Teh ninja has arrived!

Nothing more to say really :)

Oh yea! warriors with a healbot in BGs are FUUUUUN!



Cba writing a hole lot just now, i'd like to do a 2v2 strategy guide, but not having been at super high rating yet feels kinda stupid acting like i know everything :)


-Artanias

S3 started, No gladiator

As the title says, we never reached gladiator. We kept on running into teams we had very little practise agains't. We topped off at 2134 but then got beaten back down to 20xx, it was getting really really late so we both agreed on stopping.

Next day i logged on to a Challenger rank atleast, ah well next season i thought to myself. I had 5k arena points and about 36k honor banked. I rushed and bought the silk belt and the s3 gloves, feeling a bit sad though since i didn't have the materials for the gloves, also i was lacking some WSG marks to buy the bracers...

I used a huge amount of the day farming Primals and gold to get myself all the enchanting materials waiting, all the time waiting for Nakedsnake to get online so we could start pushing for 1850, seeing as both of us are very anxious to get the hand on the new weapons, unlike everyone else who seems to be buying the new set pieces first. Nakedsnake never got online, and i did verbally abuse him when we talked thursday evening, he blamed work and terrible traffic, slack i say. So we started thursday very shortly after i got online to work on the 350 rating needed for our weapons. Queues were far from terrible actually, upto 10 mins max, and mostly around 7 mins. The first game started with the gate opening, and the scoreboard instantly showing a "Draw" with no enemies inside.... right. So we started off with a 9-0 win streak until we had a silly loss agains't druid/warlock, we met alot of disc priest/rogue teams, a setup which we almost got on farm now id say, also met a pretty crappy mage/rogue team a few times.

Oh yea, id like to give you an example of how much Nakedsnake really sucks cock.
The situation: hunter/shaman in arena which me and naked have farmed for 2-3 games already by always going for the hunter while CCing the shaman. Naked then for some fishy reason thought it would be nice to "keep them guessing" by going for the shaman, result: 17 rating lost, after questioning nakeds manhood through more verbal abuse we queued again and and took our 17 rating back from those guys.

When we hit our top, 1774, we suddenly started meeting a druid/lock team from skullcrusher again and again, we beat them one single time, and prayed to allah to never see their faces once more..... yea right, they beat us all the way back down to 1729, this is when we decided to call it a night, 5 straight games agains't the same team that we just couldn't seem to beat was a bit too much, and we didn't wanna risk going too low. Though once we stopped i was really happy, the score ended 26-10 and we had gotten alot of practise. So today i hope naked will be online again so we can push for the last rating upto our s3 weapons!

-Artanias

The Green beast from Holland

So yea, last night after me and naked was fighting WAY too many lock teams, i was starting to get really really cranky. Now we have been talking alot about how much we want a 3v3 team, however we would really like to go with a priest if we could, problem is finding a skilled and free disc priest these days are next to impossible.

So today Maix(zheros new pvp resto druid) whispered me joking if we couldn't boost him a bit in arena, i knew he was joking, but i talked to naked about starting a 3v3 team with him, naked agree we could do it, so i asked Maix if he was up, obvious answer really. As you might have guessed, "The green beast" comes from Maix incredible gear, going into arena with a fresh lvl 70 druid who has 7k hp and 20 resilience was quite a gamble wouldn't you say?

While i used the prep time for the first couple of matches gloating at Maix gear we actually did pretty ok. Maix(zhero) being a Veteran in general pvp obviously knew what to do most of the time, i once asked for a cyclone on a shaman only to notice cyclone was on 0.5 sec before i asked, so mate big thumbs up, thats impressive work from a fresh lvl 70.

So 2.3 has hit, am i happy? FUCK YEA! Ritual of refreshment is so damn nice, cant explain how much i love the spell, not to mention the table is just pwnage in itself, the better ice barrier is kinda noticable. I can also see a slight improvement in my frostbolt dmg, so ye, 2.3 is awesome, daily BG quests and daily heroic quests are just awesome, now im not as broke as i used to be.

On another note, i lost a shitload of honor yesterday, i wanted to buy one single Runed ornate Ruby, the epic dmg gem through honor, problem was i clicked the item once and got the error "That item is busy" so i clicked it multiple times afterwards only to have 5 gems in my bags suddenly, leaving me with 799 honor points :(
Immediately made a ticked so i really hope a GM can revert it.

Now the topic of the month, hunters in 2.3, compared to everyone else i only got one thing to say, STOP WHINING TARDS, your all a bunch of motherfucking crybabies, yea hunters got buffed, and are now pretty troublesome, but i used to beat decent MM hunters without the use of my pet or iceblock, something had to be done really.

The rogue buffs: I LOVE EM, seeing as i run mage/rogue in 2v2 with Nakedsnake i couldn't be anymore happy really. At the moment we got 2137 rating, running a bit up a down all the time, mostly encountering a mirror team who are both humans just detecting naked and kicking his ass..... i hate humans so much >.<
We still make mistakes and lose some stupid matches, but up until now we havn't faced anything that was completely impossible to defeat. Because of this i told him i wanna push for gladiator rank.

Now according to http://www.arenajunkies.com/calculator/ we need about 2208 rating and im absolutely sure we can manage that, just with a hole lot of practise, and less stupid mistakes(for example some rogue letting me try to solo a SL/SL lock while he was busy searching for a stealthed druid)

Anyway, ill update in approx 1 week, having reached gladiator or not.

-Artanias

Iceblock Trainable in 2.4

Source

Now, when i first read this i almost jumped off my chair(which woulda sucked since i was doing a test in school), finally! dragons breath in arena, my dream came true. It would be imba and frost spec will be no more, but then it hit me. Fire still wont be viable, why you ask ? Ill explain it.

First of all the damage:
Yea in pve, fire kicks the living shit out of frost, so why not in pvp? simple answer: resilience.
Frost has shatter, and a water elemental. Shatter gives you super high crit even on high resilience targets. Fire however, has combustion, but while this might be nice in a 1on1 fight, its not worth a whole lot when you need on-demand burst in a 5v5 match. Because combustion, sadly lives on RNG, even though it WILL guarentee 3 crits, its impossible to say when those will happen, a ranged frost nova is just so much more superior in that regard.
Next, the water elemental doesnt give a damn about resilience, mine hits for approx 730-750 on average with its waterbolts, that is just about 300 dps, meanwhile i can cast my frostbolts, sheep, nova, CS. Fire just doesn't have that huge luxury. Also, next to rogues, fire mage were the class that critted the most pre TBC, rogues now however have AR/prep as a spec that doesnt rely alot on critical damage, fire still does.


Mana/survivability:
Even with iceblock fire will still have lesser survivability than frost(as it should be) ice barrier, superior snares, will still keep frost up higher.
Now mana, fire is extremely mana ineffecient for arena compared to frost, a single dragons breath costs 700 mana, that is HUGE(compared to WE that costs about 340 does way more damage, has a ranged nova and lasts quite a bit longer), blast wave is almost the same, and as a "golden talent" isnt really powerfull compared to an improved CoC. First of all the mana cost is almost the same, damage is close to the same, but CoC snares for longer, and isn't affected 2 times by resilience.
Blast wave both get the direct reducement in crit damage AND the reduced dmg from dots(ignite) not to mention blizzard did the "awesome" thing to change the animation to a minsized frost nova. Taking this into consideration, and the already obvious mana issues mages have in arenas, fire is really gonna be lacking.

Now, how to fix it ?
Damage:
Without buffing pve fire to the point that its imba, i think the only option is to remove the dmg reduction on ignite through resilience(with it being a dot) and some sort of "crit through resilience" talent, a stackable debuff through improved scorch? And no, i really dont want a Phoenix or a Fire elemental pet, so dont even think about it! Of course, this would need HUGE tweaking, to be succesfull or even balanced.

Mana/survivability:
Honestly, i dont feel fire needs more survivability than what is given through a trainable icblock, its supposed to be high damage and less survivability, so its better to leave it at that.
Mana however, a reducement on the mana costs of blast wave and dragons breath would help alot, especially because Dragons breath is such a great spell, and its gonna be used as much as possible to help interrupt healers. Blizzard also says that they will buff our mana issues in longer fights, the new evocation will obviously also help on this problem, and a buffed mana gem is gonna go some way.

Now even though i just proven that fire still will be inferior, im still gonna try it out, just as i think 80% of arena mages will, ill try it out, and see how far it will go.

Oh yea no funny pictures for the moment, im still in school waiting to start a math lesson, ill post some if i got new ones at home :)

-Artanias


Update: Pictures! they are, however all from the same player, Eleuteurios :P

This guy is as fucked up as a french whorehouse, but as funny as an entire season of friends.

Neilyo 9, does god play wow? 2k Rating bitches!

Finallyyy! my 5v5 team hit 2k rating, 2k EXACTLY, not a point more or less.
After a rough wednesday just after the reset, were we only met teams that gave us 1-3 points and only met teams that lost us 1-3 points, we started again sunday with Arctore filling the rogue spot. We met 80% 2345 setups, to be honest, im getting annoyed by meeting that kind of team so many times just gets boring calling the same target every fight, however we ended up facing 2345 but a hunter instead of a shaman a couple of times, and let me tell you, Ice trap on the tomb in lordaeron when my entire team is stuck up there getting entrapment procs all over can really fuck up things big time. Only player who is capable of escaping it is Arctore popping CloS, makes for some very nasty moments were we arent able to dps properly so for the future, hunter traps = bad. We still gotta work on our teamwork, timing nukes and stuff, and i gotta switch targets more. Think ill also switch the job of our rogues, seeing as before i wanted them to control the warrior, i so often saw that even if we get a perfect start, sooner or later the war is still gonna run freely around beating on our spriest, probably gonna stick our rogue on the priest or shaman from now on, stopping mana burns, dispells and heals will be a wonderfull thing. And the dps a rogue can perform on a warrior is really minor, compared to our magical dps, ive got quiet alot of ideas on my mind lately that i would love to try out, one thing i really wish was possible is more days where we could play, so far its mostly wednesday, sunday and monday, and the times we actually get to play more than 1 day a week is too rare in my opinion.

Bad news, Dayender our spriest said he wanted to start playing his rogue alot more in s3, and our 2nd rogue Arctore said he wants to play a resto druid. However as long as Dayender just doesnt stop his priest, i gotta admit, getting a resto druid instead of a paladin would make me very happy, actually since day 1 i've been interested in a druid healer, but getting a well geared, and well played resto druid who doesnt whine(harmonia :P) is impossible, there is some around, but all of them have a team they dont want to leave.
Now arctore, whos nothing less but an excellent rogue player wants to roll a resto druid, is just perfect! Harmonia is even about to quit playing wow, on top of this, Arctore and him are RL mates! If we are lucky this could turn into something awesome! :P

On another note my 2v2 hit 2126 rating, Nimra sorta stopped playing completely, havn't even been able to catch him on msn. So i invited Nakedsnake, always wanted to play mage+rogue again so it was a perfect opportunity. One thing though, this war+pala team fucked us over each and every single time both were humans, so just when the pala got sapped, the warrior popped perception and started beating naked down, i just couldnt stop it, tried everything, sheep, nova, snares nothing seemed to help at all. So from now on were gonna change the tactics a bit, atleast agains't humans. We were very very lucky to not meet a single druid+lock or war+lock team, so this helped our rating a bit :)

Neilyo 9
If god played wow, his name would be Neilyo, why you ask? Well that's simple, Neilyo is quite possibly one of the most skilled players I've ever seen on video playing a rogue, his CD usage is next to flawless, and the way he is extremely good at noticing whats happening around him. This video has a duel series with ming, Neilyo uses the engi goggles and highened senses, which means even Ming with perception doesn't have a huge chance doing an opener which leads to... well watch the movie :)
He also fights a gnome warrior who actually beats him 4-1, the fight is pretty nice to see, has a funny moment too :P

You also see some fights agains't Pandemics 3v3 team, neilyo runs rogue/lock/druid agains't their rogue/mage/priest, it really is a counter setup to Pandemic, but the fights are fun to watch none the less.

So go ahead and DL it :)
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=48387

A warning though, this is a pure dueling/arena movie, if you dont like that, or long fights, dont watch it.

Ill update with new screenshots once i get home :)

Update:
Pictures!
First one is Hives/Browlar laying down the law on our slacking guildmembers, this time Bowra getting asked to join Gruul!

Next 2 is Veritha/Eleutherios:

Last one is a memory of good old Barrens chat :)

Shamans in 5v5 arena, an in depth look

So, Aloran my mate has asked me to write my opinion about Enhancement shamans in arena, now i could make this article REALLY short and just say "Spec elemental you crybaby", instead i wanna try and go into detail the pros and cons, not only about an enh shaman but also resto and ele oh ye, ill only focus on 5v5, or else this will get WAY too long. One thing before i start, as a shaman you will 99% of the time be main target to die or to be CCed, easy as that.


First something that is equal to all shamans in what they bring to an arena team:

Bloodlust, 35% extra attack and cast speed, should be pretty clear in itself how friggin awesome this is, spam mana burning, spam healing, spam dps, etc etc, simply helps you get stuff done faster, doesnt need alot of explaining.

Totems, grounding, earthbind, poison cleansing, and almost most importantly, winfury totem. Grounding can with good timing save you from a CSed paladin, that hurtfull deathcoil or sheep, yea its 5v5 and alot of spells and being thrown around, still grounding aint to be underestimated. Earthbind, quiet clear what this does, snares the entire enemy team(if well placed). Poison cleansing, dispelling Wound poison, viper sting, crippling poison and even blind, remove a crucial blind or viper sting and generally having a poison remover is obviously a huge asset.

Healing, pretty much a no brainer shamans can heal, of course how good depends on the spec, not much explanation needed here.

Shocks/purge, r1 earth shocking enemy healers and purging buffs off the main target, if the shaman aint dpsing or healing, he should be purging the enemy big time, removing a mages Molten armor or mage armor can be quiet annoying seeing as theyre more fragile towards a warrior or rogue. Purging all buffs off priests are devastating, they rely on their buffs to keep them alive under focus fire, Inner fire, renew, PoM, and shield, remove all this and theyre fodder for a warrior.


So! Enhancement:
Pros:
Fucking, sick, crazy, uncontrollable, burst dps. Yea, thats right, given the timing and luck no class in the entire game can burst dps like an Enhancement shaman with a big fat 2 hander. The last time i dueled Aloran with his Deep thunder, he procced winfury(yea i call it that) on me, and did 2 HITS for 1500 and a normal one for about 750 something, thats 3750 dmg non crit, probably the first time ever i nearly shat myself playing a videogame, this was followed up by a stormstrike and an Earth shock, suddenly i saw my 10k hp ass on 50%, needless to say i paniced and lost the duel, me being the great loser i immideately started to whine about how lame winfury is, and that he only won because of the stun procced on his Deep thunder, but anyway. Just goes to show how fucking sick their damage can be, its always been like this and most likely always will be, unmatchable, uncontrollable, sick, high burst dps.

Now why is this good? Personally i see it best in a 2345 team, seeing normally they cant just charge a random person and kill them instantly, they wear down the enemy slowly looking for an opening to burst down someone, an enh shaman adds greatly to this, seeing as he VERY easy can create openings with a few winfury procs(stick him on a clothie and sooner of later that guy will be below 50%)

Cons:
The key word, uncontrollable if youre unlucky you can be running around for 20 seconds without getting one single winfury proc, that is completely shit and makes you wanna cry and whine at your shaman "why are you so gay?". Uncontrollable = bad, enh shamans cant follow orders like other classes if the leader says "burst priest!" all he can do is walk up and poke the priest a bit hoping for the best, its almost worse dps than me wanding!

Next is the limited healing abilities a shaman geared for melee has, low +healing and a low mana pool compared to the other specs limits the off healing they can do, this also adds to their relatively weak survivability, most enh shamans have NS for an instant heal to help them out but thats about it. Also an enh shaman focused by more than one melee needs to pick out his shield or hes gonna get buttfucked big time, this removes alot of their dps potential.

And in the end, an enh shamans complete lack of abilities to close distance, no intercept, CloS, vanish or sprint makes them extremely vulnerable to CC, yea frost shock, but the chance that you arent playing with either a mage or warriors is VERY low, so the main target will be slowed anyway.

Thats about all i can think off for enh shamans.

Elemental:
Pros:
The more controlled, less sick dps spec of the shaman, ele shamans are without a doubt the most popular spec for arenas, their dps is high AND controllable, you ask for it and they bring you 3k+ burst in a few seconds, ele shamans can. An ele shaman have potential burst very close to that of an enh shaman, Overload procs can be friggin nasty to have send at you. Not much to say about ele shamans dps, its a very high sustainable dps they output and a good asset to the team, cant say much else hehe.

Target Switching, unlike an enh shaman, ele shamans dont need to close distance, they switch targets instantly and start their imba dpsing, this is huge for any kind of setup, fast on-demand burst is so damn powerfull, anyway im repeating myself.

Cons:
Runs oom very very fast, limited healing compared to resto, and like enh shamans lose alot of their dps when getting focused, and focused they most likely will be. Cant really find any huge cons looking at an ele shaman apart from that, when comparing it to the other specs.

Restoration
Pros:
Resto shamans, have absolutely no dps whatsoever, however are very very powerfull at healing, earth shield is an extremely powerfull spell. Natures guardian with mail armor, earth shield and NS makes a resto shaman a very hard class to kill fast. Chain heal is also a strong group heal for when 1 target isnt being focused big time.

Cons: No defensive magic dispell, combined with no offensive CC, this is a pretty bad thing seeing as healers espeically are required to have a defensive magic dispell, removing CC and other magic effects.


This is about all i can think of at the moment, i might add some things later if i think of more, not very likely though :P
Oh yea, if you liked reading this, i wouldn't mind writing some for other classes, just wanna be sure someone actually wants to read it :)

-Artanias

PvP Movies, resto whining, LFG Korrak

So, Inspired by Zhero im making my own list of pvp movies that i found enjoyable.(omg copycat) These movies are really just some that i enjoyed watching, now when i watch pvp movies i take one thing above all else, entertainment, so yea, might not be the best player, best editing or best opponents, my focus is that it was FUN to watch(with exceptions)


Albis 4 - TBC Worldpvp(TBC)
Albis is one of my favourite mage players, because i find him skilled, i find he plays with "flair" and i find his editing is fits his choices in music well. Now for most of his movies, he always said he know the editing and top notch and the know the skill aint top notch, but he hopes its a blend of the 2. I cant find a better description about the movies ive seen by him, hes made Albis 1-3, Honest Expressions, Fire in the Sky, Rage of Angels, and his only TBC movie Albis 4. Now Rage of Angels and Albis 4, he did more than just good editing, he changed his UI to something flashy, and changed his character model to UD. I found the latter to be the best since i thought it had, the best music, best editing, and the most "flair" to watch, the content in Rage of Angels is slightly better, but the other stuff doesnt bring it as high as Albis 4. So here is the link to what i personally see as the overall best mage pvp video :)
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=39947


Grim - Total Annihilation(Pre TBC)
Now, i highly doubt no one knows about this one, seeing as it is extremely popular, and with good reason. The editing, music, content, everything just fits, his first movie was Path of Blood, i never got around to watch this one, im just too slack :) Anyway dont have alot to say about this one, that if you really havnt seen it yet, GET TO IT! Entertainment promised or your money back. Again a guy with "flair".
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=27354


R12NEdruid - Tfo - E1Sleep(Pre TBC)
This is without a doubt the most skilled druid i've ever seen on a movie(with "flair"! :P), some of what he did was something no one had ever shown on a movie before, atleast i hadn't seen it, the quality is shit, but the skill and the music is just <3. www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=25439

Drakedog 7
Yea, yea i know some people will laugh at me for this, but honestly, look apart from his absolute abusage of soul shards, look apart from his crit streaks, this movie was made for one thing: Entertainment, and i really cannot see how this movie didn't deliver on that part, the music fitted perfectly, and whatever the fuck you say, Drakedog is a great player, also this guy has "flair", his movement while playing just makes it cool and smooth to watch, and the editing fits that, its just great :) Also the guy is a legend! His first movies were made around the time that a warlock actually KILLING people was completely unheard of, like seeing the hand of god.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=42581


Sham's Movie
An extremely OLD elemental shaman pvp movie, a great one none the less, yea the pvp tactics are outdated, gear are outdated, crap quality and so on, but this one just has to be noticed because i find that what he showed back then, how he played was really unreal compared to what you saw before this one, for this, i think it deserves a notice.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=4079


Unknown 3
Godly editing, thats all i got so say, he released 3 movies and a trailer for the 4th, he never released the 4th one however, there is some outtakes scattered on googlevideo if you feel like checking that out. He also has all kinds of hidden messages in the movies, i've never been able to actually read it, apart from some, but all of the stuff hes got edited into these movies are just mind blowing. I thought the 3rd movie by far was the best, there aint much to say about this one apart from turn up the music, close your lights and prepare to be sucked into a crazy world, dont look for skill, dont look for great opponents just enjoy :)
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=11379


World of Roguecraft
Close to being what i think is the worlds most popular movie series, this warlock called Mute, was so pissed at how easy it was to play a rogue, so he leveled one himself, all the way to 60 for the SINGLE reason to prove they were extremely overpowered, and he sure did. This was WAAAAY back when rogues really were a true 2 button class, and warlocks truly were mushrooms. My favourite episode is the first(he actually made episode 3 first, then 2 then 1) it has the best editing, best voiceovers and best fights, and best music.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=26540


Never
Best, druid, movie, ever! Editing, the fights, the music, EVERYTHING is just insanely wicked in this one, Feragho, in my opinion the most legendary druid to have ever played the game teams up with a guy called Boro. Boro lives in the EU Feragho in the US. Feragho started making movies back even before Drakedog, back when a druid even THINKING about killing another guy was like getting to talk to god, he abuses potions, spams moonfire, but he did it, he showed the world that druids CAN kill stuff, and this is the last movie were you see how truly epic his skill is. Boro, hmm i never saw his other movie called Outnumbered, he made it with a druid buddy of his were they killed people 2v4 and above, maybe i should go watch it :P Anyway, this is hands down one of the best overall wow movies if you ask me, yea its that great!
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=9569


Shadow Word: Dance 3
A level 67 shadowpriest running around beating 70s, but this video aint about that, its about music, and how he mixes it with editing and comedy! I dont watch alot of shadowpriest videos, but this one is without a doubt the best one i've seen. Also the movie is absolute top quality, you can watch this one in full screen, and i honestly suggest that. His opponents as he says himself are kinda..... crap.... but that really is the only negative thing you could possibly say about this movie, so enjoy :)
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=42164


Harmonia the emo tree.
So yea, my good friend Harmonia is a druid, and feral down to the very last bone, however playing 3v3 me and Nimra got frustrated as we felt him as resto would do us far better, on top of that we both specced into something we disliked to do better in arena, this made him agree to try out resto, for the remainder of our 3v3 matches that evening he blamed every loss for him not being feral, the entire evening he was emo, crying about how much he hated it, and said it was a crap spec and so on, so because of this, Nimra my buddy made this picture:

LFG Korrak
After much work finding teammates, i finally started my dream 5v5 team,
LFG Korrak! 4dps team consisting of
Rogue(Senbonzakura)/mage(Me)/lock(Nimra)/spriest(Dayender)/druid(Harmonia), initially we had a paladin as a healer, however we believe his account got hacked since searching on the armory brings no result. Until we lost him, the team just kept on rising and rising, however the evening we went to Harmonia was his first ever as resto in a 5v5 team, and he was NOT used to spamming cyclone, abusing LoS and spamming hots, this turned into a 5-9 score as i called it a night seeing as most of us probably were pretty demotivated to keep on going. However this evening we went 7-4(i think) until Dayender and Harmonia had to leave. Harmonia had learned some more cyclone spam, and generally the team just evolved, we had some silly losses due to annoying mistakes and generally still not being at the top of our game, but fuck that! Im happy we did better and we will continue to do better!

Pictures!
Yes for once i have pictures of guild chat! only a few though :)

First one is Eleutherios(Veritha) telling us about his sexual experience:



Second is senbon telling us the secret of staring at boobs:

Thats it for this time! next up Enhancement shamans, by request :P

EDIT: Added a video i had forgotten that simply had to be there, also edited some errors around the place.

The Mashup Revolution, The Voice 07 and a 3dps team with a rogue?

So yea, here's some non-WoW related stuff for once, heh.

First of all Mashup: "Mashup" is basically some guy or band editing alot of music together from different artists i found these 2 websites through another blog: http://www.djlobsterdust.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/tlod

Some of the tracks are absolutely awesome, and i've only heard a few, so far my absolute favourite is this one: http://www.djlobsterdust.com/?p=71

If i ever create a pvp video(which seems to be very possible sometime soon, atleast the recording :P) ill be sure to snatch some of this stuff, it really is awesome.

The Voice 07:
So yea, The Voice 07, is a concert held by a danish radio/TV channel in the place called Tivoli in Copenhagen. Lumidee, Infernal, and generally some danish artists will be there, i realise this isn't anything special for a non dane, but i am extremely excited about it. It's gonna be the biggest live concert i ever attended so yea, who wouldn't be excited :)
Also Lumidee is pretty great if you ask me! Heard Crazy and She's like the wind a bit while in school,(hey gotta do something while im there right? :P) and i enjoyed both songs.
4 hours of constant music, damn i can't wait :)

Victorinox
Onto something actually wow, a 3dps team is holding a 103-3 record with a ROGUE in their setup, rogue/mage/lock/priest/pala: http://eu.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Al%27Akir&ts=5&amp;amp;amp;t=Victorinox&select=Victorinox
Now this is by no means an insult to rogues, thing is just it's been debated and "proven" many times rogues don't have a spot outside 4dps setups.
This team is quiet possibly something that proves the entire world wrong, seems they have lasting power on top of good burst dps.
They are currently doing this on the Blackout battlegroup here in EU, which is a very respectable battlegroup, so its quiet surprising they're doing this well.
Apparently half of the team migrated from Bloodscalp and was fortunate enough to recruit 2 players from Feel the pain, Inflame and Rapidload, the team who won the Online EU regional finals held by blizzard, but who couldn't do much in the finals due to their 2nd warlock quitting wow.

I'll certainly be following them to see how their progress goes, after all the most dominating team in the entire world is interesting, but the fact that they've got a rogue with them is even more impressive.

-Artanias

PS: On a side note, me and Nimra hit 2036 with the 2v2 team :)

One last edit, i just found some more info on the expansion: http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/Zug-Gaming/New-Expansion-Details/
Pretty interesting stuff :)

A smack in the face

So yea, finally got 10 2v2 games last night going the ending score wasnt as joy riding happy as last time, we ended 5-5, but honestly, we faced MUCH better and MUCH harder teams this time. However i didn''t feel bad about it at all, it just motivated me to try even harder, now im pretty sure some of the losses alot my fault.

Me and nimra faced Felguard lock/resto druid, honestly i panicked when i saw them since i didn't have a damn clue what i was supposed to do, however impressively imba nimra soloed the 2 guys seeing as they apparently took him very lightly, druid didn't heal, just stood there so nimra feared him, and killed the lock after his dots had finished off the felguard, next match i suggested we should go for the felguard and sheep the lock, this failed big time as the felguards AE resist fucked me up big time, and i just take such a huge amount of damage from the pet+dots, this coupled with the fact that the druid was actively healing the felguard really messed it up, from here on Nimra suggested if we met them again, we should go all out on the warlock, letting him deal with the pet and the druid, now we sadly didnt meet them again since i was pretty hungry for a chance of revenge. We did however meet Paladin/affl lock, that fight was kinda easy as we just bursted on the pala, made him bubble, i blocked while waiting out the bubble, then we killed the pala, and finished off the warlock.

We also met some of the feared holy,disc priest/rogue teams, these however was together with harmonia, the first one we won big time, in Nagrand, the rogue was juggled between me and harmonia which barely made him do any damage, end result we won. Next team we met like that was on Blades edge however, and i messed up(atleast i feel like that :P) not controlling the rogue properly and letting harmonia take Unnecessary damage. Sadly with 5-5 we didn't break 2k+ rating, however me and Nimra planned on alot of arena today once i get home from school(boring classes are good for blogging :)) So which partner do i feel the best with ? both are awesome, since one team that i cant manage with Nimra, ill probably be better off with Harmonia, im happy with both teams at the moment really :)

So, IVE BEEN TO HOLLAND! i was staying at Pedropress and Hedrich/Límas place, and damn i had a nice time, i also met Krexxor, Hulkster, Supercavia, Zhero, Vinnie, Shapectre, Nicoline and Szwok. Even met Hedrichs sister when we went to the cinema, all in all an awesome trip, and im already planning om coming back sometime around Christmas :D

- Artanias

EDIT: No funny pictures since im doing this from my laptop, ill check for some when i get home ;)

2v2 Team back on track :)

As title says me and Nimra finally started doing some real 2v2 together again, we ended the evening with 10-1, our only loss being frost mage/holy priest, throughough this evening i felt like our counter team was what we lost to(as anyone would feel), Nimra was talking to me about holy priest/rogue though as a counter team to ours, priest just kiting around the pillar with the rogue hitting on him and me being pretty useless having cast time spells, however i really belive by simply backing off into the middle of nagrand(taking nagrand as an example) with me spamming nukes on the rogue, the priest will sooner or later have to start using cast time heals, while their hots are powerfull, its far from the same as a resto druid, and the rogue simply has to follow us if he wants to do any damage to us.

Now if we look at affllock/holydisc priest the priest will dispell each dot my partner will use while all enemy dots will be very effective, and he doesnt HAVE to pursue us if he wants to do damage to us, quiet honestly against a well played setup of this type, i dont think were gonna have any chance at all, but hey, quoting my partner, you cant win them all now can you? :P

Now talking about something different, im 2 weeks away from arena staff! yay :>

A bit of a small update but its getting late i got work tomorrow and i wanna sleep, got some ideas for a possible longer update tomorrow :)

Explanation for the lack of updates

Yea i know, lack of updates here, BIG TIME, thing is, i recently got myself a new job, and for this job i have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning EACH day, im a postman and i've been lucky to get a route where i drive a car instead of a bike, so its not physically challenging, but still being used to sleeping until 12 in the morning and suddenly going to this ? I've explained my friends and my family it feels like when you drink alot of booze in one go, you dont feel it at first but suddenly BAM, it hits you in the head like a brick wall, its the same when i get home, im extremely hyper almost all the time, but suddenly i sit down for a short while and then i go ZzZzZz. And for once in my life im actually trying to avoid this, im going "early" to bed so that i dont look like a zombie when i sign in next morning. This is very unusual for me, seeing as i normally can find myself pushing it until 1-2 at night when im supposed to go to school next morning.

I think this is because that whatever money ill get out of this, ill be saving for when i move to Copenhagen, atleast its my dream to move there and live there, for the younger part of my life atleast, hehe.

All of this has also made it hard for me to organize any arena with my teams, since im usually not available for when they want to play, it makes me very sad and annoyed, seeing as im not the only one getting frustrated about it, my teammates are too.

Ever since i got back from Greece ive only played 18 2v2 games, nothing else, we had a score of 10-8, we're still learning, and we met alot of teams that looked like they were far higher rating than us, also when we meet a team like rogue/druid, my mate Blackdown dies so friggin fast its just not funny, and there aint a thing he can do about it, same for me, though one match that happened i ended up soloing the 2 alone, was quiet fun ^^

Our 5v5, i have no idea whats going on right now, it seems Szwok is wanting to try out alot of different setups, last one being war/lock/lock/mage/pala, now, i can see the reason for bringing the dual locks and mages, extreme CC and good burst, no questioning there, but a warrior ?
Ive never liked the idea of a warrior in 4dps setups, casters have always been my preferred choice since they can switch targets on the go without having to worry about getting in range(not counting LoS kiting here). Now ive never had anything against a rogue in 4 dps teams, since you can stick them on a shaman/pala and that guy virtually wont get a heal off unless he blows bubble to do so, this is very valuable in 4dps setups.

Anyway, i have to close it for this time, Work's calling :)

First Week of Season 2, and some info from the EU finals

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates, i wanted to wait until i had done some arena in the new season.

2v2. I joined my good friend Blackdown's 2v2 team called Body Attak(dont laugh at the spelling error, Attack was taken :P) Seeing as my mate Mahalik is going to migrate away to Tarren mill, i wanted to practise a bit with Blackdown first. Now firstly i LOVE the Mage/Rogue team, i feel we dont have any hard counters, in the same way War/Pala counters Rogue/Rogue, and the same way Spriest/Lock counters War/Pala. We got some hard matchups but nothing we cannot handle with some smart play. Now we only played 6 matches, due to the fact that i got to get up at 5:45 for work and the queues are horribly long. We lost one to Druid/Rogue, i blame that on the fact it was kind of laggy and Blackdown's Vanish bugged out, but hey enough excuses :P I belive we made some mistakes in our play, me included and that costed us the match. The rest we won, but sadly we never met any good opponents, like this Frost mage/Priest, were the mage didnt even iceblock the sap, or tried to use his pvp trinket on it. However i still believe 100% that we can push our team to 2000+ with alot of practise, both of us are extremely well geared and ready to start on season 2 for real.Oh yea, wanna send out a cheers to Nimra and Szwok for making top10 in the battlegroup, awesome job guys, just watch out for when we get up there too :P

5v5. We had alot of fun tonight playing with the 4dps setup, We also had the "pleasure" of meeting our counter team, 3 healers 2 dps, 2 Wars/Pala/Priest/Shaman. We beat them in the first match when we met them in Ruins of Lordaeron, but later lost 2 times in a row after meeting them in Blades Edge, i believe the extra room we had for kiting in Lordaeron really helped the first match, also they werent really focusing effectively on one of us, so we could easily outlast their dps while CCing the healers and picking them down one by one. The later 2 matches however.... didn't go so well. They effectively downed our warlock and rogue pretty fast, while we only had the priest down. They seemed very well geared, and very exprienced though, so i am 100% sure we can beat that kind of setup once we get better ourselfes. Like with my 2v2 team i really believe we can push it to 2000+ rating with our setup, all our players are really good, and we all want to get a high rating, we finished last season with a rating of 1700, and we hadn't had that much practise at that point. But then again, thats just my arrogant self talking as always :)

EU Finals:
Ill update on those tomorrow, its bed time for me now :)

Update on the mage s2 set, and new info on Blizzcon!

To start it off i'd like to say: OMFGWTFBBQ! There, said it now, apparently Starcraft 2 will be playable at Blizzcon!, directly copy pasted from www.blizzard.com:

Visitors to BlizzCon 2007 will be treated to the first-ever public hands-on with StarCraft II. Demo stations will be set up at the convention, and attendees can sample the new units and gameplay elements for themselves in multiplayer battles. We’re excited to offer this exclusive opportunity to our players, and look forward to seeing you at BlizzCon.

I've got a funny feeling some people who previously werent thinking about going might be interested now, just sad the tickets are sold out! Though would'nt surprise me if some "ticket sharks"(danish word) got alot for sale on ebay for HUGE prices, happy im not going :)

As if that wasn't good enough news, guess what! Whatever went wrong when setting up the stats for the Season 2 mage set has been identified! Im sure alot of mages will be happy now(me included) though we still dont know how huge the update is, one thing is for sure though, depending on how huge the update is, i still dont know if i want to go 2 pieces s1/s2 for a double set bonus, seeing as i very rarely take focus fire when playing a frostmage on a 4dps zerg team, stacking resilience to the max just feels kinda boring. Link: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=110527331&sid=1

Ive been thinking about dumping Jewelcrafting and leveling Engineering once AGAIN, though this time ill bring it up to 350 for the Destruction Holo-gogs http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32494. id rather be running around with 850 dmg 9500 hp and 250 resilience if im not taking focus fire, instead of gimping my offensive stats for something that very very rarely happens.

This is also why im in a huge dilemma on picking up the new arena staff, or the dagger and the offhand, id be happy if anyone has some tips to make my decision a bit easier.

Got a few pictures too this time around, the other day i asked everyone why the guild chat suddenly had the subjet: Penis, check out the replies i got!
















The other one is quiet old, and its something about Resto shamans dps :)

















Sucks to be a shaman! :P

Oh yea, Aloran, im still up for doing that Analysis on shamans in arena, id be happy to do it, but i want to be sure you really want it, since i dont want to start typing a wall of text that no one wants to read :P

5v5 Tournament EU finals

So a friend wrote to me on msn a couple of days ago if i were thinking about going, to be honest, i didn't even know where the finals were going to be held.
Its in Hamburg which isnt far away from where i live, so it seems ill be going to watch it this saturday! :D

Im really looking forward to it, ill see if i can borrow my dads camera(phone cams suck) and take some pics from the event :D

Id love to do a review of the event and the matches that are going to be played, though i have this natural handicap called slack, but we'll see :P

Check out which teams that will be participating for the event:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/arena/season01/index.html


I watched the US finals streamed on www.epilepticgaming.com and i must say, it was alot of fun to watch, going there live being able to maybe talk a bit to people who share the same interests as me would be nothing less but awesome! :D

Looking forward alot to it, so i just hope my friend doesn't back out on me ^^

The start of something big!

Or atleast i certinaly hope so. I've been thinking about making my own blog for a long time, especially after reading Mings and Radikals so finally i did it :)

im gonna focus on talking about pvp, and my in-future(hopefully) pvp movies, ofc ill throw in some Screenshots of the cracy guild chat we have going on quiet often to many peoples amusement :)

So! to start it all off, id like to talk a little about this evenings arena matches.
I finally got back into my 5v5 arena team with some guildies, i got kicked at first due to heavy inactivity, but now they accepted me again. One of the best things about it, is that when i play we run a 4dps zerg team, Double Frost Mage(me and Szwok), Mutilate Rogue(Kirosta), SL/Affli Warlock(Nimra) Holy Pala(Dier) we also got Karma a warrior that Szwok owns, and a Resto Shaman(Krexxor), although Krexxor is an awesome healer and a very good player, i wanna focus on the class setup i play in myself. Why is this so good ? Personally i feel the coordination needed for such a team to be succesfull is very high, others might not agree with me, and hey so far i havn't done anymore than tops 50 5v5 arena matches in total! Also the fact that ive always been a dps freak, i like big numbers, however tonight when we played i felt myself wanting to CS/poly that healer more and more, even though i knew my teammates were counting on me to dps whatever target we picked as the first one to fall, still though we managed to get a 6-4 score with me on the team and we ended at 1743 rating(not 100% sure on that)

About the first team we met was a triple healer team, shaman, warrior, priest, pala, mage. at that point i had a full fire spec, and i just didnt feel good about it. I love fire, ALOT but mostly for BGs and pve, when i play arena i prefer full frost by a HUGE margin, the control and surprisingly high burst you get with a WE out is very high.
We lost the first match due to simply being worn down by 3 healers and their MS warrior, we didnt quiet have the coordination yet to beat such a team, though i firmly belive that with practise such a team will fall, to us without any problem whatsoever :).

After that we mostly met 3dps, 2healer teams. we even met a team from our own server! double MS war, Sl lock, holy pala and resto druid. we lost the first match due to not being good enough a CCing their healers while wearing down one of their warriors. After a good match the other team was apparently also queueing(is that even a word?) from Orgrimmar, we said GG, and hoped we met them again, we then inspected them a bit afterwards and noticed their paladin was in part cloth gear, we saw this as an opportunity to put ALL our dps on him the second the fight started, this worked pretty well as once his bubble was down he went down extremely fast with the dps from our rogue, then fell the warlock, then their druid and in the end their 2 warriors :) Though once that happened and we said GG once more all we got from them was "yeye", hurray for good sportsmanship! -.-''

The later matches once again proved we had alot to learn about coordination and good CC, i noticed our rogue telling me on TS that he doesnt like going on a warrior, since even if the warrior aint really focusing his attacks on him, hes still gonna take alot of damage. Cheers for the heads up mate, its something we gotta remember in our later matches! ;)

Once we reached the 10 games our shaman asked when it was his time to play a bit, i decided to let him take my spot, since our other mage was our only way to communicate with our pala(theyre a couple and live under the same roof, though only one has a microphone and uses TS) i told them they should try with Szwoks warrior, karma, and run War/rogue/lock/shaman/pala, they agreed it would be good practise so the shaman got invited, the warrior logged on and they had a few matches, our score ended 10-11, with about 30 less rating than when i left. Now i dont blame this on the fact that i carried our entire team when i was there, i simply dont feel that a war/rogue/lock/shaman/pala was a good team considering the ones we met before, however i felt that the warrior also deserved his points and hoped that 2 healers and a warrior could give us a bit more lasting power.

The evening ended good however, and tomorrow ill be able to pick up the Season 2 arena chest and the new General's Dreadweave boots, this should make me hit 10k hp unbuffed, and give me a chance to focus more on damage and resilience!