If gear was equalized then it would be a skill issue tbh. They need to implement a system like guild wars etc where PVP is entirely separated from PVE and you earn your rewards through a system not connected to PVE at all, cant use PVE gear etc and everyone gets a starter set of pvp gear for grinding up.
I’m pretty sure a 210 gladiator cannot beat a 227, or even a 220. Anyone who knows anything about PVP will know the whole health to iLVL ratios right? I have never lost an arena game at my current iLVL when both players are 30-35K health or less.
And you know what? I suck at arena. But that’s the kind of thing a difference in iLVL can do. Make a good PVE player also a good PVP player.
OK so what are the chances of me going against a gladiator alt? Who knows. But what are the chances that someone at that health level is more skilled than me? Chances are high, but iLVL trumps it.
15 ilvls might be doable just because of the inherent class imbalances and especially if you have a really good pvper. I’m a terrible pvper but assuming that that imbalance didn’t exist and skill was equal, the higher ilvl guy would have to win most of the time. He’s going to do more damage and be able to take more damage.
LOL defending this guy. Have fun with that.
If I hadn’t read through this thread I wouldn’t know what “the interview” is either 
and I still really don’t know what it is I just believe I can reasonably find it since people said it was with Preach. If you’re going to say someone said something you should like to where it was said.
Google is free.
M+ as a whole is kind of a dps check. The fact that players got KSM with 210 gear pre-nerf, pre-tank buff shows that with skill it is very much obtainable.
Then you have other players who have benefitted from months of great vault rewards pushing beyond 220 ilvl who are still struggling to get KSM.
This is clearly is a skill issue and a git gud situation.
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Some of the real top end players were timing 15s in 190 gear.
The skill gap is crazy.
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I feel like that’s a bad example. To me, that would be like saying “I walked outside to check my mail and got hit by a meteor. Damn, maybe I was wrong there, and could have dodged it?”
No. It’s a meteor. There’s no getting away from that, and staying inside and never emptying your mailbox is negligent. Just like “Avoid the guy with wings” doesn’t come across as particularly helpful either.
A lot of that I imagine is also being on voice comms with each other, and having played together long enough to be able to anticipate and expect certain actions to be taken at certain moments. I suspect some of that is less skill, and more familiarity in coordination.
Except it’s not really. I pugged my way to 1790 io which means none of us knows each other. Additionally, our groups rarely use discord. Even now in +18/19 keys we aren’t.
It is 100% a skill gap.
How much of your “climb” was utilizing commonly accepted tactics, and how much was improvised? I’d guess much was already known between most of you at the higher levels.
Your original argument was about communication and playing frequently with each other to build synergy.
Now you are back peddling and saying something completely different.
I’m trying to make a lateral move here. Being able to anticipate what people are going to do, or what is expected means you all are familiar with common tactics at that level. This can be done in a group that already knows each other, or strangers who just already know what to do, taking any guesswork out of the equation. What I’m getting at is, the “skill gap” seems to be caused by a lack of cohesion between group members rather than individually “bad” players standing in red circles or what-have-you.
Not interrupting, holding cds, holding utilities, standing in bad, ect are all examples of low skilled players that I see All the time. The things I listed are individual issues, not a group cohesion issue. Even in my +19 SD, our healer got whacked 4 or 5 timed from the garyoyle swirly. These are all skill issues, not a failure to synergize.
Sure there are some times where the cohesion isn’t there, but far more likely and often where it is individual errors and skill gaps.
That’s kind of what I’m talking about. You’re equating it to a random act of god and nature, which you have no way to predict or avoid.
It’s more like trying to walk on red light and getting hit by a semi. There’s a warning, theres a pattern, and there’s a test of strength that you cannot win, but by the time you get there, you’ve already missed several warning signs.
I would call, in the context of WoW, strong group coordination and synergy part of the skill cap.
Never overlapping kicks.
Never over lapping defensive CDs.
Not overlapping CC.
Always having offensive cooldowns for the right packs.
Using personal defensives at the right time.
All the individual and group coordination together is part of the skill gap.
And of course high dps/hps
All right sure all those things might be hallmarks of “poor skill”, but that’s not exactly what I was trying to get at. In those high end groups, people already know what to do, and when. Or, they have people calling for utilities on voice coms. I could in the past, for example, get into two groups for the same dungeon, at the same key level, and get reamed because one group did something one way, and a different group did it another. That wouldn’t happen in groups where people are familiar with one another’s capabilities. In fact, I found guild groups to be easier not because we were “better”, but because we were all on the same page. I wonder how often “bad” players are called such because they didn’t do something the group thought was “common”, but wasn’t to the players in question. Something that either communication, or general familiarity and common tactics that never change (Rare) would fix.
I often wonder how people do the first 3 in pugs at the high end. Is everyone on discord? Do people even talk to one another to establish what’s done and in what order? Or is it just commonly known to everyone at that level? Like, does the rogue know to get the first kick, then the tank? Which add does each individual player interrupt? Who uses what stun/slow and when?
There are tons of people who have the IO score and not the skill. Perfect example is ToP on the platforms. I ran a +18 and 19 ToP yesterday and we had multiple people die from the gust. That is skill issue, nothing else. There are players in high keys that are failing death mechanics.
There are addons that track group member’s cooldowns and kicks.
Either way, skill issue is a real thing that ilvl and gear just won’t resolve.
What’s the warning or pattern to a one-shot? Which is kind of why I used the unavoidable example. A car CAN be avoided, but what about accidents? They’re not all avoidable.
I know of those addons, but that doesn’t really answer the question. How do you know who does what, and when? Is it something people already KNOW because it’s done the exact same way in every permutation of every group type, every time? Or is there communication beforehand? For example, I’ve often gone for the first interrupt, only to miss by a split second because someone else was on that target doing the same. Or used an aoe stun just before someone else used theirs. (This happens with shamans’ capacitor totem quite often)