Leaving Combat in Arena.

[Judgejoebrwn]

Posted this in the WoW forums as well.

I'm prepared for copious amounts of flaming responses, but I would really appreciate engaging in logical discussion about this topic. It's probably been mentioned a couple of times before, but I'd like to pose some ideas and get a more comprehensive view on the situation.

Recently, I've been playing some Arenas on my Hunter. I have prior experience up to 1800ish on my Holy Pally, so while I'm nowhere near the top echelon of PVPers, I do have some experience. My current comp is more of a screwing-around type of deal with my brother playing a prot warrior, and surprisingly we're hanging around 1500 (me primarily being BM). The problem we've ran into in a number of matches (and it may very well be representitive of the quality of players at this rating i.e. not very good) is that the following occurs:

2 DPS Comps - We kill a DPS, I die, the other DPS kites/runs/hides/etc. from the prot warrior until CD's are back up, kills the prot warrior.

DPS/Healer Comps - We kill the healer, I die, same thing as above.

Now this doesn't happen every match, but it has happened more often than I believe should be possible in an arena. I feel that Arena's are designed to be gladiator-esque battles - put you in a room with another fighter and you fight to the death. In the current state, proper kiting techniques, pillar humping, and proper use of CD's allows players to escape combat to drink, eat, buy time, and reset CD's. I feel that that almost defeats the purpose of being in an Arena per the design I mentioned above. Running away for a half an hour because you couldn't get the job done once engaged in combat doesn't show much killer instinct in an arena setting. Sure it can get you the win, but if you were good enough or performed well enough, you shouldn't need to do that to secure the victory.

Some of you may have stopped reading already and are inevitably going to tell me to stop QQing and that's fine, but I assure you I'm not whining about the turnout of our 2's. Let me remind you that the setup we're running is just for shits and giggles AND it's in 2's, which is more difficult to balance the game around and most hardcore players will tell you that 2's don't mean anything. However, the principle is still valid in my opinion.

The class most affected by this change would undoubtedly be rogues, but I honestly think they would be fine with a few tweaks. First off, most rogues are Subtlety, giving them two vanishes. Vanish doesn't have to remove you from combat (this goes for Feign Death as well, so don't think I'm selfish), but rather grant you stealth for a brief period of time (maybe 10 seconds) to escape poor situations or create another opportunity to open on an opponent. Keep in mind that all matches would begin out of combat until the parties engage, so mounts and abilities like Sap would still be usable early.

To recap, without the ability to exit combat in arena:

- Mounts, Saps, etc. would still be usable early for positioning and CC, but after engaging would no longer be allowed
- Eating/Drinking would not be allowed. It's your job as a healer/caster DPS to manage your mana effectively. If you fail to do that, you should suffer the consequences, not be allowed a way to correct the mistake. As a DPS, if you want heals, bring a healer or heal yourself.
- Rogues/Druids don't require a particular combat status for their abilities (barring Sap), but rather just stealth. They both should have ways to restealth for a short period of time to make use of those abilities, but should always be actively engaging opponents otherwise and not using stealth to hid for 2-3 minutes while CD's reset and Recuperate heals them to full.

Probably one or two more bullet points that I can't think of currently, but I've covered some of the more pressing issues. I'd love to hear what other people think 'cause I'm not sure I see the downsides of this (aside from some small adjustments in playstyle to no longer depend on escaping combat). I'd prefer comments stay clean and non-threatening and focus on the discussion. Let's hear some opinions.

[Dorfie]

Sorry arena isn't going to get overturned so that your prot warrior can win 1v1s? The true sight eyes are enough.

Drinking and restealthing can be stopped and are a part of the game.

[madatom]

if the other player gets out of combat and resets in such a way, you deserve to lose

so if your running dodgy classes/specs or simply aren't good enough to keep him in combat... yeah you deserve to lose

[Deleted]

I don't really agree with you, other than how retarded some class escape options are (looking at you rogues, frost mages, feral druids). I know it's nice to keep this uniqueness, but I don't understand how it can be so easy to reset the fight playing some specs whereas other specs need to coordinate and time everything perfectly before they can mount up/kite/drink.
However I think it's ok that stealth classes are able to leave combat instantly, I still think it's retarded in a 1v1 or 2v2 that one player can escape for 40 seconds and show up afterwards with full health because of recuperate.

[Peruh]

First, yes 2v2 .

But nvm.

The thing is as a prot warrior, your brother should be able to kill a dd(ex. mage). He has double charge + jump for his mobilty. If he uses the charges and the stuns right, he shouldnt have problems.

Then the kiting. Kiting is very powerful, if you do it correct. So now you may be a bit mad @ the kiter, but specially you, as a hunter, will use this so much when you get a bit more experience.

And @your Rulez

- Mounts, Saps, etc. would still be usable early for positioning and CC, but after engaging would no longer be allowed

just no.

- Eating/Drinking would not be allowed. It's your job as a healer/caster DPS to manage your mana effectively. If you fail to do that, you should suffer the consequences, not be allowed a way to correct the mistake. As a DPS, if you want heals, bring a healer or heal yourself.

To say it with your words.

"Its your job, specially as a hunter, to not let the healer/caster drink. If you fail to do that, you should suffer the consequences"

- Rogues/Druids don't require a particular combat status for their abilities (barring Sap), but rather just stealth. They both should have ways to restealth for a short period of time to make use of those abilities, but should always be actively engaging opponents otherwise and not using stealth to hid for 2-3 minutes while CD's reset and Recuperate heals them to full.[/QUOTE]
i agree in some points.
Just waiting until youre full health again isnt cool. but there are these cool cristals, which you should use.
I know its now always as eays as i write here.....But to say more, your description should be way more specific.



//english isnt everyones first language....

[Deleted]

just no.

To say it with your words.

"Its your job, specially as a hunter, to not let the healer/caster drink. If you fail to do that, you should suffer the consequences"

I find this argument highly fallacious.
The only real gripe I've ever had with Arena balancing is the ability to eat/drink. In a perfectly Utopian world, it'd be a non-issue, but as classes are at this juncture, it's a very class discriminating feature.

You just won't ever see a Death Knight be able to drink in peace.

It's a luxury only a select few classes can make actual use of in any practical scenario and as such, breaks the experience for me.

[Deleted]

- Mounts, Saps, etc. would still be usable early for positioning and CC, but after engaging would no longer be allowed

Even though your entire post was ridiculous enough, this bit stood out for me.
How can you even think this would keep balance for rogues? A large proportion of their abilities require stealth, whether it be saps/stuns/cc.

It seems like your just not very good, as if you've just come out of a 2s game against Rogue/Disc and you got completely outplayed. (ie. rogue controlling you both while the disc drinks).

...

[Dorfie]

I find this argument highly fallacious.
The only real gripe I've ever had with Arena balancing is the ability to eat/drink. In a perfectly Utopian world, it'd be a non-issue, but as classes are at this juncture, it's a very class discriminating feature.

You just won't ever see a Death Knight be able to drink in peace.

It's a luxury only a select few classes can make actual use of in any practical scenario and as such, breaks the experience for me.

Let's be honest though. Drinking never comes into play in 3s and in 2s healer/dps vs healer/dps basically have infinite mana any way. I don't even carry water on my Disc priest because I just don't need it.

[Judgejoebrwn]

Thank you for your responses. It's much appreciated.

I don't have the time at the moment to quote every individual point that I want, so I'll just reply and you'll know who you are.

On the subject of me not being very good, that's very possible. That doesn't realistically affect my point, however.

On the subject of rogues not liking this idea, I did mention already that they can stealth for brief periods of time to allow use of those abilities, but lets be honest - rogues have been given numerous ways to clear debuffs and such, making them virtually impossible to keep in combat if they don't want to be. They can just as easily grab the sight orbs so the other team cannot, making those borderline useless. We fought against a rogue/feral druid team. We managed to kill the feral before I died, leaving just a rogue and a prot warrior. I'm sorry to all you rogues out there, but you're a leather-wearing, dagger-wielding assassin - if you think that you were ever designed to be a plate-wearing, defensive class, you are wrong. Tanks are (should be) a rogue's kryptonite, much like a Frost mage to an Arms warrior. But through proper "kiting" (read: resetting), this rogue was able to defeat a good prot warrior and end the fight at >60% health. He finished the match with over 280,000 healing - as a rogue. That's balanced?

On the subject of Sap, in my 7 years of playing this game, it's always been labeled as the NON-reuseable form of CC. You could sap a mob at the beginning of a pull and that was it. Only in PVP has it branched out to a renewable form and only because extremely good rogues figured out how to abuse the combat system to reuse it. Watched a video of two rogues that CC'd a player for over 50 seconds incorporating multiple saps in with Blinds/Gouges/Kidneys, all while they trained down a healer. Impressive? Sure. Balanced? Not in the least. And that was before they had arguably the best self-healing capability for DPS.

Remember, we're not talking about kiting here. Kiting is what hunters/frost mages do. They keep their distance from melee and attack from range. The key word there is "attack". Kiting involves ATTACKING while keeping a melee at distance, not CCing to escape to heal/eat/stealth to reset the fight. That kind of playstyle, while common nowadays because people have resorted to it to win, should not be encouraged, especially in arena where by design you are supposed to be fighting constantly.

On the subject of a prot warrior vs. a frost mage, mages have FOUR ways to root you and they can sheep you. Even as prot, it's extremely difficult to reach him, let alone do any kind of damage to kill him. Fought a Frost Mage/Ele Shaman team a few times. Beat them once, lost once. The 3rd match, we killed the shammy and I died shortly after. Came down to the frost mage and prot warrior. The mage was able to kite effectively to Evocate (perfectly fine), but then spent the next 3-4 minutes running from pillar to pillar in Nagrand after sheeping the warrior to eat/drink. He didn't try to advance on the warrior, never wanted to take a chance. So my brother stopped chasing him and laughed at him. 5 minutes of standing there, the mage just left the match. What's the point of that?

Fought a Frost DK/Baland druid team. Took a while for the druid to come out. When he did, we pounced on him and dropped him. I began kiting the DK while the warrior beat on him. Had the DK to about 20%, he sac'd his pet, finished me off (only had 2.5k left, I don't have recup). He proceeded to use the root effect of chains to get distance from the warrior, got out of combat to mount, ran around the arena (even with hamstring on him was faster than the warrior) until Lichbourne came back up, healed up, did enough damage to the warrior to force his CD's, then started again with chains. Ran around AGAIN until Lichbourne came up and was able to finish the warrior off this time. Should he deserve an award for his skillful play? I don't think so. He couldn't win with what he had, so he had to buy an absurd amount of time with shannanigans. That's embarassing play in my opinion and should not be allowed in Arena.

Again, this could all boil down to 2's being virtually incapable of proper balance. In 3's, drinking never really seems to be hard to stop. But every healer has some form of mana regen, so I just feel if you run OOM and the other healer didn't, their team outdamaged yours/played better and you should lose because of that.

[MythiaX]

Fought a Frost DK/Baland druid team. Took a while for the druid to come out. When he did, we pounced on him and dropped him. I began kiting the DK while the warrior beat on him. Had the DK to about 20%, he sac'd his pet, finished me off (only had 2.5k left, I don't have recup). He proceeded to use the root effect of chains to get distance from the warrior, got out of combat to mount, ran around the arena (even with hamstring on him was faster than the warrior) until Lichbourne came back up, healed up, did enough damage to the warrior to force his CD's, then started again with chains. Ran around AGAIN until Lichbourne came up and was able to finish the warrior off this time. Should he deserve an award for his skillful play? I don't think so. He couldn't win with what he had, so he had to buy an absurd amount of time with shannanigans. That's embarassing play in my opinion and should not be allowed in Arena.

This is where the problem lies.
The dk won't be able to mount up when he is in combat. Chaining the warrior keeps him in combat. So after the last chain, he has to wait 8 seconds before he can mount up, which takes another 1.5 seconds. If, during almost 10 seconds, your warrior is uncapable of either using his charge, or use his ranged weapon, then something is wrong (range of chains is not bigger then ranged weapon of warrior)

Btw, when the dk is on a mount, your warrior can mount up to. Anything they do can also be done by you.

This has nothing do to with balance and EVERYTHING with skill. Try look on skillcapped or a similar site for some tactics/info etc

[Malgru]

Fine. I'll say it.

Hunters will get absolutely wrecked (and they have been) in 2s. 2s is not the place for them. If you run double DPS, you will be focused. You will die. Especially with a prot warrior partner. They won't feed him vengeance while you freecast. People aren't that stupid. If you want to succeed as a hunter in PVP right now, you have to run 3s with a melee and healer. Warrior/DK partners work well. You can also run RBGs, which is where hunters do shine and always have, and probably always will. 5s isn't big right now, so if you want to try it, good luck finding 5s partners. Hunters are not meant for 2s currently. That's just the way balance is. 2s is all about comp - rogue/mage, mage/healer, rogue/healer, feral/anything, blood dk/dps - will all succeed. The only time I've had success as a hunter in 2s is running with a warrior partner. I haven't gotten to play with a DK yet, but I will soon, as my partner is currently leveling a DK.

On the subject of a prot warrior vs. a frost mage, mages have FOUR ways to root you and they can sheep you. Even as prot, it's extremely difficult to reach him, let alone do any kind of damage to kill him.

Very few warriors will be able to beat a mage. Only very good warriors will be able to beat even an average mage. Prot may have a bit easier time than Fury or Arms, but mages still wreck warriors easily. Charge? Freeze. Heroic leap? Freeze. (as prot: ) Intercept? Another freeze. Note he still has blink. Sure, you can remove IB with Shattering Throw, but a good mage will /cancelaura Ice Block and run away while you're casting it, putting even more ground between you two. A mage can evocate in one Poly. He can stun you. He can get out of your stuns every 15 seconds. Plus a backup 2m trinket, in case blink is down for whatever reason. They have a massive damage absorbing shield. They have Ring. You have 2 charges (as prot) and Heroic Leap. 3 gap closers vs 4 freezes + poly + blink. Do the math. You even admitted a frost mage can beat a warrior in your post.

Fought a Frost DK/Baland druid team. Took a while for the druid to come out. When he did, we pounced on him and dropped him. I began kiting the DK while the warrior beat on him. Had the DK to about 20%, he sac'd his pet, finished me off (only had 2.5k left, I don't have recup). He proceeded to use the root effect of chains to get distance from the warrior, got out of combat to mount, ran around the arena (even with hamstring on him was faster than the warrior) until Lichbourne came back up, healed up, did enough damage to the warrior to force his CD's, then started again with chains. Ran around AGAIN until Lichbourne came up and was able to finish the warrior off this time. Should he deserve an award for his skillful play? I don't think so. He couldn't win with what he had, so he had to buy an absurd amount of time with shannanigans. That's embarassing play in my opinion and should not be allowed in Arena

Spell reflect his COI? Howling Blast? Nothing? No LOS? No stuns? (I will admit IBF is tough to counter). Your partner was kited for what seems like 4-6 minutes? By a DK? Sounds like your partner isn't really the best warrior around. DKs are squishy for a plate class. Your partner should've been able to win. Not exactly sure how he managed to kite your partner AND get out of combat AND mount up at the same time. Your partner has 2 charges and a gap closer, mentioned above. Plus fear. No, you cannot catch up to a mage easily. But you definitely can to a DK. Hamstring and Chillblains will keep you two at the same speed. Sure, chains sucks. But it has DR. 3 sec (1) --> 1.5 sec (2) --> .75 sec (3).

Also, rogues aren't even close to balanced right now IMHO. Can't do much against them really. Crippling pretty much applies as soon as they get into melee range, and Bomb + Cloak + SStep + Vanish will completely counter a hunter. They can also beat a warrior pretty easily, but arms shouldn't have too much of a problem. But since your partner is prot.. Not sure how that would work out.

[Judgejoebrwn]

Again, thanks for your posts. Kind of surprised it's gone so far without flames. Keep it up.

MythiaX - The DK is in unholy presence, so he has quite an advantage on the move. He chains (3 second root), ran behind a pillar in Nagrand, pillar humped the warrior's charge, and mounted before the warrior could get on him. At that point, as I said, even hamstrung he wouldn't be slow enough for the warrior to auto-attack. And just because the warrior can now mount doesn't mean he gains anything from doing so.

Malgru - I appreciate your opinion on Hunter's in 2's and you very-well may be right. We were planning on me being the focus on every fight, but were thinking between slows/stuns, we could keep a melee dps from ever reaching me. In turn, I could CC the healer with traps periodically and drop the dps with well-timed burst. Problem ends up being EVERY melee now has multiple ways to close distance, so it's quite a bit more difficult to keep distance than it sounded on paper. Again, this was a comp we threw together (Prot/BM initially) just for the hell of it. You never know when something is OP until you try it (Blood DK's anyone?). I've tried a few games as Survival and am planning on trying a few as Marks. He's contemplated going Arms as well just to play around with things.

I agree wholeheartedly on the warrior vs. mage thing. I was responding to Peruh who claimed Prot warriors should have an easy time with DD classes, namely mages, due to their mobility. However a Prot warrior, with the self-healing, disables, and spell reflect, was making it very difficult for the mage to make a solid offense (might not have been a very good mage either).

On the DK issue, it was a while before he managed to land hamstring on him as he's not used to using it (considering I slow our target most of the time). Honestly, had he gotten hamstring out prior to the mounting fiasco, he may have won the fight. However, since it didn't go down like that, it turned out to be one of the most bizarre things I had ever seen. Instants are pretty hard to spell reflect accurately, so CoI would have been luck of the draw. And strange situations like these are the ones that I feel would be mostly affected by this change, I don't think you'd find situations where this would have a huge impact in 3's (aside from rogues potentially). And as you said (and I agree), Rogues are quite imbalanced at the moment. Even still, certain things of their toolbox could be accommodated so it's not such a harsh penalty (even so much as "For 5 seconds after vanishing, targets in combat are susceptible to Sap").

[Illana]

you're playing 2vs2 with 1 tank and 1 dps. The genera strat will be to kill the dps and then focus on the tank.

You're getting outplayed from game mechanics that have been around for 6+ years.

best way to counter this is just get your brother to go arms or even better a whole other class entirely.

[Kreeshak]

I agree with the original poster. I strongly remember several cases in 2s.

I was playing arms/healer against either dual rogue or rogue/feral.
These classes are able to reset the fight as often as they feel and there is nothing the other team can do to stop them, until they get the kill. They game could as well last 30 minutes.

Do you find it reasonable for two dps classes to play hide and seek without dieing for 30 minutes?

Regarding the underlined part it could be a long debate, which I already had in blizzard forums where I posted a similar topic. The outcome of the debate was that rogue/rogue and rogue/feral can reset at their own will as often as they want.

[Illana]

2vs2 isn't fair

why do you think there are no rewards for it except 2.2k achievement and higher conq cap?

You get gladiator and elite pvp rewards from doing 3vs3, 5vs5 and rbg

blizzard have stated multiple times in the last year that 2vs2 is not their focus for balance, so you either play a an overpowered comp or just accept the fact you won't get to the top.

[Pwnpaw]

I don't really agree with you, other than how retarded some class escape options are (looking at you rogues, frost mages, feral druids). I know it's nice to keep this uniqueness, but I don't understand how it can be so easy to reset the fight playing some specs whereas other specs need to coordinate and time everything perfectly before they can mount up/kite/drink.
However I think it's ok that stealth classes are able to leave combat instantly, I still think it's retarded in a 1v1 or 2v2 that one player can escape for 40 seconds and show up afterwards with full health because of recuperate.

Well first off dont say "stealth classes", feral druids can NOT leave combat instantly, only Rogues.
Secondly I see you play a Priest and you whine about how easy it is for other classes to leave combat? Is it hard to press Psychic Scream and mount up?

---------- Post added 2012-01-06 at 12:15 AM ----------

2vs2 isn't fair

Correction:
2v2 isnt fair
3v3 isnt fair
5v5 isnt fair

PvP balance in WoW is HORRIBLE, it has always been and will most likely always be.

[Deleted]

Well first off dont say "stealth classes", feral druids can NOT leave combat instantly, only Rogues.

Night-elves can. And ferals can still instant-cyclone and dash behind a pillar, HoT, and restealth.


I disagree with most of this, but i do agree about rogues reseting fights too many times. Two vanishes, but no bloody healing in stealth to be allowed really. Im fine if they're eating, as long as they arent allowed to do that in stealth, or use recouperate in stealth. And yes i have a rogue, and i feel it's ridiculus everytime im doing it.

Had a duel versus a rogue friend, and in before all the "duels arent balanced", this serves as an example to prove a fact, not a representative case for nerf-reasons.

He was nightelf, so he would reset on me 5 times, of each coming back with full health after bandage/recouperate. I used everything i got, both bubbles, lay on hands and such, healed myself as often as i could but there simply was no way for me to outlast him anymore. When i looked at the meters, i did more damage than him even though all his cc's and stuff, but without the healing he did, he would've died 3 times in that duel if i remember it correctly.

If there is something i hate in pvp, its meaningless fights, where it just feels like your hitting like a wet doodle, because everyone in random BGs being tanks and healers nowadays. And then when you decide you dont wanna fight more they keep stopping you from getting away. They even chase me down into those houses in Twin Peaks. I don't wanna fight a tank, and i don't wanna hit a healer, when there's nobody else on him, or there is another healer healing him.

I definently don't see the purpous of mages having invisibility either, to get away and drink at some place thats gonna take you long to reach so he already got full mana.

Yeah all this running off to reset i'd vote against for, but kiting and LoS:ing i'd wanna keep at least.

[Deleted]

I remember when I played 2's with a holy pally friend of mine. I died pretty much same time as one of the other guys DPS (it was healer/dps vs. healer/dps) And they were trying to kill eachother, however after a while my friend got out of combat and resurrected me and we won

[klaps_05]

people getting out of combat means you are being OUTPLAYED, its part of the game, use it.

[Kreeshak]

people getting out of combat means you are being OUTPLAYED, its part of the game, use it.

people getting out of combat it means that their class have the tools to do it and people are abusing broken game mechanics. not every class can do it.