wow Blue Posts: PvP and Class Information

[Valks 2,375]

Make sure you're up-to-date with the latest information coming from the blues on the forums! Today's post covers tuning in PvP, Monks, Priests and Rogues.

Our first post of the day is a large one covering the various aspects of PvP tuning on the Alpha. Blizzard have finally decided to start balancing numbers, which means feedback now is even more important if Legion is to succeed. The team at Blizzard seems to be fairly positive that tuning is going to be a lot better this time round, since they can specifically tune classes based on their PvE or PvP performance, without affected the other. 

PvP on the Alpha

+ Show- Hide

Hey everyone,

Once again, we want to start off by thanking you all for participating in the Alpha and posting here in the forums. It's extremely valuable to us to be able to play with you all online. We're constantly reading these forums and discussing your feedback within the team. It's been a great help!

At this stage of development, the class and PvP teams are spending more time on class tuning and balance. We've read everything you posted so far and look forward to hearing even more of your thoughts going forward.

Honor Level 50 Templates Incoming
We've gotten some great feedback on the new Honor system and we've made some adjustments to its pacing. Now, we think the time has come to focus on getting as much feedback as possible on the Honor talents themselves. In an upcoming build (sorry no specific ETA), we've set the Honor level to 50 on the templates used to create new characters. If you'd like to instead continue to test the Honor progression, you are more than welcome to Prestige. We'd love the feedback!

Class Tuning
Damage and healing tuning has begun for classes and as such we'll be monitoring its effects on PvP. One of the big additions to PvP in Legion is our ability to adjust character stats on a per spec basis to tune things like damage, healing and health pools for PvP. So if we feel like a class is doing too much damage, we'll decrease their Strength, Agility, or Intellect. We commonly run into the problem that for any number of reasons, a class could be doing a lot of damage in PvP but not enough in PvE. For example, we recently reduced the PvP Agility on Havoc Demon Hunters to counteract a buff they received to their spells for PvE. Another example is the increase of Stamina for all Warlock specs since they did not feel tanky enough.

PvP Spell Multipliers
We also have the ability to easily apply PvP multipliers to specific spells when needed. These PvP multipliers only adjust the spell when used on another player or, in the case of healing spells, when engaged in PvP combat. We'd prefer to limit the number of spells we adjust in this way as it can be difficult for players to keep track of which spells have been adjusted. But, we'd like to illustrate some examples of how we've used this capability so far in the Alpha.

Self-Healing
Self-healing is valuable for giving players some degree of personal sustainability, but it can be problematic for the pace of gameplay in PvP if it is too strong. On the Alpha, we've recently used PvP multipliers to reign in the strength of Fury Warrior healing through Bloodthirst and Demon Hunter leech in Metamorphosis for just this reason.

Burst Damage
Many of our classes have instant cast spells that deal a lot of damage to create exciting inflection points in their rotation. But for PvP, where burst damage in kill windows matter so much, it can be problematic when one spell does too much damage. For this reason, we applied PvP multipliers to reduce the damage of Marksmanship Hunter's Aimed Shot and Marked Shot on Alpha. Of course, if the Class Design team adjusts the damage of either of these spells, we would adjust the PvP multipliers if we felt its necessary.

Thank you again, for all of your participation within the game and here on the forums. We couldn't do this without your help and we really do appreciate your support.

(source)

One of the plagues of expansions past was the large amount of cheating that occurred during seasons of PvP. It's no surprise that it has popped up on the Alpha forums, since it can be an extremely frustrating problem to deal with. It looks like Blizzard are hoping to adapt their systems moving forward to try and stay on top of the problems. Given that the Honor system will most likely bring back many botters, Blizzard will have their work cut out for them in Legion.

Dealing with Cheaters in PvP

+ Show- Hide

We take the integrity of the game very seriously. We have departments and technology dedicated to detecting cheats and punishing people that use them. We are constantly working to fix the problem but we don't discuss our plans or actions openly. Rest assured, it is as important to us as it is to you.

(source)

Over on the monk forums, Celestalon posted an update on the changes that are happening for Storm, Earth and Fire's AI. Previously, it was rather frustrating using the spell since it was no longer in your control. The spirits would pull mobs that weren't even in combat with you by just going and meleeing them. Thankfully, it looks like this is being fixed!

Windwalker Updates

+ Show- Hide

An update on this: We've significantly improved SEF's AI, and tailored it for its new purpose.

SEF clones will count toward SCK, and they will actively seek to maximize its effect. Every time they TP or BoK or RSK, they'll switch to a new target. Their target selection logic will try to hit targets that haven't been hit yet, and beyond that will prefer ones that were hit longest ago. They'll also ignore targets that have >90% DR or are not in combat with you. And since they Flying Serpent Kick to each target, they lose nearly no time in travel time even if the targets are spread apart.

Basically, SEF should help you maximize SCK in just a couple GCDs, while they're out.

(source)

For a while now, Holy Priests have had a bug with the class where Prayer of Mending hasn't been working as intended. It has since been hotfixed and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Rather than having to spam Renew, Holy Priests can now fully utilise the spells given to them.

Prayer of Mending Hotfix

+ Show- Hide

Prayer of Mending splitting each jump is being hotfixed to alpha.

(source)

It looks like a fix will be coming to Rogues as well, however this is planned for a future build. Currently, an issue is occurring with the Phantom Assassin ability and Symbols of Death, where more energy is spent than intended.

Phantom Assassin Bug

+ Show- Hide

Agreed. Not intended for Symbols of Death to cost Energy when applied through Phantom Assassin. Fixed in an upcoming build.

(source)