Diminishing Returns Removed from Honor
Drysc reports upcoming PvP changes in patch 2.4—Source
Drysc: As the PTR approaches we wanted to give everyone a preview of one of the larger changes for PvP that’s currently planned for the 2.4 patch.
Currently, diminishing returns are applied to all honorable kills. What diminishing returns mean for honor is that each subsequent kill of the same target will reward you with less and less honor; 10% less per kill to be exact. One of the major downsides to diminishing returns is that the calculations, for potentially hundreds of thousands of players, is too intense to do real time, so they are calculated during off-peak hours. This in turn requires that the honor you gain be temporarily displayed as “estimated” until the calculations are run. It’s a system that we’ve certainly improved (moving the calculation from weekly to daily) but still always disliked. It creates a very uninteresting and sometimes aggravating or confusing detachment from your achievements and the actual reward.
The reason for diminishing returns has always been to avoid the potential exploitation of the honor system. As the game has evolved, especially the honor and battleground systems, exploitation of the honor system now without diminishing returns would no longer be considered a lucrative alternative to simply participating in a battleground normally. We’ve also greatly improved our ability to monitor and track exploitation of this nature.
We’ve reached a point where we’re now confident that applying diminishing returns to honor is no longer necessary, and we’re currently planning to remove it with the 2.4 patch.
With this change we’re including a few restrictions as well though: Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will not be worth any honor, and if a player dies 50 times or more during a battleground they won’t be worth any honor for the remainder of that battle.
What the removal of diminishing returns means for you is that as soon as you defeat an opponent that rewards you honor, you will receive that honor, and you will be able to spend it right then. There will no longer be an estimate, and you will no longer need to wait until the next day until you can actually spend it. Your achievements through honor-based PvP will be instantaneous.
Spell Haste
In 2.4, Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. It won’t apply to melee and ranged abilities though however.
Conjured Manna Biscuits
In patch 2.4 players can only carry 80 of your delicious conjured manna biscuits at one time. As a result, you should experience less banquet-creating frustration. Sorry, the spell icon will remain the same and not look any more new or unique.
Ritual of Summoning
Patch 2.4 will remove the restriction for Ritual of Summoning that prevents you from summoning players into instances. Provided the player meets the instance requirements, you’ll be able to summon them in from anywhere in the world.
Raiding Improvement
We have a few changes planned for patch 2.4 that we’d like to share a little bit with you. First, all 25-player raid bosses will drop more gold and those who dropped set tokens will drop one additional token. Additionally, the loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to bind-on-equip. These two outdoor raid bosses will also drop much more gold than before as well.
Lastly, Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.
Void Crystal Enchanting Recipe
Once every 24 hours, through Enchanting you’ll be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. This is through a new recipe that’s being added in 2.4.
This helps reduce the exorbitant prices currently being seen for Large Prismatics, and helps raise the value of the Void Crystals. While this is the only change planned in 2.4 to help the Void Crystal prices, we’re still looking at the possibility of additional ‘help’ for Void Crystal value in the future.
Fear Ward
Shadow Priests will be able to use fear ward while in shadow form.
