World of Wizardcleave, 3.3 Around the Bend, New Envenom Changes, and 1 Simple Step to Increasing the Level of your Gameplay + Yiska's Take On PROT BEATZ

World of Wizard Cleave

“Grounding down, rolling a sheep onto this shaman. Can we burst?” I ask on vent

“Shadowfury’ed” my priest replies

“Full deep froze, dispel me and lets get on this mage” my rogue calls out

“Son of a *****…” my priest mutters.

8k chaos bolt, 7k conflag, 10k frostbolt + ice lance shatter. Goodbye Zan. Wizard Cleave for -18 points

GET WIZARD CLEAVED

 Anyone playing arenas lately has gone through somewhat of the same scenario (or maybe even put another team through it if you’re running Wiz cleave). When you’re up against a comp with this much burst, the game can end at almost any moment. You can literally watch a teammate die while you sit in a shadowfury. This double caster dps setup isn’t only powerful because of its raw bursting power though.

Let’s take a look at Frost Mage/Destruction Lock/Resto Shaman, a popular wizard cleave variant. The amount of CC this comp runs is ridiculous. Not to mention it has great lasting power and amazing burst to boot. Generally, our priest will go into a shadowfury, and after that into a full sheep. Shadowfury is impossible to line of sight, and because you go from being stunned to being sheeped, you can’t Shadow word: Death the sheep either. It doesn’t stop there though, as the warlock can chain fears off of sheeps. As soon as your priest trinkets, he’s getting instantly seduced or deathcoiled. The amount of non-shared DR crowd control this comp has makes it very powerful. Hex, Fear, Pet Seduce (or Pet CS), sheep, deep freeze, mage CS, shocks, grounding, bloodlust, 10k crits.. you get the idea.

Part of the reason this setup is becoming so popular is that almost any 2 casters will work. Dropping the Melee dps in your caster/melee/healer will almost always be an improvement. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

There are various strategies to combat this nasty setup (One Ming posted that works pretty well here), but I’m afraid that in 3.3, wizard cleave will totally take over - it’s just too strong of a comp.

Patch 3.3 – I For One, Welcome our New Mage Overlords

The Problem

With 3.3 on the horizon, damage is shaping up to be off the charts. The mage t10 set bonus will increase all damage dealt by 18% for 30 seconds when you use mirror images. 18% on EVERY damaging spell is just insane. If people think 4p t9 for ele shamans is OP now, just wait until this goes live. 8k frostbolt crits will be hitting for almost 10k.

 I really hope this gets nerfed to be honest. If it goes live, we might end up seeing mages getting the same treatment as frost DKs did. For those of you who don’t remember, the DKs who had the frost strike sigil from Ulduar were hitting super hard, and generating a lot of QQ. As a result, Frost Strike itself was nerfed. For DK’s without the sigil, this was a pretty big nerf. Wizard Cleave players with this set bonus will be dropping people like flies, but if blizzard nerfs mage damage, everyone without the set bonus would be hurt.

The Solution?

My solution to the overall damage increase that will come with 3.3 would be to increase the stamina coefficients by a significant margin on s8 gear. With my idea, the new item level on Season 8 gear would bring less of a stat increase from offensive stats. The biggest stat increase would come in the form of stamina. Having everyone run with ~32k health would help balance out damage, and give a bigger incentive not to wear PvE gear in PvP. People wouldn’t go “Boom” as quickly, and healers would have that extra moment to react before someone dies. Running 4p t10 would force you down to 24k health, whereas everyone else would have 32k.

 The only problem this change might bring would be a PvE conflict. If PvP gear had a huge stamina boost and PvE gear didn’t, defense capped tanks would start wearing PvP gear, thus stacking insane amounts of health. Balancing between PvP and PvE is always a formidable challenge for Blizzard, and this is a good example of one of the many reasons this “balance” may never be achieved. If you think you might have a solution to this dilemma, drop a suggestion in the comment box!

44/2/25 – The New Rogue Standard ?

A new round of spell changes was issued on the 3.3 PTR, one of which reads:

Assassination

* Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Deadly poison to your target by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

Poisons

* Deadly Poison now has an additional effect - Once stacked to 5 times, each application of Deadly Poison also causes the poison on the Rogue's other weapon to apply.

This thread really got me thinking. There won’t be a reason to spec anything other than 44/2/25. The amount of damage you’ll put out after an envenom will be insane. Caliph Kalamist puts it the best, saying:

“This is a joke because of how much poisons will get applied after using envenom if you pool properly with 5 DP Stacks, think about it. This change will probably be a miracle but then turn into a disaster. “

With the change to Improved Poisons, and Envenom granting a 15% increased chance to proc Deadly poison, you’ll have an additional 35% chance to proc deadly poison (and thus wound) after envenoming. This will definitely add a fair amount of damage to a rogue’s arsenal.

This is all on the PTR of course, so everything is subject to change, but season 8 is looking like its going to be… interesting to say the least.

A Quick and Easy Way to Make Yourself a Better Player!

Affix made a post today on Arenajunkies talking about a cool add-on called "SnowfallKeyPress". What this add-on does is increases the speed at which your abilities go off from the time you press them. How does it accomplish this you ask? Simple. When this mod is enabled, your abilities will go off as soon as you press your keybind, not when you release it. This can take off anywhere between 40-75 ms on each of your abilities, and is a great add-on for all aspects of the game. This can help you land those clutch kicks and counterspells, and is even compatible with bar mods like Bartender and Bongos. Get it here

Thanks for Reading! Don’t forget to +1, and check back next time for an in-depth guide to MSBT and much much more!

~Controlz

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Hey Yiska here, I thought I'd update you real quick about what I'm currently up to.

While we all loved Roma’s recent blog about PROT BEATZ, but I have a slightly different approach on the spec. While I agree with Mr. Victor on the spawning location of PROT BEATZ, I take the topic more literally. Here is some ingame footage of the games I had last night. I think you will understand why my style of PROT BEATZ makes sense. What’s the pure form of PROT BEATZ? Gameriot, you decide.

 

 

Yiska "+1" out.

Tags:

World of Warcaft, Mage, rogue

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