Best Hunter: Cherez of Nihilum

Is there a question of who the best hunter of MLG San Diego was? With a team centered around his abilities Cherez stood far and beyond any other hunter present (or lack of hunters). Cherez showed his kiting abilities and ability to play both Beast Mastery and Marksmenship specs, his timing and burst calls were uncanny (can any top wow player really expect that a holy priest, resto druid and hunter could burst down a druid, spoh, from top health to zero in a matter of a few seconds?)

Although he made a couple questionable mistakes in the finals match versus Frag Dom (Pillar hugging behind the opposite pillar on Nagrand away from his healers and jumping off the bridge away from his healers on Blade's Edge) he proved that he was the best hunter we've seen at a LAN tourney thus far and the best from Europe. Cherez brings light to a discouraged Hunter community, considering his class is the least represented in high-end arenas. GotFrag and MLG expect more hunters to compete in the future event due to his success in San Diego.

Best Priest: Hydra of Nihilum Arena

Hydra was known for his PvP priest video prior to coming to MLG San Diego. He displayed some of the best tactical execution for a priest with excellent positioning, awareness and passive aggressive play that characterized his priest ability as top notch. His aggressiveness versus certain teams while playing a discipline / holy spec (mainly a healing spec, not known for offensive ability) surprised many teams. He tried to out mana burn and burst on coordination his opponents, giving Cherez much needed offensive support. Hydra displayed what a priest can provide for a team besides heal and dispell, hopefully teams won't underestimate his offensive mindset in the future.


Best Druid: Sodah of GotGame East

The top rated druid in the world, #1 among in all 3 brackets in his battlegroup and 2600-2700 rated among all his live realm teams as well. Expectations for Sodah were high, he showed his true colours and the WoW community embraced him as the underdog with unexpected wins over Pandemic, SK-Gaming and CAPSLOCK CREW - Proving that teams will never take any team associated with Sodah lightly again. Sodah played as well as any druid could, he executed all cyclone / root strategies perfectly and many people argue it was Sodah's play that carried GotGame East more then the nature of his class comp. He seemed to hit every cyclone and every root at the right time, giving his team any advantage they could get to pull these upset wins.

Sodah will be returning to MLG Orlando with a different team according to reports, however he's bringing his live team which includes Venruki - Sodah's long-time partner and 2nd highest rated player in the world.

There weren't many paladins present at MLG, however Sck proved that paladins could compete in 3v3 arena with the only sole match win over Nihilum. Despite their 3-1 lost to Nihilum arena, all 4 games were very close and it counted on a lot of positioning and execution on Sck's part to make these matches challenging for Nihilum Arena. After Pandemic's experience running Warrior Paladin Shaman against Nihilum, one will argue they won't make the same mistake in Orlando if they face the same team again.

Best Shaman: Glorin of SK-Gaming

While there were more or less a lack of shaman at MLG San Diego- Between Kollektiv of MoB, Glorin of SK and Douja of Pandemic - Glorin displayed his ability to play the shaman class in many different fashions, whether as DPS or healer. SK-Gaming's win over Duelists Frag Dominant was mainly in part of Glorin's ability to interrupt casts and stay on Celex to burst him down - he also showed his ability to play all different specs of Shaman. While Douja of Pandemic also showed very strong shaman ability, Pandemic didn't pull off any notable wins. Have to give credit where credit is due to SK-Gaming being one of the favorites, but falling short against the top placers of MLG San Diego.

Team of the Tournament: Nihilum Arena

This was the first International WoW Arena tournament where one of the top Euro teams came to compete, Nihilum Arena represented Europe very well, hopefully opening more doors for more Euro teams to come and compete. You don't need LAN experience to win these tournaments, just excellent preparation and execution to get the job done. Nihilum Arena can proudly hold their heads high for the European community; Europe finally displayed a strong representation at a WoW LAN event.

Favored Winner: Frag Dominant

As one of the top teams coming into the Event, critics argue that FD had one of the better Bracket placements (the upper bracket was filled with top teams like Pandemic, Nihilum, GotGame West, MoB TurtlePower & CAPSLOCK CREW) - however they faced teams they had strong advantages and counter-comps against. In Orlando they could prove all doubters wrong with a win over a team that has comp advantage versus them, or if Azael has more trinkets up his sleeve to give FD the edge in the WoW Meta-game.

Loved Underdog: GotGame East

Viewers especially love the underdog teams, the unknown team that comes to a competition that noone expects to do well at all but comes out on-top. With very deserved wins over Pandemic, SK-Gaming and CAPSLOCK CREW - this team showed they belonged among the best and provided some entertaining matches for the masses.

Best Match not shown on live stream: MoB Gaming TurtleForce vs CAPSLOCKCREW

Prior to this event, there was a lot of tension between MoB's priest Fershie(aka Swarm) and CLC. The first two matches started out with MoB Gaming running Enhancement Shaman / Rogue / Druid vs CLC's RMP. This writer feels that this match up heavily favors MoB Gaming due to the squishiness of RMP. SK-Gaming ran this lineup consistently vs all the RMP teams at the tournament and had no trouble winning for the most part but that isn't the same case for MoB. Game 1, both teams trade kills but MoB is able to outlast the non-healer lineup of Mage/Rogue with their Rogue/Druid. Game 2, CLC plays beautifully and manages to pull out a clutch win. Between Games 2 and 3, MoB tries to psyche CLC out with Kollectiv still setup on the table when rosters were submitted but switching Ohnoes in right after rosters were closed. This became a RMP vs RMP mirror match. Zecks/Ohnoes can be credited for first making this lineup popular during WSVG and are considered the "Original RMP" team. But, they haven't seen CLC's ability to play RMP mirror matches. Games 3 and 4 are a complete domination by CLC, simply outplaying MoB. Both games CLC managed to put Ohnoes in bad position with Fershie landing no heals and Crysalid almost instantly removing his ice block with mass dispel. Inactive was very vocal throughout this match and topped it of with the most memorable quote of the tournament: "He's Done! He's done! You're done! I DON'T NEED NO NERD SPONSOR!."

The competitive WoW PC Circuit has fielded the toughest competition thus far for a WoW Arena tourney. We can only expect Orlando, Dallas and future tournaments to get even more competitive. Out there somewhere there's always new 3v3 team trying to prove their worth in the upcoming WoW scene, we can only expect great in the times to come.