In an attempt to not destroy our rating before the nerfs to DKs/Warriors/Pallies/etc, we only did 10 matches yesterday and I called it. We actually gained ~20 rating, but we got hit with the same rogue+enhance team twice for the final two matches and I got frustrated, angry, and just a bit temperamental (why is there an 'a' in that word in the middle!?). Anyway, that's not why I fail, I fail because I didn't have the guts to record any matches.

See, I've had a bit of a dilemma lately... I'm slightly superstitious in that if something happens a few times, I'll try and avoid it. So, the last couple times I tried recording, a couple things happened a little too much for my enjoyment. First, there were a few matches where a lot of stuff was happening which caused my game to lock up for 5-10 seconds then right itself... this cost me 3 matches I can recall and it REALLY put me in a bad mood. So, I started using this external program to record, which is better in terms of not locking up my game, but worse in terms of quality AND of naming convention. Instead of naming the movies with some logical timestamp (which the in-game recording of WoW on Macs does), it names it something like "iCapture1.mov" which is TERRIBLE when you go and try to archive all these movies (I like to keep folders with comp names, then throw the movies in them with their timestamps... so it's easy to find what I'm looking for). So, I've been going back and forth between the in-game video capture and the out-of-game video capture... and basically just been going "fuck it, I don't care" when it comes time to actually record matches.

MAN... we went up against a Resto+Unholy team on Ring of Valor and they were fairly well geared and coordinated (which should be no surprise at 2200 MMR... but face-rolling dk+resto is possible now... so...), and it was a testament to how strong the feral+disc comp is against teams with strong peels but no healer-based-offense. We started the match in the traditional way: smoking out the druid by getting up some damage on the DK, popping SR off him, then killing his pet, rooting the DK, and switching to the Druid. Usually, the DK will just keep attacking Guntir thinking that he can rofl-stomp his face to victory, but after busting Gargoyle and getting it Cycloned+Shackled, his damage is really mostly sustained and very light burst. I am basically just sitting on the druid, keeping up SR, and forcing him to use mana healing himself. When the druid gets a good amount of HoTs rolling, I cyclone him and Root the DK. The DK will usually Death Grip me off his druid, but I just feral charge back onto him (and bad Restos won't expect it, so you can catch him in caster form with combo points for Maim and then you do REALLY good damage while the druid is eating mana burns).

Anyway, we did this against this resto+dk team and a couple resto+warrior teams on RoV (we couldn't NOT get a match on RoV yesterday... wtf right?) to pretty good success. RoV actually benefits our team against resto+dps (except rogue) because of how small it is and how difficult it is to break LoS and drink. While the druid has to expend mana, I can CC the dps off Guntir, allowing him to mana burn while I health-burn, and if we need it (and we usually do) we have Innervate AND Shadow Fiend, which is more than a Resto druid can say.

After yesterday, I'm looking forward to the changes even more in 3.1.3 because it will mean less armor for the Resto druids in ToL form. At first, I wasn't sure whether I would like this change or hate the fact that caster form would have more armor, but after spending 90% of matches yesterday beating on a Tree... I'm going to consider it a nerf for Restos that I will welcome gladly. It will be less effective to beat on a resto in caster form, but still more effective than beating on one in ToL... so no harm done there, really.

As for news: DKs, Warriors, and Ret pallies are up in arms about their respective nerfs, and I can't help but laugh. Not because my enemies are getting nerfed, but because Blizzard is issuing this patch as an attempt to quell melee dominance over casters in the arena without addressing Ferals (or Enhancement shammies, for that matter). Now, let's be clear about something: bad mage+rogue beats us 50% of the time... it just depends on HOW they're bad. If the mage is training Guntir, we win because I kill the rogue before they kill Guntir. If they train me and CC Guntir, we win if Guntir times his SW:Ds perfectly. That being said, Mage+Healer will NEVER be a top contender in PvP unless mages get some CRAZY buffs for the future. Essentially, mages require mana and have no viable means of getting it back AND they basically require their targets to be frozen to do damage... which Ferals have a nasty habit of ignoring (that and Polymorph).

Why do we care that mage+healer will never be a FotM team? Well, because as long as Blizzard is aimed at making conventional melees weaker against casters, they still don't seem to care too much about Ferals. The fact that Feral pretty much hard-counters a mage doesn't really seem to bother Blizz, and while they want mages to be competitive against warriors/rogues/dks/etc, they don't really give me the feeling that the same sweeping nerfs will ever hit Ferals... hopefully.

Personally, I think that Ferals are going to get hit with a nerf-bat regarding Primal Gore eventually, but I don't think that will happen before 3.2... if at all. Personally, I'd love for Blizzard to reduce SR's effectiveness by a TON and put Rake back on Primal Gore, which would likely be a PvE nerf to damage output, but definitely a buff for PvP as more damage from Rake will always help. Oh well... I won't get upset over things not yet transpired or planned.