Engineering/Jewelcrafting/Reflective Damage Nerfs, 3v3/5v5 Rating Changes, Resilience Buff Inevitable?

Like many others I was a little upset about engineering/jewelcrafting nerfs, no one want both of their professions nerfed back-to-back but that is exactly what happened.  But at end of the day, am I really going to give up either one of them? 

Jewelcrafting despite the nerf still stacks up as good as any other profession for passive stats.  Blacksmith with two extra sockets offers 64AP, tied with enchanting's 2x ring enchants.  Jewelcrafting's bright dragon's eye offers 54AP, vs regular bright scarley ruby's 32.  (54-32)*3=22*3=66AP, still slightly better.  At the moment with JC gems replacing blue gems and getting you the socket bonus, there is just no contest, it is simply way too good.  Post nerf it is still 2AP better than all other professions.  I am also waiting for an epic trinket recipe in 3.1.2.  I can't believe there is not a single epic trinket with passive AP + active/proc AP here in WOTLk, when it was the most popular trinket in TBC.  Direct damage on proc trinkets will probably be nerfed eventually (most likely sharing internal CD with eachother).

Engineering is down to pyro rocket which is still very solid, on-demand damage for your burst specials.  Of course a standard profession like enchanting/blacksmith + crusher glove enchant would give 110 passive attack power.  I would say it is still a wash.  Pyro rocket burst will win you games, and consider you can use it at least twice in most fights, the overall damage it adds is pretty significant as well.  Nitro boots nerf hurts rogues way more than warriors, they have way too much mobility to bother with it, and for us that one extra super sprint makes all the difference in the world.  The lack of nitro boost also slows down the game and tilts the balance toward heavy melee, I hope a buff to engineering is coming soon.

Thorn/Retribution Aura Nerfs

I was disappointed that Blizzard did not balance those for heavy/light melee.  The most fair way to balance it would be an internal CD so you can't take more than 1 hit from those every 2 seconds or so.  I guess Blizzard wants to differentiate those abilities from say, lightning shield. 

The current changes should make retribution paladin/druid/x teams easier to manage, but we are still talking about 300+ damage taken, every time you hit someone with either one of those two abilities.  When a target has both, you can still get yourself to 50% easily with a CS to KS chain.  I really hope this won't fall off Blizzard's radar, this felt more like a bandaid fix than anything else.

3v3/5v5 Rating Changes

Who else miss the old zero sum system?  The new MMR system cheapens the satisfaction of high ratings.  The old +/- 16 was fair and clean.  Add some sort of newbie protection to reduce the points lost per match near 1500, offer bonus points won per match if you have low item level gear, and casuals won't complain.  They really need to do something about team swapping, starting at 1000 is a serious joke.

Having said that, it was fun to play against Veex's warrior/DK/paladin team this weekend.  At 2350, we lost no points when we lose, and won 22+ when we won, it was a good deal.  Everything Veex touches turns into gold, as they went a blistering 42-2 this week.  I believe we were the only team to hand them 2 losses (running DK/rogue/priest), although we probably lost 8-10 matches in the process.

All the scrub cleave teams should watch Veex playing warrior.  When he played warlock in S5 and won Deadly Gladiator in two brackets, I never seen a warlock dishing out so much pressure before.  His warrior is no different.  He pops retaliation literally the second he is out of my stuns, coupled with overpower spam, even with evasion tanking I take huge damage.  The second I vanished to run away, he already swapped onto my priest with his DK, blade storm goes up and the priest goes down.  Pressure, aggression, incredibly coordinated bursts (strangulate on healer, overpower+runestrike, mortal strike+scourage strike, ouch), it is pure text book.

We can talk about how cleave requires no skill what so ever, but going from a top 50 cleave team to a top 5 cleave team is a night and day difference.  I would love to watch Veex taking on an elite RMP.  Our RMP has been slowly declining as we probably spent too much time on DK/rogue/priest.  Our DK is going on a vacation for two weeks, we will go full time RMP again, as frustrating as RMP can be against non-stop cleave teams.

Resilience Buff Inevitable?

I definitely think this was the week that messed up the damage-to-survivability ratio.  Level 239 weapons make cleave teams too effective, but casters are almost just as bad.  Leave a destruction warlock or elemental shaman open for even a few seconds, and they will burst someone down.  Mages with 2100-2300 spell damage are also coming out of the woods.  It is going to get ugly if Blizzard doesn't do something.

Resilience offering a flat damage reduction against players would be the best way to fix it.  Right now everyone stack attack/spell power, offen sacrifice socket bonus like 4 resilience/crit for more flat damage.  Burst reduction is not enough. 

Hope You Didn't Miss The Cavs/Magic Finale

Lebron's 3-pointer with 1 second left in the clock was exactly what makes NBA > all other sports.  Out of all team sports including WOW arena, I can't think of any other game that allows individuals to single handedly take over the game as regularly as basketball, and it makes it so much easier to market super stars.  Individualism, that is exactly what sells jerseys.

Watching WOW arena tournaments is more like soccer.  It takes a complete team effort to kill someone, as talented as Neilyo-kun can be, he can't take over the game and score a solo kill on a tree druid standing there spamming hots into himself.  Orangemarmalade's amazing 1v2 comeback was really a result of the opponent letting his guard down.

Please Blizzard, do something to allow special players to make special plays!