The Triumphant Return of Arms

Ever since my last post I have been harboring a deep desire to immerse myself in this blog once more, to tentatively dip my hoof in the murky waters and try to plot a course through the tangled web of big-name players, sponsorships, recent patches, class balance and all of the other juicy stories that entertain us as a community. It's very hard to cover new ground concerning a game that does not change on a daily basis, and most of the quality posts are rehashed reports taken from the headliners. The most you can do is present the over-saturated information that everyone's already heard in a new voice, with your own thoughts, and hope that it's good enough. It rarely is.

I had an epiphany that what readers truly crave is consistency, whether the blog be good or bad, consistency so that they could either support it or mock it on a regular basis. Unfortunately, my hopes and dreams were crushed in estrus. Some time ago I discovered--purely by accident--that my computer harbored some virulent plague, the engineers of which were eagerly traipsing through my personal and private information. Hanging out in vent one night, playing a little DotA, and someone offhandedly asks me if I'd like to do something in WoW; I tell them that I'm playing a different game, in fact, I'm not even logged into the World of Warcraft. They begged to differ. I managed to change the password in time to log in and there was my character, all of my bank contents emptied into my bags, standing helplessly before the guild bank vault in Dalaran. I am an officer, after all, and I have access to the manifold treasures contributed by our motley crew.

With another, uninfected computer I was able to secure my account and my e-mail, as well as my other delicate online holdings, while I reformatted my main machine. The whole experience was surreal and unsettling, and throughout the long process of wiping my hard drive and reinstalling software (including the rather torturous process of patching WoW in a single sitting) I was afforded a lot of time to think. How had I contracted this sinister virus in the first place? Was it from a site I trusted, and would visit again? Moreover, why was the hacker standing helplessly in front of my guild bank with no bag space whatsoever? What was his plan? Was he simply staking out our wealth, a preliminary inspection before the looting began? It was all very eerie. I now know what people feel like after their homes have been burgled. I felt exposed, vulnerable, violated. I felt like a rape victim, and the reformatting process was an electric douche that washed my despoiled privates clean of invading seed. Moving on:

Arms Warriors

As a long-time mediocre warrior and staunch supporter of the class, I was giddy with delight in anticipation of 3.1, and each successive batch of patch notes only heightened my excitement. I had no problem with Fury, per se. It was a tremendously successful build for raiding purposes. It really wasn't that bad for Arena, either; the controlled burst potential of Fury, with Death Wish, Recklessness and two consecutive intercepts could win a game in one deft stroke. Of course people wised up to such cooldown-dependent play early on and Season 5 was unquestionably the darkest period for Warriors in Arena history. The showing was just extremely poor. Many great Warriors, who had always succeeded in the previous seasons, suddenly found that the road to glory had grown impassible. There were a handful of Warrior/Paladin teams that still managed to compete, but that composition was entirely dependent on the indefatigable Paladin class. Compared to most other popular Paladin/X comps, namely the early strength of Paladin/Hunter and the overall dominance of Paladin/Death Knight, the Warrior came up short.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th-highest 2v2 teams on BG9 are warrior teams, just for example. On the SK-100, Warriors are tied with Shamans for #2 representation after Priests. It's no mystery as to why warriors are back on top.

Arms is simply more fun to play in PvP, and it always has been. Unrelenting Assault, Taste for Blood and the whole revamped mechanics of Rend and Overpower gave the class some real control. Since the playstyle dictates Battle Stance, the demands of rage management and smart stance switches for intercept and pummel have returned. I think the change to Charge has yielded the most impact, however. Warriors have always been an extremely mobile class, and Intervene was a great addition in TBC. The new Charge continues in that tradition of giving warriors the ability to switch targets seamlessly and maintain battlefield mobility in the wake of crowd control/snares that are so detrimental to the class. As well as giving warriors a stun that can be used in combat every 12 seconds (glyphed) in combination with intercept and pummel for possible lockouts, it also generates rage and makes the next Mortal Strike a guaranteed critical. Sort of a miniature, automatic version of Fury's controlled burst.

The real strength of the warrior, of course, has always been the strength of his healer. The survivability and mobile healing power of Druids has surpassed anything we've seen before, and they are more powerful than they were during Season 3. They may no longer have the ability to flawlessly kite, but now they don't need to. The return of Warrior/Druid to prominence will be a defining legacy of Season 6. Despite my satisfaction, I have a feeling that warriors may have been given one too many tools, and as the class scales with gear (not necessarily PvE gear, but mostly the 2350-rating 2Handers), their devastating potential will become more and more apparent.

Blizzard was so quick to get a handle on Priest/Rogue that I fear the same might happen whenever a comp shows dominance in a bracket. Priest/Rogue should always be a competitive composition, the two classes have an inherent synergy, and I think the changes, while necessarily, may have been a bit steep. I am confident that any Priest/Rogue team worth their salt will continue to perform, at least until the Rogue meets a Druid and swaps healers.

Ulduar

I won't spend too much time on the topic, but I thought the dungeon merited a mention. I've had a lot of fun so far and I think Blizzard did a great job on this one. It's ten steps above the lackluster rehash of Naxxramas, though I have the feeling that different teams developed different fights. I agree with the philosophy that normal mode should be doable but not puggable, and hard mode should be the stomping grounds for the cream of the crop, but some of the fights are way too simple. It came as no surprise that they made Flame Leviathan a complete joke as a result of all of the people whining about a mandatory vehicle fight. In fact, all of the bosses are pretty much a joke up until Mimiron.

In addendum to the earlier Arms comments, it's a blast to play for raiding. It's not so much a rotation-dependent spec as it is an exercise in prioritizing, but it requires more of a focus than Fury. I still have mixed feelings about the game's direction, as most of the old developers have moved on to Blizzard's new next-gen MMO project and have left our current addiction in the hands of pimply interns and unwashed temps, but the major problems with the game (basically Season 5) seem to have been rectified. Rarely has Blizzard made so many mistakes with class balance, and I hope that the top men they've got on the job are learning things along the way.