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State of the PvP in Beta

World of Warcraft's PvP attracted a lot of players back during the Burning Crusade, with the premise of Arenas and easier to attain PvP Rewards. Initially, players were offered a set of blue gear (called Veteran's) for their honor points and battleground tokens, however, as time passed and more 'seasons' of PvP came and went, the almighty Arena gear that was getting outclassed began slowly but surely appearing at the Honor Point NPC's.

This gave way to a lot of people having what they were later deemed "Welfare epics", items that, while extremely powerful and would surely boost anyone just getting to 70, were extremely easy to get and hence the challenge was all gone. Players would need to decide whether to use Karazhan or PvP gear, especially weaponry, during the later parts of the Burning Crusade.

In Wrath of the Lich King, PvP remains a big focus of the developers, adding more Arenas and places to fight in, such as Lake Wintergrasp and a new Battleground touting the new destructible buildings and siege weaponry engine available. That's all fine and good but, how easy is it to obtain "epic" PvP gear in the expansion?

Honor Points, still currency?

While Honor Points remain the currency for most of the PvP gear, it will currently allow for people to buy blue-quality items from the PvP vendors, which isn't that much better from a dungeon-set item, only with more resilience. This is almost like last time, however, the high-end epic items will have Arena and Rating costs set onto them.

It's worthy of note that Blizzard has decided to let players keep their Honor points for Wrath of the Lich King, but even then, as mentioned before, it probably won't be that much of a deal - cost of items will go up, and your Arena requirement will most likely not be met since you need to be ranked in the level 80 version of the Arenas.

This is a good change in my opinion, since Honor Points are very easily obtainable, from people who sit AFK in battlegrounds to people just join premades for "quick honor", Honor-grinding has been present, if only because the quality of the items obtainable is of extraordinary stats and possibly damage. By limiting the gear you may obtain from honor points, you force people to look elsewhere - be it from Arena, which requires some semblance of patience and perseverance past "idle in the Battleground", or from organized group ventures, which will definitely hold your attention.

Blizzard's Plan

Blizzard's current plan is simple, they realize that they made players way too powerful way too fast with the Honor Point turn-ins, and will take steps so that you spend more time working toward your epic PvP gear, almost to the point of expending the equal amount of effort you would raiding a 10-man zone for some pieces of loot.

From a post earlier in the Warcraft forums from Kalgan,

The Savage Gladiator set is actually of item level 200s (superior), equivalent to the item level of a heroic instance. So, in much the same way that you might expect a player to first gear up in normal mode instances and get a handful of ilevel 187s items before proceeding to the heroics, the philosophy is that in the pvp case players will get the 187s crafted pvp items before attempting endgame pvp activity.

In addition, players have access to ilevel 200e (epics) for the boots, belt, bracers, ring, neck, trinket, cape exclusively through honor (equivalent item level to end-boss heroic instances, nax 10, or items from the Emblem of Heroism vendor). These items, combined with the crafted items, provide a pretty good base of items from which a player might make an entry into the arenas.

There you have it, if you want to PvP, you will first need to get your hands on crafted PvP gear in order to go into the Arenas. While they won't put an Arena rating in the first season's items, they might in the future - for now, it will be a clean slate, which is the best they can do to make this balanced in the PvP sense.

As for the Stats and changes, Resilience is still a great thing to have in great numbers, and with over 16,000 HP in most characters, this will make for interesting matchups. It's worthy of note that currently in the beta fights don't last any longer than they do in live due to the new powerful moves we've all gotten in our different classes.

The changes to resilience keep stacking up, from reducing just critical hits, now it reduces manadrain effects and DoT effects on you, making it a very complete stat. However, we can't forget that Blizzard has promised that Resilience will only be working in a PvP setting soon. Until then, the best equipment for a tanking druid will be PvP gear, but sooner or later you may need to swap out for dungeon leather gear to keep your stats up.

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Lake Wintergrasp's Map, in the middle of Northrend.

On Lake Wintergrasp

Lake Wintergrasp has a boss inside Wintergrasp Hold you may defeat for one piece of epic Arena gear, should you choose to while your faction controls the zone. Currently, there's no restrictions on when to enter Lake Wintergrasp to PvP, so if you can get here and join the fight, you probably can. It's too early to tell just how players will react to Lake Wintergrasp's mechanics, as some may love it, some may hate it, and some may just avoid it altogether, but the rewards given if you complete the zone for a round (4 hour intervals) will be some Honor Points and some Arena points, which are both always nice to have.

Overall, the PvP in the Beta is currently a little underdeveloped as some places are still undergoing some tweaks, such as the Strand of the Ancients, but it should be a way more balanced offering in Wrath than it ever was in the Burning Crusade.

Stay tuned and keep your eye on our Wrath PvP Portal for further updates on any and all PvP fronts!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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