In the upcoming Patch 5.3: Escalation, players will resist against the oppression of Garrosh Hellscream, once proud War Chief of the Horde. Though with many crimes and decreasing allies, Garrosh still controls the Horde capital city of Orgrimmar. He is also the commander of a vast army of loyal Kor’kron elite soldiers, fed by reinforced supply lines running throughout the Barrens. In order to get ready for this magnificent combat, the Blizzard Insider interviewed Game Director Tom Chilton. Let’s see the interview below.     Blizzard Insider: How does Escalation fit into the larger story arc for Mists of Pandaria? Tom Chilton: Patch 5.3 tells the story of what’s been happening on the Kalimdor home front while the continent of Pandaria was being explored across the South Seas. As the name implies, the core conflict revolves around Garrosh Hellscream and his escalating war efforts. Of course, the Alliance opposes Garrosh—for obvious reasons—but now even large factions of the Horde have turned on Garrosh as well. They’ve grown tired of his constant warmongering, and so Vol’jin leads the Darkspear trolls in open rebellion against their former war chief. Garrosh seems to be universally despised, so now players on both sides of the Horde and Alliance will soon get a chance to take a swing at him.   Blizzard Insider: Can you talk about the new features being added with Escalation? What features are you most looking forward to seeing players dig into?  Tom Chilton:The new Scenarios constitute the backbone of the Escalation patch, and we think players are going to have a lot of fun with these. Another big change will be the new events in the Barrens. The main supply lines that feed Garrosh’s war machine in Orgrimmar run throughout the Barrens, so players must win victories there first before they’ll be able to take on Garrosh directly. From the design side, we want to use the Barrens events to experiment with end-game open world content in new ways and try to get away from some of the more repetitive aspects of daily questing. As a result, we shaped the events as a series of dynamic events, rather than a straightforward progression of daily quests. We hope this ends up feeling much more fluid and freeform than previous end-game quests, with players of both the Alliance and Horde rampaging around, raiding Garrosh’s supply lines and spoiling his war efforts. Plus, just having the Horde and Alliance together in the Barrens at the same time will open up a lot of opportunities for world PVP.     Blizzard Insider: Can you talk a little about the changes to PvP combat? In what ways do the mechanics of PvP evolve in Escalation? Tom Chilton: One of the biggest evolutions in PvP stems from the changes to the Resilience system. Mechanically speaking, Resilience stays much the same as before, but most of it has been removed from gear, and instead players are getting a much higher innate level of Resilience. Gear still matters in PvP, and certain gems and enchants will retain bonuses to Resilience, but the overall survivability difference between players with different sets of gear is narrower after patch 5.3. This means player skill plays a larger role in determining the outcome of a PvP battle than before. Plus, the Resilience change has the secondary benefit of allowing PvE players to cross over more easily into PvP, since they won’t have to first collect a separate set of Resilience gear in order to survive.   Blizzard Insider: How about new PvP content? Tom Chilton:On the PvP content side, we’re also adding a new Battleground and a new Arena with Patch 5.3. The Battleground is called Deepwind Gorge and it features a “gold grab” mechanic, where both factions race to collect a certain threshold of gold for their side. Players can get gold in two ways, either gradually over time by holding key strategic points around the mining operations, or they can steal a gold cart from the other team’s base and drag it back to their own base. So Deepwind Gorge essentially combines classic “king of the hill” with “capture the flag” PvP mechanics. The new Arena is called the Tigers’ Peak, and it experiments with the concept of “high ground” in an interesting new way.  The Arena geometry includes several raised pillars, the tops of which are ringed with fences. These fences do not block line of site or ranged attacks, but they will catch any player who gets knocked back into them, thus enabling ranged players to hold the high ground and snipe or land heals from on high a bit more easily than they could otherwise with normal un-railed pillars.   Blizzard Insider: Let’s talk loot. What kinds of items can players expect to find? Tom Chilton: Players can definitely expect the usual Item Level upgrades. In addition, we’re also tweaking the loot system so players have option to choose which spec they wish to receive gear for. This means, for example, you can collect gear for your tank spec while you’re DPS-ing, or vice versa, which makes it easier to collect different sets of gear for your off-spec. In addition, on the art side, we’re also reintroducing the old world Dungeon Tier 2 armor sets back into the game as rewards for the revamped Barrens content. This enables new players to collect some of the older gear sets for Transmogrification without having to go back and farm the old world dungeons.  Blizzard Insider: Anything else you’d like to share before you go? Tom Chilton: Yeah, I want to say one more thing. In Patch 5.3, there is another new function added: the ability to see other players’ pet battles. It means that you can conduct Pet Battles with an audience now. 

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After being removed temporarily in Patch 5.2, the Voidbinder will come back to the Azerothian and strengthen equipments for warriors in Patch 5.3. But in Patch 5.2, a new RPPM is implemented on all items. Players feel doubtful that how the proc rate will be if trinkets are upgraded. Today, Blizzard community manager gives a response. 

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Build 16946 went on PTR realms. Let’s take a look at the class changes.  Death Knight UnholyFestering Strike now deals 200% weapon damage, increased from 175%. Scourge Strike now deals 135% weapon damage, down from 165%. Hunter PetsSpirit Mend now has a 30 sec cooldown, down from 40 sec. MageTalentsFlameglow now absorbs 15% of Fire Spell Power, down from 20%. Incanter's Ward now grants 15% increased spell damage for 25 sec, rather than 30% increased spell damage for 15 sec.  ShamanElemental & RestorationLava Burst had base damage increased by 25%.

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Will Blizzard have a thorough adjustment on all classes in the next World of Warcraft expansion? Will every class have a fourth spec? Is the Druids’ fourth spec just used for testing? Will the game have a new class? Recently, in the forum of Battle.net, a player posted a screenshot which may imply the new class for the next expansion. The player said this picture came from an email sent by mistake.  This screenshot features icons of World of Warcraft class. In the first line are the icons of class and below are their specializations. Most icons are familiar to you except the last row and the bottom line. According to the placement of class and spec icons, we can guess in the last row are the icons of the new class and its specs. In the bottom line are the fourth specs for all classes. According to the class icon, players guess this new class is a mechanist or an alchemist. But it may be a combination of the mechanist and the alchemist according to its spec icons. It can even be a   class that can wear Hauberk. As for the fourth spec for old classes, a water shield icon is added for Shaman. Does it mean Shaman can tank? Is Mage’s 4th spec the Bloodmage? The hunter will get the Shadow Hunter power, right? Does it mean Warlock can transform into demon forever?

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