aureon

I think a serious issue arises out of the amount of stats a melee class can attain to increase their overall power compared to an equally geared caster class at this stage in the game. Blizzard directly affects this by their each point of a stat costs 1/3 more than the previous point iLevel scaling. Take for example the rogue [Brutal Gladiator's Leather Legguards] S4 legs and the mage [Brutal Gladiator's Silk Trousers] S4 legs.

Rogues and all melee DPS can effectively use agility, attack power, critical strike, strength (for some), haste, hit rating and armor penetration to increase their damage; compared to a caster's use of spell damage, spell critical strike, spell hit and to a lesser extent spell haste. And for many, spell crit is largely supbar. This means simply due to the amount of stats a melee can use to increase their damage, they are less effected by the "one third rule".

If Blizzard changed that rule on spell caster gear for the case of spell damage down to say 1/4, there would be a bit more balance to arenas right now.

 

malthrin

So, this weekend I mostly played 2s (Druid/Warrior). 66 games ending at 1804, with the high point around 1840 something (which we then tanked back to 1740 before stopping for the night). Most of the games were played in the 1750-1850 range. As others have mentioned, tons of Rogue teams. We ran into about equal numbers of Rogue/Druid, Rogue/SPriest, Rogue/HPriest, and Rogue/Mage, with just a few Rogue/Lock, Rogue/Rogue, Rogue/Ret, Rogue/RShaman teams sprinkled in for flavor. I think that only leaves out Rogue/Hunter, right? ;p

Outside of the Rogue teams, Shaman/Warrior was the most common thing we ran into, followed closely by Druid/Warrior. Noticeably missing comps: Druid/Lock (only saw one), Druid/Hunter (one), Paladin/Warrior (maybe two). Award for most unique comp went to the Frost Mage/Elemental Shaman team that we beat by playing extremely cautiously - just disgusting burst on their part, must have had some PvE gear. I didn't see much in the way of new and exciting tactics, although most of the SP/Rogue teams went after me when the ones we ran into last season tended to try to kill the Warrior.

The biggest "uphill battle" fights were against Druid/Rogue. Winnable, but requiring a ton of effort to set up. The deal-breakers are the 1.5m Blinds and 1min Cheat Death; even in the losses, we would usually force multiple Cheat Death procs, but not be able to get a kill. We never had much success switching to their Druid; I can only play offensively for so long before I have to hide from the Druid and heal back up. Our timing and positioning to set up a switch to their Druid definitely have room to improve.

edit: for reference, this Warrior and I have been playing together since the last two weeks of S3, where we got shoulders, so I haven't had a ton of experience playing against this caliber of opponents.

 

Cwealm

Maybe it is just my battlegroup, but along with the fact that I am usually the only mage in every BG save for AV, when there might be two, but the thing that really surprises me is that the level of play seems to have declined in the past couple of months. People are more clueless than ever, and I did 6 AB's yesterday, and in each one 13 of the 15 people had under 8k hp.

I don't know if serious pvper's have everything they want and all the honor they need, or if people are gearing up their second or third alt, or if people just no longer have much interest in BG, but the entire experience in battlegrounds is the worst I have ever experienced in the three years I have been playing. Add to it the earlier observation that you spend every BG as a cloth with 2 hunter pets and 3 rogues on you the whole time, and you can imagine how much fun the game has become.

 

Lithose

Yeah, 2's seem to be dominated by rogues right now, in fact, we only ran into 3 warrior teams on our way up. As is right now rogues can dominate a warrior in terms of control and their DPS/Longevity is about even, so they are the obvious choice.

However, i will say this..Hunter/Druid is the worst comp to face, ever, especially if the hunter is using a pure longevity/CC spec (Wyveren, Improved traps, Scatter.)..The spec can't actually kill anything but it can make games last hours. We went 45 minutes against a comp like this (Me and my druid) before just giving up out of frustration (Neither side was going to win and we were losing rating by staying stuck on them rather then facing winnable teams.).

Pretty much though, except for Warrior/Shaman, I think warriors are going to be dying off this season in 2's as a "dominant" class, they will still be prevalent and represented well, but this season is going to belong to rogues and hunters in the 2's bracket.

3's looks very interesting, the rise of PMR counter comps is opening up viability of other team comps that can feed off the counter comps, which is always nice. I will say however that I believe the new team to look for is Hunter/Priest/Druid..Its just a crazy amount of control and mana drain, they can almost *always* force a fight to last forever and with mana burn/viper (silence viper, fun) the games always fall in their favor. At this time I really can't think of a counter to them, I mean, the only team that I can see standing a chance is DRW and thats only if they are able to apply so much pressure to the hunter that it forces the priest to heal.

Not sure, in any case, this season looks fun so far, more diversity in the 3's bracket at least...5's..well, same thing everyone else said, 4-6 teams playing a night, its a dying bracket.

 

whysoez

Hm? Don't you think that the upcoming nerf to cheat death is going to affect the prevalence of rogues in 2's. I also don't foresee an increase of hunters in 2's, there was a fair amount of Druid/Hunters last season as well and I don't see that changing. Maybe we'll see more BM hunter 2-dps teams (hunter/lock, hunter/rogue) but that's about it.

 

Cos-

The vast majority of rogues I see in 2v2 lately are full s2 with some s3. Those new rogues who had capped honor and tokens are the ones clogging up 2v2. These guys have over 300 res and wont really notice the cd nerf in small bracket pvp.


edit: I haven't done serious 2 dps 2v2 since last season but I don't remember ever really caring about CD if I don't have a healer around anyway. This CD nerf/change seems mostly cosmetic and directed at large brackets. I find it funny that it affects 5v5 the most yet a lot of people don't give two shits about 5s anymore.

 

Ngita

I havent noticed either of the two trends. Just your minds eye spotting paterns in randomness? Sure their are a lot of rogues., i think I had a AB wth 9 rogues on Horde side but everything else seems in proportion. As for the comment by cwealm , if anything the exact opposite a lot of players especially Horde side were probably capped on honor/gear before s4 and are now replacing that honor.

 

Last_Human

While it seems to me that there's a large amount of hunters/rogues (and annoyingly resto druids healing them!) in BGs I can certainly believe that it's psychological.
The 3th time you get destroyed by 3 stealthed NE hunters at mine on your lock gets real old and you're more likely to look at class distribution for that particular bg. I played an AB vs 8, yes 8 hunters and 4 rogues on my warlock a week or two ago, while that nightmare has stuck in my head I can hardly call it representative of all the bgs I do.

 

• syeren

The game lost it's balance last season in regards to arena, and it's only going to get worse this season with complete melee dominance due to how they scale from basic stats where as casters don't. Blizzard don't really seem to care at the moment though, simply leaving it to WotLK to fix all the huge balance issues in the game right now, but I honestly don't know how they can justify doing that to their arena community.

As for how to balance melee (or damage) in this game, I have no idea in reality due to how Blizzard has currently designed the classes, but when all melee become pretty much impossible to kite due to their spec / gear, it kind of gets rid of their own weakness; it isn't really right that Mage's and hunters should have such huge problems with melee on them, when these two classes are supposed to be the classes with the least weaknesses to melee.

In 5s I think it would probably be close to be impossible for a team to get high rated using a Paladin with only access to PVP gear due to how much damage has gone up, and the scary thought is that it's only going to increase as more and more people get their weapons as the season runs on.

5s has always been my favourite bracket due to the fact I consider it the most 'balanced' of the 3 brackets, and it also happens to be the only bracket my Elemental Shaman can compete in. However I have noticed that activity in the bracket has declined massively due to the fact casuals have less things to look forward to due to the stupid PR requirements up to the 1700 range; this in combination with point scaling in the other 2 brackets really means that there is little incentive to actually compete in the bracket anymore.

Ultimately though I just want Blizzard to fix how casters gain practically nothing from base stats, fix Paladins, fix Damage scaling, fix Rogues, and fix Druids :P

An entertaining fact is that over 90% of teams above 2200 rating at this point in the season have a Resto Druid on, with the remaining 10% of teams having either a Warrior or Rogue on them. I guess Blizzard just seem to think those people who chose to play Druid are just better at the game than every other player!

 

Ghando

Rogues are supplanting Warriors in 2s dominance in large part because in a toe-to-toe matchup they're simply better than Warriors. A Shaman obviously works better with a Warrior than a Rogue and I'm sticking with RSham/Warrior for this season, but if the opposing Rogue sticks to my Warrior we're just going to lose against Rogue/Priest or Rogue/Druid (assuming they're good). It's possible to RNG down a Priest, but a Druid isn't happening. A Rogue's massive damage will drain my mana very quickly and between Kidney Shot, Crippling Poison and Shadowstep my Warrior partner will be totally locked down. What's telling is that while in S2 a Warrior in this situation would simply beat down the Rogue, it's not really an option at the point where Rogues have scaled so well. Between all their cooldowns, parry/dodge and Cheat Death they're extremely unappetizing targets in this 1v1 matchup. Still, Warriors are plenty valuable in every bracket and a good RSham/Warrior team can be quite successful. 2s will always have balance issues.

As for Druids...they're broken, they've been broken for quite a while and everyone knows/acknowledges they're broken. I haven't heard any suggestions for fixing them that didn't involve overhauling half the class's mechanics. It's those core mechanics that create the imbalance, but Blizzard is not going to throw them out the window and start from scratch before WOTLK. I'd expect some fairly massive overcompensating on their part when WOTLK drops; that seems to be how these things work.

<Bryne> >> MILKED TEAT 2, GHANDO NEXT <<

 

Mearis

Funny how that feels Ghando - do you really think that rogue/priest gives you a hard time as warrior/shaman? I find we are almost guaranteed to lose unless we get a lucky CC chain on the shaman and he gets sloppy on refreshing tremors.

Basically, as long as we don't kill the warrior during the rogue's evasion, we lose always 100% of the time. If he plays defensively at the start, we cannot really win. If he plays offensively from the start, we'll steal wins if the warrior doesn't get a lucky rng streak and just kill me with windfury+execute.

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.

 

Lithose

A skilled player will still lock most mellee out for a good portion of the match. In most PMR teams we face the mage does consistently more damage than the rogue. The rogues primary job, in fact, is to apply a stun so the mage can shatter combo without worry of a quick pillar hump.

I'm not saying melee classes don't scale slightly better, especially considering the fact that blizzard did not spread their stats out to include haste, therefor placing them in the diminishing stat rule, however, its not quite as bad as you're making it sound, and a lot of it stems from poor itemization for casters.


The cheat death nerf is only going to make it so the rogue's healer isn't as comfortable with drinking. Its still going to prevent kills, which means even a well timed lock out of their healer won't be as effective as it would be for any other class. If you cyclone, CS or whatever a healer when his partner is at 25% for any other class, its going to be a win, if done right. This is not the case for rogues, and won't be the case even after the nerf, which is why rogues will remain dominant.

Don't get me wrong, the nerf will help tone down the stupid damage rogues are dealing, but cheat deaths core is remaining intact (1 minute cool down death prevention)..Basically, any team with a rogue is allowed one game losing screw up every minute, thats simply better than what any other class can provide.

 

Mearis

May I ask what team you are playing? If you are playing a classic double healer warrior with a shaman + another hard to kill healer, then yeah, a mage might outdamage a rogue, maybe. If you are playing a melee zerg team or any team with a pet, a rogue is going to do a hell of a lot more damage than the mage, and the mage might end up sneaking out a shatter combo at a crucial moment.

If you just sit on the mage, you basically castrate the damage the mage does to nearly zero. The mage then is stuck using only instants or casting cast time spells when the rogue manages to peel.


I agree with this.

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.

 

• syeren

I don't play 3s, it's a terribly skewed bracket with virtually no balance in it. When I play my Priest I have to play PMR or Druid/Priest/X to compete, and that isn't my idea of balance; so therefore I will never place my ideas on them.

However when I play 5s and some triple melee team's make my team's Warlock quit arena on his Warlock for good, there's something wrong there, especially when he can die in 1-2 seconds of melee exposure, regardless of a hunters trap

 

Adrammelech

I always thought warriors were one of the counters to a MM spec hunters. At anyrate, I still feel strong against warriors on my mage, I however sometimes just feel like typing /sit when ShS step rogue targets me. I did however decide to goof around BG's with a 50 fire/11 frost spec, and I actually found it to be oddly stronger against rogues with the stuns, frostbites, and blazing speed to break snares. But I admit, I'm not that amazing of a mage player.

 

Ghando

I think that good Priest/Rogue teams who play extremely defensively give us a hard time. We beat plenty of Rogue/Priest teams and it's nowhere near as bad a matchup as, say, Warlock/SPriest. I won't get into details, but if they focus my partner well enough it's hard to get a kill on either of them.

<Bryne> >> MILKED TEAT 2, GHANDO NEXT <<

 

• Riot

I have to disagree with you Ghando. Is Dios still using Cat's Edge for PvP? He should really consider moving to Maces - with a mace it's entirely possible to RNG down a Druid or a Priest - especially if your Shaman gets some great Purges off.

As far as S/W vs. P/R or SP/R - both of these should be a win in my opinion for the S/W team. I know first hand that it's tough to stick on the Priest if the Rogue is on you as well, but it can definitely be done, and with Purge and Windfury, all you need is 2-3 hits to put a Priest into trouble.

Edit: Did it's done it's over get Vengeful Gladiator this season? My Shaman and I beat them 2-3 times this season when we played them after we adjusted to them, out of a total of 5 games. Yes, a defensive priest is tough, but the RNG power of Warriors is pretty sick.

According to the LSAT examination, the opposite of hot is: A) Cold B) Not Hot

 

Mearis

Yeah, this is my experience. You can get mace stunned then windfuried and you are basically dead, especially since with a shaman on top of you shields don't really do anything. What is worst is if you heroism when you are already behind you cannot even spare the GCD to purge.

And seconding what Riot said, maces warriors are several times more scary than sword warriors. I cannot count how many games I have to getting mace stunned.

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 focus of the game has changed. Casual play is now directed towards PvP instead of 5-man instances, and in particular, battlegrounds. It's so much easier to grab a 6 pack of Red Bull and queue up for AV for 48 straight hours than actually focus and clear a heroic instance. Most people who are "serious" PvPers were ready for S4 and had 75k honor and all necessary marks saved for launch day, they quickly picked up their belt/bracers/boots and didn't queue for another BG. I'm friends with most of the gladiators/duelists on Bleeding Hollow, the players who would rather PvP every day than step in a raid dungeon, and it has been weeks since we got a nice AB raid going to grind some honor. Nobody needs anything new, unless you're just hitting 70.

Also, I don't see any incentive to win games. You can just semi-afk through matches pretending to guard a node (I'm guilty of this as well), come back and fight a half-assed battle to not get kicked out of the game, and go back to watching YouTube. Even if you're not alt-tabbing the whole time, you don't have to win. Eventually you'll get your stuff no matter how well you do. This is where the old honor system shined: If you weren't winning, you weren't getting enough honor on the week to rank up.

The dedication here on EJ is obviously not ubiquitous in WoW. Most players don't know the basic practices of their class, if that wasn't apparent enough just by watching them play. Since I've been leveling a shaman and will be 70 this week, I'll use him as an example. I'm trying to do all the right stuff as far as PvP is concerned. I'm dropping Grounding Totems on cooldown, rotating Tremor and Earthbind after fears, using rank 1 Earth Shocks to conserve mana, utilizing focus macros for shocks, and watching out for key abilities to purge (Avenging Wrath, Warlock armors until next patch, etc). In the past week of PuG BGs while grinding marks for my S4 boots, I don't think I've seen any Grounding totems on the ground from anyone except the rare well geared Shaman queueing up out of boredom.