Blizzard and Arena - Do they understand it? - Page 5

• Mex · 10/27/07, 4:35 AM

Alliance have gnomes.

Hard to click, ok?

You could pretty much close your eyes, put your mouse in your shoe and stomp around abit and you'd target 7 taurens.

In all seriousness though I have no problems with alliance racials. I love gift of the naaru on my pally, I love escape artist on my mage, I love perception on my team mates.

I don't think I've ever come out of a game swearing into vent about racials, although the number of times I've done it over warlocks, frost mages, warlocks, mace warriors, warlocks, mana burning priests and warlocks is huge.

Juli · 10/27/07, 5:15 AM

I actually find trying to click things inside/behind taurens to be more annoying than trying to click on gnomes when I played horde. It's especially bad when I play my rogue and gouge or blind a tauren warrior, then try to target the orc shaman inside him. Tab doesnt work because of the forest of totems. A misclick breaks gouge/blind, and taking too long to target the shaman results in his heal completing. Less of an issue in arena for both sides with the advent of proximo, but it's still annoying in AV.

I could weigh in on the racials debate, but it's just derailing the thread and I think it's been beaten to death. There's nothing insightful or original I could say about it at this point.

Aphyrax · 10/27/07, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by Xavias

I agree with most of what you said there, but not the part about Druids wouldn't dominate 2v2 without warlocks. I believe Druids are the best healer against 2 DPS teams (all Healers fall a bit short due to good CC and CS, but Druids have a distinct advantage - the ability to not have to spam cast and the ability to CC one DPSer, as well as two instant emergency heals)

Druids are the best overall healers in 2v2. There not just good with Warlocks, they are good with any of the primary arena DPS classes, ie Warrior, Warlock, (to some extent Hunters), rogue. Druid heals provide the most effective healing, whilst having the best survivability IN 2V2.

In 5v5 this is not the case at all, while they have extremely good damage avoidance, they don't have good direct defences against Stuns, Fears and incapacitates. In other words, with more than 2 DPS classes on a Druid, its a safe bet that the Druid is going to be killed or made ineffective. Where as in 2v2, they can avoid damage against 1 DPS, and at the same CCing that same DPSer and avoiding close to full damage.

To clarify. Druids are not strong because druid/warlock is unbeatable. Druids are strong because they do best AGAINST warlocks and because warlocks destroy all the anti-druid teams.

Warrior/druid right now is unquestionably the strongest 2v2 combo. But that is because warlocks keep all the anti lineups at bay. I play in the 2000 bracket where double DPS is prevalent, and it is quite hard for warrior/druid. We played above the wall of double DPS for a while and the games were easier. Our plan is to make one push where we break through the wall so we can get our gladiator title.

I disagree that druids are the best vs double DPS. They are the best against double magic DPS, but rogue/DPS is absolutely terrible for druids. Rogue/mage is virtually unbeatable. I once kited rogue/mage for nearly 10 minutes and we still lost because my warrior did what amounts to zero damage.

Agreed on the 5v5 part. Druids can be very strong in 5v5, but it requires very specific lineups. You either want 3 spam CCers (ie druid/lock/mage), 3 healers or 4 DPSers. Anything else is hard to make work with a druid.

Originally Posted by Elendril

Err - you're misunderstanding what I said. The lifebloom change was obviously huge, but that wasn't a recent thing. The rise of druids as dominant small bracket healers occurred very late in season 1 and into season 2 - there have not been huge changes to druids in that time, that I'm aware of, unless my timeline is off as to the Lifebloom fix. I actually play a druid in arena, as well, so I'm quite aware of how important lifebloom is :-P

There is always some delay. Perceptions take a while to change. Sometimes quite a while. Blizzard knows that (or should from past experience).

It would be interesting to see how fast and extensive they would be able to overhaul this game if it was pure PvP.