I’m against an ilvl cap and instead think that the casual gear ilvl should be really close by the time the next patch hits.
Raiders and m+ users should/will curb the casuals anyway because by this time they should have all 220+ gear and letting the causals catch up to lets say 216 a month or so before the end of the patch would be fine in my book. A 25 ilvl gap with how well damage and everything is scaling in this xpac is immense. Halving that gap should make the casual pvp scene significantly more interesting especially at the end of a patch.
By creating casual catchup mechanics over the course of a patch you also reward consistent play and do not have to do the ‘new patch means new set of trash gear to slap on asap’ thing as well. I personally would see myself playing more often if I could casually pvp and catch up over time on alts outside of from the moment a patch drops.
I think this is why wow struggles to maintain a pvp following. The casual base is neglected and expected to go into arenas. ilvl is such a huge factor in performance. Pvp is such a huge waste of time if you don’t do rated content. There is no place for a casual crowd expect to get stomped and farmed by higher rated players.
A scaled ilvl pvp queue would be nice and intuitive. For casuals. If we set the ilvl at a rank where noobs get more ilvl, and higher ilvl gets scaled down. And if possible keep the non-scaled queues.
Destiny had something like this and it was good in pvp, made it more skill based. But good armor and setup still had a important part in the pvp.
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If we could figure out the actual numbers, I’d bet my left ball that you’re assumption is EXTREMELY exaggerated.
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Honestly even rated is a waste of time. 1400 bracket rewards 207 gear, but filled with 213+ people. What kind of progression is that?
Either make gear brackets dynamic based on participation or just control the item levels within brackets.
Ah but there’s only a 13 ilvl difference between honor and conquest gear in classic and that can be easily overcome cause you don’t need ranking to get your conquest trinks, rings, and neck which is the same ilvl as the rest of conquest gear. Unlike now where you can only break past the 200 barrier by running PvE and praying that you don’t get stomped on in a carry match.
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Hmmm Brackets need some ilvl tuning imo. We recently saw them lower the rating for you to get the seasonal mount due to people overgearing their brackets and boosters. So it seems that pvp needs some updates to catch up. Numerically. I don’t understand why higher rating gives better loot? It just causes more of a snowball when facing higher rated players with less gear then them. So you have to overcome the skill gap and more of an ilvl gap. It seems very problematic to me.
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Yeah I don’t understand this too. It’s never been like that really. In TBC/Wrath there were just additional slots for rating and item level difference was smaller on average. In Cata/MoP there were just 2200 weapons, and they removed it later in MoP. WoD was perfect. Legion was boring without gear. BFA was scaling so it was okay at first before going crazy. Shadowlands is the first expansion where there are such gear gaps between players outright.
Random BGs have zero ilvl requirements or restrictions.
If you don’t like getting beat then get better gear. Hard concept isn’t hard.
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I mean you are right. There is no requirement to get inside. But there is a certain requirement to win a game… if your team mates are full of low ilvl people you are not winning that match no matter how hard they try.
Team 1 avg ilvl can be 220 some games. The other can be 190. Thats 30% more effectiveness due to the Ion quote. Thats a 4-40 min queue you can’t win.
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Pvp participation in random bgs in mop and wod was not down when there was no rating tied to gear and only two sets of pvp gear (honor and conquest). Pvers only in pvp to get gear to use in pve shouldnt be there and i’m glad pvp gear will be lower ilvl next season
A lot of pvpers don’t play pvp just to get gear, gear isnt the point of the game, its the annoying hassle they have to go through to start the end game once they’re fully geared and have the stats they want
I’m all for conquest gear being better than honor gear and conquest having an advantage, but telling people yeah just get 226 gear that you cant get through unrated avenue instead of your 200s so that its more challenging for me to stomp you in bgs is absurd. No one should have that big of a gear advantage in pvp, its that simple. Make weapons require 2200 if they must, thats fine, but not an entire gear set.
Bgs against 20k hp people are not fun and in previous expansions those 20k-30k hp people would have been able to get the same conquest gear by this point in the season, making unrated bgs way more fun
I genuinely don’t get what people don’t understand about this
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And frequently its the undergeared tanks and healers w semi geared dps. Which usually leads to tanks and healers being destroyed in an instant, and a horrible experience for all involved with the undergeared team.
Rated battlegrounds lets you pick and choose your teammates. However unrated only lets you choose a few. Which can lead to massive imbalance irl scenarios.
Yeah but it equals out. I have been in games on Alts and been obliterated and at the same time been in games I crushed people in.
You’re going to win and lose games. I feel ilvl is just an excuse for bad players to justify their losing.
I think another thing that people omit is faction balance. I see a lot of “get gud” people play horde and for them it’s much easier to just yolo to 1600 in RBGs. Alliance is pretty dead in that low end, and it’s much harder.
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For sure, alliance who missed the boat in the first 2 months are suffering right now
“Just git a guild and run wit friends” 
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Yes, LoL is a moba, WoW is an mmorpg. They are fundamentally different.
I literally just explained to you that it happens all the time in golf. Handicap is not implemented in the most of tournaments.
I am under the impression you aren’t super familiar with American collegiate athletics. The difference in the power of the major conference schools compared to lesser conferences is astounding. From money, to facilities, to preferential treatment from the NCAA because of the money, to the ability to recruit. It is not fair or equal.
We get it, “git gud” Thing is you keep saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over.
You would think by now, that no one is listening to you and you would just leave it be?
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Are you serious? Haha.
I mean people are going to have an advantage when they are more geared, cause more damage or healing, etc. vs someone that’s fresh and just entering into a battleground at 60 but it doesn’t mean they should be instantly steamrolled just because they are new.
It really has nothing to do with being bad or good it’s just how it is unfortunately unless you are a Rogue currently and then you’ll be fine but otherwise it’s how it is.
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Get ready for an angry and condescending reply.
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Big gear gap can definitely be treated as a challenge for a skilled player like yourself for sure, but at the same time it sucks for average people who just jump into WoW to run some random BGs. One could argue that the game would be better without them, but it doesn’t look like it is, looking at all the rating deflation. This pyramid needs low end to stand on, and right now it feels like it is sinking underground.
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And even if it DID mean that, it wouldn’t be a problem if, after getting crushed in a bg, they did some research and learned that if they keeped playing bgs, they would eventually be on an even footing to their opponents.
Now, they do research and learn they will potentially be on an even footing after the Covenant grind and the anima grind and the gear grind. And to do the gear grind for random bgs, they can either stick with random bgs and always be a free kill, or they can “get gud” and either do high end pve or high end pvp. And once they learn they have to deal with the hassles and learning curve of high end content just so they can have a good time in low-end pvp, they will deem it a waste of time and go do something else.
The only people enjoying bgs right now are those who didn’t gear in bgs. Or masochists.
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