Blizzard has announced to World of Warcraft 5v5 regional finalists that they will be competing at BlizzCon under the 2.2 Patch rule set. This comes as a surprise for many players as the 2.2 patch is still being play tested on their Test Servers and contains numerous and significant changes for Arena play.

Competitors received this following statement by email:

"The BlizzCon global finals will be using World of Warcraft Patch 2.2. The actual patch may not be released to the live realms by BlizzCon, so we suggest that you take some time and go to the Public Test Realm to preview the upcoming changes."

So which changes will affect players the most?

The Resilience Bug Fix

"Corrected the damage modifier calculation for Resilience when the attacker has bonus critical strike damage." Previously, Resilience worked at 150% effectiveness against any critical strike that had it's damage boosted by a talent that increases it's damage. Resilience was working extra hard against any crit boosted by talents like a Warrior's Impale talent or even talents like a Warlock's Ruin talent.

The change essentially means that any class that benefits from talent boosted crits (Warriors, Rogues, Hunters, Mages, Shaman) just received a nice burst damage boost. Breaking it down by the numbers, these classes crits are now hitting around 15% harder against targets with strong Resilience.

Characters that just barely survived coordinated bursts of damage from several players may be taking an extra 1000 damage or so now, resulting in a downed player. The significance of the change is hard to judge largely because the patch has yet to be played in the competitive environment of the live servers.

Crowd Control Duration Changes

"Polymorph duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds. Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds." Previously all of these abilities had a base 12 second duration.

This also means the diminishing returns of the abilities are reduced similarly. Beforehand, an ability lasted for 12 seconds the first cast, 6 seconds the second cast, 3 seconds the third and then the player went immune to the effect. Now the returns look more like 10 seconds to 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds and then immunity.

This change combined with the Resilience bug fix means that damage will be higher and harder to shut down.

Paladin Blessing Changes

"Blessing of Freedom cooldown increased to 25 seconds. Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1-minute cooldown." Blessing of Freedom is an incredibly powerful Paladin ability that grants mobility for offense or defense depending on the situation. Any change to it has the potential to change the shape of the 5's game.

In addition, the animations for active Blessings like Freedom and Protection have been changed and are much more visible. This primarily will help spectators keep track of the action, but could also change how games play out as teams will have increased awareness of the buffs.

Resilience Affects DoTs

"Resilience Rating: The reduction to the percent chance to get a critical strike now also reduces the damage dealt by damage over time effects by the same percentage." One of the biggest changes in 2.2 will have relatively little effect at BlizzCon as very few of the teams run 'DoT' heavy lineups.

'4 DPS' teams that run Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests known for their stacking of DoTs have only recently become common in Season 2. mYm's Curse Gaming team runs a Shadow Priest and Warlock, but the Warlock is Destruction specced and poses more of a burst threat from crits then slow death over time.

Overall, the changes are steps in the right direction for WoW being a more competitive and spectator-friendly sport. Seeing the giant angel wings appear over a Blessing of Protection'd target is unmistakable for the viewer; that turning point in a match will be much easier to translate to viewers when they so easily see it.

The biggest dilemma remains that the patch is largely untested. Whether or not it will make for a good tournament is a gamble that Blizzard is taking for the sake of a better viewer experience. We'll look at the player reactions more as we interview them for our upcoming BlizzCon preview.

You can find the full list of 2.2 Patch Changes at World of Warcraft.com.