Khuna plays rogue in World of Warcraft, participated in on- and offline tournaments and currently holds place two on the Cyclone 3v3 ladder with his team XMAS no presents GG. He is considered to be one of the best rogue players during Cataclysm and with his team one of the favorites for qualifying during the EU regionals. We talked about his attitude, RMP as a comp, coaching players and the upcoming tournaments. Enjoy.

Hildegard: Welcome to the "Forscherliga Interview" Khuna. As you may know the first question is always the same. What did you eat today?

Khuna: haha nothing fancy just some pasta

Hildegard: Probably too early in the day, but I hoped someone from France would give me a more tasty answer. Can you cook?

Khuna: Not really, I just make basic things to eat fast

Hildegard: When we first talked you had a piece of art, probably 18th century, as Skype avatar. Are you interested in art?

Khuna: ROFL. No, not at all. It was just a private joke with friends. haha sorry

Hildegard: Well let's get to World of Warcraft. Xandyn told me that the arena tournament in Korea would be played with S9 gear. Isn't it more likely to feature S12 MoP gear and rules?

Khuna: Well I knew from a friend few month ago that the tournament realm will be played in season 9 gear. I have no clue for the tournament in Korea since it is gonna be in the end of 2012 and we don't know yet when mop will be released, but I am pretty sure the regionals will be in season 9 gear.

Hildegard: Which could be a pretty big disaster, as the meta game will change a lot with the next addon.

Khuna: Yeah, but we've seen that happen before like the ESL tournament in 3.0 back in TBC so I don’t know

Hildegard: Your team is pretty confident to qualify for the Korean tournament, if I am not mistaken.

Khuna: Well it will all depend on how RMP will be on the TR with season 9 gear and the current patch. We were really confident to qualify for last BlizzCon because RMP was a really strong setup, but it got nerfed right before the regionals and it became a pretty bad one. Things have changed now, though. RMP might be good with the 25% ms buff in season 9 gear.

Hildegard: During many BlizzCon tournaments RMP was hard-countered and lost although a lot of players expected the RMPs to perform very well. SK US and Loaded Black come to mind, as well as Hydra/Kalimist/Another or your team during the qualifiers. RMP is probably the comp that was played the most over the course of the arena, but never won it.

Khuna: Well I think RMP was a really strong setup over the seasons. It was bad sometimes but I think the main fact is that very few team mastered it. It is a pretty hard comp to master because you need to play as a team and not as an individual player to succeed. Unlike you can do when you play a warlock comp. I play RMP since season 4(TBC) and I improved my game play on this comp pretty much every time I played it. There are a lot of little things, that you can improve to be more efficient for your team, while it is more about individual skills when you play comp with a warlock per example.

The strength of RMP is the damage you can pull out, if you do a great work with your partner in a short amount of time before your cooldowns run out. RMP was pretty bad in season 9 in a tournament play mainly because all the LSD were just stacking tons of resilience ( 1400+ back then ) to turtle until the RMP runs out of cooldowns and win eventually. The main reason why Buttonbashers were so successful was because their rogue was playing with 700 resilience ( was really low back then ) while their mage was leading swaps with his priest. That’s also why the nerf on TR affected us that much, because it was directly a nerf to the rogue's damage.

RMP was a bit different in season 8, though, because rogue wasn’t really dealing damage (with imp gouge etc ) he was more like a "stun bot" for his mage (with a lot of haste) and priest to kill people. It was a really fun comp to play back then, but unfortunately all the LSD could just wear 1400 resilience and been almost unkillable. I still think it was possible to beat this comp. We beat Enigmz, Fabio and Hrk as RMP when we were not even good. Our priest wasn't really good and Xandyn was far from being as good as now in WotLK, too. I just think RMP is a great and solid comp since many years but people just aren't good enough at it.

Hildegard: Can you give an example of what separates RMPs that perform very well on ladders from those that can win tournaments?

Khuna: I don't think you have to be good to perform as RMP in a ladder environment. I don't think you have to be good to perform well on the ladder no matter what your comp is.

You could just beat a lot of better teams and get a rank 1 easily by just having good pve gear and zerging people down or dodging people or queuing when no good team queues, like a lot of people did.

Hildegard: The next NAO tournament is in June. Can you play on those servers without lag issues?

Khuna: Yes, it's fine, I mean I lag a bit, which is quite annoying to backstab, ambushes, garrote or even sometimes hit my target, but I can still play with it. I don't think we would lose any game because of lag. Maybe 1 out of 10 or so. I just need to get used to it again, but obviously I am maybe playing in 80% of my capacities because of it because its harder to do things like prekick etc

Hildegard: Does "prekick" mean you kick before you see the cast bar, because you know the cast is coming?

Khuna: Exactly.

Hildegard: That of course is affected by lag a lot. On tournaments everyone is more stressed than on ladders, but your voice always sounds very calm, compared to other players. How come?

Khuna: I don't know. I used to stress a bit when I played against good teams for the first time a lot of years ago, but I just stopped stressing very fast. I am pretty much never stressed, even during the regionals. I can't explain it. I just don't stress, haha Maybe it has something to do with self confidence. I am trying to get my team pumped on Skype in a tournament play by talking loud, for example, butI always have a clear mind. I think that might help me to be good, because I always know what is going to come in the next few seconds. I can always think clear and it probably helps me to be more consistent.

Hildegard: That probably only happens because you feel in control. Means you are self-confident to the extent, that you perform best, even if you lose?

Khuna: It never happened to me since a long time to not know why I lost a game, so I don't really panic either when I do. Its either because of me, my team mates or a bad strategy (or game balance, which is very rare). I am self confident, yes, but I can admit my mistakes. I think you can't be a good player in any video game if you don't admit your mistakes and learn from it. Tell yourself, that you are at your best, too, because you can always improve. Every time I look at myself playing a few months ago I feel like I wasn't that good because I always improve.

The only time I raged or didn't know, what we could improve to win, were the few games I lost to triple dps or when I lost to rogue feral with vial, when vial was completely stupid. But I mean even if triple dps is close to impossible to beat for a certain comp, if they play it properly, I think it's overall a bad idea to cry and say, that you can't win. EVEN if its true. It's a way better attitude to adopt for me to try to play better even if we know we will probably loose but it is hard sometimes yea.

Hildegard: A very solid attitude of self-improvement, never giving up and working hard. Often players want to be good instead of constantly evolving and improving. How did you develop this attitude instead of seeing yourself as a genius?

Khuna: I think it is mainly because I started recording myself playing very early ( in the start of arenas pretty much ) so I could just watch myself and see what mistakes I did. When I saw that I did a mistake the very first thing I want to do is to never do it again. That is maybe because I am a perfectionist in everything I do.

Hildegard: What do you earn your living with?

Khuna: Well I don't really earn my living at the moment. The money I get is from everything related to WoWpretty much. I will have my own apartment in September and I think I can make a decent amount of money from WoW, if I try. I tried streaming before to see how much money I could make from it only and it was a really good amount. So I will start streaming way more when I’ll have my apartment and probably earn money from it and few other things related to wow.

Hildegard: It is no secret what those other things are. What always astonished me, was why players would pay for someone else playing a game for them. Do you have an explanation?

Khuna: Well I wouldn't personally do that, but a lot of people just care about what other people think about them. So they care about their rank in a video game. I don't really understand it to be honest but people do what they want

Hildegard: Did you ever encounter any player that was boosted at some time to perform well later?

Khuna: No, I don't think you can become any good if you ask other people to play for you instead of improving yourself. The only thing that could make you better is paying for lessons in my opinion.

Hildegard: Do you offer lessons?

Khuna: Yes, but not that much. I might do it more in the next few months, though.

Hildegard: How would that work? You check the interface/spec/gear and watch them playing?

Khuna: Well it could work in different ways. The most common one at the moment is just speaking with the persons that wants to learn about different aspects of the game or of their class in arena, in a certain composition etc.

It is sometimes also to play with them and tell them what they could improve, or to stream privately for them and explain them what you do and why you do that. Sometimes it is just helping them improving their UI or such things.

Hildegard: What I always thought would work really well was if someone was actually taken into a team. For example if you want to coach a rogue. Let your teammates play with him on the tournament realm and watch on stream. That would obviously be more costly, but pretty effective.

Khuna: Yes, some people actually pay other people to play with them and I think that is one of the best ways to improve.

Hildegard: How much does an hour of you coaching someone cost?

Khuna: Well at the moment it is something between 40€ and 50€, but I don't really do it that much like I said, like almost not at all.

Hildegard: So, moving on to some gossip. You ditched Hydra before playing with Xandyn and Zunniyaki. Why?

Khuna: Haha, well it's a long story. Ryan is my friend and I really enjoyed playing with him a lot on tr, was great fun. When we started he was kinda rusty on disc, but he improved really fast.

I chose to go with Xandyn and Zunniyaki in the end of the tournament realm mainly because I felt like we were stronger as RMP. Back then Xandyn understood the mage class, the RMP comp and the expansion way more than Raiku . Also Zunniyaki is an insanely good priest and we played a lot together before, too.

Hildegard: How did Ryan (Hydra) react? I guess he was not used to getting ditched.

Khuna: Well I saw him on regionals and talked to him before and it seemed like it was cool. Anyways, we didn't end up winning, because RMP got nerfed to the ground right before regionals so he didn't miss anything . We both had great fun at the regionals, so it was cool.

Hildegard: Is rank one title on Cyclone still worth something?

Khuna: I don't know. We don't really try anymore. Zunniyaki broke his fingers, Hydra's team is way above us because they queued really early in the season a lot more than us. The TR is coming soon.

I don't really care about rank 1 but I know Xandyn does. So maybe we will do it.

Hildegard: I think a lot of people would like to see the ladder matches of you team vs. Hydras team.

Khuna: We met Hydra's team on this GameSense tournament and ended up winning 3 - 1 cause we fucked up one game. Hydra doesn't play with Mir anymore anyway. I know Mir and Raiku are playing with a priest named Salv, but I am not afraid of them. If we loose a mirror that means we didn't play good enough, nothing else.

Hildegard: Which teams on the tournament realm do you think will compete for the top spots? Are you afraid of any of them?

Khuna: I can't really say which team will compete for the top spots on the tournament realm, yet. Simply because nobody can know, which comp will be good or not with the new patch and the old gear. I think PHD, TSG, ShadowCleave, MLS, and maybe RMP/RLS might be good, but we can't know for sure, yet. I am not afraid of anyone. I never was, even when I met a better team, than mine. I always think, that if I lose it is my fault or the fault of my team, not because the team against us is too good.

Hildegard: Is your current gear on the Arsenal tailored for 3v3 RMP?

Khuna: Yes my gear for RMP is around 4K resilience. PVE gear isn't that good for rogues in RMP, other than legendary of course, which are completely retarded. You would just take too much and don’t do that much more damage, because you can't take the hemo/recuperate spec as RMP.

Burst damage is also way more important, than consistent damage in RMP. Sometimes I don't do damage at all for more than ten seconds when playing this comp.

Even if rogue is a class, that has cooldowns to avoid damage, it isn't like a mage. You end up tanking damage in stuns, so you can't wear too few resilience.

I am only speaking about RMP, though. The hemo/recuperate spec is completely retarded in RLS for example. You are just unkillable even with low resilience.

Hildegard: You use the crit pvp trinket however, that astonished me a bit. Wouldn't other pieces be a better option?

Khuna: Well I don't have any other pieces on this rogue and crit is the most important start after AP in RMP. 3800 / 4100 resilience is enough don't need the resilience trinket.

Hildegard: The NAO tournament is well accepted and most participants agree that it is made professional. The GameSense tournament however was horrible, Athenes EOI Charity tournament didn't look too professional either. Why is no one able to make something similar in Europe?

Khuna: Because the NAO tournament is organized by more people, which are way more professional. They also took much more time to organize it and they are just more serious about it.

I don't think it is a continent problem or anything. I just think the people working on NAO put much more effort into it and they are doing a really good job cheers to them. They also had better commentators.

Hildegard: We come to the end of the interview and I always ask for a best of five list. As I know few things about the person behind the screen I chose something from WoW this time. Your five favorite arena team names are?

Khuna: Rofl this is so hard, those are French. You probably don't understand them, haha, they are private jokes with my homies

moha le serpent

jsuis un con

nettoyage en règle

plus the one i had on TR with Xandyn and Zunniyaki:

SURPRISE EFFECT

We took that name because we wanted to try to wear full pve gear before anyone else. Back then every mage was playing with high resilience. We wanted to pop every cooldown in the opener with full pve gear on mage and zerg the opposite shaman to SURPRISE EFFECT them during the regionals and make them cry haha.

Hildegard: Nice one. Thank you for the interview Khuna. Any shout outs?

Khuna: Thank you for interviewing me, yeah shout out to all of my french homies Flubbah, Alexis, Charlie, Cuentanamo, Shawir, Chubz, Skenz, Rod. To my partners Xandyn and Zunniyaki and to pretty much everyone on my Skype contact list, because I almost only have people I like on Skype

Also thanks to everyone supporting me. I am sorry, if I didn't stream that much lately. I will stream way more on the TR or around September.

Links:

Livestream: http://www.athenelive.com/KhunaX_5206X

Arsenal: http://eu.battle.net...un%C3%A5/simple

Khuna 5: http://www.warcraftm...w.php/?id=213277X_5210X

Khuna 4: http://www.warcraftm...w.php/?id=207657X_5212X

Former X_5221X

Xandyn: http://www.arenajunk...ew-with-xandyn/X_5223X

Kajn (German): http://eu.battle.net...opic/3313062248X_5225X

Hydra: http://www.arenajunk...iten-aka-hydra/X_5227X

Yiska (German): http://forscherliga-...pic.php?&t=8446