The timer rings 15 seconds remaining until the doors open. The warrior looks over to his partner and sees him doing his usual pre-battle routine of casting regrowth to that the long-last heal-over-time portion has the best chance at getting some ticks after they take a bit of damage. The warrior realizes that there are no more bells, just the anticipation for when the doors open. He grips his trusty Vengeful Gladiator's Bonegrinder ever tighter, but stows it on his back for now and gives one last battle shout to let his enemies know he comes for them. He begins mounting up as his partner gets into a prowling position to hide himself from his enemies' eyes. A tickle runs down the warrior's back, but he does not acknowledge it with a shake or a shiver; he's been down this road many times and come out victorious -- in higher rankings as well. The start of a new season meant fresh blood, the warrior knows that in order to get back to the top, he must distinguish himself amongst the unworthy opponents of the lower brackets and move on. He grips his reins ever tighter and can feel the doors are about to open.

Blinding light hits his eyes and he hears the cheering of the crowd. The warrior likes the Blade's Edge Arena, it has always felt more spread out in a very compact way. He digs his might heel into the side of his mount and it gives charge to the top of the bridge, where he stares across to see two lowly undead men. One appears to be an unholy priest and the warrior can tell from his dark and recessed eyes that this priest gave up on the faith a long time ago. The other is a warlock, what a pair, these two evil souls bound together in the arena. At first the warrior is a bit on edge, as spell-casters can often inflict slow and antagonizing amounts of pain upon him. It isn't the pain he is concerned about though, he has dealt with pain before and, as always, his ever merciful healer has always been there to repair wounds and soothe the pain. Rather, he is on edge because he cannot decide which one of the two poses the more immediate threat, be it the warlock who will obviously be able to take a hard beating, or the shadow priest who will spend the majority of the battle keeping his evil abilities on him and reducing his druid's healing energy.

It is all in the eyes. There are no misunderstandings here, everyone in the arena knows there is a druid, knows that he will be a great healer, knows that the warrior has the most elite and glorified gear from being one of the best. Their eyes give them away even more than their gear does: tattered and old from seasons past. The warrior gives a mocking snort as he thinks "they plan to fight in heirlooms! That's it," and charges at the shadow priest as the two dark casters scatter from the incoming assault. The warrior swings wildly at the priest's legs and hinders his movement, "this is too easy" he thinks as he feels dark magic corrupting his body. However, this evil presence only fuels his rage further and he lands a resounding blow on dark priest who had just managed to create a protective shield for himself.

The warrior looks over his shoulder and sees the warlock chanting an incantation and waving his hands in the air. He never understood how these sorts of magical abilities came to be infused with these feeble types of beings. All he believed in was the mace, swing it and watch the blood splatter against his armor. Though his armor burned now, scalding and smoldering. Aside from feeling mildly sick and having what could only be described as a near-blinding pain shooting through his body, he was now burning alive inside his armor. "Good," he thinks, "bring on the pain, it gives me focus, gives me power!" He swings again with all his might, inflicting a mortal blow into the side of the priest which rang a loud crack along with it signaling broken ribs and a deep wound which continued to bleed.

Out of desperation, it seemed, the priest gave a loud cry that pierced the warrior's mind for a split second. It filled him with fear from head to foot, but as his eyes widened, he furrowed his brow and shook off the feeling with a resolute wanting to destroy the priest in front of him. He heard an odd noise and saw his druid fleeing from the immediate battle. Now he was really angry; this priest was going to die very soon. Then it happened.

They sky turned dark and crushing evil presence forced itself down upon the warrior and he felt his bones crack a bit. It was done in an instant, but it left him stunned and dazed and hurting all over. A blast of pure flame hit him square between his broad shoulder blades, and he felt himself burst open as if the fire were exploding from within his chest. As he made to turn his efforts upon the warlock he realized he may have chosen the wrong target as a skull emblazoned in green fire hit him square in the chest and he was filled with resounding horror: he was going to die. The priest made a gesture at the coming druid who had gained his Nature's Swiftness, but too late, he could not speak, and then he turned and ran in fear again. Immediately, the warrior felt a burning cold sensation as flames black as the deepest cavern engulfed his body and were immediately put out. Then a figure appeared above him and struck like a dagger, straight through the warrior, and he fell dead. With the priest at about a third of his strength, and the warlock at full, the druid was no match for their onslaught of pain and destruction, he climbed the wall of the arena, trying to escape in complete terror.

The evil pair smiled.


So that was my attempt at a dramatic telling of one of our matches from last night. We have given up all hope of ever hitting anything about 1725 on the shadow priest warlock team. We got up to 1549 a couple times in our initial ten matches and never could get over that 1550 plateau to get the brutal gladiator's pants as felguard and shadow spec. So, we gave up, went and did the sunwell dailies, and over vent I said it: "I'm through caring about this team, it's time to have fun again... I'm going destro." No complaints from my brother, so we finished up our dailies and I went and spec'd destro. I am now more squishable than ever. For fun, I wanted to do a few arena matches just to see what it would be like. We faced a resto-shamang and warrior team, which we beat rather well, not super well, but decently. "So, let's do another," I said. We faced elemental shamang and rogue, which defeated us, but only barely. I was upset, so I queued again, because I knew we could do better than that, and my macros and spell rotations were finally coming together to play how I remembered. Then we had this match-up against druid+warrior, both of which were wearing full s3 gear.

I think I'm going to enjoy destruction. Essentially, I have to bait my spriest a bit at the beginning of the match, so I can get off some spells without being targeted and burst down, but aside from that, I drop more burst damage than anything I have ever seen before. Additionally, next patch they will be improving my curses so that curse of shadow and curse of elements will be one spell, so my spriest's shadow spells will be doing 10% more damage and my fire spells will too on the same cast. Definitely a sneak-attack buff by Blizzard. Also, they are making Fel Armor undispellable, which will definitely be a boon to our play as it gives me additional healing received from the spriest's vampiric embrace and from my health stones.

I want to find a good elemental shamang and just laugh about doing gibs in the 3s arena... all in good time.

Yeah, they are really powerful. Here's some of the things about being a hunter that are hard: 1) you have to stand still to shoot someone whereas a warrior can chase someone and white swing, 2) there is no 2. Honestly, hunters have a few downsides, but they are simply part of the class. They do not have a huge number of survival abilities (even though one of their talent trees is called 'survival'), but they can survive against a heavy burst reasonably well, and with all their various snares, roots, and control mechanics, they seem an ideal partner for a druid in the 2s bracket. We started the team on thursday, and as of today we are 15-5, with 4 of those losses as "damn it... we should have won but I played retardedly at the end."

We lost to 1) warrior+rogue (I got burst really hard and got cocky when we lived through it... then I got a full duration intimidating shout into blind into sap combo after trinketing out of blind a few seconds before), 2) rogue+spriest (again... we were winning and my hunter said something like "I'm getting burst down by this rogue" which I took to mean "I need you to stun him" when he really meant "I need you to continue healing as you are... don't change," then I got a full duration AoE fear from the priest), and there two more teams I cannot remember. We lost to a mage+rogue, and it was the only match I feel that we actually lost. The other matches were all me being stupid, whereas the mage+rogue completely destroyed us without me being able to directly explain why. The only answer I can give is "my hunter got rooted" which is not really an excuse as much as an explanation: if frost nova hits someone and they cannot get out of it, frostbolts will rain death from the heavens. This team tends to destroy a lot of the more favorable compositions today, which came as a real shock to me. We beat druid+rogue, we beat priest+hunter, shamang+warrior, druid+warrior, and a good number of other rogue teams. Essentially, hunters are the anti-rogue class at the moment, though shadow step is a huge hindrance to the hunter's ability to trap and get mobile, we seem to fight through it rather well.

Okay, another thing I am finding: there is a definite trick to getting away from warriors and rogues. Forgive me here, I'm an old-time druid and I still miss the days of shifting causing the 1 second snare/root immunity. Lately, I've started recording matches of my druid, as well as my warlock, and I started noticing that when melee classes focus on me, I tend to run away in travel form until I get snared, then I do my instant "back to travel form" macro, only to be snared again. I can't believe how stupid this is of me, but I almost always prefer a timely escape to moving around in cast form; it just seems too slow to be of any real use. Anyway, I realized that I was doing too many snare breaks and it was 1) costing me too much mana and 2) not effectively getting distance on good rogues/warriors. See, shifting out of travel form is a free action, so it doesn't incur a gcd or mana cost, and it removes snares/roots just like shifting into a feral form. So, if I get my head out of my ass, I should be able to effectively roll a better timed and more mana efficient escape by first getting snared in travel form, then simply exiting travel form to remove the snare and gain a little ground on my opponent, then they will snare again and I will immediately (while their snare is on gcd) go back into travel form to break the snare and be off and running at travel form speed. Right now I'm breaking the snare and going immediately back to travel form to catch the next snare... which is dumb and probably why my warrior+druid team had so much trouble.

It's the end of another piss-poor season. We are sitting in the rubble of a team that we all feel should be better than it is, and there are no fingers being pointed. Sure, there are plenty of questions floating about: "are we just getting counter-comped," "should we try a different target, or tactic," "are we doing this right?"

We queued up for 3s as rogue+warrior+druid, each with tons of gear (not the newest, but at least one season departed or newer), each with tons of skill and experience, each with a clear idea of what to do against all the teams we are expecting to see. What happened? We didn't see any of the teams we expected to see. Sure, we beat that rogue+hunter+priest team, but that was mainly on the fact that our melee-heavy team eats priests alive between mortal strike and mind-numbing poison. Sure, we beat a druid+warlock+hunter team, but only because the druid was terrible and busted all his ccs on me early on. The teams we weren't expecting, or really had any idea of what to do with were the armor-heavy teams. The warrior+pally+druid, warrior+pally+shamang, warrior+druid+retadin teams were the straws that broke my back (I'm a camel in this metaphor).

And maybe that's the trick... it just wasn't our time to queue... we got a bad run of melee-defensive teams and we just got counter-comped. However, that seems to happen to us a lot. However, I do tend to create teams that are pretty easily counter-comped. Warrior+enhancement+druid and warrior+restomang+druid are both counter-comped; the first is the same as rogue with half the survivability and the second has mana issues. It might be time to try a new strategy.

I have been watching Nerf Sap 10 a lot (mostly the commentary version) and looking at their composition. There just doesn't seem to be any feasible way that they can lose on that team unless someone knows of that comp and how powerful it truly is and happens to be anti-melee with a little luck on their side. For instance, the only team I think that could beat the rogue+rogue+lock team is a pally+pally+warrior, and the pallies would have to be amazing with their personal bubbles to avoid garrotes and blinds. Anyway, I'm talking to the rogue on my rogue+druid+warrior team and I suggest this, point out the video, and he says sure, he's got a rogue friend at 1900 right now, and next season will try it a bit with my warlock. Sweet. I'll keep playing 2s with my spriest, of course, but this sounds like raping-fun.

Other than that, I was thinking of switching out the rogue on my threes team of rogue+warrior+druid for a warlock. That way we would be less melee-heavy, have a little more cc, and would force a target off the bat. Not to mention that locks are easy to heal, can heal themselves slightly as sl/sl, and bring a spell-lock and dispel to the table.