Blizzard to make resilience more important in Arena

[Tim]

The Blizzard forums are typically a breeding ground for QQing of all sorts, but today I read a very interesting post, and an even more interesting response from Blizzard.

"This is just a question I've been wondering about and that is how has burst gotten to be so high? I've been watching some of the BC pvp vids and the damage seemed significant but never this crazy "global or be globaled" stuff we see currently. Were there any reasons or factors that contributed to Burst getting so high or is it just the natural trend of things?"

To which Blizzard responded (in 2 posts):

"We think everything is a little too intense right now, almost like playing the game on fast forward. Yes, damage can come in too quickly, but that is partially because healing is also so huge that without some amount of burst, it would seem as though nobody would ever die. It's as if players are either at 100% health or 0% health, and very infrequently effective in between. If we just drastically toned down PvP damage across the board -- say, by inflating resilience or health pools -- then healers would dominate, much as was the case in The Burning Crusade. In return, the only way to win a match would be to chain crowd control or possibly mana drain the healer. We certainly want to make sure these abilities have their place in PvP, but the game can also be frustrating when excessive healing gives players the feeling that fights are just being reset consistently until healers are completely out of mana (which in most cases can take a very long time).

On the flip side, we could tone down damage and healing, but that has huge PvE ramifications and we're not ready to re-balance the entire game -- though this is the intent for Cataclysm. What we'll likely do for the next expansion is ramp damage up a little as players advance, but have health pools increase greatly and healing increase by marginal amounts. The same change would have benefits for PvE too because mana then becomes a consideration for healers -- they must make a more determined choice between an efficient strategy and a spamming strategy -- and tanks won't constantly face dying by two unfortunate strikes. In PvP, you'll ideally see more players in a wounded state, and they can eventually be worn down rather than blown up in a couple of global cooldowns.

We are discussing the idea of increasing the benefits of resilience for the next Arena season. We will have to see what effect this has on healing and whether or not weapon inflation from the newest items can adequately offset any of those effects."

So what are your thoughts, is resilience the way to balance out PVP? Something tells me that I am not so sure..

[Ualaa]

I personally don't like Resilience, as a mechanic.

Towards the end of classic WoW, it made sense to bring something in, when anyone in the top raid level (PVE) gear could one or two shot anyone else who was in any lesser gear (which included all forms of PVP gear).

Resilience is a bandage for the issue and not a cure. Your health lasts longer as your resilience increases, there's not really a whole lot of difference between increased resilience and increased health. I like the idea of damage and healing increasing at about the same pace, but in having enough health that you are not in danger of being downed in 2-3 seconds of play. Burst, be it damage or healing power, will still be king... but it won't instantly take someone out.

Now that the statistic has been introduced, I don't see it going anywhere. The same idea as arena; I'd rather have rated battlegrounds then arena, but now that we've had 7 seasons of arena, I doubt we'll ever have a Tier of raiding without a simultaneous Arena season with the same iLV gear.

[Tim]

My thoughts exactly. I was really surprised, too, because didn't Blizzard recently announce that Arena's and resilience were a mistake?

[Lindline]

They could eliminate resilience altogether by increasing the health to damage ratio (which they are doing for Cataclysm). Resilience is there to prevent the stacking of burst as the sole deciding factor in a victory, a 100-0 style of PVP is not fun. Probably why I enjoy Star Trek online.