Arena statistics

[Kevin]

Looking over some of the more general aspects of Arena such as which classes are in the top tiers, since I wanted to calm my belief that its just all screwed up..... Data usually removes my irrational beliefs and lets me focus more on what is "reality".

This started as a search for which combination team would work best for my mage in season 4 and lead me to some interesting sites that put together data on Arenas.

The data is interesting enough that I thought I would share without comment:

Blizzard's own Kalgan on the Warlock forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...geNo=4&sid=1#74

An interesting site that lets you slice up the data to see class, spec and combinations of the top teams.
http://www.realmhistory.net/arena-statis...s/2v2.html

Well, I cannot stop myself from one comment. Notice that the shaman only comes to life in the 5v5 game and not so for 2v2 or 3v3. It really shows some of the problems blizzard has in trying to balance the game just in the different groups of PvP let alone the PvE game.

Yeah most of my arena play has been on a hunter and a shaman, and mostly in 3v3 and 2v2. So yeah I'm aware of the issues of both of those classes. Though I still think folks haven't fully figured out how to utilize hunters as well as they can in PvP and that is part of the lower representation, druids used to be under represented as well in arenas back in season 1.

But yeah shaman are still the weakest healers in arena, you pretty much have to have a support healer or you play as elemental and elemental is not a spec I'm able to really speak about in PvP. In 5v5 you can have another healer to help out, I would not like to see a shaman on a 4 DPS team trying to heal, and then the other tools the shaman brings can actually be put into play without just being shut-down rapidly.

One change that I'm interested to see is that they reduced the cast time of ghost wolf by 1s. That means fully talented shaman can have instant ghost wolf, which will let them half ass some of the druid running games. They still have to be a statue to heal but at least they do have a few other tools to try and get away even if you can dispell ghost wolf form. The GCD change to 1s on totems is going to be helpful as well. It can still be a dangerous choice to drop a totem and chew a GCD but at least you are back a little quicker (this is a nice PvE change as well).