I just came back after a long hiatus. And after playing arenas for a couple days it dawned on me. There were almost no casters.
I’m only ~1500, so maybe it changes at higher CR? Is this a known trend or are my matches an outlier?
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Low mmr is basically all melee because its easy to play
Around 2kmmr wizards starting flying in on their broomsticks, then 2.2 is the actual good melee
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Is it really that surprising?
Juke the kick, get stunned three times in a row, then silenced, then kicked anyway. Or spell reflected.
Finally managed to create some distance between you and the enemy? Oh, they LoS’ed your cast, too bad, so sad. Now your burst is over and here comes Mr. Warrior with his leap + double charge.
Hard to blame casters for not queuing into this meta.
22 Likes
yeh melee dominates the 2’s ladder pre much.
melee/cleaves are really strong right now and have a lower skillfloor
casters have a much higher skill ceiling which is why at the most competitive level you’ll see things like sp/mage and sp or mage anything be really dominant
but for newer/bad players it’s really easy to get shut down and discouraged
why lose 50 games feeling like you cant play when you can win 50 games on accident playing ret/war or turbo
6 Likes
The top 2s player right now is a boomie. To be honest it looks pretty even with 5 casters and 4 melee on the list. Definitely a bit more verity compare to bfa.
Edited: I incorrectly stated that the top druid was a boomie when it is a resto druid. My apologies.
Dinoe is an rdruid. Did a quick glance and didn’t see a boomy in the top 30.
no, hes a resto. all the casters u see on the top spots are healers
I mained warlock since I started doing arena in legion. I’ve always had alts but I’ve kept my lock up to date pretty much every season except this one.
I don’t think lock is objectively “bad” but it is definitely bad relative to other class choices in arena. It’s just too much work for not enough pay out right now so I haven’t done anything on it this season
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Feel this heavy playing Unholy into ret/war and turbo all day but it’s the best way to improve and grow at your main spec. If warlocks your thing it definitely works and all 3 specs are viable ATM I don’t think it’s in an abandon all ships state by any means
It’s more so abandon the wrong ships and jump onto the right one.
Warlock just needs the right team mates and classes (e.g. other wizards that are prime focus targets) to really be able to play the game.
Having to fill castbars to actually do stuff in this Rsham melee cleave infested meta is just not possible otherwise. You’ll get stomped into the ground without being able to land a single hardcast for literally 30+ seconds, it’s a miserable experience.
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yep i gave up on my lock even tho destro is quite a bit stronger than last season. its just to frustrating for me i’ve had enough of warriors
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Yeah same for every single class.
Shadowplay lock shaman and MLD are very very powerful comps right now the warlock just has to actually be a good player and not a BFA s4 monkey 
I was queuing between 16 and 1750 mmr a few hours ago, saw a 4 or 5 mages, 2 or 3 boomies, 2 locks and 1 Spriest out of 24 games played.
Still plenty of them at low MMR unless it was just a rare night. Oddly zero Rets. Mostly Frost DKs and BM Hunters.
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Yeah but the extent for warlocks is unlike many other classes, sadly. There’s a reason you don’t see many around, and the few that are are still ~200 rating below most other classes that are currently shaping the meta.
It’s just frustrating to see the class stuck in the past. I wish they’d abandon that whole tanky caster idea, we don’t need more HP and shields, but we need instant cast reactional abilities back, mainly Shadowfury instant cast and on a lower CD, maybe howl of terror baseline.
Hardcasting is just way too crippling nowadays.
warlock just has to actually be a good player and not a BFA s4 monkey
Can we stop putting this ahead of every discussion already?
I mean not to say anything else but it being monkey af, but no single warlock player ever wanted that gameplay to be the way it was. Fundamentally, the spec still suffered from the same issues, and Blizz found the need to fix it with giving us 200%+ haste to go ham, which is the same bad design philosophy that brought us stuff like the hunt and convoke.
Problem is, there was no choice. A class based on hardcasting just CANNOT CHOOSE to NOT just stand in the middle like a turret because what else can you do? Zero mobility, almost zero instant casts… yeah nice that we warlocks have any say in that.
Go back to MoP where our class design peaked and you actually laugh at how tame BfA destro looks in comparison. Chaos bolts hit for the same without the need of stacking 20 grimoire buffs, and it was a cast on shadow school only, so less risky to get locked out on everything.
3 Likes
venthyr warrior is the equivalent of bfa destro so disgusting and braindead
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Disagree because they already are a menace when they triangle correctly and the wizard you left alone controls the game and creates windows.
I agree a warlock needs to be a better player than the ret and warrior - I feel the same way as uhdk but your class is by no means unviable
Whoops that’s my bad I didn’t look at the profile I just seen druid and assumed boomie. My apologies
all good my friend
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Nobody said that even for a second. And traingle formation as a solution to the crippling design doesn’t make it not crippling.
Try playing a warlock day to day without that perfect setup and you see, purely from a game mechanics standpoint, how dumbing it is having to hardcast stuff that hits for less than all the other classes do with instants.
Even while triangling and peeling, the warlock won’t get much more chances to shine and melee still stick on you for 90% of the time disrupting stuff.
If things get itchy, go back to the pillar.
It’s about agency, and warlocks lack agency the most, unlike any other class. Not even unholy.
To illustrate this further: All the demolock videos you see wouldn’t even be half as prelevant if people knew that a single purge on decimating bolt would completely negate the whole setup.
Purge in itself is crippling to destro and demo, and even aff.
3 Likes