Tuning PvP without PvP stats?

#1 - July 19, 2014, 9:52 p.m.

This is a concern that has only been briefly mentioned from my readings through the Beta PvP forums. Maybe I'm overthinking it but how do they plan on tuning PvP without it carrying over into PvE with the absence of PvP Power and Resil?

Lets say healing is too high in PvP. Assuming they don't just go back to battle fatigue, they reduce "whatever classes" healing or lets say everyones by 15%, this all carries directly over into PvE now. They could pick and choose classes to nerf but its all the same translating over into PvE.

Right now healers are pretty godly, and a blanket -healing reduction to them is pretty inevitable. They can't just turn down healing done via PvP power like they did in MoP, so how do they plan to now without it hurting PvE?

The same thing applies to damage, however with resilience gone they also lost something that kept damage in check. Any damage buffs to classes in PvE will directly carry over to PvP, warriors burst being an excellent example.

Lore

Community Manager

#12 - July 22, 2014, 12:07 a.m.

It's a challenge, for sure, but one that we're going to a lot of lengths to make sure we get right. Many of the changes we're making in Warlords are intended to improve the parity between how the game operates in PvE and PvP, so we don't need to rely on PvP-only tuning mechanics as often. The increase to player base health is a fine example of one of those changes, as it (hopefully) allows us to remove Resilience and let players deal the same amount of damage in both PvP and PvE.

Certain other changes will have similarly beneficial side effects. For example, we've significantly reduced the amount of crowd control available in PvP situations in Warlords, largely in response to (and agreement with) the sentiment that extended CC chains weren't fun to sit through, and were putting too much reliance on certain classes and comps.

However, when players have control of their characters more often, the obvious side effect is that they can spend more time healing or doing damage. When you can reliably keep up a decent amount of sustained damage or healing, PvP balance becomes less focused on burst, which, in turn, makes it fall more in line with PvE balance.

That said, we're fully aware that things will never line up exactly perfectly (and it might honestly not be all that great if they did). So, we're still very much prepared and able to implement PvE- or PvP-only tuning mechanics where necessary. We're currently experimenting with a debuff for Tank specs, for example. Should they become necessary, we can easily bring back mechanics like Resilience or the healing debuff from Battle Fatigue -- though they wouldn't need to be nearly as strong thanks to the other changes in Warlords.