Dragonflight Embers of Neltharion PvP Updates

Greetings PvPers of the Dragon Isles!

In the Embers of Neltharion PTR, you’ll see a number of PvP changes, and we want to discuss and provide context around these changes. We’ve felt that the game pacing in Dragonflight has been close to what we’d like, apart from having health spikes that are too large in burst windows. The changes below are decisions we’re looking to make alongside each other, to move even closer to game pacing that we’re happy with.

Critical Strike PvP Value

At the beginning of Shadowlands, we increased the Critical strike damage and healing value to 175% from 150% in PvP (from the normal 200%). We will be reverting this change, so the Critical Strike value will be 150% in PvP to address our burst concern.

We recognize this will slow down game pacing, and we will keep an eye on it to ensure it isn’t too slow. Alongside class changes, we intend to adjust the primary stat gain from Gladiator’s Distinction as a tuning knob to keep PvP pacing in a healthy place.

Crowd Control

In September, we published a post that both discussed and recognized crowd control continues to be a point of concern for players in PvP. We shared that we would continue to analyze and evaluate how crowd control plays in PvP and discussed some other options for future patches to further address the concern of crowd control, one being adjusting the PvP duration on individual abilities that may have not been changed for years.

In the Embers of Neltharion patch, players will see the first step of this, as we are making targeted adjustments for crowd control durations in PvP. Our general guideline was to reduce the PvP duration of most Crowd Control abilities so that nothing should ever go beyond 6 seconds when modified (except when modified by Evoker’s Oppressing Roar). We want crowd control to remain meaningful when coordinated well, while still allowing for reasonable counterplay opportunities by the opponent.

In addition to the typical crowd control abilities that have diminishing returns, we are adjusting the interrupt duration of some abilities that are not PvP specific. We feel that this change would have minimal impact in other content due to how creature spells are generally designed, as most kicks are spent on spells that have inherent cooldowns longer than the interrupt duration. We will also be keeping extra consideration of these changes for seasonal dungeons.

We evaluated different crowd control types and each ability within each category to determine a healthy duration for them. We do not want all similar crowd control types to necessarily be unified and want to ensure there’s unique flavor to class abilities and what makes sense within their overall kit. We’ll keep a full list of the changes in our PTR Development Notes 215.

In conjunction with these changes, Gladiator’s Distinction will no longer provide 10% CC reduction and the new season’s professions items will no longer grant 5% CC reduction.

We are continually having discussions regarding crowd control in PvP to make targeted adjustments that will be healthy for the game’s state and look forward to your feedback on this.

PvP Talents

We’ve been excited to watch players utilize the new talent trees that came in Dragonflight. In previous interviews, we hinted at a PvP talent refresh in Dragonflight similar to the refresh that occurred in Shadowlands’ Chains of Domination update, and you’ll see the start of the refresh in the Embers of Neltharion PTR. Our goal with this update is to bring new and exciting talents into the game and also revitalize existing talents that may be undervalued as the game has evolved.

In this week’s build you’ll see new PvP talents and changes to some existing ones; over the coming weeks you will continue to see more updates to PvP talents. Keep an eye on the latest PTR Development Notes 215 for details of the changes.

Precognition

In Dragonflight, we introduced a new PvP talent, Precognition. We have been happy with how the mechanic has played out in practice. However, we feel that taking one of the three PvP talent slots has been too expensive. To solve this problem, we are removing Precognition as a PVP Talent and we’re going to be making it available as an Optional Reagent that can be used to apply the Precognition effect to crafted gear. This Optional Reagent will count as an Embellishment.

We recognize it has been challenging to play a healer in PvP, and we think the Crowd Control and Precognition changes are a step in the right direction to make playing healers a more enjoyable experience for the average player.

We look forward to seeing how the above changes play out and are eager to receive feedback on them throughout the Embers of Neltharion PTR cycle. We’ll have a Play with the Blues event later in the PTR cycle, for more focused playtesting, so keep an eye out for communication about that soon.

Thank you for all of your testing and feedback.