Hello, all

Tharvolde here.  A while back I laid out some predictions for Season 8.  The intent of this post is to talk through these predictions, see where they stand now that the season is well under way and provide additional observations.

Prediction 1) If you thought Warriors and their LOLBLADESTORM was bad this season, just wait…

The prediction speaks for itself and so does the fact that Warriors scale extremely well with gear.  Even with the resilience buff, I’ve already noticed the prevalence of 2Healer/Warrior and TSG at higher ratings.  Warriors with 100% Armor Penetration are now showing up and it’s rather scary to think of my Tree-form Resto Druid getting hit like an unshielded Mage.  For an example, check the following guildmate of mine (he has two Warriors):

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal’Ganis&cn=Maydayz

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal’Ganis&cn=Maydayx

At the time of this post he is in PvE gear on both Warriors but his Armor Penetration, completely unbuffed and without any procs is at 76.38 and 85.88% respectively.  What’s more is that this does not even include the 10% Armor Penetration given by Battle Stance or the 15% available from Mace Specialization (I don’t know if he uses Maces or not in PvP).  Regardless, it’s scary and I’ve already witnessed Warriors of this calibur thrashing our Resto Druid, by themselves, like a machete through wet looseleaf.

Prediction 2) Retribution will still fall well short of being competitive at higher ratings

Thankfully, I think the strength of Sham/Ret/MM has made my prediction inaccurate.  What’s more is that Ret does appear to be out-performing ProtRet:

Retribution (3v3):  http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/player/3/all/23/all/all/

ProtRet (3v3):  http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/player/3/all/22/all/all/

This is great news for the Retribution community and I’m very happy I’m actually very happy I turned out wrong here.  Don’t get me wrong – I do really enjoy ProtRet – but I am sincerely excited to see so many Retribution Paladins performing well if only in a couple very specific comps.

Prediction 3) Protribution or “ProtRet” will continue to outperform Retribution in all brackets but won’t be quite as strong as it was this season

We’ve already covered the first part of this prediction and I turned out to be flat wrong.  As far as the second part, however, I believe that if no real PvP changes were made between seasons then it would have held true.  One of the greatest strengths of ProtRet is, quite simply, the survivability and utility of it.  When this prediction was made, I was banking on the fact that gear was going to take a big step forward with Season 8 and that the incoming damage would increase by a greater amount than survivability.  Blizzard no doubt foresaw this and implemented a change to double the flat damage reduction effect of resilience.  The net result is that ProtRet now has even more survivability than last season and, because of this, seems even better in fulfilling its role in given comps.

Take for example the comp I play of ProtRet/Arms/Druid.  For all intents and purposes, this comp is considered “faceroll”.  However, there is quite a bit that goes on under the hood to make it work.  I’m confident that any comp with the right players, good gear and lots of time can faceroll and tunnel-vision their way into the 2000s.  To get beyond this however, takes some fine-tuning and lots of practice.  As the ProtRet on this comp, I am a cleanse bot first and a damage dealer second.  The speed at which I cleanse and the timing of things such as Hand of Freedom ultimately determines the outcome of our games.  To be able to do these things effectively, I need to be able to survive extremely well as I’m not of much use if constantly locked down or on the bring of dying.  This season,

I have definitely noticed a significant increase in my survivability thanks to the resilience change.  I have consistently seen teams such as RMP and RLS hard switch to me after training our Warrior but failing to get the job done.  Although I may dip below 10,000 health at times, it seems my opponents simply can’t seal the deal – which usually means they’ve expended all their available CDs for the moment and I’m now free to return to my utility role.  All in all, I think this prediction was 1/3 right and 2/3 wrong.  The incorrect 2/3 would be that Ret is definitely outperforming ProtRet right now (according to statistics) and that although ProtRet’s damage has definitely increased (as to be expected with new gear), the resilience change has caused our damage output to not be, proportionally, as strong as it was last season.  The correct 1/3 would be that our survivability has gone through the roof and, in that sense, I feel we are in an even better place this season under this particular role.

Prediction 4) Prepare yourselves for the return of the S3 Rogue

Wrong, wrong and wrong.  Once again, I think the resilience change had it’s say here.  It seems that most of the top Rogues are actually wearing significant amounts of resilience this season.  Take for example Rexsteele (recently race-changed and shortened his name) who is considered to be one of the top Rogues in the world:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal’Ganis&cn=Rexst

Or how about Reckful, also considered as one of the top Rogues in the world:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackrock&cn=Reckful (He’s in S4 gear right now in armory lawl)

Both are 1000+ resilience in their normal PvP gear sets.  Do they hit like trucks?  Yes.  Are they stacking PvE gear?  Only a few pieces here and there.  Either way, I’m a bit relieved Rogues went this route as opposed to reverting  to S3.  That said, I did get hit with a 9.5K Envenom on my under-geared Warrior last night during 2s.  That was fun.

So there you have it.  The predictions have been revisited and it appears as though most of my original thoughts were misguided in light of the resilience change (undoubtedly among other things).

Oh and btw:

There haven’t been any Paladin updates in a long time and it looks like there won’t be any upcoming either.  Good to know (/sarcasm)!!