Arena report Day 1 - Season 6

Ok folks, while I (and many others) stand my my big FU to Blizz from yesterday; it's time for a more coherent post. Unfortunately the armory hasn't updated yet so I don't have the match by match stats but after an evening of arena I have stuff to report. Some of it great other stuff not so much.

First of all, I'm pleased to report I did get a CHALLENGER title along with the achievement. It was probably the most frustrating season I've played in and I've played since S2 So congrats to me!

THE OVERVIEW

So log in late last night and immediately whisper my long time arena partner Kyllia. Turns out he's got some RL issues going on and says he's not going to be very available for games for a few weeks. That's not good since all teams now start at a ZERO rating. It take quite a few games to get up there. Fortunately now that I"m in a PvP guild I've met other folks exited to play and got a Death Knight to join me. I wound up playing 28 games last night. 18 of them with the DK, 10 with my Rogue partner.

Ending win/loss = 17 win 11 loss
Ending Rating = 799

THE GOOD

You're starting at a ZERO rating, it's actually awesome. Because the rating is so low, every loss you take is a zero point loss. Every win is a 47 point win.... Let me say that again because it's so important to what's going to make the season feel good to folks. Until you get well past 1k rating there is no penalty for losing you loose nothing. And every win is 47 points. Frankly it made last night probably the funnest to play in a long time. No need for your teammate to get pissed because some bonehead move got you killed. There's just no real pressure for the first 50 games or so. That's a nice change.

I'm not sure how high you need to go before you start loosing points. In two matches my opponents each lost 1 point while we still gained 47. My guild leader ended the night at a 1304 rating and said that he still hadn't seen any point deduction for a loss.

My 800 point rise in rating last night leads me to believe that the overall rating you get in S6 should be at least as high as you got in S5. That means gear will be easier to obtain. All Deadly gear has a maxium PR of 1500 and furious gear starts at 1400 for the off set. Combined with the fact that if you have less then a 1500 rating you will get points as if you had a 1500 rating... it's great news for caual PvPer's as well as moderates. I hope arena participation will improve.

THE BAD

Not all good news. Holy and Ret PvP builds are gimped compared to S5. The DK I was with Out DPS'ed me when I played RET. With exorcism gone I need to re-glyph myself. I swapped to Holy wich worked out much better (9 wins in a row, almost HOT STREAK). But I can tell it's still gimped. I'm running out of mana faster, I have no stun break, it's not great but it does still seem to work.

In other bad news, (for certain classes) I expect the same old combo's to be OP despite any nerfs, so plan on seeing more DK/Holy Pally teams, expect warriors and warlocks to suck, etc, etc.

At this point I'm unclear on what a zero start rating means for switching teams. Will you go back to zero PR every switch? Man that's going to be problematic I think.

Lastly, this isn't new but there is no Deadly gladiator PvP weapon just two tiers of Furious weapons.. minum rating for that is 1850.... Leaving most people to try to PvE for a better weapon.


GOOD LUCK IN SEASON 6 FOLKS!

Exorcism can no longer be used on players

Maybe I'm tired, maybe it's just been a rough week. Whatever the reason I only have one response to Blizz once again nerfing ret at the last second, and specifically for PvP where Ret is not dominant.

(please excuse my french)

FUCK YOU Blizzard, Fuck you.


That is all... for now.
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Exorcism can no longer be used on players

We made a change in the 3.1.1 patch to prevent Exorcism from being used on players. We didn’t announce this change ahead of time because we were trying to get the tooltip changed at the same time to reduce confusion. We still plan on getting the tooltip updated ASAP. Exorcism’s use in PvE has not changed at this time.

Going with a “not on players” solution is not ideal and we will be re-designing how the ability works in a future patch (the plan is sooner rather than later). We don’t like for PvE and PvP mechanics to work differently when we can avoid it. We also don’t like for a major damaging ability to be excluded from the PvP game. However, we thought this had become a balance issue serious enough to address at this time.

We shifted around paladin damage for 3.1 trying to increase sustained damage while reducing burst damage. Unfortunately, the Exorcism change did the opposite. Instead of stealing a GCD from a paladin, it actually gave them an extra one. A Retribution paladin could use Exorcism to cause damage while closing to melee and then be ready to go with their melee damage attacks. (Exorcism of course is not limited to Ret paladins either.) We changed the way paladins do damage for Lich King, so while it is unfortunate (and we accept full blame), it also isn’t too surprising that it is taking some effort to get their damage in the right place.

In the same patch where we remove the “not on players” limitation for Exorcism, we are going to change the way paladins do damage so that their normal combat moves have more depth to them instead of just using abilities every time they finish their cooldown. This should make causing damage as a paladin more interesting and also less bursty. While we have some ideas on how to accomplish that, if you have suggestions or your own ideas about how this could work, this would be a good time to share them. (As examples of abilities you don’t just use whenever their cooldown has finished, you might look at Conflagrate, Brain Freeze, Rip, Overpower or Arcane Blast.) We do request that you don’t fill the forums with posts of limited content or insight about how you don’t like to be nerfed. Nobody does.

It is always a judgment call about when a fix (a buff or a nerf) can’t wait. Some things we can’t change easily in hotfixes or small patches, and some things we consider too risky for technical reasons or for their potential effects on the game.

Get your patch 3.1 Ret PvP spec here (maybe)

Well, I was checking out the new wowhead talent calculator and trying to figure out a way to shave enough points out of the Ret Tree to keep a 30 second stun. Well I may have found it.

0/19/52

So let's look at what's missing from my tree.

SOC - Yep, Seal of Command is gone, the word from PTR folks is that because judgments count for a lot less damage, the blowback from Seal of Blood/Martyr is reduced greatly making this better for all around Damage. If there's an instance where you absolutly can't be taking damage, then you can always dust off that old Seal of Command or even go to a holy seal.

2H Weapon Specalization - Well, this was gone a long time ago for me. So not putting it back doesn't hurt.

Improved Blessing of Might - There it is... the two point loss that (if anyone coments) people will be looking at hard. I hate running numbers and I don't even have time for it right now, but my thought is wtih BOK trainable, a ret pally will be OK using BOK instead of BOM on himself. Sure there is less AP, but you get more health, more mana, bigger crit to make up for it. And you suddenly buy youself 2 spare points to get the 30 second CD for Improved Hammer of Justice and keep Divine Guardian which will just be huge.



The excellent blog RET PALLY SMASH has put up a different build 0/20/51 You get basically the same Prot tallents, but the ret tree gives up RV and Fanaticism instead of BOM and 2H weapon damage.

Here's the thing, Ret Pallies are getting their burst reduced already, RV and Fanticism work great together to help keep the burst up. 18% extra chance to crit AND when the crit happens 30% will be a DOT. Is that better then 6% white damage... Yes I think it is. Is it worth not having improved BOM? Only a little real world testing or heavy theorycrafting will tell.

Religulous

Yep RELIGULOUS (like the Bill Maher movie)..... if you don't know the movies it's a comedy about the various religions of the world.

Well, the reason I mention it is that I went ahead and swapped to Holy, and it feels a little comedic; especially dueling and anything that needs DPS like daily quests :)....With the assumption that patch 3.1 is coming on the 14th or 21st I'm going to try to stay holy until the patch. My build is 51/5/15 which is PvE and feels just wrong.. no stun removal, no movement increase, no repentance; but excellent healing when not interrupted. Here's what I've healed so far:

10 man VOA - With only 9 people the raid leader wanted me on raid heal, and put a druid on MT/OT heal. We wiped due to people not staying out of the cloud. 2nd time I asked to switch to tank heals and we did just fine.... I have to say though I was feeling a little low on mana by the end of it.

25 man VOA - Raid heal again, but no idiots standing in the cloud it was a cake walk, although again not a ton of mana left at the end of the fight

Heroic VH - Now this was my first real test as far as I was concerned. Being the only healer means everyone's looking at me to keep them alive. It's probably the easiest heroic as a DPS so I figured it was a good place to start.

Well, let me tell you the first boss we get is Zuramat, which is maybe the hardest boss in there and I just about caused a wipe. I'm casting crazy heals and running out of mana, so I go to case Lay on Hands on myself - unfortunately I had a teammate focused, so the LOH landed on them. I ran out of mana and died, everyone else started dropping as well. Fortunately our groups RET pally had the presence of mind to cast LOH on our tank and the tank lasted just long enough to kill him (down to maybe 10% health with everyone else dead). Still we avoided the wipe which is what counts, but no thanks to me.

The rest of the fight is fine, but I constantly found myself having to manage mana. I'm not sure how the other pally healers do in 5's but with very little down time in VH, I found myself constantly trying to keep above 50% of mana

My observations so far:

1) I know I've read posts that say Holy Pally mana pools are just about infinite, and I can see that in in short bursty arena's or large raids where you're getting mana back from other effects. But if you're the ONLY healer, I just don't see healing heroics without the occasional stop to drink.

2) Beacon of light - Well this certainly helps with healing, but 1 minute? Wow that's annoying to reapply all the time AND I have to go select the guy to re-apply, perhaps I should just write a macro - the annoying thing is that I need to put in the persons name every time I'm healing a new group.

3) I need to get a little better poping abilities like HOP, which means I need to be a little more friendly with my F1-F5 keys me thinks.

Feeling a little "meh" before patch 3.1

I've had this growing feeling of boredom while waiting for patch 3.1 Let's look at the stuff I do in a given week and why it's getting boring.

- PvP
Ah my true love, like a prison inmate waiting for a conjugal visit I yearn for more arena. The problem is that my teams have stopped playing.. Why? Well my 2v2 SHOULD be OK for a challenger title, and with my current 2's partner pulling 12 hour days at work we don't want to jeopardize it with sloppy play so we're just waiting for the season to end...

Also with arena points being reset at the end of S5 there just isn't anything to play for, so my arena partners are focusing on other things untill S6.

There's always BG's and Wintergrasp.... But I've been honor capped for a couple weeks, and nothing new in WG to buy, I'm basically saving WG marks for the next season and playing more WSG and AB just for the marks - which feels like not the best use of time to sit in a half hour AB for 1 loosing mark and no honor.

-Raiding
Yeah, I've been doing a lot more of that. At some point every week I get in 10/25 man VoA and 10/25 man OS. In fact over the weekend I managed to pick up Gauntlets of the Lost Conqueror which I turned in for Valorious Redemption Gloves for my Holy Set....That's all fine and dandy but running all 4 of these takes up maybe 4 hours in a week, with one of them spent sitting around waiting for the group to form. Then it's a 1 week lockout and I"m forced to move onto...

5-man heroics = (Sigh) it's fine, and pugs are a dime a dozen, but I'm way overgeard for anything to drop for me, pretty much relegating me to buying frozen orbs with the emblems that drop. It's also starting to feel pretty grindy, I mean how many times can a guy run heroic VH and come away exited? That just leaves....

Naxx = That would be fine, it's pretty new content for me and has gear upgrades, but unlike just about every other raid instance this one is relatively hard to find pugs for on my server (relative compared to finding pugs for all the other content) AND most importantly requires a solid 2-4 hour commitment which I don't have a lot of.

Dailies - Nothings more grinding then doing the same quests over and over for more gold... I try to slog thru 3 Holdar dailies minimum per day, plus the WG dailies. Sometimes more. At one point I needed the cash, now I"m sitting at over 5k gold so there's no real pressure. I'm sure with new gear enchants and a 1k Dual Spec fee I'll feel poor soon enough for now though I'm just going thru the motions.

So what's left for me to do? - I'm open to ideas. Frankly I think I may respec to Holy for the last week, not only should it give me a little variety but I'll help me get "into shape" for when I'm asked to heal.... Funny enough this weeks 10 man OS only had 9 people and 1 healer. So for boss fights I swapped to my holy set and off healed along with a shadow priest. It went slow, but no wipes :)

It's not a carry.. we're a TEAM

Ok guys, as you know I joined a PvP Guild a while back. One of the guys in my guild Jeddak is a fury warrior that loves to PvP AND talk smack. I want to start off by saying that he's a nice guy, on my 3's team, I enjoy doing arena and BG's with him and.. I OWN HIM IN DUELS I mean, I really, really, really kick his butt. We've dueled maybe 20 times and my record is 19-1, with my one loss occurring when I decided to duel in my healing gear (keeping the ret spec) and answering a phone call at the same time.

Now normally I would never go humiliating someone online, but good old Jeddak has a habit of Dueling me when we're the only two people of our guild on. THEN the next day when others are on I suddenly see the guild chat flooded with "lol Drunk I OWNED you last night in Duels".... Despite my protests to the contrary with what really happened there's no admission of loss, just more smack talk that he won against me multiplee times with me taking no wins.

To add insult to injury he convinced one of our PRO healers to carry him in 2v2. Their team rating is 1976. So now as we're going back and forth he's reminding folks to look at his arena rating. When I tell him he's lucky to get such a great carry he always replies "No... We're a Team" Hey.. if he ACTUALLY won and wasn't getting an arena carry he could smack talk all he wants, all day, all night. But since he's loosing every match it's just a fun lie at best. I'm not offended or angry I'm sure he's joking... But because it happens with our Guild leaders on and we're a PvP guild... I want to set the record straight.

Last night just after 11pm server time Jeddak invites me for more duels... Knowing he's going to bring it up when I log in tonight with more "lol I owned you like i own my dog" I went ahead and screenshotted our 5 matches... If you click on the pick for full screen, you can clearly see the time stamps and some in game comments.

Match#1 - (Winner Drunkenclod)

Match #2 (Winner Drunkenclod)

Match #3 (Winner Drunkenclod)

Match #4 (Winner Drunkenclod)

Match #5 (Winner Drunkenclod)

And finally - His "It's not a carry... we're a Team" 2v2 team in detail
(notice he's played 21 of 575 games)

Sorry Jed, you brought this on yourself my friend. Consider it the ultimate smack talk, but with proof.
It's a carry - You're NOT a Team :)