Battle Ground XP

So as many of you know, characters gain experience in the battlegrounds now. You don't gain it for killing players, but for accomplishing objectives such as capturing a base in Arathi Basin. The idea that Blizzard gave behind this was to help deal with twinks. They said that a twink would end up leveling out of the bracket they were in unless they turn off their xp gain. Once you turn off your xp gain, you can only do battlegrounds with other players who have done the same thing thus leaving the normal battlegrounds twink free. On paper it sounds like an amazing idea. I'll admit I've been excited to be able to level a character using pvp and to be able to enjoy the pvp since I wont be dealing with twinks. Now that the patch has been out for a couple weeks, did their vision work?

I would have to answer no. I love getting xp from playing pvp but it hasn't stopped the twinks. I've played a few days worth of battlegrounds on my mage alt and I was surprised at what I saw. First of all, the twinks are still running strong. There is no shortage of people out there who are more than willing to two shot my poor little mage. Now let me tell you why I think this plan isn't working and what needs to be done to make it work.

Twinks aren't turning off their xp or leveling out of the bracket because the xp gains from this are so minimal that it wont effect them for months. There have been some matches that I wasn't able to get any xp at all because you have to be in the right place at the right time. Adding experience to the battle grounds is still an amazing idea but needs to be approached differently. Blizzard for some reason has decided that you MUST level from doing quests or dungeons but why? Why shouldn't you be able to level from pvp? I think it's perfectly fair and will only add another dimension of fun to the game that would draw more players. What they need to do is make it so that you do get experience from killing players. Make killing a player worth just as much if not more than killing some mindless npc. It makes perfect sense and wont throw off any mechanics of the game at all. There are only two things that I can see coming out of a change like this. One is that people will be more willing and have more fun leveling new characters, whether they're current players or someone brand new to the game. Second, it will solve the issue of twinks once and for all!

Making a change to allow people to actually level through pvp wont break the game but it will solve some issues that people have had with enjoying the game at lower levels. I truly believe that with this one easy change we can make the game more enjoyable for thousands if not millions of people and that has to be something that Blizzard is interested in.

Priest changes in 3.2

The priest class is getting a few changes in the upcoming patch. The full notes are available Here but I'm going to shorten it up a bit for you. If you play disc for pvp your going to notice that the only real change you have is that the cool down on penance has gone from 10 up to 12sec. Not a huge deal but I'm sure we'll see a good number of people crying about it.

Now onto the true test of a priest in pvp, shadow. Shadow has gotten two major changes to talents, first is Dispersion. The cool down has been reduced from 3min to 2min. and there is nothing in the notes that says they are changing the Glyph of Dispersion either. That would mean that the cool down would be 75sec or 1:15sec with the glyph equipped. That is a HUGE difference from the current 2:25sec that we have now and it makes the spell a very useful advantage for anyone with Shadow spec. The second talent change the shadow tree is getting is to Improved Mind Blast. In it's current form, the talent reduces the cool down on Mind Blast by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 sec. The new version of this talent will still have that but it also adding a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 20% for 10 sec. That doesn't sound like much to some people but that could be just what we need to be able to finish off classes that heal or even another class who has a healer with them. I've already changed up my spec a little to make use of this.

There is also a little bonus change that Shadow gets and it's to Vampiric Touch. The amount of damage done when the DoT is dispelled has been doubled. This puts it's damage much much closer to what locks get from UA. That alone can be a huge boost to our class.

Overall, the changes to our class look to be a positive. I'll update this post if I find any new information for you guys, Take care.

Ducky