T6 Quality Gear For Everyone, My New 2v2 and 3v3 Comps

It seems like everyone have been sick this week to the point I almost thought it was some sort of biological attack. Jasi is suffering from 103F fevers and half the people I know experienced some sort of flu last a few days. The sharingan does nothing for nature resist and I too slept 18 out of 24 hours on Tuesday to shake off a flu before having to give one-hour seminars in front of 50 clients on Wednesday and Thursday. I am glad the weekend is finally here and PTR is out, although I probably won't be on PTR until they (inevitably) make PVP balance changes.

Not much update on the PTR other than shiny new epics from every crafting profession. Pretty much all of these are T6 quality and given the popularity of engineering for PVPers, the new engineering helmets are going to be VERY popular as they are every bit as good as T6 helmets. With heightened sense (+6) and engineering helmet (+5) you took away 4 out of 5 points of a rogue's master of deception. I am seriously considering leveling engineering. The helmet is THAT good.

I have my eyes on jewelcrafting's new BOE rings since I really wanted to replace the S2 ring. New heroic badge loots haven't been shown yet, but 2.4 will allow me to easily replace 4 of my slots with T6 quality DPS gear, trading 100+ resilience for roughly 7% DPS increase (engineering helmet and BOE ring over S3 helmet and S2 ring alone is 4%) just like rogues with PVE gear have been able to do for a long time. It really, really closes the gear gap between these who raid and these who don't. All I am asking for at this point is a top trinket for non-raiders. Something better than Deathfrost for enchanting will also be nice. Icy chill was a garbage enchant pre-TBC and the upgraded version doesn't seem anywhere near mongoose's effectiveness either. Hardcore raiders will be able to collect the new T6 bracer, belt and boots, then use the 4 piece bonus from both S3 and T6! 15 second intercept and 6% mortal strike damage? With endless rage bug now fixed, I can see a lot of warriors going 41/20.

There is a reason why when you read these boards, you believe WOW is dead. Yet when you look at the numbers, Blizzard has an all-time high of 10 million subscribers. They really made the game so much more casual friendly than ever before. Players like me who can only play 10 hours a week will never, ever see anywhere near all the contents the game has to offer. I would love to eventually run every instance and kill every boss so I can experience all the lore myself. I went to a Karazhan PUG today for badges and I realized I never saw Nightbane before. Players in the raid all had "welfare" epics and I know hardcore players don't like the fact that their gear gap against casuals is smaller than ever before, but this is exactly why WOW is at its peak of success.

Our priest Tent finally moved out of his house and being a closet-WOW player, he is unwilling to play WOW when living in a dorm with six fraternity guys. Haables explained to me that for whatever reason it is considered cool to play Halo in his college but nerdy to play WOW and I don't understand the logic. In any case, our RMP team is dead and our 5v5 rogue / 3DPS team is not going to crack top 5 without some sort of defensive dispels so we will probably start selling points there. Finding a new priest isn't going to be easy so we started a new team with rogue/mage/shaman with the shaman from our 5v5 team.

As "copy ninja" Hatake Kakashi I won't play any line-up without some sort of track record, I was very impressed by one of WOW China's top 8 teams in a national tournament with hundreds of teams from more than a dozen BGs (pretty much all the big names attended), and they ran this comp with amazing success. The 2.4 anti-dispel changes on earth shield makes it even better although the comp is legit as it is. Both mage and shaman's sustainability went up leaps and bounds since the mana gem, evocation and water shield changes. Heroism and earth shield are huge against druid teams that plague the bracket and the vast majority of them don't have any real offensive dispels. The lack of defensive dispel really wasn't all that bad at all as poison cleansing, tremor and grounding eat plenty of CCs as it is, and we are almost always on their mage or warlock anyway. Heroism and icy veins make for wicked hard casts and 1 second sheeps are not easy to stop at all even for shadowstep rogues, especially when poison cleansing totem has a chance to free the mage from cripple snare at any given second.

Earth shock, grounding totem and tremor totem when used properly really make for amazing caster control. AOE snare and 100 free spell damage between grounding totems is a nice bonus as well. Shaman is also far, far less vulnerable to double melee and hunter
teams that are popping up the ladders (warrior/retribution paladin
comes to mind) than priests. Obviously, without priest's AOE fear (and chastise) you lose one of RMP's biggest assets in long CC chains via sheep/fear/blind, but earth shock really puts a lot of pressure on enemy casters and make them even more vulnerable to mage's counter spell. We cleared 1500 to 1950 losing just two games and I am very optimistic about this comp's strength especially in 2.4.

I also joined Ultimus's double shadowstep rogue team just under 2100, and on opening night we beat our BG's best warlock/druid team in Mounsifjr and Nadagast, handing them their only loss from 1500-2100 (they started a brand new team today). I was very surprised how much pressure we were able to put on the druid, I would say it was as good as rogue/AP mage except felhunter is such an anti-mage pet. Perception is pretty much mandatory for a rogue/rogue team and well coordinated stunlock + vanish garrote's really put a ton of pressure on the druid if I get the opener on him. While I don't believe we will beat them in a series I like our chances way more than rogue/mage. In theory, rogue/rogue should beat any of the major rogue comps in 2v2. Double rogue is just so much DPS and cooldowns. Our hard counter would be anything with a paladin but the meta game in 2v2 made paladins a rare sight. I haven't made a PVP video in a long time but if we hit top 10, I think double shadowstep rogue is definitely flashy enough to make an entertaining movie.

Double DPS with AP/POM mage and now rogue/rogue definitely made arena fun to play again until significant balance changes hit. 2.4 continue to push DPS over survivability across the board and that is always an indirect buff to our class.