I have played on and off since WOTLK. I mostly BG but i do some arena now and again on my balance druid. Here is my feedback for my return to shadowlands.
I think shadowlands is a few steps away from being really good in terms of PVP and arena.
Before shadowlands Arena rewards was basically you hit 2.2k and you got a lame recoloured transmog and thats about it. Bgs have good participation and gearing in pvp is pretty fun. The last time rating actually got you better gear was all the way back in WOTLK and i really like this change. Its also great now that you dont have to grind mplus or any other PVE content to get pvp geared faster.
Shadowland pros:
- You dont have to PVE to get PVP geared anymore (apart from at the start of the season if you are try hard).
- PVP gearing is fun and it keeps participation up during the season
Some negatives:
- Lack of balancing and small tuning passes during the season for a pvp game is really bad. Should have small balance passes every month or so like all other pvp games. (they literally said in WOD that they split spells so they can nerf\buff them for pvp only, why havent they used it)
- The gear different at high rating does make it more difficult to push rating and you can hit a gear wall. Possible solution could be to minimize gear scaling in pvp without totally throwing the whole thing out. (high ratings meaning 2.2k+).
- Catch up late into the season takes way to long causing.
- Pve for gem slots -edit
Possible ideas:
I wont talk about the high rating gear issue because i am not high rating, but i think some feedback would be to minimize the catchup time required for returning players. If you are 10k conquest behind because you joined late into the season you should get more conquest per win.
I have played since WOTLK and i havent seen a season so alive this late into a xpac which is overall terrible. I think the changes they made in the later patches of shadowlands have been pretty good and i am enjoying just doing pvp again and not being forced to do pve.
The gearing curve seems fine, it’s just super awful initially.
The problem could relate more to just how difficult it is to catch up late season due to all the honor\conquest required.
I understand it both ways they dont want to invalidate peoples progress by letting people instantly gear up, but i think if they just increase the conquest by double for returning players i dont really see a big deal with that, and reduce honor cost of upgrades at lower levels as the season progresses.
Yeah, there isn’t really an enjoyable and efficient way of grinding out conquest if you don’t have gear, or a main. It’s basically pulling teeth to farm low mmr matches without a friend because the denizens of LFG always dip after a loss or two, then it’s back into the finder.
Honor gear could’ve been cool but it’s just too inefficient/expensive to realistically invest any honor into. They also neglected to make a crafted set, I think…? Something for that 180-233ish rift.
As of today with the 200 conduits 40 renown boost and conquest boxes yeah it’s not to bad. Did the entire honor grind in rated arenas on my alt and it took too long but really once my gear was all at rival I felt p much full geared anyways.
It was a lot worse
Level 52 alt in here knows what’s up. I’ll be sure to tell that to all my friends who quit because they didn’t want to have a second jobs worth of hours sunk into a game just be relevant in PvP.
It had potential and then fell flat. The honor grind, even after nerfs, is ridiculous. Honor gear itself is garbage. Legendary grind even after nerf is still expensive and takes a decent amount of time. Swapping covenants is still annoying because you have to grind renown. You still have to work on conduits even if you can buy some 200 ilvl base. You still have to farm if you want sockets.
The list is long. Too long. Burst is still broken. Sustained is still broken. CD stacking is still broken. So many friends came back when SL landed. It really did start out great. First few weeks were awesome, then it quickly faded. While the addition of more tiers in PvP has helped progression, the most geared to the least geared players is massive.
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You have to grind pve for sockets on PvP gear?
Yeah, Torghast or rifts. The gain is pretty minimal, though.