really good
2 Likes
My largest piece of feedback about Rated Battleground Blitz is a larger focus on rewards/incentive to keep players in the mode season to season. More people playing the mode means better queues and healthier mmr population. Here are some of my thoughts:
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Same or similar rewards tied to rank as in Shuffle/3s. Imo glad mount (or recolor) should come from 2400 in either of these three modes. I think it’s time for the glad mount to stop being gatekept behind 3s. My best thought for this is 3 mount colors a season. I like the idea of a different title for 2400 in BGB tho.
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A seasonal participation reward track. Simple as a PvP “renown” track, with rep tied to honor or games played. Unique cosmetics or toys for PvP.
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I think the rating system is extremely outdated and confusing to many. The same rating number shouldn’t feel so different to play season to season or at different times in a season. I suggest the industry typical Bronze, Silver, Gold… etc format.
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Healers feeling special. Healer achieves, titles, mounts, anything.
17 Likes
Absolutely love Blitz and can’t wait for this mode to be rated.
I only have a few concerns:
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How will Bloodlust be balanced? Will each team always have one class that can Lust? Personally, I think Bloodlust shouldn’t work in Rated Blitz/BGs, as it’s very influential, but it’s fairly common for a Lust-viable player to forget to use it (which greatly handicaps their team.)
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How will tanks be balanced? Flag carriers have never been balanced, with either Guardian or Vengeance being the only viable FCs for most of Rated BGs’ lifespan. Will there be an effort to make all tanks specs just as good as the others for FCing?
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Arathi and Deepwind Gorge are the only Blitz maps that I find inferior to their Rated/Random BG counterparts. I would decrease objectives to only 3 active at a time, restore node capture time to 6 seconds, and increase the node invulnerability time (or remove this function in favor of three nodes.)
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5 objectives just feel like too much for 16 players. It feels like you never want to have more than 2 players at any one base. It’s very hard to influence the match when you can only contribute to 1/5th of the objectives at a time.
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4 second capture times devalue killing players. With 4 second capture times, matches tend to incentivize players trying to cap bases with CC chains instead of killing enemy players. To me it feels like the optimal way to play Arathi/DWG is to CC cap a base, spin it until it’s invulnerable, and repeat after the timer is done (or run off to a new base.) It feels like trying to kill an enemy player is frequently the wrong decision and a waste of time. Additionally, 4 second capture times make certain specs excessively influential. Rogues can capture a flag in a Sap, Gouge, Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Blind, and Smoke Bomb. That’s 6 different mechanics across 3 DR pools. There’s just no way to effectively 1v1 Rogues for bases as most classes. Mages/Druids/Hunters are great at dueling for flags too, but to a lesser degree, while something like Warrior or Enhance are very, very bad. Classes just weren’t balanced around 1v1 or 2v2 CC chains (which is effectively how Arathi/DWG are played in Blitz.)
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Lastly, it feels like 45 second invulnerability timers are too short, at least for DWG. That map is so big, by the time you reach a new base and cast a few spells, it’s time to go back and recap the base you came from.
13 Likes
My first question is I wondering if there will be class/spec limits put in in order to not have games stacked with certain classes. Is this something that will be done by the time it goes live in WW?
2 Likes
This is by far the biggest issue with blitz right now. AB and Deepwind are popping a lot and the mechanics in this one suck all the fun out of them. Incentivizing small, spread out fights that take place across a 15 man map makes for very boring encounters which usually just end up in someone getting CC capped. It’s like playing 2v2 or 3v3 arena but without dampening, nothing dies. You just CC, get the node, leave everything alive and continue on. By the time you can disengage from the fight and try to mount to go elsewhere it’s already time to turn around, go back and repeat the same process at the same node
The point of the fast cap times and the 45 second lock time was supposed to incentivize not having to sit a base, but I’m constantly having to sit bases. Going elsewhere isn’t always a helpful thing but sitting the node and re-capping or spinning it is.
Having 3 nodes instead of 5 would be way more fun. They could work like Gilneas which is a far better design when considering you only have 8 players per team. Have BS be a constant base with 2 of the outer nodes being the starting area for each team. The nodes can always form a triangle so you get even combinations.
- Farm, LM, BS
- LM, ST, BS
- ST, mines, BS
- Mines, Farm, BS
7 Likes
That could be good, I would just disable Stables and Farm, make them default GY spawn. And the game revolves around LM/BS/GM for Arathi.
In DWG I would do the opposite Corner + Market
Start with Quarry/Market/Shrine.
When Quarry/Shrine is reset, the other 2 nodes become active, so when Quarry is capped, then reset, Ruins become available and Quarry is disabled.
Same thing on Alliance side when Shrine is capped and reset, Farm becomes available and Shrine is Disabled.
Graveyard:
I think there’s something clunky about how the graveyard are working when a node becomes disabled and you get almost double rez timer as you get ported to another GY. I think the GY where you are should still spawn you and not port you to another GY. I don’t know how else to make it work, but it can be frustrating.
Queue Pops:
Can you make it Auto-Accept for 2 minutes after I hit the first Accept Queue instead of having me click 8 different Accept everytime someone drop the queue?
5 Likes
Part of me thinks you might need to give the prot pally treatment you gave solo shuffle to other tanks, (where prot pallys can only face other prot pallys). Guard druids are really on another level as flag carriers.
If not there’s other things you could maybe do to help non-guardian/veng tanks, like give Blood DKs the speed boost while carrying, let prot pallys bubble with flag but make it a wall instead, or make stagger actually an effective mechanic in PVP for monks. Tanks work well enough in conquest maps across the board, but there’s a clear gap in CtF.
Been playing Prot a bit the last few weeks in BGs. Still undergeared but Prot Pally is def a good support class. Even with no gear it takes a while to kill me with my self heals and ESPECIALLY if I have a healer on me. I can’t kill anything of course. I don’t think you can’t put prot pally into the heal spot though in a BG setting however.
Yeah maybe some miscommunication on my part. I meant that druids are just on another level as flag carriers, and blizz should consider guard druid vs guard druid only instead of guard vs other tanks, because they outclass any other tank for that role in those maps.
Prot still can’t bubble with flag, and are very dependent on self healing, which stacking flag debuff impacts.
All that to say, the outcome of a game for the entire team can be dependent on if you ended up with a blood dk as your tank vs guard druid on flag maps.
Can anyone speak to whether RBG Blitz wins are granting credit towards the RBG tint of the Mage Tower artifact appearances from Legion? That should be a perk of this if Blitz is eventually intended to fully supplant the classic RBGs, but honestly it’s just a good idea even if the latter doesn’t happen right away (or at all).
1 Like
Oh ya Prot Pally is not the best EFC. I can do it but it’s almost easier if I can find a healer or DPS on my team willing to do it and I support them.
Outside of the good points mentioned about larger maps in BGB, the only one that can be awkward to play in is Eye of the Storm.
Rushing open towers while outright ignoring flag seems to be the winning strat, because if you can secure both towers, flag is irrelevant - they’ll bring it to you while you rack up points, and at that point you don’t even want to cap because you control the board and the GYs.
That plus most players don’t seem to understand the locked/unlocked tower logic. I suspect this will change as more people play though.
All that to say, it’s clear that some maps are great with the smaller team sizes and rulesets, while others work, but are clearly shoehorned in to make them work.
If it’s a hit, I’d love to continue to see new maps rolled out that can be made from scratch with this mode and the team sizes in mind.
Don’t feel like you need to invent brand new mechanics either! New maps of CTF or smaller conquest maps with less points can still be a hit!
1 Like
are solo q rbgs going to be cross faction like blitz im hopeing so for ques sake
1 Like
Hello Devs! This isn’t necessarily something from Blitz on WW beta, but from live I have a feeling carries over to rated Blitz atm. The issue is backfilling and not even the backfilling itself but how the UI bugs out.
Backfilling has been a thing for Blitz since the start but I never backfilled a game myself and sometimes you can’t even tell your team has been backfilled. I backfilled my first game a few days ago on live and here is what happened to me. When I backfilled the game has JUST started. From what I gathered backfilling ONLY happens during the 2 minute prep time and 10 to 15 seconds after the gate opens. Maybe less than 10 honestly. Hard to tell.
- When I entered game had already started so I couldn’t change my talents. Need something that allows a player that backfilled a game when the gates already opened to change talents even if it’s only for 10 to 15 seconds. Especially in a rated setting.
- For the entire game I had issues targeting my team AND enemy players. The UI AND my addon (battleground enemies) did not show who had the flag (it was a WSG).
- I did not show up on the raid/party unit frames OR battleground enemies for people to see me. In fact there was one person who wasn’t targetable/wasn’t even in the BG anymore which was the person that left I would assume.
- When the battleground ended, the scoreboard popped and I had no way of leaving the BG so I have to wait out the 2 minute timer. The leave button on the bottom of the scoreboard was grayed out for me. There is a screenshot in a tweet I made yesterday. ALSO if you look at the screenshot I am not even on the scoreboard even though I played in 99% of the match.
I would post a screenshot but despite seeing others do it, and I could have sworn I use to be able to it won’t let me even using the hyperlink function. I would be REALLY nice if I could post some visuals. Check my Twitter, my handle is just Mhortai. OR if someone can post it that would be great too lol.
Thanks!
2 Likes
I think a good way to address this is have the flag give points when you are holding it with no bases or something. It doesn’t have to be much like 1/3 of what bases give or something. Once your team has a base you no longer get points from the flag or something.
Backfills in Blitz lead to all kinds of bad things happening. Another thing this can potentially cause is one team having three healers in Blitz. I posted about this before, but zero idea if it has even been seen by the people that need to see it, much less actually fixed.
Also, those sweeping trust level changes that were made many months ago make it quite difficult to give appropriate feedback.
1 Like
OH forgot about this too.
A small thing, but still would like to see:
I would love if there was a small grace period when ready checking where if a few people miss, it would immediately try to find replacements if possible instead of resetting the ready check again.
Its kind of a meme how many times queues pop before everyone readies up for the game to start.
Additionally shorten the waiting lobbies since everyone is in. Shouldn’t take as long to start the games and set up a basic strategy.
As a long time PVPer I kind of wonder how many hours of my life have wasted in PVP lobbies waiting for the game to start 
3 Likes
I would still like to see a PvP dungeon journal put in the game to explain how BGs work. ESPECIALLY now since we Blitz were the current battlegrounds (so not including Deephaul Ravine) all function quite differently in Blitz minus maybe Battle for Gilneas. Some even function a little differently (like Eye of the Storm) just going from non rated to regular rated battlegrounds. Would be an awesome addition imo.
3 Likes
Can we get dedicated Raid markers applied to healers when they join? Knowing the position of your healers is super important, and would be helpful.
Additionally, I think you could expand on the concept to give better UI visual cues for healer positioning across all pvp formats (maybe even helpful in some PVE content?). I made a post here that gives some ideas:
1 Like