TL;DR: Azerite Essences have a huge timegate that discourages returning players from even trying PvP. Please consider setting all Azerite Essences to max rank in PvP.
With Shadowlands on the horizon, I’ve had a hankering to play some retail WoW. I’ve put a bit of time into getting my cloak ranks and powering through some M+ keys to try to catch up to everyone else. Still, even after dumping every night for a week into retail, I’m still upwards of a month away from not being hindered by gear in arena.
I understand a big part of an MMO is character building. However, I think the spirit of competition is just as important. Due to having such a steep curve for gear/cloak ranks/azerite powers, I would wager you are excluding a majority of the more casual/returning players from PvP altogether.
It has certainly discouraged me from even trying to come back to BfA. Nearly every person I’ve asked for tips on how to get back into the game has told me its better to just wait for Shadowlands as it’ll be far too much effort and time for little reward to do it now. I feel like this is a big problem with a simple fix.
P.S.: I would consider myself a pretty dedicated World of Warcraft player, having played in every expansion rather seriously. Yet, even for me, trying to understand the process of gearing up in BfA was DIZZYING.
12 Likes
So do Corruptions. So do offpieces bis stats. So do trinkets. So does literally everything about gearing this season.
Being competitive has never been so frustrating, or frankly time intensive. Maybe having a low rating and getting low Arena points every week in tbc / wotlk could take a while to earn your set, but you weren’t absolutely compeltely useless in previous seasons gear. The only upside is my crappy shoulders on my priest kept a rogue in combat by throwing a vial of poison while i was blinded.
5 Likes
The gear curve to actually be competitive in arena is insanely high, highest gear curve of any content in the game imo.
Also yeah essences are stupid as hell, wanted to play my HPAL and I actually had to do heroic EP two weeks in a row to get condy. Tying a major requirement of pvp healing to a year old raid weirdchamp
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The game was so much better, not that it was ever great this xpac, before essences.
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Don’t forgot Corruptions and cloak ranks!
I’m trying to gear this warlock and I feel like I’m standing at the base of a mountain just knowing I have to climb it and it’s going to take forever
And that’s just to get to a point where I’m on an even footing with everyone else.
It’s just… Daunting 
3 Likes
Yeah, tbh all the catchup mechanisms they’ve added don’t really help when essences, corruptions and malefic cores - three crucial things all use echoes.
I’m so burned out from the farming on my main that it’s disheartening to even consider doing it.
Actually find killing time in m+ (something I hated) more tolerable than the coalescing/echoes/mementos grind.
I’ve never PvE’d to the extent that I have in this expansion, as well as this particular season. It’s sad that week in and out, I couldn’t care less about the outcome of my weekly PvP chest, as it does not compare to the level of loot from the ONE m15 I do consistently. The current state of the gear grind, the pvp oriented loot and gates in order to play are pathetic.
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Agreed. I don’t mind a little bit of a grind for gear as I think Legion templates were subpar, and someone playing 10 classes isn’t cool to me at all, but right now it’s next to impossible to get back into the game.
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Honor/Conquest points + PvP vendors - gimmicky xpac secondary and tertiary gearing = Fun, meaningful pvp, and progression.
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yep you are right. More than the completely broken corruptions, trinkets, and specs, it’s the fact I can’t even play an alt without a grind that while has been terrible and pve focused for a while, is also COMPLETELY MIND NUMBING solo vision spamming and to top it all off it’s time gated :))
I very much so agree, I think this may be the grindiest most ult-unfriendly/returning player unfriendly xpack iv ever seen.
They really really need to do something about it, if not now at least in shadowlands. Its really hurting the game to have it this timegated/grindey.
Cloak catchups are the most discouraging.
oh we still doing these threads ? i guess its better than necroing the 100 other posts that say the same thing.