Celestial Tournament LiveBlogging: Vibe vs Meow

2:30GMT: Let's get rolling again here. Been checking in on the NCAA tournament and, yes, my brackets are being busted there too. It's really going to suck if OSU wins. And it's really goign to suck if Florida wins. So, I really have nothing left to live for at this point. Anyhow, I'm figuring that it's taking me an hour or more to do each of these matches. I have six left which means even if I just keep going non-stop it's still going to take me five or six hours to finish up here. And that's if I don't stop to have fun by, you know, actually playing the game. I might have to call it quits early and pick up early before tomorrow's matches begin. Just, you know, fair warning.

Next up we'll be following the #8/#9 matchup which leads to a match against EW. That means I'll leave the tournament's biggest upset - [iPod] for last. That's just how I roll.

Match Eight - Game One
#8 Battery Powered Best Friend vs #9 Bambis Dont Say
Burning Isle

Vibe
W/D - D-Slash
W/A - Dev Hammer
Rt/Mo - Offering of Spirit Smite with Judge's Insight, Splinter Weapon
E/Mo - Water with Icy Shackles
Me/E - Expel Hexes spirit hate with Spiritual Pain and U-Sig, GLE
Mo/E - LoD
Mo/E - Divert Hexes
E/Mo - Mind Shock runner runner with Heal Party

Meow
N/E - Reaper's and melee hate.
N/Me - Recurring Insecurity with degen hexes and Mantra of Persistence with Spirit Shackles
N/Mo - Necro Monk
N/Rt - Icy Veins spirit shitter
N/Rt - Icy Veins spirit shitter
R/W - Yet another spirit shitter. Energizing Winds, Quickening Zephyr, Primal Echoes, Fertile Season, the works, with Shields Up all powered by the Oath Shot
? - Didn't load (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say....oh, I don't know, Necro.)
N/Rt - Rit heals with Spirit Transfer, Weapon of Warding

[Meow] looked to be an SBRI build. Shame about the drop. But, still, it looked like [Vibe] had a pretty good counter build what with the spirit hating Mesmer and all.

Finally a pair of teams that aren't in love with Jade Isle. They both pick Burning, though, which isn't much better. You can at least credibly split there but it's not really best for it. I think it's kind of interesting, really, that these top tier teams who are, typically, really good with splits are setting their battlefields to minimize the risks of being split against.


2:45GMT: And I just erred out. Great. Time to restart.

2:48GMT: Back in game and, huh, what do you know, somebody on [Meow] had a similar problem. Looks like a no-load which puts them down a player. That's a rough way to lose and makes the actual match pretty pointless to follow. It's no different than if you made one team play solely with their feet. Sure, things happen but it's not a fair fight and there's no lessons to be drawn here. I'm going to stay a while and scope out the builds but, meh.

2:51GMT: Actually, no I won't because [Meow] resigns three minutes in. G fucking g. Again, I though there were supposed to be reconnects for this sort of thing but I guess they weren't allowed this tournament. Grr.

2:52GMT: I'm going to have to restart this one a few times to get a look at the builds here. Don't mind me, talk amongst yourselves. Here's a topic: 19th century Imperialism was both a necessity and a hindrance to developing internationalism in the 20th century.

3:13GMT: Ugh, that took forever. On to the next game. Hopefully they actually played this one. Then again, if they didn't it'll probably go much quicker...


Match Eight - Game One
#8 Battery Powered Best Friend vs #9 Bambis Dont Say
Burning Isle

Vibe
W/A - Dev Hammer
W/D - D-Slash
Me/E - Expel Hexes with Diversion
Rt/Mo - Offering of Spirit Smite with Judge's Insight, Splinter Weapon
E/Mo - Water with Icy Shackles
E/Mo - B-Surge
Mo/E - LoD
Mo/E - Shield of Deflection



Meow
P/A - Incoming.
P/A - Another Incoming. With Expose Defenses.
P/W - Charge? Attack chain is Lightning to Vicious which is decent only if you're hitting Go For the Eyes with it, really (Go4 crits the next hit, regardless of whether it's in the air or an auto-attack or whatever so timing it can be a bit tricky.).
P/N - BiP?!? Anthem of Envy is nice to see, though.
N/E - Order of Apostasy with Ward of Stability
Mo/E - ZB
Mo/E - Prot stuff. I'm guessing it's Divert Hexes here since I don't see an elite.
Mo/E - LoD

Well, map's the same. [Vibe] seems the same. But, wait, what the hell is [Meow] running?

3:16GMT: Wow, that's just a ballsy move on [Meow]'s part. Also have to give them credit for the name of their Orders Necro - "Thanks for Error"

3:17GMT: [Vibe] seems to have rolled a pretty good counter build for it again, though. Go go Build Wars!

3:18GMT: Just some odd stuff on those Paragons. Dueling Incoming's is questionable enough but they also have a lot of defensive chants like Stand Your Ground. I'm of the mind that the defensive buffs for the Paragons are, by and large, forgettable. The real money is in the offensive buffs.. Something tells me this is a rabbit out of the hat build that hasn't seen a lot of optimization. As for Charge!, well, there's a Paragon skill called Fallback which is nearly as good and doesn't cost you an elite slot.

3:19GMT: A BiP Paragon. Man, I thought Expel Hexes was weird. People like to stick the odd utility elites in their spare Parapants, I guess.

3:19GMT: Yes, I am ashamed of that pun. No, I'm not deleting it.

3:20GMT: 6 minutes in and [Meow]'s circling their Lord. The Body guard's taking it on the chin and the Orders Necro can't seem to stay alive for long. Um, yeah, at least they didn't have a drop this time but you can't imagine they're happy with their showing in this tournament.

3:23GMT: Well, resign spike 8 minutes in. Yeah, I don't think [Meow] is happy. Well, it was short which is good for me and my all too human weakness of needing sleep. Gonna get the builds down a bit better and then it's on to [EW]'s round one match.