Personally it's an unusual circumstance where i go into a BG and not encounter a frost mage (often multiples). The least fun I've ever had in WSG involved 3 frost mages on the Alliance side controlling mid, and all of them would start spamming spellsteal on me as soon as they saw a pretty graphic pop up. Yeah, even getting off the GY was a chore.
I do agree something should be done about frost mages now though, even if I didn't PVP (which I've largely given up on), due to the arms race they cause between ranged and melee classes.
I agree that they're becoming too prevalent due to their OPness, and there is usually at least one present on the other team, but, despite their godly powers, they can't be everywhere at once, nor attacking everyone at once. You should at least be able to have some fun when you're not being targeted by one, which should be at least some of the time. If you can help it, try to fight at nodes/flags where a frost mage isn't. Obviously there's not much hope when the other team is 30% mages, but that shouldn't always be the case. I would say most melee don't have much fun when a frost mage has turned its mighty, omnipotent gaze toward them, so that's not really a ret paladin thing. It's definitely the frost mage that is the problem in the current PvP picture.
I hope the Mists setup brings classes more in line with each other as far as control/utility/output, but I'm not optimistic since the last 7 years haven't been great.
Was that the blue post, that was in reply to a guy asking about the diminishing returns of all the different things a Frost mage can do? It almost seemed as though, through that act of writing out a list with multiple categories, that maybe this spec was a tad over the top.
What really irks me, is that Frost has a tonne of control, and yet Impact in the fire tree is still they can comfortably spec for. How did that get through the Q&A?
G’day all!
Just off the top of my head, this is how diminishing returns works for mages:
* Deep Freeze is on the stun diminishing returns.
* Ring of Frost and Polymorph are on the disorient DR.
* The mage Frost Nova and the Water Elemental's Freeze are both on the root DR.
* Improved Cone of Cold and Shattered Barrier are on the random root DR.
* There are also several snares which are not affected by DR, such as Frostbolt
The random root DR mentioned is actually a separate category to normal roots. We reserve this only for effects that are procs, instead of those that are the general effect of a spell. This is a very subtle and subjective classification that often comes down to simply what feels right.
Currently, we think that Frost mages have too much control in PvP. This is just something that has grown over time because we always felt that these "chilling" and "freezing" effects should naturally slow you down. Part of the design that we are implementing with the Mists of Pandaria talent changes are to move some of that control Frost mages have to the talent tree. This means it will be possible for a Frost mage to choose these options, but they come at the expense of others, Arcane and Fire mages also have the opportunity to get those control choices as well! :O
The overall effect of this is that Arcane and Fire should stay about neutral in regards to their control, but frost will lose some of it. On the other hand though, it is possible for a Frost's damage to go up and be competitive with that of the other mages if they do not go for the control talents.
As for impact...it was always at a point where Frost Mages could get it, and it was available to them as far back as Vanilla if they wanted to spec into it.
Given the likelihood of Blizz not nerfing Frost Mages in PVP before MoP, I should just ride the train for PVP achievements while I can.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I feel like they should just put all movement stopping abilities on the same DR. Anything that takes away player control should be on one gd DR. Kidney punch, colossus slam, cheap shot, polymorph, fear, all of that shit, one DR. Everything that slows player movement should be on another DR. Hamstring, wing clip, slow, etc. Nobody IN THE HISTORY OF FUCKING GAMES likes having control of their character removed from them. It's so blindingly obvious I don't understand why this hasn't happened yet.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
I started playing MMOs with Asheron's Call, so I fucking hate CC. You could only Debuff in that game to slow them down* or make them miss their attacks. That was it. That's what I got used to, and then I started playing DAoC. The first time my friends and I killed a huge group of players while our Healer friend spammed his AE Stun we laughed our asses off. Then we got our asses handed to us by some Hibs because their Bard got off their AE mez first, and could always get it off first on us. Sitting there not being able to do anything as I waited for my turn to be gang raped was not fun. And I quit that game then.
It got better mind you, but at that point I have always took the stance of "Fucking CC should not be in PvP" and I've had to deal with it in every dumb ass game since. I long for a remake of AC.
*didn't really do anything unless they were close to being encumbered and you debuffed their strength. Then they would start dropping trash items on the ground to try and continue running away. So much fun.
G’day all!
Just off the top of my head, this is how diminishing returns works for mages:
* Deep Freeze is on the stun diminishing returns.
* Ring of Frost and Polymorph are on the disorient DR.
* The mage Frost Nova and the Water Elemental's Freeze are both on the root DR.
* Improved Cone of Cold and Shattered Barrier are on the random root DR.
* There are also several snares which are not affected by DR, such as Frostbolt
The random root DR mentioned is actually a separate category to normal roots. We reserve this only for effects that are procs, instead of those that are the general effect of a spell. This is a very subtle and subjective classification that often comes down to simply what feels right.
Currently, we think that Frost mages have too much control in PvP. This is just something that has grown over time because we always felt that these "chilling" and "freezing" effects should naturally slow you down. Part of the design that we are implementing with the Mists of Pandaria talent changes are to move some of that control Frost mages have to the talent tree. This means it will be possible for a Frost mage to choose these options, but they come at the expense of others, Arcane and Fire mages also have the opportunity to get those control choices as well! :O
The overall effect of this is that Arcane and Fire should stay about neutral in regards to their control, but frost will lose some of it. On the other hand though, it is possible for a Frost's damage to go up and be competitive with that of the other mages if they do not go for the control talents.
As for impact...it was always at a point where Frost Mages could get it, and it was available to them as far back as Vanilla if they wanted to spec into it.
Given the likelihood of Blizz not nerfing Frost Mages in PVP before MoP, I should just ride the train for PVP achievements while I can.
Yes, that's the one. The blue left out both Impact stun and CS silence (both of which a frost mage can spec for at the same time). Silence is of course on a completely separate DR from stuns and disorients.
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Impact is on the random stun, so also seperate from everything else, right? And CS silence is one of the silliest mechanics in this game. I'm fine with SP silence, because they have no interrupt, but I hate Mage silence passionately.
I started playing MMOs with Asheron's Call, so I fucking hate CC. You could only Debuff in that game to slow them down* or make them miss their attacks. That was it. That's what I got used to, and then I started playing DAoC. The first time my friends and I killed a huge group of players while our Healer friend spammed his AE Stun we laughed our asses off. Then we got our asses handed to us by some Hibs because their Bard got off their AE mez first, and could always get it off first on us. Sitting there not being able to do anything as I waited for my turn to be gang raped was not fun. And I quit that game then.
Exactly my experience. The AE mez nonsense in DAoC made me quit. Of course, AC had all sorts of huge problems as well that made it not palatable to me.
Like darklite said, there are simply too many DR categories for CCs. It's absolute nonsense that you can go from stun to polymorph to silence to fear to horror, and all of them can last their full duration. Stuns and silences have also become far too prevalent, and they have no "end early on too much damage" component.
Awww, I sparked a bunch of Ret hate and I missed it.
Well regardless of what side of the balance line you stand on, I stopped having fun playing Ret right after patch 1.7.. The fact of the matter is that Ret has a lot of abilities that can be cast on others, and that carries a balance penalty. I've since leveled a warrior and DK, and found both to be more enjoyable: now thematically I wish that Ret was the badass in that group, but I've settled for pretending my DK isn't quite so evil...or undead for that matter.
I'm interested in how the Guardian in GW2 is going to turn out, but then again the structure in that game is very different. When are we going to get some more info on MoP?
There was a blue post on the 9th, saying that there was going to be a "deluge" of information about MoP coming out soon, starting with the event leading up to the start of the expansion.
Spoiler of what the event is, in case people are unaware
the sacking of Theramore
I suspect this is when Blizz will try showcase all this new questing stuff they've been talking about.
Awww, I sparked a bunch of Ret hate and I missed it.
Well regardless of what side of the balance line you stand on, I stopped having fun playing Ret right after patch 1.7.. The fact of the matter is that Ret has a lot of abilities that can be cast on others, and that carries a balance penalty. I've since leveled a warrior and DK, and found both to be more enjoyable: now thematically I wish that Ret was the badass in that group, but I've settled for pretending my DK isn't quite so evil...or undead for that matter.
I'm interested in how the Guardian in GW2 is going to turn out, but then again the structure in that game is very different. When are we going to get some more info on MoP?
Basically I look at the 4.0-4.3 ret as Blizzard's test on a Utility class, and it failed. The cata model is you either bring lots of dps, or lots of healing, and the ability to do such between bouts of being locked by CC.
Rets were an attempt to bring some healing with some DPS and a ton of utility. Then they nerfed the ever loving hell out of the healing aspect of it and didn't slide the DPS portion up.
@nobody, I'll buy what you're saying completely. Just from a personal standpoint, the lack of a snare on a melee class is a crime against humanity pet peeve to me; and while there are a lot of "arguments" out there about how it's not needed (abundance, Ret's anti-snare capabilities, 1v1 pvp lol), none of them held any water for me whenever I found myself endlessly chasing a priest, lock, hunter, or any other class down, with the game clearly showing my pelvis lodged up their ass, and the game telling me I'm out of range for some bullshit latency problem.
I'm really excited now for Ret in MoP. Prot looks like it still needs some work (Blizz has said that all the tanking classes still do), and Holy will need some number balancing once they figure out how much spells are going to cost, etc. The only thing that I'm worried about right now, is that our mana regeneration is a fixed amount over time, but our mana expenditures will increase with more haste (more haste = more abilities used in the same amount of time). I wonder how that's going to be solved, and I hope the answer isn't Seal of Insight juggling.
I haven't given the critical eye to the other specs though, I reserve the right to be grumpy and jaded about Ret again if I find out that Warriors get some newer, awesomer ability that deals 50% of the opponent's health and transforms it into sparkly rainbow energy that heals everyone on their faction's side for infinity plus. Or if Frost Mages get Polymorph: Cake (not a lie).
@nobody, I'll buy what you're saying completely. Just from a personal standpoint, the lack of a snare on a melee class is a crime against humanity pet peeve to me; and while there are a lot of "arguments" out there about how it's not needed (abundance, Ret's anti-snare capabilities, 1v1 pvp lol), none of them held any water for me whenever I found myself endlessly chasing a priest, lock, hunter, or any other class down, with the game clearly showing my pelvis lodged up their ass, and the game telling me I'm out of range for some bullshit latency problem.
I'm really excited now for Ret in MoP. Prot looks like it still needs some work (Blizz has said that all the tanking classes still do), and Holy will need some number balancing once they figure out how much spells are going to cost, etc. The only thing that I'm worried about right now, is that our mana regeneration is a fixed amount over time, but our mana expenditures will increase with more haste (more haste = more abilities used in the same amount of time). I wonder how that's going to be solved, and I hope the answer isn't Seal of Insight juggling.
I haven't given the critical eye to the other specs though, I reserve the right to be grumpy and jaded about Ret again if I find out that Warriors get some newer, awesomer ability that deals 50% of the opponent's health and transforms it into sparkly rainbow energy that heals everyone on their faction's side for infinity plus. Or if Frost Mages get Polymorph: Cake (not a lie).
Blizzard goes between "tanks should be viable in PVP" and "tanks should just be flag carriers/for the last boss in IOC&AV"
Right now we're in the later. I expect we'll see tanks (well, pally tanks anyway) become more useful in PVP in MoP, but I'm not putting money on it.
Tank viability in pvp soul come from "hard to kill, this annoying", not "hard to kill this annoying AND they do damage as good as a dps class that is far squishier"
It's the effect of Arena, and what it does to player perception. These kinds of games aren't meant to be played in a small confined area as a 1 life death match. They are fun for what they are, but most classes really only have 1 spec that is viable for that type of gameplay. And even then, some compositions are ridiculously better than others, and there seems to always be a trend with certain classes being in almost every group.
Tanks play just fine in PvP, when it's a Battleground or Tol Barad/Wintergrasp. But the logistics of running a rated Battleground Team is infinitely harder than running a 3man arena team, but the gear aquisition is the same. So more people do Arena. And so "Tanks suck at PvP"
Tank viability in pvp soul come from "hard to kill, this annoying",
I think prot warriors and (to a lesser extent) prot paladins are the only tank specs who really have that second component right now, with their vastly increased silencing/stunning capacity and prot's ridiculous movement ability. Blood DKs seem like they're just more on the hard to kill side, but without sufficient abilities to influence a battle if they're being ignored. Feral is obviously in a weird place right now since it's still a bearcat spec, but from the looks of things for now, I think Guardian druids will probably also lack in battlefield control.
Also, I looked at the talent calculator update last night, and it looks like resto druids are losing Barkskin. Ugh.
Tank viability in pvp soul come from "hard to kill, this annoying", not "hard to kill this annoying AND they do damage as good as a dps class that is far squishier"
It should. The problem is until you get to the point where the tank has the flag, or is in front of the boss in IOC/AV you are dealing with (in many cases), a weaker dps class with a couple of tricks (sometimes to annoy casters).
Resto druids lose Barkskin and gain Ironbark aka Barkskin castable on anyone. That's been the case since the MoP talents were first revealed.
It has twice the cooldown and (not positive on this) no pushback resistance, so it's a big loss for PvP, and a little buff for PvE since it gives you a minor cooldown to throw on a tank. I'm also not sure if you can cast it while stunned, feared, etc.
Tank viability in pvp soul come from "hard to kill, this annoying", not "hard to kill this annoying AND they do damage as good as a dps class that is far squishier"
Note to self: when typing on the phone with Swype, spellcheck everything first or will sound like a goose.
Resto druids lose Barkskin and gain Ironbark aka Barkskin castable on anyone. That's been the case since the MoP talents were first revealed.
It has twice the cooldown and (not positive on this) no pushback resistance, so it's a big loss for PvP, and a little buff for PvE since it gives you a minor cooldown to throw on a tank. I'm also not sure if you can cast it while stunned, feared, etc.
Hm, it looks like you're right, the tooltip doesn't have the incapacitation stuff and as far as I can remember it never did. I wonder why it hasn't become a thing brought up by druid commentors on the MoP talents yet?
Resto druids lose Barkskin and gain Ironbark aka Barkskin castable on anyone. That's been the case since the MoP talents were first revealed.
It has twice the cooldown and (not positive on this) no pushback resistance, so it's a big loss for PvP, and a little buff for PvE since it gives you a minor cooldown to throw on a tank. I'm also not sure if you can cast it while stunned, feared, etc.
Hm, it looks like you're right, the tooltip doesn't have the incapacitation stuff and as far as I can remember it never did. I wonder why it hasn't become a thing brought up by druid commentors on the MoP talents yet?
They've all rerolled paladins, priests, or druids, which are ally blatantly superior PvP healers now.
I mean, Ironbark would be a little useful if someone else were getting rapetrained, but when you're a resto druid, you're pretty much always the first to be targeted, so a shorter cooldown self-only survival tool is almost universally better than a longer cooldown that is theoretically more versatile.
Tank viability in pvp soul come from "hard to kill, this annoying", not "hard to kill this annoying AND they do damage as good as a dps class that is far squishier"
Note to self: when typing on the phone with Swype, spellcheck everything first or will sound like a goose.
I think everyone understood what your post was getting at, though. At least I don't think anyone who replied misunderstood you. The point is that only about half the tank specs actually seem to work that way, so if that's how things "should" be, Blizzard has done a poor job of it.
PvP for me over the weekend has been weird, mainly with regards to TB.
Horde are by far the smaller faction on our server, and yet for most of Saturday and Sunday, we managed to win TB. Even tonight, we managed to hold on to it for most of the evening.
Oddly enough, no BH groups are formed after we win the place, so I've got to presume we're keeping the place just because. I'll note that we're getting 30-40 people turning up to defend.
It is somewhat nice that at the end of another game, everyone is saying friendly things to each other.
Edit; I fully expect that to change come server reset, and obviously I've now jinxed the whole thing.
Wow, get into a WSG, discover Horde is getting farmed in the GY.
Ghost, jump off the side, watch everybody else fail at canceling rezzes
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
It seems counter-intituitive, but people actually got stupider while I was leveling up my Human Rogue through PvP. I'm now in the 80-84 bracket and this is worse than 10-14 was. Part of the reason is probably that I now have to do SotA and IoC which always have one side failing hilariously because they don't understand the mechanics at all. I played an IoC where we broke down the walls in 5 minutes or less and then got zerged down to a resource-loss, because we had 20 people defending, 10 people doing random stuff and 10 people tapping the Horde base, running into the keep, losing the gy and dying to respawn.
Has anyone else noticed how IoC strategies have changed over time? In my battlegroup Horde always went for docks and Alliance went for hangar at first. But now this has changed to the direct opposite, so Alliance goes docks and Horde goes hangar.
Ideally, you want your side to win the Workshop and then hold it until you get the Siege Engine, which is completely broken in that bracket. By the time it spawns, if the other side had the docks, they'll probably be in your base. You'd think this would be a bad thing and you're going to lose shortly, but it's not, because if the driver of the Siege engine has any sense, he goes back to defend.
And by defend, I mean he just farms the other side spawning on the base GY. The tank is stupidly powerful, and will most likely 1-2 shot anything that isn't sitting on 100k health (in which case, he'll 3 shot them), in addition to having a fair chunk of health (doesn't really matter, because you're unlikely to live long enough to do anything other than put a single dot on it).
Due to the broad range of health people have in that bracket, for the vast majority, the final boss is far too powerful, in that he'll kill them leaping in the air and doing that knife fan.
Redcoat-13 on
PSN Fleety2009
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Oh, ok, that makes sense, I think the Horde were even doing it in that game. I only had 4 IoC so far (and two of those were already close to finished when I entered). Still dumb how my fellow Alliance weren't pushing for Workshop or even tapping refinery/quarry.
Semi-related question: Does the "honor earned in this season" counter only apply to maxlevel, or will I be able to buy the PvP weapons the second I turn 85?
Considering I've seen non German-EU horde whine for years about always losing when they attempt to rush AV, I'm not entirely surprised that alliance can't "adjust" to how IoC is in the 80-84 bracket. That thinking that once you get the gate down quickly with the Glaives, the boss will be a cake walk, when he is anything but.
I want to say that the honor you earn in the 80-84 bracket does count towards honor earned this season with regards to weapons, because I'm pretty sure I saw that when I logged in my non-85 rogue the other weekend and did some pvp.
The problem is, is that 4k is alot of honor to grind out when you're not 85. I'm pretty sure I got around 120ish honor per AV win over the AV weekend, and those games were typically around 25 mins long. Not a good return if you ask me. Plus, you can't spend any of that honor on getting the 85 gear, so if you're wanting to qualify for the weapons straight away, then you're going to have to "dump" some honor (I've not checked if you can buy any of the mats, such as enchanting stuff from the honor vendor), in addition to grinding out a tremendous amount of BG's.
The problem you've got then, is that while you can hit 85 and get 2-3 bits of pvp gear, the rest of your gear is going to be beyond terrible. I reckon you'd actually be better off just questing, gathering mats and doing dungeons. You'd hit 85 in better gear (not much better though), you'd have more gold (could use this to buy some of the blue pvp set, although I think you'd be better off sucking it up in awful gear for 2 weeks in BG's while you got the honor set), and you'd have some Justice Points to convert to honor.
Redcoat-13 on
PSN Fleety2009
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Yeah, I was leveling through PvP pretty much all of the way, so I'm at honor cap anyway. And I already bought lots of honor pieces 10-60, including the full set at 60 and then the weapons at 70. Level 80 stuff was not worth it, though, so I'm currently dumping Honor into JP. After wednesday I can also get some more JP through LFD, so 4k honor + 4k JP (2500 honor) is definitely doable for me. Maybe I'll even have to buy some enchanting mats to keep from overflowing.
And I am questing inbetween queues (I finished Hyjal and have just started Uldum at 83). I don't think I'll do dungeons at 85, because they are boring and it's really not faster than just doing BGs to get into Honor gear. Also I'm playing a rogue, so I have no problem being useful against way better geared opponents. I mean, I had no problem playing in the DK bracket or the Cataclysm BoE bracket. I just have to pick my battles carefully there.
My best PvP experiences on this char are free of combat anyway. It's capping/recapping a flag while any number of defenders stand around it and just are too dumb to look closely or see the animation. Sometimes I wish I had rolled a gnome, that would make it even easier.
Rogues are fairly unique in having alot of abilities that are a pain to deal with and don't rely on gear. Stuns / silences / interrupts / smoke bomb are all useful, especially if someone else is around to do the dps and obviously having stealth, your gear matters very little if someone is not paying attention to a flag.
Sorry I wasn't suggesting that you do dungeons at 85 to get honor, just that it would something to do while levelling up.
As a sidenote, I'll point out that you can get 200 (or 220 if you've got the guild bonus) each day from doing 4 quests in the Venture Bay area. 3 in Venture Bay itself (kill 10 guards, smoke bomb 20 venture company dudes, and killing the elite), and 1 on that Island just east of Conquest Hold (kill 10 guys).
Has anyone else noticed how IoC strategies have changed over time? In my battlegroup Horde always went for docks and Alliance went for hangar at first. But now this has changed to the direct opposite, so Alliance goes docks and Horde goes hangar.
When I was doing PVP this weekend I got a couple of IOCs...
The Horde decided that Docks wasn't worth it and zerged WS and Hangar. In the first game somebody was smart enough to call for Rogues, Druids, and Hunters to go and kill the Glaives right off. Too bad the rest of the people got dumb and didn't defend WS or Hangar or we might have had a chance to win.
The second game nobody went after Glaives...that was a fast loss.
EDIT: Got my mage to 4pc Season 11 gear though. On a side note...TB is still terrible in case anyone was wondering.
Has anyone else noticed how IoC strategies have changed over time? In my battlegroup Horde always went for docks and Alliance went for hangar at first. But now this has changed to the direct opposite, so Alliance goes docks and Horde goes hangar.
When I was doing PVP this weekend I got a couple of IOCs...
The Horde decided that Docks wasn't worth it and zerged WS and Hangar. In the first game somebody was smart enough to call for Rogues, Druids, and Hunters to go and kill the Glaives right off. Too bad the rest of the people got dumb and didn't defend WS or Hangar or we might have had a chance to win.
The second game nobody went after Glaives...that was a fast loss.
EDIT: Got my mage to 4pc Season 11 gear though. On a side note...TB is still terrible in case anyone was wondering.
I didn't know there was strategy to IoC. It was always a race to get a catapult and launch over the wall, then use the bombs inside to blow up the gate and let everyone in.
Has anyone else noticed how IoC strategies have changed over time? In my battlegroup Horde always went for docks and Alliance went for hangar at first. But now this has changed to the direct opposite, so Alliance goes docks and Horde goes hangar.
When I was doing PVP this weekend I got a couple of IOCs...
The Horde decided that Docks wasn't worth it and zerged WS and Hangar. In the first game somebody was smart enough to call for Rogues, Druids, and Hunters to go and kill the Glaives right off. Too bad the rest of the people got dumb and didn't defend WS or Hangar or we might have had a chance to win.
The second game nobody went after Glaives...that was a fast loss.
EDIT: Got my mage to 4pc Season 11 gear though. On a side note...TB is still terrible in case anyone was wondering.
I didn't know there was strategy to IoC. It was always a race to get a catapult and launch over the wall, then use the bombs inside to blow up the gate and let everyone in.
The best strat is to own Docks, then protect glaives while they take down the gate. If people want to use the catapults to go over, then more power to them. You also want to harass the other two sites to reduce the number of people jumping down via airship or to prevent the siege engine.
My experience has been that owning docks > owning hangar + WS
PvP for me over the weekend has been weird, mainly with regards to TB.
Horde are by far the smaller faction on our server, and yet for most of Saturday and Sunday, we managed to win TB. Even tonight, we managed to hold on to it for most of the evening.
Oddly enough, no BH groups are formed after we win the place, so I've got to presume we're keeping the place just because. I'll note that we're getting 30-40 people turning up to defend.
It is somewhat nice that at the end of another game, everyone is saying friendly things to each other.
Edit; I fully expect that to change come server reset, and obviously I've now jinxed the whole thing.
I haven't seen a full TB raid in a long time. Granted, I barely do TB at all anymore, but each time I do, we end up with maybe 15-20 players by the end. It's hard to blame people for not showing up. Unless you need BH, all TB is good for is (usually) getting a decent amount of honor per time invested, but for a lot of characters, honor is worthless now and they only need CP. And of course if you do need the honor that badly, you're probably an undergeared, fresh 85, and thus as much of a liability to your team as anything else.
That seems like a discussion point: should Blizzard add better incentive for people to do TB? Like tack on some CP to it like they have for random BGs?
Especially moving forward into Mists, is Blizzard going to do another WG/VoA or TB/BH setup? Is that part of the "formula" yet or are they going to try something different? Personally I'd rather the VoA/BH equivalent, if there is one, be divorced from a periodic battleground zone since being able to go and raid it is basically an assumed right on the part of the developers anyway. Then they could stuff it in Raid Finder so dying servers don't have to struggle to put together a 10-man for it, taking 4 of the same class or people doing 8k DPS because those were the only people who even sent tells.
From the relatively sparse TB matches I see, BH clearly isn't the incentive that Blizzard thought it would be. So whatever future WG/TB equivalent, if there is one, could be given a more explicit reward than "try to win if you still need to play loot Powerball this week!"
Docks is dependent on what the other team's rogues / feral druids are doing. If they aren't terrible, they'll kill the glaives before they leave the docks and there will be very little people can do to keep them alive.
Granted, teams as a collective, seem to become thicker the bigger they are, and those rogues / ferals would rather be standing outside the east gate most of the time.
While we're talking about IoC, my favorite "dumb Horde maneuver" that I see too often is we end up taking WS and Hangar (since Alliance almost invariably sends more than half their raid to Docks). Then the Demolisher train goes to the west gate. /facepalm
The turrets on the gunship can shoot the shit out of the east gate, but they can barely touch the west gate at all, so when the ground siege goes for the west gate when your other node is the Hangar, it's a horrible dilution of firepower. Ugh.
PvP for me over the weekend has been weird, mainly with regards to TB.
Horde are by far the smaller faction on our server, and yet for most of Saturday and Sunday, we managed to win TB. Even tonight, we managed to hold on to it for most of the evening.
Oddly enough, no BH groups are formed after we win the place, so I've got to presume we're keeping the place just because. I'll note that we're getting 30-40 people turning up to defend.
It is somewhat nice that at the end of another game, everyone is saying friendly things to each other.
Edit; I fully expect that to change come server reset, and obviously I've now jinxed the whole thing.
I haven't seen a full TB raid in a long time. Granted, I barely do TB at all anymore, but each time I do, we end up with maybe 15-20 players by the end. It's hard to blame people for not showing up. Unless you need BH, all TB is good for is (usually) getting a decent amount of honor per time invested, but for a lot of characters, honor is worthless now and they only need CP. And of course if you do need the honor that badly, you're probably an undergeared, fresh 85, and thus as much of a liability to your team as anything else.
That seems like a discussion point: should Blizzard add better incentive for people to do TB? Like tack on some CP to it like they have for random BGs?
Especially moving forward into Mists, is Blizzard going to do another WG/VoA or TB/BH setup? Is that part of the "formula" yet or are they going to try something different? Personally I'd rather the VoA/BH equivalent, if there is one, be divorced from a periodic battleground zone since being able to go and raid it is basically an assumed right on the part of the developers anyway. Then they could stuff it in Raid Finder so dying servers don't have to struggle to put together a 10-man for it, taking 4 of the same class or people doing 8k DPS because those were the only people who even sent tells.
From the relatively sparse TB matches I see, BH clearly isn't the incentive that Blizzard thought it would be. So whatever future WG/TB equivalent, if there is one, could be given a more explicit reward than "try to win if you still need to play loot Powerball this week!"
So far there's been no talk of a TB/WG type zone in MoP, and my understanding is they are abandoning it.
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I hope the Mists setup brings classes more in line with each other as far as control/utility/output, but I'm not optimistic since the last 7 years haven't been great.
What really irks me, is that Frost has a tonne of control, and yet Impact in the fire tree is still they can comfortably spec for. How did that get through the Q&A?
As for impact...it was always at a point where Frost Mages could get it, and it was available to them as far back as Vanilla if they wanted to spec into it.
Given the likelihood of Blizz not nerfing Frost Mages in PVP before MoP, I should just ride the train for PVP achievements while I can.
It got better mind you, but at that point I have always took the stance of "Fucking CC should not be in PvP" and I've had to deal with it in every dumb ass game since. I long for a remake of AC.
*didn't really do anything unless they were close to being encumbered and you debuffed their strength. Then they would start dropping trash items on the ground to try and continue running away. So much fun.
Like darklite said, there are simply too many DR categories for CCs. It's absolute nonsense that you can go from stun to polymorph to silence to fear to horror, and all of them can last their full duration. Stuns and silences have also become far too prevalent, and they have no "end early on too much damage" component.
Well regardless of what side of the balance line you stand on, I stopped having fun playing Ret right after patch 1.7.. The fact of the matter is that Ret has a lot of abilities that can be cast on others, and that carries a balance penalty. I've since leveled a warrior and DK, and found both to be more enjoyable: now thematically I wish that Ret was the badass in that group, but I've settled for pretending my DK isn't quite so evil...or undead for that matter.
I'm interested in how the Guardian in GW2 is going to turn out, but then again the structure in that game is very different. When are we going to get some more info on MoP?
There was a blue post on the 9th, saying that there was going to be a "deluge" of information about MoP coming out soon, starting with the event leading up to the start of the expansion.
Spoiler of what the event is, in case people are unaware
I suspect this is when Blizz will try showcase all this new questing stuff they've been talking about.
Basically I look at the 4.0-4.3 ret as Blizzard's test on a Utility class, and it failed. The cata model is you either bring lots of dps, or lots of healing, and the ability to do such between bouts of being locked by CC.
Rets were an attempt to bring some healing with some DPS and a ton of utility. Then they nerfed the ever loving hell out of the healing aspect of it and didn't slide the DPS portion up.
I'm really excited now for Ret in MoP. Prot looks like it still needs some work (Blizz has said that all the tanking classes still do), and Holy will need some number balancing once they figure out how much spells are going to cost, etc. The only thing that I'm worried about right now, is that our mana regeneration is a fixed amount over time, but our mana expenditures will increase with more haste (more haste = more abilities used in the same amount of time). I wonder how that's going to be solved, and I hope the answer isn't Seal of Insight juggling.
I haven't given the critical eye to the other specs though, I reserve the right to be grumpy and jaded about Ret again if I find out that Warriors get some newer, awesomer ability that deals 50% of the opponent's health and transforms it into sparkly rainbow energy that heals everyone on their faction's side for infinity plus. Or if Frost Mages get Polymorph: Cake (not a lie).
Blizzard goes between "tanks should be viable in PVP" and "tanks should just be flag carriers/for the last boss in IOC&AV"
Right now we're in the later. I expect we'll see tanks (well, pally tanks anyway) become more useful in PVP in MoP, but I'm not putting money on it.
Tanks play just fine in PvP, when it's a Battleground or Tol Barad/Wintergrasp. But the logistics of running a rated Battleground Team is infinitely harder than running a 3man arena team, but the gear aquisition is the same. So more people do Arena. And so "Tanks suck at PvP"
Also, I looked at the talent calculator update last night, and it looks like resto druids are losing Barkskin. Ugh.
It should. The problem is until you get to the point where the tank has the flag, or is in front of the boss in IOC/AV you are dealing with (in many cases), a weaker dps class with a couple of tricks (sometimes to annoy casters).
Note to self: when typing on the phone with Swype, spellcheck everything first or will sound like a goose.
I mean, Ironbark would be a little useful if someone else were getting rapetrained, but when you're a resto druid, you're pretty much always the first to be targeted, so a shorter cooldown self-only survival tool is almost universally better than a longer cooldown that is theoretically more versatile.
I think everyone understood what your post was getting at, though. At least I don't think anyone who replied misunderstood you. The point is that only about half the tank specs actually seem to work that way, so if that's how things "should" be, Blizzard has done a poor job of it.
Obviously they all do shit damage anymore.
Horde are by far the smaller faction on our server, and yet for most of Saturday and Sunday, we managed to win TB. Even tonight, we managed to hold on to it for most of the evening.
Oddly enough, no BH groups are formed after we win the place, so I've got to presume we're keeping the place just because. I'll note that we're getting 30-40 people turning up to defend.
It is somewhat nice that at the end of another game, everyone is saying friendly things to each other.
Edit; I fully expect that to change come server reset, and obviously I've now jinxed the whole thing.
Ghost, jump off the side, watch everybody else fail at canceling rezzes
Has anyone else noticed how IoC strategies have changed over time? In my battlegroup Horde always went for docks and Alliance went for hangar at first. But now this has changed to the direct opposite, so Alliance goes docks and Horde goes hangar.
Ideally, you want your side to win the Workshop and then hold it until you get the Siege Engine, which is completely broken in that bracket. By the time it spawns, if the other side had the docks, they'll probably be in your base. You'd think this would be a bad thing and you're going to lose shortly, but it's not, because if the driver of the Siege engine has any sense, he goes back to defend.
And by defend, I mean he just farms the other side spawning on the base GY. The tank is stupidly powerful, and will most likely 1-2 shot anything that isn't sitting on 100k health (in which case, he'll 3 shot them), in addition to having a fair chunk of health (doesn't really matter, because you're unlikely to live long enough to do anything other than put a single dot on it).
Due to the broad range of health people have in that bracket, for the vast majority, the final boss is far too powerful, in that he'll kill them leaping in the air and doing that knife fan.
Semi-related question: Does the "honor earned in this season" counter only apply to maxlevel, or will I be able to buy the PvP weapons the second I turn 85?
I want to say that the honor you earn in the 80-84 bracket does count towards honor earned this season with regards to weapons, because I'm pretty sure I saw that when I logged in my non-85 rogue the other weekend and did some pvp.
The problem is, is that 4k is alot of honor to grind out when you're not 85. I'm pretty sure I got around 120ish honor per AV win over the AV weekend, and those games were typically around 25 mins long. Not a good return if you ask me. Plus, you can't spend any of that honor on getting the 85 gear, so if you're wanting to qualify for the weapons straight away, then you're going to have to "dump" some honor (I've not checked if you can buy any of the mats, such as enchanting stuff from the honor vendor), in addition to grinding out a tremendous amount of BG's.
The problem you've got then, is that while you can hit 85 and get 2-3 bits of pvp gear, the rest of your gear is going to be beyond terrible. I reckon you'd actually be better off just questing, gathering mats and doing dungeons. You'd hit 85 in better gear (not much better though), you'd have more gold (could use this to buy some of the blue pvp set, although I think you'd be better off sucking it up in awful gear for 2 weeks in BG's while you got the honor set), and you'd have some Justice Points to convert to honor.
And I am questing inbetween queues (I finished Hyjal and have just started Uldum at 83). I don't think I'll do dungeons at 85, because they are boring and it's really not faster than just doing BGs to get into Honor gear. Also I'm playing a rogue, so I have no problem being useful against way better geared opponents. I mean, I had no problem playing in the DK bracket or the Cataclysm BoE bracket. I just have to pick my battles carefully there.
My best PvP experiences on this char are free of combat anyway. It's capping/recapping a flag while any number of defenders stand around it and just are too dumb to look closely or see the animation. Sometimes I wish I had rolled a gnome, that would make it even easier.
Sorry I wasn't suggesting that you do dungeons at 85 to get honor, just that it would something to do while levelling up.
As a sidenote, I'll point out that you can get 200 (or 220 if you've got the guild bonus) each day from doing 4 quests in the Venture Bay area. 3 in Venture Bay itself (kill 10 guards, smoke bomb 20 venture company dudes, and killing the elite), and 1 on that Island just east of Conquest Hold (kill 10 guys).
When I was doing PVP this weekend I got a couple of IOCs...
The Horde decided that Docks wasn't worth it and zerged WS and Hangar. In the first game somebody was smart enough to call for Rogues, Druids, and Hunters to go and kill the Glaives right off. Too bad the rest of the people got dumb and didn't defend WS or Hangar or we might have had a chance to win.
The second game nobody went after Glaives...that was a fast loss.
EDIT: Got my mage to 4pc Season 11 gear though. On a side note...TB is still terrible in case anyone was wondering.
I didn't know there was strategy to IoC. It was always a race to get a catapult and launch over the wall, then use the bombs inside to blow up the gate and let everyone in.
The best strat is to own Docks, then protect glaives while they take down the gate. If people want to use the catapults to go over, then more power to them. You also want to harass the other two sites to reduce the number of people jumping down via airship or to prevent the siege engine.
My experience has been that owning docks > owning hangar + WS
I haven't seen a full TB raid in a long time. Granted, I barely do TB at all anymore, but each time I do, we end up with maybe 15-20 players by the end. It's hard to blame people for not showing up. Unless you need BH, all TB is good for is (usually) getting a decent amount of honor per time invested, but for a lot of characters, honor is worthless now and they only need CP. And of course if you do need the honor that badly, you're probably an undergeared, fresh 85, and thus as much of a liability to your team as anything else.
That seems like a discussion point: should Blizzard add better incentive for people to do TB? Like tack on some CP to it like they have for random BGs?
Especially moving forward into Mists, is Blizzard going to do another WG/VoA or TB/BH setup? Is that part of the "formula" yet or are they going to try something different? Personally I'd rather the VoA/BH equivalent, if there is one, be divorced from a periodic battleground zone since being able to go and raid it is basically an assumed right on the part of the developers anyway. Then they could stuff it in Raid Finder so dying servers don't have to struggle to put together a 10-man for it, taking 4 of the same class or people doing 8k DPS because those were the only people who even sent tells.
From the relatively sparse TB matches I see, BH clearly isn't the incentive that Blizzard thought it would be. So whatever future WG/TB equivalent, if there is one, could be given a more explicit reward than "try to win if you still need to play loot Powerball this week!"
Granted, teams as a collective, seem to become thicker the bigger they are, and those rogues / ferals would rather be standing outside the east gate most of the time.
The turrets on the gunship can shoot the shit out of the east gate, but they can barely touch the west gate at all, so when the ground siege goes for the west gate when your other node is the Hangar, it's a horrible dilution of firepower. Ugh.
So far there's been no talk of a TB/WG type zone in MoP, and my understanding is they are abandoning it.
But its still in alpha so...