GotFrag.com -The Cataclysm closed beta has been underway for a couple of weeks now; with major changes being announced daily, it's understandable that people may have mixed feelings about the upcoming expansion. In terms of content, Cataclysm will be the biggest thing Blizzard has released since the original World of Warcraft. Every zone in Azeroth is getting a makeover, the whole 1-60 experience is being re-hauled, and there will be two new races and tons of new zones to explore. You should probably free up some space on your hard drive, because Cataclysm is going to be huge. But is all this change good? Does the World of Warcraft experience we have all come to know and love really need to be shaped and molded into something new? There are a lot of people who are perfectly satisfied with their current experience playing World of Warcraft, but there are many, many more people who are not. No aspect of WoW has faced as much criticism and scrutiny as PvP, so how exactly do the Blizzard PvP devs plan to squelch the fiery tears of whine that have been raining down upon them since the release of the game?
In the current beta build, all abilities that previously reduced healing received by the target by more than 25% have been changed and will now stop at 25%. So mortal strike, wound poison, and aimed shot will all now apply a 25% decrease to healing received debuff, as opposed to the 50% they previously applied.
This can mean one of two things; either Blizzard expects damage to be substantially higher than in Wrath of the Lich King and believes healers need all the help they can get, or Blizzard wants to slow down the fast-paced Arena meta game by increasing healing.
At this point, it is very difficult to tell whether this will be a good thing. Stats have not yet been finalized in beta (armor pen and spirit will be removed in Cataclysm but still exist in the current beta build). The final, 31-point talent trees have not yet been implemented, and there is absolutely no way to tell how much damage people will be able to do at 85 in the first tier of Cataclysm gear.
At the moment all indications point towards Rogue/Mage/Priest being the strongest composition in Season 9. Cataclysm will give them even more offensive pressure and control capabilities than they already have. Mages will be getting a bloodlust, as well as an MS effect on par with wound poison (meaning some Rogues may not even run with wound anymore in favor of having more offensive pressure). Rogues are getting a major damage increase and a portable line of sight, and Priests are getting an increase to their already massive healer damage output.
While some of the aspects that make this comp so great in 4.0 will most likely not see the light of release, most of the changes that will make RMP unstoppable are major, and might not get tweaked much until Blizzard realizes the mistake it has made.
As far as rated Battlegrounds are concerned, there hasn't been a whole lot of information released regarding what they may be like in Cataclysm. All we know so far is that Battlegrounds will reward the same items on par with those obtained from the Arena, and Blizzard really, really wants you to like rated Battlegrounds. Almost every single post on the beta forums that asks anything about how the current build's massive RMP buff will affect Arena receives a response like this:
"For everyone focusing on the RMP Arena comp, I really think you're going to see a shift to more PvP concerns in Cataclysm being about Battleground balance. There will still be players playing Arenas for sure, but a lot of the players currently doing Arenas are going to shift to rated BGs instead." Source
Arena is a major part of many people's WoW experience, so Blizzard's assumption that many players will be switching to the new rated Battlegrounds is cause for some concern. Regardless, Blizzard seems to be placing a great deal of faith in the potential of rated Battlegrounds, and only time will tell whether this faith was justified.
Because of the removal of a majority of the stats we have come to know throughout our travels in the World of Warcraft, stamina has increased substantially on all items. With fewer stats to fill the holes, high stamina is now almost a must for meeting item level requirements. This means that at 85, in epic Cataclysm PvP gear, players will most likely be running with around 100,000 health. Remember that 10k lava burst crit you screencapped and emailed to all of your friends? In order to have the same relevance in Cataclysm, that lava burst will have to be critting for close to 33,000 damage.
We are still in the early days of the beta; however, there is not yet any indication of how much damage players will be capable of at 85 with relevant gear. So it's entirely possible -but not very likely- that players may actually be capable of hitting people for numbers like 33,000. We suspect Arena and Battlegrounds may revert slightly, back to their former The Burning Crusade selves. We may also see a PvP environment where it isn't possible to kill someone in a global. Whether that will be a good thing will be up to individual interpretation.
Cataclysm is very, very far off in the distance, taunting us, and all we can do in the meantime is conjecture and predict. So, while it's interesting to take a look at what PvP might become with the changes in the current beta build, it's very likely we will see an entirely different picture of Cataclysm PvP than the one we've painted for you today.
No comments:
Post a Comment