Party Sync Findings

PVP Battlegrounds
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I posted this on another thread, but thought anyone who is looking for details on the Party Sync feature and how it affects PvP might want it more readily available.

These are our findings after many matches, different level brackets, multiple characters, classes, and gear levels. All of these tests were done in the pre-60 brackets, most of which in the 10-19 and 20-29 brackets. We also started experimenting and testing later in the evening, so it’s possible that this information was not true earlier in the day but were applied after undocumented hotfixes, and obviously all of this may still change later.

~Hero Classes (Death Knights & Demon Hunters)~

  • Demon Hunters and Death Knights can participate in low level PvP.
  • Both classes retain a majority of their abilities even at very low levels, including things like Double Jump, Glide, and Fel Rush. Of note, Death Knight is missing Mind Freeze pre-60.
  • Death Knight runeforges still function.
  • Due to stat scaling (discussed below), Hero Classes are not significantly stronger numerically via scaling. However since they retain most of their ability kits, including their mobility, they can be incredibly disruptive and difficult to contest objectives. Players who are skilled with these classes will do exceptionally well; but they are not necessarily free-wins against teams that know how to deal with them, even at low levels. Demon Hunters in WSG is the major exception, but what else is new.

~Gear and Equipment~

  • You do not gain any stats or benefits from gear, enchants, or gems. You will be exactly as strong naked as you are fully equipped.
  • Scaled down players are given a template of set stats that appears to be of equal stat budget for every class (note that percentages may differ from spec to spec due to conversion rates). Scaled players should have identical secondaries, primaries, and health.

Note: The stat template you receive appears to generally be slightly stronger than the average player in the bracket, but weaker than people who are twinking or pseudo-twinking. **

  • All on-use effects, procs, and other passives built into gear (including Azerite) are disabled. **

Note: Heirloom gear effects, such as the XP bonuses, on-use heal, battlemaster trinket, and so on ARE still enabled. Enchants still do not function.

** Exception: 120’s in the 119 bracket have disproportionately high stat templates and are by far the strongest. In addition, they have access to all of their Azerite traits. Other rules and restrictions still apply.

~Talents & Abilities~

  • As in the official notes, you lose abilities below your scaled level.
  • Talents unlock row per row based on non-Hero Class unlock requirements. For example, the 30-39 bracket will provide access to the first and second talent rows to all classes.
  • PvP Talents unlock at the expected levels.

~Consumables~
(Reminder: There are already some powerful consumables available to low level players, including Bloodlust/Heroism drums that have no level requirements.)

  • You are able to use most consumables applicable to your actual level.
  • Consumables are scaled down accordingly, but some are considerably powerful.

Note: As you are already somewhat weaker than twinked players, the net gain of power relative to other players may not be very significant or worth the cost.

~Rewards~

  • Non-max level players scaling down will still receive decent XP.
  • At max level, item rewards are of 280 iLevel.
  • There appears to be no unique transmog appearances available. All equipment rewards appear to be scaled versions of the generic “Class Set” gear you get on trial or boosted characters.
  • You cannot earn level-up PvP gear appearances from crates. You receive PvP Loot Crates based on the low level’s queue rewards. Since your natural level is outside the intended range, you will receive gray items from these caches instead of gear. You can still earn Marks of Honor.
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so if i make a Twink with Best possible gear with Enchant. Later on if i xp on and make it to 120. Can i log with my that twink gear and will i be powerful enough than others?

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Having a bit of trouble understanding your question.

As it currently stands, a higher level is weaker (generally) than players actually at that level. This is not like Timewalking where you can create a “low level set” - you will have the exact same stats even if you zoned in completely naked.

Twinks playing at level are stronger than max-level players scaling down. This is because they are not set to a template set of stats, and all of their gear and enchants work as normal. Therefore, they can be using gear that is more powerful than the stat template the higher levels are provided, can enchant their gear for an extra boost, optimize their stats through item/enchant choice, and use trinkets that can be very powerful.

You pretty much only want to use Party Sync if you want to play a DK or DH in low level PvP, or if you are actually playing with people who are lower level. Otherwise, you’re at a disadvantage. The rewards are bad, too.

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Sounds like a pretty strong and well-thought out system to me. Pretty gassed to be able to play with friends while they level now.

Thank you and your friends for doing the legwork on this- it’s encouraging to read that it isn’t completely abusable atm.

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Pretty good report imo. Thanks for sharing.

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I was pleasantly surprised at how fair it seemed.

I’m a little uncertain about the scaling side of things because I keep seeing posts elsewhere about people queuing in on high level, geared players and crushing things, but I think that’s largely because low level PvP is full of generally bad players and even many twinks are pretty terrible. It isn’t hard to carry if you have a few brain cells. But, everything seemed to indicate to us that even overall iLevel doesn’t seem to do anything (and obviously equipped is meaningless since I carried a battleground as a naked orc mage) so that’s what I’m sticking with until I see evidence otherwise.

The scariest part is just DHs and DKs at low levels because they have a vast majority of their very strong kits available, but aside from being supremely disruptive they’re not actually that threatening. DH mobility with flags is very problematic but what else is new.

As a fair caveat - most of our judgments of performance and balance were observing other people who were scaled down, watching their behavior, monitoring their scoreboards, and assessing how it felt when they went against us. We demolished every relevant scoreboard stat while dominating objectives ourselves including when we played our hero classes. However, we generally do battlegrounds as a group, coordinate in voice, and have a high win-rate on most of our characters. Not trying to brag - I just wanted to be transparent that we’re basing judgment off of observations of others. In the right hands it’s very clear that using sync on a DH or DK is pretty nuts especially with a pocket healer, just not because of raw throughput.

I do hope they take away a few abilities from DHs at low level. Having basically everything but purge and talents is bonkers even if they hit like a sad noodle outside of Metamorph and Eye Beam.

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So to confirm: no one recieved the level specific green BG reward appearances from the end of match chests?

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We would receive two crates - one was the battleground reward advertised in the low level’s queue UI and the other was the new one for using party sync.

The first one which contains gear appropriate for the low level would give gray items, and as far as I’m aware only gray items. There was no mention of gold, marks of honor, etc. So whatever rewards come from that can seemingly only be obtained by the low level.

The second one contains the new gear that rewards participation with party sync, and was giving us the generic “class set gear” that scales. Seems to be the same pieces you can get by logging into a trial 110 of that class. Also not sure how often you can get this box, I don’t think anyone went on the same character twice in a row.

So it looks like you can’t farm the appearances from the low level battleground chests this way.

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Do wearing Heirloom gear make any diferent for those lvl 120 ?

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The one use effects for looms work but I belive the stats on everything are fixed

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Gear makes absolutely zero difference. You can be completely naked and be just as effective, and none of your stats will change. Main exception being that you need a weapon for non-casters because you can’t use your abilities. Also Death Knight runeforges are enabled.

You do benefit from the experience bonuses prior to 120, however.

Are you sure? None of the items we saw offered any benefit and all on-uses were disabled. If Heirloom abilities are usable that’s a notable exception.

Keep in mind I am talking about inside battlegrounds and arenas. I’m not sure if you have more freedom to use things in outdoor content, although i do know the naked thing applies there too.

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I can 100% tell you, heirlooms as long as they are not enchanted or gemmed, do work. This includes anything with extra special effects like neck, heirloom, 1 of the weapons, however stats except armor and weapon dmg/dps do not change for gear. Almost any consumable works too including high level ones, and boy are they insanely op even while being scaled. This in combination with having most of your abilities makes you pretty dang strong, especially since your template is not that bad making you of decent strength already. The only classes to kinda beat this are dk(scaled high levels anyway), Destro locks, other dhs, and Arcane mages.

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Can you provide some specific consumables that were unusually strong?

We didn’t keep a record, just tried a couple (I know Prolonged Power was one) but nothing seemed too significant to be noteworthy because our observations seem to indicate that synced players are scaled to a lower point than what at-level characters can reach. The most significant thing we thought of were high level feasts to share with the group, but haven’t tested that yet.

Our quick napkin math indicated that consumables put you about even if not slightly stronger than semi-twinked out characters. Basically, consumables are what you need to put you about even with a twink.

EDIT: One thing that could use testing is whether or not consumables scale differently at individual brackets pre-60, or if consumable scaling is per-expansion. Enchants gradually increase up to 60 and beyond, so I’m assuming consumables follow the same rules.

But all of this can definitely use more targeted testing.

Will also play around with heirlooms as well. I’m also going to be deleting a character soon anyway, so I’m going to completely delete all items, relog to clear vendor buyback, and queue to see whether or not there’s any unequipped iLevel scaling later.

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High level food does not always mean its better, and generally doesn’t provide too much stats. However, the fish pepper breath food well fed buff seems to always particularly be one if not the best option. Having an extra effect go off is very powerful. You can use for dh the battle elixir you get at the starter zone, but for specifics the consumables you buy, particularly the most recent ones are strongest in agility or stamina not both. There are plenty of useful support consumables that you don’t normally have access to. For example, living action cc removal potion, stealth while standing still, legion potions like avalanche or increase of speed, all the unique temporary power pots, and even the stat pots do work providing a lot of stats(couldn’t test the unique ones cause of expensiveness). The most recent abyssal health potion always heals for around all your health. There are a ton of food and pots so I did not have the time nor wish to go through them all, but it definitely increases your power exponentially at least temporarily until you run out if you get the right ones. Yes it does scale per bracket, but always to the same general power level like if your max hp is 2800ish then abyssal will heal for around that amount. They might be better or worse in different brackets but it is difficult to tell without actual math. I do not know if gear or ilvl changes anything, but I doubt that it would and would be surprised to hear it.

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Updated my original post with some new information and cleaned it up.

In regards to consumables, I honestly don’t think the advantage is significant enough to be worth doing usually. A few of the support consumables are handy but most of them aren’t that game-changing. Free Action isn’t even really that good unless you’re flag carrying. There’s just not enough CC at low levels for it to mean much (and you can start using FA potions at like 40 anyway).

There’s already quite a few consumables that are powerful at-level, too, such as speed potions, bloodlust drums, etc.

The fire breath food is a good point, but low levels already have access to similar effects via Elemental Force (not that anyone takes it anymore) and Mark of the Hidden Satyr. It might be significant depending upon scaling, but really you’re just adding another item onto the list of consumables you need just to keep up with people even just only enchanting heirlooms, and need to re-apply if you die.

I think whether or not syncing is OP rests largely on how consumables scale and how accessible they are. With twinks already pushing power thresholds near enough to the point of diminishing returns, synced players would need to be using very powerful consumables on a regular basis and hope that their opponents aren’t doing the same for it to be noteworthy.

I’m just theorycrafting though, I haven’t used or seen consumables get used very often with party sync yet.

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You are correct party synced players are no match for twinks. However, since no one is twinking anymore, levelers do not use any enchants or really anything besides maybe a buff or two or some feasts. Many of them dont even enchant their weapons let alone gem or enchant their gear or get BiS for their gear. The only place where that is prevalent is in the 29 bracket where all the twinks went to be vets, and you can simply avoid there. Consumables can be that powerful, not all of them are but in combination of having them is insane. The pepperball is much stronger than elemental force and hidden satyr. Not because of its total damage(which is decent) but because of how much it procs with back to back procs. Even if levelers did enchant heirlooms or gear(which they dont) they still wouldnt near be on par with a true twink and a party sync would still fair alright. I would very much suggest you to test it for yourself if you can afford it, just surf through all the consumables and pick out some good ones to test and go to town. Even without testing, just think about it, I literally get a full hp bar at minimum every 1 minute, not including the other consumables and your full set of abilities + heirloom neck/trinkets. It definitely adds up to be powerful, especially against a leveler.

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Yes, I switched chars to reply but I can confirm the looms work

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I can definitely say that it is fairly common for low levels to enchant their gear. It isn’t a majority of players (hence why I’ve specifically distinguished average players vs. semi-twinks vs. twinks in previous posts), but I see a significant number of them that at least enchant their heirlooms on both factions, without XP capping. Again, not the majority, but there’s often at least one on both factions from my experience and usually 2 or more - not including myself.

I also regularly engage with the auction house and was surprised at how frequently common twink enchants go for, and their ridiculous profit margin, even on a roleplaying server.

Anecdotally, I have still been winning consistently even against synched players including hero classes, so much so that in a WSG against 2 DHs in the 19 bracket resulted in one of them AFKing out, and we won 3/0. They are the only noteworthy example of strong synching, and they still really aren’t that good unless their player knows how to be disruptive. Bloodthirsty DHs that just want to kill things are really not any more scary than your average twink. The worst they have is flag carrier mobility and an AoE stun.

As for abilities, only Demon Hunters and Death Knights retain most of their kit, and they are still missing a few important spells. Regular classes lose almost everything, so there’s nothing significant there.

The thing is, most of the scenarios you describe sound way scarier on paper than in practice. Full health potions really don’t mean much in brackets where Swiftmend, Flash Heal, and other abilities are almost full heals. Especially since I think health potions share a cooldown with Saltwater Potions, which are extremely strong (not sure if they actually do, I keep forgetting to check. WoWhead says they do). Full healing IS the meta in low levels, which is why so many people rely on Balance Druids, MM Hunters, and Arcane Mages - they are pretty much the only classes that can secure a kill through heals unless the healer is remarkably terrible.

Apologies if I’m coming off argumentative, I think it’s an interesting discussion. (And I’m writing this on my phone lol)

Also I included the thing about heirlooms in the OP, thanks for catching that.

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You are not wrong, healers definitely have the ultimate power in those brackets. But i’m only comparing what is fair to compare, healers cannot do much damage, as such they only mainly serve the role of healing. While yes getting a full hp bar is not nearly strong as in higher bracket, it is still a 100% heal which only normally healers have easy access to.

You are also correct that you have to know and play the two classes well and rely on their abilities, but if you do then it is particularly worth it. You still have to be a team player unlike a twink there is no doubt, your team has to focus Arcane and heals but you are certainly more advanced than an average leveler. I am not sure about 19s, but I know that it becomes much more in favor of the sync once you reach about the 39 bracket.

Saltwater potions are strong, but not as strong as a full heal, then since hp pots do not share the same cooldown as other potions which increase stats or have a temporary power effect, it still turns out alright in your favor.

I always go Vengeance, they have decent healing and survivability, more mobility than Havoc, and decent damage. Havoc always suffers from being weak outside of Meta, and you can’t stay in Meta while being party synced so its a futile effort. Those DHs you fought probably thought they go just easily play without no effort and win which is not what its about, as DH is definitely a skill based class. The first few talents definitely help, which is why 39-49 is generally the bracket you want to go for.

Perhaps its a different time of day thing, but I never see them enchant anything. In fact, since they are leveling they often don’t expect DHs nor know how counter them. They plenty of times make mistakes. Also as Vengeance if you start losing as long as you don’t have a flag glide hopping and double charge generally lets you get away pretty easily, especially if you use shadowmeld and/or a consumable.

I see where you are coming from, and if players get more used to it and wise from it probably won’t shake things up too much especially if more people start using it to counter each other, as DK kinda counter dhs and DK are countered by various other ranged classes. But for now, it does seem to be at least somewhat of a difference. No argumentative at all, your just conveying your point of view and working though it to see if there is anything significant in this system. However, I have a feeling it won’t be long before its changed.