The state of arena

PVP Arenas
1

Accidentally posted this in general instead of here, so making a new thread.

Over the last week I have started playing again with a friend, mostly 2’s, but some 3’s as well. Been trying to help, teach, whatever I can offer… and I feel like so much of what the game has been in the past has just been completely lost. Do people like where the game is at now? Ignoring what’s OP and ignoring class balance, just the general feel and play of the game.

Everything just feels wrong. Every caster we have played against (ele, boomi, mage, etc) just doesn’t cast. We left a game where an ele sham nearly doubled my damage, grounded 0 traps, and won. No hexes. No casting outside of lightning lasso. Same deal with a fire mage, off the opener, mage does 390k damage without casting anything. 0 casting.

Healers… are doing so much damage now. Pratically more then DPS at many points. Had a holy pali hit me for a 30k judgement. 30k. Even on my disc priest I have hit people for 100k+ with cyclontronic blast. Thorns is doing an insane amount of damage. I get you need to swap off, but it can completely kill pressure. Druids in general can pump. I know some of this is an issue with 2s and less so with 3s, but still feels broken.

And some dps are healing for way. too. much. Lost to a dk that did MORE healing then the druid he was with. The druid just spent most of the game trying to dps. Still lost. I try to swap off but the perma slows make it difficult. Why is the healing so incredibly high? The DK just ignores LOS. Ignores good positioning. Ignores everything and just keeps moving forward. This is terrible. I should be able to punish players for terrible positioning. But it’s hard to.

DH… seems incredibly broke. Not that they are so OP. They can be rooted. But they seem completely off the plate as far as kill targets for me. They dodge… so. much. What is going on? Blade dance is absurd. It’s a complete joke of an ability. Rain From Above + Fel Lance is ridiculous. It’s a defensive and offensive ability. This is the most broken style of game design ever. Too many defensives that actually double as offensive abilities.

Every caster feels like it’s a tank. Shadowpriest. Ele. Lock… It’s just so odd. I’m spending most of the game running. Demon soul? Run. Incarn? Run. Stormbringer? Run. That is the strat now. Run. Run. Run. Run. Casters are setting up shop in the middle of the map and never leaving. Destro might as well just be a turret. It’s pretty funny being a melee and being the one that has to run from casters. Casters used to have to run LOS to pull melee away from their healers.

I don’t want to see any spec/class get nerfed here… Not trying to say that here. The issue is more of where the game is heading. I miss arena before legion. I would take any expansion over this. Healers doing to much dps. Casters not casting. Dps healing. Melee have their own set of issues.

This is not a QQ post about hunters or anything. It’s not a QQ post about losing either. We’ll get our rating in time. It’s just about where the game is at. It just feels off. The flavor is gone. The finesse. I feel like we make some really good plays. Make really good cross CC… and then walk away with nothing. The play making just isn’t there. Maybe it’s only reserved for 3s now.

:frowning:

8 Likes
2

I mean it’s nothing new, a few classes are busted and just clapping cheeks. DKs are pretty oppressive at the moment, DH aren’t hard to manage.

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State of the game is azz backwards and too many people being too tanky is half the problem (partially because of PvE gear)

4 Likes
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I disagree with this. I get what you’re trying to say, but the change from this expansion compared to the previous ones (outside of legion), is pretty dramatic.

Healers have seen a massive boost in damage. Many dps have seen a large jump in healing and overall available defensive cds. Like shadow having life swap and fade. Coupling that with the PVE items has made dampening a reality for the majority of comps.

Even ignoring arena, pvp on the whole just feels off. Getting chased down by a healer or mage on my hunter is just… disturbing. Tanks with double my health and doing as much damage, if not more. BFA took what was broken and just compounded it.

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Yeah I get what you’re trying to say, I think we were just talking about different things. Getting killed by a resto Druid in cat form as an Arms warrior or a Hunter can’t feel good.

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The current state of the game is dramatically unrewarding and unfulfilling. Never in million years did I did think that season 3 would be worse off than 2. You have classes that can literally face roll in arena while throwing caution to the wind. I’m not figuratively speaking either. DH/DK are a one man wrecking team. They’re self-sufficient, and have incredible utility and cooldowns.

I’m at a total loss on what to do. LFG has been miserable, I was 17 points from 2.1k. And granted, I know there were times that I definitely did not play my best, but I can’t tell you how games I’ve lost because my rdruid was sitting in cat dpsing while I was dying. Then they’re perplexed as to what happened?

The balancing in BFA has been god awful, and downright embarrassing for a Fortune 500 company. I feel like they threw in the towel, and are waiting on Classic to capture peoples attention.

To the OP - yes, I 100% agree that things are way off.

1 Like
7

I don’t have an issue with healers doing damage, the methodology of either healing too strong and they can dps for far too long and/or their dps actually being a healing CD is too much in one button.

Disc having strong dps was awesome in wotlk and cata. But it wasn’t a healing mechanic. It was a reward for playing well enough to stay ahead of the damage and rolling with the pressure. The team on the defensive had to stuff that pressure and force the disc to stop and heal or lose.

I think this generally gos back to the point earlier in this thread though of too many roles being fulfilled in singular button presses while others can’t do it and become weak or unviable.

The top specs all have something in common. They either passively tank/heal damage most of the time while pumping, or they have buttons that are crazy strong offensive and defensive buttons that many specs have no good answer for.

Meanwhile specs like enhance, and marksman all of their buttons have one singular purpose, don’t passively do anything, and have negatives for every strength by a rule design no one else is playing by.

Every strength used to come with a weakness. Now a handful of classes have all strengths and maybe 1/2 the weaknesses of others.

8

I agree with OP so much on everything. Everything feels wrong. Everyone is too tanky. There are too many abilities that were added to the game to counter other things. I don’t want to play classic, but I hope blizzard takes some notes from the feel of classic pvp and brings retail closer to that.

2 Likes
9

I think the consistent top specs break down into two categories.

No CD on CC or High Survivability

Everything that’s in the middle isn’t going to be as consistently good. CC like Poly and Fear are always available and if you ‘miss’ a fear or sheep, you can attempt to setup again far quicker then if you missed a hex, trap, etc.

Then on the other side, the huge amount of defensives or survivability some specs have mean they can last into dampening. CC doesn’t matter as much as the end goal is simply todo damage and draw out the game.

So many specs don’t fit into either of those two categories. hunters, ele, enh, ret, war, etc. Not that each of these can’t find a good comp to perform in, but consistently, they have disadvantages compared to the top tier specs just by how the game is currently designed.

I think the one saving grace is, as damage goes up, the middle ground will be elevated some. Comps like thug, php, turbo, etc. will be more relevant. Thug and php are def doing better now then they were, but I’d still put them as a tier 2 compared to the top comps.

2 Likes
10

You know its the same thing I’ve been saying for weeks, out playing someone is isn’t as important as it was in past seasons. On my warrior it always felt amazing and did amazing things to reflect a death coil or clone. Now? We get nothing from doing that.

The problem is exactly what the OP stated. Why are defensives actually offensives. The amount of games I’ve lost because a destro just walls and pops all cds. Being interrupt immune and lobbing 100k+ bolts doesn’t seem like good gameplay.

My biggest issue with arenas is at what point did the devs think ranged should no longer need to kite. Warriors get hit harder then mages when a rogue trains them. That is plate vs cloth. Think about that for a second. In what world was that a good change. The fact that the “best” way to play a mage now is stand in the middle of the arena face tanking all the damage and only blinking and moving to try and get polys is the problem. Getting interrupted no longer matters. Kick poly? Ring. Kick ring? Gpye.

The game is just a complete crapshow at this point its best to wait for either classic or 9.0 its very apparent that blizz doesn’t intend to do any sort of balancing before next exp. You would think the RMD cups would have been some indication.

1 Like
11

I agree 100% with you OP. The state of arenas is quite bad. DHs and DKs are designed to be over powered right now. There’s just no denying it. Like you said, DKs heal more than actual healers, and DHs have way too much mobility, it’s juste insane. And when he jumps up and stays there for 10sec throwing stuff at you doing insane damage while basically being untargetable, wtf is that?? Who thought that was a great idea, who thought that was balanced? Oh and Thorn is crazy dumb, I’m running 2s and 3s with my resto druid friend and he can basically 100%-10% the unfortunate dude that didn’t notice the debuff. Reaction time is zero. Yeah sure I souldn’t complain he’s in my team, but still, that’s not balanced

12

Yep. Unless someone is sitting at 10% health or lower, any plays you make can be irrelevant against a lot of comps. Happened the other night versus a dk/dh/healer. I get a kick in school on the healer with the DK at 5% health. The DK. Doesn’t. Die. It’s like… really? Even if we didn’t have much in the tank, how is the DK able to live while getting 0 heals. Oh wait… the DK doesn’t need heals. Fun.

I hate that basically every caster now has two schools. Oh you kicked pyro? Enjoy sitting a sheep. Oh you kicked fear? Enjoy your free chaos bolt. Complete garbage. If you get kicked, that should be that. I have always been okay with mages having that 2nd school… because they were squishy. That isn’t the case anymore.

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3’s is just as trash.

Destros still sit middle of map spamming out 1 of their 27 schools of magic

Assa still tunnels 1 target forcing defensive cds every 26 seconds with kidney/toxic blade

DK’s still W key at you all game using 1 of their 37 kicks/stuns/pseudo interrupts

Mages still absorb 9 trillion damage ever 30 seconds while blocking/blinking offensively cuz why not they cant die

WW’s still do unhealable dam entire game and if u get even 1% pressure on them lol jk 27 rolls teleport oh and 15 defensives then spam effuse behind a pillar

I could keep going but ill stop before i start in on rdruids then my veins in my forehead will burst

also, something, something vendors