Thursday, August 28, 2008

Completely OP

The first serious 2's team I ever ran on my resto druid was Warrior/Druid and mid Season3, we hit 1850 over the course of a few weeks, in small managable chunks. The reason for the low number of games here and there was due to the amount of rage that I would generate watching my warrior tunnel vision himself or myself to death. I don't know what it is with warriors, but your average warrior has the field vision of a toilet paper tube monocle.

Anyways, a couple of days ago, I promised my warrior buddy (different warrior friend) that I'd do some 2's with him, as he's been having trouble finding a good partner. He's tried all sorts of healers, but for him and whatever partner, the ceiling for this season has been around 1700. As my rogue buddy was having latency issues (500ping day in day out), another Warrior/Druid team was born and, I'll definitely jinx myself for publishing this, up to the mid 1700s with no losses.

While most people will say that it's the Druid that carries the Warrior because the Druid is such an OP class, I find that it's really the Warrior that provides the pacing and the openings for the Druid to perform their stupid cyclone tricks such as offensive cyclones, cc chains (cyclonex3, feral charge, bash, maim, intercept, intimidating shout...) and other silliness.

I don't expect us to go undefeated for much longer as the 1700's have been full of full S3 (shoulders, too) teams and a few of the matches came down to my getting away at 1% health due to some beneficial RNG (hai imp hamstring proc!). As it is, we're looking forward to going for the S4 weapons and developing a working strategy for the various comps out there that we haven't run into (Spriest/Rog, Lock/Rogue, Dru/Lock, Rog/Dru, Rog/Rog)

On a slightly more peeved note, regardless of the team comp that I'm running, any 3's team with a Warrior and a Warlock is proving to be very difficult for me to stay alive. Intercept into deathcoil into dps onto my teammates means that I'm having to spam heals like crazy and stay in casterform while the warrior shoves a big 2h suppository up my rear. I think the solution is putting pressure on the pet while prehealing alot, but i'm not entirely sure with the execution on the various maps. I'll need a few more games to pinpoint this down.

Lastly, I need to get some games in on my PomPyro mage, but time is definitely an issue. So are late summer family vacations. I really want to run Mage/Priest, and if anyone's interested, there's a great video by PeeVee (aka Pigvomit) on Warcraftmovies.com: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=86721

It shows some very high rating arena (S4 2200+) and the power of PomPyro. Pretty entertaining, too! For those not used to watching PvP videos, watch it once focusing on the mage and when he imp CS's and pyros. Then watch it a second time, watching the cast bar and positioning of the priest teammate.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Coming back is hard to do

Late summer is generally a time of family vacations and trips and online game time isn't all that prioritized. With my week off of WoW due to a business trip (I tend not to play on the road, as I prefer to go exploring), coming back to WoW was pretty hard to do, especially in the arena. Forgetting to cyclone, eating mana burns and other crap reminded me that to play at a higher level, you've got to be on the ball with your 'A' game.

That being said, I'm looking foward to relearning some of the patterns/habits that i've lost, and to keep things in mind, here's some that I should try to remember:

Druid:
  • Faerie Fire (rank 1) more. Rogues, druids, mages, shamans, their mothers, firstborns, etc
  • DPS more. If specced dreamstate, use that MF/IS.
  • Offensive cyclone more
  • Pre-hot more

Mage:

  • Deny charge with Ice Lance. Especially after 2-3 polys
  • Face away from pillars when spidersense tells you that intercept is coming
  • Juke pummels/kicks with poly more.
  • Frostbolt (rank 1) more.
  • Amp/Damp magic appropriately
  • Watch opponent buffs more. Casting into fully prehotted druids is stupid.
  • PoMPyro retarded people more. Laugh at their dead, unreleased corpses. /spit liberally.