Arena Tournament Season 5 & patch 3.1 notes

Not many news these days, everyone is eagerly awaiting next week for, hopefully, live time for patch 3.1.

The patch notes were updated yesterday, keep in mind that these are only the updates, and not the full patch notes as class changes are much more numerous. As usual, you can find this update on MMO Champion.

The current rankings for the top 8 Season 5 Arena tournament were also given this week, for both US and EU. You can find the last ranking on this page, and a comparison (very interesting) of rankings over the last month on this one.

First of all, if you take the current rankings, I'd say that it illustrates the difference of style between EU and US players. Most US teams are more power oriented, running the most powerful classes (DK, paladin/shaman, warlock). While the top EU teams are 3 classic RMP (Rogue/Mage/Priest) that were dominant in the arena since season 3 and that these players probably play very well. I'd say looking at these graphs that EU is more old style than the US. Playstyle is definitely different.

Now if you look at the month changes, the three dominant flavor of the month powerhouses (DK,Pld,Warlock) have been going down week after week. Shamans have started to replace Paladins as 3-Man healers, they are much more aggressive oriented in fast paced teams. DK and Warlocks have fallen a bit too, because RMP revival mostly, though warlocks were absent from the EU rankings one month ago and have started their come-back there too.

Overall, much of that was expected. I guess the "surprise" for most was the dominance of Warlocks right from the start, a class which was told to be "dead" in Season 5. It is now clear that with enough resilience, it's as powerful as it ever was.

About Holy Paladins, which I was expecting is also true. We can see that, with time passing, they are starting to fall from this "top healing place" that they have never seen since Season 1. With the numerous nerfs to Arena Holy, you can rest assured that we won't see much Holy Paladins in the ranking in Season 6.

Wishing all of you a nice weekend, see you next week.