Since my Unholy Death Knight video was appreciated by most people, I'll be following it up with a Blood-spec showcase most likely this upcoming Sunday. The spec is taking some time to get used to after playing Unholy for a while - plus I want to level up a bit more so I can unlock and showcase a couple more abilities.

In the meantime, Bradly (aka Rage) has given me the OK to release the Bey drama stuff, but I honestly have to ask everyone if they really want to see it, and base your answers off of the following: I will warn you, the drama is very very far out there - like I-got-picked-up-by-an-alien-in-my-farm-field-and-they-probed-me out there. When the information was first revealed to me, I was in so much disbelief that I didn't even know how to handle it, nor if I wanted to post it without the worry of legal issues and Brad not really being in favor of it (and he mostly wasn't simply because it was so ridiculous) With that being said, I will provide the following poll and I will completely take the decision out of my hands. If you want to read it and subsequently vote accordingly, remember I warned the living **** out of you, so don't go crying if it's dumb and not what you expected. It is ridiculous. However, Bey swears it to be true, and apparently has quite the large number of connections.



Paladins Fixed in New WotLK Beta Build?

Hardly. Serennia contacted me today with a very short clip portraying the state of Paladins after the recent "nerf" in the latest WotLK Beta build. It was assumed that after some of the balance changes, that Paladins would be a little bit more in line with other classes.

As you can see in his clip, that's far from the case.

If you aren't quite sure how it's happening, check out the combat log (start by looking at the back to back 7k heals the Paladin is doing as Retribution). Basically a lot of the damage is coming from Judgement of Justice. The way the talent works, is once it's applied, it will do an average of 1-3k damage (based on gear) non-crit, and whenever you take damage as the target of the Paladin, the same damage will repeat itself. Hence the 10k SoC crit with the JoJ crit on top of it. Also, apparently this is after the bug fix of JoJ refreshing itself, meaning this guy was able to pull this off post bug-fix.

From what Serennia told me, level 71 Ret Paladins are able to kill him quite easily, and he's level 77. In addition, he claimed that a 71 Ret Paladin can take on 4-5 77's at once. Looks like Blizzard definitely has some work to do.

Just in case you didn't catch it, Serennia also released a good clip portraying Titan's grip a couple of days ago, as well as the current state of Warrior's at 77. He definitely has some complaints, and he wrote a very well-documented report on some experienced issues here.

Update on Blizzard Ban Spree

I was able to pull together a little bit of information thanks to Gumbot, Yog (the best Rogue in the world) and Faction (my buddy) on how far the Blizzard win-trading/account sharing bans have gone.

So far, a tentative list of some of those that have received temp-bans is as follows: Mazuda, Gumbot, Yog, Faction, Mounsifz, Neilyo, Hamchook, Serennia, Swarm, Nutzz, Ely, Trance, Ramzes, Mattyo, Inactive, Crysalid, Kyxlol, Pugo, and Merc Glad Wataf. There are many more as well, and I'm working on compiling a full list (feel free to PM me or comment if you're relatively well known and have been banned)

From what I've been told by Gumbot and many other players, most of these bans can be summed up in the idiocy Blizzard has displayed in e-mails such as this.

Lolwut?

Yog basically summed it up by telling me that anyone who is relatively high rated and has spoken with any teams played against, even as small as a "yep" or "still playing?" constitutes as grounds for bans. If you talk to ANYONE, you're doomed.

Gumbot also provided this gem of information:

Gumbot: LF sponsor for yog's mom. He needs to be guarded like yuna on her pilgrimage to defeat sin, except yog is defeating all of America and soon the world.

In addition, Blizzards incompetency with their own system is basically summarized within this post, in which you can find some really insightful comments on behalf of Blizzard such as the following,

"Simply winning repeatedly against a particular team isn't enough, by itself, to set off alarms. I'm not able to provide much more information than that, but these situations are investigated carefully."

And in response to one of the teams complaining:

"More than half of every game your team has ever played has been against Mal'ganis teams. Any way you slice it, that's unusual. While personally I'm not prepared to levy a judgment of any sort on this case, surely you can appreciate why some alarms may have been set off regarding your activities?"

A quick trip over to the Stormstrike ladder, all of which took me 3 seconds, completely removes any su****ion as to why the above situation might exist.

http://www.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Stormstrike&ts=3

11/20 teams are from Mal'Ganis.

Apparently they're well investigated though, but Blizzard fails to even check their own ladders.

Faction provided some pretty good examples as well with a couple of thread links.

lol1

lol2. This one is a perfect portrayal of how completely obscure Blizzard can be. They completely disregard the fact that they say possibly and may have multiple times. Again, interesting grounds for bans.

lol3. Peak hours, 4 games against the same team = ban.

It's gotten beyond completely out of hand, and it's now to the point now that almost all of your "top" players don't even care to take the Arena any more seriously than it already wasn't.

I plan on digging this so it's seen as widely as possible - maybe then Blizzard might do something? Once it's up, Digg away if you care. Feel free to vote on this poll as well.