#8 - March 2, 2009, 5:18 p.m.
We increased the budget of resilience because we felt like PvP gear was too attractive in Burning Crusade. Because of that, and because this gear was initially too easy to get, it forced a lot of players to feel like they were supposed to head to the Arena to improve their character, even if they had no business or interest in trying to compete in there.
The problems we feel like we had with resilience at the start of Lich King were different:
1) We launched relatively easy PvE content before PvP gear was available. As a result, players entered PvP with really awesome Naxx gear.
2) Introductory PvP gear was too difficult to get and not available from day one. As a result, some players were going into Arenas with almost zero resilience and getting blown to bits.
3) Burst damage was initially too high, which 1 and 2 just compounded. We think it will be in a better place when 3.1 ships. We are already seeing plenty of "invulnerable healer" threads, which suggests that just burning people down is harder now. (And I don't mean to imply that is our sole measurement on how balance is working out.)
4) BC brought a lot of free stamina to almost everyone. We didn't increase health as fast as we increased damage in LK, which ended up making players feel a little fragile initially.
Ideally (and what we very well might do next time) is to try and launch the first tier of raid content at the same time as the Arena season, or at least give players a head start on accumulating PvP gear before the season starts. It's also likely you will see player health increase more, and PvE content balanced accordingly.
Now resilience is a tricky thing. Some players are going to blame any loss in Arenas on resilience being too weak. It is sometimes difficult to sort out the effects of skill from the effects of the game balance. You are going to die in Arenas a lot, even if you are a great player and everything is working as intended (which as I said above, is not currently the case).
