OHHHHHHHHHHHHH
12:07 PM
Posted by Reygahnci on Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Warlocks are bad, that is all.
Let's talk about alts. Why do we make alts? because our mains are not super fun anymore. Why aren't our mains fun anymore? because they are lackluster in the aspects of the game we crave.
WAIT, this has just changed... it's official, my brother loves playing his priest and I love playing my druid and they SEEM viable together on a 2s team, at the moment on beta. Our whole world-view has been turned upside-down... we haven't talked about my warlock or his warrior until yesterday which was basically "I don't know if I'm even going to grind that warlock up, now," to which my brother responded "I'm in the same boat with my warrior."
I'm hoping that no one notices the amazing synergy between priests and druids right now, because as it stands, we feel like one of the more dominant 2s comps (aside from any shockadin+dps team... shockadins never oom because of Judgements[sic] of the Wise... a broken talent that returns 20% of TOTAL MANA whenever a Judgement[sic] is used).
Essentially, feral brings good damage, a snare, roots, cyclone, offheals, great survivability and escape mechanics, nigh-unrootability, nigh-unpolyability, and innervate to the table and the priest is quite possibly the best healer in the game (and can survive for a ridiculous amount of time given my brother's new-found spec). In fact, let me talk briefly about this spec: I don't think Blizz had any idea of the possible combinations of "upon getting crit" procs that a healing priest can muster. With this spec, a critical strike against him (or a false-positive that would have been a crit if not for resilience or talents or abilities) causes FOUR effects to proc: Blessed Recovery (a mediocre self heal over time effect), Focused Will (causes additional healing received and less damage taken, both percents, and this stacks), Martyrdom (causes no knockback on casts), and Blessed Resilience (the best one... causes you to receive NO critical strikes against you for 6 seconds). All things combined, he can't be crit for 6 seconds, gets additional healing on himself, can't be interrupted from damage, and gains bonus healing for a short duration. This spec is insane... it also has Reflective Shield (which is amazing against everything but ret pallies who have a bugged talent which gives them a chance to 1) ignore absorption effects and 2) accidentally do double damage when they ignore absorption effects) and Lightwell, and while we all laugh about Lightwell, it's definitely better now that it applies a HoT upon use and cannot be destroyed by enemies.
Right now, we basically pick either the weakest of our two opponents or the most damaging (so, in the case of rogue+mage, we can't decide which to attack... prolly mage with HEAVY cc on the rogue, but in the case of warrior+shockadin, we attack the warrior to keep him off my brother). The reason this strategy works is because I have reasonably good peels as-is with Infected Wounds, but if things ever get to the point where he needs mana, I can innervate him OR cyclone one and root the other while he runs off and drinks. Not to mention I have bash on a 30 second cooldown and Maim up all the time... I am probably the best team-mate in terms of peels right now.
This is what we are experiencing in arena at 80 on the beta realms... we're hoping that Blizzard doesn't notice us racing to the top, and that we make it to release in this way (or better... some blue posts keep surfacing saying how we're going to be buffed etc etc). If we do, we're going to spend a good amount of time at the beginning of the first season climbing in an attempt to reach the top with our mains, something that we have never done before. The only team that gives us a hard time at the moment is rogue+mage, which is to be expected when played well. Additionally, ret+shock gives us a hard time, but it is only because the shockadin has infinite mana without drinking... something I hope (and we all expect) will get nerfed.
Things are definitely looking up, and GhostCrawler says that we can expect some love on Mangle(Cat) and/or Rake in an upcoming build... so that'll be nice.