Eldacar's Guide to PVP Power & Resilience

This guide is written by Eldacar and was posted in the General Section of this forum. I think however that it's worth to put it on the frontpage again as many players did not see the updated version, yet. Thanks to Eldacar for an amazing guide.


Hello everyone, I have written this guide to provide the player base with an in-depth understanding of how the PVP Power and Resilience stats work for level 90 players in Mists Patch 5.2.

**IMPORTANT NOTES**
- This guide is written for level 90 players, the numbers are different at lower levels.
- Resilience scaling was changed in Mists patch 5.2 from increasing returns to linear. For a comparison of the old vs new scaling see Appendix C.
- The guide just underwent a major update and revision, if you notice a typo or error please let me know!


Summary:

-Resilience has linear returns, +100 Resilience rating increases your effective health by 1.42% relative to displayed health. (+70.425~ increases EH by 1%)
-PVP Power has linear returns, +265 PVP Power gives you +1% damage/healing in PVP)
-PVP Power does not "cancel out" a target's Resilience but it will still help you hit them harder.
-You can get a significant increase in Resilience through gemming.
-Resilience is better than Stamina for increasing survivability.
-Resilience is stronger than PVP Power point for point by a fair margin.
-I cannot tell you definitively if you should gem PVP Power, Resilience, or something else, it depends on your class, spec, and playstyle. Look at guides written by pros of your class for gemming advice.


Table of Contents:

Section 1 - Resilience

1A - The Exponential Returns of Damage Reduction
1B - The Diminishing Returns of Resilience Rating
1C - Baseline Damage Reduction
1D - Effective Health
1E - Resilience Graphs and Independent Scaling

Section 2 - PVP Power, Stat Interaction, and Combined Scaling

2A - The Absolute vs Relative Returns of PVP Power
2B - PVP Power's Interaction with Resilience
2C - PVP Power Vs Baseline Damage Reduction
2D - Combined Stat Scaling of PVP Power and Resilience

Section 3 - Gemming for PVP

Section 4 - Closing Thoughts and Remarks

Section 5 - Appendix

Appendix A - Valuation and Frame of Reference
Appendix B - Formulas

Appendix C - Resilience Change in 5.2

Section 1 - Resilience

Everyone reading this likely already has at least a general understanding of how Resilience works, it's fundamental purpose is to provide percentage based damage reduction against all damage done by players, the more Resilience you have the less damage you take. That is fairly straightforward and easy to understand, however understanding how the stat scales and all the factors at work is more complicated.

There are four main factors that go into how Resilience scales, first is the exponential returns of percentage based damage reduction, second is the diminishing returns of Resilience rating, third is the baseline 40% reduction that all players have in PVP, and fourth is it's interaction with PVP Power. Only the first three factors will be examined in this section, the fourth; interaction with PVP Power is looked at in Section 2.

Section 1A - The Exponential Returns of Damage Reduction

The effects of percentage based damage reduction scale exponentially, the more you have the more valuable additional damage reduction becomes. For example, let's say someone is hitting you for 100 damage, if you have 0% damage reduction and you add 1% that 100 damage is reduced to 99 damage, a 1% effective reduction. However if you already have 90% damage reduction and you add another 1% that 100 base damage which was already reduced to 10 is now further reduced to 9. That change in incoming damage from 10 to 9 is a 10% reduction in actual damage taken by adding just 1% of damage reduction.
Here is a graph that shows how the value of damage reduction increases as you gain more:



As you can see at 50% damage reduction additional reduction is worth twice as much as normal, at 90% its worth ten times as much as normal. This kind of scaling isn't unique to Resilience, armor and any other percentage based damage reduction (even in other games) function the same way, games control the overall scaling of these mechanics by manipulating how fast you are awarded the damage reduction.

One additional note on this, in World of Warcraft different damage reduction mechanics have multiplicative relationships NOT additive, what that means is that the value scaling for any one of these mechanics is only accurate within that one mechanic. At 50% damage reduction from Resilience an extra 1% from Resilience is effectively worth 2%, however none of this has any bearing on the value of additional damage reduction from say armor, that scales totally independently but in a similar fashion. Because these defensive stats scale independently from each other and have a multiplicative relationship they can each be examined and valued independently.

Section 1B - The Diminishing Returns of Resilience Rating

For Resilience the main factor that counters the exponential scaling of percentage based damage reduction is the diminishing returns on Resilience rating. The more Resilience rating you have, the less damage reduction is awarded by each additional point of rating. This is how Blizzard controls the overall scaling of Resilience as a whole, and it is what they change when they want to alter the way Resilience scales.

Currently at lvl 90 the rate at which the returns from Resilience rating diminish exactly cancels out the rate at which the relative value of damage reduction increases, as a result the net effect of Resilience has linear returns. Adding 100 Resilience rating will always increase your effective health by 1.42% relative to your displayed health.

Section 1C - Baseline PVP Damage Reduction

Mists of Pandaria added two new factors to the way Resilience scales, one of them is the baseline 40% PVP damage reduction that all players have. What this has effectively done is significantly shrink the damage reduction gap between under geared players and fully geared players compared to Cataclysm. In Cataclysm the damage reduction range on gear before gems was roughly 0-45.5%. In Mists that range shrank to 40-59%, so while the gear is still providing a solid increase in survivability it provides fully geared players much less of an advantage compared to Cataclysm.

Section 1D - Effective Health

Before you can understand most of the graphs in this guide you need to understand what effective health is. Effective health is essentially how much pre-mitigated damage it takes to kill you. If you have 100k health and 0% damage reduction your effective health is just that same 100k. However if you have 100k health and 50% damage reduction your effective health is 200k, because someone would need to do the equivalent of 200k pre-mitigaged damage to kill you.

It is also important to note that more than just increasing the size of your effective health pool, that damage reduction also increases the relative effectiveness of heals on you. With 50% damage reduction a 1k heal actually restores 2k of effective health, this is one of the reasons why having a larger effective health through damage reduction is better than having a larger displayed health through stamina.

Because effective health is such a great indicator of survivability it is also a great metric to use for evaluating the overall effectiveness of Resilience, which is why I used it in these graphs. It is really the stat that best indicates the value you are getting from Resilience and the stat you need to be paying attention to in the graphs. Effective health is displayed on the graphs as a percentage relative to displayed health, an effective health (EH) value of 150% for a player with a 100k displayed health pool would mean that player has an effective health from just Resilience of 150k. (When you factor in other effects like armor and damage reduction from talents your EH is higher but we are just looking at Resilience by itself here)

Section 1E - Resilience Graphs and Independent Scaling

Now that we have gone through all of the critical factors at work it is time to get into the graphs. This first graph displays the scaling of damage reduction and effective health based on Resilience rating at level 90 in patch 5.2. Keep in mind these graphs show the scaling of Resilience before the effects of PVP Power are factored in, so it is effectively your damage reduction and effective health vs a player in full PVE gear.

As you can see in this graph, as you gain more Resilience you get less and less damage reduction per Resilience rating, however your effective health continues in a linear fashion anyway. Make note of the fact that there is NO Resilience cap, you are only limited by the amount of Resilience you can actually manage to get on your gear.

Section 2 - PVP Power, Stat Interaction, and Combined Scaling

PVP Power is a new stat introduced to the game in Mists of Pandaria which acts as the offensive compliment to Resilience. The idea behind this new stat is to encourage players to use PVP gear in PVP by putting major PVP-only offensive gains onto PVP gear (or in the case of healers, healing gains). PVP Power increases all damage done to players (under all circumstances), and healing done (while outside PVE-instances), by a percentage that increases based on how much PVP Power rating you have. There has been a lot of confusion on the forums as to how PVP Power works and particularly how it interacts with Resilience, hopefully I can clear some of that up here.

Before we dive in thought I would like to note that this guide focuses primarily on the +damage aspect of PVP Power because the +healing aspect does not have an easily quantifiable relationship with the other aspects of the PVP stats. However I want to point out that you will only get a fraction of the damage bonus as a healing bonus depending on your class and spec.

Section 2A - The Absolute vs Relative Returns of PVP Power

Unlike Resilience, PVP Power's scaling is very straight forward. It has linear returns when looking at it in an absolute sense, adding 265 PVP Power will always give you another +1% damage/healing in PVP. So every additional point of PVP Power will increase your damage/healing by the same amount. However I have seen some players around the forums describing PVP Power as having diminishing returns, and they are correct to an extent.

If you evaluate the returns of PVP Power in a relative sense it does have diminishing returns, going from 0%-1% will give you the same absolute damage increase as going from 30-31%, but in the latter case that damage increase is smaller relative to the damage you are already doing. This is a valid way of evaluating the data mathematically, but it is not very useful in practice.

Virtually everything in the game operates the same way, think about primary stats for example; +300 strength would give a warrior a pretty nice bump in damage right now, but if Blizzard said "Hey we like you random warrior!" and bumped their strength up to 100,000 that +300 strength would suddenly be worth a lot less to them even though it would still increase their damage by the same amount.

The  reality is that in order for a stat to offer you consistent relative gains as you gear up the stat would need to have increasing absolute returns, in other words it would need to give you more and more damage the more of it you got.
(For more info on absolute vs relative valuation see Appendix A)

PVP Power's returns are perfectly linear, you gain 1% damage/healing for every 265 PVP Power.

Section 2B - PVP Power's Interaction with Resilience

The most common misconception that most players seem to have about PVP Power is that it acts as a kind of "Resilience Penetration" which counteracts the target's Resilience 1 for 1, that is simply not true. PVP Power increases your damage by the percentage shown in your stat pane, it always increases it by that same amount regardless of how much Resilience the target has. The target's Resilience then mitigates that incoming damage based on how much damage reduction that target has.

Take for example a warrior who's swing always does 100 damage per swing in PVE. This warrior gets a +50% damage increase from PVP Power in PVP, so that 100 damage get's increased to 150 damage in PVP. This warrior has now decided to attack a paladin that looked at him the wrong way. The paladin has +50% damage reduction from his Resilience, so when the warrior's 150 damage hits him it is reduced to down to 75. That is how PVP Power and Resilience interact, the outgoing damage is boosted up by PVP Power, then the total incoming damage is mitigated down by Resilience.

Section 2C - PVP Power Vs Baseline Damage Reduction

This next graph shows the effective damage of various PVP Power amounts against a target that has nothing but the baseline PVP damage reduction of 40%.

What is immediately apparent here is that you need an enormous amount of PVP Power (pretty much the max possible) in order to cancel out just the BASELINE damage reduction all players have.

Section 2D - Combined Stat Scaling of PVP Power and Resilience

This final graph is a bit more complicated than the previous graphs, it shows the combined scaling of PVP Power and Resilience. The metrics represent the effective damage and effective health of two players with roughly equivalent gear fighting each other across the entire gear scale. At the left end it shows a player with no PVP Power vs a player with baseline Resilience. At the right end it shows a player with the typical max PVP Power vs a player with max Resilience.

This graph indicates that as players gear up Resilience is boosting up player effective health faster than PVP Power is boosting up player damage. Which also means that Resilience is still a stronger stat than PVP Power by a fair margin, even when comparing just 10K Resilience to 18K PVP Power Resilience is still stronger, meaning point for point it isn't even a competition.

Section 3 - Gemming for PVP

One of the most popular questions I get is "What should I gem for?" Unfortunately I cannot provide a clear cut answer to that question. The answer is dependent your gear level, class, spec, playstyle and more. My recommendation is to check how the pros of your class/spec are gemming, and then experiment to see what works best for your personal playstyle. The only thing that I can definitively state is that Resilience is SIGNIFICANTLY better for increasing your survivability than Stamina. So if boosting your survivability is the goal, gem Resilience.

Section 4 - Closing Thoughts and Remarks

I hope that this guide has been illuminating for everyone that has taken the time to read it, I have tried to provide as much accurate and detailed information as possible about the way these stats work. If you have questions about these stats or about anything written here feel free to ask and I will do my best to get you an answer.

I error checked this guide many times however I am still human, so if you believe you see an error please let know and I will look into it. I also want to make it clear that although I am a member of Blizzard's Forum MVP program I am NOT a Blizzard employee and nothing in this guide is based on any kind of inside information. All the data in this guide was all generated based on direct in-game observation and calculations based on that observed data.

Section 5 - Appendices

This is some additional information about some of the ideas, concepts, and data discussed in this guide. Additional appendices may be added over time as needed.

Appendix A - Valuation and Frame of Reference

Absolute valuation compares numbers based on addition and subtraction, IE going from 30% damage reduction to 60% damage reduction is an absolute gain of 30%. Relative valuation compares numbers using ratios, IE going from 30% damage reduction to 60% damage reduction is a relative gain of 100%. Why is this important? Because taking the example a step further, going from 60% to 90% is an absolute gain of 30%, exactly the same as before, but it is a relative gain of 50%, half as much as before. So if this trend were to continue, it would signify linear absolute returns but diminishing relative returns. This guide primarily uses absolute valuation because it is much easier to understand and work with when comparing a large number of data points to a common baseline.

Frame of reference is another critical concept for evaluating data, particularly when most of the data is in percentages. There are two basic methods that can be used to evaluate a string of data points; constant frame of reference, or progressive frame of reference. Constant frame of reference uses one common baseline value as a reference point, every data point is compared to that baseline. In contrast a progressive frame of reference compares each data point to the data point before it. Take for example this set of data points: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. On a graph using a constant frame of reference they would be displayed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (all data points were compared to a baseline of 0). However on a graph using a progressive frame of reference they would be displayed as 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 (each data point was 1 larger than the number before it).

Using a constant frame of reference makes it much easier to evaluate the actual changes in the progression of a data set, where as using a relative frame of reference allows you to better evaluate changes in the rate of change over the progression of a data set. Since we are more interested in the actual changes than the rate of change when viewing the scaling of stats I chose to use a constant frame of reference for the graphs in this guide.

Appendix B - Formulas

The formula to calculate damage reduction from resilience in patch 5.2 is:
Reduction %  = ((11724*0.4)+x)/(11727+x)
x represents resilience rating, credit for this formula goes to Erdluf (Echo Isles US)

The formula to calculate damage increase from PVP is:
Damage increase %  =  x/265
x represents PVP Power rating

Appendix C - Resilience Change in 5.2

The formula for Resilience was changed in patch 5.2, changing its net scaling from increasing to linear.
Effective health returns from Resilience in 5.2 are now perfectly linear. Anyone with less than 10k Resilience should have seen a slight bump in effective health from the patch, anyone with more should see a slight loss. Going forward Resilience will still be a great, lucrative stat, it will just scale more evenly instead of getting more and more valuable at the high end.

Here is an interactive graph illustrating the difference in resilience scaling between 5.1 and 5.2:
http://battlemasters...resilvis52.html

Here is another focusing in on just the changes in damage reduction:
http://battlemasters...es/drvis52.html Back to Top

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews


Part 1 - Death Knight, Druid, and Hunter

Part 2 - Mage, Paladin, and Priest

Part 3 - Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock

Part 4 - Warrior and Monk
Back to Top

This weekend

This weekend two interesting things are happening for World of Warcraft PvP enthusiasts. A player hosted online arena tournament is taking place in Europe. WoW tournaments need community support and while this is a test for a bigger tournament later this year we all benefit if it goes well. So tune in, tell your friends and show your support.

Also rogue guide author Hildegard hosts a rogue podcast on livestream with Rzn, Khuna and Akaishuichi. Talks will be about patch 5.2 and rogue gameplay, talent and glyph choices comps and tournaments. Akaishuichi will participate at the WoW tournament this weekend, too.



The WoW tournament in Europe

Friday: 5pm – 11:30pm CET
Saturday: 3pm – 9pm CET
Sunday: 5pm – 10pm CET

Stream Link

GROUP A  ////  GROUP B


The rogue podcast with Rzn, Khuna and Akaishuichi

Time: Saturday: 10pm CET

Teaser // Stream Link







Group A


"We will get Titlez" (EU Steamwheedle Cartel)
Paiz (Mage), Chromex (Warlock), Konradxo (Druid)

"Revenge of the Rogue" (EU Blackrock)
Sharkou (Rogue), Weoh (Warlock), Tethis (Shaman)

"Eat Trap got MD" (EU Aegwynn)
Caroxqt (Death Knight), Milkywayz (Priest),Dalyzialol (shaman)

"Blazing PHD" (EU Xavius)
Zionsfall (Hunter), Ryan (Death Knight), Vicky (Shaman)

“Do you even Click” (EU-Blackrock)
Texainyesyo (Warrior), Gaalonxyz (Death Knight), Halifaxyo (Paladin)



Group B

“Reskos Bizeps” (EU-Aegwynn)
Darkwingduck (Warlock), Reskolol (Shaman), summi (Druid)

“FotmSentunSetup” (EU-Blackrock)
Ghettoboyy (Hunter),  Nauree (Druid), Alisea (Paladin)

"laptop gg we lose" (EU Drak'thul)
Healthswapjk (Priest). Shakemilk (Mage), Bánanasplit (Paladin)

“Plastikcleave” (EU-Blackrock)
Akaishuichi (Rogue), Mitsukosan (Warlock), Caradura (Shaman)

“The Time is Gone” (EU-Blackrock)
Deliczz (Mage), Tuppy (Priest), Doomsen (Druid)


Website with more information

https://www.youtube....h?v=AH5IAfyB87A Back to Top

Today we've got a PvP focused interview with Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street and Brian Holinka, a new Senior Game Designer at Blizzard Entertainment. Sam 'Vanguards' Kwok had the chance to sit down with them and talk about a lot of awesome things PvP related. Brian is a PvP specific Game Designer and we were both excited to hear his thoughts on a lot of topics, including Arena Map Banning, Class Balance, thoughts behind 5.2 changes, the Arena Tournament realm and e-sports. Make sure to read the whole interview!

Diziet: everyone knows who Greg Street is, he is one of the two lead designers at blizzard and has been around as a public figure for a long time. But Brian, you're new -- why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself?

Brian Holinka: Hi, I joined Blizzard around August of 2012 and I was brought on to focus on PvP. My goal is to find out all the things that the PvP community wants, to try to reinvigorate the PvP as much as possible, keep it exciting, keep it fresh and so far it's been really exciting.

Brian Holinka

Diziet's note: Brian focuses exclusively on the World of Warcraft PvP experience. Brian Holinka worked on the multiplayer components of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Homefront, and Frontlines: Fuel of War. Holinka got his start in the game industry moonlighting on the “Desert Combat” mod for Battlefield 1942 while serving as a Captain in the United States Air Force.

Vanguards: 5.2 is being released soon. This patch features a lot of class balance changes for PvP. What were some of the main goals in terms of class balancing for this patch? Monks, for example, were very weak in PvP and there are a lot of changes for them.

Greg Street: Just a few off top of my head: The big 3 we were trying to hit were lowering the overall power and maybe representation of say, Frost Mage, Arms Warrior for sure, Shadow Priest and Hunter a little bit -- and on the low end we felt like Disc Priest had vanished from high end PvP which was a real shame from where they'd been before. We also had the new class the monk that just wasn't represented very well as either damage dealer or a healer. So those were the main goals. And then we had a lot of systems level stuff where we increased the healing of the damage dealers that also had a healing spec and tried to look at some of the things that we always try to look at : diminishing returns, and we also focused a lot on silences.

Brian Holinka: And you also saw changes to Rogues, which had pretty good representation in PvP in the past. I think they were kind of a victim of the talent reconfiguration, and so we've gone back and given them a lot of buffs for 5.2 as well.

Vanguards: PvP has always been a fine balancing act from the day PvP came out. Some say WoW PvP can never truly be balanced. What do you guys think about that?

Greg Street: You know, to be honest -- thats probably pretty fair. We just have such a diverse community -- super high end players who have a very different experience in PvP than a lot of our more casual or even intermediate players. There's everything from RBGs to random battlegrounds, 2s, 3s, 5s -- to even World PvP and dueling. Players understandably will have a very high expectation that things will be fair for them. We try our hardest to address concerns when things come up and try to keep everything feeling fun.

Diziet: If there was an ideal balance point WoW PvP can reach, where do you think that would be?

Greg Street: That's a great question. One of the things we struggle a lot is with is that there is a community, probably more of the high end guys... so there is a community of players who would be perfectly happy if there were 6-7 specs that they had to worry about. And those were really well balanced and had a lot of synergy going on -- and they wouldn't have to worry a lot about all the others. And then there are these other players, who say: "I've been a Ret Paladin all my life. That's who I want to be in PvP, I don't want to be a healer, I don't want to want to switch to rogue. Or I'm a Balance Druid, or a Mistweaver Monk." So on the one hand we can have very tight focus and probably deliver very balanced game of relatively few specs. On the other hands, we can get all 34 in there, and everyone can have some representation, but it would be a lot harder to deliver on really cool class synergy and be able to predict on what everyone is going to do.

Brian Holinka: This also is just depends on what you consider as viability. There are many different opinions on what viable means in the PvP community. Whether viable means at the very high end, competing in tournaments, vs it means on where we feel that a highly skilled player can take almost any spec and do very well with it, especially if they find a comp that works very well for them. And quite honestly, Sam, you're a good case of that. People felt that enh shamans and ret paladins were not exactly competitive, and you continue to compete on them. So I think there is certainly like Greg said times where some classes are stronger than others, but we try to make sure that everyone can compete at some level. It's going to always be challenging, because there's always change -- different players and classes want different things in PvE and in PvP and RBGs and all the different formats, it's definitely a very big challenge.

Vanguards: RBGs are currently still filled with exploiters. Is there a chance to have this fixed before the Hero of the Alliance / Hero of the Horde RBG titles are given out?

Brian Holinka: Well, you know -- there's a week between when the season ends and when the rewards are given, and we spend a lot of time in that week looking at all the Gladiators/Hero of the Alliance/Horde and determining exactly if everything they did is fair. And it's a lot easier for us to do that with Arena. It's a smaller pool of people. So they will be under the Eye of Sauron, as I'd like to say - because there is going to be a lot of attention put on those guys. We are spending a lot of time looking at all the things that exploiters do in RBGs and Arenas. I think this season we found two very big exploits with MMR that people were abusing. We saw it mid season when we recapped it to 2200, and with RBGs we had some closer to the end of the season. There was a lot more noise in the RBG data about who was exploiting and who wasn't, and it became more difficult. But as far as handing out Hero of the Alliance/Horde and Gladiator, we always heavily scrutinize those and will continue to do so.

Vanguards: There has been talk of the “legendary PvP gem.” How will PvPers go about to attaining that?

Brian Holinka: I think there was some confusion about it when it came out. It was released, and it was made a legendary at first. But in terms of PvP metagem, specifically, it wasn't a legendary PvP Gem. Basically, we were coming out with all these metagems in PvE and we were concerned. The PvP community has been loud and clear that the best things for PvP should come from PvP. So what we wanted to make sure that we introduced a meta gem that was competitive statistically with those metagems, but in the same time we also  adjusted both the PvE meta-gems and the very powerful trinkets this tier to be not as effective against players. So they might have a much lower proc rate for a lot of the on-proc effects against players. So we've taken steps to ensure that if you want the best PvP items you can achieve them from PvP. Also, looking at the delta of what is competitive and what is not competitive, I feel confident that you can get stuff all from PvP that will allow you to compete at the highest level. Maybe for some certain class/specs with certain class compositions there might be a trinket or a metagem that really benefits them, but I don't feel like that will be the norm across the game. And that's what's important to us.

Diziet: This is one of the few points in the game where the mechanics in PvE and PvP work different -- we've had warriors with Colossus Smash before, and we have damage and healing reduction in PvP. What's your long term goal in keeping the game systems separated or similar between the PvP and PvE rule-sets.

Greg Street: That's something we struggle with all the time and I wish I could say that we've had a vision for it: a way it should always work -- but we go back and forth on it a lot. I know a lot of players think that this is the big fix, that once we have a PvP version and PvE version of every spell that balance will be perfect. We don't really buy that. I think you'll see the same number of requests for "buff this, nerf this" now that they knew that we could just tweak the data whenever we wanted to. It is confusing, definitely- with the new talent system there is already a lot that players have to track of in PvP, you can't assume that everyone has this type of CC anymore, they could have any one of the three different talents. Imagine on top of that every one of those three talents works in two different ways between PvE and PvP. So I think for the immediate future we're going to keep on with this model: We'll make them work as similarly as long as we can, but if we hit a point like with things like Colossus Smash where one set of numbers won't work, then we'll go ahead and fork it rather than spend weeks and weeks of our time trying to come up with a perfect solution that keeps things in balance in both systems.

Vanguards: Do you think there is any chance on making the “cross realm” queue system work faster for arenas? Currently from my experience you can’t really get cross realm queues without one side being past the 5 to 6 minute waiting mark, and 5 to 6 minute is a pretty long period and for players at higher tier ratings and that waiting can get pretty boring.

Brian: We're really looking at that problem now. The BG system when it was made for WoW, WoW was in a different place. There were a lot of technical reasons. We're really looking at that -- we know Greg tweeted about this recently, we're really looking at finding ways to get all the players competing and getting those queue times down. I think if you're on BG9 and you're going to be facing a lot of the Tich guys, and a lot of the other big BGS it's okay, but if you're on a smaller BG it becomes an big problem that your queues are very long. It's something we're definitely conscious of and I think pooling people together is the right idea. All I can say is that we're really looking at it, and I think you guys will be pleased with what we come up with.

Diziet: I want to get back to class balance for just a bit. Going back through the history of PvP in WoW, I'd say Warlocks were one of those classes that were strong and balanced throughout the game's history. If you had to choose one class that you feel is well balanced in the game right now, in Mists, which one would it be and what do you think made it balanced?

Brian Holinka: hmm..

Greg Street: Is there a balanced class? [laughter].

Brian Holinka: I think a lot of times when we look at class balance -- for instance, I know you guys just posted an article about arena representation at Gladiator on AJ, and a lot of people look at that and they determine, "Oh, who's got the biggest bar -- they are the most overpowered, who's got the smallest one, they're the least overpowered and who is in the middle.." On that graph you might see DK or Warlock in the middle, and I don't think DKs and Warlocks are like "Yeah, we're perfectly balanced!". I think it's a matter of across all the ratings, is there a way for you to find people that you can compete with in Arena and not fall flat -- that's the biggest thing for us. And we try to keep an eye on outliers where certain classes are just outperforming everybody pretty clearly. If you look at warriors in 5.0 and 5.1 and you look at all the changes we'd made to them in 5.2 we're taking a very clear approach at trying to make sure that those outliers come down. Same thing with what we talked about earlier, Monks and Rogues -- finding those classes that aren't competing and buffing. Finding those classes that are very powerful and bringing them down. If there's a class that's in the middle in the pack, it's not so much that we can say "they need to be 2% better...", no they're competing. I think that's good. I don't know if it's a good idea for us to say this class is perfectly balanced. [laughter]

Greg Street: Well.. I know we'll probably get flaked for this, but if you look at something like the DK, they're kind of in the middle where they didn't get a whole ton of changes in 5.2. A lot of other classes had buffs or nerfs, and except for some of the things like Strangulate/Asphyxiate stuff they didn't change that much. That's probably a pretty good indication of what we're going for. But again, as Brian said, representation is so dependent on your synergy with other classes which is so dependent on the way their DRs work and things like that that I don't know if every one's representation being even means that now we're suddenly at perfect balance.

Brian Holinka: Also just because representation of the classes that players choose isn't uniform either. So, you know, there's a lot of talk on AJ and other sites, like Hildegarde's site, about "Oh, hey, if you compare gladiator to global percentages or if we look at Arena graphs and you see the global numbers compared to the numbers above 2200 and the percentages..." We look at those numbers, we look at our own numbers and we definitely try to balance accordingly. But representation is kind of a self-serving and self predicting prophecy. If everyone sees Warrior is doing really well everyone is going to say "I'm going to roll Warrior" and now you have a lot of good players playing Warrior and it kind of balloons a little bit bigger than it really is.

Diziet: It's good to hear that you guys are balancing at looking at the outliers, etc. From a more theoretical perspective, too, in terms of a class being balanced and fun to play, there are two ways of doing it -- you can tweak the coefficients on their main spells and abilities, and all of a sudden they do a lot more damage, or you can introduce different mechanics, kind of how we've seen with the talent system. What do you think the trade off between one kind of turning is?

Greg Street: It's not only more difficult for us, its also more difficult for players where now all of a sudden someone who doesn't scrutinize the patch notes, jumps into arena and people are like "Wait, what's this ability that just hit me... I didn't know they could do that now!", or "I just dispelled this this that I always dispelled and some backlash hit me that I didn't know about". It causes a lot of relearning from players too. The high end guys are so in touch with what we're doing that it won't surprise them, but they are still a minority of people even participating in PvP. On the other hand if we tweak damage numbers too much we can get to be the same thing if we buffed say, Shadow DoTs to where they would just be going around dotting everyone and never had to cast mind blast or mind flay, then it'd have a similar effect where people would be like: "Why don't these Shadow Priests ever stop moving, they're just running around tossing dots everywhere". There could be re-learning involved no matter what we do.

Vanguards: How do you feel about the balance of PvP in terms of map choices? How do you feel about the balance of PvP in terms of map choices? Some maps greatly help certain compositions such as Warlocks on Blade’s Edge -- they can jump down, port up, and with a Druid on the team they can both do that and knock people off.

Brian Holinka: I think Blade's edge and Dalaran Arena were made in a time when knock-offs didn't exist. So, all I can say is that we're aware of that and changes are forthcoming this season.

Diziet: Interesting...

Vanguards: Will there be a chance of featuring map bans for Arenas similar to RBGs?

Brian Holinka: Yes, we've certainly talked about that. Kind of like when you go into Arena, down voting an arena. I know Tom Chilton in an interview with you guys even mentioned that. It's on the list of things that we're looking at! Not announcing it's coming, but we certainly think it's a good idea.

Vanguards: Is there any chance for a permanent tournament realm in WoW? A lot of players always say, I'd like to try this class out, try this spec out, but a lot of players are locked to their own class because of leveling, and a lot of players want to PvP.

Brian Holinka: I feel like it's tough, because this an RPG and one of the things that makes people's attachment to WoW so critical is that you have a character and you've invested time into that character, you earned gear for him, you've picked his look and his name and all those things. It's one of our really strong and valuable things. I know a lot of PvPers feel "oh, if we could just switch classes the way DOTA or MOBA players switch champions.." but that's really not what is the core strength of WoW. We have the Arena Realm, it's coming... I think the next one is coming soon, in Blizzard speak. For the people who like to participate in that it's there and they'll be able to play it. But that idea is so foreign to what is core and critical to WoW that, so I don't know if it would be the best thing for the game.

Diziet: I get your point of attachment to characters -- I started playing this game when it came out, went through all the stages of Raiding. I sometimes look at my bank and go through the items that I've had, and still see level 60 items, helms with 24 stamina that were good back then... There's definitely a lot of nostalgia there.

Brian Holinka: And transmog really helps with that, not only is it that I've got a lot of cool things I can transmog to but it also helps players customize their character in a way that you never really had an option to beforehand, to customize the look of it. I think it's made that attachment stronger, the reason players are passionate about asking for buffs or nerfs for their class is because you really have a strong attachment to that class and character. You just want to be able to compete and we understand that and appreciate that.

Vanguards: What about adding more incentives for arena as a whole, such as a tier to tier progression (1600, 1800, 2000). An example is that I'm not a big PvE'er and even I got a group together to do the gold challenge mode set just to get the better visual effects. I feel that if there was more of this in PvP, it would increase activity as well as rewarding players.

Brian Holinka: That was certainly something we took to heart when we made the transition from the old 2200 rating requirement on elite gear, to the new conquest earned requirement. We wanted to break down the 2200 rating requirement and allow everybody access if they were committed and skilled. We do understand that rating is the biggest factor when it comes to rated PvP, but we are definitely looking at much more ways to leverage this further down the line. We have certain things in place, but we want to get more. We agree it would increase participation, but also to have players strive to become better.

Diziet: What kind of plans do you have for improving PvP participation and ensuring that players are queuing for Arena or RBG? There is the rating inflation, but is there anything else? Something that stands out is that in previous seasons teams have go to that rank 1 spot in the first week and then it has taken the entire season for some other team to even get close just because of how much further ahead they were of everybody else, to the point that in some seasons the teams that got rank 1 in the first week actually ended up walking away with rank 1 titles. Could you talk about the rating inflation and your thoughts behind it?

Brian Holinka: Yea, one of the things that players often do is cry out en-mess when they want something and this has been one of the common things that has been asked for. A lot of times you see players asking for punishment, "fix this bad behavior that I don't like and punish it!!". Rating decay was one thing that came up time and time again, but it's Blizzard design tenant to make everything a bonus as much as possible, as we spoke to the SC2 guys, D3 guys and quite a lot of high rated players and we thought it would feel better to everyone if your rating accurately represented your skill set. Playing during the first week you're going to have one set of gear, however during the final week you're going to have a completely different set of gear and the play style could be completely different. This is where the Arena rating inflation comes in, not only at the high end that we know a lot of AJ are interested in, but also at the low end where they're going to see their rating increase over time and we believe this will help to increase participation by not saying "you are a 1600 player, you will always be at 1600".

Diziet: What other plans do you have on improving PvP?

Brian Holinka: Yea, I think Greg recently brought up what role teams actually play in arena. They can sometimes act as a barrier to prevent people from playing, rather than encouraging and this was never the design intent. There's a good thing about it because you have your team mates, your 'core guys' and you are altogether and pushing for a group goal (rating), so we don't want to lose the idea of the 3 of us are in it together and we're going to push ourselves to aim for a rating or title. On the other hand, it's kind of dumb that if you have 2 guys on-line and you want to play with a 3rd guy that you can't play. So we're looking at what would be the right way to do this, to allow you to participate more in the right way. Then it comes back to rewards, what can we do to really entice people to play RBG and Arena's.

World of Warcraft at the BWC

Vanguards: So what about WoW as an eSport? A lot of us can remember to 2/3 years ago when WoW was big on the scene with MLG, NAO, AJ Tournament, ESL and Blizzard run tournaments. Do you feel WoW PvP has potential for a better esports scene than it does now?

Brian Holinka: I think the biggest problem with PvP in WoW at the moment is the complexity of the classes and specs. Having 34 specs with 34 different spells, that's over 1,100 different spells that the spectator may need to know about. I think the ArenaLive add-on really opened our eyes to where we were going wrong and the areas that we can improve, so props to the guys that put that together. The spell queue is really valuable and has really educated us. It's one of these things that we are constantly evaluating, SC2 is one of the biggest esports in the world, it's just a decision as to whether we want to commit to this and spend a lot of resources on.


Big thanks to Brian & Greg for talking to us about this! Back to Top

5.2 Thunder King Now Live

Below are the PvP changes for 5.2. Check out Blizzard's post for more 5.2 information!

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5.2 Developer Interviews

Gamebreaker recently got a chance to interview the developers. Below is the PvP summary.

• Item upgrades returning hasn't been decided upon yet, but it is unlikely that it will come back for PvP gear. It felt good for players to be able to upgrade their blue gear and have a high enough item level to do heroic dungeons or LFR, but it didn't feel good trying to figure out how to spend your Valor Points. Partial refunds or transferring upgrades from one item to another are potential solutions. Item upgrades were helpful in allowing guilds to continue progressing by slowly making the players stronger.
  
• Reverting the silence and crowd control changes from early in the PTR was done to prevent healers from becoming too strong with the various instant heals they have. This kind of a change might be made in the next expansion.
  
• There aren't enough rewards for PvP that are not gear.
  
• The Conquest catch up system wasn't ready for this patch, but it will hopefully be in Patch 5.3.
  
• Skirmishes are still on the todo list.

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The German guild I take Pills for Skillz is organizing a WoW arena tournament during the 8th and 10th of March 2013.  We want to entertain you with some of the best European arena teams facing each other. The whole tournament is planned as a showcase for a second tournament later this year.

We want tournaments to happen more often and we hope you will tune in.

Date:   08.03.2013 – 10.03.2013
Friday: 5:30pm – midnight CET
Saturday: 3pm – 9pm CET
Sunday: 5pm – 10pm CET

Stream: http://en.twitch.tv/itpfs/

Website: http://www.hildegard...ent-8-10-march/



Group A

"We will get Titleezz" (EU Steamwheedle Cartel)
Paiz (Mage), Chromex (Warlock), Konradxo (Druid)

"Rise of the Rogue" (EU Blackrock)
Sharkou (Rogue), Weoh (Warlock), Tethis (Shaman)

"teamARROW" (EU Drak'thul)
Ruxxy (Shadow Priest), Felleric (Mage), Doomed (Paladin)

"Blazing KFC" (EU Xavius)
Zionsfall (Hunter), Haxxan (Warrior), Vicky (Shaman)

“Endlich vereint” (EU-Blackrock)
Texainyesyo (Warrior), Gaalonxyz (Death Knight), Halifaxyo (Paladin)


Group B

“Reskos Bizeps” (EU-Aegwynn)
Souken (Hunter), Resko (Warri), Summi (Paladin)

“FotmSentunSetup” (EU-Blackrock)
Ghettoboyy (Hunter), Fewen (Druid), Alisea (Paladin)

"brathering" (EU Aegwynn)
Daze (Warrior), Gotnotalent (Mage), Xyrah (Druid)

“Plastikcleave” (EU-Blackrock)
Akaishuichi (Rogue), Mitsukosan (Warlock), Caradura (Shaman)

“The Time is Gone” (EU-Blackrock)
Deliczz (Mage), Tuppy (Priest), Doomsen (Druid)



Rules:

• All games are played on live realms.
  
• Only PvP gear may be used at any time during the tournament. Players using PvE gear despite the rules receive one warning and are disqualified the second time along with their team.
  
• Any setup with one healer is allowed.
  
• No class stacking.
  
• A maximum of three players per team is allowed
  
• Each player can play up to two classes
  
• Teams can change their setup and spec in between each game.
  
• The losing team of each match will be able to choose a map that has not already been played. Nagrand Arena will always be played first. In a best of 7 series a map cannot be played twice until all others have been chosen.
  
• Group phase is played as best of 3
  
• Elimination phase is played as best of 5
  
• Finals are played as best of 7
  
• 45 second disconnect rule: If a player disconnects after 45 second mark the game will not be replayed.
  
• All voice communication will be made over Dolby Axon.
  
• IP adresses need to be changed, which will be checked by the organizers. DDOS protection is the responsibilty of each player and multiple DDOS attacks on a player may lead for his team to be disqualified.
  
• Read the DDOS protection guide and make sure your IP address is changed.
  
• Thanks to Mugemz for all the work with his previous DDOS prevention guide.
  
• Thanks to Yaspresents for the inspiration

Price pool

For this tournament only 90€ are in the prize pool as of now. The organizers accept donations to increase the prize pool. Back to Top

Official Patch 5.2 Trailer: The Thunder King

Cho's Poem:

Pandaria, her hills of gold
In dark and mournful times of old
Did once a hopeless horror hold

When from her sacred veil did spring
With storm and flash, a monstrous thing
His name Lei-Shen, the Thunder King

His thunder boomed across the land
And none who dared and fought could stand
Against the iron tyrant’s hand

A palace grand, a walled domain
Such mighty works born of his reign
Built by slaves, their hearts in chains

But seasons change and tyrants die
His fury spent in times gone by
The thunder slept beneath Kun Lai

By Zandalari hands he has been taken
By Zandalari voice he has awakened

Gather heroes, sound the drums
The Thunder King comes
The Thunder King comes Back to Top

Fistao created a comprehensive research on the class representation for expected gladiator titles on the EU and US realms. We tried to get the Excel file implemented on AJ but we can't add tables or implement google docs or Skydrive, so I decided to add the post on my blog and you can browse the complete file there, while you can at least see the images here.

Click on the image below to see the external thread with the whole information.




Link to full post with the spreadsheet.

Fistao, on 26 February 2013 - 02:57 PM, said:

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