Legion and BFA have had arguably the worst gearing systems for PvP in this game’s life. Player agency was removed and replaced with a system that not only doesn’t allow us to work for the specific piece of gear we want, but also makes PvP’ers have to PvE to be competitive. While it goes without saying that I believe the vendor system that we previously had should make a return, I have some thoughts on how exactly PvP gear could work if we were to see vendors come back.
In WoD, the concept of scaling PvP gear was introduced. What that meant was in a PvE situation, the gear would have a lower item level. When you entered into PvP combat, joined a BG or Arena, the gear would scale up to a higher item level. This made it so that PvE gear was not exactly BiS in PvP situations. However there was one issue in that the PvE item level of the PvP gear was often on par or greater in item level the heroic level raid gear and that had the side affect of making PvE’ers feel as though they needed to PvP in order to progress further in raiding.
Using BFA season 3 item levels as an example, down below is a table on what the item levels could look like for PvP gear in both PvE and PvP situations that takes this into account.
Gear Type
PvE Item Level
PvP Item Level
Honor Gear
400
430
Conquest Gear
415
445
Item level 400-415 gear is fairly easy to obtain these days especially with the benthic gear system (if that idea is ever carried forward). People who do LFR are not often interested in progressing further in raiding and therefore wouldn’t quite see honor gear as a potential steppingstone. And normal mode raiders may see conquest gear is being a potential filler for odd low ilvl gear pieces they have, but there are many different avenues to get normal mode ilvl gear which range from the benthic system, the +3 keystone weekly chest, and the Mechagon megadungeon that was introduced this patch.
Now of course this begs the question, how would higher rated players be rewarded? Aside from increasing their conquest cap each week depending on their rating, they could be rewarded by being able to buy a token that will upgrade their gear to be a higher item level in PvE which would depend entirely on their rating. This would give PvP’ers something extra to do once they obtain their full set of gear. If Blizzard is okay with allowing PvP gear to intertwine with PvE, then using BFA season 3 items levels as an example it could go a little something like this:
Rating
PvE Item Level Of Conquest Gear
1400-1599
420
1600-1799
425
1800-2099
430
2100-2399
435
2400-2599
440
2600+
445
TLDR: WoD scaling system for PvP gear with a lower PvE item level but with the ability to increase it based upon your rating.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions about this, feel free to share what you think in this thread and thanks for reading! =)
I like this even though most people will tack on that this will increase complexity a bit… I’d also like to add that the fact of sockets making certain amounts of ilvl’s obsolete is also needless complexity.
We need to go to a system where random sockets and war/titanforging don’t exist… and a solid and scaling way to obtain gear through pvp for pvp happens.
I also suggested a while back that a vendor that could give you gear based on how many marks you turn in could be a good idea. 10 marks for 360’s, 25 marks for 380’s, and 50 marks for 400’s. Say you just hit 120, you want a quick set of 360’s, well then turn in 10 marks for each piece you want.
And conquest points with vendor is also sorely needed.
If ilvl is too much for conquest, sure decrease it in pve. But for competition, there’s already so many variables in our classes and talents and pvp talents. For 12 years, gear in pvp worked where you can go after specific stats and once you got that piece, you knew it was the one you were going after as well. (None of this oh crap it didn’t warforge or it didnt roll a socket crap).
Not having a vendor seriously makes me play the game less and have an attitude of lethargy not knowing when I’m going to get what I’m after any time I log in.
I like it, for warforge/titanforge just make them scale down to 445 ilevel. Sockets/pve trinkets won’t work in arena like legion until they fix professions for next expansion.
If I were in charge of this system, I would not allow any of the conquest gear to warforge/titanforge. Maybe the honor gear but definitely not the conquest gear.
It was perfect, pvp trinket set bonuses to make sure pve trinkets weren’t as strong. I felt like I was going super saiyan when entering pvp combat and the gear boosted up lol. Man wod pvp gear was so good.
And it really should be used as a template for designing PvP gear going forward, they wouldn’t need to worry about making PvP gear competitive with PvE gear if they just followed that system.
Vendors. Conquest Points. PvE gear doesn’t work in arena.
WoW. Are you telling me PvPer’s will play PvP even if Gear isn’t crazy super relevant? Yes. Yes I am telling you that because PvPer’s don’t care about gear we care about rating. Such wow. So WoW. Oh such.
kind of useless to suggest, given how high blizzard seems to value seamlessness/consistency of player experience (which isn’t to say anything of their success or lack of)
all it takes is them imagining one player asking “hey i earned this chestpiece in lfr and i cant enter arena with it?” for the idea to die for them. if vendors are confusing to them, content-type-specific gear pieces are completely out of the question
I was just playin. Just trying to have a good time, but you gotta go bashing on my mog. not cool. I spent a lot of time on this mog. Really, it’s all I got going for me right now in my life.
The chest piece is bandaged because my hearts a flower and has been broken so many times it’s just a wilted and bronze.
the green scaly pants represent my mother. she was just a young salamander when my dad took her to prom. he never called her again.
my gloves are brown because my mom couldnt take care of me and i was raised by trees.
and those boots. the boots are special. i met a particular tree when i was a youngin. a beautiful tree next to a river, with mossy roots. those boots. they are our babies. but i never wanted children so i skinned them and wear them.