Just a quick weekend blurb on the discoveries that’s been going on PTR. Some Arena Season 3 pieces that have been unearthed and we have the tooltips for the new and updated Alliance priest racials. Also, big news for hunters…

Arena Season 3 Itemlevels
The armor pieces (save two) and mainhand weapons are missing, but from what’s been found, we can see that S3 items have an itemlevel of 146 — a 10 ilvl jump from S2. This puts Season 3 items smack dab in the middle of Teir 6 loot and Illidan/Archimonde loot, with the legendary Warglaives a step beyond.

As this table shows, it seems that Blizzard has settled in on a 5 ilvl leapfrog between PvP and PvE items:

You can take a look at the season 3 pieces HERE.

What’s this itemlevel thing? Look HERE.

Dwarf/Draenei and Night Elf Priest Racials
Here are the tooltips for the new Alliance priest racials:

Chastise (Rank 6) — Dwarf/Draenei Priest
20 yd range
0.5 sec cast
30 sec cooldown
Chastise the target, causing 370 to 430 Holy damage and Incapacitates them for up to 2 sec. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Only works against Humanoids. This spell causes very low threat.
Cost: 300 mana

Starshards (Rank 8 ) — Night Elf Priest
30 yd range
Instant
30 sec cooldown
Rains starshards down on the enemy target’s head, causing 785 Arcane damage over 15 sec.
Cost: None

These are some serious upgrades that will have an impact in the arenas. Dwarf/Draenei priests will have a stun/interrupt every 30 seconds that’s almost instant cast. With the heal/spell damage stat change, all specs will be doing decent damage with it.

For night elves, Starshards looks like a DOT that comparable to the undead’s Devouring Plague. The damage may be a little lower overall, there are two major advantages: (1) a much shorter cooldown (30 secs vs. 3 mins) and (2) no mana cost! Devouring Plague’s cost of 1145 mana seems almost unbalanced in comparison.

Hunter Dead Zone Removal
The big news for hunters is that Blizzard is getting rid of the dead zone:

We’re planning to shrink the min range on ranged attacks to reduce or eliminate the “dead zone”. The only point to the dead zone was to ensure the min range on ranged weapons was enough such that ranged weapon attacks wouldn’t be used while also being melee’d (at least by mobs… players have a bit of slush built in). -Kalgan

Although Blizzard states that the mechanic was only originally intended for PvE purposes, this sudden change is surprising since it’s been in the game since day 1. I believe that this change was specifically put in to increase hunter effectiveness in arenas. Hunters are the lowest represented class in all three brackets and anything to help increase hunter participation in arenas is welcomed IMO.

Tags: News

13 Responses to “Season 3 Item-levels, Priest Racials and Deadzones”

1. Reinhold Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 12:37 am

   Those hunter changes might be good in that they bring up their numbers in Arena… but I fail to see how this will not, at the same time, completely imbalance them in every other aspect of pvp. They are already the unquestionable gods of BGs like AV and EOTS. Competent duelers and excellent world PvP’ers.

   I fear that Blizz was unable to surgically target a more arena specific buff for that class and as a result they will simply run amok in OP nastiness the way they did when 2.0 was first released.

2. Nerio Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:58 am

   Reply to the Hunter Changes.
   Am actualy agreaing with Reinhold on this one as anyone who reads the wow forums regularely or plays arena knows that hunters want a way to get range, not just more tools to perform at range..

   Althouge the change to deadzone have to be tested before further coments.

   No suprise thouge that bliz does things with one aspeckt of wow in mind forgeting the grater impackt on the game.

   Nerio - War of Outland

3. nevermore Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 3:33 am

   All I hear from PvPers is that BGs and world PvP matter not one iota. Are serious PvPers going to be concerned about Hunters dominating world PvP (laff)? No. Or AV? No.

   And while Hunters are currently very effective in Battlegrounds, calling them ‘unquetionable gods’ is rather overstating things.

   Granted Hunters were very much OP during 2.0 (a short timeframe), they are BY FAR the least developed class in terms of mechanics and class synergy.

   Compared to a class like Shaman or Mage, which are highly developed classes in terms of mechanics; Hunters have always been dead least in terms of their design development. They are long overdue some serious developer attention.

4. Reinhold Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 11:45 am

   Think game wide big picture here. Not just arena.

   I have a level 70 hunter in quest greens.

   I can walk into any AV, at any time of the day, on any day of the week… and top the charts (assuming some other Hunter isn’t trying to do the same) simply because of the nature of that class and the nature of those battlegrounds. Ditto for AB and EOTS. I have played 3 other classes, 2 competitively, and none even come close to comparing in this aspect.

   Sure, the hardcore esport jocks ONLY care about Arena (though most of them would die for a WSG ladder) - however, and thankfully, we (and yes I include myself in there) are not the only people who play this game and Arena is not the only feature of WoW.

   These are uninspired class wide buffs that attempt to address arena weakness without concern for the rest of the PvP game. It is poor design and with a little creativity they could have found a more targeted arena change.

   Want an example? Blind. The blind change is a targeted change that will help rogues out in Arena but will not substantially tip the balance of the class anywhere else. The same type of specific arena change was needed for hunters, not insane buffs.

5. Ive Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

   Does the deadzone change affect intercept range?

   5-8 isn’t so great as is, but it’s still USEFUL and I’d be kindof sad to see something that used to be so huge just go away :.(

6. Serph Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

   I dont believe people are whining about the deadzone change…so what if a hunter can top damage in a BG! How does eliminating their deadzone effect that?

7. Reinhold Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

   If the deadzone were the only buff the class is getting we wouldn’t be having a conversation about this. They are getting purge, probably a disarming shot, and there is talk of giving them a ranged mortal strike.

   These are sick buffs for a class that is already outstanding in all pvp sans arena. They didn’t need insane class wide buffs that will further inflate their prowess in other areas… they needed arena specific buffs.

8. Skel Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 4:37 am

   what they need to do is fix arena maps so there arent so many LOS issues. Fixes hunters IMO

9. Skel Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 4:38 am

   Oh and I thought the skill of playing the hunter was being able to kite classes. Not to just stand there and not worry about range.

10. Ziss Says:
    October 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am

    But usually the Hunter is the one getting ‘kited’ trying to get back in LoS to shoot while the other team just makes a run for it around the pillar… lol

11. Fasteddy Says:
    October 15th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

    It seems eliminating the deadzone will make hunters godly. That’s like eliminating range for rogues. If a rogue could do the same damage regardless of range they’d be unbeatable. It seems ridiculous in principle but maybe it will fit into game mechanics ok.

    Hunters are the kings of pve now. They are also the kings of BGs. I don’t see how they will avoid making hunters overpowered with this buff…

12. Serph Says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    FYI: it was stated by Kalgan that the deadzone was never intended to be exploited the way it has in pvp. Thus, this is a fix 3 years coming.

    The change will happen.

13. Morgan Says:
    October 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 am

    how stupid, just because hunters arnt the most played they give it a real mad buff, concussion shot at close range? please….. its like having no LOS on a warlock… come on!

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