In light of all the ridiculousness in my last article, I decided to try to tackle some current 'unknowns' in the WoW gaming community. The first of which is the recent splitting of SK-Gaming and Serennia, and anything relative to their tournament success/struggles. I decided to talk to the man directly - about this, the aforementioned, and mostly WotLK beta stuff - and the following was the result of our little chit-chat/interview. Some of the answers are lengthy, but I encourage you to read them in their entirety because as usual, Serennia has a lot of good things to say when I interview him.

Jasi: You had quite a strong showing at WWI and MLG SD, what do you think went wrong at MLG Orlando?

Serennia: Alright, well I think the answer to that question stems back to MLG San Diego and even before then. The comp that we ran (dru/rog/enh) was very unique and almost no one had practice against it and didn't know how to play (read: counter) it. It performed well online largely because of the "surprise" factor, and not to mention it is indeed a strong ladder comp that isn't countered by many teams that typically make it to the top of the 3v3 bracket. When we brought it to San Diego, its weaknesses were still relatively unknown and we performed fairly well at given the limited options of comps we were able to work with.

In Paris, although we seemed to be underdogs playing with a short-manned roster, I feel we did better overall because our team had depth without being locked into a shaman. For WWI Paris, however, we had 2 bread and butter comps to go to: RLD (rogue/lock/druid) and RWD (rogue/warrior/druid) which can cover (again, read: counter) the majority of the comps out there. I was able to stay on druid for almost every single game, and almost every single game that we played, Neilyo was playing a rogue; imagine that, right? Inflame was the Azael of our team, being the flexible swing player that could either play a caster or contribute to a cleave comp. I personally think we messed up bad against Council of Mages and should have won the tournament, but the past is the past and that's how the cookie crumbled.

For MLG Orlando, however, teams began to understand our main comp's weaknesses (other variations of cleave usually). Before going into the tournament, both Neilyo and I understood these weaknesses and asked the management of SK Gaming to allow us to bring a druid either in addition to our main three players (Glorin, Neilyo, and me) or replace Glorin entirely for it, as I felt every competent team playing us would attempt to counter with cleave and force us into a comp that we're not comfortable with in order to counter back. SK said it wouldn't be possible for Orlando and to go with our regular three and I regrettably knew what the results would be before the tournament even started when finding this out.

All 3 matchups we played involved the other team running a cleave variation: Orz running ret/war/druid, loser bracket team running dru/rog/rog, and Insurrection running rog/war/dru. All three of these comps favor the opponent's team and all three matches involved us playing secondary comps that we're not as comfortable with. Although we 3-0'd the random dru/rog/rog team, it wasn't so easy to beat the other more experienced teams with our secondary line-ups as one could see. Many would question why I decided to run paladin for many of those games, and criticized our play, but I had my reasons and I don't just make these decisions without consulting Neilyo and Glorin. Every lineup we run is discussed before we lock in and we decided as a team.

Paladin seemed like the logical idea for Orz because they were running a heavy armor ret paladin cleave team; basically, a druid-slaughter comp. You can't really run a druid against that unless you have a secondary healer that can also magic dispel with you (priest or paladin). However, because Glorin cannot play anything outside of a shaman, we were limited to either druid/war/enhance, druid/war/resto, or pal/war/enhance basically. Although the scenario basically required us to pick our poison, we attempted to pick the lesser of the three evils. Although the last game was close, we obviously didn't win. For virtually the same reasons, we lost to Insurrection in the loser bracket, as well. I was not confident in running dru/war/enhance to counter their rog/war/dru at first because I knew with Glorin's shakiness with online play and the nature of shamans without mods in general, we would be dealing with (read: eating) a lot of CC from Caal and probably lose the match up.Which bring me to my last point of shamans on LAN.

I think it's somewhat surprising that the world has yet to see a shaman excel on LAN as of yet. Douja performed sub-par at both San Diego and WWI (even got sapped one game vs. SK EU that they lost in the duration of that sap when they played shadowplay comp vs. their RMP), Kollektiv had a lackluster performance at both Orlando and CGS, and Glorin dropped the ball at San Diego and then Orlando, as well. Now I realize shamans are one of the most complex classes in terms of roles they are performing, but I basically just named the three best shamans in the United States (online) and all three have failed to perform well on LAN so far. Glorin was easily the highest rated shaman on BG9 last season and performed ridiculously well in even pressure matches, but is a completely different player on LAN that one would think is not his primary, or even secondary class.

Therefore, to finally answer your question or the TLDR version: I think Orlando went poorly because A) we were stuck with a shaman in every single one of our comps, B) the counter-comps we were facing never allowed Neilyo to play a rogue, C) due to both A and B, we were forced into playing comps that we were not overly confident with. It's not just a coincidence that Neilyo never played his rogue for a single map in the entire tournament and we did so poorly. By the end of the tournament, the only thing I could really think to myself was "wtb a druid so I can play war with Neil on rogue".

Jasi: Well that answers a couple of questions - especially the Paladin appearance.  Rumor on the grapevine says you parted ways with SK-Gaming. I personally have not seen anything official about it, so I, along with others, are quite curious as to what happened. Would you be willing to comment on it?

Serennia: It was no secret that Neilyo and I had chemistry issues on the team. I won't into many specifics but rather than have people make any assumptions, let's just say I brought up the issues with Gosey, the player manager at SK Gaming, well before Orlando, or even Paris. Gosey heard what I had to say but wanted Glorin's unbiased opinion on it before deciding anything. Here is most the conversation:

******

Gosey: I spoke some to Serennia and Neil today, whats your take on all this?

Glorin: Meh, they decided not to handle this internally eh? Well, Serennia is slightly out of line in terms of being hard to deal with, but it takes two people to make an arguement.

Glorin: well, i guess not, but its good that you guys let us know. The only difference is Neil is being a little kid about it in my opinion. Neil is not wrong in so far as demanding that the problem be solved, but all I can do is sit there and listen to them argue and not give an inch over the most redicious things.

Gosey: Ok, lol. What do you want to do about it?

Glorin: Well, this is a problem between those two, so any reasonable solution would have to come through them. Frankly, I see where its going but i'm hoping the two of them come to terms.

Gosey: Alright. well yea, i just want to know what you think because you have been there and seen them both "in action".

Glorin: And its not even that they dislike eachother.  If they come to terms it wouldn't be as if they are tolorating eachother.  Its simply two really construed personalities that conflict every single time they play together.

Gosey: and you seem to be somewhat neutral in it

Glorin: I stay neutral so long as both are being irrational.  Meaning I usually take Serennia's side.

Gosey: Alright, well i'm not sure what to do actually. because Neil is supposed to be leading the team, but I know he's not really the leading type of person and he is relatively young.

Glorin: I was about to get to that.

Gosey: What would you think about making Serennia the team leader? do you think he would do a good job?

Glorin: Instead of trying to guess at the correct answer to that, let me tell you a little bit about both of them. In my opinion, and in the same opinion of most everyone I have ever talked to about serennia, is that he is probably one of the best in-game leaders this game as ever seen. And that statement comes with an asteriks. Serennia's biggest problem, almost his -only- problem is that he can't differinciate between different types of mistakes. Some people can tolerate it because they can keep their ego in-check and simply ignore it.  I'm only here to get better so it doesn't bother me if he over reacts and doesn't fully understand what went wrong.

Neil on the other hand is bothered by it every time Serennia opens his mouth.  Making serennia the "leader" would solve some problems, but a lot of them have to do with Neil.  Serennia is already the in-game leader.

Gosey: so you think we should just talk to them and let them solve it?

Glorin: The biggest *problem* is Serennia's over-reaction over certain mistakes, but hes also far more rational and mature about it.  Neilyo on the other hand has a lot of growing up to do and simply cannot act mature half the time we're playing

Gosey: Alright.

******

Serennia: That said, when we finished MLG Orlando with disappointing, not unexpected results (because of our limited roster issues), the announcement was apparently made that SK was picking up Mykke and Triks to play with Neilyo on 3v3. Now I won't go commenting on either of their capabilities as a player (although I'm sure many already do on at least one of them), I asked Gosey about this next time I saw him on.

What he basically said, was that the announcement was not to be made until he got a chance to talk to me about everything. Gosey wants to run 2 SK teams and has asked me to find two reliable players that I think can perform well on LAN and produce results with them on an online ladder and they would add them on board from there. Hopefully getting 2nd rank in 3v3 on Ruin battlegroup in 2 weeks of playing will be enough evidence that I wasn't entirely carried on our previous team. That said, I haven't finalized anything yet on who exactly our roster will be or anything, but it's getting there. Our druid position (yes, I want to play a warrior on LAN if possible) is iffy, so if you're reading this and think you have potential, contact me on Gameriot~

Jasi: Sounds like Gosey made a smart decision in the end. What are your general feelings towards the gameriot/WoW community? A lot of people seemed to have it out for you during MLG Orlando, and to be honest, it seemed like many were hoping for SK-Gaming's failure. What do you think this is related to?

Serennia: You can probably relate it to the same reasons why people mindlessly downrate PvP movies or things of that nature. For example, Neilyo 13 and 14 both got awful ratings on Wacraft Movies compared to other "average" rogue videos out there just because of who he is. His personality comes across as ****y and arrogant to some people, even though it is undeniable that he is one of the best rogues in the game. But for the aforementioned reason, people will wish failure upon the players with the most publicized success. A lot of people did not want Hafu's team (Orz) winning Orlando either, because they don't like the attention that she gets from being a female gamer. A lot of it has to do with jealousy, a lot of it has to do with teenage angst, and the rest of it probably comes down to people being toolbags behind their internet anonymity.

As far as my feelings toward the community, well, I honestly don't read Gameriot that much unless I'm especially bored or someone tells me about a specific blog to go read for whatever reason. I take pretty much everything said there with a grain of salt, as I'm pretty used to how people can act online when they have the combination of freedom of speech, and the blanket of anonymity that is the internet. A lot of people say things that they would never even fathom saying in real life to someone's face, and a lot of people act certain ways that they would never act at an event, Ming included. This is also the exact reason why certain people will always find convenient excuses to never attend a LAN event and they know who they are: GC, Noxn, and Affix, to name a few~

Jasi: Lets talk beta. Now that you're experiencing level 77 PVP, what are your thoughts on the following:

World PVP
Serennia: World PvP is pretty much a joke now, as it is a fairly difficult task to find anyone that's actually willing to fight back that isn't in one of the starting zones. Flying mounts are extremely buggy in Northrend, randomly dismounting players for a 5000-foot freefall to their death at seemingly any given time. It's also difficult to gauge because we don't have the highest level zones or the PvP zone (Lake Wintergrasp) unlocked yet. The zones that we have to work with are the BC equivalents of Zangarmarsh, Blade's Edge Mountains, etc; and honestly, no one PvP'd in those, they just used them for leveling really. So far no zones have any zone objects similar to Halaa in Nagrand, Spirit Towers in Terokkar, Graveyards in Zangarmarsh, or the three buildings in Hellfire. So right now there's little incentive to look for world PvP unless you're just extremely bored like many of us are (wtb level 80 cap increase).

Arena hasn't been implemented at all in beta as of yet but it would be very problematic for reasons I'll mention in the pvp balance part of this.

General Class Balance in terms of PVP
Serennia: It's really hard to say at this point. Certain classes are just downright ridiculously broken with their damage and scaling (read: paladins), certain classes have many non-functional deep-tree talents and broken talent trees (read: rogues, warriors, and shamans), while some classes just simply haven't gotten the gear to see how well they'll perform in a realistic situation at level 80 when everyone is on the same playing field (read: death knights). I'll do a short run-down of how each class is faring in beta right now to hopefully answer your question:

Death Knight:  This class has been scaling extremely well, and the damage output that they're capable of is very strong, maybe even too strong. The reason I say this is because level 70+ death knights can easily put out Arms Warrior/rogue damage. But wait, that's how it supposed to be, right? Well, not exactly, considering most of these Death Knights are wearing full green and blue quest gear that isn't even enchanted nor even have gem sockets. While Death Knights put out an amazing amount of damage, they also have an array of defensive abilities that really makes people wonder what Blizzard is thinking. Icebound Fortitude reduces all damage taken by 50% and grants stun immunity for 12 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown and costs virtually nothing to use (20 runic power). This is a base skill and it is not dispellable. That's just scary, and when you factor in some of their amazing defensive talents to accommodate things like that, you really have to wonder how balanced Death Knights will be once they actually get resilience, unlike in beta now where they have none yet can put up very good fights with those that are in full season four Brutal Gladiator gear and do have resilience.

Druid: Feral druids, just like in Burning Crusade, once again, scale extremely well. Their damage output is downright scary and their new "Berserk" talent makes them very hard to lock down like they can be now. Add that along with Infected Wounds that effectively gives them a melee snare, and you have quite a viable melee support class from feral druids now. Restoration druids became even stronger with 2 new HoT's, faster GCD's, and more raw healing power, and are only truly hard-countered by Unholy Death Knights (because of plague strike). It will be interesting to see how much more they balance the other healing classes because there is still very little reason to use anything but a druid for small scale pvp and arena. Balance druids are still terrible as expected~

Hunter: This class was one of the last ones to have their first pass done, and as a result, have many broken and "NYI" (not yet implemented) talents and abilities. It's hard to say at this point how viable the class will be at 80 because many talents simply have no function at all right now. I'll spare everyone my guesses and just suggest people wait for them to receive their polish run.

Mage: This is one of those classes that I pretty much envy for what they've gotten in WotLK so far. They have really sick talent additions to each of their trees, and each update usually improves them just a little bit more further. Arcane Barrage as well as Slow have become very powerful in small scale fights, and I feel deep arcane specs will be used in at least some arena comps involving mages in expansion. Fire still remains the best PvE damage spec at the cost of survivability (which most pve mages don't care about). Frost remains the most overall dominant PvP spec with very powerful talents deep in the tree. Shattered Barrier was one of their strongest talents but Blizzard recently mentioned that the talent would be entirely changed, as well as adding in one more new talent, so we'll have to see what they do with that first. But even if Shattered Shield got nerfed into oblivion, the frost tree is extremely strong and it would not be surprising to see many mages spec entirely into it.

Paladin: [example found here] Class is completely broken on so many levels that you can't really say anything about them because they're going to receive sweeping changes. But let's just say if a paladin stuns you and you can't break that stun, you're probably going to die before you come out of it.

Priest:  Discipline priests received several average passive talents and one terrible activated talent (penance) so it is difficult to say that they have improved much at all unless they get significant tweaking, especially to their 51-point talent. Holy priests basically received better healing efficiency, and slightly better AoE healing, but not much else. The real sweeping changes, however, went to Shadow spec, as it received incredibly useful talents, especially for PvP. Improved Shadowform will give shadow priests much more mobility, Psychic Horror basically gives them a 4-second coil at the beginning of every fear (can't WotF or berserker rage out of it), and Dispersion makes them virtually immune to damage, heals them, restores mana, and on top of all of that, is not dispellable and is on only a 3-minute cooldown. I'll refrain from saying any of it is overpowered before more details and finalizations are released of other classes, but they are very strong with their new talents in beta.

Rogue: Rogues, like mages, received many amazing talents in every single tree that makes them all desirable. Assassination received incredible poisoning talents, as well as Hunger for Blood which offers rogues a completely different dynamic and playstyle if it stays the way it is. Combat received questionable PvP talents in the pre-dominantly PvE tree, when I know that many PvE rogues would prefer more attractive talents to further contribute to their raid DPS, rather than talents such as Stay of Execution. Subtlety rogues received even more buffs (because we all know they needed it), and the new talents alone have opened the doorway for backstab rogues to be viable once again in WotLK.

Shaman: Shamans received at least one or two amazing abilities in each tree, but I feel elemental got the biggest piece of the pie here. Thunderstorm is an amazing PvP ability with PvE-desirable benefits (5% mana return every 45 secs), Astral Shift enhances their survivability tremendously, and even the new base spell Lava Burst has amazing potential. Enhancement received what shamans have been begging for: ghost wolf removing snares, as well as the capability of firing instant cast nukes after critting a few times. Their "spirit wolves" are still not done so it should be interesting to see how powerful those are. Restoration shamans received a couple presents with a new cleanse that removes curse, poison, and disease in one shot, as well as an instant heal buffer, Spirit Link. While both of these are nice and all, I think most shamans feel they need better mana regen mechanics to compete with other healers in a raid situation and water shield just isn't cutting it anymore.

Warlock: With Metamorphosis and Chaos Bolt still being largely unimplemented, it is difficult to comment on Destruction or Demonology, but the Affliction tree is quite powerful right now with the raw DoT damage as well the Haunt talent. If things don't drastically change for warlocks from the way they are now on beta, I'd expect almost every single arena warlock to spec 54/17/0 or similar due to the movement of Soul Link, Fel Domination, and Master Summoner in the Demonology tree.

Warrior: Well let's see, I'll try to be blunt. the new arms talents are either A) a complete joke, B) entirely broken, or C) a complete joke. Not a single new arms talent is working properly and desirable to get except Unrelenting Assault which is situational at best. Everyone crying a river about Sudden Death (30% chance on crit to be able to execute your target regardless of health state) really needs to understand that this talent is garbage and Execute in general is, as well. A full-rage execute at level 77 will hit for about 2,000 damage on an even level target - barely more than a 30-rage mortal strike. Fury is almost no different, and while dual wielding huge two-handed weapons is fun at first, once the novelty wears off, and you notice that you've just whiffed or non-crit your target for the last 10 seconds and you're doing god awful damage, you'll start to wish Kalgan had our back still. And because this is Gameriot, no one cares about prot or tanking, so I won't bother discussing the changes to that tree~

And finally, PvP balance. Like many other things, it's really hard to say at this point how PvP balance will be mainly because everyone in beta right now is still running around with level 70 gear on and in case people have forgotten, your combat ratings de-value as you level up, meaning it takes more crit rating for 1% crit, more resilience for 1% mitigation, more hit rating for 1% hit, etc. Until everyone is using level 80 gear and fighting on even playing grounds, it will be very difficult for Blizzard to balance certain classes and pvp mechanics. This is a big concern of mine and whether or not they'll have time to address these issues before release, considering they've promised a 2008 launch, yet they have so many untested aspects. And here we are with everyone hitting level 77 on beta and never logging on again because there's nothing to do atm. Hurry the hell up imo.

Jasi: Thank you for the interview. For the final question - knowing that you play a Rogue as well as your Warrior now, if the Warrior class is initially lacking once WotLK Is released (IE substantial changes not made) will you be considering other class options? Also, what would you like to see as alternative to the current warrior talents?

Serennia:  I doubt I'll ever end up rerolling a rogue entirely. I, along with many others, are waiting to see how their class fleshes out with the final "polish passes" of beta and if they desire to play them any longer. Personally, if warriors continue to get the shaft that they currently have in beta, I'll probably look into playing a Death Knight full time, provided that they mold into a class that would match my playstyle desires. At this point, I would rather play something new and fun, rather than play an existing class, even if they happen to be more powerful at the start.

As for what talents I'd like to see warriors receive instead of the pieces of **** they've fed us in beta, and without going into specifics to make this longer than the wall of text it already is, I think Blizzard needs to improve their deep-tree talents in both fury and arms to give warriors any incentive of spec'ing fully into one line. As it stands right now, every warrior that wants to arena will spec 33-35/24-28/0-3 without exception. For expansion, Blizzard really needs to keep in mind that if they want warriors to even CONSIDER going 51 arms, the talent better be damn near amazing, which Bladestorm isn't [Example Here], to be worth skipping out on weapon mastery, flurry, and Death Wish. Just like if they want fury warriors to consider going 51 fury, they need to make the 51-point talent (as well as reducing the penalty on Titan's Grip) more desirable than going down to 1/5 Titan's Grip and spec'ing 5/5 into a weapon spec instead. Although Heroic Leap was cool at first... oh wait, nevermind, it's always sucked ass. Fix our ****, Blizzard.

P.S. Hoodrych desires more income to feed his coke addiction and we've been humoring certain people that wish to buy 2050 and 2200 arena ratings from us. We are generally more interested in currency usable in the real world as opposed to the type you used last season to buy your overpriced 1,000 arena points per week. If you are interested, your privacy will be fully maintained and we guarantee 100% satisfaction, as well as timely service! I know our last customers were satisfied with the job we finished in about 3 hours of playing: [Picture evidence]

So, if you or someone you know is possible interested in attaining season 4 weapons, shoulders, or even weekly points, PM me or Hoodrych on Gameriot at your earliest convenience, as time is limited!