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Battlegrounds in 5 seconds: Deepwind Gorge, Temple of Kotmogu, Silvershard Mines
One of the things which came up from my earlier posts about the basics and mentality of how to PvP, as well as the initial gearing and more in-depth gearing post, was that it might be helpful for some players to put together a Bosses in 5 seconds-style guide for battlegrounds. No, I'm not going into in-depth strategy here, that's something for another day, these are just quick, light guides for each BG to help someone out who has no idea what they're doing. Deepwind Gorge First team to 1600 gold wins. Capturing mines earns gold per mine per second. There are three mines in a line. From north to south, Pandaren, Center, Goblin. Horde have a minor advantage capping the Goblin mine, Alliance with the Pandaren mine. Carts can be picked up by clicking them. Picking up a cart removes 200 gold from your opponent's total, capturing the cart adds 200 gold to yours. If they return the cart before it's captured, they get that 200 gold back. You pick up the cart in the opposing faction base, and carry it all the way back to your own base. Killing the cart carrier makes them drop it, then it can be picked up or returned. Some speed boosts work while you're pulling the cart. Priority to win: Hold 2 bases, prevent the enemy from capturing your cart, capture the enemy cart. More detail here.
Warlords of Draenor: A peek at Diminishing Returns changes
Senior PvP designer Brian Holinka has been on Twitter today clarifying the changes to diminishing returns in Warlords of Draenor. Along with the recently posted indications of changes to CC, Community Manager Lore tweeted and then posted about the changes to DR, or Diminishing Returns: Lore One other thing I just mentioned on Twitter that I'd like to bring up here as well -- we're also planning on having fewer DR categories (and thus, more shared DR's) in WoD. Again, still in development, anything can change, but that's what we're looking at. source The reduction in DR categories is welcome indeed, as we've discussed here in the past, there are 117 abilities across 13 categories, excluding things which CC and don't DR at all. This is baffling for new PvPers, and even advanced players often won't know every spell's category. As part of the big CC cull in Warlords, Blizzard's devs are looking to simplify DR. And Holinka has added more detail to their plans.
Warlords of Draenor: Base resilience and Battle Fatigue potentially eliminated
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been tweeting up a storm today on the topic of PvP design plans for Season 15 and Warlords of Draenor, the most interesting of which is the following: @Linklmm We dislike how large base resil and battle fatigue numbers have gotten too. Out goal is to reduce or eliminate both in Warlords. - Holinka (@holinka) January 9, 2014 I think this is an admirable goal, base resilience and battle fatigue are confusing to some, and annoying to others, but I'd be really interested to see how they do it. Resilience, although not Battle Fatigue, has been part of the game almost since PvP first got instanced, and it's a valuable option for the devs to tune incoming PvP damage so that it can cope with the ever-inflating stat levels in PvE. Yes, there'll be a squish, but then PvE will still almost certainly scale up. So I'm pleased they aren't planning on taking the rather bold step of completely removing it, to leave themselves without the option to reintroduce it easily would seem a little foolhardy, and not something they'd be likely to do. I'd imagine that if it were to go, there'd have to be some method to increase player health, or at least effective health, in instanced PvP, and there'd have to be some formula changes to healing, too. I'm looking forward to beta!
How to PvP
Recently I've written a couple of guides on initial PvP gearing and the most efficient ways to get honor, and on PvP gearing in more detail. Along the way in those two guides, I've been touching briefly on various aspects of how you can get started in PvP, but what I've never done here at WoW Insider is just spell out what to do from the ground up. Let's say you've never PvP'd before. Let's say you've never even dueled. You might be a high-end heroic raider, you might be someone who's just got their first level 20. What do you need to know? Death is not a failure Honestly, if you only read one line of this article, make it that one. And this one, I guess, or you wouldn't know which one to read. If you're a PvE-er it's particularly relevant. You'll have the mentality of wiping, of death being the end of a pull, the end of a run, a failure. And this mentality will cause you to hate PvP. In random battlegrounds, where the majority of PvP takes place, death should be treated as a time-out.
PvP gearing in detail, and what next?
I wrote recently about how to get started with PvP gearing, focusing on the most efficient ways to gain honor points for your initial PvP gearing, when to replace PvE gear and so on. I was pleased to get many messages saying that it was helpful, and a fair few more asking what they should do next. People wondered what gear they should buy first for Conquest, how they should find arena teams and RBG teams and so on. So I thought I'd help you out with some of that information too. Updated for Season 15 Gear Purchase Order This was the topic of much discussion, as all I did was give a few suggestions for priority pieces, rather than a hard-and-fast gearing order. A big part of the reason I did that was that it's very personal, it's up to you, and some people will prefer one approach over another. There are various things to consider, so let me spell them out: There are bonuses to be had from various items: Bonus to a key ability on gloves +2600 +5280 PvP Resilience from having 2 PvP trinkets 2-set bonus: spec specific bonus and +500 PvP Power 4-set bonus: spec specific bonus and +1000 PvP Power There is a points earned requirement of 7250 on any weapon except Honor point off-hands. Weapons cost 3500, so starting from 0 you have 3750 to spend before you start saving for weapons. Unless you are a human, you really need a trinket that removes movement-impairing effects, or "freedom trinket" on your character.
How to gear for PvP right now
It's that time in the expansion again, the time I love, when people have killed Garrosh enough times that they're tired of it, and are looking for something else to entertain themselves. They're leveling alts, and farming or doing pet battles, but the rep grinds and scenario runs seem futile, given how the resultant loot will be replaced by greens come Warlords. So what do they turn to? PvP! I can see this starting to happen already, with the influx of tweets and emails asking me about the best way to gear up for PvP. And it's a good question, because with the current standing of PvE gear in PvP, you might need a little guidance on where to start. Item Levels In instanced PvP right now, item level scaling is in place. Your PvE gear is downscaled to a shifting item level between 496 and 512. The current ilvl is 508, and it's increasing by 1 per week. The best your PvE gear will ever be in instanced PvP is 512. PvP gear purchased for honor is ilvl 496. PvP gear purchased for conquest is ilvl 522, and is not downscaled.
Awesomenauts: Starstorm brings the McPain on December 12
An early version of Ronimo Games' Starstorm expansion for Awesomenauts will be available on Thursday. The developer earned $345,835 in September on Kickstarter to fund the expansion, which will feature five new characters and a map for the arena battler, in addition to a new spectator mode and replay system. Thursday's expansion is the first of many updates for the game, and focuses on one of the five playable Starstorm characters, Ted McPain, "one of the great heroes of the first AI Wars." The pants-less character comes with a transformable weapon, which switches between a shotgun and a rapid-fire machine gun. The developer says that Thursday's early access DLC also includes the first set of custom game settings, including a new deathmatch game mode. The full Starstorm expansion is expected to be be complete by the end of 2014, and Ronimo Games will continue to launch pieces of the DLC in multiple stages over the coming months.
My Warlords of Draenor PvP wishlist, and looking back at Mists
So, let's have at this again. A fair while back I wrote a similar article for Mists of Pandaria PvP, and in all honesty, I was giggling to myself looking back at it. At the time I wrote it, I'd been chatting with Eldacar, PvP theorycrafter extraordinaire, and bouncing ideas around. We both felt, ironically, that CC was a little out of hand. We were worried that too much existed, and that it had the potential to become a problem. And how right we were! Fortunately, a CC squish is inbound. But I did get a lot of what I wished for. Role-specific queues in random battlegrounds, and associated matchmaking was introduced in 5.3, and bots are slowly being whittled down. PvE gear has been squashed a lot better in instanced PvP, although it still massively prevails in world PvP. Burst damage is becoming less and less of a problem, with a few notable exceptions (I'm looking at you, elemental shaman). And what's more, while the implementation had some ill effects, one thing I wanted to see but was conflicted about came into play with The Crowd Chose You, and later with Dampening and the fix to make teams who've lost more players lose the arena too. We did pretty well, altogether. But there were plenty of things we didn't get. Has my wishlist changed? Yes, in that I now want an even bigger moon on an even longer stick. Again, do note that these are just desires. Where I am aware of Blizzard talking about things being done, I'll say so.
Warlords of Draenor: What CC needs to be cut?
Blizzard Community Manager Lore posted yesterday about the devs' plans to reduce CC with Warlords of Draenor's changes to abilities. If you haven't been keeping up, their general plan is a so-called ability squish, removing certain skills from every class, with a particular focus on those suffering from button bloat, such as hunters and shaman. We spoke a little while back about how they should cut abilities, and what you could stand to lose, and now Lore's weighing on CC. Lore We are planning to take a strong look at CC in Warlords with the intent of dialing things back a little. We do think it's important that players are rewarded for using CC intelligently (by coordinating usage, being mindful of diminishing returns, etc), but we think we can approach things in a way that allows us to tone down CC overall while still providing that gameplay. source To me, the key here is this: "We do think it's important that players are rewarded for using CC intelligently..." CC, in my opinion should have to be used intelligently. It shouldn't be something you use just because it's off cooldown, because there's no risk to using it, because it's effectively a surefire thing. That is not intelligently using CC, that's using CC blindly, and it's because there's no risk to doing so. So, what's bad CC? What would I cut, if it was up to me?
Conan plays WoW, talks to the devs at BlizzCon
Conan O'Brien stopped by BlizzCon to do some arena match commentating, which you may have seen earlier, but what you didn't see was that he also interviewed Game Director Tom Chilton and sat down to play a little Warlords of Draenor with Production Director J Allen Brack. He also interviews one of the arena teams. There's the usual jabs at gaming stereotypes, but I got some laughs from him trying to trash talk another player and complaining about dying from a fall into snow. The earlier video showing the full 25 minutes of arena commentating was a little bit much to slog through, but once edited down for TV it's a lot funnier.
Warlords of Draenor's Trial of the Gladiator
Warlords of Draenor is bringing some big changes to many parts of the game and PvP is no exception. Not only are there various long-overdue UI changes coming in, but we're also going to be seeing a whole new PvP island zone, a new system of measuring battleground performance and a new arena ladder: Trial of the Gladiator. Of these, the biggest change, the biggest thing people are worried about is certainly the Trial of the Gladiator system. So, let's dispel some myths about that. Lore I don't know where this idea came from, but just to clear things up, we have no plans to remove the current Arena ladder. source World of Warcraft Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka was also very clear on the BlizzCon Global Invitationals stream, on the virtual ticket videos, at 8:43:28 on the second video of the first day's play, that the existing ladder wasn't changing. The Trial of the Gladiator is going to be a completely new system on top of what currently exists. Trial of the Gladiator: What is it, and why? Trial of the Gladiator is, on a very basic level, a system that allows players to gain rating and ladder position at specific times through the week. So, for example, if you want to gain rating and try for a title this season, you'd want to be playing at these times. They might be Saturday at 10am, maybe also Wednesday at 6pm, Monday at 8pm, Tuesday at 4pm, and so on.
Conan O'Brien takes over Arena casting at BlizzCon
We're all used to some serious names taking the commentator's seat for the Arena Global Invitational at BlizzCon, but this year a first-round series between Skill-Capped and Flash Wolves got a special treat from the world's best gamer, Conan O'Brien. Conan took his Clueless Games segment to BlizzCon and joined Adam "Hoodrych" Brown and Jared "VHell" Coulston to lend some gravitas and real gaming knowledge to the commentary. The full 25-minute version you see above will no doubt be condensed down into something far shorter for the show itself, as on watching it I certainly found the whole thing rather stilted and awkward, but there are some funny moments tucked away in there which will no doubt make for great TV. It's also possible that I'm just not used to Conan's comedy style. But I certainly cracked a smile at certain points, especially where he was grabbing the more knowledgeable casters' tidbits on, for example, gateway usage, and accidentally saying just the right thing! Oh and paladin healers? Conan says to make sure you use your potions.
Are you already dodging expansion spoilers?
It has begun. The Warlords of Draenor are already pushing their way into our consciousness -- and players who are allergic to spoilers have already begun the slow push back from the table. BlizzCon weekend and the tidal wave of announcements isn't the issue, not at all. Pretty much everyone likes to watch expansion trailers and poke through teasers about the new gameplay features ahead. But once BlizzCon is a wrap, fans begin gnawing at the edges. Will players be able to opt out of this new thing or that new thing? How does this change over here affect hunters? And for the love of Elune, won't someone think of spirit?! It's easy to get sucked into the debate, only to find yourself several months down the line sitting disconsolately in a puddle of tweaks, hits and misses with no idea which things might actually be coming to pass and which turned out to be pipe dreams. It might have been easier to wait for the beta to shake things out. Have you drunk your fill of details about Warlords of Draenor? Have you already turned a deaf ear to the roar and begun dodging expansion spoilers?
Arena combat game Forced now on Steam, 20 percent off until Halloween
Action arcade game Forced is now available on Steam. The multiplayer-focused combat arena game is 20 percent off ($11.99) until October 31. Forced is described as a mix between Diablo and Left 4 Dead, featuring local and online cooperative battles for up to four players. Players control slaves in one of four skill classes in "the toughest fantasy gladiator school of them all, condemned to fight to the death." Forced is available on PC, Mac and Linux and also comes in a four pack bundle, currently discounted to $35.99, for those that know exactly who they'll team up with in the game's campaign. The game's developer BetaDwarf has a unique history, as the group of eight lived in an abandoned classroom at Aalborg University in Denmark for roughly seven months while creating Forced. After the developer's hideout was discovered by one of the school's instructors, the team of ten lived together under one roof while continuing development. Additionally, BetaDwarf raised $65,413 on Kickstarter in December 2012 to fund the project.
PvP developer round-tables taking place at Blizzard
PvP has been a hotbed of discussion and change since Blizzard hired new PvP design guru, Brian Holinka, to their development team. And this week that discussion is going to ramp up even more, as a group of the world's best PvPers descend upon Blizzard HQ in Irvine, California, for a day of discussion, debate and design. Of course, PvP is the focus, and these players will be joined by several of Blizzard's most senior developers to talk about where we stand, the plethora of changes that Mists has brought in, and the future of WoW PvP. The player attendee list, reading like a Who's Who of top PvP streamers, is Hoodrych, Rzn, Venruki, Tosan, Talbadar, Sodah, Reckful, Nadagast, Kollektiv, Athlete, and Vanguards, who's also joining me on the Press side. If you wished you were a fly on the wall in this discussion, let me be your eyes and ears! I'll be reporting back with as much information as possible, but first, a question. It doesn't matter if you're a multiglad, or just someone who wants to get into PvP but feels there's an issue standing in your way -- pick an answer below and let me know why in the comments! Yes, I know, I missed your specific issue. Pick one from the list and tell me why I'm awful. %Poll-85127%
Arena stealth changes coming soon
With the announcement of the upcoming replacement of The Crowd Chose You with the Dampening mechanic, many players have been worried about stealth classes, particularly rogues, being able to abuse the Shadow Sight system currently in place in arenas to stealth until the Dampening debuff starts to ramp up. At the moment, rogues can grab the crystals, intended for their opponents to be able to see them, and immediately disappear. This is most notably the case for rogues, although night elf feral druids can put Shadowmeld to use here. Blizzard CM Lore has posted on the forums about an upcoming change to remove this issue from arenas: Lore Quick update: several of you have expressed a concern about stealth teams staying hidden until late in the game, when Dampening starts to stack. This would require them to grab Shadow Sight orbs as much as possible, which would be tricky but is actually possible (particularly with mechanics like Vanish). We're not totally sure it would be a problem, as it would require quite a bit of skill and more than a little luck to pull off, but we do see the concern and want to avoid promoting that sort of behavior. So, when the Dampening change goes in, we'll also be changing the Shadow Sight debuff to prevent the player who picks up the orb from using stealth mechanics while it's active. That will also include abilities like Vanish or Shadowmeld. source
The future of CC and Diminishing Returns
Following his post on Friday listing out the giant categorization of Diminishing Returns (DR) in PvP, Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted again regarding the future of DR and its PvP implications. Lore As our senior PvP designer Brian Holinka tweeted over the weekend, we've got some pretty solid goals for the future regarding crowd control. We do think it needs to be toned back a bit, both in the amount of CC effects available and in how frequently they can be used. That said, CC is still an integral part of World of Warcraft PvP. Dealing with it intelligently, both in choosing when to use your own CC as well as reacting to opponent CC's, does have strong gameplay value. Quote: Honestly going to guess they're getting the exact opposite of what they planned from it. Our only "plans" were to try to make an admittedly confusing system less so. Confusion about which CC effects share DR's doesn't help anyone. source So where do we go from here? First up, the post he's referring to in the section about their "plans" is the Diminishing Returns list published last week. This is an incredibly useful resource, which all teams should have at least a cursory glance at before they start trying to make CC chains. There's no need to memorize it, but it's good to have an idea of how your comp's CC works. But that aside, it's a pretty scary list. As Lore mentions above, Brian Holinka tweeted about their plans to rectify the issues behind the DR system in the next expansion. What are the options? What should they do? What shouldn't they do?
Definitive word from Blizzard on Diminishing Returns
Diminishing Returns on CC is one of PvP's more confusing systems. DR, as people call it, is the mechanic whereby if you're repeatedly CC'd by CCs of the same nature, the duration is shorter the second time, shorter again the third, and then you're immune. The tricky question is, of course, what DRs with what? So if you're feared, does that mean subsequent Seductions will be shorter? If you're CCing with Sap, does that mean that a Hex used straight out of it will be shorter in duration? Various sources have had a stab at sorting out just exactly what DRs with what else, but there is so much mixed messaging and conflicting information out there. I was researching it for a column, and struggling, so I dropped PvP Designer Brian Holinka a line on Twitter. He came back saying that he'd try to get the CM team to put something together, and he's a man of his word. Community Manager Lore just posted a summary of just what DRs with what. How do you use it? Well go on over to the forum thread he made, do a CTRL+F of the spell you're looking for, and you'll be able to see what it DRs with. If you want to look at specific categories, then follow the links in the first post. This is a truly fantastic resource, and it's about time there was a definitive source of this information. But my god, there needs to be some optimization done in this system. It's insanely huge and confusing and hard to remember. Stick with your own spells at first, when you're working out your comp's CC chains, and worry about the rest as you go! Do you want to capture flags, invade cities, attack towers, and dominate the enemy for your faction? Do you dream of riding your War Bear with pride? We'll steer you to victory with secrets of Battlegrounds and Arena, prepping you with proven addons and keybindings that win! Send questions or comments to olivia@wowinsider.com.
The Crowd Chose You: Upcoming changes
We told you a change was coming, and as Blizzard Community Manager Lore posted late last night, Blizzard has an idea in the works to replace The Crowd Chose You, the controversial arena match-ending buff. It seems from his post that it isn't quite ready to go at this point, but nonetheless, they have a plan. Lore With Patch 5.4, we added a mechanic called "The Crowd Chose You" to Arena gameplay. This mechanic was added to suit two primary goals: keep the game from dragging on too long, and make sure matches always end with one team declared the winner. However, we wanted something that wouldn't make players feel they needed to change how they played the game. Unfortunately, the implementation of The Crowd Chose You that went live with Patch 5.4 is not filling that last requirement. So, we're going to take a different approach. In an upcoming hotfix, we'll be removing The Crowd Chose You entirely, and replacing it with a new mechanic called Dampening. If a match should last for 10 minutes, all players in the Arena will begin to receive a stacking debuff that reduces healing done by 1% every 10 seconds. This will continue until one team is eventually able to claim the victory. In the extremely unlikely event that neither team has won after 20 minutes, the match will end in a draw. We feel that this mechanic will have a much smaller impact on playstyle, team composition, and decision making than The Crowd Chose You, and thus result in more fun and exciting matches. We're currently testing the hotfix internally, and will provide an update when it goes live. source
The Crowd Chose You: A change is coming
Last week, I had a lengthy discussion with myself about The Crowd Chose You, the arena match-ending buff. I'm not going to go back through all the detail I covered in that article, or all the theories I had for how they could improve this problematic system. Nor am I going to go into the detail on how I thought that the very worst thing the Blizzard PvP team could do right now was to make further changes to arena tie-breaks in the game, to go further down the rabbit hole. Nonetheless, the post Community Manager Lore made today is completely non-specific about what's actually happening. All he says is as follows: Lore We're not really happy with how The Crowd Chose You is working out at the moment. We're exploring a few options for exactly what we'd like to do, but we will be changing it. source I am going to remain cautiously optimistic that they will not make a bad call, and stack the buff up with some other mechanic. I'm also hoping they don't go down the route of stacking debuffs, as I discussed at length in the previous article. From Lore's follow-up post, it doesn't look like they will be testing anything on the PTR, so live servers will become test servers for whatever they decide to do. I'd be happy if they just reverted it to what it was before, and went back to the drawing board rather than messing around with the season any more than they have already. We'll see what comes to pass.
