We're taking it easy this week, a by-product of both the new patch and the incoming news about 2.3 (going live God knows when). Doing everyone's renewals has kept us busy enough, I couldn't imagine trying to sell pre-mades this week.
The SL/SL nerf is in, and no one's surprised. So far, the resilience buff (DoT nerf) hasn't affected our win-loss ratio at all, but just the same, I might be closing up shop for a couple weeks to concentrate on high-bracket 2v2 and 3v3 play.
Apparently, the rating requirements for weapons and shoulders are going to be 1850 and 2000, which bodes well for the APV, not so much for the non-point buying arena community of Silver Hand though. No more turtling your points til you can afford that uber weapon, guys.
I really want to start getting serious with our 2v2 this week, and start climbing with Vlak in our 3v3, but Eternia and I have been playing pretty lazily the last couple days, and its pretty dangerous to treat the teams you find at 2100 with the same confidence and room for error we've been facing in the 1800's.
With any luck, this is just the calm before the storm, and Eternia will go all Ming-Naruto in the next couple weeks and give us that push we need to crack back into the 2200's.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Silver Hand Arena: Horde Edition
After who knows how many months of arena play, I finally got to face some of Silver Hand Horde's finest in competetive arena late last week while raising up a client's 2v2 team. Both teams were utilizing the easiest and most powerful matrices to climb the 2v2 bracket, Warrior/Druid and Warlock/Druid (season 2's Warrior/Paladin).
It was nice to gauge where the horde of our server was skill-wise, and I came away from those fights rejuventated. Our strat vs. druid teams revolves around finding the druid while stealthed (felhunter + double perception > Prowl), while I tank the dps. If we catch the druid stealthed, we have about an 80-85% win rate, but if we can't find him, and he pops out to heal, that drops our chances to about 50-50.
Tito knew our strat well, and was screaming for Crusty (his druid) to stay in the starting area, but I managed to bumrush their side of the BEM ramp, and catch the kitty in the opening salvo. Wasn't much of a match after some failed kiting attempts, and the team that's built to kill druids did just that. Eternia went into shredder mode, and we went on our way.
The very next queue, we got Nawakuna and Mobius, for the delicious Warrior/Druid combo, and while I managed to tank Mobius longer than necessary, we just couldn't find that darn cat! Nawa eventually popped out, and we got on him, but aside from dropping the gear-bomb on that team, I'd give them a decent shot if we ever rematch. Nawa moves like a great arena druid. The match was in Lordaeron, so that alter is a druid wet dream, but I was nonetheless very impressed with this druid of the horde.
I'm expecting great things from Nawa once he gears up, hopefully finding a more reliable 3v3 matrix (ran into him with Konfucious this week as well. Not a pretty team, but maybe they know something I don't), and elevating his rating to at least 2100, where all those druid teams reside.
Tito has a fantastic grasp on the warlock class, and after talking with him for a bit, I hopefully steered him toward a more reliable climbing strat. They had been playing a graded CC execute team, and while I acknowledge I've only been playing warlock/druid for a couple weeks with Vlak, we're floating a 2,000 rating with very little coordination, and Vlak in season 1 gear. Playing the mana game seems to be foolproof for us, and as long as the pet lives, our win rating is something insane (I think it's at 90-10 right now when the pet lives). Execute teams are a lot of fun, and are much quicker matches, but for climbing 1900-2200, you just can't beat a mana drain team for win percentage and reliability.
It was nice to gauge where the horde of our server was skill-wise, and I came away from those fights rejuventated. Our strat vs. druid teams revolves around finding the druid while stealthed (felhunter + double perception > Prowl), while I tank the dps. If we catch the druid stealthed, we have about an 80-85% win rate, but if we can't find him, and he pops out to heal, that drops our chances to about 50-50.
Tito knew our strat well, and was screaming for Crusty (his druid) to stay in the starting area, but I managed to bumrush their side of the BEM ramp, and catch the kitty in the opening salvo. Wasn't much of a match after some failed kiting attempts, and the team that's built to kill druids did just that. Eternia went into shredder mode, and we went on our way.
The very next queue, we got Nawakuna and Mobius, for the delicious Warrior/Druid combo, and while I managed to tank Mobius longer than necessary, we just couldn't find that darn cat! Nawa eventually popped out, and we got on him, but aside from dropping the gear-bomb on that team, I'd give them a decent shot if we ever rematch. Nawa moves like a great arena druid. The match was in Lordaeron, so that alter is a druid wet dream, but I was nonetheless very impressed with this druid of the horde.
I'm expecting great things from Nawa once he gears up, hopefully finding a more reliable 3v3 matrix (ran into him with Konfucious this week as well. Not a pretty team, but maybe they know something I don't), and elevating his rating to at least 2100, where all those druid teams reside.
Tito has a fantastic grasp on the warlock class, and after talking with him for a bit, I hopefully steered him toward a more reliable climbing strat. They had been playing a graded CC execute team, and while I acknowledge I've only been playing warlock/druid for a couple weeks with Vlak, we're floating a 2,000 rating with very little coordination, and Vlak in season 1 gear. Playing the mana game seems to be foolproof for us, and as long as the pet lives, our win rating is something insane (I think it's at 90-10 right now when the pet lives). Execute teams are a lot of fun, and are much quicker matches, but for climbing 1900-2200, you just can't beat a mana drain team for win percentage and reliability.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Patch Day
Here's hoping that the gear-swapping nerf is going through tomorrow...
I had the great pleasure of being unable to meet a client's needs for the first time tonight, falling short of a 2,000 rated 2v2 by several games before hitting the game cap.
While I could blame it on Monday queue times, or rotten luck, I'm going to suck it up, and blame it on teams running 400+ Shadow resist gear from Black Temple.
Shadow resist gear has cost me 100+ rating in a day before, but this is the first time it screwed over a client, and I gotta tell you, it feels way worse.
Here's hoping gear-swapping will out-nerf the resilience buff vs. DoTs. Warlocks are finally getting the nerf-bat, and aside from the mace spec nerf destroying all the skilled warriors out there, this patch shouldn't affect the business, my 2v2, or any of my serious teams too negatively.
2v2 news: Busy week (sold 26 teams, most being 2v2's) with a stretch of a couple days (roughly 350 matches) undeafeated. Now if we can just figure out how to improve our average against dwarf rogue/dwarf priest. When we get our strat down, it's a 90% win rate (see: warrior/druid, warlock/druid), but the priest/dwarf rogue strat has been slow coming. Hopefully, Eternia will figure something out. Shadow resist ate us alive monday night, so cross your fingers that the patch is our answer to finally cracking 2300. Tired of floating between 2100 and 2200 gaining 4 points from victories, and losing 20 points from losses just because they happen to own high end BT epics with 70+ shadow resist per piece.
3v3 news: Tons of 3v3's sold this week, and I know my teammates had as much of a blast as I did. Kicked it old school with some Rogue/Lock/Priest, and got to try out a promising new matrix too. The Druid/Rogue/Lock matrix seems to be coming together nicely, and once Vlak and I get on the same page for a decent CC rotation, we should be able to play that matrix a couple different ways. With Chans, it was Execute or Fail, trading our priest for their healer, and utilizing Improved Death to cinch up our natural rogue/lock 2v2 advantage. Swapping in a druid for the priest gives us the option to play a more graded execute with healer CC (in liu of pure damage), outlast, play a mana fight, and most importantly, being able to fluidly transition between the two strats seamlessly. Oh, and a fond farewell to all those Warrior/Paladin/Shaman teams out there. Your nerfs were a long time coming, but, grats. Well deserved.
5v5 still looks bleak. Short of a server transfer, it looks like we're going to have to farm raise a Shadow priest to run our 4dps FoTM team, and although I'd love to try some 2345, or otherwise, our class balance just doesn't allow for it. That and Silver Hand doesn't have any Elemental Shaman geared enough at the skill level we require to make those teams work. In our scrub 5v5, we're still floating mid 1800's, which is awesome for Silver Hand, but the matrix is terrible, nigh unsensical. Ideally, we'd field Rogue/Lock/Spriest/Mage/ Paladin, but with the respec's it would take to seriously buckle down, and the lackluster 5v5 landscape currently in mid-bracket (sub 2000) 5v5, the risk-reward just doesn't seem too compelling. It's also a little disturbing that our ragtag Rogue/Lock/Holy Priest/Mage/ Paladin team has climbed so far in the brackets playing only 7 games a week. Using 4dps class balance while in reality running 2 healers is a disaster anywhere but BG9 Mid-bracket, apparently.
Anyway, the business has banked over 30k gold over the last 2 weeks, so I think we're going to take it easy for a while. We got a bunch of repeat buyers, and time slots are just running out, so we might just sell off some inventoried teams, and stop offering pre-mades altogether. Might give it another week though, so if you're thinking about getting a pre-made 2v2 for points, I'd recommend hooking up with me sooner rather than later.
I had the great pleasure of being unable to meet a client's needs for the first time tonight, falling short of a 2,000 rated 2v2 by several games before hitting the game cap.
While I could blame it on Monday queue times, or rotten luck, I'm going to suck it up, and blame it on teams running 400+ Shadow resist gear from Black Temple.
Shadow resist gear has cost me 100+ rating in a day before, but this is the first time it screwed over a client, and I gotta tell you, it feels way worse.
Here's hoping gear-swapping will out-nerf the resilience buff vs. DoTs. Warlocks are finally getting the nerf-bat, and aside from the mace spec nerf destroying all the skilled warriors out there, this patch shouldn't affect the business, my 2v2, or any of my serious teams too negatively.
2v2 news: Busy week (sold 26 teams, most being 2v2's) with a stretch of a couple days (roughly 350 matches) undeafeated. Now if we can just figure out how to improve our average against dwarf rogue/dwarf priest. When we get our strat down, it's a 90% win rate (see: warrior/druid, warlock/druid), but the priest/dwarf rogue strat has been slow coming. Hopefully, Eternia will figure something out. Shadow resist ate us alive monday night, so cross your fingers that the patch is our answer to finally cracking 2300. Tired of floating between 2100 and 2200 gaining 4 points from victories, and losing 20 points from losses just because they happen to own high end BT epics with 70+ shadow resist per piece.
3v3 news: Tons of 3v3's sold this week, and I know my teammates had as much of a blast as I did. Kicked it old school with some Rogue/Lock/Priest, and got to try out a promising new matrix too. The Druid/Rogue/Lock matrix seems to be coming together nicely, and once Vlak and I get on the same page for a decent CC rotation, we should be able to play that matrix a couple different ways. With Chans, it was Execute or Fail, trading our priest for their healer, and utilizing Improved Death to cinch up our natural rogue/lock 2v2 advantage. Swapping in a druid for the priest gives us the option to play a more graded execute with healer CC (in liu of pure damage), outlast, play a mana fight, and most importantly, being able to fluidly transition between the two strats seamlessly. Oh, and a fond farewell to all those Warrior/Paladin/Shaman teams out there. Your nerfs were a long time coming, but, grats. Well deserved.
5v5 still looks bleak. Short of a server transfer, it looks like we're going to have to farm raise a Shadow priest to run our 4dps FoTM team, and although I'd love to try some 2345, or otherwise, our class balance just doesn't allow for it. That and Silver Hand doesn't have any Elemental Shaman geared enough at the skill level we require to make those teams work. In our scrub 5v5, we're still floating mid 1800's, which is awesome for Silver Hand, but the matrix is terrible, nigh unsensical. Ideally, we'd field Rogue/Lock/Spriest/Mage/ Paladin, but with the respec's it would take to seriously buckle down, and the lackluster 5v5 landscape currently in mid-bracket (sub 2000) 5v5, the risk-reward just doesn't seem too compelling. It's also a little disturbing that our ragtag Rogue/Lock/Holy Priest/Mage/ Paladin team has climbed so far in the brackets playing only 7 games a week. Using 4dps class balance while in reality running 2 healers is a disaster anywhere but BG9 Mid-bracket, apparently.
Anyway, the business has banked over 30k gold over the last 2 weeks, so I think we're going to take it easy for a while. We got a bunch of repeat buyers, and time slots are just running out, so we might just sell off some inventoried teams, and stop offering pre-mades altogether. Might give it another week though, so if you're thinking about getting a pre-made 2v2 for points, I'd recommend hooking up with me sooner rather than later.
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If you're reading this, you spend too much time on the internet.
This blog is being maintained for personal reasons to help characterize my thoughts on Arena warfare from the perspective of the red-headed step-server of fearsome BG9; Silver Hand.
This blog is being maintained for personal reasons to help characterize my thoughts on Arena warfare from the perspective of the red-headed step-server of fearsome BG9; Silver Hand.
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