WoW Wednesday – Patch 5.3 Spoilers
By Meredith Watson, OnRPG Azeroth Reporter
The 5.3 patch notes are, as of a few days ago, now live and the data miners have been hard at it getting us all the spoilers we could possibly want concerning 5.3. Except when it will be released of course. It promises to be an exciting patch that is very PvP focused with PvP undergoing some significant changes.
There will be a new battleground called Gold Rush which involves fighting for resources, specifically mines, which naturally makes me think of Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin. A new arena is also on offer – Shado Pan. Four new scenarios are also making a début in 5.3 and they are: Battle on the High Seas, Blood in the Snow, Dark Heart of Pandaria and The Secret of Emberdeep. Heroic difficulty has now been added to scenarios and offers a chance at raid finder quality items and valour points.
PvP changes
All characters over level 85 will have their base resilience set to 65% and resilience will be removed from most PvP gear. However, players will still be able to use resilience gems and enchants. Though resilience will be leaving PvP gear, PvP power will be staying and any old PvP sets that had resilience bonuses will now have PvP power bonuses instead. Healers and hybrid classes will see the most benefit from PvP power supposedly. Battle fatigue will be increasing, making PvP gear the most effective gear for PvP healers.
There will now be an item level ceiling on PvP gear. All PvP gear will have an item level of 496 including Conquest items that currently exceed this item level. Elite gear will also be decreased to item level 496.
The point of all this is to get new players or players that don’t participate in PvP to give it a try. As of 5.3 new players to PvP won’t need loads of a resilience to stand a chance but they will do less damage. However, they will have the same survivability as a player with PvP gear (who will do more damage due to PvP power).
These are big changes to how PvP gear currently works and no doubt the cries of nerd rage will be heard around the globe once 5.3 goes live but it doesn’t sound half bad to me as someone who has been wanting to get back into PvP. Bring it on, I say!
The other big news associated with 5.3 that has everyone (okay, not everyone. Maybe just a few mount obsessed folks) squeeing in their pants is the Faerie Dragon mount. The Faerie Dragon mount essentially looks like a flying chameleon with butterfly wings. The thing about it that is truly exciting is that it changes colours. How cool is that? No one knows yet how this mount is acquired. There is talk that it might be a store bought mount because it requires level 20 to ride. Others are speculating it might be the new achievement reward for accumulating 200 mounts but the data mining suggests that reward is an armoured dragonhawk. I do hope this is the case. I would like the Faerie Dragon mount but the thought of acquiring 200 mounts is daunting. Much easier to just purchase it from the store.
The other thing that has people talking in 5.3 is that a third talent spec will become available. Why would we need three specs other than for the sake of being pedantic? I can’t think of a class other than druid that would benefit from this. Hopefully, this is an April Fool’s joke but I doubt it is. This is just the sort of thing Blizzard would do although Ghostcrawler has said “We have not announced anything” on Twitter when asked about it.
Other than quite a few new achievements, some new items, loading screens and battle pets, the most important thing about 5.3 will be the PvP changes. Even though the whining about the changes has already started, I think the changes will be a good thing. I never was a fan of resilience so am quite happy to see the back of it. It is still very early days and there is likely tweaking to be done to these changes while 5.3 is on the PTR. Stay tuned. I will explore the PTR so you don’t have to. Isn’t that good of me?
