Oh yeah, this is also silly. Ret’s one weakness is that its susceptible to burst damage. It has no DR and outside of bubble is helpless when in a stun. This is offset by its incredibly high sustained healing. However, the prot legendary greatly reduces that weakness to the point where they can survive gos without using a real “cooldown” and the threshold is low enough that it won’t occur organically.
Triangle formation, and it’s not even close.
Tbh I wish arena was limited to melee/ranged/healer
No offense taken - you’re 100% right!
I’ve played enough that I have a certain “feel” and awareness during a game that I’d say puts me above a total beginner, and I know most of the major CDs, but outside of that I know I have a lot to improve on.
You’re also spot on with the theorycraft vs. reality piece. Its been a little difficult with how fast things move in the meta right now to really process in a logical “play-counterplay” manner how games are unfolding.
Like I understand the basic win conditions of playing rogue, but knowing when its appropriate to have a go is where I’m getting caught up. Watching a lot of streamers, its crazy for me to hear them go “oh yeah this game is over” like 20 seconds before they win because they understand everything that has played out that game.
I have zero idea how to play mage in arena, especially the kiting part.
For sure. And I imagine that’s getting at the reason why you made this post and why hybrids are difficult for you.
I’m sure you know your win condition in a rough sense; you stun something and then kill it in that stun and run away outside of that stun.
There are obviously a ton of other moving parts to this, but do you have specific questions for things that you have trouble with? with/as/against a certain comp in 2v2/3v3?
You list all those wonderful mage qualities but fail to report one significant weakness. Almost all their defenses are easily removed by dispel spam or spell steal spam. And mages are vulnerable to the endless amounts of snaring in the game.
Almost forgot to mention line of sight issues as well.
I’m not sure if this is a troll or not, since you’re posting on a lvl 17 alt.
However, assuming you’re actually a new player I’m happy to expand upon my point.
That’s why triune ward is so incredibly powerful.
It’s not just raw innate tankiness, it’s also purge protection. Combust can technically be dispelled, sure, but it’s almost entirely unfeasible to purge it outside of another mage using kleptomancy to steal it.
Triune ward on top of the shield conduit gives 4 buffs, AI is a 5th, pyro proc is a 6th. A mage can get a 100-0 damage burst from combust by themselves with meteor->combust-> fbx2 pyro fb pyro. since the meteor is before the combust, this is literally two globals to 100-0 someone. It’s not realiable to purge combust off through 4+ other buffs since each purge takes a global and conflicts with any other damage/healing/peeling you’re trying to do.
Yes, they’re weaker to purges than moonkin or ret paladin for example, but that weakness isn’t practical in most arena settings. Mages are never just standing in the open getting purged and getting pummeled.
This is true of literally every class in the game except druids. But even then, its super easy to force a punish by snaring them to force a form shift and stunning the shift.
This is also true of literally every class in the game… except mages for the most part, because they can use shimmer to get around LoS that no other class can.
I honestly think the biggest thing I could do to improve is take the time to set up Omnibar, and do my best to really understand the other classes/specs. Then I could understand what position they’re trying to get me in, and then I can understand how to try to avoid that.
The biggest issues I’m facing as a rogue right now is just getting stopped from restealths after having my go’s stopped or just at all, but I guess that’s really the weakness of all rogues right now.
I really only play rated arena anymore with a boomy friend on voice, and that was actually a lot of fun and we improved a good bit. Its just game knowledge that I’m lacking, and I’m not entirely sure how to go about studying up.
While understanding your actual win condition and practicing executing it, whether its in skirms/bgs/2s/3s is incredibly important, the HARDEST and most IMPORTANT part of this game is understanding other classes/specs.
People go on and on about “skill” in arena but the skill doesn’t come from button pressing order or speed; that’s easy to learn and practice and everyone can do. It’s knowing what other classes can and are going to do, and how you and your team can play against that.
You need to know other classes/comps win conditions and know how to react. That’s where all the skill in PVP comes from.
asking about specific comps/classes on forums or streams are a good place to start. I understand the desire to ask about “rogue tips” or “in general” help. However, that’s impossible to give you an answer or specific things you can work on because there are so many dynamic elements in an arena.
you could practice in duels or watching vods and seeing what people of different classes die to or how they kill. The best advice is to just practice and when you lose, just see what they did to kill you and think about what’s in your toolkit to prevent that from happening. Work with your friend to try and counteract that with things in your toolkit.
I mean… Do we remember BFA? About the only difference with enhance right now is their heals actually do something. I’d hardly say enhance is op by any means.
In the arena tourney the only hybrid you saw with a lot of consistency was ret and that’s more to do with their insane burst than their instant heals (though that doesn’t hurt).
Pretty sure we saw more mages and warriors than hybrids…
I dont think it would remove them into nonviability, but it would absolutely nerf them. It’s not a super easy fix
Super helful replies, Nas. I really appreciate it.
I might try to record games and watch them back as well, since I can slow them down and see them objectively.
Absolutely. I recommend it to anyone trying to improve. It’s 100% okay to get mad and frustrated that you lose a game here or there or have a bad streak. However, looking at your mistakes is the BEST way to improve.
There’s this widespread misnomer on the internet that being bad or making mistakes makes you a bad player/person. That’s absurd. EVERYONE makes mistakes all the time, and it’s only by realizing what is a mistake and where it happens that you can appropriately correct it.
This sounds cliche and cheesy, but it always starts with you.
I completely agree. I have to remember that all the top players weren’t top players to start with, or even for awhile after they started. It takes time.
Yeah, Cdew does this all the time on stream. He’ll literally pull up a vod where they lost and talk about things they could’ve done differently.
Sure I mean you can argue that enhance burst is a bit high, but its also VERY easy to stop and takes 2-3 GCDs to setup. Im pretty much always disarmed/stunned/CC’d whenever I press doom winds+lust and its a short window so when you only get less than half of that window on target doing damage, its not that hard to live through. Enhances ability to stay on target doing damage is also absolutely god awful against any mobile class which means you can kite their burst as well, ret likes to cry that theyre a wheelchair but enhance is even worse off. But enhance’s healing is high because youre squishy as hell, against high sustain damage comps you literally need your warrior to intervene nothing if your healer just gets locked out or CCd for a few seconds. And I mean while theyre strong theyre at least somewhat balanced due to the high mana cost, especially since they fixed lust to cost 2k mana on horde side now, during a game you will usually sit on 5-10MSW stacks for heals and if you ever have to use back to back instant heals youre 100% going to be OOM and not be able to heal or setup your go for a little while, and if those heals dont crit(which usually equates to like a 10-12k heals with MS on you) the 2 DPS training you can easily erase that healing in a few GCDs, hell ive still died after using both my heals before. Outside of hex, which can be very difficult to actually get off against other melee cleave teams, enhance’s CC is terrible as well.
So I mean the spec has plenty of weakness’, without its burst and self heals itd go back to being a dead spec like most of BfA. The only problem is that in Turbo the warrior and hpal can do SO much to shore up those weakness’ because of how powerful their utility/CDs are, but theres a reason why those two specs are still great in a ton of other comps but enhance is pretty limited to turbo, and a few other comps that are “ok” at best.
Id happily take being actually given defensives/mobility and a real stun like every other melee has at the cost of healing being nerfed or burst toned down a bit. Being squishy/lacking defensives and having a terrible ability to stay on target has been enhance’s major weak points FOREVER and instead of actually addressing those blizzard decided to buff their self heals and give them strong burst instead I guess?
Oh for sure you’re absolutely right, I’m not experienced enough to speak on high level play but I can’t argue with what I noticed in awc.