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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.
Dissecting the Dev Watercooler on PvP
A few days ago, Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street released a very lengthy Dev Watercooler on Mists of Pandaria PvP. Now that the dust has had a chance to settle, we're going to take a look at the blog and its implications for PvP right now. Next time we might look at some of their zany ideas for future PvP! MMR MMR, or Match-Making Rating is how teams are matched in rated PvP. MMR is separate from rating, but both are altered when you win or lose against other rated teams. Explaining the difference between the two is a little tricky, but essentially, MMR is how your matches are found. MMR is linked to players and teams, so a player forming a new team will carry some of their MMR with them from previous PvP escapades, in order for them not to face far lower-rated players. Rating is also linked to both players and teams, but doesn't dictate who you face. Rating is won and lost via winning and losing against teams with better and worse MMRs. Say you're at 1500 MMR and 1500 rating, and you face a team at 1600 MMR and 1600 rating, and you lose. You will only lose a small amount of rating, let's say 5, and they will only gain a small amount, again let's say 5. Both your MMRs will adjust similarly. Now say you beat them. They will lose a big chunk of rating, but likely not such a big chunk of MMR. You, equally, will gain a big chunk of rating, and depending on how many matches you've played, likely gain a reasonable amount of MMR. The MMR is saying "hey these guys beat a 1600 team. They're better than a 1500 MMR".
More Conquest Point Changes: PvP to PvE?
Following the recent alteration to a so-called bug which had existed since the launch of Patch 4.2, conquest points are to undergo further alteration. In preparation for Patch 5.1's system, which will allow PvP and PvE players to upgrade their gear with all four types of point, Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri has posted about an upcoming increase to the conquest point cap: Daxxarri To help everyone keep up with the upcoming system in 5.1 that will allow you to upgrade your Conquest gear with Conquest Points, a hotfix is being implemented very soon that will raise the Conquest Point caps: At 1500 rating, the Arena Conquest Cap will now be 1800 (up from 1350), while the Rated Battleground Conquest cap will be 2200 (up from 1650). As always, when your rating increases, so will your cap. Plan accordingly! source While this is a welcome change, the question remains: does this repair the earlier issue of players having to enter rated battlegrounds to complete the weekly cap? We aren't sure. And furthermore, it seems possible that Blizzard's team could be opening themselves up to a second issue. Since the stats on PvP gear were altered to all but match those on PvE gear, PvP gear is viable in PvE. But conquest gear has no reputation requirements, and conquest points can be earned far faster than valor, with one arena win awarding 180 points. With these increased caps, will PvP become the way to gear for PvE? Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Beast mastery hunters may escape Stampede nerf
Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street posted a lengthy Dev Watercooler yesterday, focused on Mists of Pandaria PvP. Within that Dev Watercooler, one thing he mentioned was the extremely high burst being put out by Beast Mastery Hunters, saying: Ghostcrawler Beastmastery Hunters – We agree that stacking too many cooldowns to blow someone up is not interesting, skillful, or fair. (I also want to be clear that with all of these issues, we're not blaming players for using the tools that we gave them; we're blaming ourselves.) We're taking a hard look at the various Hunter cooldowns with the intention of reducing their burst. Hunters are receiving a buff in that they will no longer need to swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox. We also hope these changes help result in higher representation of Survival and Marksman Hunters. source Very shortly after the Dev Watercooler was posted, Ghostcrawler took to twitter, announcing that a substantial bug had been discovered, which only affected beast mastery hunters in the arena: Good news. We found a bug with Stampede being too high only in Arenas. That accounts for why feedback can be so varied. More info later. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 31, 2012 Community Manager Zarhym emailed us late last night to inform us that the bug had been isolated and added to the beast mastery hunter-specific section of the blog. The bug is now detailed as follows:
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!
Getting started in PvP Season 12
PvP Season 12 has begun, as we informed you last week. First and foremost, where are the vendors with the PvP gear? They're a little hidden away in Mists, that's for sure, with the Alliance vendor on the Serpent's Spine, the huge wall, level with the border between Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Valley of the Four Winds. There is a flight point there, but you won't have it unless you happened to pick it up while looking for Bowmistress Li. The Horde vendor is also on the wall, but between Townlong Steppes and Kun Lai Summit, a short way west of the corner. Again, there's a flight point there, but you likely won't have it. For both vendors, you can reach them by getting up onto the wall at pretty much any point you can, and running along it. Of course, you'll likely be 90 before you're interested in hunting them down, so you can just fly on over! And do check out our guides to the Silvershard Mines and Temple of Kotmogu. Weapon Problems The PvP vendors sell both item level 458 honor gear, and item level 483 conquest gear, but there is currently a complete absence of honor weapons. Rather flying in the face of the so-called "you can play the game how you want to" Mists philosophy, PvPers are yet again required to get their early PvP weapons via PvE. While hardly new at the beginning of an expansion, it's rather frustrating.
PvP Season 12 has begun
It's time to spend your honor points on some Dreadful gear and get back into the rated PvP game, as Season 12 began today. All ratings have been reset and the level 90 rated battlegrounds and arenas are open for play. Two new stats have been introduced to PvP gear this expansion: PvP Power and PvP Resilience. For more information about these stats and the difference between PvP and PvE gear, see this helpful Blood Sport guide. Wowhead has a preview of the new gear, where to get it, and the prices of all the pieces that are currently in game. Their model viewer will show you how the new outfits will look on your character, as well. So assemble your teams and get to it! For the Horde! [Insert Alliance battlecry here.] The full announcement from Blizzard is after the break.
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!
Blood Sport: Sitting down with a top arena team
I was lucky enough to attend the World of Warcraft European Invitational tournament in Cologne, it was a fantastic tournament, with some of the most exciting games I've watched in a while. If you want to check out the video coverage, you can do so by visiting ESL's twitch TV channel. Among the games, I was lucky enough to sit down for a chat with one of the eight competing teams, Eat Nerds Get Birds. This amusingly, if hastily named team comprised Jimos, playing a retribution paladin, Dreamz, on a restoration shaman, and Colarn, on an Arms warrior. While they weren't one of the top 2 teams who made it through to the World Championship finals in China, these guys are PvPing at the highest level, and it was great to sit down with them and get their tips on what makes a good arena team, and discuss various other elements of PvP right now. Q: Do you go into matches with a pre-defined strategy, or are you more going in to see what happens and react accordingly? A: We always, always have a pre-defined strategy for our comp against pretty much every other comp. We don't think you could play without that, it's pretty vital. You need to work out what strengths your comp has against the other comps you see a lot, and play to those strengths. To devise these strategies, though, you need to try out lots of different approaches, and see what works and what doesn't. When you're trying things out, you need to take a strategy and do just that. You might lose a few games if your strategy is bad, but if you don't give it a proper try you won't know!
PvP impressions in 5.0.4
So here we are. The patch has landed in both the United States and the EU, and we're all looking, bewildered, at our new talent screens. Alas, there are no arenas or rated battlegrounds available with which to really try out our talents, but we can take some small comfort in the continued availability of non-rated battlegrounds. (I do, by the way, find it rather frustrating that the main PvP content is absent from the game for an entire month. Imagine if raids were closed down! But anyway, that's a complaint for another time.) Of the things I am really excited about in 5.0.4, the top one has to be talent trees. A lot of these talents, while providing situational bonuses in PvE, are really going to be game-changers in PvP. It was promised to us by Tom Chilton that, before arenas, we would be able to see the class and spec of the opposing team and be able to modify our talents accordingly. We won't, however, see exactly how the opposition's talents are distributed. One important change for healers to note is that your dispel now has an 8-second (current beta build) cooldown but removes two effects rather than one. Gone are the days of spam dispels -- warlocks, rejoice! Warlocks are doing a lot of rejoicing right now. Also notable is that Spell Penetration has been turned into PvP Power, Resilience has become PvP resilience, and everyone is now running around with a base 40% damage mitigation. PvP resilience numbers seem to provide a little less mitigation than the old resilience did, in a full conquest point set, gemmed for resilience, damage mitigation is 68.32%. The tooltip indicates that what was 5,200 resilience has been altered to 3,058 PvP resilience. This translates to 28.32% of the 68.32% total mitigation figure.
Patch 5.0.4 ends arena season, closes arenas until Mists of Pandaria
In the middle of all the excitement about patch 5.0.4 and the many changes it brings, one change that absolutely needs to be highlighted for people who primarily PvP is that not only does the patch end the current arena season, it ends arenas themselves from the day it drops (Aug. 28) until the day Mists of Pandaria launches, Sept. 25. While so far we've heard nothing saying that battlegrounds will be affected, there will be no arenas at all for roughly a month starting next week. Rated battlegrounds will also be inaccessible. So if you're primarily an arena player, you should be aware that you won't have access to the arenas for that time. You should still be able to access battlegrounds, but not rated battlegrounds. Nothing will reward conquest points and you won't be running any arenas or rated BG's until we're all frolicking on the sandy beaches of Pandaria. 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!
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.
PvP season 11 ends Aug. 28
The title says it all -- it has been announced on Battle.net that season 11, the current PvP season, will end on Aug. 28 (Aug. 29 for the EU). That's about two weeks away (15 days if you're on EU servers), so if you want to grind out those last points of rating, you'd better get your skates on! As ever, at the end of the season, your conquest points will be converted to honor points. In the interim period between Aug. 28 (29 for EU) and Mists' arrival on Sept. 25, there will be no honor cap. Come Sept. 25, all your points over the 4,000 honor point cap will be converted to a ridiculously tiny amount of gold -- 35 copper silver per point, to be precise. So make sure you're not over the cap. Spend everything! On Aug. 28 (29 for EU), all the gear that was purchasable with conquest points becomes purchasable with honor points. Any items with rating requirements attached are no longer available for purchase. If you think you may be in the running for an achievement, it is very important not to do anything to the character you think might be eligible. Don't faction-change, don't realm-change; either of these things could wipe out your rating. Season 12 will begin approximately one week after the release of Mists of Pandaria, and in the interim period, there will be no arenas or rated battlegrounds available. Only normal battlegrounds will continue as usual.
A PvP glossary of comps, cleaves, and colloquialisms
I was having a chat the other day with fellow WoW Insider writer Anne Stickney when she brought up the topic of Arena team composition names. Anne's guildmates had been talking about some of the more bizarre ones such as African Turtle Cleave (which is generally a protection warrior, a hunter, and a healing paladin or other healer), and Anne had never really heard much about these comp names. She suggested a column explaining them or at least spelling a few of them out. I thought it was a great idea for a topic to explain some of the naming conventions and to throw open the floor for other contributions from our readers. I'll also go some way into starting a kind of PvP glossary. I've been scouring the official forums and the like for threads where people ask questions of this nature to come up with a compendium of terminology to help you all out. Now, a caveat -- and it's a big one. Particularly with the Arena composition names, there are some really bizarre ones out there. Some like the African Turtle Cleave have become pretty ubiquitous, but some are still very obscure. Others are really rather unsavory, and those aren't going to be up here. If you add new ones in the comments and you can put in some links to prove their validity, I'll edit them into the piece, so get involved. And if there are terms I miss, ask; they can be edited in as well. I'm not even going to try to explain where some of the stranger ones come from; if you want to, then go for it!
PvP Mailbag: Why isn't my team progressing in Arena?
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 loves grounding your death grip. I was all ready and waiting to write a post regarding a couple more simple Battleground strategies this week, but then I got an email. I receive a fair few emails from readers regarding PvP issues they're having, and I do my best to answer them as well and as quickly as I can. But then I got this message from Balduun on Ravencrest (US), and I had to write an article on it. Why? Because it's a question I can imagine so many teams struggling with, and one I've battled with myself many a time. So let's read Balduun's email: I primarily play a paladin (Prot/Holy), and usually use my holy spec in arenas. I'm currently playing with 2 other guildies who I consider to be very good players (feral druid and sub rogue). My problem is this: even though we are good players, we know our classes, we discuss strategy, switch targets and generally try to confuse, communicate in vent, this and every other team I've been on (I've dabbled in arena with varying degrees of partners since season 2) cannot seem to cross the 1400-1500 line. When we started in PvP, we were down near the 1100-1200 area, but now we all have mostly Cataclysmic pieces with gems and some enchants.
Does tanking exist in PvP?
I was inspired by a recent discussion thread on the Battle.net forums to talk about PvP tanking. Earlier in Cataclysm, the changes to the tanking mechanic, Vengeance, led to tanking specs suddenly becoming viable damage dealers in PvP. This was removed in 4.3, apparently because it was felt that tanks were too powerful, given their survivability in PvP. Fast forward a few months, and we find some vestiges of PvP in tank specs remain. In mid-level Arena, blood DKs continue to crop up every now and then on survival-centric teams; however, they are not really the most formidable opponent. Their damage output is not so high, and if kited, they can be fairly easily (if slowly) taken down. Many a feral cat druid will shift into bear form to use Frenzied Regeneration and increase their survival, and bear damage is fairly high (for a tank class, at least). However, bears lack the high self-healing of a blood DK, since Vengeance's removal. Should Vengeance be returned to PvP? Frankly, I don't think so. Does tanking have a place in PvP? Should anyone PvP as a tank? Does tanking even exist in PvP? Well, let's have a think about that. What is tanking? Tanking, in a PvE sense, is the act of ensuring the enemy is attacking you and not your weaker allies. If a PvE enemy is attacking a healer, the tank is doing something wrong.
Basic Battleground Guides: Eye of the Storm
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. All your base are belong to her. So, we've dealt with the basics of how to keybind, use macros and focus targets, and heal with the above. Now it's time to get out there and put our skills into action! I've written a general guide to healing in Battlegrounds and touched on tips for novice PvPers in Battlegrounds in my response to a Breakfast Topic. The tips in the aforementioned columns should be used throughout your PvP life, whatever it is you're doing, but now we're getting a bit more specific. We're heading out into some real, honest Battlegrounds with some tips and strategies. It should be noted that this is aimed at players in random Battlegrounds rather than rated, but these can equally apply to the latter. Our first stop on the Battleground train is Eye of the Storm. This Burning Crusade-era Battleground addition came up in a recent podcast I did, the subject of some debate as to the best way to win it. So first and foremost, I'd say that there is no surefire way to win a Battleground. No one strategy has an absolute chance of success. There are a few exceptions to this, but just like the vast majority of PvP, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. (Name that scientist for a gold star!)
Keys to PvP: How to heal with keybinds, clicking and movement
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 never clicks anything but her fingers. Welcome back! My previous two columns in this series talked about macros and the use of focus targets, and more recently, keybinds, clicking and movement. The latter topic sparked some debate in the comments; if you read Blood Sport regularly, you will know that makes me a very happy bunny. There were a couple of comments regarding left-handed players, an area that I'm feeling quite bad about my complete lack of knowledge on. I've been running around some Battlegrounds with my baby hunter, trying to work out some ideas for you, and man, do you guys have it rough. I found that a hand position of OKL; resulted in the best access to modifiers, if that's any help at all! Oh, and a right-handed Razer Naga is not a great mouse for left-handed use. But the main topic I'm here to address is healing. CaylynnRunner, berna.bleeker, adyuaa, and PeterAnagirou all talked about the trials of PvP healing as users of Healbot, VuhDo, Clique and the like, and that's what I plan to talk about today. Some of the folk discussing healing weren't happy with my advice in the article and felt that they had to move with the keyboard, many saying that Healbot or similar addons like VuhDo make it necessary to do so. As someone who learned healing by leveling healing characters purely in their healing specs, I had a similar battle on my hands when I went into any Arena or Battleground.
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!
Arena Pass 2012: The final phase has begun!
The final phase of the 2012 Arena Pass is upon us! This is Ranked Ladder Phase 2, which follows predictably after Ranked Ladder Phase 1. From this point forward, entry is closed, so if you'd been hoping to get your foot in the Arena Pass door, I'm very sorry, but you're too late. At this point, ladies and gentlemen, it's on like Donkey Kong for the final two weeks. Team rosters are closed, so no team-shuffling is permitted. However, you can create a new team. If you're having roster difficulties or anything of the sort, you'll have to leave or disband your current team and create a new team, which of course will start again in the rating wars. What are you fighting for? Well, the top 1,000 teams. That's up to 6,000 players, since a 3v3 roster can have up to six people on it, who will all receive a Vanquisher title on the live realms for all characters over level 71. You must have competed in at least 100 3v3 matches on the same character in the same team. Leaving the team is not advisable, since that could reset your score within the rankings and even reset the game's memory of how many matches you've played. To earn Murkimus, the armored murloc pet, you'll need to play 50 3v3 matches on the same character in the same team. Again, leaving that team may well reset the number of games played, so err on the side of caution. By having bought into this Arena Pass, once you upgrade your WoW account to Mists of Pandaria, you've secured access to the L90 Arena Pass realm. Blizzard is currently saying that only people who've bought into this Arena Pass will have access to the L90 one, but I suspect that might be subject to change, unless it runs in addition to the usual 2013 Arena Pass. As Vaneras puts it: Vaneras During these final two weeks, true champions of the Arena will swim to the top of a river filled with their opponent's tears. source Good luck!
