In today’s build, Blizzard has doubled the effectiveness of the new set bonus to players wearing two PvP trinkets, (Spell #344883). PvPers had concerns about PvE trinkets being too strong in Arenas and Battlegrounds, but instead of nerfing the effects of PvE trinkets in those scenarios, Blizzard apparently wants to improve PvP trinket power.
(Spell #344883) The damage and healing benefit of Versatility is increased by 20%40% when in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and War Mode.
Worse. The trinket bonus doesnt effect the damage reduction portion of Versatility at all (source below). They made a point about clarifying that in the first post about the trinket bonus. So basically this “Massive buff” means the damage/healing increase for a player with maximum vers in every slot and PVP trinkets goes from up to 4% more damage/healing, to up to 8% more damage/healing.
Of course the % benefit scales off how much vers you have, so BG geared players are going to get less benefit then a raider who has saved vers pieces for an offset. But ofc why would a raider bother when they have access to PVE trinkets that have effects like: cheat death, spirit bond, huge heal+absorb, nuke that does 6399 damage… vs a flat percentage of bonus damage.
Seems like a pretty hefty buff to me, considering everyone will have vers on every piece.
I’m not sure that it’s intended to make PvE trinkets completely unviable in all PvP situations, but rather it will add a hefty downside to a player who decides to sub in a PvE trinket where there was zero downside in BfA.
The main ones I’ve seen complained about so far is the drestagath 2.0 that hits harder than the bfa version, a gushing wounds type trinket, a pve version of the safeguard trinket but instead of a purgeable absorb its like 50% of your hp back, and a cheat death that heals you for a chunk of your hp.
So if you were the kill target in arena against a rogue mage then you could equip both of the defensive trinkets and passively survive the rogue mage goes on rotation.
If they nerf the raid trinkets by 60-70% in pvp then the buff will probably outweigh it. I doubt they touch them until 2-3 weeks after the season starts and then only do 25% nerfs. Then after the season ends they will go back and nerf them all by 75%.
A couple points about the vers buff…
You have diminishing returns on secondary stats now. We may not get hit too hard on s1 while stats are low but later seasons this will take effect making the vers buff less lucrative.
Notice how it says the vers buff only works in bgs, warmode, and arenas. What happened to the gear is gear philosophy? Why limit this vers bonus to only pvp? Vers is one of the worst stats for nearly every class in pve. Without damage procs from bfa gear that scaled off vers (az traits, essences, etc), I imagine vers will drop even lower on the priority list. So why not allow this to carry over into pve since pvpers will already be at a stat disadvantage with all the vers gear on the pvp vendor?
You know why. Because this game favors PVE players and these Dev’s do not like PVP at all. They don’t play it, and they have no clue what is going on in the game.
I would really like for someone to explain to me what gear is gear means. If gear is gear why is it so hard to make PVP gear as good as PVE? Why not make these broken trinkets available through pvp? Why not make PVE players farm hours and hours of PVP to enjoy Pve?
This trinket bonus is basically a really weaksauce version of the former PvP Power stat. It only works in PvP and gives an offensive benefit. The difference is that PvEers also benefit from it as long as they have two PvP trinkets and versatility on their gear.
What I dislike about the whole thing is the double standard about how doing all game modes will give the most benefit. How exactly does doing PvP help a raider or someone who does mythic+ as their main activity? Will world first raiders be raising their arena rating to get that sweet PvP loot? Gear is harder to come by in PvP (this is still the case in SL afaik), and the gear itself is mostly uncompetitive in PvE. Meanwhile, PvPers need to basically be a pro at both PvP and PvE if they want to compete in PvP, assuming they aren’t paying for carries.
