Dodging On Stormstrike, DK Buff, Subtlety And Its Impact, Blizzard TR Just Around The Corner?

Breaking news: Every now and again Blizzard will release PTR patch notes with one or two changes that make you raise an eyebrow and say to yourself "yeah, that'll never actually make it live." Well tonight we have that moment with the latest changes:

Bladestorm: Warriors can now be Disarmed while under the effects of this ability.

Personally, the change wouldn't bother me in the least because overall warrior damage is outrageous right now. But I can completely understand why warriors are raging after reading this on mmo-champion: it can completely negate one of their most essential tools in getting kills in arena.

For those very warriors that are crapping their shorts... don't worry. I'll bet money that this change doesn't go live. If Blizzard does feel that warriors need some form of nerf, let's hope it's unrelenting assault.

Dodging On Stormstrike

Season 8 has been under way for several weeks now and I've been having a blast playing in it. Despite what people might think about other BGs, Stormstrike does still provide some tough competition, albeit often times in the form of protection paladins, double healer teams, etc. It's also looking good here as some people appear to be transferring over like relentless gladiator Mewnfare. Alas, some teams still feel it is necessary to dodge others several months before the end of the season.

Seriously, who dodges on Stormstrike? Apparently Bilian does as he consistently stops queueing or logs off every time we run into him in arena. His team has been notorious as of late for farming 2 point teams for hours on end just to get rank 1 for the week. It makes absolutely zero sense  to me as he has beaten us before so it's not like he's just feeding us hundreds of points. Especially considering my team is constantly tanking due to us queueing into wizard cleaves over and over again. Rumor also has it Bilian's team will make a serious attempt to qualify for the 2010 US Regionals and to get sponsored, which makes their dodging look pathetic.

To give the team credit though, Bilian's RMP is one of the tougher RMPs that my team has ever played in either the past or present. Still, being obsessed with rank 1 isn't exactly healthy. I know this very well as I was, as Yog used to call me, a "baseball player" who played for the "Dodgers" back in the day. Dodging is only acceptable in my book if the team that you are concerned about awards no points. I sure as hell am not sitting there queueing against 2 point teams that can beat me.

Kigz is a pretty nice guy but dodging the competition isn't exactly the way to get better or sponsored. I mean, what is that team going to do when the TR comes out and there are not just 2, 3, or 4 good teams but 20? For a team that is supposedly trying to get sponsored, this isn't the way to promote yourself. Getting a pretty rank 1 title means absolutely nothing if you are known for farming off 2-3 point teams and avoiding any decent ones.

For all of you top-rated teams, don't be that team that dodges everyone, transfers off the BG, etc just to get rank 1 (you know who you are).

DK Buff

Ever since the early waves of DK nerfs last year (starting with plague strike no longer removing HoTs) DKs have been on the way down. If anyone remembers early season 5, DKs were the class of arena. At a time when warriors were useless and druids were still feeling the problems of extremely high burst damage in the game (even higher than it is now), DKs were tearing people apart in a few short seconds. Who remembers 10K frost strikes? I'm glad the state of the game is better than that but it would be unfair to say that DKs are still overpowered as I feel they suffer significantly worse off from the resilience buff and the frequent DK nerfs we have seen lately. Most people noted in the past that representation at the top of the ladder on virtually every battlegroup was beginning to dwindle to the point where DKs were last or second to last.

It took me a while to feel sorry for DKs but I eventually came to my senses and started to really see the grim situation for them and it looks like Blizzard has too. I wanted to talk about this upcoming change last week but was unable to do so with the IEM Championship tournament going on. Basically, the change is as follows:

Unholy Blight now prevents any diseases on the victim from being dispelled.

This change is going to be absolutely huge and will revitalize and strengthen the comps DKs are in like TSG and shadowcleave. More specifically, it is going to be a complete nightmare for restoration shamans who currently have near 100% uptime of the poison cleansing totem.

I can't help but focus on the impact for TSG as it is the comp I play right now. Basically, the DK change is going to make TSG almost impossible to beat for an RLS and will make wizardcleaves with shaman healers easier for TSG to beat. The other comp that will inevitably die out are the numerous variations of double healer warrior teams that currently reduce a DK's damage substantially (like priest/paladin/warrior).

Normally Blizzard gives a major buff like this alongside some nerfs so that the "buff" doesn't seem so big. Not this time though as there is no real DK nerf in sight that will counteract this massive buff.

Subtlety And Its Impact

I'm not a rogue buff here so if I'm missing the mark on this please let me know in the comments.

Last week Blizzard announced several subtlety buffs making it clear that Blizzard is trying to make the spec the primary PvP spec for rogues (like it was in TBC). The incentive now is that it will do more damage than before and still bring along the necessary survivability that rogues urgently need against a lot of wizard/melee cleaves.

That is fine and dandy for them but running TSG against many rogue teams, I have a much different view from my perspective as a paladin.

If you think about it, rogue teams in general right now are all about rushdown strats. RMP and RLS for example are all about applying a ton of pressure in the opener and forcing the opposing team to drop tons of cooldowns. As subtlety that is going to be much less likely to happen as the damage output should be much lower than it is now for rogues running assassination.

Subtlety buffs will make TSG (or any rushdown team like PHD) even better if rogues do less damage than they are right now on live for a few reasons: first, TSG is one of those "rush down" comps that tries to overwhelm the other team with raw, consistent damage. In the matchups between TSG and, say, RMP, a rogue is never having trouble staying on a target anyway when his cooldowns are up. Rogues need that burst damage from their spec to get a quick kill or put the other team on the defensive. In addition, rogues aren't getting touched nearly as much as their teammates against TSG. In this scenario it would seem absolutely pointless for a rogue to spec subtlety against TSG when one of the rogue's partners gets blown up in the first few seconds anyway.

So what can we conclude here? I can say that for TSG any rogue team will be at a significant disadvantage running subtlety, no matter the comp. In other words TSG will be stronger next patch on live ladder when the rogue teams do not know who they are up against. For tournaments though we are unlikely to see rogues run subtlety against TSG.

Blizzard TR Just Around The Corner?

A lot of people are wondering just where the hell the the Blizzard TR is. I decided to do some research just to see when the past TRs were out. In 2008 Blizzard announced the TR on March 31 and allowed people to log on them 1 week later with Blizzcon occurring in October. In 2009 Blizzard announced the TR on February 10 and allowed people to log on it 1 week later with Blizzcon occurring in August.

If we are to look at history to get any insight we can learn that Blizzard's 2008 October Blizzcon was followed by a November release of The Burning Crusade. Blizzard's 2009 August Blizzcon was not followed by any title release.

I would assume that because Blizzard has personally acknowledged a 2010 release date for Cataclysm that we will be seeing a similar pattern as 2008: a TR announcement in late March followed by an October Blizzcon, concluded with a November release for Cataclysm.

Ever Had A Labial Frenectomy?

Most don't know what a labial frenectomy is but I got it tonight. Basically, I got braces like 8 months ago to fix a variety of problems (teeth crowding, gaps, crooked teeth) as part of the whole "Zilea reborn" thing that I was talking about so long ago. Anyway, I had gaps closed several months ago but was recently having some gum swelling. It was a "killing 2 birds with 1 stone" thing but because my orthodontist also wanted to make sure none of the gaps opened up again in the future, I had it done. And because the braces come off soon, what better time than to get a labial frenectomy? It is basically when the orthodontist shaves or cuts away the excess gum in between teeth. The only reason I'm telling this story is because I had shots given to me to numb my mouth and believe me when I tell you that I've had shots before, but nothing as bad as the ones for my labial frenectomy. I literally jolted in my chair and had teary eyes because it was so painful.

And the other point of this story was so that I could give the viewers a glimpse of the new hoochiemama magnet (STD-free).