22
03:51
There was an issue on some realms that allowed rated arena matches to continue after maintenance completed today. We have identified these issues and ended the season on the affected realms.
The arena season ended when maintenance began and the appropriate snapshot to decide the season's rewards was taken at that time. Any of the rated matches that took place after maintenance will not be counted for last season's rewards.
The arena season ended when maintenance began and the appropriate snapshot to decide the season's rewards was taken at that time. Any of the rated matches that took place after maintenance will not be counted for last season's rewards.
We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.
We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.
We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.
The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.
We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.
We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.
We think crits need to be proportionately weaker in PvP than in PvE. I'll explain why in a minute, but first let me reiterate that the buff we are making to resilience just affects damage. The relative value of crit in PvP won't change at all with this hotfix. You won't be critting less or doing less proportional damage when you crit. If you hit now for 3000 and crit 30% of the time for 6000 then after this change you might hit for 2700 and crit 30% of the time for 5400. Crit damage will be lower, but crit damage relative to normal damage will not. We don't want to get to the point where a crit is actually mitigated lower than an actual hit. That would be bizarre and do bad things for a lot of talent trees.
As to why we think resilience needs to reduce crits, it's because you're playing against another human and not an AI-controlled creature. Creatures generally don't heal or blow defensive cooldowns, or at least not very well. The ability to pack a lot of damage into a small time window is much more important in PvP just because the opposing player or team have so much control over the size of that window. If you whittle them down to 10% of their health but can't "close the deal" then they may be back up at 50% or 100% in no time. This kind of mechanic happens in PvE too, but much more rarely. The ability to crit in PvE is important largely because it buffs your damage or keys into talents. But the burst portion of crits themselves (high damage in a short amount of time) is much more important in PvP. Thus, we think the value and role of crit would be too high in PvP without a way to mitigate that through stacking resilience.
We don't want resilience per se to bring with it the "kiss / curse" of also nerfing your own healing output or heals received. We want players to like resilience on PvP gear. It shouldn't be a hard decision. We'd prefer a model where resilience improves your survivability without any real downside.
If we implement a healing change, it would be temporary because health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, proportionate to healing, so we don't think that will be a problem. Burst damage may be less of a problem too for the same reason, but we're less confident of that. If it isn't a problem, then we can change the resilience scaling again.
As to why we think resilience needs to reduce crits, it's because you're playing against another human and not an AI-controlled creature. Creatures generally don't heal or blow defensive cooldowns, or at least not very well. The ability to pack a lot of damage into a small time window is much more important in PvP just because the opposing player or team have so much control over the size of that window. If you whittle them down to 10% of their health but can't "close the deal" then they may be back up at 50% or 100% in no time. This kind of mechanic happens in PvE too, but much more rarely. The ability to crit in PvE is important largely because it buffs your damage or keys into talents. But the burst portion of crits themselves (high damage in a short amount of time) is much more important in PvP. Thus, we think the value and role of crit would be too high in PvP without a way to mitigate that through stacking resilience.
We don't want resilience per se to bring with it the "kiss / curse" of also nerfing your own healing output or heals received. We want players to like resilience on PvP gear. It shouldn't be a hard decision. We'd prefer a model where resilience improves your survivability without any real downside.
If we implement a healing change, it would be temporary because health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, proportionate to healing, so we don't think that will be a problem. Burst damage may be less of a problem too for the same reason, but we're less confident of that. If it isn't a problem, then we can change the resilience scaling again.
Written by Michael 'chaud'
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