GotFrag.com - MLG Anaheim has had many surprises this weekend. The wildcard team sponsored by Complexity is doing relatively well with their Death Knight, Warlock, Druid team despite running into the wall that is Check6's Beast Cleave. Yog and I mulled over whether Massive, Brogo and Snutz would lose 5-0 or 4-1 in which Yog simply shrugged, looked away and said either final scores are incredibly likely.

Europe continues to struggle

Despite having little to no accomplishments in the WoW LAN scene on American soil, the European superiority complex miraculously continues to live on. While it does have a healthy pallor, its lifespan has been prolonged with a cocktail of Inflame's ego and SK-EU managing to pull out a win against fnatic. You add in a dash of constant verbal fellatio from several cross-dressing cheerleaders and we get a situation where the words, "a DK should never die" ironically echos though the minds of everyone as they lose another series and maybe even the tournament. I�ve gotta give it to them though, they�re in third place after farming SK-US in the final rounds on Saturday night.

The fall of SK.US

SK-US had an abysmal two days and managed to do nothing but feed SK-EU to a solid third place finish at the end of the night. They somehow went from being the most winning team right before Blizzcon to barely being able to beat anyone at a tournament just three months after that performance. It�s time for them to mix it up a bit or at the very least, practice more. They seemed rusty from my perspective and even Complexity, who were swept in a series by SK-EU looked much better overall this weekend thus far.

EG and fnatic still in the running

The fnatic team was pretty much farmed by PMRs who put massive amount of pressure on Douja. He was so starved for globals that he was barely able to use his purge and shock super offensively. Team EG had a surprising performance with Tenderloin and Smatin, the unknown rogue hero recommended to Azael by Uckington.

When asked why he dropped Kollektiv, widely considered to be the best shaman player on LAN in the world, Azael responded, "He�s just not a very nice person. Every single rogue we played with asked me what his deal was because he was always overly critical of every little thing. On top of that, he doesn�t arena much and spends all his time PvEing and working on his PvE mod, so he�s really rusty. I just felt Tenderloin worked better with me overall." Azael�s instincts thus far have had mixed results but they are still placing much better than people expected, being tied with both Complexity teams and fnatic for fourth place. All of them having two wins each over the weekend.

Check-Six remains the favorites

The only thing not surprising about this weekend is Check6's performance. The team members were nonchalant about their chances of doing well this weekend and spent most of it being laid back. Against Complexity's main roster, they were mulling over running double hunter/paladin but Flexx was unable to set up his hunter in the 5 minute break they had after the first two matches.

Toez mixed in a little American pride in their match against SK-EU by shouting, "F@#! you Europe!" after Inflame died in the last match of the series, which Check6 took 3-2. To the European's credit, they were the first team to actually make Check6 work for their victory, after losing the first game where Another 2-shotted Twixz at the beginning of the first match and took a second victory in the fourth match.

Balance of the Beast

I interviewed Tom �Kalgan� Chitlon in the middle of the matches throughout the day and he had some interesting insight into the process of balancing the game and the subtle nuances between internal testing and how it compares to PTR and Live testing where they have a much larger sampling size. �Sometimes we have 6 people in the office or maybe more depending on timing testing matches and the reality is that this is not nearly a large enough sampling size to get the full scope of balance issues that may arise.�

As far as the infamous �Beast Cleave� is concerned, Kalgan merely said that Blizzard would keep a close eye on it, as the comp is not dominant on Live arena at all, having only (as of this moment) two teams being represented on the SK-100 and it generally not being a popular comp at all. I personally believe that the comp is much more nuanced than people like to believe. It�s relatively easy to fail at if your enhancement shaman can�t do positioning well. Don�t believe me? Look at Venruki�s enhancement shaman play and tell me anyone can play it.

Due to several technical issues, the Saturday schedule was a bit behind and the last two matches were pushed to Saturday morning. I�ve been looking forward to the Check6 vs Button Bashers match as they�re both undefeated and it will be interesting to see how the Koreans adjust to such a dominant yet relatively uncommon team composition.

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