Since I can’t post this in a general pvp forums I guess I’ll throw it in battlegrounds. I’m about to finish up my second month sub and have a few characters to 60, none really all that geared. I started trying this game because someone else recommended it. Figured I would share my thoughts as a new player even though I know it’s just screaming into the void. Also, I’m mostly a player of PvP games so I have other experiences to base this against.
The Good
Lots to learn: I list this as a positive because this adds lots of depth to PvP. It may not make it super accessible for new players but it gives you lots of room to learn and grow.
Great Class Flavor: All the classes/specs seem unique (to me) and I never feel like I’m playing a “re-skinned” version of another class.
Combat feels good: Despite this being an old game the combat feels pretty good for the most part. Well paced, visually pleasing and pretty impactful feeling. My favorite skill so far has to be wildfire bomb. Nothing like smashing an explosive across someone’s face.
The Bad
Balance: I don’t claim to know all the finer points of every class but it doesn’t take someone all that long to realize how wacky some things are. I would say a majority of the specs (I’ve had experience with) seem to be balanced. It’s just there are a handful that wildly outclass the majority.
All the PvE busy work: From what I gather this changes from expansion to expansion and don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with some grinding. The issue is how much of it there is I have to do outside of PvP as someone who mainly wants to play PvP. I need to go grind for my legendary memory, then grind torghast for the material to craft it, then grind lots of stuff to get my covenant ranked up, then grind for my conduits. I can get my gear in PvP, but that seems to be about it. I also tried leveling a character purely through PvP and that ended up not working because I capped honor around level 35. Everything is very funneled into PvE.
Very few modes for how old the game is: You think there would be tons. You think after a whole genre of PvP based games grew out of warcraft they would be really keen on experimenting with all kinds of PvP game modes. This isn’t so much a game breaker as it just feels like a HUGE missed opportunity.
The Ugly
Gearing in PvP: This is terrible and I don’t know who thought this was a good idea. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea doesn’t like PvP, they just like someone telling them “you won!”. As an analogy, imagine chess but since you’re new you only get 5 pieces. So not only do you have to overcome the knowledge/experience gap you’re also put at a disadvantage. Winning by virtue of having played more isn’t competitive.
this is completely the case, it actually used to be more so than now and it worked in the past since it didnt take long to acquire a full set of ‘pvp gear’ (lower set of the 2 offered) and the disparity was felt but not to the extreme that it is now.
you could invest time to eventually get the gear that made you equal to the highest pvp player but it took longer so they could still feel progression and climb rated ladders. they then tried, what im assuming your proposing with ‘templates’ which gave you no customization, just preset everything and if your class sucked as is then its just how it was. was not a big fan myself but many others liked it.
Love the phrasing here. I will say while gearing up this character, gaining more versatility and item level I get to sort of feel the gradual gain in power which is refreshing from what we had in BfA - but I’m still at a 20-30 item level disadvantage after grinding out about 30k-40k honor points the last few days.
BfA in comparison felt really bad to compete in because the dynamic changing item level and stats actually made it worse to try empowering your character (gemming/enchants made you deal less damage, the ilvl shifts ruined all your curated stats on your gear, the number you dealt on your screen was not the damage the opponent actually took). It was honestly a mess which is unfortunate since WoD and Legion had actually hit the mark on how to make it “competitive”.
WoD and Legion had templates based on certain item level thresholds - so there’d still be an item level gap for your efforts, but instead of it being 20-30 item levels between honor and conquest gear, it was more like 5-10. It worked much better than dynamic power scaling, and just sort of felt better.
To your other points: Yeah I’m really sick of having to run the same dungeons on every character because the gear scales infinitely and some of it offers more versatility at base ilvl than the fully upgraded honor gear. I don’t like doing PvE to get gear for PvP and I wish there was some separation between the two like a set bonus, or the return of Resil which they canned ages ago.
The legendary grind is okay I guess? It’s one of those things that made me go - “Wow if I’m doing alright now, that’ll help me do GREAT” so at least that’s a meaningful upgrade.
So what you’re telling me is Blizzard knows their PvP gear system sucks, they know how to fix it and they DO fix it on these tournament realms but the actual player base can just jog on? That kind of puts me at a loss for words…
“I get what you mean, but if WoW was a PvP only game we probably wouldn’t create such a big power difference between players (at the same level). Its there to make PvE progression feel good. The scaling is a compromise.”
From our PVP developer who quit… They removed scaling this expansion while keeping the ilvl gaps simply for PVE.
Who takes a look at the gaming market now days and goes “Nah, PvP isn’t important.”? Blizzard apparently, that’s who. I would understand if this game was never intended to have PvP but that’s obviously not the case. Someone needs to go check in on them and make sure they’re doing okay…
There are games that do templating systems pretty well for PvP. I’ve put a lot of hours into GW2 as an example of something that does this. For all the issues it has I find it’s “templating” system for PvP to be one of it’s better points. I’m able to jump straight in on any class and be competitive (baring knowledge gap, ect.).
The randomness of attaining levels for the conduits you want is the biggest frustration of mine with this expansion other than absurd class tuning in pvp. They seriously need to make it so you can farm the levels once you attain the conduit. Stop making each level attained based on pure randomness.
I’ll make sure to put that in my “I QUIT” reasons if the notes for patch 9.1 don’t address any of the issues I’m having this expansion.
I’m aware, however the issue is not making adjustments in another form to compensate for removing it when even the Blizzard PVP developer indicated there needs to be some sort of compensation.
i would disagree with you on this to a point, im about minimizing disparity to the point that youre not useless but i still think there should be a feeling of progression, within reason. i like being able to get haste stacked gear, or vers stacked gear, or whatever – templates took that away, felt so bad.
i was against scaling after playing it for a while but, admittingly, at first i thought it was a cool concept, theory vs practice did not yield desired results though.
and you are correct the hidden math, gem system, and everything else from bfa. it was just awful, seriously awful. every player interaction felt like the absolute unrewarding mob scaling they implemented.
were going to scale mobs so it doesnt feel like youve outgeared the content why not just release further content with stronger mobs? thats not going to work for the players the… what? it’ll be great, trust us.
Based on a long history of these types of threads / posts that end up being saturated by a few different types of perspectives, it’s pretty safe to draw certain conclusions.
There’s the entitled crew who feel that the more time you put in, the more you deserve to roll over lower geared players. Interestingly enough, and ironically, these same folks try to say that “skill” got them to that point.
There’s the great/good pvpers who simply would never want to fight folks who posed no challenge, no fun; they actually want competition that is meaningful.
There’s the guys who simply just want to be able to “get in there” and play and not get steamrolled.
There are some who want gear completely normalized/templated. I don’t personally think this is good as a complete solution as everyone wants to player power up to a certain extent.
There’s the forum troll attention seekers. These folks continue to post passive aggressive threads in some cases highlighting their own accomplishments at low ilevel while looking down/ have some fun with anyone who is currently having issues in the current gearing situation. (All the while conveniently ignoring perspective like glad partners, or carries or whatever)
Probably more but at this point although I do agree that effort should be rewarded, the gear should have a baseline that makes it at least worthwhile to “get started” or actually compete.
Those that continue to say that everything is fine are simply protecting their gear level advantage to keep it easy in casual play / carries or are desiring/feeling to keep their “status” of superiority and/or posting/shaming fun alive…
Let’s hope they improve it a bit by offering rewards and perks for high achievers / ranking but at the same time make it so that no matter what everyone can have at least a fighting chance / engaging experience no matter when in the season they decide to join/partake.
in all reality they would have been better off just releasing them through the stupid renown levels and upgradable with valor or conquest. i wish they spent about 100% less time on the convenants and more time on aspects of the game that would offer repeatable content or even — new content for pvp.
i would agree with this - all of this actually. its not asking much to be able to have access to gear that doesnt allow you get beaten to death in 2 seconds. the problem is that blizzard doesnt have an answer for this since sliding the bar in either direction will directly affect another aspect of the game.
this is now entering fulmination of their gearing philosophy and not separating the different styles of gear altogether with a dead stat in the adjacent field of play. it all comes full circle and the system is in an infinite loop of disparity whos victims are ones they should be paying attention to.
I may be getting baited here, but how so? From everything I’ve seen, I can just spam whatever content and eventually I’m going to get upgrades. I haven’t really seen anything that is strictly skill-bound to obtain. I could be wrong