Rogue / Druid is usually Rogue / Restokin (druid with a mix of some boomkin and some resto talents) or Rogue / Resto. Rogue / Feral has difficulty with any class they can't burn down very quickly: Once the initial cheapshot - rawr - rawr - rawr - DIE! is over, you've got a very vulnerable rogue and a feral druid that can't very well heal. Priest / Rogue will be easy against bad players (priest dies instantly) and terrible against good players (first player to trinket a fear = blind, sap). Anything / Paladin could go badly due to fight resets with BoP or bubble.
Teh intarwebs also told me that is the key to succeeding in the comp is offensive CC and keeping up pressure with DoTs, until it's time to burst someone down. Luckily I suck at both of those, so now I have an excuse to practice.
The thing I'd like to see are more maps and better implemented mechanics. They've tried to implement all these different rulesets and ended up not doing them very well. All the old maps could stand to be redesigned and they need to have multiple maps per ruleset.
Right now there's often no reason to defend nodes or complete objectives since you get more honor zerging around and farming HKs. I bust my butt to win and someone who just ran around the entire match ends up getting more honor. It's dumb but they're going to try and fix that.
I'd like to see maps based on actual in-game zones. How cool would it be to assault Stormwind or Org as an actual BG map? Or fight for control over Dun Morogh or something. Someone talked about taking a strike team and assaulting the flying ships in Icecrown. Stuff like that would make for a cool pvp match. They need to shake things up a little and come up with some unconventional ideas for maps and matches.
Balance will never be perfect and I'm fine with that so long as the maps are interesting and fun.
The thing I'd like to see are more maps and better implemented mechanics. They've tried to implement all these different rulesets and ended up not doing them very well. All the old maps could stand to be redesigned and they need to have multiple maps per ruleset.
Right now there's often no reason to defend nodes or complete objectives since you get more honor zerging around and farming HKs. I bust my butt to win and someone who just ran around the entire match ends up getting more honor. It's dumb but they're going to try and fix that.
I'd like to see maps based on actual in-game zones. How cool would it be to assault Stormwind or Org as an actual BG map? Or fight for control over Dun Morogh or something. Someone talked about taking a strike team and assaulting the flying ships in Icecrown. Stuff like that would make for a cool pvp match. They need to shake things up a little and come up with some unconventional ideas for maps and matches.
Balance will never be perfect and I'm fine with that so long as the maps are interesting and fun.
With Blizzard basically allowing zones to be instanced for an individual player this wouldn't be too hard to do. I think a capture the flag game on the flying ships in Icecrown would be pretty fun. Assaulting and defending capital cities would also be pretty easy to do and quite fun.
Want them to alleviate AFKing and uneven starts, and promote strategy and teamwork over zergs and HK farming?
Want a system that allows both PuGs and premades to coexist without ridiculous queue times or PuGs getting rolled?
Want a system where you could requeue with a good team?
Want to be able to earn top shelf gear from top shelf BG wins?
Check out the suggestions forum thread linked below! Here are the basics of the thread, if you like, please follow the link and read at least the first page, it goes into way more detail and rationale. And /sign, /bump, comment, troll, whatever it takes to keep this in Blizzard's eye!
(1) More honor for winning, completing objectives, etc. None for kills.
(2) When a BG ends, you can choose to 'requeue with this group'.
(3) Three tier levels per BG queue. The green, blue, and purple tiers. Winning promotes you / your team to the higher tiers, which are worth more honor.
(4) On BG holidays, an orange tier for that BG becomes available. Winning at orange gives access to top gear.
I am *very* worried about Blizz's plans for "ranked BGs", I don't want to have to form up a set team and get everyone online. I don't want to include certain friends and exclude others. I don't want to have a rating that causes strife between teammates... I just want really, really fun BGs again, where good teams can play other good teams and get gear or whatever.
Also, fuck the WSG timer, shorter AB / EotS, and all the other infected band-aids Blizz throws on BGs because they don't understand or refuse to address the fundamental *causes* of BG deterioration! Real PvPers who remember the good ole days of PvP guilds and playing (mostly) for fun need to have their voices and opinions heard!
pdo400 on
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Have to respectfully disagree on this one point. I can understand not liking it if you have two good premade groups going at it (maybe they should have a specialty WSG with no timer for this expressed purpose?), but in a pug the last thing in the world I want to put up with is an endless game with a bunch of morons that couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
Pugging Gulch without a timer was always a trial in patience/insanity. I don't go into Gulch for group clusterfucks with no attention paid to the purpose of the battle: Capture the Flag. I've said for years now that if Bliz wants to encourage what most Gulch matches deteriorate into, they need to just make an instance with EOTS type starting platforms and a giant Field of Strife (NO objectives) in the middle. That way people who have no intention of playing Capture the Flag can GTFO of my enjoyment of CTF and go mindlessly beat on each other there (I'd join in on occasion too...a Morbias-style "kill, die, spawn and do it again" madness would certainly have its perks when you just need to crush some skulls).
Have to respectfully disagree on this one point. I can understand not liking it if you have two good premade groups going at it (maybe they should have a specialty WSG with no timer for this expressed purpose?), but in a pug the last thing in the world I want to put up with is an endless game with a bunch of morons that couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
Well some sort of timer would be a good idea, just not a hard time limit. Something like a 15 minute timer that resets on each flag cap. And the first cap should be worth x honor, the second 2x, the third 4x. That way good, hard fought games can still occur, but the mindless zerg-the-middle fests wouldn't go on indefinitely. And there would be incentive to cap more than one flag instead of just capping one then turtle.
pdo400 on
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I disagree with your OP about waiting until you have the latest Honor gear before getting on an arena team. I would recommend getting on a junk 5v5 as soon as you can. Even with a 0 rating, you get +350 points a week, which is enough to buy a piece of honor gear at a huge discount from the Apprentice Arena Vendor.
You read my OP wrong. It's not an order, really, but more of a focus. If you actually read my whole OP, you see that I indeed say that playing 10 games a week should be your minimum in order to start saving up points.
EDIT: I went ahead and clarified that bit just in case.
I PvPed extensively in the TBC days but haven't been as active in WotLK. Could someone fill me in vis a vis Death Knights? I'm only vaguely familiar with the class, and I'm wondering what I should be looking for (big cooldowns, weaknesses, strengths, nasty tricks, etc.)
I PvPed extensively in the TBC days but haven't been as active in WotLK. Could someone fill me in vis a vis Death Knights? I'm only vaguely familiar with the class, and I'm wondering what I should be looking for (big cooldowns, weaknesses, strengths, nasty tricks, etc.)
Death Knights used to be a lot nastier in PvP then they used to be, however, they still are decent. I'm sure someone who plays a DK can give you better pointers, but I can offer some insight based on my limited knowledge of fighting DKs.
DKs have death grip which yanks a player from far away to right next to them. This can be used simply to get a ranged class into melee range (and into the waiting blades of a stealthed rogue, for example) or to rip someone out of range or LOS of their healer or off of a platform etc. Quite useful.
DKs have an ability that lets them go stun and fear immune, which is quite nice. And they also have some decent anti-magic shields they can throw up. I believe they have one ranged interrupt/silence and one melee interrupt.
Depending on their spec they might have some good big cooldown moves. Ice DKs can do an AoE soft freeze that lasts for quite a while, blood can summon a duplicate weapon (just stay away while it is up) and I guess unholy has its gargoyle, a temporary pet that just nukes over and over.
One of the problems with DKs is that outside of the stun on their ghoul pet I believe that they don't have any stuns. Another problem is that in my experience that their raw damage output just isn't that much and they are pretty easy to heal through as far as PvP DPS goes.
I PvPed extensively in the TBC days but haven't been as active in WotLK. Could someone fill me in vis a vis Death Knights? I'm only vaguely familiar with the class, and I'm wondering what I should be looking for (big cooldowns, weaknesses, strengths, nasty tricks, etc.)
Death Knights used to be a lot nastier in PvP then they used to be, however, they still are decent. I'm sure someone who plays a DK can give you better pointers, but I can offer some insight based on my limited knowledge of fighting DKs.
DKs have death grip which yanks a player from far away to right next to them. This can be used simply to get a ranged class into melee range (and into the waiting blades of a stealthed rogue, for example) or to rip someone out of range or LOS of their healer or off of a platform etc. Quite useful.
DKs have an ability that lets them go stun and fear immune, which is quite nice. And they also have some decent anti-magic shields they can throw up. I believe they have one ranged interrupt/silence and one melee interrupt.
Depending on their spec they might have some good big cooldown moves. Ice DKs can do an AoE soft freeze that lasts for quite a while, blood can summon a duplicate weapon (just stay away while it is up) and I guess unholy has its gargoyle, a temporary pet that just nukes over and over.
One of the problems with DKs is that outside of the stun on their ghoul pet I believe that they don't have any stuns. Another problem is that in my experience that their raw damage output just isn't that much and they are pretty easy to heal through as far as PvP DPS goes.
Anything I should know in regards to big strengths or weaknesses? Things like "don't sap a warrior" or "never waste a big stun on a mage with blink ready?" I can see they're a kind of reverse-warrior, big damage, big survivability, no MS, and a reverse-intercept. Are they vulnerable to kiting like rogues, or does the runic power set bonus on their armor make it dangerous? Is it worthwhile to spam dispel / cleanse their diseases to cut their damage, or can they re-apply those so easily it isn't feasible to keep them off? Can they break stuns or merely become immune to them?
Stuff like that. I appreciate the advice, but I'm already kind of familiar with what they do, I'm more interested in, strategically, what a DK wants to happen and what they're afraid of.
Anything I should know in regards to big strengths or weaknesses? Things like "don't sap a warrior" or "never waste a big stun on a mage with blink ready?" I can see they're a kind of reverse-warrior, big damage, big survivability, no MS, and a reverse-intercept. Are they vulnerable to kiting like rogues, or does the runic power set bonus on their armor make it dangerous? Is it worthwhile to spam dispel / cleanse their diseases to cut their damage, or can they re-apply those so easily it isn't feasible to keep them off? Can they break stuns or merely become immune to them?
Stuff like that. I appreciate the advice, but I'm already kind of familiar with what they do, I'm more interested in, strategically, what a DK wants to happen and what they're afraid of.
Heh, I'll have to ask the healer I run with for that.
As far as fighting DKs on my lock I either keep them feared or burst them down with my combo.
Anything I should know in regards to big strengths or weaknesses? Things like "don't sap a warrior" or "never waste a big stun on a mage with blink ready?" I can see they're a kind of reverse-warrior, big damage, big survivability, no MS, and a reverse-intercept. Are they vulnerable to kiting like rogues, or does the runic power set bonus on their armor make it dangerous? Is it worthwhile to spam dispel / cleanse their diseases to cut their damage, or can they re-apply those so easily it isn't feasible to keep them off? Can they break stuns or merely become immune to them?
Stuff like that. I appreciate the advice, but I'm already kind of familiar with what they do, I'm more interested in, strategically, what a DK wants to happen and what they're afraid of.
I think it depends quite a bit on what spec. I'm not aware of the mechanics of DK's, so I'll most likely get something wrong.
Things worthy of note; Lichborne, which makes you immune to Fear / Charm / Sleep and makes you undead for 15 seconds (not 100% positive, but I think that makes you immune to poly / hex as well). They are, of course, subject to anti-undead spells during this period.
In 3vs3 (I'm oversimplifying here), the idea is the DK grips a healer around a corner, at which point he pop's Lichborne, and he along with another dps that can make themselves immune to CC (so a warrior, or a BM hunter who can both apply an MS effect and interupt) pretty much burst down the healer before the other team can react.
Unholy rely on their diseases to do their dps, blood can seemingly heal himself for quite a bit, while frost atm can put out some silly amounts of burst (but then everyone can) thanks to a Sigil (but I understand that's getting nerfed in 3.2).
Dk's can peel people off their healers incredibly well, with Deathgrip, a ranged root (which will be changed to a snare in 3.2) that seemingly can be spammed, in addition to being able to put down an aoe slow. With the possible exception of a frost mage, I don't think there's another class that can kite a DK in an effective and reliable manner. Oh and they've got a ghoul which stuns as well. In a 2vs2 situation, they seem to be able to look after themselves alot better while their healer is off-drinking.
Overall, coming across a well-played DK you are going to have a rough time.
If playing as a resto shaman, you put down a cleansing totem to deal with diseases, put pressure on the DK to keep snaring you by using earthbind around a pillar, grounding totem when you can so as to eat the deathgrip, maybe put down a frost resistance totem (well I do anyway, don't know if it works), and save my glyphed stoneclaw totem for when he stragulates.
In theory, I think it will be a bit easier for a r.shaman to get away from a DK, with the change in ghostwolf and the shock cooldowns (3.2 will have windshock on a seperate cooldown to the other shocks, which means you no longer have to compromise in using say frostshock at the expense of your interupt), but it might very well different in practice.
Just my experience when I've come across this class anyway.
(1) More honor for winning, completing objectives, etc. None for kills.
(2) When a BG ends, you can choose to 'requeue with this group'.
(3) Three tier levels per BG queue. The green, blue, and purple tiers. Winning promotes you / your team to the higher tiers, which are worth more honor.
(4) On BG holidays, an orange tier for that BG becomes available. Winning at orange gives access to top gear.
I am *very* worried about Blizz's plans for "ranked BGs", I don't want to have to form up a set team and get everyone online. I don't want to include certain friends and exclude others. I don't want to have a rating that causes strife between teammates... I just want really, really fun BGs again, where good teams can play other good teams and get gear or whatever.
So, has anyone else checked out the thread? A blue recently stated that they still don't have "fleshed out" ideas for "ranked" BGs, so now is the time to help them out... and Lord knows, Blizz needs all the help it can get when it comes to PvP!
P.S. I created a new thread in Damage Dealing with the main ideas from the original thread as blues actually post there. The quoted link has been changed to the new thread, as has my sig.
pdo400 on
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Good job on the OP. It's good advice to get folks started.
When an arena season is about to end, do they give folks a heads up so they can cash out their points for honor? It would suck to have 3,000 points go down the tubes because you didn't make the rating requirement in time to spend em.
I had a guildmate log on last night, saying there was a strong rumour that this arena season would be coming to an end in 4 weeks time. I'm pretty sure I remember blizz saying arena seasons would end one week after a patch, which would then obviously put the patch arriving in 3 weeks time.
If the above is untrue, then blizz can announce with as little as one week when a season is going to end, although by that point, most people know anyway.
With regards to rated BG's, I don't really know how they're going to go about it; a reason why 5's is so unpopular is trying to get everyone online at the same time; if you have a big bunch of people in a 5's team, then it puts people at different ratings, which itself starts causing problems.
As a side note, it's still pretty depressing that if you buy your pvp gear via honor, then this will be the third season where you're buying the same looking (albeit different coloured) set and for the most part they look rubbish. Yeah ok, TBC pvp sets were just recoloured versions of the pve sets, but at least they looked different each time; I know alot of reskinning goes on, but this seems to take the piss somewhat.
If it's so hard to get five people on at one time, then why is the WoW Raiding thread so big?
It's just weird. People have no problem getting 10 and 25 man raids together, but somehow 10 people for a WSG or just three for a BG is tough. I'd agree with getting that many good people together, but warm bodies?
Sterica on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
They're probably not gonna make rated BGs based on a team rating of any kind, but rather your personal rating.
If it's so hard to get five people on at one time, then why is the WoW Raiding thread so big?
It's just weird. People have no problem getting 10 and 25 man raids together, but somehow 10 people for a WSG or just three for a BG is tough. I'd agree with getting that many good people together, but warm bodies?
I don't know either; if I were to go "hey guys, anybody fancy a heroic" in my little guild, I could get 4 other guys easy enough, but if I went "hey guys, I'm going to start a 5vs5 arena just to do 10 games a week" I'd struggle to fill it up.
It's probably to do with the fact that pretty much every spec works in pve, whereas in pvp there are specs that really do struggle (for want of a better phrase), for just not being very good / effective, in addition to how some specs have an easier time regardless of their gear.
Some have to just take it up the arse while they grind out a pvp set; my shaman has got reasonable gear, but I just can't bring myself to set foot into any pvp environment with my shadow priest while attempting to get her a set; she'd just get eaten alive and I'm just not fond of the idea of dieing within seconds against some classes and not being able to do anything.
I'm aware that I'm probably being all doom and gloom, but I think in this expansion alot of people have been put off pvp, and not just for one reason.
Redcoat-13 on
PSN Fleety2009
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
If it's so hard to get five people on at one time, then why is the WoW Raiding thread so big?
It's just weird. People have no problem getting 10 and 25 man raids together, but somehow 10 people for a WSG or just three for a BG is tough. I'd agree with getting that many good people together, but warm bodies?
I don't know either; if I were to go "hey guys, anybody fancy a heroic" in my little guild, I could get 4 other guys easy enough, but if I went "hey guys, I'm going to start a 5vs5 arena just to do 10 games a week" I'd struggle to fill it up.
I'd imagine that's mainly caused by the widespread (and correct) belief that Arenas just aint no fun.
reVerse on
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
If it's so hard to get five people on at one time, then why is the WoW Raiding thread so big?
It's just weird. People have no problem getting 10 and 25 man raids together, but somehow 10 people for a WSG or just three for a BG is tough. I'd agree with getting that many good people together, but warm bodies?
I might be wrong, but I would think its harder to get the same 5 people on for an arena than just 10 capable people for a raid.
Sure you can have backups, but everyone knows that never works out.
I'd imagine that's mainly caused by the widespread (and correct) belief that Arenas just aint no fun.
subjectivity olol? I think Arenas are a blast.
Edit: Tried doing a 2v2 as an affliction lock with my friends prot pally and it just wasn't working, so I went back to destro and now it works like a charm. Went from 900 to 1200 rating today, so pretty pumped about that. Can't wait to start putting on more deadly gear so I can start gemming out of res/stam and into more spellpower.
Updated OP with warnings against backpeddling and clicking.
Nice.
You should add in a bit about making not keyboard turning in general and using mouse turning instead.
Also, you should add in a bit about changing your camera options so the camera doesn't automatically face in the same character that your character is facing, though this is most useful for classes with omni-directional instant cast spells like warlocks.
BEJEAVIS BEGINS CASTING WALL OF TEXT
You have been warned.
So like.. I was looking at the Season 7 models up on mmochampion... half musing, half drooling, half pants adjusting... admiring the Warlock set. Then I had something of a revelation. OK. Check this out.
Tier 9. It's a trainwreck. It looks god awful. Like seriously? Palette swapping? They might as well put up large bold print saying WE DEVOTED MINIMAL EFFORT TO THE DESIGN OF THESE SETS. Then I like backpedaled a bit in my mind... palette swapping.. where have I seen this... OH YEAH- S1,S2,S3. Hmm, so back in the day instead of wasting time designing new seperate models for their Arena sets, they just copied the corresponding tier sets and swapped the colors a bit. Point here is in terms of effort and design, PvP was the afterthought, and PvE was in the spotlight.
Fast forward a bit to the release of WOTLK. Now what happens? Well, now we have the TIER 7 set, which was lifted pretty much straight off of Tier 3. Smells like corner cutting. Also the arena sets are now seperate, but still look like minimal effort was invested. Point here being that in terms of effort the two sets appear to be on equal footing during this period. Lets go to season 6 / tier 8. Tier 8 looks pretty original save for the lolhorns everywhere. Season 6: arena gear was all of a sudden cool looking again.. almost like a seperate but equal thing goin on between tier and season gear at this point.
So that brings us to the present day. We are on the verge of a major content patch where the PvP aspect of the game appears to be receiving as much as and in some cases MORE attention than PvE. I mean I see it this way... we have an arena set that is getting put in that looks like it should be the tier sets, in regards to detail and design, and you look over the aisle and see the tier sets which look like they were done in less than a week. We are getting a whole new battleground, massive revisions to WG, massive revisions to old BG content (Timed WSG, Faster honor gains through reduced score caps, BONUS HONOR FOR FIGHTING ON NODES), massive arena changes to the tune of essentially removing an ENTIRE bracket, reworking of the prime PvP stat: Resilience... and if I missed anything, I apologize.
It looks like over this timeline, PvP has gone from just something that felt "Tacked On" to being something that appears to be getting more attention than the PvE aspect of the game. It definitely felt like Blizzard wanted EVERYONE and their MOTHER (literally) to be able to raid with the release of WOTLK. Reflecting on the above impressions.. could the winds of change be blowing?
/rant
bejeavis on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
I think Tier 9 looks awesome and I wish the PvP sets would look like that.
There is part of tier 9 design that is subjective. If you think it looks great, that is great. But you can't argue the fact that multiple classes using the same models is shabby as hell.
bejeavis on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
I don't think it's shabby. I think it's neat. Like the PvP sets in vanilla. I liked that.
Posts
What druid spec would work best? My first instinct is to go double-dps with Feral, but maybe tree would be better.
One of my friends runs a rogue/druid 2v2 as assassination/tree. They do pretty decently, all things considered.
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/2v2/Druid/Rogue/
Teh intarwebs also told me that is the key to succeeding in the comp is offensive CC and keeping up pressure with DoTs, until it's time to burst someone down. Luckily I suck at both of those, so now I have an excuse to practice.
Right now there's often no reason to defend nodes or complete objectives since you get more honor zerging around and farming HKs. I bust my butt to win and someone who just ran around the entire match ends up getting more honor. It's dumb but they're going to try and fix that.
I'd like to see maps based on actual in-game zones. How cool would it be to assault Stormwind or Org as an actual BG map? Or fight for control over Dun Morogh or something. Someone talked about taking a strike team and assaulting the flying ships in Icecrown. Stuff like that would make for a cool pvp match. They need to shake things up a little and come up with some unconventional ideas for maps and matches.
Balance will never be perfect and I'm fine with that so long as the maps are interesting and fun.
With Blizzard basically allowing zones to be instanced for an individual player this wouldn't be too hard to do. I think a capture the flag game on the flying ships in Icecrown would be pretty fun. Assaulting and defending capital cities would also be pretty easy to do and quite fun.
But I would totally PVP my ass off for rated BGs, that should be the ultimate test of teamwork and skill in this game rather than Arenas.
Want them to alleviate AFKing and uneven starts, and promote strategy and teamwork over zergs and HK farming?
Want a system that allows both PuGs and premades to coexist without ridiculous queue times or PuGs getting rolled?
Want a system where you could requeue with a good team?
Want to be able to earn top shelf gear from top shelf BG wins?
Check out the suggestions forum thread linked below! Here are the basics of the thread, if you like, please follow the link and read at least the first page, it goes into way more detail and rationale. And /sign, /bump, comment, troll, whatever it takes to keep this in Blizzard's eye!
How-to: Fix the BG Experience
(1) More honor for winning, completing objectives, etc. None for kills.
(2) When a BG ends, you can choose to 'requeue with this group'.
(3) Three tier levels per BG queue. The green, blue, and purple tiers. Winning promotes you / your team to the higher tiers, which are worth more honor.
(4) On BG holidays, an orange tier for that BG becomes available. Winning at orange gives access to top gear.
I am *very* worried about Blizz's plans for "ranked BGs", I don't want to have to form up a set team and get everyone online. I don't want to include certain friends and exclude others. I don't want to have a rating that causes strife between teammates... I just want really, really fun BGs again, where good teams can play other good teams and get gear or whatever.
Also, fuck the WSG timer, shorter AB / EotS, and all the other infected band-aids Blizz throws on BGs because they don't understand or refuse to address the fundamental *causes* of BG deterioration! Real PvPers who remember the good ole days of PvP guilds and playing (mostly) for fun need to have their voices and opinions heard!
How-to: Fix the BG experience
Have to respectfully disagree on this one point. I can understand not liking it if you have two good premade groups going at it (maybe they should have a specialty WSG with no timer for this expressed purpose?), but in a pug the last thing in the world I want to put up with is an endless game with a bunch of morons that couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
Pugging Gulch without a timer was always a trial in patience/insanity. I don't go into Gulch for group clusterfucks with no attention paid to the purpose of the battle: Capture the Flag. I've said for years now that if Bliz wants to encourage what most Gulch matches deteriorate into, they need to just make an instance with EOTS type starting platforms and a giant Field of Strife (NO objectives) in the middle. That way people who have no intention of playing Capture the Flag can GTFO of my enjoyment of CTF and go mindlessly beat on each other there (I'd join in on occasion too...a Morbias-style "kill, die, spawn and do it again" madness would certainly have its perks when you just need to crush some skulls).
Pins!
How-to: Fix the BG experience
Therefore, Bliz will implement it in patch 5.1...because they always take forever with the good ideas.
:x
Pins!
EDIT: I went ahead and clarified that bit just in case.
What does it do exactly? Is it only used in arena matches or is it useful for BGs too?
Death Knights used to be a lot nastier in PvP then they used to be, however, they still are decent. I'm sure someone who plays a DK can give you better pointers, but I can offer some insight based on my limited knowledge of fighting DKs.
DKs have death grip which yanks a player from far away to right next to them. This can be used simply to get a ranged class into melee range (and into the waiting blades of a stealthed rogue, for example) or to rip someone out of range or LOS of their healer or off of a platform etc. Quite useful.
DKs have an ability that lets them go stun and fear immune, which is quite nice. And they also have some decent anti-magic shields they can throw up. I believe they have one ranged interrupt/silence and one melee interrupt.
Depending on their spec they might have some good big cooldown moves. Ice DKs can do an AoE soft freeze that lasts for quite a while, blood can summon a duplicate weapon (just stay away while it is up) and I guess unholy has its gargoyle, a temporary pet that just nukes over and over.
One of the problems with DKs is that outside of the stun on their ghoul pet I believe that they don't have any stuns. Another problem is that in my experience that their raw damage output just isn't that much and they are pretty easy to heal through as far as PvP DPS goes.
Anything I should know in regards to big strengths or weaknesses? Things like "don't sap a warrior" or "never waste a big stun on a mage with blink ready?" I can see they're a kind of reverse-warrior, big damage, big survivability, no MS, and a reverse-intercept. Are they vulnerable to kiting like rogues, or does the runic power set bonus on their armor make it dangerous? Is it worthwhile to spam dispel / cleanse their diseases to cut their damage, or can they re-apply those so easily it isn't feasible to keep them off? Can they break stuns or merely become immune to them?
Stuff like that. I appreciate the advice, but I'm already kind of familiar with what they do, I'm more interested in, strategically, what a DK wants to happen and what they're afraid of.
Heh, I'll have to ask the healer I run with for that.
As far as fighting DKs on my lock I either keep them feared or burst them down with my combo.
I think it depends quite a bit on what spec. I'm not aware of the mechanics of DK's, so I'll most likely get something wrong.
Things worthy of note; Lichborne, which makes you immune to Fear / Charm / Sleep and makes you undead for 15 seconds (not 100% positive, but I think that makes you immune to poly / hex as well). They are, of course, subject to anti-undead spells during this period.
In 3vs3 (I'm oversimplifying here), the idea is the DK grips a healer around a corner, at which point he pop's Lichborne, and he along with another dps that can make themselves immune to CC (so a warrior, or a BM hunter who can both apply an MS effect and interupt) pretty much burst down the healer before the other team can react.
Unholy rely on their diseases to do their dps, blood can seemingly heal himself for quite a bit, while frost atm can put out some silly amounts of burst (but then everyone can) thanks to a Sigil (but I understand that's getting nerfed in 3.2).
Dk's can peel people off their healers incredibly well, with Deathgrip, a ranged root (which will be changed to a snare in 3.2) that seemingly can be spammed, in addition to being able to put down an aoe slow. With the possible exception of a frost mage, I don't think there's another class that can kite a DK in an effective and reliable manner. Oh and they've got a ghoul which stuns as well. In a 2vs2 situation, they seem to be able to look after themselves alot better while their healer is off-drinking.
Overall, coming across a well-played DK you are going to have a rough time.
If playing as a resto shaman, you put down a cleansing totem to deal with diseases, put pressure on the DK to keep snaring you by using earthbind around a pillar, grounding totem when you can so as to eat the deathgrip, maybe put down a frost resistance totem (well I do anyway, don't know if it works), and save my glyphed stoneclaw totem for when he stragulates.
In theory, I think it will be a bit easier for a r.shaman to get away from a DK, with the change in ghostwolf and the shock cooldowns (3.2 will have windshock on a seperate cooldown to the other shocks, which means you no longer have to compromise in using say frostshock at the expense of your interupt), but it might very well different in practice.
Just my experience when I've come across this class anyway.
So, has anyone else checked out the thread? A blue recently stated that they still don't have "fleshed out" ideas for "ranked" BGs, so now is the time to help them out... and Lord knows, Blizz needs all the help it can get when it comes to PvP!
P.S. I created a new thread in Damage Dealing with the main ideas from the original thread as blues actually post there. The quoted link has been changed to the new thread, as has my sig.
How-to: Fix the BG experience
When an arena season is about to end, do they give folks a heads up so they can cash out their points for honor? It would suck to have 3,000 points go down the tubes because you didn't make the rating requirement in time to spend em.
If the above is untrue, then blizz can announce with as little as one week when a season is going to end, although by that point, most people know anyway.
With regards to rated BG's, I don't really know how they're going to go about it; a reason why 5's is so unpopular is trying to get everyone online at the same time; if you have a big bunch of people in a 5's team, then it puts people at different ratings, which itself starts causing problems.
As a side note, it's still pretty depressing that if you buy your pvp gear via honor, then this will be the third season where you're buying the same looking (albeit different coloured) set and for the most part they look rubbish. Yeah ok, TBC pvp sets were just recoloured versions of the pve sets, but at least they looked different each time; I know alot of reskinning goes on, but this seems to take the piss somewhat.
It's just weird. People have no problem getting 10 and 25 man raids together, but somehow 10 people for a WSG or just three for a BG is tough. I'd agree with getting that many good people together, but warm bodies?
I don't know either; if I were to go "hey guys, anybody fancy a heroic" in my little guild, I could get 4 other guys easy enough, but if I went "hey guys, I'm going to start a 5vs5 arena just to do 10 games a week" I'd struggle to fill it up.
It's probably to do with the fact that pretty much every spec works in pve, whereas in pvp there are specs that really do struggle (for want of a better phrase), for just not being very good / effective, in addition to how some specs have an easier time regardless of their gear.
Some have to just take it up the arse while they grind out a pvp set; my shaman has got reasonable gear, but I just can't bring myself to set foot into any pvp environment with my shadow priest while attempting to get her a set; she'd just get eaten alive and I'm just not fond of the idea of dieing within seconds against some classes and not being able to do anything.
I'm aware that I'm probably being all doom and gloom, but I think in this expansion alot of people have been put off pvp, and not just for one reason.
I'd imagine that's mainly caused by the widespread (and correct) belief that Arenas just aint no fun.
I might be wrong, but I would think its harder to get the same 5 people on for an arena than just 10 capable people for a raid.
Sure you can have backups, but everyone knows that never works out.
subjectivity olol? I think Arenas are a blast.
Edit: Tried doing a 2v2 as an affliction lock with my friends prot pally and it just wasn't working, so I went back to destro and now it works like a charm. Went from 900 to 1200 rating today, so pretty pumped about that. Can't wait to start putting on more deadly gear so I can start gemming out of res/stam and into more spellpower.
Nice.
You should add in a bit about making not keyboard turning in general and using mouse turning instead.
Also, you should add in a bit about changing your camera options so the camera doesn't automatically face in the same character that your character is facing, though this is most useful for classes with omni-directional instant cast spells like warlocks.
You have been warned.
So like.. I was looking at the Season 7 models up on mmochampion... half musing, half drooling, half pants adjusting... admiring the Warlock set. Then I had something of a revelation. OK. Check this out.
Tier 9. It's a trainwreck. It looks god awful. Like seriously? Palette swapping? They might as well put up large bold print saying WE DEVOTED MINIMAL EFFORT TO THE DESIGN OF THESE SETS. Then I like backpedaled a bit in my mind... palette swapping.. where have I seen this... OH YEAH- S1,S2,S3. Hmm, so back in the day instead of wasting time designing new seperate models for their Arena sets, they just copied the corresponding tier sets and swapped the colors a bit. Point here is in terms of effort and design, PvP was the afterthought, and PvE was in the spotlight.
Fast forward a bit to the release of WOTLK. Now what happens? Well, now we have the TIER 7 set, which was lifted pretty much straight off of Tier 3. Smells like corner cutting. Also the arena sets are now seperate, but still look like minimal effort was invested. Point here being that in terms of effort the two sets appear to be on equal footing during this period. Lets go to season 6 / tier 8. Tier 8 looks pretty original save for the lolhorns everywhere. Season 6: arena gear was all of a sudden cool looking again.. almost like a seperate but equal thing goin on between tier and season gear at this point.
So that brings us to the present day. We are on the verge of a major content patch where the PvP aspect of the game appears to be receiving as much as and in some cases MORE attention than PvE. I mean I see it this way... we have an arena set that is getting put in that looks like it should be the tier sets, in regards to detail and design, and you look over the aisle and see the tier sets which look like they were done in less than a week. We are getting a whole new battleground, massive revisions to WG, massive revisions to old BG content (Timed WSG, Faster honor gains through reduced score caps, BONUS HONOR FOR FIGHTING ON NODES), massive arena changes to the tune of essentially removing an ENTIRE bracket, reworking of the prime PvP stat: Resilience... and if I missed anything, I apologize.
It looks like over this timeline, PvP has gone from just something that felt "Tacked On" to being something that appears to be getting more attention than the PvE aspect of the game. It definitely felt like Blizzard wanted EVERYONE and their MOTHER (literally) to be able to raid with the release of WOTLK. Reflecting on the above impressions.. could the winds of change be blowing?
/rant