World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

[Steve]

Yeaaaaah, I think I'll be sticking with Champs Online, STO, DCUO, and maybe SWTOR for now on....

[Terralthra]

I cancelled my WoW account around the time they announced Mists. I was unsatisfied with the game, and all the information they released made it clear they were not going to change any of the things I disliked.

[TheFeniX]

I just got tired of 4.2 making a Frost DK a free HK for almost any competent player with the exception of Warlocks. Fuck, the patch hit us so hard, FIRE Mages were a credible threat. I could pop every survival CD (including my racial) as soon as a rogue or druid opened up on me and it didn't matter. I was usually dead or close to it before I could even get a 3rd Death Strike off. Yes, DKs needed to be balanced, but hitting both our survival CDs and making our primary PvP attack a joke? Then I finally got my rogue to 85, picked up the two PvP weapons and started killing pretty much everyone. The rest of the gear set was really just a bonus.

So, there was no real challenge either way. Then raiding finally got boring....

Not that the Horde/Alliance war has made any sense since...AQ, I think? That was the first major 'we need to band together!' moment in a long, long line of Massive Existential Threats. You also have Outlands, which are more or less emptied out now that every Big Bad there has been systematically lit on fire. The Orcs can go home if they want to, thus removing territorial and resource pressure from the equation. By now, they're throwing down because...uh...something will come to me...

I'm not huge on the lore, but this never made sense to me either. Outland is the Orc home....world of floating islands, right? Maybe they feel like Azeroth is their home now, but it doesn't change that there's plenty of undeveloped land in Kalimdor they could use and rarely even have to see an Alliance citizen. I always assumed they were just violent dicks about the whole thing. The Tauren strike me as the only sane Horde race and the only one I'd consider playing.

[Darmalus]

Outland is the single largest piece of the orc home world, Draenor, left. It is also disintegrating, if time actually passed in WoW it would be many more even smaller islands by the time of Cata, eventually turning into an uninhabitable asteroid feild sometime in the future.

Maybe they feel like Azeroth is their home now

The majority of the orcs you see in the game were born on Azeroth. Outland is as foreign to them as it is to humans and dwarfs. Yes, the timeline in WoW is screwed up, compressed and distorted. I'm just going by what I can gather from in-game sources.

but it doesn't change that there's plenty of undeveloped land in Kalimdor they could use and rarely even have to see an Alliance citizen.

Supposedly this is Warchief Moron's plan, a Kalimdor wholly under the dominion of the Horde. Which makes his other actions seem even stupider. The only way anything makes sense is if he hopes that by putting enough pressure on the Alliance everywhere, he can cede territory he doesn't even want in exchange for the Alliance abandoning territory he wants. But that would require yet another radical personality change on his part, not that he hasn't had a few per expansion already.

Maybe we can get the goblins working on a mood stabilizer we can slip in his food.

[Minischoles]

I just got tired of 4.2 making a Frost DK a free HK for almost any competent player with the exception of Warlocks. Fuck, the patch hit us so hard, FIRE Mages were a credible threat. I could pop every survival CD (including my racial) as soon as a rogue or druid opened up on me and it didn't matter. I was usually dead or close to it before I could even get a 3rd Death Strike off. Yes, DKs needed to be balanced, but hitting both our survival CDs and making our primary PvP attack a joke? Then I finally got my rogue to 85, picked up the two PvP weapons and started killing pretty much everyone. The rest of the gear set was really just a bonus.

So, there was no real challenge either way. Then raiding finally got boring....

That was partly the absurdity that was rogues and druids, they were blisteringly overpowered last patch and still are to a certain extent. Warlocks - despite having a number of broken mechanics and problems, having the lowest population numbers next to rogues - have been pretty much the dominant spellcaster in every arena season. Some people might whine about mages, but warlocks have always been at the top - even more so in cataclysm with how absurd resto shamans are.

[White Haven]

That's actually funny given that the 3s bracket was dominated for quite some time by Mage/Rogue/Priest teams all duking it out to see who was the best at that one formula. Not sure if that's still the case, but it was for quite some time, which makes me question the 'warlocks are king' rhetoric.'

[Minischoles]

That's actually funny given that the 3s bracket was dominated for quite some time by Mage/Rogue/Priest teams all duking it out to see who was the best at that one formula. Not sure if that's still the case, but it was for quite some time, which makes me question the 'warlocks are king' rhetoric.'

How powerful RMP was, got really overstated - sure if the players were the best of the best it was a really good combo. Even in TBC when RMP was one of the highest level comps and was winning tournaments left and right, warlocks were still a top caster. Warrior/Lock/Druid could stomp RMP into the ground (there is a reason a lot of top RMPers always went undead, and that was because of warlocks).
In WOTLK you had things like shadowplay (Warlock/DK/Paladin usually), WLD was still around and then towards the end you had things like Rogue/Lock/Shaman and heroic RLS which absolutely destroyed RMP - it wasn't unusual for the priest to just outright die from the opener.
3s for Cata has been all about warlock/shaman - they work with virtually any combination, warlocks have the only viable anti-dispell mechanic and shamans (even without Bloodlust) are the most powerful pvp healer. RMP still exists but there are far better comps for the mage and the rogue at this point - it still works, but that's because of how broken rogue damage can be and how mage damage can be if they gear correctly.

[Civil War Man]

shamans (even without Bloodlust) are the most powerful pvp healer.

Not too surprised by this. They tend to be the most heavily armored behind Paladins, and their mastery (heals are bigger the lower the target's health is) sounds like it would be pretty good in a PvP environment. They also have much better AoE potential than Paladins, who kicked ass in 2s before that bracket stopped counting for Arena ranking.

Still, people tend to think Druids when they think PvP healers, due to several instant heals and hots. Did the loss of permanent tree hurt them in that regard?

[Minischoles]

shamans (even without Bloodlust) are the most powerful pvp healer.

Not too surprised by this. They tend to be the most heavily armored behind Paladins, and their mastery (heals are bigger the lower the target's health is) sounds like it would be pretty good in a PvP environment. They also have much better AoE potential than Paladins, who kicked ass in 2s before that bracket stopped counting for Arena ranking.

Still, people tend to think Druids when they think PvP healers, due to several instant heals and hots. Did the loss of permanent tree hurt them in that regard?

Druids were only ever really good in 2s, they had one or two comps that worked in 3s and in 5s they were non-existent. The extent to which druids were the 'pvp healer' got really overstated due to 2v2, 3s was always the playground of priests and shamans and 5s has always been paladin/priest and shaman while they could bloodlust.

Cata has seen druids get wrecked pvp wise, mainly due to the lifebloom change and how ineffective HoTs are - only being able to put lifeblooms on one target makes them incredibly vulnerable to a target swap. Both versions of the mastery they've had are utterly useless for pvp (unlike shaman who as you said have an amazing mastery, i've seen shamans crit for 100k heals in 3s) and all their casted heals are pretty awful as well.
Having no cooldowns or utility doesn't help either - shamans have for example, spirit link (situationally amazing) grounding, tremor and they had wind shock - druids really have nothing outside of Tree form.
Losing that was the biggest blow, especially with the retarded way the cooldown works. The moment you shift into it, a druid gets switched - because if they shift out to kite, they've just blown the cooldown and can't shift back anymore. There are pretty much zero comps where a resto druid works, most of their comps would do far better with another healer.
Add in the fact that feral druids are pretty viable as well and it's no surprise resto druids are practically nowhere to be seen at a high level.

[Crown]

Warrior/Lock/Druid could stomp RMP into the ground (there is a reason a lot of top RMPers always went undead, and that was because of warlocks).

100% not true. They went undead because if a mirror match occured (and since this was the best 3s set up, one would always occur) those that weren't undead would lose every single time. Which is why WotF got nerf'd to ground by Blizzard.

Warlocks, in TBC, were SL/SL, didn't have instant AoE Fear, and the strategy to any game featuring them in 3 on 3 was 'train the fucking Warlock to the ground and don't ever, ever, ever, ever, like seriously ever, stop'. You could see it in the Tournament games, the SL/SL Warlocks were 100% gemmed with stamina, because during any 3 fights they were tunneled.

But since demonic teleport was given, yes, Warlocks are well represented casters when ever they roll with the most overpowered healer of the season!