Guntir and I started doing our weekly 2s matches yesterday. First and foremost, we have been a bit on edge of late because of a SPriest+FMage team on our server who farmed the sweet love of god out of us a few weeks ago, so we have been queue dodging them when they are online. We ended up in a queue for three minutes when they signed on, apparently queued, and instantly popped against us on Lordaeron. BAH... Guntir and I played extremely well against them and had luck against us (as it simply has been of late), but we edged out a victory... then proceeded to queue-dodge them.

I do not know how much longer we will be playing 2v2s; Blizzard has been negligent of the bracket for entirely too long now, and it is starting to show. We faced a 2400 Hunter+Warrior team the other day a couple times in a row which went like this "opened on the warrior, popped all my defensive CDs, died in 2 globals". I like to try and keep these posts civil, but I think that the following needs to be said: "It's shit like this, Blizz... you make me want to kill myself and everyone around me". Then yesterday, as if I needed the proverbial cherry on this sundae of disappointment and agony, we faced the legend:

Blood DK + Blood DK

Fan-mother-fucking-tastic. The match went 38 minutes (I have the screenshot at home, but I was too angry to put it up; I'll try tonight if my rage doesn't overwhelm me and cause me to go on a shooting rampage) and they eventually won because they OOM'd Guntir's Shammy and had more healing done than him. Again, "Blizzard, it's shit like this that makes me want to kill people brutally..." This has been played out via bleating in the forums pretty regularly, and until yesterday I thought to myself "how much healing could they possibly do"? Until you go up against a solid one of these comps (they were 2400mmr btw) you simply have no idea how frustratingly dickish they can be. Their damage output is not strong by any sense, but neither is it weak. They do roughly twice the damage of a Feral-spec'd Bear Form, for instance, and obviously when you are attacking one he is stacking Vengeance and ends up dropping trucks on people. Combine that with the unpeelability of a DK and you have one seriously screwed up scenario: AMS every 45 seconds, IBF every 3 minutes, 2x Death Grips to peel me off a kill-target whenever needed, 2x Silences, 2x Mind Freezes... the whole thing is utter bullshit... in fact - DKs are pretty bullshit at the moment any this is just indicative of that fact.

Back to the point...

I really do not think that 2v2s will survive much longer. Blizzard's obvious lack of awareness (or perhaps it's just general apathy) keeps the 2v2 bracket rather gimmicky. We often run into comps which should not exist and should have their various gimmicks pruned, but because they have little-to-no baring on 3s or rBGs, they simply will not be touched. Blizzard's latest Q&A suggests that Glyph of Dark Succor (which currently is either a 15% total hp heal or a 22% total hp heal depending on how it works with the glyph, with no cooldown save for Frost+UH runes on Death Strike... which does pretty decent damage itself) will be nerfed to keep it "from being abusive", but I think that that ship has sailed, personally. Meanwhile, other niche comps continue growing in strength with basically nothing being done to reel them in at all (KFC comes to mind rather readily).

Warriors are getting a DPS buff and a burst nerf next patch; it is extremely hard to tell exactly whether this is going to play as a PvP nerf or not in the big picture. Ultimately, having less burst is going to make them less potent in PvP, but their sustained damage is still extremely strong, and their mobility and control are going up-up-up next patch via the changes to Intercept and Charge (though all PvP Warriors will be Arms next patch anyway).

I think that I am going to start looking for a third member for our 3v3s team (sitting around 2250 at the moment) with 2300 experience and try to push that a bit more. I think that an Affliction Warlock would fit nicely into the comp with Guntir's RShammy, but I do not think he enjoys playing him much. I have heard extremely good things about Marks+Feral+Disc, but finding an above-average-skilled Hunter who is willing to run with a Feral is always difficult. Ultimately, we will probably be able to find a decent 2200-experienced Warrior most easily... but these are usually bad players on the whole who simply can not play without being baby-sat by a Paladin. We shall see...

I do not know when my next video will be; I am, as I have pointed out, become rather disenfranchised with 2s of late and have not even been recording them. We were so annoyed and demoralized by the loss to the double-dk team that we ended up losing to a Ret+RSham team and I immediately rage-quit... the stress simply is not worth it to me right now.

Additionally, I have been selling Maelstrom Crystals on the AH (buying the cheapest PvP epics and DE'ing them) for basically 1400-and-change a pop; I have made something like 12k gold in 2 weeks and I am hoping to knock out a few more weeks before 4.1 drops and have a rather large cache of cash (hur hur) before the new BoE trinkets come out (of which I expect plenty to be borderline OP). Oh, I picked up the Unheeded Warning and it is indeed overpowered for Ferals. You get a proc, and if you use TF at the same time (and macro it to Synapse Springs, as I do) you get something ridiculous like 15% bonus damage from TF, 20% more damage from the proc on Shreds, and ~500 more agility from the Synapse Springs; I landed two Shreds on a Priest with 3900 resilience yesterday which crit for 23k and 24k... it is simply ridiculous.