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?

IWL3 released!

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=44335

PvP content link

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.

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

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.