The interview was conducted in German and has been translated to English by Dominic Koller, the German version can be found at the bottom of the page.

People on Stormscale call you ”the worlds best 2345”, is that true?

Hehe, I wish it would be like that. In my opinion, 2345 is completely based on positional play. You simply can't achieve much without a good knowledge about positional play and well timed 5-man bursts, which you just need 90% of the time, else the healers just heal away all the damage.

Thats ais in infact where most of our problems lie. For example if our Shaman of the 2345 lineup is getting taken out of the game by a rogue (or someone else), it will get really difficult to switch which leads to a mana intensive match being really hard to win. Thats why we're trying out new tactics on a daily basis and who knows, maybe we can find a key make 2345 a FOTM again.

You guys transfered quite recently to Cyclone, where did you guys come from and why did you chose to transfer?

We transfered from the German PVP-Server Azshara (Realmpool Glutsturm) due to seeing that the current pool was dieing. More and more teams are going inactive, less lineups are being played and in my opinion most of the teams in Glutsturm are more rating-oriented instead of competing with other teams, like we do, and thats the attracting thing of doing Arena PvP.

Anyone can beat anyone with every lineup, having a strong burst, outlasting or whatever, but to know all these tricks and to know when to go offensive or defensive and therefore adjusting your tactics, this is what I really like when playing Arena even though it can be very frustrating.

Now when you've played on Cyclone for a while, what do you think about the competition?

Cyclone is a great Realmpool, only the creme de la creme are playing here. The teams are adapting really fast and completely changing their strategy after 1-2 matches which counters our style again. It's amazing how many different lineups are being played here. Being it the Hunter-Teams I love, the Droodrog teams our Shaman loves or the 2346 lineup our warrior loves, there realmpool basically knows no bounds.

It is also very interesting to see all the different playing styles of the teams. For example there are 2346 lineups which completely focus on Outlasting while others use fast Warriorswitches. But of course you should not lose the relation that Knockout is doing a really great job in terms of tournaments and brings the realmpool up the snuff. It is a dream of everyone to play such an excellent tournament and should inspire the competitive spirit in everyone.

The 2345 setup seems to be dying out as 2346 and drainteams become more popular, how is it playing that setup today when most people knows how to counter it?

The 2345 difficulty seems to be on a peak right now and 2345 should be one of the top lineups once again as soon as new strategies are known to counter Droodrog and Drainteams. Being 2345 gives you a disavdvantage over other lineups. Droodrog has much more CC (Crowd Control) than we do and therefore they can play much more offensive.

Hunter-DrainTeams can relax much more due to having Viper Sting, Manaburn and other Outlastings and get the advantage little by little. I could go on much more but I better not since we don't have the time for that. Still we are safe to say no-one is unbeatable so there always a ray of hope, being it a mistake in positional play by the opponent which can be forced by some clever movement.

How long have you been playing the setup and have you ever considered switching out any of the players to make your team more up to date?

We switched to 2345 in the middle of the second season and had a lot of fun right away. Of course we had some difficulties at the beginning with our communication, strategies and the teamplay since we have never played before. But we were getting used to it really fast, analysed movies and created our own play style. At first sight, 2345 looks like it is impossible to win due to all the disadvantages.

Thats why it's even more fun to beat an opponent where it looked like it is impossible to beat them. So we won't change our lineup definitely, being it the whole setup or a class change to be up to date, but we more focus on our strengths and the weaknesses of our opponent respectively and try to find the key to success.

What is the key to being a successful 2345 team?

Like I said earlier, 2345 is 100% based on positional play and that's where the secret lies. We always need to force our opponent into this so our burst cannot be healed anymore by them because we simply don't have much CC. Theres many possibilities to do this. The first one is to break the Line of Sight/get out of range of the healers and then kill someone with a coordinated switch.

Another possibility is the Fake Burst where you intentionally get someone down to 40% and then switch to the nearest target. In most cases the healers are still focused on the person with 40% while the nearest target gets killed. There is so many possibilities but it would take a week to list them all. So there is no default strategy to use against everyone. The only thing to do is having a good repertory of tactics and to use them in the right situation.

Which setup do you feel is the hardest for you guys to beat?

Actually there is no real opponent we fear the most, we have some problems with multiple lineups. Still the most problems we currently have is the Droodrog (Druid/Priest/Rogue/Warlock/Mage) and Drain-Teams (Hunter/Warlock/Paladin/Priest/Warrior). The main problem against Droodrog is that our strength, the fast switches, are difficult to do due to the Rogue is attacking either the Shaman or the Mage so heavy that they can't really play their offensive style. In combination with a good CC on our Paladin it gets really difficult to win.

The problem with Drain-Teams is that they can easily break our offensive with using Silencing Shot, extreme Manaburning which pushes us to a defensive style or simply that none of the targets can easily killed by a single burst. Also don't forget, the longer a match lasts they get the mana advantage. Everything has to work out in order to win against these lineups and of course, a little luck can never hurt.

You recently released a movie and I couldn't help notice how well coordinated your bursts are, who's calling the tactics/bursts in the team?

Usually our Shaman is doing the calls. Still everyone is allowed to talk when someone is noticing a mistake of our opponent, so it will be called in Ventrilo and everyone is focusing on that. Being it a Hunter-Pet in the middle of our group or a warrior being too far away from his healers. Also we try to record all of our matches and analyse all of our losses but sometimes also matches we win to find the right solution and improvements.

I also noticed that you sometimes fall back with the whole team and sort of ”start over”, care to ellaborate on that?

Falling back is an essential part of our play style. Falling back with the whole team often gets the opponent to do a mistake in their positional play which can be used to your advantage. Still this fall back has to be practiced a lot in order to do it right without the need of communicating. If you start too early, our warrior can be stuck in CC and the match is almost over.

If you do it too late, you can be left alone in the middle of a whole group getting extreme damage which can lead to death. So falling back is pretty risky but with a good coordination, it becomes an essential part. So we looked at all the arenas and started creating our own routes depending on our opponents play, so there usually shouldn't be any misunderstandings.

You're obviously a big fan of 5vs5, how do you feel about Blizzard announcing 3vs3 as their ”official tournament”?

3v3 has always been prefered over 5v5 when there's big tournaments. Being it the better overview for commentators and bringing the strategies/action closer to spectators. Or being it the bigger response of players which wouldn't play 5v5 due to being too complex. Maybe it's just easier to watch all the different players in 3v3.

I'm not too sure about this and hope for more 5v5 tournaments in the future. Who knows, maybe 5v5 gets hyped and is more renowned than 3v3 later on. I would wish for it since I think 5v5 is using a lot more of the games potential and also has much more possibilities with all the different playing styles.

Will you participate in the qualifier and if so, what setup would you prefer to play?

Like you said before I'm not really into 3v3 but I would participate in the tournament together with a Priest(Feathlol) and Rogue(Caprian) with which I had a successful time on Glutsturm. In our case it won't be a serious attempt to win the tournament more a chance to get as much experience as possible competing with other teams. Still it is a highlight and there should be more tournaments with this scale of players as it just boosts the populartiy of the game and it is also more accepted in esports.

Mages seem to have been replaced by warlocks in pretty much all brackets, do you think that warlocks are imbalanced?

Warlocks definitely have advantages over mages but I wouldn't go that far saying they're imbalanced. Of course they have a few very dodgy skills like infinite mana, the possibility to prevent healers from drinking with their pet which they can just summon again or that the intercept- stun of their pet can easily kill someone in the open field.

You could go on with things like that again but I don't think warlocks overpowered since they have their disavantages too. For example they can't do a well timed burst like mages with their Shattercombo (Frostbolt+Icelance) and the Water Elemental. But I would appreciate it if Blizzard would think about some of the warlock spells which look too overpowered from the mage perspective. Blizzard should start with a 10 second cooldown on Curse of Tongues.

What do you think about the first glimpse of 2.4, are the drain/drinking/druid nerfs justified?

The manadrain is a nerf for Droodrogs of course which weakens 2345. Looking at the Drain Teams it's a nerf which is a buff for 2345. So you have to wait and see how much the nerfs affect the teams to judge if it was a good change or not.

What changes do would you like to see to make mages more viable in the lower brackets?

Right now I can only think about one chance regarding frostmages. It would be very charming if Blizzard finally gives the frostmage the possibility to prevent pushbacks of the frost casts, just like the fire mage with "Burning Soul". The push back is pretty big without a talent, which drops the whole switch. So I would really appreciate it if Blizzard is thinking about this.

For people who are playing a mage and wants to succeed in all brackets, what setups would you suggest?

There is a lot you can do but to make it short, I would recommend these lineups:

2on2, Rogue/Mage:
Advantage: Extreme damage output in combination with alot of CC
Disadvantage: Due to the defensive playing style it tends to outlast.

3on3, Rogue/Priest/Mage:
Advantage: Extreme damage output which is great against cloth classes.
Disadvantage: Tends to get Cced by classes like hunters which kills them by getting Mana drained by Viper Sting.

5on5, Rogue/Priest/Mage/Warlock/Druid:
Advantage: Extreme damage output in combination with a lot of CC
Disadvantage: Due to mostly being HoT-Healed by Priest/Druid they're vulnerable to switches.

This should be the most successful lineups for mages at the moment.

Thanks for your time, any last comments or shoutouts?

I want to thank you for this interview and shouts go to the Glutsturm Arena team "nature sparkling wine", to the whole Azshara community and everyone I forgot. Bye

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Don't forget to check out their 5vs5 movie, which can be downloaded here.

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A 5v5 Setup using Arms Warrior, Holy or Disc Priest, Holy Paladin, Elemental Shaman, and a Mage.
The origin of this term stems from Noktyn and Sck during the online regional stage against The Fighting Mongooses. They were spamming 23452345235425 in party chat and irc, since the setup's strength is to activate Heroism/Bloodlust and press as many offensive buttons as you can.