Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Should the PvP trinkets be made more powerful?

In the upcoming patch planed for June 20th one of the major items will be the upgrade of the PvP trinkets. Currently the trinkets provide a means to escape a limited amount of crowd control effects for each class. For some classes the trinket dispels effects like polymorph while for others they can use it to get out of fear. However, with the next mini patch Blizzard is planning on changing the mechanics of the PvP trinket so that all crowd control effects can be dispelled by each class.

As World of Warcraft has progressed over the years more short term crowd control effects have been given to each class in an attempt to balance the PvP side of the game. This became necessary as the amount of players participating in PvP combat increased due to reforms in the honor system and the introduction of arenas. The developers most likely feel there are too many crowd control effects now in the game to limit what the trinket can dispel, thus the upcoming change.

Like most game changes there are those on the forums who oppose them. This is especially true for those who have crowd control effects which are particularly hard to dispel. Abilities like sap and cyclone which often can decide games will become a lot less powerful with an universal dispel available to every class on a short timer. Druids in particular are mad that cyclone, which is resistant to paladin shielding, will soon be dispelable by every class.

Cyclone is one of the few crowd control abilities available to a druid besides the very mediocre root ability. While root is practical in PvE situations it tends to suck in combat against other players where spells with a cast time are of limited use. Since healers in PvP are primary targets they often have trouble casting any non instant spells which means crowd control effects like root almost never get a chance to land on opponents.

Even if you don't focus on the impact to any one class the introduction of a universal dispel mechanic is a big change for the game. In the past World of Warcraft's system of PvP has always depended on a rock, paper, scissors approach. Basically the developers looked at single player combat and balanced abilities so that every class had another one they were weak against. Abilities like flare, mass dispel, and mana burn were designed to specifically give advantages over a certain class.

With the changes to the PvP trinket it seems as if the developers are trying to back away from their previous approach and perhaps offer classes a more even chance against one another. Still some posters complain that a universal dispel trinket ruins the chances of classes dependent on crowd control. Yet no one agrees on the definition of a crowd control dependent class. In my opinion the fact that most crowd control effects are instant cast are more then enough reason to increase the power of the PvP trinket. Whether it benefits one class over another we'll just have to wait and see in Arena Season 2.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The problem is the buff this gives to paladins and warriors. These two classes are the premier arena classes. This trinket makes them both even more dominate.

Relmstein said...

Warriors will gain an advantage but then again they are the most easily crowd controlled class in the game.

Paladins are still going to be vulnerable to spell lock and counterspell which the trinket change will not effect.

Both classes though by their popularity in high ranking Arena teams are deffinitely a little overbalanced.

Anonymous said...

The thing is, warriors are balanced around the fact they are easily CCed. They have multiple ways to close distance and impede the movement of their foe to keep them in range. Also, their incredible burst damage and high HP count is a nod to the fact they are going to get hit and they need to do a lot of damage while in range.

Now classes that had one or maybe two means to keep a warrior off them will end up eating another 3k MS instead of getting a few seconds of range, which may have allowed them to actually overcome the warrior.