Patch 2.1.2 preliminary notes

[Bolty]

I realize that this has no bearing on your specific issues when it comes to 2 vs 2 arenas but I'm cheering this change. The only thing I can offer in battlegrounds is to heal the dps (usually warriors, rogues and warlocks) long enough for them to take down the opposition and maybe I'm just a n00b but any competent rogue can lock me down for as long as he wants...

The main problem, and what Quark is rightfully complaining about, is that this change hurts classes the most that have powerful, long-cooldown crowd controls. The longer the cooldown and the more powerful the crowd control, the bigger the nerf this represents.

I'm a bit confused as to why Druids would be all that upset about this change. Yes, it means that Cyclone can be breakable by all enemies, but Cyclone is a spammable CC with no cooldown. If someone trinkets out of it, you just cast it again. The PvP trinket can only be used once every 2 minutes (if you have the advanced version, and not having that in PvP is...fatal). Using a trinket to break Cyclone only makes sense under dire circumstances, because chances are you'll just get Cycloned again, and you've lost the use of the trinket for any future, worse CCs for 2 minutes.

Now, Rogues...ugh. The least-repeatable, longest "cooldown" CC in PvP is Sap. Since you can trinket it out of it now, that is a huge nerf to Rogue PvP. Period, that's fact. The typical response of "if I break Sap, I'll just get Blinded anyway" fails to take into account that before this change, you'd be Sapped and THEN Blinded. Now you can break one of the two. It's a flat out nerf, and it's a nasty one.

Priests will feel little impact except when fighting Shamans. Everyone else already breaks Priest fear within a second or two of casting with a trinket or WotF now anyway. Warriors are essentially unfearable. As for Shamans, as a Holy Priest, I can't beat them to begin with unless they're awful. What's the difference? Priests are so used to their only CC being at best a 1-2 second disruption to an enemy that this change could almost be a buff. After all, I can use it to break Sap. :)

Rogues ARE their cooldowns. This trinket change takes a number of their best, most powerful cooldowns and nerfs them. They have a right to be upset.

The classes that make the least use of long cooldown, powerful CC options will get a significant buff out of this. Those classes? Warriors and Paladins, already considered two of the three most powerful in PvP (Warlocks being the third). Warriors lose Intimidating Shout as a guaranteed CC, that's about it. Everything else is a quickly-spammable CC, like Hamstring.

Example for those who don't PvP/Arena much:

Quark and I play as a Holy Priest/Dagger Rogue combo in 2v2 Arena. It's a solid combo, with its current weakness that I'm not very durable. I have a PvE healing spec with two points in Focused Casting and very little resilience (until next week). On the other hand, "control" fights play into my favor since my regen and healing power is way up there.

We had two matches against a double-Rogue team this week. A double-Rogue team has one obvious playstyle: CC one enemy, burst down the second. Both of these Rogues had Master of Deception and were pretty much invisible until they were on you.

In the first match, they made a critical error. They decided to CC me and burst Quark. Oops. After I was sapped they immediately opened up on Quark. This little ability called Evasion allowed Quark plenty of time to avoid damage while waiting for me to get out of the Sap, after which I instantly hit Psychic Scream and PoM'ed Quark for a quick heal. Psychic Scream was immediately trinketed out by both Rogues and one went to Blind me. I popped Stoneform, and it was all over by that point. Unable to burst one of us down while the other was CC'ed, we won via attrition against an enemy unable to heal themselves.

They learned from this.

Second match, they did the smart move and CC'ed Quark. Quark and I were bunched together with me randomly casting Rank 1 Holy Nova, a typical defense move against stealth teams to try to catch them. It failed. First came the Sap. With Quark controlled, they both immediately started wailing on me. There was no way I'd survive more than 5 seconds with 2 Rogues beating me senseless, so I trinketed out of the Cheap Shot, began running away, hit Stoneform to clear the Crippling Poison, slammed Psychic Scream to gain some separation, and Shielded to avoid a chance of Daze. I broke clear and strafed to the other side of the arena, much to my surprise. Apparently the Rogues had burned their Sprint to get in for the Sap in between my Holy Novas, and since I have the speed enchant on my boots they couldn't close the gap. All I had to do was survive long enough for Quark's CC to end and we win. So far so good.

The moment Sap wore off, Quark popped Sprint and headed for me, only to be met with a Blind. By this time, the other Rogue had caught up to me at the far side of the arena and commenced pwnage. But still, I can survive for a while against one Rogue due to my powerful heals. In seconds, the second Rogue was on me and I was fading fast. I needed Quark to get in there and disrupt them. My Psychic Scream still had 4-5 seconds left on cooldown when Quark ran up to them - and got Blinded again.

I went down in a hailstorm of stuns and stabbing. With the fight now a 2 on 1, the end was decided. At no time did Quark ever get a chance to really do anything.

Am I complaining? No. The fight was balanced. The key was the Sap - Quark got Sapped and they didn't, because they could see him before he could see them. Now, with the new Trinket, one of the three CC's those Rogues used to keep Quark out of the fight long enough to take me down is almost instantly removed, and the balance shifts to our favor. Why? Because Rogues are so dependent on their cooldown crowd control abilities.

Now, you could argue that in our Rogue/Priest team, Sap is still useful because it forces a trinket use early, making my Psychic Scream more applyable without an instant break. I'd agree if it weren't for the fact that fear remains such an easy-to-break crowd control mechanic. Loss of Sap means loss of initiative for our team.

-Bolty