A Season Passed Casually, the Fall of the PvP Rogue
I’m going to be honest here. I wanted to come say that I managed to get glad playing only the last day of the season. I was hoping to tell a feel good story to start but I can’t. Monday night I was hit with the abrupt reality of rogue arena in season 7. This was something I couldn’t really grasp until then, almost entirely due to the fact I spent most of the season searching for a team.
A big reason for this turned out to be trying to make something work with Aeias. I’d like to think I tried everything I could to make things work, but I guess sometimes things aren’t meant to be. For whatever reason every time we tried to make an rmp things just didn’t work out things would always end in arguments. We really just had conflicting views on arena and WoW in general, so unfortunately that’s how things turned out.
Last week I ran into my old friend Marco, who I met when he was playing DK in my guild at the start of WOTLK. I knew he was a solid player and he also had a HWL rogue, but it turns out he used to play shadow priest and just started again, and I randomly found he had a full relentless troll shadow priest on Blackrock. I also found Rests, a shaman who I also remember from Cho’gall who is just starting to play again.
We couldn’t really get started until the night before the last day of the season and we leveled the team up the first day. The second day, I thought we had a good chance at glad. The cutoff in BG9 was around 2610. We leveled our MMR from 2050 when we started and got as high as about 2530. It looked like we had a good chance at glad but the combination of fatigue from playing way too many games, our inexperience with new comp strategy, Rests’ full furious gear setup and Marco just starting to play priest at high level arena proved too much for us. In the end, we went on a losing streak all the way back to 2350. Times have changed a lot; I remember being able to make multiple glad teams in a day throughout BC and even in S5, but with the current state of rogues it’s a lot more difficult to form a new team without a lot of experience and succeed immediately.
The good news is the comp seems like a lot of fun, and with more practice and gear I’m interested in how far it can go next season in the competitive environment of BG9. Shadow priests have come a long way, especially with the will nerf, and although the comp is probably weaker than RLS, it’s very comparable. Hopefully my team will stick together and we will have some success in S8.
Resilience Change Coming
We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
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.
We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.
We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.
Resilience damage reduction doubled
We think crits need to be proportionately weaker in PvP than in PvP. I’ll explain why in a minute, but first let me reiterate that the buff we are making to resilience just affects damage. The relative value of crit in PvP won’t change at all with this hotfix. You won’t be critting less or doing less proportional damage when you crit. If you hit now for 3000 and crit 30% of the time for 6000 then after this change you might hit for 2700 and crit 30% of the time for 5400. Crit damage will be lower, but crit damage relative to normal damage will not. We don’t want to get to the point where a crit is actually mitigated lower than an actual hit. That would be bizarre and do bad things for a lot of talent trees.As to why we think resilience needs to reduce crits, it’s because you’re playing against another human and not an AI-controlled creature. Creatures generally don’t heal or blow defensive cooldowns, or at least not very well. The ability to pack a lot of damage into a small time window is much more important in PvP just because the opposing player or team have so much control over the size of that window. If you whittle them down to 10% of their health but can’t “close the deal” then they may be back up at 50% or 100% in no time. This kind of mechanic happens in PvE too, but much more rarely. The ability to crit in PvE is important largely because it buffs your damage or keys into talents. But the burst portion of crits themselves (high damage in a short amount of time) is much more important in PvP. Thus, we think the value and role of crit would be too high in PvP without a way to mitigate that through stacking resilience. (Source)PvE Gear in PvP
I think teams may try to focus on PvE gear as a way of blowing up healers on the other team. If that doesn’t work (because the healer has resilience), then the PvE-geared guys won’t have the survivability to stick around long. If you can’t blow people up very quickly, then the glass-cannon thing just doesn’t work and longevity becomes more important to everyone. If you can blow up healers too easily (while wearing PvE gear), then we might need to buff resilience even more. If you can blow up dps specs wearing PvE gear easily, well, mission accomplished. If you can never defeat healers (note I said defeat, not blow up in 2 globals) then we will need to nerf healing. Again, the goal is to have slightly longer matches with a little more back and forth. (Emphasis on “little” — 20 min matches can be as tedious as 20 sec matches are unsatisfying.) (Source)
Yesterday I recorded several duel series with Talbadar as shadow and I liked how they turned out. Shadow priest has become a pretty intense duel, add some gold on the line and I think it’s a pretty fun watch. I also have some other duels sitting on my PC that I was going to save for another arena video, or something else. I think, with S8 coming along with big changes, I’ll release a brief dueling video in the next week or so. I wasn’t really able to record high level arena this season without a serious team, but that should be changing come season 8 if this team sticks together. Hopefully this will tide people over though, as I think dueling is something I’ve been able to maintain at a top level. That being said, rogues are one of the weakest dueling classes at top level.
Related posts:
Grats on glad(you got it right?) and Unmercey, lovely as always. Cant wait for full movie.
Cheers.
Comment by Crossings — January 21, 2010 @ 4:14 pm
Hopefully the resilience change does help our survivability. Healing definitely needs to be monitored highly though. We’ll see how it goes.
Unmercey 8 look promising. Hopefully it isn’t too long till release, I saw the trailer a month or two ago. Always nice to see what neat tricks he can come up with and demonstrates them beautifully.
Comment by Evolas — January 21, 2010 @ 4:21 pm
S8 and new res.
We will kill them all! ^_^
Comment by Morgvat — January 21, 2010 @ 4:21 pm
i said i couldn’t get glad in a day >< lol And yeah hopefully res fixes things for rogues and wound will matter again!
Comment by Akrios — January 21, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
res fix, il swap back to 2×1.8 muti and evis instead of envenom.
how ever the lack of healing nerf and our quick recovery is a nice combo
Comment by Alucian — January 21, 2010 @ 5:17 pm
Hmmm why are you thinking of swapping back to classic mut with the res change?
Comment by Akrios — January 21, 2010 @ 6:16 pm
Since it seems like your posting alot Akrios. Their is a new rogue on your realm that im sure you know, Judersii, hes kinda a friend of mine what do you think of him?
Comment by Hidden — January 21, 2010 @ 6:36 pm
Well I seem to find that Mage Rogue in twos just got way to F-in hard And was running RMP And got Facerolled by 3 paladins. It sucked.
Comment by Carbonized — January 21, 2010 @ 6:47 pm
i left the game for a bit, when returning i noticed alot of changes the whole pvp envenom specc (which i refuse to play due to lack of cc on same target for a hard switch) getting 3 shotted by ret’s while having 650resil, i strongly feel that the resil change will aid overall but also think its going to harm our class more than help but thats just me
Comment by Ike — January 21, 2010 @ 7:41 pm
to keep the overal dmg up as my current spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0efRcRoirRcuZbZebfbh0db:bTiVzm
and muti hits for barely anything so only thing that outputs any real dmg is envenom.
where as my muti
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#fhecoxMoirRczZ0xZebfbh0db:kTi
gets at least 4k(all up) per mut on mail. dunno what i get on plate my subscription ran out. D:<
Comment by Alucian — January 21, 2010 @ 8:16 pm
Ike…you need to be aiming for around 900-1000 resilience if you really want to survive long enough to kill a ret pally.
Comment by Evolas — January 21, 2010 @ 8:54 pm
Akrios, i believe u can get glad next season *thumbs up*…
cant wait til Unmercey releases his new video, hes truly something else when it comes to play a rogue.
Comment by Pain — January 21, 2010 @ 9:22 pm
Your last 2 posts mentioned that you are betting on duels sometimes. Is this your way of mitigating time wasted farming gold while playing casually with a fun twist?
Comment by Ultorskoss — January 21, 2010 @ 11:10 pm
Nice post akrios. I’m confident u will get glad as long as ur team stays together. Team synergy is more important than raw skill and can’t be accomplished in one night. Gl in s8. Cheers!
Comment by frolol — January 21, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
With resi change hemmo might become stronger again. ShS and Cheat Death with high resil might help a lot – as you say…closer to BC.
Comment by Hitmaster — January 22, 2010 @ 4:40 am
Mby I’ll consider to start playing arena again… was so tired of this WotLK arena so called “balance”.. But with the new change, I might try it out..
Comment by Captain_Awesome — January 22, 2010 @ 6:44 am
nice post akrios!,i have a feeling that the sublety spec will come in s8 for som reason. i wish you god luck in s8! / séphiorz
Comment by Séphiorz — January 22, 2010 @ 8:16 am
Can’t wait for the Unmercey 8, and hopefully you will get some fun out of the setup you’re playing next season
Watch out for double healer warriors!
Comment by Dabi — January 22, 2010 @ 8:17 am
Good comment has always, i hope rogues get into a new way and sublety can rise once again )’=. Unmercey 8 FTW!
Comment by Sierf — January 22, 2010 @ 12:55 pm
I kinda thought the resil change would be a nerf.
Sure it means rogues will survive more, but in the long run, it basically means mobility will become much more of an issue. Getting kited by resto druids ( playing as healer/rogue ) death knights, mages, locks, etc is going to become much more of an issue, and due to a rogues poor mobility in comparison to, such as a warrior, who also brings an un-dispellable mortal strike to the table, i fear this may become a larger problem with the class.
But thats just my opinion..
Sorry for wall of text. BAM
Skef..
Comment by Skef — January 22, 2010 @ 2:07 pm
HEY man where did NitioN go?
kinda miss him you and him was like brothers? 
Comment by Nitioz — January 22, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
Woot another Unmercey vid is givin me the warm fuzzies
The res change is definitley gonna make things more interesting, possibly changing rogue duels.
Comment by Pástulio — January 22, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
- fotch
Comment by Fotch — January 22, 2010 @ 10:56 pm
wait wait wait!
Comment by Vitkenlal — January 23, 2010 @ 12:08 am
unmercy, s8,
ENJOY!:p
Comment by sullisy — January 23, 2010 @ 9:21 am
hah akrios？ can you call me？
Comment by Noname — January 24, 2010 @ 5:33 am
不知道能不能打中文
Comment by Noname — January 24, 2010 @ 5:34 am
Can’t wait for unmerceys vid
and akrios doesn’t matter if you have glad or not 
its just a title <: and everyone knows that u are one of the best rogues 
i stay in the classic muti build i hate that "deadly poison = no blind" thing
btw akri gl in RL and Wow as well
Comment by Antraxo — January 24, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
Can’t wait to see your videos!!OMGGGGGGGGG
Comment by flashcat — January 24, 2010 @ 8:40 pm
Maybe i am being the idiot here… but if you aren’t at a gladiator-title level and stick arround 1900 rating (like me) then this will be a problem for rogues.
The match-up against those walking trees or healing priests is not that difficult BUT they mostly outheal me.
Now that my dmg is even lower i don’t even need to try with standard. mut spec.
i don’t want to rant i like the idea of more survivability (i’d prefer a stamina-wise way of doing that) but healing will be too powerful.
now feel free to flame me.
Comment by shin — January 25, 2010 @ 12:18 am
Do I have pumped into the talents Murder!
-Sorry my bad English
Comment by micRyh — January 25, 2010 @ 2:57 am
Hey unmercey, hurry up wit dat vid i didnt spend a whole night of redbull and cheese crackers getting my ass handed to me for nothing! luv you, ill buy us hookers one day.
Comment by Øver — January 28, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
what you guys think about the Hemmo and it’s effectivnes now and what could possibly be durring s8?Couse im ShS now and i gotta tell you , i dont have such a serious problems with warriors/DKs or pally as i have when im muti , but that’s just me
Keep it up Akrios , you’ll get your s8 mate
Comment by Okoto — January 29, 2010 @ 1:08 am
Hey Akrios, im very glad to see your starting to play sPriest-Rogue-rShaman, I’m curious about that setup myself since i play with a shadowpriest in 2’s, would be great if u could get some vids or tacs up on the site. GL in s8
Comment by Gömd — January 29, 2010 @ 3:10 pm
I have made a recent discovery that will more than likely be usefull next season against the many hunters that we will face. I’m not sure if others are aware but backstab goes thru deterence, I’ve personally tested it and would like to see if others get the same results.
Comment by kalamitykity — January 29, 2010 @ 6:28 pm
This might not be the best place for it … but since every1 is talking about Cataclysm already ( even blue posts talk about fixes for ” the REST of WotLK” )… Don’t you agree that Cataclysm will be the end of WoW?
What I mean is that, we are not gonna play an RPG anymore … Blizzard want to make every class “the same”, which is the complete opposite of the purpose of a ROLE Playing game. WoW’s classes are losing their UNIQUENESS and in Cataclysm it will just be the last straw.
*Warlock won’t use Soul-Shards for their spells? For real? The mechanic which made that class UNIQUE is going in the dump bucket?
*Hunter’s will have Focus (Energy) instead of mana and won’t use arrows anymore ( it will become a “relic” slot like druid’s idols, shaman’s totems etc. etc.)
* All Path of the Titans will be avaliable to ALL classes??
* All passive tallents will be replace with utility tallents, ( BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FUN???? ) —> WTF , I’m already playing with 40 keybinds ( warlock/druid )where the hell I’m gonna put 10+ more active spells? <—–
The only GOOD change would be the return of the PvP Tittles. NOTE , that this is a return to the VANILLA concept of WoW, whereas ALL other changes are IN THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.
I would prefer WoW to stay at the place where WotLK is, instead of going to Cataclysm and fucking up the last parts of RPG elements left in the game …
Comment by Epica — February 1, 2010 @ 1:44 pm