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In Shadowlands, we’ve been happy to see that the reintroduction of Honor, Conquest, and PvP gear vendors has been well-received by players. Nonetheless, we feel that there is still room for improvement. One piece of feedback we’ve heard repeatedly is that PvP gear needs something special for it to stand apart in PvP specific situations.
In an upcoming build of the Chains of Domination PTR, you will notice that all Season 2 PvP items have +13 item levels in PvP. This means that in PvP situations (such as battlegrounds, arenas, and war mode), the power of these items will increase by 13 item levels. Along with this, the baseline item level of these items will be reduced by 6 from where it would have otherwise been.
If this arrangement had been in place during Shadowlands Season 1, Duelist gear would have had a baseline item level of 220 and would have scaled up to item level 233 in Season 1 PvP.
What we want here is for the different endgame sources of gear to be viable in all content, while the very best gear for PvP generally comes from PvP activities, and the very best gear for raids and dungeons generally comes from raids and dungeons. We believe this small adjustment gets us closer to accomplishing that, while still allowing for plenty of crossover play between PvE and PvP.