PvP in game update 2.0

BioWare have put up a post by Alex Modny, Assistant Designer working primarily on PvP and class combat. This particular post covers PvP systems, bolstering and the new brackets to be specific, class balance will be covered in future posts.

The information about the new bolsters isnt quite as filled with numbers and specifics as I would have liked but there are some details about how it works and why they implemented it. In short the new bolster aims to take care of the issue that there previously was no bolstering after lvl 49 which led to a often huge drop in effectiveness when hitting 50. A second issue was that the old bolster system only bolstered you depending on your level, the new system will also take in to account the equipment you have when determining how much to bolster by.

Alex also gave some details regarding changes to the expertise stat. With 2.0 the maximum amount of expertise you can have is 2018 and wearing a full set of any of the new PvP sets, War Hero or Elite War Hero gear will put you at the cap. In addition to that Expertise no longer suffer from diminishing returns. If you want to increase your power in PvP you'll have to go after your primary, secondary and tertiary stats, higher tier PvP sets will have higher stats. They felt that these changes together with the bolstering system will "make the playing field much more flat and put more emphasis on player skill rather than stat stacking".

That last sentence about the flat playing field of course makes me question why Expertise is still there interfering with the flat playing field but that's me.

As for the Brackets in 2.0 the are broken up like this "Level 10-29, 30-54, 55 & 55 Ranked" which we already knew but still, for those who missed it. They had two main reasons for splitting the non-max-lvl level space in two brackets. The first being that the split should see you paired up with people with a similar ability power, that is, similar amounts of abilities and skills available. The second reason for the split kind of builds on the first and is that around lvl 30 most classes get access to the full rotation of their spec.

Alex finished the post by saying they will be closely monitoring how these changes affect queues time and match balance and they'll make changes if needed. He also said they are also looking at tweaking some of the current warzones and working on some brand new systems and asks for people to leave them feedback in the forums so that they can squash bugs and tweak systems.

If you want to read the original post it can be found here.