That’s not what your avatar says. You just don’t main it. See, easy enough.
It clearly does. Drinking has nothing to do with the “meta” or the “meta changing”. The fact that you associate drinking with a meta is kind of oof.
It’s inherently been a part of the game for as long as it’s existed. Now should things be immune to change just because it’s been around forever? Absolutely not.
But drinking is hardly on the list of things that are wrong with arena currently. Not even close, actually.
Drinking, and the threat of drinking adds a layer of complexity to the game that you’re clearly missing out on, that largely benefits some comps more than others. Setting up drinks for their healer is a large part of win condition for more than just the shear fact that they are trying to win on mana, it’s a way to pull teams out in to poor positions to get better goes.
Wizards setting up drinks for their healers against cleaves that are currently on the run gives the cleaves one of two options; stay on the pillar and eventually lose on mana, or push off the pillar when you are turtling trying to recover to stop a drink and get caught out in a really bad spot.
Plenty of teams have won games with clever use of the latter. The threat of the drink dynamically changes the game in a multitude of ways. It changes pace and position in an impactful way and stops melee cleaves from blowing up Wizards, chucking their healers mana, than running for pillars when wizards try to counter. If healers couldn’t drink cleaves would just run for pillars whenever wizards had counter pressure and they would lose on mana every game. If melee want to line and run from wizard CDs that’s perfectly ok; but know that you are giving away a mana advantage if you had one for doing it, which is absolutely how it should be.
This is one of a handful of scenarios where the threat of the drink has way way waaaay more impact on not just outcome but pace and position in WoW. It is a deeper aspect of the game than simply a tool for dampening.
This isn’t even to mention the lack of awareness on the players part to stop drinks. If you don’t have the awareness, or a massive weak aura that screams at you to stop a drink for that matter these days, you sort of deserve to lose in damp.
You guys do arenas sober??
Actually it does, its the difference between a team who can and cant make space for their healer vis peels so that the healer can recover mana.
Without the ability to drink the game comes down to whatever healer is the most efficient in terms of mana use or who’s ever got the best gear for the most HPS.
If you take away the ability to drink you may as well PVE because that’s kinda what you’re asking for.
That’s not a “Drinking in arena” problem, that’s a resources aren’t as valuable as they should be or valuable at all problem because way too much stuff is either way too inexpensive in terms of resource cost OR have no resource cost outside of a GCD or CD.
Blizzard’s class designs have honestly been hurting because resource management has been way too back burner since Cata.
Yeah I didn’t say it was a “drinking in arena problem”. I was only juxtaposing my disdain for the resource game with the fact that it seems to be irrelevant a lot of the time anyway.
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Ah yeah, sorry I misread. =(
Blizzard has a lot of work to do if they want to Save WoW. Sure as hell is not gonna happen so long as they keep PVE and PVP class design effectively independent of each other.
I can’t tell you how many games my team has won because I started drinking and someone from the enemy team put themselves in a bad position to stop the drink and got killed because of it. Drinking just adds another level of outplay potential to your repertoire.
This is what you consider an outplay? lol
I’m not saying I agree with everything the OP has said, but running away and sitting down being an outplay is a bit of a reach. The fact that disconnecting from the fight (in a season where sustain damage is disproportionately low) adds pressure that sometimes can’t be managed is a pretty weird concept TBH.
Correctly timing a drink so it has an impact beyond just gaining mana, sure I would consider this an outplay if it forces the enemy team to alter how they’re currently playing to try and counter the drink.
For instance I had a game on Ashamane’s fall relatively recently where my team had a good amount of offensive pressure and the enemy team was dropping back, and as they were dropping back I started drinking and the WW monk on the enemy team was so adamant about stopping the drink that he put himself in a very bad position and died because of it. If i didn’t start drinking there he would have safely retreated behind the pillar and the entire match could have ended much differently.
It’s not an outplay in terms of skill or pressing your buttons better than the enemy, but forcing them into a situation where they have to consider how to properly handle the situation they’ve been presented with, more like a mind game.
Could be an error by him… Or perhaps he knew that letting you get that drink was a guaranteed loss whereas dangerously positioning was a ‘maybe’ loss. Not enough information to know, and situations like this definitely exist and often are a product of undesirable matchups rather than misplays.
Kubzy is the best drinker in the game, and if you think he’s actually thinking about ‘correctly timing’ a drink you’re mistaken. The dude will sit down literally every chance he gets.
My personal issue with drinking is that there are definitely times where you have no choice but to stop the drink, even when you know it’s unsafe. It allows healers to punish by doing nothing. That said, I also see some merits to drinking in arenas, so I’m not sure where I stand on it (overall). I definitely think it’s self-aggrandizing to say that applying drink pressure is an ‘outplay’ though because often it hands them a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ choice.
Stealth drinking (rdruids) is for sure is something I don’t agree with, though.
Yes! drinking definitely adds skill cap and depth. That is not in question, the question is if its adding in something you actually want depth.
Lots of things could add depth to the game: lets use a different example.
Imagine they allowed swapping gear mid arena, this could potentially add depth of play and skill by dropping combat to swap trinkets in between cooldowns. Top players could potentialy gain an edge by setup dropping combat to swap trinkets and what not. However, is this something that improves the game in the direction you want it? probably not.
This was just an example that not every single mechanic that adds depth is good just because.
Now going back to drinking, one of the stated design goals is making games shorter. How does drinking add depth and skill towards making games shorter? its 100% a fact that drinking makes games longer.
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