The 1800 is for a seperate subset of data.
The “Global Ranks” is exactly what it says, its of all characters scanned.
1800 is Rival, Combatant is 1400. 100% of people over 1800 have combatant.
The numbers are right. 26.1% of 120 Characters hit 1400 rating in S3.
As to your Qing, issue.
Your talking about Random Battlegrounds, and as Horde the Dominant faction. Q as Merc ally, and Qs for BGs are under 2 mins.
Rated Everything Qs are damn near instant 24/7.
Everyone can switch? It takes two freakin’ quests to switch, man. There’s a cooldown period, of course. Conduits have a week cooldown for christ’s sake.
I can take Decimating Bolt for the first 3-4 weeks until the raid is on farm and I stop attending then switch to Impending Doom for M+ and Arenas for the rest of the raid tier (or unless some ability gets super buffed in a patch or whatever).
It’s really not a big deal.
And this is specifically @Daemonic…
I usually don’t PvP the first 3 weeks or so of a new expansion because I get freakin’ Snutz at 1550 rating every other match. I fought Jellybeans in the 1400s during the first week of Legion. Got Ghostcode at like 1550. Give the pyramid some time to fill out before you start queueing. For those 3-4 weeks take the “raid meta” choice, get the heroic crap you need and then swap to the PvP covenant after you’re essentially done progression for the tier.
2 WEEKS to Switch*
Yes, it’s 2 quests, but they are arduously long quests that involve doing 8 World Quests and a TON of activities in their zone.
We still don’t even know what the 2nd quest entails.
Also PVP is Dying, but its dying because of the being forced to get AOTC to do Arena, that Ion is forcing onto the community.
We have tons of Quotes from Holinka back in MOP, and WOD, more people did Rated PVP, then EVER Raided.
Sadly, they nerf hammered Unholy Nova a while back. It’s fairly poor healing for Disc right now.
Good Mind Games it up :).
It’s probably Mindgames for raiding and Boon of the Ascended for M+ right now, although they’re fairly close to each other overall.
I am a PVPer and want all my priests to have Mind Games, so that works for me.
Thought Steal and Mind Games, has Disc in S and Shadow in S.
I been getting my priest ready to probably be main in SL, might duo main w Aff though.
Pretty sure Ion recently mentioned some sort of 2 week renown grind to get back your renown level in your previous covenant. Why punish players for wanting to optimize? Ion’s lore excuse makes no sense, so then why? Because players aren’t playing the game the way Ion wants them to play it. That’s it. He builds these convoluted systems that aren’t fun, over promises on their capabilities, then spends the rest of the expansion apologizing for it and tripping over himself trying to fix it and the game suffers even more. Shadowlands biggest problem isn’t pvp vendors or covenant switching, it’s biggest problem is Ion.
To be fair… if enough of your raid is doing .2k less damage per person… it could be a big problem.
The issue with covenants is they are not an insignificant advantage.
not sure why this weird thinking persists.
a player doing 40% of their theoretical max damage of 60k is still doing more damage than a player doing 40% of their theoretical max damage of 55k.
by your logic, why bother equipping gear upgrades unless you’re a world first player?
Thats where those problems stem from though.
I am with you though 100%.
This isnt “The spirit of WOW” this is what Ion wants WOW to be, and no one else shares that vision (or the Majority dont)
Just like his excuses with PVP stats, “No one wants 2 separate sets” yet I have 4 right now in BFA… We are not dumb, we remeber all the crap he taked about PVP in the EJ days, he doesn’t like PVP, so he is trying to kill it now that he has the power. Just like he did with Flying.
Ion is not making descions for what the players want, he is making descions for what he wants. Thats not how you keep paying customers around.
I wouldn’t go to a Pizza place and be given a different pizza than what I order and be told “You will like this better” and come back.
I’ve wiped on bosses a few times when they had less than 1% health. 
Feels weird cuz I like Ion as a person from what I’ve seen from him in interviews, but at the end of the day whether its bad design or Bobby Kotick’s and Bracks hounds nipping at his heels forcing him to push out hasty content, he’s the guy that is supposed to make this game good for everyone, not just raiders, and raids always seem to be his prime focus above all else to the point where it is seriously diminishing the rest of the game.
Could you imagine these people trying to play Vanilla with Horde Shamans or Alliance Paladins?
If Covenant abilities are so terrible for number fondling, I can only imagine what it must feel like to have factional classes.
Thats because of who Ion is.
He was never a game Dev, he was the leader of a competitive Raiding Guild, Elitist Jerks, he was a major component and name in Theory Crafting, and giving us this “Meta Community” of as his guild name is, Elitist Jerks.
He is a good theory crafter, and likely a good person, what he is not as a lawyer was his previous job shows. Is someone that can take advice, or opinions from others. He is strong willed, Arrogant, and thinks he is the smartest person in the room. Things you would expect from a Lawyer that fits the job well. It does not suit a game dev.
I played classic, had no issue with Horde Shamans or Ally Pallys.
Apples and Oranges.
I already picked my class. That was not a problem.
I’ll switch to my Classic guy too. Is that the new forum meta?
IDK? I guess.
I switched while playing classic, didnt care enough to change it back.
Dont come here often enough to bother.
I think youre overstating his influence on game design. Its not an dictatorship… I don’t agree with everything he does either but I feel like you, and anyone else who doesnt like him simply bash him because you dont know who else to turn against.