Well considering the way content was gated (had to complete Eye and SSC just to get into Hyjal to get your next tier of loot) and the ease of arena weapon availability as seasons progressed, arena weapons became obviously superior to any sort of entry level raid gear you could acquire. You couldn't just jump tiers of raids unless you got shuttled into a guild that was mid-progression and willing to carry you. ZA eased this up a bit but ZA was fairly difficult itself.
The problem wasn't and isn't quite as pronounced as whiny dudes would have you believe though. It never is.
But there are no more gating mechanics and they're far more balance-conscious than they seemed to be in TBC. I doubt the issues will be that pronounced once we move into the next tier.
JAEF on
0
Options
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Yeah I think we can all agree that TBC raid progression was completely fucked up
I doubt PvP gear will be good for PvE content after the next raid tier comes out. Honestly it seems like even the epic pvp stuff now is barely better (if at all) than heroic blues. They did a pretty good job of balancing the stats out this time around IMO.
But there are no more gating mechanics and they're far more balance-conscious than they seemed to be in TBC. I doubt the issues will be that pronounced once we move into the next tier.
Yeah, the raiding scene won't be nearly as fucked up as it was in TBC, but still none of this accounts for WotLK being a total kneejerk reversal as far as PvP reward design.
Yeah I think we can all agree that TBC raid progression was completely fucked up
I doubt PvP gear will be good for PvE content after the next raid tier comes out. Honestly it seems like even the epic pvp stuff now is barely better (if at all) than heroic blues. They did a pretty good job of balancing the stats out this time around IMO.
Well, when the next raid tier comes out, there's going to be a new tier of PvP gear as well, so we'll have to see how those compare. Epic PvP weapons absolutely blow away heroic blues, though, since having one useless secondary stat is more than made up for by the primary power that comes from weapons (raw DPS/Spell Power) and the higher primary stats.
forty on
0
Options
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Yeah I think we can all agree that TBC raid progression was completely fucked up
I doubt PvP gear will be good for PvE content after the next raid tier comes out. Honestly it seems like even the epic pvp stuff now is barely better (if at all) than heroic blues. They did a pretty good job of balancing the stats out this time around IMO.
Well, when the next raid tier comes out, there's going to be a new tier of PvP gear as well, so we'll have to see how those compare. Epic PvP weapons absolutely blow away heroic blues, though, since having one useless secondary stat is more than made up for by the primary power that comes from weapons (raw DPS/Spell Power) and the higher primary stats.
Right but the current tier of PvE gear will be purchasable with Justice Points. So there will be easy epics to be had by all. If current PvP gear is comparable to current heroic gear, it's likely the next tier of pvp gear will be comparable to current valor/raid gear. So I would assume people would be less inclined to buy it for PvE, since there is other, possibly better gear available for easy-to-get justice points.
I think the big problem right now is that Justice Point gear selection is absolute shit and leaves out several slots (there aren't even any main hands available). I know personally I've been blowing JP on heirloom gear for lack of anything better to spend them on (and still I keep coming way too close to cap every week or so).
I just bought my last off spec upgrade that's available on the JP vendor, so I've now graduated past the need for them as well. Is the 1-80 heirloom gear still only available in Dalaran?
Weapon itemization was a lot worse in BC, too. There were exactly two dps caster weapons in the entirety of T5 raiding, and one of them was dropped by kael'thas (and that one was a piece of junk iirc.) So unless your raid got really lucky on leotheras, a lot of your casters would be rocking S2 daggers.
There were like, three healer weapons. Melee didn't have it that much better with one handers or two.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Weapon itemization was a lot worse in BC, too. There were exactly two dps caster weapons in the entirety of T5 raiding, and one of them was dropped by kael'thas. So unless your raid got really lucky on leotheras, a lot of your casters would be rocking S2 daggers or that dagger from karazhan.
There were like, three healer weapons. Melee didn't have it that much better with one handers or two.
That sword off leotheras was retardedly huge...
Oghulk on
0
Options
darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
I think they could improve PvP by giving everyone a predetermined set of gear upon entrance in a BG or Arena. You could choose the gear set you want loaded when you queue up or at some sort of battlemaster type NPC. Do that and remove PvP reward gear and all of a sudden the only people queuing for BGs and Arenas are people that actually do it because they enjoy PvP.
As far as world PvP goes, I think Halaa was probably their best attempt at world PvP, and I like the idea of having some sort of faction tradeable outpost that can be attacked whenever you feel like it. They would have to find some sort of way to make it worth attacking though, maybe a zonewide buff with exp/rep gains or something. Hard to say on that end.
darklite_x on
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
I think they could improve PvP by giving everyone a predetermined set of gear upon entrance in a BG or Arena. You could choose the gear set you want loaded when you queue up or at some sort of battlemaster type NPC. Do that and remove PvP reward gear and all of a sudden the only people queuing for BGs and Arenas are people that actually do it because they enjoy PvP.
As far as world PvP goes, I think Halaa was probably their best attempt at world PvP, and I like the idea of having some sort of faction tradeable outpost that can be attacked whenever you feel like it. They would have to find some sort of way to make it worth attacking though, maybe a zonewide buff with exp/rep gains or something. Hard to say on that end.
They did a lot of that towards the end of Vanilla and with BC zones, but it ended up not bringing a lot of World PvP out. Best way to do it is to add mounts to all of them. People like mounts and I think that might be why Halaa worked out so well.
I can't believe they are waiting until 4.0.6 to address Necrotic Strike, and even then they probably will not fix the real issue. Who cares if it is finally affected by resilience if it is still spammable and stacks? Why did they bother reducing MS and other healing debuffs to 10% then give DKs what is effectively a 100% MS? So incompetent.
It's OK, we're nerfing all mortal strike effects, then giving DKs one that lasts 15 seconds, absorbs healing entirely and reduces your casting speed until it's removed. And it's uncleansable.
The only arena hate I've got, is the attitude that has come with it.
If you've not got the rating, you get people calling you a scrub.
If you've got the rating, then people call you a scrub because of your class / spec / composition.
And to be honest, that's not something Blizzard can do much about.
Well, it's the culture that they created. Because they can't design a pvp (or pve for that matter) system in which one spec/class/composition is not superior over another. They simply cannot do it. It's very easy to see Oz behind the curtain and exploit it and it becomes "the" spec/class/comp and there's nothing changing it until they put in another slight adjustment to the system which is figured out before it escapes beta.
The entire system is so static. Get this gear, this spec, this comp or you suck. That's not an exaggeration, it's backed up by your performance in game if you deviate outside of the current status quo you are crushed. Yet they also want everyone to think they're a special snowflake. It's ridiculous.
I hate to sound like a blizzard hater, but I firmly believe this is the case.
Yes, that is an exaggeration. Yes, many specs will struggle to reach Gladiator, but there's nothing holding back a run-of-the-mill 1800 team from getting gear and striving to do better.
Composition matters. There is no way in hell Blizzard is going to try and balance every possible combination of class and spec across two brackets. Part of forming a team is seeing how well you synergize with your teammates. Part of success is knowing what combinations work, and they are flexible enough to allow anyone to enjoy it.
Some enjoy it more...like death knights.
EDIT: I am very let down that the better looking set is strictly 2200. I had hoped it'd cover a larger range to show how far you are in Conquest PvP and give players a feeling of progress. And 2200 is a tad low as well. Maybe 2400 for the last pieces, and start at 1700.
want everyone to think they're a special snowflake.
this is true for leveling
not so much for endgame stuff
also the priest buffs really don't look like they'll be sufficient for making the class stop sucking. PW:S will still be trivially dispelled, and 4s temporary freedom every 15s is far from enough to get away from the endless melee gap closers. everything still costs too much mana (looking at you SWP/DP).
The only arena hate I've got, is the attitude that has come with it.
If you've not got the rating, you get people calling you a scrub.
If you've got the rating, then people call you a scrub because of your class / spec / composition.
And to be honest, that's not something Blizzard can do much about.
Well, it's the culture that they created. Because they can't design a pvp (or pve for that matter) system in which one spec/class/composition is not superior over another. They simply cannot do it. It's very easy to see Oz behind the curtain and exploit it and it becomes "the" spec/class/comp and there's nothing changing it until they put in another slight adjustment to the system which is figured out before it escapes beta.
The entire system is so static. Get this gear, this spec, this comp or you suck. That's not an exaggeration, it's backed up by your performance in game if you deviate outside of the current status quo you are crushed. Yet they also want everyone to think they're a special snowflake. It's ridiculous.
I hate to sound like a blizzard hater, but I firmly believe this is the case.
Yes, that is an exaggeration. Yes, many specs will struggle to reach Gladiator, but there's nothing holding back a run-of-the-mill 1800 team from getting gear and striving to do better.
Composition matters. There is no way in hell Blizzard is going to try and balance every possible combination of class and spec across two brackets. Part of forming a team is seeing how well you synergize with your teammates. Part of success is knowing what combinations work, and they are flexible enough to allow anyone to enjoy it.
Some enjoy it more...like death knights.
EDIT: I am very let down that the better looking set is strictly 2200. I had hoped it'd cover a larger range to show how far you are in Conquest PvP and give players a feeling of progress. And 2200 is a tad low as well. Maybe 2400 for the last pieces, and start at 1700.
What he did say though spoke just as well for PvE, which in the case is pretty damn accurate. Even now with specs being closer than they have ever been (well kinda) there's still that ultimate spec as usual.
Stepped into 3v3s last night for the first time with my comp(unholy DK, resto shammy, frost mage), and it was kinda a gong show at first. Went up against some difficult comps (RMP/WarriorPallyDeathKnight), and got a bit of practice in. Still came out with a 9-7 win/loss ratio at 867 rating (so awesome I know), but I think with a lot more practice and my partners getting some better gear and more resilience it'll come out better.
It's OK, we're nerfing all mortal strike effects, then giving DKs one that lasts 15 seconds, absorbs healing entirely and reduces your casting speed until it's removed. And it's uncleansable.
It's OK, we're nerfing all mortal strike effects, then giving DKs one that lasts 15 seconds, absorbs healing entirely and reduces your casting speed until it's removed. And it's uncleansable.
Clearly they thought about this ahead of time.
Guess where DKs would be without Necrotic Strike.
Because the answer is not "Gladiator bracket".
Now that I think about it I don't think I've ever seen many DKs in arenas before this season.
It's OK, we're nerfing all mortal strike effects, then giving DKs one that lasts 15 seconds, absorbs healing entirely and reduces your casting speed until it's removed. And it's uncleansable.
Clearly they thought about this ahead of time.
Guess where DKs would be without Necrotic Strike.
Because the answer is not "Gladiator bracket".
Now that I think about it I don't think I've ever seen many DKs in arenas before this season.
Saw a small amount last season but that was it.
You can debate about the actual ability of Necrotic Strike being stupid or not, but you can't argue with the fact not fixing the bug that see's it ignoring resilience until 4.06, is dumb.
The class / spec that causes me to grit my teeth, are Frost Mages. Stuns / (long) spell lock downs / roots / slows / spammable cc.
Quite what Blizzard were thinking with Ring of ice I don't know. It has to be one of the most stupid spells in the game, and giving it to Frost mages; I honestly can't believe that it didn't come up that this was rediculous.
It is definately true that Team Composition is the biggest factor in determining how high of a rating you can get. No matter how good you are, how well you play together, how good your gear is there are some Compositions that just can't make it past 1800. Which sucks for me because I play a Prot Warrior for both PvE and PvP. I tried out Fury and Arms for arena, but the teammates available to me don't go well with a Warrior. I actually performed better as Prot with those guys than as Fury or Arms. I didn't have crazy burst damage, but I had good control and mobility and could take a beating.
There has been some matches I've played on my Prot Warrior where it felt like we severely outplayed the other team. Matches where I spell reflected Cyclone 3 times, Root 7 times and 2 Deep Freezes we could still lose. Last week I was doing 2v2 with my Mage partner around the 1700 rating. It is a terrible composition but we can make it work for us a good 60-70% of the time. We came up against a Feral Druid/Resto Shaman comp. The Feral druid got about 6 solid seconds of uptime on my mage and he was dead. A pounce/ravage -> Leap -> Rip and my mage is down to 20% health. Sometimes there is nothing you can do against a certain team.
All that said, I've made a resto shaman for the sole purpose of Arena. He is level 47 right now, and he will work so much better with the Mage, Shadow Priest and Warlock I have available for 2s and 3s than my Protection Warrior. The Mage, Spriest and I have made it to 1700 in 3s. If we can't get higher than that on my resto shaman then I will know that I am indeed a scrub and should just Tank PvE encounters.
It seems like there is a surprising number of viable comps right now. Even weird comps like Shadow, Retribution, Frost mage are getting 2200 rating. This could still be a promising expansion for skill capped PvPers, unless itemization makes everything boil down to who has the most utility toys again.
While we've already made minor adjustments to improve the gameplay and address select exploits, our job in Tol Barad is far from over. We ultimately want to make sure that any changes we make are all steps in the right direction, and we intend to make several updates in the next minor patch to address design and balance issues affecting attackers that we can't address with hotfixes. For example, we plan to alter the battle slightly so that a team with two bases captured can more quickly and easily capture the third, as opposed to a team with one or zero bases. This way, if the defenders turtle up, it'll be a little easier for the attackers to take their last base before the defense can take one of the attackers' other bases.
No hard details, but I'd assume this is what the PTR is really up for, so they can test them out when they're ready to be.
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
0
Options
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
I love how they come out and admit the design was terrible on purpose. Real great job there guys.
Also I'm not really convinced that "fix" is going to do much. Maybe if they also made defense cap slower. But the problem is always that it's really easy for them to just zerg a different base once offense breaks the first zerg. Faster capping isn't going to help much if a different base then gets partially-capped and turtled.
It's OK, we're nerfing all mortal strike effects, then giving DKs one that lasts 15 seconds, absorbs healing entirely and reduces your casting speed until it's removed. And it's uncleansable.
Clearly they thought about this ahead of time.
DKs are pretty easy to peel compared to other melee. I'd rather have a DK on me than a Feral Druid--at least a friendly DPS player can snare or root the DK so I get some breathing space.
I'm getting rocked so hard in BG/Arena right now, and by everything. I just picked up my Trinket with Resilience on it, so that should help me last longer (by 3%). Still feel so squishy, even as a death knight. Maybe my spec sucks? I'm running the "typical" unholy spec but mages are just ruining my day every time I play.
I'm getting rocked so hard in BG/Arena right now, and by everything. I just picked up my Trinket with Resilience on it, so that should help me last longer (by 3%). Still feel so squishy, even as a death knight. Maybe my spec sucks? I'm running the "typical" unholy spec but mages are just ruining my day every time I play.
It depends. For Arena, yeah stack resilience or GTFO. BG's and such, eh it helps, but I've done BG's in just leveling/raiding gear and it's been fine. Usually when I die it's because I'm getting gangbanged by 5+ dudes, and all resilience is gonna do is delay my death by about 10 seconds anyways.
If all you have is the trinket right now, that's not enough to make any appreciable difference.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Tol Barad post gave me some hearty chuckles. I enjoy how their strategy of making defense care about defending is to make offense so terrible you never want to be on that side. Brilliant game design.
Okay, so your fear with Wintergrasp was that faction balance would lead to one side dominating. So you made attacking easy to help with that. Understood.
But by the time Tol Barad rolled in, you had a system to balance sides. So you made defending easier because...you didn't spend any real time actually testing it in beta. Was that so hard to admit, Blizzard?
I don't know, the more I think about it the more I... well... 'like' is such a strong word, but given how known I've been to bitch about the lack of "competition" in a substantial portion of WoWs PvP I feel a certain resonance with their reasoning. Leapfrog wins do take some of the urgency out of the entire battle.
That said, I'm not particularly comfortable with how they're trying to use PvE dailies and a raid as "rewards" or incentatives for participating in the battle, because neither are actually rewards for participing in the battle. It is perfectly possible to never, ever set foot in a TB attack or defense, and still get your raid done once every week. Same goes for dailies.
What happened in WG on my old shitty server was basically that you'd have a few never-say-die idiots (myself included) who'd wok their asses of to win WG with shitloads of tenacity, win (every now and then), and then have twice again as many idlers from Dalaran show up and be like OH HAI GUISE, LFG ARCH.
They need to base the game theoretical analysis of participating in the battle on, surprise, participating in the battle. When you can get the same rewards without participating, it's like a study of why communism works poorly.
(For instance, their post would suggest that they figured that even with 1.8K honour in attacking, the playerbase wouldn't start wintrading because access to the dailies/raid would be worth more. But it's not, to the people that actually fight the battles.)
TB is supposed to be like Isle of Quel'Danas, but with a PvP battle to determine who gets more dailies. Not a bad idea in theory.
The problem is, unlike IoQD, TB has little to really offer most people. The only people grinding it out are those going for some mounts or something. It's not a critical for making money as it was back in TBC. And money is what kept people coming back to IoQD, despite the ganking.
shryke on
0
Options
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited January 2011
I think some of you are overreacting to the statement that TB was designed to be more difficult to attack than wintergrasp. Right now it vastly favors defenders which causes the whole mess to be messed up. But having the battle slightly favor defenders wouldn't be such a bad thing. They do have a point about making the battle more intense. They don't want attackers to get a big advantage because they don't want to create a presumption of turnover. They want people to care about whether Tol Barad gets turned over or not. They want it to be a 'big deal' for Tol Barad to switch sides. This is an admirable goal, but the current system is horribly broken in that regard because it is nearly impossible for attackers to win unless the defenders are either paraplegics, Alzheimer patients, or prepubescent children.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I can respect their desire to want to make holding TB matter, though personally I think it's a pipe dream that they should stop thinking about. People barely respect PVP as it is. You've got people bitching about ganking, about imbalance both with individual classes/specs and general BG design. People complaining about arena compositions, and even Blizzard themselves saying arenas were a mistake. People regard PVP as a time waster at best, and as a horrible piece of shit at worst. I don't know how you're going to make them suddenly care whether or not they control a zone or not.
Not to mention, they haven't really explained why we should care. Look at WG when they turned the dailies into weeklys. On Tuesday evening, after I've finished my quests and the raid... why should I continue to give a shit about control over WG? There's nothing left for me to do in the zone for the week, so whether or not we control it or not doesn't make a lick of difference to me. TB has the same issue. After I'm locked out of the raid, why should I care if we control it? The dailies? A semi decent source of gold I guess, but it's not like I'm going to shit a brick if I miss out every so often. And the rep? Ok... and when I'm exalted and have no more use for it? We're right back to square one: Why should I care?
Oh yeah, and I got a real kick out of their explanation on the 1800 honor bit. They don't want the zone to be a flip-flop... but any child with an understanding of basic math could have told you that giving 1800 for a win would do exactly that. There's another reason why people won't care. Blizz makes these completely idiotic design decisions that makes them look like they have no clue what they're doing.
Barring some divine miracle, I really don't think you're going to make players truly care about PVP, so trying to balance it around this non-existent desire makes no real sense.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I don't think it's that hard to find a motivation to PvP, here's mine: Killing dudes entertains me, raids are atrocious, and raid gear is an assault upon my eyeballs.
I just sort of treat it like Team Fortress wherein dying is trivial.
I think some of you are overreacting to the statement that TB was designed to be more difficult to attack than wintergrasp. Right now it vastly favors defenders which causes the whole mess to be messed up. But having the battle slightly favor defenders wouldn't be such a bad thing. They do have a point about making the battle more intense. They don't want attackers to get a big advantage because they don't want to create a presumption of turnover. They want people to care about whether Tol Barad gets turned over or not. They want it to be a 'big deal' for Tol Barad to switch sides. This is an admirable goal, but the current system is horribly broken in that regard because it is nearly impossible for attackers to win unless the defenders are either paraplegics, Alzheimer patients, or prepubescent children.
If you want to avoid a presumption of turnover (or, in this case, presumption of status quo), then you make attacking and defending equally difficult. Now, there's always going to be slight imbalance because nothing is perfect, but doing so by design leads to frustration for the attackers. Not gripping intensity.
Look, all that guff about TB that Blizzard have just trotted out, is in preparation of the inevitable "buffs" to attack, that don't actually change anything but will now fit in with the design ethos of attacking should be hard, because if people remember WG when they asked what could be done, they decided after hundreds of pages of feedback to give the attacking side more bases at the start if they lost too often.
I expect something completely useless, like tank speed and damage to towers has been increased, and the GY that attackers use near each base, is now slightly closer and has a slightly larger area where you have spiritual immunity.
Posts
- Heroic dungeon gear (shit, level 70 regular dungeon gear) was suitable for entry raid content in TBC.
- I can't think of many TBC raid encounters you could just ignore mechanics and zerg down.
- Yes, class balance and Dumbass Finder are obviously better than the situation in TBC, but that's about it.
The problem wasn't and isn't quite as pronounced as whiny dudes would have you believe though. It never is.
I doubt PvP gear will be good for PvE content after the next raid tier comes out. Honestly it seems like even the epic pvp stuff now is barely better (if at all) than heroic blues. They did a pretty good job of balancing the stats out this time around IMO.
Right but the current tier of PvE gear will be purchasable with Justice Points. So there will be easy epics to be had by all. If current PvP gear is comparable to current heroic gear, it's likely the next tier of pvp gear will be comparable to current valor/raid gear. So I would assume people would be less inclined to buy it for PvE, since there is other, possibly better gear available for easy-to-get justice points.
I think the big problem right now is that Justice Point gear selection is absolute shit and leaves out several slots (there aren't even any main hands available). I know personally I've been blowing JP on heirloom gear for lack of anything better to spend them on (and still I keep coming way too close to cap every week or so).
There were like, three healer weapons. Melee didn't have it that much better with one handers or two.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
That sword off leotheras was retardedly huge...
As far as world PvP goes, I think Halaa was probably their best attempt at world PvP, and I like the idea of having some sort of faction tradeable outpost that can be attacked whenever you feel like it. They would have to find some sort of way to make it worth attacking though, maybe a zonewide buff with exp/rep gains or something. Hard to say on that end.
They did a lot of that towards the end of Vanilla and with BC zones, but it ended up not bringing a lot of World PvP out. Best way to do it is to add mounts to all of them. People like mounts and I think that might be why Halaa worked out so well.
Clearly they thought about this ahead of time.
Composition matters. There is no way in hell Blizzard is going to try and balance every possible combination of class and spec across two brackets. Part of forming a team is seeing how well you synergize with your teammates. Part of success is knowing what combinations work, and they are flexible enough to allow anyone to enjoy it.
Some enjoy it more...like death knights.
EDIT: I am very let down that the better looking set is strictly 2200. I had hoped it'd cover a larger range to show how far you are in Conquest PvP and give players a feeling of progress. And 2200 is a tad low as well. Maybe 2400 for the last pieces, and start at 1700.
this is true for leveling
not so much for endgame stuff
also the priest buffs really don't look like they'll be sufficient for making the class stop sucking. PW:S will still be trivially dispelled, and 4s temporary freedom every 15s is far from enough to get away from the endless melee gap closers. everything still costs too much mana (looking at you SWP/DP).
What he did say though spoke just as well for PvE, which in the case is pretty damn accurate. Even now with specs being closer than they have ever been (well kinda) there's still that ultimate spec as usual.
Stepped into 3v3s last night for the first time with my comp(unholy DK, resto shammy, frost mage), and it was kinda a gong show at first. Went up against some difficult comps (RMP/WarriorPallyDeathKnight), and got a bit of practice in. Still came out with a 9-7 win/loss ratio at 867 rating (so awesome I know), but I think with a lot more practice and my partners getting some better gear and more resilience it'll come out better.
Guess where DKs would be without Necrotic Strike.
Because the answer is not "Gladiator bracket".
Now that I think about it I don't think I've ever seen many DKs in arenas before this season.
Saw a small amount last season but that was it.
You can debate about the actual ability of Necrotic Strike being stupid or not, but you can't argue with the fact not fixing the bug that see's it ignoring resilience until 4.06, is dumb.
The class / spec that causes me to grit my teeth, are Frost Mages. Stuns / (long) spell lock downs / roots / slows / spammable cc.
Quite what Blizzard were thinking with Ring of ice I don't know. It has to be one of the most stupid spells in the game, and giving it to Frost mages; I honestly can't believe that it didn't come up that this was rediculous.
There has been some matches I've played on my Prot Warrior where it felt like we severely outplayed the other team. Matches where I spell reflected Cyclone 3 times, Root 7 times and 2 Deep Freezes we could still lose. Last week I was doing 2v2 with my Mage partner around the 1700 rating. It is a terrible composition but we can make it work for us a good 60-70% of the time. We came up against a Feral Druid/Resto Shaman comp. The Feral druid got about 6 solid seconds of uptime on my mage and he was dead. A pounce/ravage -> Leap -> Rip and my mage is down to 20% health. Sometimes there is nothing you can do against a certain team.
All that said, I've made a resto shaman for the sole purpose of Arena. He is level 47 right now, and he will work so much better with the Mage, Shadow Priest and Warlock I have available for 2s and 3s than my Protection Warrior. The Mage, Spriest and I have made it to 1700 in 3s. If we can't get higher than that on my resto shaman then I will know that I am indeed a scrub and should just Tank PvE encounters.
No hard details, but I'd assume this is what the PTR is really up for, so they can test them out when they're ready to be.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Also I'm not really convinced that "fix" is going to do much. Maybe if they also made defense cap slower. But the problem is always that it's really easy for them to just zerg a different base once offense breaks the first zerg. Faster capping isn't going to help much if a different base then gets partially-capped and turtled.
DKs are pretty easy to peel compared to other melee. I'd rather have a DK on me than a Feral Druid--at least a friendly DPS player can snare or root the DK so I get some breathing space.
Got raped 6 games back to back, yeah that was fun.
Also kept getting the same teams over and over and over. Ugh.
I'm getting rocked so hard in BG/Arena right now, and by everything. I just picked up my Trinket with Resilience on it, so that should help me last longer (by 3%). Still feel so squishy, even as a death knight. Maybe my spec sucks? I'm running the "typical" unholy spec but mages are just ruining my day every time I play.
It depends. For Arena, yeah stack resilience or GTFO. BG's and such, eh it helps, but I've done BG's in just leveling/raiding gear and it's been fine. Usually when I die it's because I'm getting gangbanged by 5+ dudes, and all resilience is gonna do is delay my death by about 10 seconds anyways.
If all you have is the trinket right now, that's not enough to make any appreciable difference.
Okay, so your fear with Wintergrasp was that faction balance would lead to one side dominating. So you made attacking easy to help with that. Understood.
But by the time Tol Barad rolled in, you had a system to balance sides. So you made defending easier because...you didn't spend any real time actually testing it in beta. Was that so hard to admit, Blizzard?
That said, I'm not particularly comfortable with how they're trying to use PvE dailies and a raid as "rewards" or incentatives for participating in the battle, because neither are actually rewards for participing in the battle. It is perfectly possible to never, ever set foot in a TB attack or defense, and still get your raid done once every week. Same goes for dailies.
What happened in WG on my old shitty server was basically that you'd have a few never-say-die idiots (myself included) who'd wok their asses of to win WG with shitloads of tenacity, win (every now and then), and then have twice again as many idlers from Dalaran show up and be like OH HAI GUISE, LFG ARCH.
They need to base the game theoretical analysis of participating in the battle on, surprise, participating in the battle. When you can get the same rewards without participating, it's like a study of why communism works poorly.
(For instance, their post would suggest that they figured that even with 1.8K honour in attacking, the playerbase wouldn't start wintrading because access to the dailies/raid would be worth more. But it's not, to the people that actually fight the battles.)
TB is supposed to be like Isle of Quel'Danas, but with a PvP battle to determine who gets more dailies. Not a bad idea in theory.
The problem is, unlike IoQD, TB has little to really offer most people. The only people grinding it out are those going for some mounts or something. It's not a critical for making money as it was back in TBC. And money is what kept people coming back to IoQD, despite the ganking.
Not to mention, they haven't really explained why we should care. Look at WG when they turned the dailies into weeklys. On Tuesday evening, after I've finished my quests and the raid... why should I continue to give a shit about control over WG? There's nothing left for me to do in the zone for the week, so whether or not we control it or not doesn't make a lick of difference to me. TB has the same issue. After I'm locked out of the raid, why should I care if we control it? The dailies? A semi decent source of gold I guess, but it's not like I'm going to shit a brick if I miss out every so often. And the rep? Ok... and when I'm exalted and have no more use for it? We're right back to square one: Why should I care?
Oh yeah, and I got a real kick out of their explanation on the 1800 honor bit. They don't want the zone to be a flip-flop... but any child with an understanding of basic math could have told you that giving 1800 for a win would do exactly that. There's another reason why people won't care. Blizz makes these completely idiotic design decisions that makes them look like they have no clue what they're doing.
Barring some divine miracle, I really don't think you're going to make players truly care about PVP, so trying to balance it around this non-existent desire makes no real sense.
I just sort of treat it like Team Fortress wherein dying is trivial.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I expect something completely useless, like tank speed and damage to towers has been increased, and the GY that attackers use near each base, is now slightly closer and has a slightly larger area where you have spiritual immunity.
You know; buffs that nobody asked for.