It's no secret that a ton of us mages are going to be running the whole holo-gogs double 2 piece setup. I honestly haven't really determined exactly which 2 pieces you should take from each set if this is your goal, but my initial thoughts are take the new shoulders and legs and use the old chest and gloves. Of course, you can save yourself a Halaa gem and a leg enchant if you do things differently.
The above style is probably really only applicable to mages running on classic style matrices or mages playing AP/frost or AP/fire. WE mages are probably sick of stacking stamina and resilience for which they get zero use; I know I am. Mages running around on 4DPS teams are also likely to pick up the new weapons before set pieces instead of immediately snagging two pieces of the new set.
While there's definitely room for a lot argument on this, the gladiator staff was the stronger mage option last season, but this no longer seems the case. The Endgame was buffed pretty significantly, and the extra damage and resilience from 1h/OH seem to compensate for the few stats points and 42 crit rating on the staff. You might also just be sick of looking at the staff for 3 months, and four more months of the big silly red stick might sound less than appealing.
I think that one thing everyone needs to remember is that our ratings are getting reset so we aren't pulling 1k+ points opening week -- take that into account when planning out your gear path and remember it takes a while to ramp up the point gain. If you drop 5k on the weapon combo, it could be quite a while before you're picking up the set pieces; considering how horrible our set is, I don't see that as a huge problem. ^^
My initial thoughts are come Tuesday I'll be picking up the 1h/OH as I'm not too impressed with the set especially since I play on a 4DPS skill-less zerg team. Then again, that glad wand did get a 13 DPS upgrade...
Seriously, if arena gear were to progress like this every season, in a few seasons that wand would do more damage than scorch reliably...and I'm not kidding. ^^
The other beauty to snagging weapons first is you'll get a few extra weeks to pick up the gems or gold you require to fill out your new arena pieces and star of elunes will return to non-retarded levels. Paying 100-150 gold for gems is cool.
I've actually been working on figuring out if you could use any gear in the game, what would you use and how would you socket it, sort of thing just to see what it would look like. I'll post up a summary tomorrow.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
1k Armor Increase on Season 2 Set
I've had a few people chew me out already for my lack of interest in this change, so let me explain:
Primarily, mages are not class that take a lot of damage. The class has the best tools of any in the game to avoid physical damage, and while there are definitely windows of vulnerability especially against multiple targets, I think most mages would rather just see their abilities made more effective than "tank" damage they cannot avoid better.
In arena, mages are seldom the focus fire target of choice. Some teams will try to MD an IB and kill opposing mages, but I'm yet to be convinced this is any easier than simply getting on the priest or warlock (if there is one). Spending a large amount of item budget on 1000 armor isn't enticing when you're rarely the target, and it is even less enticing when you think that after this change, you will even be less likely the first choice of enemy focus fire. Very frequently as WE, I'm trying to force opposition to attack me just because WE mages are ridiculously hard to kill. Some teams definitely put pressure on the mage to force IB, but most do not at least on Stormstrike; this is so much the case that I pretty much always use Molten Armor over Ice Armor in arena now. This armor sacrifice is pretty similar to the 1000 we gain with the new gear, and honestly, even when a warrior hops on you with MA and you're sporting extremely low armor, you're still a horrible target relative to your teammates very often.
I do think the set will be fantastic for dueling rogues, feral druids, hunters, and warriors and for that I'll certainly pick up the pieces eventually, but I'm pretty sure that if could choose to use any gear for arena at this point, it would no longer be gladiator gear I would select.
I think for fire mages this type of set makes some sense especially with the incoming reduction in DoT damage through resilience, running around with blazing speed might be more feasible. For frost mages, gear with significantly more offensive power seems like it would be a lot more powerful.
Primarily, mages are not class that take a lot of damage. The class has the best tools of any in the game to avoid physical damage, and while there are definitely windows of vulnerability especially against multiple targets, I think most mages would rather just see their abilities made more effective than "tank" damage they cannot avoid better.
In arena, mages are seldom the focus fire target of choice. Some teams will try to MD an IB and kill opposing mages, but I'm yet to be convinced this is any easier than simply getting on the priest or warlock (if there is one). Spending a large amount of item budget on 1000 armor isn't enticing when you're rarely the target, and it is even less enticing when you think that after this change, you will even be less likely the first choice of enemy focus fire. Very frequently as WE, I'm trying to force opposition to attack me just because WE mages are ridiculously hard to kill. Some teams definitely put pressure on the mage to force IB, but most do not at least on Stormstrike; this is so much the case that I pretty much always use Molten Armor over Ice Armor in arena now. This armor sacrifice is pretty similar to the 1000 we gain with the new gear, and honestly, even when a warrior hops on you with MA and you're sporting extremely low armor, you're still a horrible target relative to your teammates very often.
I do think the set will be fantastic for dueling rogues, feral druids, hunters, and warriors and for that I'll certainly pick up the pieces eventually, but I'm pretty sure that if could choose to use any gear for arena at this point, it would no longer be gladiator gear I would select.
I think for fire mages this type of set makes some sense especially with the incoming reduction in DoT damage through resilience, running around with blazing speed might be more feasible. For frost mages, gear with significantly more offensive power seems like it would be a lot more powerful.
Resilience on DoTs? SHOCKING?!
Remember, you heard it here, last.
"Ah, but see, there’s the whiny post, and then there’s the whiny post we agree with. Big difference."
This comes after a post saying "We're looking into it" so it bodes pretty well for those in favor of this change. Before even talking the morality (yeah) of such a change, I think everyones should probably chill and recognize the change will be minor most likely.
My thoughts on the change are basically that it will be good for the game. While it's true damage over time abilities cannot crit, are hit doubly by resistance gear (white resists at the front, yellow resists during duration), and are not "bursting" people down, DoTs generate huge damage that most classes cannot counter or mitigate. Most of the good tools classes have at avoiding damage range from mediocre (Ice Block) to totally ineffective (Spell Reflect) against damage over time abilities. I'm not really sure that DoTs + shadowburn + MB/death should kill a warrior reliably during a spell lock on his paladin teammate.
The change I imagine will at most be the -crit damage bonus being applied to all damage over time effects, so 400 resilience will yield a 20% reduction in damage over time effects. As arena gear scales, this could lead to someday 30-35% reduction in DoT damage, which seems severe, but consider that the -crit damage bonus to normal cast time spells and attacks kicks in exactly when it is most effective. As a WE mage, my pet does pretty solid damage for sure, but my real strength in arena comes from shatter combos. Considering crit chance on these attacks is > 75%, that -20% damage to my crits, isn't that far from just a 20% reduction to my shatter potential. You can extend the same logic to CB. The classes that bring burst damage to arena via controllable crit chance have been hit much harder by resilience than theorycraft paper numbers make it seem. You can't just say well you have a 25% crit chance, so 400 resil is basically 5% less damage, it really is the whole -20%.
The change will hopefully bring warlocks down from utter domination of 1 on 1 as well; BM hunters, WE mages, and Rogues would have significantly better odds and perhaps even be favorites with full CD.
Obviously you should fight against changes to your class that you disagree with, and I'm definitely receptive to hearing arguments as to why DoTs being unaffected by the core defensive PvP stat is justifiable so long as they aren't just:
"Ah, but see, there’s the whiny post, and then there’s the whiny post we agree with. Big difference."
This comes after a post saying "We're looking into it" so it bodes pretty well for those in favor of this change. Before even talking the morality (yeah) of such a change, I think everyones should probably chill and recognize the change will be minor most likely.
My thoughts on the change are basically that it will be good for the game. While it's true damage over time abilities cannot crit, are hit doubly by resistance gear (white resists at the front, yellow resists during duration), and are not "bursting" people down, DoTs generate huge damage that most classes cannot counter or mitigate. Most of the good tools classes have at avoiding damage range from mediocre (Ice Block) to totally ineffective (Spell Reflect) against damage over time abilities. I'm not really sure that DoTs + shadowburn + MB/death should kill a warrior reliably during a spell lock on his paladin teammate.
The change I imagine will at most be the -crit damage bonus being applied to all damage over time effects, so 400 resilience will yield a 20% reduction in damage over time effects. As arena gear scales, this could lead to someday 30-35% reduction in DoT damage, which seems severe, but consider that the -crit damage bonus to normal cast time spells and attacks kicks in exactly when it is most effective. As a WE mage, my pet does pretty solid damage for sure, but my real strength in arena comes from shatter combos. Considering crit chance on these attacks is > 75%, that -20% damage to my crits, isn't that far from just a 20% reduction to my shatter potential. You can extend the same logic to CB. The classes that bring burst damage to arena via controllable crit chance have been hit much harder by resilience than theorycraft paper numbers make it seem. You can't just say well you have a 25% crit chance, so 400 resil is basically 5% less damage, it really is the whole -20%.
The change will hopefully bring warlocks down from utter domination of 1 on 1 as well; BM hunters, WE mages, and Rogues would have significantly better odds and perhaps even be favorites with full CD.
Obviously you should fight against changes to your class that you disagree with, and I'm definitely receptive to hearing arguments as to why DoTs being unaffected by the core defensive PvP stat is justifiable so long as they aren't just:
- "But DoTs can't crit!" And resilience makes us crit not only for less damage but less often, even with this change, you're only eating half of what other classes eat on resilience. (Sorta...)
- "But we're already screwed by resists" I agree -- you should be unable to change gear when the doors open in Arena, but such a change does seem pretty unlikely. Better get that anti-resist set with spell penetration gems. LOL.
- "Resilience is intended to reduce burst in PvP; DoTs by definition are not burst" This is certainly true, though the combination of DoTs with tradition direct damage IS a lot of burst.
Season 2 Mage Gear + Some New PvP Epics
I'm sure these will hit everywhere shortly, so this is just a subset of what's new ^^
I'm not going to say anything besides, check out the armor! o.O
BTW, the overall upgrade going from full set season one with staff to season two with staff:
stam +7
int +7
hit +3
crit +6
resil +4
damage +26
armor 997
More incoming!
I'm not going to say anything besides, check out the armor! o.O
BTW, the overall upgrade going from full set season one with staff to season two with staff:
stam +7
int +7
hit +3
crit +6
resil +4
damage +26
armor 997
More incoming!
For Lazy People
Blizzcon's homepage says that tickets are selling out very rapidly and half the total available tickets have already been sold. If you still plan on going and getting your sweet SC2 beta, better buy tickets for you and your crew tonight.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
5v5 Discussion: Matrix Comosition Analysis
Figured that I'll do a "brief" rundown of the absolute most common 5v5 matrices before moving on to more discussion topics focused on strategies.
The whole "Raddy's Score" thing is just my opinion on the overall team strength; it really isn't very meaningful, but I've played on and against these combinations a lot this season. (except never played on 2xWar)
"Classic Matrix" w/ Hunter
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Hunter
How They Win: They either play to mana drain and outlast or try to use synchronized crowd control with scatter/silencing shot and counterspell pom+fireball to burst down a target. The beauty to this team is that even if you fail to get the kill during you window of burst, you can still win if you play defensively and let viper and mana burn do their thing.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns enemy priests to remove opposing manaburn if possible, otherwise the priest manaburns in order of priority: elemental shamans, hunters, paladins, and then the rest. Mage is most frequently AP/frost, he has focus CS on paladin, and sheep juggles opposing CC and DPS until warrior calls for burst. If mage is WE he will try to more actively put out damage to wear down opposing healer mana and will spend less time CCing. Warrior will generally focus opposing priest to prohibit mana burn to make the mana lasting power game more lopsided; occasionally, warrior will instead focus high priority targets such as UA locks. Paladin does all the healing and juggles between using freedom offensively and defensively; HoJ is generally defensively used to aid hunter or priest if they're taking heavy focus. Hunter sets scorpion pet on an opposing healer (not pally if possible) and uses viper + poison stacks to quickly mana drain that healer. Coordinates CC with mage to control opposing healing and CC, while mage focuses on controlling opposing DPS.
Weak Points: Hunter and Priest are "soft" targets against teams with warriors. Warrior becomes a huge soft spot against 4DPS caster teams as he's often forced to pursue into bad LoS if not careful.
Favorable Matchups: 2xWar. "Classic" w/ Rogue
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 6.5
"Classic Matrix" w/ Lock
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Warlock
How They Win: Use dominating crowd control to create windows for damage while wasting opposing cooldowns. Once BoP and Bubble are out of the way, they look for a kill when the warrior has a target pretty low. This team is in no hurry to end games and while it cannot play the long mana-draining game as well as other teams, it is very powerful in medium length games once the opposing paladin becomes controllable.
In More Detail: This team changes a bit depending on whether the mage is AP/frost or WE and whether the lock is UA or FG. Currently, it seems that WE mage and FG lock are most popular; they're also best suited to longer games. Warlock begins by getting tongues out and doing what he can to harass paladin to force bubbles while performing crowd control on opposing DPS. Mage puts damage on main assist with warrior to hopefully draw the early BoP and the mage also puts heavy CC on opposing DPS. Priest manaburns if free, but it is extremely unlikely this will happen as most teams will focus the priest. Paladin is the same as in the hunter version of this matrix as is the warrior, but the warrior is now required to do a fair share more damage to the main assist taregts to actually bring them down.
Weak Points: If ran as WE mage and FG lock, the only soft spot is the priest. He will always be the target.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter, 2.5 Healer
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), 4 DPS (rogue), 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5
2.5 Healer
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Windfury + warrior gets on opposing softest target. Mage plays extremely heavy CC, often doing nothing but CC for most of the fight. When war gets a target reasonably low, heroism is popped, and mage and shaman burst collapse on target. If target is not bursted down, the momentum of heroism is used to continue to put pressure on target until it's finally brought down.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns and mind controls very actively. Paladin is generally the same as ever. Shaman starts by applying pressure to the main assist with warrior, but is really watching to be useful with heals in early game. Lots of times you'll see the shaman healing for pretty long windows early game. Warrior is on main target with freedom and aggressive dispels on his target by shaman and priest. Mage is typically Ap/frost, though I think AP/fire and WE are stronger for this matrix. Mage plays keep alive if AP/fire while CCing as best he can and then rips the target with ap pom pyro fireblast along with shaman burst. If a less focusable spec, mage will still do little but poly juggle. Because this team does not rely on crowd controlling healers to kill a target, often mage will use CS to limit opposing offense.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, otherwise elemental shaman and priest.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter
Underdog Against: 2xWar, "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 9
4 DPS (Caster)
Composition: Warlock (UA), Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Ridiculous crowd control and burst damage. Horrible survivability beyond early game, but the second most potent common team in the first 30 seconds. Paladin aggressively uses Bubble, BoP, and BoF to keep his casters alive long enough to do their damage. After a target is down, overwhelming CC lock in the victory. Enough interrupts and silences to totally lock down enemy healing for the window needed to get the kill. While it would seem this team is screwed if they don't win early, that is absolutely not the case as often the very act of surviving the damage wastes all defensive cooldowns and the majority of healer mana.
In More Detail: Priest does not manaburn but actively nukes main assist spamming death if not the focus himself and is also responsible for silencing a healer. Warlock is UA and UA is effectively the main assist as it is the target not getting dispelled. If the target is a warrior, Death Coil is used as the targets gets low to prevent Spell Reflection. The warlock coordinates with the mage to have a different Spell Lock focus. Mage is either AP/fire or WE. Either way he simply tries to put out massive damage early, and if he's WE, he tries to keep the pressure up even if a kill is not made. Typically mage handles the paladin as his CS target, and often can simply uses the silence instead of waiting on a cast when Counterspelling. Shaman assists the warlock and when the target drops low, NS EM CL is incoming. Shaman also watches for a target to control with earthshock, this is typically an opposing priest trying to manaburn or a enemy mage trying to CC.
Weak Points: UA lock, Priest, Elemental Shaman, Mage (if AP/fire)
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic" teams
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (Rogue)
Raddy's Score: 9
4 DPS (Rogue)
Composition: Rogue, Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Rogue guns for softest target with full CD while the rest of the team play the fight as if it the caster 4DPS team. This is the strongest early game matrix.
In More Detail: The main difference between this and Caster 4DPS is the rogue's early damage is huge in taking out a single target quickly whereas the UA lock grows stronger as the game drags on.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, Rogue, Elemental Shaman, Priest.
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic", 4DPS (Caster)
Underdog Against: 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5
2xWar
Composition: Warrior, Warrior, Druid, Paladin, Shaman (Resto)
How They Win: Warriors play harass and split DPS in the middle while healing crew avoids CC with LoS and heals intermittently. Warriors retread to healers out of LoS for big heals and then get back to harassing. The goal is to completely wear out opponents until warriors windfury or crit enough to collapse on a target for the kill.
In More Detail: Druid heals defensively far away from the actual combat until opponent grows oom or out of CD then comes in for aggressive cycloning. Warrior do their best to force healing of MS'd targets and waste enemy CD by intervening out of danger to their hiding teammates. Typically one healer will aggressively look to be drinking to make manaburning the healers even when they are visible not very effective.
Weak Points: None, maybe resto druid if he exposes himself
Favorable Matchups: 4 DPS (Rogue), "Classic" w/ Rogue, "Classic" w/ Lock
Underdog Against: 4DPS (Caster)
Raddy's Score: 9
The whole "Raddy's Score" thing is just my opinion on the overall team strength; it really isn't very meaningful, but I've played on and against these combinations a lot this season. (except never played on 2xWar)
"Classic Matrix" w/ Hunter
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Hunter
How They Win: They either play to mana drain and outlast or try to use synchronized crowd control with scatter/silencing shot and counterspell pom+fireball to burst down a target. The beauty to this team is that even if you fail to get the kill during you window of burst, you can still win if you play defensively and let viper and mana burn do their thing.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns enemy priests to remove opposing manaburn if possible, otherwise the priest manaburns in order of priority: elemental shamans, hunters, paladins, and then the rest. Mage is most frequently AP/frost, he has focus CS on paladin, and sheep juggles opposing CC and DPS until warrior calls for burst. If mage is WE he will try to more actively put out damage to wear down opposing healer mana and will spend less time CCing. Warrior will generally focus opposing priest to prohibit mana burn to make the mana lasting power game more lopsided; occasionally, warrior will instead focus high priority targets such as UA locks. Paladin does all the healing and juggles between using freedom offensively and defensively; HoJ is generally defensively used to aid hunter or priest if they're taking heavy focus. Hunter sets scorpion pet on an opposing healer (not pally if possible) and uses viper + poison stacks to quickly mana drain that healer. Coordinates CC with mage to control opposing healing and CC, while mage focuses on controlling opposing DPS.
Weak Points: Hunter and Priest are "soft" targets against teams with warriors. Warrior becomes a huge soft spot against 4DPS caster teams as he's often forced to pursue into bad LoS if not careful.
Favorable Matchups: 2xWar. "Classic" w/ Rogue
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 6.5
"Classic Matrix" w/ Lock
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Warlock
How They Win: Use dominating crowd control to create windows for damage while wasting opposing cooldowns. Once BoP and Bubble are out of the way, they look for a kill when the warrior has a target pretty low. This team is in no hurry to end games and while it cannot play the long mana-draining game as well as other teams, it is very powerful in medium length games once the opposing paladin becomes controllable.
In More Detail: This team changes a bit depending on whether the mage is AP/frost or WE and whether the lock is UA or FG. Currently, it seems that WE mage and FG lock are most popular; they're also best suited to longer games. Warlock begins by getting tongues out and doing what he can to harass paladin to force bubbles while performing crowd control on opposing DPS. Mage puts damage on main assist with warrior to hopefully draw the early BoP and the mage also puts heavy CC on opposing DPS. Priest manaburns if free, but it is extremely unlikely this will happen as most teams will focus the priest. Paladin is the same as in the hunter version of this matrix as is the warrior, but the warrior is now required to do a fair share more damage to the main assist taregts to actually bring them down.
Weak Points: If ran as WE mage and FG lock, the only soft spot is the priest. He will always be the target.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter, 2.5 Healer
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (caster), 4 DPS (rogue), 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5
2.5 Healer
Composition: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Windfury + warrior gets on opposing softest target. Mage plays extremely heavy CC, often doing nothing but CC for most of the fight. When war gets a target reasonably low, heroism is popped, and mage and shaman burst collapse on target. If target is not bursted down, the momentum of heroism is used to continue to put pressure on target until it's finally brought down.
In More Detail: Priest manaburns and mind controls very actively. Paladin is generally the same as ever. Shaman starts by applying pressure to the main assist with warrior, but is really watching to be useful with heals in early game. Lots of times you'll see the shaman healing for pretty long windows early game. Warrior is on main target with freedom and aggressive dispels on his target by shaman and priest. Mage is typically Ap/frost, though I think AP/fire and WE are stronger for this matrix. Mage plays keep alive if AP/fire while CCing as best he can and then rips the target with ap pom pyro fireblast along with shaman burst. If a less focusable spec, mage will still do little but poly juggle. Because this team does not rely on crowd controlling healers to kill a target, often mage will use CS to limit opposing offense.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, otherwise elemental shaman and priest.
Favorable Matchups: "Classic" w/ Hunter
Underdog Against: 2xWar, "Classic" w/ lock
Raddy's Score: 9
4 DPS (Caster)
Composition: Warlock (UA), Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Ridiculous crowd control and burst damage. Horrible survivability beyond early game, but the second most potent common team in the first 30 seconds. Paladin aggressively uses Bubble, BoP, and BoF to keep his casters alive long enough to do their damage. After a target is down, overwhelming CC lock in the victory. Enough interrupts and silences to totally lock down enemy healing for the window needed to get the kill. While it would seem this team is screwed if they don't win early, that is absolutely not the case as often the very act of surviving the damage wastes all defensive cooldowns and the majority of healer mana.
In More Detail: Priest does not manaburn but actively nukes main assist spamming death if not the focus himself and is also responsible for silencing a healer. Warlock is UA and UA is effectively the main assist as it is the target not getting dispelled. If the target is a warrior, Death Coil is used as the targets gets low to prevent Spell Reflection. The warlock coordinates with the mage to have a different Spell Lock focus. Mage is either AP/fire or WE. Either way he simply tries to put out massive damage early, and if he's WE, he tries to keep the pressure up even if a kill is not made. Typically mage handles the paladin as his CS target, and often can simply uses the silence instead of waiting on a cast when Counterspelling. Shaman assists the warlock and when the target drops low, NS EM CL is incoming. Shaman also watches for a target to control with earthshock, this is typically an opposing priest trying to manaburn or a enemy mage trying to CC.
Weak Points: UA lock, Priest, Elemental Shaman, Mage (if AP/fire)
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic" teams
Underdog Against: 4 DPS (Rogue)
Raddy's Score: 9
4 DPS (Rogue)
Composition: Rogue, Mage, Priest (Shadow), Paladin, Shaman (Elemental)
How They Win: Rogue guns for softest target with full CD while the rest of the team play the fight as if it the caster 4DPS team. This is the strongest early game matrix.
In More Detail: The main difference between this and Caster 4DPS is the rogue's early damage is huge in taking out a single target quickly whereas the UA lock grows stronger as the game drags on.
Weak Points: Mage if he's AP/fire, Rogue, Elemental Shaman, Priest.
Favorable Matchups: All "Classic", 4DPS (Caster)
Underdog Against: 2xWar
Raddy's Score: 8.5
2xWar
Composition: Warrior, Warrior, Druid, Paladin, Shaman (Resto)
How They Win: Warriors play harass and split DPS in the middle while healing crew avoids CC with LoS and heals intermittently. Warriors retread to healers out of LoS for big heals and then get back to harassing. The goal is to completely wear out opponents until warriors windfury or crit enough to collapse on a target for the kill.
In More Detail: Druid heals defensively far away from the actual combat until opponent grows oom or out of CD then comes in for aggressive cycloning. Warrior do their best to force healing of MS'd targets and waste enemy CD by intervening out of danger to their hiding teammates. Typically one healer will aggressively look to be drinking to make manaburning the healers even when they are visible not very effective.
Weak Points: None, maybe resto druid if he exposes himself
Favorable Matchups: 4 DPS (Rogue), "Classic" w/ Rogue, "Classic" w/ Lock
Underdog Against: 4DPS (Caster)
Raddy's Score: 9
Gossip
So like one of my guildmate's friend with benefit's boyfriend's lamaze instructor's friends is saying that that arena season two has been delayed by three weeks.
I actually lied with all that "friends of friends" stuff above -- it was much more complicated. Now, I don't really believe this rumor at all as I don't trust lamaze instructors, but if this does end up being true, remember -- "Radikal Noise. You heard it...HERE...first"
This would really suck if true as most of us are bored out of our minds waiting on next season. I did some quests today, like on purpose. I put on my wizard hat and robe and quested. And damnit, I even sort of liked it; in 2 hours, I increased my total gold by 1000%.
Hopefully, we'll see season 2 gear on PTR soon and blue confirmation that season two starts Tuesday soon. A few people have asked me about dueling on PTR; I haven't really been able to get on PTR in the past week and might have some time this weekend, but I really need to get gems/enchants/honor ready for next season so it would be for a pretty short time window. (Like only 8-10 hrs of straight dueling probably)
I actually lied with all that "friends of friends" stuff above -- it was much more complicated. Now, I don't really believe this rumor at all as I don't trust lamaze instructors, but if this does end up being true, remember -- "Radikal Noise. You heard it...HERE...first"
This would really suck if true as most of us are bored out of our minds waiting on next season. I did some quests today, like on purpose. I put on my wizard hat and robe and quested. And damnit, I even sort of liked it; in 2 hours, I increased my total gold by 1000%.
Hopefully, we'll see season 2 gear on PTR soon and blue confirmation that season two starts Tuesday soon. A few people have asked me about dueling on PTR; I haven't really been able to get on PTR in the past week and might have some time this weekend, but I really need to get gems/enchants/honor ready for next season so it would be for a pretty short time window. (Like only 8-10 hrs of straight dueling probably)
My Two Cents
On this whole Oozo, Ming, and Neilyo flamefest:
I think the stiffest competition for 1v1 is on test. Ming's PTR dueling video from WoW 1.0 was definitely one of the all-time great vids. His recent vid (and my vid too!) are not as entertaining but showcase a ton of talented players.
Whenever I see 1v1 clips in videos, I'm not watching to assess "can he win this matchup than I cannot", I'm just thinking about what I'd be doing versus what I'm seeing and judge how good the clip/fight was based on how he played. I'm not trying to assess the video maker's skill by the "level" opponents he beats -- that might make a little sense for a PTR dueling video (and is a cool idea for someone who wants to do it, I picture cheesy wild west wanted posters)
So I can watch Evertras vids and think "this guys owns", but do I think he would beat Valanmor or Azael in a duel? No, not really. But I'm still entertained watching him play because he's very good and understands game mechanics well. Besides it's not like if you're a strong player, you won't be strong against crazy geared opponents, you just need practice and to adjust your strats.
So when I watch the beginning of Neilyo and the duel with the fire mage, I'm thinking "nice vanish" not "big deal you beat a fire mage as a rogue."
I would never ever ever ever go check armory ratings of players I see in videos, who cares? Certainly arena rating is correlated with skill, but who knows if they're even really trying. I mean if I'm jumped outside, I'll try to win with as minimal CD as possible and use CD as they become necessary, but in a duel I won't hesitate at all. What are you really demonstrating if you fraps barely beating me when I summon my WE 30 seconds into the fight? Nothing. But if you play the fight well, and I play the fight well, it still might be fun to watch. ^^
Videos are about entertainment, showcasing ability, and improving the overall skill of the playerbase. They need not do all 3, and if a vid can accomplish any of the three well, it can and should be well received.
I didn't really enjoy Oozo's vid, but I loved the Neilyo vid. It had nothing to do with the competition they respectively faced, but the Neilyo vid is just awesome to watch. Tons of fancy vanishes, beautiful blinds into vanish saps, and some great clips of utterly dominating outdoors (the two mages section is priceless and it could very well end up one of those 'classic' moments in pvp vids)
I think the stiffest competition for 1v1 is on test. Ming's PTR dueling video from WoW 1.0 was definitely one of the all-time great vids. His recent vid (and my vid too!) are not as entertaining but showcase a ton of talented players.
Whenever I see 1v1 clips in videos, I'm not watching to assess "can he win this matchup than I cannot", I'm just thinking about what I'd be doing versus what I'm seeing and judge how good the clip/fight was based on how he played. I'm not trying to assess the video maker's skill by the "level" opponents he beats -- that might make a little sense for a PTR dueling video (and is a cool idea for someone who wants to do it, I picture cheesy wild west wanted posters)
So I can watch Evertras vids and think "this guys owns", but do I think he would beat Valanmor or Azael in a duel? No, not really. But I'm still entertained watching him play because he's very good and understands game mechanics well. Besides it's not like if you're a strong player, you won't be strong against crazy geared opponents, you just need practice and to adjust your strats.
So when I watch the beginning of Neilyo and the duel with the fire mage, I'm thinking "nice vanish" not "big deal you beat a fire mage as a rogue."
I would never ever ever ever go check armory ratings of players I see in videos, who cares? Certainly arena rating is correlated with skill, but who knows if they're even really trying. I mean if I'm jumped outside, I'll try to win with as minimal CD as possible and use CD as they become necessary, but in a duel I won't hesitate at all. What are you really demonstrating if you fraps barely beating me when I summon my WE 30 seconds into the fight? Nothing. But if you play the fight well, and I play the fight well, it still might be fun to watch. ^^
Videos are about entertainment, showcasing ability, and improving the overall skill of the playerbase. They need not do all 3, and if a vid can accomplish any of the three well, it can and should be well received.
I didn't really enjoy Oozo's vid, but I loved the Neilyo vid. It had nothing to do with the competition they respectively faced, but the Neilyo vid is just awesome to watch. Tons of fancy vanishes, beautiful blinds into vanish saps, and some great clips of utterly dominating outdoors (the two mages section is priceless and it could very well end up one of those 'classic' moments in pvp vids)
WTB Chocobo Mount
Again, I'm really out of the loop sometimes.
But this thing owns!
An extremely original, creative design from Blue I must say. I guess the similarities are pretty subtle. What's also pretty subtle is when your girlfriend buys you pineapples all the time and says she doesn't want to go to Starbucks because she hates the smell of coffee. Pretty damn subtle.
Now my dream has always been to copy to a new server that has just come up and get me and 9 others bug mounts for an epic WSG squad, but this could be a pretty good compromise. Actually, that's not really my dream, but more of a cool idea. My dreams involve getting paid millions of dollars to "fix their warlock problem" and type witty, sarcastic messages to Tseric which he must read but cannot reply. My witty messages are pretty amazing: "I appreciate the thought and time you put into your reply Tseric, but have you considered that 'Tseric? More like GAYric!'"
But this thing owns!
An extremely original, creative design from Blue I must say. I guess the similarities are pretty subtle. What's also pretty subtle is when your girlfriend buys you pineapples all the time and says she doesn't want to go to Starbucks because she hates the smell of coffee. Pretty damn subtle.
Now my dream has always been to copy to a new server that has just come up and get me and 9 others bug mounts for an epic WSG squad, but this could be a pretty good compromise. Actually, that's not really my dream, but more of a cool idea. My dreams involve getting paid millions of dollars to "fix their warlock problem" and type witty, sarcastic messages to Tseric which he must read but cannot reply. My witty messages are pretty amazing: "I appreciate the thought and time you put into your reply Tseric, but have you considered that 'Tseric? More like GAYric!'"
Arena Season Two Predictions
I think some of these are extremely obvious, some of them are probably a stretch, and some just plain stupid. But since you can't prove I'm an idiot on these predictions for a few months, "Wait and see."
Four DPS Team Explosion
During the first half of the season, I'm willing to bet that a THIRD of the top 20 teams will be 4 DPS. A month ago, it was 1-2%, it is now perhaps 10-15%. I think 4-DPS is going to become extremely popular; once you put shadowpriests, fire mages, and UA locks in gladiator gear with high resilience they suddenly aren't so squishy, and can easily survive the opening 20 seconds to land their OMG ZERG damage combo on their target of choice. Run in BoP your lock, Bubble up, silence opposing healers and AP Pom Pyro NS EM CL MB Death Shadowburn Fireblast omgeese. It's pretty scrub, but some matrices have no good counters to this. It also allows teams with PvE gear to really bring it into the arena and do some damage with it, which leads to my second prediction.
PvE Gear Explosion
So what? Lots of teams run pallies in healing gear already. Well, expect to see a ton of casters sporting double 2pc and then PvE gear to fill up a lost of the rest of their slots. For most teams, a mage with 10k HP, 300 resil, and 950 damage is a lot better than one with 11.5K HP, 420 resil, and 800 damage. Expect the Nightseye-Star of Elune price spread to move a LOT during the season as players move to more rounded gear. I'm going to go with: Half of top 20 teams are going to be wearing 20+ Tier4 or higher items on their starting five.
ClassX2 Matrices
Double Warrior, double warlock, disc priest and shadow priest, or even double mage. I'd bet that at least 20% of all top teams in battlegroups run a 2x matrix as their staring matrix. Why? 2xWar is obvious. When run with the shammy/druid/pally version, this matrix is pretty much the opposite of 4 DPS. Outlast (without dependence on mana burn) and wear down. Very similar to 4DPS in that a lot of classic matrices are going to accuse this makeup as "scrub friendly."
As more serious teams use last season's lessons in how to counter what they've seen through the season (classic matrices for the most part), a lot of teams are going to run what they feel are counters.
I've also always felt that most classes work better with another one of themself than other classes. Warlock/Shadow priest is the counter example to this, but 2 warriors provide each other both shouts and can effortlessly go from split to focused DPS on targets. Shatter is an obvious example for mages as is the fact that poly is certainly more annoying when 2 targets are down at a time. Double priest guarantees one (or both) are free to wreak havoc with mana burn.
Resto Druids
Everyone talked up feral druids before season one. Everyone went on and on about how druids were going to own it up in cat, pop out and cyclone, toss out a heal, hop into bear and charge that pally heal, and then switch back to cat and finish off the main assist. World of theorycraft is a pretty cool game.
Even with the nerf to cyclone, cyclone is still amazing and is a real problem for some teams. 1 healer and 2 healer teams are always in danger of their available healer being stuck in unbreakable CC for a LONG time. The lifebloom buff really makes it more viable.
Early season one, I think a lot of teams that ran with resto druids grew discouraged that they died extremely quickly if they didn't immediately retreat from incoming damage whereas priests can really be in the thick of it for a while and still shield/dispel/fear and be pretty annoyingly effective. However, with gear scaling druids should be able to be in caster a bit more frequently and make use of their powerful uninterruptable heals and cyclone spam more than last season.
I'm betting 10% of all top 20 teams run a druid in their active roster at season 2's end. (Compare this to like what, 1-2% now?)
To be more bold, I bet that in 2s and 3s, resto druids gain % share in top teams more than any other class next season. Druid/warlock will be a common top 5 2v2 team.
More Warlocks
Teams that ran classic matrix with a hunter last season will work to replace the hunter with a warlock or shaman. The classic hunter/warrior/mage/pally/priest will take an overall hit in popularity as more teams move to 4DPS and 2X teams, but this combo in particular will grow scarce. Not more than 1 or 2 teams in the top 20 battelgroups are going to run this come next season's end. Classic matrix teams will shift towards the warlock to help them win the long games against 2.5 healer, help them survive the burst via healthstones against 4DPS teams, and help them counter and control the opposing healing when playing other classic matrix teams.
It's harder to imagine warlocks being more dominate in the smaller arena sizes, but all signs point to this being the case. UA locks with even more survivability and their main counter (rogue/X) teams taking a huge hit with the PvP trinket changes make me think that without significant class changes, 40% of all top 10 2v2 teams will include a warlock.
Renewed Interest in BGs
Maybe I'm projecting here a bit, but it was not necessarily the case that BGs were "skill-less" or "just a zergfest", it was largely that we as players were just sick of them. We were sick of doing the same 2 BGs for nearly 2 years, and the PvP playerbase became increasingly more interested in roaming 5v5 than battlegrounds. We hated videos full of BG PvP, tried to get roaming 5v5 going on our home servers, and were awestruck when Blizzard announced that a huge part of TBC was going to be 5v5 arena PvP.
But wait, these top teams aren't full of necessarily amazing players, even videos coming from the absolute best teams usually leave you with a "yeah that's pretty much what everyone does" feeling. When I think of the best PvP movies coming out of TBC, while the HukHukHuks vid was fantastic (it's the best arena vid by a mile IMO), I'd still much rather watch Evertras' latest dueling vid or Neiyo II.
Why? If arena is pinnacle of PvP, shouldn't it be more inspiring? My point is just that PvP is more than Arena in WoW; I could be fantastic at dueling and atrocious in the Arena or vice versa, the skillsets are not really that similar. If dueling is about planning and execution with some moderate dependency on reaction, Arena is much more reaction dependent and has more emphasis is on coordination, gameplay and class knowledge, and strategy.
I don't want to ramble forever here, but my prediction is: Reemergence of competitive WSG teams on the big battlegroups and video releases from the big PvP guilds. Players will have fun discovering how their old core strategies fit in the TBC world of huge HP and resilience.
Arcane Mages
Tier 5 2PC has a lot of potential as does just generic AM spam. AP/frost mages will look to the Arcane side of their damage output as opposed to trying to just bolt between CCing. Hard to make a real prediction here, but: 40/0/21 will be significantly more popular than 33/0/28 at season's end. Tier 5 2Pc will become more prevalent on top AP/frost mages than the T4 2pc.
Tons of Arena PvP Vids
Arena videos were somewhat scarce season 1; they've gotten certainly more popular as the season progressed, but the ratio of arena to world pvp/BG vids is still probably favoring World PvP -- PvP videos will be arena footage next season 3 to 1.
Dueling Videos
Oh I had to, come on. ^^
Killing Blue Bars
More teams are going to go after the mana pools of opponents than before. Now that CC one healer, spell lock another, pom fireball fireblast + other DPS isn't getting the job done, classic matrix teams, 2.5 healer teams, and true trihealer teams are going to play much more for the long game.
Spellsurge
On pretty much everything with a blue bar. (Well not hunters and maybe not mages) Druids, paladins, priests, shamans, and warlocks will be sporting spellsurge as their weapon enchant of choice on high rated teams.
Engineering
I really thought engineering cheese would be way more prevalent season one, but it is pretty rare. Sure reflectors show up a little bit, as do harm prevention belts, but I expect the envelope pushed on this one next season. I'll bet 60% of top 20 2v2 teams have at least one engineer. (that is perhaps not a very bold estimate considering how common engineering already is with PvPers)
A Big Balance Things Patch
Obviously, everyone expects:
Pretty much every DPS class is running around with the Heroic mode trinket in their second trinket slot. I think a lot of people are going to move to more defensive trinkets to counter 4DPS teams. I'm sure we'll see a lot more: reflectors, healing+resil pvp trinkets, engineering toys, petrified scarabs (get owned), and other various toys becoming increasingly popular especially on the players on classic type teams who need to survive 4DPS onslaught.
Four DPS Team Explosion
During the first half of the season, I'm willing to bet that a THIRD of the top 20 teams will be 4 DPS. A month ago, it was 1-2%, it is now perhaps 10-15%. I think 4-DPS is going to become extremely popular; once you put shadowpriests, fire mages, and UA locks in gladiator gear with high resilience they suddenly aren't so squishy, and can easily survive the opening 20 seconds to land their OMG ZERG damage combo on their target of choice. Run in BoP your lock, Bubble up, silence opposing healers and AP Pom Pyro NS EM CL MB Death Shadowburn Fireblast omgeese. It's pretty scrub, but some matrices have no good counters to this. It also allows teams with PvE gear to really bring it into the arena and do some damage with it, which leads to my second prediction.
PvE Gear Explosion
So what? Lots of teams run pallies in healing gear already. Well, expect to see a ton of casters sporting double 2pc and then PvE gear to fill up a lost of the rest of their slots. For most teams, a mage with 10k HP, 300 resil, and 950 damage is a lot better than one with 11.5K HP, 420 resil, and 800 damage. Expect the Nightseye-Star of Elune price spread to move a LOT during the season as players move to more rounded gear. I'm going to go with: Half of top 20 teams are going to be wearing 20+ Tier4 or higher items on their starting five.
ClassX2 Matrices
Double Warrior, double warlock, disc priest and shadow priest, or even double mage. I'd bet that at least 20% of all top teams in battlegroups run a 2x matrix as their staring matrix. Why? 2xWar is obvious. When run with the shammy/druid/pally version, this matrix is pretty much the opposite of 4 DPS. Outlast (without dependence on mana burn) and wear down. Very similar to 4DPS in that a lot of classic matrices are going to accuse this makeup as "scrub friendly."
As more serious teams use last season's lessons in how to counter what they've seen through the season (classic matrices for the most part), a lot of teams are going to run what they feel are counters.
I've also always felt that most classes work better with another one of themself than other classes. Warlock/Shadow priest is the counter example to this, but 2 warriors provide each other both shouts and can effortlessly go from split to focused DPS on targets. Shatter is an obvious example for mages as is the fact that poly is certainly more annoying when 2 targets are down at a time. Double priest guarantees one (or both) are free to wreak havoc with mana burn.
Resto Druids
Everyone talked up feral druids before season one. Everyone went on and on about how druids were going to own it up in cat, pop out and cyclone, toss out a heal, hop into bear and charge that pally heal, and then switch back to cat and finish off the main assist. World of theorycraft is a pretty cool game.
Even with the nerf to cyclone, cyclone is still amazing and is a real problem for some teams. 1 healer and 2 healer teams are always in danger of their available healer being stuck in unbreakable CC for a LONG time. The lifebloom buff really makes it more viable.
Early season one, I think a lot of teams that ran with resto druids grew discouraged that they died extremely quickly if they didn't immediately retreat from incoming damage whereas priests can really be in the thick of it for a while and still shield/dispel/fear and be pretty annoyingly effective. However, with gear scaling druids should be able to be in caster a bit more frequently and make use of their powerful uninterruptable heals and cyclone spam more than last season.
I'm betting 10% of all top 20 teams run a druid in their active roster at season 2's end. (Compare this to like what, 1-2% now?)
To be more bold, I bet that in 2s and 3s, resto druids gain % share in top teams more than any other class next season. Druid/warlock will be a common top 5 2v2 team.
More Warlocks
Teams that ran classic matrix with a hunter last season will work to replace the hunter with a warlock or shaman. The classic hunter/warrior/mage/pally/priest will take an overall hit in popularity as more teams move to 4DPS and 2X teams, but this combo in particular will grow scarce. Not more than 1 or 2 teams in the top 20 battelgroups are going to run this come next season's end. Classic matrix teams will shift towards the warlock to help them win the long games against 2.5 healer, help them survive the burst via healthstones against 4DPS teams, and help them counter and control the opposing healing when playing other classic matrix teams.
It's harder to imagine warlocks being more dominate in the smaller arena sizes, but all signs point to this being the case. UA locks with even more survivability and their main counter (rogue/X) teams taking a huge hit with the PvP trinket changes make me think that without significant class changes, 40% of all top 10 2v2 teams will include a warlock.
Renewed Interest in BGs
Maybe I'm projecting here a bit, but it was not necessarily the case that BGs were "skill-less" or "just a zergfest", it was largely that we as players were just sick of them. We were sick of doing the same 2 BGs for nearly 2 years, and the PvP playerbase became increasingly more interested in roaming 5v5 than battlegrounds. We hated videos full of BG PvP, tried to get roaming 5v5 going on our home servers, and were awestruck when Blizzard announced that a huge part of TBC was going to be 5v5 arena PvP.
But wait, these top teams aren't full of necessarily amazing players, even videos coming from the absolute best teams usually leave you with a "yeah that's pretty much what everyone does" feeling. When I think of the best PvP movies coming out of TBC, while the HukHukHuks vid was fantastic (it's the best arena vid by a mile IMO), I'd still much rather watch Evertras' latest dueling vid or Neiyo II.
Why? If arena is pinnacle of PvP, shouldn't it be more inspiring? My point is just that PvP is more than Arena in WoW; I could be fantastic at dueling and atrocious in the Arena or vice versa, the skillsets are not really that similar. If dueling is about planning and execution with some moderate dependency on reaction, Arena is much more reaction dependent and has more emphasis is on coordination, gameplay and class knowledge, and strategy.
I don't want to ramble forever here, but my prediction is: Reemergence of competitive WSG teams on the big battlegroups and video releases from the big PvP guilds. Players will have fun discovering how their old core strategies fit in the TBC world of huge HP and resilience.
Arcane Mages
Tier 5 2PC has a lot of potential as does just generic AM spam. AP/frost mages will look to the Arcane side of their damage output as opposed to trying to just bolt between CCing. Hard to make a real prediction here, but: 40/0/21 will be significantly more popular than 33/0/28 at season's end. Tier 5 2Pc will become more prevalent on top AP/frost mages than the T4 2pc.
Tons of Arena PvP Vids
Arena videos were somewhat scarce season 1; they've gotten certainly more popular as the season progressed, but the ratio of arena to world pvp/BG vids is still probably favoring World PvP -- PvP videos will be arena footage next season 3 to 1.
Dueling Videos
Oh I had to, come on. ^^
Killing Blue Bars
More teams are going to go after the mana pools of opponents than before. Now that CC one healer, spell lock another, pom fireball fireblast + other DPS isn't getting the job done, classic matrix teams, 2.5 healer teams, and true trihealer teams are going to play much more for the long game.
Spellsurge
On pretty much everything with a blue bar. (Well not hunters and maybe not mages) Druids, paladins, priests, shamans, and warlocks will be sporting spellsurge as their weapon enchant of choice on high rated teams.
Engineering
I really thought engineering cheese would be way more prevalent season one, but it is pretty rare. Sure reflectors show up a little bit, as do harm prevention belts, but I expect the envelope pushed on this one next season. I'll bet 60% of top 20 2v2 teams have at least one engineer. (that is perhaps not a very bold estimate considering how common engineering already is with PvPers)
A Big Balance Things Patch
Obviously, everyone expects:
- Rogue Buffs
- Warlock Nerfs
- New Profession Crap
Pretty much every DPS class is running around with the Heroic mode trinket in their second trinket slot. I think a lot of people are going to move to more defensive trinkets to counter 4DPS teams. I'm sure we'll see a lot more: reflectors, healing+resil pvp trinkets, engineering toys, petrified scarabs (get owned), and other various toys becoming increasingly popular especially on the players on classic type teams who need to survive 4DPS onslaught.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Class Balance Debate
I guess I'm pretty out of the loop. Apparently, XFire Debate Club is hosting a wow class balance debate next Monday (the 19th) @ 6EST. Looks like a lot of big name players are participating so this should be interesting if nothing else.
Check out the even here.
A few of the HukHukHuks will be there, as well as Ming, and then a bunch of e-famous PvErs including World of Raid's Teza, Curse's Mek (Not FH's Mek!!*) and probably a ton of people I'm forgetting to mention but c'est la vie.
The topic of debate is "the best and worst classes in WoW." Now I'm no psychic, well actually I am, and you're going to die of untreated syphilis at 33. I'll also tell you the inevitable conclusions of this debate:
Worst Class in WoW:
Rogue
I don't really know a ton about PvE anymore, but it seems to me that rogues and locks do (I'm being generous here) comparable DPS, but the lock brings healthstones, elements for the mages, and damage that requires a lot less healing than rogues. On the PvP side, rogues are only mediocre 1v1, and scale poorly into larger matchup sizes. Rogues are for the most part lousy warriors in 5v5s, and any team bring a rogue is better packing a war, even if its a second warrior.
Best Class in WoW:
Tie: Warlock/Warrior
Warlocks do dominating damage of any spec in PvE. In PvP, they rule dueling entirely and are ridiculously overrepresented in 2v2 arena. In the larger arena formats, locks were once scarce due to inability to survive assist trains, but as their health/resil has scaled, this is less an issue and locks are increasing popular on top arena teams of any size. Part of the warlock issue is that resilience does not influence DoTs, so locks profit as gladiator gear becomes abundant. Healthstones, purger fodder buffs, tongues, fear, deathcoil, spell-lock or felguard, huge survivability or UA, exhaustion -- you can go on and on with what locks bring to the arena.
Warriors are everywhere. They can still be high DPS PvE classes and they still remain as the primary tanking class in endgame PvE. In PvP, warriors strangely can have the most "burst" damage of any class and still bring the most powerful debuff in the game (MS) to the arena. The degree to which warriors scale with their weapons is still staggering, and as weapons and equipment improve, warriors are going to continue hitting harder and harder.
This is what I'm predicting at least. ^^
Perhaps they'll go crazy and talk about druids, who knows.
*FH's Meks is 10 times cooler.
Check out the even here.
A few of the HukHukHuks will be there, as well as Ming, and then a bunch of e-famous PvErs including World of Raid's Teza, Curse's Mek (Not FH's Mek!!*) and probably a ton of people I'm forgetting to mention but c'est la vie.
The topic of debate is "the best and worst classes in WoW." Now I'm no psychic, well actually I am, and you're going to die of untreated syphilis at 33. I'll also tell you the inevitable conclusions of this debate:
Worst Class in WoW:
Rogue
I don't really know a ton about PvE anymore, but it seems to me that rogues and locks do (I'm being generous here) comparable DPS, but the lock brings healthstones, elements for the mages, and damage that requires a lot less healing than rogues. On the PvP side, rogues are only mediocre 1v1, and scale poorly into larger matchup sizes. Rogues are for the most part lousy warriors in 5v5s, and any team bring a rogue is better packing a war, even if its a second warrior.
Best Class in WoW:
Tie: Warlock/Warrior
Warlocks do dominating damage of any spec in PvE. In PvP, they rule dueling entirely and are ridiculously overrepresented in 2v2 arena. In the larger arena formats, locks were once scarce due to inability to survive assist trains, but as their health/resil has scaled, this is less an issue and locks are increasing popular on top arena teams of any size. Part of the warlock issue is that resilience does not influence DoTs, so locks profit as gladiator gear becomes abundant. Healthstones, purger fodder buffs, tongues, fear, deathcoil, spell-lock or felguard, huge survivability or UA, exhaustion -- you can go on and on with what locks bring to the arena.
Warriors are everywhere. They can still be high DPS PvE classes and they still remain as the primary tanking class in endgame PvE. In PvP, warriors strangely can have the most "burst" damage of any class and still bring the most powerful debuff in the game (MS) to the arena. The degree to which warriors scale with their weapons is still staggering, and as weapons and equipment improve, warriors are going to continue hitting harder and harder.
This is what I'm predicting at least. ^^
Perhaps they'll go crazy and talk about druids, who knows.
*FH's Meks is 10 times cooler.
Blizzcon Tickets on Sale
If you're going, go buy them before they sell out!!
It's not exactly my sort of thing and I'm pretty sure a LOT of people will REALLY scare me...a lot. But, I'll be there with a few friends to snag beta keys and try to get the "scoop" (LOL) on what's coming next in WoW and SC2.
It's not exactly my sort of thing and I'm pretty sure a LOT of people will REALLY scare me...a lot. But, I'll be there with a few friends to snag beta keys and try to get the "scoop" (LOL) on what's coming next in WoW and SC2.
Slight Break from Strategy
I've been perhaps tiptoeing around this subject these past weeks, but no more!
WoW is a game where people LOVE to dream up fantasy gameplay changes. Aside from Virility's nonstop spam, at least 20% of the mage boards are posts talking about how the class should be changed, and this is true pretty much everywhere. Because WoW is such a dynamic game (it changes a lot!) and because player feedback is often the impetus for change, players adamantly propose talent tree revisions, class mechanic fixes, class balance issues and argue heatedly over whether said changes are necessary or "fair."
I know there's some skepticism with how involved players are in the development process, but I really think the TBC beta forums provide solid evidence of communication between players and devs on hot topics. (Though many of them like promises to further improve spellsteal and invisibility never had any follow through)
Point is people to love to daydream up ways to make the game "better." This is probably healthy as long as you aren't too obsessive; it's even more interesting that when any medium sized content patch is eminent, there are a half dozen fake patch notes that hit the community. A lot of these are extremely detailed/thought out and always generate AWESOME guild chat moments. "NO WAY" "COOL BRO, MORE WARLOCK BUFFS"
So without further ado, I present:
Raddy's Fake Dream 2.20 Patch Notes
Now some of this stuff is pretty tame, and some of it is REALLY far out there, but that's the fun of it. ^^
Battlegrounds
Players may now form battleground teams similar to how arena teams are created. Each battleground team may consist of 25 players. Teams can now queue for rated battleground matches and their performance will be tracked on Armory as it is with Arena. Overall rating is the average of the three battleground ratings (AV is excluded); however teams are also independently ranked by each battleground. There are no rewards available yet through this system, but players will earn a weekly honor bonus based upon their team's overall rating as long as they play 20% of the team's games. In the future, we would like to add unique rewards to this PvP system.
Dueling
Dueling rules now follow the rules applicable in Arena PvP. This includes prohibition of consumable items, inability to use cooldowns of length greater than 15 minutes, and the temporary reset of all player cooldowns at the beginning of the duel. Cooldowns will return to their original status at the end of the duel to prohibit abusing dueling to reset cooldowns.
Arena
Players will notice that their favorite Arena Maps are somewhat larger than previously; the overall size of the arenas has been increased by 30%.
In order to reduce player frustration with "turtling", if a team has no player cross the midline of the map after 5 minutes have expired. That team will forfeit the game, though the rating change will only be 50% of normal.
Fixed a few line of sight issues concerning the center structure in Ruins of Lordaeron. The textures in this arena have been improved and players should find the map much "brighter" than previously. Some of these extra flourishes have been simplified or removed to increase performance on older machines.
It will no longer be possible to view the arena map or game number before zoning into a rated arena game.
If a rated arena match begins and you have less than 5 players in the game, you may now right click on the Arena icon on your minimap and invoke "Disconnect Forfeit." This must be done within 15 seconds of the gate's opening, and teams are limited to using this option once per 24 hours. The game will simply end and there will be no win/loss or arena point adjustment.
You may no longer change your equipment after the game begins.
Priest
Inner Focus - This ability can now be cast upon teammates and is off of the global cooldown.
Blessed Recovery - This talent will now proc off of spells; additionally, the amount healed is now 15/25/35%.
Pain Suppression - Duration extended to 12 seconds.
Silence - Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds. This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Mana Burn - Reduced the effect of manaburn by 25%.
Shadowform - Damage reduction granted to physical damage now applies to all types of damage.
Hunter
Deterrence - Now additionally increases chance to resist spells by 25%
Aimed Shot - Reduced cast time of aimed shot to 3 seconds.
Silencing Shot - Silence effect extended to 4 seconds. This ability will travel now much faster to its target.
Scatter Shot - This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Paladin
Judgement of Justice - Now additionally decreases target's movement speed to 80%.
Repentance - This ability is now trainable.
New 31 point talent: Piety - 60 mana. 20 Yd Range. 3 min CD. Interrupt target's cast prohibiting target from casting any spells of that tree for 2 seconds. Additionally, grants paladin immunity to that spell school for the next 6 seconds.
New Trainable Ability: Steadfast - 60 mana. 3 min CD. Your next heal, if interrupted, will instantly heal the target for 150% of the expected heal's amount.
Mage
Spellsteal - Mana cost is now reduced by 60% on targets afflicted with Detect Magic.
Master of Elements - The mana refund is now additionally granted to the mage's party members.
Blink - This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Ice Block is now the 11 point frost talent, and Cold Snap the 21 point frost talent. Cold Snap now additionally resets all mage cooldowns.
Wand Specialization has been replaced with: Reduce the chance your offensive magics are dispelled by 15/30%
Evocate now restores 100% of mage's mana over 8 seconds, cooldown is once again 10 minutes.
Shaman
Windfury totem - This totem is now a flat AP increase and no longer generates extra attacks.
Grounding totem - Fixed an error that caused this totem to occasionally absorb extra spells.
Shocks - All three shocks are no longer on the global cooldown.
Mana Tide Totem - This totem is now trainable. The new 30 point Resto talent is: Nature's Infusion: 60 mana. 10 min CD. For the next 8 seconds, your healing spells no long restore health but instead mana equal to the health that which they would have restored.
Rogue
New Poison: Mana Antiserum. Stacks 5 times. Per stack, target loses mana equal to 1% of the damage taken.
Energy cost of gouge reduced to 30.
The damage formula for a few rogue finishers have been changed; this should result in increased damage for those with moderate attack power but more powerful weapons.
Duration on sprint reduced to 8 seconds, cooldown reduced to 45 seconds.
Riposte is no longer on the global cooldown.
Kick is no longer on the global cooldown.
Warlock
Death Coil is no longer on the global cooldown.
Fear is now on a 12 second cooldown.
Warrior
Cooldown on intimidating should reduced to 90 seconds.
Defensive stance now increases the effect of heailng spells and effects on the warrior by 10%.
Mortal strike healing debuff reduced to a 40% reduction in healing on the target.
Intervene will now absorb the next three attacks on the target.
Overpower is of of the global cooldown.
Pummel is no longer on the global cooldown.
Druid
Healing effects are increased by 25% on a druid in bear form during frenzied regeneration.
Shapeshifting no longer triggers a global cooldown.
Innervate now restores 100% of the target's mana, cooldown is again 10 minutes.
New Ability: Silly Fairy Druid Ability: 60 mana 3min CD For the next 20 seconds, your heals are unaffected by healing debuffs on your targets.
General
The mechanics of resilience have changed; While resilience will still reduce critical strike bonus by 1% per 20 resilience, each 40 resilience now reduces overall damage taken by 1% instead of reducing incoming critical strike chance.
The arena gloves and 4pc bonuses have been reworked, head over to Area 52 and check them out!
Okay this has gone on far too long, and its time to write something productive lol
WoW is a game where people LOVE to dream up fantasy gameplay changes. Aside from Virility's nonstop spam, at least 20% of the mage boards are posts talking about how the class should be changed, and this is true pretty much everywhere. Because WoW is such a dynamic game (it changes a lot!) and because player feedback is often the impetus for change, players adamantly propose talent tree revisions, class mechanic fixes, class balance issues and argue heatedly over whether said changes are necessary or "fair."
I know there's some skepticism with how involved players are in the development process, but I really think the TBC beta forums provide solid evidence of communication between players and devs on hot topics. (Though many of them like promises to further improve spellsteal and invisibility never had any follow through)
Point is people to love to daydream up ways to make the game "better." This is probably healthy as long as you aren't too obsessive; it's even more interesting that when any medium sized content patch is eminent, there are a half dozen fake patch notes that hit the community. A lot of these are extremely detailed/thought out and always generate AWESOME guild chat moments. "NO WAY" "COOL BRO, MORE WARLOCK BUFFS"
So without further ado, I present:
Raddy's Fake Dream 2.20 Patch Notes
Now some of this stuff is pretty tame, and some of it is REALLY far out there, but that's the fun of it. ^^
Battlegrounds
Players may now form battleground teams similar to how arena teams are created. Each battleground team may consist of 25 players. Teams can now queue for rated battleground matches and their performance will be tracked on Armory as it is with Arena. Overall rating is the average of the three battleground ratings (AV is excluded); however teams are also independently ranked by each battleground. There are no rewards available yet through this system, but players will earn a weekly honor bonus based upon their team's overall rating as long as they play 20% of the team's games. In the future, we would like to add unique rewards to this PvP system.
Dueling
Dueling rules now follow the rules applicable in Arena PvP. This includes prohibition of consumable items, inability to use cooldowns of length greater than 15 minutes, and the temporary reset of all player cooldowns at the beginning of the duel. Cooldowns will return to their original status at the end of the duel to prohibit abusing dueling to reset cooldowns.
Arena
Players will notice that their favorite Arena Maps are somewhat larger than previously; the overall size of the arenas has been increased by 30%.
In order to reduce player frustration with "turtling", if a team has no player cross the midline of the map after 5 minutes have expired. That team will forfeit the game, though the rating change will only be 50% of normal.
Fixed a few line of sight issues concerning the center structure in Ruins of Lordaeron. The textures in this arena have been improved and players should find the map much "brighter" than previously. Some of these extra flourishes have been simplified or removed to increase performance on older machines.
It will no longer be possible to view the arena map or game number before zoning into a rated arena game.
If a rated arena match begins and you have less than 5 players in the game, you may now right click on the Arena icon on your minimap and invoke "Disconnect Forfeit." This must be done within 15 seconds of the gate's opening, and teams are limited to using this option once per 24 hours. The game will simply end and there will be no win/loss or arena point adjustment.
You may no longer change your equipment after the game begins.
Priest
Inner Focus - This ability can now be cast upon teammates and is off of the global cooldown.
Blessed Recovery - This talent will now proc off of spells; additionally, the amount healed is now 15/25/35%.
Pain Suppression - Duration extended to 12 seconds.
Silence - Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds. This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Mana Burn - Reduced the effect of manaburn by 25%.
Shadowform - Damage reduction granted to physical damage now applies to all types of damage.
Hunter
Deterrence - Now additionally increases chance to resist spells by 25%
Aimed Shot - Reduced cast time of aimed shot to 3 seconds.
Silencing Shot - Silence effect extended to 4 seconds. This ability will travel now much faster to its target.
Scatter Shot - This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Paladin
Judgement of Justice - Now additionally decreases target's movement speed to 80%.
Repentance - This ability is now trainable.
New 31 point talent: Piety - 60 mana. 20 Yd Range. 3 min CD. Interrupt target's cast prohibiting target from casting any spells of that tree for 2 seconds. Additionally, grants paladin immunity to that spell school for the next 6 seconds.
New Trainable Ability: Steadfast - 60 mana. 3 min CD. Your next heal, if interrupted, will instantly heal the target for 150% of the expected heal's amount.
Mage
Spellsteal - Mana cost is now reduced by 60% on targets afflicted with Detect Magic.
Master of Elements - The mana refund is now additionally granted to the mage's party members.
Blink - This ability is no longer on the global cooldown.
Ice Block is now the 11 point frost talent, and Cold Snap the 21 point frost talent. Cold Snap now additionally resets all mage cooldowns.
Wand Specialization has been replaced with:
Evocate now restores 100% of mage's mana over 8 seconds, cooldown is once again 10 minutes.
Shaman
Windfury totem - This totem is now a flat AP increase and no longer generates extra attacks.
Grounding totem - Fixed an error that caused this totem to occasionally absorb extra spells.
Shocks - All three shocks are no longer on the global cooldown.
Mana Tide Totem - This totem is now trainable. The new 30 point Resto talent is: Nature's Infusion: 60 mana. 10 min CD. For the next 8 seconds, your healing spells no long restore health but instead mana equal to the health that which they would have restored.
Rogue
New Poison: Mana Antiserum. Stacks 5 times. Per stack, target loses mana equal to 1% of the damage taken.
Energy cost of gouge reduced to 30.
The damage formula for a few rogue finishers have been changed; this should result in increased damage for those with moderate attack power but more powerful weapons.
Duration on sprint reduced to 8 seconds, cooldown reduced to 45 seconds.
Riposte is no longer on the global cooldown.
Kick is no longer on the global cooldown.
Warlock
Death Coil is no longer on the global cooldown.
Fear is now on a 12 second cooldown.
Warrior
Cooldown on intimidating should reduced to 90 seconds.
Defensive stance now increases the effect of heailng spells and effects on the warrior by 10%.
Mortal strike healing debuff reduced to a 40% reduction in healing on the target.
Intervene will now absorb the next three attacks on the target.
Overpower is of of the global cooldown.
Pummel is no longer on the global cooldown.
Druid
Healing effects are increased by 25% on a druid in bear form during frenzied regeneration.
Shapeshifting no longer triggers a global cooldown.
Innervate now restores 100% of the target's mana, cooldown is again 10 minutes.
New Ability: Silly Fairy Druid Ability: 60 mana 3min CD For the next 20 seconds, your heals are unaffected by healing debuffs on your targets.
General
The mechanics of resilience have changed; While resilience will still reduce critical strike bonus by 1% per 20 resilience, each 40 resilience now reduces overall damage taken by 1% instead of reducing incoming critical strike chance.
The arena gloves and 4pc bonuses have been reworked, head over to Area 52 and check them out!
Okay this has gone on far too long, and its time to write something productive lol
Monday, June 11, 2007
5v5 Discussion Topics: WE Mage in Classic Matrix Matchups
I'm thinking that it would be fun to approach discussing 5v5 strategies in a similar framework as dueling guides; of course, there are problems with this. If one can complain that a "dueling guide" makes little sense because there are often so many variables, 5v5s an exponentially more complex. You can't follow a strategy you read online and get guaranteed results. But I do think that in the process of going through what we routinely do, we can pick out that things that clearly are not very good and integrate ideas that sound like they would work well. Enough pandering to the haters.
WE Spec 17/0/44
Matrix: MM Hunter, BR Priest, Pally, War
Our Game: We have dominating crowd control and mana burn. Any game where we can live long enough to let viper sting + scorpion and mana burn do their thing, we will dominate; to do this, we must protect our priest and hunter, who will surely be the eventual targets of opposing assist trains. We have lasting damage in the form of WE Mage and War, and mediocre burst.
Opponent 1: FG Lock, WE Mage. BR Priest, Pally, War
Their Game:
This is the new "classic" matrix on our battelgroup; it is quite challenging. They have no soft spots and have powerful lasting damage, moreso than almost any other matrix. They have ridiculous crowd control; they win by either creating a window where they can burst someone down through their vast CC which includes tongues, fear, scream, shout, poly, and CS. If they know they cannot burst someone down, they will attack the blue bars with drain mana and mana burn.
Pre Game:
This is a matchup that is very unfavorable. You do not have the damage on your team to reliably burst down any target quickly, though the priest is really your only option. Your hunter traps and frost snares are not likely to do a ton in preventing them from being all over your priest making it impossible for him to manaburn. If you ignore their priest and go for their mage or lock, their priest will dominate your pally with manaburn, and your priest will collapse to their assist train before you can hope to take out a SL lock with huge health/resil or a similarly high hp/resil WE mage.
Isn't our hunter team built on outlasting and crowd control, so this matrix is just better than ours, right? Yeah, it is, because they have a warlock -- if you want to win, bring a warlock. Well, actually, there are ways to win this fight and you have some advantages they do not. They are extremely dependent on their warrior for damage, if you can put out moderate harassment on the SL lock and WE mage, you can really limit their damage. Moreover, if you can take their pets out of the game, you really neuter what their team can do. Look for opportunities to kill the FG, and most definitely go out of your way to kill WE. Your hunter and you as a mage can quickly fireblast, autoshot, arcane/mutli a WE down, and this basically saves you at least 10-12k damage per WE you kill quickly.
WE mage should have focus set to pally, hunter should have focus/scatter on priest, but should use silencing on either pally or mage situationally. Hunter should have pet and viper stings on their priest until pally bubbles, and that point he should pet and viper to their pally, or situationally their mage. Your priest is going to do manaburn opposing priest if at all possible, probably not though. You are going to spend a LOT of time removing tongues; this is where I whine about warlocks again.
How You Play It:
CONTROL THE MAP. Harass with viper stings and multis and avoid getting DoT'd up best you can. Drop trap in strong location where you know their war has to pass through. When they eventually charge, first poly on the war hopefully inside the trap, if you're well positioned, rank 1 fb->poly->detect, and you got a nice stack for them to dispel, YOU SHOULD HAVE WC OR I HATE YOU) High level arena is very much like a duel, you MUST be using every one of your globals wisely, and with that in mind, you should be casting bolt on your target as soon as that poly cast finishes. Fireblast after the bolt and use the global to readjust positioning. This is just a good general way of maximizing doing something while getting into position; I do it as most specs against most teams I guess lol.
Their war should be dispelled at this time and all over your priest, don't concern youself about it, there's nothing you can do. Poly their mage as soon as your well positioned and off fireblast global as hopefully tongues** isn't out yet, if it is, make sure you learn how to stay near your pally and remove it promptly, if you get poly'd here (as some mages like to poly mages before wars or are just faster than you cause you had to waste time on tongues), trinket it and poly the mage as you come out. Don't suck and get poly'd by him a second time before you poly him. If you have to sit in sheep for an extra sec to watch his cast bar, do it, it's a huge handicap to eat a poly here and your pally cannot afford a global dispel you, especially not the 2-3 it might require if he did something gay like rank 1 coc, poly, detect you. Summon pet as soon as you poly their mage (or lock if you can't reach the mage, it's not big deal, but the mage is MUCH better)*
Drop your pet as soon as you can, and get on your assist target, your hunter should be watching their mage; goal is to silence the mage as soon as he trinkets poly or is dispelled. He must do this while still doing damage to the main target. If you can CS now and go for the win, do it, you probably cannot as their priest is going to be above 50%. If priest is above 50% still with no BoP, silence, yes silence the pally and shatter burst the priest. Your priest should be dispelling him while getting focused by war btw to ensure no freedom. (God it is hard to keep track of everyone!)
"Well the pally bubbled because I didn't hit the tree and the priest lived, nice advice." But you forced the bubble! Your priest should be doing fine as their mage is just coming out of silence, but your now in a world of trouble as your pally is now getting CC'd by their lock. But DR is now up on their war, and you can sheep detect the war to buy your priest some breathing room. Quickly get back to casting on the priest who should still be moderately low; now here best case is what happens, the pally comes out of bubbles and has yet to BoP the priest as he's midheal and is "saving it", scatter the pally and kill their priest. More likely he used BoP during bubble; you can work in some mass dispel madness in here, but we never found it to be reliable really.
If it looks likely they will be able to kill your priest (i.e. mage is casting openly and war is coming out of poly ready to rip), you need to get more CC down. This should be a new sheep on the mage and if possible a nova (NOT A PET NOVA) on the warrior. Try to do this without spending a half hour of wasted globals.
You still have a 5-6 globals at least before your CS is back up and a few until your second pet nova. You can sheep juggle here, though you only have 1 more tiny sheep on each most likely, alternatively, you can sheep the lock, which is probably the best option most of the time. Before getting on priest again, look to kill opposing WE and FG. Coordinate with hunter! After you succeed, pump damage into the priest, and use hunter silence on mage again when it is up, pet nova shatter combo priest and CS pally for the kill. This game is actually still not over, as you still have a full health lock, a full health mage with decent mana remaining and no matter what you do, your priest is going down pretty soon. Doing damage at this point might seem pointless because of SoR, but WTF else are you going to do. Pally is next target as he's their freedoms and the warlocks mana source, he has no bubble, you must snap second pet to kill him FAST because this is a 4v4 you will lose.
* Sheeping the mage early limits his ability to CC AND do damage while the lock is really only doing CC for their team. He is putting out some damage, but not the type of damage that is going to give them momentum. Plus poly is more dangerous early game CC than fear due to WoTf and fear ward etc. (but is worse later game as you don't want to be healing people lolol)
** Some mages are meticulous at decursing their teammates. It is VERY important; you should prioritize decursing your pally over everything but full DR sheeps on opposing war and the times when you can shatter combo. Decurse your priest teammate with much lower priority -- I decurse myself first actually. ^^
Now the Reversal:
Assume you are the FG lock version of the classic matrix.
Pre Game:
Play well and you will win. There are lots of ways to win this:
1) Attack the hunter's mana pool while DPSing priest
2) Attack the priset mana's pool while DPSing priest
3) Straight DPS priest, BoP your priest and mass dispel their pally, CS after bubble is MD'd, kill priest
I'll go with #1 for now. Their weak points are the small mana pool on their hunter, their priest as a squishy DPS target while traps don't help much, and the reliance on their mage controlling you better than you control him as he is the majority of their effective CC against your matrix.
How You Play It:
Outplay their mage. Let's play it fancy too ^^
Rank 1 fb, poly detect on their war to start. Frostbolt->fireblast on their priest as you move into position. Summon pet quickly, pref before their mage looks to poly you. Your CS focus is of course the pally, but if you can get a CS on the opposing mage's arcane tree the beginning, take it out. You aren't going to need that CS for a little while.
Mage won't IB the silence unless he's a total baller. Now, you're a lot less concerned with DR than the other matrix because you have fear and DC. Frostbolt, and then frostbolt shatter combo their priest while your lock fears and harasses pally. Pally will have to bubble. You will now be getting poly'd most likely, trinket it and sheep the mage because you're gay like that. Your pet should still be on the priest who is getting healed to full by pally. Your lock is now fearing and harassing the hunter while their war struggles to prohibit manaburns. Either their hunter will silencing shot your priest to protect his manapool, or he'll hit you here. You can actually IB this probably, but I'm not baller enough, so I just eat it. Use the time to get good positioning.
However, most hunters will SS the priest, if he does, DPS the hunter with your lock teammate while war hangs out on priest. When pally switches to healing the hunter, quickly get back on the priest, and shatter combo->CS pally->deathcoil pally if need be for the kill. They really don't have tools to stop this. IB a poly if you get poly'd mid DPS here.
It is better for the hunter to Silencing Shot the mage IMO, if he does and their war can control your priest, they now have a window to kill your WE and deny you that second nova combo. They can even work on the FG during this time. Alternatively, he can silence priest and scatter you or something. Either way you are getting CC'd and probably can't justify the risk/reward of IBing it. (it lets them go for a zerg kill on you during hypo which is pretty much GG and you don't want that) When you come out of CC, repoly the war. This buys priest time to finish manaburning the hunter, your pally should BoP before bubbling of course, and between BoP and pally Bubble they should not be able to kill your priest here especially with you harassing their war with poly (you can repoly until immune here) and your lock fearing the hunter.
As your priest gets that sickening heal to full and their DPS has that "oh balls we didn't kill him" thing going on, you should have their hunter floating around 40-70% from lock dots and harassing, their pally at 50-70%, their priest at 75% ish, and their mage and war full up. You now have the option of going for the priest or hunter. It is up to your warrior, don't argue, just adapt. Either way, if your pet is dead or too oom to use second nova, snap a new pet -- in fact if you get silenced of scattered and they killed your pet or you just know you'll need a second one before you can shatter combo, IB that CC. Moving on...summon pet and shatter combo target of choice, focus CS their pally and you know the gist of getting the kill here. This fight is totally dominated after their priest dies, get on their hunter next, and let your lock fear/tongues harass their pally (even if the mage is dispelling it, its still good)
Between BoP locking out two of their DPS and healthstone, its very hard for their matrix to gain sente (momentum) and even though you have very little burst with this matrix (which generally means poor momentum), you should have control of this fight. As a mage, you're looking to limit the effectiveness of their CC by keeping their mage under control while your lock controls first their pally and their hunter -- you then take over on the pally. You do this while CC'ing the warrior and putting out as huge damage as you can on the priest, which they can do little about. Even if the game goes to a long game, say the priest uses LoS very well or gets good resists etc., you should still have the edge as long as they didn't succeed in killing your pets and taking you out of the fight for too long. It's important in matchups like this to take advantage of the fact you aren't being focused, limit their ability to CC you by CC'ing the mage who is tasked with controlling you, and making the most of your damage potential as you are the lion's share of the team's burst.
Well, I need a break. I'll continue with more on this matchup including mixups, fakeouts, and split DPS variants; I'd then like to move on to other fights.
Mixups:
I find it pretty common that you can't always get on your target of choice off the bat, so you're forced to either play defense till you can or pick a second target to go after with your assist train. I definitely favor playing aggressively (why I play on a 4DPS team now, DUH) and I'd much rather pour damage into a non-optimal target than spend 10 seconds CC juggling.
For the FG lock team, you clearly are going after the hunter as a secondary target. He has good tools for playing keep away from your warrior, as once he gets freedom, he's extremely slippery which is one of a few reasons to not have him be your primary focus. The other reasons being the fact that damaging a hunter accomplishes basically just doing damage to him whereas damage a priest prevents that player from doing much along with the huge health pools that hunters have and a nasty physical snare. Hopefully by the time the hunters gets freedom, you can force a BoP despite the freedom or even a bubble. Worst case the priest should be exposed by now and you can quickly switch targets.
If you're the mage on the hunter's team, your options for a secondary target are more limited. The pally is always an option but often they are equally difficult to focus as they're going to play duck and hide with the pillars. If he's out of the question, you're left a SL lock and a WE mage, two classes specc'd entirely to take and withstand a beating. The WE mage is the better option of the two as at least you limit the early game CC and chain casting threat. Hopefully you can force an early IB and maybe even continue the pressure when he's on hypo, though the majority of the time you're going to be better off switching back to their priest as they still have BoP and Bubble to keep the mage alive.
Either way, it is tempting when DPSing your non-optimal target to half-ass damage and focus more on CC thinking that even if you fail to really get the target low, at least you'll thwart the opposition's offense. This is a dangerous mentality; the point of casting into that target is to get him low enough to force use of defensive cooldowns, if you aren't doing this, you're wasting time and letting your opponents accomplish their goal of using your defensive cooldowns. If you can't do enough damage to actually generate sente, you're better off poly juggling and playing keep away.
From either team's perspective, your tasks are always:
Split DPS:
At some point with teams like this you realize that as you play better opponents, you can't leave as many people unguarded. Priests, mages, and warlocks go from strong to powerhouses if you let them pump damage and CC without harassment. You should also think about their play is going to change when you start harassing them; a priest with a warrior on him won't be healing or manaburning but he will be dispelling. Any good player is going to make use of his globals regardless of pressure -- this is why I've always felt focusing SL locks is a mistake. A focused SL lock can still freely tongues, shadowburn, and DoT up as he likes. You don't gain as much by guarding him as when you pressure a mage. (This idea is the whole reason why 4 DPS is so effective IMO...well that and zerging things down)
Okay, so this is how split DPS variants work in slightly less detail than above, and how the WE mage adjusts.
WE Mage on Hunter Team:
Your team is probably running the pretty common: Viper and scorpion pet on their priest along with warrior, Hunter on the Mage with all silences going to the mage and scatters going to their war, Priest looks for window to MC war actively otherwise manaburns their priest, Pally heals and uses stun on second lock fear (fear ward first and third!), what do you do?
Control the war. It would be great to time scatters for when poly is on DR or something, but that level of control isn't really possible...well for us it wasn't. Just poly the war until immune pretty much every time he isn't immune, obvious juggle them to the pally so that they aren't super easily dispelled.
So you're poly juggling the pally and War as much you can, you've got your hunter frustrating their mage (unless he has 2 pc t4, thx PvE gear), and you've gotten all your mana draining on their priest who is prevented from mana burning by warrior and pet on him, who do you damage? Still the priest. You want to be putting damage on the target with MS to force them to heal the least efficient target, however now when BoP hits, both you and the war can hop on the mage who should be pretty much instantly forced to IB due to the harassment from the hunter. So nova combo the priest once CC becomes no longer an option (they go immune), and then hop on the mage with normal frostbolt-fireblast-CoC type of burst. Get the IB and go back to the priest briefly, if the priest gets to be totally oom at this point, get back on the mage and look to finish up the game during hypo.
WE Mage on Lock Team:
More variety here, but something like: Warrior on Priest with Felguard as well, Mage/Lock on hunter, WE on Priest when it's out, Priest manaburns hunter and then pally, Pally like heals and stuff.
Basically, you're wearing down two targets and will go for the kill on whichever gets the worst healing. The priest is likely the target to dip the lowest due to MS, but mage/lock can sometimes tear through the hunter HP pretty quick especially if opposing healing is distracted a lot by tongues and dispelling CC. You don't put the felguard on the mage because doing so does nothing if he's 2 pc t4, and otherwise just forces him into decursing more quickly, which isn't something you really want either. Plus with traps down, your war might not always 100% be on their priest and you don't want manaburns getting off.
Because the priest will probably have freedom as they try to keep him from the warrior, the hunter will not, and you'll have reliable access to shatter combo him with your pet. This can often kill the hunter if you get a good CS on the pally.
Mirror Match:
People always hate mirror matches in pretty every game and it seems to be basically true in arena as well. I actually really enjoy mirror matches in arena though loathe in duels, riddle me that hypocrisy. Actually, it's pretty clear that I hate mirror matches in duels because if I lose I don't have my class or my teammates to blame. ^^
Hunter Team:
Remember that BoP is going to be really effective and just because you get something low, a kill might be a ways off. If your team overextends trying to get the kill here, it's going to be punished; your trying to outlast here more than ever and your job is to facilitate that while frustrate their attempts to outlast you.
One common strat we ran was something like:
That's pretty basic...but this isn't THAT different than the above fights. You're still using your pet to try to burst down the priest while CC'ing mage and hunter. You're going to want silencing shots on the opposing mage to help you out-CC him and reduce his damage. Killing the WE is a MUST in this matchup as you're not trying to burst out the kill, you're trying outlast -- LIVING WATER ELEMENTALS != OUTLAST. You can try fancy stuff like silencing shot->imp CS->scatter on the pally to force bubble and then stall/CC till they are back up for the kill. The priest can dispel the silences though not quickly enough generally. You should mix stuff like this in just because it keeps your opposition honest and forces them to try to keep the priest topped up through the MS debuff. They will probably just counter by scattering your war, and CSing you, so don't be OMGSCARED when you don't get the kill.
The team who wins this is the team who keeps their priest most free to manaburn; this is largely your task and you have to do what you can to keep the opposing DPS off your priest. You can try strats where you sheep juggle the hunter as well and manaburn the priest only, and there are advantages to this (hunter is often far away and hard to dispel poly off of, hunters can't...err well couldn't trinket poly), but I think as a generic plan you're better off going after the hunter's mana pool simultaneous to the priest's. You free up your priest most effectively by never using poly 3 times on the same DR; use it twice and not again for 15 seconds. If you're working on poly on both the warrior and mage, plus pumping out frostbolts in between (plus getting CC'd yourself), you shouldn't be too bored waiting on DR to come up. If you know you aren't likely to kill the priest anytime soon, CS'ing the opposing mage's Arcane tree isn't bad particularly when your War is off of DR.
Warlock Team:
This is really the silliest of them all because it boils down to mage v mage and lock v lock epeen. All of the CC is trying to out-CC the rest, typically with locks on locks and mages on mages.
Off the bat, you're best trying to poly opposing mage instead of the war; if they charge you, you can still rank 1 bolt the incoming war but get on their mage as fast as you can. Hopefully, you can poly their mage before he even can poly your war; this is the goal! Otherwise, poly their mage and as soon as that cast finishes, immediately poly their war. Their mage will likely trinket and poly you, but at least you got the war sheeped before you were sheeped. Now you can hesitate a bit here; if their mage is guarding you waiting on you to trinket, make sure you can trinket CS and not get sheeped again. Or if he decides to sheep your war, trinket poly and CS the poly. If he does neither, trinket poly, but do not CS the mage even if he goes to poly a few seconds later. The goal is to give your team momentum by making their CC delayed, you've accomplished it from your side already, don't waste CS.
Get your pet out and damaging their priest, and watch the two locks gay each other while trying to harass opposing paladins to bait an early bubble. Likely all they will bait is an HoJ and then a fear as it wears off, but whatever. If you can spell lock the pally here, for whatever reason he is able to cast, take the early CS on him and try to put damage on the priest to warrant at least a BoP as CS wears off if not a bubble. This is going to be challenging because you're going to be forced to remove tongues and pretty much only have time for a shatter combo, and even, you're likely to get sheeped out of it. If the kill on the priest isn't happening after you blew CS, don't cry, turn your attention to kill opposing Water Elemental while protecting your priest. Kill WE with aid of lock shadowburn, you should use AM to kill the pet + fireblast. 6.5 seconds of your life gone.
Things were probably briefly hectic and then got quiet again as no team should have been able to make a great play at killing a priest unless there were huge crits involved; if there were, then bubble or BoP has been used, but it doesn't change much for you as a mage. Decurse your pally, and then sheep opposing war off your priest. Poly juggle the warrior and mage until you're second pet nova is up, use this burst opportunity + CS on the pally to go for a kill. Most of the time you should get it, but it's quite possible the opposing mage has sheeped your warrior and silenced you (which you should do if you're on the other side of this!), this did waste his CS, but it should have given him time to escape death, and the pressure is back on your priest. You have a few more seconds probably until DR is back off, so use this time to get good positioning and put light damage on the priest. If you get poly'd here, you can freely IB it, just be a little careful of the assist train switching to you.
Poly juggle the mage war and snap to bring out second pet. At this point, your DPS push on the priest should succeed as the pally should be out of CD and your shatter combo + shadowbolt/burn + war should finish off the priest. These games can drag on pretty long, remember that your pvp trinket is coming back up imminently.
Sidenote: Against this matrix, you'll find your personal frost nova pretty useless as it is generally hard to keep freedom off the warrior and be close enough to your priest to really help him with nova unless you waste a LOT of time. You can use nova on the mage to force blinks and waste mana. Just nova, wind up a bolt, and let him blink out of it; follow it with a pally stun if you want and your pally has a few seconds of safe healing.
WE Spec 17/0/44
Matrix: MM Hunter, BR Priest, Pally, War
Our Game: We have dominating crowd control and mana burn. Any game where we can live long enough to let viper sting + scorpion and mana burn do their thing, we will dominate; to do this, we must protect our priest and hunter, who will surely be the eventual targets of opposing assist trains. We have lasting damage in the form of WE Mage and War, and mediocre burst.
Opponent 1: FG Lock, WE Mage. BR Priest, Pally, War
Their Game:
This is the new "classic" matrix on our battelgroup; it is quite challenging. They have no soft spots and have powerful lasting damage, moreso than almost any other matrix. They have ridiculous crowd control; they win by either creating a window where they can burst someone down through their vast CC which includes tongues, fear, scream, shout, poly, and CS. If they know they cannot burst someone down, they will attack the blue bars with drain mana and mana burn.
Pre Game:
This is a matchup that is very unfavorable. You do not have the damage on your team to reliably burst down any target quickly, though the priest is really your only option. Your hunter traps and frost snares are not likely to do a ton in preventing them from being all over your priest making it impossible for him to manaburn. If you ignore their priest and go for their mage or lock, their priest will dominate your pally with manaburn, and your priest will collapse to their assist train before you can hope to take out a SL lock with huge health/resil or a similarly high hp/resil WE mage.
Isn't our hunter team built on outlasting and crowd control, so this matrix is just better than ours, right? Yeah, it is, because they have a warlock -- if you want to win, bring a warlock. Well, actually, there are ways to win this fight and you have some advantages they do not. They are extremely dependent on their warrior for damage, if you can put out moderate harassment on the SL lock and WE mage, you can really limit their damage. Moreover, if you can take their pets out of the game, you really neuter what their team can do. Look for opportunities to kill the FG, and most definitely go out of your way to kill WE. Your hunter and you as a mage can quickly fireblast, autoshot, arcane/mutli a WE down, and this basically saves you at least 10-12k damage per WE you kill quickly.
WE mage should have focus set to pally, hunter should have focus/scatter on priest, but should use silencing on either pally or mage situationally. Hunter should have pet and viper stings on their priest until pally bubbles, and that point he should pet and viper to their pally, or situationally their mage. Your priest is going to do manaburn opposing priest if at all possible, probably not though. You are going to spend a LOT of time removing tongues; this is where I whine about warlocks again.
How You Play It:
CONTROL THE MAP. Harass with viper stings and multis and avoid getting DoT'd up best you can. Drop trap in strong location where you know their war has to pass through. When they eventually charge, first poly on the war hopefully inside the trap, if you're well positioned, rank 1 fb->poly->detect, and you got a nice stack for them to dispel, YOU SHOULD HAVE WC OR I HATE YOU) High level arena is very much like a duel, you MUST be using every one of your globals wisely, and with that in mind, you should be casting bolt on your target as soon as that poly cast finishes. Fireblast after the bolt and use the global to readjust positioning. This is just a good general way of maximizing doing something while getting into position; I do it as most specs against most teams I guess lol.
Their war should be dispelled at this time and all over your priest, don't concern youself about it, there's nothing you can do. Poly their mage as soon as your well positioned and off fireblast global as hopefully tongues** isn't out yet, if it is, make sure you learn how to stay near your pally and remove it promptly, if you get poly'd here (as some mages like to poly mages before wars or are just faster than you cause you had to waste time on tongues), trinket it and poly the mage as you come out. Don't suck and get poly'd by him a second time before you poly him. If you have to sit in sheep for an extra sec to watch his cast bar, do it, it's a huge handicap to eat a poly here and your pally cannot afford a global dispel you, especially not the 2-3 it might require if he did something gay like rank 1 coc, poly, detect you. Summon pet as soon as you poly their mage (or lock if you can't reach the mage, it's not big deal, but the mage is MUCH better)*
Drop your pet as soon as you can, and get on your assist target, your hunter should be watching their mage; goal is to silence the mage as soon as he trinkets poly or is dispelled. He must do this while still doing damage to the main target. If you can CS now and go for the win, do it, you probably cannot as their priest is going to be above 50%. If priest is above 50% still with no BoP, silence, yes silence the pally and shatter burst the priest. Your priest should be dispelling him while getting focused by war btw to ensure no freedom. (God it is hard to keep track of everyone!)
"Well the pally bubbled because I didn't hit the tree and the priest lived, nice advice." But you forced the bubble! Your priest should be doing fine as their mage is just coming out of silence, but your now in a world of trouble as your pally is now getting CC'd by their lock. But DR is now up on their war, and you can sheep detect the war to buy your priest some breathing room. Quickly get back to casting on the priest who should still be moderately low; now here best case is what happens, the pally comes out of bubbles and has yet to BoP the priest as he's midheal and is "saving it", scatter the pally and kill their priest. More likely he used BoP during bubble; you can work in some mass dispel madness in here, but we never found it to be reliable really.
If it looks likely they will be able to kill your priest (i.e. mage is casting openly and war is coming out of poly ready to rip), you need to get more CC down. This should be a new sheep on the mage and if possible a nova (NOT A PET NOVA) on the warrior. Try to do this without spending a half hour of wasted globals.
You still have a 5-6 globals at least before your CS is back up and a few until your second pet nova. You can sheep juggle here, though you only have 1 more tiny sheep on each most likely, alternatively, you can sheep the lock, which is probably the best option most of the time. Before getting on priest again, look to kill opposing WE and FG. Coordinate with hunter! After you succeed, pump damage into the priest, and use hunter silence on mage again when it is up, pet nova shatter combo priest and CS pally for the kill. This game is actually still not over, as you still have a full health lock, a full health mage with decent mana remaining and no matter what you do, your priest is going down pretty soon. Doing damage at this point might seem pointless because of SoR, but WTF else are you going to do. Pally is next target as he's their freedoms and the warlocks mana source, he has no bubble, you must snap second pet to kill him FAST because this is a 4v4 you will lose.
* Sheeping the mage early limits his ability to CC AND do damage while the lock is really only doing CC for their team. He is putting out some damage, but not the type of damage that is going to give them momentum. Plus poly is more dangerous early game CC than fear due to WoTf and fear ward etc. (but is worse later game as you don't want to be healing people lolol)
** Some mages are meticulous at decursing their teammates. It is VERY important; you should prioritize decursing your pally over everything but full DR sheeps on opposing war and the times when you can shatter combo. Decurse your priest teammate with much lower priority -- I decurse myself first actually. ^^
Now the Reversal:
Assume you are the FG lock version of the classic matrix.
Pre Game:
Play well and you will win. There are lots of ways to win this:
1) Attack the hunter's mana pool while DPSing priest
2) Attack the priset mana's pool while DPSing priest
3) Straight DPS priest, BoP your priest and mass dispel their pally, CS after bubble is MD'd, kill priest
I'll go with #1 for now. Their weak points are the small mana pool on their hunter, their priest as a squishy DPS target while traps don't help much, and the reliance on their mage controlling you better than you control him as he is the majority of their effective CC against your matrix.
How You Play It:
Outplay their mage. Let's play it fancy too ^^
Rank 1 fb, poly detect on their war to start. Frostbolt->fireblast on their priest as you move into position. Summon pet quickly, pref before their mage looks to poly you. Your CS focus is of course the pally, but if you can get a CS on the opposing mage's arcane tree the beginning, take it out. You aren't going to need that CS for a little while.
Mage won't IB the silence unless he's a total baller. Now, you're a lot less concerned with DR than the other matrix because you have fear and DC. Frostbolt, and then frostbolt shatter combo their priest while your lock fears and harasses pally. Pally will have to bubble. You will now be getting poly'd most likely, trinket it and sheep the mage because you're gay like that. Your pet should still be on the priest who is getting healed to full by pally. Your lock is now fearing and harassing the hunter while their war struggles to prohibit manaburns. Either their hunter will silencing shot your priest to protect his manapool, or he'll hit you here. You can actually IB this probably, but I'm not baller enough, so I just eat it. Use the time to get good positioning.
However, most hunters will SS the priest, if he does, DPS the hunter with your lock teammate while war hangs out on priest. When pally switches to healing the hunter, quickly get back on the priest, and shatter combo->CS pally->deathcoil pally if need be for the kill. They really don't have tools to stop this. IB a poly if you get poly'd mid DPS here.
It is better for the hunter to Silencing Shot the mage IMO, if he does and their war can control your priest, they now have a window to kill your WE and deny you that second nova combo. They can even work on the FG during this time. Alternatively, he can silence priest and scatter you or something. Either way you are getting CC'd and probably can't justify the risk/reward of IBing it. (it lets them go for a zerg kill on you during hypo which is pretty much GG and you don't want that) When you come out of CC, repoly the war. This buys priest time to finish manaburning the hunter, your pally should BoP before bubbling of course, and between BoP and pally Bubble they should not be able to kill your priest here especially with you harassing their war with poly (you can repoly until immune here) and your lock fearing the hunter.
As your priest gets that sickening heal to full and their DPS has that "oh balls we didn't kill him" thing going on, you should have their hunter floating around 40-70% from lock dots and harassing, their pally at 50-70%, their priest at 75% ish, and their mage and war full up. You now have the option of going for the priest or hunter. It is up to your warrior, don't argue, just adapt. Either way, if your pet is dead or too oom to use second nova, snap a new pet -- in fact if you get silenced of scattered and they killed your pet or you just know you'll need a second one before you can shatter combo, IB that CC. Moving on...summon pet and shatter combo target of choice, focus CS their pally and you know the gist of getting the kill here. This fight is totally dominated after their priest dies, get on their hunter next, and let your lock fear/tongues harass their pally (even if the mage is dispelling it, its still good)
Between BoP locking out two of their DPS and healthstone, its very hard for their matrix to gain sente (momentum) and even though you have very little burst with this matrix (which generally means poor momentum), you should have control of this fight. As a mage, you're looking to limit the effectiveness of their CC by keeping their mage under control while your lock controls first their pally and their hunter -- you then take over on the pally. You do this while CC'ing the warrior and putting out as huge damage as you can on the priest, which they can do little about. Even if the game goes to a long game, say the priest uses LoS very well or gets good resists etc., you should still have the edge as long as they didn't succeed in killing your pets and taking you out of the fight for too long. It's important in matchups like this to take advantage of the fact you aren't being focused, limit their ability to CC you by CC'ing the mage who is tasked with controlling you, and making the most of your damage potential as you are the lion's share of the team's burst.
Well, I need a break. I'll continue with more on this matchup including mixups, fakeouts, and split DPS variants; I'd then like to move on to other fights.
Mixups:
I find it pretty common that you can't always get on your target of choice off the bat, so you're forced to either play defense till you can or pick a second target to go after with your assist train. I definitely favor playing aggressively (why I play on a 4DPS team now, DUH) and I'd much rather pour damage into a non-optimal target than spend 10 seconds CC juggling.
For the FG lock team, you clearly are going after the hunter as a secondary target. He has good tools for playing keep away from your warrior, as once he gets freedom, he's extremely slippery which is one of a few reasons to not have him be your primary focus. The other reasons being the fact that damaging a hunter accomplishes basically just doing damage to him whereas damage a priest prevents that player from doing much along with the huge health pools that hunters have and a nasty physical snare. Hopefully by the time the hunters gets freedom, you can force a BoP despite the freedom or even a bubble. Worst case the priest should be exposed by now and you can quickly switch targets.
If you're the mage on the hunter's team, your options for a secondary target are more limited. The pally is always an option but often they are equally difficult to focus as they're going to play duck and hide with the pillars. If he's out of the question, you're left a SL lock and a WE mage, two classes specc'd entirely to take and withstand a beating. The WE mage is the better option of the two as at least you limit the early game CC and chain casting threat. Hopefully you can force an early IB and maybe even continue the pressure when he's on hypo, though the majority of the time you're going to be better off switching back to their priest as they still have BoP and Bubble to keep the mage alive.
Either way, it is tempting when DPSing your non-optimal target to half-ass damage and focus more on CC thinking that even if you fail to really get the target low, at least you'll thwart the opposition's offense. This is a dangerous mentality; the point of casting into that target is to get him low enough to force use of defensive cooldowns, if you aren't doing this, you're wasting time and letting your opponents accomplish their goal of using your defensive cooldowns. If you can't do enough damage to actually generate sente, you're better off poly juggling and playing keep away.
From either team's perspective, your tasks are always:
- Reliable CS on Pally
- Control Warrior with Poly
- Burst on MA when needed
- Sustained damage through WE
- Control Opposing Mage
Split DPS:
At some point with teams like this you realize that as you play better opponents, you can't leave as many people unguarded. Priests, mages, and warlocks go from strong to powerhouses if you let them pump damage and CC without harassment. You should also think about their play is going to change when you start harassing them; a priest with a warrior on him won't be healing or manaburning but he will be dispelling. Any good player is going to make use of his globals regardless of pressure -- this is why I've always felt focusing SL locks is a mistake. A focused SL lock can still freely tongues, shadowburn, and DoT up as he likes. You don't gain as much by guarding him as when you pressure a mage. (This idea is the whole reason why 4 DPS is so effective IMO...well that and zerging things down)
Okay, so this is how split DPS variants work in slightly less detail than above, and how the WE mage adjusts.
WE Mage on Hunter Team:
Your team is probably running the pretty common: Viper and scorpion pet on their priest along with warrior, Hunter on the Mage with all silences going to the mage and scatters going to their war, Priest looks for window to MC war actively otherwise manaburns their priest, Pally heals and uses stun on second lock fear (fear ward first and third!), what do you do?
Control the war. It would be great to time scatters for when poly is on DR or something, but that level of control isn't really possible...well for us it wasn't. Just poly the war until immune pretty much every time he isn't immune, obvious juggle them to the pally so that they aren't super easily dispelled.
So you're poly juggling the pally and War as much you can, you've got your hunter frustrating their mage (unless he has 2 pc t4, thx PvE gear), and you've gotten all your mana draining on their priest who is prevented from mana burning by warrior and pet on him, who do you damage? Still the priest. You want to be putting damage on the target with MS to force them to heal the least efficient target, however now when BoP hits, both you and the war can hop on the mage who should be pretty much instantly forced to IB due to the harassment from the hunter. So nova combo the priest once CC becomes no longer an option (they go immune), and then hop on the mage with normal frostbolt-fireblast-CoC type of burst. Get the IB and go back to the priest briefly, if the priest gets to be totally oom at this point, get back on the mage and look to finish up the game during hypo.
WE Mage on Lock Team:
More variety here, but something like: Warrior on Priest with Felguard as well, Mage/Lock on hunter, WE on Priest when it's out, Priest manaburns hunter and then pally, Pally like heals and stuff.
Basically, you're wearing down two targets and will go for the kill on whichever gets the worst healing. The priest is likely the target to dip the lowest due to MS, but mage/lock can sometimes tear through the hunter HP pretty quick especially if opposing healing is distracted a lot by tongues and dispelling CC. You don't put the felguard on the mage because doing so does nothing if he's 2 pc t4, and otherwise just forces him into decursing more quickly, which isn't something you really want either. Plus with traps down, your war might not always 100% be on their priest and you don't want manaburns getting off.
Because the priest will probably have freedom as they try to keep him from the warrior, the hunter will not, and you'll have reliable access to shatter combo him with your pet. This can often kill the hunter if you get a good CS on the pally.
Mirror Match:
People always hate mirror matches in pretty every game and it seems to be basically true in arena as well. I actually really enjoy mirror matches in arena though loathe in duels, riddle me that hypocrisy. Actually, it's pretty clear that I hate mirror matches in duels because if I lose I don't have my class or my teammates to blame. ^^
Hunter Team:
Remember that BoP is going to be really effective and just because you get something low, a kill might be a ways off. If your team overextends trying to get the kill here, it's going to be punished; your trying to outlast here more than ever and your job is to facilitate that while frustrate their attempts to outlast you.
One common strat we ran was something like:
- Hunter and Warrior on the Priest along with pet and viper sting (holy zerg)
- Priest Manaburns hunter
- Mage controls warrior and opposing mage
- Pally stuns something or other
That's pretty basic...but this isn't THAT different than the above fights. You're still using your pet to try to burst down the priest while CC'ing mage and hunter. You're going to want silencing shots on the opposing mage to help you out-CC him and reduce his damage. Killing the WE is a MUST in this matchup as you're not trying to burst out the kill, you're trying outlast -- LIVING WATER ELEMENTALS != OUTLAST. You can try fancy stuff like silencing shot->imp CS->scatter on the pally to force bubble and then stall/CC till they are back up for the kill. The priest can dispel the silences though not quickly enough generally. You should mix stuff like this in just because it keeps your opposition honest and forces them to try to keep the priest topped up through the MS debuff. They will probably just counter by scattering your war, and CSing you, so don't be OMGSCARED when you don't get the kill.
The team who wins this is the team who keeps their priest most free to manaburn; this is largely your task and you have to do what you can to keep the opposing DPS off your priest. You can try strats where you sheep juggle the hunter as well and manaburn the priest only, and there are advantages to this (hunter is often far away and hard to dispel poly off of, hunters can't...err well couldn't trinket poly), but I think as a generic plan you're better off going after the hunter's mana pool simultaneous to the priest's. You free up your priest most effectively by never using poly 3 times on the same DR; use it twice and not again for 15 seconds. If you're working on poly on both the warrior and mage, plus pumping out frostbolts in between (plus getting CC'd yourself), you shouldn't be too bored waiting on DR to come up. If you know you aren't likely to kill the priest anytime soon, CS'ing the opposing mage's Arcane tree isn't bad particularly when your War is off of DR.
Warlock Team:
This is really the silliest of them all because it boils down to mage v mage and lock v lock epeen. All of the CC is trying to out-CC the rest, typically with locks on locks and mages on mages.
Off the bat, you're best trying to poly opposing mage instead of the war; if they charge you, you can still rank 1 bolt the incoming war but get on their mage as fast as you can. Hopefully, you can poly their mage before he even can poly your war; this is the goal! Otherwise, poly their mage and as soon as that cast finishes, immediately poly their war. Their mage will likely trinket and poly you, but at least you got the war sheeped before you were sheeped. Now you can hesitate a bit here; if their mage is guarding you waiting on you to trinket, make sure you can trinket CS and not get sheeped again. Or if he decides to sheep your war, trinket poly and CS the poly. If he does neither, trinket poly, but do not CS the mage even if he goes to poly a few seconds later. The goal is to give your team momentum by making their CC delayed, you've accomplished it from your side already, don't waste CS.
Get your pet out and damaging their priest, and watch the two locks gay each other while trying to harass opposing paladins to bait an early bubble. Likely all they will bait is an HoJ and then a fear as it wears off, but whatever. If you can spell lock the pally here, for whatever reason he is able to cast, take the early CS on him and try to put damage on the priest to warrant at least a BoP as CS wears off if not a bubble. This is going to be challenging because you're going to be forced to remove tongues and pretty much only have time for a shatter combo, and even, you're likely to get sheeped out of it. If the kill on the priest isn't happening after you blew CS, don't cry, turn your attention to kill opposing Water Elemental while protecting your priest. Kill WE with aid of lock shadowburn, you should use AM to kill the pet + fireblast. 6.5 seconds of your life gone.
Things were probably briefly hectic and then got quiet again as no team should have been able to make a great play at killing a priest unless there were huge crits involved; if there were, then bubble or BoP has been used, but it doesn't change much for you as a mage. Decurse your pally, and then sheep opposing war off your priest. Poly juggle the warrior and mage until you're second pet nova is up, use this burst opportunity + CS on the pally to go for a kill. Most of the time you should get it, but it's quite possible the opposing mage has sheeped your warrior and silenced you (which you should do if you're on the other side of this!), this did waste his CS, but it should have given him time to escape death, and the pressure is back on your priest. You have a few more seconds probably until DR is back off, so use this time to get good positioning and put light damage on the priest. If you get poly'd here, you can freely IB it, just be a little careful of the assist train switching to you.
Poly juggle the mage war and snap to bring out second pet. At this point, your DPS push on the priest should succeed as the pally should be out of CD and your shatter combo + shadowbolt/burn + war should finish off the priest. These games can drag on pretty long, remember that your pvp trinket is coming back up imminently.
Sidenote: Against this matrix, you'll find your personal frost nova pretty useless as it is generally hard to keep freedom off the warrior and be close enough to your priest to really help him with nova unless you waste a LOT of time. You can use nova on the mage to force blinks and waste mana. Just nova, wind up a bolt, and let him blink out of it; follow it with a pally stun if you want and your pally has a few seconds of safe healing.
Too Easy to Obtain?
Is arena gear too easy to obtain?
Ming's latest entry touches on the subject of how PvE gear is going to play a larger role in this upcoming arena season; this was probably inevitable. I remember when the PvP crew in TBC was complaining how eventually PvE gear would ruin arena blah blah blah -- it hasn't happened yet, and while tier 6 gear is strong, it isn't as big an upgrade over what season 2 is theorycrafted to be as old r12/r13 gear to Naxx gear.
What interested me was that Ming said, "Arena gear is EXTREMELY easy to obtain, in fact they have the lowest number of hours per epic in the game." I've sat on top 5000 points with nothing to buy since before the qualifications for the end of season tournament as have a lot of players on teams that spent most the season in the top 5 -- in fact, there were weeks when I didn't reach 30% and still it was no problem, if you're a top 5 team, you earn enough points to buy everything twice over at least. (I guess some classes have multiple sets!) Generally speaking anyone who finds 4 other people to enter a rated arena game with him every week from season start to season finish is probably going to wind up with a full set of gladiator gear, even if they never advance significantly in rating.
Why is PvP so friendly to handing out gear to anyone who participates when PvE remains quite exclusive? In a few months, you'll be able to count how many players are using the staff off Illidan, but there will be thousands and thousands of players with the season 2 arena staff.
Perhaps the point is that PvP is about PvP and not gear -- maybe? Drastically increasing the arena point cost of the gear would definitely distribute the items more selectively, but is this what we want? I don't want to outgear my opponents in arena; I just don't want to be outgeared either. I think the idea of arena gear is probably okay as it gives incentive to playing throughout the whole season.
Would it make sense to add some other outlet for arena points? Arena gems perhaps? Or is the idea that players who want to have every extra edge in PvP are forced to go PvE?
Ming's latest entry touches on the subject of how PvE gear is going to play a larger role in this upcoming arena season; this was probably inevitable. I remember when the PvP crew in TBC was complaining how eventually PvE gear would ruin arena blah blah blah -- it hasn't happened yet, and while tier 6 gear is strong, it isn't as big an upgrade over what season 2 is theorycrafted to be as old r12/r13 gear to Naxx gear.
What interested me was that Ming said, "Arena gear is EXTREMELY easy to obtain, in fact they have the lowest number of hours per epic in the game." I've sat on top 5000 points with nothing to buy since before the qualifications for the end of season tournament as have a lot of players on teams that spent most the season in the top 5 -- in fact, there were weeks when I didn't reach 30% and still it was no problem, if you're a top 5 team, you earn enough points to buy everything twice over at least. (I guess some classes have multiple sets!) Generally speaking anyone who finds 4 other people to enter a rated arena game with him every week from season start to season finish is probably going to wind up with a full set of gladiator gear, even if they never advance significantly in rating.
Why is PvP so friendly to handing out gear to anyone who participates when PvE remains quite exclusive? In a few months, you'll be able to count how many players are using the staff off Illidan, but there will be thousands and thousands of players with the season 2 arena staff.
Perhaps the point is that PvP is about PvP and not gear -- maybe? Drastically increasing the arena point cost of the gear would definitely distribute the items more selectively, but is this what we want? I don't want to outgear my opponents in arena; I just don't want to be outgeared either. I think the idea of arena gear is probably okay as it gives incentive to playing throughout the whole season.
Would it make sense to add some other outlet for arena points? Arena gems perhaps? Or is the idea that players who want to have every extra edge in PvP are forced to go PvE?
Sunday, June 10, 2007
What is Class Balance
I apologize because this will make no sense-- well, maybe it will make just a little sense. ^^ Skip to the summary and if it interests you, check it out I guess.
If there's one constant in WoW, it's that the majority of classes feel they are at the bottom of the food chain and demand rebalancing to be competitive be it in terms of PvE or PvP performance. As someone who used to PvE extensively, I definitely was as up in arms about these topics as anyone (First Year of WoW PvE endgame IMMUNE to our DPS tree at the time?), and have always been one of the players actively seeking out class changes be they for PvE or PvP; I constantly flooded the boards during TBC beta with commentary because one thing that is true about WoW is that the devs listen and respond to their players.
When I think about mages over the past 2+ years, there's been a ton of changes that directly came from the playerbase:
Now before I derail WAY too much, it's obvious that this cannot end; there's never going to be a day when everyone logs into the forums and posts "Yup, we're done, the game's balanced" as balance is highly subjective. Recently, there have been efforts to more objectively study class balance. Players analyze the class makeups of top arena teams and use these statistics to make arguments for why X class is over or underpowered. Are these arguments logical?
If I say:
Warlocks are clearly overpowered. Why is it that they are undisputed the strongest one on one class, they represent nearly 25% of the 2v2 players, 18% of the 3v3 players, and 7% of the 5v5 players? Shouldn't these ratios be closer to the general class population?
Are these types of statistics meaningful? There certainly are reasons why they aren't. Say warlocks are underrepresented in 5v5 teams, but overrepresented in 2v2s and 3v3s, are these players simply playing the smaller arena sizes because they couldn't land a spot on a 5v5 team?
Point being that people can come up with counterarguments for these statistics, be they ultimately logical or not.
But pose the question a different way:
If you were to bet what class is on the most 2v2 teams at the end of the season, what class would you bet on?
Take it a step further, what is the spread in percentage points between number of warriors on 5v5 teams and the number of druids? (So if warriors are 20% and druids are on 4%, the spread is 16) Would you sell me 10s? (Selling 10s means you think that the percent spread is less than 10 and for each point above or below 10 you pay out $ or collect it respectively)
When you think of some of this stuff from a trading/gambling perspective, it really turns the question into "what class would YOU bet on"; when you do this you can synthetically "price" classes with respect to one another for the various arena brackets and get a general feel with where the various class are with respect to one another.
Why think of the problem like this and not just use the "cold hard numbers" from end of season data?
Because the data will be attacked as invalid. The method for collecting the statistics will be attacked: How do you define "active" players? Rationalizing of the data will occur.
Using markets to naturally price the class relationships creates the beauty that if a person disagrees with the market's opinion: TRADE WITH IT. The problem is, well, of course, you can't. Forum polls and the like are useless as unless people have something tangible to win or lose from expressing opinions, they'll just theorycraft and argue all day long with no consequences; also what value is a market opinion where none of the participants have any "money" behind their opinions.
Breather. I AM talking about betting $$ on whether certain classes are stronger than other classes in a VIDEO GAME. Pretty silly...I think. But then again, does sports betting in a sense accomplish the same thing? That is, by establishing what the traded markets between teams is, one can estimate the future performance and relative strength of sports teams. And what about things like InTrade or TradeSports. These sites let uses bet on all sorts of things and they are extremely powerful for forecasting and analysis.
Breather #2: I've sidetracked to purely a PvP discussion, but realize that the ideas are similar in a PvE context. (think damage meters or something I dunno) What is class balance? It's a forward looking prediction that says how classes will perform relative to one another. If a certain class is forecasted to be dominating next season while another is predicted to suck, that is imbalance, and the predictions carry weight because they come from a large # of people with vested interests in their opinions.
Before I propose trading structured derivs on WoW class balance, does this make any fucking sense? No, not really. We gamers don't care that much; most of the actual players would not even be market participants. Scrap the whole real $ thing, can you do it inside WoW? A Casino! With sports boards like at Caesar's, trade class balance, which arena teams will perform well, etc. Bet WoW gold. Ignore the whole WoW Gold can equal real money side of things because that is a huge confusing mess. With this in place, would you have a real tool to understand how strong classes are with respect to one another? Yeah, probably.
But what about people with huge amounts of gold "bullying" the market?
Yeah, that could happen. But there are a lot of WoW players and you could limit the amount of gold a player can have net invested in the WoW Casino.
Weren't casino bots thrown out of WoW because the whole video game gambling thing is a messy subject?
Yes and who knows.
Summary:
Actually, what I wanted to get across is that class balance is more complicated than giving specific examples of one class ability relative to another class ability. Trying to piece by piece analyze class balance, which is how the WoW forums attack the topic, is logically flawed as what matters at the end of the day is how the class performs. You can measure performance by collecting statistics or by using markets to price predictive performance; I think markets are better because of difficulties in collecting meaningful and representative statistical data. Also, markets are forward looking starting at the present, while statistics just tell you about the previous season's class balance.
Creating tradable markets for things like this is difficult and probably only possible by trying to mirror sports gambling virtually inside the WoW world; this has other benefits because a Casino would probably be generally well received by the player base -- I picture...actually you REALLY don't want to know what I picture. ::shudder::
At the end of the day, all I know is that my class needs buffs and the rest of the classes need nerfs and hopefully I've convinced you all by now. ^^
I think for some the idea of using markets instead of statistics is highly counterintuitive. But, I have an example!
Suppose we play a game where I flip a coin, if its heads you get a dollar, if its tails, you get zero. How much would you pay to play this game?
Well the expected value of the game is 50 cents, so you could pay any amount up to that and it is profitable for you to play the coin toss.
You decide you want to make sure that the coin is fair, and watch me play the game with other players. After 24 flips, I've gotten 20 heads. Are you going to change your mind and pay 20/24 or ~ 85 cents to play the game? Hopefully not. ^^
But that's an extreme, what if after watching me flip the coin, I get 12 heads (what you'd "expect" lol). You notice the other players all paying me 55 cents to play the game. What suckers. Now a few people are paying 60 cents to play, soon a line of thousands of people are all standing in line to play, and are willing to pay 60 cents to play the game. Should you pay 55 cents to play?
What means more, your limited statistical data or the opinions of thousands of people?
If there's one constant in WoW, it's that the majority of classes feel they are at the bottom of the food chain and demand rebalancing to be competitive be it in terms of PvE or PvP performance. As someone who used to PvE extensively, I definitely was as up in arms about these topics as anyone (First Year of WoW PvE endgame IMMUNE to our DPS tree at the time?), and have always been one of the players actively seeking out class changes be they for PvE or PvP; I constantly flooded the boards during TBC beta with commentary because one thing that is true about WoW is that the devs listen and respond to their players.
When I think about mages over the past 2+ years, there's been a ton of changes that directly came from the playerbase:
- New Rank of Water (4 Bottle at a time though)
- Mage Armor (To aid with downtime)
- +Dmg Coefficient Revision
- +Dmg Itemization Increase
- Addition of the stat, +Spell Hit
- Addition of the stat, +Spell Penetration
- Trainable Arcane Explosion, Trainable Evocate, Talent Changes to make "Elemental" Viable
- Water Elemental (Players called for it for months Pre BC) The pet was changed significantly based on player feedback during beta; reagent removed, cooldown decreased, damage increased, can cast while pet uses nova, etc.
- Spellsteal -- This was an ability in fake patch notes that blue said they thought was a cool idea.
- Slow - Again came from player suggestions
- Arcane Missiles Coefficient Revision - A series of lengthy threads lead to this change along with buffs to how +Dmg influences Area of Effect Spells
- Reversal of Counterspell Change
- Many more I skipped!
Now before I derail WAY too much, it's obvious that this cannot end; there's never going to be a day when everyone logs into the forums and posts "Yup, we're done, the game's balanced" as balance is highly subjective. Recently, there have been efforts to more objectively study class balance. Players analyze the class makeups of top arena teams and use these statistics to make arguments for why X class is over or underpowered. Are these arguments logical?
If I say:
Warlocks are clearly overpowered. Why is it that they are undisputed the strongest one on one class, they represent nearly 25% of the 2v2 players, 18% of the 3v3 players, and 7% of the 5v5 players? Shouldn't these ratios be closer to the general class population?
Are these types of statistics meaningful? There certainly are reasons why they aren't. Say warlocks are underrepresented in 5v5 teams, but overrepresented in 2v2s and 3v3s, are these players simply playing the smaller arena sizes because they couldn't land a spot on a 5v5 team?
Point being that people can come up with counterarguments for these statistics, be they ultimately logical or not.
But pose the question a different way:
If you were to bet what class is on the most 2v2 teams at the end of the season, what class would you bet on?
Take it a step further, what is the spread in percentage points between number of warriors on 5v5 teams and the number of druids? (So if warriors are 20% and druids are on 4%, the spread is 16) Would you sell me 10s? (Selling 10s means you think that the percent spread is less than 10 and for each point above or below 10 you pay out $ or collect it respectively)
When you think of some of this stuff from a trading/gambling perspective, it really turns the question into "what class would YOU bet on"; when you do this you can synthetically "price" classes with respect to one another for the various arena brackets and get a general feel with where the various class are with respect to one another.
Why think of the problem like this and not just use the "cold hard numbers" from end of season data?
Because the data will be attacked as invalid. The method for collecting the statistics will be attacked: How do you define "active" players? Rationalizing of the data will occur.
Using markets to naturally price the class relationships creates the beauty that if a person disagrees with the market's opinion: TRADE WITH IT. The problem is, well, of course, you can't. Forum polls and the like are useless as unless people have something tangible to win or lose from expressing opinions, they'll just theorycraft and argue all day long with no consequences; also what value is a market opinion where none of the participants have any "money" behind their opinions.
Breather. I AM talking about betting $$ on whether certain classes are stronger than other classes in a VIDEO GAME. Pretty silly...I think. But then again, does sports betting in a sense accomplish the same thing? That is, by establishing what the traded markets between teams is, one can estimate the future performance and relative strength of sports teams. And what about things like InTrade or TradeSports. These sites let uses bet on all sorts of things and they are extremely powerful for forecasting and analysis.
Breather #2: I've sidetracked to purely a PvP discussion, but realize that the ideas are similar in a PvE context. (think damage meters or something I dunno) What is class balance? It's a forward looking prediction that says how classes will perform relative to one another. If a certain class is forecasted to be dominating next season while another is predicted to suck, that is imbalance, and the predictions carry weight because they come from a large # of people with vested interests in their opinions.
Before I propose trading structured derivs on WoW class balance, does this make any fucking sense? No, not really. We gamers don't care that much; most of the actual players would not even be market participants. Scrap the whole real $ thing, can you do it inside WoW? A Casino! With sports boards like at Caesar's, trade class balance, which arena teams will perform well, etc. Bet WoW gold. Ignore the whole WoW Gold can equal real money side of things because that is a huge confusing mess. With this in place, would you have a real tool to understand how strong classes are with respect to one another? Yeah, probably.
But what about people with huge amounts of gold "bullying" the market?
Yeah, that could happen. But there are a lot of WoW players and you could limit the amount of gold a player can have net invested in the WoW Casino.
Weren't casino bots thrown out of WoW because the whole video game gambling thing is a messy subject?
Yes and who knows.
Summary:
Actually, what I wanted to get across is that class balance is more complicated than giving specific examples of one class ability relative to another class ability. Trying to piece by piece analyze class balance, which is how the WoW forums attack the topic, is logically flawed as what matters at the end of the day is how the class performs. You can measure performance by collecting statistics or by using markets to price predictive performance; I think markets are better because of difficulties in collecting meaningful and representative statistical data. Also, markets are forward looking starting at the present, while statistics just tell you about the previous season's class balance.
Creating tradable markets for things like this is difficult and probably only possible by trying to mirror sports gambling virtually inside the WoW world; this has other benefits because a Casino would probably be generally well received by the player base -- I picture...actually you REALLY don't want to know what I picture. ::shudder::
At the end of the day, all I know is that my class needs buffs and the rest of the classes need nerfs and hopefully I've convinced you all by now. ^^
I think for some the idea of using markets instead of statistics is highly counterintuitive. But, I have an example!
Suppose we play a game where I flip a coin, if its heads you get a dollar, if its tails, you get zero. How much would you pay to play this game?
Well the expected value of the game is 50 cents, so you could pay any amount up to that and it is profitable for you to play the coin toss.
You decide you want to make sure that the coin is fair, and watch me play the game with other players. After 24 flips, I've gotten 20 heads. Are you going to change your mind and pay 20/24 or ~ 85 cents to play the game? Hopefully not. ^^
But that's an extreme, what if after watching me flip the coin, I get 12 heads (what you'd "expect" lol). You notice the other players all paying me 55 cents to play the game. What suckers. Now a few people are paying 60 cents to play, soon a line of thousands of people are all standing in line to play, and are willing to pay 60 cents to play the game. Should you pay 55 cents to play?
What means more, your limited statistical data or the opinions of thousands of people?
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