Unless Nethaera’s Imp Ball is broken, Patch 2.2 will finally be going live Tuesday.

For those who go TLDR and just click past the “Patch Notes” page while the update is installing, here is a quick rundown on PvP changes that you might want to know about…

Unfortunately the long wait for the patch was largely due to the new voice chat features more than anything else. On the PvP front, the changes are relatively minor… just a few balance tweaks. Even if your class is unaffected, it’s always good to be prepared and keep abreast of the changes going on with other classes.

Resilience DOT fix
Resilience Rating: The reduction to the percent chance to get a critical strike now also reduces the damage dealt by damage over time effects by the same percentage.

This is the long awaited DOT fix for resilience. DOT damage is reduced by 1% for every 39.4 resilience. (With 400 resilience, DOT damage is reduced approximately 10%). With the amount of shadowpriests and warlocks seen in the arena these days, every little bit helps…

No more mid-match gear swapping
Players will no longer be able to change armor once an arena battle has begun. Changing armor will still be available during the one-minute prep time prior to the battle. Main hand, off hand and range weapon swapping in combat remains unchanged.

…and on the other hand, warlocks and shadowpriests can take comfort that their opponents aren’t allowed to swap into shadow resist gear once the match has started.

Paladin changes
Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1-minute cooldown
Blessing of Freedom cooldown increased to 25 seconds

Big to small nerf depending on who you ask. BoF cooldown slightly increased. BoS, formerly spammable, is now given a somewhat lengthy cooldown and will force paladins to be more selective in using this ability.

*** Patch notes may be wrong on the BoS change. I’m hearing that the cooldown was changed to 30 seconds on the PTR a few weeks ago. ***

All CC now capped at 10 secs duration in PvP
Duration against PvP targets for the following abilities have been reduced to 10 seconds:

Druids: Hibernate and Entangling Roots
Hunters: Freezing Trap and Scare Beast
Mages: Polymorph
Priests: Mind Control
Rogues: Sap
Warlocks: Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear

New arena shields
Merciless Gladiator’s Barrier: This spell damage shield has been added to the arena vendor.
Merciless Gladiator’s Redoubt: This healing shield has been added to the arena vendor.

New shields for shaman/paladins. Good amounts of stamina and resilience, plus a big 1k armor upgrade.

New PvP gem
Added a recipe for Steady Talasite to the Halaa vendors. This new recipe requires Halaa Research Tokens to purchase and creates a superior green gem that grants Resilience and Stamina.

It’s a 4 resilience and 6 stamina green gem. Good middle ground between the 12-stam and the 8-resil gems, plus talasites are relatively inexpensive. You been saving them right?

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Full patch notes here.

Tags: News

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