The Kitchen Sink

First of all, before I get into anything else there is one thing that I cannot help but discuss… the Ring of Valor arena map. I have yet to meet a single player, competitive or otherwise, who enjoys playing this map.

Everything about it is completely awful, from the random disconnects to the environmental damage combined with awful coding for fear pathing along with gamebreaking exploits, not to mention the overall terrible design philosophy (lol stealth classes). Waiting an extra 30seconds for the elevator before you can actually fight is super fun too.

I think I bitch and moan every time I load into that map and the thought of being required to use it for competitive play is exceptionally frustrating. I wish they would at least disable it for all Tournament / Tournament Realm play. Am I wrong here? If you have a different opinion (or even the same one), let me know in the comments:

Do you like Ring of Valor?

Hunters and Rogues

I have my opinions about each class and their class abilities just like everyone else, but seeing as how I play the Hunter and Rogue classes primarily, I’ll offer my opinions of balance regarding these two classes specifically.

Hunters are in a more complicated overall situation than Rogues, and are generally considered to be too powerful. I mostly agree, based on a few abilities that really are just way too good. Although…

Ghostcrawler had this to say about hunters:



Anyone who has walked into an Arena game against a Hunter lately, or a Warrior/AR Rogue during s1-s4, can tell you that ‘mace stuns’ are retarded. It does not even matter how truly overpowered they are in any given situation, the issue remains that having such a strong as a stun on a random proc is STUPID. That being said, I mostly agree about Explosive Shot damage, but the post essentially says that they want to ignore other issues, which is silly…

Explosive Shot – Overall, I don’t think Explosive Shot itself is doing greatly too much damage. If it is, it’s only by perhaps 5% or so, and another minor nerf at most is all that is warranted here. The true issue concerning Explosive Shot / burst damage lies with…

Lock and Load – Two charges per proc is the big culprit when it comes to Explosive Shot. It guarantees three back-to-back Shots, which is simply too much damage to too small a window. One charge per proc off traps at a minimum and perhaps retain two charges per proc off Serpent Sting only if they do not want to hurt PvE dps too much.

Wyvern Sting – This ability is warping the arena format. Teams with multiple ways out (including abilities such as Stone Form or lineups with two poison dispellers) are succeeding or at least getting a fighting chance, and teams with zero outs besides their PvP trinket are getting smashed. This desperately needs to have the glyph nerfed or removed, and at least some consideration taken into reducing its PvP duration. This is by far the single most over-the-top ability that Survival Hunters have access to.

Entrapment – Much akin to mace stun, powerful abilities should not be quite this random. There are tons of easy ways to ‘fix’ entrapment… you can make it just root everyone who is on or near the trap 1second after it triggers, or give it 100% diminishing returns (i.e. cannot proc on the same person twice until the DR timer resets), or… fill in the blank. Entrapment is a more minor issue but it is still an issue.

When it comes to Rogues, I have far fewer specific suggestions, but that is only because I see Rogue issues as being overall very simple, and there could be any number of ways to accomplish the same goal. For the entire release of WotLK until very recently, I would sum up the Rogue class in one sentence –

Rogues do too much damage too fast, and rogues take too much damage too fast.

If a Rogue stun you, you die. If you stun a Rogue, he dies. They recently nerfed Mutilate damage targeted at lowering their burst, which I think is a very good change. My concern though, is that there is not a single mention of helping Rogues take a little less damage overall. This is my biggest concern for Rogues, and Hunters are the only other major issue limiting Rogues – which would be greatly helped if the passive abilities that contribute to a Hunter ‘controlling’ a Rogue, are nerfed (i.e. TnT stun, entrapment, etc).

Tournament Realm Gear List

This list just recently went up, and I am very happy to see that there will be no 226ilvl weapons most importantly, or even any other 226ilvl items that I see glancing through the lists. The enchantment/glyph listings look comprehensive and there remains the option of mixing and matching with pve/pvp gear both present, which isn’t such a bad thing since some lineups rely somewhat on gaining some extra offense or mana longevity by lowering their defenses.

Again there are no professions as well which is a big sigh of relief, as some lineups really just really cannot deal with Engineering on the opposing team, for example.

ESL Extreme Masters

In case there was any concern, ESL Shawn confirmed that the gear listings for the Blizzard official Tournament Realm are the very same as those that will be available on the ESL realm for the Extreme Masters EU Continental Finals and Global Finals.

You may have already heard but there is other good news for this community regarding the EM Finals, which will have all three SK.WoW teams attending thanks to the last minute dropout of Korean team Kill e A. I am somewhat disappointed that I will not be able to meet Clazzi, one of my all-time favorite WoW players, but in this case the gains outweigh the losses.

Germany… I cannot wait.