I'm interested in discussing PvP experiences now that Burning Crusade has been out for awhile and people have engaged in PvP.
I remember (and please correct me if I am wrong) that one of the biggest changes to the game from vanilla to TBC was the increase in Stamina. One of the publicly stated reasons for this change was that PvP encounters currently had become battles of epicly fast battles.
The assist-train, spell damage trinkets, increasingly higher damage on weapons all led up to the fact that people were complaining of being quickly overtaken in battles, and healing and HP pools had become somewhat marginalized based on how quickly damage had overtaken it.
To me of course, it also seemed somewhat obvious that another understated reason for the stam change was to encourage people to buy TBC and outdate older gear.
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Unfortunately, I think that the idea stated has failed spectacularly. Damage has scaled so far and so fast that in Battlegrounds and Arenas, we've come full circle. It feels precisely the same as far as bursting someone down as quickly as possible. What happened? Are there solutions?
Unfortunately, I think that the idea stated has failed spectacularly. Damage has scaled so far and so fast that in Battlegrounds and Arenas, we've come full circle. It feels precisely the same as far as bursting someone down as quickly as possible. What happened? Are there solutions?
Burst damage scales with the number of people who can assist effectively. Its tolerable outside of 5v5, and honestly I dont see how they can ever inflate stamina to the point that 4 people focusing on 1 person in cloth/leather/mail will not end the same way.
We've had some pretty epic 2v2s and 3v3s (in the 5-10 minute range) where mana has been a huge issue and swapping gear from stam to regen has been really effective. It's nearly impossible to burst someone down in 2s or 3s unless you're running around with 3 pom pyro mages, and even then, there's a lot people can do to survive that.
In 5v5, stamina does help a bit to the point where you don't die in one volley of attacks, but it's not enough to have make it so four people have to wail on you for a minute to kill you. We've had 5v5s that have also lasted quite a while in their 5v5 state and some where a few people die and you're left with a long 3v3 or 2v2. Overall I think the stamina change has worked pretty well if you consider the fact that most people don't even have too much of their Gladiator set. Resilience helps out with the burst damage as well.
From my experience it's very hard to burst someone down even in 5on5. If the team have 2 healers it will take time to kill someone, and if you don't manage to interrupt the healers or crowdcontrol them the reality is often that no one will die until the healers are out of mana.
From my experience it's very hard to burst someone down even in 5on5. If the team have 2 healers it will take time to kill someone, and if you don't manage to interrupt the healers or crowdcontrol them the reality is often that no one will die until the healers are out of mana.
I've found this to be relatively untrue, against 2 healer teams if you can snap target rapidly, you can frequently burst someone down. Perfect example yesterday in 5v5. We were fighting mid bridge, with myself and a rogue on a warlock, his paladin was healing, but we were putting them under a ton of pressure, their BoP was already out. I looked down the bridge and saw a priest at 60% with BoF on inside our hunters deadzone, I intercepted on him, and as soon as I reached him he died. I between my white swing, windury, and MS I instantly took off around 50-60% of his life, in a sub 2 second window. Yet at the same time if he had stopped healing the warlock to top himself, the warlock was dead.
I think I'm somewhat experienced in Arena now (1776 5on5, 1878 3on3 rating) and I have to say that assist training burst dps is no longer as good as it was. Sure, if you manage to burst someone down in the first few seconds of the fight you're at an advantage, but that's not a guaranteed win if you have 5 classes with a 1-trick-pony spec. We just had 3 fights against a team with a 3minute mage, once both of his macros were blown, all he did was spamming arcane explosion ;X
Needless to say, we won all 3 matches against them. 4 balanced specs against 5 burst specs with cooldowns blown is a fairly even fight.
And if your initial barrage is interrupted, by silence, AE Fear, nova, BoP and whatnot, there are enough tools for that in a 5 player group, and your target is healed back to full, you've lost 90% of the time cause you're now facing 5 players who are not depending on long cooldowns while your cooldown skills just ran out.
I've even outhealed non-burst assist training by myself, Light's Grace + Bloodthirst + Cycle proc = 1.1 sec Holy Lights.
Xi you're talking about 2healer teams, why did the second healer not heal the priest? Sounds like shitty play on their part, cloth should always be topped off.
Xi you're talking about 2healer teams, why did the second healer not heal the priest? Sounds like shitty play on their part, cloth should always be topped off.
He couldn't. If either healer had stopped healing the warlock, he would have died. Right now if you put 2 DPS on a player with MS up, it basically takes 2 full time healers chaining heals to keep them alive.
If you manage to sustain a 3DPS chain against a player, particularly a healer, with no relief from LoS or BoP, they will die near 100% of the time.
So far it seems to vary quite a bit between arenas and BGs, maybe because of quality of opponents. Haven't seen anyone instagibbed in an arena, other than a rogue that snuck in and walked into a trap to sap our warlock when we were all bunched up behind a pillar. I need to wear stamina gear to keep up, since I'll be the one 2 shotted otherwise.
In BGs on the other hand, the only thing that feels different from 60 is that my crit rate is down a bit, and mages don't die before silencing shot wears off. I can still run around in DPS gear with 6.9k health, and reliably be out of mana before I'm out of health. I love how large and open EoTS is, for switching through and picking off targets at low health.
I hear one of our hunter + pally teams had a 26 minute long arena against a 2 paladin team :S. Everyone was oom and no-one was dying.
I've really not seen the benefits of stam yet. I'm sitting at close to 8k health, which puts me at 2-3k more than what I had at 60, yet I'm still getting 2-3 shotted by mages in world pvp before I can even run the distance to them, warlock dots are *still* eating me alive... I'm really not seeing where all this stam gear is supposed to be at. Short of taking items that are just pure stam I feel like I've done a good job of making sure that every item has at least 18-20 stam on it at a minimum, and I've downgraded my DPS to take higher stam upgrades - but still doesn't seem to have impacted much.
Socketing +9 or +12 sta in everything? HP enchants? PvP gear? I noticed quite a difference in BGs going from 8k unbuffed to 10k; it is easier for me, though, since I have access to silly itemization like the KoT pants.
PvP in WoW has always been about burst; that's not going to change and I didn't expect it to in the expansion. The stamina totals you can reach now are high enough that with good healing this burst is survivable; you can't say the same thing about the DPS being put out by level 60s against level 60s. Weapons aside, the DPS upgrades available are fairly mediocre, whereas resilience isn't yet widely used and has yet to make its impact (or lack thereof) felt, so I'm guessing things will skew even more towards survivability in the next few months.
In 2v2 arenas, I find the double-mage teams to be ridiculously overpowered. They kill my teammate in less than 2 global cooldowns, and no amount of healing, proactive or reactive, can do anything about it.
He couldn't. If either healer had stopped healing the warlock, he would have died. Right now if you put 2 DPS on a player with MS up, it basically takes 2 full time healers chaining heals to keep them alive.
If you manage to sustain a 3DPS chain against a player, particularly a healer, with no relief from LoS or BoP, they will die near 100% of the time.
not really my experience, I've often kept the other healer up with MS or WP on him with Bloodlust (that's a must, though)
Once people get more resilience gear, it will help out survivibility in the 5v5 bracket, but people will still be bursted down in less than 5 seconds.
Honestly, the only players I see bursted down that quickly are dps classes that think "stamina sucks and doesn't help against being focused on". Anyone with more than 8k hp I can land a crit HL on before they die and then I'm locked and healing like crazy.
Malan, 8k is very low - our shaman was at 9.5k without any PVP reward items - he also never gets bursted down. Grounding totem is a great anti-mageburst tool, drop it after the first volley so their blasts or PoM followups go into the totem,
Against people who are not properly geared for PVP, yes, it's all about bursting down someone before their healers can react. Against people with 12k health and 200+ resiliance it's a completely different story.
I've found this to be relatively untrue, against 2 healer teams if you can snap target rapidly, you can frequently burst someone down. Perfect example yesterday in 5v5. We were fighting mid bridge, with myself and a rogue on a warlock, his paladin was healing, but we were putting them under a ton of pressure, their BoP was already out. I looked down the bridge and saw a priest at 60% with BoF on inside our hunters deadzone, I intercepted on him, and as soon as I reached him he died. I between my white swing, windury, and MS I instantly took off around 50-60% of his life, in a sub 2 second window. Yet at the same time if he had stopped healing the warlock to top himself, the warlock was dead.
I think we have different definitions of bursting. If you are dpsing on a warlock putting his healers "under a lot of preasure" and the bop is down, the fight have already lasted for quite a while. I was more referring to the instagibbs of someone very quick. I agree that if you notice someone at 60& health, you can often regardless of their class do a coordinated target switch and kill him before the healers rweact.
I've really not seen the benefits of stam yet. I'm sitting at close to 8k health, which puts me at 2-3k more than what I had at 60, yet I'm still getting 2-3 shotted by mages in world pvp before I can even run the distance to them, warlock dots are *still* eating me alive... I'm really not seeing where all this stam gear is supposed to be at. Short of taking items that are just pure stam I feel like I've done a good job of making sure that every item has at least 18-20 stam on it at a minimum, and I've downgraded my DPS to take higher stam upgrades - but still doesn't seem to have impacted much.
Close to 8k health is not very high at all, especially if you have no resilience at all -- considering mages can still crit pyros for 5k, my dots tick for 500-600, etc. There seems to be a line where once you cross it in hp/resilience, it becomes exponentially harder to kill you if you're either a healer, or someone on your team is.
Having proper items for pvp is a real plus, and make sure you're socketing/enchanting them appropriately. I'd never wear my Spellstrike Pants for pvp -- I have a pair of Trial-FireTrousers that have 3 +9 stam gems in them for a whopping total of +63 stam before an enchant is even considered. The difference between me sitting at 7.5k life and 10k life is huge, that's another "special" I can absorb pretty much.
You can't decently get 12k hp and 200resilience on a priest or a mage and still be able to function as anything but a punching bag tho. Well maybe once you can get your 5pc arena set, and full pvp gear, but because itemization is never perfect, and because it's just bad for healers, you'll still have crappy healing if you go for the 12k hps 200resilience way.
Burst is still bad, maybe not as bad as right before BC, with 41points talents and overpowered T3epics and stuff, but it's still pretty bad. Our warrior can still die before I can cast more than 2 instants on him, given an appropriate burst(white hit MS windfury proc, ns elemental chain lighting, ap pom pyro, god I hate that team). Our priest still die every now and then from a rogue+warrior and just a priest or a mage doing the finishing move(shadow word death/fireblast that goes thru BoP), happens often if there's an offensive dispeller in the opponent's team.
But then you have the counter example, our warlock, soul link, 13k hps, 180resilience, usually voidwalker out against melee teams, goes thru 2 to 3 of them during the fight, with sacrifice at low hp. He can live thru any kind of burst pretty much, but I consider him more of an exception than the average caster.
So to answer the op, I'd say yea Arenas are still a burstfest, not as much as before maybe, and will get better when squishies get their arenas gear to counter the insane smithing crafted weaps+bloodlust+windfury.
Ooh, I've been looking forward to a discussion about this...
Even 5v5 is more about effective assist training than burst damage. The typical team has 3 DPS and 2 healers and even with the 3 DPS focussing on one guy its difficult to ensure that both of their healers are crowd controlled and unable to help him.
In fact - as a Warlock, notorious for being the easiest kill in the arena game bar none - I've died instantaneously in more 3v3s than I have 5v5s because CCing 1 healer and beating down a guy is a lot easier than CCing 2 healers long enough for 3 of you to kill a guy. It seems next to impossible to kill somebody with a healer determined on keeping him alive. Not like the 'good old days' where 2 of us could rip somebody to shreds with 1 volley of abilities before their healer could even react.
Derail time: What's really getting my goat is how Warlocks and Priests are treated in the Arenas - especially the higher tier (my team is ranked 10th in our battlegroup). First off, why does Ritual of Souls cost a Soul Shard and Prayer spells cost a candle? That's driving me nuts. Secondly, the only defensive advantage that Warlocks used to have over Mages, being higher stamina, is now completely nullified. Every Mage has the same amount of hit points as I do (before Demonic Embrace - which ends up giving me about 8-10% more hp)) because we're all wearing very similar gear. Even the Gladiator sets for all 3 cloth classes have the same amount of stamina...yet Mages are given the opportunity to run around with these high stamina values, Blink, Ice Block, Mana Shield and Frost Nova combined with impunity. What are Warlocks and Priests supposed to do when they're being focussed upon? Every single arena match I use the Voidwalker. Its the only thing in my arsenal which has a hope in hell of saving me when a Rogue, Warrior and Feral Druid want me dead (derail 2: has anyone else been crit for 4k by a Feral Druid by the way? Isn't that a little nuts?), but leaves me without the ability to counterspell and dispel with the Felhunter.
I'm not going to deny it, I suffer from a severe case of hatred and/or envy every time a Mage Ice Blocks, or a Feral Druid pops into Bear Form, or a Rogue pops Vanish/CLOS/Evasion through our assist train. All instant-cast abilities that we can't do a damn thing about. All I can say is thank god for Paladins. Without Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection and Concentration Aura I would never step into another arena ever again (or at least, seeth in hatred at a piss-poor rating).
Its becoming increasingly apparent to me that the Warlock class, as well as Priests in healer-mode (following the POM nerf especially) are just too damn squishy and ill-equipped to compete in matches in the higher tier. I'm sick and tired of losing 15-30 rating to a team we would otherwise have beaten if not for the fact that they decided to focus fire on me first. 4v5 is a damned hard fight no matter who you are and is the reason that the last 2 weeks I've ended up on just barely 30% of the team's games played the last 2 weeks. I'm one of the best played Warlocks I know, but my team don't want me around because I'm too much of a detriment to their success.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
The 70 game, once properly geared, is considerably different than what we saw at the end of the 60 game. Resilience is an amazing anti-burst stat, and stamina values can reach absurd levels.
From my experience, the only teams that can reliably expect to "burst someone down" in the old sense are those with shamans and warriors (although everyone has the latter). The combination of windfury procs, MS and BL/heroism means you sometimes see the kind of instagibs that only BoP/IB/DS can save you from.
In most situations, it's more a matter of disabling at least one of the other team's healers while you wail on someone, just waiting for that crit streak that places him within execute/instacast range.
Burst is still one of the keys to winning, but it's not so much instagib as damage overload.
I think we have different definitions of bursting. If you are dpsing on a warlock putting his healers "under a lot of preasure" and the bop is down, the fight have already lasted for quite a while. I was more referring to the instagibbs of someone very quick. I agree that if you notice someone at 60& health, you can often regardless of their class do a coordinated target switch and kill him before the healers rweact.
I see burst as any time you can remove 50-60%+ of someone's hp in a sub 2 second window. This kind of damage is basically uncounterable, due to GCD's, etc. If the fight had been like, intercept -> rogue gouging the paladin, then the priest got locked out trying to channel on himself and died over the course of 4-5 seconds because his heals were interrupted, or the interruption put him too far behind in terms of HPS, that would be more slow skill based pvp. Right now people can take thousands and thousands of damage in instants.
Close to 8k health is not very high at all, especially if you have no resilience at all -- considering mages can still crit pyros for 5k, my dots tick for 500-600, etc. There seems to be a line where once you cross it in hp/resilience, it becomes exponentially harder to kill you if you're either a healer, or someone on your team is.
I completely agree with this; critical hits of any kind are king right now for bursting on those assist trains. As more and more PvP sets with resilience on them comes in to circulation, I think that classes whose damage does not depend on crits will begin to emerge as solid PvPers (Certain Warlock Specs, Shadow Priests etc)
I think it will become a case of slow but consistent damage wins the fight with mana constraints limiting the fight length (this has already come to pass with certain team compositions)
While I agree on priests, especialyl with PRoM nerf, I disagree with warlocks being worthless and/or squishy. It strikes me as obvious that any warlock who wants to arena should be speced soul link. Not 41demo, but at least 31. Just like you can't have fury warriors because MS is so much better in PvP, and stuff like that. Yes it's not fun being forced into a spec, but that's what PvP is about, min/maxing for maximum efficiency, just like high end raiding(but with very different views tho).
Our lock is the 2nd thoughest char in our team. The first being me, because well you know, I'm a paladin, I can stop bullets with my eyelids. He's soul link, has 13k hp buffed and has around 150resilience. Can he dps as much as an affliction or dest lock in an instance? Probably not. But he'll do more dps than any of these spec in arenas because he doesn't die in the first 20secs, even when assisted. He can still cast his curses and fears while assisted(but fears might be pummeled and such). Hell he sometimes even shadowbolt people who are hitting him(imp concentration aura).
The shard issues is probably just a bug imo, while a tad annoying, it's not half as bad as pvp has been on a lock for the past 2years(I played a lock for 1year or so, in the early stages). Our lock asks us to do a 5mins shard farming in AV mine every evening before we start, he stacks 70shards and then he's ok for the night. He has shadowburn too. I use 4symbol of kings every arena too, because 5mins buffs are too short sometimes(4 because sacrifice doesn't take one ^^), but that's not too bad either ^^
Well to me assist training is, well assist training and burst is when longer cooldowns are involved like PoM; AP, trinkets.
How does resilience reduce crit damage btw? if it says -5% chance, -10% damage, does it reduce the total damage of the attack by 10% or only the crit bonus? eg MS crit 3k, will it do 2850 or 2700?
Pyros, improved Howl of Terror is also pretty awesome.
the affliction lock in my team is doing great as well
Can't decently rely on fears when you're the assist, too many draenei/dwarf priests, undead rogues, warriors and tremors. Also I'm not a lock specialist, but I think imp howl means no soul link, which means you'll die pretty fast anyway, the 30s cooldown(or is it 1min?) won't have time to refresh, and first fears are usually always self cleared(trinkets too, forgot about them).
02/28/07, 12:24 PM
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