About a year ago, WSVG was canceled during the prime of Season 2. With our plans to compete there shattered, things gone downhill since.

Today we’re heading over to MLG to play, ironically in Season 2 gear. I’ll try to update the event here as things unfold and report for you guys this first live 3v3 tournament since WSVG.

Below is the event schedule found at mlgpro.

Friday
10:30 AM - 1:30 PM :: Early Check-In
1:30 PM - 7:00 PM :: Check-In / Warm-Up / Account Setup
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM :: Warm-Up / Account Setup

Saturday
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM :: Warm-Up
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM :: Winners Round 1
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM :: Losers Round 1
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM :: Winners Round 2
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM :: Losers Round 2
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM :: Winners Round 3 / Losers Round 3
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM :: Losers Round 4
8:30 PM - 10:00 PM :: Winners Round 4 / Losers Round 5
10:00 PM - 11:30 PM :: Losers Round 6

Sunday
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM :: Warm-Up
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM :: Winners Finals / Losers Round 7
11:30 AM - 1:15 PM :: Losers Finals
1:15 PM - 3:00 PM :: Finals

Tags: Rants

Well, if you haven’t heard yet, today is the 6th, and that means the final phase of the Arena Tournament. This final phase will extend to the 20th, so make sure to try your hardest and get going! Accompanying the final phase, all arena teams are now locked. Hopefully you have what you want to play all sorted out, and are ready to go!

So now that the ATR had a while to balance out, what teams are coming out on top?

With a quick look at the Armory for the ATR, here, we can see that RMP seems to be dominating… But lets look at some numbers for the top 20.

RMP:7

SDW:3

DRL:2

SDR:2

DRW:2

SPR:1

DLL:1

DLW:1

DLH:1

I skipped over the teams that were missing a player, just so I could keep things as accurate as possible. You can see that Rogue Mage Priest comes out top with seven teams, with Shaman Druid Warrior coming in second, with three teams.

A not so surprising fourteen out of the twenty teams have a Rogue. Twelve out of twenty teams have a Druid, a number you would be seeing much higher if not for RMP.

Does this accurately represent the balance of WoW? That can be argued. Though I have to say the lack of diversity isn’t so surprising, with how the whole flavor of the month thing goes.

Hopefully these last weeks will be fun ones for all of us, while we try our best to beat the best. Have fun!

Tags: Rants

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

Hey everyone, my name is Ryan, but you can call me Ross. I’m new around these parts, and I am still getting the hang of professional blogging, but things seem to be going well so far. Hopefully you will see quite a lot of me posting around here, I hope to stick around for a while. I am an aspiring professional gamer, mostly playing WoW for the moment but I also play other games, RTS being my other favorite genre. For now though, enough about me, lets focus on a little WoW.

With the ATR, the S2 gear, and obviously the access to PvE gear, things on the ATR can get really interesting. Fights vary from being just the same comps over and over again, and (in my experience) the different styles of players really makes you think on your feet. Recently, we have been playing many different comps. From Feral Druid/UA Lock/Disc Priest to DLR and Pally/Rogue/Warrior, we get to see a wide range of play. Experiencing the different classes for yourself and seeing what their weaknesses are, is a very interesting experience. There has been PTRs in the past where we were able to do some arenas, but it was never the competitive play that it is now. Playing a Warlock and a Pally to competitive levels really opens your eyes to different comps weaknesses and strengths.

Currently we are rolling the Pally/Rogue/Warrior with a high rate of success. We like to think that we can bring this pretty far, but their are some weaknesses with a pally healer. Sure BoP and Freedom are both really nice, but when you come up against teams with a Druid and a Lock (which are a very large part of the comps on the TR) things get very difficult. It is hard to burst down a good Druid, and with a Lock fearing you… things can get very messy, very fast. We do manage to kill the Druid most of the time, however if he manages to survive, things become a hassle.

Being alliance and having the access to all the PvE gear does help our team tremendously, and with the beginning of the tournament starting soon, we hope to see some really fun games. Hopefully we see more people innovating, and making teams like our 2000+ Feral Druid/UA Lock/Disc Priest team, people who can break out of the box and compete with something that no one thought was possible. Look forward to more posts from me in the future, and have fun on the ATR!

Tags: Site · Rants