I thought was fun. I respect people that do what they themselves WANT to do, and even though I won't encourage it, WoW can surely bring a lot of fun. So please don't hate on me for writing an "IRL"-entry. I'm merely trying to bring a perspective. I know I won't get many likes since everyone will probably hate me for going all "Oh this isn't a blog about wow, it's a blog OUTSIDE wow", but... Well.. So be it...

If nothing else, someone will get something to waste their time on on a friday evening. Yes, I've quit WoW but im still here at 1:22 on a friday night, blogging. Well, it's because I have en exam on monday. These days I study. I can't go out/play wow the whole weekend if I have an exam on monday. That's the first lesson I've learned. If you have an exam, focus on it. I've went from a C/D-avarage to an A/B-avarage, simply because I choose to study these days. I never feel the "I need to raise my rating before reset" or "I need to get a flask before raid".

Some people can handle the "I can seperate my IRL from WoW". I couldn't. If you can't identify yourself with this, please don't put myself in your shoes, but rather keep reading just for that great joke you think might come eventually, since you've found one of my earlier entries to be somewhat hilarious.

So this opened a whole new world. As with every drug, you play WoW when you have nothing else to do. I think I've mentioned this before. No, when I played I never identified WoW with a drug, and I won't go into that discussion because I think its rediculous. But as with every drug some people might identify with a drug, it's something you do when you're bored. Instead of learning, developing yourself or making new social contacts, you spend that time enjoying your drug. And of course you're enjoying the drug. It's a drug.

In IRL you do what you have to do. You attend family-birthdays, sometimes when your used-to-be best friend has a birthday you might be there aswell unless you have a raid. When being out you make sure you get to point X, perform task Y and get home as soon as possible to get back into the real world, Azeroth.

Now, once again, I'm not saying WoW is anything like the "real" drugs, but depending how you identify a drug, it's still a drug. And no, to most of you I still don't call WoW a drug, it's just a reference point. There are similarities, I know you agree about that.

So it was astonoshing.
I read this article yesterday about this guy from Australia accidently getting lost with this car, driving 60 miles in the wrong direction.. The papers somehow caught up to it (Ask yourselves: How?) and eventually asked him why he didn't get a GPS.
He replied: -With a GPS you can't get lost. What's the fun in that?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I played WoW I was very well stuck in this "Get from X to Y as fast as possible and then back to Azeroth" that I forgot to enjoy the trip. And, yes this is gonna sound cheesy, I forgot about the travel, which is life.

I'm still shrugging about that last sentence but I'm gonna let it be and conclude it right here..

Btw, I know I owe you guys 2/2 of our guild-night-out, but... I can't currently promise you anything. I guess it depends on how well this one is recieved which I guess will be.. Yeah, pretty low odds...

And I'm sorry. No pictures, no jokes, no nothing. Just some reflections.

Now I just emptied the bottle, and this entry didn't really take the direction I though it would take. It feels more like a speech on why to quit WoW rather than what happened to me after I quit but.. The more I think about it the better... Because Blizz pretty much took the best 4 years of my life and turned it into a world filled with elves, ganks, unbalance, easy-mode and farming, and thus became my nemesis.

So tbh, this entry has turned into "Here's a fun read" to "******* god christ I hate you Blizzard for going so ******* commercial that if this ****-entry only inspires one person to quit WoW it'll be ******* worth it."

Well... I guess I'll see you in a year or so....
To hell with it...

Slap's Take: Modern Warfare 2 Review

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:56:37 -0500

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest launch in the history of video games. I've covered this already so we should probably get that out of the way from the start. If sales were the ultimate indication of quality we wouldn't need reviews, opinions or any of that jazz. Thankfully they aren't and we have positive-proof in that regard taking in consideration things like the Transformers movies and the Sims games. Therefore today you get to read my impressions of Modern Warfare 2 and flame or praise accordingly.

Modern Warfare 2 is built on three gameplay modes: Spec Ops, Campaign and Multiplayer. The latter two are fairly obvious but Spec Ops is a new take for COD on a older concept which I will delve in to later. The whole package is impressive. There is quite a bit of gameplay here with all three modes bundled together though there is little doubt that mulitiplayer is the meat and potatoes of this game.

I remember when games used to have epic single-player story lines that sprawled multiple days with hours and hours of gameplay - this is not that game. Not to take anything away from the story as it is quite good, it's just short, really short. Consider it a quick way to toss away 3-5 hours depending on what difficulty you play it on. If you are buying this for single player you will surely be disappointed. I really enjoyed the story though I won't spoil anything for you. You have seen the videos, the locations and maybe this super spoilerific video (you have been warned, this link is a huge spoiler).

The single-player features an awesome musical score and graphics that will have you trying consume it all in the middle of a massive firefight. That obviously isn't the best of decisions, especially in the harder difficulties, but audibly and visual it really is fantastic. The snow-capped mountains of Kazakhstan, the scaling and destructible urban environments and the arid brown-tainted locations all provide unique battlegrounds and eye candy.

There are improvements over its predecessor that should be noted even if you barely see them within the 5 hours. First up is the "infinite spawn points" that were a corner stone of the last game are seemingly nowhere to be found. Infinity Ward noted in the past that this was something they wanted to fix and it seems they came through. A.I. has also been improved from audible cues to just being generally overall more functional. This is a welcome addition from the last game though they still aren't quite perfect.

Spec Ops is the last of the modes I managed to get to as I just got around to it last night. In a nutshell think of Spec Ops as a challenge mode so to speak. You have seen challenge maps in Batman Arkham Asylum, or historical challenges in Madden games; this is a similar concept. The mode tosses a bunch of objectives with increasing difficulty and complexity at you in stand-alone missions so to speak. There really isn't a story and it's just you, some guns, a partner if you choose and some objectives. It is MOW2 stripped down to its basic gameplay elements and I am really enjoying it so far.

Last night we got stuck on the bridge map trying to push across it on Veteran with an attack chopper trying to turn us in to Swiss cheese all while fending off the opposition that was also storming the bridge against us. It is intense, frantic and a blast to play with friends which I highly suggest. Spec Ops is a welcome addition though I would have traded it in for a much longer single-player story.

And of course we can't forget about multiplayer. This is what almost everyone buys Call of Duty and Modern Warfare for. I am not going to address features excluded from the game so if you are looking for more ranting about the PC changes then you are in the wrong place. Regardless of my thoughts on changes vs. past incarnations of the game it is still a blast to play. Is lean gone? Yes it is. Does it hurt the game? No, but it does change it and promotes faster, less-camping gameplay if you ask me.

I am horrible at multiplayer, make no doubt about it. I think I am up to Level 24 with a K/D ratio sub 1:1. Mikevercetti is amazing however, and he is great at stealing my kills as well. I still haven't adapted to using ****ty analog sticks in a FPS game and I probably never will. I caved this time around thanks to my IRL friends wanting to play this with me. With all that going against me I am still having fun getting my ass kicked and pulling off some solid kills. Much like titles including TF2, L4D2, Counter Strike, etc. it is the fun community aspect of playing with friends and some of those "oh ****" moments that keep me coming back. Rarely have I gone 4-14 in a round of any FPS game and still had a good time but MOW2 pulls it off which is a testament to how fun the multiplayer is.

MP is deep. There are a crap-load of guns to work your way through, various challenges within the mode that help you level up, give you more perks and make you a bigger badass as you progress. I am eyeballing a M16 right now but I have another 16 levels before I get there.

The MP game is not without its flaws however. Why the hell can't we choose what maps we want to play on? There should be no reason to be stuck playing maps that haven't really taken off with players. The lobby system is shoddy as hell at this point often taking too damn long to match you up, closing rooms, kicking people out for now reason, etc. The limit on players also bothers me. Some of these maps could easily support more than 6v6. The 9v9 domination maps could also handle some more players as well. I guess I really miss that aspect coming from someone who thrives on 16v16 TF2. I am not totally sold on the kill streak system as I feel there are some balance issues there though maybe people just haven't adapted to them yet. The helicopter gunship attacks are brutal and seem way too powerful. Care packages seem almost useless more often than not. And by the way, I fricken hate those gunship attacks just in case I didn't make that clear.

Even with these issues I see this becoming a staple of my multiplayer online action for the foreseeable future. There are flaws but the overwhelming amount of content in MP from maps, guns, additions, challenges is icing on an already sharp and entertaining package.

This is not a perfect game. Single player is too short; multiplayer has its own share of bugs and issues. Regardless of issues it does all come in a very entertaining package with a lot of value if you get in to all of the modes. Don't buy this for single-player alone.

Much like my next big review (L4D2) if you aren't playing this with friends I think the overall experience takes a hit. Sure there is a touch of single-player here and you can run around capping fools online all by yourself but just how much fun is that?

The game really isn't all that different from Call of Duty 4 either. Some new maps, locations, a quick storyline, and then you pretty much get multiplayer with a few changes. That isn't a bad thing because the last game's multiplayer was excellent and the game as a whole was well regarded.

I definitely recommend this as a "buy" if you are looking to really get in to some multiplayer action and am not hung up on a lack of lean or dedicated servers. The consolization of the series is here to stay and we can either embrace the game for what it is now or hold on to the glory days and play older titles. I am not denying Activison and Infinity Ward seemingly took numerous steps to piss people and change the status quo. But if you can get past gripes and play the game I think most of you will find it enjoyable if you judge it on its own merits and not the past or other games. Personally I am always looking for new quality games and this fits the bill of providing hours and hours of future entertainment.

You are welcome to "stick it to the man" if you like but based on its merits Modern Warfare 2 is a solid, yet slightly different, game in the COD series that deserves a spot in your collection.

PTR Testing Day 4: Lady Deathwhisper

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomennescio) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:41 -0500

Good evening everyone and welcome to yet another episode of my PTR testing liveblog.
Yesterday went pretty bad, due to blizzard bringing down the servers just as we were about to start, we missed alot of our members aswell as two decent tanks, so we had to pug a tank and a dps.

As you may (or may not) know, the ptr is full of retards who are all pretending they know what they are doing, however they dont, and if you see a war with full stamina gems, that might indicate he knows his class decently, since stamina is indeed the best thing to stack nowadays, or hes just a retard who just turned all his blue gems into +20 stam ones and then randomly smashed them around his armor.

Ofcourse, both of the tanks we were forced to pug fit into the second category, so like I said, yesterdays raid was kinda ****** up, but lets not linger at the past and look forward to the future.

Lady Deathwhisper

Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss in ICC, and is right after Lord Marrowgar.
Her trash layout slightly resembles that of the second boss of Shadow Labyrinths, the 5-man instance in auchindoun we all hated during TBC.
Lady Deathwhisper has already been tested once, there you can also find all of her (and her adds) abilitys.

The fight is basicly seperated in two phases: In phase all she does is randomly shoot shadowbolts into everyone, trowsDeath & Decay around and has a huge mana shield that absorbs all incomming damage.
Every once in a while she will spawn a set of 3 adds on either side of the room: 2 casters and 1 melee add, these all have special abilitys and can be powered up.
While killing the adds, you also need to damage the boss to burn her mana and thus remove the mana shield.

Once her mana reaches 0% phase 2 will start.
In phase two she is a really weak copy of KT in naxx:
She mindcontrols (cc those who are mc) and she casts frostbolts that hit for 41k, these frost bolts must be interupted at all costs.
Since the adds will now stop spawning everyone should just concentrate on the interupting and on the boss herself, ofcourse you still have to keep moving out of the Death& Decay

My Xfire stream is still: http://www.xfire.com/live_video/nomennescios/
Also, were still looking for a new vent server to use, so if anyone owns one/knows one we can use please contact me or leave a comment

The Liveblog

19:33 Raid opens up, things are looking good we got ourselves a vent server and a good balanced group

19:45 We cleared first 2 groups off trash with np, everything going nicely so far even though dps is slightly slackish

19:58 We just wiped twice on the two big mobs, they have a raidwide aura that makes everyone take ~5k damage/3 secs, which is kinda hard to heal trough, aswell as a debuff which explodes for 15k to whoever is near the debuffed person

20:07 We just killed both of the big mobs by having one of our tanks go healing so we could heal trough the huge dps she does

20:18 We just had our second try on her, we tried just rushing down her health with BL up, but that didn't really work to well, since having more then ~5 adds up at a time really instakills your tanks

20:27 We got her mana pool to around ~15% this time before we wiped, so were defo making progress, but having random raid members get instagibbed is just really hard to get trough.

20:57 We just came back from a period of alot of dc's, fake dc's and people leaving, we have finally filled the raid back up again and I have now logged onto my protection warrior, think were looking fine as we got her to 1 mil mana left, but then one of the tanks (me) got oneshotted and it was a wipe

21:08 We just had one more try but it didn't really matter, as soon as we charged into the boss blizzard teleported us out of the instance: testing is over

I personally doubt that there will be much more testing and I expect the patch to land either this wednesday or the next.

If you have any questions regarding pve balance, pvp balance, new items or new quests on the ptr, feel free to ask them here and ill answer them to my best possible effort.

European Championship WoW starts/ And PICTURES!!

no.spam@gameriot.com (diejule) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:12:02 -0500

European Championship WoW starts - Finally! =)

sexy photo by David Huet

source: http://www.wallpaper-area.ch/wallpaper/sexy%20green.jpg

Thank you, David!

After announcing eight invited teams for the European Championship one month ago another eight World of Warcraft teams had to be determined via an ingame-ladder provided by Blizzard. During the last two weeks almost one hundred teams competed for the four available slots of the European Championship. Here are the eight winners of the qualification and the official groups of the Intel Extreme Masters European Championship.

Qualified via ingame ladder
Rocknroll pigtails - Rating: 1892
Emo Whoopass Patrol - Rating: 1888
Pincho.wow - Rating: 1885
Death Row - Rating: 1851
RNG PARTY- Rating: 1850
Itsallgoodnahmean - Rating: 1844
No Surprises- Rating: 1841
pwning noobs all day long- Rating: 1839

Invited teams
iNNERFiRE WoW
SK Gaming WOW PvP EU
aAa
GODMODE
plan B SKY.wow
SK GAMING Sansibar
x6tence.wow
BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK

The European Championship consist of four groups of four teams. The winner of each group will advance to the European Championship Finals, while the second and third placed will play relegation matches. All in all, the top eight teams in Europe will be seen live in the offline finals taking place 2010.

4x4= 16

=)

Group A GODMODE SK GAMING Sansibar RNG PARTY Itsallgoodnahmean		Group B Rocknroll pigtails aAa x6tence.wow BRB ICE CREAM TRUCK

Group C iNNERFiRE WoW Pincho.wow No Surprises pwning noobs all day long		Group D SK Gaming WOW PvP EU plan B SKY.wow Emo Whoopass Patrol Death Row

Flame us http://www.esl-world.net/masters/news/106196/ here if you like to.

Or visit us 11th until 13th of December 2009 at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada at the American Championship Finals! http://www.esl-world.net/masters/news/105520/

more pictures @ www.flickr.com/photos/world_domination

BRB QUITTING, (FOR NOW.) LF CATACLYSM.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Meztag) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:19:45 -0500

I WAS LATE TO WRATH. REALLY LATE

But I’ve been around since pre-bc. I came back to my undead warrior Phillo, on US-Executus, after leveling 70-80 about 2 weeks ago. I, just got back and am already leaving again. Actually, I don’t like being late to x-pac, so hopefuly I’ll get here on time for Cataclysm and join my old guild Sonata of Executus, I miss those guys, and my guild leader Zharon was the BEST, he’s been arround forever.

WOW AND RL FRIENDS
I also have a 80 undead priest, Corpuschrist on the same server, who I played from june-july 09, but quit due to moving into a new house, and didn’t have access to internet. I only leveled him to do 2v2 for fun with my RL friend who plays Undead rogue Ruben. He got a bear mount run from Ropetown., and quit for 9 months shortly after. We had fun playing 2's, (isn't it always fun to do arena with RL friends), i'm not that good, nor would I even consider myself the ideal person to teach strats, or theory s, yet I was yelling at him.... but it was fun. Therefore I wanted to reserve my priest to be 80, if he ever decided to come back to wow.

BRB QUITTING, (FOR NOW.) LF CATACLYSM.

In October-November, I reactivated my account to level 70-80 on my warrior, to reserve my spot to start leveling when Cataclysm releases, and to play as much of Wrath as I could before subscription expired.

WHAT I FOUND IN WRATH
Many things… First, I found leveling was fun. No annoying people around, just me and my epic 70 gear to carry me through my quest, easily. When I hit 80 and started sizing myself up to the people who have been playing, I find how progressed everyone REALLY was and how much it sucked trying to pug heroics/nax/voa without getting doubted.

I laugh, and at the same time, rage when it comes to the non-tanking dummies who think that HP is the main tanking stat..... Also 1k dps is good for heroics, but people said minimum is 2-3. LOL. 2-3 is above average you lazy f***s.

When I get in groups to tank, it's guaranteed that one of the other bimbos notice my hp before we start the run.... "YOU'RE A TANK? YOU HAVE 22k HP? " Yeah fu**nuts, sorry I’m not one of the 485 overly geared tanks to do heroics. I understand they are probably tired of running heroics this late in the expansion, but if they help me get a few pieces. Maybe talk to me like a normal person, perhaps recruit me… could be friends in the long run, instead of labeling EVERYONE in blues bad, and not looking for that diamond in the dirt. Yeah I said it, I’m a diamond In the dirt.

HOW WERE THE RUNS NEWAY, DID YOU WIPE? LOL
I just told them to watch and learn, if we wiped, it wasn’t my fault. Lazy healers, fault. Or maybe if one one of the fa**ot dps in the group who couldn’t kill things fast enough, but had the balls to tell ME I was under geared.

After EVERY I done ran (about 10 heroics), I get whisper from someone in the group, saying WOW IM SURPRISED YOU TANKED THAT, or HEY JOIN OUR GUILD WE NEED TANKS... or something. No sh*T

1. I knew I’d, surprise you, by the way you doubted my HP.

2. F*** your guild. Only 1 guild on this server I would want to join and it’s not yours.

3. Want to run something else, stay in group or add me

Not that i'm saying i'm good or anything, but it's obvious that people have too high expectations of others. Which sucks, because it shouldn’t be about that? It should be about knowing the game’s program engine, its mechanics, and your own role in a group. Kind of odd to say that about wow, but it seems like a common.

HOW WERE HEROICS PRE RAIDS in WRATH?

My experience, raiding in wrath was lame, because everyone has a stick up their a** about having overpowered gear for a heroic.. but was **** always this lame? Was tanking heroics 10 months ago fun? I bet half of the healers that I ran, couldn't of lasted 10 months ago.

Epic Drop 11/20/09: Arrested for no tip, Hasan the terrorist, Chuck Returns, Climate research hacked, $100 million for a healthcare vote? Avatar and Survival of Dead

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:49:32 -0500

Keeley Day is here and cause for celebration. I don't envy the Brits much but they got really lucky with that bundle of goodness. This will be a wrap on the Epic Drop for the week so bring your A-game to today's discussion and hopefully some good links as well. +1 for zombies and CG-loving Cameron.

Arrested for not leaving a tip? These college students in Philadelphia were handcuffed and arrested for not leaving a $16.35 tip. The main issue of contention seems to be the mandatory "18% gratuity added to check for parties of 6 or more". They had over six friends with them though they suffered through horrible service: "They had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress caught a smoke, had to ask the bar for soda refills, and had to wait over an hour for salad and wings, they told NBC10." Mandatory gratuity is complete bull**** as it should be solely based on the quality service.

"Chuck" finally has its return date set in stone which you may have seen announced last night during "The Office". January 10th (Sunday) is officially super-Chuck day as two episodes will air from 9-11pm and then the following day Chuck moves to its regular Monday time slot of 8pm. I am definitely excited for the return of Chuck. I may have lost out on T.S.C.C. but at least Chuck is back.

Finding pictures of Keeley showing off skin with her clothes on is actually a bit of a challenge

How much should it cost to buy a Senate health-care vote? 100 million dollars, would that do it for you? Check out this post on ABC in regards to the "reward" being giving to Louisiana moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu who is wavering on her support of Obama Care. Pretty convenient eh? Glad to see it is politics as usual here in the U.S.A. And if that wasn't enough Obama Care how about everyone having to pay a monthly abortion fee if you are on the national health-care plan? Regardless of your stance on abortion would you really want to be forced to pay for such a thing?

I am curious as to when we will stop calling this Hasan nutjob "Major" and refer to him as what he really is, a terrorist. The latest? Telling an al-Quaeda recruiter that "'I can't wait to join you' in the afterlife". This guy was a joke of a Major but he seems to have the terrorist role down pat. Drinkingwithbob may be a bit "out there" but he makes a valid point, the mainstream media seems to refuse to address him this way even though every single damn sign points to it accordingly.

Eminem's Relapse 2 is being delayed until next year which should come as little surprise to rap fans considering how late in the year it is. He plans on dropping it sometime in 2010 but in the mean he wants to tide you over with Relapse Refill in December, a rerelease of Relapse with 7 new songs including "Taking my ball" and "Forever" (the later sucks but Em's verse is ferocious). Hopefully Relapse 2 will lead to a tour next as Em is one of the few rappers I would care to see in concert (again).

The Hadley Climate Research Center, major supporters of global warming, seem to have a bit of egg on their face in recent days. A hacker gained access to confidential data and emails some of which clearly points to Hadley CRU fudging the numbers to portray things how they want them in particular the now semi-famous "hockey stick" graph which seemingly supported global warming. I can't wait to see how they react to this leak and what kind of justification they have for making their numbers "fit" with certain policy decisions.

Here is a interesting look at Avatar with some new footage as well showing off the human hardware. I have my concerns about this film plot-wise but it is still on the "to-watch list":

Avatar Movie Video - Exclusive Featurette: Human Hardware

Romero's Survival of the Dead is definitely looking better than Diary and while not as slick and flashy looking as Land he seems to get back to his roots as far as the look and feel of the film:

Later today my MOW2 review will be up so make sure you stop by and check it out.

Sony bringing 3D to PS3 with 2010 firmware update

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:24:21 -0500

3D gaming seems bound and determined to push in to the mainstream in one form or another. While a new concept on consoles other than tech demos the concept has been use with mixed success on platforms such as IZ3D's PC monitor to Nvidia's 3D vision it hasn't quite had a chance to succeed on the console front yet. Sony seems set to change all of that come 2010.

In a investor and media conference yesterday they highlighted some goals company wide on of their key pillars for success seems to be the inclusion of 3D and how they are uniquely able to bring it home for us gamers. You check out the full PDF here but I've added slides to this post as well. If you want some more technical details there is a solid read at Eurogamer that is a few months old before today's semi-big news.

The headline image may look a bit funny but the slide on the right seems to confirm that Sony's glasses will be more in line with the offering from Nvidia, their Vision setup, they crappy glasses we have all come to ignore. The other big is is that all Playstation 3's will be upgradable to through 3D via a free firmware update. That plus the HDMI 1.3 spec supported by the PS3 and their ties to their own TV line which will surely offer 3D at some point give them a decisive leg-up if this technology ever becomes mainstream. At this point the 360 just doesn't have the bandwidth capable over 1.2 HDMI to offer quality 3D even if they wanted to.

The connection between their console and TV or down the road while the technology is sent to pretty much any idea TV with the right specs via code over HDMI could be key in to making something happen on the 3D gaming front. Lets face it, 3D isn't exactly putting the PC gaming world on fire or anything.

I am not totally sold on 3D yet. No matter how normal Sony's or Nvidia's glasses may look they are still glasses. I just don't know that I can bring myself to consistently want to wear glasses while playing games, it just seems downright annoying. The technology would probably have to be mind blowing for me to consider it and for now the cost of a capable TV would also have to be factored in. While down the road any decent-spec-having TV may work, in the immediate future it will probably require a special line of Sony TVs. You won't be required to buy and use such technology but if it interests you it should be there and available to you sometime next year.

Ideally I would like to see a day when 3D setups require no glasses. Various companies have displays like that including 3M, Pioneer and more. The displays are far from mainstream at this point and I assume quite expensive. This is probably what it will require for 3D to hit it big though a time when gaming systems can send 3D to any decent HDTV will probably help.

In the mean I will wait with bated breath on this whole 3D thing in hopes that it becomes totally awesome so I have no excuse to not merge it in to my world of gaming or that its complete trash so that I can bypass it faster than the Virtual Boy.

GOMTV Named Season 3 Grand Finals Video: Button Basher In Action! PTR 10835: Deadly Poison Change Won't Save Rogues From 344 DPS Legendary Two-Hander's

no.spam@gameriot.com (Ming) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:58:13 -0500

Video Link: http://ch.gomtv.com/407/26729/329238/4

Requires Internet Explorer and installaton of GOMTV plug-in, and yes you have to sit through some Korean ads as well, well worth the effort however! Keep in mind the format is a mix of 1v1/3v3. You can go to the 47 minute mark to skip intros.

The red hot Button Bashers aka HON, fresh off their super impressive MLG Anaheim victory fought fellow Koreans at GOMTV season 3 finals. Unfortunately for them, they ran into a very unique team of protection warrior/retribution paladin/restoration druid in the grand finals.

Game 1, the protection warrior sat on Orange most of the times, but BB demonstrated the same clean crisp swaps from MLG Anaheim, from druid to warrior to paladin, given the amount of survivability their opponent has, and Orange shut down most of the game by the protection warrior, it is amazing how much damage pressure they dished out. Numberone continued to dish out heavy damage as priest and they finally brought down the paladin to go up 1-0.

Game 2 was 1v1 format with Orange as mage against opponent's feral druid (keep in mind GOMTV does not allow healer specs for its 1v1's). By taking advantage of pillars, instant cyclones and of course unlimited snare breaks, the feral druid simply turtled whenever Oranged popped his water elementals. Orange was forced to fight 1v1 and the feral druid was just too hard to get away from. Series tied 1-1.

Game 3 was 3v3 again this time on Nagrand, the protection warrior and retribution paladin put out more pressure on the priest this time around to stop his damage, and both turtled better. BB did the same amazing swaps and kept the warrior at 10% for a very long time, but a protection warrior is just too difficult to kill. Orange eventually ran out of mana and died. BB down 1-2.

Game 4 saw the super impressive rogue hero Hiren taking on the same feral druid who defeated Orange earlier. Arena rules with feral druid having access to water + shadow sight, rogue without food, it is supposed to be impossible to win against a feral with instant cyclone. Yet Hiren played so well with his keep aways, never got shouted out once, always landed his saps whenever the druid tried to grab shadow sight, bandaged behind LOS at perfect angles to avoid fairy fire, he managed to force a draw from one of the best feral druids out there as time ran out! He even had the momentum advantage when the match ended. Koreans have amazing internet connections, some of Hiren's surgical precision moves would be impossible with American pings. Score still 1-2, from here all matches will be 3v3.

Game 5 was on Dalaran again and played similar to previous matches. Protection warrior sat on Orange and really annoyed the hell out of him but BB caught the retribution paladin with a beautiful swap when he popped wings and brought him down. Orange was at low mana but they had just enough left in the tank to win. Series tied 2-2.

Final match on Dalaran again, as good as Orange is at avoiding insane beast cleave damage from X6, against the constant harassment of protection warrior he just couldn't get much hard casts going. Long game and he went out of mana in the end, and down for the count. Still a very good performance for Button Bashers but I think this protection warrior / retribution paladin and restoration druid should have no problem beating beast cleave and pretty much any comp that relies on sheer early pressure. BB loses in a thrilling 2-3 series.

PTR 10835: Deadly Poison Change Won't Save
Rogues From 345 DPS Legendary

After watching BB losing to heavy armor, it was clear that as amazing as Hiren is, he just can't do enough damage to a heavy armor team like warrior/paladin/druid. Blizzard gave rogues a superb PVE change with improved poison now offering 20% chance to proc deadly poison, up from 10%, and deadly poison procs at max stack now proc poison from the other weapon (instant or wound)!

Fully talented, a rogue will have 50% chance to proc deadly poison off a 1.4 offhand, and off envenom procs it goes up to 65%. Cheap shot to kidney, spare combo points on slice and dice and you should be able to get 5 stack deadly in no time. From there the target is taking 1200 damage from deadly poison every 3 seconds, your offhand deadly will now proc wound poison damage, throw in the big envenoms and we will finally do respectable damage against plate. It should give rogue/affliction lock/shaman a nice boost although I would argue heavy armor was never that team's problem to begin with.

The new 44/2/25 spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0ecoIgoirR0uZ0bZebfbc0db

And remember, against hunter armor and above, a single stack of deadly poison allows envenom to outdamage eviscerate at equivalent combo points.

Of course, Blizzard can easily change their mind and make this a PVE only buff by limiting deadly poison proccing other poisons at max stack to instant poison only. Although given how combat relies on wound poison, they will probably leave it as is. To be fair, against druid/shaman teams it will be very hard to maintain 5 stacks considering how much you will be kited/cced. The buff to improved poisons alone should give envenom the edge over eviscerate for good, as the biggest problem I had with full time envenom 44/2/25 was lack of deadly poison procs when I really needed it.

Heavy plate teams are not that common these days compared to wizard cleave so this is not the huge PVP buff that makes rogues imbalanced, but it will finally make 44/2/25 the definitive spec. I remember when no one wanted to use shadowstep, and Blizzard buffed it again and again and again until it became THE spec. The same thing is happening to envenom here. It was $hit, now it is the $hit.

Considering 3.3 will come out before season 7 ends, I am wondering if there may be an alternative to RMP for rogues looking for gladiator titles. My rogue/ret/priest team is seriously feeling the ceiling right now, and watching Furious Gladiator Euneek out of gladiator range with this comp pains me. They tried the ultimate rushdown rogue in Enforcer and even his sideway keyboard couldn't prevent a 100 point drop.

I don't have access to a quality mage or warlock who would choose rogue over wizard cleave at the moment, and it is really late in the season to make much roster changes. I will see if I can find a quality feral but most likely I will have to stick to the same comp rest of the way.

Of course, none of this will matter once we are up against 344 DPS 2 handers. I sincerely hope this requires beating Arthas on hard mode, difficulty equivalent of Yogg +0. To be fair, the season 8 two-hands will be around 318 DPS, the legendary here is the equivalent of season 9 weapon with a crazy proc. Imagine TSG with two of these?

Week 11: A Cinematic Experience

no.spam@gameriot.com (celesis) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:51:36 -0500

Matches: 16 ( W 6 - L 10)

Thank you for the comments and constructive ideas posted in response to my Arena Sit and Go tournaments piece. I'm glad most of you liked the idea, my original intent of writing that blog was to get the idea out there in hopes that it may land in the right hands and maybe spark something up! Since then I've written another article depicting another PvP event idea which I think would be just as fun as the Sit and Go Tournaments. I will be posting it sometime during the next few days!

This week on the Slushy and the Squishies show...

All the warning signs were there, the darkening clouds, the brisk upheaval of once calm ocean waves the faint rumbling in the distance… I didn’t see the storm coming or I really didn’t want to. Up until this last week I had been cruising, carefree and enjoying the dancing of the arena waves; having a blast with teammates and friends. Ever since this ship set sail we’ve had a smooth ride, a couple of bumps here and there; the occasional arena rookie seasickness creeping from time to time but other than that it has been an enjoyable time. Until this week that is, the storm hit hard and it sent me overboard and into the furious sea… I was scared, there was nothing to guide me the sky was dark and I was struggling to keep afloat, a few meters behind my ship was being trashed by the waves, the 2200 was succumbing to the abusive waters and with it the easy times were slowly sinking.

Amid the mayhem there was a single glint of hope, a silhouette in the distance, land! It is far, more than a hundred times the distance between me and my sinking dreams but its offer of safety is better than staying put and floating hoping for a miracle. I slowly begin to swim…

And now a short commercial break!

2550, that is the number that plagues my mind and my dreams making them become nightmares. Is it an attainable rating? It has been almost 2 months since we got into the 2200+ rating range and we’ve yet to crack 2300. The past week we played 16 games and won only 6, yet we somehow gained 15 points. I played terrible, horrible the worst I’ve done since I began this project. I have regressed enormously and I’m not completely sure why. It could have been terrible luck as we encountered many teams that just destroyed me, fresh from the tournament we ran into a lot of Beastcleaves and TSGs and a good RMP. We’ve been defeating Wizard cleave, RLS and RMP fairly consistently but only found those a couple of times and it's reflected in our record for the week.

The major problem right now is that I don’t do enough damage when focused, for example TSG, having a Warrior right click me and strafe back and forth is super annoying in addition to a DK, his ghoul stun and every other possible thing that prevents me to pump damage out. On top of that they keep running through me to stop my casts, I really really really try to do my best and turn with my mouse along them as I cast even predicting where they may walk to next, but I still fail often.

Sometime during this the Warrior will Bladestorm, I have to port out and when I do I am confronted with two choices, do I spell lock the non-aura mastery heal the Paladin is throwing out and stay out of LoS until Bladestorm fades or do I spell lock the DK to avoid grip into the Bladestorm and use the time I have, with the distance I made, to put some damage into the target?

In either of the cases I will end up with a Warrior sticking to my face once Bladestorm is out the only difference is if my RNG caused the Paladin to bubble or not. Most of the times it won’t even force the bubble and after that it’s pretty much game over.

Beastcleave, I know, you know, we *all* know that it’s a tough composition to beat- there are some teams that run it where we can squeak by with a win but I usually get killed in the blink of an eye. Does it warrant further nerfs? Maybe. Beastcleave on the right hands is extremely deadly however not everyone has the skill to execute and just cruise their way into Gladiator range safe rating island.

We now return to the Slushy and the Squishies show...

The 2550 island and its offer of safety and comfort is what powers my swimming strokes in this relentless storm, I’m at my limit- I’ve been struggling back and forth being thrown around like a piece of drifting wood by the rating waves I cannot continue any longer. I can’t recall how or when my legs stopped kicking, my arms moving, my lungs breathing; I gave up and I am now slowly sinking into the deep dark ocean…

Until a gentle but firm hand grabbed my arm and clenched tightly, a second bone-y arm plunged in from above and helped pulling me out. My two teammates Ravasham and Sargaz were in a lifeboat, as I gasped for air the Rogue said- “Don’t give up just yet. We can make it to that island.” I looked up to him at the same time a paddle was placed into my hands by the Shaman: “We’ve carried you this far, from this point on you’ll have to paddle the same as us.”

I smiled, with focus and energy along with my trusty teammates I am sure we can make it. We slowly start paddling our way unto that safe land in the distance until then you will find us struggling in the arena storm together.

“yea eum you were going to drown there tho, why didn’t you use Unending Breath on yourself tho?” the rogue asked…

My reply: “Ooooh, good idea! I’ll try that next time™”

Key to fixing out of control damage, What I think Blizzard should have done with Arenas.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomaq) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:43:34 -0500

#1 What I think Blizzard should have done with Arenas.

Top 5 reasons why I think this is a good idea:

1. Everyone is equal and on the same playing field.
2. Casuals and PVErs actually get to experience arena with adequate gear.
3. Blizzard gains a boatload of casual subscriptions. PvP community gains more competition.
4. PvE gear is no longer a factor in Arena.
5. Gear does not determine the outcome of matches. Player skill does.

Here's how it works:

Instanced "Arena Queuing" areas of WoW are designated where people gather to participate in arenas (eg Dalaran Sewers could be one of the instanced areas).
In these designated areas level 80's can enter and access ALL arena vendor gear and vs each other on an equal playing field all in equal gear (think mini instanced tournament realm).
PvE Gear cannot be used in arenas. The gear provided must be used.
Players gain rating, and arena points just like the current system and work towards "unlocking" their gear by achieving the necessary rating / point requirements.
Gear is unlocked by visiting an arena vendor and clicking on "I'd like to unlock armor" and then selecting the piece of armor they'd like to unlock if they have the adequate requirements (honor, rating, arena points etc).
The honor/rating/arena point system remains the same as what is currently required for purchasing armor on live realms. This means players still have to participate in BG's etc if they wish to unlock offset pieces.
"locked" pieces would have your standard fugly looking models (e.g. Deadly Armor Model), while unlocked pieces would have their model changed to something more epic, (e.g. Relentless Armor Model). This is so good players can instantly be recognized from bads. All gear has the same stats.
Once the gear is unlocked, it can be taken outside of the designated instances and is essentially the players to keep.
While in designated arena areas you can save your sets with the equipment manager. This is so that you can keep your gear setups while you're still unlocking gear. For example: if you leave the instanced arena queuing area when you haven't unlocked anything you'd go back to your rags, but when you come back later, you can simply reload your saved gear setup and get back to Arenaing.

Everyone is equal, yet there is still an incentive to participate in battlegrounds and gain rating/arena points in order to "earn" the gear and take it outside designated instanced arena queuing areas.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#2 Fixing the out of control damage issue:

Give everyone a permanent buff while in arena that increases stam by x%. This will slow down damage in arenas and also not affect the rest of the WoW "universe"; PvErs wont cry about "stam too high on pvp gear" etc, PvPers wont cry about being global'd. Blizzard can tweak the buff for each bracket as they see fit to keep out of control damage in check.

I hope this all makes sense, if not comment and I will try to clarify.

I look forward to any constructive criticism / suggestions.

I don't care for trolls, or if you don't like my idea. It's meerly just a suggestion I thought I'd throw out there.

-Nomaq

Call of Duty is big business - A Movie, sales and a new developer?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:35:18 -0500

Modern Warfare 2 is a bit over a week old now and it has been a resounding success for Activision and Infinity Ward both on the sales front and with the critics as well. For some fans it is a mixed bag, largely due the "consolization" of the PC version, but for most the game is a hit. My review is finished and I'll be sure to toss it up for your critical consumption tomorrow some time.

The release of the game hasn't stopped the Call of Duty news flow. First up is word from the Hollywood front. Current rumors from Kevin McKidd, aka Captain "Soap" MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2, is that a Call of Duty movie is in the works and he may be brought in to reprise his role for the feature film. Now this is obviously from an actor who has little pull behind the scenes when it comes to studios and financing so we probably have to take this with a grain of salt. Activision has mentioned a desire in the past to take Call of Duty to the silver screen so it may not be a total stretch.

I am not really sold on another video-game-to-movie adaption, especially with the budget that is going to be required to make this a faithful transition to film. There are tons of fantastic modern war films that this will be held up against like Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down so whatever studio picks this up has their work cut out for them.

Rumors out of the L.A. Times has a mention of a third developer taking up the reigns of the Call of Duty series as well. According to the Times:

"Nonetheless, the publisher has aggressive expansion plans for Call of Duty. Although Infinity Ward and Treyarch have produced sequels in alternating years since 2005, the publisher now has a third development studio working on future versions..”.

Will another developer join Infinity Ward and Treyarch in making new Call of Duty games? Will they move to a new-every-three system for each studio? It could also be that we see the often talked about COD MMO coming out of these rumors or the new studio could simply be working on PSP/iPhone/DS versions.

And just in case you were curious as to how big the launch of Modern Warfare 2 was check out these figures from IGN. The game did 550 million dollars in its first week beating:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince's 5-day world-wide total
The Dark Knight's 5-day domestic total
Grand Theft Auto 4's previous hold on 5-day sales
And more sales first day than GTA4 had as well.

Check out the link for more details on the figures including some impressive Xbox Live numbers contributed by Microsoft as well.

What game could top these numbers? It would almost have to be a multi-platform release to top these numbers as I don't see an exclusive pulling these kinds of numbers. Grand Theft Auto 5 maybe?

Racism and My Failed Journey to China, How Good Shaman Play, Residual MLG Thoughts

no.spam@gameriot.com (Bodi) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:13 -0500

It's Been A String of Interesting Lessons Post-MLG
I find that life has a lot in common with PvP. I mean, you gotta set up the burst. You play it aggressive or defensive sometimes. You can choose to blow your load at the beginning and ride the momentum up or you can do it with finesse. Set up CC, set up the burst and then score the kill.

Sometimes, you make 8 different decisions every second and you have no choice but to be right on every single one because one slip up means you just ride the momentum down. I guess we as young men, we are at that point in our lives where we're trying to determine what strategy to use because the gates have just opened and some of us don't even know what comp we're playing on or against and others are playing with alt +z pressed without even knowing it.

There are differences, of course. For our accomplishments, here are no asterisks, only scoreboards. There's the Universal RNG factor of course. If I had a choice, would I have rolled gnome or human instead? It's not even worth considering. When it comes to things you can't control you just roll with what you've got.

Right now I'm at the top of my game. I work 60+ hour weeks, I travel often, I make a good salary in a flexible position that allows me to do pretty much anything in my life. However, I got a reminder that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much money I may have, how much travel or world experiences I have under my belt.....because of certain physical attributes I possess, I'll still be branded as no better than the negative stereotypes that walk the streets of my old neighborhoods. Stereotypes that I've fought against tooth and nail my entire life.

I have to face it, If I were white, I'd still be meeting Sophie in China on some reckless and romantic journey to find......something that wasn't in my little corporate office in Beverly Hills. What can I do when she tells me that because of her own naive views of her fiercely traditional Chinese parents that she lost out on something could have been amazing? Not a damn thing. It's like when I fight against a good RMP that trains me at the beginning of the game so I have to pop all cooldowns to live and they simply CC me and kill my rogue.

Sometimes, your own weaknesses and flaws get to you on top of the things that you can't control. A little while ago, I took out a woman to a nice restaurant to use my try and true method of setting up the Flame Shock so I can Lava Burst later in the evening or perhaps that week. She dispelled the Flame Shock immediately. She actually did it several times and I wasn't able to close the deal. Later that week it was revealed to me that I was too aggressive and overconfident months before I'd even gotten to that point, and it severely impeded my chances of grinding up the required reputation with her.

If you take away nothing else from this portion of the entry, take this: sometimes, you can find parallels in anything that's important to you. When we play WoW, it can be much more than an exercise in moving your mouse fast and trying to maximize your GCDs and effective APM with pixels that can be deleted easily. It's all in what you make it.

Stepping Up Your Game
I had the opportunity recently to play with someone very close to me in game and found myself in a situation where the person, while filled with great potential, was simply not used to playing the game at the level I'd become accustomed to. It's a common frustration many have expressed with real life friends, girlfriends and supposed Merciless Gladiators who actually bought their accounts.

So I'm left with the decision of continuing playing with this person and working with them to improve their play even as I strive to improve my own or....finding other people to play with who I'd be more comfortable with making that last minute Gladiator push with in coming months.

I'm already notorious for team hopping every week in 3s because I like to play with everyone so I decided to keep up with this, while concurrently keeping him on my list of players to rotate around with.

I'm far from being a perfect player. Having the opportunity to look over Douja and Tenderloin's shoulder at MLG it gave me a play by play view of how two of the best shaman play. I was shocked at how defensive they were to my (sometimes overly) offensive style. There were a few games where Douja barely shocked or purged at all, instead playing it low key and keeping his positioning to where it was very difficult for him to be switched to as he healed. There was a more deliberate patience to their shaman play that I found myself lacking.

You don't have to shock EVERY cast. You don't have to purge everything. But, when you do have the opportunity to safely play offensively, do so and do it better than anyone else. There have been times where I've been so tunnel visioned on shocking a warlock or mage and keeping myself in a constant position to do so and I end up in a bad spot to be switched to immediately. It was the first good lesson for me in what turned out to be a string of lessons in life for me this week.

I guess sometimes, when you feel like you're at the top of your game and you've never been this good before, that doesn't mean you stop improving and continuing to step it up.

I was talking to Vidra on AIM and he linked me to this video of some random white guy playing guitar. He's actually pretty ******* good.

And I found this link in Zilea's AIM comment. Fun facts about Zilea: he's made the dean's list several times before graduating college with a degree in poli sci and he reads The Huffington Post as his only news source.

Epic Drop 11/19/09: 10-year-old girl tased, Movie popcorn rules, Aussies know wrestling? Grossmans & Cutler, The Road director

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:35:15 -0500

Another bonus Megan Fox day? Yes, we are that lucky. Megan Fox's crotch is contained inside, spread eagle. If that isn't reason enough for you guys, and some girls, to stop in I don't know what is. +1 for multiple crotch shots?

Leading off tonight with the story of a 10-year-old girl getting tased. You guys say I am so anti-taser, which I am at times, but I challenge you to read this story and find any justification for this happening. Her mom should face punishment for "authorizing it" and any cop that needs and uses a taser to subdue a 10-year old needs to find a new job. The mayor of their town wants the FBI and state police to look in to this incident so that is one plus.

Our friends down under seemingly still buy in to professional wrestling. Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair "got in to it" at a press conference and the Aussies report it like its fact and some sort of brawl between Ron Artest and Allen Iverson at a post-game press conference. You can watch it all you want, I don't mind, but can't we call come to the consensus by now that 99.5% of it all is staged? Read the comments as some of them are nearly priceless.

Movie popcorn is amazing. Deny it all you want but sitting down with a bag-of-crap-that-isn't-good-for-you is half the fun of going to the theater along with being blown away by sound and picture quality you can't get in your own home. Apparently however movie popcorn is bad for you, like all awesome things in life, so you shouldn't eat a lot of it. Read up at MSNBC just how bad it is then when you giggle with glee going to see New Moon this weekend you can sneak in tofu or some ****.

Does Megan think she is some sort of gymnast? You know what, I don't care, I just approve. More at Egotastic and these were the outtakes...

How bad is it that Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears has Rex Grossman's dad feeling bad for him? Things can only go up from here right? I am not ready to call for the death of the Culter experiment but the organization has to realize that changes need to be made and a great arm isn't going to make a team. Yes I expected them to contend for the North this season but injuries on defense up the wazoo and a non-existent running game have not helped Cutler's cause. Anyone seen the missing persons milk carton with Matt Forte on the back? I hear its a collector's item.

The Road director John Hillcoat sat down with Comingsoon.net to talk about his adaption of the much-loved book. They discuss his work with Cormac McCarthy, the books writer, in post-production to help the movie come to life and the differences between the two mediums. They talk about Viggo, shooting locations, etc. Check it out and get ready for The Road November 25th when kicks New Moon in the werewolf testicles.

The FCC has outlined plans for its larger role within the world of U.S. broadband. You guys know I am weary of government intervention in such a market but they have trampled over internet access and broadband access for years at both the Federal (USF), State and local level (exclusive contracts, denying competition) so it seems they may be needed to help balance things back out. The good news is they may be on top of the issues that soon may face cell phone wireless access that soon may dominate the airwaves.

Vir sent this to me late last night and while it has gone viral on the web already I figured I would post it here in case Zilea is looking for that someone special!

And in case you already saw that one here is an awesome boxing K.O.:

PTR Testing Day 3: Rotface & The Blood Princes; New imbalanced Legendary; ICC raiding system

no.spam@gameriot.com (Nomennescio) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:56:54 -0500

Good evening everyone and welcome to yet another day of Icecrown Citadel PTR testing.
Unfortunately, due to having volleyball practise, I was 15 minutes late for my own raid, and thus unable to set up a proper blog for yesterday, but ill give you a quick rundown on what happened.

Lord Marrowgar

At 19:45 we finally started clearing trash, things weren't looking to good, since we just got banned from the Vent server we were using (still looking for replacement and we were 15 minutes late.

Trash went more or less perfectly but having a group of 5 uncontrollable mobs spawn 2 very hard hitting elites is slightly overdone for trash, so we wiped a couple of times, but really nothing noteworthy about the trash.

As I said on my previous blog, Lord Marrowgar is really a pushover, and so we one-shotted him with only 2 deaths.

The few things I can say about it is that it mostly requires luck, rapid switches and good healers.

He has 3 important abilitys:

Bonestorm: This ability works really comparable to bladestorm it lasts for ~6 seconds and he spins around the entire room hitting everything for ~5k/tick, no biggie but if you are to bunched up on eachother it can cause some strain on your healers.
Impale: This is very comparable to the mechanics of High Warlord Najentus in the way that it impales someone with a spine, and the rest of the raid has to nuke this spine. If this doesn't happen quickly the target can and will die, especially if he has a doomfire on his ass aswell.
Doomfire: This is very comparable to the mechanics of Archmonde in Mt Hyjal: it is semi-intellegent (which means it follows people around but switches regularily) but unlike the archimonde doomfires, it doesn't hurt that much: it ticks for aprox ~5k/sec.

The only way that you can actually die is if your tanks arn't near him quick enough after his bonestorm ends, since he also has the ability to split his normal hits on the two targets closest/highest on threath. If one of those targets is a clothie, it means hes gonna die, which is what happened to us, twice.

                                                   Gunship Battle

The second event of yesterday night was the gunship battle, which your raid, Saurfang and a couple of npc's, fighting an entire boat of alliance soldiers.
The objective is to beat their boat up so badly that they flee and you can continue progressing to the upper spires.

For this fight you have to devide your raid in two halves, group 1 will consist of 3 ranged, 1 tank and 1 healer and stays on our ship, to fight off boarders and shoot their gunners.
Two players from group 1 will also man the guns and shoot them when they become avaible.
Group 2 will consist of 2 melee, 2 healers and a tank and will teleport to their ship using rocket packs, take out the casters freezing our guns, and then teleport back quick enough so that muradins buff (he gets +5% damage for every hit he lands) doesn't stack up to high and oneshots the tank.
This buff will wear off in aprox 15 seconds, allowing your group to go kill the sorcerers again.
I am not sure what triggers the sorcerors to spawn, either its at 75/50/25% or just at timed intervals.
For now the Gunship Battle is for me the best fight in the Icecrown Citadel so far, in the end we got the enemy boat to 14% before the testing ended.

                                        Shadowmourne, the new Legendary

Today blizzard released the stats from the new legendary: Shadowmourne and from what I can see, its overpowered like hell.
Compared to a random legendary looted from ICC25, which will most likely have the same dps as the new wrathfull weapons, this is a 50!!! dps increase.
Not only that, but the weapon hosts 3 red sockets, and the socket bonus is +str, aswell as the weapon having a nice bit of arp and critical strike rating.

Having to fight a double healer warrior team in 3v3 with a warrior who has this baby will be difficult as hell and as far as I can see, we are basicly back to the TBC era, where having Warglaives meant you went from a 2000 rogue to a 2400 rogue.

I am currently not sure wether the proc will work in arena or not, the old proc (8k damage after 10 soul fragments were captured) was confirmed not to work on players, but this proc is only 2k, so I personally think it will be avaible in arenas.
I currently donot know how often you can proc this weapon, but if it procs often, and the +40 str proc stacks, were going to have to go pve again in order to be competitive for rank1.

                                        Blizzards new PvE Progression Path

Blizzard has just released word of their new progression pve path in ICC:

As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

This basicly means the following:

Sunwell-esque gating progress, every once in a while a new wing of the instance will be opened, this can take as long as blizzard feels comfortable with.
Togc-esque attempt system, you only have 5 wipes to kill the last boss of each wing (Prof Putricide, Blood Queen and Syndrygosa), only, after each passing week, you will have another 5 tries to do it, so that there is gradual progression on the boss kills. There will, however, be no achievement for completing ICC while having all your tries still left, or without anyone dying, like there is in totgc.
And now the most important one: graduel progression with a buff which increases in strength each week, which makes sure that blizzard doesn't have to nerf the bosses overtime to let the worse players experience them aswell. I personally think this is one of the best things they could ever have done to their pve game, as it really allows graduel progression for both the casual and the hardcore guilds. Ofcourse, there is also a way to turn this buff off, which will probably rewards you with an achievement if you manage to complete the instance in this way.

Rotface & The Blood Princes

Now onto the content of tonights PTR raid.
We are going to test Rotface and The Blood princes again, both encounters have already been tested atleast once (Princes) or even 3 times (Rotface), so there isn't much I can say about the encounter really.
Here are the models of the bosses, they might be placeholders but I personally doubt that, thanks to mmo-champion for making them.

A full list of their abilitys can be found here and here.

As usual, my xfire stream is http://www.xfire.com/live_video/nomennescios/

The Liveblog

19:06 Invites should have started by now, but Blizzard just had to choose this moment to reboot their servers, so I cannot get online, im guessing the show will start soon.

19:10 Remulos (the french server) just came online, and the rest will soon follow.

19:16 Remulos just went down and Brill, the server were on, completely disapeared from the server list

19:43 Just wtf is blizzard thinking their doing with those damned servers, wtb everything up already

19:45 Servers finally comming online, however I still cannot log onto my own account for some reason, so I logged onto a friends priest and started the invites, stream is up now.

19:54 It turns out only people who actually had a battlenet account before the patch can login

20:14 Icecrown Citadel isn't currently open, even though the entrance is crowded as hell, a guildie of mine just spoke to Boubouille (the main mod of mmo-champ) over IRC and he says hes currently trying to find out what happens aswell.
Hopefully the raiding won't be cancelled.

20:22 Finally, the instance opens, time to get rocking naow

20:45 Okay turned out I was wrong, some blizzard guy said they would be opening up....around 20 minutes ago..... blizzard service at its best guys

20:57 The instance opened up 10 mins ago but still we havn't been able to clear anything significant, people are dcing/slacking bigtime and someone just pulled the valkyrs

21:25 We are now nearly at the boss, just have to dispatch the two big gluthlike dogs

21:33 we just wiped twice on the gluthlike dogs, because appearently they seem to pull eachother even if they arn't remotely close

22:04 Tonights raid is going really ****ty, we just had our first wipe in the Blood Quarter because of tank failure, I mean how fkin hard can it be to keep decent agro as a warrior?

Six Words that Terrify Blizzard.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fives) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:13:54 -0500

"I Just Want to Kill Arthas."

Yesterday, Blizzard formally announced their plans for Icecrown Citadel progression, and a lot of what they did in ToGC is carrying over. To recap quickly, they're releasing Icecrown one wing at a time, with "several weeks"* in between wings being ungated. On top of that, hard mode Icecrown won't be doable until Arthas dies on normal mode, meaning hard mode Icecrown won't be released until all 4 wings are. On top of *that,* attempt counters are back for the final boss of each wing, only with a couple new twists: You get 5 attempts per wing boss, carrying over from the previous wing boss to the next, all the way up to Arthas. Oh yeah, these attempt counter exist on normal mode, as well.

While it's easy to be shocked and dismayed that Blizzard would betray their fanbase, anyone who has been paying attention this expansion will feel this is par for the course. This is Activision at work, pure and simple, and all the talk of lore making this necessary, or expanded enjoyment making this necessary is whitewash to cover one simple fact: This expansion sucked.

The leveling was nice, the zones were cool, and the events were fun, but on a whole, up until Icecrown we've gotten one legitimate new raid zone: Ulduar. Naxxramas was a retool of old content. Trial of the Grand Crusader was reused models and a reused final boss (really, Blizzard used Anubarak on a level 72 5 man only to bring him back as the penultimate raid boss? This shows foresight and planning how?). Maylgos, Sartharion and the Vault bosses were hole-in-the-walls, so aside from Icecrown, the only real new raiding content that wasn't a band-aid was Ulduar.

Trial of the Grand Crusader has been such a disappointment, guild leaders such as myself spend a lot of time talking to their players trying to keep them interested in going. On a whole, this expansion, with the 10/25 man split, the normal/hard mode split, and the lack of content for months at a time has made running a successful guild incredibly challenging. At this stage of the expansion, many people are moving on, finding much better value for their entertainment dollar (sadly, a lot of which ends up going back to Activision.) Many of those left are here for one reason:

"I just want to kill Arthas."

It's clear Blizzard is aware of this. To quote the blue post about the Icecrown plans:

"We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace."

Daelo is telling the truth for two-thirds of that statement. This will make their game subscriptions more sustainable, and the pacing more measured, but it sure won't make it more enjoyable. As a guild leader, in fact, it's going to make it a nightmare. But Blizzard realizes this expansion has been little more than a public beta for their B-team of developers to try to figure out how to make a dollar out of 79 cents. They know a lot of people are just hanging on to finish what they started many years ago with TFT. They want to kill Arthas, and as soon as they do, they're going to bounce and take their subscriptions with them. By stretching Icecrown out, they accomplish a couple of things: they close the gap between content from 3.3 to Cataclysm, and they force a multiple month schedule required to kill Arthas. That's multiple subscription months, as opposed to one month that it'd probably take many serious or semi-serious guilds to kill Arthas.

Let's project this out: For the sake of argument, say Icecrown comes out Decemeber 1st, just to make the math easy. On Dec. 1, we get Wing 1. Now, Blizzad's wording on the release of new wings is "several weeks." To me, several weeks means more than 2, so I'm going to say 3 weeks between release of each wing. That puts wing 2 at December 22nd. Three more weeks puts Wing 3 at January 12. Finally, Wing 4 comes out February 2nd. If your billing cycle starts on that same December 1st, you pay for December, January, and February--three months--just to *see* Arthas, provided you and your guild are good enough to get past the extremely limited number of attempts you will initially get in Icecrown. Then, you kill Arthas that week, let's say, because you're that good. The week of February 9th is when you can start hard modes. Start. A raid initially released on Dec. 1 will allow for hard modes to begin on February 9th. My powers of prognostication and experience as a guild leader / recruiter say that many, many guilds will not survive hard modes.

That's how Blizzard sees this: How can we get the most money--not enjoyment, but money--out of this content. How can we make sure we milk our greatest asset left--Arthas--for maximum value? Blizzard keeps insisting that Activision isn't up in their business, but it's just another lie they tell you or themselves to convince either party they still make a good game.

From a guild leader perspective, as I said above, this is a nightmare. I'll take it a piece at a time.

Gating:

At this point, the gear level escalation has made old content completely irrelevant. Ulduar hardmode gear is in most ways inferior to ToC normal mode gear, with a few exceptions here and there for the true min/maxers. Going back to do Ulduar has no value from a guild readiness standpoint, and for content that's been out since I believe April, many find it painful to even step foot in there anymore. What gating does is extend the need to do this old content to keep people on a solid raiding schedule. It also gives people a taste of the new content, which causes a distaste for the old content. Part of the problem is just how bad Trial is, with 5 bosses, no trash, and a trophy system that has people getting tier 245 gear for third offspecs.

There simply isn't enough to do while we wait for these wings to open.

Another real problem will be that if there are in fact 3 weeks between wings, We'll have killed the initial bosses around 10 times before we even see Arthas, making half of the instance old crap we've farmed. We'll be sharding the limited loot from these guys in those later weeks while we hope deeper bosses drop the other pieces we need.

Attempts:

The real problem, however, is the attempts system, especially on normal mode. This has huge ramifications for any upper middle class guild that still has to carry a few people, doesn't have everyone on state of the art hardware, and still plays a buggy, crash-prone, disconnect prone game. With 50 attempts, so long as you aren't going for Insanity, you have some leeway on things like DCs. With 5/10/15/20 attempts per raid week, every problem and mistake gets magnified intensely.

The first three weeks, when we have 5 attempts, one wrong disconnect costs a guild 20% of it's resources for fighting a boss. Read the tech support forums, or hell, just play the game. You'll see that random disconnects have plagued raiding this expansion. Right now in ToGC there is a nasty bug that will hit someone at random, making them DC, and unable to log back in without an immediate disconnect until the fight is over. Do I tell these long standing, unlucky raiders that the wow gods have deemed them too risky for attempt fights on normal mode? Have they just been marginalized by Blizzard for something that is Blizzard's fault?

What about the new recruit I got? How does he learn the fight? Do I risk attempts with him in the raid, or just keep the same raid comp I had when I killed it the first time, since they have kill experience? What about those people who are long term raiders but missed the first kill for whatever reason? Do I tell them I can't bring them to the fight for a while because it's just too risky? If I do bring them, and we fail, what do I tell the rest of my guild; that I had the means to kill this boss, but I decided to forsake that to make this one person happy? How do I win?

And what happens when someone does the inevitable and stands in the fire? Currently, I want for sustained sloppiness before I get in someone's face about it, because, frankly, this is a game and people are human, and I shouldn't have to go d-bag mode from the outset (it also makes d-bag mode less effective if it's always on.) But now, if someone stands in fire and wastes 20% of my attempts, what choice do I have but to crap all over them? I mean, the alternative is to tell my guild NO MORE RAIDING FOR THE WEEK. How do I tell them that? How do I keep people in the guild in the face of that?

This also gives a huge advantage to people who've gone to the PTR. They've seen the fights, and can already start planning it out with their guilds. For some guilds, including my own, a lot of the fun is to go in there and figure the fight out over the course of a night. It's a great thrill to see your raid learn to dance step by step. While pre-pull planning is a valuable and necessary part of progression raiding, you're going to force people to take it to the extreme. People will be frapsing attempts and going over them on the spot; running alt fodder thru the instance first to get more experience with the fight; waiting for every last cooldown to be up and ready (which really starts to explain their changes to cooldown timers.) Kicking people with bad connections that night, or who are prone to too many AFKs. It causes the raid/guild leader to become an instant d-bag because he has to manage the precious resource of attempts as efficiently as possible.

And this is all on *normal* mode.

Now, Blizzard has also said the following:

"In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish. "

Now, they've made the lore convenient, but what they're really saying is they want to release the content now, but only make it doable for the majority of the raiding population many months from now. They're basically telling you "stick around and we'll guarantee an Arthas kill. Stick around, and you'll be able to faceroll thru the same content more dedicated players shed blood sweat and tears over."

Tell me how I'm supposed to keep a guild together in the face of that? Why not just cancel my account, and come back in 4-5 months? What's stopping anyone in my guild from doing just that? This takes Icecrown from a guild killer, with all the stresses it will put on individual performance, and turns it into a pughouse, where anyone with even remotely required gear will be able to facerolll thru with increased health, damage, and healing.

The best analogy to all this I heard on the forums was "what if they said you could only play 30 arena games a week? What if they said you could only gain 3 levels per day?" How do you think the community would react to that? Raiding is one of the prime reasons people play this game, and we're being told we can only play it a certain amount, at certain times, and under certain conditions. It's ludicrous.

WotLK has been a guild killing expansion from the start. I've watched the recruitment forums out of necessity, and out of macabre fascination. The turnover rate for players is higher than ever. The attrition rate is thru the roof. All these changes to Icecrown make it even harder to keep a legitimate, upper middle class guild going. It really makes an unpaid job out of guild running, and is a punch in the gut to anyone looking forward to hitting Icecrown's new content. All in the name of profit, and keeping accounts open. All this ill will to get a few more months of payment out of people. All to try to string us along until Cataclysm because Blizzard lacks the resources or desire to generate content at a faster pace (they say they like the size of the team they have, and making it bigger would jeopardize the team spirit they have, but if this expansion is what team spirit creates, then some jeopardy of said spirit is definitely in order.)

Icecrown is the pinnacle of Warcraft. It's the connection from the end of Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, to World of Warcraft. It's what many people picked up wow to see. Ironically, it's also the pinnacle of Activision's taking over of Blizzard, and turning it into the cash focused beast it is. We've got race changes and faction changes for cash. Vanity pets for cash (which Blizzard is so big about, they give half the money to charity. Half. I guess the other half has to feed their kids, right? Without that panderan, kids all over california whose parents work for Blizzard would starve. Please, either go all-in with charity, or don't bother. It just makes you look duplicitous.). Now we have Arthas *****d out for maximum return. The irony is a bit cheesy, and maybe somewhat obvious, but Icecrown represents a once good entity finally succumbing to a greater power it swore it could control, thus becoming that which was feared most. Blizzard has succumbed to Activision, and it's not long before we won't recognize the former anymore.

That's right Blizzard, you're the Lich King.

World of Wizardcleave, 3.3 Around the Bend, New Envenom Changes, and 1 Simple Step to Increasing the Level of your Gameplay + Yiska's Take On PROT BEATZ

no.spam@gameriot.com (itsperplex) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:18:49 -0500

World of Wizard Cleave

“Grounding down, rolling a sheep onto this shaman. Can we burst?” I ask on vent

“Shadowfury’ed” my priest replies

“Full deep froze, dispel me and lets get on this mage” my rogue calls out

“Son of a *****…” my priest mutters.

8k chaos bolt, 7k conflag, 10k frostbolt + ice lance shatter. Goodbye Zan. Wizard Cleave for -18 points

GET WIZARD CLEAVED

Anyone playing arenas lately has gone through somewhat of the same scenario (or maybe even put another team through it if you’re running Wiz cleave). When you’re up against a comp with this much burst, the game can end at almost any moment. You can literally watch a teammate die while you sit in a shadowfury. This double caster dps setup isn’t only powerful because of its raw bursting power though.

Let’s take a look at Frost Mage/Destruction Lock/Resto Shaman, a popular wizard cleave variant. The amount of CC this comp runs is ridiculous. Not to mention it has great lasting power and amazing burst to boot. Generally, our priest will go into a shadowfury, and after that into a full sheep. Shadowfury is impossible to line of sight, and because you go from being stunned to being sheeped, you can’t Shadow word: Death the sheep either. It doesn’t stop there though, as the warlock can chain fears off of sheeps. As soon as your priest trinkets, he’s getting instantly seduced or deathcoiled. The amount of non-shared DR crowd control this comp has makes it very powerful. Hex, Fear, Pet Seduce (or Pet CS), sheep, deep freeze, mage CS, shocks, grounding, bloodlust, 10k crits.. you get the idea.

Part of the reason this setup is becoming so popular is that almost any 2 casters will work. Dropping the Melee dps in your caster/melee/healer will almost always be an improvement. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

There are various strategies to combat this nasty setup (One Ming posted that works pretty well here), but I’m afraid that in 3.3, wizard cleave will totally take over - it’s just too strong of a comp.

Patch 3.3 – I For One, Welcome our New Mage Overlords

The Problem

With 3.3 on the horizon, damage is shaping up to be off the charts. The mage t10 set bonus will increase all damage dealt by 18% for 30 seconds when you use mirror images. 18% on EVERY damaging spell is just insane. If people think 4p t9 for ele shamans is OP now, just wait until this goes live. 8k frostbolt crits will be hitting for almost 10k.

I really hope this gets nerfed to be honest. If it goes live, we might end up seeing mages getting the same treatment as frost DKs did. For those of you who don’t remember, the DKs who had the frost strike sigil from Ulduar were hitting super hard, and generating a lot of QQ. As a result, Frost Strike itself was nerfed. For DK’s without the sigil, this was a pretty big nerf. Wizard Cleave players with this set bonus will be dropping people like flies, but if blizzard nerfs mage damage, everyone without the set bonus would be hurt.

The Solution?

My solution to the overall damage increase that will come with 3.3 would be to increase the stamina coefficients by a significant margin on s8 gear. With my idea, the new item level on Season 8 gear would bring less of a stat increase from offensive stats. The biggest stat increase would come in the form of stamina. Having everyone run with ~32k health would help balance out damage, and give a bigger incentive not to wear PvE gear in PvP. People wouldn’t go “Boom” as quickly, and healers would have that extra moment to react before someone dies. Running 4p t10 would force you down to 24k health, whereas everyone else would have 32k.

The only problem this change might bring would be a PvE conflict. If PvP gear had a huge stamina boost and PvE gear didn’t, defense capped tanks would start wearing PvP gear, thus stacking insane amounts of health. Balancing between PvP and PvE is always a formidable challenge for Blizzard, and this is a good example of one of the many reasons this “balance” may never be achieved. If you think you might have a solution to this dilemma, drop a suggestion in the comment box!

44/2/25 – The New Rogue Standard ?

A new round of spell changes was issued on the 3.3 PTR, one of which reads:

Assassination

* Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Deadly poison to your target by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

Poisons

* Deadly Poison now has an additional effect - Once stacked to 5 times, each application of Deadly Poison also causes the poison on the Rogue's other weapon to apply.

This thread really got me thinking. There won’t be a reason to spec anything other than 44/2/25. The amount of damage you’ll put out after an envenom will be insane. Caliph Kalamist puts it the best, saying:

“This is a joke because of how much poisons will get applied after using envenom if you pool properly with 5 DP Stacks, think about it. This change will probably be a miracle but then turn into a disaster. “

With the change to Improved Poisons, and Envenom granting a 15% increased chance to proc Deadly poison, you’ll have an additional 35% chance to proc deadly poison (and thus wound) after envenoming. This will definitely add a fair amount of damage to a rogue’s arsenal.

This is all on the PTR of course, so everything is subject to change, but season 8 is looking like its going to be… interesting to say the least.

A Quick and Easy Way to Make Yourself a Better Player!

Affix made a post today on Arenajunkies talking about a cool add-on called "SnowfallKeyPress". What this add-on does is increases the speed at which your abilities go off from the time you press them. How does it accomplish this you ask? Simple. When this mod is enabled, your abilities will go off as soon as you press your keybind, not when you release it. This can take off anywhere between 40-75 ms on each of your abilities, and is a great add-on for all aspects of the game. This can help you land those clutch kicks and counterspells, and is even compatible with bar mods like Bartender and Bongos. Get it here

Thanks for Reading! Don’t forget to +1, and check back next time for an in-depth guide to MSBT and much much more!

~Controlz

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Hey Yiska here, I thought I'd update you real quick about what I'm currently up to.

While we all loved Roma’s recent blog about PROT BEATZ, but I have a slightly different approach on the spec. While I agree with Mr. Victor on the spawning location of PROT BEATZ, I take the topic more literally. Here is some ingame footage of the games I had last night. I think you will understand why my style of PROT BEATZ makes sense. What’s the pure form of PROT BEATZ? Gameriot, you decide.

Yiska "+1" out.

Fighting RLS: A Mage's Role

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pookz) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:41:23 -0500

Fighting RLS: A Mage's Role

RLS is a hard comp for a mage to play against because of the many ways the RLS team can harass the mage's spells. With wind shear, spell lock, curse of tongues, kick, gouge, and grounding totem a Mage can easily feel useless against this setup. "Maybe I should just get burning determination.." you ask yourself bitterly. The truth is that it's not so bad if you learn to adapt to all the different interrupts of the RLS team. Let's start with your spec

Check yo' Spec

I like the traditional 20 points in arcane for Improved Counter Spell and Torment the Weak. Your frost tree can vary depending on your preference and also the spec of the enemy Warlock. If the warlock is destruction I like to get frost warding to potentially negate immo conflags on myself. If the warlock is Affliction I drop frost warding, and pick up Piercing Ice.

Your spec might look like this against an Affliction RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAI0IobuhcdMfkt

And like this against a Destro RLS

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0frzMcZZAIbuobuhcdMfkt

Suit Up

Just like fighting RMP you want to try and get 8% hit because of the rogue's heightened senses. Spell penetration can be important since the shaman can drop frost resistance totem and the fel hunter has spell resist. You don't want the fel hunter resisting key novas when you need them. I usually play 121 spell penetration which is the same number I use for RMP.

Try and balance your spell damage and haste by using 9 spellpower 8 haste as opposed to 16 haste gems in yellow. You won't be hard casting as many spells as you normally would so a balance of spell power and haste rather than stacking haste might benefit you more. You also won't need Battlemaster's most of the time since it's hard for the RLS to drop the mage, unless he's destro which is why frost warding helps.

Glyphed Out

Your glyph decision against this match up is actually pretty interesting. Glyph of Decurse adds a flare in your game play since you can essentially "Immune" incoming hexes from the enemy shaman. What the Glyph does is makes the target you decurse immune to all curses for 4 seconds.

As you see the enemy Shaman casting Hex you simply decurse the Curse of Elements, Curse of Agony, or Curse of Tongues that's either on you or your teammate. If you do it in time the incoming Hex should be immune.

The other Glyphs should include Polymorph and either Icy Veins or Mana gem. You could even use Evocation Glyph depending on your opinion of its benefit.

Armored Up

Your ideal armor for this matchup is obviously Mage Armor but if the rogue does swap to you feel free to swap to Ice Armor to proc some fingers.

Once you feel comfortable about your spec, gear glyphs and armor it's time to queue.

Hit the Ground

Dealing with Grounding Totem can be annoying especially if you're accustomed to killing them with Ice Lance. Ice lance is a great way to kill grounding totem, but when you have fingers of frost procs the last thing you want to do is waste them on a grounding totem. When you have a fingers of frost proc and you need to kill Grounding try using Spellsteal to get rid of it. Spell steal only costs a bit more mana than Icelance and it also kills the Grounding instantly, since there's no travel time.

Since Spellsteal kills Grounding instantly, it is key to use if a shaman drops Grounding before a lesser healing wave or a hex to avoid getting Counterspelled. If you use Ice Lance to kill a grounding in this situation the travel time of the lance may be too slow for the incoming Counterspell. Spellsteal will instantly drop the totem giving you plenty of time to interrupt the cast.

It's Shocking

The Shaman's Wind Shear can really set you back as the mage fighting against an RLS. Getting shocked cast after cast is not only annoying but it causes huge downtime and can lead to a loss.

Using range to your advantage is the easiest way to deny getting shocked since the Shaman simply can't shock the cast before getting close to you. Using minute LOS can also save you from getting shocked, this is where you just use little corners or angles of LOS to get a cast just before the shaman gets LOS of you. Finally, faking shocks is great as long as you don't cause downtime by trying to fake. It helps if you actually look at the enemy Shaman's character while faking just because it helps you “read” him.

Open Sesame

Your opener against an RLS team sets the pace for the game. It's best if you avoid getting sapped but not if it means sloppily running in and engaging combat. Depending on your partners you kind of want to “set up” your opener.

If you are playing with a rogue you should allow time for your rogue to get a sap on either the warlock or shaman. In this case you can even decide to just attack whoever your rogue doesn't get a sap on. For example, sap shaman go warlock or sap warlock go shaman.

If you are not playing with a rogue it may be best to run in and grab combat early before the sap run back a bit so your healer can get in combat from you then engage the fight.

Use Protection

Protecting your debuffs with trash debuffs like Winter's Chill ensures that your sheeps will stick when you want them to. I suggest binding focus Rank 1 Frostbolt in order to stack up debuffs before you focus sheep. Rank 1 Frostbolt is a quick way to put up winter's chill and the frostbolt debuff followed by Polymorph. This reduces the chance that Devour Magic will remove the Polymorph debuff.

There are times when you simply don't have the time to protect your sheeps and need the Polymorph to at least interrupt the incoming cast. This is fine, as long as you realize that your first sheep will most likely get devoured since there are no other debuffs.

Rogue Harass

Most of your snares and slows will stick on the rogue since Devour Magic is the only dispel and it's on an 8 second cooldown. Try and keep the enemy rogue snared throughout the entire match with nova and cone of cold since Crippling poison can be poison cleansed. If the enemy rogue is sapped, cone him out of the sap; if the enemy rogue is blinded cone him out of the blind. A snare like cone of cold out of a full CC can cause the rogue to sort of panic since he's been out of the match for so long, sometimes forcing a vanish. A vanish in this case is easily AOEd out since the rogue should still be near you.

It's important while trying to cone of cold the rogue to not get gouged, so be sure to max range cone the rogue and turn your character's back to the rogue the second you see him inch toward you.

Don't Lose your CC

If you open on the shaman try and counterspell a fear or a UA coming from the warlock to avoid him peeling. If the warlock is destro, counterspell the first Howl of Terror or fear since he's trying to peel at this point. Later in the game counterspelling Immolate or Chaos Bolt is good to do. If you do not have counterspell available sheeping Immolates or Chaos Bolts is extremely effective in preventing kills.

Your CC on the shaman is based around deep freeze, novas, sheeps and counterspells. Using deep freeze on the shaman can result in an easy full poly without worrying about it getting shocked. Novaing a shaman out of LOS of their low hp teammate causes problems for the RLS team. Counterspelling hex or heals can obviously lead to a kill.

Sheeping the enemy rogue's openers and kidney shots is key in this matchup. Prepare to fake cast the Polymorph since it's common for mages to try and sheep the enemy rogue's openers and shaman are aware of that.

Your positioning should be near the rogue to harass him and get him out of vanishes. Make sure to also be in the Shaman's LOS so he's afraid of polymorphs and CS.

DPS Rotation

You're probably thinking, “So if I can't cast, what do I do?” Well, you can cast you just have to take advantage of the few windows of opportunity against an RLS in which you can actually hard cast. Monitoring the warlocks spell lock, with a stop watch or an addon, helps to find this opportunity.

Try and use all your instants first like fireblast and cone of cold. It also helps to line up your cone of cold to hit everyone for max fingers procs, so you get two free ice lances which adds to your instant damage. After that you can either scorch for damage if the target is really low or attempt to waste the warlock's spell lock by faking frost bolts. After you fake spell lock call out for PI, lust and use Icy Veins and get those hard casts off while still being aware of shocks and grounding totems. Sometimes your best damage is CCing the Shaman unless you are attacking Shaman in which it is much easier to get casts off since you can just hard cast while he's stunned.

Thanks for the read, be back next week.

Chicken wings and Kool Aid, a Zephyr Guide.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Godzbreath) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:22:08 -0500

I've been playing a lot of really laggy HoN these last few days (Oh god the University network makes me want to kill myself.) and since I've been forced to play a sort of out-of-sight out-of-mind character due to my 2-3 second command delay, I figured I'd write a guide that could be useful even for people who play on no delay. It's proven rather effective, to be honest, since Zephyr is not a big micro character in team battle. This guide will explain that.

Zephyr, Jungle Fever

Zephyr

"A riddler, a sage, and a lover of sweets, Zephyr sadly is known in these times simply as a warrior of the winds. Though he chose not to participate in the Beast Horde's war with the humans, he has joined battle against the Hellbourne, and the powerful winds and aerial attacks he calls down upon the daemons are a welcome addition to the new Legion."

Early in the game's lifespan, Zephyr was actually an Intellect hero, though he was quickly converted to Agility to reflect his skillset more closely. Although most people don't consider him to be so, Zephyr can play a very, very dangerous late-game carry. Depending on the difficulty of the game you're in, he can be effective as a lane carry as early as level 7.

Stats

Strength: 17+(2.5 per level)
Agility: 18+(2.7 per level)
Intellect: 19+(1.9 per level)
Health: 473 (0.67 regen)
Mana: 247 (0.77 regen)
Armor: 2.52 (13.1% physical reduction)
Mag Armor: 5.5 (24.8% magical reduction)
Move Speed: 295
Att. Speed: 48-58 (125 close range)

His starting stat allotment still hints toward the fact that he used to be an Intellect hero.

Abilities

His abilities may seem gimmicky, but most of them are amazing ways to save yourself from death, which makes him very seldom the hero that gets focused. It takes a very heavy nuker, (Pyromancer or one-shot Puppet Masters come to mind.) or two coordinated stunners/silencers (Panda/Pebbles are particularly dangerous to you, will explain why below.) to make Zephyr an easy kill.

Leap
"Zephyr leaps to target location, pushing away and damaging enemies he passes."
Magic damage.

Level 1: 75 damage, 550 range, 100 mana, 20 sec. cooldown.
Level 2: 125 damage, 700 range, 120 mana, 19 sec. cooldown.
Level 3: 175 damage, 800 range, 140 mana, 18 sec. cooldown.
Level 4: 250 damage, 1000 range, 160 mana, 17 sec. cooldown.

Leap is a skill that I would consider to be more of an offensive spell than a defensive spell, however it can be effective as both. Offensively, during the late game this is a bread-and-butter skill, as it allows you to drag yourself right into the center of the fray, bringing all of your lovely cyclones with you.

The defensive side is one you'll be more likely to see in public games. Being a blink ability means that it pretty widely ignores terrain, assuming the range of your leap is far enough to get across it. A good Zephyr will use it while being chased in order to hop over cliffs or trees to get away from the heroes that are chasing them. It's also not even bad to use in a team battle, just to blink into fog of war and re-enter the fight elsewhere.

I personally use it as the former. Depending on the bracket of play, I'll get it as a level 1 skill for a shot at Bloodlust, but it's kind of iffy, since it doesn't do a ton of damage. You'd have to be laned with someone who can slow them down in order to make that feasible, since Zephyr has no movement impairs until his Ultimate.

Cyclones
"Zephyr spawns a small cyclone on every kill he makes. Spawned cyclones automatically patrol around Zephyr and damage enemies they touch. Zephyr can then call all active cyclones to himself, restoring some Health and Mana."
Magic damage.

Level 1: 15 damage per cyclone, 700 radius, 25 sec. call cyclones cooldown, 20 second cyclone life span, 5 total cyclones.
Level 2: 20 damage per cyclone, 900 radius, 22.5 sec. call cyclones cooldown, 30 second cyclone life span, 6 total cyclones.
Level 3: 25 damage per cyclone, 1100 radius, 20 sec. call cyclones cooldown, 40 second cyclone life span, 7 total cyclones.
Level 4: 30 damage per cyclone, 1300 radius, 17.5 sec. call cyclones cooldown, 50 second cyclone life span, 8 total cyclones.

This is what makes you who you are. Cyclones. There are so many different ways to spawn cyclones, but obviously the most popular one is last-hitting enemy creeps to farm gold and generate endless cyclones. However, the option of jungling becomes a reality to Zephyr very early in the game due to this skill, and stays viable to both types of Zephyr players regardless of what phase of the game you're in.

If you choose to play a lane, make sure that you are weary of ranged heroes in your lane, as they can chisel you down pretty quickly if you're not good about keeping cyclones up to heal yourself. Your HP is comparatively low when measured up next to other lane heroes. Additionally, on Forests of Calv, you're probably going to want to be in the lane that's closest to your side's jungle creeps, that way if you happen to die for whatever reason, you can hop into the jungle, kill the easy (green map blip) creeps for a few cyclones and some easy gold, then run back up to your lane. On Hellbourne this would be top lane, Legion is bottom.

As a jungler, this skill is valueable most often when killing packs of Snotters or when trying to kill Catman camps. They won't damage Wild Hunters though, so be weary of that.

In team play, cyclones are your secondary objective, your first being to make sure that your ultimate is laid on top of the fray to buff your allies and debuff your enemies. If you drag yourself into the middle of a Ulti'd fray, using the item build I'm going to list below, you'll be doing such an overwhelming amount of passive area damage (about 70 per second to each enemy in range) that people will more than likely be QQing at you for killstealing. Oh well, not your fault, right?

These things being said, you can be a powerhouse if your team is steady and able to support themselves for a good portion of the game. If not, you have to try and do the best you can to coordinate with their ganks and bring at LEAST your ulti to the table for the team.

Additionally: Above I mentioned Panda and Pebbles being dangerous to you? Well, the throwback moves they have will make it rather unsafe to use Cyclones to heal yourself, as the Cyclones do not travel with you, and path rather slowly, but the toss is almost instant. If you hit Cyclones to heal yourself, but there are no Cyclones close to you, it will use the cooldown, but will not absorb the Cyclones, thus having wasted one of your key moves. So pay attention if you find yourself in this situation. Either Leap back to your Cyclones and heal THEN, or Leap out of the fray and catch your wind. (ahahaha.)

Wind Shield
"Zephyr uses his control of the wind to create a protective barrier around himself, increasing his evasion. The barrier also has a chance to redirect incoming projectile based attacks back at the attacker."

Level 1: 10 second duration, 120 mana, 45 second cooldown, 15% evasion/reflect.
Level 2: 15 second duration, 110 mana, 40 second cooldown, 20% evasion/reflect.
Level 3: 20 second duration, 100 mana, 35 second cooldown, 25% evasion/reflect.
Level 4: 25 second duration, 90 mana, 30 second cooldown, 30% evasion/reflect.

Wind Shield is rather self-explanatory. You want to apply this before you jump into a fray or a 1v1. Paired with a magic nullifying item such as Null Stone or Shrunken Head, this pretty much makes ranged/casters worthless against you. At level 4 it's pretty easy to keep it up most of the time during a fray, but early on this skill kind of only shines when trying to escape a fight. Thankfully, the duration growth is really good, so you can decide how soon to level it depending on the way the game has been going. I get at least 1 level early on so that I can apply it before I rush creeps, but it's up to you.

Wind Control
"Zephyr creates an area of high winds, slowing the movement and attack speed of enemy units and increasing the movement and attack speed of allied units."

Level 1: Allies +20%/30% attack/move, Enemy -20%/20% attack/move, 100 mana, 120 sec. cooldown, 550 radius, 600 range.
Level 2: Allies +30%/40% attack/move, Enemy -30%/30% attack/move, 150 mana, 120 sec. cooldown, 550 radius, 800 range.
Level 3: Allies +40%/50% attack/move, Enemy -40%/40% attack/move, 200 mana, 120 sec. cooldown, 550 radius, 1000 range.

This is what you bring to the group as a whole. It's a big deal as it makes it very hard for enemy heroes to flee, as everyone on your team will be running as fast, or even faster than them. It also buffs heroes that attack quickly such as Scout, Accursed, Madman, etc quite a bit too, as the attack speed is very important to them. I wish there was more I could say to convey how important this skill is, but what it does really speaks for itself. Use it, love it.

Skill builds

Skill builds vary for him a lot. I'm going to list two; a jungle version and a lane/gank version.

Lane/Gank
This build assumes you'll be attempting a bloodlust kill very early in the game. This is most easily done while laned with something like Electrician, Slither, Witch Hunter, Pestilence, Pebbles, or Pandamonium since they can keep the enemy from running pretty well. It can work with other heroes as well, these are just the ones I've found to have the most synergy with.

1. Leap
2. Cyclone
3. Leap
4. Cyclone
5. Cyclone
6. Wind Control
7. Cyclone
8. Leap
9. Wind Shield
10. Leap
11. Wind Control
12. Wind Shield
13. Wind Shield
14. Wind Shield
15. Stats
16. Wind Control
17-25. Stats

Jungle/Late carry
This is what I've been playing due to my crappy internet. Keep in mind that this leaves two of your lanes with 1 person in them, so you will have two higher level characters on your team sooner than the other team. Don't feel pressured to run across the entire jungle to help a team fight if you're still underleveled or underfarmed. Sometimes it's simply not worth running all that way simply to get there and miss the fight anyway. (Or worse, show up and run into the enemy heroes after their victory.) Use your own judgement when jungling, and remember that if a fight breaks out in a lane that you're farming RIGHT next to, you can at least run in and throw your ulti over the fray and then choose to play safe or be a chaser.

1. Cyclones
2. Wind Shield
3. Cyclones
4. Leap
5. Cyclones
6. Wind Control
7. Cyclones
8. Wind Shield
9. Wind Shield
10. Leap
11. Wind Control
12. Wind Shield
13. Leap
14. Leap
15. Stats
16. Wind Control
17-25. Stats

Item builds

Item builds vary for Zephyr depending on the game and the composition of the teams, but there are pretty basic things you'll need. Hovering your mouse over any item in this section will show you the in-game descriptions of the item.

Starting items

Runes of the Blight
x3 (90g)

A basic regen item. You -can- skip these and use Cyclones to heal yourself, but these are a bit easier to use since you don't have to waste damage output to heal with them. I'd personally rather keep my cyclones out.

Iron Buckler or Bolstering Armband
(250g or 450g)

If you're going to jungle creep, Iron Buckler cuts down on your damage intake a lot. If you're going to lane, Bolstering Armbands are a decent startup item since they provide some HP to avoid early ganks, and are used in Steamboots, which are going to be something you'll eventually want to get.

Early/mid game item goals

Mock of Brilliance
(5050g)

This is what you will be farming for, regardless of how you farm for it. It provides an aura that does 40 magic damage per second to every enemy in range, and has a 650 radius range. Paired with your Cyclones, the area damage output easily overwhelms lane creeps, and is very hard to outheal for most heroes in group fights. This is your core item, get it as quickly as possible.

Mid game post-Brilliance and luxury items

From here it's up to you what you build. I personally build a pair of boots. These two are your best options.

OR
Post Haste or Steamboots
(2700g or 1490g)

The reason I usually do Post Haste over Steamboots is the fact that if I am properly farmed, I don't find myself needing the stats from Steamboots. That being said, the additional run speed, as well as the port effect on Post Haste provides me with a better way to move to team fights. The best part about Post Haste is that you do not need to teleport to a tower like you do with a Homecoming Stone, you can teleport to any allied, non-hero unit. So creeps and couriers are great places to target this.

If you do feel that you are being focused in team battles, it's perhaps not a bad idea to use Steamboots and toggle them to Strength for the HP, though. And if you started with the Bolstered Armbands as I said up above, you'll already be one item deep to your boots. All of that money saved can be poured into one of the next items on the luxury list.

or or
Riftshards, Hack and Slash, or Savage Mace
(2650g, 4500g, or 5400g)

These are all at your own discretion, and are obviously offensive items. Defensive luxury items will be below. I think that Riftshards are the best option, because the upgrade is cheap, and it scales really well. But if you want to play a chaser, Hack and Slash and Savage Mace are solid items for that. These will up your single-target damage significantly, so you can have more part in ganking enemies carrying eyes or enemies with dangerous ultimates like Plague Rider or Hammerstorm.

or
Behemoth's Heart or Frostfield Plate
(5500g or 4700g)

I love Frostfield Plate personally, as I usually use it when noobs try and use Enchanted Marchers to get away from me. However, Behemoth's Heart is solid if you find yourself playing an excruciatingly long game where you end up having to 1v1 or 2v1 while solo pushing towers.

Obviously there are things like Shieldbreaker that SOMEONE on your team should have, and that may end up being you, so communicate with the people you are playing with and coordinate who will buy items like that.

In closing...

A lot of this **** is subjective, and obviously there is room for your own discretion. I outlined what I do, and apparently what a lot of others do. Comments are appreciated.

Left4Dead 2, a little disapointed.

no.spam@gameriot.com (EnglishGentleman) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:56:53 -0500

I picked up a copy of Left4Dead 2 last night for a whopping $80 (Canadian) and have to say that im a little disappointed in the game.

The original Left4Dead was one of my favorite games of all time, I played it to the point where eventually the game became stale. So when I first heard about Left4Dead 2, I was extremely excited. "Finally a chance to get back into the game I played so much I got bored of it" I thought to myself, dreaming of the limitless possibilities that Valve could take advantage of to make a great sequel true to Valve form.

But after my first couple of playthroughs last night, my hopes and dreams were squashed. Left4Dead 2 plays like a fancy Left4Dead. When I first heard of the boycott group planning on boycotting the game because the sequel was an unnecessary, and could be tacked on to the current game as DLC I thought they were silly. I see now how right they were. Sure there are a couple of new modes, some new weapons, and some new enemies, but when you look at the heart of the game, its simply Left4Dead with a few extra components. Take away the new characters and every single aspect of Left4Dead 2 could have been added as DLC.

This is really the first time I haven't liked anything Valve has made. Lets hope this trend doesn't continue.

________________________________________________________________________________

Short blog today, just got back from work and I've got a copy of Assasins Creed 2 waiting on me, so i'll make sure to post a mini review in the comments of this blog for those of you who care. I am very interested to hear what you all think of Left4Dead 2, agree with me? Or do you think Left4Dead 2 is a worthy sequel to its massive predecessor?

________________________________________________________________________________

New Music Fix

Artist: Them Crooked Vultures
Tittle: New Fang / Sumbag Blues
Links: Scumbag Blues New Fang

I dont know how, but I have never heard of this band before today. I mean Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Johns, how have I not heard of them? Anyways, what attracted me to the album (I wouldn't have picked it up otherwise) was the art. You can see it better in the scumbag blues video but whoever the artist was for this band did a great job. oh yea, the music. Its great, New Fang isn't the best song on the album, but the only one I could find a full version of. Scumbag Blues is one of my favorite songs on the album in its full form.

Slap's Take: The Motorola Droid Review, Smartphonygoodness

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:15:39 -0500

A few of you on here were interested to hear my thoughts on the new Motorola Droid so stop in and take a read if you are curious.

To run with the over-used Star Wars cliche the Motorola Droid very well may be the droid you are looking for. While not as advanced as C3PO or R2-D2 it just may give them a run for their money when it comes to computing power and features. I mean really, can you look at porn on a full-featured browser on R2's holocam feed? Didn't think so...

So how about the phone? This is my first personal smart phone so I should get that out of the way first. I'm not going to compare this to the iPhone or a Windows Mobile phone. I haven't used them enough to give a valid comparison and there are far more in depth tech sites that can give you that coverage. This is my own personal thoughts, pros and cons, over my past phones.

First impressions were "wow". I was a bit hesitant dropping the cash on a new phone only a year after my LG Dare but I was able to get it at one year pricing and I'm not tied to the phone longer than a year now, just in case. The phone is hefty. Not bulky, it is very slick looking and quite slim having a slider out keyboard but it feels a bit heavier than your typical phone. Having bigger hands though I really don't mind. It actually feels important instead of some throw away plastic phone.

The reality is that it is quite important. There is very little you can't do on this phone compared to your PC. Sure you aren't going to be encoding H.264 files or playing Left 4 Dead 2 but almost any of your day to day functions can be done right on the phone. If it can't out of the box there is likely an app (most of which are free, I've only paid for two) that will do it. And while not the size of the iPhone app store I found plenty of apps to extend my experience (at the time of launch I believe there were 10,000+).

Speaking of apps here are some must have, some of which you can see on my three home screens in the below pictures:

Handcent SMS - awesome replacement SMS client, and its free
Astro File Manager - great UI for managing files on your SD card without your PC
Advanced Task Manager - easy way to kill apps, turn off stuff you don't need
Meebo IM - IM on the go, what more could you ask for
Sports Tap - A must for any sports fan
Weather Widget - seen on my main screen, similar to the HTC Hero, $1.59 and worth it.
FeedR - Amazing RSS reader on the go for only $.99 (these are my only two paid apps)

Back to the phone. There are a couple of flaws and I will address them first and foremost. The keyboard is my main gripe. It isn't a deal breaker but for short messages at this point I still prefer the touch screen which is even easier to use than that of my LG Dare. When I am composing an email and need to see more content I use the slide-out or for long messages. They board is just a bit too small for my big thumbs. I need to press with the corner of my thumb and not the center so to speak to stay accurate. Plus the keyboard is offset left thanks to the dpad. The dpad is nice to have but it makes reaching with your right thumb a bit harder unless you grip the phone lower on your fingers when txting instead of in your thumb/hand joint.

The camera will suffice but you probably won't be leaving your point-and-shoot at home for important things. The LG Dare had a fantastic camera for the phone, one of the best lenses around and the Droid leaves a bit to be desired. Outside shots are generally solid but inside there is a bit of graininess at times. Others have also had issues with the auto-focus but both of the former issues are rumored to be addressed in over-the-air firmware upgrades.

Other than that I have nothing to complain about. The phone is sleek and stylish if that is a concern and has enough function within to almost be a portable PC.

It shoots great quality video if you are curious for those nights when you catch your friends puking in the bar and want to have it on video.

Call quality is generally very good and the speaker on the phone is fantastic. Ever put someone on speaker and have to still hold/set the phone the right way to get ok sound? Not here. I can set it down pretty much in any matter, don't have to hold it next to my ear, it is loud and clear.

Two of my favorite features hands down are tied in with Google. I am a complete Google-search *****. The phone has a built in Google-search app as seen on my widget screen. Click the button, tell it what you want to search and presto, there are your results often tagged with instant phone dial or navigation options right in the results. Very handy and I use this all the time.

And of course this comes with free turn-by-turn Google Navigation as well. No more paying for VZW's crap just use Google. It offers almost all the features of Google maps while providing excellent GPS-based directions. It does cache maps to the SD card just in case you lose signal but for long trips to where there is no signal there could arise an issue of in the directions/map I suppose. Considering the VZW network this is probably a non-issue for most.

Battery life isn't terrible, considering all that this phone does. I do turn my brightness down to the minimum and generally I leave GPS off, wireless off, etc. unless I have a need for it. No sense in wasting battery life on features not used. I may pick up a spare battery eventually but I haven't needed one quite yet, even in Vegas where I was using it quite a bit.

Cons:
The keyboard could have used some tweaking
The camera isn't quite up to par, yet

Pros:
All the apps and the robust functions of Android 2.0 (Eclair)
sleek, stylish and functional
the Google experience, email, navigation, search
Not bundled and labeled with all that VZW crap
Using Google Voice for free calls and texts right from the phone
Excellent build quality, nothings loose, doesn't wobble, sturdy phone
Incredible high resolution 854 x 480 screen
touch is responsive, accurate and doesn't lag
16GB MicroSD card included

All in all I am digging my first smart phone. This is definitely the best phone I have used or played with on Verizon at this point. For $199.99 with a new 2-year deal after rebate it doesn't get much better than this. I could go on and on about features and presentation as I am still finding new things about the phone every day. Basically if you guys have questions ask away and I'll to answer as best I can as I have already written more than I planned.

Epic Drop 11/18/09: Kick-Ass teaser! Bears fans drug Steelers fans? ATI's 5970! Hammer says don't hurt 'em, National debt at 12 Trillion!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Slapnuts) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:37:44 -0500

More Epic Drop goodness coming your way today including at an awesome teaser for the Kick-Ass comic-to-movie that I have been talking up for months. Enjoy the Drop and be sure to pass along any stories you have found for our daily discussion. +1 for Leighton Meester!

Our national debt hit 12 trillion dollars yesterday. In other words, one third the amount of debt we saw in the past 8 years during the Bush era. But only in one year this time around. A pretty impressive feat if I have to say so myself. We will keep on printing money though, gotta pay off those bills somehow right?

This Steelers fan was out in Chicago for the Bears vs. Steelers earlier this year and got really sick after a local offered him a drink after some "good-natured ribbing". It seems his heart stopped 4 times on the trip to the hospital thanks to what may have been a spiked drink with "toxic grain alcohol". Isn't all grain alcohol toxic? That is what everyone tells me the next day after I check all my drunk texts and calls. He should be thankful that he wasn't Jay Cutler, it may have been battery acid instead.

I'm going to start watching Gossip Girl, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of Leighton, naked

J.J. Abrams still isn't sold on directing the next Star Trek as there is no script or time table yet. You know what this tells me? Paramount needs get on the damn ball and get this crap down so they can lock him in. This wasn't one of the best blockbusters of the year for no reason and Abrams was a big part of that.

ATI dropped their 5970 dual-GPU card today in what is easily the fastest video card out and only at a mere $600. I know say mere like its cheap, but considering it owns the performance crown it really is when you consider past title holders have hit $650-800. If you want the fastest card out, this is it. Nvidia won't have answer until January at the earliest, some say as late as February. Check out Anand's review here.

Verizon's "theres a map for that" ads really pissed off AT&T but they aren't budging when it comes to AT&T's lawsuit. Verizon fired back stating "AT&T sued because Verizon's ads are true and the truth hurts". I don't see where AT&T has a leg to stand on here. They are trying to claim some of the white areas offer 2.5G or EDGE but that isn't what the commercial or maps are about, it explicitly mentions 3G coverage areas. Screw that shoddy network, I'll take VZW any day. Speaking of which I should have my Droid thoughts up later today.

MC Hammer feels the music labels have botched their approach in tackleing piracy. In what may seem like a no-brainer in logic form it is interesting to see various artists after all these years step out from the system and realize there are serious flaws in the music industry's business. I wonder what the music landscape would have looked like now if all those years ago the biz would have embraced Napster and worked out some sort of royalty system way back then.

How many of you in the State's pay Use Tax for your online purchases? I am slightly curious as many states have "mandatory" taxes you are supposed to pay for online purchases that are out of state. Slashdot picked up a story about Amazon's refusal to collect sales tax for various states saying it would be too much of a hassle. Surely someone of their size could afford it and pull it off and it seems they already do on a smaller scale if you RTFA. There is little doubt in my mind they feel it offers them a slight sales advantage because lets be honest, unless you claim all your Use Tax it probably does.

Two words, Kick-Ass!

This Week on GR!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Omni) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:56:10 -0500

Hey, I cant blog for myself so instead im taking a look at everyone elses blogs and imposing my opinions upon you the reader, yes you've read it and now you cant UNREAD IT.

------

So first off Azael;
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/MLG-Anaheim-Soulja-Boy-Kalgan
Some blog about this black guy cept he soulja boy cept he not but he look kinda scary tbh I wouldent mess with him because I weigh 50kg IRL. MOST IMPORTANTLY we saw some hot picks of Azael, this guy has dropped the pounds and is looking better than ever before +1 for working hard and getting results. Also some boring **** about MLG, importantly he dosent **** talk anyone. Your cool, I like you.

------

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Plays-Like-a-Girl-Represent-Thunderlord-Oh-yea-pics-I-deliver
Next we had some ***** talking about something idk. I DID read the whole blog but I cant remember it completely. +1 for investigative journalism on my part, oh yea there was some REALLY boring interview. Down to the important part, how good looking is she? Well I would say she's a bit chubby and I myself prefer blondes, she probably would eat the rest of my plate if i wasn't hungry, but im not going to hit her over the head with a bat on every other night cept Halloween.

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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Family-time/Divine-Inflame-not-so-divine
I posted a sick blog about inflame being ****; A MUST SEE.

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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Eurospective/WCG-An-Esports-Orgasm-Why-WoW-Needs-To-Be-Part-Of-It-Daanzka-Talks-FeralMP-Inflame-Speaks-Out
I dont really care much for WCG, but I do care for Yiska he is kinda what I wished I had sleeping with me like a teddy instead of depression. So I kinda dodged past all the WCG **** and interviews ( does anyone actually like interviews rly, not cool not cool) till I got to Inflames voiceclip, now i know im not the clevererererest, but is it meant to be funny? I dont get it? Am I the only one who is scared? -1 for Inflame im pretty sure we are close to hated rep.

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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Eurospective/WoM-Needs-a-new-Business-Plan-This-week-with-Lacanoz-What-Blizzard-are-doing-RIGHT
I dunno I found this pretty boring past the first paragraph which bashed world of ming, maybe there might be a responce and flaming, but i must admit i skim read most of it. Really not a fan of this guy, find his writing boring and I think he gets +1's because of Eurospective cos like BNP get protest vote because Labour are **** CONTROL IMMIGRATION FFS GOD. Maybe its your cup of tea if your into detail but really I dont care. ouch.

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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Done-Trying-To-Be-Korean-Balancing-Melee-The-Final-Frontier
Why does this have 235 likes, is it more to get him naked or because people actually think that this is good because he said he may or may not reactive his account. Terriable blog about Aion **** noone cares about and a vague responce saying some **** idk I really dont care, we are definatly Hated.
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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Life-e-Casual/8-MILE-2v2-Comp-Welcome-To-Detroit
Best blog of the week, just go read it and you'll know what I mean. Why dosent THIS have 235 likes idk. Confusion.
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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Beware-of-Strangers-On-The-Internet-Button-Bashers-Success-Can-Not-Save-RogueMagePriest-On-Live-Servers-From-Bodi-to-Obama-How-Taurens-Are-Perceived-In-China
Biggest drama this week with that ***** who isent really a ***** but probably is a ***** in the son of a ***** sence, more boring **** about RMP that I only read because it had BB in the title but I was sorely disappointed. Then some borderline racism but I find it funny how he relates everything in his life to WoW OMFG WHAT A NERD. I wonder if Estel really did say that, I mean that really pisses me off - Women want you to hold doors for them and play shorter tennis games but as soon as you tell them they arent gonna get paid for doing the same job a man does cept worse their all rosa parks on your ass (confused metaphore +1).
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http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Eurospective/Im-back-My-opinions-on-WoM-and-Eurospective-Being-a-critic-and-how-WoW-doesnt-seem-to-want-them-to-exist-Let-me-promote-you
I dont like him and I think hes stealing Yiska's rank 1 title on Eurospective, no noone knows who you are and noone missed you and yes trolls make statements which are logically flawed +1 for you. The who's hot and who's not was good, maybe if regular feature will stir up WoM vs EuroSpective drama. Now the ironing out creases bit was only good because in the comments other EuroBloggers be all like WE GOT DIS, clear breakdown in communication - Can Yiska fire you? I want him to.
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In conclution or tl;dr;
Best = http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Life-e-Casual/8-MILE-2v2-Comp-Welcome-To-DetroitWorst = http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Done-Trying-To-Be-Korean-Balancing-Melee-The-Final-FrontierHonorable mentions = Chandler for the blogger who never was. If you didn't get to read it, you missed out.
Wanted to call it Gameriot the blog, but some twat has that.

Also i left out all the blogs that no1 read

XOXOXOXOXOX

A Tournament Challenger Appears, SK US Drama Continues, The Return Of Glickz? Check6 Caption Contest

no.spam@gameriot.com (Zilea) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:29:07 -0500

A Tournament Challenger Appears

Paladin/Priest/Warrior, global ranking: 1. EDIT: Blizzard sure resets teams quickly. I've been playing this combo out for a little while over the past several weeks, and despite how mind-numbingly boring it can be vs other double healer teams or how frustrating it can be against heavy cleave teams like beastcleave, there is much that can be said about this lineup. Even though a lot of people in the community give it some hard criticism, it is a lineup that, in my opinion, is tournament-worthy if played by the right players. RMP, RLS, shadowcleave and even the universally feared beastcleave can be beaten with holy paladin/priest/warrior if played well.

We have heard so much about the rise of wizardcleave for a while now, and now with Pookz running it for the next tournament with Azael, it sounds promising. However, wizardcleave is one of those lineups that I feel is only powerful on live. While I have not experienced much of the tournament realm in a while, the lack of access to 4 piece bonuses along with the absurd spell damage that accompanies live play, makes all wizardcleave overhyped and not viable for tournament play.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have the team of paladin/priest/warrior, which although does benefit significantly from a warrior with a lot of armor pen, legendary healing maces and other pve gear, it benefits even more from a slowed down game. That is exactly what you get in season 5 gear as the lack of any decent pve gear leads to damage output being significantly lower for all classes.

I'll be the first to say that as future patches continue to put much needed nerfs to the game's current outrageous damage, the stronger this and other double healer variants will become. And, with the strength of it being its ability to survive through the offensive "drop-all-cooldowns-as-soon-as-gates-open" approach of pretty much every comp from RLS to beastcleave, we are talking about an extremely high-caliber tournament comp here. It isn't very easy for a team that is limited on offensive cooldowns like RMP to burn through divine sacrifice, pain suppression, hand of sacrifice, trinket, divine shield and hand of protection. Of course these double healer variants will never get to the extreme that they were in TBC, but it is still something to keep an eye out for.

The likelihood of me showing up at one of these tournaments is slim to none, but that doesn't mean somebody else won't try running it. If a double healer team shows up to one of these tournaments, expect a top 3 finish. Bet on it!

SK US Drama Continues

Last week I mentioned the blistering comments Pookz had for my gameplay, which pissed me off for a variety of reasons. Well, it looks like I'm not the only tournament player he has been criticizing, as he has now turned the gun on his former partner, Realz!

I've heard from a number of people now that the reasoning behind the SK US disband had a lot more to do with Realz being a "bad priest" more than because of lack of practice or team synergy. Word is the condescension has been going on for quite some time, even if it was not to Realz's face.

Really? Pookz may be a good mage, but I have a tough time believing Realz is a bad priest after all the time he has spent playing the class along with the tournaments he has won as well.

In any case, I had a chance to play against Realz on his rogue a few days ago, and I was surprised by his skill level. Generally, when I play against a rogue or a mage who I'm not too familiar with their skill level, I tend not to fake much to get a feeling for them. Actually, often times those unknown rogues/mages will never tab kick me/counterspell at the right time. However, with Realz, he was going ape on me and locking me down hard. I will admit I could have played it better but I still felt the pressure from the veteran player Realz.

The Return of Glickz?

According to spies, it appears now that Glickz is planning on re-establishing his footprint on the tournament scene. This time, without the hot 'n' spicy Hafu, whose presence and personality energized allies and foes alike.

Due to the debacle between Kollektiv, Zyz and Azael of team EG in the past, it is rumored that Kollektiv will now be playing with Glickz along with former SK US star Realz. This new RLS, although may not be as seasoned as current RLS Fnatic, has the raw individual talent potential that many current teams in the business simply do not have.

Could this create division within the Fnatic organization? Glickz has represented them for so long and won so many tournaments under their logo. And, with current Fnatic not doing as hot as old Fnatic, this may stir the pot up in management as to what should be done about their WoW roster.

I would personally love to see a Kollektiv/Glickz/Realz combo and don't be surprised if they pull a first place shocker on the first tournament they ever go to together.

Check6 Caption Contest

Over at Check6's website they are running a caption contest with some decent prizes for the amount of effort it will take to do an entry. The prizes consist of a Heroes of Newerth beta key and a Microsoft keyboard valued at $80. Not bad, so I'm going to go ahead and submit my caption with this photo (click the link for other possible photos to use)

"What the hell just happened?"

At any rate, I could really use a new keyboard, take a look at what I've been using for the past year:

On a final note, does anybody really want to me to host videos of paladin/priest/warrior? I got some really negative feedback last time and that is pretty much all I've been playing lately in 3v3.

Woundman on MLG [Full Blog Inside]

no.spam@gameriot.com (famsyy) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:41:24 -0500

Well, MLG Anaheim is finally over. I had a good time there, even though I performed horribly when it mattered most. I was more comfortable in Anaheim than Dallas, but that apparently didn't help my play at all. I guess one could say I have LAN jitters. I'm really disappointed in my play at Anaheim. I'm capable of so much more, but for some reason I just can't perform the way I'd like when I'm at a LAN event. If I'm ever going to win a tournament, I really need to step my game up.

Anyways, here's a review of the series's we lost and what we could have done better.

x6 vs. FnaticMSI:

First of all, this is a really hard match for RLS in season 5 gear. On live(season 7 gear), we have a winning ratio versus x6. I'd say the main reason we have a winning ratio on live is because of how scaling works. Beast Cleave doesn't scale as well as you'd think it would and Douja gains a massive amount of healing, thus allowing him to keep us(Yog) alive. Another thing I think I can change up vs. Beast Cleave is getting imp gouge and not running deadly poison/hunger for blood, so I can control the shaman better. Controlling the shaman is extremely important in the beginning of the match and if I can't do that, we may as well just concede.

FnaticMSI vs. Complexity:

The main reason we lost this series is because we didn't go on the rogue enough. Once I've forced the rogue to trinket, you want to try and get cool-downs out of the priest(mainly pain suppression), then switch to the rogue. We executed our strategies poorly vs. Complexity, which is why we lost the series 2-3.

FnaticMSI vs. SK.EU:

Well, to be honest, I don't do really anything vs. shadow-cleave except get kited. I'm basically woundman in this match; I try to put wound poison on any target I can. :P One thing I should have done is tried to kill the death knight much more often, because the warlock would pretty much always get away from me. "If" I can just apply some decent pressure, we can win pretty often.

FnaticMSI vs. EG:

RLS mirror matches are very simple. I'm going to go head and say I was the reason we lost the series against EG. I executed the strategy extremely bad and had some horrible cool-down management while I was training their shaman while Smatin was on me. All I had to do was get some cool-downs out of the shaman(NS/trinket), and swap to the rogue. I was very disappointed with myself, as we pretty much never lose mirror matches and it was pretty obvious it was my fault.

FnaticMSI vs. BB:

Sadly, another series lost because of me. Our previous loss vs. EG affected my play, which lead to me playing just awful. The only game I played well in, was the game we won vs. them. Every other game was just mistake after mistake. Anyways, BB was the best team there by far, and I'm actually very happy for them. They traveled such a long way to get here and put all the hours in to win this tournament. I just hope I get another chance to play them again, because they were by far the best RPM I've ever played against.

Anyways, that's it for now. Hopefully you enjoyed my blog and forgive my extremely poor performance at MLG Anaheim. Also, a huge congrats to BB on winning the tournament. You guys really deserved it.

Dont forget to check out WoW and other E-Sports content at fnatic.com

Embrace the Goat, Folks.

no.spam@gameriot.com (hereticaneue) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:29:58 -0500

All right, I'm diverging from my previous trash and opening up a whole new blog in which to collect curiosities. A quick note before I continue: I know that this is a WoW site, but the truth is that I haven't given much of a crap about WoW in over a year. I just come here for the entertainment. So: welcome to Heretica's Crazy Crap.

Gregarious Goat Love
By now you probably know that I love weird things and animals, so it should come as no surprise when I tell you about this farmer who collects freakish animals. A cow with an extra leg growing out of its shoulder is pretty weird, but a goat with five horns?! Could I be swooning any more right now? I don't think that is possible.

Crystal Kids, Pencil Propagation, and a Gneiss Complex
Hearing about children dying isn't really a happy thing, but dudes: Meet the brave 'crystal girl' with rare illness that is turning her body to rock. If I were going to have to die from a fatal illness, I'd want it to be as awesome as having my entire body slowly crystallize. Maybe a child's body is sacrosanct, but if that were me, I'd totally be donating my body to science.

For those of you who don't wish to let scientists pick over your cadaver, might I suggest another option. Fashion a lifetime supply of pencils from your cremated remains! I know, it sounds awesome, doesn't it? And since nobody uses pencils anymore, you're pretty much guaranteed to live on for eternity or something.

In other mineralogical news, did you know that there's a Slave Province in Canada? Me neither. But according to this paleogeology blog, the Slave province contains the Earth's oldest crustal rock outcrop: the Acasta Gneiss. Maybe you don't get all geeked out by metamorphic rock formations, but I do - and I'm not the only one. Shawnee State University just started its own Acasta Gneiss Research Project.

Something Slightly WoW-Related
Whenever I make a character in an MMO, I get kinda RP in that I choose a name generally fitting to the theme of the character. Since I play Horde, if I ever made a druid, it would have to be a cow. In which case, I would name her Ninsun. And according to GodChecker, that is the perfect name for my cow lady, because Ninsun was "the embodiment of perfect cowness and bovinity. In fact she was probably the most cowy cow in the world." It's okay to be jealous of my idea.

Other Crap
I love subtle humor, which means that Fact Unchecked is probably one of my favorite websites of all time. I also harbor a great fondness for Drew Toothpaste, so if you don't like this blog, I suggest you follow his advice in this video.

P.S. I apologize for the lack of pictures, and for the unbalanced ratio of cows-to-goats in this edition. Here's hoping for next time.

I'm betraying my hunter brethren: Aspects of the class you may not know.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Levidian) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:53:54 -0500

Every time I play or watch streams of people fighting as or against hunters I see endless mistakes and strategy issues that I can't help but think are related at least partially to ignorance about the class and its mechanics.

I've had situations where I've played multiple teams with the same setup and one gets destroyed and the other wins because they're more aware of hunter weaknesses and how to combat one of the most easily disrupted and the most easily LOSd classes in the game.

This blog won't really have a very well designed layout but I'm going to go through some things you may not know to help you improve your game. Most of the elite players know about these things as that's part of being elite (knowing your enemy) but from what I've seen many players fail to grasp much of what I'm about to share. This knowledge can help give you an edge as you fight your way up the arena ladder.

Things you may not know....

- A disarmed/dismantled hunter can drop traps but cannot shoot freezing arrow this means you can disarm/dismantle during the scatter global CD to break up the CC chain on ranged scatter/trap attempts.

- Silence effects prevent a hunter from switching aspects and from dropping traps. This means you can silence/silence shot/random_silence_effect_01 and break up a hunters potential CC chain.

- It takes 2 globals + trap arming time to scatter>trap a target this gives you about 4~ seconds from the time the shot is fired to get on top of the trap to eat it instead of your teammate. If you pay attention this is easily done in many situations and is something a lot of players still fail to do. If you can't reach the trap alternately it gives you essentially the same amount of time as a warning that you need to LOS. Many players wait until their healer is sitting in a trap and are taking damage before fleeing which can result in a death. Being vocal about CC attempts and reacting quickly can save your life and win you games.

- Any stun effect during a scatter/trap sequence will give your partner enough time for the scatter effect to fall allowing your healer to escape the pending CC chain.

- When hugging the new square pillars in Nagrand arena if a hunter is also hugging while chasing he can't shoot you if you're both touching the wall on the same side this allows you to navigate faster than him because he has to turn a corner wide to get into range and use a normal ranged attack. The pillars also prevent some pet abilities because of the follow distance and lag a pet chasing you around a pillar won't be able to attack you with a lot of activated abilities (like web) if you're running normal speed and hugging the wall because it will never maintain cast LOS because of how far back it trails.

- Utilize physical stuns from the rear when possible while a hunter has deterrence up to stun him and remove his magic protection for the duration of the stun. Advanced gib tactics like vanish Cheap shot into death coil (if kidney is down) allows you to negate the defenses if a gib opportunity presents itself.

- An effective rogue chain on a hunter that doesn't have a trinket is CS>Kidney>Dismantle even if the hunter has deterrence up he won't ever get to activate it for an extremely long period of time when a rogue utilizes this ability chain (starting with kidney) from the rear.

- Cunning pets gain a bugged shield wall @ 35% you want to make sure to use your high burst before the pet gets that low and as close to 35% as possible when attempting to kill one. Doing so can allow you to bypass its defenses and produce a gib.

- Hunters cannot use ROS when their pet is controlled or dead as it's a pet ability

- Hunter cannot use Master's Call when the hunter is controlled or if the pet is dead as it's a hunter casted pet ability (like intimidation).

- Shockwave goes through deterrence (this will probably be changed in 3.3 with the deterrence chance)

- Ranged physical attacks (until 3.3) go through deterrence this includes FoK, Heroic Throw, Hunter shots, Shock Wave, etc.

- Every time serpent sting is removed vs a marks hunter it forces him to use another global for maximum damage output. Dispelling this sting should be priority every time you have a global available to do so. Chimera shot is a 9/10 second CD so keep this in mind. Serp doesn't need to be dispelled instantly but you should try to remove it before the next chimera attempt when possible.

- The only defensive ability we can use while stunned is casting RoS on ourselves. Stuns are the most effective tool to attack/finish a hunter almost every time I die in the arena it's due to being stunned.

- Pay attention to gib opportunities on hunters as many times we utilize our defensive cool downs (RoS,Master's Call) protecting a team mate. Paying attention to this CDs will give you switch gib opportunities. Many times half the battle is just finding the gap in our cool downs.

I’m back! My opinions on WoM and Eurospective. Being a critic and how WoW doesn’t seem to want them to exist. Let me promote you!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Lyuze) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:02:15 -0500

Hey it’s me... Lyuze... remember me? Well hopefully you don’t. I’ve made a tit out of myself multiple times (official WoW forum spamming, ugh) and generally I’ve done nothing in WoW I’m really proud of. Well I say nothing: you see about 2 months ago I got this really sweet writing gig as a writer for the best ******* blog in the world (Eurospective). So I posted up my blog and it did well (70 something likes, **** yeah!) and I was ******* overjoyed with pride.

Then I vanished... And I’m sure at least 30% of Gameriot regulars were wondering: “What happened to that Lyuze kid lol?” Well I’ll tell you: Basically I got so bogged down with college work and to be honest I simply messed up not writing a second blog. I also didn’t have a working PC so I wasn’t playing WoW. (Granted I came back a bit and spammed commented some people but that’s aside from the point).

“My thanks go out to Alca, Charred, Lyuze and of course Shader, who have been the heart and soul of this blog and I can't see myself doing it without them anymore” hurt the heart.

Pookz, Azael, Zilea, Bodi and Serennia: Who's hot and who's not?

Pookz is hot because of his skill at WoW (while he’s nothing on Flyn, Redhot, Another or Trig he is very good). His blogs seem to go up and down a lot. He’s a good writer, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes his blogs just seem to be lacking content. Maybe it’s just me, all I know is his job is safer than any WoM writer.

Azael is hot in much the same way that Pookz is hot. Holding the pride of American Warlocks he arguably outplayed Inflame at MLG. Rumoured to be making 'WoM cleave' with Pookz. Good player and good blogger is good.

Bodi will always be hot. He’s probably the favourite WoM blogger going on my primary research (I know he’s mine). Sorry bro, he’s here to stay.

Zilea isn’t hot. He doesn’t seem to be able to play any pro events and no one seems to like him. He’s almost Serennia 2.0, ironic. Plus we have Pookz slating his positioning skills whenever he can. Sorry world champion: no-one cares about you anymore. Still a good writer though.

Serennia is icecold (and not in a good way). His job at WoM is in doubt despite being the best paid and oldest writer (excluding Ming obviously) for the same reason Jasi's job was at stake. Not playing WoW? Check. Writing about Aion and Dark Age of Camelot? Check. There’s so much potential there Serennia, please don’t leave us. We don’t want that really, we just want the good old Serennia back.

Eurospective: Ironing out the creases.

If WoM was a girl’s celebrity trashy magazine then Eurospective would be the NME. It has a careful eye to the European scene and doesn’t pick fights with anyone who could hurt them. We also talk about the same people month in month out: Inflame (Radiohead), Hydra (The Cribs), Another (The Enemy), Xom (Franz Ferdinand), Trig (Arctic Monkeys) and etc. Respect the community and attack people only when they’re down. That is the rule of Eurospective.

However I think the main thing that holds us down is our organisation. I will be blogging every Tuesday however I believe the other bloggers simply blog whenever they feel like it, I’m not sure how it works. Also the contributors and Blog roll could be cleaned up (all blogger’s armoury links should be there). However, I’m sure when we move sites all this will be taken care of.

The World of Warcraft community's attitude to critics and why it needs to change.

I criticise other people a lot, after all I’m aiming to be a music, film, television and video game critic. I consider it practice but I’ve always noticed that WoW had an ****ty attitude towards critics...

I recently had a comment argument with some random user in the comments of a WoM blog at one point he said: “Except you're European so you're in no position to judge his skills since you have never played him.” and “someone who achieved multiple rank 1 titles is worse than random scrub Eurospective blogger. makes sense hehehehe :]”.

Does this not seem wrong to you? I mean, honestly, can you not criticise someone unless you’re better than them? How do you judge skill in this game anyway? Isn’t it largely dependent on what other people and yourself think of you?

Go to any pub in Britain and there will be people who can’t kick a ball telling professional football player’s they’re bad (through the TV of course). No-one ever says to those people “Well he’s better than you are.” because it’s irrelevant. Why is it any different for WoW? If we want eSports to be taken more seriously we need to let in critics, they’re a necessary force.

Let Me Promote You!

Got an interesting combo going on? Feel you’re skilled player and want more exposure? Let me know and if I deem you to be interesting enough I’ll promote you. It gives me something contemporary to write about and allows you to get your name out there. I’m up for doing interviews (audio and written: depending on your personal preference), linking to PvP movies and etc. Send me an em@il to lyuze@live.com or a Gameriot message and I’ll get back to you A.S.A.P.

Till next time readers! Don’t forget to +1, comment and tell your friends.