Classic+ needs actual pvp playtesters, arenas/RBGs, and resilience,

[Xdrain-bigglesworth]

@Delvin-skyfury

resilience in P1 and the 50% resilience buff trial in P2 (or P3? I forgot), was the golden age of SoDs pvp. It was a massive success. The only people who cried about it were PvE mains. During this time, skill and counterplay actually mattered, and you had to actually set up good CC chains and have good target calling to win team fights. Premade v Premade P1 was some of the most fun I had in SoD.

I feel like the lesson here isn’t that resiliance is good, but that you shouldn’t mess with the classes - and especially not giving them all power buffs.

P1 pvp was fun because it was the closest to vanilla, but it was still way worse than if they had just hyped up and lvl locked and normal vanilla server.

@Delvin-skyfury

The problem is eventually with enough powercreep this is very hard to do and becomes the 1 shot extravaganza that SoD became. This even becomes a problem in OG vanilla eventually once people start getting AQ and especially naxx gear. There needs to be reductions in player damage to keep up with ilvl increases. Resilience wasn’t perfect, but TBC pvp was an enormous improvement just on this stat alone.

We pvp and on Era and it isn’t a 1-shot fest when both sides are good. WSG still stalemates into hour+ games when everyone is bis.

Most players just don’t play pvp when they are geared because that’s the point at which they realize that their skill is lacking and they are getting walked on all over in WSG. They cry about ‘consumes’, and make tons of excuses about how arenas are better, and no resilience in vanilla, and bla bla bla - they are very common on Era and majority of them also went to SoD.

@Delvin-skyfury

This is why PvEers can’t be taken seriously in PvP discussions. They just want to pwn noobs in 2 hits on their downtime but don’t seriously play PvP in this game. Every version of WoW PvP with resilience was better.

SoD player comes to Era forums to promote retail mechanic, image that.

[Cezar-kurinnaxx]

@Delvin-skyfury

I notice a pattern with many of these anti-resilience players

I have played every healer, every DPS (excluding DK) and resilience is a bad design in every function of the game no matter the version because its a bandaid fix for gear that was too strong or class abilities that were too strong from the start.

The real solution is self control when designing classes and gear, not patch over the bad designs with resilience.

If you build your game correctly from the ground up you don’t need resilience, and fact of the matter is Resilience eliminates the glass cannon play style; something that is actually fun.

The only people who don’t like the fast meta are those who lack the reaction time to play that fast, OR just like painfully long slow matches where you need to balance the game on the edge of a razor for it to be any good.

Another problem with resilience is that it makes games far more deterministic when you zone in VS a counter comp because no you literally have zero chance to just Zug them down; especially comps like L.S.D or God comp where there is so much CC and built in BS shield walls you can use while in CC or built in extra PVP trinkets because “Reasons” and abilities that generally have zero or near zero resource costs.

Modern Retail PVP post around WoD+ is so trashy and bad, and it was even kinda bad in TBC, Wrath and Cata too and 3 / 5 of the patches of MoP also for many of the same above mentioned reasons.

Retail ditched PVP Resilience and the PVP power stat and simply replaced it with Versatility because it was now again usable in PVE like Resilience was in TBC, but this does not fix the problem of the classes and the gear being too strong so they had to then bandaid more with even dumber stuff like PVP specific abilities, PVP specific stats, etc… Its a mess, these people don’t comprehend game design, this is why SoD is terrible, this is why Retail is terrible and Cata was always terrible.

I would have presented you with and can further my arguments against trashy game / class / gear design if you like but its unlikely many would read it and really does it matter anyway?

You and I both know that Blizzard is incapable with the present team, they simply don’t get it, cant understand it, and are blind to it.

[Tubbly-terenas (Tubbly)]

@Delvin-skyfury

The problem is eventually with enough powercreep this is very hard to do and becomes the 1 shot extravaganza that SoD became.

Which is why I’m saying we don’t do this. SoD went very much retail and threw all the gear at you. Naxx absolutely had too much power on it but I’m advocating for keeping the power curve tight and instead staying away from vertical progression. Classic+ can do horizontal progression instead, keeping gear relevant but making other ways for characters to progress in new content.

I don’t think it’s that hard to not let gear scale out of control but you have to have the design intent to do that. SoD did not have this intent at all! The gear you got in P1 was, in some ways, better than the level 60 dungeon gear of Vanila.

@Delvin-skyfury

This is fine and dandy for PvE, but PvP should have it’s own rewards that are good for PvP.

The beauty of Vanilla now is that you can gear either way. This is a good thing. The power level of those rewards should be relatively comparable.

I mean, imagine Naxx gear was much closer to AQ40 so you have 4 PvE tracks. You can also have 4 PvP tracks offering comparable rewards. You shouldn’t be thinking of power-based rewards as PvP or PvE though, it should just be character power progression that you get for playing parts of the game you enjoy.

I do admit there is some challenge in tuning the time for acquisition between both approaches though, given the penchant of our community to hyper optimize

To be clear though, I do completely agree that full PvP BiS should not only come from PvE. In Vanilla, if Blizz didn’t get so carried away with Naxx power, PvP gear actually would be interchangeable for BiS in a lot of classes. I really like having BiS, or near-BiS, come from a variety of places. The fact that some PvE BiS/Near-BiS comes from MC is a great way to keep people doing those raids.

[Tubbly-terenas (Tubbly)]

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

The only people who don’t like the fast meta are those who lack the reaction time to play that fast

To be fair, this does describe me. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. There is a middle ground here

[Cezar-kurinnaxx]

I enjoy the fast meta, but also enjoy slow meta too. Problems with slow meta tho are that healers become to strong and then healing gets really boring.

This is why I favor the Pre-AQ meta because its not lighting fast, but it is still fast enough that healers don’t become literal raid bosses.

That is another problem with resilience, nothing dies once you have enough of it going around that healers are generally selfish in that they think they should not be a valid 1v1 target and have this messed up idea that they should be unkillable unless the enemy is greater than 1.

Generally they back this up wtih “in Battlegrounds I need to survive otherwise im pointless” well breaking news, in Vanilla PVP if you don’t get peels you’re dead; so play smart; this is one of the best parts of Vanilla healing in BG’s; you really do need to play smart and be aware otherwise you die. However while you are alive you’re a massive force multiplier as it should be.

[Xdrain-bigglesworth]

@Tubbly-terenas

The gear you got in P1 was, in some ways, better than the level 60 dungeon gear of Vanila.

The epic cloth boots from P1 were better than t1 and t2 for warlocks and, depending on your hit, t3 as well.

SoD threw the baby out with the bathwater from the start of p1

Literally from the second they said “mage healer” - one should have known that the pvp was going to be bad. There’s no decent way to balance that without overhauling all the classes. Warlock tank is even more troll.

[Tubbly-terenas (Tubbly)]

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

That is another problem with resilience, nothing dies once you have enough of it going around that healers are generally selfish in that they think they should not be a valid 1v1 target and have this messed up idea that they should be unkillable unless the enemy is greater than 1.

Actually, I do subscribe to that idea… but only in retail, not in Classic. It makes sense to me that a healer should be able to effectively stalemate (not beat) a 1v1 against a DPS.

Classic is a whole other ballgame though, the game is meant for PvP battles that are not 2v2 or 3v3. Healing is actually quite powerful in Vanilla but as you say, you need to play it.

@Xdrain-bigglesworth

The epic cloth boots from P1 were better than t1 and t2 for warlocks and, depending on your hit, t3 as well.

Oh yikes!

Also, hi! I’ve been seeing you all day in AV. I’m playing my Paladin, Smellybeard. I’m done for today though, I hit 100k and I figure that’s enough. I have a 500k cap this week so I should probably pace myself

[Xdrain-bigglesworth]

@Tubbly-terenas

Also, hi! I’ve been seeing you all day in AV. I’m playing my Paladin, Smellybeard. I’m done for today though, I hit 100k and I figure that’s enough. I have a 500k cap this week so I should probably pace myself

Hi! yeah i’m only 28k in so far but I believe it is AV weekend so should be easy

I’ll give you a /wave next time

[Delvin-skyfury]

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

If you build your game correctly from the ground up you don’t need resilience, and fact of the matter is Resilience eliminates the glass cannon play style; something that is actually fun.

This doesn’t work in a game with both pve and PvP. Either you build the game around 1 at the expense of the other, or separate the 2. It’s not possible to balance gear a single source of gear around both. Power creep from PVE will always ruin PvP eventually.

This is also laughably false regarding glass canon play. Tell me fire mage and affliction lock in WotLK isn’t a glass canon, among other examples. This just shows you hardly even played PvP in TBC or wrath. Wrath was also pretty bursty even with resilience in the game so the notion that resilience necessarily kills that style entirely is just flat wrong. In fact one of the reasons tbc was superior PvP to wrath was because of this.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

The only people who don’t like the fast meta are those who lack the reaction time to play that fast

WoW is not a game built around reaction time. You are not dodge rolling, sprinting, or side stepping attacks, a class has too much burst and you lose. This isn’t dark souls.

WoW PvP is a tab target game built around lining up cc, managing cds, and setting up kill windows. A burst meta takes away any skill expression this game could offer.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

Another problem with resilience is that it makes games far more deterministic when you zone in VS a counter comp because no you literally have zero chance to just Zug them down; especially comps like L.S.D or God comp where there is so much CC and built in BS shield walls you can use while in CC or built in extra PVP trinkets because “Reasons” and abilities that generally have zero or near zero resource costs.

Matches in vanilla are more rock paper scissors deterministic than any other version of WoW. If you think L.S.D was uncounterable you never played PvP at a high level. There is way more room to outplay lesser skilled opponents with a suboptimal comp when you aren’t going to just nuke them in 2 buttons.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

Modern Retail PVP post around WoD+ is so trashy and bad, and it was even kinda bad in TBC, Wrath and Cata too and 3 / 5 of the patches of MoP also for many of the same above mentioned reasons.

Totally agree about WoD+. But PvP was at its worst in MoP. The homogenization drive that started in wrath is what ruined PvP. The problem was making every class have the same abilities, not resilience.

[Lazarak-whitemane]

@Delvin-skyfury

Just put resilience in, the best version of SoD PvP was when the 50% damage debuff against players was in, and even the hidden resilience buff in WSG in phase 1

Ok, so let me break this down a little bit.

The reason damage is atrocious in SOD is because SOD characters always had power levels much higher than their current gear and level range could normally provide. This was due DIRECTLY from rune tuning and power. Had the runes been more on a realistic vanilla level, no damage mitigation would be needed.

When you add resilience as a pvp star, it becomes the defacto requirement to play the mode and the gear becomes BIS forever even under a circumstance I will explain below

“The resilience set is available at phase 1 molten core and is the only set. Full resilience offers (40% damage reduction)”

What I don’t think you may understand that is if there is a resilience set in game, it will be bis FOREVER, no matter what phase you are in assuming it is a “full set/weapon”

So the best pvp gear you’ll just wear it for 10 years never changing it no matter how many phases there are. This is a barrier to entry that does not belong in a vanilla remake.

The core of the problem lies solely in sod rune balance. Look at the sod logs, people are doing sunwell plateau levels of DPS in molten core!

There doesn’t need to be a “flat damage reduction in BGs”

Why is that? Because you are playing at that point, a dual personality character. We saw this in early sod. World PvP damage was hilariously unbalanced due to rune power and inside the BG, the blanket damage nerf made some class combos stupidly OP.

Nothing needs to be done except actually making classes to vanilla values of output.

@Delvin-skyfury

Also we need arenas and/or RBGs

RBGs will work, arena will not. You would need to completely rebalance CC drs thru the entire game for this. Even blizzcon contenders have said arena does not belong in vanilla.

@Delvin-skyfury

Replace Rank 14 grind with a competitive PvP system. At least RBGs is a no-brainer.

You can still have the rank 14 grind as a normal way to acquire pvp gear. There is nothin g wrong with that and all it does is keep a healthy battleground population

You could add RBGs that don’t add mega power spikes in gear rewards. You can simply make it the same as rank 14 gear and change the way the armor looks, or recolor the gear and the fire and glows, maybe change the weapons. I had suggested on a podcast you can make the rank 14 axe look like dark edge but black and remove the eye put in the horde symbol, something else similar to alliance and then just send it. Maybe a mount, whatever

Not that it matters. Regardless of what I or anyone says, classic + will be bad and they will NOT deliver and you know it. I wouldn’t even waste the hopium. Blizzard can’t even attract a wider audience of competitive pvp players and haven’t the entire time wow has been around. It’s all a niche. Vanilla wsg is niche in that it has no rating and its competitiveness is perpetuated within the community only. Arena is built to be competitive yet they gain no new players for it and it remains small. CATA rbgs are also dead as well.

[Lazarak-whitemane]

@Delvin-skyfury

I notice a pattern with many of these anti-resilience players that they tend to just give long paragraphs repeating “resilience bad, no resilience good” without actually defending their position

I defend my position and I know what I’m talking about and share this ideology with those you would consider “good classic pvp players”

This is an mmo, it’s supposed to emulate a living world. You aren’t supposed to have two sets of damage values for one area of the map and not the other. It’s supposed to be consistent to feel good and real.

Resilience sets just take away from special use items like rocket helm, skull, rocket boots, various weapons and trinkets, etc. which btw is the reason vanilla pvp is so good, being able to use an infinite combination of gear and items to gain the edge in specific situations

Are you the type of player that wants consumables banned from BGs?

[Cezar-kurinnaxx]

@Delvin-skyfury

Totally agree about WoD+. But PvP was at its worst in MoP. The homogenization drive that started in wrath is what ruined PvP. The problem was making every class have the same abilities, not resilience

This happened because its the only way to “balance” Arena and why the only good Arena seasons with Good class and spec distribution are S13, S14, and to a lesser extent S15.

Resilience is a bad move, I know full well how to abuse it, I personally abused it and worse its a stat that is exclusionary to new players that any rated or even non rated system depends on.

@Delvin-skyfury

WoW PvP is a tab target game built around lining up cc, managing cds, and setting up kill windows. A burst meta takes away any skill expression this game could offer

To have this in a game that isn’t trash you have 1 of 2 bad situation.

1. Homogenization
2. Meta comps that are playable and comps and specs that may as well not Q (TBC, Wrath, Cata, WoD+) TBC was the least bad of these ironically with more viable comps than Wrath or Cata.

@Delvin-skyfury

WoW is not a game built around reaction time. You are not dodge rolling, sprinting, or side stepping attacks, a class has too much burst and you lose. This isn’t dark souls

So you’re telling me that landing frame perfect CC, vanishing a coil, blocking a pyro, cleansing and landing a sac, perfect execution of rep, blind, gouge, silence, etc aren’t mission critical and we should have a few moments to think about it or can only land kills during CD or only after we get everyone’s shieldwall clones outa the way first?

@Delvin-skyfury

This doesn’t work in a game with both pve and PvP. Either you build the game around 1 at the expense of the other, or separate the 2. It’s not possible to balance gear a single source of gear around both. Power creep from PVE will always ruin PvP eventually

Works fine when you dont have people who dont comprehend class design and balancing building a game; this is why vanilla PvP is actually very good and SoD, Cata and Retail are all trash.

You do not need perfect raid balance, just FYI because someone will always be top class, however you can build for PVP and Leveling / Dungeons and have an excellent game that doesn’t need duality problems like retail and SoD where everything sucks and no one enjoys it.

@Delvin-skyfury

Matches in vanilla are more rock paper scissors deterministic than any other version of WoW. If you think L.S.D was uncounterable you never played PvP at a high level. There is way more room to outplay lesser skilled opponents with a suboptimal comp when you aren’t going to just nuke them in 2 buttons

I never said L.S.D could be countered, I said

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

Another problem with resilience is that it makes games far more deterministic when you zone in VS a counter comp because no you literally have zero chance to just Zug them down; especially comps like L.S.D or God comp where there is so much CC and built in BS shield walls you can use while in CC or built in extra PVP trinkets because “Reasons” and abilities that generally have zero or near zero resource costs

Meaning its comp bassed and you either counter or are countered; I shouldn’t have to explain further.

@Delvin-skyfury

Matches in vanilla are more rock paper scissors deterministic than any other version of WoW

If you refuse to use consumables then yes, however this is vanilla and consumables level the playing field. Again I shouldn’t need to explain any of this.

[Cezar-kurinnaxx]

@Lazarak-whitemane

Not that it matters. Regardless of what I or anyone says, classic + will be bad and they will NOT deliver and you know it. I wouldn’t even waste the hopium. Blizzard can’t even attract a wider audience of competitive pvp players and haven’t the entire time wow has been around. It’s all a niche. Vanilla wsg is niche in that it has no rating and its competitiveness is perpetuated within the community only. Arena is built to be competitive yet they gain no new players for it and it remains small. CATA rbgs are also dead as well

This is the simple facts; all because blizzard flubs at every imaginable turn. OP remembers times when he made good ratings on a class he personally likes in a comp he enjoyed when it was a strong comp worth Q’n and thinks replicating that will bring fun for everyone; what he doesn’t realise is its the comp, the class, the gear and how that in addition to respectable PvP skills provides the illusion of a great game; because everything is fine at the top of the ladder.

I get it, I use to think like the OP, I thought a lot of the same things; then I started replaying various versions of wow on private because I liked how they play, and as I bacame a avid multiclass player I saw the faults in my former logic turn to critical cracks and my ideas were tested hard.

The only versions that stand up in respect to PVP are vanilla with pre-AQ being BiS, and MOP From 5.2 until end of 5.3.

100% of the rest of wow is pure trash, its not even worth playing.

[Duckling-anathema]

It is funny to see the pvpers of the forums be called pvers who want to just 1 shot people. Btw my hunter at lvl 55 wasn’t getting 1 shot by people. 3min shamans, 3 min mages, and warriors with guardian angels shouldn’t be a consideration on needing resilience. Heck, my hunter at 60 now in blues survives Pombussy’s 3min burst, sure they just blink in to finish me off. But it should show that even a 3min mage with Atiesh can’t just throw a PoM Pyro out to just anyone.

If we got resilience paladins, who are already annoying and really strong, would just straight up be broken. After we force out their bubble, get their LoH, and keep them drained long enough to kill them a 3rd time, their bubble cooldown will be back up lmao.

[Mootwo-earthfury]

My opinion of resilience and arenas that they should be there in a TBC fresh/fresh that becomes TBC Era, maybe even a TBC+. It doesn’t need to be put in a Classic+ based on “Vanilla”.

Then again I have next to no faith in that Classic+ is going to be good, to the point where I expect to not play it. Maybe something will change with that but that’s not the direction of things. I’m sure that some people will love it but they are probably the same people who are still playing SoD or who try everything not matter what.

@Lazarak-whitemane

This is an mmo, it’s supposed to emulate a living world. You aren’t supposed to have two sets of damage values for one area of the map and not the other. It’s supposed to be consistent to feel good and real.

Agreed.

I just wanted to say that I saw that " Warcraft Reloaded 221" podcast with you in it at 1:19 and it was good. It was nice to hear the things you talk about here spoken in a place that has a chance of being listened to.

That was a productive conversation. Also that Warcraft Reloaded guy is one of those I like as he seems to do things in an open-minded and professional way overall. I was thinking about saying this in a PM on Discord but others should listen to that podcast with you in it because it’s good.

[Xdrain-bigglesworth]

@Lazarak-whitemane

RBGs will work, arena will not. You would need to completely rebalance CC drs thru the entire game for this. Even blizzcon contenders have said arena does not belong in vanilla.

I think arenas would be fine in vanilla - if certain classes dominate that’s not really a problem in my book.

I just don’t want them to do anything with team-based-MMR, it must be tied to the player and people can then group together as they wish.

[Delvin-skyfury]

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

This happened because its the only way to “balance” Arena

TBC proves you wrong. It wasn’t perfect but it was a lot more balanced than vanilla without homogenizing classes. Homogenization made every encounter samey and boring, MoP was an absolute disaster.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

So you’re telling me that landing frame perfect CC, vanishing a coil, blocking a pyro, cleansing and landing a sac, perfect execution of rep, blind, gouge, silence, etc aren’t mission critical

In SoD, and even naxx geared players in normal vanilla, none of these things are critical. Once power creep gets too high, it’s a 1 shot fiesta where no skill expression is required.

And no I didn’t say you should have 10 seconds or whatever exaggerated number you come up with to respond. The damage should just not be so high you either cannot respond or a response does nothing.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

Works fine when you dont have people who dont comprehend class design and balancing building a game

There is no era of WoW where this is the case. We saw what happened in vanilla, PvE gear power creep made damage values in PvP way too high eventually. Separating the gear allows the 2 to be balanced separately. A few bis pieces in both is fine but balancing the game around 1 source of gear just doesn’t work for any competitive system.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

Meaning its comp bassed and you either counter or are countered; I shouldn’t have to explain further.

You’ve never been very high and this comment shows. There is always room to outplay your opponent until you start reaching rank 1 territory, with a few aggregious examples that eventually get nerfed cough cough OG launch wotlk DKs cough cough.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

OP remembers times when he made good ratings on a class he personally likes in a comp

I’ve played with a variety of comps including off meta stuff and did fine with anything wasn’t a total meme. Sounds like you are the type that blames all your personal failures on anything but yourself if you think just playing the magical perfect comp is a golden ticket to the top.

@Cezar-kurinnaxx

The only versions that stand up in respect to PVP are vanilla with pre-AQ being BiS, and MOP From 5.2 until end of 5.3.

MoP was awfully boring due to the extreme homogenization. TBC is the golden age of WoW PvP.

[Cezar-kurinnaxx]

@Delvin-skyfury

TBC proves you wrong. It wasn’t perfect but it was a lot more balanced than vanilla without homogenizing classes.

TBC started the homogenization and worse, there are fewer options in terms of class builds that are competitive or practical in TBC’s PVP because of the talents and abilities that augment them. The fact that you cannot see this shows me clearly you do not play Era and cling to the idea that WoW’s PVP in later expansions with resilience is better; its just not.

@Delvin-skyfury

MoP was an absolute disaster.

After reading this, and your above comments; I know now you’re 100% delusional and its no longer worth even considering your opinions; this is where I will cease reading and leave you to your delusions.

[Corpseknife-mankrik]

Classes and thus pvp (to the extent of the classes) got more interesting with each expansion (until it didint aka pruning/class fantasylol) thanks to additional abilities which lent itself to counter play (which ultimately led to ruin aka “class balancing”/homogenization).

And before anyone makes a run at me about class balancing being this necessary and wholesome thing Im not talking about the idea by itself but Blizzard’s version of it which is just an incessant FotM nerf and buff cycle for infinity.

For the record I don’t think Era bg pvp is better than say, MoP bg pvp. You just feel better when you play Era pvp because its not its not unnecessarily convoluted on behalf of being modeled around a 3v3 Esport. Anyone, with enough time, can compete in the Era system. Era being permanent means time is not an obstacle. In other words, literally no one is left behind - that’s not the case with retail (or any other expac) and that’s why it will never rightly fit in a Classic +.

Which, on the topic of the OP, is just another reminder to me why I never want to see a Classic +, official or otherwise.

[Corpseknife-mankrik]

@Duckling-anathema

Pombussy’s…a 3min mage with Atiesh…PoM Pyro out to…

**cue vietnam flashback montage