Just read online that they plan to make 408 the minimum required item level to do rated solo shuffle. I think this is an amazing change to help with problems we faced during prepatch with people trying to play with no PvP gear. Looking forward to the season start!
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Strong agree. ilvl 411 PvP is not difficult to get, perhaps a tad frustrating for a couple of hours but that’s it. I can’t adequately express how much I’m looking forward to this PvP season as a non-competitive player. Starting the season with everyone being at the same ilvl means that rating gains for ALL of the competitive players will be skills based rather than gear based in that all so critical first week or two; and more importantly as the season progresses the max ilvl difference will be, as I understand it, 13 ilvl. This could be one of the most competitive PvP seasons is a very, very long time.
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There’s a bit of a trend:
- geared people don’t want ungeared people on their side
- ungeared people just want gear so they aren’t the ungeared people on someone’s side
Getting the first bit of PvP is a royal pain because people area already running around in 411. The difference between a fresh 70, and someone who spent maybe 1 or 2 hours to get PvP is easily 60~70 ilvls, and gets absolutely annihilated in any form of PvP.
That 1~2 hours are hell, and while this change makes it more fun for others (and rightfully so), there’s still that moment between not having gear, and having all gear, that is extremely frustrating to deal with. It’s basically just getting 1 shot until you’re at somewhat equal ilvl and it feels like an unnecessary moment.
If the requirement is 408 ilvl, why not just scale everyone lower to 408? People who have higher ilvl will still have the advantage of having put their “effort” into getting it, while you don’t have to go through that gap of being farmed.
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I think it’s fair to ask then when people enter into rated content they have actually acquired the proper gear. Personally I didn’t have a problem with a couple of hours of finding different things to do within honor BGs to bridge the initial gap, jumping into a principal combat role in leveling gear is not going to be fun, so guard a flag or a tower etc. for the first several BGs. If they lowered the initial item honor costs further they might as well make it free. Even I’m not willing to take it that far lol.
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Fresh L70 are cannon fodder and die being looked at. it was already bad to be in that position just after release, it’s even worse now.
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It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to scale everyone to to a minimum ilvl for honor BGs just to avoid that feeling of being just fodder. Still not powerful enough to be highly efficient but not just getting blown up on every interaction. This season the honor ilvl is 411, the hard deck could be, say, ilvl 352-375 or something and then each piece of gear progressively provides improvement once the ilvl average goes above the hard deck.
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Joining rated without pvp gear is kinda of obviously going to be a bad time. Id rather blizzard slap some hands and stop someone from Qing then let everyone suffer cause they want to try rated in greens and blues.
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old PvP trinkets form SL work in Rated which currently is pretty broken
Q times are absolutely insane atm. I have fallen asleep in a few games from just how long it takes for it to pop. If blizzard did have a bettter way of lowering this Q time I think it would be very much appreciated right now
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Isn’t the queue time higher due to the barrier of entry added for a full set of PvP gear?
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I did my first solo shuffle matches this week in full PvP ilvl 411 honor gear (as resto druid). Queues were fine but I was consistently just blown up and melted. I’m a pretty horrible arena player but it seemed like I was playing naked with no gear at all.
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Its certainly punishing as most people have no MMR from a previous season so generally newer players get stuck in a higher rated match and get focused because they show certain revealing playstyles. (Backpedaling, trinketing sap,no defensives etc.) I think its not harder than structered 3s but it is more player skill oriented as knowing someone wasted a defensives usually means they die.
All my games have usually had 1 player making glaring mistakes and getting trained the entire time until they are on my team and I peel for them or offheal heavily so its balanced because if we win with that person who is losing and end up 4 or 5 wins it gives plenty of rating.
I would say low rated 2s and 3s is more safe for newer players who are looking to PvP and Solo is pretty punishing which is the way it should be.
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I would say because of a lack of healers. I Would be all for a higher reward for healers who do well to be given higher rewards over Dps and Tanks to help Q times
The only reason I play solo is that I’m a solo player. All my friends stopped playing years ago so I just do whatever I can on my own. Interesting that it’s more competitive than regular arena, I thought it was developed for solo players. I would think as a pretty terrible arena player with no invisible data from previous seasons I wouldn’t end up matched against really good players, or would at least get matched with people at the lowest end of the available pool. Also interesting that the points i did earn, all 94 of them, have now disappeared and I’m back at 0. I’m certainly not complaining, just putting out there what my experience is. I don’t play arena because I don’t like it and aren’t very good at it but figured I’d give it an honest shot. I will say that as a first experience it certainly doesn’t have me coming away from it wanting more.
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It is it just has no MMR for the people playing as its new. First few set of games were all blowouts winning 6 out of 6 and gaining insane points so its obviously new players vs Vets till MMR balances out
If you change roles it goes to that roles rating. Its a per role rating.
I dont think I would choose to heal as the first step back into arena. If you do some DPS Qs it will generally be better as you have vastly less responsibilities.
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Blizzard seriously needs to look into Solo Shuffle ratings and how they reward healers. Watching a healer go 5 and 1 and get 0 points should never happen ever especially since they are in such high demand.
If they really wanted to improve healer Qs they need to make the BOA honor item rewarded for Qing healer in Solo Shuffle.
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To be fair, a healer will always go 5-1 or 6-0 if they are facing a healer that isn’t very good (like me). The bad healer just gets targeted and completely destroyed each match, which by definition hands the other healer an easy win streak.
Similar MMR should always reward points even if the other healer is not good or in a good match up its the whole point of being similar MMR.
I agree with your sentiment, but they also need to figure out some way to get more healers involved. As Bremmen noted, sometimes a healer will go 6-0 / 0-6 because it’s clear one healer is extremely bad. I was in a match yesterday where the Restoration Druid was mmr 2234 and the opposing Restoration Shaman was mmr 914. Obviously the Restoration Shaman got obliterated every match. This was even with my constant peeling as a Warlock (which I realized after the matches basically just prolonged the games lol). He didn’t even drop Spirit Link. Those types of glaring discrepancies need to be addressed, but I also acknowledge this was after sitting in queue for 31 minutes so I think the system was just trying to give people a game. It’s definitely a double-edged blade for Blizzard to figure out a solution to.
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I would 100% rather have closer MMR games than have faster Qs if the choice was given
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