It’s been the case for quote a while and it’s been said before many times but I feel it needs to be said again in perhaps a more emphatic way.
Crowd Control in Honor PvP is out of control.
I think that there was some great work done around the PvP gearing system and I want to thank everyone involved in making these decisions profoundly! I remember close to a year ago posting about the PvP ilvl imbalances and have REALLY enjoyed the solutions that were arrived at. It has leveled the playing field in a substantial way where skill is what matters the most in PvP outcomes and had provided everyone a viable path to progression.
The next serious area of PvP game play that needs to be looked at in my opinion is the subject of this post. I recognize going into this that it is not a simple problem to solve; yet a problem it is and a solution is required.
Problem Definition: Healers in particular but any classes that are casting time dependent are for all intents and purposes disabled from their game play most of the time.
I encourage everyone to read the Arenas post linked below for what I think is an excellent description of the problem that needs to be solved. Admittedly, there are constructive and less constructive comments but I think for the vast majority of them there is an honest intent to communicate the issue (I apologize in advance for coopting a post made specifically about arena to illustrate my point):
From my own personal (and very frustrated experience) playing a Resto Druid and Holy Paladin in honor PvP (as well as solo shuffle) I’ll provide my top takeaways/suggestions:
CC has been balanced for Arena, 3v3 primarily. 6 total players.
A BG has 10-25 players on each team rather then 3.
Most even moderately competent and sophisticated PvP players use the addon “Healers Have to Die” which puts a giant red cross above the heads of all healers.
Everyone targets the healers first, or are at the very least strongly instructed to do so by other players.
The result is that healers spend their time locked out of their character waiting to die while they get a cup of coffee.
Why is any of this important?
With CC the way it is you might was well just make any PvP larger than 3v3 100% DPS, why bother to pretend that healers matter. We spend 90%+ of our time in the gaveyard and are entirely unable to play the game.
What are the potential solutions?:
Do nothing and people only play DPS classes, further lengthening PvP queue times.
CC stacking diminishing returns regardless of class of CC per target.
Give healers (and casting time DPS) more instant casts that are uninterruptable.
Make CC abilities actually cost the user something to do it, a GCD is a very small price to pay for turning their opponent off for 6+ sec.
Mass CC such as fear or freezing and movement slowing should have a very high cost to use. Jumping into a crowd of 20 players and insta-fearing the whole lot is just an obscene mechanic.
Increase the ratio of healers in BGs, if you want to make them useless add more and less DPS.
Change the main PvP trinket to provide 5-15s of CC immunity (this all by itself would go a long way, change its’ effect for arena and various content as required).
This has all gone on far too much for far too long. It is not imaginative or interesting game design to base an entire gameplay such as PvP on making players passive observers with no options to influence their fate.
Rated Battle Grounds is probably the safest place for a healer which basically disputes this. (If teammates peels for them)
If they have no trinket or zero help from teammates yes.
The only reason we have meaningful CC in the game is to not make it healer fest. If you are spending the majority of the time in the GY its generally because you are not receiving help from teammates. You cant expect organized play from the casual version of the game. Unrated PVP is basically zug zug kills or objective. Zero stakes in winning or losing.
Generally every class has an ability (if blizzard decides they should) to use as a defensive to stop them from dying. OR they have PvP trinket to break a CC and do something (generally people die because the first thing they do out of a stun is press W instead of a defensive)
From reading this post the general feeling im getting is that you want UNRATED to be like RATED. I would suggest you do rated PvP over unrated.
All of the problems you seem to be having disappear and generally get way better the more rated you play and the higher rating you get. You cant get upset no one is peeling for you the entire game because its unrated PVP they have zero stake in you living to continue playing the game the game. If you played rated they would DEPEND on you living so they throw peels to stop you from dying or they lose rating.
Solo shuffle has kind of ruined this mechanic as you can run over a healer for 6 rounds and get rating while sometimes both or at least 1 healer gets nothing in the form of rating gain.
You keep missing the point that I don’t want to play arena. I hate the 6 people in a box game in it’s entirety. Many people want large scale battlegrounds to be a fully functional and balanced game, without rating at all. Your version of PvP is not what this post is about AT ALL.
Rated battle grounds is not arena. I love me some large scale battles that why I generally do more Rated Battle Grounds. Do I wish they took 4 RBG groups and put them on different objectives? YES.
You cant complain about unrated being uncoordinated while also refusing to play rated anything especially when Rated Battle Grounds exist.
That may be what you heard but that is not at all what I said.
What I said is that the amount of stacking CC from dozens of simultaneous sources has resulted in Honor battlegrounds being so untuned that they are fundamentally unplayable.
So you’re saying that being CC spammed should only be countered by perfect gameplay with a 2m cd trinket to somehow counter 10+ difference CCs?
Like I’ve stated in another reply to you, it’s not what reality is. These trinkets and the “perfect” gameplay is aimed at arenas. CC is not balanced in larger scale PvP. Even in 1v1 and 2v2 certain classes have enough CC to make you waste your trinket.
If the only counter against a braindead CC spam is perfect gameplay, it just highlights how poorly balanced it is.
I dont think pressing trinket and a defensive requires perfect gameplay. If Unrated PvP is too much you can always do Compstomp its pretty good for learning mechanics
I will repeat what I said last time, you clearly don’t play epic battlegrounds, and I highly doubt you play normal battlegrounds based on that statement.