PVP Patch Coming Tuesday Dec 5th

[Slayerik]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=77838804EC3B659B01601E3CF5B4D092?topicId=51145118&sid=1

In a surprise move, Blizzard actually tells us in advance!

Woot, papa needs a new pair of shoes!

[Xanthippe]

I'm glad.  Maybe this will get rid of all the bozo honor farmers this week.  Last weekend (AV weekend) was the worst AVs I've ever been in.  My record was 2 wins, 11 losses (and those 11 were in a row - I was in a foul mood Saturday, which is when I played 8 of them - that's all I did Saturday, in fact).

Here's how several games went.  Alliance heads to Galv, Horde heads to SH, some alliance guy takes Snowfall.  Horde has 8-10 defending between IB gy and Galv.  Alliance dies and has to go back to SP.  Alliance has been conditioned to never, ever take SH or else people automatically cry "TURTLE."

Within 10 or so minutes, everyone is at SP or between SP and SH playing defense.  Snowfall capped, but people want to push their way to it.  Still, when someone wants to take SH to push horde further, people deride him and shout "TURTLE."

After 12 minutes, random alliance idiots say, "Oh, let them win, we've already lost."  When I suggest that they have a friend queue them for AB or WSG to get them out without the deserter debuff, I'm told, "I've already invested 15 minutes here!"

Second scenario:  Got O and D split up fairly well, push our way past Horde at Galv and take IB.  Continue down to FW, take that.  Meanwhile Horde go all out, practically, so alliance enters FW keep and lo and behold not a single tank for the WMs.  This happens way more often than it should.

I miss the days before the BG merge only because we used to win 75% of the AVs.  The massive stupidity I've seen on this past AV weekend sucks all of the joy out of that bg.

[SurfD]

Whats amusing about that story, is that I am horde on Tichondrious (battle group 9), and for a while, it was almost the exact same thing, except we kept losing.

Before cross server battlegrounds, Tich horde won about 90% of our AV games, once the cross server stuff started going, Horde were lucky to win one in 8 to 10 games.

Our Horde were somehow convinced that because the Alliance on our battlegoup could constantly win with the Cap and rush strategy, that a Rush to SP would work for us. So 90% of the time you would just get idiots blind rushing up to SH, someone would tap it, and then the whole mass would spend the next 20 minutes throwing themselves mindlessly into the defensive choke point that is the road leading up to SP graveyard and never advance any farther.  15 Alliance can defend SP graveyard almost indefinately and without effort when the Horde try to charge along the road.

Meanwhile, since the Horde weekend warriors on our Battlegroup have an almost pathological aversion to Defense, the Alliance get 20 people, and simply steamroll over SF, roll Galvager under, swat down the 3 or 4 people actually trying to defend, and roll into iceblood.  Either that, or they take all 20, sneak back to frostwolf, and cap FW, both Towers, and the FWRH at the same time.

Now that we FINALLY are starting to get people playing Defense, the alliance dont know how to adjust.  Give the alliance SF, and have 15 people on D hold them bottled up at Galvager / Iceblood, and you usually win the game.

[Zane0]

This is going to break a few UI mods for good, so uh, be ready!

[Trouble]

I don't know why Blizzard is referring to this as a PvP patch, maybe because they envision raiding not happening anymore I guess. This is a far reaching patch, changing many of the core mechnics of the game. It IS WoW 2.0. To call it a PvP patch is...not entirely accurate.

[Slayerik]

True, my class (Hunter) gets its world flipped.

[Righ]

But it is a PvP patch, because the consequences on the game have more to do with the PvP changes than anything else at all. You are no longer going to be in competition with anybody else to earn PvP rewards. They have gone from being the most mind-bendingly difficult to procure epics to the most trivially easy. If you dont put in the frankly minute number of hours to get the remaining epics you need for your character(s) before the expansion pack, you're messing up. Forget BWL, AQ, even Naxx - if you don't have the whole thing on farm status and if you're not substantially done with your drops there and leading a DKP race, you're better off heading to the PvP instances to prep yourself for the expansion. Nobody does this apply to more than classes that are changing - got a hunter with awesome agility weapons and jewelery? Most of that non-hunter-specific stuff isn't being converted, and you now want AP heavy replacements. As does every other person in your class in your guild. PvP. It's a PvP patch.

[Lt.Dan]

Is this the 468Mb patch that's been downloading after you log out?  If it is, brace yourselves for pain - even now it's only downloading at 15Kb/s.  Come patch day ...

[tazelbain]

This has me seriously considering WoW for the first time.  So about how long does it take to make out under the new system?

[Righ]

If you catassed it, it would take you under a month to get completely epic'd out in full high warlord armor, weapons and bling. The real attraction is that you can do as little you like as infrequently as you like and still make progress, however slow. Previously, playing a few AVs and ABs every week for a year would get you a lowly rank good for crap. Now you get no rank, but you get rewards commensurate with overall honor. In other words, its now like earning PvP currency rather than a position in a league table.

http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/4550993.html

Hunters may want to get the ammo pouch for 10 AV tokens & 2250 honor before TBC. It's 15% haste like the quest quiver, and there seems to be a wider selection of easy to get guns early in TBC than there are bows or crossbows.

[lamaros]

This has me seriously considering WoW for the first time.  So about how long does it take to make out under the new system?

I resubbed for this patch and TBC, so I hope it delivers. I might not get TBC if this is a letdown.

My lock is stuck with the best gear I could get without a raiding investment (my guild raids, but I don't because it's the mose boring and frustrating thing on earth), and with this patch I will finally be able to get some more upgrades.

[Merusk]

Is this the 468Mb patch that's been downloading after you log out?  If it is, brace yourselves for pain - even now it's only downloading at 15Kb/s.  Come patch day ...

The background downloader supposedly has a smaller throat, so it can run while you're playing WoW. The idea is to let it download over several days rather than trying all at once on patch day itself.

[Fabricated]

Here's some stuff I want the people here who actually care about WoW math bullshit to explain to me:

-It looks like the "Rating" system for crit/defense/hit/etc is going in this patch. Explain the defense rating to me. Is that exactly the same as it was before? Do I just get more points to my defense skill? Is the skill being made less effective? Because even blue +defense gear is getting a boost from the looks of it. I understand the rest of the ratings (10 crit rating = ~1% crit for a level 60, goes down as you get to 70, and then it's like 0.6-0.7%), just not the defense rating or the "resilience" rating.

-Why is only the epic armor getting that roughly 10% armor class boost?

-I don't play a hunter, but explain the hunter changes anyway. What's up with the huge DPS boost to ranged weapons?

[lamaros]

Here's some stuff I want the people here who actually care about WoW math bullshit to explain to me:

-It looks like the "Rating" system for crit/defense/hit/etc is going in this patch. Explain the defense rating to me. Is that exactly the same as it was before? Do I just get more points to my defense skill? Is the skill being made less effective? Because even blue +defense gear is getting a boost from the looks of it. I understand the rest of the ratings (10 crit rating = ~1% crit for a level 60, goes down as you get to 70, and then it's like 0.6-0.7%), just not the defense rating or the "resilience" rating.

-Why is only the epic armor getting that roughly 10% armor class boost?

-I don't play a hunter, but explain the hunter changes anyway. What's up with the huge DPS boost to ranged weapons?

Most of these things are, I think, covered in other threads on this forum already.

I don't believe Defense has changed, though I might be wrong.

Resilience decreases the likelyhood you will get crit, and also decreases the damage delt to you when you do get crit.

[caladein]

-It looks like the "Rating" system for crit/defense/hit/etc is going in this patch. Explain the defense rating to me. Is that exactly the same as it was before? Do I just get more points to my defense skill? Is the skill being made less effective? Because even blue +defense gear is getting a boost from the looks of it. I understand the rest of the ratings (10 crit rating = ~1% crit for a level 60, goes down as you get to 70, and then it's like 0.6-0.7%), just not the defense rating or the "resilience" rating.

Blue post from a month and a half ago does a lot better job then I could...

Combat Rating System Explanation

With the upcoming release of the Burning Crusade, we thought we would take the time to explain more on a new stat that we are introducing: Combat Ratings. These ratings are being used for any combat stat that previously was percentage-based such as: critical strike chance, hit chance, dodge chance and defense skill. Combat ratings are only used with effects generated by items and do not apply to effects that are generated by spells and talents which will continue to work the same.

The following combat ratings are currently in use: weapon skill, defense, dodge, parry, block, hit chance, spell hit chance, critical strike chance, spell critical strike chance, resilience, haste, and spell haste.

*We may introduce others at a later time.

Combat Skills

Unlike fixed percentages such as 2% critical strike chance, combat ratings diminish in potency as your character increases in level. 2% crit is the same at every level, while 28 critical strike rating grants 4% crit at level 34, 2% crit at level 60, and 1.27% crit at level 70. This allows us the ability to create and add new and better items to the world without eventually reaching a point where every character has a 100% chance to critically strike.

Below is the level 60 conversion for combat skills:

Weapon Skill Rating
2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill

Hit Rating
10 rating grants 1% hit chance

Spell Hit Rating
8 rating grants 1% spell hit chance

Critical Strike Rating
14 rating grants 1% critical strike chance

Spell Critical Strike Rating
14 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance

Haste
10 rating 1% haste

Spell Haste
10 rating grants 1% spell haste

Defense Skills

The impact on the defense skill and weapon skill systems is slightly more complicated. Many people do not realize these skills actually grant percentage-based benefits already. For example, every 25 points of defense skill grants a 1% dodge chance, 1% parry chance, 1% block chance, 1% increased chance to be missed and 1% decreased chance to be critically hit by physical attacks. Weapon skills have a similar effect for the attacker. Items will now grant skill rating rather than skill directly, and that will convert to an actual skill increase.

Below is the level 60 conversion for defense skills:

Defense Skill Rating
1.5 rating grants 1 defense skill

Dodge Rating
12 rating grants 1% dodge

Parry Rating
20 rating grants 1% parry

Block Rating
5 rating grants 1% block chance

Resilience

Resilience is a special new rating which we have created to reduce the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by X percent, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2X percent. X is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.

Below is the level 60 conversion for resilience:

Resilience
25 rating grants 1% resilience

Each time you go up a level, the amount of rating needed to get the same benefit will increase. An example of the scaling involved would be the current implementation of Agility which has always worked this way in the live game, requiring more agility for the same critical strike chance as you go up in level.

[Xanthippe]

I'm confused about the stats changes for hunters.  Actually, I barely understand how they worked before.  I'm not one of those number-crunching stat people, and I don't pay a lot of attention myself to what the numbers mean until I'm forced to.  Even then, I try to get someone to put it into English for me.

With the new patch, 1 agility = 1 ap.

What did agility mean prior?  (I knew it was good for hunters but not exactly how the numbers worked).

I focused on getting agility/stam gear, mostly agility (as a marks hunter) before I went for the epics.

Since the changes have been announced, I've noticed that things that were before considered "hunters' rings" are now being bid on by warriors and rogues.  Why is this?  I do understand about mana and arcane shot changes, but what about autoshot/general stuff?

I tried to read the other threads as much as I could, but like I alluded to before, my eyes tend to glaze over when it's all number-crunching.

Any light that someone could shed upon this for me would be appreciated.

[SurfD]

if i remember correctly, it used to be 1 agil = 2 AP.  So hunters who focused on pure Agil gear instead of the AP + agil gear are going to see their AP drop a fair bit.

[Morfiend]

Whats amusing about that story, is that I am horde on Tichondrious (battle group 9), and for a while, it was almost the exact same thing, except we kept losing.

Hey SurfD, my guild is thinking about transferring to Tich. Any info you could give about major guilds, and world pvp, and stuff like that. We are horde.

[Xanthippe]

if i remember correctly, it used to be 1 agil = 2 AP.  So hunters who focused on pure Agil gear instead of the AP + agil gear are going to see their AP drop a fair bit.

Why are warriors and rogues now wanting +agility gear?

[Threash]

if i remember correctly, it used to be 1 agil = 2 AP.  So hunters who focused on pure Agil gear instead of the AP + agil gear are going to see their AP drop a fair bit.

Why are warriors and rogues now wanting +agility gear?

Some of the better pure agi items like the neck of nef are losing a little bit of agi for huge ap boost making them very appealing for rogues, not sure about wars.

[Righ]

Yes, it was previously 1 agility = 2 ranged attack power. This will mostly hurt hunters in unadjusted equipment - uncommons, non-set rares & epics. All the hunter-specific loot is being adjusted to a mix of +agility and +AP. There consequence of this is that most people will take a small loss on ranged attack power (due to weapons, jewelery, etc) and gain a substantial amount of melee attack power. Except for the most under-equipped hunters (not even any beaststalker gear) this will largely be offset by the increase in base ranged weapon DPS (around 30%), ammo DPS (nearly double at level 55) and available talent changes. Most hunters should get an increase in DPS at the cost of faster mana usage. At level 62 (so not for over a month) we'll get aspect of the viper, which will allow us to regain mana at speed.

Stuff that was purely agility previously and which Blizzard regarded as tailored toward hunters has been changed to agility + attack power, since that is what hunters want now. Since thats also exactly what DPS warriors and rogues want, they'll bid on these items. The changes to attack power for hunters was done to make itemization easier for Blizzard. Since we now share the same stat requirements as melee DPS folks, there will be more competition on non-class-specific loot (but probably a better selection added to the game). No doubt there will be more cries of 'rogue/warrior can use this more' from the loot retards too.

[Merusk]

I was worried about Hunter DPS for a good chunk of time.   Last night I finally got off my ass and hit 62 in beta.

Arcane Shot + Steady Shot + New Autoshot = wow, dead mob.  I'm a happy hunter, and all the whiners are crazy, crazy mo fos.

[Jayce]

Whats amusing about that story, is that I am horde on Tichondrious (battle group 9), and for a while, it was almost the exact same thing, except we kept losing.

Hey SurfD, my guild is thinking about transferring to Tich. Any info you could give about major guilds, and world pvp, and stuff like that. We are horde.

Geez Morph, you guys are server nomads.

Unless you're not in the same guild as you were when you left Sargeras.

[Morfiend]

Whats amusing about that story, is that I am horde on Tichondrious (battle group 9), and for a while, it was almost the exact same thing, except we kept losing.

Hey SurfD, my guild is thinking about transferring to Tich. Any info you could give about major guilds, and world pvp, and stuff like that. We are horde.

Geez Morph, you guys are server nomads.

Unless you're not in the same guild as you were when you left Sargeras.

Not the same guild. But its the same core players, with various friends we picked up along the way from 3 other servers.

[SurfD]

Hmmm, well, lets see:

Start off with the usual forum rejoinder: Sorry, Tichondrious is not for you!

Now, with that out of the way:

If you are horde, how big is your guild? what is your current progression?

We have a few really active horde guilds:
The Core (mine): Naxx capable, and if it wasnt for holidy lull / impending patch / other stuff, we would probably be first (and likely only) horde guild to clear Naxx before BC comes out.  As it stands, we are stalled (minorly, we hope) on Gothik / 4 horsemen, but thats about it.

Triad: somewhat naxx capable, but mainly due to the fact that they are made up of the most active players of 3 other guilds who abandoned their guilds / friends in the name of progression to amalgamate) Not quite as far along as we are.

TAO: Raid capable guild (think they have some naxx content down, but not a lot) who are mainly focused on PvP (they PvE to equipe out their PvP teams with specific pieces of better gear).

A bunch of others, in various stages of BWL / AQ / Naxx.  Check the Tich forums, there is a naxx progression thread which will give you a good idea of who is where.

World PvP.  Not much going on now, but I expect outlands is going to be knee deep in blood when the expantion hits.

There are a LOT of active alliance guilds on the server, so we generally dont lack for things to do.

[Simond]

Is this the 468Mb patch that's been downloading after you log out?  If it is, brace yourselves for pain - even now it's only downloading at 15Kb/s.  Come patch day ...

Tip for anyone still waiting for the downloader: There's a file somewhere in the logs folder (I think) that gives the address which the Blizz Downloader is pointing to. Take that address and sling it into your favourite bittorrent client - just make sure that you save the file into the same place as the Blizz Downloader.

[Dren]

Is this the 468Mb patch that's been downloading after you log out?  If it is, brace yourselves for pain - even now it's only downloading at 15Kb/s.  Come patch day ...

Tip for anyone still waiting for the downloader: There's a file somewhere in the logs folder (I think) that gives the address which the Blizz Downloader is pointing to. Take that address and sling it into your favourite bittorrent client - just make sure that you save the file into the same place as the Blizz Downloader.

I'm still having trouble with it for the first time ever.  I can't seem to do it from behind a firewall even though I've given the program access to all ports.  I know it is supposed to be slow, but I've estimated it will take 3 weeks to download at this rate.  It complains I'm behind a firewall.  I suppose I'll just have to expose myself to the raw savages on the internet while I download this.

Is there anyway for somebody to host this like other patches?  Yeah, I know, a lot to ask for.

[Zane0]

Here's a nice site I found: http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors

[Rasix]

Is there anyway for somebody to host this like other patches?  Yeah, I know, a lot to ask for.

Attaching it here would take days. I can try.

[ClydeJr]

I pulled the patch from http://a.wirebrain.de/wow/ which I got from the WoWWiki Mirror list. It was pretty fast to download.

[Dren]

Thanks, I'll try that when I get home.  Have to drink first. 

It's almost beer thirty!  Woo Woo!

[Venkman]

Have there been any discussions about nerfing the rate at which points are accrued? I ask because I can't see them letting people climb the ranks at the same pace and therefore become fully epic-decked in the space of a month (normal people in this realm of course, the 2-3 hour a day warriors, not the nuts who play 10-16 hours a day).

Or does it not matter because the non-Arena gear is only "good" (read: not best) anyway?

[Righ]

They already changed the costs several times to arrive at this procurement rate.

They're specifically going to allow people who catass PvP get a full set in a month, and people who play a reasonable amount get several items to finish out their epic gear. This will help equalize people before the expansion goes in, since the PvP gear is on par with the BWL gear. People decked out in T3 with Naxx weapons and bling are sill going to be significantly more powerful at 60, but the disparity will not be as great as it would have been had a good proportion of a server gone into Outlands wearing a mix of greens and blues. Many of the early blue item dropsin the expansion are this good, but have sockets.

[Venkman]

Ah thanks. I'm in mostly T1 at this point, but some of the rewards I've seen for even the Hellfire quests would be compelling upgrades (particularly if I respec again). Good to know they've already done the procurement rate adjustments. Seems reasonable.

[Reg]

Hmm it sounds like I should start pvping with my crappily equipped 60 druid if I don't want to get my ass handed to me as soon as I enter the new lands. Will I still get points for bumblingly around incompetently or do I actually have to win at pvp?