Ask the Devs — 5.3 PTR Edition

You were given a topic, you have asked the questions, you voted for your favorites. Now we’ve gathered up the top questions and gotten you the answers. We’ve divided these questions and answers into sections to provide ease of reading and to allow you to jump to exactly what you want to know.

Now, on to answering your questions:
PvP Item-Level Cap
Resilience Changes
Rewards and Incentives
Class Changes
A Few Extras

---

PvP Item-level Cap

Question - (Johnmatríx, Sylvanas); (Pershing, Steamwheedle Cartel):
How are we planning to have the ilvl cap work in patch 5.3? Rumour has it that the cap will slowly increase over the course of a season. If this is the case, where is the big enjoyment we get out of new gear, especially weapons?

Answer - (Systems Design Team):
For patch 5.3, PvP items will just be capped outright. The current plan for 5.4 is to have the cap gradually increase over time so that players won’t acquire new gear that doesn’t benefit them (because it would just be lowered to the cap). We’re also talking about different ways in which to calculate the cap. For example, if you had full ilevel 496 gear and acquired a new 520+ weapon, it would just get dropped to 496 as well. Maybe we can design the system so that your average overall can climb to a slightly higher number.

Overall the intent is that elite PvP gear is cosmetic. We don’t want item levels within PvP gear to have such a huge disparity that a new PvP player has a miserable experience — that’s the entire intent of this change.

---

Question - (Crâwthz , Sylvanas); (Thorbald, Ravencrest); (Энсигния, Разувий):
Currently the 5.2 ladders are being plagued with PvE trinkets that have really nice procs. Are the ilvl caps going to assist with any future cases of strong PvE items and trinket procs? If not what have you got planned to avoid PvE items being BiS for PvP?

Answer - (Systems Design Team):

What we don’t want is for players who are in full Conquest gear to feel like they need to go pursue a PvE item in order to be competitive.

We think “plague” is too strong a word here. Our goal is not to prohibit all PvE gear in PvP, or we would do just that. We like that either gear type can be used to get a leg up in the other format. What we don’t want is for players who are in full Conquest gear to feel like they need to go pursue a PvE item in order to be competitive. We have made some changes to trinkets already and we will modify others if we feel it’s necessary. Our tactic overall is to have PvE trinkets with the potential for PvP burst (such as those with a large primary stat proc) to proc more frequently but for smaller amounts against players.