It is Pandemic vs MOB Turtleforce For Grand Finals, AR/Prep remains best arena spec even with hemo nerf

As I watched MOB Turtleforce (and Team Pandemic who used the same strategy for same results) dismantled Hamchook's hunter, warlock, priest team with a hard counter of rogue, rogue, druid, as big a fan as I am for Hamchook, and as much as I wanted him to win, I have to say it is a good thing for the game. Limiting the number of players per team to 3, but allow every player to play multiple classes will greatly, greatly increase the skill cap for a game that for many, didn't have the depth or high enough of a skill cap to be a serious tournament game. Being able to play 2-3 classes at tournament level, on the fly, will truly separate good players from great ones, and I hope this tournament format continues.



The difference between top 1% players is slim to none, but being able to play three classes at 2400+ level definitely deserves some serious respect from an e-sport perspective. While this is quite difficult to enforce from an online tournament's perspective (and Gameriot finally received tournament license from Blizzard, expect major news next week!), it will add so much more flavor to offline play. If you want to run multiple comps, fine, you gotta have players that are completely confident with multiple classes, instead of simply have the deep pocket to bring six players per tournament.



Either way, MOB Godfather has to be very happy to see his last minute recruit Hamchook getting a third place finish. And his MOB Turtleforce, starring Xecks the golden child, Ohnoes "Cuter than Xecks" (according to Imberlyn from the first time I posted a picture of the crew), and Spoh the druid class hero, will have two chances to dethrone Pandemic tomorrow at 9AM Eastern Time. While Pandemic has psychological advantage over Turtleforce given their past records, I really feel without Zizek's (lack of) flexbility, Xecks's team will finally be able to play even comp.  Seriously, I think we should coin a new term "you got Zizeked" when you get outcomped by opponents who are simply more flexible than you. 



I think rogue, rogue and druid should do pretty well against rogue mage priest (or any team without a paladin for that matter), will we see a RRD vs RRD final? Will Xecks finally have his golden moment? Don't miss it even if I know it is hard to wake up that early on Saturday's, especially when you have averaged 4-5 hours of sleep a night for an entire week, like I did.



Now for the bigger news in rogue community, hemo on PTR has been nerfed to 110% weapon damage. Assuming it is still normalized, rogues with 2.8 weapons will gain 1-2% hemo damage over 2.2 hemo in most PVP situations, rogues with 2.6 weapons will see roughly a 6-7% gain in hemo damage. To be honest, as big of a hit as this is, the +36 debuff over +10 debuff was what made me excited about this spec to begin with. I would have specced AR/prep without the 100% to 125% weapon damage buff, as I believe it was already the strongest overall spec in 2.2 and the +36 debuff already made it a no-brainer for me over full combat maces. Hopefully we will find out what the new +debuff is, soon.



I do believe hemo should outdamage untalented sinister strike (and it still does in term of damage per energy), but I am not sure if hemo should outdamage 41 combat sinister strikes. I don't see people going back to combat mace or mutilate's as hemo/prep will remain dominant, I do see more SF hemo users, especially these with access to the amazing T6 trinket. With S3 gear, if you stack crit gems/enchants you can hit 34% crit unbuffed very easily, if you can toss a T6 trinket on top of it, you will be maintaining 40%+ crit with non-top finishers. That is a lot of combo points even if you are against 400+ resilience. Of course getting the trinket is the hard part. Without it I will stay AR/prep. I don't know if there will be any guild that will take a large sum of gold and help me get attuned and kill enough trash mobs to get exalted, but I guess as the season progresses, T6 guilds will be more common place and this isn't completely out of question. I will most likely get Berserker's Call and stay AR/prep however.



Shadowstep is getting better and better, but I still believe shadowstep is meant for daggers. With ambush buff, if they make sinister calling reduce backstab energy by 2 per point (50 energy backstabs), I can see it become really competitive. Either way, I was worried they will take AR off prep which would destroy the spec completely. Everyone would be going CB hemo instead. The fix hurt, but it was needed, especially if 3v3 stays as the most dominant tournament format. Hopefully they will buff daggers a little more then everyone will be happy. Combat should remain the best PVE tree, subtlety should be the best PVP tree, and assassination should be a good blend of both, offering some unique advantages in certain comps over subtlety.



In conclusion, I think AR/prep will still be by far, the most dominant arena spec. 30% of my damage is from the actual hemos. I somehow doubt a 2-3% nerf in overall damage (and let's face it, you are not bursting nobody down with this spec) will change the big picture. I just want to know what the new debuff is.