TBC arenas are probably some of the most unfun activities in the world to do. It very frequently feels like you’re actually just slot machining it in a casino due to all the RNG. 99% of teams 2k+ team are rogue/X. Such skill rotating 10 second CCs. So amazing at the game. Wow. My friends no longer have fun - they have been broken by this solved game. We had a 45 minute match earlier against a mage/priest. I can’t even kill a frost mage with 0 mana because it is just way too easy for them to reset and walk away. Eventually, they decided they had to be somewhere else and gave us the win. We just get our 10 games a week and say @#$% it.
I say and mean all this at 2031 CR. Each week gets progressively worse and worse to play.
TBC really hurts the current PvP scene because it’s not a growing area. Unlike original TBC where thousands of new players were capping and trying PvP for the first time each week, we now have a playerbase that already knows the meta and as such many people won’t give it a shot if they aren’t a meta comp.
Couple that with the lack of dual spec and you get a playerbase that knows how ludicrous PvP participation is unless you only PvP. I know many players that don’t PvP at all just because of the pain of resetting their bars and the gold cost invloved.
Until we can solve the convineience factor for the casual playerbase you will never see the arena scene grow. Adjusting Arena and honor point gain is a good start, but adding in maybe some PvE applications as well could be a good move (flasks/consumes for arena/honor points?)
Speaking as a Cata rogue who had Lego daggers, you also needed vial of shadows trinket from dragon soul… Ran that gdamn raid every single week as the only agility user in my entire guild, and on lfr and still never got that gdamn pos trinket. The trinket itself was as strong as the daggers, if not more.
Made up for that by getting a heroic cunning of the cruel on my shadow priest alt, and that trinket was hilariously broken (15-40%of my overall damage in bgs)
@the thread in general :
Pvp is the only thing I care about in this game and I’ve only even done 10 games a week in tbc 2 or 3 total times. By far the single biggest display of dev incompetence tbc has demonstrated. There is zero incentive to give a damn about arenas right now with how badly they screwed it up…and making it even worse by using the s4 rating gates shows an almost comical level of stupidity /being out of touch with the reality of the game.
That trinket was utterly ridiculous, and I blame “the trinket” game play on end of Wrath mostly, but partly on end of Naxx and also on certain TBC trinkets, tho it didn’t get truly ridiculous until Cata… MoP they nerfed the trinkets, they were more mid wrath Era, but round came WoD and they jumped the shark…
Here’s my druid alt. I confidently say that 2k shoulders are “slightly above average” because I have them and I am pretty garbage.
I die randomly to warriors because I let blooms fall off and forget to go bear form. I lose games constantly because I panic trinket when unnecessary. I miss feral charge kicks even when they aren’t trying to juke. I’ll call “I’m going to bash” when it still has 20 seconds on cooldown. I get sapped by rogues after drinking when its obvious what they’re trying to do. I fall off the bridge and pillars on blades edge when I’m trying to position to cast on people below. Just last week I got solo’d by a ret paladin without windfury.
I earned my shoulders and I can honestly say at this point I see no reason why I should ever take pride in them because I know that many people at this rating are mediocre (at least if they’re playing meta comps). The fact that 2k is top 4% shows me not that a 2k player is some excellent pvper, but that serious pvp participation is so bad that people just aren’t bothering to play arena enough to improve and climb.
We have rewards that serve as points of pride and trophies you can brag about. Those are titles and mounts. Gear having rating requirements does nothing beneficial for the game and discourages participation at the levels of arena where participation is most important for a healthy ladder and fun pvp community.
ur wall of text, with the earth shattering discovery that druid+glaive rogue is easy in 2s…
does not really explain how more #changes will somehow increase pvp participation. Are dragonslayers finally gonna start the honor grind, in the final phase of tbcc, cuz brutal wrist now has no rating req?
Which wouldn’t be a major problem if brackets weren’t deflated as hell, people didn’t start at 0 instead of 1500, and seasons weren’t significantly shorter (the combination of which means most players won’t be anywhere close to buying a full set, even if they did meet the rating reqs)… The entire system right now is almost intentionally designed as a giant middle finger to anyone who isn’t a mutli time gladiator/rank 1 level player, taking all of the worst parts of both retail and tbc systems to discourage people from playing.
It’s asinine to the point where it has to be intentionally malicious.
Druid/rogue, druid/warrior, mage/rogue, lock/rogue, dpriest/rogue, shaman/warrior, double rogue, feral/rogue, lock/dpriest, lock/druid are all incredibly simple comps to get to 1850 or even 2k with provided you grind out the games and learn the basics. The amount of misplays and just stupid strategies you see at these ratings by these comps are staggering and not remotely worthy of “top 4% of players”. Also offhand glaive/talon night elf rogue is significantly weaker than human rogue with s3 weapons so lets not go pretending we’re getting purely gear carried.
The point with #changes for rating gating is that there is absolutely no benefit to having it in the game. Even if the benefit of removing it is small or even nonexistent there are virtually no negative repercussions to doing it. If there is a chance it will cause more players to participate to try to get weapons then it is worth attempting imo.
We’re you around in phase 1? The barrier to entry destroyed pvp participation.
Pushing new and higher ratings as well as keeping ratings attached to previous seasons gear will not be good. It was only ever done to curb boosting, but in this environment it encourages it.