WOW: Arena Success At Last

My warlock's team has finally found what feels like a comfortable class composition in recent weeks and has finally taken over (again) as the strongest team on my server. Oddly enough, the development that has allowed us to jump past 2000 rating has been swapping out our priest for another mage. I don't blame our priest's skills or something, I just think that our old class composition was obsolete. Really, it was obsolete already at the end of season 1. The recent surge in popularity of "Eurocomp" (a.k.a. rogue, mage, disc priest, warlock, resto druid) and "Trifecta" (a.k.a. warrior, enh shaman, rogue, priest, paladin) was really hurting our old composition because both of those compositions exert devastating pressure on warlocks.

Many teams have given up on warlocks, but obviously, I couldn't. Given the selection of players on our team's roster, we theorycrafted that adding another mage instead of a priest would strengthen us against both of those compositions because we'd be adding another anti melee crowd control class as well as significant firepower. The old model of a single priest mana burning the opposing team's casters was simply not powerful enough after the mana burn nerf relative to the offensive firepower the other teams could bring to bear on our team.

Thus, our warrior, warlock, mage, mage, paladin lineup was born and immediately our rating went up. In hindsight, it's been kind of ironic that we spent so long trying to recruit a skilled priest and then in the end, we had to bench him. The personal aspect of maintaining an active arena team roster is the hardest part for me. People become friends as they play together, so it's very hard for me to alter my team's class composition. How do you ask a friend to sit out because your team does better without him without it sounding like you're blaming him for your losses? Luckily our priest offered to bench himself for the good of the team. I mean it was apparent that our team simply didn't perform as well when we ran with him (given that his personal rating had fallen to more than 200 below the team's rating).

While I don't feel like my team is extraordinarily skilled, I am proud of the way we have been playing. We are the most consistently active and now the most successful team on my server and that is definitely something I feel I can be proud of, since I'm the leader.

WOW: Battlegroup 9 Server PVP Strength Levels

Battlegroup 9 has some strong teams on many servers, but one way to gauge the overall strength of each server is to look at the overall ranking of the 20th strongest 5v5 team on each server. The numbers you see are pretty good at telling the story of the overall skill of that server.

Tichondrius (PVP): 33
Blackrock (PVP): 108
Kil'jaeden (PVP): 211
Ner'zhul (PVP): 326
Frostwolf (PVP): 358
Barthilas (PVP): 372
Frostmourne (PVP): 478
Thaurissan (PVE): 647
Kilrogg (PVE): 795
Proudmoore (PVE): 1060
Khaz'goroth (PVE): 1510
Vek'Nilash (PVE): 1529
Silver Hand (RP): 1551
Dath'Remar (PVE): 1725
Sen'jin (PVE): 1725
Aman'thul (PVE): 1801
Nagrand (PVE): 2153
Caelastrasz (PVE): 3065

Note that every single PVP server is above every single non PVP server. No surprise there. Tichondrius is also clearly a tier above all the other PVP servers.

At least as far as PVE servers go, my server (Kilrogg) is the second strongest by this metric.

Also, to be fair, Caelastrasz and Nagrand are very new servers so I'm sure their pool of players with the gear to compete is very small.

WOW: The Easy Way Out

After trying many times to get 1850 to get a spellblade for my warlock with my paladin friend, she finally convinced me to give up on the notion and just do it the easy way. It was making us fight a lot and just get frustrated with the situation more and more. I fully admit I should have given up on the notion earlier, but I am a person who likes to believe that the game is balanced enough that we should be able to overcome the class composition disadvantages.

In any case, in two short sessions, I managed to achieve 1850 for a spellblade with a restoration druid only losing 3 games total, one of which was me disconnecting when we were close to victory. It's totally ridiculous that we could have so little experience running a comp and consistently win so much more easily. To top it off, our druid friend's gear is not nearly as good as my paladin friend's gear. We didn't even do anything outstandingly well. We just simply overpowered every team we faced with the exception of the two who legitimately beat us. Gogo Blizzard game balance.

Oh well, it's done now. Both my priest and warlock have their final gear for the season pretty much done because I'm not on any teams making a serious push for 2000 right now. Ah well. Now there's even less reason for me to think about World Of Warcraft. =)

WOW: Battlegroups Are A Bad Concept

There is always a lot of discussion about the different battlegroups (i.e. groups of servers that can PVP with each other) and various claims about the different strengths of the various battlegroups. The hype about Battlegroup 9, a.k.a Bloodlust, has made it significantly more difficult to acquire our rating requirements. All of the glory seekers who transfer to Bloodlust really have made it significantly harder to acquire high ratings this season than the last. My 5v5 teams are around 250 rating lower than they were in the previous season with the same players playing.

I know people like to mention that the top players in other battlegroups have come here and have made it to the top. However, I think it's clear that the very best players that were originally in each battlegroup were pretty competitive with each other. The fact that so many have since congregated in Bloodlust have made it so that the top ratings are saturated with exceptionally good players. In turn, these top players push down the decent players' ratings (like mine).

A couple of my friends transferred to another battlegroup very recently and have been trying to get me to transfer there as well with stories about how much easier it is there. It is honestly tempting to transfer there.

I'm guessing it's technically infeasible, but Blizzard could make all battlegroups completely even if they merged all battlegroups together within the U.S. Then those of us suffering from the hype over my battlegroup will be able to achieve the same gear that people of our skill level in other battlegroups can. It would even help the problem a little if servers rotated among the various battlegroups a little bit so that the rating point pools intermingled. Perhaps have the servers shuffle battlegroups once a week?

Battlegroups are hurting the whole arena system badly unless something is done to make them even with one another.

WOW: Finally 1850 For My Priest

After a long and frustrating few weeks of trying to achieve 1850 on either my warlock on my priest, I managed to do it! I didn't have to compromise my goal of doing it with my paladin friend either! My paladin friend was starting to hate the game because of how much trouble paladins have in the small arena brackets but we busted out paladin/priest/warrior and managed to achieve 1850 and earn her paladin and my priest our season 3 weapons!

Krakatoan

Paladin/priest/warrior is remarkably strong vs a lot of popular compositions, which led to our success. Like we beat the popular rogue/mage/priest lineup very consistently and fair decently well vs druid teams.

Now I need to see if I can manage 1850 on my warlock with my paladin friend because we're inseparable. ;)

Leadership Skills

It's funny, playing arena in World of Warcraft has made me realize how rare it is that people are able to be good leaders. On my warlock's team, I'm the leader, so we have a reasonably good leader. Consequently that team has been fairly successful consistently.

On my priest's team, we continually have problems with coordination because I cannot lead the offense as a priest whose main job is kiting and defensive type stuff. Our main warrior is an awesome guy, but he's of the simple "tell me what to kill and I'll kill it" mindset. Our warlock is trying to step up into a leadership type role, but he honestly lacks the tactical knowledge to make the right calls and quickly. One of our two mages is also very quiet and not confident enough to call plays. Our other mage would be fairly capable to calling plays, but he's not always in the game and he is not the sort who volunteers to do it. When he does it, though, he does a fairly good job. We really need someone on the team to assume the role of leader of the offense.

Being a good leader is not easy. You need to have the confidence and knowledge to quickly call plays that will determine your team's fate. It's not easy to accept the responsibility that a lot of times when you lose, it's your fault for calling the wrong play. You have to have the patience to teach your team what you want them to do better when things go wrong. You have to also have the desire to win so you can inspire your team to keep pushing just a little farther than they thought they were capable of. You have to be able to adapt on the fly as situations arise but you have to still never lose sight of the overall strategy. You need to have the patience to manage the team members and the organization to track people's schedules.

Honestly, when we started my warlock's team, I didn't think we'd be capable of getting much more than an 1850 rating by the end of the season. However, we've come quite far since then, even finishing last week as the number 1 team on my server and 80th overall in the battlegroup.

Arena Season 3 In World Of Warcraft

Season 2 had a very disappointing end for me (hence my lack of posts lately). I've been dealing with keeping my arena teams functional for the close of season 2 and preparing them for the start of season 3. First off, my dear friend paladin's computer totally died during Thanksgiving week and we had some serious issues getting the team functional even. She had to pull out an old backup computer from her basement and install it, which made it pretty impossible for us to succeed through our regularly scheduled sessions. She did turn off every graphical option possible to boost performance so that we could do one last good push on the last day of the season. We got to within 10 points of our goal (earning the "Duelist") title, but then fell back down. That was a real downer, but so many matches we lost were extremely close and we would have had a very good chance at winning if we had a slightly different class composition. So I've had to fight my own frustrations and push my teams forward.

On my warlock's team, we did an impromptu session yesterday, starting off this season 10-0 just to get the ball rolling. We'll be running our usual sessions this weekend and we've decided to start recruiting a good discipline priest (if you coincidentally are one and want to play on Kilrogg with us, lemme know!).

On my priest's 3v3, I convinced my dear friend rogue to spec more for PVP instead of PVE and we took off to an 11-1 start this season late last night. The one game we lost, we simply didn't manage to finish off the other team's warlock in the opener and after we used up our super aggressive opening tricks, we lost the endurance match to their superior endurance composition.

On my priest's 5v5, our original paladin showed up again late last night, so hopefully we can run him and our new paladin while we get our new paladin geared up. Our original paladin was by far our best paladin of the 3 we went through in season 2 in terms of gear and skill. His one problem was his temper. =(

Hopefully Season 3 brings good fortune and possibly Duelist titles for both of my characters. I feel like this season will probably be my last arena season, so I want it to be good.

WoW Arena Difficulties

Yesterday, I downloaded a video of one of the best warlocks in World of Warcraft, Azael (now Azazael after transferring to my battlegroup). He was on the highest rated 5v5 arena team in the world. However, due to some strange team drama, their team reformed under a new roster, resetting them back down quite a lot of rating points. However, watching his team play was very interesting to me because he plays a warlock in 5v5 with almost the same spec I have, so it was a good glimpse into top level warlock play.

Last night's arena sessions started off fairly well. My warlock's team pushed over 2000 a couple of times only to get pushed back down, but we weren't doing too badly. Then amazingly, we got matched against Azael's new roster and got stomped pretty hard. Luckily they were back up over 2400-ish already so we only lost 2 points. By the end of our session, we finished at 2010, our first finish over 2000 ever. Yay!

Then I had to go run on my priest's team. Things were pretty miserable and we ended up tanking about 50 rating and finishing under 1900. Along the way, we got matched against another of the teams in Azael's video and lost 1 point to them in that crushing defeat. So it was kind of a difficult night.

I'm not sure why things sometimes work out that way, but I think it's getting pretty clear that my warlock's team is better than my priest's team. We just execute offense more consistently cuz I boss people around. My priest's team lacks unified and experienced offensive coordination.

I did find it amusing that I had to face two of the teams in that video I had watched earlier in the day, though.

Getting Close To 2000

My World of Warcraft news: My warlock's 5v5 arena team finished this week at 1986 and my priest's 5v5 arena team finished at 1961. Both getting close to hitting the 2000 mark! =) Because this arena season has continued for so long, my priest has already bought 2 pieces from the DPS priest set and my warlock has full season 2 armor and is gonna buy the spellblade this week.

I feel kind of proud that my teams have come this far. I built and trained my warlock's team from scratch, pretty much. I even assembled a team website to explain arena strategy and stuff to my team members for that team. My priest's team, I'm the only remaining member who has been in every single game since the team was formed. Our paladin initially also had similar attendance, but he quit the game, sadly. It's exceptionally hard to get a strong arena team going on a PVE server like mine, especially in the infamous BG9 where many of the top arena teams have gathered. As far as my server goes, my two teams ("Fodder Time" and "we pew pew u qq") are among the best....

Next season will be the first season that my characters don't start undergeared compared to everyone else. It will be interesting to see how it goes.