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Breakfast Topic: Your predictions for arena season eight
In season seven, we saw beast cleave (beast mastery hunter + enhancement shaman + holy paladin) win the majority of high-profile tournaments and become quite popular. Very few saw it coming. Beast cleave, of course, got handed several nerfs (only one of which was serious) which many considered a death knell, but the composition is still very strong. Towards the end of season seven, protection warriors (and to a lesser extent, protection paladins) were the new flavor-of-the-month craze. Again, almost no one saw it coming. The new season is slated to be quite different from previous arena seasons in WotLK. Resilience is getting a huge boost in effectiveness, increasing the benefit of wearing PvP gear in arenas. Some people (even on arena junkies) are stating that PvE gear will be even better in PvP because of the change. The idea is that arena players can get away with donning more loot from dragons because the added resilience benefit will make up for the forfeited survivability. While I might be wrong here, that sounds like terrible logic. One gladiator is predicting the shift to more survivability will benefit warlocks, warriors, and druids. The same poster believes mages and rogues will be harmed, while everyone else will keep status quo. So, I ask you, breakfast readers: What are your predictions for arena season eight?
Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part II
In keeping with our musical theme, here's David Bowie's Changes. Most of you have probably heard it, but most of us have not really listened to it. Take some time to enjoy one of Bowie's most renowned pieces with the article today.Last time, I went over a few significant arena modifications that 3.2.2 brought us. Square pillars for line-of-sight, the armor penetration nerf, focus frames, flying in battlegrounds, and the Onyxia loot table can be found here.This article is going to talk about five of the nine classes discussed in the 3.2.2 patch notes (warlocks were left out). The reason we won't be talking about the other four is sheer article size. I'm not getting blamed for breaking anyone's scroll wheel today! We'll go over death knights, hunters, druids, and mages in the second part of this part II (which should be in a day or two).I'm giving analysis on class changes; I hope we will agree on most things, but if you disagree or decide I don't understand a mechanic properly, please let me know in the comments below. I read all your comments and am often stunned with how gracious our readers have been towards me. Thank you for all the kind words, those of you who took the time to write them!Please don't assume that I don't care if I don't write a large amount about the horrors of nerfing or the glories of buffing your main character's class (triple negative hooray). I probably don't know enough about the intricacies of the change to make an educated prediction, and would say little rather than proclaim "this will gimp class X vs. class Y" and have it fail to come to fruition.I'm going to be ignoring all non-pvp related notes. If you think I left something out, please post a comment below and I will (most likely) edit the post accordingly.Also, 3.3 patch notes are out already! Next week, part III will be merged with the 3.3 patch notes that are coming; there's a lot to talk about!So, without further ado, here's what 3.2.2 is cha-cha-cha-cha-changing in the arena world.
