The atrocious state of random battlegrounds

PVP Battlegrounds
1

I will get to the point. Alliance random BG win rates are without a doubt below 50% on average. It’s become all too common for Alliance players to frequently lose a row of games before winning even a single one. That is not normal. I refuse to believe this many Alliance players posting similar thoughts are that bad at PvP. The last time random battlegrounds were this lopsided. It was because Human racials were buffed in WoD which caused a massive shift of racial/faction changes. Resulting in Horde losing a numerous amount of games in random battlegrounds. Anyone who played during that time period is more than familiar on how bad it was for Horde players. I’m saying, it’s a very similar case now.

What are the causes?

Merc mode
This mode was originally created to assist with the long que times. Now it serves as a gateway for undergeared Horde players to join Alliance teams. Which only contributes to further losses on Alliance side.

Uneeded PvP gearing changes throughout the years

Oh where do I even begin…

Originally all any player had to do to gear in PvP was, usually, grind honor gear first via random bgs/World PvP(optional). Then when you had a full set of honor gear, you were “strong” enough to enter the arena/rated bg and grind conquest. So what changed?

Ashran Warlords of Draenor

A developer by the name of Brian Holinka wants to introduce a way for PvE players and PvP to interact. Ashran was the result of this idea. In theory, it was a place where PvE/PvP players could be more exposed to the opposite sides of content so to speak. While ambitious, and creative, it was not well received.

Battle for Azeroth Expansion

I would argue this is where the worst changes for PvP gearing started. PvP vendors were removed. Players were forced to do Keys and rely on horrible RNG boxes to have gear for actual player vs player fun.

Shadowlands

PvP vendors are brought back,. Horrible idea removing them in the first place. But now with a twist, it takes significantly longer than it did in the past 3 expansions to get geared up. But wait, there’s more! The PvP gear you get, only caps out at Ilv 197 via honor grind. Then rinse repeat for conquest gear.

Conclusion

We can see over the years on what aspects of PvP have sorely degraded. There were forced aspects that nobody asked for. Changes that definitely drove players away from the game. Now even random bgs have once again become an undesirable mode for players. I think the current state of PvP is simply a culmination of bad decisions with no real fixes. So it remains to be seen what solution blizzard will provide.

16 Likes
2

I’m not so sure about that. Epic BGs, sure, those are terrible for Alliance, but randoms just don’t seem that bad. Sure, you have anecdotes from players that have terrible w/l ratios that post here and complain, but I’ve seen just as many with 60%+ in every BG.

Personally it does feel like a skill thing to me. Look around at peoples profiles and you’ll see that players with any decent rated experience have nowhere near sub-50% w/l ratio in anything, other than maybe epics if they even play those. The people you see with 30% w/l ratios in every BG tend to have no experience doing anything competitive in-game.

4 Likes
3

Today I played with a Tichondrius Gladiator Horde merc warrior. The guy carried us against a Tichondrius Horde premade. It was pretty much the first time I’ve seen a merc have such a good effect on a random battleground.

But yeah, I feel you. The game has a load of issues when it comes to PvP. Some Alliance players really got used to losing, and it takes some convincing to get them to play hard. Generally the convincing comes from your own ability to carry a match.

If you can’t, you have to focus on trying to lockdown the right targets and being generally annoying to healers. It’s not easy, but it’s possible to win a bunch of games even as Alliance. :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Can we talk about casual bg’s being infested with ret pallys, feral druids and fire mages too?

5

OP doesn’t seem to realize that 50% w/r is the average, it’s impossible for the average win rate to be higher than that (unless they’re playing against NPCs?), so having slightly below 50 isn’t necessarily that much of a problem.

Alliance certainly is sub 50, probably sub 40 in epic BGs though, where AV is a near-guaranteed loss and the others are a struggle.

6

Anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal, for every 1 of you who says you lose 10-20-30 BGs in a row, there’s someone winning 10-20-30 in a row, regardless of faction.

7

The bonus honor, super fast queues all contribute to the let the game go mentality especially in epics … had a IOC yesterday where the Horde was behind 75-20 on the alliance wall but somehow grabbed all 3 bases , managed to catch up and almost won the game . (For once the alliance bomb runners saved the day by keeping the wall damage going on during the phase where horde controlled everything ). You will never see alliance fight back like that . Why would you when you can be in another game in 2 minutes . :man_shrugging:t4:

8

It’s not below 50%, but randoms definitely feel like crap on both factions.

9

If you slightly enjoyed reading my thoughts. Then you might be happy to hear I’m paying close attention to retribution paladins. I’m currently waiting to see how the re-designed PvP talents affect retribution paladins.

If I were to bring up an argument against them now. I’d only be repeating what many others have already said in both the paladin/PvP forum sections.

10

This game is utter trash for casuals. My spriest is at 182 ilvl and got smacked by a fury warrior for 34k. I tried coming back to the game and only to be met with an impossible game mode for casual pvp. Unsubbing

6 Likes
11

Forgot to mention class toolkits being gutted. Big sad when I log on to my shadow priest or ret paladin and see how simplistic and boring their gameplay has become.

#reverttoMoP

12

If they remove mercenary npc winrates will fix itself by time. Alliance can’t create stable battleground strategies with 135 ilvl afk mercenaries.

It doesn’t make sense to give horde afk honor farm option via mercenary system and ruin Alliance games.

2 Likes
13

I guess because winning is more fun than losing. I try to always play at my best. But sometimes it really does get to you. The tougher games are those where you’re in a team with a bunch of alts against a duelist ranked premade in the orb or the azerite map.

I tend to kind of afk a bit when it happens.

14

Must have had berserking and hit you with a lucky ancient aftershock crit, fury warriors are extremely rare in pvp also because they mostly suck.

15

It’s hard to ignore my 30% WR. 20 games, only 6 wins, but somehow people think this is “anecdotal” despite many others sharing a similar record. I say this because I have never seen so many alliance players agree random bgs are terribly one sided.

I hope blizzard can come up with a solution, or at least at some point, acknowledges the issue.

1 Like
16

“merc mode exists for undergeared horde”
never have i had a loss in pvp that was due to merc mode players. at this point it’s ALWAYS alliance players who enter the bg with “alliance sucks” “lose fast pls” “fast loss fast queue” “why try, alliance always loses” and persist with this mindset throughout the BG.

Yes the BG matchmaking system sucks but you know what sucks more? Alliances crappy attitude and trying to have a positive attitude in the miasmatic sea of pessimism

6 Likes
17

make a 50 and come have some fun! you’ll need a basic bfa account but what’s neat is you can build the 50 on a shadowlands account then transfer it (covenants/rep gear and all!)to the bfa one and still have use of your covenant. if you have any alts(level 50 now) from bfa that are raid geared you’re already ahead of the game.

18

Yeah i never see horde mercs throw bgs every time i see someone talk trash/give up its a alliance player most likely the same types that make that excuse you can shift click ppls names in bgs and it says the race and every time someone does the above i check and its alliance

3 Likes
19

How would you know they’re mercs? Not agreeing with OP that mercs throw games, but no one every knew I was a merc on my horde toons when I used to merc mode.

20

you can mouseover people in your raid group. it will say if they’re a blood elf or an orc or w/e. just because their character avatar race changes doesnt mean their ‘recorded’ race changes.
bad alliance love to blame horde mercs for losses though.

1 Like