Saturday, September 13, 2008

A Couple of Arena Gripes (IE Nerf The Fucked Up Metagame)

Can we please look into removing some of the aspects of the arena that create a sort of twisted metagame that we experience particuarly in 2v2? I'm not talking about specific class balance here. Everyone knows the general gripes about every class but I'm talkin' bout some of the general tactics which I feel are at least somewhat against the spirit of the game.

For example:

-Healers running away non stop with nothing more in mind than getting OOC to drink. As a pet class I have a much easier job of being able to keep them in combat than most (I feel bad for non pet teams in 2s) - But even then it doesn't feel like we're even fighting one another. It's a screwed up minigame as far as I'm concerned. If healers need buffs to mana regeneration then by all means give them their buffs. It seems like solely due to being able to use water in the arena it twists the entire strategy around this one facet. Not something I feel is in the spirit on the game. You may of course disagree...

-Similarly, the "kill the pet" strategy and the "run the pet across the arena and intentionally cause it to despawn" strategies. It's fairly screwy that teams can get rid of pets so easily and yet remove such a large portion of your ability to play your character. Once the pet is dead if you can't resummon the match is pretty well over. The coin has two sides, however- If pets are deemed so powerful that they need to be focused then by all means nerf the pets. I'm lobbying neither for buffs or nerfs, but rather a removal of the twisted metagame they create.

I have other gripes of course, but I'll stick to those two. It's not a matter of winning or losing in either case- it's how certain strategies that are available ruin the sense of fun and cohesion that the arena system would otherwise possess- things that can leave me seething at the end of a match- even matches we're victorious in.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with both points. I remember back when wow was released I would go outside IF between those long ass AV queue times and duel people standing out there. Some people would actually fight, and others would just be cheap bastards that sat there all day (not queueing for BGs), and try their hardest to find any little "cheap" move they could. Those people were usually decked out in full green gear, and would of course boast non-stop if they actually beat someone. The point is, they would win occasionally and it had nothing to do with skill, gear, or luck. They simply found a cheap exploit that the other side didn't know about. They are the ones who are the 2200 ranked teams, the idiots that used to duel outside the major cities all day. Blizzard found a way to keep them busy with arenas...the problem is that they've awarded these idiots with gear that can be semi decent in pve. That is wrong...keep arena gear in the arenas imo. And while I'm at it, I'd like to suggest this:

Being that arenas are essentially a spawned "instance", I don't see why they couldn't just get rid of resilience all together, and just place something like a -75% effectiveness on all spells/hits/abilities to slow things down and avoid the one-shotting problem that they cited as the reason for placing arenas in the game in the first place.

QueueTip said...

I pretty much stopped doing arenas after losing a 15 minute match 1v1 to a holy paladin. Both our partners died, and all he would do is hug the pillar gaining mana, and healing when neccessary. I couldn't kill him because of constant LOS issues when casting frostbolt, and couldn't gain mana, because he would just attempt ressing his partner. Until they make a completely open flat no pillar arena, I don't see myself playing more than the minimum number of games a week. Arenas can be a lot of fun, but it seems to be less about skill and more about game mechanics and obsurd amounts of resilience.

~Fusoya