I’m going to put the TLDR at the top and leave the reasoning behind it under it for simplicities sake.
TLDR; Bring back Legion style templates for characters but allow for the customization of the secondary stats. This allows for use of any gear in pvp and it would just scale to a certain ilvl and would still allow a character to feel unique as they can pick their secondary stats. This would allow players, despite what type of player they are to instantly hop into pvp and play with no restrictions.
WoW pvp as a whole is probably one of the hardest games to get into and understand. PvP gearing, while easier than ever is still a big barrier of entry for people who want to try getting into the pvp scene. If the season is even a few weeks in, a new player is not only at a massive knowledge disadvantage, but also a gearing one as well.
I believe that the Legion template system would accomplish two major things for the pvp scene as a whole for WoW.
Increased participation - Look at any major successful pvp game out currently, LoL, CS, SC2, Overwatch(lmao), warzone. These games allow a player to just log on, and queue up, there’s no barrier to entry besides game knowledge and usually that will just separate the player into their correct MMR. PvP is a minigame in WoW and having to specifically gear for it, especially while tier bonuses are not pvp specific makes no sense in the current era of gaming.
The second major thing that would be accomplished via this system is early balancing.
You see it every season launch “OMG X IS OP NERF IT!!!” or “X IS SUPER WEAK BUFF IT” and the response is “guys the season just came out, not everyone has their full gear and tier so other classes are gonna get better and like then you’ll overnerf something that isn’t going to scale well”
With the legion template system, the season would start off with everyone at equal ilvl and at their max power. With this, blizzard can easily look at outliers and tune accordingly right at the start of the season, you don’t need to “wait and see” how OP or weak a class will be for weeks and weeks on end before a balance change comes through.
Legion templates were well received by the pvp community with the only fault being that you couldn’t customize your secondary stats, I believe this would remedy a lot of frustration for new players who would only need to focus on gaining game knowledge.
Let me know what you guys think about this idea, thanks.
Gear isnt the problem at all. They’ve turned this game into a cd trading minigame and its not fun trying to top people off and their hp still just drops.
You know, maybe it would be more fair to offer up a counter.
What makes PvP participation good is balance AND sense of growth and achievement. Right now, why would ANYONE play when the MMR is still 200-300+ lower then last season. This time last season, with much less effort I was 2500 on my hunter and close to 2800 on my shaman. Now? I can’t even maintain 2200 half the time. 2400 is reserved for just the top 20 SV hunters atm… If you’re playing for rewards you got last season or even previous expansions, good luck.
Beyond that, the game’s pacing is trash right now. Balance exists only in the busted specs. Too many specs that are making the game unfun. NOT even from a damage stand point though. Augment needs to be deleted… completely. Mages have WAYYYY too much mobility and control. Holy pali still needs to be toned down. Disc needs buffs. Damage across the board is way to high.
Even if you ignored all that though, rating needs to be fixed and be meaningful.
I didn’t really pvp competitively in legion or start trying out arena until pretty late in the expansion but I remember enjoying being able to level any class and just hopping into bg’s and play the game without crazy power gaps. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just curious if you can elaborate why people didn’t like it? If we could customize secondary stats and not worry about getting our gear maxed out for the first 12 weeks of the season, that seems like a positive to me? They could remove the mmr cap/inflation nonsense, let people be max power at the start of the season, and make seasons shorter.
I absolutely agree about the MMR, I also wanted to mention that I’m not stating that gearing for new players is THE issue with pvp, but AN issue with pvp. I also would like to invite the people in this thread to look through the lens of a new player or even a PvE’r who would like to try getting into pvp.
flat damage cds and cd stacking needs to go. specs need an ultimate… killing spree, bladestorm, meteor, stuff like that and then adjust damage and healing accordingly is the first thing id do and at the same time have a team fixing mobility and cc power creep and see where it lands… the pve power creep bleed through has got worse every expansion which to no ones surprise coincides with the free fall of pvp
Could be an issue. Don’t think gearing is as good as people claim it to be since LFG is dead and shuffle queues are 10-30min long. Classes without a healer spec are forced to sit those queues even if they wanted to heal, which many don’t.
The crafting stuff is kind of a barrier since it’s so necessary and the frags hardly ever drop, outside of the weeklies ofc.
WoW is primarily a PvE driven game. A huge chunk of the players that PvP first started in PvE and the progression of gear is a central part of the enjoyment of the game. It’s fun to get gear AND see improvements in power. To that, it’s fun to dunk on people if you have put in the effort. That’s why there was such a huge population of twinks in the early days of WoW.
Ignoring that though, templates felt stale. Even if you had the option to customize your stats, the difference in play from PvE to PvP was jarring. Maybe more customization would have helped alleviate that, but as it was, going from M+ to arena was incredibly off putting.
In the end, making gear matter gives players a carrot to play. When there is NO reward beyond mogs and mounts, it just doesn’t feel like there is enough to play for. Also, ilvl still mattered in PvP. So a max ilvl PvE player could still have a 5-6% or more damage increase over you.
All in all, the system sucked and the majority of people I know quit or swapped to PvE for most of the expansion.
I think you need to address a different problem then. Game complexity. The game badly needs to reverse course on the bloat of buffs and cds, while still keeping specs unique and rotations interesting. We went from having too many buttons, to not enough in WoD, to again being to many. Personally, I don’t think we should ever have more than 6-7 dps abilities. Tone down the absurd amount of buffs and debuffs. Tone down the absurd amount of micro CCs.
Start there, THEN make the process of gearing more simple, not easier. By simple I mean it should be easily apparent to a new player what they need todo to get gear. These days, there’s the catalyst and crafting and quests and bla bla bla. Not that I’m against multiple to paths to get gear, but right now there are too many things todo to just hop into the game. That said, once you know, actually getting gear is stupid easy.
I don’t think gearing is the issue at all at the moment. The issue is the deflation and the hard cap on mmr is probably the biggest issue at the present time affecting 2s 3s and Solo shuffle. The other one is LFG. That system needs a rework or something LFG seems to be a big complainer although I have a feeling Blizzard’s answer to that was Solo Shuffle.
I understand this sentiment, but it greatly discourages new and continued participation from players getting their feet wet into PvP.
The power level between, a fresh 70, a crafted set, blue honor and conquest gear is so massive. Add in the stupid modifiers for abilities, trinkets, etc, and the power gap is clearly measurable.
Legion had it right with templates. I would be in favor of either:
Scaling all items of players to 437, to a maximum of 450.
All non-rated play uses templates of 447 or something.
And leave the honor and conquest gear ilvl be active in rated, and warmode.
We want more participation. Easy to enter, because PvP shouldn’t be about who has the bigger ilvl, we’re not slaying dragons. Then players can then gear up with honor and conquest sets and have fun in rated and warmode.
Yeah lemme be the one unique boomkin critting all my slow cast times with no mastery for 1 damage. Thanks for designing a multiplayer pvp system with me in mind, I’m a super important demographic
They tried scaling and it was broken for the entire expansion. Also, players figured out ways to constantly exploit it.
Game needs consistency. The constant juggling of ilvl has been bad for PvP.
I think there are two arguments to be made here. Getting gear now is easy, but confusing. You’re given free tier gear and upgrading gear takes almost no effort. The issue is ALL the other things. Like… how do you put sockets on your neck in the right order? And, how do you get those trophies and craft something? Stuff like that needs to be either removed from the game or drastically simplified OR actually explained in the game so it makes sense.
I want to just keep going back to this stuff though. I just got out of this match. Half a players health in .4s. There is no reasonable argument to be had here. the small nerf RSK isn’t going to be enough. Damage inside CDs NEEDS to be addressed badly.
Pacing is so fast, players have to look at their logs just to know what’s happening. Terrible and trash design.
100%, Its nice not having to learn DDR and Piano at the same time to play a class.
