Dr. Mayo is the winner of the grand vote on the Arena Junkies forum for my next interview. He invented the loathed triple healer comp, played one of the most amazing winning streaks in arena history with Reckful and Talbadar and played in several on- and offline tournaments against players from Orangemarmalade to Xandyn.

Read more: http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/225102-interview-with-dr-mayo/X_8592X

A blog by Hildegard, featuring Rasen from EU-Stormscale.

The WoW PVP community is known to be a bitter, troll-infested bunch of wanna-be hard asses, that hate on enthusiasm. With the lack of tournaments since Cataclysm started and the easy access to boosting services or the MMR exploit, Cataclysm was a huge letdown. Although most of all top players agree, that the game mechanics are better than ever before. Add two legendaries and other broken PVE stuff into the mix and it is no wonder, that the scene went stale, „Off topic“ became the most-read area of Arena Junkies and on the official forums things got even worse.

With the introduction of Real ID and war games as well as more players with high-speed internet connections suddenly tournaments became an option and the PVP landscape started to change. Competition was back, not about live ratings and titles, that could be exploited but for the best players in the region or even the world to compete against each others. Also RBGs started to be organized over multiple servers since the latest patch.

With the tournament realm balancing became easier, because tournament organizers did not need to check for hidden pve gear and everyone was on the same playing field. Teams could be created, comps and racials changed like on the original tournaments back in TBC and WotLK. You can also see, that every day new players start writing interesting topics on AJ, more and more players look for help there.

We are now at the end of an expansion, most that can be done has been seen. This is a time to prepare for what is coming with the new expansion Mists of Pandaria. The tournament realm will be extended to work on level 90 with the full new PvP gear. So we will have the chance to watch the best players in the world facing off against each other in a gear-balanced environment. I do not expect balance to be good or no exploits to exist, but expect to see amazing matches, new comps coming up and I have high hopes for monks as a class. They look solid, not overpowered, maybe even a bit weak.

I think the tournament viewership will sky-rocket with the start of MoP and overshadow everything except BlizzCon, that has been done before. We have many organizers, camera men and commentators, that became better and better over the last few months and a hooked up the community, that is actually interested in the results and the games. I know players, that never watched tournaments before, especially because of the bad times in Europe (middle of the night) and the lack of videos to watch what happened later on.

My readers know me to get excited, once I have an idea in my head, so I decided to ask Rasen, some questions, who is known to be the most insightful poster on the official WoW PVP forums in Europe.

Hildegard: Rasen, you read this blog, as someone following the PVP scene for quite some time, what are your thoughts?

Rasen: Well firstly, just a small correction, not really that important, but you couldn't change races on the original TBC tournaments, you were locked to playing a specific race, like all warlocks had to be Orc female for example.
Anyway about the content, I think honestly think that if Blizzard are going to make a permanent TR like you think they need to basically balance it on those realms, even if it means making balance changes which only effect that realm and nowhere else
Which I'm not sure Blizzard will actually do, but considering the state of live realms (filled with mass corruption) nobody really takes them seriously anymore. It just turned into a way for kids to make money instead of getting a job.
But I believe this would be the best thing for Blizzard as well, it's far easier to balance things when you know what gear people are going to be using, the high rated PvP community as a whole doesn't care about gear, some do, the vast majority of them don't, so if they made the TR permanent than actually do small balance changes here and there than you can get rid of a large amount of the complaining that happens about PvP.
They make the community much happier and WoW can only benefit from that. The more balanced it is the more people who will want to watch, eventually you'd have organizers of bigger organizations than just player-run events coming and wanting to pick it up. As it would already have an audience, a stable way of running tournaments and a history of successful tournaments.

Hildegard: Did you notice any change in the forums, since the tournaments started with the latest patch?

Rasen: There has definitely been more activity since the tournaments started, people seem more interested in talking about PvP again, whereas there is still the usually complaining and that probably will never disappear there has been more constructive posts and more "Well I watched NAO yesterday and X class did well, whereas everyone through that class was awful so maybe I can do better if I tried", basically when you can see people of specific classes doing well which are considered weak on live than it can inspire people to do better themselves.
When the vast majority of the high rated community are just complaining about the "game being shit" that filters through to the entire community.
When people aren't complaining (Balance is still bad, but the tournaments can sometimes put balance on a backseat even if you still hear about "oh look its 7 shaman/lock teams lololol", when the games are good, and for the most part they have been good, than people are more willing to forgive balance problems when they are having fun.

Hildegard: You are one of the very few high-rated players, that frequent the official forums, while others simply bash on the players writing there. How come?

Rasen: That's just my personality, I generally prefer to avoid drama and things of that nature, which is basically all AJ has been about for some time now, so I stopped going to that site. I also have many friends who post there so generally most of the posts are just having fun and than every so often I'll have an issue I want to bring up where I'll make a "serious" post.
And I guess I like helping people, so if someone makes a post there I can help them, whereas there are many people who can help someone on AJ (although the vast majority of the community simple ignore that forum completely) so they are likely to find better help from someone who plays their class.

Hildegard: Would consider visiting AJ more often if the community further improves there?

Rasen: Well the thing about that is it's not just the drama nature of the community there are a lot of things I do not like about most high rated players, the willingness to cheat is a big one, I'm a very honest player and I don't change that just because of the anonymity of the internet, I don't believe something is worth "achieving" (example being a R1 title) though illegitimate means, something the community doesn't seem to have any issue whatsoever with
So I don't know, there would have to be a lot of changes for me to consider AJ being worthwhile again

Hildegard: Thank you for your time Rasen. Keep it up, I love reading your posts and I actually bookmarked the official PVP forums because of you.

Links:
Official forums: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/…
Rasen: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/…

Hotted, a well known arena video producer from the US, commentated one of our matches on his YouTube Channel. The match is about 10 days old and shows us playing before our latest improvement. Still fun to watch and see yourself being commentated by him. Hopefully I will be able to make a better video soon.


Watch Hildegard's RMP vs. WLS commentated by Hotted  Starts 0:56 in the video.

Anyone that reads this nook for a time knows, that I try to improve, to play better. The last days were a huge step, as Doomsen played with me on the tournament realm. He recruited a Shadowpriest from Trade Chat, whom I will call Mr. P. I was the player with the lowest max-rating on the team and learned quite some tricks. One day later the Mr P. played with me on the tournament realm as well, this time as Discipline and with Lucié, the mage from my RMP on live (Forscherliga). Lucié learned a lot while playing with this priest, especially performing well, while being pressured and utilizing his instant control. Not soon after Mr. P. decided to transfer his priest and paladin to the Forscherliga server, while staying in Skype with our RMP. 

On Monday we played again on live, with new concepts, new moves, with a priest coached by Zunniyaki, a mage coached by Mr. P, who plays mage on 2,3k rating and myself. We had a rating of around 1860 at that time and began to play and to win a lot. At around 1920 we encountered a Feral/Enhancer/Holy Paladin team, that destroyed us two times pretty fast. Usually after such matches, Lucié and Nory (our priest) start bitching and we lose focus. This time however we changed things up and scored a kill, while playing better than ever before, forcing trinkets, managing DRs  , moving coordinated and bursting together. The next match the enemy Shaman used a bug and gave their paladin earth shield, while still playing Enchancement. They managed to score a kill on our still undergeared priest. Now the amazing thing happened. Instead of complaining, we decided to stomp these f***ers and that we did. We killed them four times in a row until they stopped queing. 

We moved up further and continued to play strong. On 1980 we encountered an RMP from another battlegroup after a seven minute wait time. Without thinking too much we moved in, unstealthed their rogue, forcing trinket and vanish at once. We switched to their mage, and spam dispel on me combined with Escape Artist and Vanish kept me on the enemy mage constantly, while their rogue tried to peel our mage. After a Kidney, Smoke before the enemy mage had Blink again we forced the block, that was dispelled in less than one second by our priest. Their priest was deeped, used trinket to avoid the ring and got into a full fear. 

I managed to get onto the mage, that desperately tried to survive,  blanketed my priest, deeped me, while their rogue silenced my mage. I trinketed, kicked his evocation and killed him one second before the priest came out of the fear. We looked them up on the armory and the team had experience between 2340 and 2520, two of them with 410 gear. 1989 rating now. Next match was easy, a 1700 rated Vanguards Cleave after five minutes of waiting. 1996. 

Next match. RLS on Nagrad. We open hard on the shaman, force the trinket instantly, force Nature's Swiftness seconds later. Shatter and Eviscerate and Smoke Bomb, 300 life left, but the Spirit Link does not bug out and although it is killed fast, the Shaman gets away. We focus too much on pressuring, switch to the Lock and get him to 30%, while our priest calls for help. I think, that he could manage the rogue himself, but he gets kicked and dies, because Luciè and me did not peel fast enough. We had little time left that evening, tried it two more times and lost both matches against the RLS, but all of them very close. 1957 again. 

While this is not spectacular for anyone that plays on higher ratings, it is cetainly for us. I think we never had as much fun in the arena as yesterday and we are on fire right now. The 2,2k hunt continues, although we lost a lot of rating during the last three games.

Today: May 12th 7:00-11:30pm CET




Yaspresenst 3v3 tournament GROUP B (May 12th, 7:00-11:30pm CET ):
Bleached X_5991X Mir , Skenz , Geru
Yas Suprise X_6008X Khuna , Xandyn , Zunniyaki
Tag Team X_6025X Talbadar , Snutz , Cdew
Multivites: Abni , Maldiva , Karvinen

Stream X_6071X http://www.twitch.tv/yaspresent/X_6073X

Today during the X_6077X Sunday May 13 03:00-06:00a.m


NAO Invitational


This includes the final matches for Khuna/Xandyn/Zunniyaki, that need to win in order to qualify for the next round.

More information: NAO Invitational Section on Arena Junkies

Stream Link: X6110Xwww.twitch.tv/naoinv/X_6111XX_6112X

Sunday evening: May 13th, 7:00-11:00pm CET.

Yaspresents tournament: Semi-Finals and Grand Finals 

Stream X_6125X http://www.twitch.tv/yaspresent/X_6127X

Sunday to Monday during the X_6131X Monday May 14  03:00-06:00a.m

NAO Invitational


More information: NAO Invitational Section on Arena Junkies



Stream Link: X6151Xwww.twitch.tv/naoinv/X_6152XX_6153X

Yesterday: Yaspresents 3v3 Tournament Group A
The Yaspresents 3v3 Tournament started out phenomenal, with the best commentator team - Azael and Zunniyaki - for any WoW tournaments up until now. The patronage by Yaspresents meant no commercial breaks, no sponsorship mentioning every two minutes and a very well organized team. The downside was that Dicegg, the hunter on Hydras team, got ddosed in their second series and had to play with a replacement hunter. The rest of the tournament was excellent and worth a watch.

Videos
Yaspresents 3v3 Tournament Group A - Part One
Yaspresents 3v3 Tournament Group A - Part Two
Yaspresents 3v3 Tournament Group A - Part Three

Also check out
Sammyx/Drmayo/Khryl vs. Khuna/Xandyn/Zunniyaki
One of the best arena series of all time. Starts about ten minutes into the video.

Hotted just posted an amazing offer on the AJ forum:

Hey guys, I announced today on my youtube channel that every Tuesday I will go through a couple of clips that people send me on my youtube channel analyzing their gameplay and trying to help them in becoming a better player. If you are interested in this, upload the clip on your youtube channel or on a website and send me the link on: hottedwow@gmail.com Subject: Name/ Class /Comp www.youtube.com/hotted89

I will send in some matches and hope you do the same. I like the idea and you should like his youTube channel.