So, Patch 3.22 went live today..., and along with the expected changes Blizzard decided to include some surprises. The most important and also the most obvious change for arena players is obviously the reshaping of the circular pillars in Nagrand Arena. The map itself has always been very simplistic consisting of nothing more than a large circle with 2 small semi-circle holes where the stealth crystals spawn, the two small entrance areas and the 4 pillars spread throughout the arena which have always been the focal point in this map. Now obviously this may seem an insignificant change on the surface, but it does have a pretty big effect on the game play in this map.
Now "pillar hugging" has always been a huge thing on Nagrand, allowing people to keep distance from both melee and casters alike if you could gain a step or two on them simply by hugging the curve of the pillar. Because of the nature of line of sight in WoW, the curve of the pillar allowed you to be "out of range" of melee special attacks even at times when you're being auto attacked, and similarly not in line of sight for spells even when you're poking the person with your weapon. With the new shape of pillars in 3.22 this is effectively over simply because it's a straight shot to the next corner on the pillar, and unless you're around the next corner before your enemy rounds the corner to the side you're currently on you WILL be in line of sight for slows, fears, HoJ, shiv etc and you very likely will be caught.
Pillaring is obviously HUGE in 2v2, and won't be as large of a difference because that map is now gone, but being able to pillar effectively can be extremely important in 3v3 as well to allow your healer a few seconds to breathe and get some mana back with a drink, or just to have your healing debuff drop in order to get topped off. As far as where I stand on this change, it's really hard to say just yet as I haven't tested it much at all, but the general consensus is that it is a melee buff as they likely won't encounter the out of range problem w/ special attacks around the pillar nearly as often.
I played a few games today but the server was so unstable that we ended up stopping quite quickly. We encountered insane ping, disconnects, and some very weird bugs such as my pet never coming out when summoned 4 times in a row in a game, and then being stuck soul draining a dead priest which somehow made me practically immune to damage and took a ret pally & rogue a few minutes of beating on me to kill me which then left me stuck in the arena.
The infamous Button Bashers have picked up a new third... after two tournaments where they didn't live up to the hype of being the best RMP in the world they are replacing their rogue Hannival. After a fantastic showing at the ESL Global Finals where Button Bashers (formerly HoN) took first place with Dker who everyone at the tournament was extremely impressed with the team recieved sponsorship from Button Bashers with a different rogue - Hannival. Although they did extremely well to qualify for Blizzcon, their performance there as well as at MLG Dallas wasn't up to the same amazing level that everyone had come to expect from them after the Global Finals. Since the only change in the team was going from Dker to Hannival, most people placed the blame squarely on his shoulders and consider him the weak link of a team which is very strong overall.
Hiren likely isn't as well known in North America, but fans of the Gom TV 'The Named' tournament will remember him from playing with Clazzi, who is a very well known Korean mage. They ran RMP in 'The Named' tournament and had a very impressive second place finish in addition to Hiren suffering only one 1v1 loss throughout the entire tournament in the finals to Mineagi (If you don't know the Gom TV format for WoW 3v3, they play best of 5 and rotate between 1v1 & 3v3, starting each series with a 1v1). More recently his team qualified for the Korean regional tournament but didn't fare too well as they lost two consecutive rounds 3-0, 3-0 to be the first team out of the tournament, but one tournament result shouldn't define a player as it's a team game, and for all I know he could've played amazing in it as the games weren't streamed.
As far as my personal opinion on it all, Hiren is most likely an upgrade skill-wise over Hannival who never really impressed me ever since he managed to lose to a warlock at level 70 as an undead rogue with double warglaives. However that doesn't mean that they'll necessarily be a better team with him, as Orangemarmalade / Numberone have spent a lot of time playing with Hannival, and were a very good team with him, so it's hard to say if they'll have the same synergy with Hiren right off the bat or if it will take some time for them to get used to their new player. Either way it should be very interesting to see how it all pans out, and I look forward to seeing them in their next tournament.
One thing that I have noticed a lot lately... while talking to many friends in the WoW Esports community about potential new players for Team EG, is that it is literally impossible to find a single player that at least someone doesn't have something horrible to say about. Obviously a lot of it is bias, class envy, and the whole tendency to **** talk in the competitive scene, but when you think about it, it's really quite ridiculous. Players who achieve even Gladiator are in the top 0.05% of arena teams, and that achievement is nothing in comparison to doing well at a tournament, or qualifying for the Blizzard Regionals for example.
In most fields if you're in the top 0.05% you're considered at the least very good if not downright fantastic, so when you consider that even people who're well above that percentile in terms of WoW achievements can be considered trash players it shows you just how skewed our point of view can get. Obviously it's the same with all professional sports, there are the heroes and the goats and pretty much any sports fan has players who're playing professionally for millions of dollars that they'll call bad. I suppose it's all based on your point of view, but generally speaking it's easy to find someone with a poor opinion of ANY player who plays this game including Orangemarmalade (because I know someone would mention him :P). I suppose this is simply because people have come to expect perfection from the top players, if they miss an interrupt, choose the wrong strategy, or even play very well but lose a match they're suddenly trash. Most people (myself included) tend to focus on the things that an opponent did poorly in arena, instead of looking at the many positives there may have been which definitely leads to the development of these opinions.
It's pretty amusing to watch two teams playing each other a bunch of games in a row and to then ask a friend on each team what the result of the matches were. With the exception of a few of my closer WoW friends, I can pretty much always expect both teams to say they won the series, and quite often both teams will tell you about how bad they farmed the other. I think that part of it is simply that people will mentally dismiss most of the losses or attribute them to things like a kidney being dodged or counterspell being resisted because we always see things from our point of view, and rarely will notice every little thing that goes bad for the other team. When you win however, you remember the perfect CC chain you pulled off, or the great swap you made and that will stick in your mind making it easy to unconsciously or deliberately stretch the truth about how matches went (since you didn't really deserve any of the losses... right?).
In the things like this don't matter much, and I think it's much more important to focus on areas that you could improve, or reaching goals that you set for yourself (both in WoW and real life) and basing your happiness and opinion of yourself on that instead of worrying so much about other people and their opinion of you. It's nice to get validation from friends, teammates, and the community in general, but being confident in yourself, and happy with where you as as a person and player is far more important.
Just some food for thought!
Until next week...