Plans for Season 6

I have to say, despite the balance changes, I’m finding season 6 to be a real challenge in 2s, in large part due to the fact I’ve decided to stick with mage / rogue. I’ll say right now that priest / rogue looks to be far and away the strongest rogue setup right now, and even as far as double dps goes, mage rogue is mediocre at best. The setup takes a big hit this season. The primary reason for this is the lack of other double dps teams, the increase of druids teams, and the complete lack of rogue survivability without constant heals. Rogue teams are beatable, but at the same time random; if the opposing rogue opens on you, your chances of winning go down to around 20-30 percent, and with half of the rogues wearing goggles or being human / night elf, getting openers can be difficult. Like I said, we’ve had a difficult start (we were doing well until tanking 250 points to warrior / druid, rogue druid and dk / druid pretty much consecutively) but with some work hopefully we will do better than our current terrible record indicates.

In terms of threes, when I have some time I’m probably going to be running PMR. Yes, it may be unoriginal, but at the moment I just don’t see another rogue comp that’s as effective. I really don’t want to play a cleave setup (anything with double melee) as I find it to be kind of mindless. If I were to play with a lock, then maybe shaman lock rogue, but (I’m sure this is true for everyone) you prefer to play with people you know.

Ultimately, I don’t know how competitive I’ll be this season. I’d really like a first place title, but with rogues being incredibly weak in 5s and sticking with a lackluster mage / rogue comp in 2s, I’m probably going to have to find it in a 3s bracket I haven’t yet started this season. At first I was thinking that I may just play more for fun as I’m really not sure what I want to do in game, but this brings me to my next point.

The Grass is always Greener

This passing tournament realm was a pretty big disappointment for me. I started out playing with a few teams. In all honestly, because I couldn’t find a good enough priest to play with Aeias and myself, and had the same problem with the other PMR I was playing with. I then essentially abandoned the people I knew to play with Pooks and Verty, who seemed serious about succeeding. I felt like a complete asshole, essentially wasting the time of the other teams I was playing with for what I felt was my best shot at qualifying.

For whatever reason, things didn’t work out. We played a bit and did decently (I think about 2300) with a mediocre record. Ultimately, we never played together enough to have any kind of synergy, and due to conflicting schedules we didn’t have a chance to play for about a week mid-tourny realm. At this point, without me realizing it initially, I was ditched by pooks without a word, which was obviously the right choice for him as he was able to qualify with sekko and realz. All I managed to achieve this past tournament realm was to insult some friends and waste 20 dollars. I don’t have any hard feelings, but I will say that it was great this past week watching Aeias shit all over Pooks 1v1 in a mirror match on live, where both me and Sekko died.

For me, the biggest problem I’ve had with this game (which is also a big reason I continue to play it) is that I can never reach a level of contentment. I realize that the mmo genre is all about the “horse chasing the apple they’ll never catch”, and that’s great. Gear will never be perfect because there will always be upgrades, there will always be new reputation grinds or honor pieces, and if there wasn’t then people would spend far less time playing and have far less interest.

For me, this concept goes beyond gear and PvE progression (and before I continue, I’m not trying to be melodramatic or conceited here, I know this is a game). Since I started playing this game a lot, I’ve always had goals: try to be the best rogue in my guild, have the best gear, be the best on the server, make the best video that I can make (get the most out of whatever potential there is), not so much for the recognition (I hope people like my vids, etc, but ultimately I’m doing it for my own satisfaction), but more for the challenge and the goal of striving to be the best.

Since arena came out in BC, these goals have had to change. Being the best suddenly meant having the best rating and being part of a great LAN team. So my goals became trying to (more…)