Recent PvP Rewards Hotfix

Since the release of Patch 6.2, we’ve gotten a ton of feedback regarding the Champion’s Strongboxes rewarded from Ashran and Rated Battlegrounds. We’ve been discussing that feedback heavily since the patch released, and wanted to take a moment to clarify some confusion as well as share an upcoming change.

To start, we’d like to clarify exactly what can be found inside a Champion’s Strongbox, as some (though certainly not all) players seemed to be anticipating items that they’d never have been able to get from the Strongboxes anyway:

• Strongboxes can never reward items that can be purchased with Conquest Points.
• Strongboxes can never reward cloaks, necks, or rings.
• Strongboxes can never reward items with set bonuses.

With that said, we definitely recognize that the Strongbox rewards (or rewards from any box, for that matter) are unclear, and that’s something we’re looking to improve upon in the future.

In addition, we’re currently in the process of applying a hotfix that will remove the Versatility belts, boots, and bracers from the Strongboxes, and make them available on the Conquest vendors instead. Once this hotfix is active, Champion’s Strongboxes will only reward helms, chestpieces, gloves, shoulders, and legs, as well as the Accolade random stat trinkets. Remember that armor pieces earned from Strongboxes do not grant set bonuses, so most players will only want to equip one of those pieces.

We feel that this change will allow there to still be a benefit to earning the Champion’s Strongboxes over the course of the season, but due to the fact that you’ll still want to complete your set bonuses, that benefit will be a little extra flexibility in gearing choices instead of simply having Versatility items another player may not have won. This also greatly increases the chances of earning a desirable item from your Strongbox (at least, until you have everything you want from them) by reducing the overall number of possible items you could get.

Thanks again for all of the feedback on this topic. We’re hopeful that this change will greatly improve the gearing experience in Warlords Season 2, and are taking all of your feedback to heart as we plan for future seasons.

Thanks again for all of your feedback. We’ve been discussing it heavily, and are going to make a few more changes.

First, we’re going to make the remaining non-set armor pieces available on the Conquest vendors. They’ll still be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes, but if you’d rather not leave earning them up to random chance, you’ll be able to purchase them for Conquest points instead. With this change, the only items that will only be available through the Champion’s Strongboxes are the random-stat Accolade trinkets (which cannot be put on the vendors due to some technical hurdles). We're aiming to make this change with this upcoming weekly reset.

Note that, as a result of this change taking place, we no longer plan to make the Champion’s Strongboxes purchasable with Conquest points for players who have earned the Wild Conquest achievement. Since nearly all of the items in the Strongboxes will be directly purchasable with Conquest points themselves, we feel that this would just add unnecessary frustration or confusion if players were to spend their Conquest on a Strongbox instead of just buying the item they wanted.

The other change we’ll be making is to remove the Ashran-only 200 Conquest point bonus to the weekly Conquest cap. The total cap (1700 plus any additional bonuses from rating) will remain the same as it is currently, you just won’t have to go to Ashran to earn all of it. We're hoping to push this change live with this week's reset, but it requires a lot more programming and testing to make sure it's functioning properly, so it may not go live until the following week.

Again, thanks for all the heartfelt feedback on this issue. We’ve definitely learned a lot of very valuable lessons, and are looking forward to seeing how the rest of Warlords Season 2 progresses!