S4 changeups

Firstly, let's address a question from Zupa about POMPyro's abilities against resilience capped targets:

Against resilience capped targets, generally, youre looking at Warlocks and Priests; ie: classes with no 'outs' and often have to tank melee before they can get their teammates to peel for them. Almost every other class will be unlikely to be running with full resilience, and when youre talking about melee classes, theyre often wearing sub 400 resilience to maximize their damage output. Some druids wear lots of PvE gear and rely on peels/shifting to get away. So the question really becomes: How does POMPyro do against Warlocks and Priests. The answer is: A bit better in some cases and a bit worse in others when compared to frost.

Against any warlock or priest team, barrier/IV will be devoured/dispelled and for the most part, you'll be spamming instants, of which, fire does a bit better. Barrier can absorb some dots before it's removed, and that can be very very helpful. Mana shield is definitely a bad substitute for barrier. When nuking warlocks and priests, a faster nuke (ie: Sorch) definitely helps. This is especially true against LOS happy targets where a 2.5 second frostbolt just wont happen. If you happen to get lucky with Impact procs, you may be able to get either class to a point where your instant nuke chain of POMPyro, ImpCS, Fireblast, Blastwave can score a kill. Many POMPyros use their AP during the instant nuke chain, and often, that's the wrong call. AP + Trinket powered scorches can definitely force cooldowns that may eventually lead to kill.

This past week has been pretty interesting when it comes to the arena. Our 5's team hasn't gotten a chance to play due to schedule conflicts and it's definitely irked some of our players to the point that one of them quit. It does seem as though when playing with older players (myself included) that scheduling becomes a nightmare. Kids, Jobs, etc can all get in the way, and as much as I'd like to focus on 5's this season, I find myself getting dragged back into 2's (ugh) more and more.

During S3, my Lock buddy and my druid got to 2k, but each game was either a long, drawn out affair of drinking, cc's and other time consuming retardedness (hello hunter/druid), or a super fast oomfest (*nod* to rogue/priest). Granted, we had a favorable comp vs all of the billions of rogue/mage teams out there, but it wasn't exactly fun more than it was a job. Some nights, we'd spend 2 hours playing 3 games and just call it because we were mentally exhausted after trying to outlast some teams that were very much into making love to the pillars. I just started doing some 2's with a rogue buddy of mine and while the games arent as long, they are much more fun, especially since I'm specced dreamstate. It's amusing to sometimes see my damage come close to being half of my rogue's and watching S4 rogue weapons tear through a clothy is doubly fun.

This season started off with my lock buddy and I trying to do Warrior/Lock/Druid but it's been a rollercoaster of a time. I'm firmly a believer of synergy and with a Warrior/Lock dps core, there has to be alot of synergy between them. Why? Well, each class covers the weaknesses of the others: Warrior to peel for Mr. Lock and devours for Mr. Warrior. For the most part, the Druid (me) cannot get into melee range due to silliness such as Psychic Scream or double melee swaps. Since I can't defensively dispel, it largely falls upon the dps to support each other. I basically stand back and spam heals while trying to follow up their cc's with my cc's.

Well, this week, it all came to a head when we lost a ton of games in a row and tensions were at an all time high. At one point, I didn't even want to log in to WoW because I knew I was going to get incredibly frustrated. So, we split the team apart. The moral of the story is that you can be an amazing player in your own right, but success really is only going to to come from coordinated effort. Letting a priest chase me around unmolested is just plain wrong. God effing damn it, molest the priest! Think of it as payback for your years as an altar boy.

At some point, I'm going to either try Mage/Rogue or Mage/Priest with my POMPyro specced Mage. It should be fun, but I hope that all the transitioning between classes (Druid and Mage) will see me maintaining my capabilities on both.