As it should work: When a pet attacks a drinking player, that player is forced to stand up after being put into combat, thus stopping the drinking.

The exploit: If the water drinking character spams a /sit macro repeatedly while being attacked by a pet even though they will be put into combat they continue to drink because the /sit macro overwrites the default /stand behavior that is supposed to occur once they are put in combat.

What this means is in any arena where the healer can get out of combat long enough to start to drink (easy for druid healers) they can begin their drinking and finish it all the way even if a pet is attacking them.

Wow, I hadn't heard of this, and now I feel a little bit better about a 2v2 loss last night: a priest had run into one of the starting areas in lordaeron with my hunter partner's pet on him, and yet was able to drink to 40% mana before my partner got there. We were so pissed off.

Edit: still don't know how the priest got OOC to begin with, but anyway...

Well if you can get out of range of a pet's attacks for a few seconds (maybe 10 seconds, not sure) it will take you out of combat.

In all likelihood if he was able to drink to 40% though then that's what happened, and it also explains some odd fights I've had in the last couple of weeks where my pet was clearly in range of a druid drinking, yet they were getting to full mana just fine.

It's not just pets either. If someone is spamming the sit macro, the only way to prevent them from gaining mana is to CC them in some way. Casting DD spells, meleeing them, etc all will not work, you need to stun/fear/sheep/etc in order to break it.

Also, since you are not put into combat healing someone until the spell finishes casting, healers are able to start a spell, and right as it finishes, spam drink and it will let them start drinking a split second before the game recognizes they should be in combat.

These two things combined are making some games very frustrating, and although Blizzard should be able to easily fix the first issue, the second one is just a result of latency and they would have to rework the way the drink buff is applied/removed in order to fix that.

physical attacks have 100% crit chance vs. sitting targets so bring a hunter! let's see him sit through THAT.

It's quite doable. People have allegedly been exploiting this in my Battlegroup (Rampage EU) in 5v5, while a partner spamheals them.

Interesting. So I'm curious... is the message box spammed by "PlayerX sits down." ?

I don't think /sit leaves a message, at least I know pressing the default sit/stand toggle key doesn't.

It does not. Same with the /train emote.

It's brilliant as a hunter and priest. If scatter shot or physic scream is on cd we're fucked. Oh, and scatter is not exactly the best ability to use if someone is drinking 40 yards away. -.-

And as a priest, after the first critical, chances are, there's a 6 second wait till the next. Does anyone know which of these absolutes ends up prevailing?

As to the spam healing being done, one could also eat mage conjured food while doing this, and constantly regain their HP at a rate of 250 health per second. This will easily heal through hunter/warlock pets.

Renew + Food is 415 Healing per second. That, on top of Blessed Resilience and Blessed Recovery would make it difficult to take down a geared priest without somehow stopping his eating/drinking. This could be very strong in 2v2.

As far as I'm aware health regeneration from food stops the moment you enter combat (unlike mana regeneration from any sort of drink, which will continue if you gained the "Drink" buff before you entered combat).

Still, this bug is definitely an issue in the smaller arena brackets, or in the later stages of 5v5 battles.

The sad part is there's quite a few players from the top teams in BG9 that are justifying its use. Luckily warriors can break it by using all of our special attacks but it's pretty unfair if your team has one of your healers/pets watching for drinks since a simple autoattack wont break it.

Pretty sure you can't eat any food, including conjured, in arena. Only water.

You are incorrect. Conjured food can be eaten just fine.

Water was allowed because an oom caster is simply worthless, and generally I think drinking adds an interesting demention to the combat (Namely not ignoring anyone). This exploit is a cheesefest though, and I wonder how it's even possible to stop it.

Water is too important in the arena for the classes that are extremely reliant on their mana pool to keep doing anything useful. Especially shamans, shadow priests, mages, hunters. The game already encourages the drain game enough (whether through warriors/rogues and their infinitely sustainable damage or through heavy use of drain mana, mana burn and viper sting) Disallowing water would favor even more the classes that don't suffer from as big a mana issue (locks, paladins, druids)

The only food that works when you're in combat though is the % heal food, such as from special events. You'll still eat the food and get the buff, but it won't actually do anything when you're in combat. Water still works when you're in combat, as long as you're sitting.

The drink explot mostly hurts the mana drain teams. I play as an SL/SL lock with a disc priest and that is the main focus of our game. Usually we run into teams that put on SR as well as drink exploit. It makes games we should win harder and ones that are toss ups a pretty sure loss. Im pretty sure this exploit has been around for awhile and with the huge thread about it in the WOW PVP forums as well as here Im sure we will see it used throughout all the brackets. Im sure its fixable but with most bugs if there isnt a huge out cry or effect a large portion of that player base it wont get fixed. I dont think there is anything more frustrating in WOW than losing arena matches to exploiters.

Alright it's too complicated to balance around some classes going OOM and some who keep going forever.

Still I don't find going for a drink or eating a meal during Arena is a great concept. Especially with so many room for exploiting.

Why not? Its risk vs reward. You risk leaving your team to regain mana or health. When and how you do this are very important part of many teams strats for winning.