Dedicated To One of the Dumbest SNL Skits

Okay, so even without fraps running, I'm at 91% CPU usage, so yeah, fraps FPS, not so hot. (New computer inc soonish)

I switched to PlayClaw to try to improve FPS while recording, and it helped, FPS went from 10ish to 25ish, and I recorded a few duels vs a few actually good players, but well, PlayClaw MORE LIKE GAYCLAW because every single file is corrupted and unwatchable. It was basically just me getting raped by mages as Shadowstep -- I'd say "Shadowdance" but, well, Beta as cool it is, I can't actually train Shadowdance as Sub, so it's more like Hemostep.

Even if I had a PvP trinket, I think non sub specs will have a lot of trouble with Frost + Blazing Speed mages, especially once they learn to improve their gayness. (Put your pet more than 25 yards away and pet freeze the sap, mix up trinket DF timing variants or just sit in sap while pet autoattacks whatever) Fancy openers really aren't possible with a single set of cooldowns. It feels like pet kill into redirect 5KS is an okay opener, blind the blink and reopen with garotte, vanish if they trinket etc etc. Typical nub style rushdown as Muti feels decent, Garotte over sap into muti, clos, expose, kidney if they BS proc, else envenom zerg zerg vanish as clos fades and judge from there.



More serious clipzz once a few of my friends actually get the fuck on beta. ^^

Another 10 Second Cata Clip

I have no idea if anyone cares about this crap, doubtful, but here's a small clip showing that you can perform actions between poly ending and the Improved Poly stun kicking in. (This should have been obvious to anyone who's had impact/blackout)

You can do whatever you like during this window, counterspell, intercept, deathcoil, cloak whatever! Imp Poly is nonetheless quite powerful. (Though the stunlocklol is potentially pretty avoidable)

Can Anyone Get This?

Anyone with a rogue on Beta able to get combat Gouge into CS guaranteed? I haven't been able to, but it seems possible with good timing + low latency. (I have 300ish)

I feel like I have 1/4 second to spare on the restealth but the typical 1/2 sec delay between stealth -> CS fucks me. I've tried with safe spam macro but I'm not sure it's better than just timing it, actually I think it's worse as you lose something like 100ms per failed action or some BS.

Here's a clip showing how close it is, lf nonbad rogue to viral this shit.

I Really Need a New Comp

Forgive the 15FPS video, but the new Ogrimmar and my comp hate each other.

INFINITE COMMBOOOOOOOO

Don't alpha counter me bro



Basically, current Imp Poly doesn't DR. You'll notice that the mob is still moving towards me despite the fact that it should be PERMALOLSTUNNED. This, I believe, and plz, some nerd correct me, is because the netcode is the same as with impact -- the server has to tell you the spell connected, in this case, poly has broken, and then you tell it that you've got Imp Poly and some nerd needs to get stunned, so during that roundtrip, there's a window pre-stun. (OR SOMETHING)

Combustion Weirdness

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Basically LB glyph turns all of your noncrit DoT effects excluding Ignite into Combustion charges.

Also for you dubstep <3rs:

Vid Leaks

Apparently, a few clips/duels from my SEKRET filefront have leaked. This is an awful one against shift. (POSTED BY DEP FOR ME WHILE I DRINK SHITTY PERUVIAN BEER IN MEXICO)

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Because even from this hotel lobby, sunburned and dehydrated and half asleep, I'm too thug to let wegame gay me.

Instead of Sleeping I Got Tricked Into Dueling Shift

And will thus post the most humiliating clip recorded.

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Random Lock Duel

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Last Duel From This Set I Promise

Didn't even realize I had this clip till now. (It's old and not that interesting)

Dueled a lot of terribles of other classes on both mage and rogue. Nobody good has come to the beach, I hate you all.

I have a few interesting/cool duels I want to save for a vid nonetheless. ^^

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More Random Shit

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If you're wondering why I wait so long on the sap, I'm counting the DR on CS. (Count it yourself nerds)

Perma'd from Live

Cuz I'm too thug. =(

Dueled some terribles on my rogue on TR. Probably going to try something new and post my favorite duel of the day every couple days. Hopping between rogue, mage, and priest probably. Going to try to learn shammy on this TR -- maybe I'll fraps some matches against decent people or of small handed stuff if I can.

For you nonterribles, come to the beach at Exodar or find me on IRC to set up duels against whichever version of me you wish. (The beach has an arena Q dargon right there and is pretty lag free)

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That's the Word

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Affix Ruined the Class, Bro

GET RAGED ON 'FIX.

The engineering trinket is severely underused by players currently, mostly because I believe people do not understand its mechanics very well. I didn't realize this till pretty recently, and have yet to arena with it, because wtb teams, but I digress -- observe.

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Random Clip

Raddy V Teaser Clip (Redux) from radikal on Vimeo.

Raddy IV -- Trailer

This is the brief tailer I promised I'd have done before 2.3 PTR for the upcoming vid. Do not watch the stream, you will not be able to see what's going on. I won't say anything else for now, so enjoy, hit up the comments with feedback. I'm pretty receptive to making changes based on criticisms for the final release. (which could be a ways off depending on what people want me to do ^^)

Without further ado, check it out.

Video Progress Update

Teaser is in QC. Will hit the interwebz shortly.

Raddy III Commentary (INCOMPLETE)

Fight 1: Prep Rogue - Yecal

This is just one fight that comes out of trying to practice the whole Invisibility into Ice Block trick. Summon WE, blink, pvp trinket and time the Invis between garotte ticks right after you let the DT hit you. This trick doesn't work anymore in the latest patch so you won't have the fun of thinking "that looks pretty easy" and finding out unreliable and frustrating this can be. ^^ A rogue can definitely deny this with a second DT, but there are of course disadvantages to doing this and the invis into IB is just another mixup to throw into the variations you run.

What I try for when doing this is to invis immune the blind as you drop IB and nova the rogue; this time no blind is attempted and I'm too slow to deny him re-stealthing so I come out with perception. This works now but didn't on live when I recorded this duel as vanish still protects you from perception (it does not now); when I realize I'm dumb and that vanish has not yet been nerfed, I use the perma-combat bug to keep myself in combat to deny sap. Basically you just make sure to buff yourself every 5 seconds, rank 1 mana shield is great for this.

He opens again, fight goes as normal, I scorch to bait a DT to waste the effectiveness of the kidney, but he doesn't bite, I try to anticipate the vanish with CoC but his timing is solid and he immunes it with the vanish. He opens again on me and lands a huge gouge on my pet as I'm novaing him when he chases. It's sort of a messy, awkward looking duel, but there's some good stuff in it! Note the blowup of my portrait shows how I never drop combat despite using Invis and not performing a hostile action for a LONG time.

Fight 2: Printt - WE Mage: No Imp CS

Imp CS is huge in WE mage against WE mage fights; I'm not going to get into a whole guide here on how I view this fight, that's for later. But I try to keep my options open and play the fight so I can outlast their mana pool by kiting their pet, while still keeping pressure up to make sure they can't stay on the offensive too long. (I don't want to eat huge damage duh)

Nothing fancy to see here. Honestly mage vs mage duels are never fancy unless I can pull off something like using cold snap to remove a spell lock or something. (Despite trying to find a way to work this into a duel with people, I never could heh)

I manage to dodge the first pet nova, after mine is resisted, and manage to land a nova as he re-applies fire ward so I'm able to move quickly to outrange his nova during GCD. We both kite each other's WE to minimize their damage, I probably should have PvP trinketed the CoC to pursue and better outrange the pet, but I believe I was wearing some silly other trinket. Nothing special here but it was tough finding strong mages on test with solid gear, and Printt was definitely very good even if this clip doesn't show it. Just ask the people who dueled him!

Fight 3: Daefuin - SL Sypon Felhunter Lock

This duel I don't do much fancy -- I get a lucky fear resist as I cold snap, though I think I would have been able to win even without that resist. I had a hard time with Daefuin as anytime you eat a fear->Drain Life, it is totally GG with his spec, or if you're CS is just down. I'll talk more about general warlock dueling in a later article, one thing you see here is me trying to rushdown to force an early DC and me trying to back out to range and be careful with being on global so that I can IB it; even though I do this, I still eat the DC and then a Howl of Terror I'm a million miles away from. Go test server lag!

The thing about dueling locks of this spec is that you're margin for error goes WAY down if you can't get good opening damage out. (And they will resist a LOT of novas)

Fight 4: Dahis - Fierce Gnome Warrior


I love dueling Dahis; best war EVER. ^^

You see a lot of straightforwardness here, a lot of CoC kiting while letting him howl you but he's slower. Lancing to keep him in combat of course if he goes for ooc charge, and of course using the awesome, overpowered flamestrike when he's nova'd so he can't spell reflect it. LOL.

Fight 5: Valanmor - BM Hunter

I hate to talk up my teammates as it is so annoying when others do it; but Valanmor is the best hunter I've dueled consistently. He's really the only hunter I see play the kite and viper sting style, and he is amazing at it. He controls my pet very well, by playing with its range and using FD as it's cast is about to finish on him and by abusing it's awful AI manages to get almost full bandages in.

Every fight comes down to the last thousand mana in fights like this; I play to force wrath early and I even try to keep the pressure on till I'm either taking too much damage or until he's reapplied a new viper. You really want to use pet nova to interrupt bandage if you can, even the small amount of healing from a few ticks is mana you need to spend that you can't afford.

I think a lot of people think WE mage vs any hunter is a "free win" but not against this style at all. ^^

It's pretty self explanatory, but recognize that your health in this fight is your blue not your green bar. (It is kind of neat to watch the fight from this perspective I think)

Fight 6: Odd - Ret Pally

I believe this is a matchup where mages have a huge advantage; you do not need Ice Block or WE to win this fight, though it is extremely close and challenging using neither.

There is a lot going on in this fight you probably don't see on first glance. At the beginning, I go straight to sheeping, this is wrong. You should rank 1 kite and even nova and lance a bit to force him to use mana on freedom, start his freedom timer ticking, and to stack WC before you poly and quickly nuke. But this is before I learned that!

It's important to rebarrier before going to max range otherwise Eye for an Eye will interrupt your second bolt and you won't get all 3 casts in.

He saves repentance for when freedom wears off. Which means that DS is up for the next non-freedom period, and uses HoJ to buy time for his next repentance CD when the next freedom wears off. This fight is all about managing their freedoms and getting in your damage when freedom is off; if you don't do this you will go oom trying to both outlast their damage and do enough damage to kill a pally.

Fight 7: Valanmor - BM Hunter Take 2

He plays this extremely well and keeps pressure on my health and on my mana this time.

Fight 8: Tally - Feral Druid

Here you see my favorite IB immuning cyclone. ^^

I spellsteal innervate at the end which is REALLY overkill and then jump around like a fool overconfident that its GG and almost lose. LOL.

You have a lot of room for error against feral druids even with CoC and nova misses or resists, you just need to keep kiting and let your pet do your damage. When they switch to caster, use IB to immune a cyclone, use silence if you have it, do whatever you can to pressure them to shift back into bear with low hp so you can keep momentum. Sente = win vs feral druids.

Fight 9: Bynis - Disc Priest

This is a great fight; I make a bunch of mistakes, I don't use pet nova well against him at all, which is something I've gotten better with lately. This fight was in my previous vid, I reused it because I could find no disc priests to duel for this video, and for some reason, even though its full of silliness and mediocrity and points, I love this particular duel.

Fight 10: Eviscerate - Combat Rogue

Even with that great impact off the bat, he still imp kick denies my opening pet. GRR.

I don't think many people play this fight the way I do, so eat rogue duels!

I should not have icelanced after nova, HUGE mistake. You have to CoC there, I got greedy.

I love the "Are you guys dueling?" It MAKES this duel.

His blind as I'm lancing that pet nova is huge, really turns the fight around almost.

Fight 11: Daefuin - SL Syphon Felhunter Lock Take #2

Holy nova resists. Inexcusable how I let both me and pet eat that howl. That is BAD play.

I hesitate on bringing out second pet because I sort of let myself give up after the previous mistakes and bad luck -- DON'T DO THIS EVER IN DUELS IT MAKES YOU A SUCK. Play your hardest no matter what, you can come back from fights that look impossible sometimes!

This duel really shows how you can get dominate by this spec's Drain Life, goddamn. o.O

Fight 12: Eviscerate - Combat Rogue Take #2

This time I don't have time for the nova so just go for the "safe" CoC...too bad I MISS.

I get a good vanish deny with pet nova and think that once I land this blink, it's all over. He snags me with the Blind as I'm blinking -- look at my hands! He hesitates too long deciding what to do after that blind however, and definitely should have bandaged sooner for the extra 2 ticks. Not getting that imp kick after the blind really ended it.

Fight 13: Spoh - Feral Druid

Keep the pressure on! Just look at his mana even if he survives somehow there; feral druids are ridiculous on the offensive, and the new t5 2pc helps them keep it, play to deny their sente!

Fight 14: Dahis - Fierce Gnome War Take #2

Fake fake fake. Uh oh. He really tricks me with his getting OOC, I really thought he would cut back in to howl as I was CoCing. I pretty much have to blink that charge just to make him waste range on intercepting me, I get some stupid lucky frostbites and almost squeeze out a win still!

And what a horrible flamestrike! Just because it's cool and fancy doesn't mean its generally good. ^^

Fight 15: Ming - Prep Rogue

This fight is probably my favorite rogue vs mage duel I've seen. It's played very well on both sides; you can say that I should have max rank AE as I cut away from him with perception to anticipate that CS, since that is how Ming likes to play, but otherwise it is really good... I think so at least!

It shows the strength of prep well and really illustrates what you are up against as a mage. Yet, it isn't too doom and gloom, because you can really imagine what happens if I lived with a few hundred health there as I land that nova and die.

Fight 16: Azael - OP SL Felguard Lock

I think this fight is pretty straightforward -- it's a pretty good comeback; had he used fel dom, I would have been screwed, but I was so far behind it looked overkill. HA! I actually think I play this really well, it's probably my favorite fight in the video. Never give up!!!

Fight 17: Unsouled - Prep Rogue

If you read my mage vs. rogue dueling guide (WHICH YOU SHOULD IMO), I think this fight illustrates what you're trying to do pretty well. Early pet, stall on the IB a tiny bit, pet nova deny the vanish, use pet to protect eat drink while it is still up, then chain into perception to try to catch a sap as the pet despawns and to finish re-meding up. Rank 1 spam buys you time on PvP trinket even if you don't get lucky and deny the garotte. Take advantage of lack of CD!

Fight 18: Kakeash - Feral Druid

IB the first cyclone to keep up pressure, and limits his ability to go for a fake on the second cyclone attempt. (Sente against feral druids is a win!)

Fight 19: Gc - Incredible Resto Shaman

I came into these fights pretty overconfident; the number of shamans who play this matchup and deny poly so well while playing the fight aggressively is pretty limited, and Gc is crazy fierce at it. He destroyed me in our few fights on test. I learned a lot from these fights; it is a matchup where I think we are the favorite, but strong play on his side really tipped the scales. I cut the clip where I did because it lasts for a while longer of just poking and wanding, but I think it should be pretty clear that resto shammy with totems and low health >> WE mage with no CD of any kind and no mana. ^^ It is a pretty cool fight -- I think that the general strat I use actually does work, you just need to be more precise on the pet nova timing, which I'm used to having room for error on. What lost me the fight honestly was choosing to bandage during the sheep instead of evocating first, reapplying ice barrier was stupid and a waste of mana there too. I really like the purge as I'm getting invis too lol.

Raddy: Water Elemental Dueling On Test III FINISHED

Pre-release out. Should have a WCM release out in a day or two, definitely by this weekend. For those impatient few that I love for bothering to read this silly site:

http://files.filefront.com/rad3wmv/;7580761;/fileinfo.html

Please DL it and don't watch the stream, the quality suffers so much! Just get a player like, http://www.videolan.org/vlc/, which lets you play as it downloads, trust me. ^^

It's not exactly what I wanted it to be, but no video I've released for any game I've played has been; I think it shows a lot of what I wanted to have people see with how I treat most the fights as of the latest mage changes.

The video has no commentary, but as a compromise solution, I'm going to have an extremely lengthy post on here detailing each fight play-by-play which I should have wrapped up this weekend.

For those who hated my previous video, you probably won't enjoy this one much. ^^

What you will find in the vid is:

1. Strong competition. There are some amazing players to watch participate in these fights; some of the matches I included showcase what they do more than what I do in some ways. Particularly, the way Dahis handles warrior vs mage. He is the only war I've seen do this fight EXTREMELY well. I could go on...but no spoiling the video.
   
2. Not much editing. More time editing = less time dueling!
3. Dueling only. No arena, no world PvP, no BGs.
4. Only WE Spec. A lot of people asked me to showcase some of these matchups as other specs; I did truly want to do this, but it will have to wait until another video. I do enjoy playing other non WE specs, and it is inevitable. (Seriously, I like to duel and release vids, how many WE dueling vids can I possible make?)
5. Mistakes. I mess up in a lot of the fights; before coming to test, I probably would not have known a lot of the things I previously did as mistakes even ^^
6. A lot of class variety. I spent a lot of time whining various places and to various people to come duel on the lake -- you'll see less rogues, less feral druids, more locks, pallies, war, resto druids etc.
7. Music: Hip Hop, Jpop, Japanese Hip Hop, Whiney Art Rock, and Drum n Bass. Pretty much the staples of all my vids. (Those who know me from other games can vouch for this ^^)

And lastly, while it isn't included in the video per se, humility. I'm not trying to prove anything. Just because I included a cilp of winning a matchup doesn't mean I have it on farm, doesn't mean I'm a better player than my opponent -- it doesn't mean anything but that I chose to include that particular fight because I felt it showed something. I don't really see many mages actively dueling anymore. (either on test or in videos) It's a shame because we really are an extremely versatile and powerful class 1 on 1, and while perhaps not a favorite in every matchup, have pretty solid tools for beating any class 1 on 1.

Oh and a final note, thanks to Ming for mentioning the brief mage vs. rogue guide I started -- I plan on getting back to it and going ahead with similar guides for other classes.

Suck at Dueling Vids

Evertras put out a second "Suck at Dueling" vid about a week ago -- I liked both of these; they're very no-nonsense, no ego, just straight basic dueling advice. I think a lot of what you see in the fights is pretty common sense, but 90% of dueling is definitely consistency. I really like this style vid a lot, check it out:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=39735

and his first video:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=38934

For those who are trying to go from above average to one of the stronger duelists on their server, learning the basics and getting consistent is definitely priority one.