Small World

Fine. I get it. Warlock/druid, Warrior/druid or gtfo. 2v2's was my cup of tea for a while, and though I'm willingly switching focus to the admittedly more strat-intensive 3v3 bracket, 2v2 will always have a special place in my heart. But if the +heal -> 30% spell damage buff goes through in 2.3, consensus among my people says that 2dps might very well be dead, and it couldn't hurt to start hedging my bets toward s3 now.

What better place to start than Warlock/Druid. Vlak and I are still pretty new at this matrix, but it's been a blast so far. We suffered a couple losses today, ironically against (what else) Warlock/Rogue teams, but we figured out our Suck Factor, and every loss brings us closer to a winning strat vs. any matrix. Soon enough, we'll be losing because of positioning, or failure to coordinate CC's, and I'm looking forward to those days. But for now, we're doing a million things wrong per match, and still floating 2,000+, so I can't help but be excited for whatever future Vlak and I might have next season.

Vlak has a similar personality toward arena and competetive pvp in general as I do, and that's as valuable as any amount of skill. I've paired with plenty people who bum out on losses, or people who will keep queueing without making adjustments (dating back to my High Warlord days), and I've found that Vlak revels in losses just as much as I do, but has the same winner's mentality I expect of myself.

The best part about being in an overpowered matrix, and underperforming, is that any time we lose a match, it's our fault. In the 2,200's with Eternia (RIP warlock/rogue), if we lost to certain matrices, it was just how the ball bounced for that particular Mace Stun proc, Spell lock resist, etc. But when you're part of the Yankees, you have no excuses to lose, and that's a really liberating umbrella to be fighting under. The feeling of helplessness dissolves into personal responsibility, and I can feel myself growing with each match.

I'm looking forward to bouncing around a couple of 3v3's this week, most notably Jon and Keire's Warrior/Druid/Warlock combo. We faced Jon's Warrior/Druid team while 2v2ing today, and these guys have tons of potential. Once Jon picks up a weapon upgrade, that 3v3 will really take off.

No 5v5 news, so I'll skip to a very irregular segment: PvE. With Valkring spamming my MSN while raiding, I can't help but catch the "LAWL BIG NUMBERS" bug. I miss damage meters and captive vent audiences, but unless there's pvp gear in Zul'Aman, I can't see myself hoofing it all the way out to the Belf Lands every week just to raid for the sake of raiding.

Since there are apparently no tanks left on Silver Hand, stockpiling Heroic badges has been slow going to say the least. The APV is basically giving out free badges to anyone willing to tank for us for an hour, but there have been surprisingly few takers. Maybe we need to start offering credits on 2,000 rated 2v2s or something. I'm sure we could just eat it for the first month of the season, and farm Karazhan to get badges, but if I ever step foot in that place again, I better be drunk or it will be too soon.