- Author: Pride
- Date: October 21, 2021
- Updated: October 21, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Back during the TBC Classic beta, PvP-focused players started reporting weird issues in PvP regarding resistance mechanics and spell hit.
Examples include a rogue’s Cloak of Shadows only resisting spells 80% of the time in PvP. More broadly however, spell hit, either through the spell hit rating stat or talents like a priest’s Shadow Focus, a warlock’s Suppression, etc., not working as intended with regards to canceling out other talents and effects that provide resistance to mechanics, such as a priest’s Unreakable Will talent, a warrior’s Iron Will, a hunter’s Surefooted etc.
Blizzard fixed some of these issues eventually, but reports started appearing that these interactions were broken again in phase 2, causing confusion among players. Kaivax came in to clarify that this behaviour is in fact intended and spell hit talents are not supposed to cancel out resistance talents, and this was caused by an intentional bug fix that went live with the phase 2 patch which were not reported.
How does this affect PvP? Well, prepare to see a LOT more resists. A priest will now resist a warlock’s fear 15% of the time, rather than 5% as was the case in phase 1. The Surefooted boot enchant, a favourite among PvPers, will now be a lot more effective. Almost every stun will be resisted a lot more often, including a shadow priest’s Blackout.
Resists tend to be a contentious topic among PvPers who are generally not fond of random effects. Blizzard eventually went on to remove every single resist mechanic in Wrath of the Lich King, instead converting them into reduced duration of such mechanics. Thus players were generally happy with lower resist chances across the board, and it already seems like there’s many unhappy PvPers with this change.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Is it better that the game is more accurate to 2007 TBC at the cost of more resists in PvP? Let us know in the comments below!
We’ve investigated this issue thoroughly and we believe that resists are now functioning more closely to original Burning Crusade.
During the development of patch 2.5.2 for Burning Crusade Classic, we found and fixed a bug preventing some talents that resisted specific mechanics (such as Unbreakable Will or Surefooted) from combining with school-based resistance stats correctly. The bug resulted in resist chances in patch 2.5.1 that were slightly different than the original 2.4.3 Burning Crusade.
As part of this fix, we took a close look at how the resist chance formula changed between patches 1.12.0 and 2.4.3. This led us to discover several pertinent changes that had happened over the course of the development of original Burning Crusade. These included alterations to the order in which spell hits and spell resistances are applied. We brought those fixes into Burning Crusade Classic patch 2.5.2, and we’re now confident that our Burning Crusade Classic resist chance formula is accurately mirroring the behavior of original Burning Crusade patch 2.4.3.
The bugfix resulted in some changes that we initially overlooked but have now identified. Two notable examples are:
- Excess spell hit can no longer be used to cancel out the effects of talents that resist certain mechanics, such as Unbreakable Will.
- This rule was introduced in patch 2.4.0 of original Burning Crusade, and we’ve based all other underlying game mechanics and formulas on patch 2.4.3.
- Rogue’s Cloak of Shadows now correctly resists spells at 90% in PvP, instead of 80%.
- This was first reported to be 80% in the beta for original Burning Crusade. However, a later change to the resist formula during that Beta resulted in Cloak of Shadows granting 90% resist chance in PvP. Ultimately, original Burning Crusade launched with Cloak of Shadows resisting at 90%, and that was not changed throughout the original expansion.
We apologize for our delayed communication on this topic. We investigate these bug reports as they come in, and we’re confident that the updates to spell resist formulas have consistently brought us closer to what existed in the original Burning Crusade.
Thank you.
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