4.1 Recap – Recognize your Warlock Overlords – Arena Pass announced!

Hello people, after a good series of feedback towards my first blog, I’ve decided to do it on a regular basis, so expect to see me here twice a week if not more.

Warlock Domination

Warlocks paired with Shamans will reign supreme on the new tournament realm, with the 5% damage buff, 30% Haunt buff and the 15k shadow bites on a 6sec cooldown they are omnipotent. I’m currently playing one at ~3000 MMR and I can tell you that they’re a force to be reckoned with. The lethal combination of Fear and Hex will certainly be too much to handle for most of the viable compositions who’re being played a lot right now. As I mentioned in my last blog, there are very few teams that’ll beat a good RLS. The one comp people would assume would have a decent winratio versus RLS, being RMP, is according to a lot of RLS-teams not really that much of a threat, surely if the mage and the rogue connect on the warlock or shaman in a ShD, the RLS will have a hard time recovering and gaining momentum, but as it is now, the RMP has to be of a very high caliber to actually put itself in a situation where it’ll be able to have a full ShD and a shatter on the same target, because even when the mage’s plowed through shocks, grounding totem and spell lock, the pressure a rogue can put out on a mage with only DoT’s is high enough to force a mage to play very defensive, making it incredibly hard to line-up a burst more than twice every two minutes.

But this might be a bit preemptive, I’ve not played against a very good MLD/MLS yet or a very good Shadowcleave. I do think MLS and MLD might be able to compete against even the best RLS, but it’ll require good CC and pressure, which will require a good mage and restoration druid. I can tell you, they’re rare. After Hydra’s also had problems finding a mage who’s up for the task to replace Flyn in dignitas, there’re not many choices left. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’re no mages who aren’t capable of qualifying, but I’m talking about winning BlizzCon, not taking rank one on retail. Who knows maybe someday my personal favourite, Trigz, will return and reclaim his mage throne (hint!).

After some 6am theorycrafting in the Hydramist skype, we’ve come to the conclusion that unless you’re playing with a Shaman and a Warlock, you’re very unlikely to perform extremely well on the upcoming Arena Pass. Warrior class legend James “Barburas” Goodhead is on the lookout for a WLS, because he also feels this’ll be the way to go.

TLDR: Warlocks have everything it takes to create new powerhouse teams, good single-target pressure, very good AoE damage and, arguably the best CC in the game.

Arena Pass announced

As some people have predicted in the near past, the tournament realm’ll be here soon. It’s now officially been announced by Blizzard http://media.wow-europe.com/insider/37/en/index.html#story5.

Gather your teammates and duke it out against other players in the Arena to win attractive prizes in the upcoming 2011 World of Warcraft Arena Pass. This gladiatorial contest is the proving ground for the most courageous 3v3 Arena combatants, and the call to arms is nigh.

All competitors who sign up for this premium service can earn a special armoured murloc in-game pet. For those who enjoy a tougher challenge, why not fight for the prestigious Vanquisher title and let all Azeroth know you and your teammates rank among the best.

Competition for the top spots will be stiff, so make sure you take full advantage of the practice period to prepare and master your strategies before the fighting heats up.

Keep your eyes on our World of Warcraft site, as more information about the 2011 World of Warcraft Arena Pass will be posted there soon.

           Blizzard

The top teams are getting ready for it, practicing a lot on the live realms to see what’ll be the good comps and what might be good comps, Hydra’s learning how to play Discipline again, seeing he played Shadow since December 7th, and he’s streaming his route to victory, so check it out on the homepage frequently!

With the announcement of the realm, a lot of old celebrities’re coming back to the game. Rumored Anotherx, Inflame & Rudd’ll all be there competing for the top spot.

Paladins, are they viable after all?

I’ve been playing on retail a lot the past week. And a lot of those games have been with a holy paladin. Remarkably, we’ve been doing quite well, the issue we had while playing Frosthadowcleave with a shaman was that he simply couldn’t handle healing through Frost DK/Warrior/Ret cleaves. Swapped the shaman for a paladin and skyrocketed in rating. The combination of HoJ/Fear and Hungering Cold seems to be spot on.

Using Grip -> Hungering Cold on a healer while using Demon Soul, full DoT’s on both of his team members with a DK pumping massive damage will surely make him trinket, the trinket’ll be followed by an AoE Fear (or casted) and a HoJ, meaning something will die, and by the time the healer’s able to cast (2 fears and a CS later), his 2nd team member will most likely be dead aswell.

Frost DK & Warlock-synergy

This is something that’s not been mentioned before, but it’s incredibly powerful. The composition is made to lock out healers for a long period of time with insane pressure on two targets.

Frost Death Knights are currently one of the highest overall damage classes in the game, their single-target pressure is amazing and they’re not easy to kill.

The solid tactic basicly consists of getting DoT’s up on a target, have the DK go on it and as soon as the healer pops out, Grip him into a Hungering Cold, if this doesn’t force a trinket or a major cooldown on both of them, you’re doing something wrong. After the Hungering Cold is over, your healer should follow up with a Fear or a HoJ if you’re not able to, but a 9second fear is what’ll really make them desperate. Even if you don’t get a kill this very instant, you can keep pressure up and in the next Death Grip -> HC, they will die, I can guarantee you this much.

Which makes you wonder, how will an RLS respond to this?

That’ll be all for this blog, but I’ll be back. Soon.

Cheeks