Blizzard: Address Cleave Team Imbalance

#0 - May 17, 2009, 9:06 p.m.

With T2 Arena weaps coming up, my Druid in 3's will now die in 2 seconds flat to Rogue and Ret Paladin, Warrior, DK 3v3 teams rather than 3.

Cleave is out of hand. Lets take a look at cleave points..

- Doesnt require any CC to kill a target, just constant tunnel vision on someone and they will die.
- Healers are dying in seriously 2 Global cooldowns now in 3's.
- If you dont have a combination of 2 of.. Warrior, Rogue, Ret paladin, or DK on your 3's team, the 3v3 bracket is getting pretty much unplayable. And with T2 arena weaps + Ulduar gear; it will get even worse and one-sided.

Mortal Strike DPS + another Melee DPS is too much right now to heal through. Melee counters Ranged/Casters right now more than ever. Chances are someone on your team is going to be dead before you can even begin to crowd control.

Melee DPS is putting out too much damage right now in arena, plain and simple. 3's should not be played on the basis of "Tunnel vision faceroll one of them to output so much offensive pressure that they will simply die."

Ret Paladins need to be fixed (not even going to get started on them, blizzard has acknowledged that too), DK Burst, Descecration, and survivability needs some toning down, Rogue poisons need to be brought back to how it was pre-wotlk; poisons are out of hand right now, aside from that, rogues arent too bad. Warriors just do insane amounts of damage + a 75% healing debuff chance (warriors and rogues actually arent that bad in comparison to DK's and Rets though) The Warrior mobility nerfs, juggernaut nerfs were needed. Combine any of these 2 classes v.s a non cleave setup and you may as well leave the arena if they arent morons.

Cleave is out of hand and only getting worse.

Ghostcrawler

#6 - May 17, 2009, 9:23 p.m.

We think cleave teams are too dominant, especially in 2s. We don't think they are as bad in 3s, but the community is very focused on 2s at the moment.

We don't think it's as simple as melee classes doing too much damage or having too much armor. We don't even necessarily think it's "melee" because I'm not convinced shamans and druids are affected. We think it has more to do with ranged classes not always able to bring their CC or survival tools to bear against melee.

Keep in mind when you are talking about Arena comps, the issue isn't as simple as saying that X beats Y. Often it's a question of who you want on your team. To take just one example, we think that last season if you were trying to decide between a hunter and warrior, the hunter brought a lot more to the table. There was no benefit to be gained from taking a warrior instead. There were a lot of reasons for this, but one of them was that physical damage just wasn't that useful and another was that warriors could never keep on a target. Another was that DKs and paladins dominated smaller brackets. In this season you can make the argument that warriors are more attractive than hunters. One of the things that a hunter could theoretically bring -- stronger CC in the form of traps -- may not be useful enough compared to say the CC you could get from a mage. This has almost nothing to do with warriors beating hunters in 1v1 duel situations and everything to do with how you want to build your team.

Obviously (I hope) I am boiling down a complicated situation to a simplistic level for purposes of illustration. My point is that often, in our minds, it's rarely as simple as "If my class did more damage, my class would be at 10% Arena representation."

EDIT: My use of "Cleave" here confused or offended some traditionalists for whom Cleave = 2 melee + 1 healer in 3s or more in 5s. We think melee are countering casters too effectively in 2s and 3s. I'll leave it at that.

Ghostcrawler

#283 - May 19, 2009, 2:05 a.m.

I edited my post above to say:

My use of "Cleave" here confused or offended some traditionalists for whom Cleave = 2 melee + 1 healer in 3s or more in 5s. We think melee are countering casters too effectively in 2s and 3s. I'll leave it at that.