2 Weeks Into S5: Problems and Solutions

Season five has been ongoing for just over two weeks now, players have had ample time to farm honor and build up their resilience, and teams have had time to strategize and refine their comps. So what we have learned from all of this? Well, aside from the fact that damage is absolutely insane right now for a multitude of reasons, there are many less obvious problems that exist right now and given the fact that I know Blizzard developers read these articles, I'll cover them and present solutions to hopefully help develop this game better.

As mentioned, I'm going to avoid the completely obvious things such as damage being too far over-the-top right now and cover the areas less discussed typically. No sense in beating the long dead horse when Blizzard is already aware of those complaints anyway. So here we go:

Problem: Death Knights are not viable targets for the current pace of arena. With IBF providing stun immunity and even damage reduction (let's even assume 20%) for 12 seconds, AMS providing complete magic immunity for 7 seconds (assumed for next patch, as well), AMZ providing an enormous magic damage buffer (16-20k damage absorb depending on gear), bone shield 20% flat damage reduction, and frost presence mitigation, Death Knights have become the WotLK "HARP rogue" in the sense that they can blow an enormous amount of defensive cooldowns to stay alive long enough to get a kill, at which point it means the fight is usually over. The biggest difference here is that rogues could still be relatively easily gibbed as well as peeled, and when playing defensively, they often output significantly less damage. DK's are also very unattractive targets because of Shadow of Death causing them to return as a ghoul and continue fighting after a brief period of immunity.

Solution: There are a few solutions that I was brainstorming to provide a fix for this but to not destroy the class for PvE tanking purposes. Of the possibilities I came up with, I think the most reasonable ones would be to either create a cooldown of around 30 seconds where one defensive cooldown cannot be used following another (similar to the upcoming interaction of avenging wrath and divine shield) or to reduce damage dealt by the Death Knight while defensive cooldowns are active by about 50% or so. This would force the Death Knight to choose whether they want to play offensively or defensively. As of right now, there really is no choice. You're offensive the whole time and simply pop cooldowns when things get in your way. Finally, Shadow of Death resurrection needs to be disabled in arena for more than obvious reasons.





Problem: Healer survivability imbalances. Let's face it, some healers are much more useful than others right now, with shamans being the absolute worst in my opinion. If you focus a 49/0/22 paladin, you have to deal with virtual stun immunity, very high crit chance on holy shock and other heals, and obviously divine shield. If you focus a priest, depending on what spec they are, you have to deal with blessed resilience AND focused will, guardian spirit or pain suppression, desperate prayer, and a variety of instant heals/shield. If you focus a druid, you have to deal with natural perfection, nature's swiftness, swiftmend, three different HoT's, bear form, and fast casting heals (nourish). When you focus a shaman, you really only have to get by Nature's Swiftness and they're pretty much screwed after that. Sure, you can drop totems when you're silenced or CS'd now or even Riptide, but one grounding totem usually doesn't change the outcome. If a shaman uses their NS and they get mind frozen once into a Strangulate, they will die 100% of the time. It simply does not even take a solo DK or any DPS really to kill a shaman in 8-9 seconds.

Solution: For paladins, move divine purpose deeper into Retribution. It really overpowers holy paladins to have access to it and to only have to give up Beacon for it which is largely worthless in arena. Priests are about fine where they are in terms of survivability, although I do feel that it is time to give priests a poison dispel given that they are the only healer class without one. I also think Abolish Disease should tick as fast as Abolish Poison (every 2 seconds for 8 seconds instead of every 5 seconds for 15 seconds). For druids, I recommend removing the restriction of certain spells for certain shapeshift forms. If a druid wants to spend a significant amount of talent points for Moonkin form and forego certain healing talents, let them heal from it. The same should apply to Tree of Life form, allowing druids to CC from it. In the current state of arena, it is almost impossible for a druid to leave tree form in order to CC less they want to get swapped to and die within two globals. For shamans, I feel that if they gained one more instant heal, they would be pretty well off. My recommendation is to cause Riptide to do the current effect/HoT but also make your next Chain Heal cast instant, allowing the shaman to effectively "swiftmend" with a Riptide/CH combo. This would boost their survivability and burst healing a much needed amount.





Problem: Healer mana return mechanics. Paladins have the absolutely best mana return ability right now with Divine Plea. The fact that it scales so incredibly well with intellect, the short cooldown, and the ability to use it on the run, while healing, and cover it makes it far and away the most effective version. Druids have the next best mana return mechanic with a glyphed Innervate. It is a guaranteed full mana bar provided that it is not dispelled and can also be used on someone else and still provide the druid with a large mana return. Mana tide comes in third with being a decent mana return that benefits the whole group, but is easily countered by simply killing the totem. Shadowfiend comes in at a distant last with the low amount of mana it returns, the ability to CC the shadowfiend so easily, and incredibly stupid AI and RNG on the shadowfiend itself. Priests have absolutely nothing comparable in this department.

Solution: Double the cooldown on Divine Plea to 2 minutes. Lower the cooldown on mana tide to 3 minutes. Innervate is probably fine as is. Shadowfiend needs the biggest help by far. Honestly, why give priests so much spirit on their arena and PvP gear when it really doesn't benefit them outside of their 30% regen while casting? The obvious solution (to me, at least) is to scale shadowfiend damage based off the priest's spirit and to make the shadowfiend immune to CC. In case people at Blizzard didn't know, a warrior's intimidating shout will hit the Shadowfiend 100% of the time and basically completely screw a priest's mana return.





Problem: Ring of Valor is the worst possible arena map ever conceived. Proven fact: if you're not a hunter or arena with one, you probably hate this arena with a passion. There are so many problems with this map it's not even funny really. You can cast spells through the gates before they even go down, such as Divine Hymn, chains of ice, sap, etc. You can see your opponents for a few seconds before the gates go down, as well, and immediately strategize or prepare. There is absolutely nowhere on the map to use line of sight for at least 30 seconds or so until the pillars begin to move. The fire does an obscene amount of damage and it is quite possible to root or stun players on top of it in order to cause a lot of damage to them. The arena is very buggy with pet pathing. The arena is also very buggy with players falling through the ground .

Solution: Remove the god-forsaken map. Fire the developer that came up with it. Pretty sure it has to be one of the worst aspects of WotLK arena to date.





Problem: Not enough incentive to use PvP gear. Naxxramas 25 gear is far too accessible for every player to be sporting in arena. No, I'm not suggesting to nerf the PvE gear or to make it harder for PvP'ers to get, but rather to give more reason to use PvP gear. Right now, a lot of the PvE dps gear, especially for plate users, has an extremely high amount of stamina on it that is equal to Deadly Gladiator gear for that slot in terms of stamina. Thus, a player really only gains a small amount of resilience while losing a lot of offensive stats by going from the PvE piece to the Gladiator piece.

Solution: Like others have suggested, the benefits of resilience need to be re-worked. It needs to give something more, maybe even a complete and full flat damage reduction across the board rather than just crit chance and crit damage reduction. It does not necessarily need to be exactly that; Blizzard could also decrease the item budget value of resilience like they did stamina in TBC in order for Gladiator gear to have more of it on them. However, something needs to be done.





Problem: Arcane mages are retarded. You know your spec takes no skill when more than half of the arcane mages you fight open with an immediate PoM pyro followed by the obligatory Arcane Barrage spam. The problem here, aside from it taking absolutely zero skill, is the fact that it is actually an effective strategy in many situations and can often win fights by playing so stupidly. After mages got their baseline ice block, giving so much instant damage to a class that can go immune for ten seconds is rather over-the-top, as well as having a spammable ranged snare/tongues in one ability.

Solution: Review the 51-point talent. The spec is obviously a 1-trick pony that needs to be revamped. My suggestion is kind of a random one that provides both an offensive and defensive talent in one. Possibly something such as an Arcane Haste spell that grants 50% spell casting speed bonus and 50% movement speed bonus for 10 seconds, and removes existing movement impairing effects on the mage, with a 60 second cooldown on the ability. Slow should also be given a small cooldown (maybe 5 seconds) and mirror images really need to stop casting polymorph. This can be both frustrating for the mage when they sheep their main target or DR another target with sheep; as well as frustrating to the opponents because it is basically RNG CC that you can't really ever predict or see coming.





Problem: Retribution paladins absolutely rape people in a single HoJ and have amazing utility and defensive mechanics to last a long time. Seal of the Martyr damage scaling is very high, as well.

Solution: Rather than further reducing retribution paladin damage which will adversely affect their PvE capabilities further, I feel that one simple change will go a very long way to fixing ret paladins. Simply move Improved Hammer of Justice down one tier in the Protection tree. There you have it, problem solved. Paladins won't be able to get both Divine Storm and have a 7-second stun on a 30-second cooldown which is what makes them so devastating right now.





Problem: Mutilate damage is absurd, especially given the fact that rogues have a virtually undispellable MS effect now. As of right now, it is a complete waste to try to abolish poisons, much less cleanse or totem dispel them. They have such a high proc rate, a good chance to resist dispel (30%), and when combined with deadly brew, there are three poisons (instead of two) that are almost instantly reapplied when dispelled.

Solution: Again, as an alternative to flat out reducing mutilate damage, I believe a better solution would be to make dispelling poisons actually a good use of global cooldowns. I recommend changing Deadly Brew so that casters can actually stand a chance or even get off a single spell when a mutilate rogue is in the game. I recommend it being changed to simply a bonus of giving your Anesthetic Poison a 20% chance to remove one beneficial magic effect from the target. This would at least give rogues a reason to ever use this poison in arena. This would also allow skillful rogues to swap poisons like some did in previous seasons before now where its either double wound or MN/wound and nothing else. This would also leave rogues with just 2 poisons typically to worry about, giving an actual benefit to try to dispel wound poison once again rather than having it as a passive mortal strike like it is now.





Problem: Warlocks suck and are free points.

Solution: Although Blizzard states they are aware of warlock problems and have presented one possible change in the future of Demonic Circle removing snares, that would be far from fixing their problems right now. Pets need to have their survivability increased tremendously. Warlocks revolve largely around their pets and it's stupid that a viable strategy against any warlock team is to simply tunnel vision their pet the entire game until it's dead, at which point the warlock dies. Teams should be punished for sitting on a pet for extended periods of time (and no, they're not "CCing themselves" by doing this, Ghostcrawler). Shadowfury and Improved Howl of Terror (the only affliction and destruction instant cc peels respectively) should be moved up in the trees to be more accessible by cross-specs. Seduce should be a separate DR from fear and the Succubus should have defensive cooldowns given to it such as Evasion and Spell Avoidance (read: cloak of shadows). There are plenty of other ideas that I'm sure Blizzard could use here so be creative for once.






Well, that's about all I have for now. I've seen Blizzard implement a lot of changes that I've suggested during the WotLK beta so hopefully they'll open up their eyes and follow through with fixing some of the biggest problems that I've outlined here.

Also don't forget to vote on the Best of 2008 with the ArenaCast polls from the link provided here. Public and player selected results will be unveiled next week.

Hope everyone had a good holidays and happy new year!