Friday 25 October 2013

PvP-Based Class Revamp

"I think this is only my third post on PvP-Live, but it’s a collection of ideas from myself, friends, a few warriors in the PvE community, and a few in the PvP community. Most of these changes are only with PvP in mind.
First: Talents.
Assuming Blizzard -want- to keep the current Talent system, then there’s definitely changes that need to be made.
Tier 1: Charge
Juggernaut – I honestly think this is fine in it’s current iteration.
Double Time – Needs changing. Suggested change would be something like “Passive: After using Charge, for the next 10 seconds your Charge can be used again to generate an extra 10 Rage but will not stun the target.
Warbringer – Needs to return to being a knockdown (opinion up for discussion).
Tier 2: Self-Healing
Unsure about this tier to be honest, though if they want every talent choice to be an option, then they need to buff Impending Victory somehow (Up for discussion).
Tier 3: Shouts
Piercing Howl needs to be baseline and it’s replacement needs to be some kind of CC. In the current metagame where it feels like it’s just “Pile CC on a healer to force trinket, pile more CC on to force defensives, last lot of CC and burst a DPS” then Warriors need a more viable CC option than just -Talented- stuns, and 1 Fear.
Tier 4: Cooldowns
Here’s where any arguments are going to pop up. I think this Tier of talents is fine. Apart from Dragon Roar. I would much rather Dragon Roar be something along the lines of:
“Roar ferociously, causing X (+ Y% of Attack power) damage to the target and disorientating enemies within 8 yards for Z sec. Dragon Roar is always a critical strike and ignores all armor on the target.”
Tier 5: Utility
Vigilance had some utility, but with the change to it basically being a Pain Suppression and not a HoS, it lost the power to break the Warrior out of Sheep/Hex/Fear. Still good, just not as good in my opinion.
Mass-Reflect I think is fine, if it’s deemed “Too OP” at some point, consider making it replace SR.
Safeguard is now only an option, as the Root-Break is built in to Intervene as standard, so you’d pick it for the burst-negation, i.e. if your healer was going to get swapped hard, you could Safeguard to maybe block a Deep Freeze, and they still have 20% damage reduction for the following Ice Lance spam.
Tier 6: MOAR COOLDOWNS
There’s not a lot to be changed here to be honest (again, opinion). Avatar breaks roots (utility, though who seriously uses this as a root breaker?) and can be stacked with Reck/Skull Banner. Bloodbath has an amazingly short cooldown and has a slow, but is a pressure CD, not burst, and Storm bolt is…well… Only good if you don’t have a ranged stun. It’s trash damage, and if you already have a stun on your team you may as well roll with that, though Shockwave/Stormbolt is useful in 2v2, where you can Stormbolt one, Shockwave the other, and your partner can CC the first out of the SB or off a trinket.
Secondly: Rage.
Ah Rage. A Warrior’s best friend… and his worst nightmare. Since launch, the hardest resource to balance because it’s either too good or too bad. You never have enough when you need it, and you always have too much when you can’t do anything with it. Total revamp needed with the Warrior resource system. Even if Rage would steadily build while in-combat, and every time it hit a milestone (15-20 Rage), you gained the use of Raging Blow/Slam, which would be your nukes. Similar to how Destruction works, build Embers, pop CDs, unleash Chaos Bolts on the universe. Warriors could build rage to fill… Enrage Charges?… And then when damage needs to come, you pop CDs and unleash your vengeance on the target. This brings me nicely on to the third (and for now, last) topic I’d like to put forward:
Colossus Smash.
For f*cks sake Blizzard. Make this either:
A) Lower CD
B) Can’t be parried/dodged.
Because having a ridiculous amount of damage negated simply because the person, by chance, parries a (technically) DPS cooldown when they have no defensives (Evasion, Deterrence, DbtS) active, is quite frankly ridiculous. make it cost 10 Rage, but dear lords stop it being parried or dodged.
Feel free to discuss anything I’ve suggested here in the comments, hopefully a few of you are a bit more outspoken than me on the forums/twitter and can possibly suggest a few of these to Mr Street et al.
Thanks for reading!
Exhil"

Continue the discussion here or on:

http://pvp-live.com/forums/topic/class-revamp-warriors/

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Life on Alliance Side... And Other Things.

I seem to have neglected my blog a bit. That said, been playing a myriad of other games recently (as I've not been raiding) and so haven't had much to talk about on the WoW front. So I'll summarise a few things that, in my opinion, the game needs to change pretty damn quick.

First off: Racials.

I knew that the Human Racial was overpowered in PvP, due to the fact it allows you to run with 2 DPS trinkets but OH MY GOD is it stupid. My first battleground as a Human and it was Strand of the Ancients. Without touching the Demos I matched my damage done that I normally did on Hordeside. The next BG was also Strand of the Ancients, where I actually hit the Demos. I did nearly 10 MILLION more damage done than what I'd do on Hordeside, simply due to my ridiculous burst with double trinket procs up.

As an idea, instead of removing the Human Racial, just make it available to -all- races, and remove the PvP "Get-out-of-shit" trinket. That way:
A) You're not forced into playing Human for competitive Alliance-Side PvP.
B) Every non-human race stops complaining about it being overpowered.

Secondly: The State of Class Balance.

Now I know that there's never going to be a balance, Class A will always beat Class B. Class C isn't even viable any more and Class D is going to be FoTM after the buffs. This is the same for PvE as it is for PvP. This expansion, there has never been a point where a Warlock in your Raid was a bad thing. There's never been a point where a Priests were bad in Arena. Blizzard tries to balance Utility, Mobility, and Damage. For some classes, you can not trade damage for Mobility. For example, I would quite happily trade the Double Time talent for Warriors for a built-in Bull Rush glyph (+35 Rage to charge).

Obviously a lot of my expertise on a Warrior is through PvE. I'm not claiming to be the next Mystic or anything in PvP. But I know when something is broken, and when something is fine. And it really pains me when my class gets nerfed, simply because people can't handle the damage it can put out when -every- possible buff I could have happens to be up. That "stars align" moment gets my class gutted, and it's completely unfair. Or when something like the whole "Second Wind is OP" argument came up originally.

Lastly: Gearing Your Character

Zellviren has wrote numerous blog posts about the downfall of the 5-Man dungeon, and how it's completely lost it's place this expansion. My pet peeve is a different aspect of the game. As fun as it is, Flex really shot itself in the foot. To quote a friend of mine:

"Write about how much of a pisstake it is that Blizzard adds a scaling boss difficulty for SoO, yet the gear doesn't reflect that at all. I can get my BiS gear from the first 5 bosses and only a trinket from Garrosh, yet the first bosses are complete and utter piss compared to the second half of the raid."
 That sums it up quite perfectly, I'd say. He, as a warlock, can get -all- the gear he needs from the first 5 bosses. On Normal mode. Why does he even need to do any of the Flex Quarters that aren't Downfall (P4)? Loot tables, and where loot is for every class, could have definitely been distributed a tonne better. Admittedly better than Throne of Thunder (BiS Caster Dagger is a -random- drop from bosses), but still feels like they completely ignored where loot should be.

I'll try to gather some more thoughts, perhaps PvP a bit more to get a grasp on where things are on that front, but I should be posting a bit more often now.

Thanks for reading!

Teren/Exhil

Sunday 6 October 2013

I Made An Alliance Character!... Wait...

So, after some (read: not a lot) of convincing from an ex-Raid Leader (and since girlfriend), I made a few characters on  Aerie Peak and swapped my Mage over to carry some heirlooms over with me. Needless to say we ended up making a guild there for friends/family/bads so if you're tempted to reroll a new character, feel free to come join us!

Current Levelling Progress on AP:

Mage - 90
Rogue - 25
Warlock - 28
Warrior - 1
Priest - 1
Hunter -1
Monk -1
Death Knight -1
Paladin - 1
Druid -1
Shaman -1

Hopefully I can grind out a few 90s, and if people are interested we can maybe get some thing going in the raiding scene!