4/8 PvP Alpha Dev Update
Hey everyone,
Once again, we want to start off by thanking you all for participating in the Alpha and posting here in the forums. It's extremely valuable to us to be able to play with you all online. We're constantly reading these forums and discussing your feedback within the team. It's been a great help!
At this stage of development, the class and PvP teams are spending more time on class tuning and balance. We've read everything you posted so far and look forward to hearing even more of your thoughts going forward.
Honor Level 50 Templates Incoming
We've gotten some great feedback on the new Honor system and we've made some adjustments to its pacing. Now, we think the time has come to focus on getting as much feedback as possible on the Honor talents themselves. In an upcoming build (sorry no specific ETA), we've set the Honor level to 50 on the templates used to create new characters. If you'd like to instead continue to test the Honor progression, you are more than welcome to Prestige. We'd love the feedback!
Class Tuning
Damage and healing tuning has begun for classes and as such we'll be monitoring its effects on PvP. One of the big additions to PvP in Legion is our ability to adjust character stats on a per spec basis to tune things like damage, healing and health pools for PvP. So if we feel like a class is doing too much damage, we'll decrease their Strength, Agility, or Intellect. We commonly run into the problem that for any number of reasons, a class could be doing a lot of damage in PvP but not enough in PvE. For example, we recently reduced the PvP Agility on Havoc Demon Hunters to counteract a buff they received to their spells for PvE. Another example is the increase of Stamina for all Warlock specs since they did not feel tanky enough.
PvP Spell Multipliers
We also have the ability to easily apply PvP multipliers to specific spells when needed. These PvP multipliers only adjust the spell when used on another player or, in the case of healing spells, when engaged in PvP combat. We'd prefer to limit the number of spells we adjust in this way as it can be difficult for players to keep track of which spells have been adjusted. But, we'd like to illustrate some examples of how we've used this capability so far in the Alpha.
Self-Healing
Self-healing is valuable for giving players some degree of personal sustainability, but it can be problematic for the pace of gameplay in PvP if it is too strong. On the Alpha, we've recently used PvP multipliers to reign in the strength of Fury Warrior healing through Bloodthirst and Demon Hunter leech in Metamorphosis for just this reason.
Burst Damage
Many of our classes have instant cast spells that deal a lot of damage to create exciting inflection points in their rotation. But for PvP, where burst damage in kill windows matter so much, it can be problematic when one spell does too much damage. For this reason, we applied PvP multipliers to reduce the damage of Marksmanship Hunter's Aimed Shot and Marked Shot on Alpha. Of course, if the Class Design team adjusts the damage of either of these spells, we would adjust the PvP multipliers if we felt itsnecessary.
Thank you again, for all of your participation within the game and here on the forums. We couldn't do this without your help and we really do appreciate your support.
Tuning? Aren't a lot of classes upset with mechanics still? Are you guys going to still be adjusting mechanics while tuning? Edit - I ask this because tuning occurring for PvP can hit PvE, and vice-versa.
I feel you are reading too much into what I wrote. It would be best to take what was written at face value and not try to derive anything else from it. (
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Cheating in Rated PvP
Blizzard please listen to us. We're doing this because we want you guys to know this is a huge issue and we don't think its getting as much attention as it deserves because it is causing multitudes of players to stop doing RBGs and arenas.
We take the integrity of the game very seriously. We have departments and technology dedicated to detecting cheats and punishing people that use them. We are constantly working to fix the problem but we don't discuss our plans or actions openly. Rest assured, it is as important to us as it is to you. (
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Monk (
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Windwalker Monk Feedback -- Build 21414 -- 6-Apr
An update on this: We've significantly improved SEF's AI, and tailored it for its new purpose.
SEF clones will count toward SCK, and they will actively seek to maximize its effect. Every time they TP or BoK or RSK, they'll switch to a new target. Their target selection logic will try to hit targets that haven't been hit yet, and beyond that will prefer ones that were hit longest ago. They'll also ignore targets that have >90% DR or are not in combat with you. And since they Flying Serpent Kick to each target, they lose nearly no time in travel time even if the targets are spread apart.
Basically, SEF should help you maximize SEF in just a couple GCDs, while they're out.
Assuming this is a typo and means Maximise SCK, does this mean that you've decided to have a hard cap on the SCK stacks? It's been expressed that 5-7 stacks would be the best route for this ability.
Whoops, typo fixed. No, there's no hard cap, it's just limited by available target count and GCDs.
Has it been decided on 3 or 4 chi yet?
Leaning toward 3 at this point.
This question slipped my mind the other day but do these stacks for SCK get consumed each time you use SCK or does it just roll for 15 seconds for each target?
They are not consumed.
Just another thought, and hear me out. With the new SEF change being almost exclusive to use in PvE, could we do a talent switcheroo? Nerf Xuen's damage a little bit, but make him baseline(as it probably should've always been) and put the new SEF in his spot on the talent tree. That way we could pick SEF for those crazy AoE fights(Hello Iskar, my old friend), but have Hit Combo or RJW for other situations and then we have our Xuenny-poo all the time. This would also give PvPers another valid CD to use and so they wouldn't have to look at SEF on their bar wondering if they'll ever use it. I just don't see the point of giving us SEF baseline when it'd only be useful on a handful of fights, whereas Xuen would be the most generic CD for use on everything for both PvE and PvP.
I may just be completely crazy, but I wouldn't be opposed to the new SEF change if that was the case. Could potentially be swapped for other things as well, that was just the one that made perfect sense to me.
Sounds like you're assuming SEF isn't intended for use in PvP... It is. It's not the same use as it had before, but it should still be useful.
i do have a question about the counter. Based on the description, I can tag 10-12 targets within 4-5 globals (depending on if you tab target or not to help the SEF). There should be a way to show which targets have been tagged. That way us as a player know not to attack a tagged target. Secondly If I tag a target, and 5 seconds later TP that same target, will the counter for that target get refreshed? Also what will the SEF do if they run out of targets to tag? Will they stop on said target and just continue to copy your moves until someone's "debuff" falls off?
They 100% work as would be ideal, continuing to refresh on whatever was hit longest ago. There's no debuff with SEF, because there's no need; they'll take care of it for you (unless there's some silly 20+ target situation, which we virtually never do).
Maybe a moot thing once people talent into the SEF artifact trait (38% damage instead of 33%; or a total of 114% damage).
That trait will change.
There was a very recent post from Celestalon aimed at frost mages, that referenced efforts to reinforce their niche of 2 target cleave, which has existed "for a while". Since SEF came out in mid MoP Windwalkers have likewise had a niche with cleave - even spread cleave. I guess this does not count as "for a while"? Or there are other reasons why this long-running spec identity is no longer acceptable?
A very fair question. We agree that the spread cleave niche that Windwalkers had was pretty cool, and unique among melee. Maintaining Frost's niche was easy, and caused no problems. Conversely, maintaining Windwalker's niche was running into problems left and right. Thus, we're trying something different. This is a very significant and experimental change, to be sure; that's why we're trying to be so communicative with you all about it. (
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Priest (
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Holy Priest Feedback -- Build 21414 -- 6-Apr
Prayer of Mending splitting each jump is being hotfixed to alpha. (
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Bugged? Phantom Assassin (PvP Talent Feedback)
Agreed. Not intended for Symbols of Death to cost Energy when applied through Phantom Assassin. Fixed in an upcoming build. (
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