Just to keep updated re. Eviscerate Arenas Vol. VII, I’m almost done editing, but I didn’t want to rush things, and with upload time I’m not going to be able to release the video until I come back in a week, as I’ll be out of town. The good news is I’m happy thus far with how the video looks.
If you aren’t aware, the tournament realm is now open for registration. Whether you’re looking to qualify and compete or you just want a chance to play a geared 80 of any class, the tournament can be a lot of fun. I’ll be picking it up next week when I get back, as it’s always fun to see what other classes are like and what kind of learning curve they have without having to level them. Click here for the FAQ.
Messy Arena and AOE Everything, one of WOTLK’s Biggest Failures
One thing I’ve noted in the past, and something that we can hopefully avoid in cataclysm, is the fact that WOTLK was, at least in PvP terms, a messy expansion. Simply put, the Burning Crusade arena looked at lot less sloppy than the current one. It’s like Blizzard took the chess board and poured a bag of checkers all over it.
A lot of classes were given core damage abilities that are also aoe in nature. Deathknight’s desecration coupled with their ability to spread diseases across multiple targets so easily makes any game where you play a DK an absolute mess. Not only that, they have a ghoul and gargoyle as well, at all times. Mages have always had tons of novas, but WOTLK added mirror images and with elemental up as well, it’s blatantly annoying to look at my screen when facing a mage team. Another example would be enhancement shamans; until the wolves duration expires the arena is an absolute clusterfuck. I could go on, but I think anyone that has played WOTLK and BC will understand that things have gotten a lot more messy with the addition of a lot more pets and aoe abilities.
I hope Blizzard can take this into account when we move to Cataclysm. Not every ability needs to be AOE or spawn pets. Maybe I have OCD, but right now in arena, I much prefer playing teams without five pets and that don’t turn the arena into an ugly mess. I’ll also be a hypocrite here because I do like smoke bomb, but sometimes these are graphical decisions rather than game-play decisions. Bring back the single target aspect of WoW, and it will also serve to make PvE (especially 5 mans) a lot more challenging.
Can Cataclysm be as Epic as this Picture?
In actuality it’s not quite this extreme, but the stereotypical rogue encounter is that if they have their cooldowns available, they’re going to wreck you and if they don’t have their cooldowns available, you’re going to wreck them. Giving Cloak a chance to fail was a way to make sure that rogues couldn’t guarantee that they would be immune to spells for a few seconds. Usually they would be, but sometimes they’d get unlucky and the lock or whoever would have a chance against them.
In Cataclysm, we want to reduce both extremes. That is, the rogue shouldn’t feel invulnerable when they have all of their cooldowns available and they shouldn’t feel helpless when they get caught without them. In that environment we think it’s safe to remove the chance to fail because Cloak won’t be the only thing that determines victory or defeat vs. a caster. Things like Smoke Bomb and larger health pools as well as other changes should help keep a rogue alive when Cloak is on cooldown. Likewise, the warlock won’t be stunned so much so they won’t be quite so frustrated when the rogue does pop CoS.
Having a ninety percent chance to succeed is actually a pretty frustrating place to be. At that point you aren’t grateful when you roll lucky. You’re mad because you were so unlucky. At 90% you start to count on something, which makes it worse for it to fail. If Cloak had a 10% chance to succeed (we wouldn’t do that, but just for sake of argument) then you’d feel awesome when it did work because you got lucky. What I’m getting at is that it’s not like we thought the 90% deal was super fun gameplay. We just thought it was necessary.
Without the entire gamut of Cataclysm changes though, we’re not sure rogues need a PvP survival boost at the moment.
Just to pick this apart a bit…
Cooldown Reliance - The first thing that’s wrong with this is that even with cooldowns, rogues are probably not going to wreck anyone competent. That being said, they have the right idea in that we fair a hell of a lot better with them then without them. In arena, once a rogue runs out of cooldowns right now you have to hope that you’re about to win, because without them we’re warriors with leather and less damage. This is no secret to anyone experienced with the class, but it’s nice to see Blizzard realize it too.
RNG – I don’t understand why Blizzard enjoys having random results factor into victory or defeat. I realize that yes, they are changing cloak, but the argument for why it was 90 percent is a bit ridiculous. If I’m playing Basketball, I don’t want a chance that when I catch the ball it will deflate. In any competitive contest rules should strive to make the results of the game as much attributed to the humans involved as possible. Justifications like this irk me. No one wants RNG to determine if they win or lose anything, and PvP in WoW should be no exception. This is one of the reasons WoW will always struggle and be laughed at as an esport.
Rogues don’t need a survival boost at the moment – I do agree with this. Rogues are squishy right now, but with enough resilience we aren’t too squishy. We don’t need a survival boost, we need a damage boost in PvP. The fact that a mage can survive a full KS right easily if they have barrier up is a bit ridiculous. Hopefully cataclysm will solve this by moving towards burst and away from being poison bots.
That’s all for now, I’ll be back in a week!
Related posts:
i bet cataclysm gonna be a failiure.. anyway if they manage to succed for once i hope they really fixed rogues… i hate all this RNG bs..
Comment by Mini — April 24, 2010 @ 8:08 am
Less cd on CoS and Evasion (and less duration), and mastery for boost damage and playing, killing rng (wich started in wotlk, just think on the rng racials, talents) – i think these things could rly balance things out.
Comment by zenton — April 24, 2010 @ 8:09 am
it only looks like they’re only adding more pets tho…offhand, new pally guardian comes to mind
Comment by loran — April 24, 2010 @ 8:09 am
Have to agree on the survival boost thing with you. Another day I saw Reckful playing with Hoodrych and Toez and I just amazed how long he survived against pve geared warrior (opposite team was double healer). His gear is a great mixture of pve/pvp gear in my opinion. However me myself felt very annoyed playing a rogue so I basically quitted WoW, at least for now.. Good luck and definitely keep those videos coming!
Comment by Dabi — April 24, 2010 @ 8:18 am
Sorry but I do not agree about the survivability issue you touched on last in your article. Even now, towards the end of the expansion, I still get 14k Kill Shotted by a hunter with 1100+ resilience. I feel, if anything, rogues needed more survivability mechanics in Cata, and it looks like that is what we’re getting. Our damage is right where it should be, a rogue can put out some insane damage when pooling your energy and cds correctly, however the rogue is almost always focus fired by the enemy team because they know that the rogue is more squishy than the priest.
That is just my opinion. Interested to see Arenas Volume VII next week.
Comment by Evolas — April 24, 2010 @ 8:22 am
I couldn’t put it better myself. I’m quitting untill Cataclysm personally, duels and BGs have always been my favourite part of WoW. Right now as I see it there isn’t a point to playing a game you can’t win, especially to the most incompetent of people.
Comment by Dcduo — April 24, 2010 @ 8:40 am
agreed with all above posters, larger health pools will help rogues survivability enough, but the dmg we do is very low. since sdance got a few buffs ive been playing in to 2400 in 3s w/ rmp. the fact that ambush does 2k crits to hpallies is truly the problem. when you couple 1400 resil and full plate, your damage is incredibly sad. i saw the mastery system where sub is getting the arpen but will it be enough? since pallies/dks/warrs are by far the most played classes in wotlk, i hope they will make it so rogues can do some dmg against them, and not as a poison spec which is all rng (ever waited for deadly to apply?).
i think cata will be another big failure and let down for most pvpers. i hope im wrong but unless they start taking abilities out of the game in arenas, it is going to get even messier
Comment by uschearak — April 24, 2010 @ 9:32 am
Nice post glad to see you’re semi-active again and not posting once a month.
Comment by Varmt — April 24, 2010 @ 10:41 am
In actuality it’s not quite this extreme, but the stereotypical rogue encounter is that if they have their cooldowns available, they’re going to wreck you
Failure. Just..failure.
Comment by roozter — April 24, 2010 @ 12:00 pm
“If I’m playing Basketball, I don’t want a chance that when I catch the ball it will deflate..” is a great metaphor that highlights the inherent problems with a rng cloak. overall, nice post!
Comment by trained — April 24, 2010 @ 12:35 pm
“That being said, they have the right idea in that we fair a hell of a lot better with them then without them”
THAN* THAN* THAN*
Comment by Merenor — April 24, 2010 @ 1:50 pm
BTW Akrios your UI is messed up. Its not working. The bars are too big and now there colliding with each other. I cant seem to find the correct position to put them in. Please help D=.
Comment by Reflektive — April 24, 2010 @ 4:49 pm
I might just play again in cata. This game looks like it is stepping in the right direction before the xpansion, although it always does. Cataclysm warrior is looking alot sexier than rogue i must say.
Comment by errlol — April 24, 2010 @ 7:51 pm
@ Reflektive (#12) You have to go into the Bartender options in order to adjust the bar size and positions. Type “/bar” to go into the Bartender interface window.
Comment by Evolas — April 24, 2010 @ 8:16 pm
@ 7: Well if even a sub rogue could crit in a holypally around 4-5k than why should anyone pvp with it? Pallies (not protretryshit) are still the most vulernable targets in arena. And btw I think casters dominate arena much more than plates. Tbh, warriors, dks and pallies were so beloved not because they are plate wearers, but cuz they can do retarded pressure. Armor (tipe) is meaningless in wotlk.
Comment by zenton — April 24, 2010 @ 10:12 pm
am i understanding this wrong or is blizz just stupid: they say rogues are too squishy when we dont have cooldowns, they want to make us less cooldown-reliant. so they give us us this smoke cloud and the 40% dmg reduce thingy, both of them have a cooldown. does that make sense?? at least cos will be 100% :/
Comment by Mintyo — April 24, 2010 @ 11:46 pm
Definitely need a damage boost! You can have a lot of control, but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if you barely do any damage. Rogues in wotlk are basically stunmonkeys and other people do the actual killing, and I didn’t roll rogue to be some sort of fucked up support class. I hope if they’re nerfing our stuns that they’ll buff up our damage because it’s pretty lackluster atm. I also hope they remove all that “takes less damage while stunned” bullshit. They might as well just put “you take less damage from rogues. Fuck those guys. We’ll always love you shamans. Love, Blizzard.”
Comment by Lems — April 25, 2010 @ 3:58 am
@15 not only are hpallies uncc-able (sac,trink,bubble), but they have instant heals and bubbles most healers are envious of. hpallies are basically priests with a bubble in plate. yes they might be vunerable to a casters standpoint, but from a rogues standpoint they are the hardest healer to kill by far. we shouldnt have to spec into a poison spec to do enough damage to plate. think about it, warriors do massive dmg to plate, rets do massive amounts to plate, why should rogues have total gimp dmg vs plate. i guess it has alot to do with rock paper scissor, but i think making the playing field even, gives a chance for players skill to truly come out. not relying on 30k armor to save you but for your ability to juke and outplay to get the win.
this is coming from a sub standpoint.
Comment by uschearak — April 25, 2010 @ 8:16 am
Smoke Bomb will be gamebreaking, just imagine the possibilities….ex. In the arena, youve cornered a rogue who has no trinket, his healer is about to heal him tho hes standing in a pillar like 20yards away, smoke bomb and BAM, no way he could get in time. the rogues dead. this could also be used to kill locks pets or even defensively if you are being kited or about to die. etc etc ETC lol
Comment by Suplol — April 26, 2010 @ 9:26 am
next to a pillar* lol
Comment by Suplol — April 26, 2010 @ 9:26 am
Oh btw i believe that the reason they are adding more pets is because pets are somewhat like passive abilties that just do more damage, rather than skills, and imo if they added skills rather than pets things would get more complicated and people would get confused as to what to use due to a very large useless variety to choose from, tho this does makes things messy it somewhat makes them kind of simple…
Comment by Suplol — April 26, 2010 @ 9:41 am
About the rng part…. BRING BACK THE MACESTUN LOL… no really dont ;P
Comment by Suplol — April 26, 2010 @ 9:48 am
Can Cataclysm be as Epic as this Picture?
I would love to see that temple ingame xD
Comment by Suplol — April 26, 2010 @ 9:49 am
Q: Can Cataclysm be as Epic as this Picture?
A: Yes.
Comment by blue_eyes — April 26, 2010 @ 11:32 am
-About classes that get strong AoE abilities & Pets: you’re unfortunately right, the game looks like a mess when those things are out. In BG’s, crucial fights (to capture a point, to kill the EFC etc.) are often determine with the number of this abilities: players just smash their imba cooldowns, pets pop everywhere (treants, ghouls, snakes, bloodworms, fire elemental, gargoyle…) and the game is so messed up. Combined with awesome AoE attacks, this almost totally negates skill (healers cannot cleverly heal in this mess, dps just blindly focus what they can reach because they know that they mught be dead 5 sec later, etc.).
On a side note, the effect of this is fatal to World PvP: remember when rogues could take X ennemies, with a clever use of CC and cooldowns ? Now, this is not possible, or only against poor geared opponents. Why? Because everyone can pop an awesome cooldown which will inflict you high damage, so that even if they are not skilled, don’t have reflexes etc., they still can damage you enough. Even if you can keel them controlled, you’ll take too much damage to take several opponents at the same time. Which I find is sad. I’m not claming that rogues should be sort of a Hero class, capable of taking down an army, but part of his charm was the ability, for skilled players, to face multiple ennemies with a hope of victory and a bit of luck.
Thing is, I don’t think Blizz will remove those. Maybe the’ll not emphasize them, but currently there are already too much overpowered abilities. But they seem to want to give each class some very cool abilities, so that every player, regardless of his skill, can at least press a “I win” or at least a “I rock” button every minute.
What strikes me when I read blue post, is the way Blizz can contradict itself. They don’t want PvE to be an AoE rush, but they keep implemening stong AoE; they don’t want rogues to rely on cooldowns, but we get 2 more with Cataclysm.
-For the damage boost, I agree. When Wotlk was released, our damage and our burst was very high (mut was +50% dmg, it’s now 20% against poisoned targets; overkill did give us a real burst during the opener). Then, they nerfed those abilities, and implemented resilience, which results in a weak, too weak damage now. A simple way to boost this damage would be to buff mutilate again, maybe not 50%, but 30%. I guess they don’t want to give us the first Overkill version (energy cost reduction), but it was way funnier that the current version.
-Some “minors” improvements could easily be done for rogues, for instance buffing gouge (lower energy cost, no position requirement for instance), changing talents which have been useless for ages (imp KS…). Will Blizz think about it ?
Well, I’ll stop for now. Keep up the good work, Akrios and his new bloggers.
Comment by baruch — April 26, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
Well we will see. Not coming back for this game if they don’t change it back or do some serious progress, PvP orientated.
Comment by Zelein — April 27, 2010 @ 3:40 am
Zelein im in the same spot, not playing so far. Only reason I came here is to see if the game improves to better.
Comment by silencedeath — April 28, 2010 @ 5:00 am
My toons are all geared in full wrath and I am done with this season and this game for now. Hope they fix these issues in cata..
Comment by Happystuns — April 30, 2010 @ 11:15 am
i hope blizz take a look on sites like this one and see how fukd up things are
. The larger health will just make rogues unable to kill another rogue so fast ><, it wont help us to survive. Some buff in energy regeneration will be fair and some skill that allow us to regenerate hp (like everyone) will work and wont be op. I always thought that prep should finish CoS cd (since a rogue w/o cos vs a caster = dead… and a rogue with CoS up vs a caster = live longer rogue but dead anyways) I think the game will be the same.
Return rogues to be the stun class, everyone is a stun class leaving rogues into oblivion ! buff up our damage. Everyone has amazing burst except rogues.
Comment by Viejo — April 30, 2010 @ 12:40 pm
Akrios, movie go!
Comment by Horizon — April 30, 2010 @ 3:19 pm
@Viejo, yeah, the “larger health pools” argument is not viable if rogues don’t get a significant damage boost or ability buff, it’s juste gonna make us last longer but still loose.
I agree that almost every class has now a way to regenerate HP (it’s amazing to see how a warrior can regenerate his health with his talents, cf. GeForce vids). Still, I don’t think this is what rogues currently want. We don’t want to heal, we want to avoid damage as we are supposed to be. But with Aoe attacks, stuns and attacks which “cannot be dodged”, a rogue cannot really rely on his Dodge chance nowadays. Which is sad. Still, adding a poison proc that heals the rogue would not be absurd in my opinion.
Comment by baruch — May 1, 2010 @ 9:47 am
To me it will be interesting that in cataclysm what to change. I do not want that thieves were changed by them and so without additional additives are strong and even very much)
Comment by Svoi — May 2, 2010 @ 10:59 pm
Hey does anyone know the name of the Font used in Akriios videos ? Not the Calibri 9.0 or the SCT Adventure, but the Font he uses to spell “Eviscerate X” and all that, please guys im out on a limb here ive been looking for close to 3 weeks now.
Thanks
Comment by HeartsiCk — May 4, 2010 @ 11:07 pm
Cataclysm will fail ofc
as WOTLK and i bet it will be MOAR!
there isnt any other reason for that. There wasnt any balance in that game and never ever theres gonna be such thing, all best to the players who gonna spend money for that incoming bulsh1t and hope u will adapt fast.
Moving to rated BG’s cos they cant balance the things out
All best folks
PS: NERFS US MORE COS WE STILL OWN !!!
Comment by Noworth — May 9, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
ha?! well i hope it doesn’t >.<
Comment by m.k — May 10, 2010 @ 2:12 am
I am really hoping that Cat wont be a fail. Matter of fact if it is cake sauce like the have made Wotlk. I will quit this game. Point Blank PERIOD. Instance wise this game has become way too easy. I remember watching old Vanilla wow and just being amazed by the level of dedication and skill people had to kill huge shit. Big emphisases on team work there. Now you can seriously PUG your way to damn near full Tier gear. Another thing I have seen happen is people reling on Gear Score way to much. Then again With my below than average GS majority of the time, I still managed to out DPS and out duel Geared to the tooth people. Oh wait, It is because I am decently skilled at the game to make the shit happen.
Another thing that I want to point out is how rogues used to be. I remember playing and being so infuriated with my rogue. (after leveling up a lock) Then I realized, maybe I should try playing a bit more tactically and plan my attacks out. From there it was great. I remember the great fear rogues instilled in people when they roamed about. Now its “hey look a rogue FREE HK =D (they face roll on the keyboard and win) Ever watch old pvp videos geared rogues would sit at nearly 40-45% dodge and dodge they would.
I think that the rogue class attracts more intelligent players, and those players happen to be good. So when the poor players get pissed because a good rogue beat him, they QQ, Blizz Reads all the QQQQQ fest on the forums and what happens…the most nerfed class in the game. Oh when Wotlk was fresh Rogue DPS was soo poor it was unbelievable no one wanted us in a raid it was so sad…at least they kinda fixed that.
One mechanic I don’t understand why dagger rogues and armor don’t work. Think about it really quick. Daggers are the ONLY stabbing and penitrating weapon used in game. I would make sense that daggers after a couple of swings and some abilities would punch holes through plate rendering all that shiny shit useless. The hacking and slashing of swords axes maces w/e would slide off plate and not PENetrate. I don’t know makes sense to me. STabby Stabby Stab Stab. Kill everything anything the paid hired assassin. Find it and kill it get it done make money. That is the roll the rogue plays, now we play the roll of bed time story teller or your next door neighbor warrior friend’s target and practice dummy.
Please Blizz bring back the old glory of the rogue. You did it to the pally…we could use some love. Oh yeah bring back the awesomeness of 2H Windfury Ass Kicking Shamans. For the love of christ fix the game.
Comment by shadowmunger — May 16, 2010 @ 3:53 pm