mists-of-pandaria-pvp
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Censer of Eternal Agony and Bloody Coin hotfix and changes
A very brief list of hotfixes for patch 5.4.8 were introduced on Friday, brief enough that they likely escaped the attention of most players. However, if you are one of the players currently farming Bloody Coins on the Timeless Isle via the Censer of Eternal Agony, you may have noticed a few changes in the way the Censer works, and in the manner that Bloody Coins are farmed. The cooldown for the Censer of Eternal Agony has been increased from ten minutes to one hour. In addition, Fire-Watcher's Oath now has a cooldown of ten minutes, down from the one hour mark it was set at previously. Its cost is now 100 Timeless Coins, rather than 50 Bloody Coins, and the transformation now allows both mount usage and druid shape-shifting. In addition to that, the internal cooldown on earning Bloody Coins has been significantly reduced. Community Manager Lore hopped on the official forums to discuss the changes in detail.
Patch 5.4.7 arrival imminent as season 14 end is announced
We discussed in the past that a new PvP season was announced before the arrival of Warlords of Draenor, and at the time waxed lyrical on the historic durations of PvP seasons, and the impact that a new season might have on the release of the expansion. And now the season is here, and with it, patch 5.4.7, which has been tested on the PTR, including character upgrades and more. And now the two-week warning is here. This says the usual stuff, season 14 conquest items will be converted to honor cost, with the exception of those with rating requirements, which will not be available for purchase. They aim to hand out the awards, mounts and the like, within one week, but it could well take two. There is now a minimum rating of 1,000 for players to count in the title calculation. Personal rating will be reset with the season end, but as we've become accustomed to, there is no talk of an MMR reset. What does this mean for patch 5.4.7? Well, in recent history, the end of the season has coincided with the launch of the patch. While the blog is clearly saying "as early as two weeks from now", they generally stick to the two week period advertised. What will 5.4.7 bring, and how long will season 15 last? Both of these questions could be key for determining a realistic release date for Warlords. And what's more, could pre-orders begin around 5.4.7? There has not been direct confirmation, but the presence of the upgrades on the PTR suggests they are not far 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.
Patch 5.2 PvP healing changes
Within the PTR Class and Set Bonus thread, which is now on part two thanks to its gargantuan size, it's easy to miss things, which is exactly what I did with this little gem: Ghostcrawler PvP We're making a change to the way damage-to-healing conversions work so that the healing is not affected by resilience. The healing will be based on how much damage would have been done as if the target had no resilience. If you hit an opponent for 10K and have a mechanic that converts damage into 50% healing, your hit may land for 6K because of resilience, but the heal will still be 5K (50% of the unmitigated damage). This only applies to resilience, not to armor, Shield Wall or other forms of damage reduction. This change currently includes Atonement, Glyph of Battle Healer, Ancestral Guidance, Vampiric Embrace, Nature's Vigil, Glyph of Siphon Life, Eminence, Glyph of Flame Shock, Leeching Poison, Death Siphon, Feral Spirit and Soul Leech. Related, we have read feedback that certain mechanics, such as Retribution's mastery, Hand of Light, are double-dipping from resilience. If this happened, then your attack would be mitigated by resilience and then the mastery proc (which is supposed to be a percentage of the main attack) would also be mitigated by resilience. However, we can find no evidence that this is actually happening. In our testing, Hand of Light is never mitigated by resilience a second time. If anyone has additional information, please share. source
Should free-for-all PvP be applied to battlegrounds?
Yesterday, I finished gathering valor points for Wrathion, and moved on to the next step of the legendary chain. Unfortunately, this included winning two battlegrounds. I say unfortunately because while I enjoyed PvP back in the days of vanilla and Burning Crusade, I really haven't focused on PvP all that much since then. In fact, other than some excursions into Wintergrasp and Tol Barad, I tend to avoid it altogether. It's not that I don't enjoy PvP, honestly -- it's that I know, deep down in my heart, that I'm not terribly good at it. So I stay out of the battlegrounds and let those that know what they are doing excel at it. But last night's excursion into the Temple of Kotmogu and the Silvershard Mines were eye-opening, to say the least. Temple of Kotmogu was an incredibly fun frenzy of grabbing orbs and killing players, and escorting carts in the Silvershard Mines was pretty entertaining, too. Still, sometimes I miss the days where PvP was all about killing other players. It turns out, I'm not alone.
Dev Watercooler: Mists of Pandaria PvP
After announcing their intention to do so on Twitter a week or so ago, the developers, headed in this instance by Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, have posted a Dev Watercooler on Mists of Pandaria PvP. Ghostcrawler comments on MMR or Matchmaking Rating, as well as class balance, even addressing specific concerns about certain specs. He also provides a sneak peek into new features which are coming up for PvP in the future of Mists of Pandaria. Hit the break for the full post.
Conquest Point hotfix: making it harder to PvP
This has been an unfolding drama over the past few days, and for me is one of those moments where, even making the best effort, I literally cannot understand where Blizzard are going with a change to the game. For a while now, the Conquest system has remained the same. If your rating in either arenas or rated battlegrounds is below around 1550, your arena point cap is 1350 for the week. The total cap is 1650, but in order to reach that higher cap, you need to do battlegrounds. If you're doing rated battlegrounds, you can get all the way to 1650, but not with arenas, unless your rating is high enough. So, when players noticed they weren't getting their conquest above 1350, they took to the forums.
PvP Power, PvP Resilience and PvE gear
For any readers who don't know, Mists of Pandaria brought about a fairly substantial change in PvP gear. Resilience and Spell Penetration were removed, and replaced with two shiny new stats: PvP Power and PvP Resilience. PvP Resilience is essentially the same as the old Resilience stat, reducing your damage taken from other players. It's active all the time, whenever you're wearing your PvP gear. PvP Power is not, as many believe, a direct 1 for 1 counter to PvP Resilience. PvP Power increases your damage against other players. So, if you're a player who has 0 PvP power, hitting a player who has 50% damage mitigation from PvP Resilience, and your hit does 100 damage, it will only hit them for 50 damage. Say you are that same player, only now you have a 100% damage increase against other players from PvP Power. Your 100 damage hit now hits another player for 200 damage. But, the player with 50% damage mitigation is still resisting 50% of that damage, so it hits them for 100 damage. Of course, these values are not correct in-game, but we're getting to that. They're just for illustration!
New Mists of Pandaria Battlegrounds: Temple of Kotmogu
Welcome back, readers, to this second instalment of our run-down of the new Mists of Pandaria battlegrounds. There's no reason why the Temple of Kotmogu is second. It's not harder, and it's not available later. It's just the second one I wrote about. First, a word of warning. The information in this post is accurate in beta build 15961 and may change significantly before launch. Like Silvershard Mines, this battleground is only currently available at level 90. It is significantly more straightforward in construction than its mine-based sister battleground but equally as tactically interesting. I'm really excited about both these battlegrounds, and I think it's fantastic how Blizzard is introducing new styles of battleground rather than capture the flag, capture the node, and invade the keep. The in-game battleground finder screen describes the battleground as follows: The Horde and Alliance wage battle for the ancient Mogu artifact that is foretold to hold great powers. Temple of Kotmogu is a 10 vs 10 Powerball battleground where each side attempts to control the Mogu artifact for as long as possible in different scoring zones Let's take a closer look.
Arcane Brilliance: Mists of Pandaria mage glyph guide
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're talking glyphs and the mages who love them. Question: where do we keep our glyphs? Are they semi-permanent tattoos? Are they inscribed upon our clothing somewhere? Do we carry around a piece of paper with all our runes scrawled upon it? And if so, what happens to that scrap of paper when we forget to take it out of our pants before we run them through the laundry? The practical mechanics of inscription intrigue me. As time marches forward, I find myself staring intently down the barrel of my wand at the approaching pandaren invasion, realizing with each passing moment that I am entirely unprepared. So much to cover! So little time. Good thing we can Alter and Warp time, right? It's high time we discussed glyphs. I know Josh Myers previewed glyphs during my absence a few months back, but a whole lot has changed since then. This particular system has changed a bit from what we're used to. Gone are prime glyphs. Now it's just majors and minors. And the majors have been redesigned in an attempt to make them more situational and utilitarian, and this attempt seems to have been largely successful. Instead of being forced to choose between damage increase glyph A and damage increase glyph B, you will now find yourself choosing the glyphs that appeal to you most or fit your playstyle best. Cookie-cutter, must-have glyphs are by and large a thing of the past, and I submit that this is a positive change. Still, each spec will find that certain glyphs work better for them than others, and in the guide that follows, I will endeavor to advise you as best I can on which glyphs look most attractive for each school of mage.
New Mists of Pandaria Battlegrounds: Silvershard Mine
As you may be aware, there'll be two new battlegrounds arriving on our doorstep in Mists. They are the Silvershard Mine and the Temple of Kotmogu. If you listened to this week's Convert to Raid podcast, you'll have heard me talking briefly about these two battlegrounds -- but I save the best for you, dear readers, so this is a more in-depth look at the battlegrounds. Firstly, a word of warning. The information in this post is accurate in the current beta build 15913 and may change significantly before launch. So first, let's look at the more complex of the two battlegrounds, the Silvershard Mine. As the name would imply, it's in a mine. Revolutionary! More specifically, it's in a Venture Co. goblin mine underneath Stranglethorn Vale. It's described in the battleground finder tool as a 10vs10 escort battle, which is pretty accurate, as the objective of the battleground is for each faction to capture and escort mine carts to depots at the end of the line, retaining control of the carts throughout their jouney from the central depot to their destination. An added level of involvement is found at the crossroads, where players can change a mine cart's direction.
Ghostcrawler briefly discusses PvP power and PvP healing
Just a short while ago, everyone's favorite blue crab, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, posted briefly on the U.S. forums in response to a thread regarding the function of PvP power and PvP healing. This certainly makes for interesting reading and may allay some fears of the PvE community regarding the use of PvP gear in dungeons and raids. Is this testing or speculation? Because PvP Power and PvP Resilience should work anywhere with regard to DPS, but of course only when you are attacking or being attacked by other players. The only thing that doesn't work is PvP Power-fueled healing. At the moment, you only gain the healing benefit when in BGs and Arenas. The reason is because that we don't want PvP gear to be super effective for PvE content (useful is fine, but super effective is not). That design goal is easily met for damage dealers, because they won't benefit from PvP Power when damaging creatures. Unfortunately, there isn't a simple check for us to determine if a healer is healing damage done by PvP or PvE. In an Arena or BG you can make that assumption, but in the outdoor world you may be engaging in world PvP, or you may just be questing. We are considering just letting PvP Power affect healing everywhere but dungeons and raids. That would solve world PvP and only risk unbalancing group questing and world bosses. Even the world bosses probably don't represent a huge game balance risk, given that the option always exists to get tons of players together to zerg them. source So to sum up, PvP power is easily developed to work exclusively in PvP scenarios for DPS and tank specs, as the game can easily tell what you're hitting. Healing is far harder, as you're always healing people wherever you are, so the game has to test for PvP scenarios before employing the PvP power. To me, as a PvPer, the second option that GC mentions sounds far more appealing. For the PvP healing buff were to only apply in Arenas and Battlegrounds seems quite contrary to Blizzard's desire to reignite world PvP. It would also leave PvP-geared healers rather defenseless outside of the Arena and Battlegrounds, were they to be attacked on PvP servers or similar while out farming, etc. I don't think that unbalancing world bosses is a huge price to pay, particularly considering Blizzard's earlier comments regarding the likelihood of world PvP taking place around world bosses. However, I'm sure PvEers will take comfort in the knowledge that Blizzard is taking steps to keep PvP gear from becoming too powerful in PvE scenarios. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Arcane Brilliance: Which spec will be best in Mists of Pandaria?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we endeavor to answer that age old question: Which spec will other people insist my mage needs to be? We will try not to resort to that age old response to that question, which tended to involve punching those other people in the mouth. One constant, no matter how hard I've tried to ignore it, that has always existed in WoW is that one spec is always "best." The class designers are constantly tweaking the numbers and trying to keep things balanced, but once we all sit down with our collective calculator and spreadsheet, one spec always emerges to rule them all. It has been a sad reality that while we have always had freedom to choose a spec and personalize it to fit our preferences, when it comes time to raid at high levels or take part in PvP at high levels, that freedom essentially vanishes. You can make arguments for utility over damage or for certain specs in certain fights, but in most cases, under most circumstances, you're going with whatever cookie-cutter spec the internet has agreed upon that week, or you're not getting an invite. Well, now we have a fresh expansion to leverage our calculators and spreadsheets upon. It's still early in the beta process, and hard numbers are in short supply. Still, the overall design of the specs seems to be fairly well-defined, even if the actual percentage points are still in flux. What conclusions can we draw at this stage? Which spec looks to put out the best damage? And most importantly, which spec will let us kill warlocks most efficiently?
I am not going to miss Tol Barad at all
I've been making a pretty concerted effort over the past month or so to knock out all those things that I hadn't quite gotten around to finishing for one reason or another in Cataclysm. Last week saw the end of the grueling grind to get enough tokens to purchase the mount shown above, which is easily the most hideous mount I now possess. I'm not sure who thought aqua went with olive green and pink, but whoever they were, I wholeheartedly hope they aren't doing the color scheme on any further mounts. While I was pleased to get the mount despite its questionable color scheme, there was something I was far, far happier about. I got all the tokens I needed, I got the mount, and at last, at long, long last, I never had to look at Tol Barad ever again. The only things I enjoyed from Tol Barad were getting a pet and two mounts, and the backstory that never really developed further than "Here is a mysterious island with some really strange stuff and ghosts on it." The story disappointed me, the mounts and pet were happily added to the collection, and as for the rest of it ... Well, let's just say I'm not holding any candlelight vigils for the zone. In Mists of Pandaria, we don't have a Tol Barad. We don't have a Wintergrasp. And I am perfectly happy with both of those things.
The Queue: Simple and Clean
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I'm not entirely sure why, but Kingdom Hearts popped into my mind late last night. Was there anything cooler than the Battle of 1,000 Heartless back then? Heck, has there been anything cooler since? I don't think so. Hurry up with Kingdom Hearts 3, Square. I'll happily buy whatever console you decide to put that baby on. amaxewardiary asked: Q on leveling pandaren monks. Are there any changes to the 1-60 zones?
Tom Chilton on the future of PvP in Mists of Pandaria
Nethaera sat down with WoW's game director Tom Chilton and asked him some questions about PvP in Mists of Pandaria. While a lot of the information we already knew about, there are some highlights that are worth noting. The first thing is particularly interesting ... Some highlights: Blizzard is considering putting an item in-game that would let players on the ground shoot down mounted players, pulling them into combat (if they're PvP-flagged and in close enough range). There'll be no Wintergrasp or Tol Barad. City guards on PvP realms will not be as tough as guards on PvE realms (PvE realm guard strength will remain as it is now). The new BGs should be in the beta for testing in the next couple of weeks. The new BGs may be added to the rated BG list at some point in the future. Players will see opponents class and spec (although not how that spec is used) before they start an Arena match. The full blue post, after the break.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: A first look at Battleground blacklisting
Following on from today's Breakfast Topic on your favorite Battlegrounds, we're really excited to bring you the latest news from Pandaria: Battleground blacklisting is live in the beta! This long-anticipated feature allows the world-weary PvPer to go through the list and click a thumbs down icon to the right of a highlighted Battleground. You can see what the icon looks like before it is selected on the highlighted Arathi Basin on the header image. Once the little icon is red, as you can see in the header image on Alterac Valley and Strand of the Ancients, those Battlegrounds are blacklisted. When you queue for a random Battleground, those two will be excluded from your random list. It should be noted that the weekly Call to Arms Battleground cannot be blacklisted -- the "thumbs down" icon doesn't appear next to it. However, as you probably know, the Call to Arms changes every week, so the Battleground in question can go back onto your blacklist straight after the Call to Arms is over. You can blacklist a maximum of two maps at a time. To un-blacklist, simply uncheck the symbol. Being a crafty PvPer, I immediately begged a favor from the lovely Anne Stickney to see if we could blacklist more than two Battlegrounds by joining as a group. It turns out that Blizzard had already thought of that, believe it or not, and the the join as group function is currently disabled. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Early Mists of Pandaria talents and PvP
WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of Battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who spends most of her time in Azeroth as a restoration shaman turning people into frogs. The Mists talent trees have been up for a little while now, and we've all had a chance to look through them for our specific classes. I can tell you right now, I'm excited. Gone are the days of the boring talent -- you know, the one like Bane that shortens the cast time of a spell by 0.5 seconds. To my mind, the majority of these talents are like the special, gold-bordered one that you get excited about working toward as you level. Now, a caveat, as we must have said a hundred times here at WoW Insider over the past few weeks that these are in their early stages and definitely not set in stone. I mean, heck, some of them aren't even finished yet! But the ones that are there are pretty exciting from a PvP perspective. In order to avoid boring you with a huge, long list laying out each talent and discussing its potential PvP implications, I'm going to bundle them into a few categories. Trust me, I've done that discussion in my head, and it wasn't pretty. But first, let's consider these in a more overarching way. Right now, if you're facing, for example, a restoration shaman in Arena, you're likely going to have a pretty good idea of their abilities. They cast shields -- one that generates health when you hit it, and one that generates mana. They have a totem that avoids fear effects, one that grounds spells, one that increases spirit, and one that shares out the health of everyone in the swirly disco.
One gear set for PvE and PvP in Mists of Pandaria?
This has been coming up quite a lot following Ghostcrawler's recent Coffee with the Devs (where's my vanilla latte, devs?), and I thought it was something worthy of a moment's thought. I'm assuming here that all gear is equal in stats according to ilevel and it can all have PvP power/defense, or none of it can. EDIT: I want to make it clear that this is purely hypothetical, and imagined! Blizzard aren't doing this. I'm wondering what's stopping them. Now, I understand that back in the halcyon days before The Burning Crusade, resilience didn't exist in its current form. Please note, however, that this isn't meant to be a discussion on that period of WoW. So what would be the positive and negative aspects of such a system? One area where I see a bit of a struggle emerging is as follows: How do you get this gear? How does it scale? Where does the best gear come from? If I were a dev (with or without my coffee), I'd have to say that one's a tricky one. I suppose you could let people earn points from both PvE and PvP and have them spend those points, similar to valor or conquest now, except both are taken to the same vendor. You could still have lower tiers of gear available for honor or justice equivalents that are easier to reach.
Looking at the PvP stat changes outlined by Ghostcrawler
I'm sure you all have seen the latest Dev Watercooler by the big man (Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street) himself. And I'm sure you will all have noticed the biggest news in there (in my opinion, anyway) is the section about the PvP-related changes to resilience. Disclaimer: This is not absolute. Just like the changes, it's almost impossible to see how they will play out without trying them for ourselves once the beta comes along. But I want to hear your opinions, both on these changes and on my thoughts. Let's talk it out, people! First and foremost, I don't know about you, but I am really not digging the names. I reckon a tidy solution might be to sling in a PvP section in the character pane. If Blizzard did it within the character pane, it would just avoid the clumsiness of adding the "PvP" into the actual stat, and (I think) it would make it easy for players to understand what they were looking at. Of course, Blizzard could call the new stats "Bob" and "Vera" for all it would really matter to their performance!
