Solo Shuffle Feedback

Yeah I’d love for this to be a way to fill out my Great Vault for the week.

12 Likes

It would seriously round out the game better cause LFG IS PAIN sometimes

2 Likes

Tried out the Solo Shuffle today so some feedback:

First I’ll just say I’m not a big fan of the 2 teams of 3 people in a box type of PvP, I much preffer evenly matched battlegrounds. With that said I also understand that Arena is probably the simplest way for solo conquest content to work.

  • If I can’t gear up conquest PvP gear at a reasonable pace by doing this I never will.
  • The conquest gains are very, very small at the moment. After winning 3 of the 6 matches and dying once I finished with about 850 honor and 75 Conquest.
  • I played a defensive build Necrolord Arcane mage which worked out pretty well. (same spec I use in honor BGs)
  • One person in the group won all 6 and one lost all 6.
  • The alliance queue at about 5PM EST was 8min vs. about 3 min for a BG
  • It took about 4 rounds of invites for everyone to finally accept. Didn’t waste too much time.
  • No one talked, there was no real strategy.
  • Same map for every match was boring.
  • When Arena first came out in BC two friends and myself would do our 10 matches a week, get our points, buy our gear and that worked well. I certainly would be bored out of my skull having to do 20-40 ques of this a week. That would NOT be fun.

I Would much prefer an individual que for BGs that awarded conquest. I’m thinking of a points system (not honor or conquest) where, let’s say a 10 man BG, there are say 2000pts to be awarded.

  • For Healers create a factor based on total healing, self deaths, team deaths, win or loss and other factors perhaps.
  • For DPS create a factor based on total damage, self deaths, opponent deaths, win or loss and other factors perhaps.
  • For tanks create a factor based on total damage taken, self deaths, opponent deaths, win or loss and other factors perhaps.

Order all the calculated player factors (highest to lowest) from 1-10 (best performer to worst performer) and distribute the points for the match, more points for high performers and less points for low performers. Keep an AVERAGE of every players points per match, which they can see. At the end of the week calculate the how much conquest they are awarded based on their point average which would be related to the distribution of point average across all participants. In a nutshell if you do nothing you get nothing and if you do something you get something relative to what everyone else did or didn’t do. A bit mathy but could possibly work. Anyway trying to provide a way to do what I’m suggesting. IMO it would be more fun than 6 ppl in a box… That was never much fun to me.

4 Likes

I will admit I’m a bit opposed to your proposal of rating players based off strict metric performances. I love to use the example, “You can keep heavy bursting into a Priest with Guardian Angel up, but ultimately you’re not contributing any damage.” A single player could create a win condition for the team with a simple stun and another player acting off it appropriately. Judging players off numerical metrics would not be a feasible task for Blizzard to implement, nor does it actually display any type of skill for a player. For example, WorldPvP and I could be matched together in Shuffle. I could go into the game and simply fear/stun train the healer while he one shots down another player. He does all the damage and I do zero, but my CC was just as valuable as his damage to win the game. Ultimately numerical values do not really mean anything in PvP.

7 Likes

Feel free to propose something that awards conquest that does not involve arena that can be done solo.

If Solo Shuffle awards conquest as a solo que sufficient to gear up I will do that. Currently it does not.

1 Like

I can’t comment much on this, as I don’t PvP much, however, my thoughts on what I did so far of it:

Why is the queue time 10 minutes if it’s a solo queue? Seems weird.

If the goal of Brawls and Random BGs is to help people get gear for rated PvP, something needs to be done to address the ilvl discrepancy in these venues. If someone has PvP gear, they will 100% win against people with PvE gear.

And in Solo Shuffle in particular, if one person dies, your team loses. Which means you can just pick off the PvE geared people. I did the most damage in my Solo Shuffle, but I also died insanely fast when they realized I was in PvE gear.

As such, what incentive do people have to start PvP in the middle of an expansion, if they’re just going to be dominated over and over and over until they finally get enough honor/conquest for gear? Which will take forever since if you lose, you don’t get much.

PvP Gear being required and dominating in Rated PvP makes 1000% sense. But in Random PvP that’s meant to be catchup FOR rated PvP? Not so much.


Also, am I mis-understanding this? The game ended after 4 matches, but somehow it “invented” a 5th game? I’m not sure if it’s a bug or I’m just dumb.

Then to make it weirder, I was with the priest every match but one, so the 5th/6th match I should’ve been matched up without her, as there were 2 healers and 4 dps. Which means I would’ve been capable of getting more wins than her, so it’s not a case of “the 5th/6th match didnt matter as the priest had more wins than someone could pass them in.”

And then… the weekly quest for solo shuffle completed after this? When it requires 6 matches participated in.

I’m genuinely confused if this is a bug or I’m just not understanding it.

EDIT: Yea, I’m feeling really dumb right now.

The only Solo Shuffle I’ve done is that single one. How did it get 7 out of that? The achievement below it (Win rounds)is at 5/15, even though you can see in the above picture the game says I only won 4?

(Only reason I’m posting this here instead of bug reports is because I’m not sure if it’s a bug or it’s just poorly explained how things are calculated, and if it’s the latter, that could definitely be improved.)

EDIT: I talked to the Death Knight who was with me, and apparently one of the people left. Which ended the Shuffle for everyone.

That’s… rather punishing.

3 Likes

I think most of my games have been finishing top or at least middle with someone always being the focus target because they fail to use Defensives correctly. Usually when they get swapped to the other team I always say to focus them and when they are on my team I try to help them by changing up strategy or at least offering peeling. I have only had one person really be toxic so far and it was the person who finished dead last all my other games everyone seems to want to win badly enough to listen to feedback

2 Likes

This has been my experience too. It seems everyone is trying their best to succeed. When I play against a player I noticed struggling who ends up on my team, I offer some feedback and they usually take it, or I hard peel for them knowing that if they are focused that it will be the result of a loss. I noticed other teammates also helping the struggling player.

1 Like

Did it a few more times tonight cause I didn’t want my feedback to be so horribly skewed by a single game, however, it’s still pretty much the same thoughts:

Games need to either normalize ilvl and stamina or group you with people with similar ilvls. I ended up with a holy paladin with 16k more health than me and only like 2-3 ilvls higher than me, but he had 16k more health cause he was in PvP gear.

This doesn’t matter -so much- in Random BGs (though it is still a big issue) because if you die in PvE gear, it’s just one death. But in Solo Shuffle, one death means your team loses that match instantly.

I’m against normalizing like this in rated PvP, even though I don’t do it, but in random bgs and such, that are designed for helping people get honor for Rated PvP, something should be done to help ease that burden.

The match counter in achievements and quests is either bugged (which I will gladly post a bug report if it is), or it calculates weirdly. My first game tonight my “won” games didn’t increase at all, even though I won 3. Then the next game, it went up 5 even though I only won 1. But my “Participate in 15 matches” completed with only 2 queues of 6 battles. I genuinely don’t know if this is a bug or just how the game calculates, as we’ve never had a system like this.


Yep. In my last game, I had the least health by far, but they said I was too hard to kill cause I knew how to get away, when to use turtle, feign, etc. so they opted to target the other dps. I would target the other hunter, because they didn’t know what to do. I gave him a tip when he was on my team but he ignored me. So shrug.

Some of these healers are insane lol. Maybe I just got good healers in my queues tonight but some of the matches lasted long enough for Double Tap to be ready a few times.

3 Likes

Hello everyone. Thank you for the feedback on this issue. Soon, we will be applying a hotfix that will increase the item level of any item acquired in Shadowlands up to at least 239 while in Solo Shuffle (items above 239 are unaffected by this change). This change will only apply to the Solo Shuffle Brawl due to the unique nature of the game mode.

While we want players to be able to jump into this new experience as soon as possible, a player with extremely low HP is quickly identified as an easy kill target for each round, resulting in a predictable match for all parties involved. We selected item level 239 to allow for gear acquisition and upgrades to still feel like meaningful power progression for a character. We’re interested to hear your feedback after you’ve played a bit with this change.

25 Likes

Great fix glad to see lots of people are being heard

2 Likes

I appreciate the fix, and this will help people who are under 239. But in a general sense, this is like putting a bandaid on a severed arm.

This priest is the same ilvl as me. (For the record, if you look at my armory, I’m like ilvl249. Almost normal raid level) But, he’s wearing PvP gear, so he gained like 20 extra ilvls I can’t see. As such, he gained 14k health on me. He essentially has 25% more health than I could ever have**, because I don’t have PvP gear and to be honest, fights like the one I just had make me want to never touch max level PvP again, and it’s why I haven’t done max level PvP. It’s not fun.

**By can’t ever have, I mean this single solo shuffle made me lose all interest in PvP again. Any interest Solo Shuffle brought back instantly went away. All 5 of the others had full PvP gear. I was the only target. The ONLY target. I died all 6 times, even with the healers doing their best to keep me alive and me using as many cooldowns as I could.

Also, for the record, I’m not even joking when I say I couldn’t hurt the rogue. He used Fleshcraft, and I was on him with a FULL ROTATION and fleshcraft never broke. He wasn’t being healed, anything. I simply could not break his shield, because he had so much versatility. (at least I’m assuming that was the reason) I was able to hurt the other hunter, but not the rogue, no matter what I did, that rogue did not take damage. Not even from a Double Tap aimed shot.

This is an issue that is present not only in Solo Shuffle, but Random Battlegrounds as well, and it’s been vocally expressed by the people trying to get into PvP as well as the people who casually PvP that it is a problem, and I know this because I tried to get pvp gear on one toon in 9.0, and every. single. battleground. had multiple people complaining that they were unable to do anything to the people in PvP gear and were being 1-2 shot.

Do not get me wrong. I think PvP gear is important for rated PvP such as Arena and Rated Battlegrounds. But it creates a gear disparity in casual PvP that is meant to be a way for us to get INTO rated PvP.

What this is doing is essentially if you tuned a m0 dungeon to require gear from M+15s to not want to pull your hair out.

Again, I am in no way saying this should affect Rated PvP in any way, shape or form, or world PvP. This is STRICTLY talking about Random BGs and Brawls, ESPECIALLY Solo Shuffle.

But something has to be done, or PvP is going to die out. I don’t have to tell you that the amount of PvPers goes down and down each expansion - it’s literally a complaint the PvPers make constantly. And part of that, I have 100% certainty is because the Rated PvP people doing casual PvP is making the avenue to get PvP EXTREMELY unfriendly and unfun to people without the PvP gear.

Either separate the queues based on ilvl, and prevent people from changing gear other than weapon and trinkets after entering (so if they take off their PvP gear, they can’t put it back on to cheese the queue), or find some other solution. Because as it stands, this is insanely unfun and will do nothing but chase away the people who might get into PvP.

I know I will have pushback from the PvP community on this opinion, but they need to understand their complaints that PvPers are disappearing are because of the fact they “enjoy” ganking people in random bgs with no PvP gear. You literally chase away potential PvPers by making the casual PvP an unfun experience.

And just because someone will still think it - I am in no way referring to rated PvP or World PvP. If you want to do Rated PvP without PvP gear - you know what you are signing up for. But for Random BGs and Brawls - the literal avenue for gaining PvP gear, no.

Obviously this is just my thoughts, I don’t speak for everyone in the least. But for me, I doubt I’ll touch max level PvP if it remains how it is.

11 Likes

Do you have PvP trinkets on? the bonus is pretty noticable if you have PvE gear only. I think the offset is pretty noticable especially if the person without trinkets plays a Semi squishy class and uses defensives instantly. I think the PvE gear to PvP gear difference is good for the game as PvP gear is absolutely horrible in PvE

No I don’t because I don’t have the honor to buy them (Aka the thing I’m supposed to be earning in casual pvp to get them) nor have I done the war mode quest.

Casual pvp is meant to be the gateway into rated pvp. Disparities like this should not exist. It actively pushes away people from pvping.

If you spend time in random bgs, you’ll see it’s a very common thought.

As I said in my last post, it’s like tuning m0 to require m+15 gear. And if it really is just the trinkets? Then the most basic trinkets should be available for something like Anima.

4 Likes

You’re exactly right. It’s a big problem and has been vocally addressed over and over and over again for YEARS. There is no listening happening on this issue at all. Even in 7/7 honor gear it isn’t much better once all the glads are geared. If your goal in PvP is to gear up in honor gear and play honor BGs casually it isn’t a fun experience without an iLvL cap.

Specific to solo shuffle if it’s meant for solo PvPers to have a path to conquest gear it’s impossible right now for a player to earn enough conquest to actually gear up (not to mention there is no rating so you cant get past rank 1 anyway), all the while they are facing rated PvP players who are playing, once again, outside the rated content and destroying the experience for players who are either uninterested in rated play or can’t participate in it often due to real life constraints that makes setting aside regular time for a video game impractical or impossible.

The fact that rated conquest gear can be upgraded all the way to rank 9 with honor only exacerbates the problem (last season you could only get to 5/9 on honor). You have literally made it mandatory for rated players to farm honor content to upgrade rated gear. IMO this is ridiculous. The rank 1 pieces require conquest to purchase thus blocking casual players from buying it and honor to upgrade thereafter provided the player has the rating. Arena matches are just for the rating requirement, conquest isn’t even necessary after the initial pieces are purchased. Honor should play no part whatsoever in obtaining or upgrading rated PvP gear. It creates a situation where players who do not wish to participate in rated play become the food to feed the rated players progression. It is not fun for the food!

6 Likes

Just to throw in my experience, because I’m also getting destroyed in Solo Shuffle…

After mumblemumble years of being a PVE only player, I tried some arenas late in 9.1.5. I had a couple of guildies try them with me. One had some arena experience from farming the spider mount in 9.0, and the other was completely new to it, like me.

We started queuing up in 3’s, and while it was frustrating at times (one of us would just get deleted sometimes and we didn’t know how), it was actually the most fun in PvP I’d ever had. The games are quick and the queues are short. You shake off losses by immediately queuing up a new game. And we started analyzing logs of games we didn’t understand so we could sort out what we happening and figure out a way to counter it.

The great thing about arenas is that you don’t lose rating in the early stages. The point where you start losing rating on losses seems to vary based on your MMR, but you can probably expect to lose no rating on losses up to at least 1000 rating and maybe a bit beyond. So losses are quick and impose no penalty, and wins–even if they are a bit uncommon, we won only 1/3 of our matches in those early days–give you a substantial amount of conquest. Despite being noobs, we were able to fairly quickly outfit ourselves in all conquest gear. (This was late in the season so there were no conquest caps.) With practice and steadily improving gear, we ultimately climbed to 1800 rating and helped a few more guildies get there too.

Later I tried some 2’s and I actually wish I’d started there instead. 2’s with a dps/healer comp is less complicated and bursty than 3’s. If you’re a noob, it’s a lot easier to sort out what’s going on in 2’s, and if you have a healer, the games tend to last a bit longer and give you more time to process what’s going on. I also found that in the late tier (in our noob bracket), dps/healer comps had an advantage over double dps comps in that if we survived the initial burst, we had sustain and they didn’t and typically it was over for them.

Fast forward to today, and arenas for me and my fellow noobs are very different! I’ve only been able to get to 1200 rating so far. The conquest cap slows my gearing progress, and there are a lot of really sweaty teams out there gearing up for mythic raids. We have been facing teams that are far, far more skilled, and I feel like the healer/dps advantage has disappeared, as double dps comps are wrecking us now. Some good has come of it–we’ve learned several techniques from these superior players that we are now trying out ourselves. But mostly it’s been kind of discouraging. We’re doing less PvP than we used to.

Solo Shuffle in particular has been brutal. I don’t know if there’s a rating system being used invisibly, but just as in arenas I’m facing opponents that are miles above my skill level, and it’s discouraging. After getting destroyed three matches in a row last night, I was so discouraged that I logged out of WOW and played a different game for the rest of the evening.

I think it suffers from the same issue arenas do right now. There are lots of mythic raiders doing PvP to fill up their vault. They need arenas to gain rating and conquest, but they also need honor, and Solo Shuffle is supposedly the best way to farm it. So it’s full of sweaty players right now. Like arenas, it might get more casual-friendly as the tier progresses and the mythic raid folks are done gearing.

So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a problem right now, and I hope Blizzard is looking at it. But as a practical matter, I actually think low-CR arenas is the most casual-friendly form of PvP out there, because you fight teams at your level (late in the tier, at least–right now it’s somewhat less fair), and you can earn your conquest gear quickly, or at least as quickly as the conquest cap allows. I may be getting destroyed in both arenas and Solo Shuffle right now, but I still capped conquest, and I got tier in my PvP vault last week and was able to upgrade it twice.

5 Likes

I think the main reason people do this is because you either suffer in LFG to grind honor to upgrade conquest gear or you do non rated and until Solo Q or Solo Shuffle is rated and its going to be the fastest avenue with the least amount of work. I think alot of people also end up Qing for Shuffle/BGs while they do quests as sort of a filler since doing quests while sitting in an RBG LFG you cant do anything cause blizzard hasnt thought to remove that restriction yet.

1 Like

Okay, so I did some more this week just because. And again, from a casual PvPers point of view, and this time, strictly Solo Shuffle.

Gear needs to be normalized and the extra stamina from PvP trinkets needs to be disabled if everyone in the Shuffle doesn’t have it.

I got the PvP trinket from A New Deal, and grabbed a one of the CC trinkets to make the set bonus, and that gave me 8000 more health. Some people get 10,000, depending on how your spec/class scales with stamina.

I ended up with someone in Solo Shuffle tonight that was in BFA gear. I’m not sure if the ilvl scaling only works on Shadowlands Gear or something, because they only had 38,000 health. Guess who died every single time? Guess which team decided to not even try and just lose?

Hell, I killed them in a single Double Tap. I didn’t have to do anything else. And another time, I killed them with an Aimed Shot/Kill Shot “one-shot” (I had a proc of kill shot from Flayed Shot on another player).

And in case someone says I’m lying, this was them: I’m not going to post their name, for obvious reasons.


In short, if gear isn’t normalized and the extra 8-10k health disabled if everyone doesn’t have it, solo shuffle will continue to remain unfun. 226 scaling is definitely not enough. I did 2 games tonight, the first one was that hunter. The second one, the druid healer had 44k health. In each game, every single group was “TARGET X” as soon as we got grouped. And it was always that person. And if they weren’t in the opposite team, the opposing team had somewhat equal health, so we just targeted the weak link skill wise, which is what should be done. Not “Kill X because they have 20-30k less health than everyone else.”

Also, please have a minimum ilvl for queueing for Solo Shuffle. Not something like 200+, just something that ensures they have Shadowlands gear at the minimum.

2 Likes

I dont think we should remove the bonus just cause someone doesnt have it. I also think they should add a required item level for at least Healers

2 Likes

Hate to bump an old thread but did blizzard relax the punishment for leaving solo shuffle early? I understand the ranked mode is coming out in DF and that unranked my not be as strict but it seems that leaving current solo shuffle games does not incur a punishment that fits leaving games and usually result in one person leaving after getting a loss. I didnt really see this problem ever before this patch but has been happening constantly now.

DF question: Will the punishment for ranked deserting be harsher?

5 Likes