Archive for the ‘Arenas’ Category

Resilience & Season 8

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Wrap up of Season 7

I am overall satisfied with how Season 7 went for my RMP. We hit 80 roughly a week before the season started and geared our characters from all blues/greens to almost full relentless. I am happy to say that none of us bought rating to get weapons or any other gear, all of our progress was due to hard work and learning our comp. Although I had originally expected to end the season with a higher rating, I am fine with where we did end due to some bad losses to counter-comps where we would lose ridiculous amounts of points while hard wins would net us only a few.

Changes to Resilience

The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.

This announced change will hopefully bring arenas to where I think they should have been all of LK. The rise of cleave teams has done little good for arenas and WoW PvP. The meta-game as a whole has been who gets blow’d up first loses. There is zero strategy in most of these cleave comps other than pick a target (usually healer) and rush them down. We fought many beastcleave comps this season and each one was an uphill battle. Those games were rarely fun because it always ended in 1 of 2 ways:

  1. Can’t LoS hunter and there is no avoiding the burst. I die through PS with full buffs/battlemaster.
  2. I survive the initial burst and then we destroy them because they now have no strategy.

As my friend Nworby says, “If it is beastcleave, take what rating you think they are and then add 200.” This rang true many times as we would beat a beastcleave and think “we’ll probably only get 5 points for this win” and then find out that they were rated much higher than how they played.

Hopefully this change to resilience will bring damage down to where it needs to be and should have been all expansion. I think the reason this wasn’t the case was because of the opposite problem in TBC. It caused the devs to be too cautious with resilience’s effect so that each game didn’t turn out to be a drain game.

The change initially helps me out a lot. I will gain another 12.39% damage reduction and have a total of 24.78% reduction across the board on damage. This should help me be able to last longer while being trained.

Best memories of Season 7

Beating teams with much better gear – This is true for any season, but was a lot of fun this season. When you have those games that you are outgeared and sometimes outcomp’ed but you play so flawlessly that you get the win. This season, we were around 1600 rating and we played a team with 3/5 relentless and weapons. At the time, we were in almost full deadly and didn’t really stand a chance against their 1900 rating. We didn’t make a single mistake and predicted their every move that game. The 25 or so points that we gained was very rewarding.

Reaching 1800 – Our journey to 1800 was difficult to say the least. Not having furious gear from the previous season and also not having decent weapons really hindered our progression. We decided that the easiest way to hit 1800 would be for my 2v2 (rogue/priest) team to get it first and then we could push for it on our 3v3. We ended up within 15 points of 1800 roughly 15 separate times over 3 weeks. Every time that we got close, we would play a geared team and lose 20+ points. In the end, we hit 1800 on our 3v3 first beating a 2k team to get the final points that we needed.

Learning RMP – RMP is a very fun comp to play. While some of the cleave teams were rough matches, most of the others were a lot of fun. RMP requires a lot of coordination and is a lot harder to play than some other comps that I’ve played in the past. It is a comp that really relies on skill and teamwork to get the job done.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

Prot PvP

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Prot Warriors have been the topic as of late. You may have noticed a Prot Warrior team reaching 3000 rating and maybe the Prot Warrior team that played at MLG Orlando this past weekend. It is undeniable if you have played against them that Prot Warriors are a serious threat in PvP. With the current state, Blizzard has announced that they will be nerfing Prot Warrior PvP.

In the next content patch the current plan is to change Warbringer a bit so that it no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares but Intervene would remain unaffected.

The diminishing returns on shield slam damage now starts to kick in when shield block value is more than 1960 (at level 80). It maxes at behaving as if your shield block value is 2072 when your block value is actually 3160 (again, at level 80). Remember this includes the scaling from both shield block value on gear AND shield block value from Strength.

There has been some heated resistance to these changes. There are many PvE warriors who are worried that it will affect their tanking. Likewise there are many PvP warriors who want Prot to be a viable option for them. I have two major problems with Prot Warriors (and Prot Paladins) in PvP:

1. They do not require resilience

There is (supposed to be) a reason that PvP gear doesn’t work in PvE and PvE gear doesn’t work for PvP. Resilience is that reason. You shouldn’t be able to step into arenas without resilience and not get insta-gibbed. Likewise, you should not be able to raid in PvP gear and top any charts. Right now, Prot specced characters can walk into arenas without resilience and survive.

Gear is and will continue to be a huge factor in arenas and PvP. This is most of what makes character development fun for me. It is a great feeling of accomplishment when you buy a piece of gear after a long honor grind or with arena rating. It is mainly what separates a character that just hit 80 and one who someone has devoted a lot of time into. Your gear defines your character.

I can remember back to vanilla WoW around the time that I hit rank 10 on my warrior. There were a couple warriors on the realm who had BiS gear. They would stand around Ironforge waiting for duels or just talking to their friends. Many people would gawk at their gear. For me, that gear was unobtainable and although I wished that I could have their gear, I knew that I didn’t want to put that much time into it. Today, gear is much easier to get but still separates the people who want to put in some work to advance their characters and those who just want the handouts. Try walking into an arena without resilience as a caster (especially healer) and you will get blown up so fast that it will take you back in time.

When Prot Warriors are allowed to not only participate but do well in arenas and PvP without resilience, it takes away the status of any PvP gear that is difficult to obtain.

2. They completely shut a caster down

When TBC first came out, I immediately crafted a mace when I hit 70 and specced into mace specialization. I wasn’t in the majority who chose to use the mace. Many warriors went with the Axe for the extra crit. I started playing some 3’s with another warrior and a druid. A few weeks into season 1 and my warrior partner switched specializations and crafted the mace because it was that good. Our double mace stuns carried our team up to around a 1900 rating. Any healer who played during S1, 2, 3 can remember how overpowered mace stun was. There really wasn’t any way to get away from a Stormherald wielding warrior who was stunning you every few seconds.

As much fun that was for me at the time, it was overpowered and there really was no skill involved with the stun. It was a proc that randomly happened and there was no way to control it. The healers that we hit did not have any options for getting away. When these situations come up where skill and knowledge are completely removed from arenas, you end up with complete RNG. You end up hoping that you don’t run into those overpowered classes because if they play it right, there is nothing you can do to beat them.

The way warriors stand pre-nerf, they have too many ways to completely shut down someone by themselves. AoE stuns, blanket silence, AoE spell reflect, interrupts, range (charge/intercept), and on top of all of that… burst damage. They are easy to heal because nobody is going to burst through 50k health, hard to kite due to Warbringer, and hard to get away from due to their snare and stuns/silences.

Now I’m not trying to say that playing a Prot Warrior doesn’t take any skill to do and you will hit 3000 rating. I just think that Prot Warriors have too many abilities that are designed solely around PvE that have now become too powerful in PvP. Powerful enough that it won’t just be a FotM class, but would stay this way unless it is nerfed.

Arenas are always more fun and rewarding when you win because of how you played and not because your class beats all.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

Arena Footage

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

As promised, here is some video captured during our arena matches last weekend. The matches are between 1850 and 1900 rating. We played many comps like beast cleave, mirror, spell cleave, TSG, etc. I spent a lot of time during these matches doing offensive dispelling, more than usual. The challenge of playing a disc priest is the balance between defensive and offensive play. I have had teammates get global’d during a holy fire cast.

RMP is a lot of fun because of the diverse strategies vs the various comps. We don’t just pick a target to try and global, we pick our CC targets and damage targets and switch when needed. Hopefully these matches offer some strategies for your RMP or other comp.

Match Breakdown:

Match 1: RMP

Get in combat early to prevent sap. Play very aggressive from the start. Offensive dispels on the mage/priest. Mage will CC the rogue while you hit their priest. If the priest doesn’t go down, switch to mage. Throw some defensive dispels on your rogue to help him stay in range. I wasn’t paying attention to the mage and got polymorphed and blinded (the reason Ballsagna went down).

Match 2: Beastcleave

Use CC early. Avoid the initial burst with bloodlust at all costs. I have been killed through pain suppression against this setup. Burn the shaman and CC the paladin. Try to pillar hump to keep hunter off of you. Dispel bloodlust if you have any extra globals.

Match 3: Double Healer (Druid/Disc Priest)/Warrior

CC the priest to take him out of the game and burn the warrior. Dismantle him before shield wall. If the initial burst fails, hard switch to the druid. They will try to outlast you (and they will) so burst is the key.

Match 4-5: TSG

The initial burst will usually be on you. Avoid it as long as you can. Be ready with pain suppression so you have a chance to last through strangulate. Hit the warrior HARD as he comes in to force him to go defensive and avoid a bladstorm on top of the damage. Shackle the DK’s gargoyle if possible. If the warrior gets a bladestorm on top of the strangulate, it is usually game over. Keep abolish disease up on everyone.

Match 6: Disc Priest/Mage/Paladin

We always go for the ret paladin against these comps. Try to force the bubble early and hope a Mass Dispel gets it off in one try. We started with a sap and full dispel of his buffs, then railed him.

Match 7: Warlock/Rogue/Disc Priest

CC on the rogue and dispel priest and burn. Priest can’t keep himself up through the burst.

Match 8: RMP (Shadowplay)

Hit their rogue. GG

Match 9: TSG

Watch the burst as before and hit the warrior hard. Don’t blow fear into a bubble like I do. Predict the burst and PS yourself before it happens. All damage on the Warrior while CC on the pally.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

Think Outside the Box

Friday, December 4th, 2009

A large part of what makes Arenas fun for me is the amount of competition. The same thing that turns people away from Arenas because they are too competitive, is the same thing that I like about them. The changing competition and inability to fully predict what the enemy will do next is what keeps me coming back. If you are more into raiding, imagine if your guild finally got to Anub’Arak except he changed tactics every time you tried to down him. There are no more phases, no more emotes or timers to predict when he’ll use his abilities; only raw teamwork can even come close to beating him. How many of you would still raid? How many wouldn’t fall asleep like you normally do when you run old content?

Playing RMP is the epitome of this competition. If you go into every arena match with set strategies and aren’t ready to break from those strategies, you will end up losing a fair amount of matches. It forces you to think outside the box, to come up with different strategies for each comp that you face and ultimately makes you create strategies on the fly. For example, when we face a mirror comp, we always have the same opening strategy but it rarely ends the same. Some RMPs will focus the rogue, some the mage, some the priest. Not to mention the many variations between. You have to be able to adjust your strategies on the fly and react/predict what your opponent is going to do.

How Casual is Casual?

I keep reading articles here and there about ex-WoW players or current WoW players who feel that the game is too hardcore for them. Whenever I run into a random person in RL who plays WoW, it seems like they don’t have any max level characters. The rare ones who do seem to have a single 80 that doesn’t have any gear let alone knows much about the game.

It would be fun to see statistics on how many players are really that casual. What percentage of accounts have 80s and how many of them actually see endgame PvE/PvP content. Just hearing that I have 3 level 80s makes these people look at me like I must play 24/7 and not have a job or a life. In actuality, I currently play WoW roughly 3-5 hours per week on average and could easily hold my PvP status with playing much less (1-2 hours per week).

On one hand, many would consider me casual because I play little every week. On the other hand, many would consider me hardcore because I have 3 level 80s all of which are in full Epic gear. Being a Hardcore WoW player is nothing what it used to mean. In 2005, I read a statistic that said less than 10% of level 60’s even saw MC let alone killed Ragnaros. Think about the old ranked PvP system where 1 person would get rank 14 per week per realm. Thats only ~52 people per realm per faction per year.

If the game gets to a point where epics are handed out freely without any work or any value, I will no longer have interest in the game. Take away that competition and the game will be a MMO version of peggle.

Live Stream

Lately, I have been streaming my play through Xfire. Add me as a friend or check out my stream at http://www.xfire.com/live_video/ferngully You can usually check out all of our Arena games and some other PvP that I do.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

1800; Manual Dodge

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I had a long post written for this past weekend. It was the culmination of my frustrations over not being able to hit 1800 to get relentless weapons. For my gear, I was losing a lot of spell power by gemming for the resilience that I need to stay competitive in arenas. I have also been wearing a WG trinket instead of my battlemaster’s because of the resilience. There was no other solution to getting that SP back other than getting the relentless weapons.

So what was the problem? We played for the past three weeks without breaking 1750 on our 3v3. Every time we got close to 1750, we would lose a bunch in a row or lose big points with a single loss. My 2v2 team was able to hit 1787 max and was over 1770 on ten different occasions in the past three weeks, yet we were not able to hit 1800. After being stuck at those ratings for three weeks, one starts to wonder if it will be possible without buying the rating. It has always been the catch 22 of WoW for me. In order to get better gear you need to have a high rating, but in order to get a high rating you need to have better gear (if you aren’t willing to be carried).

Skill > Gear (expanded discussion)

In the world of PvP, the concept of skill being more important than gear is a common attitude. I think that a majority of players consider this to be true. I would say that I used to generally subscribe to that theory. The problem is that I know that most of the time, skill has nothing to do with the outcome of a PvP match. If you put a list together of the most important factors in determining the outcome of a PvP match, skill would be pretty low.

Now you have to understand that I’m talking 99% of the PvP that happens. Tom Chilton was recently quoted as saying 20-25% of WoW players play arenas and 1% of those hit a 2k rating. I would generally say that skill matters much more when you are over a 2k rating. So is it possible for a keyboard turner and clicker to hit 2k? Is it possible for a undergeared player to hit 2k? It is possible, but rare. Most of the time you will find skilled, knowledgeable players at this level and the undergeared are carried by others.

So that must mean that the other 99% of players who play arenas are bad, right? I don’t think so. I’ve played against a lot of people at lower ratings who were very good players. I have seen a lot of players who want to play with a friend so they are in a bad comp. I know that there are good players at lower levels of play (ones who could reach 2k given the right circumstances). I could only reach a maximum 1450 rating last season playing Warrior/Resto Shaman. Judging by my ratings, I would be considered a bad player. Nothing has changed between then and now for me except a new character and team composition.

On the same note, I have seen bad players at the 2k level. WotLK opened the play for faceroll teams to dominate. Most of these players can push 3 buttons to win and do not need to even think about it. Find a good stream of a faceroll team on Xfire and watch for a match when their initial burst fails at killing someone. Most of these teams have no idea what to do after that, they just give up. Nevertheless, these teams are over 2k and so are worshiped by many. Gear can carry you and so can your comp.

The attitude about skill being more important than gear comes from our wanting it to be true. We wish that PvP was all about who could play the best rather than who had all the gear.

1800

We were able to pull off some great wins this past weekend and hit 1800 in our 3v3. Our final win was against a ~2100 rated team to give us 19 points and get 1808. It was a Priest/Ret/Mage team that outgeared us considerably. We controlled the entire match holding their ret paladin to only 7.4k damage and their Priest to only 17k healing.

I will be able to pick up my Relentless MH on Tuesday when I get enough arena points and then re-gem most of my gear to compensate for the extra resilience. I will definitely enjoy the extra SP.

Manual Dodge

I had mentioned in last week’s post that I was starting a new guild. I finished getting the signatures the other night and was able to form the guild <Manual Dodge>. The guild is going to be a PvP oriented guild. I haven’t raided much since Ulduar and my priest is fully PvP geared so I do not plan on raiding with him in the future. I focus a lot on PvP because that is still a lot of fun for me. When you play this game fully for PvP and you are in a guild that is full of PvE fanatics, there is just a disconnect. I wan’t to play with others who like PvP, that is why I formed Manual Dodge.

We are planning on doing a weekday premade schedule. We will pick out one BG per weekday and make a premade for that BG. All BG’s will be covered every week and will rotate so that personal schedules do not make a player miss out on the same BG every week. Potentially, if you are able to play 15 games (wins) per day in the premade, you will be able to make over 65k honor from turn ins alone. Also, the bonus honor would probably be around 75k. This is a great and fast way to honor grind. Our premades will be open to anyone on our realm but guild members get priority positions and advanced warning on them.

I’m pretty excited about the guild and hope to meet some new people who love to PvP as much as I do.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

Relentless Weapons; New Guild

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I should be getting back to my regular posting now. I have been hunting every weekend and it doesn’t leave me time for much else. It will be nice to have a weekend without all the traveling. I am also starting a new guild (which I’ll talk about below) and that has been taking up my time. You can expect more posts in the next few weeks, so keep checking back.

1800

We have been pushing to get 1800 in our 2v2 team. The weapon boost is a big upgrade for Ballsagna for his DPS and also mine for the extra resilience allows me to gear more SP. We have been 1700+ for about a month now. We had saved up arena points to buy our weapons because our MMR was over 1800 long ago and we were expecting to hit 1800. Up until we hit a wall.

With my being gone every weekend and Ballsagna’s schedule, we were left with very few opportunities to play. This left us with late at night games on slow nights. Usually there were very few teams on for the night and most of them were not near our rating. Every time we got above 1750, we would get matched up against a geared team or a counter-comp and we would lose big points (17+).

We have gotten over 1775 nine seperate times in the past month and yet haven’t been able to get the right matchups to get that 1800. Hopefully it will just be a matter of time before we get the right matchups to hit 1800 and get our weapons.

Everyone Has Relentless Weapons

I recently saw a Paladin advertising in trade chat, “LF Disc Priest for 3v3 rated 1440 must have 230+ weapon”. I was floored. Our 3v3 rating is currently 1700 and none of us have 230 weapons. I am using a 219 MH and a level 78 OH. We started the season as fresh 80’s with no gear and have worked our way to where we are currently. Too often, I see bad players who have relentless weapons. It reminds me of a druid on my old server who, after 300 games, was rated 1200. He even has a relentless weapon.

This is especially true when you get around 1800 and you don’t have your weapons yet. Every team has relentless weapons and does double the damage that your team can. It is a lot of fun and encouraging to get there without gear. We play teams that should beat us because of the gear difference, but we outplay them for the win.

The only teams that I hate playing are the geared faceroll teams. We played a few last week that could drop me in a stun (25.2k health, 36% physical reduction, 1162 resilience, pain suppression, and other passive damage reduction talents). Even with our trying to stop their insane damage with every form of CC that we have at our disposal, there was no stopping them. I don’t even understand why people play those comps. To me, that wouldn’t be any fun.

Skill > Gear

While I generally subscribe to this statement, it is only true when gear isn’t a huge factor. If you took a veteran player with a fresh 80 against an ebay character that is full s7 gear, who would you bet on to win? While there are other factors that come into play, as long as the ebay character has basic knowledge of how to play, they will win because of their gear.

We would all like to say that skill is always more important than gear, but this is just not the case. The game does take skill to be good at, but it also takes gear. Just enjoy the times when you bear a mirror comp who has better gear or that 200-300+ rated team who you should never have played.

The best thing is to use your gear disadvantage to learn your class and comp more than the people who are pushing 3 buttons for wins. When you finally get the gear, you will be a much better player and your team will be playing like there is no gear difference instead of being used to outgearing everyone.

New Guild

When I transferred and faction changed, I was originally looking for a PvP oriented guild but instead joined a guild that my friend was in. I have never raided with them mainly because of the times that they raid and haven’t really gotten to know anyone. I decided to jump ship and join a PvP guild. The problem is that there aren’t any big PvP guilds left on Dragonmaw and the ones that I found are not that active anymore.

So I have decided to start a guild. We have some great ideas in store for events and how to make a PvP guild work and make it fun so people want to join. I still need to get signatures, but should be able to get those tonight and will start recruiting soon. I will be posting more details about the guild in future posts so check back here for news. Also, if you are interested in joining the guild, let me know. We always welcome new recruits.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas | No Comments »

PUGs; Arena Pacing

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

PUGs

We’ve all seen it; Someone is starting a PUG raid and needs a few healers, dps, or tanks. They say in LFG: “LF 2 healers, 3 dps, and 1 tank for VoA25. PST stats and achievement or no reply.” The key point they are trying to make is that they want only quality players who have experience at the fights.

You have been looking for that group all day. Finally you get a chance to join a raid to do that instance. Except there is a problem… You have never done the instance before on this character. Like me, you have done it dozens of times on other characters and know the fight backwards and forwards. You could contribute to the kill with your eyes closed. Your character has the gear and you have the experience but you will never get an invite because you don’t have the achievement.

The sad fact is that bad players ruin raids. Sometimes it only takes one bad apple to spoil an otherwise good raid. This causes a fear and a bad stigma of new players. Very few people want to invite a new player or help them out which makes new players lie to get groups. So the resounding solution is to make sure people have done the fights before, and the achievement is proof of this.

The problem with this thinking is that achievements are not an accurate measurement of how competent a player is. I have played WoW for almost 5 years and have 3 level 80’s, yet I can’t get invites on certain characters because I haven’t done those fights on that particular character. I have also seen people with the achievements stink up a raid because they were carried there by a guild or a random PUG.

IMO, a more accurate representation of how well a player knows his/her class is their gem choices/spec. It is pretty common for a bad player to not know how to gem/spec for their class. It just takes a bit of knowledge by the raid leader to see these mistakes and make a more accurate decision on who gets an invite. The main problem with this is that a lot of people don’t have this knowledge. They know how they themselves should gear and spec, but any other class is like a foreign language.

So is there a solution for new players, veteran players with new 80’s, and raid leaders alike? I would say the best option is for new players to work at getting gear with a guild. Blizzard always offers options for more casual ways of getting gear. So get in that Naxx PUG or get a few friends together and farm ToC. Raid leaders should be a little more generous with who they let come to their raids. Most players aren’t going to ruin your raid and if you aren’t capable of seeing which players will be a hindrance, leave the raid leading to someone else.

Arena Pacing

I have recently gotten my resilience up to an amount that is respectable for arenas (1063 on my priest). Just the increase of 200 points over last week is a night and day difference so far. I am able to stand my ground against faceroll comps and actually stand a chance even if Pain Suppression is on cooldown.

Overall, I am enjoying the changes to resilience for this season. With the new season of gear scaling and all the damage numbers higher than ever, it is nice to have a tool to reduce that dps. There have been very few situations where I get dropped in a GCD (it still happens once in a while). This allows us to play to our class strengths and makes skill and coordination ever more important in arenas. A very good change over previous WotLK seasons where cleave teams were dominant due to high burst damage.

For anyone who plays a healer class, if you have the time and resources, gather a high resilience set of gear and try it out in BGs. At times, you will feel like a raid boss because 4-5 players can’t kill you. It sure gives BGs a whole new dimension when you are tanking half the opposing team. If you happen to be one of the many who is trying to kill Ferngully, be sure to /salute and let me know you’re a reader.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Arenas, Important Things | No Comments »