This change will “double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players,” according to Bornakk. Players will see a 10% to 20% reduction in damage taken. However, this change will not affect critical strike chances or critical strike damage. If healing becomes too over powered with this change, Blizzard has a “PvP only solution” ready to go, however they’re not rolling out that part of the changes just yet.

The full details after the break.

From Bornakk:

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.

All in all, this is definitely business as usual for the end of the season.  If you’re saving up for a piece of gear right now, I’d suggest holding on to your honor and just splurging when the new season starts on the next tier of gear up.  Enjoy your PVPing.

Bornakk

We are currently planning to end Arena Season 7 as early as January 19. At that point we will go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific titles and/or Relentless Gladiator’s Frostwyrm to refrain from transferring their character to another realm until after Arena Season 7 ends.

The following Arena Season will not begin for at least one week after the current season ends. During this time between seasons, all rated matches will be turned off and only skirmishes will be available. When Arena Season 8 begins, all team ratings, personal rating, and arena points will be wiped, but matchmaking rating and honor points will remain.

Also, a note to all of your multiboxing PVPers.  If any of you guys are competing regularly in higher end arena, let me know.  I’d love to give you guys some spotlight time.

When Blizzard first talked about Wintergrasp at BlizzCon ‘08, they knew the biggest question on peoples’ mind was “What if I’m seriously outnumbered?”. The answer to that was the Tenacity we all know and love. A buff recalculated at intervals that culminates in a buff to health, healing, and damage. Presumably, this would allow a single player to take on many opponents (or a multiboxer taking on an entire team) when their own team is seriously outnumbered. There are people on both the giving and receiving end of the buff that will point out the flaws and argue whether or not it even works as intended. However, Blizzard has only hinted at a far less quantitative buff that is in place in case a faction seriously “outmatches” another.

No matter how much Tenacity you have, a bad execution of the battle can still result in a failure to achieve victory.  There are certainly many right paths to victory and many wrong paths as well.  Of course, the ultimate goal at Blizzard is that everyone should be able to see content.  Deserving or not so much.  However, if you lose a lot, Blizzard is there to give you a helping hand.

When a faction has been losing repeatedly, a hidden buff is in place that increases the rate at which rank is received.  What this means is that the same number of Alliance would reward you with more ranking.  At the extreme low end of this, you probably wouldn’t even notice its there.  However, its the extreme highend that has gotten some reaction from the players.  You either know its there and understand how it works, or you dont know its there and are left scratching your head over how your dirty, cheating opponents are now rolling sieges against you after 30 seconds.  At the extreme high-end, one kill, just one, be it player, guard, npc, or cannon (yes they count) would result in an instant boost to the highest ranking available.

Just remember, those sieges rollin’ down your throat within the first minute of battle aren’t hackers, just losers… er… players who lose a lot.

Bornakk explains it all… kinda -

We wanted to address some of the confusion we often see regarding the Battle for Wintergrasp. We will not provide exact details on how the system works to try and avoid abuse of the mechanics, but there is a system in place that can change how the battle plays out.

When one faction defends more than the other, the system will give advantages like the ability to use catapults or siege tanks faster to the faction that is on the offensive. On realms where one faction is often able to defend the fortress and the other faction rarely defends, the system tries to help this balance by providing bonuses to the faction that rarely succeeds at defending.

The original Blizzard post – http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21971498555&sid=1