- Author: Shadostruct
- Date: December 12, 2022
- Updated: December 12, 2022
- Expansion: World of Warcraft
WoW PvP has often suffered from excess. Excess in the abilities to balance, in the amount of team compositions, and now the excess in maps available for Arena. Thankfully Blizzard appears to be taking a more hands-on approach this time around and is introducing a feature that will hopefully make balancing for PvP across the board a bit simpler.
There will be 3 map “pools”, named A-C, that will have 8 maps available in each. With the introduction of the latest map there would be 15 total, and Blizzard employee Linxy mentions they want the newest map to have a real impact! As such the new map will appear in all three pools for the season. This should keep things fresh for players, allow the new map to shine, and allows PvP players to really drill down on what strategies they think will be appropriate considering the map pool at the time. This should also allow Blizzard to be a bit more tight with their PvP balancing and allow for dynamic changes across the course of a season as the pools rotate.
For more details on the team at Blizzard’s though process going into this decision check out the full post below!
With the introduction of Nokhudon Proving Grounds as a new Arena map in Dragonflight, we’ve hit 15 total Arena maps that are available when players queue up. We feel that this is a large number to have in the pool at once and waters down a map’s impact in an Arena experience. That being said, we think it will be interesting and fun to divide up the maps into a rotation to keep the pool dynamic for players.
We feel a weekly cadence ensures players will see their favorite maps frequently during a season. Additionally, the decision for 8-map pools was made to compact the rotation so players will be able to more easily refine strategy on certain maps with specific compositions within a week.
After working with a few combinations, the iteration we will be implementing for Dragonflight Season 1 will be a rotation of 3 buckets with 8 maps each, that captured all our current maps:
POOL A |
POOL B |
POOL C |
|---|---|---|
Nagrand Arena |
Nagrand Arena |
Nagrand Arena |
Dalaran Sewers |
Ruins of Lordaeron |
Hook Point |
Tiger’s Peak |
Tiger’s Peak |
Tol’Viron Arena |
Enigma Crucible |
Empyrean Domain |
Ashamane’s Fall |
Empyrean Domain |
Blade’s Edge Arena |
The Robodrome |
Ashamane’s Fall |
Maldraxxus Coliseum |
Mugambala |
Maldraxxus Coliseum |
Black Rook Hold Arena |
Enigma Crucible |
Nokhudon Proving Grounds |
Nokhudon Proving Grounds |
Nokhudon Proving Grounds |
While discussing internally what the map pools should look like, there were various factors we looked at to divide the maps up to be as fair as possible. The factors we looked at within each pool included map size (large and small), map line of sight placement (symmetrical pillars, Z-axis, or other variants), and to keep the new map in each rotation, which in Season 1 of Dragonflight is Nokhudon Proving Grounds.
We look forward to hearing about your experiences with this rotation in Season 1.
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