Official PvP Beta Feedback Thread- ARCHIVED

[Saint_Kai]

Oh, I can give them a run for their money, too (300/200 W/L at the moment). But the outcome is rarely in doubt.

You know, I used to play World of Warcraft, and Blizzard game devs used to do the same thing. The playerbase was telling them for years that Paladin was weak, especially in pvp. They kept denying it, or not saying anything about it, and not making any kind of changes to it... for years. It wasn't until an official ranking later, where out of all 6 classes, only a single paladin made it anywhere close to the top 10... and he was in the top 50. A single paladin in the top 50, which kinda embarrassed Blizzard to start making some changes to Paladin to make it stronger in PvP. Though it was still kinda weak when I left the game. It was partially that weakness that made me, and many others, leave.

I liked being a paladin. I wanted to be the holy knight that smites evil and protects and defends the team. But the only thing the paladin could do, was wear cloth and stand in the back and spam 2 healing spells. Why cloth and not armor? Because cloth had the healing bonuses on it. Warriors were the tanks, and Paladins couldn't approach anywhere near their level. And their damage output sucked. The whole sad tale of the Blizzard Paladin should stand as an object lesson to any development team on the importance of balancing their classes.

Somehow, I guess, I kinda hoped game devs on smaller games like this, who leave big companies to be closer to their players, would be more communicative and understanding when the playerbase is overwhelmingly trying to tell them something.

[Darkhorse]

Oh, I can give them a run for their money, too (300/200 W/L at the moment). But the outcome is rarely in doubt.

You know, I used to play World of Warcraft, and Blizzard game devs used to do the same thing. The playerbase was telling them for years that Paladin was weak, especially in pvp. They kept denying it, or not saying anything about it, and not making any kind of changes to it... for years. It wasn't until an official ranking later, where out of all 6 classes, only a single paladin made it anywhere close to the top 10... and he was in the top 50. A single paladin in the top 50, which kinda embarrassed Blizzard to start making some changes to Paladin to make it stronger in PvP. Though it was still kinda weak when I left the game. It was partially that weakness that made me, and many others, leave.

I liked being a paladin. I wanted to be the holy knight that smites evil and protects and defends the team. But the only thing the paladin could do, was wear cloth and stand in the back and spam 2 healing spells. Why cloth and not armor? Because cloth had the healing bonuses on it. Warriors were the tanks, and Paladins couldn't approach anywhere near their level. And their damage output sucked. The whole sad tale of the Blizzard Paladin should stand as an object lesson to any development team on the importance of balancing their classes.

Somehow, I guess, I kinda hoped game devs on smaller games like this, who leave big companies to be closer to their players, would be more communicative and understanding when the playerbase is overwhelmingly trying to tell them something.

I'm guessing you didn't see the post where I acknowledged that out of the 3 classes, War Mages are on the bottom of the pile (both from a anecdotal perspective and a statistical perspective) and that we are planning on making balance changes in the near future...

[Saint_Kai]

I'm guessing you didn't see the post where I acknowledged that out of the 3 classes, War Mages are on the bottom of the pile (both from a anecdotal perspective and a statistical perspective) and that we are planning on making balance changes in the near future...

My apologies if I missed that, but I didn't see such a post in this thread. All I saw from you was that your mage was 14-2 and thus it was a bit hasty to call War Mage "broken." One might gather, from all the feedback here, that War Mage is indeed "broken" for pvp. Something is broken, when it doesn't work right, and War Mage getting repeatedly creamed would seem to qualify.

The only other possible post I saw on the topic was acknowledge there was balance issues at very high might, of which no particular amount was ascribed to "high." I'm currently sitting at 13k might, and I can say there is a problem at my level.

But I am glad to hear the acknowledgment that the Devs recognize that War Mage is suffering greatly, and that changes are coming. I just hope you can understand the frustration that comes with seeing items available from pvp, especially some that are limited beta-only, and so trying to get them and yet it goes so slow since you lose more fights than you should. I'm not sure what level your mage is, or how much might it has, but I'd encourage you to continue to pvp up in the 10k+ might range and see how well you do, to get more of a personal feeling for what War Mages are suffering through. It isn't fun, and thus people get upset.

[Bj_Knows]

Subject
Multiple Enchants

This may have been said, but a few suggestions:
- Smoke bomb should allow for spell dodge to avoid it if it is a spell, or dodge/block if it is a physical ability.

THIS is one of the skills I hope gets nerfed by allowing resist or block/dodge to affect it. Makes no sense for a powerful knockback to be totally unavoidable. At the very least allow status resist to prevent it.

Defend gives you instant Knockback Resist +50%, each Enchant Rank gives you +3%. One strategy is to Enchant a single item to Rank 6 or +18%, in combination with Defend, you get Knockback Resist 68%.

If you are Defending when you are hit with a Knockback Attack, the attack will extend Defend's casting time. Since Defend is a During Casting Time Affect not a Finished Casting Time Affect this extension will include Defend's Knockback Resist +50%, Status Resist +20%, Block +20%, Dodge +10%, and Attack Reduction 50% ( I *hate* it when Scarabs do this to my Justicar ).

I would love to see v2.0 add multiple Enchants to each item, so I could have Status Resist/ Knockback Resist and Nature Damage/ Luck on items.

[Possessed_Mithrid]

I would love to see v2.0 add multiple Enchants to each item, so I could have Status Resist/ Knockback Resist and Nature Damage/ Luck on items.

That would be awesome but it could make for some really long fights.....

[Wolfessdeath]

Oh, I can give them a run for their money, too (300/200 W/L at the moment). But the outcome is rarely in doubt.

You know, I used to play World of Warcraft, and Blizzard game devs used to do the same thing. The playerbase was telling them for years that Paladin was weak, especially in pvp. They kept denying it, or not saying anything about it, and not making any kind of changes to it... for years. It wasn't until an official ranking later, where out of all 6 classes, only a single paladin made it anywhere close to the top 10... and he was in the top 50. A single paladin in the top 50, which kinda embarrassed Blizzard to start making some changes to Paladin to make it stronger in PvP. Though it was still kinda weak when I left the game. It was partially that weakness that made me, and many others, leave.

I liked being a paladin. I wanted to be the holy knight that smites evil and protects and defends the team. But the only thing the paladin could do, was wear cloth and stand in the back and spam 2 healing spells. Why cloth and not armor? Because cloth had the healing bonuses on it. Warriors were the tanks, and Paladins couldn't approach anywhere near their level. And their damage output sucked. The whole sad tale of the Blizzard Paladin should stand as an object lesson to any development team on the importance of balancing their classes.

Somehow, I guess, I kinda hoped game devs on smaller games like this, who leave big companies to be closer to their players, would be more communicative and understanding when the playerbase is overwhelmingly trying to tell them something.

..What? As a dev from the PvP World of Warcraft team BC-Cata, I really hope you only played during BC because since then(it being the first expansion to start balancing out hybrids, lots of kinks to work out.) your post for that is everywhere! Between healing, dmg, and tanking.. Tanking of course is irrelevant in PvP if you're talking about arena, which is really the only truly skill based PvP. Anyways, holy paladins did well in PvP for BC, especially with 5's being the main skilled bracket that the PvP tournaments were based off of. Class balancing is complicated, mostly because the playerbase will yell for this and that to be catered to and it's actually very hard to know which ones to listen to. The best information comes from playing yourself in the brackets and, in WoWs case listen to the high ranked arena players. Which, Blizzard does far less of now but does indeed cater to people like you who try to think they know what they're talking about but really don't..

Anyways, back on topic! The issue with going by ladder and what not currently on BoH is the matchmaking system will match you with up to a 12k might difference, that means the highest might players will almost always get matched with someone with a lot lower might.. Giving them a pretty good advantage from the get-go, and I still see a lot of high might WMs with 2h's for some odd reason, hint hint.(They don't have a clue!) But now that you've mentioned you're using your PVE spec for PvP, I can really see the issue you're having. Saying that a ton of people are saying WM needs buffed does not make it so, because as shown the populace can be pretty un-knowledgeable about the very game they play regardless of time spent playing it. I have not once when facing a mage see ice shield proc less than 5 times in a match, but have seen it pop up a crazy amount of times. So I suggest an internal cooldown to it, and perhaps a change that makes it so it either wears off with time, dots ticks remove it, or dot ticks do full dmg through it.

You talk about mages needing to be 'lucky' to win PvP, well the current PvP is completely about RNG, and mages are the kings of RNG and therefore should excel, but the issue is Justicars have so much knockback power(Mostly because of Heroic will practically resetting their abilities.) Now your issue with facing that justicar? Not only are you playing in a PvE spec, but their bleeds and knockback power is indeed a bit crazy. You went to cast a 'quick' spell with their heroic will up, KNOWING that it reduces their cast time by 50%. What could you have done? Defended it, forcing him to cast into your defend since anything he uses will be under .50 seconds, unless of course he defends as well. Which is a plus for you since now it's down and your icy grasp is half a second closer to coming off cooldown for later.

Certain fights you will have absolutely NO chance to win because of RNG, and certain fights your opponent will have NO chance to win because of RNG as well. It's a bad way to base the PvP off such a thing, because then there's really no way to tell who's actually a better/knowledgeable player, is there? As forementioned, another issue is getting matched up with up to 12k might differences which is absolutely nuts. The queue system needs a lot of work, not only closer might matching but being able to chat while in the queue and do other things so 'waiting' for queues isn't as much of an issue.

I cannot tell you what you could've done better in a match unless I was there, matched vs you in particular since that's the only way to see unless you can record the fights yourself. There are many problems with each of the classes, and one of my previous posts has only started to breach the subject on balancing so far, but I highly doubt we'll see real changes to class balance for some time and I doubt even more they will be proper balancing if they listen to the masses.

[Saint_Kai]

So, Wolf, you have no experience playing as a War Mage, especially in pvp. And even the Devs have acknowledged the problem, so that makes you the odd man out.

Yes, I know I am PvE specced. But honestly, it should not make that much of a difference since I have a wide variety of skills and am dual-specced. If anything, I'd probably gain just a little bit of damage to Frozen Shards and Fire Blast if I re-specced. But even that doesn't matter because you have PvP-specced War Mages telling you they are getting creamed vs. intelligent players... or at least ones that know their IWIN combo macros.

By the way, I played original WoW, before any expansions. If you didn't play back then, then you wouldn't know anything about how badly the Paladin sucked back then. 3 skills, one each for tanking, healing, and damage. But only the healing tree made you effective at what you did. And even then, you only had 2 healing spells, and you only ever spammed one of them: Flash of Light. I should know. I was one of those paladins in raid after raid, spamming Flash of Light over and over and over for hours at a time. Wasn't fun.

[DnT_TheTaken]

I'm speaking as a near 13k might War Mage, with full T14 gear, the T16 pvp sword and a shield, and a roughly 300/200 win/lose ratio, so I believe I have some experience here. And let me just say, War Mage is broken for pvp. As in, it doesn't have a chance unless extreme luck goes our way (or our opponent isn't very skilled, which accounts for most of my wins).

This needs to be fixed, now, long before any pvp beta items go away, to give the war mages a chance at them. Venan chose to put pvp into this game, so they have a duty to balance the classes.

Now to explain, in detail, the precise reasons, I will give all Shadow Walkers and Justicars access to the knowledge of their IWIN buttons. It's a sequence of skills that ensures you rack up big damage and put the opponent in a situation where they have very little hope of winning. This works amazingly well on War Mage, though as I don't play the other classes, I can't say how they do against each other.

Justicar
You probably want to land Seismic Slash first, although if you can land Brutal Strike, that is the better combo opener. If you feel you can't land either of those, open with Stunning Blow. To do this, wait for your opponent to use up their defend, and have their stuns/delays be down or unable to respond in time. It's okay if they hit you quite a bit first, since that builds up your vengeance and applies stagger to them. Then go: Seismic Slash > Brutal Strike > Wound, and then see how much time is left before they can respond. If you can fit in another attack, good. But if not, use Heroic Will and start the cycle again. If you need to, use your stun to keep your combo going, but if you can save it until the end for another Brutal Strike, that is best. This is because Brutal knocks you back 0.5 seconds, while Seismic knocks you back 1.25 seconds, leaving the opponent basically unable to respond. By the time they can do something, you've easily knocked 15k off their health... and there isn't any coming back from that much. Also, by this time they have 2 or three wound debuffs, meaning they are taking an easy 1k damage a second or so.

In short, it is the Justicars knock back abilities combined with heavy damage (even with a 1 hand weapon!) that allows them to rip an opponent to shreds. Two knockbacks, a stun, and a move that can make them instantly usable again. If you can delay the fight long enough, Heroic Will may come up again, sealing your victory.

Shadow Walker
Shadow Walkers, your combo is: Ensnare > Defend > Caltrops > Piercing Strike. That's an easy 4-5k damage, which may not be as damaging as Justicar, but they have something to even it out: Reflexive Strike. Speed is king in pvp, and spamming this move whenever it is up, means an easy 1-2k damage ever second. Also, your caltrops dot is ticking for 500 to 1k damage every second. Reflexive Strike is also useful for removing buffs like Ice Shield. Now, after your combo is done, you generally want to look for an opening to use smoke bomb, which will allow you another piercing strike and another couple of Reflexive Strikes. If you have Riposte, which you should, then defend against damaging attacks and your defend will instantly finish, meaning no lost time. With Riposte and Reflexive Strike, your damage per second will be insane. I've seen some Shadow Walkers use poison attacks like Toxic Blade to fairly good success, but most use Piercing Strike. The advantage of the former is the magical damage, which most don't gear to defend against.

In short, the Shadow Walker's incredible speed and damage means they can eviscerate opponents fairly easily. Reflexive Strike, in particular, doesn't leave you as vulnerable, since it gives you an easy way to set yourself up to see what your opponent does, then react to it .2 seconds later. It's a strong method of controlling the fight and giving you a steady damage rate.

War Mages
So what can War Mages do against this? Not much. Icy Grasp is nice, and it's usually my first move. I get a weak slow out of it, and it allows me to land Incinerate, which will hopefully start a burning effect (about half the time). And then I can usually get off a fire blast before a Justicar or SW gets off their next move, but then I'm vulnerable. Why? Because our cast times for most of our abilities are insanely long, compared to everyone else. I can't use Ice Lance or Incinerate much because that opens me up to Seismic or Smoke bomb. And stuff like Brutal Strike and Piercing Strike will land before that. So, yay, even if I get off a big attack, I've usually taken more damage than I've dished out. I use a Sword and Shield, because a staff would just make me too friggin' slow. By the time I landed spells, half my HP would be gone. I've only seen a couple of War Mages do real well in pvp, and only one used a staff. And her win/lose ratio paled next to a 1h/shield war mage that does fairly well.

So, as I said, Incinerate and Ice Lance are out, and the latter is our only pushback move, which means it rarely comes into play. And it's only 0.5 second pushback instead of the 1.25 of Justicars (although their Brutal Strike is more comparable). Against Shadow Walkers, instead of pushing them back, they have time to defend which leads to a dodge which completes their defend timer; so instead of pushing them back, I've only sped them up. So that leaves me with Icy Grasp and Time Void, both 5 second recast(TV doesn't even really stun, just interrupts, so limited usefulness). Fire Blast and Frozen Shards are my only two real attacks, then, and even Frozen shards can be a bit too long to cast (too long for speed SW, and longer than Seismic Slash and Stunning Blow).

So how does a War Mage win? Luck. A LOT of it. It requires my flame dots to land, and stack up to three. They supposedly have a 75% chance to land, but I've gone through 10-20 castings of fire spells and not seen one. Also need luck with ice shield procs (a lot of them), and perhaps a bit of luck with Snap casts and random freezes... which have low percent chances of happening. Luck can also happen if I dodge or block a lot, or if I resist their debuffs and stuns. I have 10.5% chance via enchants to resist debuffs, but it is still not something to count on. So whereas Shadow Walkers and Justicars can win with a fair bit of skill and a little luck, War Mages need a LOT of luck to win. We need misses and procs by the shit ton, because most of our spells can be repeatedly blocked or stopped due to cast time.

It gets so bad, that I've seen many War Mages just outright give up in PvP. They enter combat and then go afk, leaving their toon to auto-attack and lose. They know they can't win, so at least they can get some tokens for minimal work, right? War Mages are about the only class I've seen do that. How sad is that? That they know they don't stand a chance, so they just plan to give up in advance. How many of the top PvPs are War Mages? Maybe I'd guess there might be 1 in there.

Now that I've highlighted the problems, how do we fix things? I could ask for Shadow Walkers and Justicars to be weakened, but nobody likes their classes nerfed. So the only solution is to buff War Mages. How? Here are some suggestions, at least several of which will be needed:

#1. Decrease cast times for Incinerate and Ice Lance. It's ludicrous how long they take, which means in pvp they are barely usable, since at best, they will simply be blocked (when opponent defends, who has plenty of time). At worst, they leave the war mage extremely vulnerable to stuns/knockbacks/even more damaging moves that take less time to do. I'd suggest lower base cast time to 1 second.

#2. Increase proc chance of snap cast to mirror Riposte more closely. Instead of a paltry 2/4/6%, go 10/20/30% at least, if not the 20/35/50% of Riposte. For a tier 4 skill, the proc chance is pathetic.

#3. Increase proc chance of flame dot from 75% to 100%, and increase damage. That means that if it isn't blocked or resisted, it lands. When Shadow Walker and Justicars DoTs can do much, much more and land much, much easier, there is an extreme disparity.

#4. Increase Fire Blast damage from 40/50/60% to 50/75/100%. Or alternatively, lower recast to 0.5 seconds. This is to bring it more inline with Reflexive Strike, as a move a mage can use to actually get some damage out and help control the fight a bit better.

#5. Increase the Freeze chance of Deep Freeze from 3/6/9%, to something a bit higher.Like 10/20/30% chance. This gives ice mages more of a chance.

#6. Increase pushback of Ice Lance to 1 second. 0.5 second pushback for a spell that takes so long is a joke.

Now, obviously, doing all these would make War Mages overpowered. Pick and choose about 2 or 3 of these. I'd personally like the first 3 as the most balancing. And all of these would just involve going in and modifying a few numbers. Should be relatively easy.

We are in the PvP BETA, right? Make some changes to War Mages and see how it plays out. Do War Mages get overpowered? Nerf their abilities back down a tad. But if they finally manage to be able to put up a fight, then the BETA will have succeeded in it's mission.

If a developer puts PvP in a game, they have a responsibility to make sure the classes are balanced, so each class has roughly equal chance of winning. But when one class can easily and repeatedly lose to lesser gear players with 2k less might than them, something is wrong.

Devs, please acknowledge this and fix the problem, above all else. Don't let the Beta end with War Mages so disadvantaged in terms of tokens won. They'll miss out on a chance for a pvp beta sword or a pvp beta background.

If justicars did what you said up there, they would Lose more than win, you have obviously never played a justicar, and if you get beat by that rotation then you need some better practice. I stopped reading after that since your justicar info was bogus I assumed everything else would be. I have currently faced 4 mages that can consistently beat me, and they all seem to have different rotations than the vast majority of wms. The vast majority of wms I fight are still 2h. And the 1h o fight are still aoe Pve specced in a 1v1 environment. Kai I have fought you, and you fall into that category. The problem is, people are crying about how broken wms are, so they will get buffed and be unstoppable. I agree they are the weakest class, but they only need a slight adjustment to be balanced in the currently RNG based PvP.

Justicars and sws are only balanced because of rng, and that usually seems to go the sws way. One dodge/riposte will ruin any kb chain a justi can throw. 0 dodges and the justi wins. End of story.

[Saint_Kai]

So, you're saying the combo of Seismic > Brutal > Wound > Stunning Blow > Brutal > Heroic Will > Repeat" is bogus? Obviously, it doesn't have to be that particular order, as I have seen some variation (and depends on how much time the opponent has left on their pushback). Some Justi's like to toss in Radiant Light as a quick move to add to the wound stack, and it also depends on circumstance. But I have seen this combo more often than not, and everyone else here who has fought a Justicar can attest to it. The important part is to land Seismic at a time when their defend is down, to get the maximum benefit. If I can get Defend up to intercept Seismic, then I only get a half second pushback, and any followup attacks are cut in half or blocked/dodged. I notice some Justicars toss out Stunning Blow first, perhaps to get the target to defend against it, and then throw in Seismic.

Hell, even if we want to toss the whole idea of the combo, if you still aren't appreciative of it, we still have Wound. The incredibly powerful dot that stacks with practically every move the Justicar lands. Radiant Light lands for 50 damage, and bam, another 500-1k Wound on the stack.

But every Justicar that has beaten me, has done something to that effect. Stack Wound and do combo. Some pop Heroic Will off first, to get the first move off quickly. This tends to work best with a powerful 2h weapon. I can only tell you what I've seen, and what has beaten me.

Although lately, I've respecced, gotten familiar with the cooldowns and abilities of other classes, and began to plan around the combos. I save my defend for Seismic, for instance, and let other moves go through. I keep track of what the other player's cooldowns must be in my head, so I know when it is safe to cast a longer spell.

I'll even backtrack a bit, and say that WM doesn't need as big of a buff as I thought it did. But it still relies largely on getting a bunch of Ice Shield procs, or a proc of Snap Cast, or a random freeze or two. And the latter two have a 2-9% chance of happening depending on spec. Ice Shield is about the only reason WM's can win.

Edit: Let me also add, and repeat from earlier, that I don't know how Justicars and SW's do against each other. Since I don't have experience in that, I refrain from talking about it. But I do have experience as a War Mage fighting against them, so that is what I see. Yes, Justi's and SW's do depend on the RNG somewhat... but they don't need to base their whole strategy around it. WM's need to hope and pray Ice Shield procs enough, or that they dodge/block enough attacks while in mid-cast, or that they get a Snap Cast or two, or a random freeze or two, or that their weak flame dots actually land enough times to stack up to three (And I've gone 10+ casts of fire spells and not see them go up; no resist, just fails to proc).

Second Edit: Just fought you, DnT, so don't you dare tell me any differently. I just watched you apply Wound, and then go Seismic > Brutal > Heroic Will > Brutal and take off most of my life. You even fit in a stun at the end. I literally had no chance. Zero.

[DnT_TheTaken]

So, you're saying the combo of Seismic > Brutal > Wound > Stunning Blow > Brutal > Heroic Will > Repeat" is bogus? Obviously, it doesn't have to be that particular order, as I have seen some variation (and depends on how much time the opponent has left on their pushback). Some Justi's like to toss in Radiant Light as a quick move to add to the wound stack, and it also depends on circumstance. But I have seen this combo more often than not, and everyone else here who has fought a Justicar can attest to it. The important part is to land Seismic at a time when their defend is down, to get the maximum benefit. If I can get Defend up to intercept Seismic, then I only get a half second pushback, and any followup attacks are cut in half or blocked/dodged. I notice some Justicars toss out Stunning Blow first, perhaps to get the target to defend against it, and then throw in Seismic.

Hell, even if we want to toss the whole idea of the combo, if you still aren't appreciative of it, we still have Wound. The incredibly powerful dot that stacks with practically every move the Justicar lands. Radiant Light lands for 50 damage, and bam, another 500-1k Wound on the stack.

But every Justicar that has beaten me, has done something to that effect. Stack Wound and do combo. Some pop Heroic Will off first, to get the first move off quickly. This tends to work best with a powerful 2h weapon. I can only tell you what I've seen, and what has beaten me.

Although lately, I've respecced, gotten familiar with the cooldowns and abilities of other classes, and began to plan around the combos. I save my defend for Seismic, for instance, and let other moves go through. I keep track of what the other player's cooldowns must be in my head, so I know when it is safe to cast a longer spell.

I'll even backtrack a bit, and say that WM doesn't need as big of a buff as I thought it did. But it still relies largely on getting a bunch of Ice Shield procs, or a proc of Snap Cast, or a random freeze or two. And the latter two have a 2-9% chance of happening depending on spec. Ice Shield is about the only reason WM's can win.

Edit: Let me also add, and repeat from earlier, that I don't know how Justicars and SW's do against each other. Since I don't have experience in that, I refrain from talking about it. But I do have experience as a War Mage fighting against them, so that is what I see. Yes, Justi's and SW's do depend on the RNG somewhat... but they don't need to base their whole strategy around it. WM's need to hope and pray Ice Shield procs enough, or that they dodge/block enough attacks while in mid-cast, or that they get a Snap Cast or two, or a random freeze or two, or that their weak flame dots actually land enough times to stack up to three (And I've gone 10+ casts of fire spells and not see them go up; no resist, just fails to proc).

Second Edit: Just fought you, DnT, so don't you dare tell me any differently. I just watched you apply Wound, and then go Seismic > Brutal > Heroic Will > Brutal and take off most of my life. You even fit in a stun at the end. I literally had no chance. Zero.

Haha wow, you easily could have stopped that, you defended wrong, and then used time void up too soon and still left yourself open. You still have issues with your timing. You still have a lot of work to do. You let me trap you into that combo...q