#0 - Nov. 21, 2006, 9:15 p.m.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=31713
The video inspired pretty strong reactions, both positive and negative. I would like to explain a few things about it and answer in detail some of the things people have been criticising. Wcm doesn't seem like a good platform for this, and I can't post on the american WoW forums, so I'll just do it here and copy a link to this thread into the movie's description at Wcm. Here goes:
First of all, I'd like to say that english is not my native language, so I am sorry about any spelling / grammar mistakes this post might contain.
I was extremely surprised about the amount of people who downloaded the movie in such a short time. It went nr. 1 under "What's hot this Week" on Wcm in less than 12 hours from going online, which is amazing to me. I didn't expect this to happen, especially since this was the first WoW movie (also the first movie in general) I ever made. I received a lot of criticism about the movie - both positive and negative. While I really appreciate the first, allow me to adress some of the most popular points of the second:
Many people apparently felt that the video was not so much a display of warriors being a weak PvP class, but merely of me being a weak PvP player. Other criticised that I was doing the duels with a fury spec or that I seemed to specifically be dueling classes who had the most "anti warrior" build possible.
- I don't really think the builds played such a big role. As for the Paladin, a reckoning build would've been far worse, especially against a dualwielding warrior. A destro warlock with succubus out would have owned me just as badly. An ap/fire mage wouldn't have been able to kill me with rank1 of any cast type, but he still would've won the duels. A preparation rogue wouldn't have killed me as quickly, but just as effectively. The only classes where you can justly say that I might have beaten them if they had a different build were hunter and priest. Then again, why would I want to show a duel against a holy priest with a pure pve build? If I did that, I might aswell have chosen a def build for myself, in which case I would probably end up losing even against holy priests. This video is about PvP viability, so of course I chose enemies who had PvP builds, just like I had a PvP build myself. Which leads me to the next point...
- Unlike what many have claimed, 17/34 is NOT a pure pve build. It's just not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you have earthstrike + deathwhish ready (which I did in every scene), it's at least as strong as the classical 31/20 build, possibly stronger. My mainhand is pretty slow anyway, and what it lacks in weapon damage over a 2hander is largely made up for by the 20% damage increase from deathwhish. Of course, the burst damage potential still isn't quite as big as with a MS build, but the difference is marginal. Also, the sustained dps and rage build is clearly higher, which is a strong advantage against all classes that you can beat on for an extended period of time, such as shadow priests or warlocks (also Palas, but here you have to take into account the MS debuff). I'm not saying that there is no difference between Ms and Fury builds in terms of PvP viability. I'm just saying the difference is nowhere near as big as some people seem to think. I don't believe you can honestly watch this movie and tell me that the course of the duels would've been fundamentally different if I was MS instead of fury.
- As for the dialogues: I realized they were a bit lengthy, that's why I put the warning in. When the movie was in the works, I posted on the British WoW forums asking if somebody would want to help me out on a movie project by speaking some dialogues. I didn't want to do it myself, since my pronounciation clearly falls short of a native speaker. I also had a friend of mine publish the same request on the american forums. Well, long story short, nobody agreed to help me on this, so I simply couldn't include spoken dialogues. I considered adding some music, but figured it would too strongly distract people from the text. I realize that the final result isn't perfect, but except for spoken dialogues (which I couldnt get), I didn't see any better way to do it, either.
- Enemy cooldown abuse: I had deathwish and earthstrike in every scene, so I only thought it fair for them to have their cooldowns available aswell. Also, the only enemy who was really heavily abusing cooldowns was the rogue. I wanted to have it that way just to show how, contrary to popular belief, rogues can entirely destroy warriors. If he had been using less cooldowns, he might not have owned me as badly, but he still would've won, which is basically what the movie is all about.
- Skill in general: I have received countless replies to the effect that I basically suck and only lost due to my lack of PvP skill. Many of these assertions were clearly by people who didn't watch the movie closely. I'll name a few of the most popular examples:
'Wtf why didn't you disarm the paladin/hunter/rogue?' - The pala was wearing strongholds (obviously, one of the few 'crowd control' type of abilities the warrior has can be avoided entirely by putting on a stupid pair of gloves). The hunter would often dodge the disarm thanks to deterrence. I actually did disarm him once, after which he immediately freezetrapped. The rogue obviously could not be disarmed due to evasion (and even in the highly unlikely event that the disarm would work, he'd just blind and /lol).
'Why didn't you fear the rogue?' - Because he was wearing his insignia anyways. I did, actually, fear him in the last duel. Watch again and check the result.
'Why didn't you use challenging shout on the hunter?' - I really like this one. The hunter didn't even have his pet out. Plus, if the hunter positions him at a propper distance behind his freezing trap, it is actually not possible to get the shout out.
'Why didn't you pummel more?' - I did in every situation possible, except for the shadowpriest's mindflay. Pummelling the mindflay means a guaranteed mindblast 3 seconds later (which you will not have the rage to fear-interrupt because you're constantly low on rage against priests anyway).
Of course, when I spoke about 'timing my skills and grenades perfectly', that wasn't to be taken literally. I don't play perfect. Nobody does. One of the few points of criticism that were highly valid was that I keyboard-turn, which admittedly sucks. But then again, what if I mouse-turned rather than keyboard-turned against that warlock? Do you seriously think that 1 additional second would've sufficed to take down his shield + 6000hp? Because I sure doubt it.
The point of the video is not to prove that I am awesome at PvP. It's to prove that warriors suck at 1on1 PvP. I don't think I made any fundamental mistakes in any of the duels, seriously. There were a few minor things that I could have done better, but they wouldn't actually have changed the outcome of the fight. Take MayDie or Laintime or whoever you consider to be the 'perfect warrior' and have them fight the enemies I fought, and they will not do substantially better than I did. Or, alternatively, watch their videos and look for mistakes of their enemies as closely as you were looking for mistakes from me. I guarantee you that you will find plenty, and that's even though they (unlike me) intentionally included only the fights that would make them look good. I realize that the nature of my movie merits heavy criticism and downright flaming, and honestly, I don't give the slightest fraction of a !@*@ about how most of you judge my PvP skill. What I did care about when making the movie was to drive home the point that warriors are ridiculously underpowered in 1v1 combat. Unless you can actually point out any mistakes of mine that could've been avoided and also might realistically have turned the tide of battle, your critique has got nothing to do with anything.
Aside from all this, many people seemed to like the movie, which I really appreciate :). For some reason, the comments in the Warrior forums (de/en/us) are much more positive than those on Wcm. I am guessing this just might have something to do with the fact that warrior forums are frequented by... well, warriors, i.e. people who actually know what they're talking about, with regard to the movie :).
