Getting honor gear was so fast and all done via PvP, so that was not a factor for very long at all. For me, playing a few evenings and I was within 20 ilvl of BiS.
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No, but in randoms you donât see the same players so the person who geared up in a few nights wonât be facing you. Same as now.
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A lot of this depends on the context as wellâŚ
Little bgs (10/15-mans)? Yes, gear is pretty huge. A few undergeareds on your team is a big drag on your chances to win.
Epic bgs (40 mans)? Gear matters less, since thereâs usually 10-12 pumpers (on either side) doing MOST of the heavy lifting on DPS/healing. So if you have some undergeareds/dead weight players on the team, itâs not as big of a deal.
When you play lots of 40-mans you will notice the same names consistently at the top of the damage/healing charts. Itâs also easier to âblend inâ and stay in the back of the crowd (where itâs safer) in a 40-man bg as an undergeared player.
Gear matters, but the degree to which it matters is also influenced by the context. Itâs not 100% black and white.
Since weâre on this topic, ranged DPS can âget away withâ having less gear than a melee DPS. A ranged DPS thatâs a little undergeared can still be useful and contribute since theyâre exposed to less danger/pressure than a melee DPS.
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I think you may be remembering WoD differently than it was. Though itâs fair to say that I quit WoW relatively close to the start of the last patch, when HFC first came out. Most of my time was invested in WoD before that.
I think your statement of âa few eveningsâ to gear up to honour might be a bit of an exaggeration. However, itâs not my intention to get into an argument with you about something that happened many years ago and that we both may not be remembering as accurately as either of us might like.
The bottom line is, the gap in power between a freshly capped toon and an honour geared player was significant. Additionally, the gap in power between an honour geared player and a conquest geared player was also quite significant.
Donât misunderstand. Conquest gear was well within reach, you just had to play arenas to grind it out. I even used to stream on Twitch, as well as make the occasional YouTube video, showing that it was quite possible to gear up even if you didnât have the best stuff. This is no different than today⌠you may not like that you have to PvE to get gear, but you can do so and it requires relatively low effort, just time.
This was never about how you gear up. This was about rolling into BGs with people who are significantly less powerful than the expected average, and the gap in power between those tiers.
I am not sure what this has to do with anything. âdonât worry about gear, because you wonât come across the same player againâ.
And you said that scaling is fixing the egregious disparity between 425 and 480 plus corruptions etc. I would be curious if anyone in world would agree with you on this.
Also, where are the details on all this scaling magic you speak of?
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Well thatâs where the complaints come from, is engagements in BGs. And in both xpacs, the answer is to gear up. Thatâs fine but that doesnât stop BGs from becoming determined by gear when âgear mattersâ This is why Legion had the best balance in BGs, and the outcome came down to who played objectives better, not really gear being a factor.
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You should look up âHow long does it take to gear for PvP in Ashranâ and see for yourself. Most responses seem to say 6-7 hours for full honour gear and a few conquest pieces.
From the WoWHead guide:
PvP Gear has become considerably easier to obtain in Warlords of Draenor than it has ever been in any other expansion, with various methods available to acquire it.
You also mentioned before that you did a lot of PVE in WoD and that transition between the two was harder. I never did any PVE in WoD, so maybe that was a difference too.
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Yeah Iâm just not seeing this âscalingâ either 
What I DO see in the real world: 475+ players destroying 415-425 players, while barely suffering a dent themselves (usually the geared player is still like 80% health after the skirmish).
If itâs a fresh 120 with only 150-170k health, sometimes I see those dudes getting 3-shotted 
Since the only scaling in place is mystery scaling you really canât claim this with any certainty. We have no idea what scaling is in place and what exactly it does.
Most peopleâs anecdotal experience would suggest scaling doesnât equalize players of a substantially different item level.
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^ this
I get that the âscalingâ is there (somewhere), but letâs be honest⌠in the real world, in day-to-day actual play, geared players are stomping undergeared players.
You put a 500k health geared player against a 200k health undergeared player in a 1v1, and 9 times out of 10 the 500k health player is going to win. Thatâs not theory, thatâs just reality/the real world.
I suspect what happened is that âscalingâ was balanced around 8.0 (or very early BFA) but didnât account for future (substantial) damage sources from corruption/essences/azerite traits/DPS procs.
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In WoD we had the ilvl floor, I think with Warmongering the conquest players were at 710 and the freshly-capped were at 690? I tried looking all this up but canât even find the ilvl floor for Wild (season 1).
But I do remember friends getting to 1900 on freshly capped characters. Hit cap. Go into arenas. Start gearing up. But they were telling me that because I kept complaining about my fresh capped shaman which was pretty terrible. Not going to lie. Sheâs a fresh 120 with 38k hp now, maybe Iâll take her into some random BGs and report the difference between WoD and BfA.
I think part of it is that in WoD there was a light at the end of the tunnel for freshly capped charactersâin BfA there isnât.
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BGs arenât about that though.
Without fail, argue something tangential to the entire discussion.
I am not sure about season one, but the three tiers of gear are laid out below:
Basic Gear : Warlords of Draenor has introduced a new tier of PvP gear - is the âbasicâ tier at ilvl 625. In PvP, it automatically scales up to ilvl 700. This has a chance to be Warforged, adding 6 ilvls to both numbers.
Honor Gear is ilvl 670 in PvE, and scales to ilvl 710 in PvP. This has a chance to be Warforged, adding 6 ilvls to both numbers.
Conquest Gear This epic-quality gear is the top level of PvP gear, excluding purely cosmetic Elite gear. It is item level 700, and scales to ilvl 730 in PvP. Conquest gear cannot be Warforged.
https://www.wowhead.com/guides/gearing/pvp-gearing-guide-for-warlords-of-draenor
It was a short, bright tunnel in WoD.
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Itâs important to realize 1v1s shouldnât be discussed when it comes to BGs. They are a team game aspect of wow. It is very possible for a lesser geared team to win by playing objectives, utilizing CC/silence on the right characters. Gear brings more damage, but that doesnât = a win automatically.
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Itâs important to realize that you will dig into anyones response and find some minor detail to argue about, since you canât keep up the argument that 425 gear vs 480 (+corruptions etc.) gear is the same discrepancy as 710 vs 730 in WoD.
And then bring up a bag of arguments that you have on repeat that are unrelated to the discussion at hand:
How about this:
All things being equal how does the exact same team with 425 gear fair against the exact same team with 480 + corruptions + essences + best azerite?
This is what we are talking about.
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Itâs randoms, the chances of this happening are small. Then factor in specs, some comps fare better than others.
You can only change one variable at a time in an experiment for good reasons. This is a discussion about the power gap in gear, not BG strats.
I would love to hear an answer to this though:
how does the exact same team with 425 gear fair against the exact same team with 480 + corruptions + essences + best azerite?
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And the power gap can be overcome depending on specs.
Another deft attempt at arguing something on a tangent.
Exact same specs, exact same team. Not a discussion of BG strats or BG comps.
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But this will never happen. Why argue something that wonât happen?