PvP Last Night

I respec'd to 0/61/0 for some PvP action. In retrospect I should have taken 2 points in Earthen Power instead of Improved WF totem. I also didn't change my glyphs to match the Static Shock build, but I'll do that today (after RL stuff). We are raiding SSC or TK tonight as a guild PUG, and my ZA run is scheduled for just before that so I will have some results of my output in both PvE and PvP.

But as for PvP last night all I can say is... WOW. It's like gaming in fast-forward. The speed of the action is twice as fast as pre-patch. We have all the buffs and hard-hitting abilities without the stam increases that will be coming in WotLK. So it's bambambamdead. Of course you all probably know this already, but last night was my first PvP action since August when I needed to take a break from all the filthy rogues out there.

Here's how I fared against different classes:
Druid - didn't get to square off with any droods last night. I recall getting smacked with Starfall and thinking OMG I can't get away from these damn things! But other than that no interaction.
Hunter - Still a struggle. This is where I needed Earthen Power to break the wingclips.
Mage - Actually found mages easier to kill post-patch. Seems they didn't get any crazy new tricks.
Paladin - hmm. Yes they got killer buffs, and yes the long duration stun sucks, but considering that they were always hard to take down for me before I didn't find them that much worse. Grounding Totem, Medallion of the Alliance, and MW5 HW are life savers. I always struggled against Pally's because of the combination of high armor and healing ability (prot Pallys were a waste of time for me pre-patch). Now if I have grounding totem up that'll eat up the hammer, a quick switch to shield for more armor, and Medallion for the next stun. What was pleasing was that I was able to rip apart the poorly-geared Pallys despite their stuns.
Priest - Disc priests still take a loooong time to kill, which post-patch means like 10 seconds. But I would say they are easier to take down now because the insane boosts to damage outpaced the buffs given to heals.
Rogue - still filthy. I both love and hate rogues. OK, I don't love them, but I can appreciate a well played rogue who uses all of their dirty filthy cheap tricks. The jury is still out for me as to whether or not rogues are easier, harder, or the same. Right now I'm leaning to easier/same. My damage is just as bursty as yours filthy rogue! But I get ARMOR!
Shaman - Elemental shaman... as long as I can get in before getting smacked in the face with a Chain Lightning crit then they're toast. But on more than one occassion I went in at full health and by the time I closed that 30-40 yard gap (in Ghost Wolf no less) I was at 50% health. I know they didn't get buffed as well as other classes but that initial hurt is NASTY. Once I'm in and above 50% health... pffft. ES that next cast and /wave /goodbye.
Warlock - Ouch. Warlocks got nasty. I used to be able to take down locks on a consistent basis--it was all about totem management and timing heals against dots. Now those dots bring the pain faster and harder. I found myself having to choose between dpsing them or healing myself. And when you get to that point you have to ask yourself, is this worth it? Of course with a healer behind me these guys are just another bloodstain on my fist weapons.
Warrior - BBBBBBBLADESTORMMMMM sucks. I thought I'd take advantage of that "cannot be stopped unless killed" part... yeah, not so much. Word of advice: when you see a Warrior doing the whirling dervish - run away bravely.

Things that are awesome:

• Spirit Wolves - I love my wolves
  
• Spirit Walk - I love my wolves even more
  
• MW5 HW - thought you had me didn't you filthy rogue?! HA! Insta-heal!
  
• Windfury Crits - of course :D
  

I know not much about Static Shock in here. Jury's still out until I can look at some numbers post-raids tonight.

Start of S4 on the 5v5

We kicked off season four last night on our 5v5. We rolled with the Disc Priest, Holy Pally, MS Warr, Hunter, and me. We went 6-6 on the night and ended up with a grand total of 1506 rating.

As I expected there were some sick teams. We got rolled by a few with full S3 gear who must have just started their season as well. There was one 4 dps / 1 healer team that decided to FF me down first. They charged across the bridge in the BEM map and I started dropping totems. By the time they got to me I hit Heroism and as my health was dropping I popped Shamanistic Rage and I was toasted before that GCD was up. It took two GCD--three seconds total--for them to rip me to shreds. ouch.

And then there were some teams trying to make their way like us. As the gates opened on our 2nd battle there was no one to be found. We speculated the possibilities: all rogue, all druid, druid/rogue, or stealthers + Shadowmeld. The priest got sapped so we started beating on that rogue who popped up behind enemy lines, and then our Proximo's lit up: five rogue team. It's both my dream come true and my worst nightmare all rolled into one. If our team was a 4 dps team or if the rogues had their stunlocks down better they probably could have stunned the pally, killed the priest and then made trouble for us. But being rogues they are not required to have skill or strategy so they didn't have their act together and we picked them apart one by one. Mmmmm DELICIOUS. With rogue blood on my blades we looked for the next challenges.

I made two tactical errors that at worst cost us matches or at best made the loss go down faster. The first was on a two healer team I had us going after a dps first. It was a Pally, Disc Priest, SL/SL Lock, Frost Mage, MS Warr team. A pretty vanilla combo for 5v5 and one that makes choosing a target tough. I picked the Lock and chose wrong. Mental note and 5v5 Arena Rule Number 1 for our setup: On two healer teams, take a healer first. We could have very easily attacked the pally, forced the bubble, have the priest dispel it right away and finish him off. Then we are free to dps through the Priest's heals.

The other tactical error I made was choosing a 2nd target on a very unusual team combo: Disc Priest, 2x MS Warr, Resto Druid, Feral Druid. We got the priest down first and fast. Then I called out to go for the Resto Druid because I recognized the Kodohide Spaulders and thought he would be very weak. But he did an amazing job of kiting using Cyclone, roots, cheetah, and pillars to save himself. At that point the three physical DPS had taken down the priest, even after a bubble, and then the hunter. Props to the druid in crappy gear, goes to show skill+spec > gear. Of course it helped the rest of the team had full S3 gear including shoulders and weapons. That resto druid was the natural choice, but he sure had some great people carrying him.

On the whole it was a tough start to the season, but in the end we fared... well, mediocre. Maybe we'll get a crack at it again today or tomorrow.

Patch 2.4.3 for Enhance Shamans

For a sub-patch (is that the right term?) there are a significant amount of changes taking place, and not just bug fixes but gameplay improvements, UI changes, nerfs and buffs. Here are a few key pieces for enhance shamans:

Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
This will affect Purge on enemy targets. Currently I do not know if Purge attempts to dispel non-dispellable effects, but I can only assume this is an improvement.

Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
Oh man oh man. Rogues will actually require resil? One calculation I saw was that to achieve the pre-patch level of mitigation a rogue would need well over 430 resilience. Now when we have that damn rogue down to below 3% I know my Stormstrike will waste him and not just bounce off his cheat.

Activated beneficial effects from jewelcrafting trinkets can no longer be dispelled.
If you are a JC and use the trinkets this should be good news. Though Stoney is a JC I don't use the JC trinkets because I have better ones for both PvE and PvP. I'm curious, can you use the trinkets in arena?


Magister's Terrace nerfs listed here.

This seems to be a pattern of Blizzard's: release content erring on the side of difficult then after a few months nerf it for the masses. In some regards I'm disappointed to see what I've earned, most often the hard way and early on, be brought down a notch for the sake of the masses. But on the other hand I suppose it's the nerfing that keeps the semi-casual players interested and thus subscriptions high--so I can see how it is a good decision from a business point of view for Blizzard. But I digress, I posted here about how to get your enhance shaman into an MgT run as most groups were only looking for CC classes. I expect groups will still be looking for CC classes but the nerfs should make it easier for us enhance shammys to get in runs.


Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
I've never had a problem with this but again I suppose any bug fix is a worth a fix. Anyone know of any specific cases where this was a problem?

That covers 2.4.3 for Enhance Shammys. Enjoy!

Cheat Death Nerfed!

God bless Blizzard!

Patch 2.4.3 Change to Cheat Death - Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

Good explanation of what this means is on WoW Insider:
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/06/18/understanding-the-cheat-death-nerf/

Anything to nerf rogues is fine by me.

Going Downhill

We had a really rough arena day yesterday. We went 5-8 and drove our rating down to 1566. It sucked completely. At one point we were up to 1603, but we only had 9 matches so we had to play again. We lost that match and lost 18 points... ouch. So we played another, lost it but only lost 3 points. Another against the same team and lost 3 points again. Then we lost one more, lost a ton of points and had to call it a day.

The damn friggin rogues were ripping us apart. We need a strategy to beat the teams with rogues. I spend most of the fight with my shield on unless they are not hitting me. But when the team pops out they only see a warrior and a shaman so naturally I'm the target. I start with the shield, get totems down quickly, then back into Ghostwolf to avoid at least a Sap. But with us playing defensively we're giving the other team the opportunity to mana burn, mana drain, and do big damage. There are just so many tricks up a rogue's sleeve they don't even have to be well geared to compete against an S3 team. We focus-fire on them and they Shadowstep away or Cheat Death, Blind, Cloak of Shadow, Vanish, and get a heal. Then we are starting all over again. Even with Faerie Fire and dots up on them that Cloak of Shadows gives them the chance to get away.

If they are on our druid it's twice as bad. Our damage is wasted and our healer is going down. Nasty nasty nasty. We were all bent out of shape yesterday after arenas.

We are working on some rogue strategies. First of all, we're going to have the warrior Intercept when the rogue is on our druid. We're toying with the idea if we should Intervene as well. That would mean lost rage for him as he switches in and out of stances, but it might help with a timely Intercept/Intervene. We shall see.

The other thing that becomes clear is that if we are going to FF on a rogue, we have to keep after it. After he blows all his cooldowns, we have 1 minute to burn him down again or all those cd's will be back up again.

Another strategy is to kill anything that does not have a life-saving effect. That means no targeting mages, rogues, or paladins, and avoiding warlock and priests (assuming they are SL/SL and disc, respectively). That means we kill hunters (we loooove killing hunters), shamans, druids, and maybe even warriors. In fact, that's a thought. I wonder if we should take down a warrior first if the group has one? I can pop a shield and Shamanistic Rage to help mitigate the increased damage I'd take, but that could work if we face a warr/rogue team.

With summer here our druid is out of school and we will have more time to get in more arena matches. I'm glad because I hate having to do them at the last minute. I was also talking with a guildie that has three teams over 1800, including a 2000 rated 2v2. He says the best times he finds for arena is early in the morning and late at night. I'll be keeping track and we'll see when the best times of day are for 3v3.

Damn Rogues

Tonight was a rough night in arena for us. We went 5-6 and dropped nearly 20 points in our rating. We had to call it a night due to our Druid needing to get to bed, but agreed to try again later in the week to get that rating back up.

The problem tonight: rogues. Damn friggin rogues. Hate. If it's not Kidney Shot it's Cheap Shot. Then it's Vanish or ShadowStep or Cheat Death. And it's not that they do a lot of damage--they don't It's just the complete and utter immobilization. The worst part was that we were not handling the group makeups very well and going after
the wrong players. It was an off-night to say the least.

When the rogue got on me I would switch to shield and pop Shamanistic Rage, but that's only 15 seconds of love. When they got on our druid healer he was immobilized and I had to backup heal. This took the pressure off their healer who could then assist with DPS and/or CC. Horrible all around. We are all looking up some strategies on how to handle rogues because let's face it, the RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) combo is the nastiest of them all and we are sure to face more and more rogues the higher we get.

I'm ok with losing a hard-fought match, though it sucks. And losing to a 2000+ rated team is quick and relatively painless. But losing to an undergeared rogue just because it's a damn rogue just plain sucks.

Our only loss against a no-rogue team was to a holy pally, ret pally, MS warr combo. that couldn't be a worse combo for us. It would be a caster's delight, but not ours.

On the plus side on the night, we faced ourselves (enhance sham, MS warr, resto druid) and owned them. That felt good, we realized we are doing something right that we could take down a team that matches us.

I think I am going to make a kill-list-order for us to set a few must-kills from the start so that we can take them out the moment they appear on our screens. Then after they are down we can go after the lower priority targets. More to come on that.