Posts Tagged ‘Mage’

Arena Footage

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

As promised, here is some video captured during our arena matches last weekend. The matches are between 1850 and 1900 rating. We played many comps like beast cleave, mirror, spell cleave, TSG, etc. I spent a lot of time during these matches doing offensive dispelling, more than usual. The challenge of playing a disc priest is the balance between defensive and offensive play. I have had teammates get global’d during a holy fire cast.

RMP is a lot of fun because of the diverse strategies vs the various comps. We don’t just pick a target to try and global, we pick our CC targets and damage targets and switch when needed. Hopefully these matches offer some strategies for your RMP or other comp.

Match Breakdown:

Match 1: RMP

Get in combat early to prevent sap. Play very aggressive from the start. Offensive dispels on the mage/priest. Mage will CC the rogue while you hit their priest. If the priest doesn’t go down, switch to mage. Throw some defensive dispels on your rogue to help him stay in range. I wasn’t paying attention to the mage and got polymorphed and blinded (the reason Ballsagna went down).

Match 2: Beastcleave

Use CC early. Avoid the initial burst with bloodlust at all costs. I have been killed through pain suppression against this setup. Burn the shaman and CC the paladin. Try to pillar hump to keep hunter off of you. Dispel bloodlust if you have any extra globals.

Match 3: Double Healer (Druid/Disc Priest)/Warrior

CC the priest to take him out of the game and burn the warrior. Dismantle him before shield wall. If the initial burst fails, hard switch to the druid. They will try to outlast you (and they will) so burst is the key.

Match 4-5: TSG

The initial burst will usually be on you. Avoid it as long as you can. Be ready with pain suppression so you have a chance to last through strangulate. Hit the warrior HARD as he comes in to force him to go defensive and avoid a bladstorm on top of the damage. Shackle the DK’s gargoyle if possible. If the warrior gets a bladestorm on top of the strangulate, it is usually game over. Keep abolish disease up on everyone.

Match 6: Disc Priest/Mage/Paladin

We always go for the ret paladin against these comps. Try to force the bubble early and hope a Mass Dispel gets it off in one try. We started with a sap and full dispel of his buffs, then railed him.

Match 7: Warlock/Rogue/Disc Priest

CC on the rogue and dispel priest and burn. Priest can’t keep himself up through the burst.

Match 8: RMP (Shadowplay)

Hit their rogue. GG

Match 9: TSG

Watch the burst as before and hit the warrior hard. Don’t blow fear into a bubble like I do. Predict the burst and PS yourself before it happens. All damage on the Warrior while CC on the pally.

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Think Outside the Box

Friday, December 4th, 2009

A large part of what makes Arenas fun for me is the amount of competition. The same thing that turns people away from Arenas because they are too competitive, is the same thing that I like about them. The changing competition and inability to fully predict what the enemy will do next is what keeps me coming back. If you are more into raiding, imagine if your guild finally got to Anub’Arak except he changed tactics every time you tried to down him. There are no more phases, no more emotes or timers to predict when he’ll use his abilities; only raw teamwork can even come close to beating him. How many of you would still raid? How many wouldn’t fall asleep like you normally do when you run old content?

Playing RMP is the epitome of this competition. If you go into every arena match with set strategies and aren’t ready to break from those strategies, you will end up losing a fair amount of matches. It forces you to think outside the box, to come up with different strategies for each comp that you face and ultimately makes you create strategies on the fly. For example, when we face a mirror comp, we always have the same opening strategy but it rarely ends the same. Some RMPs will focus the rogue, some the mage, some the priest. Not to mention the many variations between. You have to be able to adjust your strategies on the fly and react/predict what your opponent is going to do.

How Casual is Casual?

I keep reading articles here and there about ex-WoW players or current WoW players who feel that the game is too hardcore for them. Whenever I run into a random person in RL who plays WoW, it seems like they don’t have any max level characters. The rare ones who do seem to have a single 80 that doesn’t have any gear let alone knows much about the game.

It would be fun to see statistics on how many players are really that casual. What percentage of accounts have 80s and how many of them actually see endgame PvE/PvP content. Just hearing that I have 3 level 80s makes these people look at me like I must play 24/7 and not have a job or a life. In actuality, I currently play WoW roughly 3-5 hours per week on average and could easily hold my PvP status with playing much less (1-2 hours per week).

On one hand, many would consider me casual because I play little every week. On the other hand, many would consider me hardcore because I have 3 level 80s all of which are in full Epic gear. Being a Hardcore WoW player is nothing what it used to mean. In 2005, I read a statistic that said less than 10% of level 60’s even saw MC let alone killed Ragnaros. Think about the old ranked PvP system where 1 person would get rank 14 per week per realm. Thats only ~52 people per realm per faction per year.

If the game gets to a point where epics are handed out freely without any work or any value, I will no longer have interest in the game. Take away that competition and the game will be a MMO version of peggle.

Live Stream

Lately, I have been streaming my play through Xfire. Add me as a friend or check out my stream at http://www.xfire.com/live_video/ferngully You can usually check out all of our Arena games and some other PvP that I do.

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Confessions of a Bad Player

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

The inside truth as to what really goes through a bad player’s mind.

Confessions of a Bad Player

  1. Yes, my capslock is broken - I really need everyone to know that it is broken, so I will say anything that comes to my mind. HEY IT IS RAINING HERE.
  2. I need a summon from the mage and a food table from the warlock - How can you blame me? I don’t see how anyone can keep those two classes straight.
  3. When I’m casting pyroblast, you can’t expect me to move – My DPS is so important to this group that I need healers to focus on me.
  4. Honestly, I really don’t know how to spec. I think I’ll just put 1 point in everything. – That’s the strategy that everyone goes for anyway.
  5. I gladly gem my gear with green TBC gems. - Anything else is just too expensive. Hey, it isn’t the gear that makes the player.
  6. Pots make up for skill. – I’m new to this class, and the game, but I brought some flasks with me so prepare yourself to be blown away.
  7. I take PvP so seriously that nobody else is worthy to play on my team. – Sure, I might be at the bottom of the KB, HK, and Damage meters, but that’s because everyone else sucks so bad that I just stopped caring.
  8. Epic ground mounts are too expensive. – I really don’t have the time to play this game if it is that hardcore. Plus, they aren’t THAT much faster.
  9. I regularly Divine Storm thin air. – I’m actually just checking for “rouges”.
  10. I can’t kill anything because my class is gimp. – Blizzard hates me.

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Welcome to k3b1

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Change to k3b1

We have switched gears on k3b1.com. There have been a lot of followers of our past endeavors. Many of you will remember Exigo, ESP, PC Gaming and further back to the classic k3b1 forums (if you don’t, i’ll be glad to tell you the stories). Today we are transforming k3b1 into a WoW blog. I will tell you why, but first let me share a little about who we are:

About Us and Our Condensed WoW Story

k3b1 stems from our names “Kent” and “Blake”. We coined that term many years ago when we first started programming games and making websites (dope fish + star wars). We are brothers who live in North Dakota.

We started playing WoW in early 2005. Over the years we have leveled many characters and made a lot of friends as well as some enemies. During this time we have logged over 600 days playtime combined. We have grown to know the intricacies of the game and the classes. We have spent time focused on PvE as well as PvP, have leveled both Horde and Alliance characters, and have led large raiding guilds as well as been members in them.

In vanilla WoW, we played a Warrior and Paladin on Hellscream US. We did not have the time to push for R13, so we did not have top of the line PvP gear. Even though we were undergeared, we beat many of our opponents by using game mechanics alone. I am reminded of Darafeln standing outside of IF and nobody would duel him because he just beat another 60 with his “lightsaber” (enchanted training stick). Because of the multiple hour que’s to log into Hellscream, we transferred to Dalvengyr in the first ever PvE to PvP transfers. Towards the end of vanilla, we got into raiding. Starting with MC and later going to ZG and AQ 20/40.

In BC, we kept our characters and started focusing on raiding. After leaving our guild over differences in opinions, we started our own guild and cleared Kara/Gruul and started on TK and SSC. At this point in time, the Dalvengyr population was very casual. It was extremely difficult to constantly get 25 people online for raids and there was a very small player pool to recruit from. We decided that we could have a lot more fun on a well populated and established realm. We decided to reroll.

We both started Blood Elf Paladins on Dragonmaw US. We played these characters until the end of S4 and decided to reroll again on Dalvengyr before WotLK came out (Dalvengyr had been selected as a “recommended” realm and the population bloomed). Darafeln started leveling a Shaman and I started leveling another Warrior. Before WotLK, I switched to leveling my 56 Paladin (which I had leveled in the Kara/Gruul days) due to the huge ret buffs before WotLK.

WotLK came out and we hit 80 on Shaman/Paladin. Our small guild cleared Naxx within a couple months and most of us were soon bored with Naxx. Darafeln then leveled a Rogue and some on his Paladin where as I leveled my warrior to 80. We started getting into PvP again and focused on Shaman/Warrior comp in S5/6. During this time we did a little Ulduar raiding but nothing major. As you may know, Shaman/Warrior is one of the worst comps during those seasons and we decided that we wanted to reroll a good PvP comp.

We convinced our friend to roll a Mage and I rolled a Priest. We were going to run a RMP comp in 3’s. We hit 80, transferred off of Dalvengyr back to Dragonmaw and faction changed to Horde to play with a bunch of old friends. We started the comp a couple months ago and thats when we decided to start this blog.

Our current main characters are:

Ferngully (Undead Priest, Dragonmaw US)

Ballsagna (Blood Elf Rogue, Dragonmaw US)

Our other 80’s include:

Blatzkowitz (Human Warrior, Dalvengyr US)

Macabuwia (Draenei Shaman, Dalvengyr US)

Contiguous (Dwarf Paladin, Dalvengyr US)

And other various characters 60+

Why the change

We have played WoW for almost 5 years. I know there are new players out there who are trying to pick up every new tidbit they can and also veterans who enjoy discussing WoW. This blog is the place for that. We want to share our knowledge with the WoW community; New players will find this blog both helpful and encouraging. We were all new at one time.

Another side to this is if you are a veteran player and really enjoy discussing the latest patch notes, class balance, BG’s, raids, etc. we love to discuss it also. We spend hours in vent some days discussing talent builds, glyphs, strategies, etc. We are looking to help out newer players while trying to get some good discussions going. Hopefully we make some friends along the way.

Welcome to k3b1

We have another site (www.doodadnox.com) where you can freely host your gaming screenshots without all the clutter and advertisements of larger image hosts. Feel free to check it out and sign up for an account to start sharing your screenshots today.

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