WSVG Toronto Recap Part 1

I was gonna post an update last night when I got home but I went to see UFC74 instead so I have a lot to talk about today, and that's an understatement.

I'm gonna start off with a recap of WSVG Day 2 (Saturday). After a shaky day 1, we came in more comfortable and confident and we really wanted to fight our way through the loser's bracket to at least get a decent finish for the tournament (decent at the time by my definition was top 12, maybe top 8 if we played really well). Coming in with a static lineup, we knew we were gonna have a lot of trouble with the sponsored teams that came in with 5 players capable of playing multiple classes each so we really weren't expecting to contest for the top 3.

Anyway, we came in and we were assigned a match pretty quick. We were told that we'd be playing against the loser of the match between MoB Turtle Force and Select Few as soon as their game was done. There was some controversy surrounding this match when we came in though, it was supposed to start at 10pm but the MoB guys didn't show up till 11 and they were forced to forfeit 1 round (ie. start the match at 0-1). Select Few also snatched the first game so we were looking at a 2-0 game and a good chance of having to play MoB Turtle Force as our second lower bracket match. Thankfully (or not, as we were soon about to find out), they pulled off a comeback and advanced with a 3-2 win.

Select Few ran a druid/warrior/warlock team which is one of the setups we've somewhat struggled against on live. Its a team with dps that have infinite mana and the best healer to counter mana burn and viper sting. Our main goal was to outlast the druid and eventually drop the lock as we kept the warrior on a leash. They have no dispel so poly, nova, scatter chains were huge and were able to keep the warrior out of the game for a long time.

before the druid and we slowly went down. Game three was pretty similar to the one before it, The first game we didn't CC very well and the warrior just sat on Hamchook for a good 20-30 seconds at the start as I blew all my mana trying to keep him up. We didn't put very much pressure on the druid either, so he just chain cycloned myself and Fugie and we found ourselves in a hole again, down 1-0. The second game we got it together and played a much better game, we managed to oom the druid and get the lock down really low as we kited the warrior around, but it wasn't enough. The dots and bursts of damage from the warrior had me outta mana and the hole got deeper at 2-0. The third game was pretty similar to the second, extremely close with the only difference being that we came out barely on top the end. One down, two more to go.

The fourth game was probably one of the best and most nerve racking games I've ever participated in. There was quite a crowd behind us and the game started off very similar to the other ones; We were looking at the two healers' mana pools slowly winding down. As my mana started to get low I had to get really selective with who I healed and what heal I used. I had the "is he gonna die if I don't heal him now?" going through my head before every heal, trying to sneak in as many short drinks as I could. The warlocks dots were just ticking away on all 3 of us, slowly wearing us down. As time passed, it just seemed like I couldn't keep up with the mana I had so I was yelling for Chook & Fugie to do anything they could to avoid damage. "Kite! Kite! Don't take any damage, use the poles to LoS! Try to group up for PoM bounces!" was all you could hear from our table. It was starting to get pretty desperate, everyone was sub 15% and I was sitting with 300 mana thinking we're going home after just 3 games. A few pom bounces and some icelances later I heard Fugie say "warlock down." I was shocked as hell and 10 seconds later, I heard Fugie say "druid down" as me and Chook were hugging a pole, running from the warrior. The mood at our table really did a 360, There was a big sigh of relief and a lot of happy campers. It was pretty funny to hear their side of table after the game, their druid was basically yelling at the warrior and lock saying they do no damage. It was something like "how the hell do you not kill one of 3 people that are sitting at 10% for 30 seconds"and to be honest he had a decent point, I dunno how none of us died.

Game 5 was a little easier as we managed to get solid offensive pressure off the bat and that opened the druid up for mana burning. We ran him dry pretty fast, got the kill on the warlock and just like that, we dodged elimination.

The next two games were fairly relaxed, we beat Elite Walmart Security and Confused in straight games and we started building some confidence again. After those we had a little breather, we had about an hour to wait for the games in our bracket to finish up. We watched Pink Tabard put up a great fight against Insurrection (Fnatic) during our downtime. They got a really tough schedule, playing the 3rd seeeded team in the winner's bracket as their first match and then the 2nd seeded team in the lower bracket. They played really well and managed to take a game from both teams. Had they been awarded a better seed I really think they had a chance at cracking near the top of the tournament. I hope to see them at future WSVGs!

When all was said and done, we were matched up with Phosphatidylinositol (lol?), the team that was responsible for knocking Insurrection down to the loser's bracket after a few intense 40 minute games. They ran a common yet unique setup in druid/warlock/priest. The unique part about it was that the priest wasn't shadow, he was holy. Two very durable healers coupled with some serious mana burning potential was enough to get #1 in their battlegroup and they were doing really well here at WSVG, one win away from a guaranteed top 8 finish.

We started our series against them with two straight Blade's Edge games that made our chances of advancing seem really slim. Their druid just travel formed and drank, their priest abused the poles on the sides to get the pet off and drink and the warlock's dots and drains slowly took their toll on me. We didn't have anywhere near enough burst to kill the warlock, or even put any significant pressure on his healers, the HoTs were enough to keep him up after the first minute when Chook & Fugie had to go into low mana mode.

After the second game, we found ourselves in another 2-0 hole and this time we had no solution. None of us really had any ideas on serious improvement that would change the course of the game. Every suggestion came to a dead end until someone suggested pve gear. Not only did the other team have little to no damage, but all the damage they had wasn't mitigated at all by resilience... and here we were sitting in our full gladiator gear with 12stam and 8resil gems. As soon as that idea popped up, it was a scramble to re-socket everything. We only had 5 minutes between the two games so we had to do it quick. Priests weren't given any straight pve gear, but every socket in my gear switched to either 18healing, 9healing2mp5 or 3mp5 pretty damn fast. We had to queue as we were finishing off the socketting and I realized my metagem wasn't working because I broke the requirements. It was all pretty funny, but I ended up going into the game with an extra 120-130 healing, a decent amount of mp5 and a disfunctional meta gem. Chook and Fugie also had significant damage/mana boosts from the whole deal.

Anyway, we went into the next 3 games with the "pve setup" and the extra damage/healing was enough to either burst the priest while the druid was feared/trapped or just outmana them completely.

I'm gonna take a break now, I'll get into the rest of the day sometime soon, there was a lot of excitement after those matches.