My nitro boosts no longer work in Arena? Huh? We all might’ve heard this was being considered but it didn’t make it’s way into any of the patch notes, yet the change happened anyway… The loss of boots aren’t the only ninja changes that Blizzard pulls over our eyes, the ninja nerf to Mana Burn last month is also notable: “Mana Burn has been reduced to 10% mana burned (up to a maximum of 20% of the Priests mana), down from 13% (max 26%)”. For the most part however most of the ninja changes Blizz sneaks in aren’t nerfs or buffs but simple bug fixes with PvE encounters or abilities/spells that weren’t working properly.

So where are the ninja patch notes then? Right here. Of course! A totally visible and easy to find post on the US Forums -_-

What kills me about these changes isn’t getting nerfed for balance sake but that it doesn’t get documented into the proper patch notes. Sure, most of what’s in that forum post is just minor bug fixes but things like the nitro boosts nerf really should’ve been in a proper patch note. Why? Well unlike minor bug fixes a tiny little change to something like the nitro boosts causes this:

Compare this chart to the ones from my post earlier this month and it’s obvious something has changed. All the druids learned how to play? Of course not, what happened was that the overpowered combo that was rogue/priest has lost it’s advantage. All the higher rated rogue/priests where/are engineers. The general strategy for them was to burst someone down while CC another and thanks to engineering they where both able to do that and the nitro boosts gave priests what they lacked the most: mobility.

Now that using the nitro boosts is out of the picture the 2vs2 scene has gone back to it’s old-school days where druids kite and peel you to oblivion while they’re warrior friend wears one of you down. Despite the fact that plague strike has been nerfed pally/DK is still a strong combo and a force to reckon with and probably one of the few combos able to out-cheese the cheesy of all cheesy combos, warrior/druid.

It’s almost like Blizzard wants every season to have the same combinations dominate. I’ll admit that the nerf to the boots was necessary but it’s just ridiculous how druids come out on top when they’re given breathing room.

Tags: Blizzard Forum Post, Ninja Patch Notes, Nitro Boost nerf, Rogue/Priest, Warrior/Druid

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 08:31 pm and is filed under Arena, Old School, Patch Notes, PvP, QQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.