Serennia 3; PvP Trinket Tracker

Serennia 3: 3.0 Arena

http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=94077

As the title obviously indicates, I've been practicing and experimenting a lot with arena in 3.0, especially on the warrior class, trying to figure our all the new strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. The video features me playing as a warrior, paladin, and druid. The druid clips are from 2.4, but all of the other clips are from 3.0 and beyond. All of the paladin clips were also taken after the damage nerfs were hotfixed, but before the latest 3.0.3 patch went in. All in all, you can expect the following:

-A few BG scenes
-3.0 paladin/warlock 2v2
-3.0 paladin/rogue 2v2
-3.0 paladin 1v2
-2.4 druid/hunter and druid/warrior 2v2
-3.0 druid/warrior 2v2
-3.0 paladin/shaman/warrior 3v3

Paladin 2v2: As stated in my WCM description, I feel that playing 2dps with a warlock as a ret paladin is very different from playing with other classes with immunities such as mages, rogues, and other paladins. You cannot be overly aggressive or your warlock will simply get destroyed; I feel that timely burst and strong control/CC is what is needed to win with the comp, hence the playstyle shown. With "1-trick pony" type comps of ret paladin/arcane mage, you can afford to be much more offensive full time.

Druid 2v2: Although the clips are from before 3.0 and we admittedly lost to both teams, I mainly put the clips in there (especially the druid/hunter one) to show how it was entirely possible to control the entire fight, completely outplay your opponent, yet still come very close to or even losing a match because of RNG. This match was a perfect example of why I had always fully supported Blizzard's decision to remove mace stun.

Warrior 2v2: Almost all of the 2v2 clips shown in the video were played using a Brutal Gladiator's Painsaw (2.20 speed 2-handed polearm). It was mostly done as an experiment to test the results of using a fast weapon in conjunction with sudden death mainly. All in all, I felt that it was a strong weapon, especially with its very consistent rage generation and large amount of sudden death and overpower procs. The biggest downside of it was obviously the Bladestorm burst being considerably lower than my other 2-handers (Brutal 2h axe and Apolyon). At first, I was experimenting with weapon swapping either right before or during the Bladestorm to a slow 2-hander in order to maximize the damage from it, but it inevitably was too much of a hassle to compensate for marginal gains in procs and rage generation. I've started using the Brutal Gladiator's Decapitator almost exclusively now.

Warrior 3v3: We had actually been practicing this 3v3 comp (resto shaman, ret paladin, warrior) before 3.0 had started in preparation for in thinking that it had a lot of potential. Even before 3.0, we did rather well with it when ret paladins were incredibly lackluster and resto shamans had much less utility and tools at their disposal. Now, however, the comp is considerably stronger in terms of damage, mobility, and especially healing thanks to riptide, tidal force, decurse, and improved earth shield among other things. The comp does have its share of weaknesses such as the shaman being vulnerable to burst from comps like a double arcane mage team, but then again, I don't feel that any healer short of a paladin can survive their current damage right now at level 70.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the video. I got a lot of 3.0 practice out of it, learned a lot about different class comps, and have gotten significantly better at the new various warrior mechanics. Proper Bladestorm timing is probably the most important thing a warrior can stand to learn right now. Whether you use it to immune an incoming CC/disarm, use it to put out unhealable burst on one target(1 whirlwind every second for 7 seconds can't be healed by any single healer if MS is on the target), or to do a lot of AoE damage to their whole team (pets included), it definitely takes a lot of getting used to.

So what's my verdict on warriors for 3.0 and expansion in arena? I'd say that we're still a strong class but still entirely one-dimensional. No matter how good you are, how many mods you use that tell you everything you need to know, or how lucky you get with RNG, warriors will always have a significantly lower "skill cap" than most other classes. You simply don't have the tools to seperate yourself from ms/hamstring bot #129675. Although it is easy to distinguish a mediocre warrior from a good one, the point still stands that warriors are still entirely too limited by stance mechanics, cooldowns (or lackthereof), defensive tools, and in many cases, offensive burst damage output. I'll be making a comprehensive thread directed at Ghostcrawler sometime soon to see Blizzard's vision for warriors in expansion before I draw any further conclusions.

I included numerous shout outs at the end for people that I've played with a lot and anyone that has made a lasting impression in my time playing WoW. Hope everyone enjoys it and thanks for watching.




PvP Trinket Tracker

The other topic I wanted to cover tonight was a new mod that Kollektiv recently made per my request. Basically, in 3.0 now, PvP trinkets are shown in the combat log for a fraction of a second as a casted buff, as well as the new human racial. That got me to thinking that writing a mod to display enemy trinket cooldowns would not only be possible now, but extremely useful.

Although I believe Afflicted has tried to incorporate this, it does so very poorly all around and is displayed wrong in a lot of respects. That said, Kollektiv brilliantly developed this mod, PvP Trinket Tracker (PTT), with many features and display options that we both felt were nice to have. PTT will do the following:

-Distinguish between horde trinkets, alliance trinkets, and human racial
-Flash the respective icon when the cooldown is almost ready
-Color according to what class it is
-Grey out when the target dies but continues monitoring the cooldown in case they are rezzed
-Auto-collapses to fit however many people are in the arena match (2, 3, or 5)

You can also scale the bars, lock the mod, etc through simple clicking or /ptt lock commands.

Not only do I have a screenshot to show what it looks like (bonus points if you can figure out all the scrambled names):



But I also recorded a quick skirmish match to showcase exactly how it works:

http://files.filefront.com/pttwmv/;12275567;/fileinfo.html

So, if you're interested in using this mod, you can download it here from our guild's website host. Any mod updates will overwrite that URL, also. If you find any bugs or have any feedback about it, feel free to let me know somehow.