Elite PvP Gear and Transmog
Are the elite PvP sets from past seasons/xpacs going account wide like the CM sets are? I've heard yes, and no, But I've never seen Blizzard comment on the topic.
Yes. You still need to meet the equip requirements on the item you're transmogging to, so it is functionally unlocked only the class (or classes if you are super pro) you earned the items on.
The old tabards do not have any equip requirements, so they will be available for any character to use.
inb4BUTMYGLADMOUNTS: Like many systems that are added in during the game's lifespan, this is a case where the items and rating system that delivered them are very legacy, and we don't have a good way to know what your rating was in a given season this many years later. Transmog handling isn't indicative of a philosophy shift in how we handle prestigious PVP rewards, and we may change how this works for tabards & cloaks going forward.
Will the xmog system be bnet wide or account wide? Also will you need to login to the character for said items to pop like heirlooms when they first came out?
Yes, population of the transmog collection will be very similar to the addition of toy and heirloom collections. Each character will contribute to your account-wide (battle.net) collection as you log them in.
One last question though, you said meet the requirements, In my case that would just mean a priest that is at level x (x being whatever level the gear was at the time) so for cata elite gear the alt priest in question would need to be 85 and so on correct?
Not just priests I had that were also 2200+ in that particular season?
Yes, if you have a set of elite gear in your priest's bank, once that is added to your transmog collection any other Priests on your account only need to meet the level requirement to gain access to that transmog. Your Mages wouldn't be able to use it, because the gear is restricted to the Priest class. Again, this may not be how it works in future seasons, just for legacy seasons. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Vanilla PvP Sets and Transmog
Any character that is able to purchase the Replica pieces right now, will still be able to use them for transmogrification in Legion. However, the appearances won't be made available account wide. The same rule also applies to the Replica weapons.
However, you can still unlock these items, on a per character basis, by obtaining 1800 Battleground Rating in Rated Battlegrounds. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
World PvP
Can't the honor talent just activate when entering PvP combat?
Honor talents activate whenever you engage in PvP including out in the world. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
PvP and Ability Pruning
daily reminder: this thread is already 5 days old and still not a single response.
Generally when you see a major point of discussion on the forums that is being met with what seems like complete silence, it's not because we're stonewalling and assuming the concerns will just go away if we ignore them for long enough. We're usually discussing the same issues internally with just as much enthusiasm (though generally with fewer memes and hashtags), but don't have anything to share just yet.
It'd be most helpful if this type of discussion could focus on specific examples of abilities that you miss, and why you feel they're important to deep and enjoyable gameplay.
I'd like to describe one category of abilities that is the least likely to return: tools added in recent expansions that ultimately contributed to hom*ogenization. BC is generally well-regarded historically when in comes to WoW PvP (and raiding). But then we gave everyone 4 new abilities in Wrath; then 3 more on top of that in Cata. And then reworking the talent system in Mists and Warlords actually introduced a ton of new active abilities and procs (since the old talent "trees" actually were mostly passive modifiers with only a handful of active gameplay drivers).
Along the way, we made what I'll freely admit were design mistakes. The underlying one was probably just committing to adding X new abilities each expansion even when many classes genuinely were complete and functional packages without any need for that many new abilities. But then more specifically, coming up with fun and desirable new abilities is hard, and a bit too often we turned to the easy path of looking for a class's weaknesses and offering solutions to those weaknesses. Paladins lack mobility when Freedom isn't up? Let's give them them an array of passive and active sprints to choose among. Shamans don't really have CC? Let's give them Hex, a stun, and a root. And so forth.
Subjectively, removing those things now feels like a nerf, and objectively, it essentially is one. But in the context of broader CC and cooldown disarmament, it's not coming at the expense of balance. And offering new tools, especially through the PvP talent system, that can accentuate strengths, seems like a better path than continually shoring up weaknesses at the expense of diversity.
Finally, I'd like to respond to the idea that this is all about increasing accessibility for new players at the expense of veterans. It is not. The new player experience has always been fairly streamlined, with only a handful of abilities available, and new ones meted out over the course of many levels. We don't think that the existence or absence of a cooldown or CC tool at level 75 has any impact on a new player's ability to approach and enjoy the game. But it does have impact on the clarity of gameplay at max level, spec hom*ogeneity, and how impactful each individual ability can be in a world full of analogues and counters.
Thanks for the replies so far. A couple of specific responses, though I am by no means discounting the other examples so far that aren't getting direct replies:
For Warlocks - No baseline Demonic Portal - Remove gate way and give us Portal Back. No Shadowfury
Though it still exists as a talent, Demonic Portal is actually an example of removing weaknesses in a way that harms class differentiation. Going back to BC, one of the core differences between the two pure offensive casters, warlock and mage, was that warlocks were far more durable and "tanky," while mages were frail but had more mobility and escape tools (Nova+Blink being central to that). Giving an instant teleport/escape ability like Demonic Portal to warlocks did a great deal to blur that distinction, and the class's design might have gone in a quite different direction without it.
Shadowfury falls more under the general CC disarmament pass. It's an ability that used to be available solely to Destruction warlocks, deep in their talent tree. An AoE stun like that is incredibly strong, and was only balanced as a tool exclusive to a spec that faced significant challenges in PvP at the time, due to their reliance on cast-time spells and other factors. When it became available to the class as a whole alongside their other CC, as part of the Mists talent system conversion, that simply proved to be too much, and so it was a prime candidate when we started looking to dial back the overall amount of crowd control being thrown around.
For me, abilities like Dark Simulacrum added a great level of depth. A friend of mine loves the ability and the freedom it offers: do I need a heal? Let me put it on a healer. That mage is probably going to Mirror Image, let me steal that. That sort of stuff.
Dark Simulacrum is a talent available through the Honor system, so that exact gameplay, which we agree is awesome, should still be present. Like Grounding Totem, these types of abilities really shine in PvP, and were subject to so many restrictions in raid/dungeon usage that many players often gave up even trying to use them. And then occasionally we'd miss a spell flag, and you'd be able to entirely negate a major boss mechanic like Xhul'horac's Void Surge (not intended, but left in due to how many groups had come to rely on it by the time we realized the problem). Those are fun and cool abilities, but they simply fit better in the PvP space, and the dedicated Honor system allows us to make that distinction now. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Legion PvP
We understand your concern here and the enthusiasm people have to test class balance with everything unlocked. The reality here is that there our primary focus is not currently on class balance but on leveling through the honor system. In the not to distant future, we will want to focus solely on class balance and we'll set everyone to honor level 50. Once we've done that, there will be no turning back. But there are still some stages of the Alpha where more people will be invited to test and they'll get their first experience leveling up through the system. We've recently made changes to the amount of honor required to get to level 10 that will be seen in our next build. We'd like to test those changes in a live environment.
My question is, idk if there's a way to be specific enough about it but: what is the overall goal here for length of time to level up?
For instance, in relation to time it takes to get a full conquest set of gear? Are you aiming for the time it takes to get to honor level 50 to be relatively the same as getting a full set of conquest gear? A bit more? A bit less? A lot more?
It should take longer than it currently takes to get a full set of honor gear (bearing in mind that the new honor system has a "rest" system similar to XP). In Legion, the rate at which you earn honor is similar to Warlords.
We'll take a look at the rate at which you earn honor in Skirmishes.
Also, if you really want to check out Honor Level 50 matches, you can coordinate War Games with "Tournament Rules" checked in the UI. Players are all Honor Level 50 and set to the same "item level" when Tournament Rules are enabled.
Prestige is 100% voluntary and offers no power advantage. We are fine if players who care solely about their rating do not Prestige. Rating is serving them fine as a progression mechanic. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
