Incentives to play Rated Battlegrounds 2: Flag Carrier Class Viability

Community WoW Community Council
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Hiya! For The Alliance :smiley:

This is my second post in relation to the incentives to play Rated Battlegrounds, click on the links at the bottom of this post to check out some of my other posts!

To enter the queue for Rated Battlegrounds (RBG) you simply need to create a raid group of 10 players. A typical RBG Pick Up and Go (PuG) group generally seeks to have a composition of 1/3/6 (1 Tank + 3 Healers + 6 Damage Dealers).

Paladins, Warriors, Demon Hunters, Monks, Death Knights and Druids can all queue up for Rated Battlegrounds and PvE activites alike as the Tank role, however in Rated Battlegrounds only one of those classes has the capacity to become immune to all forms of Crowd Control for a period of 30 seconds.

Naturally, this makes Guardian Druid a far superior choice when Flag Carrying or Defending a Base on Arathi Basin is concerned, rendering all other Tanking classes as an unpopular choice and unviable in the minds of most serious RBG players.

Waiting for specifically a Guardian Druid takes longer than it would take to wait for any of the other five classes which can queue up as a Tank. What is the solution?

Well, the goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes to go from:
Forming a Rated Battleground Group > Playing Rated Battlegrounds

I have thought of three approaches:

  1. Seperate Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks (Flag Carry Maps) by allowing groups to select which maps they’d prefer to play and eliminate up to two from the map pool.

When queueing for Random Battlegrounds it is possible to queue for specific maps

  1. Equip the Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks Flag Rooms with a vehicle, item, suit of armor or pair of boots that grant players access to powerful Flag Carrying abilities.

Class fantasy would of course be difficult to maintain if the Flag Carrying abilities are to be balanced. “Boots of the Swift” would be equippable by only one member of your team at the start of a Flag Carrying RBG. The player wearing them would glow red or blue depending on their faction and gain access to various abilities (Self Heal, CC Immunity, Knockback, Speed% Increase, Spell Reflection, Heroic Leap, Stealth, Shield for Allies, Heal for Allies). They would have to be balanced of course, and the goal would be to ensure all of the abilities which add to the flavour of Flag Carrying currently remain in the game.

  1. Introduce new Legendary Powers specifically for Flag Carrying in RBG, attempt to keep the class fantasy intact.

Legendary powers would include: CC immunity similarly to Legacy of the Sleeper operates, some form of Spell Reflection replicating the old version (3-5 second duration reflecting all spells throughout this period, as opposed to just one) of a Warrior’s Spell Reflect and perhaps even a Mass Spell Reflection. The abilities I mentioned in brackets above all have the potential to be their own individual Flag Carrying legendary power provided these ideas are carefully thought out and implemented effectively.

Imagine how long it would take to create a group for a Mythic+ Dungeon if you could only invite a Guardian Druid to play the role of Tank.
I believe in order to make RBG more approachable it is necessary to solve the problem of finding a suitable Flag Carrier. New players are often keen to try out all aspects of the game and if RBG is to remain as one of them it must be something you can easily form a group for.

Thanks for reading, If you have any questions or would like to know what I think about another matter feel free to pose it as a reply! I have many other ideas of how to encourage participation in Rated Battlegrounds.

First Post: Incentives to play Rated Battlegrounds 1: Cosmetic Rewards

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I dont agree with the first two things as letting people blacklist certain BGs really just removes the more objective based teams from winning over the “big dam” yolo fotm teams. I think the idea of a pickup would be interesting but I wish it was a little different maybe just a damage reduction of like 30% for 10 seconds?

So for the sleeper problem its basically just blizzard not caring about what other tanks are trying to do/can do. I dont think people understand how insane blizzard lets Gdruids be when measured against other tanks. I know for a fact that when im carrying the flag as brewmaster roll will literally move me inches at low stacks while guardian can move 100% of its normal lengeth with wild charge at 10 stacks. The favoritism is insane when you consider how the legendary works around how the class plays and how they are also given a channeled CD reset to make sure they literally live the longest with zero draw back.

If they are going to keep sleepers around they really just need to make it a Pvp spec tank legendary to even out the playing field because all the “PvP legendaries” are pretty useless.

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I normally don’t comment on parts of the game I don’t play - but would it not be easier to just make Legacy of the Sleeper weaker in PvP situations?

They weaken DPS legendaries and tier bonuses specifically in PvP, the same could be applied to Tank Legendary Effects, no?

I dunno, maybe it’s just me. Just seems like it’d be easier to change how effective Legacy is in PvP than add something new for every other tank?

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Glad you created a topic to address an unspoken tank reality of RBGs! First off, let me start by saying I always thought PUG stood for “Pick Up Group” - I think we need a poll on this! haha

I remember the first time I played my Brewmaster in PvP, I was absolutely SHOCKED that I was unable to utilize its mobility considering what Guardian druids are able to accomplish. It still baffles me to this day that druids can sprint and leap with the flag yet a monk is unable to use their mobility speed buffs.

Each tank role provides its own niche play. Legacy of the Sleep is definitely fantastic, but each tank also has its own set of viable legendaries. The problem is that other tanks seem to have their utility or mobility nerfed whereas the Druid has been left unchecked. Being able to pick up the flag, run to the edge of Alliance Twin Peaks edge, swap into Balance, flap across the map, then Wild Charge, and Sprint for a quick cap is quite bonkers considering a Monk can’t even barrel roll properly when holding the flag. I believe the bigger issue isn’t that Guardian Druids have this legendary, but rather the other tank roles are unable to optimize their utility while holding a flag due to nerfs they receive while carrying. It would be great if Blizzard addressed these vast discrepancies so that other tank classes can shine.

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I would LOVE to hear the reasoning behind guardian druid always being the top and nerfing the other class tank specs to keep it up there

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Thanks for your reply, one of the ideas that got lost when I attempted to make this post as concise as I could was that there could be separate ladders. It wasn’t for the same reason though. My idea was, if you were using the Boots of the Swift/Vehicles instead of a FC you had a separate queue. That way as you say, the players who are in a full team still queue randomly onto any map and hold the highest prestige in the community, but the players who’ve not got a team can still queue up in a short amount of time and build a worthy team with ease.
Yeah well, I don’t think it’s favouritism I think it’s the case that they’ve simply overlooked PvP in the case of druid and the CC immunity was perhaps intended so prevent them from having to shift out of forms during a M+ situation (rooting magic effect in Plaguefall).
Yeah I think I’d prefer it if they introduced a new set of Flag Carrying Legendaries as opposed to simply giving sleeper to every tank as you well know; Prot Warrior and other tanks with no self healing will still not be a strong contenders.
Thanks for replying! :slight_smile:

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Yes I believe altering the effects of legendaries is the key to making the Tank role accessible to more classes in Rated Battlegrounds. As you say, it definitely could then spread and aid PvP balancing, by giving legendaries PvP specific benefits and deactivating their original effects.
Great idea, it would be tricky to balance but when is it not? :slight_smile:
Thanks for your reply!

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Wehey Mornnah haha yes indeed I reckon you’re right, I recall watching an interview where Ion referred to them as Pick Up Groups, thanks for jogging my memory before I made a fool out of myself haha (whoops too late). Just kidding of course, I have played with a Brewmaster FC but I was unware they were unable to use so many of their abilities they’d use regularly throughout a dungeon!
I think you’re correct with what you say about the issue being broader than the Sleeper Legendary, and it’s important to keep the class fantasy alive which makes this quite a tricky problem to solve. I am certain that if effectively implemented the Boots of the Swift Flag Carrying equipment could achieve this, would it be satisfactory enough if you could queue in PuG groups as Brewmaster equipping Boots of the Swift and losing some of your main abilities for the sake of balance? When you entered with a premade team it would be a separate queue and your legendary powers would be tweaked along with all other Flag Carriers in a way that makes any class that can queue as Tank viable, but does not take away from class fantasy?
I think the answer is yes, for most players. However it would have to be balanced and implemented in a simplistic fashion which still ensured Flag Carrying was fun and different depending on your class.
Thanks for your reply!

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They honestly need to just balance it period. Its so unbalanced currently that I think most people would welcome literally any change to shake things up beyond just “pLaY fOtM” its basically flavor of the century at this point