Wednesday, December 26, 2007

December 07 - State of the Rogue Address

Complaints about the rogue class are mounting up on the forums, but once again the complaints seem to be entirely misplaced.

"I can't beat an equal-geared warrior!"
"I can't beat SL/SL warlocks!"

Wrong. You can beat them and should, in most cases. Resilience is not as much of an issue as it was in previous seasons, IMO. I can tear down a 450 resilience SL warlock PDQ. That's not to say that they are easy, or that I can't lose. I can, they are a dangerous class. As are warriors. But, they are far from unbeatable.

IMO, rogues have the advantage over every "non-healing" class in the game, except for, perhaps, a well-played frost mage.

So, where are rogues weak? They are weak against certain brands of healers. Healing classes are generally easy for rogues until they pass a certain gear threshold. Then, they can become nightmares, the worst of which being the resto-druid.

In a typical arena match, what determines who wins a 3v3 or 5v5 match? Class composition is obviously a primary factor, as is gear, and then relative skill. After that, what is more important? Good DPS or good healing? The answer is good healing. Healing wins matches, not DPS.

The best teams I've seen use a combination of CC and class abilities to help mitigate damage to themselves so they don't overburden their healers. Doing damage is a secondary concern and something that you do when the other teams reveals a chink in their armor. But, make no mistake. Healing is the backbone of the best teams. So much so, that teams will take out threats to a healer's mana pool as a high priority.

So, you are left with long matches which are not dependent on DPS until late in a match when a rogue's mobility is at its worst. Shadowstep was a nice fix to give rogues something similar to a warriors intercept. However, you have to make too many sacrifices in other places to get it.

Do warriors have to spec to get intercept? Do you see what I'm getting at here, Blizzard? At this point in time, I just can't see bringing a rogue into a 5v5 over an equivalently geared and well-played hunter, just for example. A marks PvP specced hunter brings CC in the form of frost trap, imp concussive shots, imp wingclips, and silences as well as being a threat to the opposing teams mana pool and buffs. And, to top it off they can do DPS, when needed, independent of mobility.

So, rogues are still the masters of 1v1 in the BGs and can do well in 2v2 and 3v3 (with very specific line-ups that require a very good healer), but are still quite weak for 5v5 IMO.

As for me, I'm going to work on a hunter alt.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Rogue Forum Topic of The Day: Welfare Epics

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3547621734&sid=1&pageNo=1

My take on things:

I really love some people on this forum. Arrogant, self-absored, and illogical. They try to derive individual worth out of what their team or guild has accomplished. And they try to demean others individually for what their team or guild has not accomplished.

Arena is NOT a primary measure of individual skill. It's a gear and class composition check first. Furthermore, a skilled player grouped with keyboard turning fresh L70 friends is not going to ascend up the ranks no matter how good they may be individually.

As far as getting gear. Getting gear via PvP is MUCH EASIER than getting gear via PvE. Actually trying to compare which one requires more skill is absolutely moronic since they require different skill sets.

If you think otherwise, then I'll have to ask what your end-game experience is. If you haven't been in a cutting-edge guild attempting content that has not been killed before, then you really have no place to speak. Dying repeatedly to learn a new encounter that may or may not be "tuned" correctly by Blizzard takes true f'n dedication.

I have much respect for the people in cutting-edge guilds and this is coming from someone who has mostly been dedicated to PvP. They quite literally beta-test the game for you.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

More Resto Druid Conversation.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3271126490&sid=1&pageNo=1

The topic that just keeps on giving.

It's really interesting how so many people can have different perspectives of balance in the game. Most of this comes from their own experience, I'd say.

I've had my differences with Ming, some of which may be of legendary status by now... but I've always considered him to be a good rogue who is very knowledgable about the class. Sometimes I disagree with him, but usually not. And, Ming agrees that resto druids exist that can just flat out tank the best a rogue can throw at them in CASTER form. What this means is that if they are just toying with the rogue and if they actually used their full abilities it would be even worse.

Sure, these resto druids might be rare. But, they exist and as others learn this is possible their numbers will increase.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Nerf Hemo!

Nerf Hemo! But, restoration druids? NO PROBLEM.


NerfHemo.wmv

Clearly hemo does too much damage for this PvE restoration druid to handle! I'm kicking out around 500 DPS sustained DPS in this fight (most fluctuation between 400-600 DPS). But once the druid gets their instacast HoTs up, I can barely dent the druid's health. Strong healing is fine. What takes this way over the fucking line is the mana regeneration. You have instacast HoT healing doing more than 600 hps AND essentially an infinite supply of mana?

Please... this shit is broken. It's far more broken than hemo is, that's for sure. Will Blizzard continue to ignore this? Most likely.

I was thinking to myself. How could I possible take this druid down solo? My only idea was to use an AR/prep build and just absolutely cooldown dump at the beginning of the fight. You'd have to kill the druid outright before they get those instacast HoTs up and the only way I see doing that is a long duration "stunlock" utilizing blind/sap and two ARs (that's assuming no trinket, of course - heh).

Then, I came to the rogue board later in the day and saw that AR was being taken off of prep (something I agree with BTW - I disagree with the give-and-take-back hemo buff-nerf).

I posted this clip on an internal forum yesterday as well. Without previously talking about it, one of my friends said that the only way a rogue could take down that druid was with AR/Prep, agreeing independently with my earlier assessment.

Then I got to say in an ominous voice, "you haven't heard yet, have you?"

I've always wanted to do that. Keke.

In hindsight, I could have used EA here but I don't generally bother with a druid since they can just go into bear form anyway. So, I use my CPs to keep rupture and snd up. I've never seen a resto druid just stand there and take it like this without going into form before, so it didn't cross my mind. With that mana regen I don't think EA would have made a difference though.

My apologies for the music, I took one of the most annoying songs I could find and sped it up to reflect my annoyance with the fight.

Also, before my numerous lovable nitpicking fans point out that I blinded while the druid was dotted, I'll point out that was using blind to disrupt the root cast as it is more reliable than kick and gouge in a laggy enviroment. I went LD about 2 minutes after this fight.

BTW, an alliance paladin came by and the druid didn't get the GY back. Mission accomplished, heh.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Boycott China

First Ming, now this.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/some-maxtor-personal-storage-3200s-shipped-with-virus/

What is going on in China? They ship our kids lead-based toys and candy laced with date-rape drugs, and now pre-installed viruses. It seems to be that no product from China can be trusted until they start cleaning house. Or perhaps the Chinese government just lets this go on with a wink-and-a-nod.

Boycott China. Just kidding about the Ming thing.


Sort of...

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Gaming Malaise

I'm back at work now, and most of my friends have either left WoW completely or are cutting down online time to take care of real life projects. Things are definitely in a slump and ATM I am in solo mode. I have no interest in forming an arena team with a bunch of people I don't really know for the same reasons that I never do PvE dungeons with a PUG.

When it comes right down to it. I don't trust people very much. Well, not most of them anyway. ;)

Mortale said in a recent discussion on the rogue forums that social skill is now a part of pvp skill, and you know... I laughed. But, when you think about it the statement is very insightful and correct. Having good connections and knowing the right people will take you farther in the current system than individual skill ever will.

One of my problems is that I've always treasured independence. I have no problem helping other people complete a task or some goal, BUT... I absolutely HATE asking for help and recieving help makes me feel uncomfortable. The only people I feel comfortable asking for help are my good friends. I would never ask someone I don't know well for help. Never.

So, what do I do when most of my friends are gone? Hrm, I've been struggling with that one for a bit myself. I messed around with Tabula Rasa for a few weeks, and I don't regret it. It was a fun game, particularly the instances. Very fast paced PvE combat with a FPS type of feel to it. However, I don't think it will serve as a good platform for PvP so it's lifespan was short with me. I'm still looking for my Warhammer invite. We know one person so far who has been invited. Hopefully more of us will be invited sooner rather than later.

So, what have I ended up deciding to do to pass time? I'm playing Chromed in the 60-69 bracket as a mutilate build and having fun. The 60-69 bracket reminds me of oldschool PvP that isn't corrupted by ridiculous resilience values and gear imbalance. I've never played this game with a gear advantage, ever. I've always been behind the curve and I've shown that the curve can be beaten (at least in the past). But, I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting people with better gear than me. Just, so damn tired of it. It takes me a hell of a lot more effort to kill someone than it takes them to kill me. And even then, the fights are just often long and boring. So long in many cases that a rogue is forced to use every single tool at their disposal just to win... one... fight. And that sucks.

So, I'm just going to stay in the 60-69 BG until my Warhammer invite arrives and gear myself as best I can with my limited resources (me). From time to time I'll release some clips just to remind people of what it was that once made playing a rogue fun.

Here is the first of such clips. It's just a small collection of a few uneditted straight forward clips. The song is "Insect" by Die Warzau.


homage.wmv

The file is only around 80 MB, I'd suggest the full download over the stream.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Rogue IS Hard.

You might have noticed that I have a bit of a split personality when it comes to rogues. One half of me hates them, and the other half is sympathetic towards them and still thinks they are the most fun class to play. The latter of those personalities is responsible for this post.

If you are a rogue, I'm sure you've had this kind of thing happen to you numerous times and it kind of captures the true essence of playing a rogue. I'm low health from just killing someone when a warrior charges me from behind, then...


retard.wmv

... some retard breaks my blind halfway through it's cycle while I'm bandagin and feeds the warrior a shit-ton of rage. But, hey... you don't need to display teamwork or intelligence when you can put out that kind of damage. Amirite?

Monday, August 13, 2007

Rogue is hard.

The PvP trinket. Don't leave home when it's on cooldown.







hard.wmv

Just kidding. They require the most skill of any class!

My gear sucks. I suck. This is my second day on PvPing with a class that I haven't even PLAYED for more than than hour in over 3 months. Close your eyes and just imagine what a great rogue with great gear could do. And now contemplate why rogues are the whiniest and most self-absorbed class in WoW.

Now, to compare and contrast let's see how Iwl does against this slightly better geared warlock.






spotter1.wmv

OUCH... my trinket and WoTF was down and Spotter had berserker, but it wouldn't have mattered. What kicked my ass here was the total control I was under due to well-coordinated use of spell lock, howl, deathcoil, and snare to keep me from closing to fear.

Rematch, except this time its me with berserker buff. RAWR!


spotter2.wmv

Damn. :(

I choked at the end, I should have dropped shadowform and renewed and PoMd. It would have been enough to win. Good players force mistakes. I've always said this and it really pisses me off to see people applaud someone in topgear flawlessly killing people they outgear. Well, no shit. I mean, bad players put no pressure on your whatsoever. Who wouldn't look l33t beating the crap out of people they outgear?

It's the people who you know that can kick your ass that get you second-guessing yourself because you know one mistake or slipup means a loss. That's pressure. Ganking people who are no threat to you, no matter how elegantly you do it, is pointless to me.

Oh yes, back to the original point: Rogue > Shadowpriest

Saturday, August 11, 2007

This Just In...

I still suck.


suck.wmv

I'm in the process of building a new UI. I decided to knock the dust off of Oozo and play him for the first time in over three months just to see how the UI was working for a rogue. Things went pretty well, except for the 3.5K mortal strike from a warrior with berserker buff. I killed a couple of mid-teir warriors with Ming's brand new Ultimate Rushdown Garrotte Strategy (MURGS). I mean, it seems like the same exact thing I was doing towards the beginning of the year but I guess it's different somehow. It's kind of funny, a lot of warriors just react very badly to that opener. They still aren't used to seeing it I guess. Well, maybe now that Ming has finally revealed MURGS other rogues will start picking it up. Ming beat Dahis up pretty badly with it supposedly. Echelons has just released a movie featuring duels using MURGS with a combat twist. Man, I wish I could have thought of this months ago when I was still playing a rogue.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Best Shadowpriest Movie Ever!

Seksi 2

I gave this movie 4.8/5 as I thought it was very entertaining. The opening sequence was well done. The music is pretty safe and nonabrasive. The editting and effects are nice and not overdone. Much of this movie has the gladiator-rated Seksi doing 1v2s and 1v3s. Some of the opponents are poorly geared relative to Seksi, but there are some rival-rated opponents in there to spice things up. Once again, overall... this is a solid movie well worth watching.

But, you know me. I don't post about anything unless I'm bitching about something... and sure enough, here it comes. The people (and people, in general) at WCM are morons who can't see what is even clearly placed square in front of them to see. Here are some quotes from the reviews and my reply to those quotes:

"This is definet the best priest movie ever." - hellmaker


It's definitely the best priest movie made where the belt of nigh invulnerability is used over 12 times in the same movie.

"I feel that you truly understand the defensive powerhouse nature of the Shadow Priest class" - Gankt

Yes, the shadowpriest class becomes a defensive POWERHOUSE when utilizing the class ability "belt of nigh invulnerability." Wait.. is that a priest ability? Ah, well... Seksi truly understands the belt of nigh invulnerability, that's for sure.

"the spriest class has become crazy powerful in TBC" - brassmonkey1622

Crazy powerful when using the belt of nigh invulnerability, the battle standard, and healing/mana pots all in the same fight against outgeared opponents. Hell yah, shadowpriests totally rock in that situation. Clearly this calls for a shadowpriest nerf!

And here it comes...

"priests should be nerfed HARD for being able to take so much focus fire without dieing. i cant survive 1/2 of that as a destrolock. imba video and tell us your survival secrets" - nobite

Well moron, if you had bothered to look at the combat log you would see that one of the secrets is using the belt of nigh invulnerability in over 80% of the scenes in your movie.


I swear to God, if I even used that thing in ONE fight I'd get flamed for it. Gee, I wonder if a 4K damage shield would make it easier to pull off 1v2s and 1v3s. Hrm... Potions? Maybe I should start using those too. I guess I always got my overpowered 3 second nets that break immediately on damage.



Friday, August 3, 2007

Secrets of the Death Knight Revealed!




I believe that this trailer for the upcoming expansion holds clues on how to unlock the new Death Knight class. First, you must be a paladin who does not heal or rez their companions and runs at the slightest hint of true danger. Second, you must be so bad at playing a paladin that a handful of midlevel undead can kill you.





God...





... there's going to be a whole lot of Death Knights.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

What's Wrong with WCM.

The foremost thing wrong with WCM are the insane number of retarded downraters that inhabit the place. If they don't like your music... 1 out of 5. If they don't like some single aspect of your movie... 1 out of 5. If they have a personal beef against you from past experiences... 1 out of 5. There are four criteria for you to rate on: content, creativity, editting, and audio/visual quality. Downraters show again and again that they have no respect for this rating system. They are either too spiteful or too stupid to use it honestly.

I report these cretins every chance I get. I do it to protect my own movies, but I ALSO report them when they downrate others' movies unfairly. The funny thing is, I keep on seeing some of the same names over and over when I do this. Why in the hell are people who have repeatedly demonstrated that they lack the capability of being a fair critic allowed to rate? Let them watch the movies, sure... but REVOKE their right to rate movies. Their input is offensive, useless, and dishonest.

IWL3 - Shadowpriest PvP

Let's take a look at the scores my movie has recieved so far: 4.8, 4.8, 4.2, 4.5, 3.0, 5.0, 4.2, 2.0, 2.5, 4.5, 4.2, 4.8, 5.0, 3.8, 4.2, 2.5, 5.0, 1.8, 5.0, 4.5 Avg. 4.01 WCM Avg. 4.01

The standard deviation for these numbers is approximately 1. So, scores between a 3.01 and a 5.0 lie within 1 standard deviation of the average (or mean). Scores on the outside of that range are questionable. Scores on the outside of 2 standard deviations (in my case scores below a 2.01) are extremely questionable.

If we remove the scores outside of 2 standard deviations we get this adjusted average: 4.25
If we remove the scores outside of 1 standard deviation we get this adjusted average: 4.57

Now, let's take a look at a movie that was put into WCM's "featured box" immediately upon it's release and has been there for about a day so far.

Cheesewiz vol. 1

IMO, this movie is not very good. It's a movie of a well-geared warrior mowing people down in a matter of seconds. And it had to be a matter of seconds, because the movie is not even using the registered version of FRAPs. That means, no clips over 30 seconds. I sped up the clips in my movie, but this movie is on crack. I think it is at 2X speed and has a ton of editting that does not enhance, but rather obscures (kind of like Oozo Lives!).

Here are the scores this movie has received so far: 2.0, 1.2, 3.8, 2.0, 3.0, 2.0, 3.5, 3.0, 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 3.5, 1.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 4.2, 2.8, 3.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0, 5.0, 2.0, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 3.5, 3.8, 1.5, 3.0, 1.8, 1.5, 1.0, 2.2, 2.5, 2.5, 4.0, 4.2, 2.2, 3.8, 4.8, 1.2, 1.2, 1.0, 2.8, 2.0, 1.2, 2.8, 1.5, 3.5, 2.2, 4.0, 2.8, 2.0, 4.0, 3.8, 1.0, 1.8, 2.0, 3.2, 2.2 Avg: 2.34 WCM Avg: 2.32

The descrepency is either due to a small mistake in number entry or WCM might be using weighted ratings. I'll use the average more beneficial to the movie poster. The standard deviation in this case is 1.1. So scores between 1.24 and 3.44 fall within one standard deviation of the mean, while scores between 0.14 and 4.54 fall within two standard deviations. So, here a HIGH score is actually a questionable score.

If we remove the scores outside of 2 standard deviations we get this adjusted average: 2.26
If we remove the scores outside of 1 standard deviation we get this adjusted average: 2.27

Interesting. I guess this means there are more downraters than upraters, in general. Surprise!

Okay, so why am I comparing these two movies? Well, I released my movie 3 days ago and it has silently slid down their "latest releases" column (the one no one hardly ever looks at) and now is no longer listed on the front page at all. Now, this Cheesewiz movie above was put into the featured block the very moment it was released (2 days after mine) and has remained there since for a full day. My movie only has 4,400 download at the moment and that is not really going any higher unless it somehow makes it back on the front page. The downraters have done their job and my score is just low enough to keep me off of the "high rating" list for PvP.

Now, the Cheesewiz movie has 33,700 downloads. Is that because it's a good movie? No, its because it's been in the "featured block" for so long. You see, when you put a WCM promo in your movie it "increases your chances" that your movie will be placed in the "featured block" with your graphic. I can fully understand some exceptional movies blocking me out. Fine, but over the past 2 days some of these slots have been taken up by this Cheesewiz movie and a rotation of movies some of which are OVER A MONTH OLD.

Do I feel slighted? You are damn right I do. And it's not just me, my position is not unique. They are screwing over several movie authors with this kind of behavior.

Is this the first time they have screwed me? Not really. ICOBN4, even though it had over 16K views and a rating of 4.8 out of 5 never made it into the featured block. Do, I see a pattern? Yes. Do you see it?

I won't even get into that whole "I am a Shaman", "I am a Mage", etc. crap. It should have never been approved and that guy now has special benefits because of that shit. But hey, when you are the only game in town you can do whatever the hell you want to do. Amirite?

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Warriors Are NOT 1v1 Gods

Dahis took some flak in one of his recent articles called "Mortal Strike and You" mainly for saying

Actually I rolled a Warrior partly because I wanted a class that was an underdog 1v1, but that’s kinda’ a long story that nobody cares about. - Dahis

Dahis is absolutely correct here. Overall, the warrior is an underdog in 1v1. It's only when they get incredible gear that they really start having success. How many successful undergeared rogue movies have you seen? How many successful undergeared mage movies have you seen? Now, how many successful ungeared WARRIOR movies have you seen? LOL.

But, nonetheless Dahis got responses such as:

I’ve never met a geared warrior spec’d for PvP that wasn’t a GOD 1v1. Your’s truly, The beleaguered rogue. - a beleagured rogue

and...

Where does this myth come from that warriors are bad at 1v1 PvP? Warriors beat the following classes rather easily: Rogues Priests Warlocks Paladins. They lose to: Mages. Depending on luck or individual skill, they have about even odds against: Hunters Druids(feral) Shaman. Mages are the only class that can consistently school a warrior 1v1. Agaisnt other classes, it’s either about even, or warriors clean house.

No, just no. Warriors have problems against all of the casters 1v1 and I'll take myself as proof of that for the priest class, at least. In my upcoming movie I take out three fairly well geared warriors 1v1. Ozymandeus, Mistarawr, and Elrich. Ozymandeus is a duelist rated gnome warrior using Deepthunder. Mistarawr is a challenger rated NE warrior using Stormherald (not sure why he currently has a L60 weapon equipped), and Elrich is a Grand Marshal human warrior using Stormherald and currently on the #4 3v3 team in my battlegroup.

Last night, I killed this guy 1v1 even though he got the charge on me from behind while I was searching the WSG alliance hold for the flag. Ravock. This is a gladiator rated NE warrior using Stormherald. I'm pretty sure he must have been shadowmelded because he came out of nowhere and caught me completely offguard. Yet, he still died and I didn't. Of course, being one of the best fights I've ever put up my fraps program wasn't loaded and it will be lost down the memory hole.

These fights are NOT easy for me and yes, I do get squashed by warriors from time to time as well. But, my point is this...

It's widely acknowledged that I suck. I totally suck and I have crap for gear. I'm a scrub. Yet, I can kill these warriors. So, how do you think a good player with top-end gear would do against them?

Exactly.

Warriors are not GODS in 1v1. If someone like me can beat them, dare I say they need buffs.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Solution to the Rogue Problem?

I'll be using this as the backdrop for my song credits/end sequence. It ties into the Cloak of Shadows short movie I did a month ago or so. The rogue's name in that fight was Mistoffelees.
I just couldn't pass up the potential for a laugh or two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Mistoffelees


iwlcred.wmv

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Iwl3 PvP Content

I wanted to go through the PvP content in this movie to point some things out, and maybe explain why I did some things the way I did. In no way am I trying to make a statement that I know everything about shadowpriests, because I don't. I have a lot to learn. But some of the discussion below might be helpful to shadowpriests in a similar position to me. Shadowpriests who are fairly new L70s and still working their way through the system. This is for you. And perhaps we can learn from each other.



SONG ONE - "My Sanctuary" by Pig
  • Duelist Gnome Arms Warrior w/ Deep Thunder

Misdirection is a pvp skill. I use misdirection quite often in the BGs and this clever gnome warrior tried to use it on me. He was running around on his mount pretending not to see me. However, I knew that was a sham because he had me targetted. He changed directions quickly and due to the mount was able to get his charge off simultaneously to my SW:P. Some shadowpriests would advise you to use SW:D as it has better range, but even as liberally as I use SW:D I just don't feel comfortable opening with it unless the guy is already near death to begin with.

To be fair, he started this fight at about 90% health. However, I don't think that would have effected the outcome when you look at our final relative health. This is because the Gods of the psuedo-random role were on my side in this fight. His charge stun was resisted. That gave me an oppurtunity to deadzone kite him a little bit. I used a net on him, and he quickly used escape artist to get out of it. However, even that fraction of a second was enough time to safely get off a mindblast / SW:D combo. The SW:D procced blackout and I followed that up with devouring plague.

He was then finally able to get off his intercept. This time the stun stuck, and it was followed up immediately by a mace stun proc. The one nice thing about being a shadowpriest in this situation is that if you have already got your DoTs up you are doing damage and getting some heals even if you are stunned. The gnome got unlucky with crits, but I didn't it as I managed to sneak out a 1800+ SW:D crit between the first macestun and a second macestun.

WoTF being used is an issue with a macro I'm trying to build that uses WoTF or the PvP trinket intelligently. It rarely fails to do the correct thing. In this situation I was trying to use my PvP trinket to break the mace stun, but my PvP trinket was not up and it reverted to using WoTF once that stun broke since I spammed it like a goofball. I expect the issue to be almost completely resolved when I have the 2 minute PvP trinket.

  • Challenger NE BM Hunter

In my limited experience I've found hunters to be the easiest kills for shadow priests. Basically, the only time I lose to these guys is when they get a snake trap down on me. I haven't encountered a really good hunter since starting the shadowpriest. They all try to stand and out DPS me rather than kite. Of course, I'm also using hunter-killer gloves. Hunters rely more on knockback than other classes against casters and these gloves can really shut that down. IMO, they are the best PvP gloves available to a shadowpriest at L70. That's kind of sad, really. The bonus on the arena gloves sucks, but if you are holy/disc you should pick them up for the stats alone, of course.

  • Challenger NE Arms Warrior w/ Stormherald

Awareness of your surrounding is part of PvP. I lined this warrior up from the side for a dismount/fear. He was a bit slow getting off of his mount, but he would have been feared or stunned anyway. I dumped devouring plauge on him after he got to me and things were looking pretty good. I noticed that he switched to battle stance to overpower me so I feared him. Unfortunately he got off a simultaneous mace stun which I removed with trinket, but it cost me the time to cast a mind blast/SW:D which would have killed him. I was only able to get off SW:D, which almost killed him but not quite. So, I took that damage and at the same time he used deathwish and intercept stunned me. I took a huge round of damage along with my SW:D damage and almost died. Fortunately he went down to DoTs while I was stunned.


  • NE BM Hunter and NE Feral Druid

The hunter makes a nice move with a quick dismount, scattershot, trap attempt but I trinket out of the scattershot and jump away from the trap. You can almost see the look of surprise on his face after he gets range, turns around, and realizes that I'm right on top of him. A druid jumps me, I switch targets to DoT him, then switch back and make sure the hunter has died. I kite the druid a little to let the DoTs work. I then net him to give me an uninterrupted mindblast, put the pet on him and kite him some more til he is a bit low on health. Fear with the mindblast/SW:D combo finishes him off.

  • Duelist Human Affliction Warlock

I start this fight with low mana and all of my buffs stripped from returning the flag in a previous fight. My basic strategy with warlocks is to frontload as much of what I can early. Silence early, fear early. I'll get all of my DoTs up including my pet in this case since I was low on mana anyway. This fight is, of course, much harder with a warlock who uses his felhunter well. In this case the warlock was using an imp. Here I started off with silence and got vampiric touch up. Vampiric touch is generally a hard spell to land in solo PvP. It is subject to pushback, interrupts, counterspells, etc. Since I'm using the L60 PvP gloves which decreases pushback for mindblast that is the spell I usually use when it comes to casting times. However, I feel that getting vampiric touch is of such importance against warlocks that it becomes the fist thing I try to do agains them. After I get vampiric touch up, I fear allowing a quick mindblast/SW:D combo. I put the pet on him and run out of range for my CDs to come back up.

I'm really not sure what the warlock is thinking or doing at this point in time. He's already hurt pretty badly and just kind of seems to give up.


  • NE Moonkin and Human Fury Warrior

My intent here was to focus on the moonkin til he died. Fury warriors usually can't hurt me (even well-geared ones). I was concerned the moonkin would change forms and heal, so I just put everything into him. Fear with an early mindblast/sw:d almost took him out, and did a nice chunk of damage to myself as well. I then silenced the moonkin and finished him off with mindflay. Switching to the warrior, I threw my shield back up and netted him to give me a mindblast and some kiting room to let DoTs work. He went down easily after that.

  • Human Challenger Mage

This was a really close fight. I dotted the mage up, got the fear off, and did mindblast/sw:d. Coming out of the fear she got an impact proc and quickly lit me up to about half of my health. I silenced and put vampiric touch up. I then went totally n00b and mindflayed. That was like hanging a sign on me that said, "Please counterspell me now." And she complied. Don't be afraid to change out of shadowform, especially after a bonehead move like that. If I hadn't of immediately changed out and did PoM/Renew I would have lost this close fight.

  • NE Marksmanship Hunter

This guy had pretty fast reactions. I was coming at him from the side but he saw me and immediately went into action. He was hitting pretty hard with his gear and the berserker buff. Even though he had built up a lead, I never really got that concerned. Hunters just don't have any defense against DoTs and he had used up all of his ways of stopping my casts (scatter shot and silencing shot). Well, all except one. Feign death. He literally mistimed his feign death by a fraction of second and that was the deciding factor in this fight.

SONG THREE - "Destroyer" by Messiah

  • NE Challenger Moonkin

I had debated whether putting this clip in the movie or not just because of the ease of victory. I decided to leave it in to make a couple of points. First, awareness of your surrounding is a PvP skill. And two, bluffs work sometimes. Towards the end of this fight the NE shifted out of form and wanted to heal. Although everything I had was on cooldown, I charged her bluffing a fear and she fell for it. She MOVED! This bought me time for my mindblast/sw:d combo to come online which killed her before she could heal or CC me. If she had not fallen for the bluff and stood still then she could have easily got off the heal or a CC to reset the fight.

  • Human Grand Marshal Warrior with Stormherald

This warrior is on the #4 3v3 team in my battlegroup. I caught him on his mount and dotted him up. He tried to get to the regen hut before engaging me at a disadvantage. A blackout proc prevented that, I then feared him away from the regen hut and took it myself to keep him from getting it. I shielded up, hit him with mindblast/sw:d. Once again, sw:d is meant to be used during fights IMO. A lot of people will say you should only use it when they are near death. They are dead wrong. Keep in mind, that with vampiric embrace up I get health back from the mindblast and sw:d to help mitigate the damage it does to me. The warrior on the other hand takes all that damage and it is hard for them to recover once low health. He pummels my mindflay, but at this point I am at 50% health and he is at 5% health.

Benign, one of my teammates, had asked over vent if I wanted help but I didn't hear him since I was concentrating on the fight. He came in and landed a shadowfury, then the warrior died to my DoTs. His late participation did not change the outcome of this fight.

  • NE Grand Marshal Feral Druid

Druids can be a PITA because of their relatively high resist rates. And sure enough, this bear resisted my fear. I dotted him up and chased him a bit to keep him inside feral charge range. He eventually got range and charged me but to his misfortune my touch of weakness procced blackout on him. He caught me offguard switching out of form to cyclone at halfhealth and I got caught in the GCD. However, I did manage to get off the silence at the last second and we got a simultaneous silence&cyclone. I quickly trinketted the cyclone and lit him up with a timely double crit mb/sw:d to put him at death's door. Then, mindflay procced blackout sealing his fate.

  • Human Warlock

This warlock was horrible. I can't even say what spec he was for sure, because he didn't get to do much of anything and he might have changed specs since then. The only reason I put this guy in was to fill some space in a song and also because he was in a preform that were acting like a bunch of asses by farming the graveyard. I love getting these pricks alone, and this is usually what happens when I do. Farming the GY DOES NOT equal skill. Go screw yourselves GY campers.

This is however, my general strategy for warlocks. Throw everything at them, the kitchen sink, the works and do it early. I lock him up with fear with silence and put everything single I have on him.

  • NE Challenger Feral Druid

This cat pounced me from stealth. I broke away, got a fear off which was quickly trinketted. However, it gave me just enough space for a mindblast. I then kite him as best as I can to let the DoTs do the work. Here is another example of an "early" sw:d. I did this sw:d when he was around 45% health. I knew it wasn't going to kill him, but it did put him in low health with a bunch of DoTs ticking on him. That caught him offguard, and by the time he bashed to shift and heal it was too late.

  • NE Fury Warrior

This is just for pure comedy. Why do people play fury warriors? Seriously? ;)

SONG FIVE - "Wires and Pins" by End User

  • Human Mage and Human Fury Warrior

Here I just DoT the warrior up and switch to the mage. Once again, I'm just not generally concerned with a fury warrior or what they can do so he is second priority. The mage and I simultaneously silence and counterspell. For whatever reason, mine sticks and her's doesn't. I fear for control and from that point she doesn't really do anything at all to hurt me. The warrior is an easy kill after she is gone.

  • NE Moonkin and Dwarf Hunter

The moonkin adds and I notice he is not full health so he becomes the primary target. I silence him right before I get scatter shotted, so he never really has a chance to do anything. The hunter is trivial after the moonkin dies.

  • Draenie Mage and Gnome Warlock

This was a tough 1v2 to pull off. The gnome warlock did not want to play with me by myself so he waited to come back until I had already engaged the mage. At the beginning of this fight I get a bugged fear. Bugged fears are quite common for priests, almost as common as bugged vanishes. A bugged fear is when you are right on top of your target and you fear, but nothing happens. There is no fear message, there is no resist message, no immune message. No message period.... BUT, your fear cooldown gets used. It's great. It happens to me about 2 times a night of heavy PvPing. I asked my friend (who used to play a priest) about this, because I never hear priests complaining about it. He said they just gave up trying to get it fixed.

Against a good mage that would have been bad, but fortunately I wasn't up against a very good mage. He disoriented me with breath and laid a frost nova on me, but I silenced. Since he was silenced breaking the nova wasn't a priority so I used the time to VT him then dispelled the nova. He got a few shots in but went down easily. By this time the gnome warlock who ran away from me earlier had come back and was casting on me while finishing off the mage. He had me at a complete disadvantage as all my control was on cooldown. I changed forms to renew and PoM to prolong what I though would be the inevitable.

Fear came back off of cooldown so I was able to get his pet off of me. This warlock was using a strange soul link/destruction hybrid, which meant... no unstable affliction. And that is the only reason I lived. I was able to PoM/renew myself while at the same time dispelling his DoTs. I kept on the move because I knew he couldn't hurt me too badly without using a casting time spell. I put my pet on him to get some mana back and do some damage to him. I put some DoTs on him and when his health was low enough I threw my shield up and turned to do sw:d. That and a DoT tick killed him. Never give up as Evertras says.

  • NE feral druid and Human Arms Warrior

I had killed this druid solo easily about 10 minutes prior to this fight, but this time he got an friendly add in the form of a well-geared human warrior. As soon as I noticed the warrior I dotted him to put him combat as I didn't want him to get a free charge. I then switched back and forth between the druid, who broke my fear instantly with his trinket, and the warrior to keep them in combat. Eventually the warrior did intercept stun. Now, here is one of those really subtle situations where fast reactions can get you in trouble. If you immediately trinket to break the stun you are going to hit by a hamstring.. and then, you are screwed.

In this situation you need to wait out the stun and look for the warrior's hamstring. After he hamstring's, then use the trinket to get away. The warrior is basically kiteable now because his intercept stun is on cooldown. I put the pet on the warrior to keep him combat so he couldn't drop and charge and turned my attention to the druid. By this time I had also slipped out of shadow to PoM and renew myself. I kited until my fear came back up from cooldown. I used it to get the druid off of me. The warrior by this time had decided to kill my pet since he was basically turned into a non-factor. Mindblast and sw:d finished him off.

I turned to the druid, but I just didn't have the mana to finish him off and a resisted fear put the nail in the coffin. In hindsight, I should used vampiric touch on the druid immediately after the warrior and it might have been enough to eek out the win. Lesson learned.






Iwl 3 Shooting Complete

I picked up some new gear that changed my look. The L70 blue PvP shoulders to be exact. I got tired of looking like a n00b, so now I just play like a n00b rather than both looking like and playing like a n00b. A new look means an official end to filming.

MY SHOULDERS GLOW, I'M L33T NOW! WOOT!

Actually, I had stopped filming awhile ago because I've been more interested in actually winning matches to build honor than hunting for 1v1s. Doing the two are almost always mutually exclusive. Almost. I missed some great clutch play clips with flag returns I would have loved to have put in the movie. I netted an enemy druid literally 2 feet from the flag return, nabbed the flag and solo'd him down. Did the same against a mage a couple of days later (no net, but fear - he trinketted but it gave me enough time to get the flag). Both were very well-geared as they were in preforms. Preventing a cap by a matter of seconds, fighting it out in their flag room 1v1, and scoring the return is just great drama.

Ah, well. All movie-makers will tell you that their best moments never got recorded. It's just the way it is.

You've seen most of the movie, but I'll do a run down on opponents anyway. It's something I need to do because I want to add comments to the movie to point some things out. People are just overall horrible at seeing details. If I don't let them know that this warrior is using a stormherald, I'm almost guaranteed to have some halfwits saying all of the people I fought had bad gear. I've always just assumed that people will say... ok, that guy is in full gladiator, or ok... that guy is using stormherald. But, it just doesn't work out that way.

I'm not alone in this. A few weeks back a pretty humble priest released a movie that no one really watched and a few who did watch it flamed him because his "opponents all sucked." I say humble, because the guy never once mentioned that he was a gladiator rated priest from season one. So, I'm watching this movie and yeah, it did have some suckass opponents in it WHEN HE WAS DOING 1v3s. Heh.

He had a 1v2 in the movie against a well-geared warrior and a gladiator rated holy priest. He had a 1v1 against a well-geared rogue that kicked his ass, sadly (shadowpriest). He had the standard 1v1 kill against Swifty the NE warrior of movie fame. The content of the movie was good. Where it failed is that it was his first movie and it didn't have any fancy editting and the music was mostly rap (which most people don't go for). I'm absolutely convinced that people saw the lack of editting and heard the music and just flamed it from there. They even flamed his opponents which was absolutely retarded when you actually looked them up on armory.

And to make matters worse. Some of the people that flamed this guy, pointed to Shadow Word: Dance as having better opponents! LOL! I mean, I LOVE the Shadow Word: Dance series, but the people he fights are HORRIBLE.

Do you see the pattern here? Bad editting, bad music = bad opponents whether true or false. Good editting, good music = good opponents whether true or false.

Why are people so damned shallow?

Okay, I just went off on a tangent I wasn't even planning on going down... content coming in next post.

Why?

Why can't I stop singing "I feel like chicken tonight! Chicken tonight!" to myself while fighting Moonkins?

Why?

Somebody... please... help.

Monday, July 23, 2007

A New Mage Blog

Snagged this from Radikal's blog. It's a blog by a high rated Mage and focuses mainly on a mage's role in 5v5. It's pretty similar to Radikal's blog.

http://worldofpapa.blogspot.com/

An Impressive General 5v5 Arena Blog

Whoever is doing this site has put a lot of work into it and gives a lot of info on the 5v5 ladders. If you are the type of person who likes to know who the movers and shakers are or which teams are on the downslide then you might like this blog.

http://arenablogger.blogspot.com/

Saturday, July 21, 2007

3v3 Arena Last Night

Well, another week of disappointing Arena. We started off with our wonderful SP/SP/Warlock line-up. This is a real weak class line-up, IMO and I'd just rather not play it all. Nonetheless, some very intelligent person who flamed me said we were trying to "exploit" DoT damage. I mean, our warlock doesn't even have UA. Hello? This line-up is there to help Zinn get some points. Period. The problem is that you can't have an all DPS group like this unless they have stacked HP and resilience... which, of course, we don't have. So, we went 0-5 losing to a string of warrior/healer/* teams. The only line-up we can reliably beat with SP/SP/Warlock is another full DPS team. Zinn started feeling guilty and we all started feeling like crap because of how this whole situation is alienating Zinn so we stopped before dropping any more games.

We then brought in Gundy to replace Zinn. Now, this SP/Warlock/Shaman line-up I really like. Our abilities compliment each other very well, IMO. Gundy wasn't able to get on vent because his son was still up, so we had to go with just me and Benign on vent and Gundy wondering what the hell was going on. I guess these are the kinds of problems that real people with lives have to deal with?

Now, remember in my last post about Arena I was complaining about getting matchup where we were severely outgeared? Check this out. Our very first match with Gundy gives us a matchup with this warrior's 3v3 team.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Zul'jin&n=Rhoz

Uh. Do you even give a fuck, Blizzard? Why is my "starter" 3v3 team being matched up against the #19 3v3 team in the battlegroup. The warrior, himself, is on the #3 2v2 team decked out with Stormherald, etc. Each one of the players on that team has more resilience than my entire team COMBINED. Does Blizzard just expect fresh L70s to walk into the Arena totally decked out or something? WTF. So, at this point I'm seriously contemplating just quitting the game entirely. Everyone is shellshocked, and we lose the game after that to a hunter/hunter/druid team that we should have easily beaten.

0-7.

All, I want to do at this point is break even. Zinn has played 5 matches, so we need to that within 15 matches played. That basically means that we need to win our next seven matches. Our next match is against the hunter/hunter/druid team we had just lost to and this time we wipe the floor with them as we should have in the first place with our class composition. Through fortune, and perhaps more reasonable matchups than usual we manage to win the next six and I call a halt to the whole painful process at 7-7. We are done with 3v3 for the week. Anymore means we have to play some matches for Zinn, and his and our time is much better spent in the BGs right now since as a team we are missing so many of those items.

So, our SP/SP/Warlock line-up is 13W 21L, while our SP/Warlock/Shaman line-up is 19W 10L. Zinn is feeling like he is bringing us down. We feel guilty because of how he is feeling and don't want him to get frustrated to the point where he just quits. Is this shit really worth straining friendships over?

This is exactly why I never did Arena with Oozo. I'm not a mercenary like Ming willing to stab teammates in the back and advertise openly for replacements. I care about loyalty and I care about my friends and I foresaw this kind of thing happening. But, I'm not willing to piss all over my friends just to get a higher arena rating. I simply won't do it.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

And Now For Something... Different.

So, I've been a bit harsh on rogues lately perhaps. I don't hate the class, of course. However, I am very concerned that in Blizzard's attempt to fix rogues for 5v5 they will do something stupid (blind change anyone?) which will have too much impact on 1v1.

In my opinion, rogues face two very identifiable and defined problems. First, they lack in 5v5 arena. Second, they can't beat certain class builds with stacked resilience. Now, the first problem exists simply because rogues were never designed for group combat. They were designed from the ground up to be a solo hunters and killers. The long cooldowns were put in place to curtail the pace of their solo killing. Things... have obviously changed. Blizzard broke their promise of delivering meaningful world PvP and IMO took the easy way out and moved all PvP of importance into the arena under the banner of group PvP. That, alone, was a huge nerf to rogues.

How do you fix a class for group combat, that was never meant for group combat, without overpowering them for the thing they were designed for, 1v1 (*I'll address resilience later) killing? This is a difficult problem, and you've seen Blizzard grasping at straws trying to solve it. A lot of rogues try to come up with solutions, but their solutions would be disastrous for certain 1v1 matchups.

Someone recently mentioned having sprint on a 20 second timer. Pardon me? Sprint on a shorter cooldown than a priest's fear, which is their only built-in defense (and a rather weak one at that) from rogues? These things have to be thought through carefully. Yes, some classes will have advantages over other classes in 1v1 matchups. There is no way to stop that. But NO class should ever be labelled the winner-by-default just because their abilities totally overwhelm another classes' abilities. That must be avoided at all costs.

The second issue at hand is how rogues do versus classes with high resilience. The overall consensus is poorly. But, that does not necessarily mean that rogues are broken. What that could very possibly mean is that resilience is broken! IMO, rogues have all the tools and abilities they need to confront any class 1v1. Resilience is the villian here, not what rogues can or can not do in terms of abilities. You can't fix resilience by buffing rogues. It's not going to work. My advice to the rogue community leaders is to get off of this "buff rogues!" bandwagon and get on a "fix resilience" bandwagon. It's the gear that's causing the problem, people. It's the gear.

As far as things that can be done for rogues... BUG FIXES. OMG, there is nothing wrong with that. Venick linked to a post that listed some things that could be done to help rogues. Several of those things were bug fixes. It would be truly unreasonable to disallow any class of that.

1. Pets should lose aggro when a rogue restealths. I'm not just talking vanish here, I'm talking about any restealth. It is absolutely ridiculous that a pet can chase you all the way across a battlefield even though you might have disengaged and restealthed from the battle MINUTES earlier. It's retarded. Unfortunately, Blizzard says it's "working as intended." IMO, turn up the heat on this issue. FRAPs footage some of the truly ridiculous and retarded ways pets knock you out of stealth. It just makes Blizzard look like retards when they say that kind of thing is "working as intended." What they are really saying is "we are too lazy to fix that." And people will know it.

2. Vanish. Blizzard will never be able to fix this problem without a heavy-handed approach. The network code has built in features to make it a "fair" game for people with slower connections and thus has a pretty liberal interpretation of events that happen "simultaneously." Any time the game engine decides that two events are simultaneous (even when they really aren't) and one of those events happens to be vanish, it's likely that vanish is going to get screwed. BTW, this is not just an issue that effects vanish. It effects EVERYTHING. However, vanish is extremely important to the rogue and it should be addressed. IMO, they should give vanish an immunity buffer on both sides. What that means is that you would not vanish immediately, but you would be immune shortly before your vanish and shortly after your vanish. How much cushion is needed depends on how much cushion the game-engine gives when decided two events are simultaneous.

http://oozolives.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-vanish-bug.html

3. Poison and rupture should not break gouge. Hey, if it's good enough for druids, then why not rogues? Now, the author of the post above also suggested blind and sap but I think that would be entirely too abusable. I mean, premed garrote, shiv, 5 pt rupture w/ deadly poisons and then blind. HAHA!

4. Non-damaging AoEs, except fear, should not break stealth. I strongly believe that fear should break stealth, but other non-damaging AoEs such as demoshout, earthbind (fixed), mass dispel (fixed) should not. Perhaps fear should have small frontloaded damage attached to it. ;)

5. Some kind of mobility buff for lengthy 5v5 matches. Yeah, once a rogue's CDs are spent they are extremely kiteable and controllable. And, I'm sure this happens quite often in lengthy 5v5s. But again, how do you buff mobility for this situation without having too much impact on 1v1s? Hrm.. not so easy to solve is it? The author of the post linked above suggested a passive speed buff, perhaps talented. Maybe, if it goes in the least popular PvP tree. ;P

Perhaps, they could look into something like the DAoC sprint. Which uses energy to increase footspeed. In WoW, energy replenishes much faster so it would not completely disable the rogue. They just wouldn't be able to launch into heavy-energy combinations immediately after sprinting to catch up to someone. Balance could achieved by adjusting the energy per second cost of sprint. The effect would be similar to a channelled spell, but not break on damage. However, it would break when energy reaches zero or the rogue takes some other action. Even this causes me some trepidation to think about in 1v1 situations, however it would mean that as long as the rogue is regaining energy that they won't ever be totally helpless to kiting.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Iwl3 Open Project (continued)

Proposed intro clip/song:


iwl3b.wmv

Need to run, will fill in some details here later.

Thoughts on the Arena

One thing I think I've learned is that as more people get involved in the fight the more gear starts to matter. I can overcome some pretty huge gear discrepencies 1v1. But it gets harder to overcome gear imbalance in 2v2 and even harder in 3v3.

It's been pretty rough going for myself and my friends in the Arena. Even at our low rating we are constantly being placed against people with significantly better gear than we have. A lot of people seem to be "playing down" to help their friends get points/gear. Hell, I've even heard of some high rated people from season 1 selling their services to help low rated teams get more points.

First of all let me give you our basic line-ups and armories:

2v2: Shadowpriest & Destruction Warlock

Iwl

I still have a couple green pieces and a few blues, but overall my gear isn't that bad. As far as the L70 honor pieces I still need the ring and the trinket (I'm a sucker for teh purplez).

Benign

A lot of Benign's gear is green and blue but IMO he's done a great job of doing work outside the PvP enviroment to get some fairly decent stats considering his gear level. He has over 10K HP buffed, but only has two of the L70 honor pieces. The trinket and the cape. IRL Benign has a fairly demanding job, a family, and a young daughter. He does not have a lot of time to grind honor in the BGs. It would probably take him 3/4ths a year to get all the pieces. But, we'll keep plugging away until Warhammer arrives. :)

3v3:

We have two basic line-ups here:

Shadowpriest, shadowpriest, and destruction warlock. Zinn is the second shadowpriest.

Zinn

Zinn is a freshly levelled shadowpriest. As such, all of his gear was green and low blues when we first did Arena with him. I believe he had something like 7K BUFFED HP in our first arena matches! We went in anyway, because a week without arena is lost points. With Zinn, we went 13-16. Pretty ugly, but not too bad considering our overall gear I suppose.

I would not recommend SP, SP, Warlock to anyone. I try to tell Zinn that he needs to hotkey shadowform so he can slip out and heal easily if needed but he refuses to do so. He hates healing. :P

I've known Zinn for a long time. He's a good online friend. Like Benign, IRL he has a demanding job (in fact - his job has kept him from playing this whole week so he won't get any arena points). He has a family and children to care for. He can't grind honor either. It would probably take Zinn over a full year to grind the L70 honor pieces. He currently has none of those pieces.

Now, did I go out looking for a new team member after our horrible start with Zinn? No, the next day I spent on Oozo farming water motes so Zinn could work on his Frozenshadow set. We pretty much have no choice but to try to gear Zinn and Benign as much as we can outside of the PvP enviroment. That's why you don't see me in any Frozen Shadoweave. I knew I could get gear grinding PvP honor, and I knew they couldn't. So, even though I'm a tailor I've tried to help funnel those resources their way so they can get some decent gear.

Our second line-up is shadowpriest, warlock, and resto shaman. Gundy is the shaman.

Gundy

Gundy did some arena last season so he has a gladiator piece, but he's done little in the way of BGs only having two of those pieces. He also has some decent healing gear from being in a semi-casual raiding guild. Gundy also has a family with two children, one a newborn. So, he is somewhat deprived of time as well but is able to play a little more than Benign and Zinn, in general.

This is actually a pretty strong line-up classwise IMO. We've gone 12-8 overall with this line-up and a couple of those matches we really got robbed on. As in an enemy with 2% health getting feared behind a wall allowing their paladin to close distance and save their ass when they should have otherwise been dead. This line-up holds the most promise, but so much depends on gear and the gear is simply not going to accumulate fast enough for us to really do anything.

Now, on to some of our opponents. As mentioned before we have run into some teams where the people just massively outgear us. Yesterday, we fought a team with two challenger rated opponents PLing some shaman. They lost, but only because one of the challenger rated people was a hunter. Hunters = easy kills for our shadowpriest&warlock combo. We had a 2v2 where this guy was on the opposing side...

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azgalor&n=Dumbledwarf

I know, it's not incredible gear, but it's vastly superior to ours. I mean, he had 250+ resilience. Why are we matched against a team with someone like that? And this kind of thing is common. I'd say about 70% of our matches are tainted by gear.

There are a lot of people playing down, hopping teams, PLing friends. It's extremely difficult for a team of fresh players to enter into this system. I mean, it's going to take 4-5 weeks before I even get my first piece of gladiator gear so I can start competing?

Well, at least I can always smack these people around 1v1.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

You want humors? I got humors!

But you won't like it if you are a rogue. ;P


cos.wmv

STUPID ROGUE QUOTE OF THE DAY!

Rogues apparantly need buffs because "rogues need some stun,snare,silence abilities so that once our stealth is detected were not useless."

Let's see...

Kidney shot (stun), mace stun (stun), crippling poison (snare), deadly throw (ranged snare/ranged silence - OMG a 2fer!), blade twisting (snare - lolz), and kick (silence). Hrm, something does seem to be missing here...

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Iwl 3 Open Project

The full movie is a long ways off yet. I plan to spend at least another 2-3 weeks recording footage. However, I felt I had enough decent footage to fill out one song so I put a short clip together. I absolutely love this song. It's called "Wires and Pins" by End User. It has a nice slow haunting melody overlayed with some awesome fast tempo DnB.

The song just requires movement, IMO. So, I put a lot of motion, zoom, tilt, shake, rattle, and roll into this clip. Far more than usual. I think it works for this song and for 1v2s. It's not something I'd do for a whole movie though. I took Sebastian's advice and sped up the footage like Dance does in his series. A lot of people don't like the slow pace and GCDs of normal shadowpriest footage and ,although deceptive, I think it does help the pace quite a bit.

I'm calling this an "open project" because I'd like some input from you all. I can still go back and tweak things fairly easily at this stage.


I'm thinking about doing an "editor's cut" to go along with my next movie to explain some things I did or to point out mistakes I made. For example in the last fight with the warrior and the druid. I keep the warrior in combat by switching targets back and forth between him and the druid so he couldn't get out of combat to charge. That forced him to use intercept stun.

I then used my trinket. Some people might say I had "slow reactions" at this point in time since I didn't use my trinket immediately. I hesitated. But the hesitation was intentional, because it wasn't the intercept stun I was worried about... it was the hamstring. I waited until after the warrior hamstrung me to use the trinket. That allowed me to get free and kite the feral druid without having to worry about the warrior since his intercept was now on cooldown. I put my pet on the warrior to keep him combat so he couldn't drop and charge while I kited the druid to buy time for my second fear (the first got immediately trinketted, of course).

Stuff like that the average viewer would never notice. Never. But, I'd take a lot of heat for having "slow reactions" for not immediately breaking the stun. Even though I had very solid and correct reasons for not doing so. Getting hamstrung after using the trinket to break the stun would have been a death sentence.

That's not to say I don't make mistakes. I make plenty. Later in that same fight, if I had used vampiric touch on the druid immediately after killing the warrior things might have turned out differently. Of course, the resisted fear didn't help matters much either. I'd talk about my mistakes too.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

iwl3a.wmv

Adding Some More Community Links

Here are some blog links picked up from here and there. A couple from Drifting's site and one from Radikal's.

YARRR HARR HARR! - This is a 5v5 team blog mainly run by Chidorii an undead priest. However the site is not priest specific and is more of a general team blog that relates their experiences as the season progresses. They play on an EU server and are currently ranked #17 5v5 in the battlegroup. Chidorii is a gladiator rated player from season one so they got "arena cred" if that matters to you. Although they are hardcore players they keep the blog relatively light with a good deal of personal info and humor.

Gidgey's Blog - There is not a lot of content here, but there are a couple of really nice and well done short movies featuring Gidgey, a female gnome mage.

Chewing the Cud - This is Oxhorn's machinanima blogsite. You've probably seen some of his work. He is the source of many WoW humor movies. Personally, sometimes his humor is not quite my cup of tea but I'll admit to laughing more than once or twice at things he has produced. Most of the posts deal with machinanima, however there are some more philosophical posts here as well. Whether you like his humor or not, I think you will have to respect Oxhorn as a thinker.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Removing World of Ming Link

If you've actually read through the comments in Imberlyn's latest post you will understand why. I simply won't link to a site that allows that type of filth and hatred to be posted and remain unmoderated.

I don't hold grudges. Hell, I even have the World of Sev link up even though it personally attacked me. This has nothing to do with my dislike for Ming and everything to do with just common decency.

Instructional Videos

I am so looking forward to Minti’s 1v1 instructional videos. Finally a narrative that is worth watching and some insight into the split second decision making that goes through a top-notch rogue’s mind mid battle. - Lorr

Like Minti and Dahis, I think it is pointless to try to write out a guide on how to fight classes 1v1. There are certainly some general rules of thumb to follow, but in the actual fights themselves there are just far too many variables. What if one of your crucial shots gets dodged? What if they start off with a huge string of crits (I think we all know what happens then). There are a lot of intangibles in any fight mostly the fault of our old trusty psuedo-random number generator. You really can't judge a person on how good they are when everything goes as planned. It's when some curveball gets thrown at you that you never expected that truly tests how good you are. It's if you can turn the tables even when everything is going right for the other guy. These are the true tests... not following some scripted fight sequence, even though it might hold true in many cases... but not all.

I think most movie makers have dabbled around with the idea of making instructional type videos before. I know I have. And in some of my videos you can see text comments I make explaining some things (my older movies, generally). The problem is that there are certain "elitist" people around who take personal insult when you try to help people who may be new to the class or not as knowledgable as you.

How dare you help this person when I know more than you do! You suck!

And then, of course, they go on to offer not a single shred of help to the person with questions. I think we all the know the value of these types of "elitists" in society in general.

For this reason I think a lot of movie-makers have shirked at making fully instructional videos. However, if anyone can pull it off while minimizing a flamewar, it's Minti. What these videos would offer is not a step-by-step guide on how to beat different classes. What they would offer is insight in what you can do when things go wrong. As we PvP we build up a database of knowledge:

"Oh shit! I can't believe that just happened! A few weeks ago when this happened I tried this, but it didn't work. But wait! A few days ago when this happened I tried this, and it worked! I'm going to try that again."

Minti's videos could add to this database of "oh shit!" knowledge. What do you do when things do NOT go according to the scripted plan. It could offer alternative or superior solutions than the ones you've come up with yourself. And it will definitely open up discussion (hopefully constructive) about how to handle different situations as they arise. There is, afterall, more than one way to skin a gnome.

And most importantly, from shadow-gaming.com's point of view, it would turn them into a true online resource for WoW PvP. Could you imagine how popular a series of such videos would be featuring a variety of classes? To Minti and Dahis, please become the History Channel rather than E! Entertainment News like that other blog.

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to give some credit where credit is due. As I mentioned before this is not a new idea. In fact, recently someone did this type of thing from a holy priests point of view. I thought it was pretty well done, and was actually an interesting watch.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=42450

Perhaps shadow-gaming.com could open up an Instructional video section for their website and link to movies like the one above as well as their own to offer a centralized location for these types of movies. After a formal review, of course. ;)

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Rogues, Warriors, and Shadowpriests. Oh, my!

First: A warning.

Almost everything I talk about is from a 1v1 PvP perspective. Things are obviously different when you talk about a class that has support. Warriors, for example, become exponentially more difficult the more support they have. It was that way before the BG system, it was that way before arenas, and it is that way now, and it will continue to be that way in the future. However, people still seem to scream about warriors on a 1v1 basis.

Notice the language: "I was stunlocked by a warrior" "A warrior 4 shot me"

I see a lot of "I" and "me" and very little "my team" when reading warrior complaints. Team PvP is not 1v1 PvP people. I focus on 1v1 PvP, and although you would be correct to say that "1v1 PvP does not matter in WoW anymore"... I don't give a shit. :)

I will continue to focus on 1v1 PvP in WoW, until a new game comes out and then I will focus on 1v1 PvP in whatever that game is.

End of warning.

---------------------------------------------

I still visit the Rogue forums for a laugh now and then. It never ceases to amaze me what they will complain about, why they complain, and how they complain.

"I've been stunlocked by a warrior"
"Warriors stunlock better than rogues"

So, in these two threads we have rogues complaining about how warriors stunlock better than rogues (LMAO, please) and spout off some ridiculous burst damage numbers. But... but... he had a STORMHERALD!

"I got 4 shot by a warrior"

In this thread a rogue with around 7K HP and 12 resilience complains of getting four-shotted by a gladiator-rated warrior using a STORMHERALD! That's kind of funny just by itself, but later on someone chimes in:



"It's just wayyy too easy for any warrior to kill a good rogue." - some clueless rogue

Well, I got news for you. It's just wayyy too easy for any rogue to kill a good shadowpriest. Last night I had a rogue cheapshot me. I quickly trinketted, dotted, and started to kite. He vanished. Yes, he vanished with my DoTs on him. But, hey no problem. Because rogues have so many 1v1 escape abilities now that no matter how much they suck or screw up a shadowpriest can't kill them unless the rogue decides to hang around. Realizing that he is screwed, the rogue sprints away, cloaks, and restealths. I could have used my pet to "stealth bug" him, but unfortunately the shadowpriest "survivability" skill is on a 5 minute cooldown and isn't always up when you need it.

Here is another quote from the same person as above.



"Why do we have to worry about energy..." - same clueless rogue

Ever play a caster class that is out of mana, pal? Because if you have you would never... and I mean... NEVER bitch about energy mechanics.

Sprint/CoS/restealth and CoS/vanish are on the same scale of cheesiness as paladin bubble/hearth. Rogues need to play another class and realize how nice it is to have a "get out of jail free" card. I should be rewarded when I catch a rogue before he gets the opener. It takes good reactions to knock a rogue out of stealth that sneaks up on you when you aren't expecting it. BUT, a shadowpriest does not get rewarded for this. What a shadowpriest usually gets is a rogue doing vanish/CoS. Then, they either just leave, or they hang around long enough for their precious CoS cooldown to refresh and try again. Hey, keep on trying! You are bound to get that opener right eventually!

I'm sorry to say this, but it is pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic. The skill rewards people who play poorly (they use it defensively). And makes good rogues even more difficult than they already were (they use it offensively). Before I go on, I want to make it clear that what I'm talking about has nothing to do with high resilience matchups. That is a whole 'nother can of worms that Blizzard has managed to screw up. The resilience system is broken. I'll just leave it at that.

CoS by itself is fine, the problem is the timer. The skill is always up. And, I've actually had extended fights where the rogue gets to use CoS twice in the same fight. Please? Or you have the situation like I describe above. The rogue totally screws up his opener, but uses CoS to get away and then just hangs around in stealth for a whole-whopping minute and tries again. Absolutely pathetic.

You think you have problems with warriors, rogues. Just try... try... to play a shadowpriest against a good rogue. Heh.

Now, here is the flip side to that coin. Last night after my friends logged I decided to go looking for some 1v1s with my shadowpriest. In a span of a couple of hours I managed to kill the following warriors 1v1. The lowest I got was half-health.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Shattered+Hand&n=Goorgaar

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Medivh&n=Elrich

Oh noes! A STORMHERALD!

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodhoof&n=Ozymandeus

Oh noes! Deep Thunder and 300+ resilience!

Does that mean I totally rule? NO. What it means is that:



"It's just wayyy too easy for any shadowpriest to kill a good warrior" - some newb shadowpriest


I suppose when you sit down and read this article (if you manage to make it all the way, that is) you could just summarize all of the above with a single sentence.

If you quit your bitching about warriors, then I'll quit my bitching about rogues.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

WoM versus SG

Well, it looks like this rivalry is heating up. Ming has an article that directly attacks shadow-gaming.com here. And Happyminti has an article attacking WoM here. I'm not sure which one came first, but from reading them, I'm thinking that Ming's article is in response to Happyminti's. For the record, someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Foolish little brother, if you wish to surpass my site, flame me, hate me, and keep your site alive with these unsightly Adsense numbers. Beg and pray that Dahis will keep a dead weight like yourself around in both SG and his 5v5. Someday, when you obtain the same popularity as I do, come before me with your Alexa numbers. I am more successful than you, both in game and in RL. I will eventually obtain Dahis-kun’s service, both in game and in RL too. Once he is serious about tapping his full income potential from WOW, he will seek my darker powers immediately. - Ming to Happyminti
You know even if this is fake and just for show, it's just downrite pathetic. I mean, who is entertained by drivel like this? Seriously. I will take the History Channel over E! Entertainment News every freeking day of the week. I understand that some people may like watching wrestling or some show that follows the daily struggles of some washed-up former celebrity going through rehab. Those types of shows do have an audience. An audience of morons. And there are a hell of a lot more morons in this world than intelligent people, so yeah if you are looking for more hits then appeal to the morons. Ming has that part right at least.

Quality over quantity, IMO.

Here is another quote which is interesting to me:

My dueling guides have always been the very best there is because I am very specific about how you win a fight, and if you follow my steps you would beat 90% of the opponents no questions asked - Ming
Is this the same Ming that has been bitching and complaining about how rogues are the "worst" PvP class and how he can't beat anyone on the PTR? What is required for a class to be good to Ming? Beating 100% of your opponents?

Again, all of this can all be simplified as follows:

If you like the History Channel then go to shadow-gaming.com
If you like professional wrestling then go to worldofming.com

eos

The Debater: Episode 3

I've been slacking so, going to do a Debater 2-fer.



The Debater: Episode 2

The Debater returns. Unfortunately this might only be humorous to you if you actually played City of Heroes at some point in time. In either case, my apologies. /grin


Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Shadow Word: Dance Series.

If you haven't checked out this series of shadowpriest movies yet, you should do yourself a favor and do so! In particular, the second and third installments, are very enjoyable.

The shadowpriest in question is only L67, but he takes on L70s in world PvP clips. Now, his opponents are not the best but his editting skills are beyond reproach and he certainly knows what he is doing. He is the Tosan of Shadowpriests.

Dance also adds a lot of humor (via in-game text) to his movies. I found myself chuckling more than once. The music was all unknown to me and very catchy and upbeat.

There is absolutely no way I have the time and patience to edit a movie like this. According to Dance his third movie took 18 hours to render. Imagine your power going out 16 hours into that or something. No, thanks.

Personally, I'm just going to try to keep my movies cleanly editted and synced to the music. And, I'll go with content as my main focus. Unfortunately, people are more impressed by keen editting skills than content. But, such is life.

Once again. Treat yourself. :)

Shadow Word: Dance 3
Shadow Word: Dance 2
Shadow Word: Dance

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Busy Working on IWL2

I've been pretty busy the past few days recording material for Iwl2. I'm probably just going to keep on recording another week or two depending on how many good clips I can get.

I usually make my movies by music segments.

Here is one of those segments as a teaser. This is a L69 clip. Most of the movie will be L70 though.

http://files.filefront.com/Iwl2Awmv/;7856675;;/fileinfo.html


Iwl2A.wmv

(also - I'm going to turn pre-moderation off and see what happens. I'll put it back up if necessary)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Venick's movie finally public!

He had to wait painfully through a slow WCM upload process, but Venick's rogue movie is finally public. To me, this movie has kind of an "oldschool" feel to it. Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Undead rogue running around in AV, anyone?

Most of the movie features 1vNs and back-to-back string kills in AV. There are a couple of world PvP clips, and a nice 1v1 duel against a tough orc resto shaman. Once again, I would like to see more 1v1s against tough opponents. The AV clips are great entertainment, but I really only learn anything new from watching top 1v1 duels anymore. A mixture of entertainment and education is best, IMO!

The music choices are pretty safe. Not my favorite music styles, but nothing irritating. Where did all the Pendulum go from the V&T probject! ;)

http://venick.blogspot.com/2007/06/video-venick-30031-fate-sealed_21.html

Be sure to check out the rest of Venick's blog and squash (report) people who downrate for retarded reasons at WCM. :)