The Queue: Death Knights in the arena and other things

Hey, welcome back! How was your Thanksgiving, my American pals? Did you sit around and laugh at Europeans like I did? You did? Great! High five! No, I'm just kidding, I love all of you equally. My Thanksgiving was pretty good! Well, as good as Thanksgiving can be when nobody feels like cooking so you buy a pound of sliced turkey and drop it in a pot of warm canned gravy, toss some of it on bread, and have a can of jellied cranberry sauce on the side. It's not good unless you can still see the can ripples in it. Mmm. Can ripples. Delicious.
Right, right, the Q&A! Let's start with Rasman's question...
I was just thinking about Death Knights and PvP and realized, Casters are really going to be hurting in the areas now if they match up agianst a DK. Death Knights don't care about your casting bar because they can just yank you in or go Vader on you because you forgot his cookies, and choke you for the Silence. Matter of fact, if they get you close, they really have 3 or 4 ways to interupt those casts, if you include the stun from an Unholy DK's Ghoul, that is. Am I just stammering on and not knowing what I'm talking about, or are Death Knights going to make this upcoming Arena season VERY Melee heavy?
It's hard to tell how Death Knights will fare in the arena. While there's a lot of people that expect Death Knights will dominate, there's also a very vocal (and smart) group of players that think Death Knights will start strong when they're an unknown, but people will learn fast and utterly dominate them. Death Knights have a lot of tools, but a lot of pretty big weaknesses as well. As the devs themselves have said, it's really, really hard to predict arena play. It's not just numbers or spells, it's strategy and tactics, too. A seemingly weak spec (or even spell) could become the backbone of a team.
If a couple of popular compositions completely shut down Death Knights, we might barely see any of them with a high rating. At least not until someone else figures out a comp that dominated the one that originally shut Death Knights out. That's the nature of the arena. It's hard to guess, and it's always changing. That being said, my personal prediction is that Death Knights will be more effective in a 2v2 or 3v3 setting than in the 5v5 setting. A double or triple melee team with a Death Knight will absolutely ruin Healers, I think. In the 5v5 setting, the healer(s) will have a lot more support, and a lone Death Knight won't complete dominate the entire other side.
It's a topic that people can debate for hours, days, or weeks, and there will never be a conclusion until we're deep in Season 5. And when Season 6 comes around? The scene could change completely.
Brian asked...
Is there any reason other than looks for a hunter to pick a Tenacity pet other than a gorilla? From what I've been hearing, gorillas are far and away the best tanking pets.
Besides aesthetics? If RP reasons counts as looks/aesthetics, it mostly comes down to utility options. The Gorilla is probably the best tanking pet overall, yeah, but you might like the unique abilities of the other pets. For Beastmasters, the Acid Spit from worms is really good if you don't have Sunder Armor in your raid/party. Scorpid Poison is a huge pain in PvP. If you wanted a pure tanking pet, though? Gorilla is the way to go, no doubt, no question.
Creo asked...
I can't find any reference to this, but is there anything that will replace the riding crop?
This is something we don't know yet. Last we knew they were trying to find a different way to handle those speed boosts that wasn't so clunky and annoying, but I don't know if they're still working on it. I have to admit though, now that Riding Crops are gone I don't really miss them. I liked it when I had it, but it was pretty annoying. Now that it doesn't exist, I just don't care and fly on my awesome red drake contentedly. They might reintroduce it somehow, but we don't know yet. If they do, I hope they do it in a 'set it and forget it' kind of way. Not worrying about it is nice.
nyctef asked...
Sorry if this has been asked before, but does anyone know why Dalaran is a no-fly zone?
They wanted Dalaran to be more like an actual city, forcing the players down into the streets. Instead of just flying over everything and skipping it all, we're down on the roads and sidewalks passing eachother by and interacting. We see the entire city and the neat things that go on instead of just seeing rooftops and specks that may or may not be players on the ground.
In my opinion, the only downside to these few no-fly zones is setting yourself on auto-pilot and walking away from your keyboard for a minute is dangerous nowadays. With Wintergrasp being right in the middle of everything, the number of times I see "Oh dammit!" in my guild chat increases every day as more and more people get flight back and immediately plummet to their deaths.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, Arena, The Queue






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Eggie Nov 28th 2008 11:12AM
--- the number of times I see "Oh dammit!" in my guild chat increases every day as more and more people get flight back and immediately plummet to their deaths. ---
*bubble
=]
Shadowhaxor Nov 28th 2008 1:02PM
Can't bubble if you're on auto-pilot and alt-tab for a few moments.
Muse Nov 28th 2008 2:50PM
My parachute has deposited me in a tree several times. Usually right next to a mine. But nowhere near the portal/flight master.
Faldrath Nov 28th 2008 11:17AM
The worst part about flying over Wintergrasp, being dismounted and dying is that there are a lot of places in the mountains surrounding Wintergrasp that you simply cannot reach as a ghost and end up having to use the spirit healer to come back. So they're not only annoying deaths, but expensive ones as well...
Kargon Dec 2nd 2008 8:23PM
Yeah I got stuck halfway up the cliff too, fortunately I had a friend nearby with some Jumper Cables. I did have to loan him some gold to pay for his epic flying though to get him to come save me...
OK so I was going to loan the gold anyway. But still, 1500 gold for a rez, Most Expensive Rez, Evar.
Tripedius Nov 28th 2008 11:20AM
They really should have worked around that. Not being able to fly through wintergrasp is really annoying when taversing northend. With an epic flying mount the detour won't take that long, but I can imagine that it is a pain for normal flyers.
Why don't they add an altitude barier as well so you can fly over WG without interfering with the actual pvp going on.
gurgle Nov 28th 2008 12:18PM
I really hope they don't. It's not hard to spin yourself around when you get the BIG WARNING on the screen that you've entered a no fly zone and get out in time. Oh, you're afk flying somewhere? Should have used a paid flight.
I also like the no flight zone around Dalaran - it makes parachute cloaks and similar items actually useful :)
Zevan Nov 28th 2008 5:23PM
The problem with an altitude barrier is people will be able to fly over and drop into the thick of combat if they have things like parachute cloaks and certain abilities.
Gordal Nov 29th 2008 3:39PM
@Gurgle: "It's not hard to spin yourself around when you get the BIG WARNING on the screen that you've entered a no fly zone and get out in time."
Problem is that, at least on most servers, Northrend lag is horrendous. The two laggiest places on the continent? Wintergrasp and Dalaran.
I was flying around last night right after getting Cold-Weather Flying, exploring the continent, and decided to hoof it from Crystalsong to Sholazar Basin (The last place I had to explore) via flying over Wintergrasp.
I hit the border, smack into a wall of lag, and by the time my connection righted itself, the warning had passed to only giving me three seconds to leave the no-fly zone or be dismounted; and there was no way that I'd be able to leave the zone without being dismounted.
So having landed (safely) in the mountains near the border to Crystalsong, I remount, and remember that I had a free flight courtesy of a quest giver to the Basin in Dalaran. So I fly towards Dalaran from the south (Krasus' Landing being in the north), skirt over the wall, lag, stutter, dismount halfway up a building.
It's fair to say that most people on most servers have bad enough lag when going near both no-fly zones. The warning doesn't give enough time to avoid being dismounted unless you have a godly connection to a stable realm.
Nith Nov 28th 2008 11:24AM
It probably been covered before but will scriber's get more recipes?
I was blacksmith before 3.0 and liked the rep grinds and just mob grinds for a pattern. So while I like the research thing it is kind of disappointing that I dont get anything new from grinding rep or any drops anywhere. Also I am hoping for more inscription utility recipes, the darkmoon cards are really expensive and probably not worth the mats an the off-hands are pretty useless for a paladin. I liked the shoulder incriptions but I wish there was more to this. Maybe a special class of scrolls for self buffs, or maybe belt inscriptions or libarms.
Colt Nov 28th 2008 11:34AM
Who would Inscribe a belt? Thats a Blacksmiths Job with his Eternal Belt Buckle :D
but i was wanting to know what the heck the Enchanted Anvil is used for in Dalaran and is BS's is gonna get more stuff to make, right now its mostly Tank and PvP gear and nothing to learn after hitting 440
Nith Nov 28th 2008 11:40AM
That was my hope, get the buckle AND an inscription 0.O
Calaana Nov 28th 2008 2:02PM
You can only have one perm enchant on an item. Much like how you can either choose rune forging or a weapon enchant for a deathknight.
Fyve & Boomstick Nov 28th 2008 3:02PM
I want to know where all the Leatherworking recipies are. So i've already bought all the hunter ones from the dalaran chap. The shammy ones i'll buy next, and All the quivers/bags rep rewards... Where are the other patterns?! Blizz, where are the northrend equivilent of heavy leather balls and comfortable insoles and other useless stuff that its fun to have all the same!
/QQ
Punjab Nov 28th 2008 12:05PM
What with most new content being angled towards higher level players, it would be interesting to see numbers on how those at or near the level cap compare to those still levelling. My initial thoughts would be that there's many, many more characters at levels 1-70 than there are at 70-80. Is this the case?
Amaxe Nov 28th 2008 12:11PM
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
This shows how it is divided at present
Punjab Nov 28th 2008 12:18PM
Levels 10-69: 4,312,089
Levels 70-80: 3,960,736
Guess they're more equal than I thought. Thanks for the link.
Kangaxx Nov 28th 2008 1:53PM
The big question is, how many of those are alts?
I have one lvl 80, three chars at lvl 60-70, and 10 or so between 5 and 50, and I think many others have a slew of low-level alts as well.
Sierro Nov 28th 2008 12:08PM
Any chance for an explanation of how Wintergrasp works? Where are the entrances? Are you flagged for PvP as soon as you enter the zone? What are the objectives?
Amaxe Nov 28th 2008 12:09PM
"I have to admit though, now that Riding Crops are gone I don't really miss them. I liked it when I had it, but it was pretty annoying. "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Baudmount addon fixed that very nicely actually. Automatically changed what you had equipped based on whether or not you were mounted.
Not having the trinket is annoying... Bliz should have left it in place until they had a solution