While blizzards tournament is entering the final phase, MLG announced they are going to be hosting a new PC Circuit starting in June. Naturally the reason im even talking about this is because the Circuits feature game will be, you guessed it, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Prizes will be $22,500 per event and the entire Circuit will be played on HP’s new Blackbird 002.

Information is as follows:

By blandestk @ www.mlgpro.com
* Kick-off event: MLG San Diego, June 13-15th
* Other stops: MLG Orlando, July 11th-13th and MLG Dallas, October 3-5.
* Official PC Circuit game: World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade®
* Format: 3-vs-3 - more details on rules and the official format will be released on May 15th.
* Total spots available: 32 teams
* Prizes: $22,500 per event

They will be posting more information on there website as the time nears and we will be keeping you up to date on any new information as well.

With more and more mainstream steps being taking to making WoW a pro e-sport I guess we will see what really comes of it this next year.

Tags: PvP · News

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

Here are the Season 4 Item Pricing, as expected - nothing surprising. If you haven’t been keep up-to-date with the news, there are some interesting rating requirements for S4 as well.

Following are the S4 Gear stats in wowdb.
Read More

Tags: PvP · News

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