3.2 The Patch of Offspecs & What We Can Learn From Prot Paladins, Valrath's New Team, ESL Financial Problems

Serennia's escapades continue as he is apparently "driving a friend somewhere".  Whatever he is doing, I hope it does not involve selling stolen goods to the local thug on the street. In any case, I'll be covering tonight.

Patch 3.2 - the patch of offspecs

Season 7 has gotten under way and with everybody racing to get to first page on the WoW armory, it is quite competitive to say the least. I was trying out some double healer/warrior in 3v3 because I figured it would be a pretty interesting, yet fun comp to run. Before the season started, all I saw was cleave or RMP lineups, but this season I've been running into obscure comps like druid/lock/hunter, shaman/lock/hunter, enhancement shaman/rogue/priest, the list goes on.

But, the biggest thing I've noticed so far this season is that offspecs are becoming even more popular than ever.

My blood pressure started to rise after expecting that I could go back to holy in 2v2, thinking that the fad of protection paladins was behind us. Boy was I wrong.

After 30 or so games, I don't think I even saw a holy paladin. I recall even playing prot paladin/rogue, which just burned me up because everybody knows that when there is a paladin on both teams, the team with the protection paladin is going to have a significant advantage. The question I really pose to everyone is this: why are people still running a spec that is going to be gone in a couple weeks? It really seems like those types of players are the ones that don't expect to get gladiator without the aid of broken aspects, hence their spec.

As most can deduce, it wasn't long until I got so angry that I went ahead and went protection for 2v2, figuring it was the catharsis I needed.

In 3v3, the situation started out the same. I started off as holy in my paladin/resto shaman/warrior lineup, figuring it had the necessary tools and healing power to keep my teammates up. Once again, I was wrong, as the majority of teams dished out far too much pressure, draining my mana very quickly, leading to losses. I actually assumed that if I went protection in 3v3, it would be significantly worse in every situation. That definitely wasn't the case. As holy, matches against WLD/cleave setups were ridiculously hard when I got swapped to, forcing serious cooldowns to be blown instantly. As protection spec, those same teams were unable to make a swap to me and my sacred shield was so much stronger, making it easier to keep my partners alive while simultaneously providing some damage mitigation through avenger's shield.

I feel really dirty playing protection spec to say the least. I hope the patch comes sooner rather than later. All those prot paladins made me go prot, so blame them.

The bigger observation remains. In 3v3, I've been seeing an awful lot of destruction locks, prot paladins, enhancement shamans and even BM hunters. Is this a good or bad thing?

Protection Paladins

The target of not only hate but envy by every other class in the game, and with good reason.
I have such mixed feelings about the protection spec. On the one hand, it is the dumbest, most poorly developed spec in the entire game. Too much healing power, impossible to kill, etc. On the positive side of things: should the survivability of a protection paladin be the barometer of how much survivability every class should have?

I'm not talking the extreme of prot paladins with their passive shield wall below 35% hp, but just the mitigation, the added HP and the type of damage that prot paladins take via talents (Combat Expertise, Shield of the Templar, Sacred Duty, Improved Righteous Fury).

I'm sure there are a ton of players that would go ape if every class had the survivability of prot paladins (DKs, feral druids, ret paladins, basically every class without an MS) but seriously, a slow, controlled game is better than a zergy burst game with little time to react. If Blizzard doesn't feel they can lower damage via resilience buffs, why not just add more talents like the ones listed above?

If survivability and/or damage received was more like with prot paladins, I think the game would be enjoyable for a lot more players.

At the very least this season has done one good thing of introducing a lot of very unique compositions in arena which consist of pretty much everything you can think of.

Valrath's new team

I have to make a redaction of my last article where I claimed that Spoh was not going to be part of his new team. In fact, Valrath's new team consists of DK/ret paladin/druid with Euneek and Spoh. Whether or not a sponsorship is looking to picking these guys up is up in the air. I know that myself and Valrath have had sponsors approach us after Blizzcon, but it is another thing entirely if a sponsor would gamble with an entirely different team.

My thoughts on his new team? While the players may all be good at their classes, I personally don't think the comp has the strength to win tournaments due to the lack of MS and the obvious problems with the comp. Any good RLS, WLD or double healer team (druid/priest/warrior) will have an easy time handling the damage output. Sure, they may be able to pull some insta-gibs out of their hat, but in the long-term the team composition simply does not have the consistency or longevity necessary to win in the big leagues.

ESL money dry?

The word on the street is that ESL is having some serious money issues as a lot of the teams that placed for prizes as far back as last year still have not gotten paid.

I got a moment with Azael, member of team EG to get his opinion on the matter:

what's going on? is ESL shortchanging everybody? Why haven't you been paid yet?

I wish I knew, they still owe me and zyz $4500 each. I actually bought a new super computer on credit thinking that I would be paid as promised.

Isn't ESL planning to hold more tournaments? Shouldn't they at least be paying out the prizes from previous tournaments before they hold more?