It looks like Blizz will keep its word, and barring some unforeseen delays, season one wraps up next Tuesday. One last week to scramble for those top spots: it's going to be definite chaos on some battlegroups. (LIKE OURS!!)
I'm not going to get into a dreary, emo, self-deprecating, reflective "how the season went" thing, don't worry...YET. I will say that I'm pretty happy with the game overall -- dueling on test was a blast, I'm really feeling Game Over's current lineup, and I'm proud of the FH's overall success in arena this season. With SC2 beta on the horizon, I'm sure a lot of the players who are serious into PvP are looking to jump ship to a game where competitive high level plays comes more naturally, and I'm certainly of that mindset myself a bit, but I'm genuinely psyched for Season 2 to get going and to play against our Stormstrike rivals seriously once again.
Oh and in case if you haven't noticed, this is a LOT more "my PvP diary" than my normal content, so you can either skip the rest or keep reading, but I promise you'll find no "real" content.
We didn't get a chance to play too many games on Tuesday. Tuesday is generally the most active day for playing, so it was a bit surprising to not run into any of the top few teams, but I'm sure this weekend we'll all be clashing. We instead played against one of our rival FH teams a few times; its a matchup that we dominate I think, but a DC loss and a pretty big spread in ratings lead the games to being only slightly better than a wash. This is where I complain about how I've played in 30+ 4v5 games all season and only in one 5v4, but that would be REALLY whiny and I'd never do that. We played a half dozen 0-rating games before competition totally dried up and we had to call it a night; it's really unfortunate that, due to various RL conflicts, we really can't play much this week at all (MY FAULT) and we're pretty dependent on the top few teams playing this weekend if we want to catch up, hopefully they'll give us a chance.
As it currently stands, I feel that we're the favorites to win any matchup, though DeadMatch, NiP, and Yeah We Lift I'm sure disagree. ^^ My point isn't to be an arrogant prick, but just that the 4DPS matrix feels really solid. It really is more fun to play for me as well; you really are actively controlling the match instead of just poly juggling, bursting a bit, and waiting on your priest to manaburn the opposition to grind out the victory. 4DPS feels very strong against the classic matrix, feels lacking against tri-healer, and feels generally so-so against the 2.5 healers a teams; I don't think you really pick up a matchup advantage by going 4DPS as opposed to other matrices, but you do gain versatility in how you play some of the fights. I'm interested to see how the PvP Trinket Change affects gameplay, I hate to generalize and theorycraft, so I'll just leave it with that we aren't super dependent on regular CC, so the change probably doesn't hurt the matrix much at all.
As for non-Game Over, but overall FH PvP, I'm very proud of the guild's teams. It looks like we'll have 5 teams in the top 10, and all of these teams I believe return next season, though with some roster modifications. Also on the horizon for next season is a new team built from new FH members formerly of Surge (a rival/friend guild of ours from back on BB) and yet another team that will certainly turn heads, but I'll keep quiet about. Seven teams all with the potential to be serious contenders? Hell yeah ^^
Though some of the best players in the battlegroup have left the game, Makoplux ::cough::, their teams for the most part remain and I have little doubt that Stormstrike will see NiP, Yeah We Lift, and perhaps a new Shining Force team tearing it up next season. As a battlegroup with a ton of pride that was utterly decimated by disqualifications for the Blizzard tournament, it's tough to really say much about how we compare skill-wise to the other battlegroups, and I hate to make silly, cocky baseless statements, but I actually love to make said statements and WE'RE THE BEST BATTLEGROUP IN WOW. Perhaps not, but if Blizzard can avoid totally screwing up the end of season playoffs next season, hopefully we'll at least prove we're competitive with BG9 and BG6.
This is about the time where the serious players are finishing off farming their honor for next season's PvP gear, and at any given time, I see at least a few guildmates doing just that. I personally am a combination of too cynical and too lazy to really get going on the honor grinding until I actually see the new gear, which I guess I can now so I really have no excuses...except for the lazyness. I actually don't abhor the idea as it'll be the first time I've stepped foot in a battleground in months, which honestly is something I used to love. My reservations are of course: Should I really be wearing gear so focused on survivability as a WE mage on a 4DPS team? I mean I NEVER get attacked; most teams just CC and lightly harass to try to reduce my damage output, but I'm certainly the less squishy of the various options. I'm already running around with 10k+ unbuffed HP and 320+ resilience, should I be focusing on other gear instead? In the end, I'll probably stick with the PvP gear as I don't really know what else I'd use as I don't raid or PvE at all. But it does seem that those mages who are truly hardcore enough to do it all that they'd probably get more mileage out of PvE gear playing the role I'm playing in arena. It's not even like you sacrifice stamina in PvE gear anymore, you just trade resilience for DPS, a worthy trade IMO.
I think this wall of text has gone on long enough, and though I have a few more things to rant about, I'll save them for another day. Enjoy the last of season 1 and don't suck.
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13 comments:
You're right. Mages seldom, if not never get focused in a 4DPS matrix especially when you got your ice barrier up. Which sometimes really got me thinking, should I wear my PVE dps gear instead?
Blog more please... this reading is much more entertaining than World of Ego... er, World of Ming. Particularly the pvp tactics; how do you think things will change with PVP trinkets being able to 86 Blind? Will you sandbag the trinket in a rogue match to get rid of it?
Assume that the trinket also knocks out Death Coil and hunter freeze traps. What about those?
I think you can definitely change up what you do against rogues to make use of the trinket change more than they can. I'll definitely have to practice what I want to try, but I'm pretty confident that just modifying the basic strats to IB earlier and save the trinket for blind will have moderate success at worst.
As for freezing traps, that is GG vs any hunter who doesn't kite like Valanmor, you should totally farm marks hunters who just try to burst you. (I'm pretty sure we did already, but the trinket change helps us a lot more)
As for locks, I think its great and helps us a bit more than it helps the lock (assuming it removes DC); I don't think its going to drastically shift the fight, it still seems like you're going to want to IB the DC to avoid the dmg/heal component if you can, and it also seems the lock can still dust DC the WE if need be. I don't think its going to help us put locks on farm in duels, but it will make fights a bit more interesting I think. ^^
I like the PvP trinket change TBH, its a great simplification. Now they can address class balance issues without this trinket hanging over their head.
trinket change?(yes i suck etc etc)
All PvP trinket now remove slowing effects and every affect that takes control of your character away from you, all CCs, stun, etc afaik.
From my PoV, as a lock on Raddy's team, I don't think the PvP trinket really hurts us very much, Hunter / Shaman being able to remove fear is a little annoying, but still between, tremor and fear breaking on dots, it's nearly irrelevant.
As for removing a deathcoil, the damage and healing is already done, and all you're really doing to a lock by removing them is denying them the 1.5s to cast a searing pain or an immolate by trinketing it, and honestly, I almost see it as a buff, because I can see many many people trying to trinket deathcoil, but being slow, and basically changing nothing in the fight besides the fact that they just wasted a cooldown and can no longer trinket my fear.
yea i read up on it on the EU pvp boards.
most whines are currently coming from rogues it seems. personally this is AWESOME for me. being a lover of the full fire spec, i now see huge potential in returning to the spec with the change to the pvp trinket, yea now everyone can break my dragons breath, personally i see this as a huge and welcome challenge to refine my tactics against all classes. i know it will bring up some interesting fights against especially shamans and rogues.
i am so looking forward to this!
The trinket change has the strongest effect on 2v2 and 3v3.
However, 2v2 and 3v3 have the weakest effect on game balance.
"Now they can address class balance issues without this trinket hanging over their head."
Or, they could have never introduced the trinket in the first place... :)
Too many whiners IMO...I personally want to see many more "hard" CC/counters and counters to counters...etc.
Get out of jail "free" cards (opportunity cost of wearing a different trinket) is weak game design, IMO.
@Atashi
Which is exactly what made Starcraft so great. I honestly don't think blizzard can ever outdo that game in terms of pure skill vs. skill content. It is the chess of computer games, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. WoW is just a much different game.
Then again, even in chess, many players argue that White has a clear advantage by moving first. So maybe starcraft is better... :)
how can you already see the new honor gear? PTR?
possibly worst timing on blizzard keeping its word :D
What about Go? Black always goes first, but white gets extra points at the end because of that.
What do you guys think of SC vs WC 3 in terms of skill, fun, etc.? I've only seen you guys talk about SC.
@ Animastryfe
Starcraft is excellent in all regards. One of its positive aspects is also its bane. It is extremely intense (stressful?!)
For me, hardly anything is as thrilling as having a closely matched 1v1 SC match where you're trying to make every one of 100+ actions per minute count. It's arguable that SC is too tactically/physically skill dependent as opposed to strategical depth. A great strategy rarely defeats a solid, standard strategy with flawless mouse & keyboard control.
The largest blockade to SC1 being a successful modern game, IMO, is its matchmaking system. There is none. SC is extremely skill dependent such that there are many levels of skill gradients. The best matches happen between individuals of similar skill.
War3 had an excellent matchmaking system when I played it (up to TFT release.) I enjoyed War3 for its relaxed pace in team games and its "cute" graphics. Aside from its community, I did not find War3 to be exceptional on any level and clearly inferior to SC in many aspects. Keep in mind that I barely touched the expansion (TFT).
I had little to no motivation to purchase the expansion pack after playing War3 vanilla, and I have played every Blizzard PC game made thus far.
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