Laments from Olympus

Since the onset of the Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard has made some major changes in how their game and its development are perceived. Though they have always considered player feedback, concerning all aspects of the game, they have been far more proactive than ever before in getting their desired changes pushed through. Despite having a major patch on the horizon, they could not wait to introduce certain tweaks; apparently they looked at the burst damage potential of certain classes and realized the ramifications.

 

To make one thing clear, "player feedback" is basically the amount of whining players do on the forums. There has been a lot of complaining, but I don't necessarily feel that it has been more than in previous circumstances. You can compare it with the level of weeping over Warrior mace specialization, or HARP, but it's a divide and conquer strategy that Blizzard has going. Rather than make one class grotesquely imbalanced, as has been the time-honored tradition since the class reviews and their introduction of cyclical highs and lows for each class, they have elected to take half of the classes - some of them historically popular classes - and set them on some shining pantheon. Occasionally these latter-day Apollos rouse themselves from having decadent orgies with satyrs and drinking ambrosia to mete out judgment on the pitiful, ungrateful masses that wallow below - those peasants being the other classes. Sometimes the gods need the help of one lucky mortal, and the fruit of their union is equally imbalanced - e.g., Zeus ***** some ***** and Hercules is born. Hercules is the strongest man in history.

The changes are understandable, for the most part, and they foretell the adjustments that are coming in patch 3.10. The Arcane Mage is one of the most fearsome manifestations of power - raw, surging power drawn hither from the Twisting Nether - that we, as players, have ever had to cope with. I think the most infuriating thing is the ease of play for the class. Mages have traditionally been a backbone PvP class, with the "good mages" and "bad mages" clearly defined, a class that was easy to play but difficult to master. I believe Arcane was designed with PvE in mind, another error on the part of Blizzard; if you balance a talent tree around killing dragons, what's going to happen when they get into a fight with their neighbor? It's like Gran Torino where Mages are Clint Eastwood and the rest of us are Asians. It's pretty clear that Frost was always the spec that was designed for PvP, which is why it has been the most popular spec for arenas up until the current season; Blizzard does not want to force any class into playing one way or another, so they decided to give classes a lot of options. That's a good philosophy with a bad execution.

The minor changes in today's patch mirror the sentiment that Blizzard is concerned over any combination featuring a Rogue and a Mage. RMP, for instance, is a combination with a great ability to adapt to the changes over the past five arena seasons and remain strong. The versatility is just too much, and Rogues are suffering because of the Mage problem. Arcane Barrage, Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, Slow, Blink, Frost Nova, Iceblock  - this is a combination that offers tremendous burst and, when used correctly, fantastic survivability. The crowd control is also a major issue, especially when Rogues and Mages queue up together. We all saw the Mutilate change coming, but I did not anticipate it to be quite so harsh. Blizzard is trying to tone down the burst in favor of sustainable damage, but even in long, drawn-out matches, hard switching and coordinated burst will always reign supreme. With the rest of the upcoming changes, including the buff to Resilience, we'll see a lot less gibbing and more endurance battles. Let's hope Blizzard is making the right decisions.

Is it just me, or did Blizzard forget about a few classes? I am of the personal opinion that Survival Hunters are just as bad as Arcane Mages. Trying to catch one of these ******* is like going after a slippery snake in a mud puddle. Yes, we get it, Survival Hunters have good survivability, but why do they do so much damage? Is it so difficult to fix the hunter class so that they are somewhere in the middle, instead of ping-ponging them from one extreme to the next? Survival makes me long for the return of BM's prevalence; as gay and annoying as it was, it was a breath of fresh air compared to this new evil.

My theory concerning Death Knights has always been that Blizzard will slowly tone them down until they are balanced, popularity-wise. I may still be correct, but I guess "slow" was an understatement. Blood is emerging as the new spec for high-rated Arena, which is both a blessing and a curse; while it is more dangerous than Unholy or Frost, it is far less frustrating to contend with, especially as a melee class. They continue to be the coddled, favored infant of the development team and I am not expecting any hardcore nerfs soon.

The remaining classes have needs, and issues that need to be addressed, but they allow for much more brevity. Shamans are only weak because of how strong Paladins are. Paladins are being looked at, and I hope they see a lot of changes, beyond Divine Plea. Feral Druids are the new Mutilate Rogue, and their full and terrible potential has yet to be realized. It's strange to consider, but weren't Feral Druids grotesque at the beginning of the previous expansion as well? What is it with that? I haven't spent much time looking at Warlocks, but they got that new summoning portal thing, they should be okay. That's all they really needed. As for Priests, I think they will hinge entirely on the Resilience change.

I'm fine with how Warriors are right now. They are still fun to play, but the fact that Fury is superior to Arms in PvP is demoralizing. The burst potential dwarfs that of Arms, but hopefully with their damage increase to the Arms tree in the upcoming changes it will become more attractive. I prefer playing as Arms, as it has always been the exemplary PvP tree; having to play Fury for raids and then respec to a different variation of Fury for PvP, with essentially the same playstyle despite a few changes, is getting very tedious.

In my next post I will examine the consequences of the changes, and hopefully we'll get some more information pertaining to patch 3.10, when the real **** will hit the fan; ground mounts that ******* swim underwater, the dual-spec system we've been waiting for, and class changes all around. In conclusion, there is one change in today's patch that everyone is thankful for - the game is finally changing in the right direction:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.