We’re currently targeting item level 213 for Challenger-level PvP, Heroic raiding, or Mythic Keystone dungeons at the +7 difficulty.
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This is a worrying development. I had thought they were going to wait until a month or so post-season to add higher tier Honor gear upgrades so that it would mirror the current BFA PVP gear system - a 26 week currency grind to unlock a (almost) full set of heroic ilvl gear. But this post seems to imply that heroic ilvl is going to be restricted to PVPer’s who arena to 1600 rating. In BFA the weekly PVP chest reward for 1600 was a piece of heroic ilvl gear, so thats obviously where they are drawing their comparison from, but what about us? Are they seriously expecting us to grind out honor for … 26 weeks to get a full set of LFR ilvl gear, and then… hang around for the rest of the season getting farmed by PVEr’s?
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but whatever: if all you do is play random/unrated bgs then you don’t deserve good gear.
Just like how Jimmy the LFR casual doesn’t deserve good gear, on the PvE side of things. Have to do the more difficult version of the content if you want good gear.
It’s a little disconcerting that they rate challenger and m7 at the same grade. Not that challenger is necessarily difficult to achieve, but completing m7s is much easier still. Hopefully the fact that all PvP gear includes versatility will be enough to prevent mythics alone from being the optimal route like it is now.
No, I sincerely doubt that. 219 conquest gear will likely be accessible to everyone by way of daily BG wins and some WPvP objectives like CTA. I’m sure honor gear will just be there to supplement conquest gear.
You don’t think trying to PVP against heroic raid geared players in lfr gear is difficult?
That’s the difference between PVP and PVE. LFR and RBGs can both be nightmares based on the random factor of your own team, but LFR enemies will never be any more difficult. The same can not be said of your opponents in PVP. In fact, the opposite is true.
As more and more players clear Heroic raids you will face more and more of them in your RBGs. There is an inherent increase in difficulty that must be accounted for and rewarded accordingly.
Rated pvp where it’s 100% premade vs premade (gear is at a certain level for the most part) both are on voice comms (generally, some yolos exist) and skill levels are roughly matched due to an MMR of the teams.
Right. The entire team is on roughly the same skill and item level and are placed against a team that is also roughly the same skill and item level. The “safety net” of the quality team and MMR matchmaking keeps the difficulty in check, which is why skilled players in rated play will likely see similar to even higher win rates in rated than if they were to solo queue randoms.
You can apply the same concept to raiding. Take a player in a guild with Mythic Nyalotha on farm and have him solo queue LFR Nyalotha. Over the span of 4 weeks, do you think he would have more success in his guild runs on Mythic or in LFR? The Mythic version is unequivocally more difficult than the LFR version, but the groups themselves account for as much or more of the difficulty than the raid itself.
For this reason, I don’t think rated play should award better gear. It should simply be an alternate path to the same gear, but with a greater degree of control over coordination and focus on objectives with the potential for those achievements, mounts, tabards, and elite sets.
If players are better at PVP, it’s going to show on the battlefield. Piling on an advantage of increased item level just pushes the situation to a ridiculous state that is further compounded when those players decide to bring premades into random BGs.
And because they’re casuals with crappy honor gear and a covenant with a PvP ability useless in PvE, they’ll have major difficulty getting into PvE groups and find it impossible to win against their opponents in rated PvP.
Lack of communication, coordination, cooperation, understanding of mechanics, and even an understanding of one’s class, these are what equate to difficulty and are what you will find on a regular basis in LFR. Frustration is simply a byproduct of the experience.
How? After months of farming gear and upgrades to reach the honor gear cap at LFR level, they will be facing opponents who are fully mythic raid geared.
“Hey, wod gearing sucked. It only took a few days to complete your honor set, and you could start working on your conquest set then immediately. That was wrong! It should take months to earn gear that is useless even in randoms. If Ion approves this casual gearing system, it must be perfect!”
The only person keeping you from acting like a person who is concerned about the state of PvP is yourself.
Locking better PvP gear behind rating just makes it harder for players to climb the ladder.
Not only do you have to overcome a skill gap, but you also have to overcome a gear gap.
Imagine you face off against a glad/r1 player. It’ll be a tough fight because they’re probably more skilled than you. If they’re also wearing gear that’s one or two raid tiers above yours, wave goodbye at any shot of victory.
For random bgs, this means there will be gear gaps. Casual players will always be at a noticeable disadvantage against rated players. They won’t ever catch up, even later in the season.