wowblogs

While I know this is a WoW blog, and many of you may not give two hoots about other games, I feel obligated to let everyone know of the recent tragedy that struck down a pro-CS player.  As Zyz let us a know in his latest blog, Antonio "cyx" Daniloski, died in a tragic car accident, on his way home from the airport after missing his flight for a Counter-Strike tournament.  The mousesports player was only 19, and hearing the news that he passed stuck a nerve with me.  I've attended the same events as the guy and seen him in action, and seeing him claimed so young makes me count my blessings.  We're all gamers, and seeing another pass is a tragedy no matter what platform they compete on.  R.I.P cyx.  Read more at SK-Gaming.





In historic fashion, Congress has approved the relaxation of its crack cocaine penalties.  In the 80s, in order to curtail the rampant production and slangage of rock, they passed a law that would incite penalties on those convicted of possession / sale of crack cocaine to 100 times that of powdered cocaine.  I'm glad to see the Obama administration continue to make strides in the affirmative action department!  No longer will the Taurens face harsher consequences for their drug of choice than their gnome and undead counterparts in America! 

 

 

I received a lot of mixed feedback about 5s, so there's none of that this week. The general response seemed to be that people were interested in seeing 5s from a rogue point of view, but that it was too chaotic and wasn't all that fun to watch. There are a lot of technical nuances in terms of positioning and cooldown rotations (basically raid tanking status) but that sort of thing isn't really exciting. Then again those games were pretty mediocre, so I'll see if the opinions change if I find some better footage.

 

Something I'm unsure about is which part of the screen to crop. I play at 1920x1200, so I have to crop my footage to 1080p. Basically it's either cropping out the bars or cropping out my buffs. I think seeing buffs is more important. What do you nerds think?

 

As far as the clips go, they're mostly RMP. There's an RPP and a rogue/moonkin clip in there as well, and I would honestly say that they are far dirtier than the RMP clips. Overall, what you can expect to see is me doing the biggest damage in the house. When I put pve gear on I turn into what Ming wishes Veex looked like in his shadowmourne movie. As promised, there's plenty of footage as shadow dance. Songs are Buckethead - Soothsayer and MF Doom - That's That.

 

 

 

I try to keep myself at least somewhat informed on the changes to paladins but it seems like if I don't look at mmo-champion for 2 days, I'll come back and notice everything is completely different and unrecognizable. There are now new things like a "Holy Power" system, a new talent called "Light of Dawn" along with the insertion of less interesting talents like "Clarity of Purpose" (which gives your Divine Light and Holy Light abilities a shorter cast time, even though there is Judgments of the Pure already in the tree). Instead of boring all of you with going into detail reviewing talents and trees that are changing daily, you can take a look at how the paladin class is looking by clicking here.

I try to keep myself at least somewhat informed on the changes to paladins but it seems like if I don't look at mmo-champion for 2 days, I'll come back and notice everything is completely different and unrecognizable. There are now new things like a "Holy Power" system, a new talent called "Light of Dawn" along with the insertion of less interesting talents like "Clarity of Purpose" (which gives your Divine Light and Holy Light abilities a shorter cast time, even though there is Judgments of the Pure already in the tree). Instead of boring all of you with going into detail reviewing talents and trees that are changing daily, you can take a look at how the paladin is looking by clicking here.

Thanks to a long time reader/friend, the hokage finally had a chance to get a taste of Cataclysm beta to get an in-depth look at the new game mechanics.  Blizzard mentioned rogue being one of the "farthest along" classes when it comes to the talent trees, so while things can still shake up a lot with unimplemented mastery/glyph systems, the basic concept will probably stay the same.


With Starcraft 2 out today (great game, not a big RTS fan myself however), I sincerely hope Blizzard puts a lot more time into Cataclysm beta because it feels way less polished than WOTLK was at the same stage.  Countless bugs, broken instances, and level cap still at 83, this thing is not ready for release until Christmas and that is being extremely optimistic. 

Which brings us to the next question, are we really going to have to endure season 8 for 4 more months before patch 4.0?  Raiders really have to deal with ICC/Ruby Sanctrum?  Can Blizzard afford to keep the current build of WOTLK out there for that long without losing a ton of subscribers?  The answer is no.

I am sincerely worried about the progress of the Cataclysm project.  The 31 talent is a great idea but it is going to take them that much longer to balance.  Blizzard really has to do something to keep its player base, I just don't know how they can pull it off as development resource spent on WOTLK is less resource for Cataclysm.  Can they find a relatively low cost way to rejuvenate the game?  Perhaps release the 31 talent system into the game after Blizzcon, change resilience to the Cataclysm version, and increase health by 50% in all arenas/BGs?  Throw a season 9 while we are at it, and recycle one of the classic level 60 instances and update it for level 80 play?

We will see!

 

Tehseus just put out his new video, Feel the Justice 5. He claims for it to be one of his best so I highly recommend watching it. It’s mostly 2v2 with a comp that should NOT work with some world PvP and a few duels. You can find it here.

 

I don’t know when it happened, but it seems that 5v5 is the top bracket for Taiwan players. After browsing a bit through the armory the highest 3v3 team has not even broken 2850 while there are 3 5v5 teams above 3000 rating! I never expected the 5v5 bracket to see 3k in WotLK and expected the 2v2 bracket would be the second.

 

Lastly I predicted that Vileroze and his team would be the first team to hit 3100 and I was right, what up.

 

Sorry folks, no music this week! I promise some next week though.

 

 

1. Write a blog the first week of the month

2. Get the link screencapped in a meme thing on 4chan, get 100k views on blog.

3. Demoralize every other blogger for the rest of the month, leaving the front page a steady trail of WoM posts.

4. ???

5. Profit, $250 to be exact.

 

Have a great weekend everyone.

 

 

Queue the Clay Aiken...

The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has made a major mark on Azeroth, producing an abundance of Wizardcleavers making arena miserable for the common man.  It's not surprising then that, Harry Potter and Co. have started to rub off on the real world as well.  A professor at Michigan Tech University has discovered a way to manipulate glass to create an invisibility cloak.  Although the project is still in early developmental stages, I would expect them to progress from infrared to the visible spectrum shortly. 


One of my favorite questions to ask people when I'm drunk on vent is if they'd rather fly or be invisibile.  I was always surprised when the vast majority of people replied be invisible, citing all the scandalous **** they could do if no one knew they were there.  So as our technology continues to grow exponentionally, and move past **** like facebook and twitter, into truly paradigm shifting and world altering marvels, should we be afraid or embrace the change?  As cool as the ability to make yourself invisible may seem, do you really want someone like Zilea creeping around your house while you're doing P90X unseen?  One thing's for sure, the necessary security that these new technologies will require shall certainly boost the economy, and provide many new jobs for Americans.  Still, the more I think about the future, the more I fear the dystopian existence Bill Joy theorizes in his "Why the future Doesn't Need Us" essay.

 

A lot of nerds have been asking me to make a movie. I'm still not sure what I want to put in it, so I'm asking potential viewers. Duels will certainly be in there and probably some 2s as well, since you get to play with more finesse in those situations, but I don't want it to be the focus. Additionally, it's hard to resist the temptation to throw a few minutes in of 1-shotting peasants with berserking. That's honestly something we haven't seen enough of since vanilla and I intend to bring it back before cataclysm kills it. Hopefully, I'll get some moonkin/rogue, RLD, and RMP footage this weekend all as dance. As far as duels go, what do people want to see?

 

For now, here are some 3s/5s clips that I put together. Not the best footage, but it should give you an idea of what to expect. I'm **** at making movies so hopefully that scumbag raddy will help me out. I'm now up to 40k hp for 5s. Hagrid fears not the wizard scum. Enjoy the clips, or at least the music that goes along with them.

 

Songs are Mt. Eden Dubstep - Hide and Seek for the first clip, and Deltron 3030 - Mastermind for the Hagrid clip.

 

I don't usually talk about my personal life but this past weekend I went through a horrific experience that I'm still thinking about. I was told that I'm just humiliating myself but telling this story publicly is the only way cathartic way to go about this to clear my mind of it.

For those that aren't aware, Trance and Bodi (Bodi's profile was removed because he's a big baby) have been using an online dating site known as OKCupid for quite some time now, and is supposedly where Bodi meets a lot of women (including his recent fiance). Both gave me great testimonials on this so after reaching physical perfection with the removal of acne and my braces, I decided to give it a shot to see what the female market was looking like for a bachelor like myself.

While using OKCupid I was referred to by an unknown person this girl named Silvia. I didn't know who it was or anything but I didn't expect to when using a match-making website. It seemed harmless but apparently this person approached me because she knew people in WoW that knew me and thought we would be a perfect match together.

I saw her photos and thought "you gotta be kidding me, I must really be a stud now or something" and we found a lot in common (which, believe it or not, did not involve WoW) during discussions of sports clubs, sports (World Cup), photography, and even animal caretaking.







After seeing photos like the third one, I started to get a strange feeling that something wasn't right. It just seemed a little strange but I wasn't sure what the problem was. I think being called "tall, dark, and handsome" was the real tipoff.

A few days later I was getting pressured into going to this fancy Italian restaurant because she had been to it before and thought it was decent. I was pretty reluctant at first but I bit the bullet and went ahead and gave it a shot.

We ended up going to a place called Foscari Italian Cuisine, which is supposed to be a decent place to eat, well, Italian cuisine. The food was great and everything but she ate an awful amount of Emilia-Romagna, which to this day I still don't know what it is. The talk was pretty typical of people on first dates with lines like "what do you do for a living?" and "what was the last movie you saw?", and after dinner we were on our way to Laguna Beach to enjoy the warm 65 degree weather at 9 pm (wowza).

Pretty typical boy-girl stuff happened there, but as soon as we started making out I caught in the corner of my eye what looked like a bulge near the crotch area. Now, I'm not saying she looked exactly like in the photos on her OKCupid profile, because believe me, I looked at that bikini line and I don't see any bulge there, plus she didn't exactly look like the photos I saw. But there was no way to deny this. "What the **** is that?" As soon as I saw a wink followed by a noticeably deeper "lookin' good hot stuff" (probably because the guy knew they were caught and couldn't hold it together) I knew I got ******. Who did this? I had to find out.

I had to consult with someone, I couldn't believe this happened to me. As soon I walked through the door I had to tell Lucy everything that happened, knowing that I can confide anything to her. She has proven to be a great listener, but she just looked at me with stone cold silence after I told her everything.



My mind darted everywhere and it wasn't long until I pinpointed Trance as the culprit. Who else could have referred me this person? It was either Bodi or Trance because they were the only ones who knew I was setting up a profile. After interrogating Bodi his hands were clean after he swore to me he had nothing to do with it.

I called Trance up because it was becoming pretty obvious. I asked him bluntly, "did you know anything about this thing I went on a date with?" I could almost see the grin on his face when he said "how did it go?". There was definitely a muffled chuckle on the other end. I have no idea if it was him or his stupid brother. But Trance is going to pay for this, I hope you sleep with one eye open, pal.

I don't know where to turn, it knows where I live.

There’s been a lot of fuss going around about the new 31-point talent trees released by Blizzard in the Cataclysm Beta. Personally... I feel jewed. It’s hard to get excited about these new talent trees and the expansion because it feels like Blizzard decided to take away toys and give us new ones (that I haven’t gotten to play with yet). I’m just not impressed so far, but that’s part of the reason everything is still in Beta. It really sucks to see a lot of classes can’t get X and Y with the current state of the 31-point trees, seeing that these talents have been available previously for an entire expansion.



It’s been nearly 5 years since I chose to roll on Blackrock without knowing what I was getting myself into. Why some asswipe in AUS decided to name Blackrock the “unofficial” Australian server at launch is a load of garbage, but regardless, I’ve met some pretty cool people from the “down under” because of it. Playing with Australians reminds me of dealing with spoiled brats from a daycare, no matter how valid your argument is or how deserved a flame was to one of them, they always have something to say back to you (most likely, in the form of another flame).

I’ve began to notice that most of the top trolls on GR are Australians, in fact, 3 of the most well-known trolls on GR are indeed Aussies.

1) Slappywag - The creator of the “Neilyo Song”, Slappy has been steady trollin’ Gameriot since TBC and has made himself a name for it over the years. He’s definitely pushed my buttons numerous times, even though were cool lately, he is pretty much the reason that the admins at ArenaJunkies hate me (I copied a Blizzard news post by the original AJ creator, Tyveris, on SK-Gaming back in the day) and Slappy became a forum moderator because of it (while trolling the Off-Topic forums a ton). I’ll admit I was in the wrong back then, but I wasn’t even getting paid by SK-Gaming even though I was #1 in traffic for the first month or two I was on SK.

2) godmode - I’ve noticed this troll for quite sometime in the WoM comments, he finally posted probably the most popular GameRiot Blog of all-time when he abused that Blizzard CM’s personal life. Godmode earned himself some cash this month for copying/pasting a Blizzard Employee’s personal info onto a blogging site.

3) faction (mung) - Just because he has the lowest brain-cell count on Gameriot does not stop faction from trolling AJ or GR these days. It’s astounding how stubborn one troll can be, this Australian refuses to leave his EST server with 300-400ms and play on a server with 150-200ms on BG9. I mean, he’s a pretty terrible Priest and I’ve never heard a complement about his play from any Stormstrike player but it seems like he would have a ton more fun trolling on Blackrock and playing with decent ping if he wanted to. It’s probably best that faction stays stupid and banned on GR.

I’ve honestly noticed that every single “top” player from AUS (except Uck) is a professional troll on the side, they all just love pushing every one's buttons and it’s pretty hilarious sometimes. In one of my recent blogs, it showed that 2 out of the top 10 cities that visit GR are from AUS (The #1 Overall City is Sydney). Troll Nation needs to represent, Blizzard should put trolls riding around on Kangaroos instead of Raptors.

Hate it all you want - going to keep posting music.

 

A mix I found on ASOT 463. Skip to 3:15~ if you don't like long intros.

 

 

Hardstyle anyone? 2:25-End for my favorite part.

 

 

This is a pretty sweet electronic song. The video is almost as cool as the song, though. Some of you may have heard this one already.

 

 

See you again next Saturday! Thanks for reading

 

 

I'm very excited to have The Hokage back in full force.  As much as I love Trance and as much I dearly miss Sir Bodi, I wasn't a huge fan of the direction the site went when Ming went casual status.  The simple fact is, no one has as much passion, experience, and enthusiasm for this community as Ming himself, and I'm glad to have him taking back the reigns.  He's already been in communication with the staff with his new plans for the site, and encouraging the blog roster to produce higher qualities "contents."  It's always been easier for me to work more diligently and enthusiastically when my boss is doing the same.  Expect great things in the coming months as we explore Cataclysm Beta, the remainder of the tournament season, BlizzCon, and all the dirty laundries to go along with it.  I hope Ming continues to cultivate the roster at WoM like he does his spice garden he has with Estel, making sure we have top quality writers on staff.



In the wake of Trance's dirty laundry about Millies lesbianism last week, I discovered Kate was actually on a pretty badass reality modelling show.  Maybe this was already public knowledge and I'm late but check out this YouTube.  Fast forward to 6:10 in or so and watch!  I'm pretty sure she's in more episodes too, but I haven't had time to watch yet.  Gotta hand it to her, pretty cool.  Maybe I'll tryout someday =)

 

With the removal of armor penetration and larger health pools, the threat of a shadowdance burst is greatly diminished. Hemorrhage hits like a wet noodle and backstab is harder to use and just as weak. I believe that it was mentioned somewhere that the devs intended for hemo and backstab to be similar to mangle and shred. The problem is that backstab doesn't hit all that much harder than hemo does, especially when you consider that backstab still requires the use of a dagger which results in lower poison damage.

 

For backstab to be worth using, it has to have some sort of special effect. Rewording it "stab" and allowing you to use it from any angle doesn't accomplish anything except giving us another version of sinister strike. Whether by nature or through subtlety talents, backstab needs to ignore armor. Simply buffing the damage of backstab would result in too great of a disparity between damage on cloth and plate for it to ever be effectively balanced. An armor-ignoring backstab wouldn't put sub on par with assassination in terms of pressuring plate, but it would be a start.

Because there seems to be a lot of focus on sub relying on bleeds, a conflag-like talent for rupture would be another way to provide sub with a means of bursting a target that isn't "lol shs ambush ded cy@." Having shadow dance deal damage as shadow would be pretty nice as well.

 

As far as talents that are just kinda dumb go, murderous intent really stands out. Even at 30e, backstab is still not worth using over mutilate. Maybe with a backstab buff this talent would be good, but as of now it's 100% worthless.

 

Some other talents that need to be looked at are ruthlessness and initiative. They've been staple talents in both of their trees for a long time, but need to be adjusted to fit the new talent system. Even with current talent points, they're both barely worth picking up. With talent points being fewer and there being denser talents to choose from, ruthlessness and initiative require either a point reduction or an additional effect. In particular, initiative could gain the effects of dirty deeds (which is now gone). 

 

Not sure what to do with ruthlessness. Possibly combine it and imp evis into a talent that increases the damage of your finishers. As of now both talents are pretty generic and lacking in an otherwise very saturated area. Also, imp evis in a tree focused on envenom is kinda silly, so changing it to effect overall finishers would make sense.

 

Sorry I couldn't bring anything more interesting than a discussion about new talents. Kindof got asked to do this last mine. I'll put some wizard crushing footage together for next Wednesday though, promise .

Rogue/Mage/Priest (RMP):

Against RMP the biggest concern is always going to be the rogue's opener. It is extremely difficult to determine how each RMP plays because there are so many playstyles. There are some RMP that will try to sap the paladin and open hard on the warrior, others may try a hybrid strategy of forcing ccing the paladin until he shields, and then swapping. Then, of course, there are some RMP that will ride the paladin from start to finish. Based on the map you have a variety of options as the paladin to handle this matchup. If the map is nagrand arena, dalaran arena or ruins of lordaeron, you're most likely going to end up running in and popping Divine Sacrifice as you and your teammates approach the halfway point of the map. For ring of valor and dalaran arena, you should be able to get away with a 40 yard Judgment to keep you in combat. The main thing you might notice is that virtually every mage in RMP is going to charge in to try to nova your warrior, followed up with a blanket counterspell on you, to where they will try to set up that important opener. I've learned pretty well on most occasions to give my warrior a Hand of Freedom right when the mage is getting close, followed by spam cleansing my DK just in case he gets caught in it as well. If you can get that done, your warrior and DK should be clear to hop right on the priest. At that point you'll be pulling the SK US strategy of 2009 of riding the healer into the ground until he's dead. Ultimately it usually is too much for the RMP to handle and the priest will drop quickly.

Tips: Be prepared to HoJ a frost bolt and if you're horde, followed up with an arcane torrent on the next one.

Rogue/Warlock/Shaman (RLS): This matchup, believe it or not, is pretty close against a decent RLS. Against average to subpar RLS, TSG can grind through it pretty easily. Your main target is going to be warlock most of the match and late-game you have the option to switch to the rogue once his cooldowns are down or keep focus on the warlock. Normally, a clutch deathgrip -> gnaw on the shaman will be enough later in the match to get either the rogue or warlock down when the shaman starts running out of steam.

Tip: If your paladin has enough PvE gear that you can reach ~500 haste, you don't need to worry about fake casting too much. You should be able to output more than enough healing with just Flash of Light that they will be struggling to get your partners down.

Mage/Warlock/Druid (MLD): One of the more difficult wizard cleave variations for TSG. There aren't too many viable strategies against it so your best bet is to sit on the warlock until the druid positions himself poorly, then make a fast swap to him, pop Divine Sacrifice and unload and make sure he goes down quickly. If the game goes on too long you are sure to lose to the crowd control rotation of polymorph -> fear -> cyclone. If you are lucky you'll get the matchup on ring of valor with the druid not pre-hotting himself.

Warrior/Warlock/Druid (WLD): An extremely favorable matchup for TSG. You can go with two different strategies. The most straight forward strategy is just riding the warlock down all game with the paladin tab killing the felhunter whenever it gets low. The other strategy is putting heavy pressure on the warlock all game and just waiting for the druid to be in the open for a quick swap. Just keep the pressure on the druid once that happens but if he doesn't die quickly the warlock is going to have his way with DoTs and fears, at which point you want to get back on the warlock again until another opportunity presents itself. With warriors being able to disarm, WLD is significantly easier for TSG than it was before.

Hunter/Warlock/Druid (HLD): There are a few strategies for this matchup. If the warlock is UA, the druid is probably the best target to go on from start to finish. You may want to even consider going right for the druid right out of the gate because it takes some time for the warlock to start rolling DoTs. That time is more than adequate to set the team behind by riding the druid and giving you the momentum for the match. If, however, the warlock is destruction, you can either focus the warlock hard and lock him down from unloading with chaos bolts and just win the game with careful death grips/intimidating shout/HoJ on the druid or you can play the riskier game of going on the druid. The druid can die just like if the warlock was UA, but you are going to be on the receiving end of some insanely high burst damage by leaving alone the destruction warlock.

Tip: Make sure you are keeping the felhunter feared whenever the silence is up. You can even use Holy Wrath if Turn Evil is on cooldown.

Mage/Warlock/Shaman (MLS): This matchup plays out similarly to mage/warlock/druid with the goal being to ultimately get a kill on the shaman. You can go with the same strategy of focusing warlock and swapping to shaman based on positioning. However, shaman is infinitely easier to kill than a druid, and you don't need to worry about HoTs. So, for that reason, you can actually just go straight for the shaman and pop your big cooldowns like Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice and that should be enough to drop the shaman. The good MLS teams may be able to survive the train on the shaman and kill one of you but it is much easier to pull off than training the druid on MLD.

Priest/DK/Paladin: Train the priest and avoid mana burns. God help you if you have to sit through this match as anything other than a heavy melee based cleave.

Priest/Warrior/Paladin: Train the priest and avoid mana burns.

Protection Warrior/Hunter/Paladin: This is a tough matchup that can really go either way. From past experience, most of the matches came down to training paladins either after Divine Shield was used to heal partners, or just a straight out zerg. As a paladin in this match you have to always keep your eye on your distance from the protection warrior and the hunter because a Shockwave -> Concussion Blow -> HoJ is all it takes to force you into Divine Shield. If I was to advise a strong strategy I would say that the TSG should ride the hunter all game but I haven't played against it enough to really know how effective it is.

Warlock/Elemental Shaman/Restoration Druid (LSD): I haven't had too much experience against this but the times I did play against it I quickly saw that with the druid healer there was no way to drag it out as TSG. There is only one strat: ride that druid down hard and hope to god he dies quickly. With the druid's crowd control there just isn't much legroom as TSG when you're talking about an elemental shaman.

Elemental Shaman/Destruction Warlock/Paladin: This is one of my least favorite matches because you're talking about unreal burst by both of the DPS players that can global anyone on your team at any time. There's nothing less fun than playing against this comp on a map like ring of valor. This team is a loose cannon that may end up trying to global you if they can't drop your DK or warrior quickly enough. Nonetheless, anyone is free game and your job is to draw this game out by splitting with your warrior on warlock and your DK on elemental shaman. Your DK needs to be exceptionally well at locking down the shaman and preventing him from freecasting for too long. You should eventually get a player down either by making the other paladin go out of mana or by catching him off guard and killing someone.

Mage/Warlock/Priest: This wizardcleave variation is easier than MLD and MLS, which is probably why you never see it in arena. Your target will be the priest from start to finish. Much like with MLS/MLD, you can sit on warlock and make a swap but you should be able to go right on the priest from the get-go.

Rogue/Warlock/Priest: Another rare but still existent lineup is rogue/warlock/priest. It is much easier than RLS but it can be more aggressive. The priest's fears are a great addition for bringing a very offensive team. A fear followed by a priest's significant burst can turn the tide in their favor. As TSG you actually have the option to go on the priest but it is safer to go on the warlock simply because you are locking down one of the DPS instead of leaving them free to have their way. Just like with any other rogue team you will want to make sure you don't get caught in a sap because it could get ugly. If you can't get a Judgment up on anyone, go in with Divine Sacrifice popped. If you do manage to get sapped, you can still give Hand of Freedom through sap to your teammate. Just make sure you give it to them after their Kidney Shot wears off.

I'll keep adding to this list if people want to see more. I gave an overview of the comps I could think of.

Rogue/Mage/Priest (RMP): Against RMP the biggest concern is always going to be the rogue's opener. It is extremely difficult to determine how each RMP plays because there are so many playstyles. There are some RMP that will try to sap the paladin and open hard on the warrior, others may try a hybrid strategy of forcing ccing the paladin until he shields, and then swapping. Then, of course, there are some RMP that will ride the paladin from start to finish. Based on the map you have a variety of options as the paladin to handle this matchup. If the map is nagrand arena, dalaran arena or ruins of lordaeron, you're most likely going to end up running in and popping Divine Sacrifice as you and your teammates approach the halfway point of the map. For ring of valor and dalaran arena, you should be able to get away with a 40 yard Judgment to keep you in combat. The main thing you might notice is that virtually every mage in RMP is going to charge in to try to nova your warrior, followed up with a blanket counterspell on you, to where they will try to set up that important opener. I've learned pretty well on most occasions to give my warrior a Hand of Freedom right when the mage is getting close, followed by spam cleansing my DK just in case he gets caught in it as well. If you can get that done, your warrior and DK should be clear to hop right on the priest. At that point you'll be pulling the SK US strategy of 2009 of riding the healer into the ground until he's dead. Ultimately it usually is too much for the RMP to handle and the priest will drop quickly.

Tips: Be prepared to HoJ a frost bolt and if you're horde, followed up with an arcane torrent on the next one.

Rogue/Warlock/Shaman (RLS): This matchup, believe it or not, is pretty close against a decent RLS. Against average to subpar RLS, TSG can grind through it pretty easily. Your main target is going to be warlock most of the match and late-game you have the option to switch to the rogue once his cooldowns are down or keep focus on the warlock. Normally, a clutch deathgrip -> gnaw on the shaman will be enough later in the match to get either the rogue or warlock down when the shaman starts running out of steam.

Tip: If your paladin has enough PvE gear that you can reach ~500 haste, you don't need to worry about fake casting too much. You should be able to output more than enough healing with just Flash of Light that they will be struggling to get your partners down.

Mage/Warlock/Druid (MLD): One of the more difficult wizard cleave variations for TSG. There aren't too many viable strategies against it so your best bet is to sit on the warlock until the druid positions himself poorly, then make a fast swap to him, pop Divine Sacrifice and unload and make sure he goes down quickly. If the game goes on too long you are sure to lose to the crowd control rotation of polymorph -> fear -> cyclone. If you are lucky you'll get the matchup on ring of valor with the druid not pre-hotting himself.

Warrior/Warlock/Druid (WLD): An extremely favorable matchup for TSG. You can go with two different strategies. The most straight forward strategy is just riding the warlock down all game with the paladin tab killing the felhunter whenever it gets low. The other strategy is putting heavy pressure on the warlock all game and just waiting for the druid to be in the open for a quick swap. Just keep the pressure on the druid once that happens but if he doesn't die quickly the warlock is going to have his way with DoTs and fears, at which point you want to get back on the warlock again until another opportunity presents itself. With warriors being able to disarm bladestorm, WLD is significantly easier for TSG than it was before. You'd think it'd be a double-edged sword, but the bladestorm for the WLD is far more important to get offensive pressure than it is for the TSG.

Hunter/Warlock/Druid (HLD): There are a few strategies for this matchup. If the warlock is UA, the druid is probably the best target to go on from start to finish. You may want to even consider going right for the druid right out of the gate because it takes some time for the warlock to start rolling DoTs. That time is more than adequate to set the team behind by riding the druid and giving you the momentum for the match. If, however, the warlock is destruction, you can either focus the warlock hard and lock him down from unloading with chaos bolts and just win the game with careful death grips/intimidating shout/HoJ on the druid or you can play the riskier game of going on the druid. The druid can die just like if the warlock was UA, but you are going to be on the receiving end of some insanely high burst damage by leaving alone the destruction warlock.

Tip: Make sure you are keeping the felhunter feared whenever the silence is up. You can even use Holy Wrath if Turn Evil is on cooldown.

Mage/Warlock/Shaman (MLS): This matchup plays out similarly to mage/warlock/druid with the goal being to ultimately get a kill on the shaman. You can go with the same strategy of focusing warlock and swapping to shaman based on positioning. However, shaman is infinitely easier to kill than a druid, and you don't need to worry about HoTs. So, for that reason, you can actually just go straight for the shaman and pop your big cooldowns like Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice and that should be enough to drop the shaman. The good MLS teams may be able to survive the train on the shaman and kill one of you but it is much easier to pull off than training the druid on MLD.

Priest/DK/Paladin: Train the priest and avoid mana burns. God help you if you have to sit through this match as anything other than a heavy melee based cleave.

Priest/Warrior/Paladin: Train the priest and avoid mana burns.

Protection Warrior/Hunter/Paladin: This is a tough matchup that can really go either way. From past experience, most of the matches came down to training paladins either after Divine Shield was used to heal partners, or just a straight out zerg. As a paladin in this match you have to always keep your eye on your distance from the protection warrior and the hunter because a Shockwave -> Concussion Blow -> HoJ is all it takes to force you into Divine Shield. If I was to advise a strong strategy I would say that the TSG should ride the hunter all game but I haven't played against it enough to really know how effective it is.

Warlock/Elemental Shaman/Restoration Druid (LSD): I haven't had too much experience against this but the times I did play against it I quickly saw that with the druid healer there was no way to drag it out as TSG. There is only one strat: ride that druid down hard and hope to god he dies quickly. With the druid's crowd control there just isn't much legroom as TSG when you're talking about an elemental shaman.

Elemental Shaman/Destruction Warlock/Paladin: This is one of my least favorite matches because you're talking about unreal burst by both of the DPS players that can global anyone on your team at any time. There's nothing less fun than playing against this comp on a map like ring of valor. This team is a loose cannon that may end up trying to global you if they can't drop your DK or warrior quickly enough. Nonetheless, anyone is free game and your job is to draw this game out by splitting with your warrior on warlock and your DK on elemental shaman. Your DK needs to be exceptionally well at locking down the shaman and preventing him from freecasting for too long. You should eventually get a player down either by making the other paladin go out of mana or by catching him off guard and killing someone.

Mage/Warlock/Priest: This wizardcleave variation is easier than MLD and MLS, which is probably why you never see it in arena. Your target will be the priest from start to finish. Much like with MLS/MLD, you can sit on warlock and make a swap but you should be able to go right on the priest from the get-go.

Rogue/Warlock/Priest: Another rare but still existent lineup is rogue/warlock/priest. It is much easier than RLS but it can be more aggressive. The priest's fears are a great addition for bringing a very offensive team. A fear followed by a priest's significant burst can turn the tide in their favor. As TSG you actually have the option to go on the priest but it is safer to go on the warlock simply because you are locking down one of the DPS instead of leaving them free to have their way. Just like with any other rogue team you will want to make sure you don't get caught in a sap because it could get ugly. If you can't get a Judgment up on anyone, go in with Divine Sacrifice popped. If you do manage to get sapped, you can still give Hand of Freedom through sap to your teammate. Just make sure you give it to them after their Kidney Shot wears off.

I'll keep adding to this list if people want to see more. I gave an overview of the comps I could think of.