| The first week of the arena season eight is finally over. This is my first time participating in the first week of any arena season. It was an exciting and challenging week. The changes Blizzard made to resilience had an interesting impact on how the matches panned out. |
Our game time this week was very limited as I had unexpected visitors stay with me. After two days (five hour of play time) in the arenas and 48 matches we managed to end up at an overall rating of 1100. This came to a disappointment to us as we wanted to end up near 1300-1400 but it’s definitely a modest start.
In case you haven’t heard in this recent patch all players within the battlegrounds and the arenas have received a buff to in effect double the benefits of resilience’s damage mitigation except when the damage comes from a critical strike. Also they have decreased the effectiveness of all forms of healing by 10%. This includes heals from items such as Healthstones and potions, however, it will not affect defensive shields or auras.
From my observations resto druids have become the arena gods. Their mana regeneration rate combined with the mechanics of their instant heals plus their heals over time plus the resilience changes have made them very hard to kill. We had several fights where after killing off on of the enemy opponents my partner and I spent 8-10 minutes coordinating all our abilities in order to take down some pretty talented druids.
Resto shamans definitely fall in the above mentioned category but due to the finite nature of their mana they are not as hard to take down. However we encountered a Resto Shaman + Rogue team that took us 19 minutes to defeat. Resilience buff definitely aided powered up rogues a fair amount.
Interesting enough mages who in my opinion where over powered in the previous arena seasons proved to be some what crippled by these changes to arena. With their offensive damage effectively reduced by almost 50% and their heals received down to 10%, mage burst DPS has become quite survivable and in my opinion are still quite squishy. Sure their resilience effect is doubled but they still remain clothies with 10% less incoming heals. My partner, a resto druid, was able to withstand the effects of a mirror image with out kiting or breaking LOS. Prior to this season mirror image was a death sentence to him as well as for me despite wearing plate. Additional for us the damage mitigation from paladin frost aura remained untouched, further lowering the incoming dps from frost mages.
This brings me to the first advice for retribution paladins in season 8. Once you encounter a mage in the arena be sure to:
- Turn on your frost aura. This cripples the incoming dps from frost mages and also gives you a good chance to resist the ensnaring effect of their frost bolts and frost nova.
- Switch over from seal of vengeance or seal of command to use seal of justice. This gives your judgements and divine storm a chance to stun the mage for a second or two interrupting the spell they are currently casting, further reducing their effective DPS on you.
- Make sure that whenever possible you keep hand of sacrifice on your partner. This means that when the mage polymorphs you any damage your partner receives will break you out of the polymorph effect.
New Hardware update:
It’s been very hard for me to stop being a clicker. I now mix mouse clicking with the additional buttons and macro functionality of my Razer Naga. Whenever possible I force myself to use all my spells by using the 1-12 thumb button functionality(see my previous post) however the downside to this that I am still keeping my eyes on the toolbar to see when my talents and spells are available. For this upcoming week I will try to find an addon that best helps me overcome keeping my eyes on the toolbar. This will hopefully free up my sight to effectively chase shamans and druids on the run. Please as always suggestions and comments are always welcomed.
Total Blog Directory
Blog Directory
No comments:
Post a Comment