Azael has written a really comprehensive overview of the upcoming MLG Columbus event which is on this weekend. There’s a lot of big NA names there as well as everyone’s favourite Euro RMP. Should be a hell of a show.
Since the armory data for my arena teams seemed to be relatively up-to-date today I decided to take a look at win ratios versus different compositions, in tabular form as I’ve done in the past. There’s not really any huge surprises, though I will say it never ceases to amaze me how incredibly rare hunters are in any bracket these days. Not that I’m complaining, mind you!
Note the subtle omission of my paladin’s 3s, keep grindin’ that gear Milkduds. Anyway.
Some general comments:
It’s harder to get a good sample size for 3s because of the enormous variety of compositions. And by variety, I mean “which healer would you like with your two melee?” Still, you can see some interesting trends.
If you’re an E’T armory stalker like me you might also enjoy reports for Stanso’s Rogue/Priest, Endarl’s Rogue/Priest (oh look, 70% win ratio on RoV), and Balandil’s Rogue/DK (not even kidding).
1 Which is exactly all of them these days, thanks for nothing Hydra 5.
Frankly I’m surprised Overkill survived this long. In Season 5 when people complained about burst damage – in particular rogue stunlocks – overkill was usually the first thing that got mentioned as an obvious knob to tweak. Not only that, but PvE rogues have long lamented it being a pre-requisite for mutilate but almost entirely worthless in a raid situation where your restealthing options are limited to a single vanish (that resets your swing timer!)
So here’s the new version they’ve come up with:
Overkill: Talent redesigned. Now increases energy regeneration by 30% while stealthed, and for 20 seconds after breaking stealth.
I think I like this, although it’s only marginally more energy regen than the combat talent Vitality and will have significantly less uptime1. I haven’t crunched any real numbers on it, but let’s have a look at how it affects a typical mut/prep opener.
Assumptions: mut glyph, vigor glyph, no FA (for simplicity), no ruthlessness, full RS, dirty deeds.
| Time | Expenditure | Energy | Combo Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| t+0 | 130 | ||
| t+1 | Cheapshot -30, Regen +10 | 110 | 2 |
| t+2 | Mutilate -45, Regen +10 | 75 | 5 |
| t+3 | Pause, Regen +10 | 85 | 5 |
| t+4 | Kidney Shot -15, Regen +10, Relentless +25 | 105 | |
| t+5 | Mutilate -45, Regen +10 | 70 | 3 |
| t+6 | Mutilate -45, Regen +10, Overkill Fades | 35 | 5 |
| t+7 | Evis+Lolrockets -35, Regen +10, Relentless +25 | 35 | |
| t+8 | Pause, Regen +10 | 45 | |
| t+9 | Pause, Regen +10 | 55 | |
| t+10 | KS fades, Mutilate -55, Regen +10 | 10 | 3 |
| t+11 | Warrior pops retal, you die. |
| Time | Expenditure | Energy | Combo Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| t+0 | 130 | ||
| t+1 | Cheapshot -40, Regen +13 | 103 | 2 |
| t+2 | Mutilate -55, Regen +13 | 61 | 5 |
| t+3 | Pause, Regen +13 | 74 | 5 |
| t+4 | Kidney Shot -25, Regen +13, Relentless +25 | 87 | |
| t+5 | Mutilate -55, Regen +13 | 45 | 3 |
| t+6 | Pause, Regen + 13 | 58 | 3 |
| t+7 | Mutilate -55, Regen +13 | 16 | 5 |
| t+8 | Pause, Regen +13 | 29 | 5 |
| t+9 | Pause, Regen +13 | 42 | 5 |
| t+10 | KS fades, Evis+Lolrockets -35, Regen +13, Relentless +25 | 45 | |
| t+11 | Warrior pops retal, you die. |
So basically your damage is spread out more over the 10 second period now than it used to be, and the second set has one less mutilate. However, the new buff persists significantly longer than the old overkill after leaving stealth, so in terms of sustained damage you’re trading a potential saving of 60 energy over 6 seconds (if you use an ability every GCD during overkill, which is not really realistic anyway) versus a potential generation of 60 energy over 20 seconds (+3 energy per second, but does nothing if you’re capped). Sounds fair.
It’s a bit different for openers versus rogues but cs->rup->mut->mut->ks depends on Relentless Strikes and Seal Fate RNG to a large extent anyway. It’s a definite nerf for swap sap -> cs openers, but I die in cheapshot as much as I kill other rogues in cheapshot so, well, let’s hear it for symmetrical rebalancing. And it seems much easier to take advantage of in PvE now.
Even if it was a massive nerf I think I’d still be looking forward to this patch, though, when you take a gander over some of the other things that are going in:
Freedom nerf I’m still on the fence about. Six seconds is probably enough, it sounds balanced on paper, but I’ll have to play with (and against) it to see.
You can see Zarhym’s post about the patch notes here.
1 Unless you can end games in 60 seconds reliably, in which case it could possibly have identical uptime!
(pic courtesy of Protagonist on the AJ forums)
A lot of people have picked up on this, but GC never ceases to amuse with his extensive PvP experience:
We think cleave teams are too dominant, especially in 2s. We don’t think they are as bad in 3s, but the community is very focused on 2s at the moment.
Cleave teams in 2s, mmhmm. That said, Cleave is definitely a problem, ret/war/tree in particular makes me nerdrage (doing a lot of that this week) but pretty much any double melee is a horrible overpowered skill-less zergfest.
Disclaimer: my 3s teams may include an undergeared elemental shaman and a destruction warlock, respectively.
According to a blue post from Bornakk today, they have basically hotfixed stealth detection items out of the game. They’re barring the TBC goggles from arenas, taking the detection off all the engineering goggles, and reducing the magnitude of the detection on all the others. I haven’t seen any numbers but I doubt any of them will be worth using in arenas any more.
It’s a good change. I never felt like wearing the goggles gave me an advantage – everyone has them, so I had to wear them just to be competitive. And especially now that the furious gear is out, giving away 32 ilvls of stats is a hard sell when a lot of opposing teams don’t include rogues.
I did like the model though! :[