As it was teased at Blizzcon, World of Warcraft: Legion will have an entire new PvP system and it will be one of the biggest revamps of player-versus-player mechanics in the series’ history. Blizzard is now sharing more details on these changes.
It’s a long list of changes, so let’s highlight the most crucial points:
Honour and Conquest will no longer be currencies that you use to buy gear from vendors. Instead, characters who have reached maximum level will earn Honour Points from competing in Battlegrounds or Arenas, similar to how lower-level players earn Experience Points. As you earn Honour Points, you will increase your Honour Level, up to the maximum Honour Level of 50.
Along the way, you’ll earn a number of rewards, including Gold, Artifact Power, and a brand new set of PvP-only Honour Talents. These are a special set of Talents that are only active when a player is in a PvP instance (such as a Battleground or Arena) or otherwise engaged in PvP combat, and work in addition to your normal Talents.
In Legion, as soon as you zone into a PvP instance, the stats on your gear will be nullified, and you’ll be given a pre-determined set of stats that’s uniquely configured for your specialisation.
What does this all mean? It means player skill will matter a lot in this new system, while gear won’t. So if you’re one of those players who don’t care about Arena and its high-end rewards, or have many alts playing with green and blue items, this is all good news!
And there’s more:
- PvP seasons will be shorter. (More seasons = more rewards!)
- End-of-season PvP awards will be handed out separately to the top percentages of players in each faction, instead of in relation to the overall player base. (*ahem* *ahem* see you, Horde *ahem*)
- Once you’ve reached Honour Level 50, you’ll be given the option to Prestige, which will reset your Honour Level back to 1, and once again restricting access to higher-level Honour Talents. However, in return, you’ll increase your Prestige Level, which grants access to a number of rewards, such as mounts, titles and various cosmetics.
Legion will also have two new Arenas, one located near Black Rock Hold and another one in the forests of Val’sharah. The mechanics of the second one sound pretty cool: When you first enter this arena, you’ll be encased in a dome of vines. When the match starts, those vines will retreat, leaving the starting area exposed to the rest of the arena. In the centre, you’ll find three statues, which can be used to break line of sight. However, those statues are located very close to each other, so you’ll need to keep moving if you want to play defensively.
This all sounds fun (check out the whole list of changes over here) especially for someone who’s running Ashran non-stop recently for those bloody Nemesis titles. We’ll see how it works out.
Comments
12 responses to “Big Changes Are Coming To World Of Warcraft’s PvP”
Still waiting on the true dream… completely separate balancing on ability stats for PVP vs PVE to prevent PVP-based nerfs to PVE-effective abilities.
A man can dream.
This is exactly what they are doing in Legion 🙂
“Second, it allows us infinitely more control to make PvP-specific balance tweaks. If one spec’s Mastery is too strong in PvP, that’s fine – we can just reduce the amount of Mastery they have. If a spec is too easy to kill, we can increase their Stamina. If a healer is having too much trouble keeping teammates alive, we can increase their Spellpower. In short, we can tune classes for PvP in a way that’s exclusively focused on PvP.”
I’ll believe it when I see it! It’s been over ten years of PVE nerfs thanks to PVPers whining about ‘balance’.
I honestly don’t believe PVP can be fair and Balanced even if everybody was a carbon copy of each other.
All I ask is that it doesn’t feel one sided or cheap. That being said I play Alliance and my faction is a bunch of drooling idiots for the most part.
PvPers could say the same thing about PvE…
lol.
Yeah, PVP abilities nerfed because of PVE… yeah, PVPers might say that, but it’s never actually happened. But PVPers will say anything when complaining about how anyone that isn’t their class is OP if it kills them.
Omega levels of bias detected sir!
“Once you’ve reached Honour Level 50, you’ll be given the option to Prestige, which will reset your Honour Level back to 1” – I see Activision finally convinced bliz to include a little COD in their game 🙂
Lets all hope they bring out a Nuketown map 😛
“Once you’ve reached Honour Level 50, you’ll be given the option to Prestige, which will reset your Honour Level back to 1” – I see Activision finally convinced bliz to include a little COD in their game 🙂
Lets all hope they bring out a Nuketown map 😛
why would you want that? cod is terrible, just like your comment
I’m pretty excited to see these changes, but the only worry I have is that the item level on your gear scales into pvp not in a big way but has an effect. So if peeps are running in the highest raid tier they will have somewhat an advantage over some who just solely plays to pvp.