Well the European leg of the Arena Tournament has just recently started and I think its about time I reflected on exactly what I think of the new wave of PvP.
I remember when I first joined WoW it was all about AV and getting that Unstoppable Force but it was rife with problems. To this day the Alliance have a Terrain Advantage over the Horde in AV, but PvP was just all about Class Balance.
With TBC came Arenas, small 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 Skirmishes. Short and to the point.
However, it comes with its own inherent problems. Terrain whores leave you feeling cheated … Mass Dispell can wipe out all your Cooldowns … Teams without healers are at a massive disadvantage … But the biggest problem of all - CC.
More specifically Fear is the biggest problem, the single most lethal class in the Arena is the Warlock. Let me tell you how it goes;
> Battle Starts
> You close in on the Warlock
> He Dots you
> He Fears you
> You Trinket out of it
> He Fears you
> He Fears you
> He Re-Dots you
> He Fears you
> He Fears you
> You Die.
Fear is renewable, has a low cast time and they even have two kinds of it. Oh and did I mention that a few patches ago they made it extremely resistant to breaking via Dots? Yep.
The second most imba Character class is the Holy Pally, they have the effeciency to heal constantly, the ability to make themselves completely immune to your Attacks, they have 100% Resistance to Spell Interrupt and they have CC.
Sadly this is very much all the Arena is, a CC battle, which is disappointing for me (a Shaman with -Zero- CC) and thus you have lots of Gladiator Equipped Warlocks and Paladins running around … and virtually no Shaman.
I can only hope in the future Blizzard do something to remedy the CC problem, making them all weaker in PvP … They took out the “Heartbeat” thing a few patches ago and replaced it with something which reduces how long CC lasts with every use … But this doesn’t apply to Fear.
In Summary; I wish I rolled Warlock.
James.
