Shadow Priests, General PvP, and 4.0

#0 - Dec. 7, 2009, 1:39 a.m.

Few questions for GC and friends about 4.0, if you have a second :). Sorry for the Q&A

1. Is burst damage and burst healing going to be brought down to the point where more constant-oriented damage is going to be the new "PvP standard?"

2. Are you going to tone burst healing down to the point where insane amounts of burst healing, an MS, interrupt, or silence is required to succeed?

3. Is it your intention to for a lack of a better term, "fix" shadow priests problems in PvP?

4. Is there going to be more entry-level PvP gear such as craft able PvP gear or the previous seasons PvP gear (please don't take this as lolhonorweaponsplox)?

That's all I can think of right now. Of course, I mean all in a vacuum, 1v1, and in theory, so if you do answer some or all of these I understand that the answers won't be exact but thanks anyways.

Ghostcrawler

#7 - Dec. 7, 2009, 5:51 a.m.

We've answered the first two questions recently. I'm sure you can find the thread.

I'm not sure what the third one is except that you want to do better in PvP. :)

The fourth question, about the availability of starter gear in PvP, is something we are working right this moment on improving for Cataclysm. Players tended to view the Lich King starter gear as either tedious or a distraction while at the same time they were able to get high item level weapons from PvE. Those two factors contributed a lot to the very short matches we had in the first season.

We know players need some minimum level of resilience (say somewhere in the 300 - 500 range) before they feel like they can survive long enough to do anything. We need to make sure players generally aren't stepping into Arenas or BGs without it.

Ghostcrawler

#30 - Dec. 7, 2009, 6:41 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Not to be nitpicky, but I think many pvpers would suggest that your estimate is on the low side - the number is more like 800-1000 for many healers and clothies, at least with the current damage that gets thrown at you by high-end weaponry.

I think 1000 is probably the point where you really start to feel like you aren't going to die at any given second. But that's okay as long as it is reasonably attainable. We offer resilience on gear largely as a reward. It's a good milestone when you realize that the gear you have worked to obtain is now keeping you alive. It's comparable to a raid that has trouble on a boss until they get enough of the right gear, at which point they now stand a good chance to beat him. In other words, if we didn't want players to have to work to get resilience, we'd just make it a passive damage reduction aura in Arenas and BGs.

But I do agree the starting sets of resilience gear in LK were unattractive given the investment it took to get them. To use my raid example above, you shouldn't be facing the boss in greens either.