Offtopic:
Anyone else unable to view thottbot links? It continually tries to login and just goes around in circles. When people link tbot item's i never know what they are :(

I had that issue ages ago. Deleting your cookies, temp files, etc, etc, should do it, though I can't quite remember how I resolved it for me.

And its the violet tragan, the mushroom for the noggenfogger quest.

The priest is dead within 5 seconds.

Bare in mind 5 shaman team has no dispelling atall so mages will be able to poly 3 at least, giving them a massive advantage at the start. I dont know how much the stamina changes will affect things but I would assume 5 mages could kill 2 shaman in the time it takes the other 3 to become immune to polymorph, and there'd be no chance of those 2 healing as they'd be instantly counterspelled. I would also assign one guy to be wanding virtually non stop putting the hurt on those 5hp totems.

It's nice to feel so much love for the rogue class :)

Well, even if few of you include us, I'm sure I'll get to have some occasional fun in the Arena.

I'll never specc full into sub, but I'll experiment and see what I like, which probably includes imp. ambush, hemo and initiative as usual.

It was mentioned that rogues, while squishy, can crowd-control for at least a little while. That's basically our strenght... I envision we'll be vultures as usual, grabbing ahold of any class straying too far off from the safety of many, and start our stunlocks; keeping them out of combat and losing health at the same time. I'm sure many of you have experienced being jumped by a rogue not afraid to use his cooldowns. Imagine that happening when 2 of your teammates are busy a little off to the left needing your heals/damage/decurses or whatever.

I'm not afraid to go up against bears, priests or hunters or otherwise vital players on your team; 'cause when you get out of my stun you need to first think about yourself, then get rid of me, and while you take care of that I'll be giggling at your teammates falling before my mates :)

edit: Oh yeah, I forgot, here's what I'd bring, simply because I know that every one of the players I know are formidable all on their own (and taking into consideration that we might be restricted to only one of each class), no synergy intended:

Rogue (well, me, duh)
Mage (don't care about the specc)
Shaman (don't care about the specc)
Priest (preff. shadow, but doesn't matter too much)
Warrior or Druid (It's a toss-up)

That is one hell of an offspec 5v5 team Malag.

To that i say GL! :D

(My only issue with a rogue is they are oh so very high maintenance. Squishy (require heals), melee (require constant dispelling of snare effects, compared to range dps). With imp sprint, that helps a bit, but for a rogue to be trully useful in 5v5, i think you need some passive ability to help mitigate (and avoid some) of the snare / trap abilities out there.

You forgot wounding poison...

Anyway, i don't think the healing reduction MS affords a team is that critical if you have the appropriate crowd control.

The oppurtunity cost of Wound Poison is too high unless they change it from being a flat healing penalty with or without a cast time coefficient (I have no idea about that actualy, is it similar to Blessing of Light?) into a percentage based one.

Crippling MH Mind Numbing OH will be far more useful, maybe Deadly depending on how Disembowel works out, and would be the stacking alternative if you face heavy cleansing.

I don't see Rogues having a spot in many top tier teams, individual skill is a big factor of course, but there are just too many ways of shutting us down. With the impact of our burst lessened, we will need constant removal of DoTs, Faerie Fire, and snares, while still being healed; this is far easier to do on a Warrior that's got maybe 25% more health and 100% more armor, and doesn't rapidly lose individual strength as cooldowns run out. If the opposing team has a Hunter, we will even lose our core ability if he sticks to our preferred targets and keeps Flare up.

We pay a high price for arguably being the strongest solo world pvp class 1-59.

I'm personally rerolling a Paladin, being Horde, I'd rather the Paladin in my Arena team be me than hope to meet a good one who clicks with me and my friends.

Meet the new gods of the Arena:

http://affliction.tag2087.com/arena.wmv

:/

I skimmed (and searched in vain) but when entering an Arena game, does it list all the classes and names you are going up against? If the games are fast, I really wish they'd remove this option. Non-world PvP takes away so many strengths of rogue stealth it's ridiculous.


"Hmm I see 2 rogues in the BG list, keep flare up" or something like that.

Shaman, paladin, priest, warlock, warrior.

pwnt.

and this is how it looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtZnldX9Kos


At the end of each fight you can see total healig done / total damage done from each player. pretty neato.

So is there a limit to how many of each class can be in a match? Or is it still in very early testing?

I don't think it has enough damage, fast enough with current skyrocketing HP values. Their Priest would go down extremely quickly (would just take 1 silence probably) and against a team with 3+ healers/dispellers, I don't think you'll ever be able to out-dmg/CC the healing.

It sure would be fun to try though.

On second thought - with a 4 mages AEing, you'd prolly be able to outdamage healing? maybe?

2x Imp Blizz + 2x flamestrike, then everyone moves in at once to use Blastwave/Dragonbreath + FN/COC, then everyone Arc Explodes.... I duno if you could keep everyone together it might work, assuming you don't run OOM first.

My friends and I were talking over the 5-man we want to put together and this is what we came up with so far:

More dps, better burst ability, and strong magic dmg synergy:
Warrior: MS / Fury + TM
Paladin: 34/27/0 or 41/20/0
Priest: 20/41/0
Shaman: 40/0/21
Mage: Fire Variant

More rounded overall, dmg split between melee and dps w/ some synergy, healing spread out among 4 players
Warrior: MS / Fury + TM
Paladin: 34/27/0 or 31/30
Priest: 10/10/41
Shaman: 0/40/21
Druid: 0/40/21

In all cases we wanted 2 offensive/defensive dispellers, at least one poison and one curse removal. We want at least 3 healers, but the main concern is that if we focus on magic synergy we might be weak versus endurance teams and if we focus on endurance then our capacity to take targets down relies heavily on the warrior staying alive.

It's all just theorycraft, because we've not 5-manned with a shaman before, but are there any obvious weaknesses we’re missing?

Yes, enhancement shaman (in team 2) will make baby jesus weep in Arena. Elemental (i prefer 31/0/30 as purification is very good). Having 4 heals is nice but i cant see team 2 having enough DPS, even if the shammy went elemental. Admittedly, the new paladin talents may change things somewhat.

im leaning towards 5 mages specced either 0/30/31 or 0/41/20 massive AoE burst dmg. first spec get ice barrier giving them sufficient time to use all their spells or the second one allows them to take turns disorienting the target (since dmg wont break the disorient, you essentially get 15seconds of them stuck in place). shattered cone of colds, blastwaves, dragons breath. imp blizz + frostbite to stopthem from escaping the kill zone. stacking flamestrike dots. >.>

of course, its a very different fight if the opposing team play smart and seperate so you can't aoe. assuming arenas have enough room for it. mages single target is very high but with sheep being basically useless (between latest nerf and the arena CC restrictions) focus fire could kill the mages one by one too fast for them to keep up. this would be more of an issue with the fire specced ones though imo.

in conclusion: when you can aoe, the fire build FTW. if the opposing team plays smart, ice barrier is a winner.

PS first EJ forums post woot

ex-Flames Team:

3 Paladins
1 Druid
1 Shaman

HP's high.
Armor high.
Heal ability high.
Melee dps high.
Ranged dps... enough to get the job done on weakened opponents.

Paladins stacking 3 auras and 3 blessings plus 3 totems runnin all damage shielded and druid buffed with enough versitility to switch up tactics to take out different group variations.

Versitility examples like exorcising demons and undead for example, or how about turning undead? nifty little bonus abilities, or a totem for every occasion, or a shapeshift to ruin your day, sleep the hunter pet, root people. Creative people can take small abilities and make a huge difference in fights that are close.

Plenty of dispell, decurse. Plus which healer are you going to kill first?

They just move as a group around the field, slowly if need be, and kill everything.

Plus 3 heal touch, one shammy insta-heal, a druid insta rez and heal, and 6 shields.

pretty much game over.

I call this team my "Patriots" take on group combat. No clear superstar, just great healing and defense with a good running game and a precision passing attack.

Key weaknesses, unchecked hunters and well played mages and locks, ie crowd control and ranged attacks. However, during the ebb and flow of a good pvp fight the advantage of ranged attacks quickly diminishes and so does crowd control. Anytime a person is stationary lobbing spells or shooting a bow he's able to be moved up upon. It's that simple.

To win stick to the game plan of good healing, move together, and stay focused. If that is done, this group would be hard to defeat. Very hard.

exFlames to the Out

Turn undead doesn't work on Forsaken, if that's what you were implying.
You also can't use Battle rez in Arena play, due to its >15minute cool down.

Very Interesting idea though.

Your team looks very weak against AoE dmg and I could see two mages just obliterating that group, especially w/o an AoE Heal. It was one of the primary concerns when evaluating our 4healer/melee oriented team. The problem is that they need to hunt in one large pack or packs of 2 and 3 to be effective AND they have to be on top of their target.

I'd also be concerned about their ability to finish someone off as the team lacks an execute type attack, Motral Strike and Curse of Tongues.

Anyway, it's all just pie in the sky right now. I've participated in some organized 5-mans, but with all the new talents, spells, cross-class synergies and Shamadins on the same team... it's hard to get your head around it all without actually playing around with it.

Well, here's something i've been toying with for 5v5:

1 Enhancement Shaman
1 Fury Warrior
1 Arcane/fire Mage
1 Demonolgy Warlock
1 Resto/Balance Druid

The main strengths of this set up is the strong crowd control combined with high health pools, intermixed with some good burst damage. In 5v5 being able to rotate and use crowd control to your advantage is going to be the key to success, how well you can isolate opponents so you can tear them apart piecemeal 1v1.

Also, having a warlock allows you to supply healthstones to your party if need be (especially useful for the fury warrior and mage), and a heavy resto druid (whilst not being in tree of life form due to movement weakness) means you can keep HoTs up on the melee classes as they savage.