Player base perception doesn’t make people instantly become 2400.
Just because I perceive warlocks do be broken doesn’t make them 2800 this season, and they aren’t.
This is where class, spec, and skill factor come into play which is why you should pay attention to spec health at the top 1(or whatever 3%)
The player base at 1% as a general factor, probably have a good idea on what is strong, what’s a good comp, and play that.
I dunno man… I think a lot of r1 players play the class they enjoy more than fotm stuff, regardless of power. Like dilly for example always plays hunter despite them being super weak a lot of the time. Smexxin always plays dps shaman and war. Pika always plays rogue (though they’re always good 
). Saucer always plays enhance.
I think my issue with you saying that templates made some specs bad is that it wasn’t necessarily the templates. Blizzard finds ways to make classes bad lol… I think template balance was decent compared to other expansions (as you mentioned, corruption BFA lol).
a shifting distribution does. if you are an 85th percentile player and 85% happens to be 2200 this season, but 2400 the next, nothing about you changed, you got 2400 from rating inflation.
For sure. Which is why the top 1-3% would be a general rule of what specs are healthy, and or strong.
Oh no, I think templates were extremely better than what we have now. And I say this as someone that regularly does 0-2.4 boosts. If I were a competent player, but new to PvP, and I qued into arena with 15% vers and had to fight boosters with 227 ilvl at 1800mmr I’d quit immediately.
Or the abomination of what was season 4 BFA with any paraplegic being able to get gladiator in the highest gear inflated and rating inflated season in history.
Both are obviously far ends of the spectrum but I think templates that allow you to pick your stats in a PvP instance > either of the options we got in BFA/SL. If it comes down to only being able to get legion templates, that’s better than nothing, but SOME specs did get left behind because of them.
Alright! We are on the same page now haha…
The irony is I was pretty against templates at the time (especially coming out of wod). I’d take them in a heart beat now though. I still played more legion than BFA or SL.
what really irritating is that bfa S2 was peak for pvp(in bfa), S3 was meh, S4 was bad, SL S1 has been terrible, SL S2 is currently looking to be twice as bad as S1.
why is pvp on a downward trend of every season being more and more frustrating than the last?
The argument seems to be “it’s an mmo, it’s about gear progression!” or from bad players who want to be able to final verdict people for their entire HP bar simply because they have 30 ilvl on them.
But none of these arguments are sound; Rated PvP is instances and competitive, there is nothing competitive about “my chest has +71 Strength than you so therefore I win” with very few outliers of being able to “outskill” so gear progression should be irrelevant, go pub stomp random battlegrounds.
In my opinion it’s borrowed powers. I haven’t held rank 1 rating since MoP, but I’ve been 2700+ every season since legion s7 since, (I quit s4 of bfa, and all of wod) and the common factor seems to be classes that are exponentially changed and balanced around something that will 10000% be gone in a year.
Also, blizzard randomly changing mmr every few months nerfing, or buffing, 75% of the player base sitting 2800+ right now is renown 20 and haven’t qued since January because the game is so dead at high mmr that you que into the same AWC and blizzcon teams.
Agreed… PvP progression in literally any PvP game ever had always been the rating you achieve. Progressing your skill. Maybe get rewarded with a few cosmetics.
I think we are cursed now though… PvE has always been slightly bigger than PvP. Then ion murdered PvP so they continue to cater to pvers who need that power progression. I’m kinda annoyed they’re separating PvP and PvE in 9.1 with “wod like” scaling but then leaving out the essential parts that important to pvpers 
whats ridiculous is how much progression we have had already, we’re not even to the first patch and we’re already at end of expac levels of progression.
legion started off teh same and ended with mega millions, templates were the only thing that kept pvp even doable in that situation. wpvp in legion was straight screwed and an example of why templates were a hard requirement with that kind of power progression.
I mean I will say I believe BFA gear inflation was way faster than current shadowlands inflation, however; I believe I remember seeing in an interview that they are going to stay squish every expansion from now on. Could be wrong though.
You’re dreaming. Some classes/specs got everything they needed from templates and were gods of PvP the entire expansion, while others got none of what they needed and were trash.
Devs just ignored the problems they created and decided to move directly into the “best PvE geared team gets guaranteed wins” model for BfA.
This is an interview with a Diablo lead who later became a WoW developer.
~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or8q02BQFLY
It seems to be exactly what’s happening now with WoW PvP.
Lets just all agree that Templates were good because it meant skill -> gear for the most part.
However, losers (see Bad clueless players) didn’t like it because they couldnt PEW PEW after getting BIS gear. They didn’t want to learn the other classes skills / rotations or set ups. They wanted to get gear and dominate undergear.
When templates came out they QQ’d to no end because they couldnt do it and were forced to either get good at pvp or quit pvp.
It’s exactly why I only duel people naked now at 60. Most QQ and decline and the ones that do accept 95% of them lose. They dont have an obvious advantage.
One perk while ignoring the many negatives that have been pointed out that are unrelated to gear advantages.
Yeah venruki is terrible… That one BlizzCon he didn’t iceblock and all 
that’s totally why he created the mega gearing thread in legion. It’s not likes advocated for wod gearing where everyone has access to bis or anything.
Cool story brah. Maybe they’re just weirded out by the naked dwarf trying to get people to wrestle him.
His post was about gearing being bad in Legion, not about templates being bad. We still had PvP gear but it was mostly RNG and thus at the highest levels where he was playing, where template ilvl boost actually mattered, it was easier to just PvE for your gear. Nowhere does he say remove templates. In fact, if you search that entire 2000+ post thread the phrase “remove templates” is said once, of course by Abomb who is not exactly who you want championing your cause.
Ahh Nawat, wana naked duel my 60? Here. Heres my btag: Broxigar#1224.
I’ll be sure to post your loss on this forum thread to.
But if templates were the ultimate solution there wouldn’t have been a need for the thread or that many unhappy people.
Clearly there were issues with the system.
Eh even outside abom I know that there were essentially remove template posts. I know that because myself and a few guildies posted in the thread asking for wod gearing back.
My issue with templates is I don’t see the need if they remove rating locked gear, which is my biggest gripe with gearing. I dislike all the stuff it encourages.
Literally wod gearing with tighter scaling. It’s customizable templates at that point. I just don’t see the need for legion template system.
So just add customizable templates. WoD gearing was basically that except you were useless for a weekend while you spammed Ashran and also had to wait until the middle of the season to have “complete” gear. Why add a gear barrier at all?
Personally I wish they’d just turn on the buff they had in beta that scaled anything you were wearing to 213, up or down. Fully customizable by wearing whatever gear you want but everyone is on the same playing field.
I was excited when I first heard about templates, it’s when I heard the details that I disliked it. Honor levels, PvE the best gearing path (if they’re going to use templates make it even), lack of balancing passes, no character customization, x = x + 1 character advancement. Done right they could be great but I don’t trust their promotion of other agendas in making a fair, balanced, and rewarding system.
EDIT: Most importantly for me is what happened to WPvP with the gearing system.