Well, without going "X CLASS COUNTERS THAT" we can do a run down
From a quick glance at the list, other than the Warlock curses, a Paladin can Cleanse pretty much everything you mention. With bubble on top of it (I think I've been saying for... almost two years now that bubble/Cleanse is the most broken mechanic in PvP, and my suspicion is that it will just become more obviously broken in arena combat), none of the non-curses are reliable until all paladins in the opposing team are dead.
Druids would definitely be viable as well, but are missing big things compared to shaman/paladin: they can't decurse magic (from my experience, in PvP, I'd almost exclusively rather have an additional magic decurse than an only curse decurse; perhaps this is Horde bias, though, from our only magic decurse being in cloth), they can't purge, and they can't heal while wearing a shield.
Otherwise, what do you get going from Warrior/Paladin/Shaman to the other classes?
Mages (and to a lesser extent, Warlocks) will be limited by mana and still have to deal with wearing cloth (which, if anything, will become more of a disadvantage -- longer fights leads to something of a bias to melee damage due to the effectively infinite animus of Rogues/Warriors compared to mana-based dps classes).
Priests wear cloth and are going to be focus fired down. See above for the problems with cloth.
Hunters look to be in a similar situation to Rogues -- do mostly the same job as Warriors, but with less armor.
Of course, my hope is that I'm overreacting and things will be different and balanced, but so far, I'm not seeing it. I vastly enjoy playing my Rogue, and I look forward to playing competitively in the arena system, but right now I find it hard to justify filling an arena spot with a Rogue over a Warrior.
I honestly think that at the moment of theorycrafting arena teams, the strongest looking set up is:
Paladin, Shaman, MS / Deathwish Warrior, Fury Warrior, and Druid. Seems as the warriors attacks are supplied by hitting people of being hit, they never have the fear of running out of mana, and as long as the healing and dispelling goes on them, they should be fine.
Now your point on cloth is what worries me a lot, all these arena sets are high stamina LOW int, which means that casters are gonna be struggling to kill more than one person (with healing,) and have any mana left, which may cripple casters in this game of "lol I have 16k+ health and 400 resilience!"
Either way, at the moment it's all theorycraft, but the signs are looking worrying for casters both DPS and Healing.
As for priests, there is no way in hell you can add more survivability to the class without it empowering shadow priests even more in solo PVP, which is what their main trouble is at the moment.
The only possible suggestion I can think of is a... Holy Form, which means they can't be snared, have around 6 K armor, can't use Shadow Spells (which will have little use in the arena now due to the nerf of CC,) and have a lot of resistances.
Priests are fine, they're just going to have to learn positioning, everyone won't be able to run in a big pile and fight. I'm gonna go back and mention Guild Wars again, go watch some of the competitive play there and you'll see front/mid/backlines formed. The "Priests" (Monks there) are deep in the backline making it very hard for people to push in and hit them. Without some better type of battle map though its going to be very difficult to spot all of the ranged DPS classes trying to sneak forward to hit backline targets. Being a Priest will become one of the most difficult jobs period but a "great priest" will be able to turn battles because of the massive amount of sustainability they'll add to their team.
I think a lot of the WoW population is in for a rude awakening with this arena stuff still, I'm not sure they really want what they're gonna get. I also think that a competitive PvP game with addons may turn this more into addon battles instead of real fighting. People are going to push the envelope of what you can do with targeting/enemy range detection/assist training/spellcasting syncronization/etc to min/max the ability to kill past healing and keep your healers out of the range of harm. I'd much rather see all addons banned from Arena than worrying about Arcanite Bombs.
You can't really do "lines" in WoW tho, if you stand too far behind you can't dispel(30yards range), and if you're 30yards away, you're in intercept range which means you'll get train assisted by melees very fast. Once you get harmstrung, only thing that will save you is a paladin BoF, and that only works once, if you have a paladin. Every 5vs5 I've seen, the warriors charge whatever's closest, harmstring to hinder movements and keep going right thru it to get to the priests. Sometimes AE fear after charge to scatter the group around. It becomes a big "tail-eating-snake" circle thing very fast where everyone runs in circles trying to run away from other people or run after the ones running away ^^. Only exception is when people ignore hunters, since they have really far range, but mostly everyone else finds themselves in the big circle in the middle, because of range issues(shocks blessings dispels AE fears and such).
Some classes live and die by their crowd control. A priest without fear or a mage without poly or frost nova is not gonna last long anywhere, group fights or not. As the fight starts things might look nice, but as more and more CC is used, and diminishing returns thus kick in, eventually classes that need their CC to be of any actual use on the battlefield are gonna be standing there looking at mostly 'immune' messages, then find themselves in a too-close-for-comfort relationship with <rogue/warrior>, hamstring/crippling poisoned, besically unable to do anything but wait for their healer to run out of mana while the infinite-'mana' melee class tears them apart.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that melee currently have extremely one-sided fights against some classes (mages in particular), but if you were to slap a blessing of freedom on any of them they instantly view those classes as free kills. That's what I'm afraid is going to happen. Basically, you have to kill them before diminishing returns (diminished diminishing returns?) kick in or you die.
So far I don't really like what I'm seeing from TBC PvP much... reduced CC effectiveness, more random uncontrollable elements, more hitpoints reducing the effecitveness of burst damage, increased survivability but not caster durability, undispellable debuffs (isn't being dispellable supposed to be their weakness?), etc...
"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
- Clark's Law
I'm afraid some of the PvP topics on EJ have begun to mirror WoW forums with some of this speculative "Looks like my class is useless, time to reroll [whatever]" junk.
Anyways, as far as CC goes, I need to see how skills were changed before I make much of a judgement. Some mass % based reduction would not be a good idea. On one hand, you're crazy if you thought current poly would be balanced for 2v2 or 3v3 but frost nova, for instance shouldn't be altered much. Short duration CC fit to cooldowns like rogue stuns or psychic scream or whatever should be auto-nerfed by having more HP/AC/Resilence and it wouldn't seem as if they would need much changing.
On mana -- I think it'd be pretty obvious in testing if casters are simply running out but unless there are some changes to int or an arena exclusive rule, it seems like that would be the case.
As for priests, there is no way in hell you can add more survivability to the class without it empowering shadow priests even more in solo PVP, which is what their main trouble is at the moment.
Isn't the 41 Disc talent doing just that?
The 1v1 PvP prowess of shadow priests is vastly overstated, anyway.
The WoW line isn't as solid in guild wars, but it exists. WSG/AB is totally different from group vs. group. I played in organized 5v5s screwing around in Gurubashi and distance definitely works as the other team will meet up with huge difficulties attempting to run through the rest of your team.
The problem with 'lines' in pvp isnt only due to collision detection. It's also because most of the classes in the game are effective out to 30 yards. there is no need to close rank with the back line, you just have to get within 30 yards of them (same as they have to get within 30 yards of whoever to do their job too). The exception is rogues and warriors. Rogues who just stealth to wherever they want to be before revealing themself, and warriors who can just charge to wherever they want to be. This is why setting up a front line to protect a back line wont really work. The best strategy to hamper rogues and warriors is simply to scatter (but still be within 30 yards for healing) so at best they can only easily attack one of your squishy targets, and may have trouble advancing to the second one after the first is dead.
Besides, in pvp like the arena where it will be 5v5 or less there just arnt enough people to form even a theoretical line unless you are fighting in small hallways.
The problem with 'lines' in pvp isnt only due to collision detection. It's also because most of the classes in the game are effective out to 30 yards. there is no need to close rank with the back line, you just have to get within 30 yards of them (same as they have to get within 30 yards of whoever to do their job too). The exception is rogues and warriors. Rogues who just stealth to wherever they want to be before revealing themself, and warriors who can just charge to wherever they want to be. This is why setting up a front line to protect a back line wont really work. The best strategy to hamper rogues and warriors is simply to scatter (but still be within 30 yards for healing) so at best they can only easily attack one of your squishy targets, and may have trouble advancing to the second one after the first is dead.
Besides, in pvp like the arena where it will be 5v5 or less there just arnt enough people to form even a theoretical line unless you are fighting in small hallways.
If the opposing casters can hit the priest, then they are standing right on top of the priest's team, meaning they are being shredded by melees and mid-range caster attacks. They also have to run 30-40 yds while being bombed and snared to get into range of the priest.
Warriors can't charge wherever they want to be. They'll be lucky to charge at all with ranged classes trying to get them in combat with skills that outrange charge. And if they do charge, the priest should be out of intercept range. Even then, if he does somehow make it to the priest, he's a lone warrior very far from his healers. As far as rogues go, a prerequisite of all arena teams is at least one person able to count to five. If only four enemies are visible, they should be able to guess who the last class is and what he is trying to do.
The priest only has to put themself in danger to heal the melee classes, and as most groups will have a secondary healer, that will be their responsibility anyway.
This isn't pure theorycraft; I'm speaking from experience in playing organized 5v5s in the Gurubashi arena (and I assume the arenas will start with 2 teams facing eachother and a similar size to Gurubashi). 5v5 combat is as different from BGs and world PvP as duels are. Don't get me wrong, priests don't go entire matches never being attacked, but lines definitely exist and survivability skyrockets in comparisons to other kinds of WoW PvP.
This depends on a ton of factors. If Rogues cant rely on stuns, fights against warriors become basically impossible, they have more hp, more armor, and hit just as fast, but harder. If rogues can rely on stuns, then the fight remains roughly equal, but longer.
Mages who cant rely on poly, or snares, but have blazing speed, they may be good at kiting, but who is going to let you hit them with 19 fireballs? If a player has 14000 hp, my big nukes are critting for 2800 now, lets say 3900 in expansion, thats 5 of the biggest nukes.
It looks very sketchy to me for Rogues and Mages both. Lucky me, I have a mage, and a rogue, as main and alt, I raid with my mage and pvp with my rogue, and I dont like the change for either. I'm willing to wait and hope, but I expect it to nerf both classes massively.
As far as rogues go, a prerequisite of all arena teams is at least one person able to count to five. If only four enemies are visible, they should be able to guess who the last class is and what he is trying to do.
Well, not really. It could be anything from a rogue to a warrior to a priest to a druid to a hunter to a mage! Heck, you might get lucky enough to encounter a whole team of stealthed opponents. I hate shadowmeld.
"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
- Clark's Law
Well, not really. It could be anything from a rogue to a warrior to a priest to a druid to a hunter to a mage! Heck, you might get lucky enough to encounter a whole team of stealthed opponents. I hate shadowmeld.
Meh, my memory is mostly goldfish-like and I had no problem keeping track of shadowmelded targets within a finite, reasonable space. The shadowmeld nerf isn't going to be removed afaik, so they can't really do anything constructive while melded anyway. Unless you consider staying stationary unable to do anything without breaking shadowmeld constructive of course.
I held few of these 5on5 arena events while i was still playing with my rogue, and it's true what they say about those lines, they do exist. Primary healer (priest fe) stays in 30y range from the ranged and the secondary healer (shaman fe) and the secondary healer keeps in the range of the melee who charge in to the battle, so anyone who wants to touch your lifeline (priest), needs to go through melee, secondary healer & ranged dps, and basicly so far that their team's healers wont have range on him if he is melee (their healers are fighting our melee, hence unable to move really). You dont need two healers to keep up your melee, one is enough, when the melee has enough hp to survive any burst combo.
And about priest durability, on our arena tournaments, our priest *never* died, those lines protected him from real harm, as well as whole team knowing (and acting accordingly) that we'd be invincible as long as the priest was alive.
Also i was quite suprised nobody ever suggested the team composition for 5on5:
UD Rogue: 17/33/1 - Combat Sword AQR/RCL (+TF vs plate), Renataki & ZHM/ES, TT, AR, BF, Imp kick, Gouge, Blind, KS, Vanish+CS, Crippling/Mindnumbing, Sap.
UD Priest: 18/22/21 - Trispec with survival talents + Silence, 3k+ armor, 6k hp, PvP & ZHB trinkets, Shield, Dispel, Heals.
Orc Shaman: 21/8/22 - Ele/Resto for high damage low cd interrupts & healing, 1h+Shield, 5s cd ES, NS, Grounding, Tremor & Purge.
UD Warlock: 9/21/21 - Demo/Dest lock with Succu, DC, SB, Corr, CoA, CoT, SB for bursting.
Troll Mage: 21/0/30 - Frost/Arcane survivability/CC build, Sheep, Blink, PoM, FNova, FBite, Permafrost, IBlock, CSnap, Imp CS, Imp dampen, FBolt for bursting.
First of all, i have to say that we couldnt find equally skilled UD mage at the time, so we had to go with troll (no, we werent UD for WotF, but for the cool looks!). Now everyone is wearing mostly stamina gear to prevent any bursting done by opposition, so everyone but the mage was way over 5k, some over 6k. When matchs starts, team backs away while rogue sprint saps the oppositions dispeller, which instantly leads to mage blinking in and PoM sheeping the second dispeller and frostnovaeing the melee. Priest stays back dispelling/shielding/healing and lock watches over him like a hawk, fearing, seducing and if emergency deathcoiling anyone trying to touch him.
Shaman is in between the rogue & priest, keeping the rogue & mage alive and being close enough to interrupt anyone doing anything else but instacasts on priest as well as keeping tremor & grounding down. Rogue locks down the first prey (CS>AR>KS>Vanish+CS if needed = 12s of undispellable stun, add +2s silence every 10secs, gouge for secondary targets, blind for tetriary, Renataki & TT for extreme burst & CP generation), who cannot act at all while mage bursts him down with the assistance of the warlock (FBolt>FBlast + SBolt+SBurn = GG). All this time the priest is running around in circles on the back while the remnants of the opposition try to chase him down (since he was supposed to be squishy!).
Well our composition & tactic worked pretty damn well, didnt loose a single match with that team composition.
Hmm, i might have sidetracked abit from the real point :) Which was that rogues are *not* obsolete in 5on5 arena -type matches, on the other hand they are imo better than warriors (who i think are quite the overrated class for this kinda events). Melee damage is so easily mitigated by armor, snares & range, and even if MS debuff yields 50% less healing on target, good rogue is double the worth by locking down single target down for good (2x50% = 100%!), and even multiple ones for short period of times (the gouge you did on the secondary target still cant do jack while under the effect, blind still needs to be cleansed but how is it done when you're locking down the only one who could cleanse it?).
Ranged magical damage is way superior to melee in every way (no way to mitigate without going in to redicilous lengths of using +resist gear, but then just use another school of magic and your opponents suddlenly gimped all his stats for almost nothing) in these fights. And for those casters who were afraid of going oom, your manapools most likely will grow from passive int gained via leveling, and managems, lifetap (you DO have a healer in your team, right?) make those worries even more trivial. Healers may take a hit, but healing is already *too strong* in group fights like this, atleast i wouldnt mind if they would change it (as well as healers role) abit to the other direction (i'm a priest nowdays, and i love healing people, but still, i feel abit two dimensional every now and then). Hunters otherhand are just big enigma (they were actually pretty good on arena due to superior range, entrapment, survivability vs melee & interrupts from pets, they just didnt make it to our composition), but hunter talents/skills are not even out yet, so it depends quite alot how they change them.And finally to my ultimate point, the rogues who were crying about how they'd be obsolete in arena fights due to HP's raising and their burst damage remaining on it's current level, should get over their egos as a "damage dealer" in group PvP, and focus more on their strengts which is the best interrupter/single target CC by far in the game. As HP pools rise, the value of interrupts raises too (instead of one interrupt you need 2-3 for same effect, and when before single counterspell/silence did it, now they are on CD when the second & third interrupt are needed, gogo Imp Kick). Even if the talents were bullcrap, I see this in combination with the new skills as a *huge* buff to rogue viability in group PvP. No more forced to nerf due to the notorious Ambush-Backstab combo, rejoice!
Uh, it came in abit long, this is why i dont usually post in here :/
Well posistioning doesn't really matter against organized PVP teams in WoW, as most classes or opponents (If you're an alliance priest, you're not used to BoF on warriors being a standard if they want it) will simply run through whatever is trying to protect them, and go straight for the priest.
At the moment, my general defence when that happens is to use my ZHB to get my armor bonus and try and skiddadle while people are hitting me, hoping that someone has CC'd them off me (Psychic Scream use on one person is absolutly useless considering how well it can be used if used right.
Now if I put myself out of range of the enemy, and barely within range of a warrior, the problem comes up with the fact that people have to move in order to hit the opponents, so the idea of kiting both your team and your opponents isn't that effective, but when it actually does pull off (and I imagine it does with BoF on yourself quite a lot) it is devastating, it's just awkward considering that warriors have to run all over the place in order to get the other team's priest / healer.
Then there are hunters, which at the moment are the bane of WoW PVP for a priest who is trying to do their healing job, with their fucking Viper Sting (If your shamans / druids are busy doing your job,) and their fucking stupid damage. Fuck Hunters, most fucking simple class in the fucking game to play and they do so much fucking damage, FUCK HUNTERS.
The problem we are presented with at the moment is that if spell durations are going to change like we are lead to believe too, we're going to be in trouble a lot of the time, and it will be exactly the same type of problem I run with at the moment, It doesn't matter if I have 6k HP / 3K AC, I get nuked down pretty much zero problem if the other team assist train, and CC is my only saviour, and I don't mean Psychic Scream; as it is pratically useless in PVP when you're being attacked by warriors / rogues.
As for the ability of a 1v1 shadow priest being underrated, at the moment my priest (which I haven't played in a long ass time,) can have 527 +Damage with 5.2k HP and 5.7k Mana, and if Specced shadow, no class presents a problem at all (maybe a really good well equipped Warlock / Disc/Holy Priest these days.) There is also a priest on my server who has 700+ shadow damage with over 5.5k HP and 5K Mana, now his only downfall is that he is probably the worst PVP priest on the server (Got to love raiding guilds ^_^,) but I imagine his damage output in a 1v1 situation is insane :)
The concept of full affliction gets worse and worse.
What makes you say that? With increased HP pools and an emphasis on outlasting rather than outbursting, an Unstable Affliction + Demonic Embrace build seems very powerful to me. I expect some serious asskicking when paired with a Shadow Priest 2.0 in the 2v2 bracket.
Collision detection would have been great in WoW, it could have even given Protection Warriors a more satisfying role in BGs.
Hopefully the developers of WAR don't have to take it out between now and release.
I'd still love to see Taunt force target changes for 3 seconds in PvP.
This would have a number of drawbacks too. I would be more in favour of seeing targeting lost on fade blink and possibly even feign death as long as the feign death trap macros dont become a huge problem. Which reminds me, i would like to see exiting combat a little more difficult in the arenas than in normal pvp to make it somewhat similar to a pve bossfight. Would help to reduce the risk of mana pools being tuned for drinking midfight, although sheep drink fights would be less problematic if polymorphs duration is lessened.
"Drysc wrote:
Any ability that can keep a player occupied or out of the fight can technically be considered a crowd control ability. It's become a pretty broad term for the majority of players."
I guess they don't mean a melee hitting/hunting a mage means that mage is "kept occupied or out of the fight", but it should :\
And I agree on Warrior/Paladin heavy teams are gonna rock even more.. ah well I'll just have to kill some dragons instead..
Rogues aren't going to be useless in PvP, their role is going to change. Viluliina is spot-on. Burst damage has not been and should not be the role of the rogue -- mages can do it better and from farther away. Rogues, good ones at least, have always focused on control over damage. I look forward to the BC PvP changes, as a rogue, with excitement.
Everyone who is whining about needing to reroll because rogues are useless? Go.
"Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long."
-Rorschach, Watchmen
09/29/06, 9:23 AM
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