It's Been A While, I'm BEEECK

Don't get the "BEEEECK" reference? allsp.com, Season 9, watch The Losing Edge.

So, I'm back to my Hunter full-time after realizing that I'll never master another class the way I mastered my Hunter. However, after noting that players are mastering multiple classes for tournament play, I've decided to continue playing and gearing up my Warrior, and level-capping my Mage and playing/gearing him as well. This means I'll have a personal arsenal of Warrior, Hunter, and Mage at my disposal that I can confidently play well.

I've been experimenting a lot since coming back to my Hunter. Lileth and I are doing 2's again, and we went 11-0 with Hunter/Warlock in 2v2 last night. It's not much, but it's still early in the season. A lot of old FOTM teams gave us minimal trouble (like War/Pal, War/Dru, and Rog/Prst). We haven't fought any of the newer, somewhat FOTM teams like Rog/Mag, Rog/Lock, Lock/Dru, or Lock/Pal. Actually, we haven't fought any Locks yet, which is probably a largely contributing factor to our success as a 2DPS team. That won't last long later in the season.

3v3, we've been running the cookie cutter drain team of Hun/Prst/Lock. We'd like to grab a Druid over our Priest, but we'd rather have a good Priest than a bad Druid, and the only good Druid we know is preoccupied. We ended up playing Hun/Prst/Lock much more aggressively than most teams end up doing, as we would usually have a target dead before our first drain target was OOM (thanks mostly to Lileth being Godly at CC, or is that just the premise of the class? ;p)

5v5, haven't started it yet. The plan is to get it going this week, but it's unknown yet whether we'll do just that. We're short a Druid and a Paladin, so if any Illidan Druids or Paladins are reading this by some wild chance, we'd like to hear from you. The plan is to go pure drain/outlast, but those plans might change quickly; we're thinking of going with a bizarre setup of Hun/Lock/Prst/Rog/Dru, which would definitely be unprecedented in the higher brackets, if it were to make it. I do not have a ton of faith in the matrix, but I do have faith in the players we'd be using.

I haven't been too active on the "boof huntars lul" scene, as I'm actually pretty happy with our current state. The two things we truly lack now are survivability and good pet design. Good pet design is a combination of a lot of things that would surely end up as more than two, as pet survivability, utility, scaling, and the loyalty/happiness systems are dramatically flawed. On top of that, Dismiss Pet is trash. Utter trash. As far as our survivability goes, I truly feel that all we still need is a good oh-shit button against casters and we'll be in great shape. The state of Hunters has most definitely improved, but I'd still like to see a few more changes made.

Hamchook just placed third at Dreamhack, which makes him the third Hunter ever signed to a contract to play on a team, and receive money for it (Reznap receives money even for tournaments he doesn't participate in with Pandemic). Good shit Hamchook, can't wait to talk to you again.

I've decided on when I'm going to pick up my video project again, and many people aren't going to like this. Basically, I'm waiting to get an entirely new rig (~6mo.) to make my new video. I'd like to get a bit more financially stable before I even order my new PC, which will probably end up being a Dell XLS. At the very least, I need to back up a bunch of shit on this PC and reformat it, but I haven't decided to yet, nor have I taken any initiative to start backing it up. This time around, I'd have to do it with CD's, as I think some of my files are infected, and I'd hate to infect my laptop as well by giving it shitty files.

Whether or not I'm still going to make a push to be a pro player is up in the air. At this point, my social life has picked up a lot, and I'm not so sure I'd have the time to commit to practicing, or the money to travel if I were accepted to compete. That's all still assuming there will be another WSVG-esque competitive domain for WoW as an eSport (although I wouldn't be surprised to see CAL/CPL pick it up).

I don't have a lot of faith in the organizers of DreamHack to carry on hosting WoW competitions, simply because DreamHack is an annual event, if I'm not mistaken. Nor do I have faith in GameRiot stepping up and doing anything, since they're owned by the same company that brought is the failure that was WSVG. If anyone were to pick it up, my money would be on CAL/CPL, simply because they've always been known to pick up popular games, financially bacled or not (case in point: DotA). A game like WoW would shake things up a lot in CAL.

Radikal has rejoined us in the blogging world, and I could not be happier to have him back. His most recent post was a poker flashback, which, by the sound of it, would be boring but, in actuality, was fucking mad entertaining. I could read Raddy's writing for hours and not get bored. Raddy, if you're reading this, I have got to meet you, my friend.

That's it for me. I'm tired and it's 4:45 AM. Good night kids.

'Til next time,
-Treisk