TWOTHREEFOURFIVE

So there are some pretty stupid nick names for different arena makeups but the comp I've been recently playing really takes the cake. It is really shocking that someone called Warrior / Ele Shaman / Frost Mage / Disc Priest / Holy Paladin 2345 and it stuck. It isn't catchy and its not amusing. But apparently it did stick and even spawned 2 copycat naming conventions 2346 and 2347. Apparently 5 = frost mage, 6 = warlock, and 7 = hunter. Anyway I've been playing that comp recently and doing alright, esepcially considering I had never played my paladin in 5s before. My gear was pretty gross, with only 2 pieces of relentless and 3 furious - and almost no wrathful off pieces. My GS was 5100 compared to the rest of my teams > 5800 so they were definitely carrying me a bit. Of all the people on the team I have one of the least difficult jobs as I mainly spam flash of light with the occasional holy light bomb or cooldown to save someone. That being said my priest is extremely aggressive both on mana burns and offensive pressure so the better I stay on top of healing the more it allows him to control the mana pace of the match.

One thing I am noticing I need to work on a lot more is my positioning. I have played 2k+ in all brackets on my priest as disc before and its amazing the difference in where I need to be as a paladin vs my priest. Priests have a good number of mobile heals and their positioning forces the enemy to react with the threat of mana burns. The difference on the paladin is I am way more effective of a healer when I don't have to move and get to pump out heals. In order to do this I need to almost predict where the fight is going to be so I can be where the action is going to be as well as where it is now. With 2 defensive dispels I don't need to worry too much about polymorphs but I could still improve a lot about deciding when I hide from cc and when I stay in and heal.

The other thing that I have been working on is using my hammer at good times. 2345 has a lot of offensive pressure, which acts like CC in a way by forcing people to line our frost / elemental turrets. Besides that all we really have is polymorph on demand so we really have to use our hex / fear / hammer wisely. I'm still learning but I've had some big stuns that have scored us kills when we didn't have a polymorph or counterspell available to use against one of their healers. My general strategy there is to inch closer to their paladin or druid. If I run up to their paladin early I can usually lure his hammer when it really isn't effective. My team is pretty verbal on swaps so I know when it's time to help out. Most of the time their healer can trinket it right away but that brief interrupt is enough time for our burst to drop someone very low and even if we don't score a kill they are burning cooldowns, mana, and iniative.

The new random BG system is simply amazing compared to the old suffer through isle of conquest strand of the ancients to complete the set. I am at full wrathful off pieces on my rogue and only need to upgrade furious ring to wrathful ring on my paladin after 2 hard weekends of farming. I wish alliance stood a chance in WG on my server, but in the last week we won a total of 3 times. The silver lining is with 9 tenacity I'm going 30-1 soloing on my rogue taking on 3 people at once and winning with under 20% health. I know its not skill but it is fun to break face sometime. We'll see how much the upgrades matter on my paladin tonight, we're hoping to break 2000 team rating this week. We started the team from 0 (ugh) and have kept a ~65% win ratio. Our initial 1800 MMR quickly rose once we started beating a few 2200-2300 teams but we're hanging steady now at about 2200 MMR because we keep running into a really good Euro Comp (Lock/Mage/Rogue/Resto Druid/Disc Priest). That comp was invented in S3 to beat 2345, and while we haven't given up, they have both the comp advantage and 5 really solid players.

I'll try and fraps some matches tonight and see if it is even worth watching from the paladin's perpsective :)

I'm back!

Yeah its been a while, so fucking sue me. I've been busy with... yeah I got nothing I get distracted easily. Anyway Season 8 has been interesting so far playing a new fun comp with Karial and Ernnie and trying to ride the druid/lock synergy train towards goodness. It would be better if I was a warrior (obviously) but here are some key tips I discovered our first week of playing.

1. Queue with energy - you got to be pumped to get into that fight. Positivity is at least as good as plate with several defensive cooldowns, incredible damage, and a fuck you move where only death can stop you (I wrote this before you could disarm it - ty Blizzard).

2. Go over strategies with your team mates while you buff. Our warlock shared this brilliance with us in a recent match
Ernnie: you guys should stealth
Rogue + Druid in Unison: WE ARE FUCKING TRYING TO
Blizzard: hahhaha we outsourced our servers to Antartica to save on heating costs. This allows us to enjoy this



3. Once the match starts don't be afraid to adapt. In our 10th and final game last week none of us spawned before the gates opened, and since I was already being judged by the holy paladin, I quickly adapted by vanishing. My druid then spawned in the middle of the warrior and dk. He popped barkskin like a champion. I knew he was gonna get squashed so I cheapshotted the warrior. The warrior was having none of that and instantly trinketed and span in a circle like a ceiling fan made of knives. This game is like rock paper scissors, only in this case spinning hatchet of death, tree, and helpless dude who can't save his druid. Our warlock managed to spawn with 10 seconds remaining until we needed to leave the arena (which no matter how hard we clicked did not work).

4. Momentum is everything
Match #9 from the same week we spawned before the gates opened (hooray) but then froze in place. When our lag ceased the gates were open and the druid dk and hunter had flares death and decay cleverly awaiting us directly under the pipe, which then proceeded to vomit us out onto their waiting grasp. We used this momentum, and their massive incompetence to get a restealth off and open hard on the hunter. Riding the momentum train we were clevelry winning until the lag hit again leaving our druid unable to cast, and poor Ernnie got death gripped into his early grave.

Ok all joking aside our resto druid lock rogue comp has been very fun to play. When we are doing things right we have a lot of CC. Our general strategy is, I stunlock whatever melee will prevent Ernnie from dotting everyone up. When I finish the stunlock, Karial will rotate his cyclones on while I switch to our main target. With Ernnie/Karial rotating cyclones and fears and me swapping quickly to play a mix of offense and defense we can put out some serious pressure. We can then blind a healer or if the healer is exposed from trying to keep up, hard swap to him. It takes a lot of coordination but we are loving it so far. The biggest problem is finding time to play (those ICC bosses aren't going to kill themselves) and a certain someone keeps leaving on weekends to do real life stuff... what a loser.

Back to Arenas

The Bits and I finally found time to 2v2 again this last weekend.  Ahh how I miss it.  We were doin pretty good! Like 6-1 and we're fighting a prot pally and warr.  I'm doing my best to control the warrior, roots to cyclone and back to roots and whatnot.  Their pally is dotted and at like 50% health, but I am DYING!  I try and run behind some boxes to hide and heal, but mr pally finds me...He's laying into me, and I'm actually a little worried I may die.  All of the sudden he just DROPS...wtf happened?  That little nub cleansed a UA off himself while DPSing me......


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BAHAHAHAHAHA.  I don't think we stopped laughing for a solid 5 minutes.  It also probably contributed to our 0-3 run we went on following that.  Oh well, worth it in my opinion.

Too Busy Taunting

So this is a tribute to Jong about his Least Favorite PvP Spell.  The Bits, Raithen, and I were doing some arena's last night in Ring of Trials.  I'm running away from this DK who's trying to eat my lunch.  I'm about to run behind one of the pillars meanwhile I am laughing over my shoulder at the DK who is Nature's Grasped to the ground as I cheetah away...YOINK! I'm in squishy form next to the pissed off DK.  I went splat.  Raithen and Bits continue on their merry way.  Raithen tries to run behind a pillar to re-stealth.  YOINK! Raithen goes down in a blaze of glory.

Yea, Death Grip sucks.

Arena Match & My Char's Facebook Status

Last night the Bits, Raithen, and I decided to do some 3v3.  Just a little feral/holy-pal/afflock.  We're not pushing for gladiator (yet) as Bits' lock just dinged 80 not too long ago, and frankly, I suck at the feral ness.  But we were playing and having a fairly good time, winning as many as we lost.  So our last match we're fighting, frost mage, hunter, holy pal.  The exact kill order eludes, but I'm pretty sure their mage went down first, followed swiftly by the Bits.  Raithen is able to rez the Bits, who dies almost immediatley again, meanwhile having our pali dumping mana into him.  Now their pally is rezzes the mage (That's my bad, I tried to get to him in time, but failed.)  So I kill him again after stopping his evocate.  Well we play around with the hunter and I attacking each other, neither of us really doing much damage.  Both our pally's are gaining mana without having to drink.  I'm hopping around in bear form as we try and distract them for the rez again.  But they're sticking to Raithen like flies on....well, you know.  I'm trying to peel them and then realize, wait.  I have a rez too amiright?!  So I run away, hide behind a pillar and REZ MY FALLEN COMRADE!!  Hunter realizes what is going on just a smidge too late for him.  Bits comes up, stays alive, we finish off hunter and then pally, ya ya ya! USA! USA!

We decided that was a good one to stop on.

I armoried myself cause I was bored this morning and oh wow they updated the armory!  There's Karial staring at me in 3 EFFING D.  Not only that but I can put him in different poses??  and HOLYCOWWTFOMG he's got "recent activity"  Pretty soon I'll have to update his status and let it tweet out to the world.

"Karial would rather be in an arena right now"

Yeesh, we're getting closer to a live feed where people can watch my char's every move.  A lot of people are going to wonder why I spend so much time naked with Bits and Raithen in the Howling Fjord.

Karial: "Ok, you jump in the icy water first"
Bits: "NO! You won't do it, YOU go first."
Raithen: "Fine, fine, fine.  We'll all go on 3."

How do you learn to arena?

Obviously the answer is to play arena matches right? Well not really I've actually found this to be one of the worst ways to introduce an arena virgin into the wonderful (and fucking painful) world of arenas.

Stream of Consciousness

So after the long Holiday season, lots of traveling, and not a lot of WoW. I'm BACK!

So the Bits has a warlock now that he's gearing up, which means lots of heroic runs. Problem 1: He is the tank for our groups of insta-queue. Which means we needed to find another one. Raithen's response about asking if his Pally would/could tank. "Umm, I threw away/vendored all my tanking gear" Alright then, I've got a feral spec. Maybe not (even close to) the greatest, but could be fun.