Anyone tried arena yet ?

[remanz]

Even for non-boxed, How is the burst vs healing + defense. Nothing is going down ? All 25min battles ?

I played some bgs. getting rolled right now as lacking gear right now.

[Shodokan]

Games in 3's can last 2 mins due to burst (bm hunter + something), or 20+ mins (mage/ret/druid vs dk/mage/shaman, mage/ele/priest, RMP)

[Nikita]

Been gearing my shamans in BGs aswell, at first I almost cried cus 1 lock could solo my team. Now Im at 16 % pvp power, and shit die. Get some kills by trinket, insta Elemental blast followed by (insta sometimes) Lava burst, then ES. Gonna try 5v5 once Im close to fully honor geared.

[heyaz]

Been gearing my shamans in BGs aswell, at first I almost cried cus 1 lock could solo my team. Now Im at 16 % pvp power, and shit die. Get some kills by trinket, insta Elemental blast followed by (insta sometimes) Lava burst, then ES. Gonna try 5v5 once Im close to fully honor geared.

I'm assuming that 1 warlock was full pvp geared and you were in fresh 90 with quest stuff? Cuz is a quest geared fresh 90 can own my whole team already, kinda makes me not wanna finish leveling them to 90

[remanz]

At least pallies can survive. Pallies are pretty beefy this round with all the defensive stuff. But damage are not there, at least not yet that I can see. So I just run around getting feared/CCed to no end until I am out of mana and bubble.

[Kruschpakx4]

I think I've enjoyed fok aoe silience in arena more than bgs these days , srsly sometimes you feel like nothing dies, although you dont die too but anyway its so fcking boring

I've also done an arena game with 12% pvp power, at least the oneshot macro does its job but still pretty hard with all that cc stuff and warrior/mage damage, will see how its going with full gear.

[heyaz]

How is the Ascendance burst holding up at 90? I played a few WSG's when I hit 87 and with Ascendance + SWG it was god mode. Blow the hell out of level 89 flag carriers even with their healers, they couldn't stop it.

The problem I had at first, and will just come with experience, is when to use it. I ran into a couple 89 blood DKs who ate my entire burst through an AMZ I didn't know was up, and a pally with the run twice as fast as me thing just outrun me even with SWG up and I couldn't get enough lava bursts on it.

Survivability: the stone bullwark totem + 4x healing tides kept me alive against beast 89 ret paladins and warriors who would otherwise wreck my whole time in 5 seconds. But after those were on cooldown, way squishy. But this was level 87 with no resil or pvp power.

My other observation is that the "empowered" chain lighthing aka lava beam was garbage, not worth using the 15 seconds of ascendance when with ele mastery and/or bloodlust it was more effective to pick off individuals.

On another note, a good counter to all the mass CC, especially warrior/mage stuff will be crucial. I have this idea in my head of strategically projected capacitor totems and the old earthbind root + thunderstorm trick that procs in mid air and lands them 20-30 yards away, rooted.

[Palee]

I don't even know what to do level anymore, so I'm just leveling randomly whichever characters pop up on my screens when I log in.
Eventually, maybe by the next expansion I will have all teams up at 90.

[remanz]

Ok I just got full set of pvp gears in time before Monday night. How about gemming. PVP power > all ? I had a feeling PVP power > even primiary stats (Str) for pvp. Played some solo arena. Rets are best described as semi tanky + off healing + 2min per burst. Even the 2 min burst is mediocre comparing to Warrior, BM Hunter, or even Frost DK. As usual, the best tools Rets bring to the team is the off healing and support.

What I see from other offensive classes are:
1. Warrior and BM Hunter burst are retarded. Should not be ignored. Either CCed or take down first.
2. Demo lock is unkillable. Serving as a tank/bait in arena where locks run ahead to soak damage.
3. Frost DK outputs more sustained pressure and damage than warrior, but it is kind of squishy.
4. Mage, didn't see any good mages here. But they are definitely not as good as in Cata where they can pvp with just pve gear, and nobody can touch them. Some of these PVE mages, I killed them with just range attacks.
5. Both enhance and elemental shamans are squishy as usual. Usually targeted first by opposing teams. The burst from them are 2nd to warrior and BM hunter. But the survival is much worse compare to warrior and hunter.
6. haven't seen enough rogues/druids/monks/priests.

EDIT:

btw for shamans, 4 elementals, at around 30% PVP power, 4 elementals can 1 shot pretty much everything without immunity (even demo lock). It kinda felt like LichKing era. So aim for 30% pvp power.

[heyaz]

btw for shamans, 4 elementals, at around 30% PVP power, 4 elementals can 1 shot pretty much everything without immunity (even demo lock). It kinda felt like LichKing era. So aim for 30% pvp power.

By one shotting I assume you mean 4x flame shock + lava burst is a kill, not ascendance and spamming lava bursts in god mode equals a kill?

If so that's great to hear... I'm almost 90 and have taken a break at every level to pvp and even at 89 I still cannot one shot anything (maybe an 85 without pvp gear but who cares). The math makes sense though, 30 (or 40%?) base mitigation, 4x 30-40k lava bursts don't equal a kill on 160-300k hp. Nice to know some pvp power may change that.