Blizzard have finally broken their silence concerning PVP - today's Warcraft blog entry addresses a lot of the issues that have been raised but pretty much ignored on the forums since the launch of MoP.
It's an interesting read and it looks like there are some exciting changes coming to the game.
Rogues
As we knew, our damage is fine - it's just the FotM classes that have too much of it. No damage buffs are expected (and rightly so) but Blizzard are still hinting that we will be getting a mobility boost. Seeing sprint put back onto a 1min CD (instead of the proposed 5.1 change to 45seconds) looks promising - I hope the dev that suggested it as a fix to our mobility has been relocated to a different class team. Well, either that or been forced to play a level90 rogue in PVP for a month....
MMR
MMR decay/resets aren't going to implemented, but MMR inflation will be. It looks like the further into the season you get, the more points you will be earning for wins. This sounds like a much better concept than decay and should offer a real incentive to teams to keep playing throughout the season.
Class Balance
Whilst not going as far as actually apologizing, I think it's fair to say that Blizzard are trying to say "We're sorry we broke arena". BM hunters will apparently be receiving a pummelling with the nerfbat, but not at the expense of survival/MM hunters. Warriors may be in for further nerfs to their control, despite the calming down of Avatar and the removal of glyph of gag order from PVP. Mages are also identified as being in a very strong position - apparently no inarguably strong class appears to be sitting in Blizzard's blind spot at the moment.
Healing
Incase anyone didn't realise, offspec healing is apparently too strong - an eloquent fix is being considered that will make PVP power only boost the actions relevant to your current spec. If this isn't enough, it's likely that a blanket +15% reduction to healing will be (should fix rshaman and hpala healing as well, but lets hope priests receive some love).
Blizzard seem eager to reassure us that they haven't finished with PVP for the expansion and that they are working on improving aspects of the game that now feel outdated and clunky.
Loss of Control UI
Expect to see more obvious notifications for when you're stunned and disarmed - this will be of a bigger benefit to newer players but it's a nice idea.
RGB Loser Rewards
It will be interesting to see what these rewards will be. If you only play RGBs for the conquest cap, receiving a handful of points for a close loss is cool - what would be much more welcome would be a reduction in the rating you lose. Fingers crossed.... but I'm expecting we're more likely to receive extra honor/conquest points.
Smoother Battleground Brackets
I guess someone at Blizzard is playing Guild Wars II - the idea of temporarily boosting your level to max while you PVP is something I'd love to see, but I'd be happy enough to be temp boosted from 10 to 19 for the purpose of a BG.
Random Battleground Teams
"we can help ensure that there are a certain number of healers per team or at least a good class distribution". Good news for everyone except FotM rerollers (who may have to put up with longer queues).
Honor and Conquest Item Upgrades
Being able to use honor/conquest to upgrade your PVP items' ilvl will provide a good incentive to continue to queue once you're fully geared, but Blizzard definitely needs to start taking action against botters. I'm not seeing many bots at level 90, but levelling 10-89 through battlegrounds is painful to say the least.
Small Group RBGs
Blizzards idea of grouping 5man teams together for RBGs sounds interesting, as does the concept of 5v5 maps. I've never enjoyed the 5v5 bracket, but turning it into something that isn't a death match could be fun (especially for stealthers).
Level 90 TB/WG
Replacing dedicated PVP zones with the promises of 'improved World PVP' was an unexpected let-down. World PVP has failed to materialise (at least on my server), level 90 PVP zones would be very welcome indeed.
All in all I'm feeling massively reassured by Blizzard's blog post - PVP is not in a great state at the moment (hence the low frequency of posts here) and it's great to feel that we're actually being listened to.
Fingers crossed.
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Personally, the only topic discussed in the PVP Blog that I really do not care for is the change pertaining to continual gear upgrades through conquest points. Most of us that pvp do it for the camaraderie and competition, PVEers on the other hand are usually in it for the purps. Keep the gear upgrades for them and keep the playing field level within the competitive arena and rbg brackets. When I loose a game I want to know it was because of something I had control over, not because the other team had better gear than me. This was why the MoP changes to keep PVE gear out of PVP was a welcome change for many of us. Continual gear upgrades will provide those that can log into the game week in and week out an unfair advantage and reward time played over skill which should not be the case in competitive brackets. Make the rewards vanity related, i.e. give us the opportunity to purchase through conquest points the Challenge Dungeon transmog sets or a cool mount/pet. The prices can he exorbitant to keep them “rare” and in the end it won’t alter the balance we see in the arena.