The battle for the Gulch, will being rated change much?
Sep 1st
Karuki, Knight of Daeth, has decided to bring war upon the Horde starting with the planes of the Warsong Gulch, defending the forests of Ashenvale with her glowing purple shit trailing behind her. Before heading to war with the Horde however, Karuki had 
to find some more people to fight for the cause as being hopelessly outnumbered would result in a crushing defeat. Upon gathering her band of followers she heads to the Silverwing Hold to mount her attack on the Warsong Lumber Mill. After arriving at Silverwing hold the gate collapses after only five of her men are able to get in leaving Karuki and her friends left to fight with the few that are left in the area, surveying the battle she notices Arthhass from “Bloodlust” battling it out in the middle whilst being undecided about whether he would like to be blood or unholy and if cloth items or tank items are good choices for dks in pvp, “not today” she says as she raises her palm to her face and swiftly types /afk before she can see what other atrocities are in the gulch today.
With the current state of the random battleground system and the welfare gear it provides, this is a far more common than it should be occurance unless you’re running with a full premade, but what does the future with a proper rated battleground system hold in store for us within the gulch?
At the moment, skills that control movement are a huge part of WSG. In cataclysm we see the ‘counter’ to death grip, life grip. Whether you can life grip people up and down hills like you can with DG is something that I’m personally not aware of (although if it follows the same mechanics I’ll assume you can). This affects WSG in quite a large way with the hills and the barrier on the alliance side. The fence above the tunnel on the alliance side provides a nice barrier which melee can’t go through, but grip/spells can. What this presents is an interesting way to pull flag carriers around both defensively and offensiveley (especially since warriors can charge up the hill to people behind the fence).
The other possibility life grip would present is being able to grip people up cliffs and open up different paths to take the flag.
There’s also the counter to these cliffs however, knockback spells, although these now have a counter in DK’s Pillar of Frost, at the moment the tooltip reads “immune to external
movement such as knockbacks”. This could also be immunity to death grip (if someone with beta could confirm this that would be great), this would open up some interesting talent specs if the trees were not locked into 31 points before you can start another (making pillar of frost unaccessable for anyone who isn’t frost spec).
The other main points of interest are the areas where skills such as Smoke Bomb and Curtain of Frost are going to be at their greatest effects, small choke points which many teams will want to get through and avoid by using life grip/swiftness pots/body & soul etc. having several members caught in something like Smoke Bomb+Curtain of Frost (which should make for an interesting combo) would most likely lead to losing a few people if not that fight as a bunch of people isolated and slowed in the bomb would die pretty fast, at least on WOTLK terms.
Setups for WSG in the future -
Whilst it’s hard to say what it might look like so early into the beta, there should be some staples to WSG teams
- Flag Carriers
Druids -
- Can move fast with the Flag
- Good survivability vs melee, vulnerable to casters
- Stampeding Roar providing AOE sprint briefly to allow teams to avoid chokes
DKs -
- Low cooldown abilities and self healing will lead to the best survivability out of any flag carrier
- Also brings alot of utility with strangulate/grip/necrotic strike/dark simulacrum (the potential of this yet to be seen skill is huge)
Warriors -
- Moble with charge/intervene/intercept/heroic leap allowing them to scale cliffs
- The best survivability vs melee with block
- Utility with AOE spell reflect/piercing howl/safeguard/huge amount of stuns
Paladins -
- Good survivability against both melee and casters due to Argent Defender
- Brings utility in disease/poison removal/divine guardian/sacrifice/auras/blessings/aoe silence from AS
Another thing which may see a use is flag couriers (rogues/druids/mages) that grab the flag and bring it to the carrier but depending on how the meta game unfolds will see to whether this used, either way expect much higher levels of coordination in how the flag is handed between players than it is in the current WSG pugfest.
- Knockbacks/Grips
No wsg team is going to be without these and bringing multiple amounts of each wouldn’t be a bad thing, the potential for chain grips both offensively and defensively as mentioned above is huge as well as thunderstorm’s ability to knock an entire group in different directions and isolate people in the midfield. I wouldn’t be surprised to see every team running with at least 2 knockbacks because of this.
- Plate Zerg?
A staple core of a lot of vanilla wsg, warriors+wf or paladin support were often a force that would just kill stuff with unhealable damage, it wasn’t uncommon to be able to kill stuff in an intercept stun if the wf+swordspecs lined up. Now that rets and dks have joined warriors as a viable force in the plate zerg teams will they see a resurgence in Cataclysm as the huge damage slowly pushing forward force that it was previously.
- Wizard Cleaves?
Thought healing 2 wizards was bad in 3v3? Try 7! These could either work very well, or not be very good, depending entirely on the dmg:hp ratio. With the current WSG scene I’d go as far to say as a wizard cleave lineup would be by far the best for the ability to just switch and global something before healers can react, use dk flag carrier for bonus points of having a grip with maxium wizards.
Whilst it’s still quite hard to predict trends in rated bgs that are still months off, I personally do hope that how teams use the map and posistion themselves around the big aoe skills is going to be what decides victories of the skirmishes around the map rather than the current situation of whoever can spam the most damage in the least globals (this is a valid tactic in arena too for those who have not yet played harrypotter).
Also a brief shoutout to Hendie’s video which hasn’t really got the views it deserves despite non existant editing – http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=159623
Offensive druid play from a bunch of different comps and one of the few resto druid vids which hasn’t left me skipping bits due to a minimal amount of tree hugging, “starfire” being a good way to sum it up, also has skype somewhere!
Karuki “knight of daeth” out.
Team Dignitas @ MLG Raleigh Part 2
Aug 29th
Hello everybody! After attending the Blizzard invitational two weeks ago it is now time for the Team Dignitas World of Warcraft squad to attend the MLG Raleigh event in the United States. As always we will be bringing you updates of results, (hopefully) gallery updates and more! The team is accompanied by our Starcraft II players so if you are a SC2 fan then you can check out their results aswell.
As many of you might have noticed, we have put up a blogging site as we are currently working on our new site which is not finished yet, so please bear with us while we work on it. We will be adding more features ASAP.
Update 5: EG took us down 2-3 
Came in 4th, well played to the guys tho!
Update 4: Took the next 2 games 3-2 and 3-1, we’re now up against Loaded, gonna be a thrilling game! Still trying to get hold of the players, not that easy when they need to focus on their games of course! Will keep you updated tho 
Update 3: Trying to talk to flyn on msn and find out whats going on, stay tuned!
Update 2: Lost 1-3 vs coL.Red and their mld setup.
Update 1: We won our 1st game vs coL.Black! 3-0
Links:
Team Dignitas coverage
MLG Stream
MLG spotlight on Team Dignitas
THE EPIC SHOWDOWN – RMP MIRROR
Loaded vs Dignitas
Game 1:
Nagrand
Game starts off slow as usual in RMP mirrors with Rogues looking for eachother. Kalimist gets the sap and a battle of attacking the Rogues goes off with no team really getting an edge. Kalimist as Shadowdance blows his 51pt ability and obliterates Satz after some back and forth.
1-0 DIGNITAS!
Game 2:
Nagrand
I don’t care who you are or where you are but you gotta love those RMP mirrors on the best Arena map. This is WoW in it’s purest form right there. Again a battle of Rogue training ensues even though Dignitas wanted to start with a Mage train. Loaded turns it around on Hydra who is pillar hugging extremely well and can top himself off with Flash spam. But also Kalimist drops insanely low for about 15 seconds and kites immensely well while my underpants are too drops richer. For a bit tip top CC chains are being exchanged but as his dance comes back up, Kalimist can turn it around.
2-0 DIGNITAS GET CRAZY!
Game 3:
RoV
Because of the different playstyle with Mutilate, the advantage for Loaded instantly shows as going on Hydra is much easier than in the games before and much less cooldowns are needed. Kalimist in the early game mostly the Rogue with slightly less HP than Satz but as the time to dance is right, Satz drops to 20% but still with Cloak up and no coL.Red-esque luck to be found for Flyn. Eventually Hydra gets caught in a long CC chain while Kalimist goes low but still has BM & Cheat Death which still can’t keep him up for long enough and a DF on Hydra finishes off Kalimist. Flyn and Hydra try to pull a 2vs3 as Numberone is oom but ultimately lose the battle.
2-1 Dignitas
Game 4:
RoV
Again a bit unfortunate with the map choice but it is not in my ability to judge if it’s really such a big difference. Dignitas really gets off to a bad start as Loaded gets on Hydra quite well and he has to trinket a fear simply to get away from Satz while Kalimist has to trinket a Blind. Orange this game putting the moves on Flyn as you here him call out schoollock outs and sheeps quite a bit. Because of the early usage of trinket from Hydra he isn’t able to trinket the Sheep into DF and Kalimist dies as the Cheat Death procs quite close to 0 HP.
2-2 Tie. I can’t believe this is happening
Game 5:
Dalaran Arena
Dignitas with an amazing opener and Kalimist absolutely focused and immidiately identifies Satz as Sublety. Orange has to block almost instantly while Dignitas switches it to Satz who dies in the Dance.
We like to give a shoutout to Loaded for an extremely enjoyable series with amazing plays. RMP FIGHTIIIING!
Complexity Black vs Skill-capped International
Game 1:
Blades edge arena
Complexity is going for the Mage as MM with a spider as pet and the Mage is forced to block rather quickly. A lot of range issues for coL.Red force Twix to use his deterrence. Flexx calls out that he’s been focused long before it gets serious as the Paladin gets CS’d and tries to bubble heal which is not enough. Quite well played by SK-C INT.
1:0 SK-C INT
Game 2:
Dalaran Arena
Again a lot of pressure on the Mage. Twix gets half duration blinded and Norman kind of wastes his BoP as they didn’t really have any momentum rolling. Again they can get on the Mage who is forced to block and coL switches off to the Rogue for a second. One more round of burst is alligned onthe Mage as the Priest gets put in a sweet CC chain that ultimately seels the deal.
1-1 Tie.
Game 3:
Dalaran Arena
This time the difference between Toez and Norman showed quite a bit as if course it’s his tournament. coL again hard on the Mage but SC-Int turns it on the Paladin who’s panicing hard at that point which causes a chain of bad decisions. The bubble is used in a very bad spot and gets immidiately dispelled. Also the positioning seemed to be off which Twixz is also complaining about. Flexx and Norman were simply too far apart to make anything happen offensively and as far as peels for the Paladin go. Eventually Norman goes down due to heavy pressure from Enforcer.
2-1 SK-C Int
Game 4:
RoV
Obviously good map for coL. Early block forced almost immidiately while Priest is put in a Scatter. Quick switch to the Priest during the immunity to keep the momentum rolling and back when it fades puts SK-C Int on the back foot again. Norman HoJ’es the Priest follow by Flexx instant Hex who trinkets but isn’t able to keep his mate up.
2-2 Tie again.
Game 5:
Blades edge arena
The game goes down with a close cross kill on Flexx and the Korean Mage and it turns into a full blown 2vs2. It looked like nothing could really win the match for SK-C but as Twixz’ pet goes down more and more opportunities open for Enforcer to burst and they actually eventually manage to take the series with a kill on Norman.
3-1 SK-C Int. What an upset.
Nerdstompers Black vs Evil Geniuses
Score of games played off stream: 2-1 for EG.
Game 4:
Ruins of Lordaeron
The game picks off with the MLS on the offense with Heroism being popped. Velsus drops dangerously low but can heal himself up with a critting NS and looks fine from there on. As Heroism fades you can almost instantly see the momentum shift with Pookz & Azael taking a ton of damage from both Starcraft2 hero Nadagast and Hoodrych but also Tenderloin seems to get a fair share. He drops low but dots are fading so Velsus cyclones him. He is able to heal himself out of this situation but eventually gets his Resto tree locked and dies eventually because of it.
Series tied at 2:2
Game 5:
Dalaran Arena In the beginning “training the healer” is kind of the name of the game for both teams with few exceptions. Hoodrych as always against Mage teams is barely playing the game as Pookz also does a pretty good job at babysitting. Again, it seems like momentum is only possible for EG when Heroism is up and they just seem to survive which they eventually fail at as Hoodrych gets off a great Bladestorm which drops Azael slowly but surely for WotLK standards.Apologies for the delayed kick off, scrambled eggs had to be devoured.
Unfortunately our team lost 1-3 to coL.Red in a match that caused a lot of controversy because of a disconnect resulting in a rematch which was pretty much a secured win for our guys giving them more momentum after already winning the first match. To top it off RNG striked again and the last two deciding maps were of course played on Ring of Valor in which Kalimist even got [killed through Cloak of Shadows] once. Legendary…
Right now two matches are going on. One is the grudge match of Team Chris Thorman vs Nerdstomper Blue and the other is Nerdstompers Black vs Evil Geniuses. The later is not being streamed but the score seems to be 2-0 in favor of a fully out of practice EG.
Team Chris Thorman vs Nerdstomper Blue
The matches so far have been quite heated as both (ab)using the in voice to communicate what they think of eachother. Team Chris Thorman shot ahead 2-0 but seem to be unable to take advantage of their momentum as the series is tied at 2-2. One thing to note is that most games were decided by misscommunication between the players.
Final game:
Ring of Valor
The game starts off with Nerdstompers Blue gunning for Chris who’s just blowing through his defensive cooldowns. He tries to LOS by a big pillar but as it goes down, he’s completely exposed to the damage that is being cast upon him. Glickz gets a fear off on the Druid who then gets put into a Kidney shot while Kollektiv hexes Uckington. The Druid goes down and rude words are being exchanged instantly. Nothing better than a little shit talk.
MLG Raleigh Night 1: Live Blog
Aug 29th
Dignitas vs Complexity.Black
Game 1 RMP vs Prot Warrior, Hunter and Holy Paladin
Dignitas focuses on Twix for their opening strategy, which at the same time places a ton of pressure on Complexity.Black’s new Paladin Norman. Toez apparently retired from the team recently.
The match was very quick and ended with a kill on Twix,
Dignitas goes up 1-0.
Game 2 RMP vs Prot Warrior, Hunter and Holy Paladin
More focus fire on Twix from team Dignitas.
After forcing the Paladin of Complexity.Black to blow a ton of his cooldowns early on, Team Dignitas lands a huge round of damage on Twix to score a kill.
Team Dignitas 2-0.
Game 3 RMP vs Beastcleave
Complexity.Black switches to Beastcleave for game three.
Complexity.Black is able to put pressure on the Mage Flyn from Team Dignitas.
Norman tries his best to stay out of crowd control throughout the fight.
Though it looks like Norman was doing a good job at staying away from Flyn’s Polymorph, a full duration sheep finally lands and Team Dignitas gets a kill on Twix to take the series.
Team Dignitas wins the series 3-0.
Skill Capped.US vs Skill Capped.International on Ruins of Lordaeron
Game 1 RMP vs Wizard (MLS)
The Shaman of Skill Capped.US lusts right off the start and then faces a ton of pressure. Skill Capped.International’s Mage and Rogue (Enforcer) nearly score a kill on the Nevershock.
You hear the team of Skill Capped.US screaming for a kill on the rogue. Going from 100 to dead in the blink of an eye, the wizard team of Skill Capped.US, whom are running an arcane mage, explode Enforcer.
1-0 SkillCapped.US.
Game 2 RMP vs Wizard (MLS) on Blade’s Edge Arena
This round, Enforcer opens up on Nevershock with a Sap. They then open up with a ton of damage and cause Nevershock to jump off the Blade’s Edge Arena bridge in order to line of sigh the Mage’s casts.
After a great fear from the Priest of Skill Capped.International, Nevershock dies and the Wizards go back to the drawing board with a loss in the second game.
1-1 series tied.
Game 3 RMP vs Wizard (MLS) on Nagrand Arena
Enforcer, who is playing with two Korean players, opens with a Cheap Shot on Nevershock. You can hear Enforcer’s teammates calling out things in Korean.
Enforcer catches a bad fear away from Nevershock, but miraculously his teammate finishes off the Shaman with the aid of his Priest. Enforcer let out a cheer for his team as he did not know they scored the kill until after he came back into the fight to look for his target.
The Warlock and Mage Abn of US do not give up though and score a kill on Enforcer. Sadly, without a healer, they eventually drop to the Mage and Priest of SC.International.
2-1 Skill Capped.International.
Game 4 RMP on Blade’s Edge Arena
Nevershock, again is the focus of Skill Capped.International’s opening strategy.
The Warlock of Skill Capped.US gets caught in a great deal of crowd control throughout the opening of this match and it proves to hurt their momentum as Enforcer escapes death.
Nevershock fighting to stay alive at the bottom of the bridge finally is taken down by the RMP of Skill Capped.International.
3-1 Skill Capped.International.
Nerd Stompers vs For the Motherland
(A quick note on For the Motherland. Jetz team could not attend the event, so Happiminti and a Starcraft II player decided to play in the WoW tourney.)
Game 1 WLD vs Hunter, Rogue and Paladin on Blade’s Edge Arena
Happiminti is the priority target for Hoodrych, but avoids an early pitfall through the use of cooldowns. The pug of For the Motherland shows how they do not have the chemistry that is required, drop the first game to Nerd Stompers.
1-0 Nerdstompers.
Game 2 WLD vs Hunter, Rogue and Paladin on Ring of Valor
Hoodrych finds himself frustrated as the Hunter from Russia drops him in some ice blocks. Nerdstompers Warlock does not have a Devour Magic for him as his pet was feared far away from Hoodrych.
The hunter from Russia doing a great job at controlling Hoodrych, still is unable to put out pressure on anyone and finds himself falling to Hoodrych who finally lays him down.
2-0 Nerd Stompers.
Game 3 WLD vs Hunter, Rogue and Paladin on Nagrand Arena
Hoodrych bounces between Happiminti and the Hunter to keep them both off of his teammates. ‘The Boss’ Hoodrych is not playing around this game and drops Happiminti really easily.
3-0 Nerd Stompers.
Uck’s HLD vs Arenapwnage
Game 1 Leave Cleave vs HLD on Nagrand Arena
Forced early heroism. Lots of target switches. Talbadar silences the Hunter… Novos gets exploded.
1-0 Uck’s HLD.
Game 2 Leave Cleave vs HLD on Blade’s Edge Arena
Uck runs out of shards and busts out an imp midway through this loooooong match.
Finally, Diziet gets CC’d while Novos is bursted down at the bottom of the bridge.
2-0 Uck’s HLD.
Game 3 Leave Cleave vs HLD on Ring of Valor (Thank you!)
Lots of pressure from Uck’s HLD throughout the fight allowed Chris to stay at safe mana, while Diziet was stressed to heal Novos.
Novos dies to a Chaos Bolt from Uck as he runs for the big pillar.
3-0 Uck’s HLD.
–
More information for Sunday’s matches here: http://www.gotfrag.com/wow/story/44921/
Team Dignitas @ MLG Raleigh, WoW tournament info updated!
Aug 28th
Hello everybody! After attending the Blizzard invitational two weeks ago it is now time for the Team Dignitas World of Warcraft squad to attend the MLG Raleigh event in the United States. As always we will be bringing you updates of results, (hopefully) gallery updates and more! The team is accompanied by our Starcraft II players so if you are a SC2 fan then you can check out their results aswell.
As many of you might have noticed, we have put up a blogging site as we are currently working on our new site which is not finished yet, so please bear with us while we work on it. We will be adding more features ASAP.
Update 2: We won our 1st game vs coL.Black! 3-0
Update 1: Both of our SC2 players are in the LB Round 4. Our WoW team should begin shortly.
Links:
Team Dignitas coverage
MLG Stream
MLG spotlight on Team Dignitas
Information about MLG Raleigh WoW
Hey guys, Yiska here and I want to bring you the information that is available to us at the moment.
The Teams
Nerdstompers Black – Hoodrych, Nadagast, Velsus – WLD
The last remaining WLD in the professional scene will be at the event coming from with the hope that they get a better tournament path than they did at Blizzard’s North American Regionals. A thing to note about this team is that Nadagast is also participating in the SC2 tournament as is currently doing very well as he’s in round 4 of the upper bracket, showing that WoW players get the job done.
Nerdstompers Blue – Realz, Glickz, Kollektiv – RLS
The former SK.US only recently joined Nerdstompers. With the big disappointment of not qualifying for the NA Regionals due to different reasons, this team is looking forward to prove once again that their time in the spotlight isn’t over as they have haters a plenty. This team is known for their strategical strength as they always seemed to be the people who are called the exception. “We farmed every RLS on TR but Realz’ team” is a sentence that we heard countless times in the past.
Complexity.Red – Sodah, Snutz, Venruki, Reckful – RLD, MLD, MLP, RMP
One of the most versatile teams in the pro scene currently is on fire. After a second place at MLG Ohio in which they were only beaten by Loaded.Black and Nerdstompers (while playing RLD, not the freewin that is MLD vs WLD) and the first place at the North American regionals, the team is looking to go all the way once again and they are definitely one of the favorites going into this event. Looking at the winning record of this team, they are one of the only teams that doesn’t need any bracket luck to go far.
Complexity.Black – Toez, Flexx, Twixz – ATC, Beastcleave
Absolutely dominating team of the last season, not so much this time. The team has been on the decline ever since IEM Global Finals at Cebit. Nevertheless they managed to get into the upper bracket finals at NA Regionals before they got rolled by the Wizard broom. If they can get good brackets they can go far, but there aren’t many free wins for this team at this point in time.
Loaded – Satz, Numberone, Orangemarmalde – RMP
One of the most successful teams in recent history and also the last bastion before Hogwards overrun at Blizzcon. We are potentially looking at epic games against our own guys which hasn’t happened before in a regular tournament. The team is well known for their amazing coordination and perfectly executed bursts. Loaded.Black fightiiiiing!
TSG (PK.Cards) – Veev, Valrath, Zilea – TSG, odd comps
The current Blizzcon champions didn’t make it against the Wizards despite some very unorthodox comps which made the entire community raise a brow at the same time. It has been rumored that they will be a no show at the event as Veev and Valrath are said to have quit the game after this disappointment. It would be sad to see those players go as they could have a good shot if they got decent brackets. After all at a tournament with this many teams, someone else killing the Wizards isn’t entirely impossible.
ArenaPwnage – Talbadar, Novoz, Diziet – SPSD
Second place at NA Regionals and therefore qualified for Blizzcon, yet not really a community favorite as their playstyle was admittingly quite lame at times, hugging the pillar for felt hours. When all is said and done, they are still a team able to place very high up as only coL.Red and the RLS should pose a serious threat.
Team EG – Woundman, Azael, Tenderloin – RLS
This time without their Mage Pookz so they will only be playing RLS. Azael has been very active promoting WoW and their oranganisation Evil Geniuses around the country which caused the team to have very limited time to qualify for NA Regionals which they failed to do in the end. In general Azael reports that Tenderloin has quit the game and they have only been able to get a day or two of practice in which they still did pretty well. It would be very surprising if the team played a role in this event but with a team of that calibre it might as well happen.
Skill capped – ? – MLS
Big questionmark behind this team as they were supposed to attend with Filovirus, Nayro and Abni but one of their players has reported that they will be replaced by one of the other members in the skill-capped.com player pool.
Team CHRIS THORMANN – Uckington, Seruuf, Chris
A lot of ups and downs over the week for this team as the drama bomb around this team has just exploded around this team as they admittingly wintraded their way to NA Regionals. Nevertheless they did extremely well and they were easily one of the most exciting to watch and they weren’t too far away from going to Blizzcon. Uckington has been very guilty because of the way the qualified but this has not too much to do with the MLG invite. If the team will still attend remains to be seen.
Team Dignitas – Kalimist, Flyn, Hydra – RMP
I guess I need no introduction here but I can update you on what has been going on since the upset of European Regionals. The team has been bootcamping for quite some time practicing as much as possible on the rather inactive European battlegroups and TR to try to make up for their showing at Regionals. Of course there are a couple of comps you can’t really practice against in Europe such as RLS and Talbadar’s triple healer so the chances of the team are rather unpredictable. I for one would be satisfied with a victory over Loaded in a mirror, but due to the tournament structure it’s possible that this won’t happen.
The big differences between the WoW tournament this time in Raleigh to the one in Ohio are the following:
- The tournament system is no longer two groups into Double elim, but Double Elim from the get go which sadly allows for some very bad luck in seeding
- Teams are seeded based on their results of MLG Ohio. If the team didn’t participate, it is up to the admins to decide their seed.
- Only Vhell and Vansili will cast the event. They will be supported by the players themselves with the in-voice feature which means you will hear all teams talk during their games.
The stream for Starcraft II will kick off at 15:30 CET. If I’m not mistaken the WoW stream will kick off at 1:40 CET. The games for WoW will be sooner tomorrow.
One of the last melee heroes – Interview with SK Sansibar’s Barburas
Aug 25th
Hello friends, today I have an interview for you with James “Barburas” Goodhead, the multiple rank 1 warrior of SK Sanisbar’s warrior/warlock/paladin team with Draintrain and Fraki that finished 3rd at the European Blizzcon Regionals.
Hello Barburas, could you tell us a bit more about yourself -
Hi, my name is James and I’m a 20 year old studying to become a vet at a university in England.
Many people would not consider warrior/warlock/paladin to be a viable live setup let alone capable of qualifying for regionals and placing respectively at them, what led to you playing with Draintrain/Fraki on the TR?
Originally draintrain asked me to play with him as his warrior (Blade, who is another excellent warrior) wasn’t going to go to LAN events. We started off trying WLD but struggled to find a good druid which I feel is essential for WLD, eventually out of desperation we played with a paladin (Demun) who drain played 5s with on live. It ended up working better than any of us expected and we were able to take R1 during practice phase. However for whatever reason it started going badly, so we tried out Fraki and were able to retake R1 during the practice. Fraki was initially tied down to his old TSG, but struggling to find a pally as good as him – we basically asked him to play with both his TSG and us and if his TSG qualified then he’d go with that. Fortunately (for me and drain) his TSG didn’t come top 8 and instead we got third with WLP on the european arena pass.
As said above WWLP isn’t a very common setup, compared to some of the standard ladder comps such as wizard cleaves/wld/rmp what would you say are the strengths of the comp when played by top tier players and what would you be playing if you weren’t playing this comp at the moment?
It’s a strong all round comp and can overcome most hard setups by outplaying without as much rish of stupid gib losses that can occur for example if you’re playing RMP and meet an ATC due to cooldowns like HoP, Bubble, Portal, etc. If I wasn’t playing this I would probably be playing Warrior Mage Priest, not as it’s exceptionally strong but because it’s a fun comp to play and I have friends playing Mage/Priest
When in matches, how does your team go about calling the plays, is everyone calling stuff or is there one player that speaks out and makes the main calls of when to switch/peel etc.?
I probably do the most offensive calling (like who to go on/swap to, etc); although drain does a fair bit too. Fraki usually calls how things are for him, whether we’re safe to go offensive, whether he can freedom and so on and we just try react to each other’s calls to play as best we can.
In your first series against Inflame’s team you showcased the best warrior play coming out of Europe in a long time in many peoples opinions, the amount of pressure you were able to put out against them causing Inflame to exclaim “warrior’s are pretty fucking overpowered”. What went wrong in the second series?
I think the second series was more a case of Inflame’s team replicating aAa’s play more than us playing worse, though we did have some bad luck. The first game was Dalaran arena where we effectively have 0 chance due to how thunderstorm works on that arena. The second game when Inflame had no pet, was on 20% hp with full dots, I had freedom and taunka proc up and was about to die, floated up to a pillar in RoV due to a bug with how fear/horror effects sometimes interact with RoV (he was death coiled) and that saved him and ended up costing us that game (which would have put us at 1-1 instead of 2-0 down). We won the next game extremely quickly when I pummeled inflame on shadow into a bladestorm he couldn’t portal into a HoJ + full dots + spell lock/fears on the druid. The final game was extremely close but eventually we lost; draintrain hadn’t realised he hadn’t got soul link up as he fel domed and was cycloned at the same time and I think he thought he’d cast it – he got killed as daylie was extremely close to dying too, but mistakes happen – especially at a LAN event. WLP really struggles with LSD if they know how to play vs us and while we may have been able to win it was definately stacked against us.
You’re being compared a lot to Hoodrych who’s playing a similar comp overseas lately. How do you like this comparison?
Well it’s always nice to be compared to a good player like Hoodrych, I like to consider myself a decent warrior – i’m far from perfect but I feel I’m reasonably good so yeah it’s a compliment to be compared to Hoodrych.
You gem a lot more defensively than most warriors, could you explain the heavy resilience gemming and how it relates to the way you play your setup?
I don’t really feel it’s especially to do with the setup, it’s just my playstyle – for example Blade who also plays with Drain and Fraki on live plays with a lot less resi and it works well for him – I just like having enough of a resilience/stamina buffer to survive certain setups like wizard cleaves (LSD, shatterplay, etc) or teams such as RLS or RPS which may go extremely hard on the warrior – particularly to be able to survive cc chains on my healer. It does I guess relate a bit to the setup, as I gemmed a bit more offensively when I used to play warrior mage priest – as in that setup I’m something like 70-80% if not more of the damage, whereas playing WLP an affliction lock can put out a very respectable amount of damage so I can sometimes afford to wear a bit more defensive gear as I’m not the only one doing a lot of damage in the setup.
There has been a flaming debate about whether or not LSD is the new power-house as far as WoW comps go. Now that you’ve witnessed them at Regionals, what is your opinion on the line up in the broad picture? Can Europe hope for top spots at Blizzcon?
I feel LSD is an extremely powerful setup which can beat nearly every setup if played well. I don’t feel it’s impossible to beat like a lot of people believe, but only a few setups really have a chance vs it and I feel it has a lot less setups that would be considered hard or fair matches than most setups do. I feel europe, particularly aAa has a good chance at top spots at blizzcon – the only teams that I expect to be possible contenders would be complexity red and loaded black.
LSD’s or Shadowmournes, which would you rather see removed from the arena (or makes you rage more. I can’t decide myself)?
Shadowmournes, if there’s anything I hate about arena on live it’s the imbalance between the gear of people who purely PvP and those who PvE for better gear. That’s why I liked the TR as everyone had equal gear. Not that I like LSD by any measure, but LSD is an overpowered comp of which there are many others, both now and in the future. PvE vs PvP gear is a problem that’s been in the game for ages and probably won’t really ever be changed.
What does the future hold for SK Sansibar, any possibility of seeing you guys at an MLG anytime soon?
I’m not really sure, it’s too late to go to MLG raleigh but we may end up going to a later MLG event. I believe there’s going to be an online tournament sometime soon in europe so we may take place in that too.
How does Cyclone currently compare to Misery when you played on it?
It’s just a more active BG with better teams (particularly at the top of the ladder), although it’s become increasingly inactive lately but I imagine that’s the case across the board.
Back in Misery you played the WindowsMediaPlayer setup, would you recommend this to other warriors and provide any pointers for the warrior in this setup?
It’s a fun setup but it’s harder than most setups you could play as a warrior (such as double healer, or prot warrior setups). It’s just important to coordinate well with your mage (who acts mostly as a CCer to allow you the warrior to do as much damage as possible) and your priest to make sure everyone is safe and to keep people alive. Some games I’ve done more than 10 times the damage of my mage, just because he’s had to play defensive all game and when he’s playing offensively it’s more about hitting the right CC to allow me to do as much damage as possible.
Any Shoutouts?
Would like to thank my sponsor SK Sansibar, my teammates Drain and Fraki (and Blade) and some friends: Blowi, Kelz, Kubus, Rezie, Bmx.
Thanks for your time James!
