Mir’s RMP wins the first Endless 3v3 Tournament
Endless.gg is currently the most hyped TBC private server and a huge success for their crew who worked hard to create a worthy place for PvP lovers. The excellent player base (around 5-7k peak-time) attracted a lot of TBC veteran PvPers and former AT gladiators to compete.
After such success amongst the PvPers, Endless announced at the end of the season their intention to host their first 3v3 arena tournament. It took place on the 6th of June 2020, after a week of qualifiers.
On Friday 24th of April 2020, Endless officially announced the release of T5 content and, much to the PvP community’s delight, a potential Arena Tournament at the end of Season 1. After a few days, on Monday 11th of May 2020, the server confirmed the tournament announcing an eye-watering prize pool of $1500, splitting $900, $450, and $150 respectively to the top 3 places.
Endless’ Arena Tournament Rules
To qualify, players must have had at least 70% of their team’s total games played and their rating needed to be within 150 points of the team’s rating.
Format
– Best of 5 games double-elimination playoff bracket,
– Best of 7 games Grand Final without winner bracket advantage.
Gear
– The tournament was played in S3 gear and selected PvE off pieces/trinkets
(Arena-Tournament/Endless PTR gear)
Team Compositions
– No double healer or triple DPS comps (Dreamstate druid regarded as a healer).
– No swapping comp/race. Once the tournament started the players were locked into the team they qualified with. Gear and talent change was permitted, though the server considered that this rule might change for future tournaments.
– Each team had a roster of 3 players.
Maps
– The first game of each series would always be at Nagrand Arena.
– The losing team was able to choose which map the next game is played on.
The qualifying teams consisted of very high achieving TBC players. This tournament also marked the return of old Arena-Tournament heroes such as Pinklal (Lock) and Roudy (SP), who put praiseworthy effort to shake the rust off and compete as Shadowplay.
After a week of competition, the following 8 teams qualified for the tournament:
- rogues do too much damage (RMP by Mir, Leekzy, Uzb)
- zug zug (Shadowplay by Daylie, Pinklal, Roudy)
- im tired bro (RMP by Rivah, Avishan, Xerio)
- kekw (RLP by Voidax, Pretender, Marionetka)
- Manbracket Superteam (HLD by Powerscoper, Peterparkour, Klimp)
- our comp is bad (WLD by Tazar, Azie, Gucci)
- romas mom (Shatterplay by Sladewilson, Andryoushka, Juststunthat)
- ok lets (RLP Paypays, Asmo, Widzy)
More news
The tournament
Cast by Blazefuryx and Jerry, the tournament was live-streamed on Twitch and attracted more than 700 viewers during the semi-finals and grand finals.
We cover only the finals, but below you can see how the rounds before them evolved:
The finals: RMP Mirrors
Most of the tournament’s viewers were already familiar with the two finalist teams who were very prominent during season 1.
After a long period of being rank 1, Avishan Rivah and Xeriyo yielded to Mir, Leekzy, and Uzbeki. Mir had been playing RMD with Mirok, his 2v2 druid with whom he also ended up ranked 1 in that bracket, but changed his team a week before the season ended.
Having already met during the winner semifinals, Rivah’s RMP lost the BO5 to Mir’s RMP with a score of 3-1. However, Avishan, Rivah, and Xeriyo found their way back to the finals by winning the loser bracket finals against Pretender, Voidax, Marionetka’s RLP.
The finals
The final games were intense because the community had already had the opportunity to watch these two teams compete for the rank 1 title on the live server as well as in the semi-finals of this tournament. Each match was very close and both RMPs displayed their skill in terms of good survivability, cooldown management, and come back recoveries.
During the BO7 finals, Avishan’s RMP won the first game by killing the opposing mage. A sap on Rivah offered a good opener to Mir’s RMP, as the strategy is mostly based on killing the mage for both teams. Avishan had to cover Rivah by opening on Mir with a cheap shot which exposed him to Leekzy’s sheep right after his Kidney. Xeriyo dispelled that sheep when Avishan left combat and this gave them an extra opener (garrote) on Leekzy who never managed to get any CC off after it (kick sheep / vanish garrote). Leekzy’s block was quickly dispelled and a second vanish garrote was used to finish him off, forming the score to 0-1
In the second game, the rogues decided to play differently on each opposing mage. Mir opted for a cheap shot, expose armor, and vanish garrote, while Avishan started with a cheap shot chained with shadow step kidney shot right after Leekzy’s blink, resulting to the latter’s trinket, followed by a vanish garrote. Going for Expose armor is a good strategy but the downside that it can be removed by ice block which is what happened in that game. Mir immediately reapplied it with a second vanish garrote to keep the pressure at maximum and both mages died a few seconds later. The RP 2v2 mirror was close but also ended in favor of Avishan’s RMP. (0-2)
A start as such meant that Mir’s RMP had to be cautious as another loss would have put them in a very difficult position. They managed to win the third game by setting up an insane 4 seconds burst to bring down Rivah’s hp from 96% to 0%, inclusive of Uzbeki’s mass dispel which was almost shadow step kicked by Avishan. This allowed them to come back in the race for the tournament’s first place, forming a score of 1-2.
The fourth game took place at Ruins of Lordaeron and started with an extremely intense opener from Avishan and Rivah on Mir who was down to 40% before the kidney shot. Uzbeki saved Mir, allowing him to survive without using any trinkets. They finally came back to 2-2 after a full sheep on Xeriyo, who trinketed Mir’s Blind at the beginning, and a trinket from Mir on second KS to assist Leekzy’s burst to finish off Rivah.
After this, the teams were tied in this bo7 grand final with a score of 2-2.
Both priests shone in the fifth game which was also very close and both mages nearly died.
Xeriyo pre-mass dispelled Leekzy’s ice block and Avishan’s RMP did their best to cover Rivah’s own block (blanket counterspell before blocking, followed by blind as an interrupt on mass dispel, followed by a shadow step kick). Uzbeki faked his mass dispel on step kick, an extremely smart move which allowed him to recast it safely, offering his partners the window to finish off Rivah. During Rivah’s ice block, Xeriyo took a counterspell on his Flash heal which shut down all Rivah’s chances to survive after Uzbeki’s mass dispel. The score was then 3-2.
The sixth game was decisive and quite similar to the previous ones with both mages dying due to insane burst pressure.
The Rogue Priest mirror started with similar conditions for both teams but Mir managed to apply significant pressure with damage while Xeriyo wasn’t playing it safe, exposing his partner to death and forcing Avishan to use kidney shot defensively with a gouge to escape. Finally, Mir got a chance to restealth while Avishan did not find this opportunity and finally died Mir’s RMP had won the tournament with a score of 4-2 in the finals.
Mir showcased this game in his last video: Mir II
These intense RMP mirrors which turned a 0-2 around into 4-2 allowed Mir, Leekzy and Uzbeki to further establish their position as the best 3v3 team in the current TBC server scene. In addition, it demonstrated how strong this arena combination is in the game, which also explains its popularity.
It’s really nice that people actually are able to pull out these different starts, and gearing, and talent setups that you woudln’t see on ladder because that’s how tournament should be in my opinion. There’s a difference between being good in ladder, and in tourneys so… it was fun.
Leekzy
3v3 Tournament Winner Mage
With such an event, Endless has proven its potential to become the greatest TBC server that has existed during the past decade and we will be looking forward to seeing the upcoming tournaments.
