Did yall see that TBC arena tourney?

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Most of them can’t vanish coil or anything for that matter. Most play cold blood hemo no fun allowed boring as frig rubber stamp PvP.

There are a few who do but it’s rare. Close in coil vanishing is haaaaard to do because the “batching” system they got now is less than stellar to this day even it it allegedly checks state 100 times a second.

I somewhat doubt the 10ms batch, because I do not have 10ms reaction time. But can recognize easily when order of operations in PvP (live classic vanilla) is a mess.

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well mages are bugged on the beta atm so nova doesnt break to damage. each nova is basically an 8 second deep freeze. MLP is good, but its not as good as what you saw. (assuming blizzard fixes the bug)

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Quite a few frost novas that had 3 full ice lance crits pumped into them with incidental DoT damage from the warlock teammates. I was sitting there cackling at a mage pumping 10k into a frost nova without it breaking. Also, I noticed that the Fel Hunters were chasing the rogues after vanish still. An old bug that appears to still be in the game. Mages will still be fine even after they fix the nova bug, but yeah this was not entirely representative of the coming S1 meta.

Hilarious to see the lone resto shaman be practically unable to cast anything, though.

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Yeah it’s still using the vanilla version and not the TBC version that basically breaks on the first spell damage to hit it.

TBC beta is a roach nest of bugs

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Man thanks for the breakdown, thats exactly what I was looking for!!! Do you have any S1 comp domination predictions? What comp will reign Supreme? And, would it be different from OG S1?

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This is sort of a tough question because there are a ton of variables that come into play here that can change on a whim and also it makes it sort of hard to predict but I’ll give you a really over explained answer that might not mean much because of the variables I’ll mention lol.

But first I have to ask are you talking 3v3 or 2v2. I’m way more seasoned in 2v2 but I do know a little about 3v3.

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3v3 but I would like to hear 2v2 as well!!!

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So I can’t really see any specific comps “dominating” the bracket. As for tbc there may be 5 really strong comps, one might be better overall but another one might instantly counter that other comp. I’ll explain later. Also another thing that will majorly impact the bracket is if some bugs don’t get fixed or even if they are bugs at all.

I’ll start with what we think are bugs and how they will effect arena. So mage roots… it seems on the beta that mage roots either are never breaking on damage or at the very least they have a very small chance to break on damage. Idk if this is a bug or if this is actually how it was coded back then and pservers have been having it wrong all this time. But if this is true, this will have a major impact on both mage representation (for obvious reasons), melee representation (for obvious reasons), and possibly even comps with no defensive dispel (for less obvious reasons). So if this is actually how it works, comps with rogues/warriors/melee in general that have no defensive dispels (disc/shadow priest for example) can be really pushed out by mages. If you watch the last fight where Mir team was kicked out you’ll notice that when he gets rooted he gets slammed with like 4-5 ice lances every time when he doesn’t have any of his cool downs. This massively sucks for melee going against mages because they can be literally globaled with no answer through instant cast spells.

So I guess comps that I will see being strong in 3v3 if this is true.

Basically any variation of rogue/warlock/mage/shadow priest

With most common healers being
Priest/druid

So if I take a random variation you could say

Rogue/warlock/priest

Or

Shadow priest/warlock/druid

These are what comps I think would be pushing the top ranks with what we have seen on the beta simply because it seems like a lot of the more popular melee comps might be overwhelmed with mage/warlock/rogue damage and control being really strong and resil being really low.

If the mage roots end up being broken, then there is a possibility you start seeing some more warrior comps. Such as warrior/warlock warrior/mage etc. Even though in season one I just don’t realistically see them as being as much of a threat. With such low resil, with such high cc these other comps have, and the amount of burst and control they can put on a warrior I don’t see them really being a ‘dominating’ comp.

Once we get into later season we may see more comps come into play that can compete a little better. Warrior comps/drain comps/double healer comps but not so much in season one.

2v2 now… this can be a really weird bracket in season one at the start lol.

I think double dps comps will be insanely strong at the very start. Again, with most of the classes I mentioned before so think…

Mage/rogue warlock/rogue shadow priest/rogue will all be crazy good double dps comps from the very start

But good healer dps comps you’ll see the standard rogue/priest rogue/druid warlock/druid warlock/priest ret/resto sham

And when I say I think it could be weird… is because there are some really weird comps that can destroy in some early game brackets (maybe not so much high tier)

Double mage
Double rogue
A silenced spec disc priest/rogue
Silenced spec disc priest warlock

Some of these comps I think can really have potential to gib teams early on.

I know if anyone is reading this and is a warrior is probably thinking I’m dumb AF, but I really truly honestly do not see them being on a “dominating” team in season one. Take the stereotypical “best” comp people always say. Rdruid/warrior. If a rdruid warrior goes against a mage rogue in season one, that warrior may as well afk in pollys, roots, blinds, etc while their 0 resil resto druid gets nuked in a kidney by this double dps team.

Will it still be a decent comp? Sure. You might destroy some comps early on if you hit some crits. I just don’t see them being a top of the top tier ‘dominating’ comp.

As for how different it is today? Yeah it’s going to be a lot different. Back then warriors were WAY over represented specifically for season one (later season they are really freaking great).

You will see way more double dps comps in 2s. You will see way more teams with priests matched up with warlocks. I remember people always saying “priest warlock sucks man your fears overlap”. Which is sort of funny to say when they work in such different ways lol. And yea, I know I’ve been dumping on them, but I think you’re going to see a lot less warriors than we did back then in top ranks SPECIFICALLY for early season.

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Man I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that up!!! I love discussing details like this!!!

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I had no problem getting all of my gear s2/s3/s4 even just mid-way through the season IIRC. My recollection of S1 is fuzzy because I rerolled after our comp wasn’t working out (just a bit too early TBH - drain play was a good idea but the gear levels of S1 didn’t really support it - EHP / MP5 too low to make outlasting a viable strat that early) but I don’t remember them substantially changing the point accrual system. I could be completely wrong though.

But yeah, S1 is going to be a mess. At least people won’t be bringing SSC/TK gear into Arena like they did when that content was actually current, so PvP isn’t going to be as terrible, but yeah, the S1 PvP gear back in the day did not offer a huge amount of resilience so it was kind of a fiesta.

The Asmongold Invitational worked because melee had really bad weapons, but when you have big pumper weapons combo’d with low resilience, it’s going to be really rough S1. Not as bad as it was when it was live, but I think S1 PvP is going to be something of a mess just like it was a mess back when TBC launched. My hope is that S1 is a very short season - S1 PvP is bad and having only Kara, Gruul, and Mag as raid content is going to suck. I feel like a 3 month S1 is probably the sweet spot, and then I’d love to see S2 last like 6 months if possible.

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That’s not near enough time even if you were at 2200 in 2v2, with only 3 months and assuming you hit 2200 on the very first week of the season opening including leveling time and all, you would be getting your very last piece the last week of the season. Gear comes slow for pvpers in tbc,

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I’m just talking more that I think S1’s meta sucks and add on top of that only having Kara, Gruul, and Mag for raid content, that’s going to feel bad to dwell on. If they need to accelerate the rate people earn points, so-be-it, I’d rather them double arena point acquisition than have a 6 month tier.

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Idk if I fully agree with that tbh. Yes, the raid tiers are easy. Yes, there could potentially be a slight content drought. But I’m of the opinion that the tbc-wotlk era of wow did pretty well with content draughts. Because belves and draenie start at 1 this gives them plenty of time to join the race and catch up again. Sure from a hardcore raiders perspective this might get boring, but I have never been and will never be a fan of pushing content along just because some people “burn through it too quickly”.

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It’s just my opinion. More realistically I expect the tier to last a while, since people have to level up, run through normals, rep grind, run through heroics, attune, and then do Kara as well, and Blizzard is going to extend the content such that people will be farming it out until the content is completely dry before allowing people to move on. And S1 will last as long as needed for that to happen, even if I think the PvP meta is not going to be fantastic. It’s not the end of the world I suppose, just more time to level up and kit out alts in preparation for S2 which I suppose is a positive (sort of like how the content drought of Shadowlands is enabling me to step away from SL a bit and dedicate time to leveling up for BC).

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You mean Paladin/Druid

Those 2 will be a damn counter to any group with a frost mage or rogue. Priests would be 3rd best (although their best comp will be lock and mage) while shamans will struggle vs any burst/hard cc comp (which is almost of them). People need to realize in TBC mana will be an issue not just for casters but healers as well so if you want to do a little cheesing have comps that can do as many useless buffs as you can so it can protect your major buffs. Spell Steal will have a 21% base mana per use, Mass Dispel is 33%, DM is 13% and Purge will be 8%.

Also melee Warrior/Rogues (ret/enhance is gonna struggle hard no matter what), if you’re not a mace spec rogue you’re gonna have a bad time in arena unless you’re rocking BiS daggers vs clothies. Warriors are gonna struggle unless they got a Lionheart 2h sword from weapon smithing and if you get that 2h sword you actually have some nice options for cleave comps.

Even then I’d advise people not to play rogue or warrior till at least season 2 if you’re desperate or wait till season 3 when amazing weapons are there for the taking.

The best comps for S1 will most likely be

mage/lock sl sl/priest-druid-paladin
lock aff/sp/priest-druid-paladin
mace rogue/mage/druid-paladin

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No I def meant priest druid lol. Paladins are not that great in tbc arena. They have to hard cast their only decently healing spell and get hard ccd or hard countered against most comps. Playing on or against a Paladin team you are basically playing on a timer. You almost instantly get their trinket and immediately following you almost immediately get their bubble. Once that bubble falls off you better have won as the Paladin team or your dead.

Not to mention the only offensives they bring is hoj. Which is decent but when you could have something like a druid that has a stun/root/cyclone plus their heals being instant it’s really hard to keep up on most fights.

Paladins really aren’t that great in tbc arena unfortunately. Sure they can use freedom for mage roots, but a good mage is just going to spell steal that right off of you and put you in a poly. They only ever REALLY work in maybe a 5s comp or a double healer team.

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Paladins have waaaay too many tools to make it a top tier healer, sorry that’s how the cookie crumbles. They can go multiple builds that can counter anything from stuns, reduced spell and melee dmg taken, spell push back, silences duration, dispel protection, they can go down ret for eye for an eye, they can go down prot to become an unkillable healer and the list goes on.

Paladins won’t have mana issues in TBC compared to priests, shamans and to an extent druids, they get mana back from crits on their heals. They have insane resists to magic dmg and dispels and I already explained why dispels won’t do a damn thing to paladins unless you get a BoP or DS dispelled which doesn’t mean Doom for you and your group…Cause mana is still a thing in TBC and it’s a precious resource in pvp.

See my previous post on all the mana %s of every dispel cause you don’t want to spam it more than twice cause you can end up with 50%-60% in two casts unless you’re a dumb priest (hydra) like in that asmon video who did it twice in a row and was 30% mana not even 20 sec into the fight. I know it’s like “well Hydra won that match though”…well yea cause that dumb !@! undead mage kept los’ing his healer like a scrub sub 1k rating player and the rogue never used cloak (at least on his cds it wasn’t on cd). So any none half !@# pvp team would have pushed that group hard when they saw the priest double MD, that’s 66% of the priests mana gone in less than 3 sec. Also like I said earlier as well if you go rogue in arenas please go mace spec.

Anyways back to holy paladins, they not only have insane counter measures they have blessings (bop, freedom, sacrifice) and they still have auras which is amazing vs any comp except maybe melee cause devo aura is always trash. I suggest you go look at a paladin tbc talent calculator to see on all the crazy stuff they can get and the irony is they don’t even need to go deep in holy tree.

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Lol ok so you aren’t familiar with tbc arenas. You know what instead of talking about what if’s just go look at some ladders for popular tbc pvp servers. Or go look at Paladin representation for glads even back in the day.

Go look at the arena tourney that jsut happened.

No Paladins won that day.

When wotlk hits we can have this discussion. Not in tbc. Sorry man.

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I’m looking at the ladders and there’s paladin mate, in fact 6 in the top 13 LOL on one pserver which isn’t saying much cause it looks like most people are around 1.7k on that one. Also there’s a paladin in number 1 in the old TBC ratings on cyclone bg as well. Other ladders are ether bugged out or don’t show anything for 3vs3 (btw those rating are above 2k unlike most pserver ones).

That tourney was garbage dude, like literal trash players who haven’t played classic since phase 3 or phase 4 who got into TBC beta for some odd reason. I pointed out so many issues during that Hydra fight it was laughable how bad both teams played. Don’t even get me started on that 2 healer 1 BM comp…really dude you want me to believe you that those were good pvpers?

That human rogue had one good play the whole series and after that got carried hard by the lock even when they switched to the mage. Even then no locks went felguard for their gear lvl would be op as hell compared to sl/sl, specially if you have the tome from BWL for your felguard (please don’t nerf this tome blizzard) its gonna make it a spin to win machine for the first season.

So don’t talk like you know anything about TBC arena dude, if you honestly thought that arena “tourney” that just happened was a good show case of arena in TBC then no wonder you don’t know anything about TBC arena.