Arena is Serious Business

[Bolty]

http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wo...08233357zn6.jpg

Look at the time elapsed and damage done by the Priest and Druid.

This reminds me dead-on of an arena match I had last week or the week before. My team, Rogue/Priest, vs the typical Warlock/Druid. We kill their Warlock, and just as the 'lock dies, my Rogue disconnects.

What's left? Holy Priest vs. Resto Druid. You want to see something pathetic? Try watching these two specs actually try to fight each other.

The Resto Druid can go feral, but can't do enough damage to really pressure the Holy Priest's mana. A Renew practically keeps the Priest up just by itself. Eventually the Druid has to drop form to heal up, and can be feared and mana burned down to zero. However, as long as the Druid then keeps moving, the Priest can't kill him - Lifeblooms and Rejuvenations even at near-zero mana can keep the Druid up against the Priest's lame SW:P and SW:D. If the Priest tries to cast anything else, he has to stand still and the Druid gets away to shift, stealth, drink, whatever.

So that's exactly what this Druid and I did for about 20 minutes, until we each realized the other wasn't a dumbass and wouldn't get themselves killed by screwing up. The Druid finally got away and stealthed, and I just stood on the bridge of Blade's Edge arena and waited. Everyone once in a while the Druid would attack me, probably just to see if I was afk or not, and we'd do this lame dance for a minute or two before going our separate ways again.

My Rogue partner made a lvl 1 alt on their server and whispered them. Our basic argument was along the lines of "we won, your Warlock died. Do the right thing and just afk out, you're wasting time." Their argument was "no wai, you leave."

"Okay, but you have no idea what a stubborn ass my Priest partner is..."

An hour and a half later, after a lot of web surfing while WoW was in windowed mode, their Druid quit and we won 14 points. Yay!

What I'd like to know from the above screenshot, is how it finally ended after over 8 hours. The Priest did eventually kill the Druid, but was that from an epic (haha) battle or did the Druid just give up?

-Bolty

[Tal]

Look at the time elapsed and damage done by the Priest and Druid.

When I see those kinds of screenshots it makes me really wonder why Blizzard didn't impose a time limit on matches. After all they put in the crystals to prevent too much stealth-dorking around. Not sure how a time limit would work - maybe after an hour it becomes a draw and split the points?

What's left? Holy Priest vs. Resto Druid. You want to see something pathetic? Try watching these two specs actually try to fight each other.

Back when I was on a 2v2 my partner (a ms warrior) and I (holydin) ran into a (s)priest/warrior duo. We were working on the priest when I was silenced on a heal - I trinket out of it after having to bubble out of a fear earlier when I get concussed by the warrior and my partner and the priest die at the same time. That leaves me against a protection specc'd warrior with 16k health, spell reflect and a ton of armor. Unfortunate for him he was more than willing to stand toe to toe with me and I saved FoJ for healing myself to full. Even after that lets just say I was able to use my bubble AND my blessing of protection often before I finally killed the warrior.

"Okay, but you have no idea what a stubborn ass my Priest partner is..."

-Bolty

Bolty stubborn? Nah... :whistling:

:wub:

[NiteFox]

It's just human stubbornness.

I remember when Alliance Battles were introduced in Guild Wars: Factions there was a nasty little glitch that made the gates not open. Now, Alliance Battles are 12v12 battles between the two titular factions. You get a little rep in your relevant faction for competing in them, but we're not talking anything along the lines of ELO-style ratings.

So the gates would stay shut, preventing the untimed battled from progressing. 24 people stuck around with nothing to do but /dance and goad the other side into quitting first. No you. No you. And so on.

People can taste an easy victory in the works, and don't want to lose it. In the AB case, it's only the people that haven't quit on the one side that gets the points when the other side quits.

[Arethor]

My own fun little experience. 39 minutes of straight battle of the ridiculous. Warlock/Druid mirror match in blades edge. It was more or less each warlock chasing the other's druid. At one point I had gotten their druid to 1% as he jumped off the bridge but his warlock had an amazingly timed fear to stop me. Probably my most memorable arena.

[Bolty]

When I see those kinds of screenshots it makes me really wonder why Blizzard didn't impose a time limit on matches. After all they put in the crystals to prevent too much stealth-dorking around. Not sure how a time limit would work - maybe after an hour it becomes a draw and split the points?

A time limit would promote being a jerk.

Take for example a 3v3 match, Priest/Mage/Rogue vs. Warrior/Healer/Healer. The Warrior team stomps the Mage and then cleans up the Priest. The Rogue vanishes.

For the next 30, 60, 90, whatever-time-limit-you-want minutes, the Rogue plays keepaway, hiding from the other team. Sure, they can grab the inviso-seeing crystals and find him, but if he gets caught during the stealth-sight time, he pops Evasion, waits for an opportune moment, and vanishes again, finding corners and niches to hide.

Okay, a really good team will still beat him and/or stop him from vanishing, but I can totally see this happening in lower brackets. The Rogue would know that if he just survives to the time limit, he splits points and avoids a loss for his team.

No thanks. That's seriously not fun. Arenas need to be fun.

Also, time limits would promote serious game-breaking collusion. Want to be on a Gladiator team? No problem! Find another team to get together and engage in point-sharing win-trading by playing game after game to the time limit. No, a time limit game would *have* to give zero points to both sides, even if you found a way to address the hide-and-seek problem.

Also, time limits are tough to balance. At high levels, long matches of 15-20 minutes or more are very common. Warrior/Druid vs Warrior/Druid or Warlock/Druid can easily take half an hour - it's all about playing until someone makes a mistake. Who has the longer concentration span? I remember 3v3 matches near the end of Season 2 that went on and on and on because I was on a Warrior/2 Healer cheese team.

I think Blizzard finally added spelldamage to healer gear for multiple reasons, but one of them may have been to promote more offense in arenas and help to break the healer vs healer stalemates. It's still not enough, though; there are some combos that are unwinnable (Priest vs Druid, for instance). Mana regen is such that most classes can regen the mana needed to stay alive against another healer. Even classes that need to stand still to heal can be tough for the mana burning class (Priest) to kill, although in general the Priest should beat the Shaman and Paladin eventually.

-Bolty

[Concillian]

The main issue with these types of very long battles is the healing.

There are a few solutions, but every 15 minutes adding a stacking -10% healing debuff to all players would bring these matches to an end quicker and would still have competition involved.

15 minutes should be long enough that normal matches wouldn't be an issue, but short enough to avoid an 8 hour complete stalemate. Healers could probably have a shot at killing each other by the time it gets to 40-50% or so.

[Artega]

Wouldn't a shaman be able to effectively avoid mana burns through efficient use of totems and earth shock? I don't know how effective they'd be at doing damage, but I'd guess purge could even things a bit, since water shield costs nothing to keep up.

[oldmandennis]

Well rogues hiding out is an easy problem to fix - just increase the uptime or effective length of the seeing eye thingies. Even without changes I don't see any real problem finding them eventually - every class has a way to try to keep a rogue visible if they have nothing else to worry about.

Splitting the points doesn't mean giving both teams something. I'm not on expert on chess ladders, but they have some way to handle a draw. Something like the lower ranked team would have gotten 18 points from the higher if they beat them, so they get 6 for a draw. You can keep it zero-summish. The lower rated team should get something in the case of double DPS kill, which seems to be the most likely cause of unwinnable matches.

Shaman can't avoid all the mana burns - in 12 seconds you can shock 2 burns and ground a third... but even with good timing on the shocks and a bit of push back they can one off every cycle. Also wanding a tremor totem -> scream is going to cost you a whole bunch of mana.

Still I'm not sure how the holy priest is going to kill the shammy, but I can see the shammy getting lucky with some WF crits - if he thought ahead and pre WF'd a 2h weapon.

[Bob the Beholder]

I don't have the shot on hand, but a dude on Gorefiend regularly posts a match with an elapsed time of nearly a day and a half.

[Concillian]

I'm seeing some double resto druid teams showing up on the PvP forums. Basically they have no lives and each match is a battle of hours upon hours of sheer determination to not /afk. Apparently there is more than one of these teams rated 2200+. Sounds fun.

[Taelas]

I'm seeing some double resto druid teams showing up on the PvP forums. Basically they have no lives and each match is a battle of hours upon hours of sheer determination to not /afk. Apparently there is more than one of these teams rated 2200+. Sounds fun.

:blink:That's... EVIL.<_<

[Jester]

I'm seeing some double resto druid teams showing up on the PvP forums. Basically they have no lives and each match is a battle of hours upon hours of sheer determination to not /afk. Apparently there is more than one of these teams rated 2200+. Sounds fun.

Moonfire = autowin against healer-less burst teams.

-Jester

[Frag]

Moonfire = autowin against healer-less burst teams.

-Jester

Care to elaborate?
~FragB)

[Taelas]

A healerless burst team won't be able to take down two Restoration druids, and with no healing, Moonfire will eventually kill them.

I'm guessing.

[Jester]

Care to elaborate?
~FragB)

If you have 2 well-geared, well-played resto druids in 2v2, you are basically invulnerable against burst teams. All you have to do is do *some* damage to the enemy, and eventually, you win.

Moonfire is a quick and easy way to do that.

-Jester

[Concillian]

Moonfire = autowin against healer-less burst teams.

-Jester

lol, double healer teams... the ultimate counter to double DPS teams?

in 2.0 people would have thought it crazy, but with the importance of resilience and general gearing up, it's actually true.

[Bolty]

in 2.0 people would have thought it crazy, but with the importance of resilience and general gearing up, it's actually true.

Only with Druids, though. The other healer classes would lose in a 2 healer vs. 2 dps matchup.

-Bolty

[Sheep]

Only with Druids, though. The other healer classes would lose in a 2 healer vs. 2 dps matchup.

Why is this the case?

[Artega]

Why is this the case?

Druids don't have to stand still in order to heal. They also have superior mobility, good methods of limiting enemy mobility.

[Quark]

Druids don't have to stand still in order to heal. They also have superior mobility, good methods of limiting enemy mobility.

That and they spend more time running away than actually healing.