There's a short, five-page locked thread over at the official forums that starts out by quoting Ghostcrawler although the OP doesn't quite make his point clear. I think what he's trying to say is that there's too much crowd control in the game, so much in fact, that a PvP trinket is mandatory. The discussion devolves into a criticism of the prevalance of crowd control in PvP. This is arguably exemplified by one of the most enduring and successful 3v3 team composition in Arenas, the RMP or Rogue-Mage-Priest comp which has access to a good number of crowd control (and interrupt or silence) abilities.

Ghostcrawler pops in to give his two centavos worth (apparently he can sift through QQ much better than I could) to say that "crowd control abilities are part of WoW," and is actually a little surprised at the reaction. "If you don't like being CC'd," he chides, "use your PvP trinket." He goes on to say that too much crowd control isn't good for the game, and also acknowledges that too much burst and too much healing aren't palatable, either. A little later down the thread, he gives a little illumination behind developer philosophy about crowd control design and distribution. Newsflash: it isn't equal.

By not being equal, I mean that some classes have more CC than others, while some have access to more CC breaks than others. But the accusation was that this made the game unbalanced, and this is what our favorite crab disagreed with. Despite the trend towards a little class homogeneity (e.g., identical or non-stacking buffs), he draws the line at making classes carbon copies of each other. He admits that "making classes identical or even very similar makes the game easier to balance," but he also astutely points out that "it also makes it boring."

My take on this is if you want to PvP, wear the blasted trinket. It's been in the game since vanilla WoW and is hands down the single most important item for PvP. It is the first purchase any PvP player with half a brain should make with Honor and now Wintergrasp Marks of Honor. With added stats on the Level 80 versions, such as massive Resilience or combat ratings comparable to PvE items, the new versions aren't just necessary, they're pretty damned sexy, too. It's also the only effect in the game that can remove Cyclone, which has been around since The Burning Crusade.

When to use the trinket is one of the most strategic decisions any player has to make in a PvP situation. While I think that some classes still need better class ability outs, the state of crowd control in PvP is more balanced than in Wrath with the increasingly standardized durations and diminishing returns. While Blizzard has a ways to go in balancing all three aspects of burst, healing, and crowd control, they're headed in the right direction. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, wear your trinkets before heading out the door.

Tags: CC, Crowd-Control, Ghostcrawler, Official-Forums, PvP-Trinket, QQ

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Forums