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 by Jasi, Level 63
Last updated at July 19, 2008, 2:30 am
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Many people are focused on the newly released WotLK talents, and while it's completely understandable, there is a hugely significant change coming up in the next patch (believe it was being added in 2.4.3) that can potentially change quite a bit in terms of balance. It's not the sinister calling change, or the cheat death change, rather the change that gives both Mage and Warlock armor 100% dispel resistance.
At MLG Orlando, it was shown that Warlock/Warrior/Druid continues to flourish and besides RMP, which is equally as strong, it is easily the best combo a team can run right now. With two separate teams placing quite well, while both running the same comp, the strength of the makeup is quite evident. RMP at least has some decent counters to it, and it can be taken down by any WLD relatively easily (as was shown at MLG). At this point, it seems like WLD is pretty much the only makeup that is almost completely impossible to hard counter without running something quite ridiculous or obscure in terms of makeups. Perhaps the fact that it lacks any counters is a good thing in that it makes it one of the most balanced makeups along side RMP, but until there are more than 2 very balanced makeups in total, it's probably not a good thing.
Not only that, but it's arguably one of the most noob-friendly combo in that if you take three decent players in terms of their respective classes, the makeup can be played quite effectively. If you're a top player and you're playing the WLD makeup, it's almost hard to not be decently successful.
So what is it about this change that will take the comp and put it even further over the top once the patch is implemented? Well if you think about it, one of the only effective ways of taking down the WLD combo is to focus the lock once Fel armor has been successfully dispelled. This buff will effectively remove the only strength and chance RMP has at taking down WLD in general. Once it's gone, it's going to be that much harder for RMP's to beat the comp and further pushes WLD away from a balance level that has at least a couple of counters. This will allow warlocks to have a +27% healing buff (with the talent or w/e) permanently. If this buff is to go through before Dallas, the competition looks quite grim - but there is a solution.
This problem will really only be relative if the TR stays in a season 2 format until WotLK. As it stands now, the chances of being successful on the TR with any makeup besides RMP or WLD is incredibly slim, and this buff will all but completely eliminate other comps from competing.
There are a couple of things that can be done to maintain the small existing amount of balance though, and the main one would be for Blizzard to change the season on the TR and other tournaments from season 2 to season 3. The reason for this is that RRD and other cleave teams actually became a decent counter to WLD after season 2 ended. Granted there are a ridiculous amount of cleave style teams running around now, but this will take WLD and make it a comp that won't be so noob-friendly anymore and will really only remain as successful when the team is composed by some of the best players. Teams like Hafu's are leaps and bounds ahead of most teams, and their play at MLG was incredibly impressive so I have no doubt that they would still be able to be as successful, but it will just require a bit more out of them.
If they don't up the season to 3 on the TR, the overall diversity on comps will just be incredibly limited after this patch change. Again, if it does become season 3, double melee will be good, WLD will have a decent counter, and RMP will still be strong.
After talking to a couple of teams that were very close to qualifying at the end of the 2nd qualification round on the TR (that happen to run a RRD or double other double melee/cleave style team), it seems their only way of really progressing was to avoid any WLD team possible. They were able to pretty much take down any other team without really countering, rather playing as well as possible (as good as you can actually be playing a cleave team, that is) but just couldn't find a way to take down WLD teams. The thing is, they couldn't take them down even with attempting to run other comps. And the team I'm talking about isn't exactly bad either, it's happyminti's team that ended up in a tie for 4th. They basically ended up having to suffer through WLD teams trying to snipe them all the time by fake queuing, by queuing, leaving, and then trying to queue right as minti's team would.
So in the end, this buff could really put some balance issues over the top, so hopefully Blizzard compensates in some form.
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hope dis helps
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And the team I'm talking about isn't exactly bad either, it's happyminti's team that ended up placing 4th.
they tied for 6th within the last 15 minutes
Virtually no no one was queueing, so if farming 1850-1900 rated teams like pandemic repeatedly is being fed, then that is something respectable to say, so long as people don't misinterpret it as them intentionally giving us points, which wasn't the case. Ask Kintt if you want, he was on their priest. In that case, all the WLD's that qualified were "Fed" by us. Grats, we're feeders now~!
Anyways, just real curious bro, why did you break up with your GF for WoW?
Oh, and sorry for saying rick ross don't really feel like editing it. It's a dumb catch phrase that all the COD4 kids say.
And as for Orz vs DGFG, they really just got massively outplayed. While the fel armor nerf will definately make this a more fair matchup, I don't see RMP being a disadvantage vs war/lock/druid, though I'm sure rogue/lock/druid will suck even more (to play against as RMP) than it currently does.
And for a noob friendly comp, it was astounding the difference in effectiveness between teams like Hoodrych's, and teams like Hafu's. I know from personal experience all the players on Hoodrych's team are great, but it was like watching an entirely different comp compared to Orz. The difference in the amount of control and pressure exerted was quite obvious, and I don't think it was because they were perticularly better as individual players.
Anyway there are a bunch of counters to WLD, just more or less not the generic setups that are popular today. Just because they're not viable for high-end live doesn't mean they're not viable on LAN.
"Every other team trying to run enh shaman vs WLD" Care to give examples? AFAIK, both Limewire's team and Neilyo's team have winning records against just about every WLD.
Try again, slave.
1. Pandemic vs GGW. Uhhh did you watch the matches? TEEB DIES WITHOUT NSING TWICE. Yeah those were awesome matches.
2. TNS who you "heard was the best rogue/enh/druid team on TR2" RAN A MUTILATE ROGUE VS THEM. No shadowstep IS pretty huge, you incompetent imbecile.
3. Pandemic's absolute flop vs GGW goes to show you that it's NOT that easy to "mash stormstrike and purge" without experience. NONE of their matches lasted more than what, two minutes long?
4. "Nerfs nearly every counter WLD had"
Read that over, and then slap yourself.
But you know, playing and trolling are two different things. Although my bet is you play in an awful RMP that can't beat the average WLD now because OMG WE CAN'T KILL A WARLOCK IN 10 SECONDS, THIS GAME IS BROKEN.
1. People who make mistakes lose? NO WAY?!? Also, please say you haven't done that before.
2. Like I said, they did very well on TR2 where WLD was much more abundant, I'm sure they had their reasons to go mutilate.
3. Like you just said, the druid playing poorly cost the matches, not the shaman's inability to mash his 2 buttons properly. You're one to talk about counterproductive.
4. Care to prove me wrong instead of avoiding over and over?
WLD was the best overall comp before 2.4.3
- 4 of the 8 TR qualifiers ran WLD, including the TR2 winner
- WLD was the only comp to have more than 1 team win money at an MLG, one being a 1st place
- Even on live where the comp is not nearly as good, WLD is still the 2nd most common comp above 2200.
2.4.3 has made WLD much stronger, nerfing nearly every counter WLD Had
- Teams considered counters: RMP, RSD, WSD, Shadowcomp
- Almost every counter to WLD involved purge spam and heavy dps on the warlock
- Undispellable fel armor obviously sets this back
This is the entire point of the blog, all you've done so far is dodge the real issue and nitpick at unimportant side-arguments.
btw, using your own number, which is obviously biased and on the low side:
Let's say WLD had a 25% win rate vs RSD and WSD, that's on average 1 of every 4 games.
Now let's say 2.4.3 allows you to win 1 more game out of 4, which is most likely an underestimation. That's now 2 wins in 4 games.
50% win rate vs a "hard counter"?
RMP/Enh Shaman teams will obviously have a harder time against WLD, but that doesn't make WLD unstoppable.
You brought up the point that WLD did in fact win an MLG (hey woah that's my team no way), and that 4/8 (even though it was 3/8 lol) teams made it on the US TRs. You're naively overlooking the fact that European and Asian teams have 0 WLD teams winning their TRs and competitions.
Lastly I'm glad that you have to degrade my gender, because that has anything to do with this argument. Do whatever to make yourself look cool, I guess?
Tool.
Edit: Read Gumbot's comment below, he sums everything up quite nicely
sniping one game to get 10 points to maintain 2nd? Trust me its not
because we wanted to play vs them, we had to. Our choices were between
RPM or double rogue druid we'd take the double rogue druid. They could
have won the game easily hadn't they fallen off the bridge on blade's
edge after bringing our druid to near dead in a cheapshot. We'd take
the rogue team over RPM because RPM backthen hardly had to even try to
beat us, i played vs CLC on the TR and the games were such a joke, you
know how many polymorphs were cast..:0 you know howmany frostbolts: 0
the whole game was instants spamming damage...zzz. Happy didnt have to
suffer at all, they farmed a single team from like 1800 to 2046 which
at that point they thought was 4th. Happy Didnt qualify because of his
composition, but because he left it way too late to start playing.
TLDR
Don't try and use the MLG matchs as an indication of class balance
especially if you are going to cherrypick which games you bother to
look at. Players like orz play on a completley different level than
you, almost like playing a different game. If orz never played duelists
and all you had to go on to make your opinion on WLD vs RPM was the
didylol vs duelist what would you say? You would say something like
"Omg they shutdown the warlock to doing 8k dmg and their warrior never
even attacked, and his pet died instantly, i think there needs to be a
lock buff". But you decide to base your opinion around team Orz. You
saw the difference between duelist vs GG and orz. Can no one accept
that duelists just got flatout outplayed? Or if it happens in America,
it must be because of compositions. Jasi, although i'll admit that this
change is really big, perhaps too big, but im just glad that it might
reduce the amount of mindless warlock zering that's been so prevalent
since the beggining of TBC. Did any of you honestly feel that mob
gaming outplayed Orz when they swapped to war/sham/druid and killed
glick instantly? I know you guys have frequently said this about
eurocomp aswell that its stupid lame because its mindless train on
warlock. Same with TSG comp etc. Also if you have been paying attention
to whats going on on live you'll notice a huge increase in
priest/druid/XespW in 3s. All through s3, it was warlock train in 5s do
you not recall every top team on bg9 complaining about how stupid it
was that literally everyteams strat was train the lock. I'm sure that
this change won't be so quickly judged by those who actually play the
game past 1800.
WALl of TXt
You complain about the composition being noob friendly, well no ****
zilea, it has a druid/warrior at the core of it, what druid/war/X combo
is hard to be decent with honestly? Whether or not its the best
composition right now is yet to been seen. I dont think its a
coincidence that all 4 korean teams have a priest and a whopping 10/16
teams who qualified for regionals during TR1 have priests. I just dont
see how any wow player can advocate for more cleave at this point
during the game, anything but more cleave for christ sake.
wall of TXT
Also could someone figure out exactly how the felarmor mechanic works,
for example if i have it on im at 126% + healing if i am MSed do i now
receive 75% of healing or 61.5% of healing.
To the first part of your statement, our team started at 2000 and bounced around 2050, 1900, back to 2050 throughout the course of Monday evening. This final push "from 1800 to 2046" was actually a push from 1960 to 2046 where the only teams left queueing were two PMRs (Scotii & Kintt's). We had also recently run into a very low rated WLD that got a win and cost us 22 points, and earlier Innate's WMD which farmed us over 60 points. Also, we couldn't queue while we were in Orlando, mister.
Just clearing things up.
I think the concern of this article isn't about sniping, it is about WLD being the indisputable best overall Comp in Season 2 (in the US - remember bg9 - serennia, azazael, and spoh #1 - Talason, Eep and Hips #2 - both WLD - ALL SEASON) and a Season 4 Buff only further extending that lead for tournament play. Fact of the matter is, Buffs that apply for season 4 (which I do think this buff IS NEEDED for poor trained warlocks) shouldn't have effect in season 2 tournament play where there is obviously no need for them (MLG is proof enough).
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