We were lucky enough to get a great interview with Corey “Emolol” Ratliff from Gravitas Gaming, better known as Duelist Going for Glad, on the passed ESL tournament which ran the 3.0 patch. It was a very good tournament to give everyone an idea of what we might see in the future from teams as discussed. Enjoy!
Thank you for taking the time to sit down and answer a couple of questions, I know with both school and active WoW tournaments recently it has been busy for you. Anyways, could you just quickly introduce yourself and your team to give the readers an idea of who you are.

My name is Corey Ratliff, and I play rogue for Gravitas Gaming on the team otherwise known as Duelists Going for Glad. My two teammates are DJ “Celex” Roggenkamp and Daniel “Ely” Vulis. I’m currently going to school part time to obtain a certificate in Commercial Arts but i’m not sure if this is what I want to study so i’m considering other majors that have more to do with business so I can pursue a career in e-sports after my time as a professional gamer has expired. I’m also looking for a part time job, but it’s hard to find anything good that offers a flexible schedule that I need for all the traveling.

Ok, so the ESL tournament was this passed weekend, in which your team Gravitas Gaming placed 2nd overall. Going into the tournament you were aware that they were going to use Patch 3.0 for it. What was your initial thought when you heard this, and did you think it would hurt or help your famous RMP makeup?

The large majority of the players at ESL got little to no practice in arenas due to server issues or lag. The main form of practice was basically laggy duels, which really doesn’t give teams much to work with as far as 3v3 strategy, the majority of ideas might of looked good on paper, but would get stomped without practicing execution. Getting used to our new specs was a little difficult, I think Ely forgot to use penance the first few games, Celex missed a bunch of his fireball procs, I wasn’t 100% used to shadowdance binds so I was a little slow with it, I could of used it a little better than I did for sure. Overall we were excited about our comp. with new mage talents and rediculous damage and so much variety in specs for rogues.

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Tags: Interviews · Articles

It has now been a couple days since the patch 3.0.2 release, and it has definitely made an immediate impact on the WoW community. Big topics that have become popular include: Ret Paladins being OP, Glyphs and the balance from class to class, and gaining exp in battlegrounds. I have been able to experience all of these topics, and there is good reason for them being so talked about.

The obvious and probably biggest concern the community has with this patch release is the Retribution Paladin, their ability to put out great amount of damage constantly and being able to heal effectively when needed. Queuing up for arena at the moment is completely different, in the sense that almost every game, no matter what bracket, will seem to have a Ret Paladin. This just isn’t coincidence, it is fact that Paladins are stronger than they probably should be at this time. With that said, there has already been a recent “hotfix”, with the Divine Storm ability (51 point talent) being nerfed in the way that it is now physical damage, instead of magical damage, so armor/shields will now make a difference. These hotfixes are expected to come more and more before the actual release of Wotlk, but right now, the PvP scene seems to be dominated by Ret Paladins. To be fair however, a big point is that blizzard has stated that these patch changes were meant to be balanced at level 80, which is the max level of the expansion, not level 70. However beta players, including myself at blizzcon, still suggest that Ret Paladins are OP even at level 80. I do not think there is any doubt more “hotfixes” will come prior to Wotlk release, but it is just a matter of how much.

Another big discussion is that on Glyphs, and the effect they will have on PvP and whether or not they seem to be balanced right now from class to class. The inscription profession is a great idea, but with such a big addition to the game, comes the good and the bad as well. Although personally, I have not looked in depth into the Glyphs as a whole, I know there has been discussion on whether or not they are balanced. It will be very interesting to see how this profession plays out come Wotlk and whether or not people will be able to live with them the way they are.

Although not the last discussion the community is having, it certainly is a big one. With the release of Warhammer Online, there were several features that it had that made you wonder why WoW had not implemented them into their own game yet. With that said, WoW has now added experience gain in battlegrounds, along with being able to queue up from anywhere in the near future. A big argument that players have with this however, is that it ruins the twink play in battlegrounds. Basically, twinks are characters that would be at the high end of a certain level bracket, and have the best gear attainable at that level with the best enchants as well. The twink community is a decent size, and it can be fun for any player to create one just to have fun on the side, but with gaining exp in battlegrounds, they will eventually level and ruin the point of a twink. A suggestion that has been thrown around is the ability to turn on and off exp gain in battlegrounds, so a player can choose. We will see if blizzard decides to implement this as well.

Tags: General · Articles

Hunter pets have always been an issue in arena, especially when it comes to survivability. A big reason for their lack of survivability is no resilience, but we might see that changed in wotlk.

“The burst issue is one worth more discussion. We have hesitated giving resilience to pets because to some extent we do want them to be killable. When you’re the other team all ganging up to kill a pet while enduring tons of damage from the hunter, it can feel like a long time, and then the hunter just turns around and brings the pet back.One thing we’re not crazy about is the pet-as-guided-missile strategy that some hunters seem to employ (send your pet in, then ignore it the rest of the fight.) You should want to heal your pet and otherwise try to keep it alive and not just use it as a delaying tactic.

Now I’m not saying pets are already too tough, just that we don’t want to get them that way, which is why we haven’t gone the resilience route yet. But I would be interested in hearing more discussion about how much more health a pet would need to feel like they weren’t getting one-shotted. Alternately, maybe talents that affected chance to be crit (or granted something on being crit) would be more appropriate. If in the end you think resilience is the only thing that will keep the pet alive, let us know that too. “-Ghostcrawler
Source

It will be very interesting to see what blizzard decides to do as far as pet survivability in arena, especially after all of these new pet talents. Hunters should have a bright future in the arena scene just from what we have seen so far with new abilities and talents for wotlk. But if they decide to give resilience to pets, the reaction from both hunters and non-hunters will be something to follow.

Tags: PvP · Hunter · News

Update: Big patch today, so far I notice the energy regeneration smoothed down to 1 increment at a time instead of the 20 per tick! Hopefully more talents are working now, will update tomorrow as I check things out.

Summery of what I have experienced personally so far on beta realm as well as video #2 below:

Vimeo decided that they’re lame(and want to make a profit) and no longer supports ‘game videos’ right after their policy of not supporting porn videos(lol) so check comment 1 to download the normal looking version since filefront un-widescreens it.

General: All the new weapons are either faster or equal speed of TBC weapons, not sure if they plan on making the level 80 end game weapons to be even faster than TBC weapons. Instances are really easy right now, most likely cause everyone got purples from 70.

Mages: Frostfire bolt, slows and DoTs you - not so good if you want to sheep right after… Instant cast Arcane Barrage hits you for 2300 isn’t really fun btw.

Shamans: Thunderstorm’s knock back can be countered by Shadowstepping right after (so Intercept should own it as well), Enhancement Shaman hurts like hell and even their Shocks do significant damage.

Shadow Priest: Dispersion can buy valuable seconds for the next Fear as well as block out big DPS moves such as Shadow Dance. Also unlike other immunity moves, you gain a nice sum of mana and hp back in it’s duration (this actually makes a huge difference).

Warriors: 2 2handers = better than 1? I’m sure most will still go back to Mortal Strike + Bloodthirst as long as the games are still won by mostly healing debuffs at 80.

Death Knights: I think I see more ice in these guys than Mages atm. Imagine the insane amount of synergy they’ll have together when both of them have moves that do triple damage on frozen targets and can freeze for each other with ease. High armor targets are also no sweat for DK since they have a good amount of magic DPS. Only thing missing for DK is some sort of healing debuff. Their reversed Shadowstep will also give them an amazing role in Arenas.

Paladins: Everyone’s ret atm 10k 1 shotting things, not much else to say…

Druids: Things are looking pretty good for them, feral still does boat load of DPS while Resto with 1 second GCD on lifebloom is rocking harder than ever, only toped by the new heal Flourish which solves the multi-target healing problem as well as another burst prevention on top of Swiftmend and NS. Did I mention Tree form armor increase and no movement penalty? Expect a lot of ugly trees which you can’t sap running around in arena coming soon in 2009. The relief is that they won’t be getting Feral Charge with it being a 21 point talent.

Some Shadow Dance feedback: Even though it’s amazing for bursting (and much needed vs just about any non-clothie right now), I have the feeling once people are used to dealing with it, a lot of aoe spam deny will happen. Even now, it’s often that I miss out on 1 or 2 of the vanishes just because random aoe move or vanish being broken like usual. It’s also very weak against classes that have on demand damage reduction or immunity, especially the ones that can be used during stun.

You also want to come in to Wotlk with as much AP and as little crit as possible. level 70’s crit rating is garbage once you’re 72 or higher. Same applies to spell damage vs spell crit rating I would imagine.

Spec used in video: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=f0ecoZZiMsshhRcxoguVo

Tags: Videos · Rogue

Since I went to blizzcon, I was given a key to the beta. I was able to copy my Rogue and Druid over and just started playing yesterday. (The download was 2 gigs, ouch!)
Well pictures speaks a thousand words and a video has plenty of those so let’s check this out:
1. Since I’m bad at leveling I’m still 70 at the time I made the video. At 71 with relentless strike, the build would be much stronger.
2. Mainly trying to show 51 subtlety with daggers as a viable spec, the other 2 51 points are still broken so not much to show there… I believe the ability to get 45 Energy Backstab/Ambush made a huge difference. (keep in mind I don’t have relentless strike or ruthlessness yet)

Original size was widescreen, see comment 1 for download link.

Here’s the spec used in video: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=f0xfZZAMcshhR0xstuVo

Tags: Videos · Rogue