Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent PvP with the Blues event and to those who have provided feedback so far on Battleground Blitz. This has been helpful for the updates and tuning adjustments that we made the past few weeks on PTR, which you can find in our development notes.
To refamiliarize yourself with Battleground Blitz, please check out our initial Preview post and the follow up post.
We want to provide some additional context and information, and to address some common points of feedback that we’ve seen. Battleground Blitz will be introduced in Guardians of the Dream and will be a permanent brawl in the rotation while we’re testing the feature so that we can get information, data, and feedback about it to determine how we want to approach a solo queue Rated Battleground mode in the future.
Upcoming Updates
There are some updates being worked on that you should see in upcoming PTR builds:
Cross Faction Queueing
During the PvP with the Blues event, players may have noticed their faction changing with mercenary mode being applied to them. The intent here was to prioritize quality matches and shorter queues for the brawl, regardless of which faction a player belongs to. We saw the abundance of feedback from those who disliked a forced race change with mercenary mode, so we’re working on cross-faction support for Battleground Blitz. We are aware of an issue where cross-faction groups cannot enter Battleground Blitz. We are currently working on resolving this, but it won’t be addressed this week.
Item level Scaling and Requirements
For Battleground Blitz, the item level for equipped gear above 312 item level will scale to 472 (4 item levels below season 3 honor gear), similar to how gear scaling currently works for other unranked modes. The scaling is limited to 312 and above to avoid potential issues with over scaling stats on items from previous expansions. We will look to adjust this scaling later in the season as players acquire higher item levels via conquest gear.
There will also be an average minimum item level to queue for the brawl: item level 330. This should ensure players will be in 312 item level gear for each slot.
Rewards
We’ve taken a look at what would be appropriate rewards for the brawl:
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Conquest has been increased for wins and will be awarded on losses where matches are close.
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First win of the day: 100 conquest
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Following wins: 50 conquest
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Close Loss: 25 conquest
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Several achievements have been added for participating in and winning Battleground Blitz matches, found under the “Player versus Player” tab.
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In addition to the weekly “Something Different” brawl quest, two additional weekly quests have been added for Battleground Blitz. You will be able to find these talking to Malicia in Valdrakken, with the second quest requiring the first one to be complete for the week.
Miscellaneous Updates
- The deserter penalty that is applied after leaving a Solo Shuffle match will also now apply for Battleground Blitz.
- Items, spells, and toys that currently cannot be used in Rated Battleground will not be able to be used in Battleground Blitz.
As mentioned in our initial post, we’re approaching this idea in a tempered manner. Adding a new format to PvP is a big commitment. Our intent is to implement this feature as a PvP Brawl first, so we can experiment with the format, discover any problems, and consider player feedback. If the format is well-received during the brawl, we can dig into additional details on the plan for a rated mode, including rating changes, how the ladder will work, rewards, leavers, and additional team matching.
To further test Battleground Blitz and general PvP tuning, we will host another PvP Brawl with the Blues event on the Guardians of the Dream PTR on Friday, October 13 from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. PDT.
Again, thank you to everyone who has provided their thoughts on Battleground Blitz so far! We are eager to hear additional thoughts as players continue to play!