Although I’ve been frustrated with rogue mage (druid teams are a nightmare) I have to say that blizzard is continuing to move the game in the right direction. I’ve been a bit busy this past week with exams, but I’ve still had a chance to check out some of what 3.1 has to offer.
First off, from a PvE perspective, Ulduar feels like a big success. Yes the new encounters, the wide open environment, and the fact rogues kick ass in PvE again is nice, but the real reason that Ulduar is a success is because the difficulty is right on target. A casual guild will be able to clear the instance on 25 man with a fair amount of effort and commitment, but it won’t get finished overnight. The bosses aren’t to insane, but they can be challenging. For the more hardcore guilds, the hard mode difficulty of encounters will keep them frustrated and happy for a while (see Algalon, the encounter you can only do for one hour at a time, with a hard mode in which no one can die to algalon during the instance lockout). Even the new VoA boss isn’t a total walk in the park.
3.1 PvP Balance
I think I can safely say that PvP, while still far from perfect, is moving in the right direction. Death knights are far more balanced with the nerf to shadowfrost spec. Dks still have amazing survivability and damage, but now they can’t do it from range. Frost has some amazing burst and serious crowd control on a one minute cd, and when used effectively hungering cold can end games. Destro locks, as expected, have come a long way. I would not call them overpowered in any sense, they take a ton of damage and they deal a ton of damage. That’s the reality of a burst class and spec, if destro doesn’t have that insane damage then it can’t compete with 19 k holy lights.
The biggest winners of 3.1 have to be priests. The most offensive healer is now able to outlast, and keep themselves alive incredibly well. Without rogues changing significantly in pvp, priest rogue has become increasingly successful, as it has always been popular. I really hope blizzard doesn’t take this as a sign that rogues are somehow out of balance, because I still think rogues have a long way to go to be the class they should be. Rogue survivability really hasn’t changed, the class continues to be the most fragile and easiest to kill, vanish failures still costs you games. So long as blizzard realizes that the increased success of priest rogue and rogue / mage / priest can be attributed to priests being a little too strong, I don’t think rogues will receive unwarranted nerfs.
Retribution paladins, even with the nerfs and the removal of PvP exorcism, had a huge increase in popularity with ret / healer 2v2. I really find some hope for balance in this game, though, when replenishment (mana restoration) was hot-fixed to only affect the paladin (same for other replenish classes) in arena. What else gives me hope? Blue posts like this:
…paladins have more to contend with than just maximizing damage. They do have heals, bubbles, cleansing and similar mechanics going on. That is why I said we can’t take something as complex as a rogue’s combat system and shoehorn it in for Ret.
But we can (and most likely will) change up the basic Seal, Judge, DS, CS, Exorcism buttons so that they can’t all be brought to bear at once AND to make pushing those buttons a little more interesting from the paladin’s point of view.
The model of “I bring burst” is not a good one for the game. You can counter stuns and bubbles and heals and even people running away from you. You can’t counter someone unloading five digits of damage within just a few GCDs. That makes the combat shallow and frustrating. We’re not convinced that is all Rets are about (because they do have heals, bubbles, cleansing and similar mechanics), but if we think the damage mechanics are too easy to counter, then we will compensate in other ways.
Why does this give hope? It means that blizzard doesn’t want classes to be able to do ridiculous, simple, and uncounterable burst damage. It doesn’t mean tommorow ret pallys will suddenly be a managable class with a huge skill cap, but it does mean that blizzard is at least aware of some of the problems plagueing wotlk pvp.
Video Progress Updates
I finally took some time and got a new harddrive this past week, and I have to say it’s much easier to record without worrying about filling and clearing my hd after every set of recordings. Because of this I’m going to continue making arena videos, I figure that I’m playing arena anyway so frapsing along the way isn’t all too time consuming. My fifth arena / duel video is comming along well (should be out in the next few weeks).
In regards to world pvp, I’ll say that it’s coming along, although extremely slowly. I have a few clips, maybe 10 percent of what I need, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s more than nothing. With my classes over for the summer hopefully I’ll find more time to dig for world PvP, as difficult as that may be.
Related posts:
- 3.2 Patch Notes, Huge Resilience Change, Rogue Impressions
- Unmercey 8 Review, Working on a new Arena Vid, Season 8 Initial Thoughts
- Beginning Work on Eviscerate X? 3.08 Impressions, Happyminti’s CS/Blind Through Sap Macro
- I’m not dead yet…Season 8 Impressions, Shadow Priest/Rogue Strats Part 1: Warrior Druid
Akrios
Nice post and I agree with you. I haven’t had much PVP aside from BGs yet but it seems to be better in many respects than last season thus far. Survivability is still an issue with us. If I am caught in a stun and my trinket is on cool down its basically over but 1 thing I have noticed is that I’m not just dying to Dks and Pallys anymore. I guess thats a sign of balance.
Comment by Edondia — April 27, 2009 @ 11:50 am
Nice post. A question about your WPvP vid, how long do you think it’ll be? 15-25 as usuall? (I hope for a longer one really, but the lack of material can eff that up ^^)
Comment by Unseen — April 27, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Akrios,
Im so happy that you are continuing with the Arena videos man. Keep on rockin with your unique moves
Comment by Wizex — April 27, 2009 @ 12:45 pm
DK nerf was very nice. I actually have not seen many dks in arena for some reason (the retards cant faceroll as well). I have seen 2-3 posts now on how Ret is easy and overpowered in a burst and unavoidable sense. This is goos news. Also I would like to say that
we may be getting a new move in the future.
Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/16473973884-one-small-pvp-change-id-love.html
Comment by Centh — April 27, 2009 @ 2:38 pm
Good to see that you are continueing to work on more videos, a lot of your videos teach me quite a bit of things about pvp, you motivated me to play Mutilate at 70 instead of Ar/Prep or Shadowstep. Its also really good to see you’re still trying to get a world pvp video made, I personally love world pvp, but its so rare to find these days, the world pvp I mostly experience now is alliance camping outside Ulduar -.-.
I took a break from pvp since season 3 after I hit Gladiator, thinking about coming back into it. Good to see that rogues arent really becoming stronger, but DKs and Paladins are becoming weaker
Most of the time it just disappoints me to have a DK plus a Healer tank my entire AB team and cap out flag -.-
Anyways, looking forward to seeing more from you.
Comment by Durlug — April 27, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
is that so blizz start to think in right direction..
Comment by Xcizor aka Kross — April 27, 2009 @ 4:54 pm
OMG i just read the blue post in that link, and I just today had an arena match that came down to me vs a holy pally with ret aura on, i opened and lost 3/4 my health before my stuns wore off… Im very pleased to see this issue is being addressed.
Comment by Bendickson — April 27, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
I really look forward to your videos. I would also really enjoy some ShS/ShD PvP from you. Generally, it’s safe to say that Shadow Dance takes more skill to play than Mutilate.
Comment by Gaust — April 27, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
I’m enjoying the posts, I just wish you posted more often. I bet you have a fan club on your server. Little groupies that follow you everwhere with no cloths on and yelling in common…
Comment by Feight — April 27, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
i agree with feight, i check up on the site alot because the posts give alot of insight on whats going on in wow (particularly the rogue pvp community) and there alot of useful information and interesting content
Comment by Lionize — April 27, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Post MOAR!
Rogues topping the DPS meters in dungeons makes me smile once more.
But you know what makes me smile more??
Thinking about Eviscerate X and Eviscerate Arena V…!
Comment by Faeyna (Kul Tiras, Arena Realm 1) — April 27, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
I am still waiting for that Ret paladin nerf…the use of exorcism on players being removed was more of a panic nerf because it was just too insane. Although there is still a long way to go for rets to be balanced.
As for the rest of the classes, I think PvP got balanced very well in 3.1. Priests are moving up the meter in arena (hey, it’s better than seeing endless dk/pally teams) and the TNT stun removed from hunters is a huge upgrade for everyone else.
Keep us posted Akrios.
P.S. Where is the Rogue Weekly update from Nition?
Comment by Evolas — April 27, 2009 @ 8:09 pm
Hello master. As always a pleasure to read and completely agree with your relexion. Waited for the new video. A greeting from Argentina.
Aenea (Drakkari)
Comment by Aenea — April 27, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
Some valid points made here, good post.
News on new Eviscerate vids is always lovely too.
-Coltraine
Comment by Coltraine — April 28, 2009 @ 1:24 am
Totally random question, but i’ve always found your world pvp videos more entertaining because of the music, as I identical taste in that respect. No, i’m not insulting the trance, it fits in fine, more so curious as to why you decided to switch over and use none of the old for the newer arena videos. Don’t take it as “lolur musix sux chanj bak plx.” Always enjoy the videos and it’s nice to pick up a few extra tricks on the way.
Comment by Mobius — April 28, 2009 @ 4:52 am
Great post, I definitely agree with what you say about rogues seeing some possible critisism due to nothing other than playing with a priest, even in 5s its difficult to down a priest pre and post CDs. But with all the complaints about rogue/priest teams I’m worried about us rogues being nerfed since when most casuals see rogue they attribute us with being the pvp class.
Comment by Teckniq — April 28, 2009 @ 5:27 am
Really nice post Akrios, cant wait for your video
Comment by Leakzxo — April 28, 2009 @ 8:46 am
I left a post on the mage tips page as comment #24, didn’t know if you check all your old posts and read through them or if you were notified about new comments, but it would be much appriciated if you could take a look at it
.
Also Icecrown and the Basin seem to have the most PvP flagged players wondering around if you’re looking for some good action for your videos… that would be a good place to start or check out.
I’m on a RP realm (don’t worry no RP’s there) and I still seem to find a lot of World PvP around these 2 areas.
Comment by Odim - Kirin Tor — April 28, 2009 @ 10:00 am
Nice read. Can’t wait for your next video
Comment by Sulf — April 28, 2009 @ 4:21 pm
Hello friends.
Tell me please which is best way to play rogue\priest arena in 3.1
1. I need minimum res and better damage
or
2. more res for survive ?
Thx for help =)
Comment by Chaks — April 28, 2009 @ 10:35 pm
Yay, nice to see you will make new pvp videos, keep up the good work Akrios!
Comment by dealeos — April 28, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
Gief more arena movies and show us how we should beat retri paladins and resto druids as mage/rogue
Comment by tossu — April 28, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
I dont know really what the other guys here on roguerogue.com thinks but if you are experienced with the Subtlety tree, I would like to see you play a Shadowdance specc. I’m growing pretty bored of all the mutilate movies you have made so far(ofcourse it’s always fun and exciting to see you play in any specc). And if not experienced enough, maybe a movie with a different partner(class) for example shadow priest, warlock, feral druid. I would love to see some action from both of my options.
peace
Comment by Sayou — April 29, 2009 @ 3:19 am
whatever you do, don’t make another mut/prep mage/rogue movie. Shit got old like 5 months ago.
Comment by nzgs — April 29, 2009 @ 5:31 am
no reason in particular i just think trance fits well with arena, just another kind of music i like.
Comment by Akrios — April 29, 2009 @ 7:50 am
open on ret when the hots fall df –> blind druid and shatter force a quick bubble, and do it again. I’t s a really hard team
Comment by Akrios — April 29, 2009 @ 7:52 am
just regarding those last two comments, i don’t make videos for what other people want, if you find it boring, if you wanna see something different, I don’t care. Make your own vid, don’t watch mine, I make vids because its fun not to prove something.
Comment by Akrios — April 29, 2009 @ 7:56 am
Hy Akrios! I just wanna say that you are one of the very bests, I learned a lot from your vids, and i would like to thank you what you are doing here with this site.
And one offtopic if i can ask ofc
What happend to Nition?
Comment by Hungi — April 29, 2009 @ 11:49 am
Akrios
Don’t let these guys get under your skin. There opinions aren’t worth it. If they don’t like it they don’t have to watch it. Aside from that its your site you can do whatever the #### you want to. I enjoy your videos and I don’t see that ever changing. Just keep doing what you’re doing the rest of us really appreciate it.
Comment by Edondia — April 29, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
Easy why you not found any good Dk’s. Either you’re in a low bracket, or you’re BG fail and doesn’t have any skilled Death Knights.
Comment by Wic — April 29, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
AKRIOS HAVE MY BABIES
and what happened to Nition?
he like…poofeded
Comment by Fortitudelol — April 29, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Hey Akrios,
Just have a quick question im running mage rogue this season and we are doing pretty well but were having some trouble with druid/X teams. What is a decent strat for druids and a plate wearing partner?
Comment by Boxtrik — April 29, 2009 @ 5:32 pm
I’ve got to say this site has some great information on one of the most diverse and interesting classes. I learned a lot here and other classes do not get the benefit from a website like this. And as for pvp, it is hard we still are a good class so don’t get to discouraged you just need to fine the right partner / teem that will pull a little extra weight for you LOL. And 1 off topic question,I don’t see a Raid guide at the moment. I’ve been talking to quite a few people who now believe combat once again is the best raid spec and I’m just not sure.
Comment by Raife — April 29, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
i’m pretty sure sayou was just trying to see someone talented do something cool with subtelty. it was a mere suggestion; its something i’m certain a lot of people would enjoy.
Comment by twinhat — April 30, 2009 @ 9:15 am
Akrios, dont get me wrong, I like your videos alot, I truly enjoy watching them. I was just wondering if you were interesting in making a Shadowdance/other partner movie. It would show the different options we rogues have regarding specs and partners. I’m not saying that your movies are crap or that you have to go Shadowdance. Anyhow this can be interesting to see in any other form than a movie.
P.S. watched your new movie. Great job.
Comment by Sayou — May 5, 2009 @ 5:47 am