As title suggests, since players will be selected randomly and therefore have no control over whom they will be teamed up with, it only makes sense to eliminate ilvl altogether from this mode to ensure fair matchmaking. Otherwise, whichever team combinations with the higher average ilvl would have a significant advantage in all the shuffled matches.
To put things into perspective, since each team will have 1 healer, and the healers will never be in the same team (only the 4 dps will be shuffled around), whichever team has the better geared healer would almost always win due to having a higher average item level compared to the other’s, in spite of what the combinations for the remaining dps are.
in addition, since this mode will be introduced as a pvp brawl, it would encourage both old and new players to participate without the barrier to entry of gearing requirements. And just like every fun and successful pvp games out there, pvp should be all about a player’s skills, not item levels anyway.
This does seem like a good opportunity to reintroduce some form of scaling to encourage as much participation and get as much good feedback on the format (untainted by gear imbalances) as possible.
If actually introduced as a rated format, gear imbalances wouldn’t be as much of an issue so scaling wouldn’t really be needed since the player base would get segregated over time and end up playing vs similar rated players.
But for the brawl, it could definitely be an issue and impact both participation and feedback.
Idk about your take on rated. In 1k on an alt, I’ll have 35k health and see plenty of 50k plus players. I mean the majority of matches. I’m sure it evens out in the upper ratings.
To be fair, all PvP modes should negate 90% of the ilvl benefits. Having to get to the very end to start experiencing the real game is old, terrible design.
In other rated formats, people can group with other players of different rating. Which won’t happen in rated shuffle.
So you will generally be playing with people that perform at the same level. So while there will be gear disparities they will likely be less frequent/impactful than in other forms of PvP.
Whether gear disparities should exist in PvP at all in any format is a whole separate question.
Personally, I think some amount of gear disparity is ok and encourages people to, and rewards people for, engaging in rated formats. Its when gear disparity is too large that it’s a problem.
I disagree. I think gear should matter in PVP because WoW is an MMORPG. We tried scaling in legion and it wasn’t very well received. I think it would be a step backwards to reintroduce it.
Yeah it’d be a small step backwards for you but a giant leap for mankind. Thanks for showing your selflessness and taking one for the team. You da best
nah that concept is fine, there are multiple other problems that make it worse:
gear wasnt a massive contributor to your overall performance, just about every single ability in the game had a base value + scaling value, theyve done away with i think all of those base values, meaning theres not much of a minimum floor in terms of player power anymore (for example, backstab could have a base damage of 100 and weapon damage scaling of 250%, today it would look more like 100% attack power and thats it; this puts heavier emphasis on your gear(note those values are entirely arbitrary and dont mean anything))
gear was simpler to acquire and buying a piece of conquest/arena gear precata was typically the end-all be-all item. the item didnt need to be upgraded or anything, and all u had to do was either enchant/gem it if possible and later reforge
I get what you’re saying, but essentially you’re arguing that the concept of ilvl benefits mattering is fine, as long as they don’t really matter (because base values negate the impact of gear, and because there isn’t as much of a gear ladder to climb).
If gear is going to scale outrageous in PvP like it does in PvE for tier transitions etc., then they need to just do some neutering stam calculation based on ilvl (where highest ilvl has the highest health if they really want, but then an intro gear ilvl puts you at like 85% of that health, not 40-50%), and make abilities % health based or something for PvP. Then we can have a fun, competitive environment without me feeling like I’m a level 40 fighting level 60s.
i will clarify that these bases didnt negate the impact of gear, it just made it possible for players with less or no gear to still somewhat compete with players that did. gear was still considerably meaningful, but there were additional systems in place to prevent it from getting out of hand
the blue pvp profession set that got better each season, and honor gains being considerably better, so gearing was smoother.
That was back when we still have control over who our teammates are, and you could proactively select players with similar item level to yours before joining a match to ensure a fair and enjoyable experience against the other teams.
With solo shuffle however, imagine being randomly grouped with significantly lower ilvl players while playing against opponents with similar or higher ilvl than yours and getting stomped on repeatedly every match and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I did the covenant campaign, I’m doing the Domination campaign, I’m doing Korthia dailies/Maw periodics, I queued for LFR to get a Vault reward for Triune Ward, doing some Torghast to get the mats for the legendary, and queueing up for random BGs during the workday and losing 80% of them to premades during Honor week, because they need absurd amounts of honor to upgrade their Conq gear too.
What should I be doing, paying for a carry? I’m taking what is very likely a common solo path through the experience as per 9.1.5, and let me tell you, there’s absolutely no end in sight to being 2-3 shotted given how much honor each BG gives, and how much I need to even upgrade this bad PvP gear.
Correct, I’m playing the game through the game’s systems as they were designed. And I’m here to tell you, they’ve created an insurmountable wall that I doubt they seriously tackle until the next expac. If even then.
I agree. Gear should matter in pvp. Otherwise what’s the point in obtaining gear and making your character stronger.
This is a game about progression.
Instead of gear scaling, how about blizz give the players what they’ve have ACTUALLY been asking for.
One honor set
One conquest set.
No upgrades unless it’s for the pve ilvl.
Simple.
No stupid scaling needed
No one is asking to remove gear progression from the game. It still exists in every other aspect of the game, but for this specific new solo shuffle mode, gear progression would only defeat its purpose. None of your “simple” solutions is addressing this problem. The “stupid scaling” seems like the only way to make things fair for this mode.