What mechanics do you think are random, unfair or just plain dumb? What do you think is poor design, and should be changed to make the Arena game better and fairer? What would you suggest the best way to "fix" the mechanic in question?

Things to post:
"Mace stun is silly because it pushes a massive random factor in the game that is signifcant enough define a win or a loss. If it doesn't proc, it feels underpowered, if it procs twice in a row at the right time, it can change the entire game. A proc should not be able to do this. A good idea to address this would be to make Mace stun have an extremely high proc rate, but a 45 silent cooldown.

Things not to post:
"Kidney shot is OP, in fact, Rogues are OP. I hate Rogues. Blizzard are stupid."

I'll begin with my most disliked mechanic. Fear.

Fear duration can be extraordinary retarded at times. Both ways, it can break too early, or too late. Sometimes it breaks after 1 tick of damage, other times not even after 6000+ damage is done. This is very very poor design and downright stupid for a game like Arena. The sheer randomness of allowing an ability to potentially take out a target without them ever regaining control of their character is just plain bad design. And again, the fact that it can break if the target has a DoT on it in literally 0.5 seconds after you've casted is stupid aswell. Randomness is the number one frustration in the Arena game.

My favourite solution for Fear is to put a damage cap based on level of the target. For a level 70 character, fear should instantly break when 1000 damage is applied to the feared target, during the fear duration. This allows warlocks to manage what exactly they want this fear to accomplish, do they want it just to have time to apply dots to it, or do they want to CC a healer for full duration? I think it would not gimp Warlocks in any sense at all, but rather remove some randomness for all parties involved.

EDIT: Heres a list of some of the concerns listed by posters in this thread:
Mace Stun - Too random and can potentially cause of win/loss in quite an unfair manner when the timing is right.
Fear - Can potentially be extremely powerful and downright unfair when it doesn't break after very large amounts of damage applied to the target. Can also be unfair to the fearing Warlock when it breaks after tiny amounts of damage.
Gear Swapping - Cap Resistances and reintroduce gear swapping - adds lots of diversity and strategy.
Luck based Talents/metagems - A kidney shot, Counterspell, Mass Dispel bubble resist etc are very devestating and game-defining. At the same token, it isn't very nice when you spend talent points on something and having it not work for dozens of matches at a time, whilst your opposing team resist 3 of your fears and a bunch of silences. Can be very unfair to DPS teams who rely on such mechanics and execution to win the day. Good way to start regulating this is increasing proc rates but introducing silent cooldowns. (already done with MSD)
Pet Survivability - Pets being killed in seconds because they have 0 resilience. Portion of Players Resilience given to pet should be considered.
Cloak of Shadows - 10% chance to become extremely frustrated when a Deathcoil/Frost Nova/Other CC lands while cloaked. Make it 100% for the love of god!
Starting Area Mats - WTB free candles!
Dispel Mechanics - Many powerful talents made quite ineffective due to trivial dispelling. Dispel resistant talents randomising the game further, turning wins into losses.

I don't see why randomness is bad? Sure it can be frustrating at times, but it makes reaction times and adaptation so much more important. If the game was 100% predictable you'd end up being locked into wars of execution. Whichever team had the best combo and their execution perfect would win. Every single time. That would be a lot less fun than having your fear break early and having to adapt, or having to snap off a NS+Heal after suddenly noticing a team mate drop to <20% from a streak of WF procs and crits.

The times that stuff lines up and just rapes you without you being able to do anything are awful, I don't think anyone disagrees, but as long as they're sufficiently random I don't think the overall affect on the arena game is horrible at all. Perhaps in a sudden-death tournament style, but the entire ratings system is built around averages, so randomness really isn't going to have a game breaking effect.

Also what's the point of this thread? Just to vent about stuff that pisses you off in arena?

The OP has a great point: Randomness insofar as crits and WF procs is good - you rely on a sudden burst of damage to kill a target before he can get healed. This NEEDS to be random so that healer cannot predict when to drop his NS+Healing Touch macro. The randomness factor built into critting adds value.

However, the randomness factor built into Fear adds zero value. It can break in 1 second with the minimal amount of damage dealt, or it can last the full duration even if the target has already been redlined from damage. This lack of predictability hurts the usefulness of Fear - if you try to use it to JUST CC a healer, it might break on some incidental damage, letting you down; if you try to use it to deal damage against a helpless enemy, it might still break ASAP, letting you down once again.

Basically, Fear is inconsistent, which makes it difficult to use. You KNOW Poly is going to break on damage, so you know exactly how and when to use it and what to expect. You KNOW stuns will NEVER break on damage, which also tailors your expectations respectively.

I dont see how execution war is bad.

Often end up losing +25 points because of intercept+mace stuns combination which lasts for 10 seconds.

Also the fact that since 2.3 patch rogues do most damage and are most viable at the same time while wielding MACES. Stuns, too many of them combined with all the cooldowns they can go through TWICE.

Another vote for fear tweak that makes a fear automatically break after xxxx damage is done as well.

Because it almost means you can play with your eyes closed. You don't need to react to randomness / unexpected events outside the opposition's movements, which, due to the non-random nature of everything else would be highly predictable.

Randomness is good because it allows those players who are better able to quickly adapt to perform better, and punishes those that use their abilities as crutches.

Sure, I've lost in a lot of situations where I probably should have won. But you know what I do after those situations? I requeue. I also know that I've won at times where I probably should have lost.

If you're consistently losing to something, it's not because it's random.

I dont think that the randomness of the length of a fear is a big deal. From both my warlock's pov and when Im feared I think its that you go running in a random direction over quite a large distance. I think everyone would be happier if you didnt run so far from your original position, or maybe a little in the opposite direction and then stop. Also if you want to have a damage cap on fear it needs to be much higher than 1000, otherwise one set of tics can break it. I dont think it would be that bad if they increased the chance to break on direct damage more. Its already supposed to but sometimes it doesnt seem like it.

My pet peeve is drinking. I dont think it was necessary but I dont think they will change it now anyway. But I think its stupid that running behind a pillar and getting 2 tics off and going through stacks of water each fight is viable. I think the best solution is a longer time to drop combat, 5 secs isnt a very long time, it should at least be longer than what a CC generally lasts for.

This is a ridiculous thread. Or it's turning into one.

Cry more, warlock, is what I want to say to the above poster, really.

(Sap and gouge are free? And allow damage to be done? That's news to me. Gouge is 45 energy!)

Warlocks have TONS of instants and can put out a load of damage even whilst being 'locked down'. Quite apart from the number of awesomely capable kiting warlocks I've played against. If you have the required HP / Resi and good healers you'll be alive well after all the stun DRs are in progress and a mace rogue doesn't have too much after his initial cooldowns.

I can't believe I just wrote that, but anyway- basically- any chance this thread will be more than crying about stuns/fear?

nb: I haven't complained about fear despite being a Troll Rogue who gets owned by it all the time :P

You honestly don't believe that crap do you?

I totally, 100% disagree with you. Randomness is bad because it makes the game unfair, it doesn't make players play better. We have execution for that. We have strategy for that. We have experience and skill for that. Randomness gives worse teams a better chance to steal victory. I don't see how it is a good thing in any form.

How does the lack of randomness allow players to "play with their eyes closed"? Since when does a full duration fear allow you to do anything but wait until it breaks (when your cds are down)? Good players don't react to randomness, they react to what the enemy team are doing, and combine their strategy with it.

I also don't see how randomness makes players better, if anything its the opposite. I don't see how 3 mace stuns in a row will make a person "play better", but I do see it making a shitty player win a game against someone better, and that to me, goes against everything arena stands for.

How does getting feared for 9000 damage make you utilise your skill more? It is just plain and simple - randomness is bad design for a game like this.

What he said was actually that sap and gouge are instants. He only said mace procs are instant and free. They're an uncontrolled proc though, so the fact that they're instant and free doesn't hold a lot of weight. It comes into play a frustrating amount of times, but that's really just random.

I think a big problem is with fear's running range, and I don't think many people would have an issue with a small leash being added. As is, fear can cause problems for both parties due to los, but a bigger though rarer problem (which has happened to me a couple times) is getting stuck on the environment and being unable to get back out when fear breaks.

Lets please not beat specific things into the ground with arguments, we've done that in other threads most especially concerning fear. It's just going to degenerate into a flame war.

I will rant though.

Game turning randomness is so wrong. Today I was screwed over at least 3 times due to randomness. The first we got a paladin down to a sliver of life and I landed a mass dispell right on his face and copped a resist. We did all that work to get him low and be in a position to dispel the bubble and all for naught. Another mass dispell story this time we have the paladin low and he stuns me before he bubbles, I trinket out and cop a mace stun before I can mass dispell. He messed up bad, he let himself get too low and we openned up on him. He deserved to die but because of a 9% proc he got away with it. The other was against PMR I trinket and fear on a KS just in LOS of the mage while my paladin is blinded. If I can get around this corner I wont even get hit for a few seconds. I'll get get healed by my paladin and my instants will come back around. We will almost definitely win from here as they're going oom. Mace stun and a fear resist fromt he rogue of course sees me cop a shatter combo and some hits from the rogue and I go down.

There were also a number of times where a chastise or fear got resisted but not in a way that lost us a match we were going to win. To be fair I also resisted a couple kidney shots and an intercept or two which may or may not have contributed towards wins. This isn't some bad beat story where I lament the stars aligning against me, I realise luck can swing both ways. That doesn't make it fine though, I don't care that across 100 games the randomness evens out or that ultimately 1 game doesn't matter. No. I don't like losing a game because of randomness.

If I get cycloned 3 times and somebody dies because I couldn't heal them, tough. I should have LOS'd the druid, or we should have pressured the druid, or we should have been positioned differently, or that player should have been more defencive, or I should have kept them topped off more, or I should have saved my trinket earlier. Whatever, if that match was winnable then somewhere along the line there was something I/we should have done that didn't happen. There's a fault there and it can be worked on for the next game, you can learn from it. You can't learn anything from a random event except that mace stun is a bitch.

If they removed Mace Stun from the game, how would you replace it? It would be a significant non-trivial nerf to two classes in Arena.

Offer solutions, not just comlpaints.

And adding a leash to fear would be fine in Arena but a buff for PvE, where the risk of using fear is the risk of pulling extra mobs...

That wouldn't work with CS/KS (or Charge/Intercept) - the procs would all be lost in those early 10 stun seconds. Then you'd have 20 sec controlled stun DR and 45 second Mace Stun 'cooldown' overlapping. Not to mention the fact that Mace Stuns are very often wasted through overlapping with these other stuns ALREADY.

Equally- Mace Stuns already have DR, so after the 3rd you have 20 secs of immune already...

The solution isn't necessary because the solution is easy. An AP proc, a haste proc, a flat increase of AP, whatever. Infact you could just take it out and both classes would be fine, right now it's arguable to take swords over maces for warriors depending on what you're doing. It's not like I'm saying take polymorph from mages, mace stuns are just something thrown on top of the class if they use maces and take the spec and mean little in overall balance. For every proc that wins a game you get nothing but wasted procs all game. I also wasn't talking about just mace stun. The +% resist to fear/stun/dispel are just as random and can win games just as easily. They also don't need an offered solution because the replacements could be anything.

They could even just add a 4 second stun on a reasonable cooldown and a unique DR to both classes to compensate for all I care. It's not the stun I have a problem with, it's that it fires randomly. Give me something I can plan around.

Maybe a directional Leash, ie you always run away from the caster? I can see cases of people being run into walls and held there, but for the most part, it seems reasonable.

And as to the Mace stun, tbh it would be no different to the nerfs to fear - which have already happened. Have the stun subject to heartbeat resists, have a scaling %chance to break on damage.

Onto the next - Arcane Shot. What the hell were blizz thinking off? A dispell ability for hunters, fine, i can see the need for it. Tacking it on to an ability that they already use in a standard shot rotation, meaning that they are now passively dispelling buffs whilst dpsing, and finally (not to sure if this bit still occurs, since I respecced Aff after it happened) dispelling Soul Link - leading to a extra 30% damage done for the follow up shots.

Now, I realise that a lot of classes have the ability to strip opponents of buffs. But how many of them have that ability, that does a good amount of damage, doesn't mess up any cast rotations and therefore doesn't even cost a GCD? Off the top of my head, Shield Slam. And I have yet to have that happen in any arena.

A Dispelling shot skill, separate from any current skills - low cost, low damage - but a proper descision to use it. Yes it messes up shot rotations (if they are using any), but so does any dispell.

Though you're still just whining, I do agree that Arcane's dispel is very very good. But Hunters did need something fairly big.

It's a very nice buff that through their normal DPS they quite quickly strip blessing, MOTW, stam, shields etc. Effectively it's like giving them a 20%* dps boost, since they're removing health buffs and heals and shields as a matter of course...

* number pulled from thin air

The thing is though, that Arcane shot buff didn't add anything for viability to hunters in the Arena. They can still be LOS'd pretty much whenever you want, and have their DPS cut to near 0. All it really did was making them VERY, VERY annoying to fight out in the world.

Yeah yeah, I know, I know, "World pvp is dead, lol," but that doesn't change the fact that a sizable portion of the population still has to deal with Leegoolaass the NE hunter every day.

I have to agree with everyone else in this thread and disagree with this statement.
Blizzard has been trying to force randomness out of arena since it first started. Resilience and High HP gear is designed to do exactly that. Dont forget that arena is a competitive multiplayer online game, randomness is very BAD because it is extremely frustrating. Frustration is what makes people stop playing.
Arena with randomness = like Counter strike
Arena without randomness = like Quake
And we all know that Quake is far better than CS

Both the opening posters comment's about mace procs and fear are very good suggestions. Though I think giving mace procs a high proc chance with a hidden cooldown is a bad idea as it would become quite useless, what would be a much better idea is increase the proc rate slightly but give it VERY harsh diminishing returns - to stop multiple consecutive procs.

Randomness is fair because it doesn't favour either side. You're not arguing against randomness here, you're arguing against abilities being "too powerful". Which I think is valid. Arguing against randomness though is just dumb. Arena rating is an averaged score. You can't be at 1300, play a game vs a team at 2400, beat them through lucky procs / fears / etc and jump to 2400. An unlucky streak of crits / procs / whatever is just that, unlucky. You need to work within the averages of abilities and their procs or durations. If it's really just a total fluke that you lost to that team 200 points below you, then randomness still dictates that you'll win an overall majority vs them, if you're truly "better".

Now, of course I don't have actually figures here, but say that on average, over the course of hundreds and hundreds of fears, fear will break, on average, after 4000 damage. Now that number may need to be tweaked, it may need to be lowered, the mechanics of player behaviour whilst feared may need to be adjusted, whatever. None of that matters. Removing the randomness would just mean that you could guaruntee 4000 (or whatever) damage over the course of a fear by planning it that way (downranked DoTs, timing shadowbolts until the last second, whatever). Say for example that number is 1000. That doesn't change anything, removing the randomness still makes it an ability that puts the fearer in complete control, and removes any need for the opponents or the fearer to adjust their strategy on the fly to deal with randomness.

From the sounds of it though, what you're arguing for is simply for fear to break on less damage. That's fine, but the randomness should remain because otherwise the game becomes way to entrenched in repeating the same series of moves every single time you cast a spell. Part of what I enjoy so much about PvP is needing to be aware of so many different factors at once and being able to react to split second changes in any of them instantly. Taking away randomness takes away a huge part of that and arena simply becomes PvE (hyperbole I know, but to me it wouldn't be any different, and I'd probably quit WoW).

I hate losing to someone that I feel is an inferior player due to randomness as much as anyone, there are broken keyboards to atest to that. Still, no matter how I look at it, I think removing that element of the game would take all the fun out of it for me.

Again - maybe fear and mace stun are overpowered, but that's not a product of their random nature. Think about it - if, on average, the results (as in a team's overall rating, win/loss ratio, etc) stayed the same vs these elements, would people really be happier? Or are we just upset about their current power levels? If it really is the former, then it's simply a case of a disagreement about what's enjoyable (repetitive, unchanging, and flawless execution vs adaptability, reaction and quick-thinking). That's simply how I've always been, I've always prefered quick, random encounters over deeper, more strategic planned events (ironically I'm currently studying in a degree which is entirely essay-based in its assessment -- not a single exam ).

Anyhow, if people really think that the abilities themselves need tweaking, then that's something that should be focused on, rather than attempting to remove what I believe is an essential and highly enjoyable part of PvP in a misguided effort to do the former (nerf them).

It is beyond good, and it is quite devastating to mages. I am no longer going to even spec into impact anymore, because I never have any armor up anyway- by the time you get into where the hunter's dead zone used to be to get hit with the new 134 dps hunter stat stick, your armor is gone because hunters now have a dispel on top of a shot that already does huge amounts of damage to us. As the previous commenter said, they don't even have to work a "dispelling shot" into their rotation- they just slammed it on top of one of their already extremely powerful shots. Can you imagine the freak out if the developers put a dispel effect on top of ice lance?

What this means is simple and ugly for mages. No more impact/frostbite procs on pets. No more impact procs or frostbite/IL combos unless it comes from a nuke (I think I cast about two frostbolts per arena).

But then again, Blizzard has been quite clear about the mage role in pvp- chain-sheeping in between ice blocks, well-timed counterspells, and kiting the MS warrior around the arena. That is what we are here for- other classes kill people.

How about every minute a random person in the arena takes 8k damage and one person gets a random effect that could be any one of dozens of effects ranging from being polymorphed into a frog to getting a 300% damage buff. Over the course of hundreds and hundreds of arenas it would average out that you win and lose roughly the same amount of games from it. Many games it will hit someone and the effect is minimal.

It's the randomness that people have a problem with, it's not a stealth nerf request. Disagree if you want, but disagree with what people are actually saying.

Your posts are bad. Don't make any more of them.

I think Randomness was introduced on purpose with a other elements to hide the natural imbalance of the game: Pillars for example, why they were introduced? Wow has never been and hide and seek game, protection through environment objects has never been part of the game from the beginning (in fact in world Pvp you can still shot through hills and trees). The ability to move should not be part of the strategy, this is not Quake (damn hunters). Removing randomness at this point would brake the very thin equilibrium of the game in pieces