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

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