| The Office |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|12:06 am] |
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... is the best show ever |
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| MLG Anaheim |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|09:23 pm] |
GET SHIT ON BEASTCLEAVE!!1!
KOREA #1 |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|07:24 pm] |
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Highly disappointed with Fortress Sieges.. It's worse than Wintergrasp. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|11:13 am] |
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Recently picked up an iPod. Any good Apps that you recommend? =D |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 23rd, 2009|10:52 pm] |
This is old news, but after much anticipation, Aion finally went live on US. I tried to keep in touch with WoW on top of playing Aion, but that turned out to be impossible not only because of my limited play time, but because it takes a lot of commitment and dedication to actually progress through leveling in Aion. So, all in all, I quit WoW.
Comparing Aion to WoW and FFXI, I'd say it's somewhere in between, but probably more like FFXI. Although NCSoft said they want to cater to the western players by 'lessening' the grind, the grind is definitely there. On the bright side, it actually feels like you have to 'work' for each level. Leveling up actually means something. Because killing 1 mob takes a decent amount of time, I'm always looking forward to that level where I can get better spells and armors to speed up my killing spree. I'm lv31 Cleric at the moment.
I've been playing stealth/sneaky classes in MMOs since I started playing. In FFXI, I was a THF. In WoW, I started out as a warlock, but eventually switched to rogue. What really prompted me to play a healer instead of assassin is that, after PvPing seriously as priest in S7, it turned out that I'm not that bad of a healer. Ran Mage/Priest and brought our MMR to 2400+. And I think I was a decent WHM in FFXI.
For me, healing really comes down to two aspects. 1) Proactive healing and 2) Reactive healing. A lot of people queue heals after seeing health bars drop. This is reactive healing. But I tend to proactively heal. You queue up heals anticipating attacks. If a tank is at 70% HP, I'll queue up a big heal in case of a possible yellow attack that'll bring the HP down to 30% so that it'll go back up to 80%. But if the attack that brought the HP down to 70% was a yellow attack in the first place, I'll queue a flash heal to bring it to full since back to back yellow is unlikely in a game like this.
'In a game like this'? Here, I'm referring to the pace of the game. WoW was a very fast paced game whereas FFXI was slow. Once again, Aion is somewhere in between the two from what I've experienced so far. Generally, in a game that's slow paced, you rarely see back to back special attacks by bosses (hence why I tend to queue up flashes after a big hit). I went and fought a lv40 world boss near Kaidan HQ. I was lv30 while the rest of the alliance was 40. The fight took about 20 minutes. From 100% to 20%, it was laid back - pretty much a cruise control. Very similar to FFXI. At 20%, it starts getting a little hectic and it started doing a lot of AOE. We ended up wiping. I hope rest of the bosses aren't like this. Fights that only require your full attention at 20% and below get really boring after few wins. Bosses should require your full attention from the time of engagement to 0%. WoW excelled at doing that (especially with hard modes). NCSoft has been around for a while, so I'm hoping this isn't the case with every boss.
So, proactive healing, check. Last but not least, it comes down to how fast you can dispel. All this really means is that you just need to bind dispel to a quickly accessible key. For me, the F key works. One thing that I love about dispel mechanics right now is that if the target you have selected is a hostile target, dispel will automatically be cast on you instead of the enemy. This is great because you don't have to target yourself to dispel your debuffs. This saves a lot of frustration because, frankly, tab-targeting in this game SUCKS. So to select yourself to dispel and target enemy player again, you end up wasting few extra seconds.
In terms of PvP, I think I'm OP. Can't grasp the full scope of PvP at lv31, but no one has been able to kill me 1 on 1 (granted they're at a similar level). With virtually unlimited mana pool and the ability to wear chain armors, cleric's survivability is insane. I don't know about other clerics, but I personally gem for HP and MP (in about 6:4 ratio). I don't have any trouble killing assassins, rangers, and gladiators. It's funny because I keep trying to juke interrupts when I'm fighting them... but I'm not even sure if there are any direct interrupting abilities. Templars and sorcerers take a while, but sooner or later, they die. I have not been able to kill chanters and other clerics. The fights last forever and it usually ends with one of us fleeing.
I have a lot of things I still want to write about, but time is ticking! Abrupt end to the entry, but I'll update with better content next time.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|12:33 am] |
I've pre-ordered Aion several months ago, but I've only got to play in beta 3 times. I'm planning on giving it a shot after its release. So far, my experience in beta has been great. Nasaar wrote me a pretty detailed description of how Aion endgame will be like and I'm happy with it so far. But it also feels like it'll be time consuming, so I still have mixed feelings. The main reason I picked this game up was for PvP. I've pretty much lost all faith in WoW PvP.. It's too imbalanced and I don't see it getting better anytime soon. The resilience fix from 3.2 is barely noticeable and I'm afraid that S7 gear will offset the damage reduction change.
There's no doubt that PvP will be a huge part of Aion. At one point or another, you'll run into the opposing faction and fight 'til the other dies. After years of PvPing in WoW, I've collected some wisdom and elements required to succeed in killing your opponent. Out of all, one thing that really makes your or breaks you is this:
Good keybinds
If I see another screenshot with keybinds that go beyond 5, I might go into cardiac arrest. If you're binding abilities to keys like 8 or 0, you're doing it wrong. You want to bind abilities to keys that you can reach without having to take your right hand off of your mouse (other way around if you're a lefty). Furthermore, you want to press those binds without having to move too far away from your character movement keys (A S D W). What you want is this:
Blues are your movement binds (Tab is for the usual tab targeting and forget about R - it should be greened). Green keys are your best binds. Abilities that need quick access to like interrupts, defense (Ice Block, Shield Wall, Vanish, Divine Shield etc) should definitely be bound to these. Yellow is as far as you can go. It's not recommended to go beyond it, but if you really run out of binds, you can stretch it to keys like B or 6. Reds are your modifiers, obviously. Combine them with any color (even the blues), you have added good binds to your collection (better to use up Alt and Shift before you move onto Ctrl). I question the use of F keys, but F1~3 can be decent binds. A lot of people use them for warrior stance changes, druid form shifts, or even pots and healthstones.
In case you're wondering, my rogue's keybinds can be found >here<. It could be better, but the point I'm trying to get across is that you want to create binds that you can have quick and easy access to without having to use your mouse hand.
A bit off topic here, but I think this is a good place to talk about my ventures throughout Season 6 Arena. Things did get more balanced this season, but it's still depressing when compared to S3 and 4. The fact that you can still gib someone within intercept stun goes off to show bad PvP is right now. Back in TBC, we used to call that 'instagibbed'. Now, we say WOTLK'd.
I think S6 completely destroyed double dps comps in 2's. Running rogue/mage, we've never had this much difficulty going up against dps/healer comps. In S5, we had to deal with holy/ret hybrid healers. Now, we have to deal with prot spec'd paladins in healing gear. We've fought baddies that trinket'd Saps and still stood no chance. I land a Sap on DK, we both burst down the pally. DK trinkets Sap and I follow it with a Blind. He gets bop'd and we lose. We've had DKs running in with Lichborne popped so that we can't poly or sap them. I've never felt so weak as rogue/mage and we couldn't get past 2250 even with the best gears possible. Had I been an Undead rogue instead a Blood Elf, we would've achieved 2350. I can't count the number of times I lost to priest and warlock teams because of the lack of an extra fear breaker.
On a side note, I laughed and raged at the same time when I read this from Blizzcon's Q&A panel.
Q: A lot of players feel like WotLK made arena more casual friendly, but with Cataclysm bringing rated BGs, will we see arena return to what it was like in BC, more like chess?
A: Felt BC arena's were more casual. Getting welfare epics. WoTLK arenas are far more hardcore, participants are far less than in BC. Feel it's because the matchmaking system is so much better and you have to play against teams that are going to beat you.
/facepalm. WTB devs that actually PvP.
They really need to make certain racial abilities more appealing in PvP. There's a reason why we never see Trolls, Blood Elfs, and Orcs in tournaments. The other racials are so much better. And when Cataclysm hits, it'll be even worse since Taurens can be pallies and Gnomes can be shamans. I'm almost certain that they'll make changes to racials again, but I hope they make them with PvP in mind. Racials were never important in PvE and it'll most likely stay that way. So it only makes sense to buff them around PvP.
The main comps that stood in our way of getting 2500 this season (Glad cutoff) were DK/pally and DK/druid. Even with 3.2 changes, DKs hit extremely hard and HoTs are insane. Against DK/druid, we pretty much have to tunnel the druid and hope that NS goes off when wound poison is still on him and that it won't get dispelled through deadly poison stacks. If we can't kill within 20 seconds of engaging, we're doomed. I don't think HoTs are overpowered. But when they're pre-hot'd, they are insane. The key to winning against druid healer comps is to switch often. If you spot a target without HoTs on, make a quick swap. With how the dmg is right now, no druid will ever keep a player alive without pre-loaded HoTs. So the logical thing to do is to start on the DK, make the druid use all of his globals healing the DK, swap to the druid when his HoTs fall off and drop him. Sounds easy on paper, but almost impossible in reality. As a double DPS comp, you simply don't have that luxury of time. The longer the fight gets, the harder it is for us to win. Even after we make a swap to the druid, we still have to deal with barkskin, NS, and un-cc'able DK that pops Lichborne (trinket for Blind).
On the bright side, we've had a huge success against rogue/priest. It's unfortunate that most high rated rogue/priest teams just sat on their rating after priests got nerfed. But we went up against a decent number of them and all it really took was... tunneling the priest. I hate zerging. It's noob-like, amateurish, and brainless. But when sticking to finesse actually punishes you, you simply have to go with what works best. And thanks to WOTLK, even the sponsored pros often rely on tunnel visioning healers.
Have my mage 1v1 the priest, when PW:S is gone open with cheap shot - mutilate - vanish before the other rogue gets a jump on you. Use cold blood and then prep and open with ambush followed by 5 pt cold blooded eviscerate and vanish. Before their rogue even gets a jump on me, the priest is at 20% even through PS. Then I'll re-open with a CS and KS rotation while their rogue will finally get a jump on me. My job here now is to insta-trinket the CS and blind the rogue. My goal is to make that rogue trinket the blind so that my mage partner can 1v1 a rogue that has trinket on cooldown. It's a faceroll strat, but I'll blame that on the game.
Another popular comp was warlock/druid. Our strat against this comp actually had some sort of thought into it. Sap fel hunter, poly the lock, and get on druid. 9 out of 10 druids Barkskin as soon as I open on them with CS. It's pointless to waste energy through barkskin because we don't kill the druid. As soon as the HoTs on the lock falls off, we swap and kill him. So many locks drop before they can even teleport. Everytime we execute this properly, it's a beauty.
Enough about 2v2, let's talk bout 3v3. Once again, I ran RMP instead of other easy faceroll comps like DK/rogue/priest or ret/rogue/priest. All I want to say is.. FUCK DK/HUNTER/PALLY. I've concluded that if we win 1 match out of 5 against PHD, we're doing good. It's impossible for our mage or priest to survive against BM. It's too much un-cc'able dmg. I think our win:loss ratio against PHD is somewhere around 1:10. Another comp that drove me nuts was ret/rogue/priest. This comp defined faceroll and rogues that play this comp are all trashy players that are 100% skilless. All they do is spec Imp FoK and spam fan of knives all day long with adrenaline rush popped preventing our priest from getting a single heal off. It's pointless to fake cast because of AR. The only solution I've found was to go hard on the pally with their priest CC'd. Make him bubble, reset the fight (can't hope for mass dispel, fuck my life), and kill pally. Our win ratio wasn't bad against this comp. It was just frustrating as hell.
Against cleave.. well, cleave is cleave. We got a lot better at dealing with DK/warrior/pally and DK/warrior/druid cleaves. The most important thing against cleave is to make the first move. Before they can start training your healer, you have to cut them at mid. As soon as you see that there's a DK and a warrior on gladius, the rogue should pop sprint and the mage should rush in and nova them. One of the melee almost always gets freedom'd out, there's nothing you can really do about this. But reducing 2 melees to 1 alone is a huge start. Priests can generally live against 1 melee for a good amount of time. I feel that pally is the best target to get on. Earlier on in the season, I felt that getting on either the warrior or DK was better because you can peel them off of your priest. But I quickly realized this is easier said than done. Freedom goes on warrior, so we have to snare the DK. But one death grip on the priest is enough to train him freely (Death grip followed by hamstring). Plus, the DK has too many defensive cooldowns to work with for us to put enough pressure to force a bubble on the pally. No matter how you look at it, forcing a bubble by bursting down the pally is the easiest way. Whether your priest can live through the cleave train is really up to your mage. I think our mage did a pretty good job of it as he adapted and fought more and more of this comp.
Last 3v3 comp I want to mention is my own comp: RMP. This comp is the only comp that has survived through all 6 seasons of arena and it won't end with season 7. Being on Rampage BG, I've went up against Complexity and Gravitas Gaming. Needless to say, we got destroyed. And by destroyed, I mean the matches didn't even last a minute. It's impossible to describe in words the incredible offensive pressure they put out. Their CC coordination is 100% flawless and, for the first time ever, I felt like I could never ever be that good. This was the difference between a world class RMP and a 2300 live RMP. On the bright side, we've had quite a bit of success against other RMP mirror matches. The strat that I used was different from the rest of the RMP that we've fought against. Most RMPs in WOTLK either zerg the priest or kill the rogue. In TBC, everyone went after the mage. That's what we did this season. Succeeding with RMP largely depends on your mage. If you can shut that mage down, you've shut down half of the team. What I wanted to do was fairly simple and straight forward. Dispel the Ice Barrier, force a quick Ice Block, and mass dispel to land the kill. It's amazing how effective this is. As soon as I see the barrier get dispelled, I land a cold blooded ambush followed by a mutilate. This takes away 2/3 of the mage's health. If the mage doesn't block, he'll die with eviscerate. A lot of mages actually die due to GCD not being off of ice block (it really should be). Most mages don't realize what even hit them before they realize they need to block. Even if we don't get the MD off, the next dispel on the barrier will end the match. Give it a try this season. Have both your mage and priest spam spell steal and dispel on the opposing mage and open with a big ambush. It works like charm.
Anyway, the road to gladiator is tough. I really wish I played rogue/priest in 2's this season, but I can't abandon my pal that I've done 2's with for 3 seasons now. But now that 2v2 doesn't give out titles anymore, I think I'll try out various comps.
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| Final Chapter of my epic FFXI saga |
[Aug. 21st, 2009|06:20 pm] |
This is the last and the final chapter of my FFXI saga. I said it won't take another year to write it like it did for the second one, but I almost failed to deliver lol (second one was written in Sept 2008 - Click to read again). In this entry, I'm gonna talk about my days in EvilDeedsInc until the day that I left FFXI. Hopefully, I don't get too emotional and start tearing up while writing!
Hate it or love it, there were lots and lots of dramallamas in FFXI. Let's be honest here. Don't you miss those days? Back then, we all hoped to be civil and show proper respect, but if we didn't have Demo, SV, and us EDI causing ruckus at times, things would've been a lot more boring. Sometimes, you need some extra spice in your noodles. And this reminds me of the very first HNM drama I've witnessed. I'm sure old timers remember the notorious Riaky. He was highly criticized for his misdemeanors, but nevertheless, led one of the better shells on Garuda (R.I.P mpkCriminaLmpk). Anyway, approximately 4 years ago, Riaky's mpk claimed King Behemoth and started fighting with less than 5 people. Help began to arrive, but eventually, they hit the enrage timer and wiped. Coloration (Div) and Stel fought for the claim and Stel won. This angered the great Riaky. He accused Stel of stealing KB when mpk still had members up and fighting. Few hours later, in Dragon's Aery, Fafnir was claimed by Stel. Riaky bombs Cure IV like a pro and pops Invincible. Faf turned around and chat log read "Fafnir readies Spike Flail". So far so good. But Riaky failed by running too far away and the drama curtain fell with "Riaky is too far away" banner. Or did it? Riaky may have failed to deliver, but mpk wasn't ready to give it up. They trained every single spider in Aery on Stel and witnessing all of this on my first week of camping HNMs made me say "THANK YOU GOD" instead of "WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN INTO!1!". Mpk's mpk attempt ultimately failed, but things looked good for them as Stel only had 20 minutes left on Faf's enrage with its HP still sitting at 100%. Everyone assumed Stel was going to wipe, but Faf was no match against Stel's Itachi-like chakra. Impressively, they actually killed Faf within 20 minutes after going through all that hassle. It was a pretty speedy kill for '05.
( LJ Cut 'cause I don't wanna rape your friends page! )
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|07:10 pm] |
I'm going to shift gears and talk about Priest instead of Rogue in this entry. I mostly neglected Priest in S5 because it had terrible mana regen in PvP gear. Plus, I didn't take the class seriously enough to actually get anywhere far. Wore full blues, had the 5 min. trinket, and used Grid, the addon that I highly criticized in my last post. I also ran a weird comp of Ret/Disc with a Paladin (my brother) whose main spec is Holy. So I never went past 1800 lol.
3.1 gave much needed buffs to the Priest class. Probably a bit too much. Their survivability is through the roof and mana regen is on par with other healers. Now that you can cast Penance on yourself and Pain Supp. during stuns, you can tank Rogues. But the single most game-breaking spell that put Priests on top of SK-100 ladder is probably Divine Hymn. In 3.0, this spell was used to incapacitate enemy players around you and put a semi-renew on your party members. I've never found much use of this spell in 3.0 because it shared CD with P.Scream. The only time I used it was against Feral Druids and undead Rogues since Fear is ineffective against them. It was also decent for de-stealthing players at the start of a match in Ring of Valor, but all in all, the spell was mediocre at best.
It's a different story now though. Until few days ago, the thought of using Divine Hymn to heal never occurred to me. It costs 2k mana, you had to channel, and the fact that it sucked balls in 3.0 automatically made me assume that it still sucks. Only when I downloaded and watched Menismyforte4 did I realize that I was completely wrong. 13k crit heals as S.Priest? Granted that this was pre-nerf (which was largely needed), it was enough for me to test it out on my own. And this was like finding kryptonite.
Mandu gave me few tips on how to effectively use Divine Hymn as well. And after trying it out, I couldn't believe that I didn't have this spell on my bar all this time. Even in a nerfed state, it crits for 7k. Once you pop Inner focus and cast Divine Hymn, you literally bring someone below 10% up to full. It allows for a full reset. The beauty of this spell is that it heals your party even if they are out of los. On top of that, the heals do not put you in combat so you can start drinking right afterwards.
There are other reasons besides all the buffs that this class received that made me want to take it more seriously this season. I complained about my 3v3's Priest in my previous entry. After hearing all the excuses, I decided to see it for myself. Is it really that freaking hard? First, I deleted Grid and Clique from my addon folder. Next, I had to come up with every possible decent keybinds for my 5000 spells (4980 of em, I'll probably never use). I needed a lot more binds that I thought. I had around 20 binds when I used Grid/Clique to heal, but after I was done configuring my binds, it was up to 50-ish. A lot of them are macros, which are critical when purely healing with binds only. I think the most essential ones are: Self-Penance / PI / PS / Dispel / Abolish Disease / PW:S and Shackle-Gargoyle. Other macros are there to just make my life slightly easier, but not really necessary.
I couldn't simply jump into rated matches with 0 experience in healing without Grid. I spent a good day doing BGs and skirmishes (queues are almost instant during the S6 prep week) to get used to it. I'm not gonna lie. It took a while to get used to it. It was pretty tough and people died because of my lack of heals. But, at the end of the day, I got a pretty good hang of it and felt that it's enough to start gaining ratings. Shortly after we started doing rated matches, I thought to myself that deleting Grid/Clique was one of the wisest decisions I've made in this game. I'm speaking with 100% honesty that I started seeing things that I did not when I healed with Grid. Unlike Grid healing, healing with unit frames and binds force your eyes to look at everything on your screen.
The only thing that seemed to stop us from gaining points was rogue/priest. But we've adapted and go at least 50-50 against this comp. Instead of standing on top of each other spamming consecration and holy nova hoping to get Rogues out of stealth, we decided to distance ourselves so that if one of us get sapped, by the time the Rogue gets close to the other to open, the sapped one will be out of sap. They usually sap my brother and come after me, but now that you can actually survive Rogues' openers, we can put up a good fight. There's 1 scenario that we end up losing 90% of the time though. And that is if they actually sap me, have the Priest chain dispel to get my PW:Shield off, and open. Fights become significantly harder if that happens.
Right now, we're sitting at 1884. Not where we want to be, but with an odd comp such as Ret/Disc, I don't consider it a bad start. I feel like I have a chance of winning against any comp - something that I've never really felt as Rogue/Mage.
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| (no subject) |
[May. 3rd, 2009|02:37 pm] |
I'm only 4 weeks late! After farming re-used content for nearly 4 months, Blizzard finally added a brand new raid dungeon, Ulduar. As you probably know, I'm no longer interested in PvE, but I had the opportunity to spam some Sinister Strikes thanks to my brother's guild. I've only done up to and including Mimiron in 25 man, but that was enough to conclude that Ulduar is a very well tuned instance. The difficulty of the fights are nowhere near the level of pre-nerf Kael'thas or Mu'ru, but I suppose that's what Hard Modes are for.
For PvE, Combat seems to be better than Assassination. And it's only because Combat is much less punishing when it comes to messing up your rotation. As Mutilate, it's so frustrating when you fail to land Envenoms before SnD wears off. A lot of this is due to yourself being out of range of the boss or in a position where you can't perform any actions (i.e. Grip by Kalagorn or Slag Pot by Ignis). Although this type of burden has really diminished thanks to Hunger for Blood now being a 1 min. buff, it's still a huge hassle. Mutilate PvE spec is strong when you only have to attack 1 target,but when you need to constantly switch dps to different targets (Freya, Auriya, Hodir etc), your dmg output significantly decreases since your dmg heavily relies on deadly poison and rupture ticks. Combat, on the other hand, is all about white and yellow dmg with SnD running. 3 pt SnD & 5 pt Rupture is much easier to keep it running than Mutilate's Envenom, Rupture, HfB rotation. With most of the boss fights requiring a lot of mobility, I think Combat is better (or easier) than Mutilate for most fights in Ulduar.
Now, onto PvP. I did not make Gladiator in S5. While I attribute our failure to our Grid healing Priest that tunnel visions 80% of fights, I have no regrets and would like to think that I tried my best with what I had. I've never understood why people heal with Grid in Arena. This is not some PvE easy mode healing where you can stare at Grid all day long and faceroll your way to victory. It is absolutely imperative that you pay attention to your surroundings as a healer in PvP. Your party's health and debuffs are not the only things you need to keep track of. Using Grid and Clique may allow you to heal and dispel slighly faster, but if it's the cause of getting chain CC'd and mana burned, you should cold turkey it. Because of this, my RMP team could not break the 2k barrier. It's actually surprising how we even got to 2k with a healer that never SW:D'd polymorphs. I suppose that's another explanation of how dumb S5 was. In the end, I had to break the news and drop our Priest from the team for S6.
In the 2v2 bracket, my Rogue/Mage team could not find a way to consistently beat Hunter/Paladin and DK/Paladin. We were stuck in the 2100's and it seemed nearly impossible to win 3 games in a row let alone shooting for 2300's, which was the minimum rating req. for Glad title. Going against Hunter/DK + Paladin teams, getting taken out of Stealth usually meant a loss. All DK had to do was pop IBF and Gargoyle on me for 15s of Stun immunity and make my Vanish worthless (Gargoyles shoot me through Stealth). I really wondered how other Rogue/Mage teams found a way to beat these two comps consistently to go above 2400 rating. Did they just resort to queue dodging? I don't think that's it because most teams at a rating that high were Hunter/DK + Paladin.
Fortunately, no particular set up 100% counter us now. The only team that we seem to be having trouble against are Warrior, Ret Paladin, and Druid teams. But it's still much less stressful than last season. Warriors have returned to their glorious S3/4 status. Arms is now the new fotm spec and all it really takes is one well timed Bladestorm to win. You can be behind 90% of the fight, but that's all it takes to drop someone from full to 0. One thing that really hurt us is that Frost Mages no longer dominate Warriors. How come? Juggernaut and Shattering Throw. Arms Warriors' mobility rivals that of Shadowstep Rogues thanks to this single talent. But not only can you use Charge in combat, your next MS crits 100% of the time after charging. This instantly removes Ice Barrier forcing the Mage to Ice Block soon after. Usually, when this happens, Mages can sit in IB and wait for Ice Barrier CD to come back up, but that's no longer possible due to Shattering Throw. Follow that up with Hamstring and Bladestorm and you've got a dead Mage.
Hopefully, we'll be able to make a better run this season. My 2v2 rating sits at 1985 (MMR 2050-ish) right now and my newly formed 3's team is at 1135 (we've only played 30 games so far with a 24-6 record and an MMR of 1850-ish). I'm still using Mutilate as my primary spec in Arena since the change to the Backstab glyph made Subtelty specs somewhat worthless. I might give Hemo a try after I acquire few Furious pieces. Although Combat is pretty strong now in PvP, I don't think it's the correct spec for 3v3. Not that anyone is really interested, but I'll consistently update my progress in Arena this season =p I'm gonna try to get more detailed than just saying things like "we tanked our rating because of xyz teams". I still believe in the power of RMP and will try my damned hardest to break that dreaded 2100 barrier this season.
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|02:41 pm] |
ESL Germany Global Finals started yesterday morning and what a tourney it has been so far (subject to interpretation). The recorded matches can be found here. The only grudge I had against this ESL tourney is that, while they streamed countless CS matches, WoW streams were almost non-existent (hence the small library of videos in the youtube channel). They didn't bother streaming some of the most exciting match-ups such as HON vs. SK-EU, which is a match between two of the top RMP teams in the world.
There are few things that I have picked up from watching the streams:
What the hell USA
Out of the 12 teams participating in the Global Finals, 3 of them were from US (SK-USA, EG, and compLexity). Their records are as follows: SK-USA (1-4), EG (2-3), compLexity (0-5).
First and foremost, compLexity's whopping record of 0-5 is 'somewhat' understandable as their main line-up is Druid/Mage/Rogue. It was a viable comp in S3 and S4, but with the changes made in WOTLK, it's definitely not what it used to be. Although compLexity has been able to do rather impressively as DMR on live servers with a record of 316-89 on Rampage BG, their line-up has proven to be ineffective on LAN. I was pretty disappointed with their performance as Happyminti is a player that I have the utmost respect for. But I'm afraid that I might no longer see these guys in action in the long run if they don't start multi-classing and have other line-ups as alternative.
Next stop is EvilGeniuses. The moment that I saw Azael playing his Warlock as Shadowfury destro instead of 51 affliction, I knew they would run into a dead end. With half of the teams in the tournament playing RMP as their main line-up, there is absolutely no reason to pick destro over affliction. RMP setup simply do not have the lasting power that Rogue/Lock/Shaman has. The priest will eventually go oom and there's little to no reason as to why Rogue/Lock/Shaman should lose to RMP as long as they survive the initial burst. Take for example, EG vs. SK-Korea. EG knew that SK's Mage was going to go arcane. Shouldn't this ring an effin bell? With no Ice Barrier and only 1 Ice Block to work with, it only makes sense to go full affliction and load him up with DoTs. That alone would've forced SK-Korea to play defensively. Instead, Azael still chose to go destro and ended up losing the series 3-2.
Finally, few (or many) words about SK-USA. If there's a team that became a complete laughing stock of Arena community, it's this team. Not only did they run a faceroll comp of Hunter/DK/Paladin and manage to go 1-5, their leader (Serennia) had the guts to tell the world how bad x6tence was at playing the same comp. To quote him directly, "this game really shows that it is in fact possible to be terrible at paladin/hunter/DK. X6 really had no clue what to do, had no coordination whatsoever, and put out virtually no pressure and promptly lost their 3rd game in a row SK-EU, getting swept by a comp that they should be strong against". Yes, it is very possible to be terrible at PhD (nickname for Hunter/DK/Pally - oh the irony) as Serennia and Co. generously demonstrated to the world by going 1-5. Their 1 and only win came from a match up against compLexity lol. How PhD loses to RMP - I have not a clue. No disrespect here, but it goes on to show that EU and Asia are just one step ahead at adapting/finding solution to beating faceroll comps such as PhD instead of resorting to counter-comp'ing and queue dodging.
Shadowdance - The Future
Somewhere in one of my previous entries, I stated that it is a matter of time until Subtlety will become (once again) -the- PvP tree for Rogues. You get trained and kited so hard as Mutilate that after you blow two sets of CDs via Prep, you pretty much become close to being useless. With the rise of Hunter teams, ShS is too crucial of an ability to have. Don't get me wrong. Mutilate is still good. But sooner or later, it will become obsolete unless Blizzard makes some major changes to Ass. tree.
Well, that 'sooner or later' came earlier than I anticipated when Rogues from EU and Korea all showed how viable Shadowdance can be. This is one of the reasons why I said EU and Asia are ahead of time. All Rogues from US played as Mutilate. But after witnessing that Shadowdance/ShS is the key to beating PhD, Happyminti spec'd Subtlety (but still failed to win a series). Because of this tourney, I think we'll see a lot more Subtlety Rogues on live servers now.
SK-Korea and HON
This entry won't be complete unless I kiss my country mates' buttcheeks before ending it. These are the two Korean teams that participated in the tournament. SK-Korea is more widely known as Council of Mages (The champions of WWI Paris). And what a scene they have brought to this tourney.
There's one thing you should know about Korean teams. Unlike other teams in the tournament, they do not run multiple line-ups. They only have one comp, which is RMP, and they stick with that comp no matter what comp their opponents run. They simply do not believe in counter-comping. So if you know how to wreck RMP, you can wreck Koreans. Or can you?
Each tourney after tourney, Koreans showed that their style of RMP is completely different from the rest of the world. Many people (from US and EU) claim that RMP is all about coordinating CC chain and setting up a burst. And time after time, the Koreans proved this notion wrong and showed that their level of RMP is several tiers above the rest. In patch 3.09, Mages' Arcane tree was hit with a nerf bat, which made almost all mages from US and EU switch back over to Frost. Arcane is almost obsolete now in Arena (at least in the US). But both CoM and HON entered this tournament with their Mages playing as arcane and went on an amazing run despite the nerfs. After CoM scored 1st place in WWI Paris, their failure to repeat the glory in their next tournament caused players like Realz, the Hunter of SK-USA, say "Korean RMP is overrated". By the way Realz, you just got swept by that 'overrated Korean RMP' 3-0 ealier today (Sat.) as PhD.
Thankfully, CoM and HON both managed to shatter that notion by making it to the semi-finals. I have never seen a priest that is more aggressive than Hydra until now. Numberone (HON's Priest) has skills just oozing out of his veins. His well-timed Holy Fires, Stoneform > Desperate Prayer combos are just flawless. After their 0-3 series defeat, Happyminti from compLexity commented on the match against HON:
The games vs hon were like nothing we've ever played against. No PMR has played like that against us thus far so we were caught relatively unprepared. Multiple games we almost got kills but because we have no dispell they are able to almost indeffinitly restealth and prevent gibs by sheep and slow spam. The last game I did not open on the rogue b/c I was attempting to sap him when he left combat to allow venruki to come out of sheep and catch up. However it worked against my advantage when he decided to vanish and I got knocked out. They are on an entirely different level for RMP and while I contributed our losses to other teams due to Plaugestrike removing hots and forcing us to not play druid, we lost simply b/c HON came out with something totally unexpected and controlled us the entire game which was unlike any RMP we've played before. I was very impressed.
Sck from SK-USA, arguably the best Paladin in the USA, said after their 0-3 loss to HON:
hon is ridiculous, ive never been as impressed with another team as i was with them. my asshole hurts
Didy from GotGameWest, one of the best Warlocks in US, said after watching SK-Korea vs. HON finals:
Euro vs. US trash talk aside. The koreans are twice as good as both of us.
However, SK-EU did manage to beat HON in an RMP mirror match. If there's any other RMP that can put up a good fight against CoM and HON, it's SK-EU. The synergy between Xom, Another, and Orly is nearly second to none. But although SK-EU beat HON in groupstage, they were toppled by HON and SK-Korea in the playoffs. When it was all said and done, both Korean teams made it to the finals and it was either SK-Korea or HON that was going to win the grand prize of $30,000.
If there's a series that you absolutely must watch from the youtube channel link that linked above, it's the finals. CoM and HON showed what it is like to play WoW PvP at the highest level possible. I don't think anyone, after watching the two BO5 series, can ever dispute their sheer talent. The WoW forums are overflowing with people saying how godly Orangemarmalade (HON's Mage) is - and it is true. Please watch the series and find out why. You won't regret it. I just can't describe in text how insane the finals was. GO WATCH.
The outcome of the tournament will certain bring a lot of changes to arena on live servers. Will we actuallly see Mages go arcane once more? Is Shadowdance the answer to PhD? We will see.
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| Patch 3.0.9 - R.I.P Rogue? Or not just yet? |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|12:24 am] |
Before you jump to any conclusion, I will say that yes, Rogue PvP needed adjustments (i.e. nerf). But notice how I said 'Rogue PvP' instead of the M word (read: Mutilate). The biggest misconception that average players have is that Mutilate itself does too much dmg. False. The chances are, they haven't gotten their face rubbed the wrong way by TG Warriors' whirlwind and bloodthirst crits (13k dmg in 2 globals). So, then, if Mutilate is not the problem, then what is the reason behind Rogues' PvP prowess? Allow me to outline.
1. Glyph of Vigor and 4-set bonus
With glyph of vigor and the 4-set bonus, Rogues are given an energy pool of 130. Even without all the talents in calculation, it allows for two back-to-back Mutilates. But do not be fooled. This is not the main problem - however, it's where the problem stems from. Landing two consecutive Mutilates is no more dangerous than TG Warrior's WW + Bloodthirst or Ret Paladin's Crusader Strike + Judgement of Command + Divine Storm. The problem is that, with an energy pool of 130, Rogues are gifted with incredible offensive pressure via other talents that allows you to do so much with 130 energy.
2. Overkill
In order to grab Mutilate, you need to grab Overkill, which allows you to spend 10 less energy for every actions performed during and 6 seconds after breaking stealth. What does this mean? With 130 energy, you can open up with Cheap Shot - Mutilate - CB Evis - 2x Mutilate - KS and Evis ALL WITHIN 6 seconds. This, in my opinion, is the main reason why people cry so much about Rogues - their devastating openers.
3. Wound Poison
Despite what others may tell you about Mutilate's burst in Wotlk, it's hardly different from TBC. Mutilate still had that signature burst potential that can flat out drop someone from 80% to 0 within KS duration in TBC. Then why did 9 out of 10 Rogues spec Shadowstep instead of Mutilate? It's because Hemorrhage did very competent dmg (quite the opposite of now) and you greatly benefitted from the mobility provided by Shadowstep. Of course, Cheat Death was broken and you were near impossible to kill even with just 200 resilience. With S4 weapons and some PvE gear, Hemo crit'd for 1800 back in TBC. Mutilate, if both weapons crit, did around 3k. Hemo was much more efficient and, per energy spent, Hemo did more than Mutilate. Another reason why players avoided Mutilate like a plague is because of its lack of CDs and mobility. Although you had that insane amount of burst in possession, you were so easily trained and kited. Add the positioning requirement of Mutilate, you could only do so much with only one round of vanish, sprint, and evasion as your CDs.
But I digress. So if its burst has not changed, why are people dropping like flies by Mutilate's wrath at the moment? Simple: Wound Poison. Back in TBC, you had to stack WP 5 times to get the MS debuff. And that took forever to happen with abolish poison ticking. You had to resort to weapon swapping and shiving the crap out of your target while fighting through abolish ticks. But now, WoW has gone noob friendly and we no longer need to do that. In fact, I don't even have Shiv on my bars anymore. So what am I trying to get here? In TBC, because WPs required 5 stacks to get the MS debuff and the application rate of the poison was so random (i.e. low), healers could heal through your burst. It was 'manageable'. But now, with 50% application rate and the fact that you only need 1 application of WP to get the full MS effect, it's incredibly hard to heal through the burst.
4. Dual Wield Specialization
For PvE purposes, Blizzard decided to move DW spec. to tier 1 of the Combat tree. This talent is probably -the- talent that transformed Mutilate from good to game-breaking. 50% increase in off-hand dmg is huge for Mutilate especially if you have a slow/high top-end dmg dagger equipped (wtb Sinister's Revenge x2). Let's be honest here. Although Mutilate is a very strong special attack in itself, a Mutilate Rogue's sustained DPS is atrocious. On plate wearers, the white dmg is so low that it's not even worth using SnD as a finisher. In that sense, I'm glad that they did not touch DW spec. Mutilate would've been killed if they actually swapped DW spec back to its original place.
There are few other reasons why Mutilate is regarded OP, but for my own time's sake, I won't explain all of them (Deadly Brew or 2x CB via Prep are some of the other factors that buff Mutilate). I also won't explain how I would've dealt with Rogues if I was one of the devs since it's pointless. However, I would've probably done something with Overkill, Deadly Brew, and take out Glyph of Vigor as I believe tweaking those 3 things can truly balance Rogues (i.e. nerf its burst while increasing the sustained dps).
So now what?
Sadly, Assassination tree is still the strongest. Combat is a joke at the moment for PvP and Hemorrhage brings 0 burst to the table. Although Hemo spec is still a good way to bring about sustained dps, it's far too easy to heal through the dmg. What about Shadow Dance? Although Ambush no longer benefits from Lethality, it's still a great source of burst. It's unfortunate that when it's on CD, you do mediocre dmg via Hemo/Backstab (Backstab is awful when so many classes can snare you in variety of ways). Also, if you get CC'd after popping Shadow Dance, it's pretty much gg. Mutilate, despite the 30% dmg nerf, is still the way to go.
I suspect that, in order to make up for the lost dmg, I need to start using abilities that I have been neglecting in wotlk arena: SnD and Expose Armor. Whenever KS was on CD, I've been using Eviscerate as my finisher. This patch is great in a sense that everyone now needs to play Mutilate like they did in TBC instead of rolling their faces on their keyboards for auto-wins. Like I said, nerf to Mutilate was necessary, but imo, it was just done improperly. What's terrible though is that they have not touched Surv. Hunters or Ret Paladins (The hotfix on Explosive Shot was hardly a nerf), which makes me believe that it's now almost impossible to beat what was already incredibly hard to beat as RMP (i.e. Hunter teams in 3v3 bracket). Well, this certainly isn't the first time that Rogues got hit with a severe nerf stick (ah, the good old HARP days). Many survived through series of nerfs and, hopefully, I have enough gas in my tank to do that as well.
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 1st, 2009|01:52 pm] |
So Blizzard introduced a brand new match making system for Arena few days ago. This was followed by endless QQs crying about how easy it is to increase TR and PR now. To an extent, this is true. I've seen people go 25-20 and gain 150 pts in rating. Under the previous system, that should've resulted in a net gain of around 75 pts. Only 5 wins and gain 150 pts? Before I go into further detail, this is my current PvP gear:
Off-hand I'm using is Mutilator instead of Shiv (obv). Despite the acclaimed rating requirement of 1830 for the Mutilator, it's actually 1930. I wasn't able to buy it at 1830 no matter how many times I clicked. My gear is pretty solid. The only big upgrade would be a Sinister's Revenge (or two lol), which I'm not sure if I'll ever get my hands on. My ratings prior to the new system were 1992 in 2's and 1935 in 3's. I run Mutilate Rogue/Frost Mage for 2's (I know, a hard comp) and the traditional RMP for 3's. I haven't done any 2v2 in a while to reserve the rating requirement for the Deadly helm. I personally don't enjoy 2v2 because it's all about counter-comp'ing and queue dodging. There's no way we can beat Hunter/Pally comp (Hunters are OP and if you say otherwise, you're in denial). I don't do 5v5 because it's a chaotic shitfest and it's annoying to find 5 reliable players that want to commit. I feel that 3v3 bracket is the most balanced and enjoyable (although Hunter/Pally/DK is a faceroll comp). I stuck with RMP instead of RMPaladin (the new fotm along with Hunter/DK/Pally) because it's, imo, the most fun set up to play with.
Getting back to the topic of the new system, at this very moment, it blows very very hard. In the long run, I honestly believe that this new match making system will drastically improve Arena and make it more fun and competitive. But they should've waited until Season 6 where everyone gets to start from scratch again. In the current state of the game, you can actually lose games, say 8-11, and still get a net gain of points. As a result, you see all of these 'bad' players cruise their way to 1900+ by going .500 or even by losing a few games. There's an insane inflation of TR and PR right now. Last week, my 2v2 rating of 1992 was ranked 60th in my BG. I checked today and it got pushed down to 150th. I've talked to one of my guildies regarding this and he said his team went 38-32 and still gained about 190 TR, bringing their rating up to 1856 from 1660.
If anyone can faceroll their way to 2k, is there a point in having a rating requirement for the Deadly Gladiator's set anymore? I've always thought that the rating requirements were pointless now that 3 out of 5 pieces drop from an instance - and you can acquire these without the rating restrictions. In S4, having Brutal Gladiator's Shoulder actually meant something. It was a symbol of pride and enlarged your epeen by 6 inches. Also, having that 'Gladiator' title infront of your name meant that you were part of the top 0.5% of your battlegroup. Does this even matter anymore now? The titles might still have some meaning left in them since they're percentage based, but the new match making system completely nullified the point of putting a high rating requirement on Deadly Glad's shoulders.
The idea behind this new system is great. It queues you up against players of similar skill. It also prevents all of the Gladiator rerolls from stomping on fresh lv.80s in blues. You can switch teams and not have to worry about your PR taking too long to catch up to TR. But to implement this system mid-season is a huge mistake on Bliz's part. On the other hand, we still have few months until the season is over, so hopefully, everything will even out soon and we can all enjoy the competitive nature of arena once again.
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|03:34 pm] |
This is sort of an extension of my latest post, which included an epic SF3 fight that nearly dislocated my jaws from dropping it so much. As many of you know, Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li is coming out in just few more weeks - Feb. 27th to be exact. Here's the official trailer:
Anyone else think that it's going to suck up to the point where it's not even worth bootleging it? Despite Kristin Kreuk's beauty and appeal, I think they did a terrible job of not choosing a Chinese actress for Chun Li's role. Although Kreuk's maternal side is of Chinese descent, you can't deny that she looks more caucasian than asian. Remember the recent big hits such as Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? To be honest, they weren't even comparable to the authentic Chinese martial arts films, but were rescued by the elequent actions that Chinese actors and actresses displayed. Just like Jessica Alba's beauty couldn't save her movies, I don't think Kreuk can. While she certainly isn't one of my favorites, Zhang Ziyi is 10x more fitting for the role.
While we're still on the topic of Street Fighter, I'm pretty excited about Street Fighter 4.
It's scheduled to be released in US on Feb. 17th. Unfortunately, it'll take me a bit longer to play it since I've still yet to own an Xbox360 or PS3 (Wii fails D:). I'm in no rush to buy one of the two consoles yet since FF13 won't be released in US until 2010. Speaking of FF13, a brand new (to my knowledge) in-game trailer has been released.
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Can you say, ballin'? Perhaps, this will be Square's redemption for the utter failure that was FF12. So it's inevitable that I will, someday, pick up either Xbox or PS3. Question is.. Which one? Well, that about sums up what I wanted to share.
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|01:08 am] |
So, last week, I came across this fascinating website called Xfire. You might have already heard of it, but it's never too late to jump on the bandwagon even if you're days behind. The site allows you to live-broadcast the game that you are playing - enabling other players around the world to stream your gameplay in real time. Of course, you can simply watch others play without having to broadcast one yourself. Most of the popular games such as World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Fall Out 3, and many more are being streamed by countless players as we speak (or read). The site is still in its beta testing stage, but it still proves to be a great tool for entertainment.
Recently, the pro-gamers of WoW Arena were exposed to this incredible site and started streaming their arena matches. Although the quality of the stream isn't jaw dropping, it's on par with GotFrag TV's live tournament streams and you can get a feel of how the big boys in the 2400s play. Some of the notable players that began using Xfire are: Serennia, Zyz, Pookz, Didy, Affix, Sodah.. There's too many to list. If you've been following MLG and ESL tourneys for the past year, those names should ring a bell.
Unfortunately, because the site is still in its beta stage, the number of people that can stream each channel is capped at 50. Hopefully, they will raise the cap soon since it's nearly impossible to get a spot when the reputable players stream their games. I'm pretty sure that you need to register an account in order to spectate games and you also have to DL the plug-ins (you should be prompt automatically by your web browser).
For people that do not play WoW, CS, or COD, this entry wasn't that interesting. So I'll leave you with some entertainment. I might regret using this clip so early on in the year (it's that good), but here it is: This clip is from Evolution 2004 Street Fighter 3 tournament. It's a match between Daigo Umehara (Ken) and Justin Wong (Chun-Li). With both sides scoring a win in the previous 2 fights, the winner of this fight was to head to the Grand Finals while the loser was to drop to loser brackets.
In case you have no idea what just happened, let me enlighten you. When Ken was around 5% health, Justin used Chun-Li's special in hopes of scoring a win. The thing to note here is that Daigo cannot simply 'block' the attacks as Ken will die from taking damage even if it's reduced. Thus, he goes on to fully parrying all 15 attacks of Chun-Li's special. Each attack must be parried individually and you only have about 4 frames to parry each attack (estimated to about 0.2s). The parry in the air was just.. ballin'. Then Daigo proceeded to finish of Justin with Ken's own special. I can never get sick of this video. I don't think any of the videos that I plan on posting in the future can be of this calibur. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
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| Merry Christmas! |
[Dec. 25th, 2008|03:46 am] |
Merry Christmas!
Several months pass by until I realize that I should really update my LJ. It really doesn't feel that long ago, but I wrote my last entry in September! And I've written a grand total of 10 entries this year (5 of which were 'filler-like' entries). Despite my weak grammar and sentence structures (lolESL), I actually love writing. Whether you like it or not, I'm going to try to write more often now that school's workload is decreasing day by day!
Many of us are familiar with the term Electronic Sports - more popularly known as 'E-Sports'. To fully appreciate the evolution of E-Sports, you have to go back to the year 1998, where Blizzard Entertainment released StarCraft to the citizens of South Korea. No other countries pay the players as much, sponsor as much, and have as many spectators as they do in S. Korea. Not only do they have a specific TV channel dedicated for E-Sports, sponsored tournaments draw thousands of people. It's like a religion.
It's not an exaggeration when people say that South Korea is where pro-gaming all started. Players like Lim Yo Hwan (better known as SlayerS_`BoxeR`) was paid more than $300,000 USD annually to play for his sponsor. If you compare the winnings from a Starcraft tournament in Korea and WoW PvP tournament in America, the difference is huge. WoW PvP is growing more and more popular thanks to the introduction of "Arena" in The Burning Crusade expansion. On top of that, many top PvP players from WoW have gone 'pro' and started to show the fans that WoW PvP can be a great E-Sport. However, the winnings still only range from $25~35k. The highest winning I've seen was $75,000 from Blizzcon.
The PvP aspect of World of Warcraft has a -huge- potential of becoming one of the greatest E-Sports of all time. Blizzard recently announced that World of Warcraft subscriber base reached 11.5 million worldwide. With such a huge player base behind it, one can only assume that WoW might topple Starcraft's reign as the best E-Sports game of all time.
There is a problem though. And it's a big one. WoW is a PvE oriented game. The PvP aspect of the game is just a dessert, not your filet mignon and mashed potatoes. Hence, the Devs put priority in PvE and balance the game around PvE. This can result in utter madness for the people that favor the PvP scenery. One can already see people raging on PvP forums about how imbalanced the game is. I've personally experienced it myself when I found out that Mark of Blood cannot be cloaked, Ret Paladins still rip you apart in seconds, and I can Ambush crit someone for 8k. If you take a look at the SK-Gaming 100 ladder, you can see that Paladins and Death Knights take up nearly 25% of the ladder. What's interesting is that Warlocks, a class that reigned as the most PvP-OP (Overpowered) class in Season 1 and pre-BC, are nowhere to be found on the ladder.
Everyone's frustration is understandable. I felt extremely frustrated as well even as a Rogue since 9 out of 10 teams that I fought against in 2v2 bracket either had a Death Knight or a Paladin (most of the time, both). I wouldn't say that I'm a great PvPer, but I was able to hit 1850 for S3 weapons in S1 gear. But while myself and Gladiators from BC are still swimming in the 1700's rating, you see DKs and Paladins in blues chilling in the 1900's all the way upto 2k. You can have 0 skill and still go that high.
Here is a game full of potential, and yet, fails to bask in glory due to PvE balance issues. It's quite disheartening. Blizzard usually does a good job of balancing things out in the end. I just hope they don't put it off for too long.
Here's a shot of my brother's rogue that I play to do Arenas sometimes.
Will there ever be another game like Starcraft? The only other game that comes to my mind is Counter-Strike. Remember, I'm talking about games that are well respected as E-Sports gaming. I suck at FPS, so I haven't really played much of CS. But you don't need to be a scientist to realize that the game is purely based on skill. Well, you can get lucky here and there, but on average, a great player will always win more against a good player, and a good player will always win more against a decent player. While it's impractical for that to happen in WoW, for the betterment of the PvP community, I hope the Devs put more effort in fixing the madness that is PvP atm. I'll end the entry with one of the most exciting moments in CS tourny history.
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| She lives! |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|03:31 am] |
Yes, I'm alive! It's been quite a while since I wrote an entry, ya?
I promised that I'd finish my saga one day and here's the third chapter. It's unfortunate that I waited a year and nine months to write this 3rd chapter lol. It's been so long since I've left FFXI that I probably forgot a lot of important details. If you want to re-read chapter 2 to see where I left off, click here.
So yes, I've already quit once in the past. Thus, in total, I've quit twice! What made me return? All other games were boring. You have to admit that once you play an MMO, most single player games seem dull and dry. Why? Because, at the end of the day, you want that WHM in your alliance to Dia a spider to shake things up. You want that BRD to Water Threnody a darter to make the fight more epic (/wave Waga). Ironically, others' mistakes made MMO games interesting.
Also, take Final Fantasy X for example. You can dodge that lightning bolt all you want to obtain Lulu's final weapon... but for what? You don't have anyone else in the game to brag to and show how gigantic your e-peen is. You don't have people following behind you to take a better look at your Thunderfury. So, I decided to return... to rejoice in others' incompetency and seek my 15 minutes of internet fame.
The break lasted for about 2 months. When I returned, I was invited to Method's (formerly known as Zabuza) static. The group consisted of Me (THF), Method (NIN), Grimey (RNG), Silverheart (BRD), Hatt (MNK), and Migataru (WHM). I quickly discovered a magical food that Square added to the game: sushi. Every single melee job ate 'em like they were hooked on crack. I was actually able to hit those freakin' Toramas in LoO. The static was actually pretty skeptical of inviting me at first. THFs weren't exactly liked back then. Okay fine, they will never be. But after seeing my performance, they were somewhat satisfied and welcomed me in. But I think that static lasted for about 2 weeks after I joined lol. Boy, were people in that static lazy -_- Some of them couldn't wake up at 11AM to xp. Due to time conflicts, the static broke and I decided to form a static of my own.
I wasn't going to invite non-friends to my static. Inviting random players to a static has headache written all over it. It came down to me (THF), Method (NIN), Casseus (WAR), and Kulafu (RDM). Four of us made a great team and I can say without hesitation that playing with these 3 guys was definitely one of the best times that I had in FFXI. I really miss those days. The more I think about it, the more I want to rewind 3~4 years to go back in time. My job was to make sure we can xp on the same day and time while finding 2 others to complete the party. Picking up 2 random guys wasn't that big of a hassle. If anything, finding an empty xp camp was harder. I was sort of the 'leader of the pack' and I loved taking care of our static because those guys were flat out awesome. I set up ZM runs, farming sessions for O-hat mats and testimonies etc.
As I gained more levels, I became interested in gearing myself up with better equipments. Farming was really not my thing. With 30 Kindred Seals lying in my MH, I decided to use Tyra's KABOOM service in hopes of obtaining Ziska's bow. The following pic is pretty damn ancient. You can see some of the 'oldest' NAs in that pic. It was definitely a greeeeat day. Incoming noob shouts:
Damn right! Thank you Taru's (*'-')w
One of our biggest goals, as a static, was to get our Hakutaku hats. People say it's ugly, but I disagree. Optical hats look sexy! Following pic is pretty damn old as well and you might recognize some of the names. I forget which LS sponsored this run, but Method was on top of his duty. It literally took us over 20 minutes per pop. No one could hit for shit. Look at all those DRKs for Christ's sake. But I was really happy that Cass and Method were able to get their O-hats that night.
Me? I didn't get my hat this run because people were too tired to go on. I was pretty disappointed, yes. I actually got my O-hat with the help of Angelic HNMLS lol AND THIS WAS AFTER I GOT INTO EDI CUZ THEY WOULDN'T HALP ME. Actually, it was because I didn't want to drag people down there for 1 hat, haha. Angelic was led by Sparker and I remember Debutis, Governor, and Hilander being present when I arrived with Method. They were in a great need of a THF. It was up to the point that they could honestly care less about my lack of endgame experience. I was told that in return for helping me get my Ohat, I had to join them.
Quitting guilds/linkshells was never my thing. I'd rather quit the game instead. I expressed my stance and, in the end, they generously helped me kill Hakutaku. Oops, I jumped too far ahead in the storyline. Let me back up a bit.
What I'm about to tell you is one of the things that I will never forget. I've mentioned that I was leading the static and setting up various events like ZMs to obtain sky access. As a token of thanks, Cass and Zab (Method, but I like to call him by his original character's name) sent Amemet Mantle +1 and Dragon Boots to me. It was something completely out of the blue and I wasn't expecting such thing at all. Cass was saving for a Juggernaut while Zab was saving up for a Speed Belt. Even in the midst of that, they took gil out of their pockets to surprise me this way. You have to understand that we weren't part of any endgame linkshells at this time. The only way for us to accumulate gil was through pure farming. For them to go as far as taking a huge chunk of their finance to thank me was something that I will never ever forget.
As I was getting close to lv75, my desire to go beyond the limits increased. I wanted to start looking into doing endgame content. Long before I hit 75, I was aware of the endgame contents available. Right now, BlueGartr forums is generally regarded as the 'HNM community site'. It's pretty popular now. But I think I was the first one to start reading their forums on Garuda. I could be wrong, but I started reading their forums before they even killed Kirin. Back then, the site didn't have that many readers. The only people that read it were people from Bahamut and some of the members from Paradise Oblivion if my memories serve me right. So, when I was around lv45, I knew what was out there.
I started researching Garuda's HNM linkshells. When I was lv30-ish, I think the only NA HNMLS that was in existence was CherryBlossom. Uberlink had a lot of high levelers, but they didn't do much endgame stuff. Hot damn that was long time ago. Anyways, after CherryBlossom broke, it led to the uprise of VisVires and mpkCriminaLmpk followed by many other linkshells later on such as: TheMonfia, ForsakeN, angelic, Artatata (never knew how to spell it), and eventually, EvilDeedsInc <3. There might be more linkshells, but I can't remember any other ones at the time. Ah, I remember (and how could I forget), StealthVertigo and Demo!
One day, I was talking to Zab about which LS we want to be part of. He wanted to be in mpk because he knew several people in there. Me? I've always wanted to be in EDI. It's weird because I absolutely knew nothing about them. I just really freakin liked the name of the LS. I google'd EDI's website and sent Virgil an e-mail saying that I'm interested in being part of the LS. But I e-mailed him prematurely. I wasn't 75, did not have Thief Knife, and had no endgame experience. As expected, I was told that I need to hit 75 first and will most likely need a Thief Knife to join. Fast forward about a week, while skilling Evasion alone in Boyahda Tree, I got a tell him saying that I'm welcomed to join their Dynamis-Sandy run. And on May 28th, 2005 I was invited to EDI. They all welcomed me in and did not care about the fact I was a nooblet. All that mattered was that I was a chick and Sirus was in ecstasy. After the run, I was able to kill a 'real' HNM for the first time, which was Kirin.
I was very satisfied with how things were going. I was able to fully enjoy almost every aspect of the game. Things that I've always wanted to kill such as Capricious Cassie, Simurgh, Serket, and rest of the Jeuno HNMs, the 4 gods and Kirin... I was able to kill them all. Then there was loot. Stuff that I thought I'd never get to wear: Dragon Harness, Hecatomb pieces, Tatami Shield, Percious Harpe... One by one, they all fell into my inventory as time went by. In the end, there were very few Thiefs that could match my gear level. And I was very thankful for that. Here's a shot of one of my first Jeuno HNM kills. Kiri told me to never melee, so all I did was shoostings it =(
Every sentence that Sirus types has sex in 'em.
Also, a historical shot of me hitting lv75.
However, joining EDI had few side effects. While I got to experience more content and receive phat loot, my relationship with my best friends started to deteriorate. This was inevitable. I don't know how it is now, but back then, EDI was an incredibly busy LS. We were one of the most active linkshells and had something scheduled every single day. From big events to the littlest thing, we literally did everything. There was so much running every.single.day. To list some of them: Geush Urvan, Gration, KURREA (lol), Harajnite, Shen, Uggalepih Pendant NM, the Soboro katana NM - These are NMs that not many even bother doing. But we did all of these on a daily basis. Add, on top of that, Dynamis, Ouryu, Bahamut, Kings, Sea, and Sky, you have a very busy week. Because of this, the time that I was able to spend with my static friends started to decrease. In the end, I had to choose one of the two: friends or endgame. I couldn't have both.
I'd like to say that I didn't abandon my friends. But I would be lying if I said it wasn't my fault that things fell apart. However, I did try my damned hardest to keep in touch with everyone in the midst of all the events that I had to be called upon. Even after hitting 75, I kept scheduling our little static times so that rest of the guys could hit 75 too. And they did. But I can't stress how difficult this was. I had to skip out on LS events to get my static friends to reach 75, which resulted in me getting yelled at by Virgil -_-; Cass' time in FFXI was coming to an end. He ended up quitting the game ; ; Cass, I know you have my journal's URL! If you ever get to read this again, I want you to know that YOU ARE AWESOME. Starting from lv30 Bastok Missions in Beadeaux to the point you said good-bye... I'll always remember the good times!
Incoming: apology. If there's one single person in FFXI that I should really apologize to, it's Zab. EDI took Sea very seriously. We had the most members with Al'taieu access among Garuda's linkshells at that time. We took great pride in that and the LS as a whole strived to get all of the new members to enter Sea as well. This is where the LS, in my opinion, was at its peak. If I was to describe our LS in one word at the time, it's sacrifice. All the veteran members sacrificed so much of their own time to carry all the new comers through the Promathia missions. Let's face it. Most of Promathia missions sucked. It was too hard to pug them. You pretty much needed a solid static to get through the missions. How were you supposed to pug Sacrarium? How were you supposed to pug and actually beat Ouryu? How many of you got through Ouryu without doing this?
The point I'm getting at is this. In that screenshot, 3 (possibly 4) out of 6 had already cleared this mission. I'm pretty sure they cleared the whole thing. Jumpin, Virgil, and Nasaar definitely had Sea access at that time. I'd need more than just two hands to count the number of times they did this fight for others. We were very grateful. So what does this even have to do with Zab?
Well, I progressed through the story line up to the point where I had to fight Snoll in Uleguerand Range. That fight was just retarded. I wiped about 5 times to that bastard. Even when we finally beat it, we beat it with only few seconds left on the timer. Anyway, our group was heading up to the Snoll cave until I got a /tell from Zab. He asked that if Mollie, who is one of the people that needed to get through this mission, could leave us to do their scheduled ENM run. My obvious answer was no. We had several people sacrificing their time to carry our butts through this frustrating mission. Pulling Mollie out meant further wasting their time and adding more frustration. But Zab insisted that he leaves because they, too, have 5 people waiting for Mollie to do their ENM run. I eventually lost my patience and temper and sorta blew up on him. After that, we didn't talk for months (possibly a year?) due to my pathetic pride until I looked back and realized that I shouldnt've blown up on him. I mean.. this was a guy that had farmed Angel Skin to decurse my H.Body Abj when I returned from vacation. To just suddenly shun him like that was entirely my fault and I deeply regret it.
Zab! I'm sure you no longer read this. But thanks for accepting my apology and all the time that we hung out doing silly things. You were one of, if not, THE greatest friend that I've had in FFXI. You no longer log on to AIM (well, I don't either lol), so if you ever read this, drop me a comment and we'll have a chat! Thank you for all the memories and friendship.
The next chapter will the be last and will cover my time in EDI to my departure from FFXI. Hopefully, it won't take another 2 years to write it lol. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I have while writing this. Certain parts really got me teary and I can't believe how much I miss my friends on Garuda. I'll update my journal a bit more often too! I miss everyone!
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| (no subject) |
[May. 5th, 2008|03:48 am] |
Neat!
No.1 by Boa w/ Final Fantasy X-2 AMV mixed |
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| Gawd.. so bored sometimes |
[May. 1st, 2008|03:32 am] |
No MMOs = Awesome when there's a lot needed to be done.
No MMOs = Freakin' bored out of my mind on rainy days with loads of free time
Those days are actually perfect to hop on FFXI and see how everyone's doing. Only thing that's getting in the way is that I can't get myself to install and update the game. I'm not even sure where my CDs went D:
When's the next maintenance? I wanna hop on AIM and chit chat like the good ol' days! |
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| At the SK Gaming office |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|05:54 pm] |
A clever video that revolves around the competition between Nihilum and SK Gaming.
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itzeli's journal