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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
Is crowd control out of control?
There has been an interesting discussion taking place over on the EU forums with Blizzard Community Manager Nakatoir about the state of crowd control in PvP. There seems, predictably, to be a focus on arenas in the discussion, which is logical, since they seems to be where crowd control is generally used most effectively. Nakatoir's contributions are largely in response to complaints from players about chain CC. Chain CC is where an opposing team manage to keep a player controlled for a long period of time by "chaining" together their crowd control abilities. This can be a hugely frustrating experience, as a good CC chain can keep a player out of action for a long period of time. Often, as is the CC-ing team's plan, long enough to land a kill on the CC'd player's team-mate. Nakatoir provides some great advice for countering CC, rightly saying that chaining together one 33-second chain of CC, as one poster describes, requires a great deal of focus and communication. A CCing team is playing offensively, if they're using the CC to land a kill rather than to turtle, and sometimes attack is the best form of defense.
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.
The state of PvP: Current issues, balance and communication
First and foremost, before we get into the heavy stuff, I wanted to give a brief run-down of the Tol'viron Arena. As you can see from the header image, it's very similar to Nagrand Arena, the 4-pillar arena much beloved of caster teams and tree-huggers everywhere. Again, if you take a look at the header image you can see that there are 2 pillars on one side, and one on the other. The result of this from the games I've had so far is simply that most caster teams prefer the two-pillar side, while melee teams will try to draw casters out. It's much the same play experience as Nagrand Arena, only with slightly fewer options for pillar-humping. The three pillars seem to be equidistant apart, with the two pillars naturally closer to the doors, and quite a run to the single pillar at the start. The runs between the pillars are somewhat longer than in Nagrand, so be aware of your line of sight and distance to healers if you're both on different pillars. This arena seems to only rarely permit a healer to hug one pillar while healing a DPS who is hugging another, range-wise. Be aware! Also, I ran to the wrong side at the start several times. Get your bearings!
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.
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!
Mists of Pandaria Arena Pass Realm: PvP Sandbox?
If you're signed up to the 2012 Arena Pass realm, chances are you're fairly into your PvP. I can imagine that you, like me, are daydreaming about the changes to your favourite class in Mists of Pandaria, and wondering what you'll be playing when the Pandas come to town. Maybe you're thinking of switching your main PvP character to something different, or, like me, wondering whether a pandaren will actually be the best race for your preferred class. Wouldn't it be great if there was some way you could have a go with a max-level, fully geared character shortly after the start of Mists before you had to make such a big decision? Guess what? If you signed up for the 2012 Arena Pass realm, it's likely that you can! Blizz Blue Nakatoir posted the following a few weeks back, in a dark corner of the EU forums: Nakatoir Sorry to come back to this so late. But I just wanted to let you know that we plan to have the level 90 realm up as soon as possible after the release of Mists of Pandaria, it may even be accessible within weeks after the release but this is not guaranteed. "What does this mean for me?" you might ask, well this means that you may be able to access the Mists Arena Pass realm and get the epic PvP gear long before it is possible to have close to the same level of gear on the live realms. So you may be able to have access to the best PvP gear on the Arena Pass realm before most people will even have any on the live realms. :O source I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited about this! 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!
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!
What I want to see from Mists of Pandaria 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. Unless you've been living in the little cave on Darkmoon Island for the past few months (and frankly, if you have, well done -- that must be one awesome time machine!), you'll have heard about the impending expansion. I previously posted a short plea for WoW Insider readers to head over to Blizzard MVP Eldacar's thread asking for PvP feedback over on the official forums, and it got me thinking about what I would love to see from PvP in Mists of Pandaria. Now, I'm excited about the upcoming changes that Blizzard is talking about; you've no doubt seen the information over on Battle.net. Resilience as a baseline stat sounds pretty great to me and will make PvP at lower-level brackets a bit more fun, but I'm curious to see how Blizzard's going to scale it within those brackets. If it scales with level, then a level 64 is going to have an even easier time beating up a level 60 and basically being a one-toon killing machine. And this won't serve to help PvP at lower levels at all, although it will make entry into max-level PvP a lot easier. And the new Battlegrounds look interesting, the proposed Valley of Power BG especially, because the premise is pretty simple. I don't think overcomplicated Battlegrounds that require complex player-environment interaction are the most fun. I prefer simple maps that place the emphasis on, you know, killing the opposite faction. There's a term for that, I'm sure ... Oh, yeah. PvP! But I'm thinking big, ladies and gentlemen, really big -- Azerothian-moon-on-a-stick big. Now, a brief disclaimer: This is fantasy from the deranged mind of an Englishwoman and certainly not a scoop of exciting early news. I'm just throwing this out there!
