Wednesday, August 29, 2007
AFK Few Days
Its just past 5am right now so this is definitely not gonna be long. I'll be out of town for the next little while so chances are you won't see any updates on the blog until at least Sunday as I don't plan on being in front of a comp.
Monday, August 27, 2007
WSVG Toronto Recap Part 3
Day 3, after waking up at 8am to make sure I wasn't late I only got to the Fan Expo to be greeted by people saying "you can't go in, only exhibitors at this time" and a lineup of like 500 people.
We finally made it inside after talking to like 3 different people and explaining our situation, somebody understood. So as we got in, we asked one of the admins if the games had been postponed a bit since people were having a hard time getting in and they said "yeah, hold on." A minute later, an admin and the WSVG director walked up to us and asked if they could have a minute of our time. They pulled us over and sat us down on one of the bleachers and the conversation went something like:
Admin: Hey guys, there's been a dispute brought up regarding your last match with MoB Turtle beach. I'd like you to know that we think you're a great team, and this is not something we take very lightly. This isn't something we discussed for a few minutes, we were up until 5:30am trying to make a decision. So we said alright, what was it? They asked us if at any point during the day yesterday we used a scorpid pet, we said yes. They asked us if we had gone out and tamed it ourselves, we said yes. They asked us if we had levelled the pet, we said yes. They asked us what made us think it was okay to do that and this is something that's been a little misunderstood.
Godfather made it sound like we had asked 20 people until we got the answer we wanted to hear. No, we walked in the building, we asked the first guy doing team registrations what pets hunters have and he said they start with a boar. He also pointed us to the Blizzard rep on-site and said he's the one that would be able to make that change. We asked the Blizzard guy if that was possible, he told us that he can't make the change now and that if WSVG wanted to get that done, they'd have to submit a request to Blizzard and it would be looked at. So then we went back to a WSVG admin and asked him if we could tame a pet since there was no scorpid provided. He said he didn't know but he'd find out for us. He went to the back, asked his manager (or whoever), then came back and said "yeah, go ahead." There was no he said she said, we asked 1 person, who then asked their manager or whoever's responsible for these things, who said yes. The messages were all relayed and it all seemed legit.
Back to the conversation with the director; he said ok, and agreed that is what happened since the admin obviously backed us up on the issue and said we asked and he said yes. He then said "that's the thing, you guys asked if you could tame a pet, not if you could use it in an arena." At this point, it really seemed like they were fishing for something to get us on. Yeah, we didn't think of every clause and have the admin sign a written consent to allow us to tame a pet... did they want us to? The forum post on the WSVG site that writes about the ruling says:
"Earlier in the tournament, Yea We Lift asked head WoW admin Chris Pipher if they could tame a pet, but did not specify that the request involved leaving the arena and replacing one of the provided pets."
For anyone that understands the game in the least, our question would be enough for them to realize that we do in fact have to leave the arena to tame a pet and that taming a pet requires replacing one if you already have 3. I guess we didn't make that very clear though, since we're clearly dealing with a director that knows absolutely nothing about the game. Not that I really expected otherwise, he's a businessman running his company.
Then he brought up the IRC deal. He said they have 3 separate conversations recorded with Hamchook talking to one of their PR guys on IRC asking about the scorpid. This was true, the little details that most people seem to leave out about this is that Hamchook didn't ask if we could tame one, he didn't think we would have to. He logged on and asked what pets would be provided, and if there was no scorpid, would it be possible for the WSVG to put in a request to Blizzard to get that changed. The director seemed to agree with that as well, since they obviously had read the logs.
Then he brought up the fact that we had levelled the pet. He asked us if we had put a decent amount of time in, levelling the pet. We said yeah, before matches we often had 40-50 minutes of prep time, where he flew just outside of Shattrath and killed some mobs. At that point, the director and the admin said they needed a minute to discuss the situation. When they came back, they started up with the "well, we think you're a great team but as a league we have to ensure fair play, etc, etc..." and Hamchook got a little fed up with the fluff and asked straight up "So what's gonna happen now? Are we getting DQ'd?" The admin said no, he said Godfather didn't want to handle it that way, he wanted to see a rematch played with the rules followed. So he said we'd have to replay the match with a boar instead of a scorpid. We said ok and we were pretty motivated to beat em again as we were pretty pissed at the time.
So we went back to the same comps, Hamchook was given a new login and he had to set up his new hunter from scratch. Once that was done the rematch was underway. We used our usual setup and they came in with the setup they used in the 3rd game, resto shaman/paladin/warrior. We knew we could beat them even without the pet, against most good teams, the pet would be dismissed for most of the match anyway so we were somewhat used to dealing with that. We knew we would have to play almost flawlessly as it would take an extra 20-40 seconds to get them down to the point where we could land a kill. The first game, CC was perfect. Between novas, scatters, freedom dispels and polys out of LoS, their warrior barely scraped me for the first minute of the game. Their shaman was out of mana and from there between a CS, fear and silencing shot on the pally, we got a kill and won the first game.
The second game was controversy round two. We played a solid game and got their shaman down to just a few hundred life, I pushed a little too much for a kill and got caught in a bad spot so when he didn't die, I was pretty screwed. We were told we had 5 minutes to prep for game 3, but it seemed like there was something going on at the other team's table. Supposedly, the admin had seen someone reach over and touch one of the player's keyboards on two occasions. They discussed the issue with Godfather, then they came over to us. The director (same guy from the morning) said he had witnessed unfair play and filed a dispute on our behalf, he then asked us to give MoB the same courtesy they extended to us and replay the match. We agreed and said let's play.
The rematch went almost the same way as the previous one, we got their shaman really low but we just couldn't finish him and I dropped before he did, so we were back in the same spot, 1-1. Game 3 I don't really remember very well, I think I got caught and purge spammed at the same time so I took a really heavy burst of damage early that I couldn't fully recover from. So it was 2-1, we talked about it a little bit, said we've come back from worse and got ready to play. Game 4 was looking really good, we had them out of mana and I got a solid drink off that put me up to ~4k mana. Their warrior switched over to our mage mid-game, Chook told Fugie to iceblock if he had to and that he'd land a kill soon. I heard that and said the same thing, Fugie had used his iceblocks though to break fears/HoJs earlier in the game and said that it was on cooldown, something I didn't hear so I stayed out of LoS, expecting him to block. So with that miscommunication, we lost Fugie. A few seconds later, their pally dropped and it was down to a 2v2. The only problem is that everyone was drained, myself, hamchook and their shaman all had under 1000 mana. Scatter+trap on the warrior helped us get some breathing space and get a few drinks off, but the shaman just wouldn't die. He sat at under 40% with 0 mana for a really long time. Eventually, the warrior got his trinket back up and after he trinketted a trap then resisted my MC, and at that point I had almost nothing left to keep Hamchook alive for another 20-30seconds.
So we ended up losing the hard fought series 3-1, and with that we hit the end of the road at 4th place. Even though the last day wasn't really what we expected, the tournament as a whole for us was a huge success. We went in there with modest expectations and our main goal was really to have fun, something we definitely did. After a shaky day 1 we came back and played really well throughout the rest of the tournament.
Some random thoughts and shoutouts I'd like to make:
First I'd like to thank everyone that was there supporting us. Pink Tabard, I said it before, you guys were awesome and I hope we see you at the next WSVG. Nuthar, Tunor, Gwen, Superdood and his roomate Ed, Makoplux & company, it was awesome to meet you guys and thanks for the fanbase you provided at the event. Same goes for everyone in #bg5 on IRC, everyone that msged me to say congrats when I logged on, all the blog posts about us, its really crazy to have so much support. Thanks to Raddy and Ming for all their articles and linking to this blog as well, I doubt too many people would be checking it if it wasn't for them. :P
Another thing I want to clear up is the WSVG Admins. They're not idiots as most people seem to think, haha. They play the game and they know it well enough to run the show. They did a great job if you exclude the mishap with the dispute, but that wasn't even their decision, it went way over their heads. Anyway, thanks for running a great tournament and I'm sure we'll see you guys at future events.
I think what happened this weekend isn't so much a bad thing for WoW as an eSport. As long as the league and Blizzard both realize that there are still lots of things to improve on, it's a success. I'd expect to see scorpid pets available for hunters at LA, hopefully some race changes (gnome warriors, gnome warlocks, dwarf hunters), something done about the helm enchants half the casters used, something done about shadow priests having divine spirit and a more detailed set of rules.
Godfather, I watched your video, and I appreciate hearing your side of the story. I really have nothing against you, and I agree that you did what any manager worth his salt would do. I wasn't the happiest camper when we had our little talk right before the rematch and I'm sure you understand that. I wanna thank you for your sponsorship offer and we're looking forward to some more rematches in LA and London. :)
We finally made it inside after talking to like 3 different people and explaining our situation, somebody understood. So as we got in, we asked one of the admins if the games had been postponed a bit since people were having a hard time getting in and they said "yeah, hold on." A minute later, an admin and the WSVG director walked up to us and asked if they could have a minute of our time. They pulled us over and sat us down on one of the bleachers and the conversation went something like:
Admin: Hey guys, there's been a dispute brought up regarding your last match with MoB Turtle beach. I'd like you to know that we think you're a great team, and this is not something we take very lightly. This isn't something we discussed for a few minutes, we were up until 5:30am trying to make a decision. So we said alright, what was it? They asked us if at any point during the day yesterday we used a scorpid pet, we said yes. They asked us if we had gone out and tamed it ourselves, we said yes. They asked us if we had levelled the pet, we said yes. They asked us what made us think it was okay to do that and this is something that's been a little misunderstood.
Godfather made it sound like we had asked 20 people until we got the answer we wanted to hear. No, we walked in the building, we asked the first guy doing team registrations what pets hunters have and he said they start with a boar. He also pointed us to the Blizzard rep on-site and said he's the one that would be able to make that change. We asked the Blizzard guy if that was possible, he told us that he can't make the change now and that if WSVG wanted to get that done, they'd have to submit a request to Blizzard and it would be looked at. So then we went back to a WSVG admin and asked him if we could tame a pet since there was no scorpid provided. He said he didn't know but he'd find out for us. He went to the back, asked his manager (or whoever), then came back and said "yeah, go ahead." There was no he said she said, we asked 1 person, who then asked their manager or whoever's responsible for these things, who said yes. The messages were all relayed and it all seemed legit.
Back to the conversation with the director; he said ok, and agreed that is what happened since the admin obviously backed us up on the issue and said we asked and he said yes. He then said "that's the thing, you guys asked if you could tame a pet, not if you could use it in an arena." At this point, it really seemed like they were fishing for something to get us on. Yeah, we didn't think of every clause and have the admin sign a written consent to allow us to tame a pet... did they want us to? The forum post on the WSVG site that writes about the ruling says:
"Earlier in the tournament, Yea We Lift asked head WoW admin Chris Pipher if they could tame a pet, but did not specify that the request involved leaving the arena and replacing one of the provided pets."
For anyone that understands the game in the least, our question would be enough for them to realize that we do in fact have to leave the arena to tame a pet and that taming a pet requires replacing one if you already have 3. I guess we didn't make that very clear though, since we're clearly dealing with a director that knows absolutely nothing about the game. Not that I really expected otherwise, he's a businessman running his company.
Then he brought up the IRC deal. He said they have 3 separate conversations recorded with Hamchook talking to one of their PR guys on IRC asking about the scorpid. This was true, the little details that most people seem to leave out about this is that Hamchook didn't ask if we could tame one, he didn't think we would have to. He logged on and asked what pets would be provided, and if there was no scorpid, would it be possible for the WSVG to put in a request to Blizzard to get that changed. The director seemed to agree with that as well, since they obviously had read the logs.
Then he brought up the fact that we had levelled the pet. He asked us if we had put a decent amount of time in, levelling the pet. We said yeah, before matches we often had 40-50 minutes of prep time, where he flew just outside of Shattrath and killed some mobs. At that point, the director and the admin said they needed a minute to discuss the situation. When they came back, they started up with the "well, we think you're a great team but as a league we have to ensure fair play, etc, etc..." and Hamchook got a little fed up with the fluff and asked straight up "So what's gonna happen now? Are we getting DQ'd?" The admin said no, he said Godfather didn't want to handle it that way, he wanted to see a rematch played with the rules followed. So he said we'd have to replay the match with a boar instead of a scorpid. We said ok and we were pretty motivated to beat em again as we were pretty pissed at the time.
So we went back to the same comps, Hamchook was given a new login and he had to set up his new hunter from scratch. Once that was done the rematch was underway. We used our usual setup and they came in with the setup they used in the 3rd game, resto shaman/paladin/warrior. We knew we could beat them even without the pet, against most good teams, the pet would be dismissed for most of the match anyway so we were somewhat used to dealing with that. We knew we would have to play almost flawlessly as it would take an extra 20-40 seconds to get them down to the point where we could land a kill. The first game, CC was perfect. Between novas, scatters, freedom dispels and polys out of LoS, their warrior barely scraped me for the first minute of the game. Their shaman was out of mana and from there between a CS, fear and silencing shot on the pally, we got a kill and won the first game.
The second game was controversy round two. We played a solid game and got their shaman down to just a few hundred life, I pushed a little too much for a kill and got caught in a bad spot so when he didn't die, I was pretty screwed. We were told we had 5 minutes to prep for game 3, but it seemed like there was something going on at the other team's table. Supposedly, the admin had seen someone reach over and touch one of the player's keyboards on two occasions. They discussed the issue with Godfather, then they came over to us. The director (same guy from the morning) said he had witnessed unfair play and filed a dispute on our behalf, he then asked us to give MoB the same courtesy they extended to us and replay the match. We agreed and said let's play.
The rematch went almost the same way as the previous one, we got their shaman really low but we just couldn't finish him and I dropped before he did, so we were back in the same spot, 1-1. Game 3 I don't really remember very well, I think I got caught and purge spammed at the same time so I took a really heavy burst of damage early that I couldn't fully recover from. So it was 2-1, we talked about it a little bit, said we've come back from worse and got ready to play. Game 4 was looking really good, we had them out of mana and I got a solid drink off that put me up to ~4k mana. Their warrior switched over to our mage mid-game, Chook told Fugie to iceblock if he had to and that he'd land a kill soon. I heard that and said the same thing, Fugie had used his iceblocks though to break fears/HoJs earlier in the game and said that it was on cooldown, something I didn't hear so I stayed out of LoS, expecting him to block. So with that miscommunication, we lost Fugie. A few seconds later, their pally dropped and it was down to a 2v2. The only problem is that everyone was drained, myself, hamchook and their shaman all had under 1000 mana. Scatter+trap on the warrior helped us get some breathing space and get a few drinks off, but the shaman just wouldn't die. He sat at under 40% with 0 mana for a really long time. Eventually, the warrior got his trinket back up and after he trinketted a trap then resisted my MC, and at that point I had almost nothing left to keep Hamchook alive for another 20-30seconds.
So we ended up losing the hard fought series 3-1, and with that we hit the end of the road at 4th place. Even though the last day wasn't really what we expected, the tournament as a whole for us was a huge success. We went in there with modest expectations and our main goal was really to have fun, something we definitely did. After a shaky day 1 we came back and played really well throughout the rest of the tournament.
Some random thoughts and shoutouts I'd like to make:
First I'd like to thank everyone that was there supporting us. Pink Tabard, I said it before, you guys were awesome and I hope we see you at the next WSVG. Nuthar, Tunor, Gwen, Superdood and his roomate Ed, Makoplux & company, it was awesome to meet you guys and thanks for the fanbase you provided at the event. Same goes for everyone in #bg5 on IRC, everyone that msged me to say congrats when I logged on, all the blog posts about us, its really crazy to have so much support. Thanks to Raddy and Ming for all their articles and linking to this blog as well, I doubt too many people would be checking it if it wasn't for them. :P
Another thing I want to clear up is the WSVG Admins. They're not idiots as most people seem to think, haha. They play the game and they know it well enough to run the show. They did a great job if you exclude the mishap with the dispute, but that wasn't even their decision, it went way over their heads. Anyway, thanks for running a great tournament and I'm sure we'll see you guys at future events.
I think what happened this weekend isn't so much a bad thing for WoW as an eSport. As long as the league and Blizzard both realize that there are still lots of things to improve on, it's a success. I'd expect to see scorpid pets available for hunters at LA, hopefully some race changes (gnome warriors, gnome warlocks, dwarf hunters), something done about the helm enchants half the casters used, something done about shadow priests having divine spirit and a more detailed set of rules.
Godfather, I watched your video, and I appreciate hearing your side of the story. I really have nothing against you, and I agree that you did what any manager worth his salt would do. I wasn't the happiest camper when we had our little talk right before the rematch and I'm sure you understand that. I wanna thank you for your sponsorship offer and we're looking forward to some more rematches in LA and London. :)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
WSVG Toronto Recap Part 2
Alrite, last time I left off just after we had won a 3-2 match against the long name'd with the drain setup. As soon as we won that game we were all pretty happy, we were guaranteed at least top 8 even if we lost the rest of our games.
The main stage game at this point was Pandemic vs MoB Turtle Force (or whatever MoB team Zecks plays on) and we were told that the loser of that game was dropping down to our bracket and would be our next match. Pandemic crushed them as they did every other team and we were off to set up for our match against Turtle Force. Knowing we had used only one lineup the whole tournament, I was pretty sure they'd pick something that countered us pretty bad. Instead, they picked something that's a pretty even matchup I'd say, they went with a triple dps shadowpriest/warlock/mage team. Between poly, two CSs and silence they could really shut me down if I was in LoS.
The first game we didn't really see it coming and the damage stacked up quick. We weren't prepared to run like beaners and by the time we got into it, it was too late. The shadowburn/swd/fireblast burst was too much after a silence. The second game we knew what we wanted to do and we got a favorable map in Nagrand but a few slight mistakes cost us the game. Myself and Hamchook got split up on separate poles and he ended up getting caught in the open for a little too long. The damage that team can put out is pretty serious so even the smallest opening will leave someone dead.
So here we were again, in yet another 0-2 hole. The difference this time was that we knew we could beat this if we played well, it was mistakes that lost us the two games. So we queued in for game #3. It came down to really good LoS work on our part, it was all about avoiding the mage and the warlock for me. Fearward was a huge help as a fear into a poly would end the match, so I put that on myself anytime I could. The game plan was simple, we knew they were going after Hamchook, he was pretty much the only viable target. Iceblock would clear all debuffs and render Fugie immune for at least a little bit and if they went for me their shadowpriest would get lit up really quick. Fugie would do his best to spam sheep between the warlock and mage as myself and Chook focused on surviving and putting whatever damage/stings we could on the shadowpriest. It was mainly instant spam with a flash heal when I knew they couldn't CS. I think I only got poly'd once or twice during the final 3 games, Fugie did a great job of shutting their mage down and we did pretty well to stay away. Two well played games on our part later, we had another 2-2 tie, going into a game 5.
Controversy surrounding MoB, round 2. We start the game off pretty well, Hamchook is sitting topped off as they're making a run for him. All of a sudden, he stops in the middle of one of the ramps on my screen and I'm like wtf? Then I hear him and like 20 people behind me start saying "crashed!" So I look over and see the WoW error screen on his comp. In the meantime, Godfather and the MoB crew on the other side are going nuts. "WHAAAT WHAAAT KILL EM! YEAAA WHAT NOW!" while they're completely oblivious to us yelling at them saying he crashed. It seems as if they thought he pulled the plug or something, which is pretty laughable when we had a huge crowd behind us, some of which were even pretty reputable:
Noktyn from #battlegroup9 irc:
[Pandemic-NoktyN] i was behind hamchook
[Pandemic-NoktyN] when the disconnect happened
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he got dc'd
[Pandemic-NoktyN] and died
[Pandemic-NoktyN] like
[Pandemic-NoktyN] 10 seconds
[Pandemic-NoktyN] after he dc'd
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he was dc'd a long time
[Pandemic-NoktyN] they were made about that too
[Pandemic-NoktyN] i think they think he plug pulled
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he definately error'd out
A WSVG admin walked over, saw the error screen, then told us to queue up again and replay the match. Game 5 went just like the two before it, we did a good job LoSing and eventually, their shadowpriest went OOM and died. With that, we pulled off our 3rd 0-2 comeback of the day and eliminated MoB Turtle Force and locked a top 4 spot.
Shortly after, we were told that we'd be playing against MoB Turtle Beach, winner gets to play against EG for a shot at Pandemic in the grand finals. We really had no clue what they were gonna run going into the match so we were ready for anything. They chose a druid/mage/warrior lineup which is pretty weak against us, the mage is a class we can drain and do serious damage to while they have no defensive dispels for polys, novas and fears. We took the first game with relative ease. They were locked in with the same composition for the second game, which came down to the line. I got poly'd and cycloned under the bridge while Hamchook got stuck on top with the warrior and mage tearing him a new one. As my poly broke I yelled for him to jump. All I saw was him jumping towards the edge with hamstring on and sitting at 2% with deterrence up dodging executes. On one of his little hops before he got off the bridge, a shield connected and the warrior got poly'd at that exact second. Chook jumped down with a shield and 2% life, and the mage in hot pursuit spamming icelances. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to see absorbed over and over. His CS was still on CD so ZG trinket + flash spam as the MS debuff wore off quickly took Chook out of the danger zone. A few seconds later their mage dropped and we found ourselves up 2-0.
For game 3, they switched their makeup to Warrior/Pally/Resto Shaman, which is something that when played well gives us a decent amount of trouble. The game started up with their warrior charging Hamchook's pet and starting to beat on it. As I healed, Hamchook quickly dismissed it (quickly being a 5 second cast) and their warrior switched his focus to me. As the match drew out, Chook brought the pet out again and the mana drain continued. Eventually, we had their shaman fully dry and their pally hurting on mana as well and we managed to drop the shaman. My mana was pretty low at the time, but Fugie did a great job of controlling the warrior so we were able to sneak out with a win and a 3-0 series.
That was it for the day, we had at least top 3 guaranteed (or did we? :P) with a good chance of getting to play Pandemic on stage the next day.
The main stage game at this point was Pandemic vs MoB Turtle Force (or whatever MoB team Zecks plays on) and we were told that the loser of that game was dropping down to our bracket and would be our next match. Pandemic crushed them as they did every other team and we were off to set up for our match against Turtle Force. Knowing we had used only one lineup the whole tournament, I was pretty sure they'd pick something that countered us pretty bad. Instead, they picked something that's a pretty even matchup I'd say, they went with a triple dps shadowpriest/warlock/mage team. Between poly, two CSs and silence they could really shut me down if I was in LoS.
The first game we didn't really see it coming and the damage stacked up quick. We weren't prepared to run like beaners and by the time we got into it, it was too late. The shadowburn/swd/fireblast burst was too much after a silence. The second game we knew what we wanted to do and we got a favorable map in Nagrand but a few slight mistakes cost us the game. Myself and Hamchook got split up on separate poles and he ended up getting caught in the open for a little too long. The damage that team can put out is pretty serious so even the smallest opening will leave someone dead.
So here we were again, in yet another 0-2 hole. The difference this time was that we knew we could beat this if we played well, it was mistakes that lost us the two games. So we queued in for game #3. It came down to really good LoS work on our part, it was all about avoiding the mage and the warlock for me. Fearward was a huge help as a fear into a poly would end the match, so I put that on myself anytime I could. The game plan was simple, we knew they were going after Hamchook, he was pretty much the only viable target. Iceblock would clear all debuffs and render Fugie immune for at least a little bit and if they went for me their shadowpriest would get lit up really quick. Fugie would do his best to spam sheep between the warlock and mage as myself and Chook focused on surviving and putting whatever damage/stings we could on the shadowpriest. It was mainly instant spam with a flash heal when I knew they couldn't CS. I think I only got poly'd once or twice during the final 3 games, Fugie did a great job of shutting their mage down and we did pretty well to stay away. Two well played games on our part later, we had another 2-2 tie, going into a game 5.
Controversy surrounding MoB, round 2. We start the game off pretty well, Hamchook is sitting topped off as they're making a run for him. All of a sudden, he stops in the middle of one of the ramps on my screen and I'm like wtf? Then I hear him and like 20 people behind me start saying "crashed!" So I look over and see the WoW error screen on his comp. In the meantime, Godfather and the MoB crew on the other side are going nuts. "WHAAAT WHAAAT KILL EM! YEAAA WHAT NOW!" while they're completely oblivious to us yelling at them saying he crashed. It seems as if they thought he pulled the plug or something, which is pretty laughable when we had a huge crowd behind us, some of which were even pretty reputable:
Noktyn from #battlegroup9 irc:
[Pandemic-NoktyN] i was behind hamchook
[Pandemic-NoktyN] when the disconnect happened
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he got dc'd
[Pandemic-NoktyN] and died
[Pandemic-NoktyN] like
[Pandemic-NoktyN] 10 seconds
[Pandemic-NoktyN] after he dc'd
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he was dc'd a long time
[Pandemic-NoktyN] they were made about that too
[Pandemic-NoktyN] i think they think he plug pulled
[Pandemic-NoktyN] he definately error'd out
A WSVG admin walked over, saw the error screen, then told us to queue up again and replay the match. Game 5 went just like the two before it, we did a good job LoSing and eventually, their shadowpriest went OOM and died. With that, we pulled off our 3rd 0-2 comeback of the day and eliminated MoB Turtle Force and locked a top 4 spot.
Shortly after, we were told that we'd be playing against MoB Turtle Beach, winner gets to play against EG for a shot at Pandemic in the grand finals. We really had no clue what they were gonna run going into the match so we were ready for anything. They chose a druid/mage/warrior lineup which is pretty weak against us, the mage is a class we can drain and do serious damage to while they have no defensive dispels for polys, novas and fears. We took the first game with relative ease. They were locked in with the same composition for the second game, which came down to the line. I got poly'd and cycloned under the bridge while Hamchook got stuck on top with the warrior and mage tearing him a new one. As my poly broke I yelled for him to jump. All I saw was him jumping towards the edge with hamstring on and sitting at 2% with deterrence up dodging executes. On one of his little hops before he got off the bridge, a shield connected and the warrior got poly'd at that exact second. Chook jumped down with a shield and 2% life, and the mage in hot pursuit spamming icelances. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to see absorbed over and over. His CS was still on CD so ZG trinket + flash spam as the MS debuff wore off quickly took Chook out of the danger zone. A few seconds later their mage dropped and we found ourselves up 2-0.
For game 3, they switched their makeup to Warrior/Pally/Resto Shaman, which is something that when played well gives us a decent amount of trouble. The game started up with their warrior charging Hamchook's pet and starting to beat on it. As I healed, Hamchook quickly dismissed it (quickly being a 5 second cast) and their warrior switched his focus to me. As the match drew out, Chook brought the pet out again and the mana drain continued. Eventually, we had their shaman fully dry and their pally hurting on mana as well and we managed to drop the shaman. My mana was pretty low at the time, but Fugie did a great job of controlling the warrior so we were able to sneak out with a win and a 3-0 series.
That was it for the day, we had at least top 3 guaranteed (or did we? :P) with a good chance of getting to play Pandemic on stage the next day.
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.
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.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
WSVG Toronto Day 1
I got home from WSVG like 45 mins ago (its just past midnight now) and I gotta head back tomorrow morning so I really don't have too much time or patience to write a long entry tonight. If I get home at a decent hour tomorrow I'll be sure to put a little more effort.
Basically, just to give you an update:
Day 1 was a lot of fun, most of the players we talked to were straight, the WSVG WoW reps were understanding and it really seemed as if everyone was there to have a good time. As you've prolly already read on Ming's blog, Chook was stuck as an elf and was given a default boar pet. We did have a decent amount of time to set up so we spent most of that taming and then attempting to level a scorpid pet to 70 (which failed miserably when we all got bored at about 1/3rd into 69). He did have a 69 sorpid ready for match though, not that it made any difference since they had no poison cleanses.
Anyway, our first game (the only one that really matters) was against SK Gaming, who flew all the way from Sweeden to attend this as they have for the other WSVGs. They ran the "golden trinity" mage/rogue/priest comp and we went in with our standard priest/hunter/mage. This is a matchup we generally don't have too much trouble with and we really weren't too worried going into the games. We got caugh off guard the first game when I got polied early and thought Fugie would be ok if I didn't trinket but he really got torn apart fast and with a quick mass dispel from their priest he dropped early. The second and third games we took control of the match, played it at our pace and eventually dropped the mage. The third was a repeat of the first, a CS on me followed by some miscommunication and a good burst on their part left our mage dead. The fifth and last game is one we really should have won, we had them all out of mana and the mage was running around at 30-40% life for a long time but we just couldn't finish him. They did an amazing job of playing defensively, between snaring our hunter and abusing LoS we just couldn't finish it and eventually their rogue's infinite energy pool caught up to us and we eventually lost fugie and the series.
Ultimately, the reason we lost wasn't because Hamchook was a night elf and had a level 69 pet. It was the fact we were an inexperienced team going against one that's been to every event to date. I didn't think I'd be nervous beforehand since I'm normally pretty relaxed, but when the matches actually started and I realized it was harder than I thought it would be, the nerves really kicked in. It was our first time playing at a large event like this and it really is a significant change from playing in the comfort of your own room.
Props to SK though, they played a great 5 games and I wish them luck in the rest of the tournament. From what I saw, we had the closest and most entertaining series of the day and that was confirmed by a few of the WSVG guys that said our game shoulda been on the main stage. Although the PinkTabard guys (woo bg5) put up a good fight against Zecks & company. Even though they ended up losing 3-1, the score doesn't really show how close each game was, especially the last.
After our first round loss we got dropped to the loser's bracket where we won our second game 3-0 against a warrior/mage/pally team so we're not out of it yet. It sucks to drop down so early but there's really nothing you can do other than get up and keep going and thats what we plan on doing.
Until tomorrow.
Note: I didn't really read this over properly so don't hate if something sounds retarded.
Basically, just to give you an update:
Day 1 was a lot of fun, most of the players we talked to were straight, the WSVG WoW reps were understanding and it really seemed as if everyone was there to have a good time. As you've prolly already read on Ming's blog, Chook was stuck as an elf and was given a default boar pet. We did have a decent amount of time to set up so we spent most of that taming and then attempting to level a scorpid pet to 70 (which failed miserably when we all got bored at about 1/3rd into 69). He did have a 69 sorpid ready for match though, not that it made any difference since they had no poison cleanses.
Anyway, our first game (the only one that really matters) was against SK Gaming, who flew all the way from Sweeden to attend this as they have for the other WSVGs. They ran the "golden trinity" mage/rogue/priest comp and we went in with our standard priest/hunter/mage. This is a matchup we generally don't have too much trouble with and we really weren't too worried going into the games. We got caugh off guard the first game when I got polied early and thought Fugie would be ok if I didn't trinket but he really got torn apart fast and with a quick mass dispel from their priest he dropped early. The second and third games we took control of the match, played it at our pace and eventually dropped the mage. The third was a repeat of the first, a CS on me followed by some miscommunication and a good burst on their part left our mage dead. The fifth and last game is one we really should have won, we had them all out of mana and the mage was running around at 30-40% life for a long time but we just couldn't finish him. They did an amazing job of playing defensively, between snaring our hunter and abusing LoS we just couldn't finish it and eventually their rogue's infinite energy pool caught up to us and we eventually lost fugie and the series.
Ultimately, the reason we lost wasn't because Hamchook was a night elf and had a level 69 pet. It was the fact we were an inexperienced team going against one that's been to every event to date. I didn't think I'd be nervous beforehand since I'm normally pretty relaxed, but when the matches actually started and I realized it was harder than I thought it would be, the nerves really kicked in. It was our first time playing at a large event like this and it really is a significant change from playing in the comfort of your own room.
Props to SK though, they played a great 5 games and I wish them luck in the rest of the tournament. From what I saw, we had the closest and most entertaining series of the day and that was confirmed by a few of the WSVG guys that said our game shoulda been on the main stage. Although the PinkTabard guys (woo bg5) put up a good fight against Zecks & company. Even though they ended up losing 3-1, the score doesn't really show how close each game was, especially the last.
After our first round loss we got dropped to the loser's bracket where we won our second game 3-0 against a warrior/mage/pally team so we're not out of it yet. It sucks to drop down so early but there's really nothing you can do other than get up and keep going and thats what we plan on doing.
Until tomorrow.
Note: I didn't really read this over properly so don't hate if something sounds retarded.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
What the hell...?
So I came in to work today and when tried to load up the blog... I got this beauty of a screen:
Your organization's Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.
Reason: The Websense category "Sex" is filtered.
URL: http://yeawelift.com/
Yessss! On the other hand, they decided gameriot was no longer associated with the "Games" category and unblocked that for me. Personally, I think someone higher up with connections plays WoW and likes to keep up with his reading. It happened before with the EJ boards, they kept getting blocked and unblocked every couple of days. They've been blocked for a few months now though so I can only imagine who won that fight.
Anyway, today I'm gonna talk about idiots... err... I mean druids. Over the past 2 days our 3s rating has been crapped all over. We peaked at 2441 on Monday night and we're now sitting at just under 2200. A good 200 of those points were lost to teams with druids. Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute... druids!? Remember a couple months ago when you couldn't mention anything that associated druids with being viable in any sort of matrix without getting an angry mob of druid whiners on your case? When the class as a whole was pretty much on strike, bitching about anything and everything? Yeah, about that... take a look at your local 2v2 and 3v3 ladders. Resto druids are taking over with pretty much everything that doesn't rely on mana; warlocks, warriors, rogues... They have great burst healing capabilities, instant heals that rival those of priests, the ability to break snares/get away from the fight to drink (while half of their heals keep ticking) and on top of all that they're really mana efficient.
I realize that what I just said makes druids sound like gods and will probably make you wonder why it took people a season and a half to realize their full potential. A lot of the explenation actually makes a good amount of sense. Looking at a EU realm population chart, druids are the second least represented class next to shaman, who until a few months ago were only available for horde. They also aren't like warriors, meaning you can't really bind a third of your keyboard to MS, a third to hamstring and a third to intercept then mash your face across the keyboard for victory. Druids are up there with the harder classes to play, there's a lot to keep track of and a lot you can do to distinguish yourself from others. I won't go into how to play a druid since I really don't know. Most of my views come from playing against druids and realizing how big the difference between a good one and a mediocre one is.
Now, on top of that, factor in the fact that most druids had been resto for 2 years since it was the only remotely viable spec and many wanted change. Blizzard promised variety with a great feral tree and they delivered with TBC, where feral druids were pretty much overpowered in every possible way. We had feral druids ranking top 5 on damage meters while tanking in bear form and taking less damage than prot warriors. What kinda idiot would even consider staying resto under those conditions? Naturally, most wanted to go feral and those that didn't were pressured by a guild that was in need of a tank. So instead of respeccing weekly and building 2 sets of gear, they figured feral would be the pvp spec to be and they started working on their respective arena sets.
Now that we're deep into season 2, those that picked feral over resto have had the chance to re-gear and get used to playing healers again and they're really tearing it up. We played a lot of games against two of the best druids on the battlegroup and their 3v3 teams over the past few nights and I want to give credit where it's due. Mounsif, who is in my opinion the best druid on bg5 and Brahz, who is a pretty close (or maybe distant :P) second are harder to play against than any other healer, including other druids, for our setup. I'll probably go in-depth about our wins, losses and what we learned from them at some point after this weekend's WSVG.
Other than that I changed the banner up a bit, thought the default one was pretty boring. In case you were wondering, yes, that is a simpsonizeme.com picture and yes, I did use a picture of myself to make it so that is more or less what I would look like in a simpson style world.
Update: I missed one thing that I was planning on talking about. Innervate, fuck that spell. They need to make a tree pop up outta the ground everytime a druid uses innervate or something. Its not hard for them to run out of LoS before they use it... Making it so hard to tell when they actually do use it is straight up annoying. They added a giant wave on mana tide totems and they're adding massive wierd looking halo type things on the important pally blessings, there's really no reason for innervate to be so low key.
Your organization's Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.
Reason: The Websense category "Sex" is filtered.
URL: http://yeawelift.com/
Yessss! On the other hand, they decided gameriot was no longer associated with the "Games" category and unblocked that for me. Personally, I think someone higher up with connections plays WoW and likes to keep up with his reading. It happened before with the EJ boards, they kept getting blocked and unblocked every couple of days. They've been blocked for a few months now though so I can only imagine who won that fight.
Anyway, today I'm gonna talk about idiots... err... I mean druids. Over the past 2 days our 3s rating has been crapped all over. We peaked at 2441 on Monday night and we're now sitting at just under 2200. A good 200 of those points were lost to teams with druids. Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute... druids!? Remember a couple months ago when you couldn't mention anything that associated druids with being viable in any sort of matrix without getting an angry mob of druid whiners on your case? When the class as a whole was pretty much on strike, bitching about anything and everything? Yeah, about that... take a look at your local 2v2 and 3v3 ladders. Resto druids are taking over with pretty much everything that doesn't rely on mana; warlocks, warriors, rogues... They have great burst healing capabilities, instant heals that rival those of priests, the ability to break snares/get away from the fight to drink (while half of their heals keep ticking) and on top of all that they're really mana efficient.
I realize that what I just said makes druids sound like gods and will probably make you wonder why it took people a season and a half to realize their full potential. A lot of the explenation actually makes a good amount of sense. Looking at a EU realm population chart, druids are the second least represented class next to shaman, who until a few months ago were only available for horde. They also aren't like warriors, meaning you can't really bind a third of your keyboard to MS, a third to hamstring and a third to intercept then mash your face across the keyboard for victory. Druids are up there with the harder classes to play, there's a lot to keep track of and a lot you can do to distinguish yourself from others. I won't go into how to play a druid since I really don't know. Most of my views come from playing against druids and realizing how big the difference between a good one and a mediocre one is.
Now, on top of that, factor in the fact that most druids had been resto for 2 years since it was the only remotely viable spec and many wanted change. Blizzard promised variety with a great feral tree and they delivered with TBC, where feral druids were pretty much overpowered in every possible way. We had feral druids ranking top 5 on damage meters while tanking in bear form and taking less damage than prot warriors. What kinda idiot would even consider staying resto under those conditions? Naturally, most wanted to go feral and those that didn't were pressured by a guild that was in need of a tank. So instead of respeccing weekly and building 2 sets of gear, they figured feral would be the pvp spec to be and they started working on their respective arena sets.
Now that we're deep into season 2, those that picked feral over resto have had the chance to re-gear and get used to playing healers again and they're really tearing it up. We played a lot of games against two of the best druids on the battlegroup and their 3v3 teams over the past few nights and I want to give credit where it's due. Mounsif, who is in my opinion the best druid on bg5 and Brahz, who is a pretty close (or maybe distant :P) second are harder to play against than any other healer, including other druids, for our setup. I'll probably go in-depth about our wins, losses and what we learned from them at some point after this weekend's WSVG.
Other than that I changed the banner up a bit, thought the default one was pretty boring. In case you were wondering, yes, that is a simpsonizeme.com picture and yes, I did use a picture of myself to make it so that is more or less what I would look like in a simpson style world.
Update: I missed one thing that I was planning on talking about. Innervate, fuck that spell. They need to make a tree pop up outta the ground everytime a druid uses innervate or something. Its not hard for them to run out of LoS before they use it... Making it so hard to tell when they actually do use it is straight up annoying. They added a giant wave on mana tide totems and they're adding massive wierd looking halo type things on the important pally blessings, there's really no reason for innervate to be so low key.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Random Thoughts & Tips
I play with very few mods, the only one I would really miss in a stripped UI is the focus frame, which Blizz will hopefully add to their default in the near future. Its kinda surprising that they didn't add it to begin with, but we'll let it slide since they always seem to be a few patches behind with implementing useful mods.
Focus Selection:
The first thing I do out of the gates in every game is set my focus target as I'm sure most people do.There's a lot I'd like to be able to keep track of but only one frame/quick target macro to work with. In the past I've been torn between what to pick but after playing around with different targets, the two best choices that I've come up with are:
1) Their main CC class (usually mage, sometimes warlock). This lets me see the poly coming before it lands and often gives me the time to pre-spam dispel or make my way out of LoS to avoid it myself. It's also a very reliable way of knowing when to cast SWD to break yourself out of polys (which is really not as hard as it may seem). I tend to use this in the smaller brackets (2v2 and 3v3) where avoiding CC can be game breaking. There are some really nasty CC chains that can put you out of commission for long enough to end the game and being the only dispeller on my teams, I really have 1 on-call break every 2 minutes.
2) Our primary target (the one we're trying to kill first). This is often my choice for 5v5 games since getting poly'd and CC'd myself isn't as big of a deal. In most cases I'm the focus target and even when I'm not, most teams will put their CC on dps (aka the warrior/mage) rather than the secondary healer. The only CC that I get hit with relatively often in the 5v5 bracket is fear, so as long as I keep fearward on and have my trinket up, I'm in good shape.
Now, for the actual focus selection. It allows me to bind a dispel focus target macro which speeds up offensive dispels significantly and it lets me keep track of their life. Being able to predict a bop and pre-spamming dispel before it comes on will often wipe it as soon as its put on, which needless to say is pretty huge. Same goes for iceblocks, if you see a mage getting low, it's not hard to predict that an iceblock is coming soon. Having a mass dispel ready to take it off will speed that up by at least a second or two. You can also time your offensive fear on the pally when the target is low rather than sitting comfortably at 100%.
I know a lot of people assist their warrior to get a hold of the dps target and even though it'll work a lot of the time, I've found that it isn't always reliable. Not all warriors have tunnel vision and keep their target from start to finish. They'll switch targets from time to time to hamstring or pummel something. Especially when a BoP or iceblock goes off, most good warriors won't sit there swinging at an immune target for long and if you assist them at the wrong time, you'll quickly find that dispelling that BoP isn't as fast as you'd like it to be.
The Beauty of PoM:
Another thing that I've noticed recently is that a lot of people talk about pom being such a great heal but most of it seems to be because it's instant and it adds to the priest's array of "on the move" heals. That's true and all, but there's a second, huge component of the spell that gets ignored pretty often. With talents, it costs under 300 mana and heals for ~1500 per jump. If you look at it as an instant cast heal and disregard the bouncing component, its still a pretty decent heal. However, if you do factor in the fact that it can jump 5 times and heal for up to 7500 in a matter of a few seconds, it becomes quite possibly the most efficient heal in the game.
Now you're probably thinking "yeah, good luck getting it to bounce 5 times between targets that are taking consistent damage" and in a lot of cases, you're right. You'll get your 1-3 bounces off a pom and you won't complain. There are scenarios though, where you can use it to its full benefit if you're smart about your positioning, most of which involve a warlock. Think about any warlock team you've played against in 2v2 or 3v3. How often do they keep dots on only one target? Most of them have the mentality of "more dots on more targets = more damage = more pressure" so they'll almost always toss meaningless dots on anyone in range/LoS whenever they have free time.
If you notice that you and one or more of your teammates have ticking dots on them, its a perfect time to pom. Get near them and throw a pom off as you run with them wherever they go. Within 4-5 seconds it will use up all the charges and you'll both take 3k+ healing for less than 300 mana. Its a little harder to coordinate if you don't have dots on you and its both your teammates that do, but there's really no reason why you shouldn't tell them to bunch up if they have the opportunity. If the warlock thinks he's all smart and decides to only keep dots on the focus target, that's fine too, you've just reduced the amount of damage their team's doing to yours significantly. Just keep a renew on and it'll heal through at least half of his damage with just one cast every 15 seconds.
We often play an outlast game, so things like getting the best efficiency out of heals goes a long way.
Update: Woo, the dates are back on track. I made a few drafts of posts to keep ideas that popped up and I guess the date shows when the post was created rather than published.
Focus Selection:
The first thing I do out of the gates in every game is set my focus target as I'm sure most people do.There's a lot I'd like to be able to keep track of but only one frame/quick target macro to work with. In the past I've been torn between what to pick but after playing around with different targets, the two best choices that I've come up with are:
1) Their main CC class (usually mage, sometimes warlock). This lets me see the poly coming before it lands and often gives me the time to pre-spam dispel or make my way out of LoS to avoid it myself. It's also a very reliable way of knowing when to cast SWD to break yourself out of polys (which is really not as hard as it may seem). I tend to use this in the smaller brackets (2v2 and 3v3) where avoiding CC can be game breaking. There are some really nasty CC chains that can put you out of commission for long enough to end the game and being the only dispeller on my teams, I really have 1 on-call break every 2 minutes.
2) Our primary target (the one we're trying to kill first). This is often my choice for 5v5 games since getting poly'd and CC'd myself isn't as big of a deal. In most cases I'm the focus target and even when I'm not, most teams will put their CC on dps (aka the warrior/mage) rather than the secondary healer. The only CC that I get hit with relatively often in the 5v5 bracket is fear, so as long as I keep fearward on and have my trinket up, I'm in good shape.
Now, for the actual focus selection. It allows me to bind a dispel focus target macro which speeds up offensive dispels significantly and it lets me keep track of their life. Being able to predict a bop and pre-spamming dispel before it comes on will often wipe it as soon as its put on, which needless to say is pretty huge. Same goes for iceblocks, if you see a mage getting low, it's not hard to predict that an iceblock is coming soon. Having a mass dispel ready to take it off will speed that up by at least a second or two. You can also time your offensive fear on the pally when the target is low rather than sitting comfortably at 100%.
I know a lot of people assist their warrior to get a hold of the dps target and even though it'll work a lot of the time, I've found that it isn't always reliable. Not all warriors have tunnel vision and keep their target from start to finish. They'll switch targets from time to time to hamstring or pummel something. Especially when a BoP or iceblock goes off, most good warriors won't sit there swinging at an immune target for long and if you assist them at the wrong time, you'll quickly find that dispelling that BoP isn't as fast as you'd like it to be.
The Beauty of PoM:
Another thing that I've noticed recently is that a lot of people talk about pom being such a great heal but most of it seems to be because it's instant and it adds to the priest's array of "on the move" heals. That's true and all, but there's a second, huge component of the spell that gets ignored pretty often. With talents, it costs under 300 mana and heals for ~1500 per jump. If you look at it as an instant cast heal and disregard the bouncing component, its still a pretty decent heal. However, if you do factor in the fact that it can jump 5 times and heal for up to 7500 in a matter of a few seconds, it becomes quite possibly the most efficient heal in the game.
Now you're probably thinking "yeah, good luck getting it to bounce 5 times between targets that are taking consistent damage" and in a lot of cases, you're right. You'll get your 1-3 bounces off a pom and you won't complain. There are scenarios though, where you can use it to its full benefit if you're smart about your positioning, most of which involve a warlock. Think about any warlock team you've played against in 2v2 or 3v3. How often do they keep dots on only one target? Most of them have the mentality of "more dots on more targets = more damage = more pressure" so they'll almost always toss meaningless dots on anyone in range/LoS whenever they have free time.
If you notice that you and one or more of your teammates have ticking dots on them, its a perfect time to pom. Get near them and throw a pom off as you run with them wherever they go. Within 4-5 seconds it will use up all the charges and you'll both take 3k+ healing for less than 300 mana. Its a little harder to coordinate if you don't have dots on you and its both your teammates that do, but there's really no reason why you shouldn't tell them to bunch up if they have the opportunity. If the warlock thinks he's all smart and decides to only keep dots on the focus target, that's fine too, you've just reduced the amount of damage their team's doing to yours significantly. Just keep a renew on and it'll heal through at least half of his damage with just one cast every 15 seconds.
We often play an outlast game, so things like getting the best efficiency out of heals goes a long way.
Update: Woo, the dates are back on track. I made a few drafts of posts to keep ideas that popped up and I guess the date shows when the post was created rather than published.
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