Two Incredible Vids

As I'm making this update from my phone, I can't easily include links, but the new KZN and Affix's 3s vids are definitely must-watches. Affix's vid includes many of my the BG9 stars, gratuitous lightning capacitor ownage, and ridiculous crowd control using the full potential of their mage/rogue/druid matrix. KZN's vid shows off playing AP/fire in a hunter+ classic setup. AP/Fire in a shammy 2.5 healer matrix is something I've always believed had extreme potential given how well Makoplux played it for NiP last season. KZN still plays extremely defensively (poly SPAM), and while it might not be obvious as to what this accomplishes, the goal is to:

• Frustrate the opponent's offensive gameplan by constantly interrupting their DPS with brief crowd control.
• Reduce the outgoing damage of the opponent to skew the mana efficiency in your team's favor.
• By frustrating the opposition, increase the chance of mistakes. This includes leaving a player in the the 50-60% health range for too long or DPS getting frustrated and overextending beyond the safety of their healing and dispelling.

The mantra of bait the overextend of an opposing DPS and punish by either CCing (a poly->detect behind a pillar for example) or bursting him has really been consistently effective since early season one. Even strong players sometimes make the wrong decision when it comes down to chasing that priest who looks like he is about to go down or heading back to the healers to get topped up. As a mage, ironically, we now intentionally overextend on a lot of teams to not necessarily tank their DPS, but to give our teammates a few seconds to position themselves and avoid that initial focus.

GameOver hasn't been able to play this week yet due to conflicting summer schedules, and we won't be playing till late Sunday or Monday night. With a new patch on the horizon, there's plenty to theorycraft about, so expect somewhat more nonsense from me than usual as I'll be bored unable to play. ^^

I'll post up links when I can.