Update:

Legion Developer Q&A - PvP

The team isn't happy with class balance currently on the beta.

Tuning for characters with maxed out artifacts isn't a priority right now, the priority is tuning for launch.

Artifacts aren't tuned for PvP as well as they will be eventually.

There is a PvP multiplier for many spells in Legion, so the team can tune spells individually for PvP without affecting PvE.

Artifact traits can also be tuned for PvP, independent of PvE.

Cauterizing Blink has been reduced to be half as effective in PvP.

has been reduced to be half as effective in PvP. Doom Winds is another trait that also has reduced power in PvP.

is another trait that also has reduced power in PvP. Healers were not getting the full stats from their weapons applied to the PvP template, so they were undertuned by almost 30% until recently.

Earlier in beta, damage in PvP was far too high. Everyone ran in, used their cooldowns, and everyone died.

As damage is lowered and now that healers are fixed, utility spells should be useful again.

In Legion, if you win a battleground, skirmish, or arena you get a piece of gear.

The strongboxes in Legion contains items like potions or Mark of Honor .

. The gear you win uses the same random upgrade system that PvE gear does, with a random upgrade of +5, +10, +15, or more item levels.

Grinding lots of currency and then visiting a vendor to purchase a piece of gear wasn't very exciting over the long term.

When things are less predictable, it is a little more exciting when you get a piece of gear and a little disappointing when you don't get the gear you want.

The team wants some unpredictability, but knows the community has been getting their gear from vendor purchases for a long time.

The team is putting in bad luck protection. When you get a piece of gear, the chance to get that piece of gear again is significantly lowered.

You will get gear at the same rate as you have in the past, but the order is a little less predictable.

The PvE part of the game also has an unpredictable gear system.

Gearing up for PvE with PvP gear will still be possible. The gear isn't quite as good for PvE as the PvP gear you get in Warlords.

At the launch of Legion, the PvP stat template base will give you stats like you are wearing item level 850 gear.

Every item level above a baseline (800 at launch) increases your stats by 0.1%.

If you had an item level of 900 you would have a stat boost of 10%, giving you stats like you are wearing item level 860 gear.

Honor and Conquest are going away in Legion and will be converted to gold.

Strongboxes will reward Marks of Honor, which can be used to purchase all of the older PvP gear.

It is important to the team that a lot of players feel like doing rated PvP.

The average player will be motivated to do rated PvP for gear and increasing their honor level.

Every time you do a rated PvP activity you get double honor for your first win of the day.

Rated content offers 50% more honor than the unrated content.

Rated content offers a higher upgrade chance for the PvP gear you get from a win.

The higher rated you are, the higher chance you have to get an upgrade.

Seasons will be tied to raid tiers due to how new content is produced and released.

PvP seasons would benefit from being a little shorter than raid tiers.

Players enjoy the start of the season with new changes and the chance to gear up, as well as the end of the season fighting to get their title.

Seasons have been about as twice as long as they should be.

Legion doubles the number of seasons, so halfway through a raid tier a season will end and a new tier will start.

Seasons will last roughly 10 to 15 weeks.

Honor talents activate in all PvP situations. If you hit another player or are hit by another player, they activate.

PvP stat templates do not activate out in the world.

Honor talents can be tuned so that they don't give you a large advantage in PvE.

The team doesn't want you to have an incentive to have someone constantly hit you for access to the the talents.

The team will look at having PvP stat templates activate for duels.

There is character customization through Honor Talents.

Secondary stats for some specs are problematic, with things like Mastery creating too much burst sometimes.

The team doesn't want to introduce complexity into the system by letting players tune their stats.

They could create Honor Talents that influence your PvP stat template if that is a popular desire.

The team will hopefully be able to make balance changes more often so that a spec isn't underperforming or overperforming for a long time.

Changing PvP spell multipliers is something that can be done with quicker hotfixes.

The team wanted compelling rewards from the honor system. Compelling rewards usually involve player power.

The player power granted by the honor system is the Honor Talents.

For a reward to feel good when you get it, it will feel bad when you don't have it.

You can quickly level to Honor Level 10 and have access to at least one PvP talent for each tier. The rest offer additional customization as you rank up.

PvP talents will be reviewed on an ongoing basis to fix underpowered ones or change out talents that no one is using.

Honor Level / PvP talents are not reset each season. Every season adds more Prestige levels.

Initially you are Prestige level 0 and Honor Level 1. You level to Honor Level 50, press the prestige button to level your prestige.

The first season has four Prestige levels and the next will add another four.

In Warlords, a lot of the PvP focus was on Ashran.

Hardcore arena players may not have liked Ashran but there were people that enjoyed it.

In Legion, lots of PvP dev time was spent on the new honor system.

There are two new arenas in Legion and one old arena may be getting a facelift.

The team hasn't been doing a great job with creating new battlegrounds.

There are lots of battlegrounds already so if they add new battlegrounds, the team might cycle out some old ones.

The team is talking about how to make more battlegrounds and release them more regularly.

There are a lot of conversations going on regarding how the team communicates what they are doing about cheating.

There is a group of people that has a full time job of reviewing player actions and punishing cheaters.

The team is reviewing their policies about repeat offenders right now.

When someone is demonstrating that they are committed to cheating, they shouldn't be allowed to play the game.

Preventing kick bots is a challenge. Interrupts aren't on the GCD, so you can cast them at any time.

The team cares about the cheating problem and they are working on solving it.

Removing Engineering toys from unrated battlegrounds was an oversight.

The team will look at it and see if it is possible to bring them back.

The PvP honor level is being used as a gauge of experience.

A few weeks after launch, if you are below honor level 10 and prestige level 0, you will be placed in a different bucket from everyone else for random battlegrounds.

The team wants players that are tanks to be able to go and have fun in PvP, but not at the expense of everyone else.

In Legion you have to select your role before you queue.

You can't bring 2 healers or 2 tanks into 3v3 arenas anymore.

If you are a tank and want to go and do arenas with your friends, you can be very good and have fun.

The team doesn't want tanks to be the preferred spec at the top end of PvP.

It makes a lot of sense to bring a tank to rated battlegrounds. They can be a flag carrier or front line target caller.

World PvP zones were designed to exist during their expansion, maybe stick around a little longer, but that is it.

The team understands the nostalgia for the older World PvP and is talking about things they can do.

One idea is an occasional Wintergrasp event to make use of the old zones.

There are four free-for-all PvP zones out in the world in Legion.

You can turn into a Murloc, tame and mount animals for mounted PvP, as well as the Black Rook Hold arena out in the world, fighting each other to earn points.

There are also World PvP quests.

The team has to be very careful about changing any of the older battlegrounds.

Rocks and trees not blocking line of sight in Warsong is weird and is something the team can look at.

The older battlegrounds could get a visual update, but they don't want to change up the layouts.

Taking the gameplay from older battlegrounds and making a new map with it would be a better solution.

The systems in place in this expansion delivery on class fantasy, but there has been some mobility power creep.

If a class is very mobile and has a lot of damage uptime, they may need a damage reduction to maintain balance.

There are certain spells with a teleport that offer a lot more power in PvP than they do in PvE. The damage on these spells may be massively reduced, as the main benefit is a teleport.

The Arena Master is becoming a Legacy achievement in Legion.

is becoming a Legacy achievement in Legion. It would be wrong to just remove the 5v5 requirement, as players actually earned it in the past.

A replacement achievement and title is possible.

5v5 was removed as it was very unpopular. Less people do 5v5 than mythic raiding.

The team isn't trying to drive everyone to rated PvP.

It is better when more people are participating in rated PvP, giving players somewhere to go when they care about winning a little bit more.

It is fine if someone just wants to do random battlegrounds or skirmishes. Almost everything being done in Legion will benefit them too.

Prestige level starts at 0.

Honor level goes from 1 to 50. When you hit 50 you can reset to 1 and gain a prestige rank.

The first prestige level rewards a battle pet that follows you around and tells everyone how awesome you are. Alliance Enthusiast and Horde Fanatic

and The second level starts a quest line that gives you another of the PvP artifact appearances.

The third level rewards a Courser mount .

. The fourth level rewards a pennant like the ones from arenas, but a faction skin. It also rewards a title.

Cross-Faction groups for random battlegrounds is not likely to happen. Faction lines are too important to ignore.

The team doesn't want the game to just matter every few minutes when burst cooldowns are up.

Healer mana, applying sustained pressure, and crowd control should matter.

This week was the Legion PvP Q&A with Holinka. Our notes are a quick recap, watch the video for context!Next week iswith Order Halls and Artifacts.