Monday (1 Feb) - PvP News

Monday (1 Feb) - PvP News

Patch 3.3.2 was installed Tuesday morning as expected. In addition to the big news on new bosses already reported, there were a few smaller tweaks and changes. Moonkin druids got a nerf fixed with an enhancement to their Earth and Moon ability, and elemental shaman also got a buff that improves their damage as well - Wild and JB like those changes.

The new Season 8 (S8) Arena season is open and the new gear sets are available. According to the trade channel the pvp gear available for honor points only is the S6 (Furious) gear, which is the ilevel 232 gear. I couldn't get an answer on additions to Wintergrasp gear, but the wowhead lists haven't changed and I don't think we got anything new. The legs are still the only i232 gear from WG.

There was also a pretty significant change in the world of pvp arena, battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp. Two changes were made. The first is that a damage mitigation stat called resilience was buffed to reduce damage by 10% more than before, in general making players with resilience gear harder to kill. Then, in an attempt to balance things out, all healing in these pvp areas was reduced by 10%. This includes healing spells, potions, healthstones, etc.

The overall result is intended to make combat last longer and "fix" perceived problems that (1) it is too easy to zerg kill players with a focused attack, and (2) it's too hard to kill some healers (tree druids and holy paladins in particular). Since the changes don't affect spell shields, it's hard to see how this makes a holy paladin any easier to kill than before, but I'm not an expert at pvp so I can't really weigh in much on that.

The very personal question is how these changes could affect pvp in the Wild family.

The most critical impact is that resilience becomes an absolutely essential stat for pvp. Wild and family have been able to pvp without a lot of resilience gear up to now. Resilience was good, but one could still get by without it. Now, I don't think that is possible. Except for maybe the lowest level BG brackets, resilience gear is going to be a must have unless one wants to spend all their time at the graveyard.

How does this affect pvp for the Wild family?

EZ is probably not that affected yet in the 20s bracket. I'm not sure what kind of resilience gear is even available to players at that level. She will be affected somewhat in that her heals will hit for less and she'll get less healing per cast from her healing partner Ando. EZ dies fairly fast as it is. She'll die faster now.

JB may be the least affected, as she has around 300 resilience from pvp gear already. For a level 80, though, that's far less than real pvpers have and the changes will put her at greater risk.

Wild's pvp days may be numbered. I don't have the time or interest in gearing Wild for pvp as I have enough trouble just gearing him for both resto and moonkin specs. Building a resilience set as well is just not in the cards.

Philly probably has been hit the worst. She has next to no resilience gear, and would need a lot of time to collect it, but her focus really should be on levelling. Even in disc spec where she has her best shield Philly will be a much easier kill in pvp, and in shadow spec she'll be ripped to shreds. I may just pve level her until she can get the tailored resilience gear that Wild can craft, using that to help gain additional gear.

In general, I'm finding it hard to get all these toons enough in game time. With Wild now back on a 3+ night per week raiding sked, and with the extra time required for the daily and weekly badge dungeon runs, I've not been able to do much with any of the others. I had hoped to get Philly to the Isle of Kel'danas daily for some quick experience at the very least, but even that time has been hard to find. I had hoped that pvp play for experience could take the place of pve levelling in some large part for EZ in particular, but she is levelling far slower than her compatriots.

Just not sure at the moment how to balance things out. Even though I'm "retired" I still have a real life. I know, real life is way over-rated. :P