Likely Contained Herein, in no particular order:
a. Deathknights get a fairly bad rap, for a whole slew of (often legitimate) reasons, but their aggregate playskill tends to be the biggest tar against them, especially since they tend to do well as a class in Arena ratings overall.
If you just re-rolled from Hunter or Warlock to DK, and are all psyched to begin your awesome career as a Deathknight, stop by here and check out some pointers before you pop into the EJ forums and contribute to the never-ending stream of crap that is currently getting spouted.
b. PvP: More specifically, no thoughts on how to balance it, but instead, how to make the best of it, win a bit more often, and have fun trying. Ideally some sage anti-DK advice, but no guarentees.
c. Random stuff like comments on politics, I can`t help myself.
a. Deathknights get a fairly bad rap, for a whole slew of (often legitimate) reasons, but their aggregate playskill tends to be the biggest tar against them, especially since they tend to do well as a class in Arena ratings overall.
If you just re-rolled from Hunter or Warlock to DK, and are all psyched to begin your awesome career as a Deathknight, stop by here and check out some pointers before you pop into the EJ forums and contribute to the never-ending stream of crap that is currently getting spouted.
b. PvP: More specifically, no thoughts on how to balance it, but instead, how to make the best of it, win a bit more often, and have fun trying. Ideally some sage anti-DK advice, but no guarentees.
c. Random stuff like comments on politics, I can`t help myself.
Obama Shuts Down my Town, and Confessions of an Overpowered Class.
Posted 02/23/09 at 3:57 PM by Lanky
(This one is long.)
For the most part, he is completely correct, aside from one major flaw that I see showing up all the time in high end arena blogs. Just like practically everyone else who gets paid to fucking sit on their ass and play arena matches all day, Jasi assumes that players who are now “easily hitting 2300” have very little, or nothing of real value to contribute.
Personally, I disagree.
And not just because I am playing a Deathknight / Holy Paladin comp moving towards 2100 real rating in 2s. High end, sponsored arena players are smaller than a single percentile of players who are even playing in the arena system currently. Players on teams over 2300 comprise less than 10% of the entire Battleground bracket still, just as previously, the ELO system has simply been modified upwards to a new scale topping out at 2700, as opposed to previous seasons where it topped around 2400. This probably means that 1700 is the new 1500, and 2000 is the new 1800, although we still have yet to account for exactly what the hidden rating changes did to this system either. I personally doubt that the scale has gone up that far, since this week’s rating of 2047 gives me 411th position in the bronze bracket on Mal’ganis, an absolutely massive server. In season three or four, 411 would have gone to a team at least holding 1970, so I think rating inflation has been overplayed somewhat.
So then, what can mediocre arena players like myself contribute that is of value for this debate? Given the massive number of people who are in a similar position to me; fairly high ratings, playing a class that is over-represented, and too strong, I think that the best contribution would be a sense of perspective.
Here, let me simplify it:
First off, two resource systems, a slew of important (and ridiculous) cooldowns, and no MS effect means that Deathknights are a fairly skill intensive class at the baseline, but I would categorize them as harder to learn than to master. I am not saying that it is difficult to Chains of Ice are warrior forever, or to Death Grip / strangulate some poor mage, or to pop Dancing Rune Weapon with 130 runic power and faceroll, but I would absolutely argue that it is very easy to be categorically terrible at playing the DK class. Runes are way more complex than rage is to manage, and the second system ala Runic Power adds additional complexity to even the most basic resource management while playing. Deathknights literally require over 25 keybinds in PvP, all of which need to be accessed very quickly at certain moments, and being able to hit Empower Rune Weapon just as fast as you could hit Obliterate or COI or Strangulate or Plague Strike remains crucial to good play as a DK. So, to end it off today, even though I said I wouldn’t look at overall balance, I’m gonna drop some ideas about Deathknights in PvP for 3.1. Obviously these are not exact, but hey, can’t fault a guy for some ideas:
Reductions / Removals:
Dancing Rune Weapon – Increase the duration to 1 minute base with no possible extensions (make it more fire-and-forget), lower the cooldown to 2 minutes, and significantly reduce the damage it does, down to around 25%-30% of Deathknight strike damage.
Unholy Ghoul Stun – Remove this utterly, add some kind of a non-magical DoT if you really feel the ghoul needs to do more.
Plague-strike: Obviously we now the HoT removal is getting removed. My suggestion is that buffing the damage on the strike makes no sense in PvE or PvP, unless you buff it so much that it compares to Icy Touch, which is already in need of some scaling changes (downwards). If this is supposed to be our Healer Pressure skill, find a way to actually make it pressure all healers equally. As a one Rune skill, it should not do too much of this. Options to look at include: Allowing talents to make it a direct applied snare, or a direct applied MS effect, I’d suggest no higher than 30% at the absolute top. Plague strike could also increase the cost of Heals while Blood plague was applied, since 3/4 healing classes can remove diseases this may well be the best possible solution, although you would need to give Druids a way to effectively deal with diseases if this was chosen, either through a new addition in resto talents, or a glyph.
Talent Changes:
We know that massive shuffles are happening in the DK frost trees, but other blue posts have hinted at even further changes. Hopefully they include:
Killing Machine – Move this up the tree, at least past 31. Reduce the number of points you need to max it perhaps.
Icy Touch Talents – Probably getting swapped with Endless Winter.
Chillblains – Will probably just be removed, since Endless Winter + Chains of Ice is really all most DK builds even take from Frost unless they are going very deep.
Desecration – Get rid of the aoe frost trap effect of this, it is stupid. Make it a 2 or 3 point talent that passively increases all damage dealt by 2-3%, and gives Plague Strike a single target snare effect similar to Hamstring.
Magic Suppression – Down to 3 points, at the absolute most
Corpse Explosion – Ugh. Just remove it.
Vampiric Blood – Reduce the duration and leave the glyph as it is.
Bloodworms – What the hell?
There. Now yell at me.
Obama:
Yeah. I said it. Deathknights are overpowered in the strictest sense of the term. Spread the word, stop the presses, get out your suits and Sunday dresses! Before we go there though, just anecdotally I’d like to mention that I live in Ottawa, and I got to experience the power of the American presidency first hand last Thursday. Ottawa’s beautiful (and frickin’ cold) downtown area came to an almost complete halt Thursday, as President Obama came up for a short visit with our dour conservative Prime Minister; Stephen Harper. Obama then nipped down to the market to have a Beaver-Tail and buy some cookies for his daughters, forever ingratiating himself with all of Ottawa in the process.
We had busloads full of Assault-rifle wielding Emergency Response police, we had helicopters blocking cell-phone signals, we had armoured cars, ubiquitous Secret Service agents, and wide traffic blocks. All this was to go to the Canadian Capital, I mean, really, what are we going to do? Send our Hockey teams after your President? He has higher approval ratings in Canada than our own PM does... anyways it was exciting and amusing, and I must admit that I find the self-generating momentum surrounding Obama to be a really fascinating anomaly. I expect Historians and Sociologists will be writing about the ‘Obama phenomenon’ very shortly, if they aren’t already.
Confessions:
Now the class I play, and that I thoroughly enjoy, is absolutely not alone in that category. SK-100 searches for the top Class and Spec compositions give us 30% and 24% Paladin representation in 2s and 3s respectively. Deathknights are the next most popular in twos around 18%, and In 3s Hunters dominate at 24% as well (which of course means that classes like DKs, and now, Warlocks are getting inflated numbers too, because those are the partners that Hunters run with).
Now, we Benefactors have debated what these numbers mean internally in our Arena Bitching Thread. The general consensus is despite the obvious biases (serious arena players reroll / have multiple 80s to choose from, and artificial inflation of class representations occurs together because ‘good’ compositions are fairly static), these numbers indicate that the current arena season is utterly fucked.
Personally I agree.
Many top arena players also agree. I have recently finished reading the latest from World of Ming (I like to keep up with what the top / sponsored players are talking about as a point of interest), and increasingly I find our beloved boards here at EJ mentioned in their paid blogging. Generally speaking, the critique is that (to quote Jasi)
Yeah. I said it. Deathknights are overpowered in the strictest sense of the term. Spread the word, stop the presses, get out your suits and Sunday dresses! Before we go there though, just anecdotally I’d like to mention that I live in Ottawa, and I got to experience the power of the American presidency first hand last Thursday. Ottawa’s beautiful (and frickin’ cold) downtown area came to an almost complete halt Thursday, as President Obama came up for a short visit with our dour conservative Prime Minister; Stephen Harper. Obama then nipped down to the market to have a Beaver-Tail and buy some cookies for his daughters, forever ingratiating himself with all of Ottawa in the process.
We had busloads full of Assault-rifle wielding Emergency Response police, we had helicopters blocking cell-phone signals, we had armoured cars, ubiquitous Secret Service agents, and wide traffic blocks. All this was to go to the Canadian Capital, I mean, really, what are we going to do? Send our Hockey teams after your President? He has higher approval ratings in Canada than our own PM does... anyways it was exciting and amusing, and I must admit that I find the self-generating momentum surrounding Obama to be a really fascinating anomaly. I expect Historians and Sociologists will be writing about the ‘Obama phenomenon’ very shortly, if they aren’t already.
Confessions:
Now the class I play, and that I thoroughly enjoy, is absolutely not alone in that category. SK-100 searches for the top Class and Spec compositions give us 30% and 24% Paladin representation in 2s and 3s respectively. Deathknights are the next most popular in twos around 18%, and In 3s Hunters dominate at 24% as well (which of course means that classes like DKs, and now, Warlocks are getting inflated numbers too, because those are the partners that Hunters run with).
Now, we Benefactors have debated what these numbers mean internally in our Arena Bitching Thread. The general consensus is despite the obvious biases (serious arena players reroll / have multiple 80s to choose from, and artificial inflation of class representations occurs together because ‘good’ compositions are fairly static), these numbers indicate that the current arena season is utterly fucked.
Personally I agree.
Many top arena players also agree. I have recently finished reading the latest from World of Ming (I like to keep up with what the top / sponsored players are talking about as a point of interest), and increasingly I find our beloved boards here at EJ mentioned in their paid blogging. Generally speaking, the critique is that (to quote Jasi)
“It doesn't really matter where you go - Gameriot, Arenajunkies, Elitist Jerks, or even the WoW forums - there you will find players that couldn't break 2k on old systems including s3/s4, who are now able to hit 2300 with relative ease and feel as if under the new system they have grounds for teaching others how to play the comp, as well as ****-talking based on their ratings.”
For the most part, he is completely correct, aside from one major flaw that I see showing up all the time in high end arena blogs. Just like practically everyone else who gets paid to fucking sit on their ass and play arena matches all day, Jasi assumes that players who are now “easily hitting 2300” have very little, or nothing of real value to contribute.
Personally, I disagree.
And not just because I am playing a Deathknight / Holy Paladin comp moving towards 2100 real rating in 2s. High end, sponsored arena players are smaller than a single percentile of players who are even playing in the arena system currently. Players on teams over 2300 comprise less than 10% of the entire Battleground bracket still, just as previously, the ELO system has simply been modified upwards to a new scale topping out at 2700, as opposed to previous seasons where it topped around 2400. This probably means that 1700 is the new 1500, and 2000 is the new 1800, although we still have yet to account for exactly what the hidden rating changes did to this system either. I personally doubt that the scale has gone up that far, since this week’s rating of 2047 gives me 411th position in the bronze bracket on Mal’ganis, an absolutely massive server. In season three or four, 411 would have gone to a team at least holding 1970, so I think rating inflation has been overplayed somewhat.
So then, what can mediocre arena players like myself contribute that is of value for this debate? Given the massive number of people who are in a similar position to me; fairly high ratings, playing a class that is over-represented, and too strong, I think that the best contribution would be a sense of perspective.
Here, let me simplify it:
**If you are sponsored to play Arenas in World of Warcraft, or a shoe in for Gladiator again on your server, you are probably in the upper single percentile of all players currently playing arenas, and from the perspective of Blizzard’s design team, your opinions and suggestions are utterly skewed by how good your team is at the PvP game. Any changes they make to try to ‘balance’ PvP will be magnified a thousand-fold in the stratosphere where you earn money to play. When you are dispensing advice about what to do, you should keep that in mind.**Blizzard wants to normalize the amount of player skill and effort required across classes in order to succeed. Why do you think Arcane mage and rogue damage was nerfed so brutally? It was not just because “there was too much burst”, there is STILL too much burst. Blizzard nerfed those skills because they did not require any skill or effort to use and abuse. Expect this to be the absolute trend coming out of any PvP related changes in 3.1, which, of course, brings me to Deathknights.
First off, two resource systems, a slew of important (and ridiculous) cooldowns, and no MS effect means that Deathknights are a fairly skill intensive class at the baseline, but I would categorize them as harder to learn than to master. I am not saying that it is difficult to Chains of Ice are warrior forever, or to Death Grip / strangulate some poor mage, or to pop Dancing Rune Weapon with 130 runic power and faceroll, but I would absolutely argue that it is very easy to be categorically terrible at playing the DK class. Runes are way more complex than rage is to manage, and the second system ala Runic Power adds additional complexity to even the most basic resource management while playing. Deathknights literally require over 25 keybinds in PvP, all of which need to be accessed very quickly at certain moments, and being able to hit Empower Rune Weapon just as fast as you could hit Obliterate or COI or Strangulate or Plague Strike remains crucial to good play as a DK. So, to end it off today, even though I said I wouldn’t look at overall balance, I’m gonna drop some ideas about Deathknights in PvP for 3.1. Obviously these are not exact, but hey, can’t fault a guy for some ideas:
Reductions / Removals:
Dancing Rune Weapon – Increase the duration to 1 minute base with no possible extensions (make it more fire-and-forget), lower the cooldown to 2 minutes, and significantly reduce the damage it does, down to around 25%-30% of Deathknight strike damage.
Unholy Ghoul Stun – Remove this utterly, add some kind of a non-magical DoT if you really feel the ghoul needs to do more.
Plague-strike: Obviously we now the HoT removal is getting removed. My suggestion is that buffing the damage on the strike makes no sense in PvE or PvP, unless you buff it so much that it compares to Icy Touch, which is already in need of some scaling changes (downwards). If this is supposed to be our Healer Pressure skill, find a way to actually make it pressure all healers equally. As a one Rune skill, it should not do too much of this. Options to look at include: Allowing talents to make it a direct applied snare, or a direct applied MS effect, I’d suggest no higher than 30% at the absolute top. Plague strike could also increase the cost of Heals while Blood plague was applied, since 3/4 healing classes can remove diseases this may well be the best possible solution, although you would need to give Druids a way to effectively deal with diseases if this was chosen, either through a new addition in resto talents, or a glyph.
Talent Changes:
We know that massive shuffles are happening in the DK frost trees, but other blue posts have hinted at even further changes. Hopefully they include:
Killing Machine – Move this up the tree, at least past 31. Reduce the number of points you need to max it perhaps.
Icy Touch Talents – Probably getting swapped with Endless Winter.
Chillblains – Will probably just be removed, since Endless Winter + Chains of Ice is really all most DK builds even take from Frost unless they are going very deep.
Desecration – Get rid of the aoe frost trap effect of this, it is stupid. Make it a 2 or 3 point talent that passively increases all damage dealt by 2-3%, and gives Plague Strike a single target snare effect similar to Hamstring.
Magic Suppression – Down to 3 points, at the absolute most
Corpse Explosion – Ugh. Just remove it.
Vampiric Blood – Reduce the duration and leave the glyph as it is.
Bloodworms – What the hell?
There. Now yell at me.
Total Comments 5
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Its not so important a point in the grand scheme of your post, but I would be inclined to say that, rather than an "upward shift" in arena ratings, it has instead been a "widening", ie. 2000 is the new 1800, 1500 is the new 1500, and 1100 is the new 1300. I believe there was at one point a blizzard post indicating that the gaussian filter involved in the hidden rating system was configured to place people in the region between 600 and 2700, centered at 1500.
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When you talk about corpse explosion and say "ugh" are you saying ugh because you think it sucks or because it's ridiculous?
Corpse Explosion is amazing. - Arena Junkies Forums It's so funny how few DK's know about this. |
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oops double post
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You have to go Gnaw ---> CE, I know how much damage it does. It has a three second cast time while the ghoul blows himself up, and low range, players can run out of it. The skill is still fantastically awkward to use too.
That said, Engineer DKs have been abusing it like crazy for a while now. |
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Updated 02/24/09 at 11:37 AM by Lanky |
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Yes, that's why you play with a paladin who can HoJ :P.
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