Filed under: PvP

I had a very brief twitter conversation with Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street a few days ago. It went something like this:

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

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.

Community Manager Daxxarri posted today with a lot of useful information to help players get to grips with the new PvP gearing methods in patch 5.2. There's some old information repeated, but if you weren't paying attention the first time around, here's his recap of the changes to the PvP gearing system:

Daxxarri

• Rating requirements will be removed from PvP gear.
• Malevolent Gladiator's gear will be available for purchase with Honor Points.
• A new tier of Conquest Point gear will be added that becomes available once 27000 Conquest Points have been earned for the season.
• Team Rating will gradually increase during the season for teams and players who continue to compete in PvP. This system is explained in the Mists of Pandaria PvP Dev Watercooler.

source

The option to choose between PvE and PvP dailies was mentioned a while back in the first set of patch 5.2 PTR patch notes, and now they're finally live. There's no unlocking required, either, both factions simply need to complete their "Assault on..." scenario -- for the Alliance it's Shaol'Mara, for the Horde, Zeb'Tula. Both scenarios play out exactly the same, speak to either Jaina or Lor'themar to start the solo instance, and fly over the island with your scout, and go from there. I won't spoil it, but a little while and a lot of killing (the Alliance one was quite a bit harder than the Horde one for a fire mage) later, you'll leave the instance and find yourself in either Sunseeker Premontory or Violet Rise, depending on faction.

Once you've unlocked the faction base, you'll need to seek out the Assignment Map to choose your variety of daily quest.

WoW Insider recently posted about Blizzard taking decisive action against players who had been discovered win-trading. In the original post we also reported that Nakatoir had been very firm that these suspensions had been thoroughly investigated and would not be reverted.

Bashiok posted the following today:

Bashiok

Earlier this week, several player accounts were given short suspensions and had their ratings wiped for being involved in Rated Battleground win-trading. Upon further review, we determined that some of the players initially identified as cheating may not have purposefully participated in the exploitive behavior, and as a result, we're in the process of lifting suspensions and restoring ratings to all but the most egregious offenders. This process should be completed following the Tuesday maintenance.

As always, our goal is to identify cheaters while making sure people playing by the rules aren't inadvertently penalized. Rest assured that we'll continue to take action against players who aren't competing in the spirit of fair play.

source

Firstly, an important note: PvP gear is now available on the PTR for pre-mades. Get in there and get PvPing. The future depends on you!

I've been rather critical of Blizzard in recent columns discussing the state of PvP. I've spoken before about the problems PvP has faced in recent times, and while the current season's rating is in tatters and crumbling around us as yet another win-trading bug is exposed, yet more suspensions roll out, and yet more players are stripped of rating, we can at least do what the devs appear to be doing and look forward to patch 5.2, and a fresh start.

While it's yet another black mark against season 12 that another win trading bug has been doing the rounds, win trading is hardly new, and it's good to see that Blizzard are taking steps to fix it, if rather slowly. Win trading has been around for a very long time indeed, and there are whisperings that this bug has existed for some time, although that remains unconfirmed. Quicker action from Blizzard would be welcomed, but there may be things preventing this, that we're not aware of, behind the scenes.


1. Gearing changes are a good thing

These have been quite the hot topic of late, with the recently announced changes to PvP gear which purport to flatten out the gear curve and aid the late starter to the season. While many players on the forums seem to be the polar opposite of cheerful about these changes, asserting amongst other things that they're the worst thing to ever happen to PvP, the stupidest decision ever made, and various other prophecies of doom.

Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri posted on the forums today regarding a Win-Trading bug.

Daxxarri

Providing an environment where players can compete in the spirit of fair play is extremely important to us, particularly in rated Player versus Player combat. As part of that commitment we regularly monitor gameplay, and have discovered an issue where some Rated Battleground teams have exploited the queuing system to obtain high team ratings and engage in win trading.

These, and all, exploitative activities are absolutely prohibited. We will investigate the situation carefully, and players that have been found to have participated in exploitation will be subject to the appropriate actions against their World of Warcraft accounts. In the meantime, we are currently working to resolve any remaining issues with the queue system to prevent this behavior in the future.

source

Punishments in the form of suspensions have already begun to appear, as well as rating resets for all players suspected of being involved in win-trading. As forum posters have been quick to point out, the trouble Blizzard's team faces is that many players have faced these win-trading teams, despite not actively engaging in win-trading themselves. This issue means that, apparently, some players are affected who never engaged in exploiting intentionally, but it can be difficult to be sure who is who. Nakatoir adds the following:

Nakatoir

After a thorough investigation and liaising with multiple departments, we can confirm that the recent wave of actions taken against Rated Battleground exploitation and win trading are indeed correct. The team of investigators have made sure to avoid any false positives and we will not be overturning any of the actions taken.

source

Encouragingly, several prominent PvP streamers who have actively participated in win-trading using this exploit have already received suspensions and been stripped of their ill-gotten rating. Time will tell whether the new PvP gearing system has any impact on this behavior, but it seems unlikely, given that, for many, rating and titles are incentive enough to exploit the system.

---

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.

---

On the patch 5.2 PTR, the PvP interface has had a much-needed makeover. You can see the results above. The revamp has made the system far more intuitive to use, and brought it in line with the PvE queue screen.

Clicking one of the three lines on the left-hand side will bring up the various options available to earn that currency, or, in the case of War Games, a brief explanation on how this under-used feature works, and how to set up a War Game. Perhaps this will result in more players using them, but many still lament the absence of a skirmish system, and there doesn't seem to be a gap for it at present!

Moving to the right-hand side, the dice icon next to the Random Battleground is how players will choose which battlegrounds to blacklist. This could be considered an improvement on the current interface, but it's still not entirely obvious that that's what the icon does. In order to queue for specific battlegrounds other than Wintergrasp and Tol Barad, it is necessary to choose them from the drop-down menu at the top right of the screen.

To help alleviate the confusion about the absence of gear upgrades come patch 5.2, Lead Systems designed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street recently tweeted the following:

The good folks over at Adriacraft have been busily mining through the data in the Patch 5.2 PTR, and unearthed another new battleground map! Adriacraft's Stevan informed us that this map is currently titled Goldrush BG, which, given the titles of Eye of the Storm (Netherstorm BG) and Gilneas BG for, well, Battle for Gilneas, it seems relatively likely that this is another new battleground map.

Looking at the map itself, which Adriacraft have provided an overhead screenshot of, this seems like a far smaller map than the previously datamined Defense of the Alehouse. It's likely for 10 or so players, and appears to have, or intend to have, two bases, as well as at least two resource nodes. Given the name of the battleground file, it's possible that these are gold mines, but from the map there are three small golden bits in the middle, also visible at five seconds into the video, so perhaps it's a spawning node capture.

Stevan also informed us that there are human models in the patch 5.2 PTR files, and therefore speculated that this battleground could have NPCs in it, bringing gold to players, who might have to defend resources that allow the NPCs to carry out their task. Or, to bring my own speculation into it, perhaps there are mines or nodes that can be captured, which permit players to ferry gold back and forth, and the NPCs mine up the nodes or gold.

Naturally, this is datamined information, and should be treated accordingly, not as confirmation of any new element of the game. But, it's fun to speculate, and encouraging indeed to see new PvP content appearing in the patch 5.2 PTR.

---

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.

---

We've had a lot of exciting news about PvP changes in 2012, with some promises not delivered upon, and some sweeping alterations in our chosen section of play. But let's get the tin foil hats on and see what we think is coming in 2013.

As I write this, the PTR is active, and I urge all arena and battleground fans to get in there and PvP as much as you can. Ghostcrawler has commented several times on twitter about how there's often not a great deal of PvP testing in PTRs and betas, which in turn leads to issues like warrior burst and the hunter Stampede bug going unnoticed. So, let's not let that happen again. If you're a PvP enthusiast, download the PTR, get on there, and PvP.


Class changes

The big winners and losers from the Patch 5.2 PTR changes appear to be to be monks and rogues on the winning side, and warriors, mages and feral druids on the losing side. This is not entirely unexpected, nor is it unfair, as monks were very under-represented at high level, as were rogues, with warriors and mages being on quite the opposite end of the scale. Feral druids I've included simply because of the Cyclone nerf, which is a heavy one to one of their major, and most aggravating crowd control abilities.