Hey everyone, it’s been a few days since my last article here, but hopefully I have something really interesting for you today. I ran into Aesa, a Druid who is currently running Shaman/Druid/Warrior on the ATR. He is a great WoW player and a great guy, and hopefully you will be as excited to hear from him as I was!

Warlfg: Lets start by having you tell everyone a little bit about yourself, and about your time playing WoW.

Aesa: I’m a sophomore at college, I leveled to 60 in vanilla WoW but never really started playing a lot till TBC. I played on Dentarg horde druid Aesa, play Bheegrom on Malganis now.

Warlfg: For those that don’t know, what comps do you usually run in arenas?

Aesa: I play 2v2 in scrubstrike with Rycho, and I’m running shaman/warrior/druid with Limewire and either Errelno/Arcan on the TR. We’re 1880 rated on TR right now which is fairly high though not as well as I was expecting we would be doing.

Warlfg: You said that you expected a higher rating on the TR, is this because it turned out to be more competitive than you thought? What teams do you seem to have difficulty with?

Aesa: Its actually LESS competitive overall than I thought, like most of the BG9 “big names” are extremely over hyped and don’t even come close to beating us, but there are a few teams that are just really keeping us down that we haven’t been able to manage barely any wins at all against. Anyways its still early. So I would say that overall there are a few teams that are extremely good (Hafu’s and Greenranger’s). A bunch of teams that are famous for being extremely good that are actually not that good.

Warlfg: Haha, I have been running into some “famous” WoW players as well. Going up from 1500 my team beat a few well known people very easily just because they weren’t trying. You mentioned Hafu’s team, and I understand how this might be a harder comp, how do you usually approach them?

Aesa: Try not to get mace stunned IMO. I dunno basically our best chance is cleaving the lock gibbing the pet, then dispelling fel dom. Basically being really skillful and training the Warlock the entire game.

Warlfg: Good advice. That can be difficult to achieve sometimes, especially with their team being East Coast. If I might ask, where are you and your teammates located?

Aesa: I actually don’t know where my teammates are. I’ve only played a total of 0 games with Arcan and 7 games with Errelno (or vice versa can’t remember) before we started playing on the TR. Which I think is one of our biggest weaknesses, since other teams have been playing together forever and have their strategy pat down. Anyways I’m in St. Louis.

Warlfg: Being East Coast myself, I notice that I can pull off 20-30 ping on a good day. You aren’t exactly West Coast, but do you notice any latency problems? And what do you think of having the servers at the Boston Data Center?

Aesa: I don’t notice it, but Limewire always blames his ping when he misses a earth shock (its really because he sucks). But seriously though lime is like the best player I know.

Warlfg: It’s almost impossible to get everything perfect on a Shaman, and a missed Earth Shock every once and a while isn’t something to hate yourself about. Anyway, what do you think about recent Druid nerfs? Something needed, or unnecessary?

Aesa: Well, I have two possible answers if Blizzard employees read this, they’re overdone. If not, in all honesty, Druids are still fucking ridiculous best class in the game comparable to Rogues and Warriors right now. So I mean… I’m not surprised at all they got nerfed.

Warlfg: Haha, I have to agree to an extent. I don’t agree that everything they did was the correct action, but I think something needed to be done. Everyone knows that a Druid is a very strong (to say the least) class. This might be a tough question, but what do you, obviously playing a Druid, think needs to be done?

Aesa: Honestly, I’ve been playing this game ever since season 1, and the trinket changes + arena water was huge, but everything else is just minor, top players will still be top players. Even when shadow damage got nerfed by like 20% due to resilience, Warlocks and Shadow Priests still played. I don’t think any Warlock I knew dropped significant rating due to that, and I’m sure everyone can agree that it was a far bigger change than what they did to Druids.

I really don’t care what minor tweaks Blizz does, I’ll still play my Druid, I mean no one ever asks to nerf their own class. Druids ARE really good right now, one thing I think should be nerfed though is that a Druid can roll triple lifebloom on himself when he’s completely OOM with in combat mp5. Overall the recent druid nerfs are minor as hell, not a big deal, top Druids will still be top Druids. I guess if I had to choose Blizz should stop changing things, because all it does it make people mad. It makes 1/9 classes happy and 8/9 classes mad when they buff, when they nerf, it makes 1/9 classes mad and 0/9 classes happy.

Also with the scare beast change, everyone is saying there’s no way its going to go through, its overpowered, but I actually sort of like it. Druids have trouncedHunter teams for 3 seasons running, and seriously, god forbid Hunter teams get the upper hand just once.

Warlfg: Good answer. What comps do you have a lot of trouble with on the TR? And Limewire plays on the ATR as Enhancement? I’m asking because an Enhancement Shaman is something somewhat rare in arena, at least one that is successful.

Aesa: He plays as Resto, last night he tried Enhancement for the first time ever and it was actually surprisingly successful. Hard comps for us are basically anything with a warlock and no Rogue. Yea… Warlock and no Rogue. Warlock/sPriest, Warlock/Warrior, Warlock/Warlock basically. Limewire has always played as Resto although we’re gonna experiment with Enhance while its still week one.

Warlfg: Speaking of Resto Shamans (because I play one) what buffs would you like to see to make them more competent healers in arena? Also, how long would you say that it takes to pick up playing a Resto Druid? Any tips for a noob rolling one, hoping to do decent in arena?

Aesa: I know this is a subject of huge controversy, but I think Limewire seems pretty happy with his class, while I saw Shaman hero Gc say they still need buffs. Personally my opinion from SK Gaming’s 2000+ teams on the TR at the end of practice is that Shaman were the most popular healers (not druids, surprise eh?). That might not be entirely true, but they are definitely holding their own. I think Shaman are fine, like I said I believe most changes Blizz does are pretty minor, the only one I consider really huge was putting arena water in the game which made druids own instead of Paladins who could spam flash forever and not go oom. Iinstead druids could just hot up and drink forever and not go oom.

As for picking up a Resto Druid I dont think its particularly easier or harder than any other class. Basically if you play any other class at 2.2k+ you’ll be able to play your Druid there, if you can’t, you won’t. It really depends on the person a lot too like personally I can switch classes pretty well, I got 2200 with Warrior/Shaman in like 1 week of playing warrior, went 26-0 on TR practice playing Priest in RMP with ZERO 3v3 Priest experience but I also know players that can’t play anything except their main. I would
suggest watching a pvp video to see how top druids play, Sonny or Hafu’s, its not really something I can sum up in even a few pages.

I would say the most important thing is realize that when you have triple lifebloom on yourself no dps is gonna kill you by themselves. I see low rated Druids come out of a kidney shot at like 50% then just go bear and survive awhile until they die instead of just HoTing themselves up.

Warlfg: Speaking of Hafu, what do you think of her as a player? She gets a lot of attention being a successful girl gamer, but I personally think she is one of the best Druids. Reason being, is she was the one that actually suggested you to interview.

Aesa: Obviously she is really good, I feel sorry for her that her comments are always met with “hafu, i’d hit that” and stuff like that from the majority of the WoW community, which no one can deny contains a good amount of people with no social skills.

Warlfg: Hafu seems to be an extremely skilled gamer, I don’t know her too well personally, but she seems to be a nice girl as well. Do you think WoW has a future as a eSport?

Aesa: I think WoW can be as much as an eSport as any other game, but eSports in general are kinda silly. A very small percentage of the world enjoys watching video games as compared to watching soccer, football in the US, etc. A lot of ppl say WoW has a low skill cap, but I consider myself one of the better players, maybe not the best, and I know that I play NOWHERE NEAR perfectly.

Warlfg: Maybe I am just crazy, but I love when there is a SC tourney going on. Alright, thanks for the interview. I don’t want to bore you to death, so before we end this, is there anything else you want to share?

Aesa: Tunnel Defenders owns (my guild).

Warlfg: Haha. Alright, thanks for taking your time and letting me do this interview. Good luck on the ATR!

So that’s it! Aesa was kind enough to spend some of his time to answer my questions. I hope it was an informative interview about the life of a pro gamer. Getting some insight from one of the best was a refreshing experience, and fun to do. Again, have fun on the ATR!

Tags: Interviews

Some tweaks here and there:

Hunters

• Aspect of the Viper: This ability now grants an additional amount of mana each 5 seconds equal to 35% of the hunter’s level. - slight mp5 boost, 24.5 mp5 to be exact
• Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast. - This sounds pretty big vs Druids and other Hunter pets, especially Druids. Looking forward to what kind of impact it will have.

All ZG charms that were still useful has been rendered garbage. It’s nice to see that blizzard are timely on these fixes, especially after some people have invested 7 weeks in to getting them post BC.

Rumors of an epic version of PvP Trinket has been around, yet another 40k to grind - fun right? Full boring notes can be found here.

Tags: PvP · News

Recently we have been playing the super scrub double healer team. I don’t like playing a Paladin so, I have been playing my Shaman and, I have to say, we have been owning it up. With Xut on his Priest, with mana burn, we don’t have many hard counters. The only comp that really annoys me is other double healer teams (and god damn DLL, which I am seeing more and more of, or some other drain team). Then it becomes some sort of pillar humpfest that lasts forever. Despite having only one DPS, with a Warrior we can still pull off decent burst, especially with me on a Shaman.

I know an hour arena game isn’t long compared to others, but with me on a Resto Shaman vs. a Disc Priest, you can understand why it went on so long. If he didn’t leave I could have seen it going on for much longer. The entire game was full of pillar hugging and the Priest fearing/mana burning me. With that being even possible, makes me think the state of WoW is something that currently, without some big changes, can’t really be an esport. WoW would be really interesting as a major sport, but with the problems that it has right now are preventing it from being taken seriously. I don’t believe WoW can ever achieve the status of a game like StarCraft, for example. While WoW can have its moments, having a tourney decided just upon the others comp, kind of ruins the fun. Blizzard only seems to be getting further and further away from making wow an esport, and that in a way really saddens me.

Rolling Double Healer Warrior lets me take advantage of all the PvE gear on the ATR. This is one scenario when I will actually take advantage of the PvE gear available. I believe that PvE gear might not be applicable for every comp, but depending what you are rolling on the ATR, it can be a huge benefit. I like having that extra +heal, and those set bonuses, if I feel like using them. I feel that it was a great idea for Blizzard to implement PvE gear on the ATR, and hope they follow suit for future tournaments.

I feel that Blizzard sometimes makes terrible decisions about what exactly is balance. Blizzard nerfing things for no reason doesn’t help the game go in the direction they seem to want it to. Renataki’s as an example, was never a huge deal. I can see that they don’t want you to need to get pre-bc gear to be competitive, but by no means was that the case here. Of course it was a decent trinket, however, the need to nerf it again to 20 energy is just stupid. Sometimes it seems that Blizzard has no idea where they want this game to go, and other times, it seems that they have these goals of getting WoW to be a major esport, but fail to do anything to help it out. I honestly don’t know whether it is that Blizzard is completely incompetent, or that their Devs like to favor some classes.

Balance isn’t something that Blizzard seems to look at carefully. Randomly nerfing gear and abilities isn’t how you fix the game. Not every scrub on the forums QQing about a perfectly fine ability is right. I wonder if Blizzard really plays their own game sometimes, with all the random nerfs, and the unneeded changes to classes and gear.

We will continue to try out different comps, and cry over balance on the ATR. We are playing a few comps seriously, but we are also still trying out some new things. Look forward to new articles about me getting owned by imba Locks, and about me attempting to play a Resto Shaman.

Tags: Rants

We have all heard of the quad-box shaman 5v5 team. We have all heard of them, but we never really saw anything like this, this, or this. Quad boxing is the “art” of controlling four computers (or four instances of WoW) to achieve the same result. In this case, the result is insane burst. Capslockcrew, known as one of the best 5s team, went up with a quad box shaman team and lost 3-2. This might seem surprising, until you think that only a few of them need to really get off some spells to kill something. In these games, even though they lasted a few minutes, you have to realize that it didn’t take that long for someone on the opposing team to die. The trick with quad boxing is, you have to not only manage your different characters abilities, but also when to trinket, etc.. when one gets CC’d. Quad boxing, even though some might deny it, does take some level of skill.

Should quad boxing be permitted in arenas? I’m not really one to say. Of course it sucks to lose to a team like that when you are someone like Capslockcrew, but then again the quad boxer has put a lot of time and effort into leveling and gearing his four different characters. Even though it sucks to go up against a quad boxer, I don’t think they should be illegal. It does show, however, that the state of fives isn’t what it used to be, and that threes have become the more competitive bracket.

Speaking of 3v3s, recently I have been noticing some really interesting comps on the ATR. I came up against several comps with a feral druid, and even had a fluke where we lost against a Warrior/Feral Druid/Resto Shaman, due to us just being terrible. They were a decent team, and with MS and pummel, they pulled it off really well, however we went on to beat them a few times before we stopped queuing for the night. The ATR really gives everyone a chance to experiment, and it is really interesting what one can pull off to a competitive level. No doubt these Feral Druid teams have been influenced by our high success of our late Feral Druid/UA Lock/Disc Priest team, which we brought to 2000+ on the ATR before we dropped it to play a more competitive comp (Lock/Druid/Rogue).

The first day of the tourney, we decided to try out Resto Shammy/Ret Pally/Warrior and we won to a degree. With none of us actually playing that comp (or the classes) competitively before, I think we did decent. We came up against, and lost to, both Neilyo and Zeckz. We weren’t exactly expecting us to get matched up against them, but being the first day of the tournament, it is bound to happen. We will be playing both a Resto Shaman/Ret Pally/Warrior and a Holy Pally/Warrior/Rogue comp in the upcoming days of the Tournament. We have played multiple comps up to a high rating, and even classes we have absolutely no experience with, and it really opens your eyes to what is possible. It takes time to learn a new class, but once you have the basics down, you can at least compete with the best. We can only wait to see what the ATR is to bring in the future, and where our teams will bring us. See you on the ATR!

Tags: Rants

New rules on season 4 gear was released today, wishuluck from our forums summed it up well. You can join the discussion here!

New Rating Rules:

1) If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating. This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They’ll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.

2) If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating. This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they’ll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.
Read More

Tags: PvP · News