---

Q u o t e:


I have to admit that I am more than a little confused as to why you are rebutting with a "BG's dont get enough attention" argument to counter my "Arenas havent gotten a 'heavy focus' argument".

Edit: and my apologies for taking this thread off track, I would prefer this thread to remain as 'clean' as it has, and stay on the topic of the original points.

Please feel free to respond to this post, but I will not respond to yours for the sake of staying on the original topic.

---

Your reply was laced with a sarcastic response that the Arena's have not received any heavy focus. I pointed out that as far as PvP goes - the Arena has received nearly all the focus. The Battlegrounds certainly have not. Wintergrasp received a little.

Everything PvE has to be measured with heavy scrutiny on how it will affect the failboat Arenas. I never played Arenacraft 1, 2, or 3. It wasn't the Frozen Arenathrone. Yet for the past 2+ years, everything PvP has to be metered through the Arena.

It's no wonder that several people are ready to see the Arena tumor cut out of World of Warcraft. Many of them would willingly hand Blizzard the scissors to do so too.

---

Q u o t e:

If only to play Devils advocate, I would like to explore this "the heavy focus on the arena is killing WoW" complaint that you make.

---

The heavy focus I am speaking of is in regards to the design, implementation and sheer amount of hours put into class nerfs, buffs, fixes and "balances" all of which revolve around a mini-game that Blizzard obviously hoped would lay the foundation of a new profit center (aka an eSport). An Arena system, I might add, which Blue posts have confirmed recently were never intended to be the ultimate PvP experience of WoW.

All of these hours could have been spent fixing what is now ultimately a lackluster, unenjoyable and unrewarding battleground system that they already had in place.

Blizzard has stated that rewarding players for their BG play is too difficult at the moment because there is no way to determine player skill. This suggests that in their minds, Arenas actually do reward skill. While I agree 100% that there is skill involved with getting high ratings, the glaring problem with Arenas is that they are the exact opposite of Blizzard's stated "Bring the Player, Not the Class" manta.

In BGs I can take my existing character and jump into cooperative PvP. To be successful in Arenas, however, I first need to find out which compositions are dominating, then reroll and powerlevel one of those classes. I find that unacceptable. PvP should be about using your existing characters and playing with your existing friends/guildies - not about finding out the exact class combination you need to put together in order to form Voltron.

The vast amount of DKs running around in Arenas only prove my point. If DKs had rolled off the assembly line being weak in Arena play, then I'd wager that over half of them would be back playing their old mains by now. DKs aren't the problem, but their over saturation of the Arenas is a symptom of the disease which is killing this game day by day.

Blizzard knows Arenas are failing and at an all time low, just as they know that BG participation is down too. Rather than admit their mistakes however, they instead just find a bigger carrot to dangle in front of people to encourage them to keep playing in their broken system (read: Frostwyrm mounts).

World of Warcraft would be a better game as a whole if Arenas were cut out and discarded as the malignant tumor that it is, and the whole eSport angle was then made the central focus of their brand new MMO.

---

Q u o t e:
5) Burst.

Burst.
Is.
Killing.
This.
Game.
Plz.
Fix.
It.

---

10000000x that.

The rest of the post is good. But that part really stands out for me.

The amount of burst in this game makes PVP depressing. I love PVP. But right now, venturing into a battleground that's stocked with 5 DKs and 3 pallys (that's just one side's worth), is just... not cool.

They already run Tournament Realms, I really dont see why this isnt separated. Guild Wars had a fantastic route with this (The games quality aside), that being you could make a max level PvP toon, and equip it with anything youve discovered (unlocked). In other words, if I went on a PvP realm I could equip my Betrayer where someone who had never received it couldnt. You can make any special PvP rules you want there to fuel the eSport. Because having one system for BGs, Arenas, and PvE just isnt gonna happen, its impossible. Entirely too many variables and those are 3 separate animals. People argue "PvP isnt based around 1 VS 1". Well.... when? In a BG it isnt, in an arena it kinda is. And whatever you do there impacts the other 2.

I am PERFECTLY suited for BGs, I am not that well suited for Arena. How can that be true? Because they are DIFFERENT, and one ring will NOT rule them all!

---

Q u o t e:
1) Massively Unbalanced classes.

2) The BG's.

3) The devs being too slow to balance.

4) PVP gear (specifically weapons).

5) Burst.

6) Resilience.

---

1) OK I can see that point of view. Warlocks definitely need large PvP nerfs. Probably Rogues too. Shaman definitely need huge, massive, buffs.

2) BGs can't be ruining the game, they are irrelevant to the game since Blizzard abandoned them a long time ago. It could be argued that Blizzard abandoning their most balanced form of PvP and trying to balance PvP around dueling in a fish bowl is what unbalanced the game?

3) Too slow and don't know what they are doing. I made a series of posts in BETA of what was wrong with Elemental Shaman, and what would be needed to fix it. Slowly they are being forced to follow my post nearly word for word, but only after they try every other bad idea first. Yes Ghostcrawler, I can do your guys job better than you, when it comes to Shaman balance. You should send me an email sometime -- problem is, you guys do everything by committee, and you apparently have a twit in your group that cries to mommy every time someone suggests an idea that would unbreak Elemental Shaman.

4) Not a problem.

5) Not a problem.

6) Not a problem, other than it favors DoT-based classes (Warlocks, Death Knights) and causes crit-based classes to be useless (Shaman).

Remember when high damage classes had low HP, and classes that were hard to kill did little damage? Yeah that was cool.

Also, I agree with the OP pvp isn't balanced because wow classes were designed around pve roles. Then gear homogenization with stam being everywhere made all the squishy classes real threats. Then the previously non squishy classes received tools like defensive cooldowns which were then use offensively since damage is so out of control a few seconds of pewpew with little to no danger to you is all you need. It's like being a rogue, but you're out in the open.

Of course, now rogues have been nerfed to hell. The idea of stealth was just a bad idea to begin with.

---

Q u o t e:
1) OK I can see that point of view. Warlocks definitely need large PvP nerfs. Probably Rogues too. Shaman definitely need huge, massive, buffs.

---

I hope they nerf the tar out of resto shaman so you have absolutely no worthwhile spec for pvp

:)

---

Q u o t e:


I hope they nerf the tar out of resto shaman so you have absolutely no worthwhile spec for pvp

:)

---

Considering I don't play Restoration, nor have gear for Restoration, I already have no worthwhile spec for PvP. Shaman aren't like Warlocks -- we can't just pay 50g and respec to another tree and instantly be #1 at whatever, no gear change required. Shaman have to grind 6 full sets of end-game gear to pull that off.

Also, considering that Restoration Shaman are already worse than HPaladins and DPriests, and Restoration Druids are getting major PvP buffs ... I think your wish will come true in a couple weeks.

I wonder if a blue has seen this post yet........

This guy hit the nail on the head in every way possible. It's a shame he doesn't work for blizzard so he can clean things up around there.

---

Q u o t e:

You don't need 800-1000 resilience to survive a Shatter combo. The game is designed around the notion that you will escape or prevent CC. You aren't going to survive long CC'd with players beating on you no matter how high your resilience is.

---

Some CC is made expressly for the ability to be unable to get out of and allow for a 3 second window of wtfbbqhax burst, like stuns, with exception of an elect few classes who can remove it or ignore it better then others.

Not saying that CC vulnerability is bad, but some immunities or resistances are clearly more powerful then others. In the case of warriors, when everything pretty much can stun, snare, or slow somehow, the incapacitate and fear immunity on demand also seems less valuable from the half or so classes that do that.

Also, first.

---

Q u o t e:

GC Response

---

You don't get much more thorough than that.

---

Q u o t e:

You don't need 800-1000 resilience to survive a Shatter combo. The game is designed around the notion that you will escape or prevent CC. You aren't going to survive long CC'd with players beating on you no matter how high your resilience is.

---

So why does everyone have long stuns and CC?

I just don't understand how we're supposed to be able to escape cc or prevent when everybody has it (some being able to be used offensively -- mainly the ones that fall under STUN). There are times when we can prevent, but there are other times where you just get to take it. Those times aren't fun.

I'd also imagine some Warlocks would have comments about this. :P

I still have an issue with rogues. The stuns come way too often and make for some very unfun times. That being said, while a rogue can still tear a priest to shreds, they definitely aren't as bad as they were before. But the stun spams and the notion that we are not supposed to live through them... isn't cool.

How will built-in defenses be dealt with in the future? Though the effect will certainly be less pronounced when people have more resilience and top-notch weapons are harder to find, it is still the case that this provides certain classes with a unique advantage. A deathknight or paladin can get away with wearing much less resilience gear, and thus be much stronger overall. Furthermore, Ulduar dps plate budgets more stamina than other forms of gear, meaning the ideal gear setup for deathknights and ret paladins (not exclusive to these, but these are the most obvious) will likely be a mixture of PvP gear and a fair bit of PvE gear.

I am not suggesting for a second that this is an easy issue being ignored. Frankly I have difficulty seeing how small scale PvP balance can exist without considerable homogenization. Still, are there any ideas in the works for this?

---

Q u o t e:


You don't need 800-1000 resilience to survive a Shatter combo. The game is designed around the notion that you will escape or prevent CC. You aren't going to survive long CC'd with players beating on you no matter how high your resilience is.

I think what we might do differently next time is make higher resilience values available earlier. You start to notice resilience having an effect at say 500 or so and you start living long enough to counter attacks at 800 or so. A lot of players going into the season with 100 or so resilience did get blown up. This felt particularly weird because:

1) For the last few seasons, their resilience had pretty much just gone up. Season 5 was a reset that had a lot more in common with Season 1.
2) In addition, this was complicated by the issue above -- that players were combining the weak resilience with very potent PvE weapons that they had already looted from KT. If the Arena season had started around the same time Naxx had opened (combined with slightly better tuning on Naxx) then there would not have been such a discrepancy.
3) Some classes had overly powerful built in resistances that made up for the lack of resilience. Specifically, DKs had a lot of cooldowns and passive defenses built in for tanking and paladins had their shields, which could be used offensively at the start of the season.

To drag out a tired cliche, the combination of these 3 (low resilience, KT weapons and baked-in defenses) plus the high burst at the start of the season created a perfect storm for fast Arena deaths.

Perhaps a better solution is to have relatively high resilience on the starter gear (like 500) but at the cost of offensive stats. We do want PvP gear to be a progression though. We don't want you to start the first season of an expansion with amazing resilience and offenses.

---

You can't just decrease the damage on PVP gear in the hopes that the draw of the resilience is going to keep people from wearing anything BUT it... Players are simply going to wear the PvE gear as long as it is more attractive and continue to dominate with high DPS.

The fact that any of the plate wearing classes can wear almost full PvE gear and literally faceroll to a 2k rating (except MAYBE not warriors) is just astounding. How could this have gotten by during beta testing. The assumption that all players PVPing are wearing resilience gear is destroying your balancing process.

The game play in this game has changed and it needs recognition. There is no more wearing down of mana pools... It's simply who can pull off the kill combo first.

---

Q u o t e:


You don't need 800-1000 resilience to survive a Shatter combo. The game is designed around the notion that you will escape or prevent CC. You aren't going to survive long CC'd with players beating on you no matter how high your resilience is.

---

If that's the plan then a lot of classes need better ways to escape or prevent CC.

A big part of what I hate about my Warrior now is that for years I was used to eating a ton of CCs and getting kited constantly, but I had the health and armor to last long enough to find a break and turn things around. Now my Warrior is made from the same glass as everyone else. While there are active counters, they are too clunky and impractical.

Every player needs to be able to survive mistakes occasionally. There need to be ways to survive even if you get jumped while your best escape is on cooldown. It shouldn't be easy, but when you don't have a chance because you were a half-second slow activating a defense, that really sucks.

What about moonkin in pvp.


simple question, zero answers?