Mearis

From the first week of season 4, here are my first impressions: I play a disc priest semi-seriously and a terribly geared resto druid.

I played a lot of game in our 3s as disc priest (me), resto druid, rogue. We saw a lot of double healer warrior teams, almost zero PMR teams, and a fair few hunter/druid teams. Mages/warlocks seem to have pretty much disappeared. The class that seems to be making a very big comeback is the hunter - at least in 3's they seem to be a lot more present, although almost always with a druid.

The other combos that seem to be incredibly popular are shaman/warrior/ret, or druid/warrior/rogue - standard melee cleave combos. The complete dominance of heavy melee dps teams might bring paladins back to the front - or might explain the hunter popularity, frost trap + roots shuts down melees pretty hard.

We got up to 1741 then stopped.

As far as 2's goes, I played a fair few games with my druid only to quickly get my ring and the metagame seems to be fairly healthy, but I never broke 1700. I bounced around a few teams on my priest to help guildmates/friends and again things seemed fairly standard.

I cannot speak at all for 5's.

At least initially, it seems like physical DPS is making a big big splash. Our team is pretty good at countering standard cleave teams, so we are doing ok - but I wouldn't even want to try to play a warlock right now in the presence of those huge melee trains.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

malthrin

This is mostly from early in the week - ~50 3s games (we're rogue/war/druid) on Thurs to get 1700, haven't played this weekend. Double melee is indeed the main theme of 3s now it seems; rough estimate of what we saw:
25% Rogue/melee/healer
25% War/Ret/healer
25% PMR
25% other

Strangely, we didn't see a lot of 2 healer teams, which I think will get more popular as another counter to melee zergs for those who can't find a decent hunter. A couple random musings on the consequences of the melee trend:
-Rogues outside of PMR will have to wear heavy resilience
-Two healer setups (Rogue, Warrior, Warlock, Hunter) become more popular. Priest/Druid are the natural choices for these setups.
-The return of Holy Paladins, particularly in Paladin/Warlock/Warrior

I'll probably be playing 2s heavily next week. A few teams have already gotten their weapons in this BG, so I guess ratings have spread out enough to make some progress.

 

Mearis

I cannot imagine running a warlock in any team without a resto druid to peel melees off. You are asking to get sundered and have your shit pushed in basically.

I'll wait for really creative people to come up to hard counters to cleave comps, but the best counter is probably something like warrior/warrior/holy paladin or warrior/paladin/resto druid.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

malthrin

I was actually thinking of trying Warrior/Warrior/Druid when another one of my Warrior friends gets some gear.

Regarding Holydin/lock/Warrior - my thought is that you'd play this with heavy pressure on the enemy Druid, early offensive BoP. If you can get him in a situation where he needs assistance, you give the enemy melee a hard choice: peel off to try to save the Druid, or stay on the lock and trade, leaving you with double melee vs Paladin/Warrior.

 

Darlal

I would not be suprised to see anti-melee tripple dps teams appear. Things like Lock/Mage/Rogue, or even Rogue/Rogue/Lock. As much as I hate to say it, the obvious choice here is to run a strong anti-rogue team as rogues appear in 50% of these teams (RMP, double Melee) and the counter teams are more versitile than warrior counters. If I had the character/gear/practice I'd run something like Hunter, Mage, Resto-Shammy and play super-offensively. Another solid option against these teams is Rogue/Hunter/Druid (or priest if you want to play drain/Shammy for the huge burst).

 

Mearis

The only good counter to rogues is human rogues with more PvE gear though.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

• Amera

I've only seen a couple pal/lock/war teams, and they are complete fodder for the war/ret/resto I run sometimes. I actually don't even see why that is a good combo at all without a druid - it hasn't been since s2. Until rogues are changed (nerfed) further, I don't see many competitive teams not having a rogue outside of some double healer warrior teams.

Really, it doesn't feel like anything has changed to me since late season 3 yet, other than people trying to run some new combos and thinking they might succeed, only to get curbstomped by the PMR and WRD which still totally dominate the bracket.

In 5s, I started on a new tri-healer team and I'm loving it so far. Otherwise it seems like all the major comps are alive and well, though I think 2346 is definitely on the demise with the consistent increase in Cleaves and the general insightful and robust strategy of "hey, let's sit on the warlock."

 

Sorcerer

Played over 104 games 1st day of the season with RRD to help friends get legs.

My data from the day is something like this
Only 1 team had a warlock in team (seriously...)
~70% of teams where double melee (with lots of enh+war+Hpal where they would go defensive vs our comp with sword and board for whole game totally f.... us)
~20% of teams consisting of double healer and a warrior. Didnt meet single hunter+duo or rogue+duo.
~10% was PMR or MRD

On 1st day we played in 1400-1650 range.

Another data from saturday with my PMR 1.5k-1.7k where we stopped that day after ~30 games.
Pretty much every team consisted of lock RLD/WLD/HLD where we were astonished by that fact since my spying on 1st day. Havent meet nearly any double melee / double healer teams.

And fresh data from today playing with RRD again.
1550-1.650 we faced again heavy armor double melees. It aint fun.
However we noticed few tri hybrid dps teams with something along the lines of Enh or Elemental shamy + Dreamstate + SP / lock.

2vs2 with PR seems pretty crowded by very bad teams with very wide range of combinations.

If i had my druid or shammy available i'd start maybe a tri-healer 3vs3 team. Pally / Shaman / Restokin with druid/shammy playing a bit more offensivly just waiting for other team getting out of CDs and mana.

 

Knasen

Once played a warlock myself at gladiator level but alot of things have bored me to death..

So to start, its not strange that warlock got huge issues. We cant do shit on our own to gain range to melee as already pointed out, in addition we are forced into a specc which relies heavily on a pet, which unfortunatly was left with leving greens, and all of a sudden its s4 and people have gained enormous amount of offensive power while pets wont move many millimeters per expansion. The most shocking thing is that they think no pet scaling is ok, when we lose so much when the pet dies.

Atleast they have figured out that we cant get away from melee, but the why wont the fix come out until wotlk? Changes from blizzard are just too slow imo. Things balanced out pretty good on their own in s2, but in s3, everything went wrong, and s4 will continue that way most likely.

What happened between s2 and s3? Armor pen became a stat that everyone had, not just "those hardcore raiders", at the same time rogues and warriors found that they hade skills known as expose and sunder armor, which gives what, a 20% or so increase damage done on cloth. In addition ShS became the supreme specc for rogues, and cheat death was -99% dmg taken orginially (bugged, was supposed to be 90) which gave rogues the opportunity to stack pve gear to crazy lvls and all that was the rise of World of Roguecraft once again.

In conclusion, something need to be done to help cloth in general, but what? People can probably come up with better ideas but just want to throw some out for discussion.

Capping armor pen and make expose/sunder static bonus just like curse of shadow/elements (just in pvp)

Make pets scale, Tom Chilton thinks its ok that pets can be killed in 2 globals, the hunter and warlock community disagree. Cant obviously not make them another player but at this time they are too easily killed.

Melee outscale caster for the 2nd expansion in a row pvp-wise, what can be done so it doesnt happen a 3rd time, and what can be done so melee aint a bit behind early on in each expansion.

 

Sorcerer

Just dont blame ArP as a Full S3 lock / mage without imp. expose or full sunders is already without armor. Its all around other stats.

I do agree that leaving the changes for wotlk totally destroyes arena for few classes.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

The armor penetration stat is a part of it, but whether or not you blame armor penetration as a stat isn't a big deal.

The fact is that a caster's effective armor hasn't increased, resilience hasn't increased (can't really), and the incoming damage has increased.

It's also easy for melee to keep up a sunder or expose. It's not like casters can load up someone with curse of shadows, misery, or whatever and winter's chill and have it all stick.

 

• Calantus

I nearly killed myself getting to 1700 in 2v2 as priest+warrior (with axe ffs). It took 67 games all up and was very painful. I'd say we had about 40-50% warrior/healer, then a roughly even split of rogue or warlock teams, and then a few hunter teams. Warrior teams were oddly paladin heavy which I'm not used to but they probably just haven't been filtered down yet by their counters. Rogues were mainly mage/rogue and priest/rogue, warlocks had a variety of healers. Hunters were all with druids and paladins. Pretty much the same as it ever was for the lower and middle ratings.

Except hunters... holy FUCK. When did they get so much goddamn damage? I seriously fear them far more than any other damage dealer right now and if it wasn't for pillars I think I'd give up WoW (again) until they were nerfed. I don't think they need a nerf precisely because of pillars, but my God are they scary and deserving of fear now. You will not catch me going more than 2 feet from a pole if a BM hunter is in the arena. Hunters also brought something new (to me) which is ret paladin and BM hunter. The first time I saw it I thought it was some crazy mess-about team and died in the span of a HoJ.

 

Ngita

The seems to be a strong trend to play 2's with the best player you can get in the hope of 1550-1700 rather then fail 5's that earn good arena points but are never going to climb much over 1500 at this stage of the season. Their just arent enough resto druids to go around.

 

Ragnor

We did around 40ish 3v3 games with ret paladin/ms warrior/resto shaman upto 1667.

We dominated every druid based team and the oddball makeups with our wf double melee pain train however we still got rolled by quality RMP teams. None of us had bothered respec'ing from our pve spec's (slam spec warrior and none of the mid prot talents like stocism for me), which probably make quite a difference but RMP teams that know what they are doing will still dominate everything apart from their hard counter(s).

We also lost twice to pally/lock/warrior simply due to inexperience facing the combo. Can't remember the last time we saw an effective holy paladin team in 3s. You didn't see many around last season that's for sure. We failed to kill the lock fast enough twice, too much hp and res with voidy out + bop to remove ms and get a heal to full. Perhaps we'll rattle the warrior or paladin next time first.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Grigori

Played about a hundred games between my eight level 70 toons mostly in 2s and 3s with many different partners through the week. There were quite a few Holy Paladin+Warlock in 2s and Holy Paladin+Warlock+? in 3s and many Hunters. Aside from those, a lot of people ran comps rarely seen at the end of S3. With the trend of people lapsing on Resilience for more PvE gear, gib comps seemed to be making a comeback.

We ran an APPoMPyro+Elemental Shaman comp ourselves and steamrolled all the Warrior/healer teams we ran into, openning up with extra long range Fire Blast (S2 hands+Flame Throwing, 3k damage openner on a crit with Ignite) on the Warrior to stop Charge then nuked harder than the healer expected. We "show off" the Shaman with Gorehowl then switch to weapon+shield "as soon as we see their comp." Many times the healer tried to open with CC only to find his Warrior just plain dead right after.

Indeed it is very dangerous to be caught in the open by a geared BM Hunter with her CDs up (or even by a not very geared one, ever since Blizzard botched the Steady Shot clipping fix). They don't have a lot of endurance though. High damage BM burst rotations are very harsh on mana and they will run dry very fast even with the new AotV. Once they are low on mana their damage goes way down when they can't chain quaff Fel Mana Pots the way they do in raids. Plus they are not hard to catch and kill once BW is gone.

- - -

I had an interesting experience this week on that:

I have a Priest friend who has two alts, Ellarone the BM Hunter and Morgaindrys the Feral Druid. She only gets to raid with her Priest, so her alts are not very well geared. Her Hunter doesn't have much gear except for the bow from Karazhan. She forms a 2s team with one of her friend's Feral Druid who is also in mostly blues and greens. They considered the fact that 90+% of the teams at 1500 in our Battlegroup in week 1 are in at least S2, and figured that they had no chance and simply queued and /danced for ten matches.

My Hunter just made 70 on the weekend before the start of S4 and managed to get one piece of honor PvP gear, the S2 crossbow, before the end of week 1. I took my new weapon and grabbed Morgaindrys for some points in 2s. Refusing to /dance for ten matches, I took stock of her gear and we tried to come up with some way to steal a win here and there. Our initial strategy was to have her dress in her cat gear and Pounce, and I would burn the Pounce target. Unfortunately, she had mostly bear gear and very little cat and healing gear, and we got steamrolled and only managed to kill one toon in six matches.

She got a little frustrated trying to win and told me that her Australian internet was having lag issues and it was very hard for her to melee in the lag, so I set out to revamp our strategy. After some thought, we decided to give deception a try. I had her put on bear gear except for a healing weapon (in this case, the distinctive-looking Serpentcrest Life-Staff), and told her to act like a Resto Druid and bear out to Feral Charge/Bash my target when pressured. We then went back into queue.

We got a Rogue/Priest team in S2 gear. I dropped a Frost Trap and Aimed Shot the Priest. The Rogue CSed me, tripping the Frost Trap. Morgaindrys popped out and Cycloned the Rogue. I activated AP trinket/BW/RF. The Rogue smelled Resto and sprung for Morgaindrys with me BWed and the ground frosted. She beared out and Feral Charged the Priest, then Bashed. The Priest PSed, but with Aimed Shot up he still died to my Hunter left alone to spam DPS macro and Arcane Shot his spells.

Later we beat another S2 team through the same deception and sheer AP trinket/BW/RF burn. This time it was Rogue+Mage. I started out on the Mage. The Rogue started out on me. I activated my CDs and Morgaindrys Cycloned the Rogue and Feral Charged and Bashed the Mage. They switch to the "Resto Druid." Mage got low quickly and Iceblocked, leaving the Rogue to pound on 25k armor 14k health of "Resto Druid." I dropped an Improved Mend Pet on the pet and left it on the Mage and switched to the Rogue. The Rogue died before he could down the bear and the pet finished off the Mage. Having a split chained /click for KC in the SS macro to allow separate player/pet targets helped there.

Morgaindrys couldn't stop laughing after we were done. Maybe she will try to win a few with her Hunter this week.

 

Pixen

It's awesome that you were able to have success at such low gear levels. We did the whole /dance for 10 games bit a while ago, but it got old in a hurry.

Just wanted to throw out there that you'll find the whole "misdirection" bit will get less effective the higher you go. Any decent arena team is bound to be running Proximo, and will be looking at stats/buffs. An enhancement shaman isn't going to have 9k mana (your elemental buddy with Gorehowl), and a resto druid isn't going to have ~5k mana and LoTP in forms. The other thing to consider is that when you switch gear midmatch, you're automatically down mana and possibly HP.

We had fooled around with some deception in S2, having our holy pally and ret pally switch weapons so they'd go after the retadin first; it was moderately effective. To date the only thing I've found really effective is not buffing my warrior with MOTW in warrior/druid; they tend to expect a rogue when you do that.

 

Duilliath

It's kind of awkward so far at the start.

One game you run into a Holy Priest / Destro Warlock in pvp blues, the next game you run into full s3 Resto Druid/Dual Glaive Rogue.

To be expected of course, but it makes for a bit of a struggle. So far I've seen a lot of everything in 2v2 - but rogues are abound in pretty much 50% of the teams that I've encountered on various characters so far. And having 3 stealthing toons, it seems as though the human arena population exploded since the last season.

 

djhbrd

I played Rogue/Druid and Rogue/Disc this week and found the lower brackets to be fairly safe for scrubs (See: Rival and below) compared to S3's launch. Rogue/Disc we went about 15-12, and Rogue/Druid we went 18-6, ending the week comfortably at 1727. Gear on each player is as follows:

Rogue: 220 Resil, 1 S3/2 S1, S3 weapon
Priest: 420 Resil, 3 S3/2 S2
Druid: 450 Resil, 5 S3 with weapon

We saw a ton of XXX/Druid teams. Hunters, Rogues, Warriors, Warlocks, everyone was teaming up with Druids, especially past 1650, from what we ran into. I think the only non-Druid team we saw was a Gladiator 2x Frost Mage team at about 1680.

 

• Amera

Season 3 was really the first wave of serious druid re-rollers with gear. In season 4 they will be everywhere. It's been said many times, but even on virtually all the teams designed to counter druids, druids are still the best support for them too, so it barely changes the metagame.

 

Mearis

<- Druid reroll, as soon as I caught the direction the wind was blowing.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

djhbrd

The sad thing is, my main 2v2 partner is an Alliance Warrior that rerolled Druid on Horde and transferred over for S4

 

• frmorrison

Warlocks/Mages will be a bit better in 2.4.3 when they can't lose their Armor spell.


Druids are on the rise, the last WSG I did had 4 resto Druids on the Alliance side.


It is nice Deathknights have a few anti-druid abilities, but they will not be around for a while.

 

Terp

I'm not sure what exactly is causing this, but I think we are running into population based problems. Started week a bit above 1700, went 7-4 yesterday and finished a good 30 points below start. This morning we got matched up against 3 straight 2 point victories. I've been playing since S1 and never encountered this, and really I don't know what to think. It's very discouraging knowing that it'll only take a fresh glad team or a disconnect me and my partner are prone to to knock us down ~30 points.