Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #296 - For Azeroth!: “Be Chill”

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#296 - For Azeroth!: “Be Chill” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  It's just we get so focused and locked in on oh what's the best
• 0:04
  comp? We're only running the best comp
• 0:05
  for every level from 2 of. The Karen Tour for Pandaria.
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  For calendar to the. Burning region for Gilnaeus or?
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  Has not died for the Lich King, for the.
• 0:25
  Sindori for the Alliance for the.
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  Whore for Azeroth. Hello and welcome to another
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  episode of For Azeroth. My name is Manny AKA de Truvan
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  Manny and I am joined once again by recruiter friend Sean.
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  Sean, how has the World of Warcraft been treating you this
• 0:47
  week? Manny, the World of Warcraft has
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  been treating me quite well this week.
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  I've had a pretty good week so far.
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  It's Wednesday, so we're recording this after our weekly
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  heroic clear, which we blasted and then we went in and blasted
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  normal as well just for for SS&G's.
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  San Lane and Goblins. San Lane and Goblins, yeah.
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  Yeah, same thing with my team. Just going through on normal
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  clearing through that. We've got some new recruits, so
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  we wanted to get them some gear from that kept them sort of
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  caught up, jumped into Heroic, went through half, half of that.
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  Now we're up against the bosses that we have been progging it
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  get. Well, sorry, I'm not sure
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  Princess Nexus. Princess is really Prague.
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  She seemed, she seemed to go down pretty easy.
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  We ended up doing her first and then doing Brute Twister because
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  Brute Twister is so much more coordination and that seems to
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  be a point where my team seems to hit some struggles.
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  So that's our current fight right now.
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  Those are good fights. Brute Twister caught some
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  nerves. Were they just to Mythic?
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  And we're going to talk about this in a second, you know?
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  What? Why don't we jump right into it?
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  I know it's sort of it's sort of out of order, but yeah, we have
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  seen some nerf. So Brute Twister saw HP nerfs on
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  a number of things. The biggest one that I think is
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  fantastic, and I don't believe this is just for mythic the the
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  pest, the parasites, they can be stunned when they are actually
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  trying to infest. So they don't have that
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  invulnerability anymore. You still get that extra moment
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  to like get off because I used cap totem, there's a bit of
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  delay when it goes off and if I and like I've seen it just be
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  like, Oh no, and I just screwed up.
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  So I'm I'm super happy for that. The mythic only nerves also
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  include the speed at which, or sorry, the rate at which their
• 2:54
  speed increases. Because for as long as they're
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  out every second they were getting a speed boost.
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  Now it's every other second. So they're speeding up.
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  They're speeding up way slow. It's going to be a much easier
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  thing controlling those past and everything and then like half.
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  As fast. That's good.
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  Yeah, yeah. And with the with the HP nerves,
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  it's going to be a lot easier to to handle things and kill rude
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  Twister. But a lot of those nerves are
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  mythic only. We also saw some nerves for Kai
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  Vesa, the Nexus Princess. Kai Vesa, her execute having 25%
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  damage taken out of it. Her her dot also having damage
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  taken off of it, including when you clear it.
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  So it feels like the it's going to be a lot easier on the
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  healers. And this is I think in tandem
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  with the nerf set, or rather some of it was bug fixes, but
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  we'll call them nerfs that happened to Preservation Evoker.
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  They no longer double dip in vitality for a couple of moves
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  and stuff. So they aren't going to be as
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  crazy outliers as they used to be.
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  Yeah. So now they'll just be
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  approximately 15% ahead of every other healer based on the
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  numbers. So that's good.
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  That's good. That that's way better age.
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  You know, they're like they're bringing it in.
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  They're giving other classes a chance.
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  There's a there's actually a a problem.
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  I think Blizzard is hesitant to nerf Preservation of ochres
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  because there's a lot of the fights in mythic right now.
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  They had like the last few fights that are only possible
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  because you have double preservation of ochre and how
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  broken preservation of ochre is right now.
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  Like I don't see if you nerf preservation of ochre and it
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  doesn't also come alongside massive damaged nerves to silk
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  in court and to Ansarek. I don't see other teams being
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  able to kill those two bosses without double preservation of
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  ochre. It is doing that much of the
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  heavy lifting in the healing and the healing matter.
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  Yeah. And it's and and oven acts that
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  fight is being 3 healed right now.
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  And it's it's being 3 healed because preservation of ochre 2
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  preservation of Ochre's are able to to basically.
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  Area yeah, I, I think though, they have to end up bringing
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  preservation of ochers in line because there are teams that are
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  going to be coming up now that aren't going to be switching
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  their comps to tailor it for for this sort of damage.
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  This is just part of the typical, I, I want to say
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  typical, but it's been that that way for a while where as the
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  teams go through as like various teams are coming up, they nerfed
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  the content so that it is doable for, as you said last week, mere
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  mortals. And that is a big part of, of
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  where we're at now with the race because we have now completed
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  the race to world first. At the time of this recording,
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  we have four teams that have defeated Queen Ansarak.
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  And so, Sean, can you take us through this and what it took to
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  bring down the Queen? Yeah, this was an incredible
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  race. One team went into the race just
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  clearly playing ahead of everyone else, and that was Team
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  Liquid. It was a it was no surprise to
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  anybody who watched any part of this race that Liquid came away
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  with the victory on September 29th.
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  That was Saturday, Saturday evening for them, Sunday morning
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  for me. And they pulled that kill out
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  and they did a great job. They watching their analysts.
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  There was a point on like Thursday or Friday, even when
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  people weren't sure that Ansereck was killable in this,
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  in this reset because of the the damage required to kill her.
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  And I liquids, liquids analysts went went, they went cooking, so
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  to speak, and pulled out some incredible, incredible damage
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  numbers. Like they shifted cooldowns
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  around. That's my actual favorite part
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  of the race. I know a lot of people like
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  watching the players perform and that's great.
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  But you can see those players perform at a super high level
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  almost anytime. Like you watch any, any of
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  their, their, their rating, any of their mythic plus that they
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  do. But you only really get to see
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  the analysts shine in that race to world first where they're
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  trying to squeeze out as much damage, as much healing as
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  possible from from the limits that they have.
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  But they pull the win. Echo came in second.
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  They almost lost second. So everybody, it's been pretty
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  solidly locked in liquid E1 and two flip the order for the last
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  little while. But Echo came close.
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  Our method came close to stealing 2nd place from EE did
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  not play with the usual consistency that we expect to
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  see from them. Now I say this, please
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  understand they're still miles and decades ahead of anything I
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  or any of my friends or anybody else that I know could possibly
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  imagine doing. They are among the best.
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  Except. For me, like if I read 12 hours
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  a day I'd be there too this last episode.
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  We did, yeah. Yeah, if I just raided 12 hours
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  a day, it's like coming in second on the race.
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  World first is like winning silver medal at the Olympics.
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  You're still second best in the world.
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  The world, it's like it's even like people are like, oh, you
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  came six at the Olympics. Yeah, I'm only 6 best on the
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  planet. I'm sorry.
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  Anyway, they came second. Method pulled in 3rd.
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  They both did that on the 30th and then on October 2nd, which
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  is today. I think it happened last night.
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  About nine hours ago from this recording, yeah.
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  Yeah. And so nine hours ago, Hot Pot
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  hero, Bogo Hero pulled it in for 4th and it was really great to
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  see them pump it out from the the China realm because we that
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  was not something we had been seeing or we had expected to
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  see. And they put on quite a show.
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  There is potential that they could maybe fight for a third
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  place spot in the next race. We'll see with that monetary
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  incentive coming from China, maybe helping to push their
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  their, their drive a little bit. Yeah, well, they they didn't get
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  it this time. So as per that deal, they throw
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  more money on the pot until, until somebody from the Chinese
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  realm gets world first. It it just the incentive just
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  keeps growing. And like it is great to see that
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  strong showing out of the region because they just got back into
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  the game with the launch of the the war within that that
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  repairing that fence and getting that the game back into the
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  region. This is amazing.
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  This is amazing that they were doing it.
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  I kind of wonder if there were illicit ways for people to play
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  in the region at at some point. It just either way, I wouldn't
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  be surprised. The fact that like they could
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  jump to this level so quickly is is actually not surprising for
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  me. These guys, all these players
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  play at such an amazing level. You are right, this is Olympic
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  level plays and it's not just being able to play that well,
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  it's being able to play that well so consistently.
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  Consistently you were talking about like, hey, Echo, they were
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  bit inconsistent and they would get like that 20 something
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  percent kill and then they'd be wiping in phase one the next
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  poll and it'd be like, oh geez, this is not where we want to be.
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  And they'll like I I definitely agree with you, but the world
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  first kill took 404 pulls attempts that they went in over
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  the course of multiple days. Like we were saying, oh, they
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  got to Ansrak the resets there. We'll give them like let's say
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  two to three days. And we were saying like
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  Thursday, Friday. Yeah, it happened on Saturday.
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  So I you weren't really that far off Sean, when you said Friday,
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  but 404 pulls for that first 1E with 449 pulls method did it in
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  less pulls 425. And that's why you're you were
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  saying hey, like they almost lost it like the difference
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  between world 2nd and world third was a matter of hours.
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  And it was actually inverted in the number of pulls it took to
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  get to take down answer. There's a question of, hey, if
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  method had gotten a little bit of stronger showing when they
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  were trying trying to do pulls earlier.
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  If they hadn't had that like late night, if they hadn't had
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  like the COVID that took out I think 5 players and and caused
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  them to isolate, this might have been a completely different
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  game. So like there is a big question
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  mark there about like, hey, what's going to happen next
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  time? Because I think method has
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  definitely shown that it could jump into second, if not first
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  place in in the next one if they can keep up the level of
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  performance that they did here. So all of these teams, Olympic
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  level performance and it's great to see more teams in the
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  competition, more players being showcased here and people just
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  hungry for that gold. Yeah, it's I'm excited.
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  More teams is better. It's it's it's exciting for the
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  fans, exciting for us. I can't wait.
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  And yeah, it's I mean, you said it, 404 polls.
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  That's crazy. You said that to a regular team.
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  You know, two night a week, you know, 404 polls, that's three
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  months of polls. You get about an average of 25
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  polls a night, 20 to 30, you know, polls a night, depending
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  how fast they're going, some a little faster if it's a
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  contendual style fight. So four months of prog for the
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  rest of us. So Blizz, if you're listening,
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  we're ready for those nerves now.
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  Most definitely I I think when you get those like with teams
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  Ivory that when you when you even get close to triple digits,
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  that's like this team might be disbanding territory.
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  So it is a completely different mindset to dial in that hard to
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  get these down yeah. On the flip side of that, let's
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  talk a little bit about Mythic Plus, because keystones are
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  continuing this week, we have a new affix here.
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  The Void bound is the next part of Xalatas bargains Void bound.
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  The way that that works is that when the group is in combat,
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  Xalatas periodically appears yet again some of the Void Emissary,
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  which immediately begins to empower enemy enemies with this
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  dark prayer ability. OK each dark prayer cast grants
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  these surrounding enemies a damage reduction.
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  You do less damage but when you defeat the void adversary it
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  clears all of the stacks that were on the boss or sorry on any
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  of the characters that are around.
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  And then all of the players get a 22nd buff that is ACDR cool
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  down reduction and increases your crit.
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  This is the dream as an enhancement shaman that is 100%
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  about cooldowns, this is the dream for me.
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  I'm going to have so much fun this week.
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  I haven't had a chance because we were recording really early.
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  Last night was raid night and I didn't get to play as much, but
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  I I am so excited for this week. I also love that the punishment
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  is yet again, it takes longer to kill the enemies.
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  So everybody hard switch, do the mechanic kill this thing?
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  Yeah, hopefully on the beta we noticed that shamans were able
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  to purge the mechanic. They were able to purge the
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  shield and essentially one shot the AD.
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  I haven't run with a shaman yet this week but I have spoken to
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  some friends who had who I told them about this and they said
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  the shamans that they played with were unable to do that.
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  So I don't know if it was removed or not.
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  But if you're a shaman, I definitely recommend at least
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  trying urge the Xalatath shield at least once.
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  Yeah. Because if that's the case, just
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  one more reason to stack those shamans in the the sub 1211 and
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  below range. It's a +2 to plus 11 is is
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  double shaman territory all day long, every day.
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  I mean you can also bring in those demon hunters, they have
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  the offensive purge too, so I. Did run with a Demon Hunter,
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  they were not able to consume magic.
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  OK, as a warrior can you shattering throw to do extra
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  damage to that shield? Yeah, if I talent into
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  shattering throw which. I have to talent the Purge.
• 16:21
  Come on man, this is now like we're looking at options here.
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  Yeah, that's not going to. That's not going to happen.
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  All right, OK, we'll check and have to like come back.
• 16:32
  Maybe I'll do an editing note before we put put this up to,
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  to, to say definitively editing Manny.
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  This is your point right here. Editing Manny here.
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  It turns out that purge has been fixed so it no longer one shots
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  the shield. It looks like you are going to
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  have to do it the old fashioned way.
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  I return you to the episode beyond that, we're back to
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  tyrannical at four at 10 fortified.
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  Obviously once you get past 12, the the void bound disappears
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  and you're dealing with the guile.
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  We have had some teams that have been pushing a lot higher and
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  now, but with those higher keys is where the stress is coming
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  from. And so we've seen additional
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  nerves to some of the more challenging dungeons because at
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  this point in the season, there are some dungeons that are
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  clearly easier than others and some dungeons that are much
• 17:24
  harder. Like as much as Sean, you and I
• 17:28
  had like a a bit of a clown show and miss this weekend.
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  I think miss is strangely one of the easiest of the dungeons
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  available. It just feels like you just go
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  forward. There's not much that's going to
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  screw you over in that. But on the flip side, Rim Batal,
• 17:49
  Siege of Baralis, and Stone Vault all got nerves and I think
• 17:53
  are very needed nerves for those dungeons.
• 17:58
  Yeah, it's crazy how much easier miss is.
• 18:04
  Like there's a graph put up by Lo Fi Banshee on Twitter and
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  they like track keys that have been done and mists is more than
• 18:13
  there's been more mists done timed if they're more than
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  double the the amount of any other any other key.
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  I don't want everything nerfed to miss level.
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  I think maybe they actually need to bump up the difficulty in
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  Miss and Eric Kira I think is another one that's kind of easy.
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  I so I agree, Eric Kira is also easy.
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  The City of Echoes is a little bit easy.
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  I'm OK with easy because it's infinitely scaling content.
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  Let it be easy in those low key levels so that people who just
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  want to get their keys for the week done and get them done and
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  get out without hating their lives and let the difficulty
• 18:55
  ramp up for the people who want the difficulty at the higher key
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  levels. I don't think there's any
• 18:58
  problem with keystones from 2:00 to 10:00 or 2:00 to 11:00 being,
• 19:04
  you know, timeable with a wipe if you have a full part of you.
• 19:08
  I actually think they should be tolerable.
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  I think from 2:00 to 11:00 every key should be timable with it
• 19:14
  with one full party wipe included.
• 19:18
  I, I agree with you. I think that that's all always
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  of course relative to gear, like the more gear you have,
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  obviously the easier you're able to make up for, for a wipe.
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  And therefore as you get higher gear can compensate for less.
• 19:33
  And so that's automatically something that that occurs, but
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  I meant in terms of difficulty relative to other dungeons.
• 19:39
  I dislike when there is a dungeon.
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  In that case, make the rest of them easier, dumb them down.
• 19:48
  I don't want, I listen, I don't where there's some I don't run
• 19:51
  because I just don't want the headache.
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  You know, I, I queue up to do my eight 10s for the week and I, I
• 19:59
  usually pug those by myself. I log in in the afternoon or in
• 20:02
  the morning and I just jump into pugs.
• 20:04
  I do eight 10s. It was black or cold in season 3
• 20:08
  of Dragonflight because it was the one that was the most likely
• 20:12
  to be completed with pugs. It's Mr. Tyrannosythe in this
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  one. I ran 8 myths last week.
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  And then I I do other keys on the side with my groups.
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  So my my mythic plus group or my my raid friends?
• 20:24
  My raid team friends, either of those, I'll do whatever dungeons
• 20:28
  we have or farming trinkets and stuff.
• 20:29
  We're doing all of those. But if I'm looking to fill my
• 20:32
  vault to complete my week, I want it to be easy.
• 20:34
  I'm running those mists every time.
• 20:36
  Every time I even I know I'm going to run 10s of City of
• 20:41
  threads, Grim Batal. These other ones that are a
• 20:42
  little bit harder, I know I'm going to run them.
• 20:44
  I still pug 8 mists out because I want to incentivize I I speak
• 20:50
  with my money so to speak him instead of money.
• 20:52
  In this case, it's my time. I'm letting him know, hey, this
• 20:55
  difficulty of myths, I enjoy this.
• 20:57
  I'm doing it a lot more of this, please.
• 21:00
  I Yeah. OK.
• 21:03
  I mean, like I think that's always going to be the case that
• 21:06
  players are going to go towards the path of least resistance,
• 21:10
  like from the dawn of Mythic plus everybody running MA a
• 21:13
  million times because it was just fast, easy in the that.
• 21:17
  So it's always going to be the case.
• 21:20
  I just think that if they have a target difficulty that they want
• 21:28
  and seven out of eight dungeons are hitting that and there's one
• 21:33
  that just is a little bit low, I don't say screw your target
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  difficulty and bring them all down to that lower thing.
• 21:39
  I say bring the outliers into range, both the high and the
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  low. I know players typically are not
• 21:46
  going to like that because it's like, oh, you made my eight runs
• 21:49
  a week harder if. If they bring the hard ones
• 21:54
  down, I'm OK with them bringing mists up.
• 21:57
  But Manny, I don't have the same faith that you do that.
• 22:02
  That's what will happen. I think we'll see mists timer, I
• 22:07
  think. I think what will happen is
• 22:08
  we'll see the timer and mists decreased.
• 22:10
  You'll have less time to complete it because it's so easy
• 22:12
  to complete, but it'll just shorten the timer that you have
• 22:14
  in there, which I'm OK with. I'm already going fast.
• 22:17
  I don't mind if I have to go faster, but I don't think the
• 22:21
  same adjustments are going to happen on those ones that are
• 22:23
  like City of threads right now. This the the the twins boss.
• 22:26
  If you're not in a group that's coordinated and knows the fight
• 22:30
  and is in voice comms, you're not finishing that dungeon on
• 22:34
  anything above A7. I I got to say that that is
• 22:38
  something that they really need to address.
• 22:41
  The it's not how hard things hit.
• 22:44
  It's not the bad overlaps, like they're already addressing that.
• 22:50
  If you guys look at our show notes, we've got all the
• 22:52
  adjustments that they made. A lot of it is bad overlaps,
• 22:56
  random mobs that like run out and like can screw you over
• 23:00
  because they've run into a pack and pull over pack that you
• 23:02
  didn't want. That sort of stuff they're
• 23:03
  already on top of. But those levels of coordination
• 23:08
  that create the PUG stompers, I think that's what they need to
• 23:12
  start looking at now. And I think that they also need
• 23:16
  to think about that because in combination with the effects
• 23:19
  that we had last week, you could have some really bad overlaps
• 23:23
  where it's like, hey, I got to run out of this, but now all of
• 23:26
  the orbs are coming from that direction.
• 23:29
  What do I do? And I, I so I I just think they
• 23:33
  need to adjust timings and so forth so that the coordination
• 23:37
  doesn't need to be that meticulous.
• 23:41
  Yeah, it's man, there's some bad overlaps.
• 23:45
  There's some that somehow got introduced in Dawn Breaker.
• 23:48
  Dawn Breaker is a very easy key to complete.
• 23:51
  If you're looking to complete Dawn Breaker, run like you're
• 23:52
  looking for a good key to complete, run it.
• 23:54
  I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being the first plus
• 23:58
  10, like the first portal you get from or within.
• 24:01
  I wouldn't be shocked if it was Dawn Breaker.
• 24:03
  I think City of Echoes also maybe, but Dawn Breaker is
• 24:05
  super, super accessible right now.
• 24:08
  But there is the third second boss.
• 24:14
  There's some weird overlaps that somehow did not exist last week
• 24:17
  that exists this week where they're doing orbs on top of
• 24:22
  tank Buster and AOE on top of orbs which didn't exist last
• 24:27
  week. And like, if it's just the tank
• 24:30
  Buster, my health part doesn't move, my health part literally
• 24:32
  stays at 100%. But this week it was tank Buster
• 24:36
  plus the orb and I one shot me. Well, I guess two shots.
• 24:40
  It was 2 abilities, but and it was completely out of nowhere.
• 24:44
  We have no idea how it happened. So there is the there's
• 24:47
  adjustments that were made that it's like, oh, did you make this
• 24:50
  worse in the other direction? Maybe.
• 24:52
  I don't know what happened, but yeah, hot tip for Dawn Breaker.
• 24:55
  If you're a Dawn breaker fan, you're somebody who enjoys Dawn
• 24:58
  Breaker. Run it in slow flight, turn off
• 25:04
  I beg you, I beg you I beg you I beg you.
• 25:06
  For anybody who's pugging dawnbreaker or running with a
• 25:09
  regular group, turn off sky riding and use boomer flight.
• 25:15
  It gives you more precise landing and you don't need the
• 25:19
  zoomer flight to get to the end safe location, you can just fly
• 25:23
  there straight there from the ship.
• 25:26
  So when the first boss is doing her explosion at like at the end
• 25:30
  at .1%, she starts her explosion mechanic.
• 25:33
  As soon as that cast starts, everybody leaves the ship.
• 25:36
  Fly right inside the church because you get down into the
• 25:38
  town before the mobs spawn. So you're standing on the spawn
• 25:43
  location of the first Lieutenant when it spawns, you can pull it
• 25:46
  right there. You don't need to be on the ship
• 25:47
  when it dies. It dies anyway.
• 25:48
  It casts that spell, it dies. And then from there you want to
• 25:53
  have slow flight on so that when you're landing on spots, you can
• 25:56
  hover above it, wait for everybody to get there and then
• 25:58
  land straight down. Instead of having people dive
• 26:01
  bombing in on an angle and pulling a bunch of packs from
• 26:05
  the side And we're like, oh, well, I couldn't land straight.
• 26:06
  Like just slow flight. Everybody should just slow
• 26:09
  flight. I won't.
• 26:10
  I'm at the point now where I will not run it.
• 26:12
  I'm telling everybody before I put the key in slow flight and
• 26:15
  and then on the last boss, you just get off the ship and you
• 26:18
  fly direct straight line to the spot where you end.
• 26:22
  You have plenty of time. I land and I can just wait for
• 26:27
  him to wait for ration on the land anyway.
• 26:30
  Was that this week's Just the Tip?
• 26:32
  That was this. That was this week's just the
• 26:33
  tip. Yeah, there was like 3 just the
• 26:35
  tips in there. So if you go, yeah.
• 26:39
  Perfect. In terms of the meta that has
• 26:46
  been forming in the keys, we've it's mostly a a continuation of
• 26:53
  last week, both in good and bad. The highest keys that we have
• 26:58
  seen completed as of this recording has been a 14 Aracara
• 27:03
  no less. We've seen 13 a ton of 13 / a
• 27:09
  number of different dungeons. So that's that's been good.
• 27:12
  The representation for tanks still quite healthy.
• 27:16
  We've got 3 tanks with over 20% representation.
• 27:22
  We've got the Blood Decays, 26.4 is the highest percentile.
• 27:28
  We've got Warriors 25.7 really close there, Druids 20.6 a
• 27:36
  little bit behind, but both the air carrier and a number of high
• 27:40
  keys have been completed with Guardian Druids, so they are no
• 27:45
  slouches whatsoever. Then on the other half, the
• 27:50
  lower representation, we've got VDH, the Vengeance Demon
• 27:53
  Hunters, they're at 15.5%. Brewmaster Monks, I'm really
• 27:58
  sorry, 7% on the dot and protection palleys.
• 28:06
  Ouch. 4.8% on protection palleys.
• 28:10
  And I really think that it is the fact that paladins are still
• 28:16
  like very much tied to that concentration that if they don't
• 28:20
  have up the defensives, they just start getting trucked.
• 28:26
  It's so like it it's I'm not sure if they need, they need
• 28:31
  some sort of adjustment. But the last time paladins got a
• 28:34
  rework or something, it was nightmare fuel for the rest of
• 28:37
  us. So I'm not entirely against a
• 28:41
  little bit lower of representation right now for
• 28:45
  Protection paladins. What?
• 28:47
  What do you think about this? It's great, Hank.
• 28:51
  Parity is good. People should be able to play
• 28:53
  what they want at the levels they want.
• 28:55
  Again, as we get to those higher levels, you're going to see a
• 28:59
  gap start to exist, but the the longer you can delay that gap
• 29:07
  happening, the better. I'm OK with there being like,
• 29:11
  you know, I locked in meta where it's like only this specific
• 29:16
  comp complete can complete the keys at this level as long as
• 29:19
  that's only one or two key levels above what everybody else
• 29:24
  can complete one. Preferably I can accept 2, but
• 29:29
  when and in most cases that is how it is.
• 29:32
  It's just we get so focused and locked in on, oh, what's the
• 29:36
  best comp? We're only running the best comp
• 29:38
  for every level from due up. That's when you see a problem.
• 29:42
  Yeah, that trickle down effect is what really effects these
• 29:45
  numbers more than what's actually viable at those high
• 29:48
  keys. Yeah, human perception, people
• 29:50
  not understanding how you know the game works or how any of it
• 29:55
  works, really. It's like, it'd be like if you
• 29:58
  watch the NFL and saw the the Chiefs win a Super Bowl and
• 30:01
  think to yourself, well, we're only going to win if we have a
• 30:03
  tight end who's dating a pop star and a quarterback who's
• 30:06
  Patrick Mahomes. So we got to cut all our Tom
• 30:09
  Brady's. We got to cut all our Jared
• 30:11
  Goffs. We got to cut all our Matthew
• 30:13
  Stafford's. All these people got to go.
• 30:15
  Sam Laporta, you're out of here. Yeah.
• 30:18
  And it's like, that's not it worked for them this season, but
• 30:23
  it's OK. Like, you can still get this
• 30:25
  done with, you know, your Jaden Daniels.
• 30:29
  Sorry, I watched a lot of football.
• 30:31
  That's OK. All of these names are French to
• 30:33
  me. I'm like, I think I recognize
• 30:37
  that name. I think I've heard that name
• 30:39
  before. This is what happens, like when
• 30:42
  I like show my show, my girlfriend.
• 30:45
  I'm just like, hey, listen to this show.
• 30:46
  It's like, what the hell are you talking about?
• 30:48
  I'm like, no, no, no. I just need the general flow is
• 30:51
  when I'm trying to get you to understand.
• 30:53
  It's like, yes, you guys sound enthusiastic.
• 30:55
  I don't know what you're saying. I love it.
• 31:01
  OK, the flip side of that of course is there is a huge
• 31:07
  differentiation with healers. Resto shaman, as bad as it was
• 31:12
  before, is pretty much cemented itself with over half the keys.
• 31:19
  54.2% of keys. And this is a keys 10 and above
• 31:26
  right? The next highest is priest
• 31:29
  combined holy, Holy and discipline at 14.5%, Holy Pally
• 31:37
  at 11, Preservation of ochres at 8.9, Miss weaving 5.9, Resto
• 31:45
  druids at 5.5. So I want to say that if you
• 31:49
  throw Resto shamans out of that picture, the other ones are
• 31:55
  really close together. Like there's pretty even
• 31:58
  representation outside of that just disproportionate lion's
• 32:04
  share that Resto Shaman has. And if you guys want to know our
• 32:07
  thoughts of like why Resto Shaman is just absolutely
• 32:11
  killing it for for healers, do check out our previous episode.
• 32:15
  We did go into that and we actually had a little bit of a
• 32:20
  help from Spencer as well who who gave their point of view.
• 32:24
  Yeah, yeah. Again, parody is good.
• 32:28
  We want to see that one to two key levels.
• 32:30
  I think it's still too early in the season.
• 32:31
  People's gear is still behind. Do you have one or two groups
• 32:35
  which are skewing the data? You know, you've got if if
• 32:39
  you've got, let's say there's three, there's 15 people.
• 32:43
  So three groups worth of people that are pushing those high end
• 32:46
  keys right now. Well, most of them are playing
• 32:48
  one, maybe 2 characters and that's it.
• 32:51
  So those numbers are going to lean towards the characters that
• 32:53
  they decided they were going to play and that that affects it a
• 32:58
  little bit. So don't get too locked in just
• 33:02
  now. I think it'll be interesting to
• 33:04
  look a month from now and see where things are at.
• 33:08
  We're seeing some Boom Kim buffs, which will, I think,
• 33:10
  remove Guardian Druid from the equation and maybe put Vengeance
• 33:14
  back in. Boom Kim's looking really good
• 33:17
  in a lot of Mythic Plus dungeons.
• 33:19
  Ultimately, you're going to have a Druid in that the top group,
• 33:23
  the top groups are going to have a druid no matter what.
• 33:25
  You want the versatility buff. If you are bringing DPS that
• 33:30
  benefit heavily from mastery, then you're going to have a
• 33:32
  shaman because you want sky fury totem and that locks in two
• 33:36
  spots a rest of shaman. And then your your druid is
• 33:39
  going to be maybe a boom kin or maybe guardian druid.
• 33:41
  If boom kins not doing well and boom kin is doing well, then
• 33:44
  you're going to be looking at OK, let's buff that damage with
• 33:48
  a vengeance Demon Hunter. It also brings syphilis silence
• 33:53
  still, which is still good even after the nerves.
• 33:55
  So I'm interested to look at a month.
• 33:58
  Let's look at it in a month and see where things are and then
• 34:01
  that's when we can start. This.
• 34:03
  I think officially crown what the season 1 meta is, but I want
• 34:06
  to point out this is not a new position for Resto Shaman.
• 34:13
  Resto Shaman was the meta in season 1 and not the meta, but
• 34:17
  they were. They were the most played healer
• 34:19
  in season 1 of Dragonflight as well.
• 34:22
  I honestly think when I look at Dragonflight and how the Meadow
• 34:27
  shaped up, it was really about the damage.
• 34:33
  We got into a point in later seasons where what was really
• 34:37
  challenging stuff was how quickly you would get one shot.
• 34:42
  And what people did to compensate for that was bring in
• 34:48
  Ogvokers. They would allow tanks to be a
• 34:53
  little bit harder, hardier and be able to get through stuff and
• 34:58
  on top, on top of, you know, boosting everybody else with
• 35:02
  with the extra damage. Guardians were just insane about
• 35:07
  being able to just have infinite rage, so they were doing so well
• 35:13
  when they removed that in came in other tanks that were just
• 35:17
  able to survive but bring high high amounts of damage there.
• 35:22
  And unfortunately, and it's still true to this day, resto
• 35:26
  Shaman doesn't bring much damage.
• 35:29
  What's propping Resto shaman up, in my opinion, is the fact that
• 35:34
  it's able to bring the utility and the extra health so that
• 35:39
  these teams that are going in early aren't aren't so like hurt
• 35:45
  and one shot. When I look at the way things
• 35:50
  are set up with like these teams that are pushing, we're seeing
• 35:54
  frosty KS in there, right? We're seeing some unholy decays
• 35:59
  when when there's not frost, We're seeing ogvocers back
• 36:04
  again. We're seeing arcane mages,
• 36:06
  guardian druids and protection paladins and, and of course we
• 36:12
  we talked about having blood decay being highly represented.
• 36:16
  They're covering off like the battle rez, the bloodlust.
• 36:19
  And once you have that cover, you start seeing that shift when
• 36:22
  you don't have the resto shaman in some of these high keys.
• 36:26
  That's when I start seeing elementals and enhance come in
• 36:29
  to cover that utility as well as bring in bring in the bloodlust.
• 36:34
  When you have a guardian druid in there, you're less likely to
• 36:38
  see the BDK. I've seen rogues show up and
• 36:42
  such because hey now we don't need that battle rez.
• 36:46
  Though I always find that like it seems scary to have a battle
• 36:53
  rez on your tank, you you recently experienced like how
• 36:59
  much it takes out of DK to do that do that battle rez.
• 37:04
  It's a similar situation that when you're on a tank,
• 37:06
  especially now with Blood DK not stacking haste as the as we were
• 37:13
  talking about over the weekend, their resource generation isn't
• 37:16
  as instantaneous. Losing all of that to do the
• 37:18
  battle rez? Yikes.
• 37:21
  Yeah, and no thanks. Yeah, so I I definitely want to
• 37:26
  see how it develops, where crystallizes.
• 37:28
  I just think it's kind of cool to see how things are.
• 37:32
  And I think it's actually going to be very interesting because
• 37:34
  now that we are past the race to world first, this is when
• 37:39
  Blizzard really starts coming back in with those those class
• 37:43
  adjustments. And like you said, like we're
• 37:46
  going to see things change drastically from from here.
• 37:51
  Any thoughts on like what what you think is probably going to
• 37:54
  get hit with an Earth bat? I I'd like to see, I mean, we
• 37:59
  talked a little with dungeons, but I'd like to see it happen
• 38:01
  with classes as well. I'd like to see Preservation,
• 38:04
  Evoker brought down, rest of Druid brought up.
• 38:07
  The healers in between those two are all pretty well mark like
• 38:12
  pretty well lined up for parity for for healing done.
• 38:15
  But Preservation of Ochre is way ahead and Wrestler Druid is way
• 38:18
  behind. Which is ironic because coming
• 38:20
  out of the beta they were they gave it some nerves.
• 38:22
  Wrestler got nerfed a bit and since then it's been rebuffed
• 38:27
  for a total of like 12% odel overall healing and still so far
• 38:31
  behind. I don't know, I sometimes wonder
• 38:33
  who's in charge of like who looked at it on the beta and
• 38:39
  said this definitely needs to be nerfed to be at the point that
• 38:42
  it's still 12% and then like have a release and give it a 12%
• 38:45
  overall buff and still have it be so far behind.
• 38:49
  It's sort of wild to me. And so I think I think you'll
• 38:53
  see those. I do think you'll see some
• 38:54
  adjustment in that. That way.
• 38:56
  I don't think they know how to buff freshly Druid or what is
• 38:58
  wrong with I don't know. It'll probably hopefully it's
• 39:00
  not just another aura buff. I hate those, but who knows.
• 39:03
  I would like to see for Adps standpoint they actually did
• 39:08
  fury really dirty. They they tuned, they tuned fury
• 39:13
  warrior based off of normal and heroic raid and heroic dungeons
• 39:19
  damage, which is unfair because they looked really good because
• 39:23
  all of their damage was instant burst.
• 39:25
  But as soon as you get to a situation where any of these
• 39:28
  mobs are living longer than the 15 seconds of that burst window,
• 39:33
  they fall off completely. So if you look at the damage
• 39:36
  profile now of fury, they're below the halfway point for AOE
• 39:40
  cleave damage. So they're they're midpoint for
• 39:43
  the thing they're supposed to be best at.
• 39:44
  They're below half and for single target, they're second
• 39:47
  from the bottom. So what is their niche?
• 39:50
  What are they here for? Like it was they they the early
• 39:54
  tuning on it was necessary, but they tuned it.
• 39:56
  They they nerfed it 3 posts in a row.
• 39:59
  Three different things happened and it was too much.
• 40:02
  And if the cooldowns for fury didn't happen to line up so
• 40:06
  exceptionally well on answer act, I don't think you would see
• 40:09
  it played much at all anymore. And then Warcraft logs on
• 40:16
  rationale on a fight that has ads that need to die.
• 40:19
  They are extremely dangerous ads.
• 40:22
  Decided not to count the AD damage in logs.
• 40:25
  So fury warrior if you clear ration on on any difficulty but
• 40:31
  mostly mostly talking mythic and you look at the the details
• 40:36
  meter at the end of the fight your fury warrior is at the top
• 40:39
  and you survived the fight because they killed the ads.
• 40:42
  If you look at it on Warcraft logs, they'll be the bottom.
• 40:45
  So warriors are swapping to arms and no longer killing the ads
• 40:50
  and. Teams are struggling because
• 40:52
  they're struggling. To kill it.
• 40:54
  That is, that is so bizarre. And yeah, OK, there are two
• 41:00
  games that happen when you are raiding.
• 41:03
  There is the Beat, the Boss, the Play the Mechanics game that
• 41:08
  exists in World of Warcraft, and there's this other secondary
• 41:12
  game layered on top, which is I need to get that legendary
• 41:17
  parse. Not that it's, but it's not just
• 41:19
  that it's teams base their roster on the damage they see in
• 41:23
  Warcraft logs. Yes.
• 41:24
  So who we take, who we taking to the bus?
• 41:26
  Who's at the highest damage? OK, well, our Warriors are at
• 41:28
  the bottom, but we're not taking them.
• 41:30
  Yeah, but I think that's not the game that you're actually
• 41:33
  playing in order to beat the boss.
• 41:35
  That is a secondary thing that has like been overlaid, which
• 41:41
  had value. But like when they make those
• 41:44
  decisions to say like, OK, we're counting any ad damage as
• 41:50
  padding and therefore not included in the logs and it
• 41:53
  warps the perception. Like you could have teams that
• 41:57
  are literally working through their own detriment because
• 42:01
  they're misappropriating the logs.
• 42:04
  It's like I recently there was a, a post about like how the
• 42:09
  damage from evokers isn't being properly attributed and that you
• 42:17
  need to, you need to like look at this to see what the evoker
• 42:21
  damage is. And that to me is just like it
• 42:25
  happens from time to time, but like you've got to be on top of
• 42:28
  that because you could have a Evoqua that's doing amazing
• 42:32
  damage, Wing Commander destroying, but because your add
• 42:36
  on isn't quite reporting it, right?
• 42:39
  You bench them and then you wonder why you're taking X
• 42:42
  amount of extra kills to to like get back to where you were last
• 42:48
  week. That's so.
• 42:49
  That is so weird for me. Yeah, it's crazy stuff.
• 42:53
  So anyway, to fully answer that question, I'd like to see Perez
• 42:57
  brought down a little bit, Druid brought up a little bit for DPS.
• 43:00
  I'd like to see Fury giving back some of its identity, return
• 43:04
  some of its or, or, or just revert some of the nerfs that
• 43:08
  had happened to their AOE ability.
• 43:11
  I don't care if you make the strongest single target Warrior
• 43:13
  has arms for that, but give Fury give them a identity.
• 43:20
  They don't have one right now and people are abandoning it
• 43:23
  because of it. And I also would like to see
• 43:26
  shadow priest get a buff. Shadow priest is in in a rough
• 43:29
  spot so they could use a buff. And I guess the the issue that
• 43:36
  we run into a shadow priest is it's hard to buff it for raid
• 43:40
  without making it broken and mythic plus.
• 43:43
  So it's like, what do we do here?
• 43:45
  And BM Hunter's the reverse. It's hard to buff them for
• 43:48
  mythic plus with making the broken right.
• 43:49
  Anyway, shadow priest needs to be fixed somehow.
• 43:52
  Do something. And then my fear, my big fear,
• 43:56
  my concern is coming to fruition.
• 44:00
  They are probably going to nerf prop warrior because all the
• 44:06
  streamers are playing it. Manny, they listened to me.
• 44:10
  They said, oh, Sean's right. This is a lot of fun.
• 44:13
  This rage generation is crazy. I'm basically invincible.
• 44:17
  I love it. Let's push with it now and it
• 44:22
  Pratt. I mean, I I meme a lot on this
• 44:24
  show, but Pratt does not need a nerve.
• 44:26
  Pratt feels comfortable. All of the other tanks will feel
• 44:31
  similar as they get gear. Pratt just happens to be less
• 44:34
  reliant on gear. Pratt will is not broken.
• 44:38
  They're not like a head and shoulders above, you know, and
• 44:41
  they won't be taken. They won't be the metacomp tank.
• 44:45
  They'll be the most fun tank. You might see them in the MDI,
• 44:48
  but not the TGP. But I'm worried that perhaps
• 44:53
  going to catch a perception nerve because so many people are
• 44:57
  playing it and saying how much fun it is and how great it is.
• 45:00
  That's my my fear. I, I, I don't want to contradict
• 45:08
  you because you are the guy who knows prod, but I have been
• 45:13
  looking at prod and I've been seeing like seeing all of the
• 45:20
  damage that is coming out of mythic plus.
• 45:23
  That is just the, the white swings, the auto attacks, right?
• 45:27
  That is fairly heavy in in mythic plus and as you get
• 45:32
  higher in those keys, right, it's going to become worse and
• 45:37
  worse and protection warrior is the tank for physical damage.
• 45:45
  And so like I understand sometimes it's perception, but I
• 45:50
  also think that like right now, the way damage numbers are
• 45:53
  coming in and mythic plus, unless they're willing to like
• 45:56
  back out of like a million mobs came at you and white and white
• 46:01
  swinged, which is kind of the issue that some of these tanks
• 46:06
  that need to build up stuff before before they can really
• 46:09
  smooth out damage or or dealing with like I think that they have
• 46:15
  to be worked in a vault, but there's going to be.
• 46:17
  More to mythic plus than can my tank survive these hits?
• 46:22
  It's what group utility do they bring?
• 46:24
  What what kind of damage are they doing?
• 46:27
  How much damage are they doing? That kind of stuff and it's just
• 46:31
  brought brings nothing else other than hey, I could tank a
• 46:34
  lot of mobs really well. And if you take that away from
• 46:38
  them, you're going to run into the same thing you had with
• 46:39
  fury. What's the class identity?
• 46:42
  Then if you if you remove that right, their their class
• 46:45
  identity is hey, I can get punched in the face a lot, a
• 46:50
  lot, a lot I. Mean that is the that is the
• 46:54
  quintessential tank identity and they they do the sword and board
• 46:58
  better than others in that way, but that that's really good.
• 47:03
  OK, guys, we are going to move into a interview that we
• 47:08
  recorded with Lithi. You're going to see that coming
• 47:12
  right up. But before we do, I want to take
• 47:14
  the time to thank all of you who have been leaving us a review on
• 47:17
  iTunes or the bonus roll production directory.
• 47:21
  It is the best way to help us in a non monetary fashion.
• 47:24
  It helps us reach new listeners, and we thank you for all the
• 47:27
  support that you give in that way.
• 47:33
  Hello and welcome to this very special bonus interview of For
• 47:38
  Azeroth, which we're tagging on to.
• 47:39
  Episode like 296 is where this is going, maybe 295, it's hard
• 47:44
  to tell. Numbers are not real myself.
• 47:48
  Sean is here with True Villa and Manny as always, and we are very
• 47:51
  happy to be sitting down with the one and only.
• 47:54
  I want us to make sure I'm pronouncing this correct.
• 47:56
  Is it Lithiara or how do I say the?
• 47:59
  It's just, it's just lithy, lithy R Us curvy, the long form,
• 48:03
  but it's not really used at all. Someone has been banking my
• 48:07
  Twitter handle for like 12 years now.
• 48:09
  So. Oh really?
• 48:12
  Yeah. It's an account that last
• 48:14
  tweeted in 2012 and can't do anything about it, you know?
• 48:18
  How dare they give the name up? We demand it.
• 48:23
  Can I ask where does Lithy come from?
• 48:25
  Where did that name generate from?
• 48:27
  Oh God literally just my my musings off.
• 48:30
  I need a name for my Demon Hunter.
• 48:32
  Was playing a lot of Borderlands 3 so I wanted to go with Lilith
• 48:35
  like everyone else that was taken already.
• 48:38
  After some thinking it turned into Lithiara and from there on
• 48:42
  out everyone just called me Lithi.
• 48:43
  So that was that's what stuck basically.
• 48:45
  Very cool, I dig it. That's that is a good genesis of
• 48:49
  the name. I like that LITHI.
• 48:51
  For any of our listeners who might not be sure, you just give
• 48:53
  us like a brief synopsis, like what's the elevator pitch?
• 48:56
  Who is LITHI? So yeah, I'm a esportscaster,
• 49:01
  mostly play by play, but I do some hosting.
• 49:04
  I've been focusing a lot on Mmos over the last six years.
• 49:07
  I've done a bunch of League of Legends, Valorant, but you'll
• 49:10
  find me all over the place really.
• 49:12
  And yeah, I love telling amazing stories.
• 49:15
  I love putting a spotlight onto the players and just have a good
• 49:19
  time and hang out. I love it.
• 49:21
  I love it. What what drew you to cast?
• 49:23
  Because your other than your exceptionally innate talent at
• 49:27
  it, what drew you towards it? I, I don't think I would call it
• 49:32
  an innate talent, but I appreciate it.
• 49:36
  Honestly, always been very, I've always been very fascinated by
• 49:41
  just commentary from like from a young age onwards, especially
• 49:47
  like traditional sports, F1 soccer or football.
• 49:52
  And at some point I had the opportunity like, hey, would
• 49:59
  you, would you be interested in casting German MDI for World of
• 50:03
  Warcraft? I was like, I mean, that's out
• 50:06
  of nowhere, but let's go, I'll do it.
• 50:07
  And I jumped on there, had fun, was apparently decently good at
• 50:12
  it, and stuck to it. Worked my way up and now I'm
• 50:15
  here. I love it.
• 50:16
  That's great. That's a it's an inspirational
• 50:19
  story to to do something you love.
• 50:22
  You never work a day in your life, I think is what they say.
• 50:24
  So so it seems like you're having a lot of fun with it.
• 50:28
  Let's jump into why we're like, why is Lithy here?
• 50:31
  Why did we bring Lithy on the show?
• 50:32
  What do we want to talk about? And that is specifically this
• 50:35
  race to world first in Narrow Bar Palace that just finished
• 50:38
  up. You were selected to be one of
• 50:40
  the casters for what ended up being 3rd place team method.
• 50:45
  How was that? How does that happen?
• 50:47
  Do they just reach out? Do you reach out to them?
• 50:50
  Long story short, I, I obviously tried to reach out to the teams
• 50:54
  ahead of the race, see if I can get a spot.
• 50:56
  I was in touch with with Echo, had a little bit of a
• 50:58
  conversation. Sadly nothing came of that, but
• 51:01
  that's all right. And I'd also talked to method
• 51:03
  and at the time they also they already had their caster roster
• 51:08
  locked in and I was kind of given the feedback.
• 51:10
  Hey, we sadly, we sadly don't know enough of you as a race.
• 51:14
  The word first caster to had you considered in like the the first
• 51:17
  choice of players. We needed a bunch of as casters,
• 51:21
  we needed a bunch of analysts, and you didn't fit the profile,
• 51:24
  so we went with some other people.
• 51:26
  That kind of the initial feedback I got, which quite
• 51:28
  honestly is fair enough. I've been out of the word first
• 51:32
  race casting like actively for the entirety of Dragonflight
• 51:35
  after the aversion events kind of died off and pieces died as
• 51:41
  well. Very sad about that, but hey,
• 51:44
  what can you do, right? But during the race, especially
• 51:50
  during the first week, at some point there was a little bit of
• 51:53
  a COVID issue in the Method studios.
• 51:56
  So a bunch of the players were sick, a bunch of the casters got
• 51:59
  sick. And at some point I was reached
• 52:01
  out to and they told me, hey, we could use some backup casters.
• 52:05
  We are running low on people at the moment.
• 52:07
  If you could come in, that would be awesome.
• 52:10
  And I was like, yeah, sure, definitely, definitely can do
• 52:14
  it. Got on the train the next
• 52:15
  morning and rest is history really.
• 52:18
  Were they? Is their venue closed?
• 52:20
  Like are you close enough to their venue that it's like a day
• 52:22
  can be for you or? It was a six and a half hour
• 52:26
  train ride. So I mean it's doable in a day,
• 52:30
  but definitely like I'm in Berlin, so like NE Germany and
• 52:35
  they were near Stuttgart, so S southwest of Germany.
• 52:39
  So like completely cross country really.
• 52:42
  Gotcha, gotcha. Gotcha.
• 52:43
  Cool. I dig that.
• 52:45
  So coming in, you're getting ready for the race row first.
• 52:47
  You mentioned that you had been out of it for for an entire
• 52:49
  expansion. How do you get ready for that?
• 52:52
  How do you like go into a raid? How do you go into an event
• 52:54
  thinking, OK, I need to be the most prepared?
• 52:56
  What kind of stuff do you do for that?
• 53:00
  Quite honestly, not too much extra because I was prepping for
• 53:04
  the tear and everything anyway because I'm raiding myself.
• 53:07
  So TLDR, you look up current state of the game, what classes
• 53:11
  are good, what classes could be good?
• 53:15
  What's there in terms of insane items like insane trinkets that
• 53:18
  make some classes really, really good like a spy masters,
• 53:20
  etcetera. And you look at the bosses.
• 53:22
  How are the bosses designed? What is what are the difficulty
• 53:26
  points in this tier? Which boss is going to be a wall
• 53:28
  like which bosses are going to be important?
• 53:30
  And basically you just try to get in and go in as prepared as
• 53:35
  possible with as much knowledge as possible and kind of go off
• 53:38
  of that because what first race casting is a lot less comparable
• 53:43
  to traditional E sports casting. You can't really do too much
• 53:47
  prep in terms of player storylines, etcetera, unless of
• 53:52
  course you're very familiar with the team and it's a team that's
• 53:55
  been long established, which method is in constant
• 53:59
  fluctuation. And quite honestly also, well, I
• 54:03
  got called one day before casting, so I didn't really have
• 54:06
  the time to do as much research as I would have liked to for any
• 54:09
  other event really. But yeah, this kind of that's
• 54:14
  kind of the prep that goes into it.
• 54:16
  You want to be, you want to be ready to talk about all the
• 54:19
  topics that can come up on a word first race broadcast, which
• 54:23
  compared to other esports is very podcasty.
• 54:25
  So you talk about all kinds of things and also all kinds of
• 54:30
  things that are not World of Warcraft.
• 54:32
  Like I was spending a lot of time with logs on the couch
• 54:35
  because we had a bunch of the morning shifts together.
• 54:38
  We just talked about about bodybuilding, you know, So
• 54:40
  that's kind of that's kind of where the what first race
• 54:42
  casting is at for me. Yeah, because it's it, it's
• 54:45
  broken up, right? Because it's like a minute of
• 54:47
  action or two minutes of action followed by long periods in the
• 54:50
  in the middle. So you have to be quite adept at
• 54:54
  the gift of gab, I think is what my my mother.
• 54:57
  Would say just a yapping for hours as the kids nowadays say.
• 55:02
  Yeah, yeah. Man, it looks like you're ready
• 55:05
  to jump in there. What do you have?
• 55:06
  Don't wanna hoggle the Lithi time?
• 55:09
  Thank you. Honestly like hearing how much
• 55:12
  it is about the prep and how much it is about like having all
• 55:16
  of your ducks in a row before you even step out and say word
• 55:18
  1. You also said that like, hey,
• 55:22
  like, yeah, you started decent, but like, how do you improve
• 55:25
  between between like casting, like what do you do to like
• 55:29
  craft the gift of gab, as it were.
• 55:34
  So most of the improving part is really focused on kind of
• 55:39
  traditional E sports casting where you have some very clear
• 55:43
  cut structures and game flows that you kind of want to
• 55:47
  represent a need to hit and need to talk about.
• 55:49
  So VOD reviews are kind of the most important thing.
• 55:52
  Watch back your casting, double check what you're saying.
• 55:56
  Did you talk about the right things, etcetera, etcetera.
• 55:59
  Even more so do it with knowledgeable peers of yours.
• 56:03
  If you have some other casters that you respect, the whose
• 56:06
  opinion you respect and then you know can give you good feedback,
• 56:11
  ask him to do a what review with you.
• 56:12
  Ask them to do some advice even if they don't have too much
• 56:16
  time, sometimes they'll they'll they'll find the time to maybe
• 56:20
  just rewatch a quick clip of you of your play by play castle like
• 56:23
  a League of Legends team fight or like a the last play of a wow
• 56:26
  arena match, for example, right? Get some feedback.
• 56:29
  Get any feedback you can get because it's super super hard to
• 56:33
  find quality feedback. Talk to your peers.
• 56:38
  But outside of that, just make sure you prep as much as you
• 56:44
  can. It's it's a bit hard to kind of
• 56:50
  bring across how to prep storyline and storytelling
• 56:55
  because I've never really put too much thought into into
• 57:01
  practice regarding that. It's a little bit more of I
• 57:06
  really, I really want to talk about these stories because I, I
• 57:09
  think they're interesting and kind of finding, finding this
• 57:13
  interest to communicate what I'm passionate about.
• 57:18
  That's that's that's really all I do to approach storytelling
• 57:21
  and everything else is literally just prepping as much
• 57:25
  information and context as I possibly can when it comes to
• 57:31
  raise the world first casting. So a very podcasty style.
• 57:36
  Have conversations with people, talk to people and practice
• 57:41
  conversation not just talking about the same topic while
• 57:45
  sitting next to each other. Like actually talking to your Co
• 57:48
  caster, listening to them and not straying from that flow of
• 57:53
  conversation cause a lot of a lot of casters.
• 57:56
  A lot of beginner casters especially in the word first
• 58:00
  rate scene are very focused on just talking about the topic.
• 58:06
  Sometimes tend to over focus on chat a lot as well, which is
• 58:12
  it's valid if you want to bring in chat, but that's more that's
• 58:16
  like a that's a broadcast this decision from the team right to
• 58:20
  be 1 involve chat a lot to be not 11 involve chat a lot.
• 58:23
  But if you do involve chat, make sure it's done in a way that it
• 58:29
  doesn't undermine your Co caster.
• 58:31
  That's kind of the mantra I try to keep when it comes to word
• 58:35
  first race casting. But yeah, what reviews,
• 58:40
  conversation, those two are the biggest things.
• 58:43
  And then obviously the third is practice your game knowledge,
• 58:46
  learn the game, know what you're talking about.
• 58:49
  Like that you mentioned not undermining your code, Castro.
• 58:53
  That's a great segue into this next question that I want to ask
• 58:56
  in and it's a meandering segue. I'm an old person.
• 58:59
  This is what happens with Neander in the movie Saving
• 59:02
  Private Ryan. They've we're gonna meander.
• 59:06
  Buckle up. They famously took the cast, the
• 59:10
  majority of the cast, and put them through a boot camp before
• 59:12
  the movie, with the exception of Matt Damon, who they left owed
• 59:15
  from the cast. So all of the people in the cast
• 59:17
  who are supposed to be going to save Matt Damon did this
• 59:20
  horrible, grueling boot camp section.
• 59:22
  And then they brought Matt Damon in at the end with the intention
• 59:25
  of making it so that the cast, who was supposed to be
• 59:28
  frustrated they were going to save this one soldier, were
• 59:30
  actually frustrated with this one person, the actor.
• 59:33
  So why am I bringing this up? In this analogy, Method had
• 59:37
  already started. They've been going for a week,
• 59:38
  their team have been prepped, they've been communicating, and
• 59:41
  then along comes with the private riot and you're brought
• 59:46
  in. Now, hopefully the cast of
• 59:48
  Method didn't hold that same animosity towards you that the
• 59:51
  actors did towards Matt Damon. But what does it feel like
• 59:54
  joining that team that has been working together for a period of
• 59:57
  time? Honestly, it was quite nice.
• 1:00:01
  Everyone was very happy to see me.
• 1:00:06
  It's the Wow community, so you kind of know each other at least
• 1:00:10
  from the online space already. Previously, right?
• 1:00:14
  I had never met the majority of the Castor roster.
• 1:00:19
  I had met people like Lorox and Cana when they were still
• 1:00:22
  playing for Method back in the day during the the Eternal
• 1:00:27
  Palace race and the Nyalotha race.
• 1:00:29
  So we weren't complete strangers and you know, you have, you say
• 1:00:34
  hi in the chat, say talk a bit to someone like dark mech.
• 1:00:37
  I've casted an event or two with dark mech in the past, but
• 1:00:41
  that's full remote. So generally the just the the
• 1:00:44
  reception was very warm, was very nice.
• 1:00:48
  Everyone was happy to see me, got along well with everyone and
• 1:00:53
  the energy in the studio just generally was very, very high
• 1:00:59
  focus. I came in obviously basically on
• 1:01:03
  the day, the first day of the second reset.
• 1:01:05
  So obviously first day was very chill, lots of splits, but you
• 1:01:08
  can you definitely tell tell at that point the Raiders really
• 1:01:12
  were locked into the tier and just gaming away.
• 1:01:14
  Not too much, too much yelling and conversation.
• 1:01:18
  And also the Raiders are sitting decently separate from the
• 1:01:21
  caster, so you don't actually interact too much outside of the
• 1:01:25
  like, lunch and dinner breaks and maybe after the right night.
• 1:01:30
  But wasn't generally a good good pleasant energy in the studio.
• 1:01:34
  Especially considering that I basically came in and on the
• 1:01:37
  exact day that everyone started to test negative from COVID.
• 1:01:40
  So this is kind of the big reunion of everyone back
• 1:01:44
  together in the same space. I think that definitely helped.
• 1:01:48
  Nice. You also came in just after they
• 1:01:52
  had stayed up late to do that big push, and they're coming off
• 1:01:56
  of that. You're somewhat separated, but
• 1:01:58
  what was the energy at that point?
• 1:02:01
  So after that, after that big push, obviously killing Silicon
• 1:02:05
  court at 4:00 AM just before the reset was a massive deal, was a
• 1:02:08
  massive kind of boost of momentum, but it also messed up
• 1:02:12
  the the sleep schedule a bit, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:02:14
  What method did in the following week is shift the entire
• 1:02:16
  schedule back. So instead of starting at 8 and
• 1:02:19
  ending at midnight, they started at 10:00 AM and went until 2:00
• 1:02:22
  AM. So they definitely shifted that
• 1:02:25
  a little bit. That was kind of the big thing.
• 1:02:28
  Generally, I think they were all very hyped and excited about
• 1:02:33
  being able to be on Queen before the reset, just like Echo and
• 1:02:38
  Liquid were. So it was definitely the feeling
• 1:02:41
  of OK, we are hot on their tails really.
• 1:02:44
  And I think that momentum carried forward, even though I
• 1:02:47
  think it took like a day or two or three to really recover from
• 1:02:52
  that late night kind of crowbar segment of gaming, you know?
• 1:02:59
  I love that they had that momentum that they actually
• 1:03:02
  shifted their schedule and not try to just like go right back
• 1:03:04
  to business as usual. And with people coming back in,
• 1:03:07
  the reunion seems really good. Shifting gears a little bit, at
• 1:03:11
  the same time, you were also casting for the AWC, so you were
• 1:03:16
  doing 2 jobs at once. How did you balance that?
• 1:03:19
  I don't know, basically, basically when Method called me
• 1:03:24
  up, I told them, hey guys, I'd love to do this, but I'm booked
• 1:03:28
  for an event this weekend, so you need to give me the hours I
• 1:03:31
  need to have the evenings free and I need my own setup where I
• 1:03:34
  can cast. If you can do that, I'm game.
• 1:03:37
  I'll pop over and do some casting.
• 1:03:39
  And they were very, very lovely in kind of making that possible
• 1:03:43
  for myself. Also big shout out to the tech
• 1:03:46
  guys at the location at the lead camp who were helping me set up
• 1:03:50
  and everything. And the occasional minor
• 1:03:53
  technical issue that is just going to pop up if you if you're
• 1:03:57
  on the road right. But they help me out a lot in
• 1:04:00
  terms of, in terms of just managing the workload most tough
• 1:04:09
  I, I don't regret it because it was a good time, but in terms of
• 1:04:15
  the exhaustion level, I definitely regret it.
• 1:04:17
  And it was a terrible idea. But I, I gave it my all.
• 1:04:22
  I hope it didn't affect my casting too much, except for the
• 1:04:26
  Saturday, which was an utter off day and I feel very bad about
• 1:04:30
  it. But it's just got what what
• 1:04:32
  happens after a bad nights of sleep and a lot of work, you
• 1:04:34
  know? Yeah, that'll happen.
• 1:04:37
  It's this is this is actually great because I love to ask the
• 1:04:41
  difference between casting in person at a venue and casting
• 1:04:45
  remote. And you, you can literally give
• 1:04:48
  us that example to them both in the same week.
• 1:04:51
  So how does that, what are the differences there?
• 1:04:53
  How does that feel? It is.
• 1:04:55
  It is a massive difference. So remote casting generally
• 1:05:00
  works really well, but it's a lot more static.
• 1:05:03
  You you're not able to communicate on body language,
• 1:05:08
  hand signs, etcetera with your Co caster as much.
• 1:05:11
  It requires a lot of additional kind of brain power and
• 1:05:18
  willingness from both sides to to set up and get into a
• 1:05:21
  position where you can kind of gesticulate to each other, read
• 1:05:25
  body language etcetera. When you're remote casting,
• 1:05:28
  which in 90% of shows I've worked on so far, it's just not
• 1:05:32
  really feasible. In person is a lot better
• 1:05:36
  because you're standing next to next to each other like a a
• 1:05:39
  quick glance over or your Co caster coming in with a hand
• 1:05:42
  sign and like doing a finger up or something like gesturing to
• 1:05:46
  you that he wants to jump in with something.
• 1:05:48
  It's a lot easier. Hand offs and like quick
• 1:05:51
  conversational bounce backs are a lot easier even in high
• 1:05:55
  intensity moments in person, that's just, it's just a lot
• 1:06:01
  easier and a lot more fun to cast together in a studio.
• 1:06:09
  But remote casting obviously has its benefits.
• 1:06:13
  You're at home, you're in a very comfortable space.
• 1:06:17
  You have all your set up, especially if you're at at your
• 1:06:21
  own PC and have prepared accordingly.
• 1:06:25
  You have more information than you could ever hope to have on a
• 1:06:29
  caster desk in a studio at your availability because you can't
• 1:06:34
  have everything up, up and open on every single screen while on
• 1:06:37
  a caster desk usually like you have your notebook, maybe an
• 1:06:39
  extra screen with a little bit of extra info.
• 1:06:42
  So you're definitely less limited on that regard when
• 1:06:46
  you're casting from home, at least me personally on my setup.
• 1:06:49
  Yeah, yeah, I like that. You mentioned that you had cast
• 1:06:53
  for the German MDI in the past. Was this your first AWC and or
• 1:06:58
  first English casting for Blizzard?
• 1:07:02
  They're they're called English casting.
• 1:07:03
  Yeah. That didn't like make it.
• 1:07:04
  That's not like a huge language faux pas.
• 1:07:07
  No, I think so. I mean, I'm, I'm referring to
• 1:07:10
  it, I'm referring to it as the, the English main broadcast kind
• 1:07:14
  of. But so the first time I was
• 1:07:18
  picked up for AWC was earlier this year, I think it was the
• 1:07:22
  third season of Dragonflights. Towards the end they had they
• 1:07:28
  had a spot where they needed a caster for one weekend.
• 1:07:32
  And I've been bugging them for a couple years by this point that
• 1:07:36
  I would love to be on the AWC and love to do some casting.
• 1:07:39
  And they finally gave me a shot. And that kind of always was my
• 1:07:43
  goal is like, I need just one day.
• 1:07:45
  Just give me give me one day and I'll convince you that you want
• 1:07:48
  to keep me on the broadcast and kind of worked out.
• 1:07:50
  So they brought me back for the final season for a few weekends.
• 1:07:54
  And now they brought me back again for a couple of weekends
• 1:07:59
  for this season. So yeah, that's that's kind of
• 1:08:02
  how it went. I like that did.
• 1:08:04
  That answer the question, sorry that.
• 1:08:05
  Does answer the question, Yes. You're like sort of.
• 1:08:07
  You're very familiar with the ABC.
• 1:08:08
  You're like an old hat. And it's like, this is you know
• 1:08:10
  what? I got this.
• 1:08:11
  I told you I was gonna do it and it was gonna be awesome.
• 1:08:13
  I was right. I knocked your socks off.
• 1:08:15
  Here I am. I'm just curious.
• 1:08:19
  Sorry. Go ahead.
• 1:08:19
  Manny. No.
• 1:08:20
  No, no, go ahead. I'm curious because AWC like
• 1:08:24
  arena play and and MDI play is so very different.
• 1:08:28
  Like MDI you can almost, it's not scripted, but you like, you
• 1:08:30
  know what polls are coming up next.
• 1:08:31
  You sort of have a feel for it and AWC is very much more on
• 1:08:35
  your feet now. You might not want to pick, but
• 1:08:37
  do you have a preference which you prefer asking for?
• 1:08:41
  Oh absolutely. AWC because it's PvP, it's a lot
• 1:08:46
  more high intensity, especially for me as a play by play caster.
• 1:08:50
  It's much more where my comfort zone lies at because you
• 1:08:57
  basically get high action the entire time.
• 1:08:59
  Yes, it's very analytical heavy play by play casting, but it's
• 1:09:04
  still play by play casting the entire time.
• 1:09:05
  While MDI, which I dearly love and I enjoy casting a whole lot,
• 1:09:10
  it's a lot more conversational style, a lot more analytical,
• 1:09:16
  almost colour casting with a few key play by play moments.
• 1:09:21
  And even those can be very scripted because obviously the
• 1:09:25
  teams practice these poles and if you cast the dungeon for the
• 1:09:29
  same team multiple times, you generally end up with very
• 1:09:33
  similar kind of situations. So that's kind of why you enjoy
• 1:09:38
  the AWCA lot more. Additionally, it's just a lot
• 1:09:42
  more focused storytelling. You have a very rich history of
• 1:09:47
  teams that have been around for years of competitors that have
• 1:09:50
  been playing for years. And there's there's just a lot
• 1:09:54
  of opportunity to tell stories about these teams and put a put
• 1:09:58
  a put a focus and a spotlight on these players that have been
• 1:10:00
  around for so long. I.
• 1:10:02
  Love that that's I had never made that connection before that
• 1:10:05
  MDI is, is more you learn more into that color commentary
• 1:10:08
  because it is just like I've seen them do this poll 30 times
• 1:10:11
  this week. I like that a lot.
• 1:10:15
  Well, you're very good at it. You, your play by play is
• 1:10:18
  incredible. Having you on the desk is, is,
• 1:10:20
  is a real treat. So hopefully we get more liffy
• 1:10:23
  in both AWC and MDI. If possible.
• 1:10:27
  I, I want to touch on a more serious topic, a sensitive
• 1:10:33
  topic. This, this most recent AWC,
• 1:10:37
  there was some backlash, some some, I don't want to say
• 1:10:41
  backlash because that makes it almost justified.
• 1:10:43
  There was some shitty people. I can't swear.
• 1:10:46
  There was some comments made that were inappropriate, some
• 1:10:50
  negative comments came towards you as a caster.
• 1:10:53
  And I just wanted to know if you could talk about that for a bit,
• 1:10:56
  sort of what transpired or how you felt.
• 1:11:00
  Yeah. Well, it's such a, it's such a
• 1:11:06
  weird thing to talk about because all the all the negative
• 1:11:10
  comments and the things that actually reach me are mostly OK,
• 1:11:21
  let me let me start, let me start over.
• 1:11:23
  I think the the obvious context here is that I am gender fluid
• 1:11:26
  and I do present I do present female a good number of times
• 1:11:31
  and especially long broadcasts. I like to wear a little bit more
• 1:11:34
  fancy outfits because I feel comfortable in them.
• 1:11:38
  And obviously there are a lot of comments about the hell is the
• 1:11:44
  hell is that guy wearing? What is going on here?
• 1:11:46
  Which doesn't bother me at all. It's like whatever you, you can
• 1:11:50
  say whatever you want, really. Obviously then there are the a
• 1:11:56
  lot more kind of toxic comments towards my presentation, but
• 1:12:03
  also a number of comments that just target my performance and
• 1:12:10
  my credibility and my I question the reason why I'm on the desk,
• 1:12:19
  you know, and the problem with a lot of these comments is that
• 1:12:25
  yes, I am very new to the desk. Yes, I am not even remotely as
• 1:12:29
  good as legends like Super tease, Van Rookie and Zico that
• 1:12:33
  I have the honor of working with.
• 1:12:36
  And I'm not as established of a personality on the desk like
• 1:12:40
  someone like Aya who is doing a fantastic job as well.
• 1:12:43
  So, and a lot of these comments about this guy is not as good.
• 1:12:49
  I hate his casting style. I really don't like that he's
• 1:12:52
  not as analytical as the other guys.
• 1:12:54
  This guy is getting lacking game knowledge.
• 1:12:58
  It's all it's all comments where I have to, I have to admit to an
• 1:13:02
  extent there is a kernel of truth to them.
• 1:13:06
  But what on the other hand, what bugs me about it is the fact
• 1:13:09
  that those days where I'm on the broadcast mail presenting, the
• 1:13:15
  number of comments and flak I am getting feels like it is reduced
• 1:13:20
  by like 90%. And I'm I'm online.
• 1:13:26
  I'm online enough. I'm online enough to, I think,
• 1:13:30
  be justified in expecting thinly veiled homophobia, transphobia,
• 1:13:35
  transphobia presented as justified comments, so to say.
• 1:13:41
  But at the same time, I don't want to go out there and accuse
• 1:13:44
  people of hating on me just because I am different.
• 1:13:48
  So, yeah, it's AI think for me currently, it's a it's a
• 1:13:55
  difficult tightrope walk of finding the kernels of valid
• 1:14:01
  constructive criticism that I need to improve my game
• 1:14:05
  knowledge, that I need to improve my casting.
• 1:14:10
  And I think that's kind of the the biggest tool that I am also
• 1:14:13
  constantly working on because I do agree.
• 1:14:16
  But on the other hand, it's also like, I don't, I don't need to,
• 1:14:20
  I don't know, owe it to anyone to engage with all the and sorry
• 1:14:24
  for the choice of words with all the bullshit that's tossed in my
• 1:14:26
  direction. And yeah, it's it's very much a
• 1:14:31
  learning experience. I've been casting for six years.
• 1:14:34
  I've been getting the occasional comment of I don't like this
• 1:14:36
  guy, I really like this guy. You know, the IT holds itself a
• 1:14:40
  balance. But being on the AWC certainly
• 1:14:44
  opened the gate to a very new level of kind of backlash,
• 1:14:50
  criticism, whatever you want to call it, that I've received.
• 1:14:52
  But in equal measures, I've had so many people reach out and
• 1:14:58
  compliment my casting and comment on that.
• 1:15:00
  They are very happy that I'm kind of breaking the norm, that
• 1:15:05
  I'm presenting myself in the way I am and that it's encouraging
• 1:15:09
  to them. And I had a very good
• 1:15:12
  conversation with a friend last night and I think he phrased it
• 1:15:16
  better than I ever could. And what he said was it.
• 1:15:22
  It sucks to see the situation happen, but it is growth that's
• 1:15:28
  just being facilitated in the World of Warcraft community.
• 1:15:31
  And it is good that this has finally happened because it has
• 1:15:34
  been long overdue. And I very much agree with that
• 1:15:39
  sentiment. And I am very happy to help
• 1:15:42
  facilitate this growth as much as I possibly can, even if it
• 1:15:46
  means that I need to put some extra mental effort into
• 1:15:52
  enduring kind of the the growing pains.
• 1:15:55
  You know, I think that's, I think that's a good way to
• 1:15:57
  phrase it. I like that.
• 1:15:59
  I'm going to tie it back into Saving Private Ryan.
• 1:16:01
  You mentioned the experience level on the desk.
• 1:16:04
  If Van Rookie is Tom Hanks, you're certainly Matt Damon and
• 1:16:08
  you, while you may be newer and newer on the scene, you are just
• 1:16:11
  as good and we'll have just as bright a future as as our Van
• 1:16:14
  Rookie Hanks have. So.
• 1:16:16
  I appreciate that. I appreciate that and it's it's
• 1:16:21
  also nice to see that my Co casters are kind of having my
• 1:16:24
  back. I was, I was talking to Azale a
• 1:16:27
  bit the other week and we did a, we did a quick little vaude
• 1:16:32
  review together. And basically I kind of took
• 1:16:35
  into that vaude review what was given to me as kind of the
• 1:16:39
  harshest criticism. Like, OK, what's what's up with
• 1:16:41
  your game knowledge and the casting style And the feedback I
• 1:16:48
  got generally was OK, yes, there's a few points that you
• 1:16:51
  can work on and you should work on, but generally you're in a
• 1:16:54
  very good spot. And I kind of try to approach it
• 1:16:59
  from the angle of the people that know as much and or way
• 1:17:04
  more than me and the people that are my peers and doing the same
• 1:17:09
  job. Those are the opinions that I
• 1:17:11
  actually need to listen to. That's those are the opinions
• 1:17:14
  that matter. And as long as my peers and
• 1:17:18
  especially the Wow E Sports team is happy with my performance and
• 1:17:22
  things, I'm doing well at the very least, OK.
• 1:17:26
  I think that's the measure of kind of quality that I need to
• 1:17:30
  listen to instead of listening to the voice from the community,
• 1:17:35
  no matter how loud it is. I like that I want to be
• 1:17:38
  cognizant of your time with the and I'm completely hogging this
• 1:17:41
  entire interview. So Manny, I apologize, but I
• 1:17:43
  want to get one last question and what can we do to help
• 1:17:46
  improve the space? How can we help?
• 1:17:49
  I don't want to say fight this energy because, I mean, you
• 1:17:52
  won't say it, but I'll say it. Those people that make those
• 1:17:55
  comments aren't making those comments because they give a
• 1:17:56
  shit about your casting ability. They're saying it because for
• 1:18:01
  the exact reasons that that we think they're saying it because
• 1:18:03
  they're, they're garbage people. So how do we how do we improve
• 1:18:07
  the space so that it's better for everyone?
• 1:18:11
  Just be more accepting, Be kind to each other, to everyone
• 1:18:15
  really, especially those people that are brave enough to be
• 1:18:19
  themselves on a broadcast, even if they are different.
• 1:18:23
  I think that's the biggest thing.
• 1:18:25
  If you if you don't look at the broadcast and you don't really
• 1:18:31
  hear a difference in in anything, maybe it's not worth
• 1:18:35
  commenting on it. Even if the person actually
• 1:18:37
  looks different once you open your eyes again.
• 1:18:42
  Other than that, if you want to criticize and you're very, it's
• 1:18:48
  very valid to want to criticize. Keeps constructive.
• 1:18:51
  Don't be rude about it. You can definitely tell a caster
• 1:18:53
  what you think. Even if the verdict is I don't
• 1:18:56
  like your casting, say why I don't like your casting because
• 1:19:01
  you don't understand the game enough.
• 1:19:03
  I'd love for you to bring in more like valid analytical
• 1:19:06
  points during your casting. That's good feedback.
• 1:19:08
  That's something the caster can work with and if it fits into
• 1:19:11
  your style, it can be integrated.
• 1:19:13
  And the broadcast is going to go better because as much as some
• 1:19:17
  people out there seem to hate it, queer people and diverse
• 1:19:20
  people and people of all colours and identities, they're around,
• 1:19:27
  they're everywhere and they're going to stay.
• 1:19:29
  You're not going to get rid of them by being a bigot.
• 1:19:32
  So just just give up on it and chill.
• 1:19:37
  Just be chill. I like that that's that could be
• 1:19:40
  the tag line for the episode. Just beat chill.
• 1:19:44
  Okay Manny, I'm done. I'm done hugging all the
• 1:19:45
  questions. I'm sorry.
• 1:19:46
  It's tough. It's so fun talking to Lithi.
• 1:19:49
  I got I got time all day. You can ask me all the questions
• 1:19:52
  you want. No, this, this has been great.
• 1:19:54
  I'm really glad that we got to have this time and talk about
• 1:19:58
  this sort of thing. I really do think that like the
• 1:20:01
  people who have their bad faith arguments that are going to
• 1:20:05
  suddenly become so critical for for particular reasons.
• 1:20:09
  It's night and day watching that broadcast.
• 1:20:13
  You were talking, going back and forth, and it wasn't until the
• 1:20:17
  match was over and you appeared on screen that suddenly people
• 1:20:21
  had stuff to say. And that's just so telling.
• 1:20:24
  So absolutely telling. Like for you to say like, yeah,
• 1:20:27
  it's 90% different when when you're presenting male versus
• 1:20:31
  versus when you're presenting a female.
• 1:20:33
  It's like, I didn't even need that confirmation.
• 1:20:36
  Like it was like already transparent where that was
• 1:20:40
  happening. But what I love is really the
• 1:20:44
  energy that you bring. How do you like just before we
• 1:20:49
  let you go, Like how do you keep up that energy over the long
• 1:20:52
  cast, like through an MDI through, through the AWC, they
• 1:20:55
  have rotating people. But like, how do you keep up
• 1:20:57
  that energy going through all of that?
• 1:21:01
  I mean, in the physical sense, literally make sure, make sure I
• 1:21:05
  slept enough that I'm awake, which is some days it's easier,
• 1:21:10
  some days it's harder because it's on my full time job and
• 1:21:13
  sometimes I come off work and straight into a broadcast.
• 1:21:18
  But yeah, enough food, enough sleep, enough energy, get a get
• 1:21:22
  a snack, get the blood sugar up every now and then.
• 1:21:25
  But in terms of just motivation, it's literally just, I'm a
• 1:21:29
  massive fan of the games I cast. I rarely ever pick up a
• 1:21:33
  broadcast where I'm not at least enjoying the game.
• 1:21:38
  So I try to just to reflect that I love Wow Arena, I love Wow
• 1:21:44
  PvP, and I'm a massive fan. Even if I'm not casting, I'm
• 1:21:47
  sitting in front of my screen and it's cheering for the move,
• 1:21:50
  even if they get knocked out in the second round lower bracket
• 1:21:53
  every now and then, you know, But it's just really, I try to,
• 1:21:57
  I just try to convey the love and passion I have for the game
• 1:22:01
  on broadcast. And sometimes that works with a
• 1:22:04
  lot of game knowledge, sometimes it doesn't.
• 1:22:06
  But generally I just try to bring the energy level because
• 1:22:10
  as long as that is on point, I want to say that's like 50 to
• 1:22:16
  60% of a good broadcast. If your caster has a lot of fun
• 1:22:19
  and is very passionate about it, it automatically sounds way
• 1:22:22
  better. As if you have someone talking
• 1:22:24
  about the game that knows everything, but it's not
• 1:22:28
  passionate about commentating for it, you know?
• 1:22:31
  I always love that energy when you're casting and I've watched
• 1:22:35
  games where I don't even know about the game and then later be
• 1:22:38
  like, you know what, I am gonna pick up Valerie and see what's
• 1:22:41
  going on in that game because of things.
• 1:22:43
  I really appreciate that. I always approach it from the
• 1:22:46
  angle of if you don't know what's going on, you have a team
• 1:22:48
  on the left side, you have a team on the right side, just
• 1:22:50
  watch the health bars and cheer for the team you want to cheer
• 1:22:53
  for. If their health bar goes down,
• 1:22:54
  that's bad. If the other team's health bar
• 1:22:56
  goes down, that's good. And I think that's a good
• 1:22:58
  starting point. And from there on out, you can
• 1:23:00
  just learn the game while watching because I think we as a
• 1:23:04
  caster team and especially the other three guys and I are doing
• 1:23:09
  a solid, solid job of breaking down and kind of presenting what
• 1:23:12
  is going on in a more digestible fashion, of course, at fast
• 1:23:17
  pace. But the more you watch, the more
• 1:23:19
  you learn. So any upcoming events where we
• 1:23:22
  can catch you? Are you allowed to announce
• 1:23:24
  anything at this point? Well, obviously you can catch me
• 1:23:28
  on the AWC broadcast once again starts with top eight EU this
• 1:23:32
  Friday. It's 7:00 PM CST and I think
• 1:23:39
  10:00 AM Pacific. I think that's roughly around
• 1:23:43
  the correct timestamps on the official watch of channels on
• 1:23:46
  Twitch and YouTube. So that's kind of the the
• 1:23:47
  biggest things that are going on and anything for the rest of the
• 1:23:51
  year. If you want to hire me, I'm
• 1:23:54
  available. Beautiful.
• 1:23:58
  So thank you so much. Any last thing that you want to
• 1:24:00
  say before we let you go? Not really.
• 1:24:05
  Thanks so much for having me, for letting me talk about
• 1:24:08
  casting, because I enjoy that almost as much as I do casting,
• 1:24:13
  and you guys do a fantastic job. So I'm very excited to be on the
• 1:24:16
  show here. Thank you very much, Livi.
• 1:24:18
  Where can our listeners find you online?
• 1:24:23
  You can follow me on Twitter at Lithiara.
• 1:24:25
  You find me on Twitch, just Lithi on there or blue Sky,
• 1:24:29
  which is also just Lithi in case you have abandoned the hell site
• 1:24:34
  by now. And other than that, yeah, maybe
• 1:24:37
  on your local Wow E sports broadcast or Final Fantasy or
• 1:24:41
  whatever else is happening. Perfect, right?
• 1:24:45
  I think that's it. Manny, do you want to?
• 1:24:46
  I don't know. I don't end our shows ever, so I
• 1:24:48
  don't know how this ends. May all your hits be crit, you
• 1:24:51
  know. How this ends, let's let's hear
• 1:24:52
  to Sean ending the show. Yeah, you know how it goes.
• 1:24:55
  Great. In a world where you can be, I
• 1:24:57
  don't know, it's different show. That's it for us from For
• 1:25:03
  Azeroth with this special episode interview with Lithi.
• 1:25:07
  We're so thankful for you listening to this episode and
• 1:25:10
  may all your hits be crits.