No Longer Queuing for Battleground Blitz in DF (Feedback)

PVP Battlegrounds
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I am no longer finding this game mode much fun and prefer to only play the rotational weekly brawl and random battlegrounds instead.

Is anyone else feeling similar?

The main problem for me is how scripted the matches tend to be and the lack of control you have to make a change in the outcome before the match will end.

For example, I recently just played a Gilneas Battleground Blitz. Each team capped Mines and LH respectively, with a big team battle at WW.

We were Alliance and quickly lost LH during the big team fight at WW. We did capture WW.

By time we returned over to LH, both of the Horde healers were there. I tried my best to fight and kill them down, but healers are near unkillable, especially with the supporting Horde dps players that quickly came to help.

Trying to make a play, I went for Mines as I knew both Horde healers were at LH. As I make my way down there, I kill the lone dps at Mines right as 1 healer makes his way over to Mines to stop me from capping.

After a short amount of time, more Horde show up and the other healer is now at Mines. By this point, more of my Alliance team members have come from WW to help me at Mines.

Still alive, I peel away and go back LH hoping to get it, since no Horde healers are there. Same pattern happens again.

Keep in mind, I’m currently a 2400+ Fury warrior player so I’m doing max damage and have great control over multiple targets.

Suddenly, the game is almost at its end before we finally kill the healers and take LH.

In Battleground Blitz, the game mode is too fast for how tanky the healers currently are.

The amount of time it takes to make a play to turn the game around is too costly. The game is essentially close to being scripted because of how fast the resource acquisition is.

Some solutions could be to simply reduce the rate at which the resources accumulate a bit or to dampen the healing of healers in this game mode similar to arena.

I want nothing more than to be excited for this game mode, especially with TWW coming soon. But right now, the game feels slightly outside of one’s control based on how much total time is available to turn the tide of a battle.

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This is why the mode will flop after its honeymoon period

Prekicking oozo cope response

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Personally, after spamming BG Blitz a lot last season, then more in the past couple weeks… I personally think the ONLY battlegrounds that work with this format are the two CTF maps. Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks.

Gilneas: Like the OP said, you don’t have enough bodies to mount meaningful assaults on two bases at once. Especially if there’s a tank in the mix. It takes too long to fight the flag spinning tank. Unless you have a couple of stealthies, the team that wins the two bases at the start are likely to be the victors. (This is pretty similar to the regular version though). It’s way too easy to rotate and defend the bases when you control two of them.

Arathi Basin/Deepwind Gorge: These maps are too big with too many bases for 8 people. This basically becomes no longer a strategy game where you play as a team. It feels way too much like random happenstance whether or not you can get a node. You show up to one to take it only to find three opponents there. You and a teammate or two show up to one and there’s nobody there.

Silvershard Mines: This BG has always sucked. Way too much value on mass roots, mass slows, displacement effects/knocks.

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I haven’t played as much, but my main PVP are Blitz and Epics. I think the one reason I don’t play Blitz right now is the lack of rating.

It will be a massive positive when Ranked happen, It won’t be anything like current Blitz.

You didn’t see my Stealth Sniper-Response!

There are stealth buffs that anyone can take. In Gilneas, you can try ninja capping a base, full team offensive or split offensive. It can work, but these days I don’t trust players to not be mentally defeated at the first sign of struggle.

I think Rating will fix a lot of these issues.

There’s also some feedback in the Beta forum to make AB and DWG a 3 base map instead of 5, which should help the flow of the game.

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Thank you all for keeping things incredibly constructive!

My goal for this thread is to compile a cohesive cluster of feedback points to outline exactly what does not feel good with Battleground Blitz in its current format.

I love the fact that PvP and Battlegrounds specifically are getting attention for the upcoming expansion but my concern now is that Battleground Blitz is moving too far away from what made Battlegrounds fun to begin with.

  1. Game modes and objectives are increasingly feeling scripted
  2. Lack of control to make an impact before the match will end
  3. Resource acquisition is too quick
  4. Healers are too time-consuming to eliminate
  5. Team fights last too long in comparison to the overall match length
  6. Certain map modes are too chaotic for 8 players (Arathi Basin/Deepwind Gorge)
  7. Strategic team play is not incentivized
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BFG always has this problem. If you cap two, it’s really easy to just turtle up and win. It’s not a blitz issue. The BG just needs a bigger distance / more broken sight lines between objectives.
Oddly though, the blitz version of BFG doesn’t reset the flags the way AB or DWG do. That would alleviate the issue of healers spinning nodes indefinitely, but it would also probably lead to much MUCH slower games than even a normal BFG because 8 people can stalemate 3 nodes easier than they can stalemate 5 on the bigger king of the hill maps.

That you think this matters carries a lot of not great implications.
Do you feel that, as a 2400 fury warrior, you should be able to carry battlegrounds? Wouldn’t this imply that you are playing at a higher level than everybody else in the game? Not that RSS match making is flawless, but if you are ever in a position where you can carry a game by just splitting off to 1v1 a guy, then matchmaking has probably failed.

It’s not scripted though. Your team gave up their home base by tunnel visioning on the WW fight.
If you really wanted to flex you superior 2400 solo shuffle fury warrior / retpocalypse abilities, you could try to be a little more aware of what the enemy team is doing from the start. If you keep an eye out for people going to LH, turn back and help defend it. If you see the enemy team coming to WW, but there’s only 4 people, just look back towards your home base. It’s not like a few horde players pushing LH at the start is new and innovative tech. You’re gonna see more stuff at higher ratings where people just send good spinning classes to stall WW while the rest of their team steamrolls your home base.

The irony is that you’re saying this match felt scripted when the enemy team basically broke from the script of fighting over WW while your team just did what 99% of people do and went all in for the LH + WW cap, gambling on just having a better team fight. The issue this game was not healing being too strong. Also, sorry to break it to you but warrior is in the running for least capable class of carrying games. Obviously a good player can pull their weight and more, but if you want to carry games then you want to play something with gimmicky tools like knock backs, stealth, ice wall, shadow rift, chrono loop, etc.

Yeah, this I can pretty much agree with. I really wish they put the resources into just designing new maps around 8v8 rather than trying to half heartedly tweak old ones. This game really needs a BG map overhaul IMO. We get a ton of new dungeons and raids every expansion, but BGs have balance issues that persist for years, and when we do actually get a new map they try to reinvent the wheel rather than just give us new maps for simple modes that people understand.
I do really like silvershard mines though.

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I enjoy it, my last BFG we capped LH/mines to avoid the WW push. But we just…said to go mines before the game started and the team listened. I like being able to get my CQ without running in to fully geared kids at 1600 in 2s while I’m in honor gear D:

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The specific issue in the blitz version, is that it feels useless to even attempt to try. By time you can eliminate enemy healers, the match will end. Or, its too late to overturn the outcome.

No that was not my point of including this. The point was, that hopefully should indicate I have sufficient knowledge of the game and can play well above average. In spite of this, I am not able to feel like I can influence the outcome of the match still in the slightest. I don’t want to participate in a game mode that gives me this feeling.

People can make mistakes. Whoever was in our match defending LH could have been outplayed on a CC and lost the cap or just simply killed and failing to call incs.

The issue again is that a mistake should not lead to the end of the game. I want to feel as though we have a chance at turning the outcome of the match at almost any point during the game.

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Been saying this for months. They should only allow ONE healer in battleground blitz. This way the healer has to make the important decision on where he thinks he is needed most to have a greater impact on team victory. With two healers it’s relatively easy to have them split at two nodes in BGs like Gilneas making it very unfun.

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I’m not really sure what you mean here… Is it even an issue… Pve is scripted. People complain about arenas being scripted. The script is written by you having objectives to aim for to win?

Depends a bit. Some classes have a crazy amount of impact (rogues being able to off cap objectives) and others don’t. That’s always kind of been a thing in BG’s though? This is still a problem in rated BG’s or regular BG’s… It is a team game after all and not perfectly balanced.

This is a possibility that I do kinda agree with :thinking:

Kinda agree again… Not by much… This is going to be a hard balance to find :thinking::thinking: because if healers suck nobody will want to play them. Then ques go up and then nobody has a good time.

Again in high level rated BG’s this has also always been a thing? Can be pretty hard to land kills with how many defensive CDs people have and healer coordination…

Eh I don’t think this is a thing.

It’s uncoordinated solo que… This was foretold and nothing you can do. Randoms are no better…

All in all the modes not perfect but I don’t think most of the things you mention are actually an issue.

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This could be a much easier way to sum up my overall feeling.

The strategic-based team play and ability to make an impact on the match or feeling like its never over is not equivalent between traditional random battlegrounds and battleground blitz.

I wish battleground blitz felt a bit more like random battlegrounds do, just with rating attached to them.

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Blitz is by far the best bg format it’s not even close.
But to much time chasing node spawns.
A good rogue changes the landscape in blitz nodes because they keep healers from getting to spawn points. Frustrating as heck for me.
They need to not have so many nodes available for capture with only 16 people in the map. They need to force combat. And you need the bodies to kill tanks and heals. Heals are not over powered. As a 2400 warrior’s I’m sure you know how to solo a healer. Heals aren’t over powered. Strategy for blitz is just a bit different. A dps fighting a healer in the road is amaze balls. And if a healer shows up at a team fight all dps should be training them. I’m already seeing people shifting into that strategy. As a healer it kinda sucks because if I can’t get to a team fight it’s bad news for that node.
Just Que up but try to shift your strategy a bit and not be so rbg strat orientated. It’s not gonna flop. It’s super accessible rated format

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I love Blitz, the only problem is the queue time. Also clicking enter BG 25 times just for a normal BG to pop and reset the queue is annoying!

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If they did that, probably most of them wouldn’t bother queuing. I think they like having someone else to shoulder the burden with.

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only good thing about the mode is the forced even healers and 512 ilvl boost. randoms have far too may games where 1 side has healers and the other does not. until that is fixed(and premades) blitz is just flat out better.

it does need to be 10v10 though. 2 healers is too much for 6 dps.

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i agree valorcus the healers in battleground blitz and even rated rbgs the healers take forever to kill if killed at all they need to nerf healers period

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I also noticed that healing has become very strong this season. I find Blitz much less fun this season as I geared up and got into higher MMRs. Healing output gets very high, but DPS coordination doesn’t increase much, and so it simply becomes about which team has worse healers. I don’t remember this happening last season, but I might be wrong.

I think dampening might indeed help in some way, to compensate lack of live communication. And reset it once they leave combat or die.

I also feel this is partially a tuning issue, that might resolve itself once TWW starts, and we’re back to normal stat levels. It could be that healers scaled much more in S4 gear, with all that versatility.

Saying that, I do find Blitz very fun when playing fresh characters in honor gear. It’s like a better version of random BGs. There are way less overgeared players on lower MMRs which I like, and it makes for a better fresh experience.

I actually disagree, I find CTF maps are more annoying in random queue format. In team fight/node BGs everyone’s zerg brain aligns with win condition somewhat, whereas CTF maps are more about team work, which is hard to find when people queue solo.

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I agree i noticed also with the healers whoever has the best healers on the map win the game but i love battleground blitz i want this mode to succeed

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It really lands somewhere between random bg and rbg. With CR rating it’ll be competitive. I do t like hitting re-Que ten times either but it’s a small price to pay for a seemless transition into 8v8. I’d rather spend less time chasing so many nodes and more time in combat. If they could not have as many spawn on the larger maps. They do this already in eots. The best part about the rbg community and games is that everyone clashed and you had to win team fights. In random bgs you see like three people head for farm. Don’t need three people to go to farm. Quit trying to dodge combat. Send a rogue, hunter or tank and be prepared to rotate. Gotta get rid of so many nodes and force team fights!

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I’ve felt as you did in that match and I dont bring instant mobility or a meaningful MS effect to aid my team. CC is about as strong as it’s ever been. CC and silence on healers is the way to get kills on DPS.

Yes, some healers during their defensives are like hitting a raid boss, so don’t hit them into their defensives. I’ve seen healers die, but it’s not usually a typical goal with current tuning in pug matchs.

Healers can Rez on their own or get rezed by an out of combat teammate before you kill all the DPS or tanks at the objective. Well thought out knockbacks, grips, silence and other CC and spell breaks is faster to disrupt a healer than trying to kill them first.

I wouldn’t go as far to say the mode ends matches too quickly. Both teams have the same probability of having teammates that stay giving them the same amount of teammates and maps are pretty well mirrored to not give one an advantage over the other too often.
What I see from Blitz that you see as a problem, is every decision mattering because the match is short, and I like it.