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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzCon 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 2 of 3)
Vic Viper Aug 25th 2009 4:30PM
Not to say they're not skilled or anything like that; congratulations for winning the competition.
I understand that even in an fairly balanced game, there'll always be the "best comps",
But the PVP "balance" in WoW almost makes you feel handicapped if you play without MS or an Holy Pally , RMP being the closest to an exception >_>
Chris Aug 25th 2009 4:34PM
I saw the whole finals. It was the warrior who put out the most damage by far. To say this shows DKs and Pallys are OP isn't true. These guys knew how to play.
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:37PM
In the end, it doesn't matter if they knew how to play or not. Whatever classes are in the first place group will be nerfed, because hey, they MUST be OP, cause they won!
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:38PM
In the end, it doesn't matter if they knew how to play or not. Whatever classes are in the first place group will be nerfed, because hey, they MUST be OP, cause they won!
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:34PM
"It reaffirmed the power of Holy Paladin heals"
In another words, I can expect a nerf to my PvE Holy Paladin spec because of Arena PvP results. Yay!
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:38PM
Uh, weird, that reply wasn't supposed to be to myself.
catharsis80 Aug 25th 2009 4:39PM
OK, wow.com, fix your posting. The first time I thought it was my fault, but the second time I made CERTAIN I was replying to Chris.
Para Aug 26th 2009 7:57AM
Yeah i hope they dont use that logic too but who knows blizz have been known to make the most stupid changes possible before.
"DKs are top of the ratings so are Hunters after we buffed survival. (probably a few other dps here cant really remember) lets see who they are paired with oh holy paladins."
"i know lets nerf paladins they are clearly the problem hunters too!"
After they made the changes dks still stuck to the top spot, they just used druids to heal them instead. Then GC uses his 1 braincell to come out with the comment "healers are OP"
I hate blizzard what would it take for them to actually sit down and use some logic to see that some classes are stupidly OP (rogues and dks) while others need buffed (shamans for example)
snowleopard233 Aug 25th 2009 4:36PM
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.
Avrus Aug 25th 2009 4:46PM
Expected Rogues to fall further off the chart as strong DK / healing teams continue to push through any sort of burst that can be thrown out.
Season 7 will be the Season of plate and healing.
Para Aug 26th 2009 7:59AM
All seasons in wotlk have been Plate/healing nothing new here im afraid. Its the reason i gave up healing in arenas with my priest, why bother when dks can take you from 100%-> 20% if all they have to do is time their pet stun with their silences then deathgrip you.
Being globaled into the ground by mele is phun.....o wait......
Radiophonic Aug 25th 2009 4:48PM
I have to wonder if some teams who AREN'T sponsored will ever get to do great things too. Seems a bit like a monopoly imo. Don't get me wrong, I don't play arena but when I see guilds like this dominate everything from world firsts to Arena championships I have to wonder, will they ever let other above-average players in on these wonderful achievements?
Fierna Aug 25th 2009 6:27PM
A good question but you already have to be pretty fantastic to get sponsored.
Kemikalkadet Aug 26th 2009 6:31AM
Neither TSG nor Shipit are sponsored, however i think all the other losing teams were. If you looked on the official blizzcon page for the tournament it listed all the teams with their pro-team logos, TSG and Shipit both had default in-game arena team logos.
As for the actual tournament, TSG really deserved the win. Sure they're just playing cleave but they played it flawlessly, most of the wins came from forcing errors or bad positional play from the other team rather than pure unhealable damage. I think shipits hunter really let them down in the final, he seemed to be the weak link that was costing them matches.
Para Aug 26th 2009 8:11AM
Nah the reason why hunters do bad in arena is because they are so SO easilly shot down by mele classes with a snare ability. So a cleave team would have NO problem whatsoever of keeping the hunter in mele which means he cant do much damage basically brining it down to a 2v3.
Anyway i havent seen the vid yet but cleave teams have been WAY too powerful since TBC and it was only a matter of time untill this happned burst is still too high in arena therefore making the damage some cleaves can throw out just way way to powerful.
Kemikalkadet Aug 26th 2009 12:46PM
Oh you're right that hunters in general are sub-par this season, they have something like 0.5% rep in the sk100.. similar to warriors in s5. My point was that the hunter cost them games through poor play rather than being the victim of a weak class, though hunters being underpowered certainly didnt help.
johnk Aug 25th 2009 4:51PM
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.
Feanix Aug 25th 2009 5:09PM
Correction: I'm 99% sure that Shipit was running Hunter / Death Knight / Holy Paladin.
Dart Aug 25th 2009 11:34PM
Does anyone else think 2 people should've rushed GC at Blizzcon yelling CLEAVE!!!11
Maybe they'd nurf it
Jake s Aug 26th 2009 3:41PM
They won b/c of op dk.
The Korean team lost b/c of comp alone.
I'm not biased towards Koreans or European players but I thought they played much more skillfully.
Also if a whole country of players (Korea) pretty much boycott dks you know something is wrong.
Especially one of the top countries...