But keep in mind also that Blizzard is watching the Tournament realm closely for PvP balance, so what we see here could have some hints into the future of Arena changes. Mages especially don't make out too well on the 5v5 chart, and Hunters don't appear to fare much better. Warriors, as you might expect, are off the charts, but comparably on 5v5, Druids aren't at that level. Rogue placement is a surprise, too, but Vhiari just says in the comments that that's more an indication of how many people rolled rogues on the TR rather than a signal that Rogues are rocking 5v5.
Interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the data is a little too fuzzy to pull off any serious conclusions (even if Mages aren't getting high ratings, this chart does nearly nothing at all to help us figure out why that might be), but it's an interesting look at what's happening on the TR so far.
[via WoR]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-21-2008 @ 5:09PM
JohnC said...
can someone explain to me just why hunters suck at 70 arena?
im 56 and at pvp i feel i dont do to bad but all i hear is how rubbish 70 hunters are in arena, i just dont get why?
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4-21-2008 @ 5:19PM
Eternalpayn said...
First off, blizzard doesn't balance classes during lower levels, only endgame. Also, hunters are still great in battlegrounds, but they rely almost entirely on line of sight, which is a huge problem in Arenas. Also, they don't have a whole lot of stuns or interrupts, don't provide good buffs, and their traps, while powerful, don't honestly help a whole lot.
4-21-2008 @ 5:29PM
Hebes said...
They are viable in arenas, for example on 2s pair them with a druid and they are a great. Even after the nerf to drains and the nerd to mana regen they do great.
@Eternalpayn they have scatter shot on a 30 second cooldown, they have traps that make it almost impossible to catch a druid or any healer for that matter all they have to do is run thru the trap and they off free. They also have silencing shot on a 20 second cooldown all while being able to drain mana with viper sting. And all that with a pet on the opposite teams healer which makes it almost impossible to drink.
If you are playing as BM then you are off to a bad start in arenas, sure the burst is great but all they do is LOS the duration of your bestial wrath and you are done for.
4-21-2008 @ 5:45PM
Eternalpayn said...
Touché, Hebes.
Scatter shot is nice, but they cannot take damage while it affects them. Still a nice interrupt though. Traps are very visible, though, and any melee chasing a hunter should know to be on the lookout for them. Silencing shot is a good anti-caster interrupt. I'll give you that one. Viper sting is (obviously) only good against casters. A Melee class can take down a hunter with relative ease once in short range, 2 melees can dominate it. Obviously, 2 melees are very uncommon in 2v2 and 3v3, so it is a lot better of a class there. I forgot to mention I was strictly talking about 5v5's.
4-22-2008 @ 7:26AM
Eternalpayn said...
Also, silencing shot and scatter shot are talented, I believe.
4-22-2008 @ 7:48AM
vildand said...
Hunters are a strong class in pvp, but it's relatively hard to do well on a hunter in the arenas because a lot of the good things a hunter brings are either harder to use than their counterparts or easily exploited against you.
Beastial wrath is fairly overpowered in both outdoor pvp and the battlegrounds, but if you use it in an arena your enemies will either hug you or step out of los while they kill your pet making it fairly useless.
Silencing shot is a nice ability, despite it being talented, but it's harder to use than it's counterparts because while the shot is instant the silencing effect isn't in effect before your target gets hit.
Traps are a marvelous form of CC, but they do require people to actually step into them which won't ever happen against good teams.
And so on.
4-21-2008 @ 5:11PM
hellshire said...
The rogue placement IS nothing ore then population imbalance. Check the 2v2 graphs and you'll notice that rogues are the most populated class sub 1850. The population takes a hilarious nose dive at the 1900 range and bottoms out at 2000+.
Long story short. People rolled rogues thinking it was easy mod and had their collective asses handed to them when they realized that playing a rogue is more then just stringing stuns together.
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4-21-2008 @ 5:23PM
below said...
Exactly what hellshire said.
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4-21-2008 @ 5:51PM
Jagoex said...
Interesting graph, even given the limitations it suffers from.
I remember not too long ago that Blizzard said something along the lines of buffing and nerfing classes based upon Arena success. So, if this data is fairly accurate, does it mean we'll be seeing a huge nerf to Warriors anytime soon?
http://jagoex.blogspot.com
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4-21-2008 @ 6:00PM
hellshire said...
Hardly. The arena servers are kind of like buying a character on ebay. Maxed out and pregeared. But all the gear in the world isn't going to stop you from sucking eggs. I can see them balancing them game on the real server arena, but definitely not the tournament realm.
4-21-2008 @ 9:51PM
Michael said...
That is why they do balance on that.
The gear is essentially equal, the only real benefits are skill and class. Skill is pretty much equal at high brackets, there's not much variation. By far the largest difference comes from class combos.
4-21-2008 @ 6:35PM
soap said...
so this says the only classes at 1900 are rogues at 180% and warriors at some over the graph high number, while all other classes are at 0%.
I don't know about you but I have never seen a 4 warrior 1 rogue team rocking the 5s bracket....
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4-21-2008 @ 7:52PM
jerzz80 said...
oh yeah.....this data is so outta wack cause of where it came from. delete this nonsense "blog".
bleh
-insano
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4-21-2008 @ 7:52PM
jerzz80 said...
my favorite thing to hear......"get on this mage"
ftw
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4-21-2008 @ 8:17PM
Mity said...
reason hunters dont work in arena is simple, and two-fold.
1: hunters rely on range and space to move, to control their combat and keep their opponents at bay. arenas are the size of a crowded phonebooth.
2: hunter combatstyle relies on a tank, either pet or player. in pvp the pet is ignored, and so is the tank most of the time, and the melee user, or other will go for close combat with the hunter.
mix these two elements and u get the high rating arena hunters parametres. pretty impossible odds at the out-set.
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4-22-2008 @ 12:50AM
buenoexcellente said...
Hunters and Mages have vast problems in arena simply because the arena was designed to give them problems. Those pillars didn't magically appear. Unfortunately they are WAY too effective. I did a skirmish the other night and it was a random Hunter and my Frost Mage against a single S2 equipped resto Druid. I left the match after 10 minutes of us randomly chasing this guy around and never being able to get off anything that could put a dent in him.
Its the environment itself that has destroyed those classes viability. Blizzards response to it has been to "make them bigger" by reducing mana costs and increasing damage, but that's kind of like throwing a cat to the sharks and thinking that giving it better teeth is going to help it swim better.
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4-22-2008 @ 3:21AM
woeye said...
Well said, buenoexcellente. Add to this the problem with cast-time spells vs instant-spells. One of the reasons why druids are so string is their large pool of instant-spells. Their HoTs can work while the druid runs behind a pillar to get out of LoS (line of sight).
Every second in the arena counts. Standing still for some seconds and trying to cast a spell, either offsenive or defensive, can be pretty painful. Because the time you've tried to cast a spell your opponent might have run behind a pillar.
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4-22-2008 @ 9:11AM
Nathan Jessup said...
Mages imho don't show up in 5's in because we don't cc as well as a lock, and we need to get 3 sec standing still for a frostbolt/icelance combo. Locks dont have as much of mana issue, and don't need to stand still. Also in 5's mages burst is not as valuable as it in 3's or 2's so why not take the better cc, who mana drains their heals and dots (read no los issues) people?
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