May22,2010

Hi, my name is Isaac Cummings-Bentley, I'm a 21 year old from Kingston, Ontario, Canada (not the USA like everyone assumes!) and I've been a World of Warcraft professional for Team Evil Geniuses for about two years.  I am a student and spend my spare time watching sports, listening to music, and trying to keep in shape among other things.  Lately I've just been enjoying the good weather around here and eagerly awaiting the beginning of the World Cup in South Africa.

If there's one thing which made me begin to take WoW arena seriously it's my competitive nature.  I've played a lot of competitive sports in my past and when I stopped doing that for various reasons my competitive nature made me take whatever I was doing relatively seriously.  I still love to joke around and play arena for fun, but ultimately if I'm going to put time into it I want to be winning and I want to be one of the best.

I think that with every season you have certain positives and negatives to arena, and that this current season and gear set is no different.  Overall I think the game is very enjoyable, and there is pretty much an unprecedented amount of diversity being seen at the top level of arena play which is definitely a positive thing as far as entertainment and the growth of the game is concerned.  Obviously the big negative for most players is how high damage has scaled making damage in certain setups or situations nearly impossible to heal through, but to be honest with you I feel that for the most part these situations are preventable by better positioning and reacting to what the other team is doing in the appropriate manner and with enough speed.

As far as comparing this season to others and BC arena I feel like so many players have a tendency to remember the past in a better light since they're not currently having to deal with the problems / imbalances that we faced at those times.  I hear a lot about BC arena being so amazing, but when BC arena was on live servers it was non-stop complaints about the ridiculous state of Restoration Druids, WLD, Mace Stun's from both HARP Rogues, and MS Warriors as well as other imbalances which plagued the game at the time.  In earlier WotLK seasons we faced similar problems with certain things being extremely overpowered at different times such as DK's in season 5, Arcane Mages in season 5, Hunters with TnT Stun, and the list goes on.  I personally feel the game is as good as it has ever been and certainly arena is far more advanced than it was in BC and more balanced than it was in earlier seasons of WotLK - the main problem we're facing now is the PvE gear available and personally I would like to see arenas played in Season 7 Gear with a cap on PvE gear at the 245 Item Level which is what I consider to be the most balanced gear set.

I think that it's more competitive than it has ever been.  There are more and more players taking arena seriously these days and attempting to break into the pro scene which pushes the current pros to improve and stay at the top of their game in order to keep their spots and stay ahead of the competition.  It seems to be the general  consensus that the IEM Global Finals was one of it not the best WoW tournament to date as far as game balance and competition with a wide variety of setups doing quite well and a lot of great teams representing each continent and although I'm admittedly biased, I am inclined to agree.  I think that as long as we keep getting more tournaments with great competition and coverage such as that one and the tournament organizers continue to try to improving their tournaments by smoothing out technical and other issues it will only continue to improve.

First and foremost I would tell you to have fun.  Find players you enjoy playing the game with and who have the same goals as you in the game and as you improve as a team you will also become good friends.  If you don't like the people you play with it's easy to lose confidence in them or blame losses on them and it's also hard to want to practice and spend a lot of time together when you don't enjoy each others company.  Everything becomes much easier when you're friends with your teammates and can all be mature enough to admit mistakes and suggest ways to avoid them in the future - I find if you're able to take responsibility for losses then it comes easier to those you're playing with as well. One of the biggest mistakes I see Warlocks doing is trying to plan their moves a few steps ahead instead of basing their decisions off of what's happening to them in the game - there's no one right solution or strategy for beating a team so try your best to adapt and play off of the other team as well as your teammates.  The target you originally want to go on doesn't always end up being the best one, so don't make rigid plans when going into an arena match.  Instead you should do your best to put good damage into whatever you can, control whatever is easily available to control and think about how you can make players who're avoiding you put themselves into a situation where they'll be easier to control or swap to IE - Pulling a Warrior back across the map so that his healer has to come off of their pillar and into the open where you'll be able to push up and have an easier time to control them. I enjoy the Warlock class quite a bit, and I also spend a fair bit of time playing Warrior also which I definitely enjoy a lot as well.  I think that Warlock has consistently been quite a strong class and I feel that right now with the tournament realm gear Affliction Warlocks are somewhat out of control due to being able to have two great PvE trinkets as a Human.  As far as Destruction I feel that it's pretty solid as well although it's definitely underrepresented and I feel that's simply because it doesn't seem to scale as well as Affliction and it's harder to get constant pressure out for most players as that spec - especially against teams with multiple dispels. Well I think that first off I'd either revamp Ring of Valor to make the pillars permanently up or I would simply remove the map altogether because I really feel as though that map in its current state has no place in competitive play.  As far as other changes it's hard for me to say without putting a lot of thought into it but off the top of my head I really feel that Hunter burst could definitely use some toning down as could Elemental Shamans. Perhaps a good way to go about those would be to make Chimera Shot / Aimed Shot not reset with Readiness so that it's used simply for interrupts and defensive purposes as I believe it was intended to be used in the first place - It would still be a very strong if it's allowed to reset Traps, Silencing Shot, Scatter Shot, Deterence, Disengage etc.  As for Shamans I really feel a quick fix is to remove the guaranteed critical strike from Lava Burst when Flame Shock is up because when you have that in addition to some Lightning Overload proc's you can create a situation where they can literally 100->0 players. I think it's impossible to say what the hardest match up I've ever had is but the hardest one I've had in recent memory that we were able to win is without a doubt the series against Mousesports at the IEM Finals.  They ran BM Hunter / DK / Paladin and the damage they were able to put out was absolutely unbelievable and very very scary to play against as even with our Shaman specced and geared 100% for survival they were able to drop him nearly instantly multiple games, and the BM Hunter was able to completely solo me one game through Bloodlusted healing spam, Nature's Swiftness, Healthstone / Battlemaster etc all while in Demon Armor without the DK hitting me at all another game.  It was an extremely intense match up for us and also one that was very stressful because we knew pretty much every match would be decided in the first few seconds of the game based on if we could live through their burst or not. Be aware of the Felhunter at all times, I see many players doing things such as spamming fake casts when my pet doesn't have Spell Lock up or is simply out of range or stuck in a root or nova behind a pillar which many times gives me enough time for my pet to get to them and lock them out when they finally stop faking. There are definitely a lot but I think the biggest one I commonly see is to do with players attitudes.  I constantly encounter people writing off match ups as impossible or being satisfied with blaming the imbalance of a setup or class instead of trying to improve on their strategies, positioning and individual / team play to overcome a disadvantage.  You would be surprised how much room their is for improvement in many of these cases if you take a hard look at your own mistakes and flaws both individually and as a team to see what you can change against a tough team.  Try different strategies, try different specs, use cooldowns at different times and keep trying to improve and oftentimes you'll be able to overcome the disadvantage and begin to beat a team or setup you never thought you could. It was definitely a lot of fun, and who doesn't want to win $25,000?  I think our team simply came together at the right time as was able to improve consistently throughout the tournament which allowed us to peak at the right time and win.  It's definitely something special as only a handful of people have ever won a tournament of this magnitude, so it kind of puts us all in elite company which is fun.  Beyond that it hasn't changed any of us, nor has it changed my opinion of myself or my teammates as I already knew they were capable of winning something like that, the only thing it really changes is the opinion of the fans in general but you can't concern yourself too much with that because they're a pretty fickle bunch and can turn on you pretty quick when you start losing! My best memory was probably beating Button Bashers, as I really felt we got robbed when we lost to them in group play due to my macros being reset inadvertently by an admin when he shut off my PC.  We all felt that we should have beaten them in group play and it almost ended up knocking us out of the tournament when we didn't, so beating them in the Semi-Finals was definitely sweet redemption! I would like to sincerely thank all my sponsors at Team EG - Intel, Steelseries, Peregrine, Kingston Technology, MSi, and Bigfoot Networks!  I would also like to thank all my teammates and friends who make my time playing the game fun!

Be sure to follow us over at www.myeg.net and cheer for us at MLG in early June!

 

Thanks for the interview!