Hi there. I am writing this because in my experience people who experience what I did usually just never que up again, never pvp beyond unrated battlegrounds, and never make a post about their thoughts. Thise leaves you in the dark completely and has you scratching your head why the majority of the player base doesn’t do rated pvp.
For context, I was sharing an account with my brother then we had a falling out so I am on a new account but not a new player though I consider myself one given how long I haven’t played the game for. I have done Mythic raids. I have done through AQ40 in Classic. I understand the basics of this game very well. I still had this experience.
I played a healer, the role you desperately want because there’s a bonus for healers. You had a healer who actually wanted to heal a Solo Shuffle. I have 5,000 hours into Dota2 where I played Support. Why couldn’t you make this even slightly enjoyable?
I did a solo shuffle on 2 of my characters, sub rogue and resto druid. I got obliterated so badly in each of them I just stood still the last 2 and let it end because I didn’t care anymore. I got 0 win in 12 and honestly I think I’m like the majority of people. You go in, can’t see or make sense of anything that’s going on, and then get outskilled by a large margin on top of that, and are left feeling like there’s no point in queing up again, let alone attempting to learn anything from the experience.
Then what should I see at the end screen? The average rating for the whole 6 of us was 1,800. How??? If you take my entire account and aggregate Solo Shuffles I have done a whole…wait for it… 5. With a 0% winrate. So how am I being put into that situation? Sure, you say, it’s silly at first, but after 10 of them you’ll even out and get to your mmr. That’s bad game design. When encountering a new player you want them to win some of the shuffles. That’s good game design. Your new player experiences wins and losses, not just losses. Regardless of intention your new player experience is, “Just go 0/60 and then you’ll finally be in your intended skill bracket. Maybe not even then.”
I don’t know how to fix this system and I don’t care. That’s your job. My job as a player is to give feedback and vote with my time. So I’m joining the majority of the player base and voting that rated pvp sucks so I won’t be doing it until there’s a major overhaul. Either the mounts become obtainable through marks of honor (the only thing I even wanted), or I never get them. I’m fine with that.
If you play unrated battlegrounds you should have experience and understanding how to PVP correctly. PVP is a lot more then just running at people spamming damage.
There is a lot of expression in each specs capabilities that should be learned. 1800 is the STARTING MMR now for everyone, its fine to be below average everyone starts somewhere.
There is a lot of rogue content from streamers like kalv/pika/whazz and plenty of little guides to come across on youtube, from people of different ratings.
Since you are coming from a place of no experience I highly suggest looking into skillcapped and taking a deep dive of all their videos/content and UI/WA package and go about learning in a good way and setting yourself up for success.
Even at 1800 there are plenty of people who have done this or already have a concept of these basics so approaching it from a place where you have zero is going to be difficult.
Don’t get discouraged hop back in the saddle, learn up and try again.
For what its worth sub is also one of the most difficult specs in the entire game to do well with in solo shuffle for a variety of reasons. Even veteran players are likely going to struggle if they don’t have a strong mastery of the class in PVP.
Although it might not be intuitive, solo shuffle is not intended for new players. You’d need to gain some experience with PVP as a whole (set up your UI properly, learn how the different specs play, what to look for, etc.)
A good starting place, as suggested, would be to watch some skill capped videos.
Yep, it sucks man they should do better. You should invest your time into a different game if you want to PVP.
I was just thinking about how miserable it must be to start at 1800 if you are new to PVP or learning a class/role.
If you like pain… learning how to fake cast and monitoring defensives should be your focal point as a healer. Id suggest playing a Disc Priest or HPal right now if you want an easy even playing field against your opponents.
actually griefing behavior. Losing and getting owned is as much a part of the experience as winning and pwning noobs
Indeed a common experience. There are two things going wrong here on your side:
You don’t seem the type that would play rated here. You gave up too easily and don’t think there’s any point in improving. I say this because…
Most people playing arenas or PVP in general have been doing that for a while. You should at least watch a few videos on how you’re supposed to play your spec and role. If you just queue like you did you will get demolished.
And a few on Blizzard’s side:
You should never have been 1800, it is indeed too high for someone just starting out. It makes 0 sense. They recently introduced rating inflation which puts you situations like that.
You are below the skill average though, statistically speaking, so it would be expected that you lose your first shuffles
Blizzard’s fault for sure, the bar for entry is high and you need to look outside the game to even begin. But you also won’t get the true experience if you don’t actually do it.
A lot of people you meet in shuffle (or pvp in general) are a-holes too, so that doesn’t really help new players.
If you want to continue your shuffle journey, just take things slow and try to have fun. Try to learn something about your class or a different class every now and then and the knowledge will eventually compile and you’ll be able to spot things easier when your opponents try to do certain things.
So if you are new to the game or to pvp and play a healer I’d recommend just queuing arena skirmishes, you will always get 3s matches which give you great practice. Sometimes people are undergeared, but thats fine as the goal isn’t to win it is to practice your spells/keybinds/positioning and to get used to your pvp ui so you know where all the info is automatically.
Dont ever queue up rated in WoW right away, it is overly complex to anyone who hasn’t played pvp at all yet and a lot of stuff isn’t really even shown in game. Need addons like bigdebuffs and omnicd to track important debuffs above player frames and change the size of them, track enemy cds, etc. Practice in skirmish.
On that note, dps need a way to also practice 3v3 unrated. Skirmishes put me in 2v2 all the time when all I want to do is practice 3v3.
Ultra lategame dota 2 matches on a hero with units and useable items requires way more mechanical button pressing skill and information processing than wow.
But how much effort is this game putting into teaching you (the rhetorical new enthusiast) any of this? By now it is probably habit for someone interested in a cool new thing to hop on youtube or (ugh) reddit for some easy osint, but how many other games require you to seek 3rd party training before you’re even baseline competent?
How difficult is an Adventurer’s Guide portion dedicated to PvP? How impossible would level-agnostic templates be to implement?
You’re doing better work for arenas than the people running them. That’s pretty screwed up.
Starting at 1800 is actually good, the higher mmr u play against the better for u cause u gonna climb faster and dont lose mmr if u lose.
If u play against a lower mmr team if u win u gain almost no mmr but if u lose u go down alot…