BlizzCon 2009: TSG wins WoW Arena Tournament World Championship
by Zach Yonzon 
Aug 25th 2009 at 4:00PM
All throughout the Finals, TSG played extremely aggressively, bringing Shipit's Hunter, Tsukiyomi, to dangerously low health within the opening moments of every match. The Koreans faced an uphill battle coming from the consolation bracket, needing to defeat TSG twice in a best of five, but it was clear that the North American team's aggressive style and double melee comp were too much to handle.
The Korean contingent walked away with a respectable $30,000 and third place team x6tence from Europe took home $15,000. The awards were handed out by Blizzard's Tom Chilton, who described this year's Arena Tournament as "the best ever". We also saw the defeat of RMP -- as even Mage hero Orangemarmalade couldn't advance within the consolation bracket. It reaffirmed the power of Holy Paladin heals and Death Knights, however, in an environment that saw zero Shamans. It'll be exciting to see what 2010 holds as Cataclysm is likely to change the entire face of World of Warcraft PvP.
BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, BlizzCon, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
artifex Aug 25th 2009 4:05PM
"Cataclysm is likely to change the entire face of World of Warcraft PvP."
It's all part of the metagame, which is throwing new challenges before the theorycrafters. :)
snowleopard233 Aug 25th 2009 4:12PM
They look pretty bummed out considering they just won 75,000 dollars. It’s probably because they sold their souls to the lich king in order to play as death knights lol.
Retropally Aug 25th 2009 5:58PM
I thought the same when i saw it live...they interviewed the lad and if it was me i'd have pulled that cheque from his hands and attempted to run and fit through the doors with it :P
Andrew R. Aug 25th 2009 4:16PM
I see one death knight, one warrior and one holy paladin not three death knights.
Reading comprehension hits you for 3,000. You lose common sense.
snowleopard233 Aug 25th 2009 4:33PM
I kid. I kid.
Geez, somebody's sensitive about the topic of necromantic warriors competing in gladiatorial competition.
snowleopard233 Aug 25th 2009 4:37PM
Still, you got admit. They don't look nearly as amped as they should be. I know that if I won any competition, no matter how physically drained I'd be, I'd still manage to crack a smile
MechChef Aug 25th 2009 6:24PM
Nerf plate, qq.
Tyrrax Aug 25th 2009 4:20PM
Still, they win no points for originality or for facerolling. Contests like this only serve to highlight what is wrong with the game right now.
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:35PM
You speak in PvP terms. Don't change everything to cater to Arena people which are not the majority.
Sakarabu Aug 25th 2009 4:52PM
Yeah cause the pve side is grrrrrrreat right now.. OHWAIT.. We are fighting one new boss a week, each taking place in the same small circular room YAY!
WoWie Zowie Aug 25th 2009 4:21PM
plate dominance
gc is happy
hmm...
vorpalbunnie Aug 25th 2009 4:22PM
I watched most of the arena matches. I enjoy watching arenas so much more than participating. :)
It was too bad the coverage was constantly delayed, etc.
johnk Aug 25th 2009 4:23PM
PVP --> Shamen --> ZERO!
Do the math Blizz, time to take Shaman out from under your nerf heel.
Lemons Aug 25th 2009 4:35PM
QQ Moar...
Shamans get buffed in nearly every single patch in one way or another. I haven't seen a nerf aimed at shamans since I started caring enough to read patch notes in BC. Just in this last patch they added the ability to throw down 4 totems in one GCD.
Also...I don't see rogue, mage, priest, lock, or druid in there... I guess that means we need more buffs too. I wouldn't mind having 7% more HP...
johnk Aug 25th 2009 4:56PM
My mistake. I meant to QQ about the need to buff Ret Pallys...
I'm glad you read the article and found where it said there were zero Rogues, Mages, Priests, Warlocks, or Druids represented. I must have missed that part.
Shaman are persistently one of the least played classes in WoW. When a class is powerful, it draws players, when a class isn't powerful, it stays largely unplayed. Shaman had a brief moment of OP before BC, got nerfed to the ground, then have slowly been brought back to balance. The totem change to Shaman was to fix something broken.
So tell me where's the QQ in "saw zero Shamans" - that's just fact. If Shaman are fine, splain that to me Lucy
Angus Aug 25th 2009 6:30PM
Lemons: "Shamans get buffed in nearly every single patch in one way or another. I haven't seen a nerf aimed at shamans since I started caring enough to read patch notes in BC. Just in this last patch they added the ability to throw down 4 totems in one GCD."
Allow me to school you then.
Patch 2.2: Shaman got bug fixes including lowering the damage of a lower rank of a spell so it never beat the higher rank, instead of buffing the higher rank... no major nerfs here.
2.3: The great "you resto shaman can go to hell, and we're screwing elemental too..." patch.
All healers get 1/3rd of their +healing as +damage. In the VERY SAME PATCH Shaman get their lightning bolt and chain lightning cast times reduced by 17%. They also nerf a talent deep in the elemental tree so the cast time is not better for elemental. Blues tell us it is a buff and everyone points out that a shaman with +312 damage will end up losing damage from the change in the co-efficient. Blues refuse to believe the math and try weird explanations for calling it a buff. People threaten to find more busses...
The devs cave in and have to manually change the co-efficient to what is was before.
Note that will be important.
2.4 call of thunder loses 1% crit. Rogue stun chance that is a direct comparison recieves no such "bug fix"
Shamanistic rage now can't be dispelled. Yea. Oh and they cut the uptime in half, have a nice day. If the team you needed it against didn't have a dispel, they just got one at the 50% mark for free. 15 seconds is almost stupid. Still is but at least it is a 1 minute cd now...
3.0 Remember that little change in 2.3 with lightning bolt? Yea, they removed the adjustment to spellpower they put in. So same gear shaman lost almost 17% damage. This is at a time when a bunch of classes suddenly got massive increases. The changes to shaman itemization that had str become bad and agility good were addressed on tier gear by taking away the str and adding that much AP. Not agility, AP.
3.1 Sated changed to 10 minutes. Flurry lost 5%.
Yes there was a lot of good things in there. But often the 50% rule hit shaman buffs. It is a change that is 50% buff and 50% nerf, so you don't really get better.
Now take this class and put it in a serious arena competition. Try.
Resto can be interrupted better than any other healer. (Paladins can bubble or hide behind a pillar with a beacon on target healing themselves) This same healer's survival technique removes his mana regen. (earth shield replaces water shield)
Elemental is a turrent and has almost jack all for mobile attacks. Against melee they have a single move with a long cd that doesn't even bother warriors or dks that much. They are pretty much hosed in the mobile fights called arena.
Enhance is a joke in arena. You know any other melee that is told by the experts that the best way to handle another melee is to run? Other melee try to take the initiative and beat the other melee, enhance runs and hopes the healer can keep them alive. If the wolves are on CD, you lost. Those things pack healing, anti-cc, and dps in a ball of ghostly goodness, but without em, the enhance shaman is hoping to beat 2-handers or stunlocks with pure dps from 1 hander and a lucky proc with a 3 second internal CD. I wish rogues had poison have a 3 second shared internal CD...
You can tell shaman to QQ more. Feel free. But when you notice there were NO shaman in that tourney, while the other classes at least showed up, but were not in the final, then you get the clue. No serious arena player bothers with shaman. They are a handicap.
Bronwyn Aug 25th 2009 8:30PM
"When a class is powerful, it draws players, when a class isn't powerful, it stays largely unplayed."
Not that I don't agree that shamans need some help in PVP but this statement is flat out wrong. When a class is Powerful AND easy to play, it draws a lot of players.
Para Aug 26th 2009 7:48AM
Lemons your an idiot.
The only thing putting me off making a shaman is the fact that they are a joke in pvp atm, sure in pve i hear they are one of the most fun classes to play.........but pvp is something i do inbetween raids + its fun. If a class just gets pulverised by pretty much every class you would think it would be buffed. Except i have seen shamans BOTTOM of the arena representation from the START of TBC and nothing has changed :(
I hope they change shamans like they changed ret for wotlk, if they make atleast enhance or resto pvp viable (not OP just not bottom of the list) then yea i could definatly see myself rolling a shaman, untill then i just cant see myself sticking with the class.
Nossy Aug 25th 2009 4:26PM
I bet we'll see a bunch of shamans if multiboxing is allowed. Why do you say Holy Paladin but not name the spec of other classes LOL?
Pretty much this says that DKs and Pallies are OP.
Nick S Aug 25th 2009 7:05PM
Not really. The reason this comp works is synergy, synergy, synergy. The Paladin can keep the Warrior alive better than probably any other healer with Freedoms/Sacs. The Death Knight requires relatively little healing, which is necessary when the healer does so poorly when asked to multi-target heal. Bladestorm, AMS, and Lichborne allow CC-free burst periods, and Freedom just increases time-on-target. The Paladin is a poor DPS target, which forces other teams to target the Warrior or Death Knight, neither of which is easily to kill.
Holy Paladins aren't OP, nor are Warriors. DKs, maybe a little. What makes this comp so strong is the uncounterable nature of the whole team, not any individual. Replace the DK with a Rogue and see how many tourneys you win.