Scrod

A woman is in NYC for a business trip. She hails a taxi and steps in, hungry for fish. She tells the cab's driver, "Take me to a place where I can get scrod." He says, "That's the first the I've heard that in the pluperfect subjunctive."

Ever since the end of S4 and the general miserable-ness of the Arenas due to the incessant lag, my friends and I have been predominantly spending our time PvE'ing or BG'ing. Now that the lag is gone (you have noticed that right?), there's been some more time spent trying out comps and such in the waning days of TBC.

My Warrior buddy asked me to help him get to 1800 again (all ratings lost on server xfer) so he could get the points and rating for the S3 axe for leveling in WotLK and within 24 or so games, we had the rating, even though the absurd number of Ret/Arcane teams out there made every game a nailbiter.

/StartRant

Let's just make this clear: If you're not a burst team and you get caught against one in the Orgrimmar or Ruins of Lordaeron map, you'd better pray for RNG your way because one of you is going to die... and quickly. I sincerely hope that Arcane Mages are brought under control even though this amazing quote from GhostCrawler made me choke on my Earl Grey:

If Arcane is overpowered at all, it is nowhere near to the level that
Retribution was. Sorry. This isn’t a contest to see who can get the least or
most nerfs.

Right.

He's absolutely right.

If you're stupid enough to only use Arcane spells to try to kill someone, Arcane isn't overpowered. Arcane Blast (AB) and Arcane Missiles (AM) are mediocre filler spells. But the fact remains is that Arcane Mages don't just use offensive Arcane spells to rip people apart. Let's count the offensive damaging instants that can be used instead of queuing up a stupid AB or letting people run away while you channel a set of AM:

• Arcane Barrage
• Cone of Cold
• POM Nuke
• Arcane Explosion
• Fireblast
• Icelance

(If you've ever played City of Heroes, its basically like playing an Ice or Fire Blaster, where you spam instants and win)

So the question is, why would anyone use AM or AB when they can do instant damage and protect their spellschools for when Polymorph needs to hit? Answer: Only if they want to proc a Missile Barrage or if their target is cc'd and stuck in line of sight. Which is why every Arcane Mage is playing 2's with a Rogue or a Ret Paladin (the stun King and QQueen of WoW) or another Mage for pure ridiculousness.

So what's the solution to toning down Arcane Mages? Well, it sure as hell isn't what Blizz is planning to do, which is to buff Arcane Blast. No. No no no. Nononononononononono.

Buffing something with a cast time in PvP isn't going to make people want to use instants less. Mobility is king in PvP (eg: Druids), and unless pillars are removed from the Arena, instants will still be far more coveted than casted nukes. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Destruction Warlock or a Mage hardcast a Fireball in a competitive arena match?

So what's the fix that helps an Arcane Mage with their PvE Rotation? Simple: increase the cooldown. I don't care if the damage scales up or if Blizz improves the damage of Arcane Blast, but there should be no reason for someone to eat back to back to back instant cast Barrages in the span of an Imp Counterspell or a Hammer of Justice or a Kidney Shot.

Break it down by caster? Sure!

• Boomkin: Starfire has a cast time. Even if the Druid is lucky to get Nature's Grace and Wrath of Elune, it still has a cast.
• Fire Mage: Blast Wave, FireBlast, Dragon's Breath all have longer cooldowns. None do nearly as much damage.
• Frost Mage: Shatter Combo 2 hits max unless you combo it into other casts. Brain Freeze Fireball (due to lack of fire talents) doesn't hit very hard.
• Shadow Priest: MindBlast/SW: Death Combo has a much longer cooldown. No third nuke.
• Elemental Shaman: Bolts have a cast time, Shocks have longer cooldowns and deal less damage and NS Chain Lightning is once every 3 mins
• Warlocks: Only instant nuke is a Nightfall proc. Good luck even getting back to back procs. Is Shadowfury/Nightfall possible? If it is, would it be viable? Computer says no.

Wake up, Blizzard!

/EndRant

Anyways, we found out that Blizzard is wiping all Arena Teams and Arena points during Maintenance on Tuesday. This means that if you have Arena points saved up, you must spend them before Maintenance.

Which means my Warrior buddy won't get his axe.

And that's what we call scrod.

Shoulders... sort of... plus, a rant!

Last night's foray into the arenas started something like this:

(All paraphrased, as I'm not pro enough to Vent record)

Me: Hey, you want to do some 2's?
Warrior: Yeah sure, I've been thinking about it all day, after last night. .. (note: all we ran into last night was Shadow Priest/Rogue)
Me: Ok, let's queue up. What do you think our chances are of getting Shadow Priest/Rogue?
Warrior: I bet that's what we run into first.
Me: I'll take that bet. I'm thinking Warlock/Druid.
(Gates Open)
Me: Priest... Rogue... waaaaiiit... Shadow Priest! F&*%!! Way to jinx us!

(As an aside, every time we've gotten close to a 'milestone' rating, one of us has mentioned it, thus jinxing us, thus leading to a loss. Every damn time)

Well, after 12 games, we finally hit 1950 and stopped for the night. Warrior got his Vengeful shoulders, so now, aside from his totally ghetto Stormherald, he looks like a proper Warrior. No more fly away Merciless Shoulders! We'll probably continue the march towards weapons tonight, and hopefully we'll run into alot of bad Rogue/Priest and bad Warlock/Druid teams.

My 3's Shaman picked up his S3 Offhand yesterday as well and we're looking to push our rating even further now that he's got some serious weaponry. I can't wait to see how much damage he can crank out with WotLK and the new and improved Shaman Enhancement Talent Tree.

I also got a new piece of gear in a Heroic MgT run after our 2's run. Vial of the Sunwell finally dropped and I've been itching to get my hands on it to see what all the hubbub is about. The reason for nabbing it is that I am trying to find a reasonable second trinket solution to surviving double dps without completely gimping myself, by equipping Battlemaster's Perserverence, only to run into a drain team. Vial seems like a pretty awesome trinket, with that on demand 2k heal (or less with Wound Poison). However, it also has a pretty beefy 15 Mp5 for those long matches. I'll give it a whirl, because it HAS to be better than my current standard trinket: Seaspray Albatross. Which, incidentally, is essentially a dead albatross hanging from my neck against double dps teams.

Sadly, my Mage has gone to the wayside, as I am finding, with my nightly arena on my Druid, that I don't have time to play him. I wish I had alot more time and some consistent arena partners to play with on my Mage, as all of the WotLK Mage changes are looking incredible! Sadly, with no steady arena partners, I'm essentially relegating him to an AH mule. He does help me move an incredible amount of gems, however, so all is not lost. I am kinda pissed off that I didn't get any arena points on him last week, but, on the flip side, unless I get a real serious team, he'll never get any of the S3/S4 weapons/shoulders. I'm okay with this, as there's only one more piece of Brutal gear for me to get (legs), but with the expansion coming, I'm rather disillusioned with the returns on effort, especially if I don't play him regularly.

/rant
Honestly, it sucks. I put in a TON of effort into this character, starting him right before S4 started (70 in 6 days /played without the Recruit a Friend PL). From then till now, I have toiled over:
20Resil Medallion and 45Resil Medallion
All Guardians (Boot, Belt, Bracer, Ring, Neck), Vind Ring, Boot
S2 Staff, Helm, Shoulders, Legs, Chest, Sergeant's Heavy Cape
Brutal Helm, Chest, Glove
Leveled JC to 375
Revered with SSO for Helm Enchant and Crimson Serpent Trinket
60 Badge Cloak, Icon, Witch Dr. Wand
Revered with Sha'tar for Helm Enchant
Exalted with Scryer for Shoulder Enchant
All Epic gems

It just seems so sad to grind a character out, but have no one to play with...

Of course, my Priest and Rogue buddies left the game/server, so that could explain part of it... punks....

Rogue/Mage Day 1

A rogue buddy and I gave Mage/Rogue a try last night after my War/Dru team cranked ourselves up closer to 1900. Anyways, Mage/Rogue games usually go pretty fast, and as PomPyro, they go even quicker. No Ice Barrier, Frostbite, or second Ice Block means that a lucky imp hamstring proc or a lucky mace stun means that I need to pop cooldowns to survive. It's absolutely insane how quickly a mace warrior with some lucky RNG can hose a clothy. However, whenever our target is locked down by the rogue and I'm able to get away to some degree, shit dies. I think I solo'd a druid after my rogue died with the 'ungody chain of pain' and some lucky impact procs. Impact procs are like tasty macestuns, but from range.

We have yet to hit 1700 because I'm pretty bad at my mage, positioning wise, and because my teammate isnt used to running with a mage. Rupture/Garrote on the warrior when we're aiming to eventually poly him after we pull the druid out through pressure means we're eating alot more damage than we need to. I also Ice Block waaaaay too late and forget to cone of slow.

It's okay.

We'll learn.

It was fun to see the different reactions of the various healers when they realize that any target below 50% is a legit target for a 1GCD kill. Some healers just ran around the pillars, some played aggressive and tried to add dps, and some overhealed like crazy. One druid spent most of his mana bar keeping 4 hots on himselves while shifting and running around the pillar while I chain cc'd his warrior. I honestly think that the psychological pressure that a Pom mage exerts is far more than our frost buddies, because the elemental is a dead giveaway of a dps push.

All that being said, I'm going to give frost another try if we run into way too many lucky war/dru teams that can imp hamstring and mace stun on command. I'm going to be SO happy when the patch that nerfs macestun comes.

chugachugachugachugachugachugachugachuga-choochoo!

Hear that mace warriors? That's the nerf train a-comin'!

Hello Mr Shoulders in the 1500's

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but this season, even though it's over a month in, I've seen an overwhelming number of full season 3 (shoulders) players in the 15-1700's. Is the general sentiment that grinding to 2050 for the S4 weapons is too hard so people have given up once they've hit 1700 or has the PvP arena population dwindled because of the new rating requirements and your average Joe not being able to get to 1700? Granted, my 2's partner (S4 sword rogue) and I must have tweaked off some teams in blues in the 1500's, but the number of full S3 Sword Warriors and their pet windfury Shamans that we met in the 1700's was just ridiculous.

I like the challenge, but to be honest, I didn't expect to put that much effort in the 1500's as I did last night, fighting a full S3 Warrior/Druid as an Honor Epic'd Rogue/Mage.

RMP

In WoW Arena 3's RMP, or Rogue Mage Priest, is one of the most consistently successful combination of classes due to its heavy burst, control and complementary abilities. Imagine a psychic scream into blind into sap into sheepx3 and you get the idea of how much non-overlapping crowd control can be dispensed. It's sick nasty when it all flows together and provides a great amount of time to burn a target down quickly. Hello, smite...

Although I had leveled my mage as both deep frost and deep fire, I find myself inexorably drawn towards a 33/28/0 spec; aka PomPyro. Presumably it's because I'm a pretty poor mage when it comes to personal accountability a la "why is that warrior not sheeped?!" or "why did you CS that rogue?", but a quick search through the ArenaJunkies forums shows that PomPyro does have viability and there are some successful mages out there in that eThug world that have been tossin' their molten boulders at people's faces for years. BUT, research also shows that PomPyro is not nearly as popular as impCS/Frost; 17/0/44.

Since I've been doing well in the 5's bracket where our no-skill comp of ShadowPriest, FG Lock, PomPyro Mage, EleSham and Holy Pal have zerg trained the feces out of pretty much any team with a warrior, last night I figured i'd grab some of my buddys' alts and give RMP a try. While specced frost. I've got to say, i've never felt so helpless in my life and I really dont understand how frost mages even do any damage against a team that's remotely intelligent. It could have been that we were fighting alot of Warlock teams, Hunter teams, and teams with both a Warlock and a Hunter, where both pets decided that my undead ass needed two or 3 more holes, but, I learned quickly that Frostbolt should only be cast when you are either a) not being trained by ANYTHING that does damage or b) when you have Ice Barrier or Icy Veins up. Spell pushback sucks. Also, crying when your Barrier or IV gets dispelled and your rogue has the target in a 5 point kidney is absolutely permissible.

To that end, I think I cast a total of 2 frost bolts in each game and spent the majority of my time running about like a scared little girl, sheeping things off my priest (Chu! gerritoffovme!), Frost Nova-ing melee (I did remember this) and spamming my instants, which as a frost mage kinda sucks because that's limited to ice lance, fireblast and r1 cone of 'stupid with latency'. Fully half of my pets got 1 Freeze off before dying or me being chain cc'd, but to my credit, I did get 1 sweet shatter combo for around 6k damage somewhere amidst the confusion.

Towards the end, my priest buddy was getting worn out at my terrible frost play and I swapped back to PomPyro.. and surprise, surprise, definitive win. What I dont understand (yet) is why people like frost specs so much. Granted, the second iceblock and the extra novas are nice, but how fun can it be when all you do is spam instants because your main nuke has no spell pushback resistance? Mobility as frost kinda sucks due to no blazing speed and killing druids that know how to shift is pretty much a joke. Teams that don't play defensive when you pull your pet out deserve to lose and getting chain dispelled of all of your buffs means you cant cast anything anyways.

So, yeah, back as PomPyro now because it just fits better with my rushdown playstyle...

Besides, it's a beautiful thing when druids realize that they actually have to pay attention to the mage beyond just shifting to avoid shatters.