Cataclysm from a PVP perspective

Time has come to take a look at the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion from a player versus players point of view. The changes made in Cataclysm are overall large. Many play this game mainly because of its pvp system. How will the upcoming release affect their gaiming experience?

About Mortal strike
The fact that Blizzard has nerfed all abilities that previously reduced healing received by the attacked target will influence mortal strike, wound poison, and aimed shot. In the current beta build their healing debuff will be nerfed and capped to 25% instead of the previous 50%.

This substantial decrease of these damage abilities leads us to believe that Blizzard is out to introduce one of the following two changes;

Either Blizzard expects the damage output to be considerably higher than in Wrath of the Lich King and believes that the healers need all the help they can get, or else they want to slow down the current fast paste of the Arena meta game by increasing the healing effect.
Since there is no way of knowing the damage situation for a character dressed in the first pvp tier at level 85 with the new 31-point talent trees implemented, it is at this point very hard to see if these changes will be for the better.

About the Battlegrounds and Arenas
The biggest change in this area of the game pvp is the introduction of rated battlegrounds.
Even though there hasn't been a big deal of information released regarding what these may be like, we know that Battlegrounds will offer as reward the same items on par with those earned from the Arena. This will definitely change the arena-battleground relationship.

To quote Ryan Crockett from gotfrag.com, about this subject;

- "Arena is a major part of many people's WoW experience, so Blizzard's assumption that many players will be switching to the new rated Battlegrounds is cause for some concern. Regardless, Blizzard seems to be placing a great deal of faith in the potential of rated Battlegrounds, and only time will tell whether this faith was justified."

About the Rogue, Mage, Priest combo
This has been regarded as the best current 3v3 combo for quite some time. Right now things are pointing in the direction of that staying the same through Season 9 as well.
More offensive pressure and control capabilities will be introduced for this combo in Cataclysm.
A bloodlust, as well as an MS effect on par with wound poison will be given to the mages. This means that some Rogues may not even run with wound poison anymore in favor of having more offensive pressure in the arena team.
Rogues will be getting a a portable line of sight and major damage increase and an increase will be given to the priests to their current massive healer damage output.
Most likely will these changes need tweaking due to game balance. It will however be interesting to see how much.



Rogue, Mage, Priest. The current best considered pvp combo.
In the picture we see it used by the US professional team Frag Dominant Duelists.


About the stamina system
In Cataclysm a meaningful amount of stats will be removed from the game play. Due to this fact, stamina has increased significantly on all items.
With fewer stats to play with, high stamina will now be the set norm for the PVP play.
This might mean that a character with Cataclysm epic PVP gear at level 85 might see a standard health cap somewhere around 100,000 health.
To put this increase in perspective;
In order for a lava burst to have the same relevance in Cataclysm as it has today, it will have to be critting at numbers somewhere close to 33,000 damage.

This last part however is mere speculation since we don't have enough real information of how much damage a player will be capable of dealing at level 85 with relevant gear.

Beta not saying all
Since it is likely that Cataclysm will be rather different from what is presented to us in the current beta, this painted picture of the PVP system might actually not be precisely what we get.
We need to remember that many people fundamentally like the look, shape and paste of the current PVP system.
Even though changes can attract more players they could also be for the worse. Blizzard will do well in testing these changes throughly before releasing them.
And few doubt that they will.