The PvP brackets have been cut in two. What was once 10-19 is now 10-14 and 15-19; two brackets where one formerly existed.
Rilgon (of Stabilized Effort Scope) tipped me off to this today, and it looks to be true in all the brackets I checked. I can’t find official confirmation of this, but hopefully we’ll see something soon.
If true, this is a fantastic change. It will be great for levelers, as it removes the huge disparity between the top and bottom of the brackets. It will be really interesting for twinks, giving people a lot of options where to lock XP. (Level 10 twinks will probably become dominant in the 10-14 bracket due to favorable mechanics at level 10.)
Let me be clear – right now this is not official. There have been some posts on Something Awful about this, and my own observation is that this seems to be the case. Treat this as a rumor until you hear it from a blue post.
But man, what a thing to hope for. Just when I thought the surprises had stopped, Blizzard pulls this one out on us. Well done!
Update: while it’s not a blue post, there’s a great thread started with the new bracket listing. Some interesting additions include Eye of the Storm in the 30s and AV having a 60-64 bracket, making it more difficult on the expansion twinks who tended to dominate the 51-60 bracket before. (Expansion twinks just use endgame Vanilla gear and don’t get BC, so they never level up but have unlocked XP and hammer the leveling bracket. Now they’ll face Outland gear, and lots of it.)
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What are the favorable mechanics at level 10?
I can confirm it was behaving this way in the 20s – it wouldn’t allow a lvl 24 and a lvl 27 toon to queue together for AB or WSG. Had no problem at 26 and 28. I agree that it’s a wonderful change – makes pvping at low-bracket levels so much more fair and viable (I hated getting teams full of lvl 11 rogues but what can you do, it’s their right to pvp). Plus opens up whole new realms of BIS Twink Gear.
I second the first commenter – I’d love to see a post on why 10s are so OP right now. mmm, math.
The quick answer on why level 10s are more favorable than level 14s has to due with stat scaling through the early levels. There’s a great stat resource at Shadowpanther.net which shows how from 1-10, most stats like Crit, Hit, etc. have a flat contribution to your rating. Starting at level 11, they begin to fall off.
So, for example: at level 1 you need .54 Crit for 1% Crit. At level 10, you need .54 Crit for 1% crit. At level 11, though, you need .81 Crit, and at level 14 you need 1.62.
The other major advantage you have at level 10 is your out of combat regeneration. It’s insane at level 10 and starts to fall off at level 11. Don’t let a level 10 get out of combat. Seriously! They will get a free heal from the deal.
I’m glad I read the comments because I had intentions of asking the same question!
Thanks for the info 😀
Nice! I hope the queue times aren’t any worse from this though. I haven’t PvPed on my new priest alt yet.
We had two people in the guild last night that mentioned not being able to queue as 31 and 36, but they could both queue individually.
If these BG changes are intentional and how it’s going to be then the twinking game just got that much better.
I’m already absolutely thrilled at being able to do AB at level 10 which I definitely was not expecting. I still hate EotS, so having it lower doesn’t do a thing for me, but it’s still a welcome change for some I’m sure.
I missed running from base to base in AB. Makes it a much different game.
Ooooh, this makes sense now. I play solo, so hadn’t had the problems with queuing different level players, but I had noticed the tight distribution of levels in the BGs I entered. In the prep room for WSG, somebody cheered “Yay, all high levels” and three battlegrounds later I was still seeing that — 17, 17, 16, 17, 19, 16 …
I agree, this is dynamite news.
This would be GREAT! I noticed that I could queue AB at 10 on Asphyxis but the q-time was always 10+ minutes where I could hit a WSG in <5 min almost religiously. That means I seriously need to find out more about the Horde Twinks. WOOT!
This is excellent! No more feeling like I can’t or shouldn’t PvP half the time while levelling.
Confirmed! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1293872
“The new brackets span five levels each, except the final bracket composed of level 85 players:
10-14 30-34 50-54 70-74
15-19 35-39 55-59 75-79
20-24 40-44 60-64 80-84
25-29 45-49 65-69 85
“Fighters can also join the battle in Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, and Alterac Valley at an earlier level than ever before:
Level 10 – Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch
Level 35 – Eye of the Storm
Level 45 – Alterac Valley
Level 65 – Strand of the Ancients
Level 75 – Isle of Conquest
Level 85 – Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks
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Oh good, I like the shift on when you can enter…It always seemed a little sad to get a shiny AB at 20 and then not get any new places to play for 30 (31?) more levels.
I love the bracket changes but I’m not sold on level 10 being the best choice across the board. Level 10 has a nice stat advantage, but 11 gives another talent point and 12 allows better health pots and the crafted +2 stam ring. Right now my prot warrior is locked at 11 for questing but it’s tempting to move to 12. Level 13 would give a 3rd talent point, which might be a leg up for some trees, but I don’t see level 14 being much benefit at all. I wonder if there’s a caster/melee split here.
This is awesome, except for having to ride herd on my guildies to keep in tighter level spreads so we can still play together. But it means I can do bgs before the 7-9 range of each bracket. *fans self*
I love EotS and although it doesn’ t make any sense to me that a toon who can’t get to Outland can play there… awesome! And AV at 45, w00t!
For me that’s the best news to come from the BG bracket change. That 51-60 bracket in AV has long been rubbish with it coming down to which side had the greater number of expansion twinks more than anything else.
I’ve always felt that the expansion twinks were the lowest of the low in terms of BG PvP’rs. In my opinion it was almost an exploit in that they could twink away against the general population and lowbies, without having to XP cap and play solely against other twinks.
So yeah, I’m glad they’ve thrown the expansion twinks back into the ‘general population’ (well sort of).
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