Low level BG Imbalance swept under the rug

I had originally written here how World of Warcraft is a really big game, and while we know there are a lot of different types of activities outside of max-level content that people enjoy, we're not always going to be able to focus on each of them all of time. But it wasn't written particularly well and I feel like my points were probably fairly obvious to everyone. :)

Anyway, in short: we will be address some low-level PvP balance in Warlords.

First off it's worth noting the item squish. While individual brackets might not see a huge change, certainly the power curve between levels will be a smoother one. It'll have a bigger impact on world PvP as it'll be more like it was in vanilla, and relative power between characters won't see these dramatic swings. Back in the day even if you were 10, 20 or even 30 levels lower than someone else, you still had some shot at getting away, if not actually killing them. Of course as people start gearing up again that disparity will grow in the outdoor world, but it should be fun to get back to a smoother character power curve, and it'll at least always hold true for sub level-100 gank attempts.

We recognize that low-level PvP balance just hasn't gotten the attention it needs, and that's largely due to us having to focus our attention on content that the majority of players focus their attention (e.g. max level). In Warlords we're going to be doing a bit of ability shuffling (read: deleting) which is going to result in the need to smooth out the ability-acquisition pacing (when you get a new ability and at what level), and we'll also be taking a pass on low-level balance at the same time. It's difficult because of the spread of people across all levels and ensuring every ability of every spec at any one particular level vs. another character/level/spec of another level have parity. Low level brackets just inherently bring a measure of un-balance with them due to the possible level difference, which is necessary to ensure they can fill up with enough players. Our goal is primarily to smooth out the outlying abilities - and this is hand-in-hand with the item squish - to ensure the base damage of all the abilities before scaling is appropriate. There are just some obvious tuning problems right now that we'll take care of, and then as much finer tuning as we can manage. We'll be looking for feedback during beta.

01/27/2014 12:18 PMPosted by Sentenza

01/27/2014 12:09 PMPosted by Bashiok

Our goal is primarily to smooth out the outlying abilities - and this is hand-in-hand with the item squish - to ensure the base damage of all the abilities before scaling is appropriate

I thought base damage was being abolished entirely, in favor of pure scaling. At least this was what I have heard elsewhere many times before this.

There has to be something to scale from. :)