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Blood Sport: The PvP perspective on 4.0.6, part 3

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

Welcome to Friday's special edition of Blood Sport! Today we'll be discussing all the classes we didn't get around to last time. Enjoy!

Hunters

Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.
I have been petitioning for this change for longer than I can remember. This absolutely 100% the most needed change on this entire list of patch notes and the greatest quality of life increase to hunters since the ammunition change.

If the minimum range requirement is removed, I think I will be able to enjoy playing the class again in PvP. I'm pretty sure if someone was standing on me in real life, I could shoot them in the face with a bow and arrow.

Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.
Needed. If you think getting disarmed was frustrating as a warrior ...

Master's Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute, and its range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 25. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.
Needed. Master's Call is an incredibly important ability for hunters and this will improve their arena representation by a good deal, especially when combined with the other hunter changes (which are almost entirely beneficial in PvP).




Aimed Shot weapon damage has been increased to 200%, up from 150%. In addition, the base cast time has been reduced to 2.4 seconds, down from 3.

Arcane Shot damage has been increased by 15%.
Chimera Shot's overall damage has been increased by roughly 50%.

Kill Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.

Whoa. Expect to see lots more hunters at high ratings. I can't say I disprove of this change, because hunters need something huge to give them a selling point, but this might be overkill.

Expect to be way more fearful of hunters in arena. With the right team composition (again, usually involving a death knight or warrior), their damage is already pretty awesome, but this should push them into the stratosphere.

Black Arrow damage has been reduced by 15%.
Explosive Shot damage has been reduced by 15%. PvE changes. This hurts hunters who wanted to play survival, but they'll have other options open to them.

Mages

Counterspell lockout duration reduced to 7 seconds, down from 8.
Although Counterspell would work better as 6 seconds (as most other blanket + school lockout abilities are six seconds such as Spell Lock), 7 is better than 8.

Mage Armor now reduces the duration of magic effects by 35%, down from 50%.
This is a huge change and one that is incredibly needed. A lower number wouldn't be opposed by most players either.

Ring of Frost: Radius shrunk to 8 yards, and inner "safe" radius is now 4.7 yards (exactly matching graphic). Dispelling the effect of Ring of Frost will now make the target immune to being refrozen for 3 seconds. If a second Ring of Frost is cast by the same mage while the first is still active (via Cold Snap), the first will now disappear and cease functioning. In addition, Ring of Frost now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
This is about as close to a non-nerf as you can get. This is currently one of the strongest spells in PvP (if not the bar none absolute best), it should really be looked at harder.

Moreover, we need a way to tell if the Ring of Frost is friendly or not. Perhaps an enemy ring of Frost could appear white while a friendly Ring of Frost could appear dark blue?

Fingers of Frost can no longer be dispelled and now also increases Ice Lance damage by 15%.
Ice Lance does not need to be doing more damage than it is currently.

Frost Specialization now only grants 2 base points of mastery (instead of 8), reducing all Frost damage to frozen targets by 15% from previous values. However, Frost Specialization now increases base Frostbolt damage by 15%.
From what I've heard, this keeps frost mage damage about status quo with a slight overall increase in damage. The main thing it does is shift frozen damage to non-frozen damage and puts emphasis on cast-time spells (Frostbolt). If all this is true (I haven't done the math personally), I support this change.

Paladins

[Forbearance's] duration has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
This is fine. Divine Shield is on a long cooldown and has no way to be Cold Snapped or anything like that. Forbearance isn't even a big issue in arena or rated battlegrounds as far as I know.

Rebuke can now be trained by all paladins at level 54. Existing characters will need to visit their trainer, even if they had talented Rebuke before.
Holy paladins being able to Kick is pretty cool. This will give the exceptional holy paladin a new tool and positional strategy -- it increases the overall skill cap of holy paladins and creates interesting gameplay. I doubt that paladins will run directly at enemy healers and keep on them for the entire game, as some have suggested.

Priests

Improved Power Word: Shield now also increases the amount absorbed by an additional 15/30% when cast on oneself.
This is awesome. I wish more spells had a special clause on them when you self-cast them. It adds diversity to the game -- "If we attack the priest, he'll get an extra bonus because of Power Word: Shield; do we want to go for someone else?" That kind of strategic thinking is what we need more of in arena.

Absolutely fantastic change here. I bet you thought it was a little one until you read this.

Pain Suppression is no longer dispellable.
Absolutely needed. Every time I see a Pain Suppression get dispelled, I die a little inside. The ability was originally created to limit the effectiveness of offensive dispels. It had a 65% chance to resist dispel, which seems like a lot ... until an opponent Purges once, and boom, your super-awesome ability is gone. You die. You rage.

Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.
Becoming immune to silence and interrupts, regardless of the way it's done, usually straddles the line between powerful and overpowered. I don't expect this to be an exception. Expect to see a ton of discipline priests keeping their teams at full health post patch.

Glyph of Psychic Horror now reduces the cooldown of Psychic Horror by 30 seconds, down from 60.
Powerful glyph on powerful ability gets nerf. People are happy except class involved. More news at 11.


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