Blue Notes: Devastate reverted, BG matching system in for 2.1

Here's a couple of 2.1 changes that may have slipped by some people's radar amidst the furor about T6 graphics and whatnot. First off, the Warrior skill Devastate, which had been changed to "strike with both weapons when dual-wielding," is being reverted, since it seems to be doing too much damage:

The change to Devastate in 2.1 is being reverted and will not be a change for the patch once it goes live. We've done some additional damage testing and the output is in far excess of what we had thought it would provide.

And secondly, the much-discussed battleground gear matching system is in fact in for 2.1, although it wasn't in the patch notes:

The matching system is in for 2.1; however it picking and choosing is fairly loose to match the amount of people playing in the battlegrounds currently. There simply aren't as many people playing now, from say when the new honor system had launched, and we would rather get players into battleground matches sooner than have them wait around just to match them with the people they were probably going to be matched with anyway. We'll be continuing to tighten up or loosen how stingy the matching is as the number of players in the battlegrounds increases or decreases, respectively.

Bottom line is that with enough people in queue you're going to see some better matching, but in the lower levels where there's generally already slim pickings the chance you'll see a twink every once in a while is probably pretty good.

The matching system is an attempt to get around the issue of twinking, basically. By trying to match players with similar gear together, twinks will fight other twinks, and non-twinks will fight other non-twinks, which I think is how most people would want it. When asked why the matching system didn't make the notes, Drysc responded: I would guess it's because the patch notes don't fill themselves in as we make changes.