Then and Now: Season 5 "All-Stars"

Most players would agree that the game has significantly changed with the release of 3.1, for better or worse. Paladins and Death knights stepped down from the throne of dominance, priests and druids are back on the rise to their TBC glory days, warriors arn't completely extinct from arena anymore, hunters are spotted going back to the BM spec, and rogues everywhere have all become incredibly skilled after a content patch.

With this article, I wanted to take a look at some more known and lesser known "all-stars" from season five and see where they are today and the public can determine if they were carried by class/comp, or if they share continued success this season. Here we go, in no particular order:



Deadly Gladiator Noxncakes (Hunter)
After achieving dglad in 2v2 on bg9, Noxn seems mostly inactive this eason with a less than stellar 3-9 record in 2v2 with his deadly gladiator partner (albeit druid this season instead of paladin), Jorkzie. My take on this is that Noxn bandwagoned the class in WotLK, gravy trained off the strength of hunters in s5, and can no longer flourish. He/She was an amazing priest and should really go back.



Deadly Gladiator Proseph (Death Knight)
Big mouth on the forums, bigger mouth in game from what I'm told. Fell off the map following the 3.1 patch with no arena teams currently and a tremendously fail one last week that he's no longer on. Was basically a nobody before and will continue to be one now, I guess.



Deadly Gladiator Adamz (Paladin)
He along with his partner Lupi have both basically disappeared from the arena scene with Adamz supposedly playing retribution now yet has no current active arena teams while Lupi is on a 1400 2v2 that struggles to break 50% win ratio.



Deadly Gladiator Bigdaddyyur (Death Knight)
Another big mouth on the forums that produces less than big results online. Going from Deadly Glad to 1700's with the exact same partners and 53% win ratio is pretty funny, but not all too surprising.



Deadly Gladiator Rydaa (Paladin)
He, along with his DK partner Milkbagz, who earned Dglad in 2 (almost 3) brackets last season currently are sporting their best team being a 2v2 rated 1193 with a 45% win ratio. Just warming up, though, right?


Inactive (Death Knight)
Seemingly quit his DK in favor of playing his rogue this season (shocking). Skill cap all of a sudden became too low, or were rogues the hidden OP class simply overshadowed by DK's and Paladins which no longer is the case?



Merciless/Brutal Gladiator Glick (Warlock)
With affliction basically taking it in the ass, it's no surprise that there has been a huge decline in warlocks but Glick not adapting to Destruction or other comps caught me a little off guard. Maybe he's just waiting for a re-buff that will likely never happen? To be fair, even Veex's warlock has been almost entirely inactive so far this season, with him playing his warrior instead.



Although there are plenty more (feel free to contribute your own stories of failure), I did want to comment on a few things that have changed significantly in 3.1:

-Druid tree form survivability is absolutely ridiculous now. No healer class should be able to tank a MS class and another DPS class at the same time without ever having to channel a single spell.

-Retribution aura and thorns combined destroying rogues through no effort of the players is retarded

-The mana efficiency of Penance (even without the Improved Healing talent) is ridiculous considering how much it heals for. Roughly half the mana cost of a holy light for at least the same, yet potentially more healing and other reactive effects go along with it (grace, divine aegis, etc).

-Casting pain suppression and hand of freedom while under effects that you should not be able to use them on other players during (ie sap, seduce, etc) is a stupidly bugged mechanic and needs to be fixed.

-12 second cooldown charge (glyphed) with no stun DR at all for warriors is pretty overpowered in 2v2 (I haven't played 2v2 yet, just watched streams) while also guaranteeing a MS crit and still being able to intercept on a separate cooldown.  The stun should DR at least off itself (if it does, correct me if I'm wrong).

-Warlocks suck way too hard again and the lottery known as "Destruction crit chance" doesn't seem all that fun or interesting to play. Blizzard really needs to stop with the vision of this class always being able to tank damage and succeed.

-Disarm used to be unique to only warriors yet now 5 classes can do it? Really? Warrior (disarm), rogue (dismantle), priest (psychic horror), hunter (chimaera shot), mage (fiery payback)? Am I missing anything here?

-Mass Dispel and Shattering Throw resists: if a player is skillful enough to actually time these perfectly in order to cause a detrimental result to a player that immuned in a bad position to get dispelled deserves to be rewarded with AT LEAST a guaranteed dispel. These "immunity removals" should not be affected by dispel resistance and MD'ing a bubble 5 times without it coming off needs to go.

-Prot healing paladins are silly. Yes, they have their weaknesses and all, but a 20k endless mana pool (due to inifinite divine plea if needed), 20 second cooldown hoj, and 25k+ holy light crits arn't exact balanced. Despite contrary belief, they DO work extremely well in certain comps and I doubt they were ever intended to be a healer with a ranged kidney shot.


I'll probably write more about these topics next article when I'm not busy chain wiping to Freya hard mode. Cool instance btw Blizz, glad you made certain Ulduar hard modes impossible (hello mimiron) so that you can finish your Algalon encounter. At least they did one thing right and made arena weapons better than raiding ones; the tears of PvE nerds will be flowing freely soon.