WoW-Arena.de: How did u get into eSports or professional gaming?
Olivier ‚Orly‘ Bellemans: Our teams had been highranked on the official ladder throughout the season and SK Gaming who were at the time looking to replace their old european WoW team took notice. They approached us and asked if we wanted to play in the upcoming blizzard worldwide invitational tournament for them. We agreed and that was the first tournament I competed in as a sponsored player.
WoW-Arena.de: WoW PvE got quite some supporters, are you interested in that as well – or just PvP/Arena?
Orly: I used to raid casually before TBC and actually had a lot of fun, but it often felt like I was chained to my computer for the night when sometimes I’d just want to get out or do some battlegrounds. When our guild fell apart I decided it wasn’t worth the effort anymore and set my focus on PvP.
WoW-Arena.de: How much time a day do you invest in WoW?
Orly: Probably around 4-5 hours a day on average.
WoW-Arena.de: What are you doing, when you’re not playing World of Warcraft?
Orly: Team Fortress 2 and Starcraft I love to play lately when I’m not logged in to wow. I also like to follow the GomTV(.net) tournament action.
WoW-Arena.de: What priority does WoW have in your life compared to other activities?
Orly: WoW-players have no other activities, didn’t you know?
WoW-Arena.de: How does a normal day for you look like?
Orly: Get up, go to college, come home and log into wow after some dinner.
WoW-Arena.de: Are you satisfied with your current clan?
Orly: Definitely, we have a lot of talented and humorous players to play with or practise against, and when I come home from a long night of karazhan pug’ing they are always there to comfort me.
WoW-Arena.de: Why did you choose your ingame-class?
Orly: I had never played a healing class before and was itching to try it out, but in the likely event that I would end up hating it I wanted to have the option to go back to being dps. Out of the four different healing classes the priest’s shadow tree was definitely the most competitive dps spec and that’s the main reason I made a priest. Being a healer has actually been great fun and I have no intention of going shadow.
WoW-Arena.de: Are you able to play other classes as well so that you could change your lineup in a clanwar?
Orly: I can play a Warlock and am currently learning the Shaman class. To put together any other strong lineup however at least two of us need to play an alternate class, which can bring down the quality of our game. Contrary to popular belief there are very few „hard counters“ and if you can’t run a lineup at a very high level it won’t pay off against a top team. This is why you’ll typically see us sticking with the RMP lineup even when there are other setups that on paper should do better in a certain matchup.
WoW-Arena.de: What are the strengths and weaknesses of your lineup (rmp)?
Orly: Versatility is the greatest strength of a rogue mage priest team, you have so many strategic options available to you when you go into a game that it can get very hard for the opposing team to prepare for what is coming. The weaknesses of the lineup become apparent when your opponent does manage to anticipate your every move and picks apart your attack: your rogue runs out of cooldowns, your mage runs out of cooldowns, your priest out of mana and you’ll likely lose.
WoW-Arena.de: What makes an arena-match so interesting for you?
Orly: It’s very satisfying and rewarding to come up with different setups and off-the-wall strategies. The day I can predict the outcome of every single arena game I may as well quit wow.
WoW-Arena.de: What is a must-have in your opinion to be successful as an arena-team?
Orly: Confidence, if you believe in your ability to win hard enough only the rng can stop you.
WoW-Arena.de: What needs to be changed to make WoW more competitive?
Orly: From a priest point of view: dispel mechanics are in dire need of a makeover. Wasting 5 dispels on an innervate that still does not come off, letting the random number generator decide if dispells reduce a druid’s healing by 10% or by 50%, having a felhunter devour cc through 5 different debuffs, .. games are decided everyday by this kind of stuff. Additionally it would be great to see more frequent and educated balance changes. Shamans and Paladins have been pretty terrible as a healer for a long time now to say the least. Blizzard tries to avoid the knee-jerk reaction when it comes to balance concerns, I think that’s a good thing, but in some cases the imbalances are so glaringly obvious that any change is better than no change.
WoW-Arena.de: How interested are you at the moment in the upcoming Add-On WotLK?
Orly: Leveling up in the first few weeks of TBC was hilarious, being on a pvp server makes the whole process of leveling a lot less painful. It should be fun to duke it out in world pvp on stormscale with the different pvp guilds, allthough I expect the server to crash every other hour haha.
I’m also looking forward to arena with much improved pvp mechanics and new abilities to toy around with when I hit 80.
WoW-Arena.de: Do you see yourself as professional gamer in about a year?
Orly: Anything can happen.
WoW-Arena.de: Do you have certain plans for your future (studies, work, …)?
Orly: Getting my college degree and looking for a job in the games industry.
WoW-Arena.de: Thank you for the Interview.