Project Lore

This morning blue poster Bornakk announced the first of what could be several fixes to the PvP system. Resilience will soon be getting double its regular buff, which he states would decrease the damage taken from other players by up to 10 or 20 percent. Here's the exact wording of the announcement:

"We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players.

So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.

We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted. We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game."

So although healing adjustments for PvP also have been discussed a bit recently, it looks like that won't be coming just yet. Which seems a bit odd to me, considering that players will be taking less damage as a result of this fix. But time will tell how it works out. If nothing else, this could be a kind of test for exactly how Blizzard decides to treat PvP in Cataclysm.

Just keep in mind - While you'll be taking less PvP damage while in your resilience gear, others will be, too. Battles may take a bit longer (especially if you have decent healers who will be able to keep up better since you'll be taking less damage). You may have more survivability -- but that also means you'll have to be smarter about strategically popping your cooldowns for maximum effect. And it may also mean re-looking at your PvP spec to see if you have talents that would be a better match for longer fights.

How do you think this change will effect PvP play, especially in the upcoming Arena Season 8? As for myself, I'm picking back up my PvP set and making sure to have it handy for my occasional Wintergrasp battle or battleground - I think it definitely will make a difference.