At the moment Shamans are overpowered to the point that its actually ruining SoD with Enhancement and Elemental being top 5 dps in the entire game and even their Tank spec having much higher damage output then many other classes only viable dps specs e.g Rogues, Priests Paladins etc.
This has had a direct and immediate effect on the PvP aspects of the game, there are multiple posts about the phenomenon daily, either horde asking for same faction BG’s, alliance saying stop queueing till they nerf shamans, and general posts about frustration and giving up/quitting. You can choose to pretend this isnt or hasnt already happeend but the reality is it has. Im sure many are aware of the common marketing idea that the vocal minority are representative of a much wider sentiment, well this is very true for gaming in general, many never visit the forums to express their frustrations they just stop playing… the wells been poisoned and they dont want to drink from it any longer. The issue is at this point the well has been poisoned for so long with Enhancement shamans currently being able to hit well over 1400AP in leveling blues and elemental shamans being able to literally global people, that even if shaman nerfs are implemented today, tomorrow or this coming wednesday it wont solve the problem immediately, people are already pissed and view SOD pvp as completely broken as a result and some have even quit. It will take time for the community to recover and trust the well again, given how long and how broken shamans are and we may not even see player engagment pick back up intil half way into phase 3. I get that people have their own motivations to make their character/faction as strong as possible but honestly you are chopping off your own foot at this point by not advocating for wide sweeping and impactful nerfs to the shaman class, so that the community and game can recover and we can start the process of trusting the well once more.
You can pretend that it isnt a direct result of how broken shamans are at the moment, but literally ask any of the alliance players, we arent queueing and by in large the main contributing factor is that shamans are broken and we arent going to join a one sided fight until they are brought back down to the same levels as other classes, the people coming onto the forums and posting that they arent queuing anymore are only the 10% tip of the iceburg, the most outraged segment of the community, the majority just stopped queueing and now you have massive queue times…
and the biggest issue is that even after the nerf it will take some time before those players try to join a bg again because the well has been poisoned for so long at this point noone trusts it.
At this point literally every person should be asking for wide sweeping and massive shaman nerfs because the longer that well is poisoned, the longer it will take for community sentiment to recover after they finally come.
Honestly I dont blame you, you are paying for a service, not a stand alone game, with that you should expect active develeopment maintenance and tuning, and its not a cheap sub at that vs other games. And for the last 2 weeks it feels like they havent cared or done anything to improve or fix the game, Im sincerely considering whether they are doing enough to warrant it at this point.
No they just have Ranged shocks which slow and hit for massive damage, Ranged shocks which interrupt and silence spells on a short cd and hit for massive damage, an AoE slowing totem with no target cap which has a massive aura radius, blessing of freedom so they cant be slowed or rooted while using them, and the ability to play a race which has an aoe stun racial, an extremely shot cast time travel form ala druid travel form which allows them to control range and engagement and can be used in combat definitely no crowd control LMAO!
Alliance aren’t queueing because of how one-sided it is. This isn’t coordinated. It’s happening naturally. The imbalance is undeniable. And I’m sure people like you will say it’s because Alliance simply sucks at PvP. Tell me, which faction playerbase uses racials as a crutch?
Thats exactly it, this isnt coordinated this is the natural result of no effort to balance the game, clear and undeniable broken mehcanics available to one single class, and the natural erosion of the pvp community as a result, and well the end result has been a visceral and massive reduction in player enagement in pvp seen directly in the huge drop in alliance queueing for pvp.
People arent going to run up a race up a hill if the other team gets to drive there in a car and win then blame the other competitior for not getting there faster.
Not true at all alliance quite literally have instant queue pops not 8 mins at pretty much any hour of the day, thats due to an abundance of horde players queueing and no alliance queueing.
thats why horde are now begging for same faction bgs, because alliance is done vsing an unbalanced and broken class
I thought Horde sucked at PvP because in p1 we lost all the Ashenvales?
I thought Horde sucked at PvP because Alliance was faction locked all of p1 and 1 month of p2?
I thought Horde sucked at PvP because we were always out numbered 3 to 1 in world PvP?
Again that was due to faction inbalance, horde undeniably have the best pvp racials in the game, the difference here is that all classes have received massive changes and, the difference isnt stun resist, bloodrage, aoe stuns or berserker racials, now its shamans in leveling blue gear with 1400+ attack power and ele shamans 1 shot globaling other players.
How do we know this wasnt an issue before? because p1 pvp bg engagement was healthy, then they buffed shamans into god mode and pvp died.
No faction playerbase is better than the other. The thing that causes the imbalance is the game’s systems. I mostly said that to antagonize you.
Although, if you are a serious pvper and you want the best challenge, you shouldn’t be playing Horde given the current state of the game. That’s easy mode.