Re: 20% healing debuff on Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast:
Healing debuff effects (a la Mortal Strike), even if it's only 20% for casters doesn't address the issues of melee consistently trumping casters in the Arena or in BG's. Limiting healing effects on players strains healers and their mana pools. It doesn't make casters any more viable than they currently are. For anyone thinking that this will improve casters or move casters further into the limelight in the 'cleave' dominated Arena needs to think again. Warriors, Rogues and Hunters are all far better at applying the debuff, which, coincidentally is also far stronger.
Re: Caster viability
Making changes to allow for all casters to become more viable from an average player's perspective needs to center around instant AOE snares/slows and movement abilities, both on a reasonably short cooldown. The snare needs to be an AOE because multiple melee can truly lock down a caster now that nearly every melee has an interrupt, pushback and/or other forms of cc. In addition, movement abilities need to also be on a reasonably short cooldown to allow for escape. I'd argue that movement abilities should also almost guarantee a reasonable distance gained strictly because of the need for casters to actually cast.
Blizzard has already taken steps to move in this direction, but there are a few issues that need to be resolved, also coincidentally to classes that are very under represented in the Arena: Shadow Priests, Warlocks (Affliction/Demonology), Boomkins all need AOE snares. These classes have virtually no escape options if multiple melee get on them. Shadow Priests also do not have any short cooldown movement abilities that guarantee distance. Fade is not a solution.
While I realize that some classes are designed differently and function differently in combat, there needs to be a bare minimum with caster class parity or even homogeneity when it comes to dealing with melee. With classes scaling differently with gear/abilities as we move through the various expansions, it becomes more and more important that the bare minimums are met throughout all of the caster classes purely for survival, if nothing else.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Faction to Faction Transfers = Comp Racial Homogenization?
Edit: Nethaera just answered some questions regarding the Faction Change service. Answers to some questions are in red.
If you've been actively following some of the blue announcements across the WoW forums or through the blogosphere, you've undoubtedly heard about the upcoming service to switch factions. What isn't known about this service are the specifics:
From a comp and meta game perspective, racials can make or break a fight. For example, RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) mirror fights, teams with triple Undead players generally have a short term advantage as Will of the Forsaken functions to nullify the first Psychic Scream of the opposing Priest. Likewise, if, through the upcoming changes to Resilience, Warlocks become dominant again, classes that have the option of playing as Undead for WotF will fare better in the long run.
On the Alliance side, with the nerf to Stoneform, the 'talent-fication' of Desperate Prayer and the change to the Human racial from on demand Perception to a two minute cooldown trinket (Every Man For Himself), Humans have become one of the more popular races across the board. As Humans are able to utilize an additional trinket, they often have more burst or utility depending on the trinkets available to them. In the past couple of seasons, especially in the 2v2 bracket, this has been a pretty huge benefit as burst damage has often surpassed the average mitigation capacity for the average player.
When it comes to race to race comparisons across faction lines, certain racials tend to be more beneficial to the teeming masses than to top players. One example is the Night Elf Shadowmeld compared to the Tauren Warstomp for Druids. While top pros can use Shadowmeld to avoid a fear or other form of CC through good timing, I believe that the average Druid would benefit far more from Warstomp, if anything to get Cyclones off on interrupt happy melee or to stun multiple players in an attempt to break a train.
So, what do I think about this? I think that IF Blizzard allows you to choose your new faction's race AND if Blizzards allows accounts to have characters of different factions on the same PvP server, there will be a definite shift in faction for specific comps. This will be particularly true if players a) focus on 3v3 instead of 2v2 and b) stack resilience, thus creating a slower, less burst-centric game. Paladin healer based comps will likely go Alliance for the Human racial. Priest healer based comps will likely lean towards Horde for WotF. Shaman comps will likely sway towards Horde as well due to the Orc/Tauren racials being favored over the small heal over time and +hit aura from the space goats. Druid healer comps are likely to go either way depending on their DPS' favored classes.
Honestly? I don't want to play a Night Elf chick or a Human Priest, because I abhor the animations, but if the crew swaps factions, I may have to tag along.
If you've been actively following some of the blue announcements across the WoW forums or through the blogosphere, you've undoubtedly heard about the upcoming service to switch factions. What isn't known about this service are the specifics:
- Whether or not a player will be able to change races, but keep the same faction. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.
- Whether or not a player will be able to choose a specific race in their new faction, regardless of their original race. (Unlike the Orb of Deception) Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So, if you play a Human Paladin, you'd only be able to change to a Blood Elf Paladin.
- What about switching back? No. You'd only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.
- Whether or not accounts will allow a player to have both Horde and Alliance characters on the same PvP server.
- What the cooldown of this service for a single character will be. We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however, we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.
- What the impact will be on servers with existing faction imbalances due to raiding popularity.
- What the impact will be on battlegroups with consistently lopsided starts due to faction imbalances.
- What the impact will be with regards to comp racial homogenization with respect to Arena trends.
From a comp and meta game perspective, racials can make or break a fight. For example, RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) mirror fights, teams with triple Undead players generally have a short term advantage as Will of the Forsaken functions to nullify the first Psychic Scream of the opposing Priest. Likewise, if, through the upcoming changes to Resilience, Warlocks become dominant again, classes that have the option of playing as Undead for WotF will fare better in the long run.
On the Alliance side, with the nerf to Stoneform, the 'talent-fication' of Desperate Prayer and the change to the Human racial from on demand Perception to a two minute cooldown trinket (Every Man For Himself), Humans have become one of the more popular races across the board. As Humans are able to utilize an additional trinket, they often have more burst or utility depending on the trinkets available to them. In the past couple of seasons, especially in the 2v2 bracket, this has been a pretty huge benefit as burst damage has often surpassed the average mitigation capacity for the average player.
When it comes to race to race comparisons across faction lines, certain racials tend to be more beneficial to the teeming masses than to top players. One example is the Night Elf Shadowmeld compared to the Tauren Warstomp for Druids. While top pros can use Shadowmeld to avoid a fear or other form of CC through good timing, I believe that the average Druid would benefit far more from Warstomp, if anything to get Cyclones off on interrupt happy melee or to stun multiple players in an attempt to break a train.
So, what do I think about this? I think that IF Blizzard allows you to choose your new faction's race AND if Blizzards allows accounts to have characters of different factions on the same PvP server, there will be a definite shift in faction for specific comps. This will be particularly true if players a) focus on 3v3 instead of 2v2 and b) stack resilience, thus creating a slower, less burst-centric game. Paladin healer based comps will likely go Alliance for the Human racial. Priest healer based comps will likely lean towards Horde for WotF. Shaman comps will likely sway towards Horde as well due to the Orc/Tauren racials being favored over the small heal over time and +hit aura from the space goats. Druid healer comps are likely to go either way depending on their DPS' favored classes.
Honestly? I don't want to play a Night Elf chick or a Human Priest, because I abhor the animations, but if the crew swaps factions, I may have to tag along.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Wintergrasp Instanced = Poor Judgement
Back in City of Heroes (CoH) Issues 7 and prior, there was no end game content to speak of.
Well, almost no end game to speak of.
What CoH had was Hamidon. Hamidon was this outdoor raid boss that was essentially an ernormous cell complete with various 'mitochondria' (mini raid bosses) that performed various functions. Due to the ridiculous number of hit points, the regen rate and the mez resistance, Hamidon required nearly an entire zone (only level 47-50 allowed) of heroes to defeat, with the whole process taking a substantial amount of time. However, at the time, Hamidon loot was the best in the game so people would plan their evenings around these Hami-Raids. For many servers, Hamidon was not a feasible raid encounter for one Supergroup (Guild) to take down by themselves, and as such server wide raids were often scheduled for maximum participation.
The problem with the Hamidon encounter became clearly evident: Due to the high powered rewards from a relatively easy boss, everyone on the server that was eligible to participate in the fight would attempt to join in. This generated immense latency due to hundreds of players grouping up in the same location with the server processes grinding to a near halt as it slowly performed all of the necessary combat and reward calculations. On the Virtue server, the last 5 minutes of the Hami-Raid looked like a bunch of people standing around a dot as the server wasn't able to render Hamidon, any of the attacks that were being auto spammed, or even fellow Heroes a mere 10 yards away.
Why am I telling a tale of an old encounter from a different MMO?
Because the problems that plagued the Hamidon encounter from several years ago will continue to plague Wintergrasp even after its upcoming fix.
From the Blizzard Staff:
Problem #1: People will be forced into non-participation as the queue is a random selection.
Tuesdays after resets are key for any players who are holding off on grinding Battlegrounds for Honor based rewards (Furious T1 weapons count as well) because they know they'll get 10k+ honor from completing the 3 basic Wintergrasp quests (Win Wintergrasp, Kill 10 of the opposite faction, Destroy/Protect 3 Siege Vehicles). Not everyone wants to nor can wait for the next Wintergrasp as many players have schedules, such as planned raids or real life obligations.
Granted, the argument can be made that the weekly quests can be done later, but aside from Algalon, this is the only other content in the game that doesn't guarantee participation. Strangely enough, this seems to go against Blizzard's motive to create content for widespread consumption. Unfortunately, this is going to create a lot of angst from people that set aside time on Tuesdays to 'get Wintergrasp done' only to be randomly prevented from participating. Consider that player that resides on a server with a very high population of his/her faction and doesn't randomly get selected for Wintergrasp twice in a row? What about missing out three times in a row?
Still not convinced? Let's draw a comparison to raiding. If you're short just 10 Badges of Heroism to be able to purchase a piece of badge gear and the game prevented you from joining a raid , you'd be pretty peeved right? Same deal. You could go do Battlegrounds for that 10k+ honor and you could go and grind PuG Heroics, but it's far more lucrative and consistent to Raid Naxx or participate in Wintergrasp.
Problem #2: Latency will still be a problem.
Latency occurs when many players congregate together and the server cannot handle all of the simultaneous actions by that many players in such a short amount of time. On my server, Tuesdays after resets can generally get 4-5 full raids of players Horde side. Tops. Granted, the Alliance side is far more populated and as such, they're likely at 7+ raids, however, at those numbers, when even half of the Wintergrasp population congregates at the gates of the Wintergrasp Fortress, the latency sets in. Even a late night Wintergrasp last night with barely 2 full raids on each side created some latency, because everyone sat around by the Fortress gates. That's 80% of the proposed population maximum.
Problem #3: Still no incentive to not camp the gate.
The implementation of the tower mechanics have pulled some people away from camping the front gate, but it's not enough. By camping the gate, players that are in a raid can: a) rank up faster than those assaulting/defending the southern workshops and b) obtain more kill honor, even at 1 honor/kill. It follows the Battleground Zerg Paradox: where players that zerg from node to node obtain more honor than those who defend nodes, thus forcing the defenders to zerg if they want a piece of the kill honor pie. Gate camping = latency and we're back at square one.
Problem #4: No way of dealing with AFK'ers.
Every Wintergrasp has its share of AFK'ers. You can find them on both factions hidden in alcoves around the Fortress front gate cannons just soaking up kill honor. Right now, there's no issue with them as the huge numbers of players on both sides generally reduce the impact of non-participators. However, with a possible cap on players in Wintergrasp, the impact of their inactivity may soon be felt.
All of these sticking points in Wintergrasp were prevalent in the old school Hami-Raids of CoH, even down to the 200 player cap on every zone. However, the problems persisted to the point that the developers completely revamped the encounter and limited the specific encounter zone to 50 players. The big difference with CoH is that when one zone is full, another identical zone can be spawned, effectively allowing for continuous consumption of content. Unfortunately, WoW doesn't utilize this technology, so we're looking at what amounts to a Battleground that can only be accessed by 100 players of your faction every 5 hours. 5 hours? Yep. Because, if you're like me, you really only care about cranking out that quick Offensive Wintergrasp win once a week.
So, do I have any suggestions to solve the problems that currently or will soon plague Wintergrasp?
Honestly?
No.
The inherent design of Wintergrasp is far more suited to a Battleground than a PvP zone. Amusingly, the new Battleground (Isle of Conquest) seems more suited to a PvP zone than Wintergrasp.
However, my best suggestions to alleviate some of the server stress during the early week Wintergrasps would be as follows:
1) Allow for all of the quests to be completed independent of an offensive or defensive Wintergrasp battle. Better yet, allow them to be completed without any battle, so players don't feel the need to go to an Offensive Wintergrasp to have the best chance of completing the Victory in Wintergrasp or the Defend 3 Siege Vehicles quests. This will remove most of the people who are there just for the honor the current quests give.
2) Give a node defense honor bonus like what is proposed for Battlegrounds in 3.2.
3) Create teleporters at each Workshop that allow players to quickly travel from their faction controlled nodes to other faction controlled nodes to defend them from attackers. Create zone wide notifications when a node is about to be lost. Most defenders hate to mounting up to ride to a node only to have nothing show up. It's a waste of time and a waste of potential free honor while standing by the front gate. Do not allow teleportation to the Fortress from the various nodes.
4) Remove the destructable nature of the southern towers, turn them into capturable nodes a la EotS. If the offense faction controls towers, weaken the Fortress gates/walls for each tower. Think reverse Tenacity. If the defensive faction controls towers, speed up the timer. If there are no players near a tower, immediately set tower to neutral (middle point of the capture slider).
Will these suggestions fix all of Wintergrasp's problems? Probably not, but I believe that attempting creative fixes to adjust player gameplay expectations is a far better course of action than the anticipated implementation of a very heavy handed random queue system.
Well, almost no end game to speak of.
What CoH had was Hamidon. Hamidon was this outdoor raid boss that was essentially an ernormous cell complete with various 'mitochondria' (mini raid bosses) that performed various functions. Due to the ridiculous number of hit points, the regen rate and the mez resistance, Hamidon required nearly an entire zone (only level 47-50 allowed) of heroes to defeat, with the whole process taking a substantial amount of time. However, at the time, Hamidon loot was the best in the game so people would plan their evenings around these Hami-Raids. For many servers, Hamidon was not a feasible raid encounter for one Supergroup (Guild) to take down by themselves, and as such server wide raids were often scheduled for maximum participation.
The problem with the Hamidon encounter became clearly evident: Due to the high powered rewards from a relatively easy boss, everyone on the server that was eligible to participate in the fight would attempt to join in. This generated immense latency due to hundreds of players grouping up in the same location with the server processes grinding to a near halt as it slowly performed all of the necessary combat and reward calculations. On the Virtue server, the last 5 minutes of the Hami-Raid looked like a bunch of people standing around a dot as the server wasn't able to render Hamidon, any of the attacks that were being auto spammed, or even fellow Heroes a mere 10 yards away.
Why am I telling a tale of an old encounter from a different MMO?
Because the problems that plagued the Hamidon encounter from several years ago will continue to plague Wintergrasp even after its upcoming fix.
From the Blizzard Staff:
I believe that Blizzard will only be creating new problems with this patch and sadly, these are problems that will increase the apathy towards Wintergrasp and the possible world PvP opportunities it brings to the table.To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made:
-Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp Zone.
-Queuing will begin 15 mins before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone.
-Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
-The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
-Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be
teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
-Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
-The queue will accept 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 100 players at a time.
Problem #1: People will be forced into non-participation as the queue is a random selection.
Tuesdays after resets are key for any players who are holding off on grinding Battlegrounds for Honor based rewards (Furious T1 weapons count as well) because they know they'll get 10k+ honor from completing the 3 basic Wintergrasp quests (Win Wintergrasp, Kill 10 of the opposite faction, Destroy/Protect 3 Siege Vehicles). Not everyone wants to nor can wait for the next Wintergrasp as many players have schedules, such as planned raids or real life obligations.
Granted, the argument can be made that the weekly quests can be done later, but aside from Algalon, this is the only other content in the game that doesn't guarantee participation. Strangely enough, this seems to go against Blizzard's motive to create content for widespread consumption. Unfortunately, this is going to create a lot of angst from people that set aside time on Tuesdays to 'get Wintergrasp done' only to be randomly prevented from participating. Consider that player that resides on a server with a very high population of his/her faction and doesn't randomly get selected for Wintergrasp twice in a row? What about missing out three times in a row?
Still not convinced? Let's draw a comparison to raiding. If you're short just 10 Badges of Heroism to be able to purchase a piece of badge gear and the game prevented you from joining a raid , you'd be pretty peeved right? Same deal. You could go do Battlegrounds for that 10k+ honor and you could go and grind PuG Heroics, but it's far more lucrative and consistent to Raid Naxx or participate in Wintergrasp.
Problem #2: Latency will still be a problem.
Latency occurs when many players congregate together and the server cannot handle all of the simultaneous actions by that many players in such a short amount of time. On my server, Tuesdays after resets can generally get 4-5 full raids of players Horde side. Tops. Granted, the Alliance side is far more populated and as such, they're likely at 7+ raids, however, at those numbers, when even half of the Wintergrasp population congregates at the gates of the Wintergrasp Fortress, the latency sets in. Even a late night Wintergrasp last night with barely 2 full raids on each side created some latency, because everyone sat around by the Fortress gates. That's 80% of the proposed population maximum.
Problem #3: Still no incentive to not camp the gate.
The implementation of the tower mechanics have pulled some people away from camping the front gate, but it's not enough. By camping the gate, players that are in a raid can: a) rank up faster than those assaulting/defending the southern workshops and b) obtain more kill honor, even at 1 honor/kill. It follows the Battleground Zerg Paradox: where players that zerg from node to node obtain more honor than those who defend nodes, thus forcing the defenders to zerg if they want a piece of the kill honor pie. Gate camping = latency and we're back at square one.
Problem #4: No way of dealing with AFK'ers.
Every Wintergrasp has its share of AFK'ers. You can find them on both factions hidden in alcoves around the Fortress front gate cannons just soaking up kill honor. Right now, there's no issue with them as the huge numbers of players on both sides generally reduce the impact of non-participators. However, with a possible cap on players in Wintergrasp, the impact of their inactivity may soon be felt.
All of these sticking points in Wintergrasp were prevalent in the old school Hami-Raids of CoH, even down to the 200 player cap on every zone. However, the problems persisted to the point that the developers completely revamped the encounter and limited the specific encounter zone to 50 players. The big difference with CoH is that when one zone is full, another identical zone can be spawned, effectively allowing for continuous consumption of content. Unfortunately, WoW doesn't utilize this technology, so we're looking at what amounts to a Battleground that can only be accessed by 100 players of your faction every 5 hours. 5 hours? Yep. Because, if you're like me, you really only care about cranking out that quick Offensive Wintergrasp win once a week.
So, do I have any suggestions to solve the problems that currently or will soon plague Wintergrasp?
Honestly?
No.
The inherent design of Wintergrasp is far more suited to a Battleground than a PvP zone. Amusingly, the new Battleground (Isle of Conquest) seems more suited to a PvP zone than Wintergrasp.
However, my best suggestions to alleviate some of the server stress during the early week Wintergrasps would be as follows:
1) Allow for all of the quests to be completed independent of an offensive or defensive Wintergrasp battle. Better yet, allow them to be completed without any battle, so players don't feel the need to go to an Offensive Wintergrasp to have the best chance of completing the Victory in Wintergrasp or the Defend 3 Siege Vehicles quests. This will remove most of the people who are there just for the honor the current quests give.
2) Give a node defense honor bonus like what is proposed for Battlegrounds in 3.2.
3) Create teleporters at each Workshop that allow players to quickly travel from their faction controlled nodes to other faction controlled nodes to defend them from attackers. Create zone wide notifications when a node is about to be lost. Most defenders hate to mounting up to ride to a node only to have nothing show up. It's a waste of time and a waste of potential free honor while standing by the front gate. Do not allow teleportation to the Fortress from the various nodes.
4) Remove the destructable nature of the southern towers, turn them into capturable nodes a la EotS. If the offense faction controls towers, weaken the Fortress gates/walls for each tower. Think reverse Tenacity. If the defensive faction controls towers, speed up the timer. If there are no players near a tower, immediately set tower to neutral (middle point of the capture slider).
Will these suggestions fix all of Wintergrasp's problems? Probably not, but I believe that attempting creative fixes to adjust player gameplay expectations is a far better course of action than the anticipated implementation of a very heavy handed random queue system.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Patch 3.2 - Arena Changes
There are alot of big changes coming so lets get down to brass tacks.
Edit: How did I miss this one?
Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.
Wow. Just. Wow. This makes resilience HUGE. This also makes long term classes like Melee/Warlocks much stronger if matches can be drawn out long enough through defensive play. Inccoming Season 3 all over again? Hrm. Time for everyone to reroll Druid imo.
3.2 Arena Changes
-The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5 player team rating. Rating requirements form 2 player teams can still be used to purchase previous season of gear.
This is probably the biggest change as the 2v2 Arena bracket has been the go to bracket that most of the Arena population plays due to the ease in which people can come together to get games in. Naturally, 2v2 is inherently imbalanced as many comps live and die by the comps of their opponents. A renewed emphasis on 3v3 and 5v5 will likely encourage players to compete in a seemingly less Rock/Paper/Scissors type of environment. However, this is only conjecture as it seems to be harder for casual PvPers to coordinate some of the larger team sizes as evidenced by the complete dearth of teams in 5v5. In addition, casual players may continue to flock to 2's as they may see the Season 6 (Furious) gear as 'good enough' and as such, keep the 3v3 and 5v5 ladders relatively bare.
Remember, the strength of a bracket is completely dependent on the number of active teams. Only time will tell to see if the casual crowd embraces these other brackets and if Blizzard lowers the rating requirement of the next tier of gear to tempt causals. My best guess is that Blizzard would create 2 tiers of Season 7 gear, one that the casuals can easily obtain and one that the pros will want, much like the tier 8 and 8.5 gear from the raids. Let's see if I'm right.
-Dalaran Sewers
--The Entire Arena has increased in size by 25%
Good. This should give people more room to work with both on top of the platform and while running around the edges.
--Mounts can now be used in this Arena
Great. Not being able to charge into combat sucks. Not being able to catch up with a travel form Druid pillaring you with the entire map sucks.
--The position and collision of the crates on the central platform has been modified
Awesome. There have been times where, due to the geometry of the crates, I've had failboat fears or had others LOS my cyclones while still blatantly in LOS. This should help eliminate those issues and make it less random or prone to the effects of latency.
-Ruins of Lordaeron
--Alcoves have been removed from the starting chambers
This is an interesting change as it prevents players from kiting between the two starting chambers, LOS'ing and drinking. Naturally, this will make RoL a faster map and reward teams that seize control of the central tombstone.
--Two line-of-sight tombstones have been added to the slime pool on the southern side of the map
I'm not sure how large these tombstones will be, but it seems they will be a good place to run towards if the other team dominates the tomb with AOE snares.
--The collision around the central tomb has been smoothed out to prevent players from becoming stuck on the terrain as often.
I have mixed feelings about this change as the current tomb showcases experienced players from complete nublets from the way they move across the tomb. This change will likely allow melee to stick to their targets easier, speeding up the match even further. I think in the end, this will be a positive change as people will likely complain less with regards to the map geometry.
-----
Note: WHERE ARE THE CHANGES TO RING OF VALOR (A.K.A. RING OF BUGS?)
Edit: How did I miss this one?
Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.
Wow. Just. Wow. This makes resilience HUGE. This also makes long term classes like Melee/Warlocks much stronger if matches can be drawn out long enough through defensive play. Inccoming Season 3 all over again? Hrm. Time for everyone to reroll Druid imo.
3.2 Arena Changes
-The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5 player team rating. Rating requirements form 2 player teams can still be used to purchase previous season of gear.
This is probably the biggest change as the 2v2 Arena bracket has been the go to bracket that most of the Arena population plays due to the ease in which people can come together to get games in. Naturally, 2v2 is inherently imbalanced as many comps live and die by the comps of their opponents. A renewed emphasis on 3v3 and 5v5 will likely encourage players to compete in a seemingly less Rock/Paper/Scissors type of environment. However, this is only conjecture as it seems to be harder for casual PvPers to coordinate some of the larger team sizes as evidenced by the complete dearth of teams in 5v5. In addition, casual players may continue to flock to 2's as they may see the Season 6 (Furious) gear as 'good enough' and as such, keep the 3v3 and 5v5 ladders relatively bare.
Remember, the strength of a bracket is completely dependent on the number of active teams. Only time will tell to see if the casual crowd embraces these other brackets and if Blizzard lowers the rating requirement of the next tier of gear to tempt causals. My best guess is that Blizzard would create 2 tiers of Season 7 gear, one that the casuals can easily obtain and one that the pros will want, much like the tier 8 and 8.5 gear from the raids. Let's see if I'm right.
-Dalaran Sewers
--The Entire Arena has increased in size by 25%
Good. This should give people more room to work with both on top of the platform and while running around the edges.
--Mounts can now be used in this Arena
Great. Not being able to charge into combat sucks. Not being able to catch up with a travel form Druid pillaring you with the entire map sucks.
--The position and collision of the crates on the central platform has been modified
Awesome. There have been times where, due to the geometry of the crates, I've had failboat fears or had others LOS my cyclones while still blatantly in LOS. This should help eliminate those issues and make it less random or prone to the effects of latency.
-Ruins of Lordaeron
--Alcoves have been removed from the starting chambers
This is an interesting change as it prevents players from kiting between the two starting chambers, LOS'ing and drinking. Naturally, this will make RoL a faster map and reward teams that seize control of the central tombstone.
--Two line-of-sight tombstones have been added to the slime pool on the southern side of the map
I'm not sure how large these tombstones will be, but it seems they will be a good place to run towards if the other team dominates the tomb with AOE snares.
--The collision around the central tomb has been smoothed out to prevent players from becoming stuck on the terrain as often.
I have mixed feelings about this change as the current tomb showcases experienced players from complete nublets from the way they move across the tomb. This change will likely allow melee to stick to their targets easier, speeding up the match even further. I think in the end, this will be a positive change as people will likely complain less with regards to the map geometry.
-----
Note: WHERE ARE THE CHANGES TO RING OF VALOR (A.K.A. RING OF BUGS?)
Staying True?
Upon meeting a fellow WoW player, the first question that is invariably asked is "What class do you play?" Many of us become identified by the classes we play to the point that we know that Joe is the Paladin, Bob is the Warrior and that mysterious Blood Elf mage named HermioneX, but never talks on vent, is probably a guy masquerading as a girl.
Sad, but true.
To get to the point where we players become identified or self identify as a particular class, we spend countless hours playing that one character and/or favoring one class over others. Typically, we call this character/class our 'Main' and refer to others as 'Alts'. However, with the cyclical nature of class strength, there are times in which our favored classes outperform others and times where a raid spot is more of an active charity than of actual need. The same applies to the world of competitive Arena PvP where class success for an average player can vary drastically from season to season. As an example, back in Season 5, Survival Hunters were absolutely ridiculous, but after a heavy round of nerfs, have dropped back down to obscurity.
The question that begs to be asked is: What makes one stick with (or abandon) a certain class when it's average success rate is consistently average to below average across multiple seasons (or raid tiers)? In this case, I'm not talking about weak classes that are being piloted by pros to the top of the ladders, as pros will succeed regardless of class strength. I am referring to an average player comparing themselves against other average players.
I happened to choose two classes that have been perennially strong since Season 2 (Priest/Druid), however, Season 5's Paladin dominance made me question the choice of my classes. The 3.1 buffs to my classes and nerfs to Paladins have rekindled my desire to continue playing my characters, but I was on the precipice of rerolling if the demographics didn't change. Unfortunately, I have friends who have been affected by the dominance of other classes over their preferred class across multiple seasons and some are to the point that they are struggling to find the fun in the game. Yes, there is probably an overemphasis on class comps and on Arenas with it comes to determining class viability in WoW, but shouldn't there be parity when it comes to having fun regardless of the activity that is chosen?
It just so happens that my friends are staying true to their relatively weak classes because they enjoy the gameplay of the classes more than the gameplay of their alts, but I suspect that without positive changes to their classes, this may be a subscription cancelling point.
I hope it doesn't come to that but from my experience with Season 5, I can see where they're coming from.
Sad, but true.
To get to the point where we players become identified or self identify as a particular class, we spend countless hours playing that one character and/or favoring one class over others. Typically, we call this character/class our 'Main' and refer to others as 'Alts'. However, with the cyclical nature of class strength, there are times in which our favored classes outperform others and times where a raid spot is more of an active charity than of actual need. The same applies to the world of competitive Arena PvP where class success for an average player can vary drastically from season to season. As an example, back in Season 5, Survival Hunters were absolutely ridiculous, but after a heavy round of nerfs, have dropped back down to obscurity.
The question that begs to be asked is: What makes one stick with (or abandon) a certain class when it's average success rate is consistently average to below average across multiple seasons (or raid tiers)? In this case, I'm not talking about weak classes that are being piloted by pros to the top of the ladders, as pros will succeed regardless of class strength. I am referring to an average player comparing themselves against other average players.
I happened to choose two classes that have been perennially strong since Season 2 (Priest/Druid), however, Season 5's Paladin dominance made me question the choice of my classes. The 3.1 buffs to my classes and nerfs to Paladins have rekindled my desire to continue playing my characters, but I was on the precipice of rerolling if the demographics didn't change. Unfortunately, I have friends who have been affected by the dominance of other classes over their preferred class across multiple seasons and some are to the point that they are struggling to find the fun in the game. Yes, there is probably an overemphasis on class comps and on Arenas with it comes to determining class viability in WoW, but shouldn't there be parity when it comes to having fun regardless of the activity that is chosen?
It just so happens that my friends are staying true to their relatively weak classes because they enjoy the gameplay of the classes more than the gameplay of their alts, but I suspect that without positive changes to their classes, this may be a subscription cancelling point.
I hope it doesn't come to that but from my experience with Season 5, I can see where they're coming from.
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