Arena Gank Squads and Mindbending Blues

Remember my post about Death Knights? I pointed out how, in that interview, Tom Chilton (aka Kalgan) made an odd remark about arenas and ganking? Here's the quote from Kalgan:

"It will also be a lot of fun in arenas where you could pull a guy right into the middle of your gank squad."

I added [sic] to that comment because it made no sense. "Ganking" means one player or group destroys players that don't stand a chance to fight back due to level differences, low health, poor gear, or anything that makes the ganker way more overpowered than the gankee. Aren't we supposed to be matched up fairly in arenas? Isn't that especially what the new system is supposed to be designed to do?

Yesterday, Blue Community Manager Bornakk, aka the guy on the right, made this increasingly confusing post to "clarify" how arena team and personal ratings will be calculated for Season 4. It houses such doublespeak as this:

"The adjustment to a team’s personal rating can vary based on the average personal rating of the other team while team ratings will always adjust based directly on the team rating of the other team."

If I know one thing about writing, it's this--if you can't explain something simply, it's likely because you can't figure it out yourself. Clever level 1 alt Enginee warns Bornakk that s/he sees right through this smokescreen of a system:

"This system facilitates and encourages GRIEFING.... They can, anytime and over and over, reset average PRs to 1500, 1600, 1900, whatever they wish...and beat up on teams 100s of rating below them for kicks. There is zero, nada, negative repercussions to resetting PRs, no downside. So instead of searching the empty Outlands for someone to gank, they can grief teams."

Bingo! So this is what Tom Chilton meant by arena ganking. I finally feel like I am on the same page as the Blizzard developers. And I mean that sincerely, no snark. World of Warcraft is constantly changing--some might call it evolving, some might say devolving--as it's an ongoing MMO. So, the question that comes about in the end is always: Are these changes acceptable to you?

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Death Knights: The Dark Knights of Azeroth

Shrouded in mystery, the Death Knights--Blizzard's first World of Warcraft hero class--will be available to play in the upcoming Northrend expansion Wrath of the Lich King. And, like the superhero Batman, they will have endless utility while at the same time being as scary (and nutty) as grandma's fruit cake. Or, perhaps, grandma herself.

Ten Ton Hammer has a great article up about Death Knights which includes lots of details about this new class from Tom Chilton, aka Kalgan, Blizzard's co-lead designer.

Excerpts from the article:

• The Death Knight is an anti-caster tank. “They’ll be fully capable of tanking creatures on the more common level, like the heroic dungeons and five person instances,” Chilton said. “But where they’ll really shine in the raid scenario is in tanking casters.”
• Chilton said, "If you have a level 55 character on your account, it unlocks the ability to create a Death Knight.” Chilton also mentioned that the Death Knight can come from any of the races.... “You’ll be limited to one Death Knight per server that you play on,” Chilton stated. “Players will be able to make multiple Death Knights, but they’ll have to do so over multiple servers rather than just one."
• [Chilton said,] “You’ll start off in a new area created specifically for Death Knights. They’ll have their own quests and you’ll go through that quest line to learn how to play as the class along with picking up some early abilities, gear, and learn a bit of the storyline behind the class.”

More excerpts about Death Knight abilities:

• The vast majority of a Death Knight’s abilities use runes and are represented by the three pairs of colored symbols that have replaced the energy / rage / mana bar.... An example is the “Death Coil” ability (which Chilton described as iconic to the class), which requires runic power and unleashes it all causing up to 600 shadow damage to a non-undead enemy target or healing up to 900 damage on a friendly undead target.
• Another finishing move we saw...consumes all the runic power but grants the Death Knight immunity to stun effects and significantly increases their armor for 12 seconds.
• The Death Knight uses a rune to surround the Death Knight in an anti-magic shell, which absorbs 75% of the damage from the next spell and transfers that into runic power.
• The “Mind Freeze” ability...interrupts casting.
• A runic power ability called “Strangulate”...flushes all of the Death Knight’s runic power, silences an enemy for a maximum of five seconds...causing a bit of damage.
• The iconic “Death and Decay” ability...casts an area effect damage spell and his[sic] a chance to fear some of the targets within the area.
• The Grip of Death...pulled an opponent directly to the Death Knight, bringing him face to face with the horrid fighter.... “That Grip of Death ability is one of the Death Knight’s primary taunt mechanics,” Chilton said. “It will also be a lot of fun in arenas where you could pull a guy right into the middle of your gank squad.”[sic]
• Players will be able to use knockback maneuvers – along with pull maneuvers.
• The Death Knight can also root enemies in place using the “Chain of Ice” ability, which wraps his opponents in icy chains.
• Death Knights also have the ability to raise their own ghoul guardians to fight alongside them... So if a friendly player you’re grouped with dies, you can actually cast “Create Dead” on their corpse and that player will have the option to play as the Death Knight’s ghoul.... The Death Knight can also use the Death Pact ability to slaughter his own guardian and gain a bit of health back.
• The Death Knight can also summon their own “Death Charger” – a horse that functions similarly to the Warlock and Paladin abilities to summon mounts.
• Players will have three different “Presences” to choose from while they’re fighting: the Blood Presence for maximum DPS, the Frost Presence is the tanking aura, and the Unholy Presence for the PvP style of gameplay.

Go to Ten Ton Hammer to read the whole article because it's worth it. There are many more details there about Death Knights than in my outline here.

Warcraft players then assaulted the Blizzard forums over the weekend with countless posts about Death Knights. Beloved Blue Nethaera insists that Blizzard will "make sure the Death Knight is balanced in with everyone else," though these abilities do seem a bit overpowered (particularly the "arena ganking" one). Some players have been expressing concern that their characters are held up in too much crowd control lately--especially in arenas--so it's interesting to see Blizzard give this class even more abilities to make you lose control of your character. Also, I'm picturing the combination of Death Knight with certain racials to be arguably overpowered, like Blood Elf (racial aoe silence) , Night Elf (racial stealth), or Dwarf (racial stoneskin). Strange that you can be a death knight Dranei but not a warlock Dranei. I thought this was because the Dranei were so good that they could never be corrupted. Maybe that will be explained.

I don't mean to nitpick about a class that isn't even finished yet. Okay, I admit I'm still a little bitter that Blizzard took away never implemented priests' Summon Champion, yet they are giving Death Knights an ability to drag people to them. Perhaps Summon Champion will be in game for level 80's. Or perhaps I will be the only priest in a game full of Death Knights! I don't even want to think about that.

There's a lot of miscellaneous stuff that still has to be ironed out. No word yet on the fleshing out of the talent trees. No word yet on what level Death Knights will start with their professions. Nathaera explains: "At this point, we haven't shared what we may be doing with the Death Knight class in regard to how professions will be handled with them. When we have more information we can share on this, we will."

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World of Warcraft Arenas: Are Hunters the True Forsaken?

Okay hunters, you all knew something was wrong. Normally the darlings of the battlegrounds--the class with the highest kills--you wondered why the heck couldn't your arena team rise above 1700 or 1800 (at least, if you didn't have a druid). Where were all the 2000+ ranked hunters? Well, now you know you weren't imagining things. The numbers show they're simply not there.

Last week in the Warlock Discussion Forum in a thread called Lifetap change reverted (self-explanatory), Kalgan (Tom Chilton, the lead game designer's nom de message board) dropped The Drama Bomb and the forums erupted with hunters screaming. Especially since the Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe is getting nerfed in 2.4.

43.0%...50.2%...43.0%. What's that all about?

The only information Kalgan provided about the chart was this,

...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...

...and, yeah, hunters were listed as having 43...well, I don't have to repeat it. The chart was for 2200+ ranked teams, though among the 1850+ teams (2v2, 3v3, & 5v5, respectively), hunters fared no better: 50.2%...50.2%...50.2%. Ouch.

Incidentally, don't go posting those numbers on the Warcraft forums repeatedly. Posters who did that last weekend were banned, and I wasn't around to see the carnage. I do know that Megatf, the only consistently 2200+ ranked hunter I know of, was permabanned from the forums and his sticky thread on how to pvp as a hunter was removed. Afaik, his character is active, but whether or not he'll compete in the arena tourney is anyone's guess.

Hunters are not a weak class. But in the fishbowl arena, the hunter can't always play as a ranged class. There's the biggest problem. And the fact that hunters don't have the melee to compete with a melee class of equal gear makes it very easy for them to get crowd controlled (CC'd) and beaten to death. They're also not a burst damage class. Hunter damage is meant to be meted out over time, using autoshot in between a special shot. Hunter CC is good in a 1v1 situation and grows poorer the more enemies there are (you won't ever see a hunter freezing 5 people in place like a mage). They're getting to be as complicated to play as warlocks used to be a couple of years ago. The more complicated a class, the less people will choose to play it. And the harder it will be for just anyone playing it to do well.

In the hunter forums it's generally assumed that if you're going to do well in arenas, you would choose MM (marksman). Recently, because I do 5's, I was thinking of trying out survival for better CC, but I could find no real evidence that it's a good way to go, for several reasons: 1.) People aren't flocking to do it, so the general consensus is it's not any improvement for pvp, 2.) I can't find any survival hunters in a high ranked team, 3.) looking at the tree, I see a 31 point dispellable CC (wyvern sting) and a 41 point talent (readiness) that seems more like a pve talent. In fact, 4.) I most often read survival discussed as a good pve tree, not a pvp one. Seeing as paladins, druids, and shaman can dispel wyvern sting, none of this seems like any big surprise. So I guess, for now, mana draining as MM will have to continue to be my purpose (like it is for just about every other hunter).

If anyone remembers how bad warlocks used to be, they'll also remember just how long it took Blizzard to improve them. Doubtful that any real changes will be made to "fix" hunters for season 4, but possibly by season 5 (provided that Blizzard wants to continue with the whole arena system). In that case, you're looking at six months to a year, so changes could be in conjunction with WotLK xpac.

So what will I be doing? Leveling my old druid and gearing up my even older priest. Still doing the weekly arenas on my hunter for the points, of course, and just keep on keepin' on. After all, what else is a "scrub blood elf hunter" supposed to do?

And now for something completely different.

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