Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Nerd Dramas

Earlier, I mentioned I had little intention to say much about yesterday's patch; however, it's a bit hard to not at least briefly comment on the madness of the past 34 hours.

The biggest fuckshow of all shows in which there has been fucking has been the arena rating system "revamp." Basically, you can't lose PR from losses anymore and players are hitting 3k-3.5k PR. In addition, the points you earn seem pretty random; I've heard that they are basically treating your team as your rating and you're earning or losing based on your opponent's inflated PR, but I'm not entirely sure this reflects personal experience. The current system does basically ensure if you play enough, your team rating will rise, and your PR will skyrocket -- it's obviously broken, but I'm not exactly sure what is the problem. Some players are able to win 10 points games and lose only 1-2 for losses, my experience has been basically that wins and losses are both about 3-4 points.

Also of note is the failed implementation of some of the engineering improvements. The Hyperspeed Accelerators were supposd to have their CD reduced to 1 minute in addition to the additional 2 seconds on use, but their CD remains at two minutes. The Gnomish Lightning Generator was supposed to become instant cast, but remains a 1 second cast. With really no meaningful improvements to the profession and the severely less powerful rocket boots, engineering's plus side is a 2 second rocket boots at the cost of 3% bonus critical strike damage and about 50 spell power; I'm not sure it is justified.

Obviously, bugs like the pally BoP shared CD bug, the lack of stable Wintergrasp, and a myriad of other less serious bugs abound, but it is really the arena rating bug that I think is the most troubling. Roll back ratings to before Tuesday? Retroactively calculate what the ratings should be? Set personal ratings equal to team ratings and hope it all works out later? This is one of the bigger errors I've seen so far with the Arena system -- I'm a little surprised players aren't raging more about it. It would be the largest scale rollback to date in WoW if they go ahead with a full rollback.

I expect that Blizzard will employ its usual "I'm sorry you're angry about the arena system messup" strategy -- gentlemen, this is a good tactic. It's not an admission of fault or even a real apology; as much blame is placed on the players for REACTING as Blizzard for FUCKING UP. It's the equivalent of apologizing to your gf with "I'm sorry I made you overreact like that." You ARE apologizing but you're also blaming the victim. Class.

Huge dramas will abound no matter what Blizzard decides -- the path of least resistance is probably a rating and personal rating rollback.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Finish inside next time.

Hugs,
Paddy

Blake Lately said...

He's the catcher.

Anonymous said...

OR, just remove ALL arena teams and force the champs to grind their way back up. Not like it's hard for pros to go back. Heck I wouldn't care if you took my 1800 teams, cause I know in a week or two I'd be right back up there. Which is why I'd often do 1v2 arenas to bust my rating into 1300s :( Man why did warriros suck in TBC as solo /sigh

Anonymous said...

Basically, you can't lose PR from losses anymore and players are hitting 3k-3.5k PR.

This seems true in high rated teams, but what is equally retarded is that you lose shitloads of personal rating when playing in a low rated team.

I actually ended up at a sub-1500 rating on my alt in a team that gained almost 100 team rating.

phael said...

yeah games for me are goin like 1-3 point wins and 10-20 point losses... thank god we werent losing lol

Raddy said...

@phael - at the end we kept running into a ret/dk who would give us +2 and cost us -11 and I decided sleep was a better idea than rage

Anonymous said...

Engineering is DEFINITLY worth it. I think you're mistaken here Raddy. The gloves are indeed 1min cooldown with 10secs. Maybe you just need to re-enchant? That chant + IV + green haste trinket from Chromie + 6% talent + a meager 120haste from gear makes arcane blast a 1.63s cast. Pretty sick.

The Lightning trinket still has a cast-time but can be cast on the move, simply use it right after a barrage or any instant cast and its still a solid trinket. Cooldown reduced to 1min also.

Boots nerf sucks, but at least they reduced cooldown to 3mins. Engineering is still very much worth it!

Anonymous said...

They dont have to rollback everything, just all arena ratings back to tuesday pre-maintenance and refund all gear that was bought, as well as remove all the achievements people acquired.

Daeger said...

What? My Hyperspeed Accelerators have the promised changes. 10 second duration, 1 minute cooldown. I macroed it to arcane blast and it works well.

I haven't tried the Lightning Generator, but I heard it's cast on the move.

Sh!nks said...

lol i saw a 1600 rated 2v2 and the guy had flawless victor his PR was 2400

samuelbeckett said...

so i start a new team with a friend..every win or loss it doesn't matter both our PR falls like 25 points, and team rating goes up by like 1-3. called it after 10 games and both of us in the 1200s.

samuelbeckett said...

Yes, the CD indeed has been changed on the lightening generator to 1 minute, and is usable on the move.

Boots last only 2 seconds, but the CD is down to 3.

I haven't checked the gloves.

samuelbeckett said...

so i start a new team with a friend..every win or loss it doesn't matter both our PR falls like 25 points, and team rating goes up by like 1-3. called it after 10 games and both of us in the 1200s.

phael said...

@raddy

yeah we called it after a string of 20 minute games with glad hpals and dk's netting 1 point wins.

Raddy said...

Really on the engineering changes? I checked the gloves right after servers came up and still was getting 2 min CD on use.

Raddy said...

57/3/11 Arcane PvP spec still probably outdamages other specs in PvE lol

Anonymous said...

Engineering changes WERE patched. It seems the tooltips were not. On use my gloves gave 1min CD, so if yours are still 2min, it's a bug and should be fixed (just like arena LOL)

Haab said...

Sapphiron #1 Frost Breath hits Radikalus for 155746 Frost. (17840 Resisted)

Raddy said...

after we lost it haab, I just died so I could eat my sushi ^^

7200 deeps on faerlina no aoe whatwhat

Anonymous said...

Dicks bro.

Hugs,
Paddy.

PS. Dey be trollin'

Kolenzo said...

The description for the hyperspeed accelerators still says 2min cooldown but if you actually use it and check, it's 1min.

I don't think I'll even use rocket boots since 9% crit damage seems alot better (that meta is still bugged right?) than 2 sec rocket boots, but the trinket and glove enchant make it worthwhile as frost for sure.