No matter how much I wish it was still the case, you can't do an 8-hit WW since they patched that out years ago. Sure was great fun when you could though.

I think you may have misunderstood here... the change is an increase in a talent from 15% regen in casting to 30%, hence its a buff directly influencing your in-combat casting regeneration, and has nothing to do with your regen outside of 5 sec casting.

Rogues are getting some pretty substantial buffs in 2.3. Holy priests are also getting a lot of love with Fear Ward for everyone and Chastise for Dwarves/Draenei. Night Elf shadow priests are getting a monster buff. Enhancement shamans got some nice buffs, perhaps even enough to make them viable. It's not all doom and gloom. The one relevant druid buff (the shapeshifting change) was more of a UI streamlining thing to help players with high latency, and it definitely matters for shadow priests as well. Although druids are already unreasonably powerful, I can see the justification for this change.

I do agree, though, that the warrior changes seem unreasonable. A talent tree rework is a big thing nowadays, and not something that happens very often - and this one was done to apply a buff to what is already an ubiquitous class in arenas. Changes like this, without some substantial compensating rebalancing in the other direction, just don't make sense.

Not to sound like a broken record, but what exactly does this change? What buff will any Arena specced warrior gain from the talent placement change?

Before even reading beyond the first post in this thread I played a game with myself and guessed who would post, and what they would post. So far, I've guessed a few correctly and we're only on page 1. Regardless of the intent of the OP, this is likely to degrade into a "Bliz doesn't even play their own game because they didn't buff my class" thread, that or at the very least the same disgruntled people rehashing their same complains in another thread.

But until it does, one major PvP change which will mainly affect the Arena I haven't even seen mentioned in 2.3 is the fix to Resiliance double penalizing people with added crit damage bonus talents. While technically this affects specs like Destruction Locks (all three of them in the Arena) and Rogues with Lethality, the reality is it punishes Frost Mages the most. Blizzard has acknowledged the bug and said they were trying to get it in. This "buff" (re: bug fix) will help out Frost Mages immensly.

Back to the original question, yes of course Blizzard plays their Arena, it's simply that balancing classes isn't easy. We like to think it is, but it's not.

2.2 fixed the resilience bug. Burst damage is definitely up.

A mage teammate and I calculated some numbers based on some Arena fights the other day (where we knew the Resiliance of our opponent), and it definitely did not seem to be fixed. The numbers worked out perfectly to be double penalized, I guess we'll have to do some dueling to test again.

Mages have two overwhelming problems in small brackets, mana and LoS.

Ameliorating our mana problems, through lowering the cost of three spells, would be a big improvement.

Blink (627 mana),
Cone of cold (645 mana pre-talents, 532 mana with max talents),
and Mana shield (2.22 mana per 1 damage absorbed, despite the fact that 1 mana and 1 health have an even item cost in TBC)
Arcane missiles (740 mana)

I hardly think this would alter the balance of power in 5s, and in 2.3 AM will not be a viable dps spell, making a reduction in mana cost for these have very little impact on PvE.



Line of Sight is a big part of the game, and even as a mage, I'm very leery of making any significant changes there. Perhaps the most reasonable change that wouldn't require anything global would be to make the elemental's waterbolt a 1.5 second cast, with a 1 second cooldown, and/or allow its freeze to ignore LoS obstacles. This would hinder opponent's efforts to avoid all of its attacks. As a ranged pet, it is more or less unique on the pvp scene, and it doesn't seem like a great deal of thought was put into how it interacts with barriers.

Reducing the cost of AM would also be a small aid in our quest to beat pillar dancing ad infinitum.

Replace Mage with hunter and that quote stands also.
We don't have spam CC, or a mana regain ability to help though.

Aspect of the Viper is one of the most powerful mana regen abilities in arena, along with Feign Death/Drink.

I checked the 2.2 notes and found this, "Corrected the damage modifier calculation for Resilience when the attacker has bonus critical strike damage."

So if you're testing is finding otherwise, it may have been broken in one of the smaller updates. Definitely would be interested to see what you find out.

For sure, can't wait for the Intercept Stun > Stormherald Stun > Mace Spec Stun > Concussion Blow Stun fun in 2v2 against even more slippery 2.3 druids. Warriors on test are reporting a 2-3% decrease in procrate overall for Mace Spec Stuns? -_-

Not sure I would call 3 min cooldown 3min duration fear ward "a lot of love" as far as arena is concerned. The current 30 second incarnation would be a lot of love, but with the 3 minute duration it means you enter the game ASAP, ward your target of choice, and have 1 refresh 2 minutes into the fight for most matches; nothing like what it is currently with 3 people warded out of the gate and a refresh every 30 seconds.

Chastise, on the other hand, is a whole lot of love. Not quite as great for shadow priests, but especially with the removal of GCD from dropping forms, I'm pretty sure this spell will be much loved by holy and shadow priests alike. I find it amusing that they are finally 'equalizing' the racials, except they nerfed the ability before giving it out, then gave dwarves something that has great potential to be even more powerful in pvp.

I really see the druid change as completely necessary, and a long time coming. Every time I've played a druid, as far back as beta, I've gotten to about level 30 and said to friends, "Shifting feels too clunky, I'll try this class when they reduce the shifting penalty through the removal of GCD or shifting mana cost or both. They can nerf other abilities to compensate for the buff, but the class just feels broken like this".

...and now they finally have. I'll definitely be leveling my druid up the rest of the way come 2.3 experience changes (horde of course, god how I hate night elves).

What other class has to give up offensive for their mana regen? Everyone else gets theirs through fast acting spells, evocation/lifetap etc. AoTV is weak because we have basically zero passive regen. Its our ONLY source. other classes have spirit/talent mp5 + their active mana regens. Water shield, Life tap, evo, innervate etc.

AoTV can't even keep up an auto/steady rotation.

FDing to get out of combat isn't really that much of an advantage I'm using FD to help survive 95% of the time not to drink. I don't know about other Bgs but in Stormstrike hunters get attacked often. Most classes drop combat running to some LoS obstacle to drink anyway, and are OOC when they get to their spot.

What's your point? Hunters have a lot of handicaps in small brackers as well. I don't think anyone would contend that a class should be balanced around hunters, just the opposite. I mean, this is a class that probably shouldn't even have a mana pool to begin with; it was just a "we give up" change by blizzard when the focus model they had envisioned up for hunters failed!

On top of that, Blizzard has tried to fix hunter mana regen, by buffing aspect of the viper and by making water purchasable (you are the only mana-using class with an instant means of getting out of combat).

They should do the same sort of creative thinking for mages in my opinion. We have zero 5SR regen, since mage armor isn't viable for pvp, and speccing 20 points into arcane is a lot to ask for a class with one viable arena tree.

But there's no reason to stand on a soap box. I think I've made my point and you can either agree or disagree.

This is exactly the point, we are getting a major pvp mana regen nerf next patch for 5on5/3on3 more so than 2on2 (because in 2s there isn't always a felhunter and/or you have more time to stay out of los so innervate (which everyone can see as a buff!) isn't dispelled instantly). Which is really strange considering 5on5 is the druids weakest bracket. So saying we're getting major buffs next patch which others aren't is in my humble opinion nonfactual.

On a totally different matter, how can healers getting +500-600 spelldamage not be called a "buff". I'm pretty sure it will change the face of some class combos not to mention their spec decisions.

Still hunters can adjust their playstyle with Viper Sting and have a pet that isn't affected by LOS.

And Zure had a very good point, even if other classes are hurt in a similar way (and it's not only hunters, i guess the same counts for ele shamans or oomkins too). I've been playing WOW for a very long time, but i was never frustrated by this game like i am when fighting like a spriest/lock or druid/lock team in 2v2 arenas. The arena designs with its LOS barriers are fine for 5v5 and pretty much ok for 3v3 imo, but it's really hard to have a significant impact on 2v2 matches as a mage, b/c a lot of spells are simply uncastable on a target that knows how to abuse the pillars.

I think the best solution would be to alter the three different arenas for each bracket, i.e. reduce the barriers, maybe completely exclude them for 2v2 - i still dunno why they are needed there, but maybe i overlook something significantly.

Regarding the mana dependency, i could imagine implementing mana-buffs like those regen-buffs in WSG or AB that spawn every 30sec. Would also add a new tactical element, although it's kinda Quake-like.

Blizzard has to be very careful when they make changes because strategies tend to emerge over time.

The last WvsG which is a 3v3 format that I watched had one team that had a resto druid in it. Now there are dozens and there have been no changes to the class during that timeframe.

Small changes can have a very dramatic impact and need time to see how they really play out. It's easy to say that the hunter changes aren't much of a buff but time is needed to see how big of a difference they really make

Along with that, it's difficult to adjust a lot of things without a serious rework or threatening some basic PvE mechanics. Take warriors, perhaps the most powerful arena class in a lot of ways. As much as people complain about mace stuns, MS, and intercept, really the issue with warriors is their scaling and synergy, which goes into so many other areas of the game I think they are really hesitant to touch it. A solo warrior, for example, is pathetic compared to most other classes - take a warrior into an alliance BG where no one heals and have fun with that for a few hours, its pretty painful. But give them a single healer to follow them around and they rip face with reckless abandon. Then look at gear scaling - a warrior in greens is less threatening than a 4 year old. Whereas one with full epics just rips through people like a lightsaber.

Ideally they'd need to completely rework the rage mechanic to make crappy geared warriors better and well-geared warriors worse, then give them more baseline abilities to make them competitive without babysitting by a healer, and make them gain less from buffs. But that is a pretty huge task, especially consider they are the primary tank class still in PvE and they don't want to totally fuck that over.


But anyway, I think the most legitimate complaint is probably their pace of change. I understand they want to wait and get some good data before proceeding, but 3 months to change something that is obviously broken is just silly, and seems to happen with alarming frequency.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. It also goes to show that Blizzard knows more than many of us give them credit for. Tom Chilton told druids they were fine and basically just needed to learn to play (or rather teams needed to learn to use druids effectively) from the very beginning of the xpac.

I really think you underestimate that the extra 15% regen while casting, which is a gain of about 12 mp5 naked. There will be very few resto-to-NS specced druids for whom the 2.3 changes taken as a whole (30% in5sr + spirit changes) will be a net reduction in regen. You basically have to assume near zero time oo5sr and an innervate dispell before the first tick. It goes without saying that there are none for whom it will be a "major nerf".

And assuming immediate dispel is ridiculous. If you can't CC, LoS, or get outside of 30 yards from an offensive dispeller, or wait until the felhunter's devour is on cooldown, then I think the other team deserves to have you regen a tad less.

Except Druids are still only 3% of the high-end 5v5 representation, 8 months later (the bracket Blizzard claims is "balanced"). Now if Blizzard thinks a certain class is fine because they are well represented in a certain bracket and underrepresented in another, then they need to notify people of this change change in philosophy so customers can stop hoping and whining. (mages are fine in 5v5 & shit in 2v2, vice versa for Druids).

Long patch schedules really hurt balance work. Major changes are dangerous, because you can't fix them (unless you can convince QA that those unforseen outcomes are bugs -- good luck! -- or they're already preparing a hotfix for a "real" problem). You can't iterate on minor changes to make sure they're the right minor changes, so you come off as an out-of-touch idiot. It's really difficult to make quality changes when you can only tweak the knobs every three months.

It's much easier to get things right on a short, iterative cycle, like the current PTR (only it would probably be nice with more players). Unfortunately, content and features don't work on those tight schedules, so you're not getting buyoff on the plan unless you commit to balance as an organization. Good luck with that too!

The 2.3 shifting changes account for the flaw in that logic -- yes, a well-played feral druid can do well, but it takes a great deal of personal skill with the current control scheme. (You don't have to look, my arena ratings are terrible.)