Changes to Consumables in Unrated Battlegrounds with Season 3

We’ve seen feedback like this, expressing interest in the ability to bring consumable items into unrated PvP environments to spice up the flow of combat. Over the years, we put tight restrictions on these to minimize disruption. We felt this was especially important during a time when the solo battleground player did not have alternative forms of content if the chaotic and sandboxy nature of unrated battlegrounds became too overwhelming.

Now, with a variety of game modes to pick from and a much narrower gap in power disparity between players, we want to take an opportunity to review this philosophy. In a hotfix going out tomorrow with the start of Season 3, we will adjust a variety of Dragonflight consumables to enable their use in Unrated Battlegrounds. We will also make a handful of adjustments to War Mode consumables to make them more practical for players to acquire in bulk. Some items will also receive some moderate tuning adjustments (outlined below) to ensure that they are impactful, but not disruptive. The most significant change to note is that the War Mode items in the below list have had their cooldowns standardized to 5 minutes, shared with other typical combat consumables. Engineering bombs remain on their own separate 5 minute cooldown.

With this hotfix, all of the following items will be enabled for unrated battlegrounds and battleground brawls, excluding Battleground Blitz. Please note that some tooltips may include zone restrictions that are no longer applicable after this change and will be corrected in a future patch.

Engineering Bombs
The chance for bomb malfunctions is now standardized to 5% for all players while in a battleground, regardless of other factors.

  • Grease Grenade
  • Primal Deconstruction Charge
  • Polarity Bomb
  • Gravitational Displacer
  • Sticky Warp Grenade
  • and their EZ-Thro counterparts

War Mode Consumables

  • Curious Primordial Fungus
  • Pest Fogger
  • Wild Dragon Fruit
  • Wild Truffle
    • Duration reduced to 12 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Energized Temporal Spores
  • Gritty Stone Potion
    • Speed penalty reduced to 15% (was 30%).
  • Warbanner of Ire
    • Now on the Battle Standard cooldown of 10 minutes.
    • Bonus primary stat reduced to 5% (was 10%).
  • Prismatic Snail Mucus
    • Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 30% (was 50%).
  • Soothing Emerald Tea
    • Now on the Healing Potion cooldown of 5 minutes.
    • Immediate health increased to 25% (was 20%). Health over time increased to 40% (was 15%).
  • Volatile Crimson Embers
    • Damage bonus increased to 30% (was 25%).
    • Damage taken over time reduced to 1% every 3 seconds (was 3% every 3 seconds).
    • Duration increased to 24 seconds (was 15 seconds).

Additionally, we will adjust the War Mode consumables to no longer be Unique and no longer have charges. Instead, these will be stackable items all the way up to 200. We will also reduce their cost from 100 Bloody Tokens down to 50 for a stack of 5, and Seltherex will now also offer these items for 500 Honor for a stack of 5.

For players who may already have a few of these items when this conversion takes place, you should retain the same remaining number of uses left even if your stack size does not visually reflect this.

Finally, we’d like to encourage everyone to share feedback on all of this. We’ll be monitoring it closely when making further decisions about how to approach this sort of gameplay.

22 Likes

Thank you Kaivax.

We’ve all been a little dismayed at the change to Bloody Tokens for the wPvP items.

Being able to purchase them with honor is awesome.

4 Likes

great changes tbh :people_hugging:

3 Likes

this is cool, but please address the 90s healer trinket that’s really bad for the game

1 Like

I didn’t even want this usable in BGs

I appreciate y’all taking the time to rethink unrated PvP, but the power disparity between people “in the know” and new players or less aware players is already too great.

Today, I killed a PvE geared Ret Paladin in two Disintegrates just by having Berserker.

The unspeakable horrors that will be unleashed with the new burst items, I dare not think of.

Actually, I already thought about it and let me demonstrate why consumables are unhealthy in PvP:

This was when we could use consumables in Blitz on PTR. I cracked a million DPS, and I didn’t even get to hit my usual 7+ people with Deep Breath.

And here’s last season on retail

Now imagine 10 people doing this every 5 minutes. That’s just more time in GYs for everyone :l

19 Likes

These changes are really good. Like the change to honor for consumables and even more I like my Engi matters again in PvP.

What a relief! I was dreading the idea of having to farm Warmode graveyards for several hours per week.

3 Likes

That item and the other warmode items share a cooldown with saltwater potion now

1 Like

Yeah, new people are going to be decimated by preforms with every consumable in the game even worse than they are now. This is poorly thought out…

13 Likes

LOL. Just another reason to avoid random BGs entirely. I’ll only do them if there is a conquest weekly for them.

Blizzard has zero concept how much consumables + cooldowns can do. Get ready for nothing but one shots all over the place.

21 Likes

With Saltwater or with Stat Potions?

Cause stat potions and saltwater don’t share cd

Which is why you can one-shot people

These consumables are basically gonna turn team fights into who has their 5 minute ultimates available

2 Likes

Didn’t even know that tbh. Just going off of this part:

guess we’ll find out tomorrow

“Ok, I want all 39 of you to rush back door and hit the enemy leader with your consumables in 3, 2, 1…”

1 Like

Your love for them is like a truck BERSERKER!

But, for reals… I can’t think of an aspect of WoW that is not gated behind people in-the-know. Almost all of our achievements or obscure unlocks require the use of Wowhead, Reddit, Guilds, Communities, or YouTube. PvP is probably the most accessible and straight-forward aspect of the game.

2 Likes

kid named fury warrior:

I mean, why stop here. They need to let the centaur hound be usuable in random BGs :stuck_out_tongue:

Random BGs needs some 1 million damage sniper shots, IMO.

DWG pops

Shadowflame rocket to Berserker

Glide to Market

Pop Embers

Get CDs reset

Pop Saltwater/Intellect Potion

Can you guys guess what happens next?

3 Likes

I really can’t give feedback on PvP other than ask for a real anti-cheat to be added to this game first.

Negative interest in PvP, as this game has too many scripters and botters all around everywhere.

One of the reasons I quit Overwatch permanently many years ago was because blatant aimbotters weren’t getting banned, and watching them stay in game for over a year.

2 Likes

You go and play Blitz, Arena or RBGs, where they don’t work?

Yes, exactly, people won’t like randoms anymore :<

I mean I will because I know the cheese, but less try hard people won’t

1 Like