Shadowmourne Is Warglaive Deja Vu, Level 50 After A Month? Believe It! Too Late For A S7 Comeback?

Shadowmourne
So anyone that played arena back in season two when guilds started to initially down Illidan Stormrage definitely remember the rogues that were lucky enough to have Warglaives of Azzinoth. Probably the most notable arena rogue with a pair of glaives early on was Shinta, troll rogue of Ner'zhul that played with Deep. If you ever played against him in season two or even three, you remember how absolutely insane the damage output he did was compared to any other rogue sans glaives. Warglaives could basically take any rogue from sub 2k rating to well over 2500 because it obviously infused them with skill.

While Blizzard has been pretty good about removing proc weapons in general and keeping game-breaking items such as glaives to a minimum ever since then, with the release of Icecrown, we'll eventually be seeing people with Shadowmourne, which has been datamined to have the following effect:

Your weapon swings have a chance to drain a Soul Fragment from their victims. When you have acquired 10 Soul Fragments you wil unleash the Souls of the Damned, dealing 6840 to 7560 shadow damage split between all enemies within 8 yards.

Now the Warglaive haste proc was pretty ridiculous but this proc is downright silly for arena. Assuming there arn't any targets to split the damage with, 7k'ish on the proc before factoring multipliers like ebon plague or CoE is easily a 1/4 - 1/3 someone's HP.  And while Death Knight's can't quite burst what they currently do on live after the 3.3 nerfs, Shadowmourne in the hands of a ret paladin or even warrior will be absolutely ridiculous. I'm really not sure why Blizzard has avoided proc weapons all expansion long and come back to warglaive mentality with this weapon. Hopefully only the back-pedalling PvE nerds get ahold of it, I guess.




Aion Level 50? Believe It!
So just after a month from release, I finally hit level 50 on friday in Aion (on a Templar no less).  I must say that I now know how it feels to have experienced the full wrath of a Korean game and the amount of grinding needed was just obscene. At level 49, doing the fastest grind group to date with literally overlapping pulls, we were barely pacing at 1 bar per hour of grinding (there are 20 bars per level). The grind in this game is downright overkill and serves no purpose other than to be an enormous nuisance and timesink, but there are far better ways to implement timesinks.

In any case, now that that's over with, it's basically looking like level 50 content (aside from ganking lowbies) revolves entirely around group-questing, fortress sieges, and rifting with friends. That's perfectly fine and somewhat expected and all, but that leaves the casual gamer audience out in the cold and I personally believe that this aspect is the one where WoW shines and Aion will potentially fail. Aion's endgame is great for the hardcore gamer with lots to do if you have the right partners to do it all with, but if you're the type of person that only logs on for a few hours each day at most and looks to have fun with it rather than just slave away at grinding, I think you'll feel there's a lot to be desired.

The templar class itself has been a mixed bag for me, as well. It's meant to be the tank class so I wasn't expecting to do ridiculous damage or anything like a sorcerer would, but soloing as a templar is flat-out 2-3x slower than any other class due to the slow kill rate, even when using a greatsword. They have minimal disables/stuns, and virtually no healing capabilities until a level 45 stigma, and obviously cannot kite, so downtime is always there even when chaining potions. Templars are almost forced into grind groups which are pretty solid if you do them right but it's also painful at the same time watching rangers, spiritmasters, and sorcs solo things that full grind groups usually kill and level 3x faster as a result.

All in all, the game hasn't really been a let-down, but it remains to be seen if the end-game content will keep players playing or if the majority of the playerbase will even stick around to finish the brutal grind to 50. However, with the leveling part finished for me, it gives me time to go back to WoW once again which leads me to my last section...





Too Late For A S7 Comeback?
You can easily tell from armory that I haven't logged on since Aion launch which was right when s7 started, as well. Although gear isn't everything and honor gear is particularly easy to get, is it too late to make a comeback for this season and push for Relentless Gladiator? I'd be lying if I said that I knew what DK comps even worked right now nor if our damage is even acceptable anymore (my guess is that it is not), so is it even worth the time or is coming back for the start of s8 (final season of WotLK) more practical?

Just glancing at the SK-100, aside from seeing my boy Ryan (Hydra) dominating it, I see a grand total of one (1) death knight in the entire list and his ratings arn't even that impressive. I suppose the SK-100 might be a little flawed because not everyone does 2v2 anymore, but it does say something about the class representation now. Are DK's even a threat anymore in arena? Can DK's realistically push for rank 1 in a battlegroup and hold it? Is this season even worth playing or is waiting until 3.3 the best bet?

I'm honestly looking for input on this since I don't want to have to grind honor gear and such for s7 and then basically right away again for s8. So what does everyone think?