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Warlock/Shaman Buffs Removed, Kalgan's Statistics in Arena
After some testing on PTR, Blizzard removed the MS debuff on Flametongue Weapon/Totem and Warlock's life-tap is normalized back to it's prior state. Kalgan explains Blizzard's stance on arena representation and Druids make a significant showing now in arena compared to other healer classes.
By Brendan 'trance' C
Mar 6, 2008 12:50
After some testing on PTR, Blizzard removed the MS debuff on Flametongue Weapon/Totem and Warlock's life-tap is normalized back to it's prior state. Kalgan explains Blizzard's stance on arena representation and Druids make a significant showing now in arena compared to other healer classes.Updates on Changes:
Shaman
-- Changes to Flametongue (both Weapon and Totem) have been reverted. The healing reduction debuff has been removed.
Warlock
-- Changes to Life Tap have been reverted. Values are back to normal.
Rank 7 - Converts 580 health into 580 mana.
Mage
-- Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100%.
These changes basically set back 2.4 to look very similar to how things are now, there's a rumor that some Lifebloom changes might come into effect as well.
Tom Chilton take on Warlock's and Lifetap changes
Quoted straight from the WoW forums:
"No other warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4. One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we'd expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we'd expect, a value below 100% means they're represented less than we'd want (obviously this chart doesn't include a spec breakdown in any way).
2v2 3v3 5v5
Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5%
Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0%
Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4%
Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4%
Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6%
Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8%
Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9%
Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3%
Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).
Edit: one other detail regarding the chart, this one is set at 2200+ rating."
Soure: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5103773379&postId=51032556993&sid=1#74
Druids in, Paladins Out
These changes and the recent popularity of mage/warlock/druid centric comps has brought out an interesting topic on Gameriot. Many people believed druids excelled specifically in the 2v2 and 3v3 bracket, but now it's a whole different story with them being popular in all brackets. It seems now that Druids are replacing Paladins in the top arena teams and the Paladin is slowly being phased out. Zilea at Gameriot covers the topic in his blog and uses the current BG9 ladder as an example: here.
Update on the 5v5 BG9 Tournament
Fnatic.wow defeated Shuttlecocks 3-1 today, meaning they'll face Teh Supeh Gosus in the LB Finals. Azurewrath from Fnatic posted a video and a link is provided below. SK-Gaming will await the winner of TSG/fnatic in the Finals.
Fnatic.WoW vs Shuttlecocks
Shaman
-- Changes to Flametongue (both Weapon and Totem) have been reverted. The healing reduction debuff has been removed.
Warlock
-- Changes to Life Tap have been reverted. Values are back to normal.
Rank 7 - Converts 580 health into 580 mana.
Mage
-- Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100%.
These changes basically set back 2.4 to look very similar to how things are now, there's a rumor that some Lifebloom changes might come into effect as well.
Tom Chilton take on Warlock's and Lifetap changes
Quoted straight from the WoW forums:
"No other warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4. One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we'd expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we'd expect, a value below 100% means they're represented less than we'd want (obviously this chart doesn't include a spec breakdown in any way).
2v2 3v3 5v5
Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5%
Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0%
Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4%
Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4%
Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6%
Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8%
Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9%
Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3%
Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).
Edit: one other detail regarding the chart, this one is set at 2200+ rating."
Soure: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5103773379&postId=51032556993&sid=1#74
Druids in, Paladins Out
These changes and the recent popularity of mage/warlock/druid centric comps has brought out an interesting topic on Gameriot. Many people believed druids excelled specifically in the 2v2 and 3v3 bracket, but now it's a whole different story with them being popular in all brackets. It seems now that Druids are replacing Paladins in the top arena teams and the Paladin is slowly being phased out. Zilea at Gameriot covers the topic in his blog and uses the current BG9 ladder as an example: here.
Update on the 5v5 BG9 Tournament
Fnatic.wow defeated Shuttlecocks 3-1 today, meaning they'll face Teh Supeh Gosus in the LB Finals. Azurewrath from Fnatic posted a video and a link is provided below. SK-Gaming will await the winner of TSG/fnatic in the Finals.
Fnatic.WoW vs Shuttlecocks
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Ha-ha. I wonder why.
(HINT: DOUBLE MELEE/EUROCOMP ANYONE?)
Alot of teams choose to go with a paladin/druid combo instead of the druid/priest one used in the "euro comp".
I do generally agree with the points made by Zilea though in that druids can replace pretty much any healer in any setup and do a better job.
Funny how hunters are underrepresented across all brackets though regardless of them being perfectly viable in a number of setups.
Not to mention that scatter has a pretty short range.
It shouldn't be too hard to a mage to get a couple of frostbolts off in between those interrupts.
But if hunter uses "all he got" to counter veins and goes los ! lolz .. what then huh? :)
Currently a hunter can keep a mage from being useful pretty much entirely through pushback needing do to very few interrupts.
After the patch the hunter will have to save the interrupts for mage damage which in turn gives more room for the rest of the team.
WTF?
wow thats a lot, remember the times when druids was the uncommon class of all the availables by blizz XD
Shut up.
xD
and go shadowstep if u want superior mobility, u will lose about 8% damage .. but the mobility u get is awesome
One thing you might want to highlight is that those %s are normalised for class popularity. Prior to taking off in arena, druids have always had a really low representation. Now that they're FOTM in arena, their abundance in 2s / 3s will be exacerbated by the fact that as a class in general they have a really low representation.
A similar thing is likely for hunters in reverse - large player base with small popularity in arenas.
In a sense this corrupts the data and makes in less than ideal for analysis, as nice as it is to see 'blue' figures.
KittenorJc
Regardless it's nice to get some feedback of any sort from blues. Unfortunate for them that anything they post on the WoW forums is immediately subject to hostile scrutiny and trolling.
Going to be annoying not being able to wand down mages casts in duels anymore :(
I don't know what these people are thinking. Have you seen a PVP lock that had more mana than hp? If it was % based, you get less mana than the amount of hp tapped.
+int was never a priority stat for pvp locks. It was based around stam, resil and spell dmg. Life tap gets rid of the need for a high mana pool.
The revert, if anything, is a buff (re-buff should I say?)