Bizzlesnaff’s Clip Contest

Submit Your Clips!

Click the Image above for a video trailer explaining the contest!

My associate and confidant, Mr. Bizzlesnaff (see Eviscerate X, Six Silent Shadows, Unmercey 6, Who Is Champ Jones for examples of his editing work) wants your PvP clips. Have a clip you like but don’t know how to edit? Want to get a PvP clip out there?

So, if you’re looking to get a clip out there for people to see, don’t be shy. Submit! In the end, it’s all for fun! Just send your clip or a link to it to bizzlesnaff@gmail.com

Here is a link to a torrent of FRAPS, which you can use to record in game footage.

How I Make Videos

A topic I look at sometimes here is PvP videos. It’s something I know a lot about, although people often discredit them they have had an impact on things. Like a lot of concepts surrounding the game, they’ve changed and developed over time. This article, I’m going to take a closer look. First, I’ll talk about my general process for making videos. After a while, I’ve found that I have some routines for production. In a article coming soon, I’ll be listing some of my favourite vids, spanning from vanilla WoW to WOTLK.

My Process for Making a PvP Video

Before I start, let me say that there’s no “correct” way to make a video. It’s a creative process like any other, so just like there’s no correct way to draw a picture, there’s no correct way to do this either. The kind of video you may make really depends what you want to do. Do you want to simply show PvP, do you want to add lots of editing and effects? Are you trying to teach people something, are you trying to show something specific? Do you want to sync the music, do you want to incorporate machinima, do you care about intros and outros and cutscenes, or are you making a bread and butter pvp video? I can’t answer those questions for others, but the following is what I normally do when I decide to record and produce a PvP video. Hopefully it can be of some help to some people, I’m posting this because it’s something I get a lot of questions about.

Before you Start:

- you need something to record in game. My suggestion is fraps, which you can find on any torrent site. If fraps lags you, change it’s options to half size, also try changing the fps in fraps to 60. Another tip is in WoW options, to NOT play in window mode, or window mode maximized.

- you need a video editing program. I use sony vegas, adobe after effects is another good option. Both of these programs can be torrented fairly easily. There are thousands of editing tutorials for beginers on youtube / google, and it’s how I learned the basics.

My Process

Step I:

The first step, obviously, is getting the content. This means recording raw, in game footage. For me it’s pretty simple. The more you record, the better your video will be. That’s not to say the play-style will be very different if you record more, but personally I look for interesting clips against skilled players (interesting meaning a close arena game/duel, something where someone got to show skill in one way or another) and these clips may or may not come quickly.

For an arena video for example, I’ll probably record on and off for a few months. To avoid confusion and stay relevant, I try to record within the same content patch period, so for example recording for a 3.3 video will take place and be released in 3.3. I also try to record arena content from the same season for similar reasons. After every few nights of recording, I’ll find some time to go through the clips, organize them into what I might use and delete what I won’t. By the time I’m done I’ll probably end up with dozens of clips, so it’s important to stay organized.

my fraps folder after recording an arena session

Step II:

The second step for me is picking music I will use. This is important because I try to sync the music with the video itself, and sync it with the editing. I find it makes a big difference if you sync the focal point of a clip with a focal point in the music. This is something I may change later when I get more clips or to make things fit better.

Step III:

The third step is starting to put clips generally on a timeline with the music. Once they are roughly in place, I can start editing.

Step IV:

The fourth step I take is to add in velocity to individual clips, and cut them up so they fit with the music. Changing velocity usually for me means putting slow motion in parts I want to highlight, and I generally cut out parts of clips that I don’t think fit.

clips after some basic syncing with changes to velocity

Step V:

The fifth step is the combination of cropping (zooming and rotating different parts of clips) and adding effects as I think suit the video. Honestly, there is no simple way to explain this. Check youtube for tutorials, look around, ask people. Try new things, and save often so you won’t be afraid. Editing and effects can go as far as you want them to; I’m not going to pretend to be able to explain this or say that this is something I’m great with. The sky is really the limit here.

Step VI:

The last part of the editing process for me is going over the video piece by piece until I think things are good and it’s ready for a render. After the first render, unless by some miracle everything worked, I’ll watch the vid once or twice and fix what I didn’t think fit or worked. After doing this, I’ll render again and hopefully have a finished video.

Well, first of all, hey, it’s been a while, but fortunately I’m not writing this from beyond the grave. The last few weeks have been crazy for me in general, so I haven’t found much of a chance to update here. I’ve had three 10 page + essays to finish (one that will be a bit late), mid terms, the shocking passing of my 19 year old cousin in a car accident, and trying to live the rest of my normal life along the way. I’ve still been playing arena, but I just haven’t had the chance to write much. Things seem to be gradually settling down, so hopefully I can be back to the norm soon as far as posting goes.

Season 8

Well the season is well under way. As far as balance goes, I can’t really complain right now. The only class that feels out of balance right now, to me, are hunters. People make the argument that they don’t have many comps that work and that they really aren’t that strong. I tend to disagree. They have the same insane damage as warriors, but are still in the role of melee. Hunters have this damage, MS effect, execute, pets, amazing aoe snares, ranged silence, ranged crowd control with freezing trap, snake trap, deterance, and disengage, and this being a rogue site, let’s not forget flare. The scary thing is, I don’t find that there are many skilled hunters, and I think that’s what holds the class back more than anything.

Deterance vs. Cloak

When I say that cloak should be 100 percent, or that evasion needs a more consistent change to reduce rng, people still argue that. Clearly, blizzard hasn’t felt the need to make a change. It’s hard to agree with this when you consider deterrence. Coupled with disengage, and the ability to perform it twice, this feels currently like the ultimate defensive cd. The only counter to it is for a melee class to stun them, which can be very difficult as I’m sure you’re all aware.

How can hunters be put into balance? Both disengage and deterrence should have a forbearance, similar to iceblock for the same reasons ice block has it. The ability to survive unless stunned for the duration of two disengages and deterrences seems like overkill on survivability. The only other change I’d like to see for hunters to bring them a bit more into balance is snake trap. Snake trap makes arena exceedingly messy, and that’s something I think everyone wants to avoid.

Shadowpriest / Rogue 2s

More than anything this season, I’ve been playing shadow priest / rogue 2v2. Now I know that a lot of people (myself included) had abandoned 2s, not just because Blizz has forgetten the bracket, but because of the abundance of unbeatable plate/healer teams. I have to say, this reality has dissapeared; the bracket feels a lot more  balanced with a great variety of comps being viably. If you don’t care about meaningless titles and you have a 3s for gear, I don’t see anything wrong with 2s right now.

I find I really enjoy playing with a shadow priest in 2s. You have all the pressure and excitement of double dps, and the utility of some heals. You also have the huge benefit of densive shields. Over the course of playing the comp, I’ll be posting some strats to hopefully help others. It’s not the best comp right now because you do have a lot of fairly hard counters (DK/Pally, Rogue/Mage, Lock/Druid), but we’ve been as high as second this season when we were playing a bit more, and when we have time hopefully we’ll be able to get back up there.

Against Warrior / Druid

So this is a comp that is very beatable with the use of some simple strats. Although swapping may work occasionally, I find the best strat here is to sit on the warrior. He will go defensive and the game may go long, but you have the tools to reliably succeed with this strat. Now this may sound simple, but there’s a lot more to it. Here are some specifics:

• Get a cheapshot on the warrior before he touches your priest and lands a snare. Your priest should stay mounted here and once you open, rush the druid for a fear. Even if the fear isn’t possible, he should be able to get better position for silence and fear later on.
• Use silence relatively early, as the game may go to a second silence
• Open with CS–>Mut–>Ks, and chain a dismantle out of Ks. If they trinket Ks, it’s probably a good idea to dismantle. It’s important to get early pressure so the warrior and druid have to play defensive.
• Tricks of the Trade with the first opener once your priest starts damage
• Be careful with demo shout. If you get shouted and your priest gets snared, you make have to blind before fear after you get the intial pressure on the warrior.
• If necessary, and a kill isn’t close, the priest can pillar and briefly recover while you peel. Hymn is great for these situations.
• Fiend early for additional pressure
• Feint bladestorm, running away is usually a bad idea

Really, these are the main ideas against this comp. The only warrior / druid team we’ve lost to consistently is hoodrych / chumpjohn, largely because of his excellent defensive play and 1200+ resilience, but even with them we’ve come close and I feel gear is an important factor.

More Strats to Come in the future. To those who play the comp, what do you want to know about? And don’t say DK / Pally, because that really is the biggest counter.

Plans for 3s

I do have some things in the works, but until it gets off the groun I won’t say much here. I did play Rogue/Lock/Shaman a bit to about 2650 to start the season. This is easily the strongest and easiest rogue comp to work with. It rewards aggressive playstyle and swaps, and only really struggles against beast cleave. If you don’t know what comp to run, go with RLS because it’s your easiest ticket to victory. UA locks have amazing utility and can spread pressure that compliments a rogues ability to quickly change targets.

Arena Video

It’s a while away from completion, but I’m starting to collect clips and it will be done when it’s done. It’s mostly a matter of waiting on clips right now.