Getting Ripped as 2345

GameOver began its Monday night games with 8 consecutive losses (1 being a DC) against two of the FH (sorta) teams, Pewp Machine and Armchair Athletes. Both teams run classic + FG lock, but they were winning against us in very different ways.

Armchair likes to put Azael's FG and Dahis (warrior, omg duh) on me the whole game; between Skillherald and the FG I end up taking a lot of damage and doing very little. I basically end up kiting out of LoS of the mage so I don't eat the shatter burst (between Intercept, Skillherald, FG intercept and novas, it's pretty annoying to not be a gnome) and poking out to decurse teammates and drop a poly or two. By taking me out of the fight, the game becomes a longer game and while our priest is more free to burn and harass, they have the mana efficiency advantage with a FG lock spamming mana drain the majority of the game. If I start to get more aggressive, they look to burst me down with a MD on Ice Block.

Pewp Machine plays against us very differently; they are much more damage oriented and really go for the early kill on our priest. Doing this also ensures that despite the lack of heroism, their priest can win the mana burn war as ours is unable to cast. Unlike Azael's constant fear and tongues spam, you see a lot more of PM's lock, Streygo, shadowbolting faces off. I seem to fall for the same, FG intercept->poly->psychic scream combo EVERY game.

It's a little weird to basically start a new team at ~2400 rating that plays completely differently than your old lineup. Stormstrike is also not a battlegroup with any top 2345 teams so there's not a whole lot of "how does X beat this setup" -- on the other hand, we played as our opposing matrices all season last season so we do remember what we used to do against 2345 teams and what was and wasn't effective. There were a few teams that began as 2345 at the beginning of the season, but these teams have since all abandoned the lineup in favor of 2xWar, classic+lock, or 4DPS. Not since NiP's strange 2345 with Mako as AP/Fire has 2345 dominated the battlegroup. (NiP did truly dominate)

As I've said before, I don't think we really play 2345 with enough of the "2345"-ness. We play to outlast every team; we kill pets, we kite and CC and shock. We have been doing this against Fireman's hunter+classic who punish us severely every time we play so passively.

We ended up splitting the remainder of our games for the rest of the night after the night's early losses. I basically started playing way more defensively and either we were able to punish overextension or we created an opening to get out some burst. I tried to fraps a few of the games, but once again FPS drops from like 70->30 and gets really choppy which makes playing too difficult.

GameOver doesn't play again till Thursday so I'll probably use the time to level my gnome and catch up on blogging. ^^ I don't really have a 2s/3s team right now though it would be nice to have an excuse to respec to 0/6/55 or some variant considering how much I'm focused in 5s.

** UPDATE ** YOU MUST WATCH NEILYO6 -- IT IS AMAZING ^^