As many Arena players do, I'm always discussing why things are the way they are in the game, on a higher level then just "Yeah, they are overpowered".

My latest theory on class balance in Arena is centered around the theory that there are 10 main "points of interest" that classes can be evaluated and valued to have. Think of it as a wishlist for classes in terms of arena.

These 10 PoI's are obviously affected by the class that is using them, as well as the classes are playing against, and the Arena size. (the scope of how good/effective it is, is derived between these variables).

THE SCORING SYSTEM
Because it is absolutely impossible to give an accurate account of what each class is capable of with the millions of variables in the game, I will try and be as "general" as possible when writing the overview of the appropriate PoI.

At the end of this summary, I will compare the results here with actual Arena statstics from the Armory. If this theory has any basis, it should express similar results.

These are the PoI's I believe are the deciding factors in Arena class balance:

Survivability (the biggest PoI, split into smaller PoI's)
- Physical survivability (armor, stats, dodge, defensive stance, resil, etc)
- Ability Survivability (Your iceblocks, Earthshield, fel armor, Pain supressions, evasions, drains, death coils etc)
- Preventive survivability (Shapeshifting, blinking, kiting, some forms of CC etc.)

Crowd Control (Poly's blinds cyclones, entangles, fears blah blah)

Heal Killing (counterspells, felhunters, silences, mortal strike, WP, many forms of CC)

Burst / Shock damage UNIQUE TO DPS CLASSES (Elem shammys excel at this, as well as lucky warriors (which is pretty much all of them) and hunters who actually have LOS.

Healing Power UNIQUE TO HEALING CLASSES (not just direct heals, but safety in healing, ie instant heals to prevent CS, NS, bubble etc.

Line of Sight This catagorie is a reflection on which classes can use LoS to their advantage. Classes who can use LoS and gain a massive advantage from it (think warlocks), and classes who get absolutely screwed by it (hunters)

Dispels and debuff killers/preventers Grouding totems, tremor totems, dispel, purge, prayer of mending

Mana draining and Endurance Probably the most valuable PoI these days. These are your viper stings, your mana burns, drain mana's, any ability that has an impact on the endurance of the other side, one can even put mortal strike in this catagory, as well as pets stopping the enemy from drinking.

LOLCombo's and Synergies This PoI covers combinations that are just plain hard to stop. Think Spriest/warlock covering you in dots with UA, think frost mage and rogue taking your HP down from 100% to 20% in 5 seconds. Think that Dwarf Warrior that is running around with freedom, causing disgusting amounts of crits on you.

Shutdown Very similiar to CC except more along the lines of a class being able to impair or stop your ability to do your task. Warriors and rogues excel in this department, and in caster situations, so do mages.

Here is an example of applying these values. THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE!We'll start with the most reported overpowered class:

The SL Spec Warlock

Survivability: In my experience, an SL lock is by far the most survivable class in Arena. They theoretically have an effective HP pool of over 17 000, paired with extremely powerful methods of getting HP back (fel armor, drains) and also have the ability to get any class off of them instantly with death coil, usually followed by a fear or trinket (to get away). Furthermore, a Warlock with 400 resilience further pushes their massive health pool, and methods of regaining life to extreme heights.
Rating: Excellent

Crowd Control: A castable fear and a Deathcoil. Fear + dot up combo is remarkably powerful, often resulting in a near-death sentance for the person who was foolish enough to get feared. However, if the target fails to get feared, it has the opposite effect.
Rating: Excellent

Heal Killing: A pet counterspell silence that is independent of the Warlocks casting and GCD, CoT, Deathcoil interruption, and fearing healers (a favourite).
Rating: Outstanding

Burst / Shock Damage: Probably the worst class at this, they prefer a gradual draining with dots. Affliction Warlocks on the other hand can do quite big bursts if left alone. (dots + SB's is nasty).
Rating: Very Bad


Line of Sight: Clear winners for this catagory, sorry. Dot and LOS is the most abusive LoS mechanic of all time.
Rating: Outstanding

Dispels and debuff killers/preventers: Meh, pet purges its target over time autonomously, and can be used to dispel some CC such as sheeps, fears etc. However quite difficult to micro.
Rating: Good

Mana draining and Endurance: UNLIMITED MANA BAR. By far the most effective class in this catagory. Draining through LoS, unlimited mana supply, which is %#%# useful, fear and dots, not many classes can last very long with a warlock on their ass.
Rating: Outstanding

LOLCombo's and Synergies: Well these days pretty much every team has a warlock, and its no wonder with the fact that they are the only class that offer a mana drain, CS, powerful CC, and much more, but combined with a spriest, a warlock can do some freakishly high damage.
Rating: Very Good

Shutdown: CoT is the only impairing effect, easily countered though. Fear rotations can be quite effective but all in all, not a shutdown kind of class.
Rating: Bad

The Holy Priest

Survivability: Not much to see here... 1 Instant melee range fear. Pretty bad considering warriors are all immune to fear, and rogues will trinket out, and get 30 seconds of free reign. Blessed Resilience is their most powerful survivabily ability, their ability to heal is a definite plus (although not so much compared to other healers). PWS isn't really powerful in any regard, inner fire gives them some armor but can be purged (like Blessed Resil), and same goes for renew. Holy priests were considered quite good at surviving in Season 1, but with the influx of Dispeling strategies, pretty much all of their survivability is a target.
Rating: Average

Crowd Control: 1 Instant melee range fear with a 30s cooldown. Not very effective at the end of the day.
Rating: Bad

Heal Killing: Just the instant fear, and to a lesser extent Mana burns, again, nothing spectacular.
Rating: Very Bad


Healing Power: Prayer of mending is by far the most powerful heal against dot classes or multi-target classes. However, their other heals are quite lacking, and easy to prevent. They also have quite a limited mana pool in comparison to other healers, due to quite expensive abilities and poor regeneration. They have Unbreakable will, which is very nice for anti-CC and maintaining heals, but at the end of the day they really don't have anything very different to other healing classes (except prayer of mending).
Rating: Average


Line of Sight: They can do a half decent job of staying out of LoS for large amounts of time, however they will eventually have to stick their heads out to heal. With very little instant heals/hots, they cant really abuse LoS that well. They will have to use their cast bar for long pperiods of time in LoS.
Rating: Bad


Dispels and debuff killers/preventers: Dispel magic, mass dispel and Prayer of mending are by far the most powerful dispels and debuff killers. Offensive dispel as well as offensive makes priests the ultimate (de)buff killers.
Rating: Outstanding


Mana draining and Endurance: They are extraordinary mana drainers, but they themselves have pretty bad endurance. They simply cannot spam heals for very long, and dispels do cost a lot of Mana. Prayer of mending gives them extremely good endurance but only against dot classes. Still considerable.
Rating: Good

LOLCombo's and Synergies: Dwarf priest + rogue plz.
Rating: Good


Shutdown: Well.... they can mana drain a healer to make him run away a little bit... They can also do a mass dispel which can be carefully timed to shut down a mage and paladin. A lot of good priests can actually mass dispel a pally bubble than immediately fear them before they can heal their partner.
Rating: Average for a healer


Other classes Continued...

Curious as to the point of this post, since it seems like it will just illicit a flame war. Is this part of a long-winded explanation as to why hunters fail at most arena brackets? You don't really need that - it's pretty obvious, and well-summed up in other threads.

The categories aren't bad or anything, but much of it is completely arbitrary, specifically the 1-10 ratios. If warlocks are the worst at something, why aren't they a 1? How do you measure the distance between a 2 and a 4?

Edit* Moved to top.

The 1-10 ratios are a calculation of general effectiveness of the abilities divided by classes effected, than multiplied by how badly they are effected. The multiplyers are all made by my assumptions and therefore just an estimate.

The reason they are 5/10 for Bust is because of Affliction/Destruction spec. These specs can be quite capable of burst damage on the scope of Mages and spriests. (combine the dot ticking damage with a nightfall proc).

You started out making this like a serious post then simply derail into personal values and weird statements. You lost alot of credability there. For instance if the lock is the hardest class to kill, why does most teams target the lock first? Seems to work. Or are you making a system that tries to define how well a class is in 1on1? In that case your title is quite misleading.

You said yourself that with all the different variables in the game its impossible to make a system that calculates how valuable a certain class is. So why are you trying to make one?

Taking the advantages of Affliction locks and SL locks and getting huge points for both doesn't work.
As stated above, there is no real basis for a 1 to 10 range. A rating out of the all the classes would have been better (EG 1st, 2nd etc).
Besides, as entertaining as it all is what's the point? Almost everyone who reads the PvP forums would be well up to date with the pros and cons of each class. Making the list doesn't help us counter the class, or change it.

Why do warlocks get 10/10 for survivability with no "oh shit" iceblock / divine shield, no escape mechanism apart from a single target deathcoil on a 2 min cooldown (and howl of terror on a 40 second cooldown if UA), cloth armour, etc etc. I also agree that taking the advantages of both UA and SL specs is very misleading. The combination of their extreme potency when ignored and their relative squishiness makes UA locks an excellent first target in my opinion.

You also didn't mention mass dispel (or maybe you did and I missed it), but that's a huge weapon in the priest's arsenal, and gives them a huge advantage in being able to negate two of the strongest arena abilities in the game.

Sorry. Like it's a good idea, but trying to assign values to these points of interest is too abstract. Like mana burn is 100% useless vs warriors/rogues. Survivability and burst damage are going to vary incredibly depending on your team, your bracket, and your opposition. Some sort of discussion regarding what the PoIs should be, and which classes are the best at utilising them would be interesting, but trying to quantify this is ultimately an exercise in futility.

There's a little mistake on that warlock sheet ...

A soullink Warlock has no "instant fear, a castable fear and a Deathcoil", but only deathcoil + fear. So either you take out soullink from survivability or remove the instant fear.

Most arena locks i know are skilled at least 31-34 Demo for soullink, rest in affliction.

However, interessting point of view on classes.

I just think that it always depends on your opponing team how good your team will perform. Because there are enough "OH SHIT" class combos that will be able to counter almost everything if played correctly. Just like a Priest will be always some kind of problem to a pally or even a frost mage since he can dispell all kind of magic effects from friends and foes.

Actually, I totally agree. The score card is not going to accurately depict the strength of the POI and is subject to a lot of argumentative replies. I have removed it and left it with a more general description.

I indeed made a mistake on the Warlock front, regarding specs. I have adjusted the "Burst/Shock Catagory to one more consistant with an SL Warlock, as well as ammended the survivability instant Howl of terror. I have also updated the class to reflect that this is a SL warlock.

As said above, there really is no way anybody could accurately notarise the exact "score" of a class. This is merely an interpretation of it (mostly mine), and very open to debate and conversation.

You also forgot some abilities. Mind control can be a pretty powerful CC, especially on blades edge mountain. If you are able to MC one of the enemy team and throw him of the bridge this can sometimes decide the game if timed correctly. While the CC does have its drawbacks it shouldn't be neglegted.

MC is such a hard CC to get off, and pretty much impossible if your being targetted, so I would probably not classify it as survivability. If you want to classify it is CC, its horribly priced mana-wise, and overall quite silly, as you take out both yourself aswell as your target, for a massive price of your greatly needed mana pool.

It is highly situational (its saved my life on blades edge against Warriors), and it should get some credit for that, but quite minor in comparison.

Yeah sorry I don't really see any insight coming out of this thread. It's like making a top 100 list of video games, everyone's only going to reply "omg they put battletoads behind crystalis??? List discredited"

This thread:

Survivability: Bad