Blizzcon championship 4th player?

[Terahertz]

Haven't been following WoW PvP much at all but when I checked out the Blizzcon livestream I saw that some teams had a 4th player sitting behind the computer while others had the same 3 players. What was the purpose of the 4th player? Substitute or something or like a coach that keeps track of cooldowns and DRs?

[Deleted]

A 4th player is allowed, so that teams aren't bound to only one comp. For example: Skill Capped played RMD against Tempo Storm, who went with Holy Paladin, Subtlety Rogue, and Arcane Mage. Skill Capped lost, after that the Rogue was replaced by a Shadow, who was played by their 4th player.

Comp changes are only allowed after a loss, but that's what the 4th player is for. Cloud9 for example didn't have a 4th player because they didn't want to play anything but RMD.

[Deleted]

Suprised not everybody knows it. But I will explain, 4 players are allowed to be able to change comp. In this case, the 4th guy is called Fabss and is the highest rated warlock in Europe. He won blizzcon before, it is sad he didn't get a chance to play in the blizzcon finals, and you wanna know why? Because there was no need for a warlock because the other teams were DQ'ed thus not giving SK gaming a need to change comp to counter the other eu teams. But with them removed, Fabss could only sit by and give mental support to his teammates. It is what it is.

[Terahertz]

Thanks. Can the 4th player still communicate with the other 3 who are playing? Besides the 4th player potentially being a better player at a certain class he substitutes for, being able to communicate still seems like a huge advantage above 3 player teams due to DR tracking and generally a better view over the game as spectator.

[keishton]

yea when their opponents were all rmd rmd rmd in the finals theres really no chance for a lock to shine. he was mainly there to make holy pallies cry

theres nothing stopping fabs from communicating with them (heck he was right next to them lol) maybe he actually had a screen full of stop watch macros tracking cds who knows :P

[Livevil]

Nah, somewhere along the broadcast they said that the 4th player isnt allowed to communicate with the rest of the team during the games.

[Auberdeen]

Thanks. Can the 4th player still communicate with the other 3 who are playing? Besides the 4th player potentially being a better player at a certain class he substitutes for, being able to communicate still seems like a huge advantage above 3 player teams due to DR tracking and generally a better view over the game as spectator.

nope, no headset and no communication during the fight for the player sitting out

[Saladfork]

I don't think the 4th player even got a good view of the game. They would always be looking at their teammates screens, and yeah they had to remove their headset and couldn't communicate.

In the U.S. regionals, they only had 3 computers up and the 4th player would just swap out. But this ended up adding huge delays when someone would want to swap out since they would have to test all their binds and junk. So I'm glad they switched to 4 computers instead.

And just to clarify--the fourth player just gives you an additional player to work with. You could play with 3 players and switch classes, but having a fourth player who specializes in a particular class is usually better than one person switching to an alt. You can still end up in weird situations though--i.e. Pika playing shadow priest, hehe.

He won blizzcon before, it is sad he didn't get a chance to play in the blizzcon finals, and you wanna know why? Because there was no need for a warlock because the other teams were DQ'ed thus not giving SK gaming a need to change comp to counter the other eu teams. But with them removed, Fabss could only sit by and give mental support to his teammates. It is what it is.

Warlocks were nerfed after qualifiers. Joefernandes said it himself in his stream today that the team would've continued to play LSD3 (and Joe would be benched) if not for the nerf. They felt like turbo was the stronger option from that point on. It was a big move/mistake by blizz, but oh well.

Comp changes are only allowed after a loss, but that's what the 4th player is for

You can change your comp at any time, even after a win. First game is blind pick so neither team knows who chose what comp. Second game -> winner chooses their comp first, losing team is informed and allowed to choose their comp. People just don't usually switch after a win because there usually isn't a reason to do so.