S4 - Week 4: Up the down staircase

So week 4 is upon us and Kelf and I met up late (even for us) last night. A start time of 10:30pm server time. I was a little concerned that as late as it was, we'd have only better (harder) teams to play against. Now as a reminder we started the week at 1551, which meant we needed a solid 4 wins to get to 1600, the next benchmark for gear.

On the plus side I had warmed up with a couple skirmish matches before we started AND had picked up my new legs right before the match. On the minus side I was going without much sleep and had to brew some 9pm coffee to keep me fresh, if a little tweaky.

So, first match comes up we win pretty easy. Que up again right away, this time we pull a Warrior/Druid combo (our first of many that night). These guys were terribad. Not much resilience and the warrior totally ignored me, leaving me to down the druid pretty quick. we IMMEDIATLY que up again, hoping to pull the same team. We're in luck and 2 minutes later the score is 3-0

I'm starting to think the evening is going pretty well and I take a quick look at the rating. It's higher then I thought 1591.... Now I'm a little nervous. A win would get us over 1,600 a loss and we're back down into the 1,570's.

We pull out of the gate and it's not the same team. Shaman and (if I remember right) a rouge. "Shammy" I say to Kelf and proceed to go at it.... This team wasn't going down without a fight. Quite a bit of Pillar humping, dumping of totems and of course the Shaman running away in wolf form. However after a slighty prolonged game we beat them!! 1,606 BABY / 4-0!! I'm extatic and tell Kelf to go get his gear. I'm picking up mine before we get into another match. I can't believe how well this week is going. Perhaps we need to que up at 10:30pm all the time :)

WHOA COWBOY. Kelf tell me he's short on points, by around 300. If we maintain this rating thru 10 games he can pick up the chest piece next week, but for now he has to pass. "That sucks" I tell him. He say's he'll drool over it another week. I go ahead and pick up my new chest but can't use it just yet.. need to get it gemmed and enchanted first.

The way the night is going, I'm having visions of 1650 but it was not to be. The break in queing was not good for us.

Next team up was a Shadow Priest and Shaman. UGH.... a couple times Kelf managed some last minute heals to keep us alive and managed to get that Priest down to 3%... but couldn't seal the deal. Our first loss of the night 4-1. The next match against another druid/warrior brought us our 2nd loss. Then a series of losses after that. Suddenly our 4-0 turned into a 4-5 and our 1606 rating had slipped to 1542.

I get a (probably well deserved) few words from Kelf about my inability to stay in his healing range. And how my chasing around the opponent left me vounerable AND out of range a handful of times over the last few matches.... Something I need to work on. But that's for another post.

So our last match ques up. Warrior/Druid combo again. These guys are good.... and annoying! The druid is humping that pillar like it was the 1st woman he's seen in 20 years. The warrior starts up on me, but after about 5 minutes of this, he switches over to Kelf, leaving me and the druid to go at it.

I swear this Druid is on auto-pilot. Spamming the same few heals once he gets a little ways aroudn the pillar, and switching to bear form whenever his health gets below 50% (or when he feels the need to hump that pillar again).

I'm doing all the right things, but this druid is as well. And he's regening mana like crazy. Meanwhile Kelf is down to a couple thousand mana as the warrior keeps beating on him, but he's able to do amazing things with little mana and has no problems keeping himself healed. Meanwhile the match is DRAAGING on.

I'd say about 10 minutes into the match, I get the potential for my 1st break. Up to now, I wasn't doing a ton of damage, his resilence combined with bear from was keeping my hits around 600-800 damage. But I had finished drinking up a little while ago and had set myself up.
- 2 Stuns available
- Full mana
- Avenging Wrath ready to pop
- Holy Vengance stacked x5

So, when the druid switched to humanoid form I put repentance on him, then poped my wings, and started wailing away. 2nd stun off and more damage. With the wings on I was getting thru the resilience a bit and getting crits in the 1,000 - 1,500 range. The druid's health slipped to under 20% for the first time ever. Just as importantly his mana was starting to get low.... I figured if I could repeat this cycle every 3 minutes I could eventually wear him down.

A couple repeats later I could see it was taking a toll. The druid was getting eager to run away for a bit and suddenly the guy stops humping the pillar and starts running all around the Arena. We briefly switch to the warrior at one point and get him down to 10%, but the druid runs back in time and heals the guy.

Back to chasing the druid....a few more cycles and finaly I get the druid. With no healer, the warrior goes down shortly after. What a friggin' long match! Seemed like it was for ever, but at least 20 minutes, probably closer to half an hour.

Kelf was done, I was too..... 1557 final score. 5-5 and 6 points higher then we started.

P.S. - I'd like to mention that during this match both Kelf and I had to break away to drink multiple times. I was especially vounerable to this, and probably sat to drink about 5 times during the match. The opponents lack of getting on me when drinking (or in the case of the druid) sitting down to drink himself while I got away was what eventually did the team in.