Patch 5.4 PTR: Arena tie-break system revamp with a 1,000% damage buff

Blizzard Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted over the weekend in response to a player who sent over this image of a buff on his character on the PTR. "The Crowd Chose You!!!" i

s a buff that, as you can see from the tooltip, gives huge additional damage, as well as preventing that player from taking any damage. The person who captured the shot tweeted to Holinka asking for clarification, as you would in that situation, and Holinka replied, saying that it was a tie-breaker.

Naturally this caused quite a lot of excitement among Holinka's followers, with some people getting rather upset and worried that this would somehow result in a race to see who was the first to press their button, or similar, so Holinka followed up with a further tweet clarifying exactly what the buff would be used for.

Now, what this means is that the fears of players who are saying "this buff is OP" are unfounded. This will most likely be applied to a player or players on the team that the tie-break system concludes should have won an arena match that is about to time out, allowing that player or those players to bring the match to a close, removing their opponents' ability to turtle or use stealth to hide.

What remains in question, and as Holinka adds this will be covered by future patch notes, is just how exactly the game decides to award this buff to one team or another. I've discussed this previously in a Blood Sport column, but that system is the important element here, although the buff is cool. I personally think that, once the buff is active, there should be a block on any player leaving the arena. Because if players just left, that would really spoil your fun!