Blizzard clarifies arena tie-break

There has been an excellent thread running in the EU forums laying out constructive criticisms of the new arena tie-break system. This system, if you hadn't heard, introduces a new buff called "The Crowd Chose You!!!" which will be applied to one team or another based on two criteria: the team with the largest number of players alive, and the team that brought an enemy player closest to death. Blizzard EU Community Manager Taepsilum posted in the thread to clarify that this is still very much in iteration, and to calm the fears of the posters, but a couple of great points were brought up.

Firstly, if one team gets an enemy player to repeatedly low health percentages, for example, they get a mage to 10% then to 5% then to 8%, but their opponents get one of them to 2%, do their opponents win? It sounds, from reading about the system, like the team that got the player to 2% would emerge victorious, but this seems a little counter-intuitive. Another great question is whether the health for the calculation is percentage based or numerical. Percent would make more sense, it seems. Hit the break for Taepsilum's post.

TaepsilumThere are some very good points being brought up in here, particularly the dispute between the "frequency in which each team gets someone from the other team close to death during the course of one game" Vs "how close to death the enemy was".

Some solutions could encourage turtling and we have to pay attention to that.
On the other hand, we also don't want to change players' behaviour too much because of this, for example, some healers might stop feeling comfortable playing at low health in order to keep the pressure on the other team during certain moments, and paladins/spriests/mages/hunters/rogues won't wait so long before they bubble/block/deterrence/vanish, etc...

Who should win between a team that nearly kills their opponent 20 times during one single match and a team that leaves their opponent at 1 HP and plays defensively during the rest of the game?
Maybe there could be a mix between both variables with some weight applied to each of them.

We'll make sure to share the potential issues you brought up with the devs, there are many solutions available to break ties and it's possible that we end up seeing some iteration on this.

Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tie-break, arena-tiebreak, arena-tips, arenas, breaking, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, pvp-guide, tie-break, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide

Filed under: PvP

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Blizzard clarifies arena tie-break

There has been an excellent thread running in the EU forums laying out constructive criticisms of the new arena tie-break system. This system, if you hadn't heard, introduces a new buff called "The Crowd Chose You!!!" which will be applied to one team or another based on two criteria: the team with the largest number of players alive, and the team that brought an enemy player closest to death. Blizzard EU Community Manager Taepsilum posted in the thread to clarify that this is still very much in iteration, and to calm the fears of the posters, but a couple of great points were brought up.

Firstly, if one team gets an enemy player to repeatedly low health percentages, for example, they get a mage to 10% then to 5% then to 8%, but their opponents get one of them to 2%, do their opponents win? It sounds, from reading about the system, like the team that got the player to 2% would emerge victorious, but this seems a little counter-intuitive. Another great question is whether the health for the calculation is percentage based or numerical. Percent would make more sense, it seems. Hit the break for Taepsilum's post.

TaepsilumThere are some very good points being brought up in here, particularly the dispute between the "frequency in which each team gets someone from the other team close to death during the course of one game" Vs "how close to death the enemy was".

Some solutions could encourage turtling and we have to pay attention to that.
On the other hand, we also don't want to change players' behaviour too much because of this, for example, some healers might stop feeling comfortable playing at low health in order to keep the pressure on the other team during certain moments, and paladins/spriests/mages/hunters/rogues won't wait so long before they bubble/block/deterrence/vanish, etc...

Who should win between a team that nearly kills their opponent 20 times during one single match and a team that leaves their opponent at 1 HP and plays defensively during the rest of the game?
Maybe there could be a mix between both variables with some weight applied to each of them.

We'll make sure to share the potential issues you brought up with the devs, there are many solutions available to break ties and it's possible that we end up seeing some iteration on this.

Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tie-break, arena-tiebreak, arena-tips, arenas, breaking, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, pvp-guide, tie-break, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide

Filed under: PvP

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Blizzard clarifies patch 5.2 item upgrade changes, upgrade NPC gone

To help alleviate the confusion about the absence of gear upgrades come patch 5.2, Lead Systems designed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street recently tweeted the following:

@panterpe No gear. The NPC is gone.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 11, 2013

Naturally, this response prompted a flurry of tweets from players concerned about various aspects of the proposed changes. Ghostcrawler responded to several, with further explanation, and Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok subsequently posted a longer explanation on the US forums.

Players concerns related, understandably, to gear which had already been upgraded. Would it keep its upgrades? The response, reassuringly, from Ghostcrawler, was yes, it would. This fact itself brings other issues with it, particularly for PvP gearing. Upgraded Conquest gear is already so much higher than honor gear, with a maximum item level of 491 compared to honor's maximum of 466. The new honor gear arriving in 5.2 would have brought the two levels closer together, but it was then downgraded from 483 to 476.

There have been several posts from various Blizzard sources saying that PvP gearing would be totally revamped for 5.2, the outcome of which PvP players await with trepidation. And for PvE, the issue is pretty similar -- the pressure is now on to get gear upgraded before patch 5.2 arrives, when, currently, the ability to do so will be removed. From Ghostcrawler's follow-up tweets, it will return in patch 5.3, if it returns at all.

Ghostcrawler makes the not unreasonable point that the demand on valor points was high, with the choice players had to make between choosing to buy a new item and choosing to upgrace an existing item might have been stressful for some. But for others, like me, the choice to spend valor on something that required no rep grind was very welcome.

It is a surprise to some that the Voidbinders are not left in just for patch 5.2 gear, rather than removed altogether, particularly given how helpful this would be for players trying to level alts, who were able to grind out justice points to upgrade low level gear and get over the bar into heroics, allowing them to continue with progression without having to spend gold at the auction house. And much the same applies for the next progression bars into the Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear/Terrace of Endless Spring raid finders -- the item upgrade possibility is another option for characters to get over that hurdle.

BashiokEven Ethereals need a vacation, and the item upgraders (Voidbinders), are no exception. They're saying they need to go home to take care of business arrangements, but ... I'm not convinced. I think they're just homesick for their 'space mummy' families.

Ok ok, fourth wall broken, we're actually just temporarily removing them from the game for 5.2 due to the new raid tier. The idea with the item upgrade system is that it's a way to spend currency on upgrading items when buying new items isn't the clear path. Either you've bought everything, or at least most of them, and then spend currency to get that extra *oomph*. With a new raid tier coming, we don't want to create a trap where people are wondering what's more lucrative: spend currency on new items, or on the new gear appearing on vendors? (Hint: It's the new gear on vendors.) To help ensure we're not indirectly encouraging anyone to spend their currency somewhere they probably shouldn't, the item upgraders will be taking a break.

Right now we're planning for them to return in 5.3, which will not have a raid tier, and offer upgrades again as people will have likely have some currency to burn. We're not sure yet if we'll continue this cycle of having them take a break for raid patches and then come back in non-raid patches, but we'll continue evaluating as we go, absorb feedback, and let you know how these plans evolve.

I, for one, will miss the upgrade system, but Bashiok's post implies, not unexpectedly that there will also be new rewards to spend valor on. Hopefully the reputation grind will be less arduous than the current ones!
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: breaking, featured, gear-upgrades, gear-upgrades-gone, item-upgrade-system, item-upgrades, item-upgrades-gone, mists, mists-of-pandaria, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, voidbinder

Filed under: News items, PvP, Mists of Pandaria

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