The fact that the goal is to beat the best teams makes it take more skill than a pug steamrolling contest by definition.
The alternative is to tell pug pvpers to have a mentality of âPlay every game through, donât quit no matter whatâ. Beat countless premades in Vanilla with this mentality, even ones where I joined 0-2 in WSG.
Otherwise youâll have to make a premade. And not just any premade, start off in small groups of 3-4 and act as one unit. Slowly add more on other days, then start running with that. Start recruiting via pug BG, not from LFG chat. This is how you create a better premade from scratch. You have to get used to each other and not bail the instant you lose a game or something bad happens in a game.
The fact that the goal is to beat the best teams makes it take more skill than a pug steamrolling contest by definition.
And thatâs why the goal shouldnât be to streamroll PUGs, and itâs why vanillaâs best videos were never about steamrolling PUGs.
Predetermining this to always be the case is the difference between having 30% win rates and 70% win rates as a pug.
Many premades have different levels or organization and strength. In MOST cases, premades are randomly thrown together pugs. Phase 3 will be the same.
From someone whoâs fought many premades as a pug group, it can be viable even though itâs not the best. To dismiss all or almost all premades as winnable battles will probably give you the worst BG experience youâll ever have.
I say this as someone who plays premades when they are on and pugs when they arenât. Being successful at both is great.
This mentality damaged PvP more than anything else.
Itâs worth it to give it an honest attempt. Remember, death balls are less effective in Vanilla than they are IN ANY EXPANSION OF WOW. This is due to the burst damage possible.
You have to also realize that at least 9 out of 10 premades are HORRIBLE and its less likely to get a strong coordinated premade over one that isnât. The biggest advantage of most premades is that a pug will vastly overrate them.
Itâs not a defacto requirement for victory. It definitely helps your odds but the primary thing a premade brings to the table is the ability to make very bad pug players immediately quit and go afk.
The goal is to get the most honor possible. You get more honor per hour winning games in a few minutes against pugs than you do playing in 20 to 30 minute games against other premades. Therefore the best way to rank up is to steamroll pugs.
Want to fix issues with premades? There are a few things that can be done.
One of the problems is that premades will scout BGs to spot other premades and dodge the queue. When the queue pops, one person accepts and looks at the enemy team. If they see a premade or another scout, they tell the rest of the group to cancel the queue. This can be fixed by one of two methods:
- Donât allow enemy players to actually see each other until the match actually begins, AND/OR
- Apply the deserter debuff if a player cancels his or her queue after it pops.
The other issue is that premades will stomp pugs, so pug v. pug and premade v. premade would be better gameplay. However, to fix that, youâd need some system that matched premades against each other (either a separate queue, or just a matchmaking system that USUALLY matched premades against each other).
Changing the deserter debuff wouldnât be THAT big of a change, but implementing even a simplistic matchmaking system will probably annoy lots of players.
Simple fix: if you queue as a Premade and leave a game, you get several DKs as a penalty. I donât mind premades, but hate ones that duck any competition.
Just apply a deserter debuff. That should be enough to discourage the behavior.
It would also be a MUCH smaller change.
The goal is to get the most honor possible. . . Therefore the best way to rank up is to steamroll pugs.
No, thatâs the goal of the honor system and itâs up to you and the rest of the players to decide if thatâs worth having as your goal. Bragging about owning a video like Grimâs Total Annihilation back in the day is something worth bragging about, bragging about getting R14 because you steamrolled PUGs and lost every hard fight vs. premades is not something worth bragging about, see the difference?
It sounds like youâre saying that the solution to pugs being farmed by premades is to become the victimizer.
Blizzard has always actively supported placing premades against pugs who they can farm. They choose to do this, even though it eventually results in greatly reduced participation, as pugs realize thed futility of queuing up.
Anyone taking it seriously enough to premade is doing it for R14. Itâs not possible to get rank 14 without steamrolling pugs and that is a fact. R14 is only given to the top couple of players each week for honor gained, so the only possible way to get it is to be fed all the honor possible steamrolling hundreds of pugs each week for several weeks.
X-servers fix almost everything controllable with premades, ESPECIALLY with this ridiculously insane population of active pvpers. Also most pugs will be spamming AV as it will be more consistent honor for a pug.
It still doesnât fix the queue-dodging, which is obnoxious regardless.
Pretty sure you lose a scout each time you hit a premade and if you are hitting premades over and over, not only do you lose more scouts you also lose honor per hour.
Also two scouts queuing into each other creates a silly game of chicken. If one side makes the call to pull their premade in, does the other scout call theirs in or give the opposing premade a free win?
There are countless things that are gonna be classic unique thatâll adjust this situation more than you think it will. Remember deserter IS still a thing in WoW classic but only for people entering the BG. So scouts entering the BG to scout it will have deserter if they leave.
The scout can be an alt if necessary, and x-realm wonât change your chance of hitting a premade unless youâre on a server thatâs radically different from the norm.
Itâs a larger pool of potential opponents, but that pool includes more premades as well as more pugs.
Yea, but that doesnât have anything to do with x-realm.
These are points that debunk the effectiveness of the strategy I was responding to. X-realm and countless scout issues and modern wowâs massive change in the number of premades all debunk this tactic that used to work in Vanilla.
The fact that BGs are x-realm doesnât change the effectiveness of scouting.
Youâre not facing more opposing premades just because BGs are x-realm.
To what end? Whatâs your point? You seem very evasive about just how irrelevant this is.
There wasnât a 15 minute lockout in vanilla.