In prior expansions when we bought an Honor piece it was immediately entry-level competitive. In Shadowlands, it’s essentially useless until you upgrade it a total of 5/7 times if not 7/7 just to be equal to a 0/9 conquest that is still 26 item levels below 9/9 conquest anyway so you end up being one-shot with it.
Let me provide a bit more of a perspective. We need to upgrade each & every individual equipment piece, even after we bought it, and there are a total of 15 equipment slots (16 if using one-handers). That means we need to upgrade our equipment a total of 105 times just to be an item level of 233 which is also Conquest 0/5. 5/5 Conquest is 259 item level, which means you are still 26 below. In PvP, that’s a big deal… you won’t be competitive at 233 against a 259 at all. So you will die. And you will die. And you will die unlike you’ve ever died before in any prior expansion, because the grind in Shadowlands dictates that is the requirement.
Please understand why the PvP community is very, very upset over this. It is not “Oh, the cool kids say it sucks.” No, there is legitimate issues that is not being resolved. 9.1.5 made the issue 20% less severe but it is still 80% severe. I am genuinely concerned for the future of PvP in this video game.
Equipment upgrading was tried in a single major content patch in Mists of Pandaria in PvP. The PvP community protested it to such an extent, the feature was removed from PvP equipment the next major content patch. But for some very odd reason, someone had the bright idea to bring it back for the entirety of Shadowlands.
For the well being & longevity of the PvP game, item level upgrading needs to be removed once again in PvP. PvE can have it if desired, it may benefit their environment well. For PvP, it is devastating for alternatives by providing an excessive grind to competitive entry PvP play.
If people are trying alts then the ranked ladders have more non meta class and specs in them. The lower ranks (sub 0-1600) have more people trying new specs and thus an easier environment for new PvP players to learn in.
If there was only 1 honor set and conquest set, then random BGs can be fun for players that are sub 1400 in ranked play. It was like this in MoP. I could play my destro warlock for 2 months, then get a little tired of it and try my priest. Then try my frost DK. And repeat. There was gear progression but easy enough to try it on alts. If you grinder out sub 1200 raked arena wins, you could at least have the same hp as rank 1 gladiators in BGs.
So much healthy change would follow a 1 honor and 1 conquest set.
Make honor and ranked tiers relevant by creating different color sets and elite sets and titles and plenty of trans mog stuff.
Blizzard made the gearing convoluted and aggravating on purpose so people would be more inclined to buy tokens so they get a Gladiator PVP boost for the gear.
Or at least that is what some guy at the gas station told me.
There are better casual pvp experiences in other games with way less grinds and even playing fields. I would suggest you play other games sadly since they haven’t made much effort in improving this experience. Compared to other games that have more frequent tuning and opportunities for more balanced experiences.
I don’t agree. I do not think Blizz made the PvP system to sell tokens. I think they thought this would be a good progression and incentive system for PvP gearing.
The unintended consequences of this system has been degenerate gameplay experiences.
More skilled players also get more powerful and this doubles their advantage over new PvP players or alts. There is a greater need to pay for boosters. Which continue to flood lower rankings with over skilled and over geared players. Which puts even more pressure to play only the best meta specs.
This is coming from someone who never played arenas before MoP. Then in MoP I achieved 1550 on four classes. I represent a million plus players who enjoy trying PvP and ranked play, but who are not very good at it.
And just because I don’t play in the nba, doesn’t mean I can’t have fun playing at la fitness. And there, I might only rebound and give assists. The fans in the nba arenas are not filled with former nba players. This is my elitist defense against any high ranking pvper who dismisses my comments.
The issue is, not a single developer or any person for that matter at Blizzard actually does PvP.
Imagine just one of them getting off work, going home and then logging onto WoW to grind out honor. Lets even say they don’t have a family and basically no responsibilities, now tell them they have to commit the next 2-3 weeks of every week night, plus weekends, to grind out all the honor they’ll need to upgrade their gear.
They have metrics they are following and for whatever reason, that is driving awful design choices. I have a lot of friends who would come back, if ONLY for PvP, but don’t because of the stupid amount of time it takes to gear. It’s substantially worse then what we had in Wrath. I would gladly take not having a catch up mechanic of any type if it meant I could actually cap my conquest needed for the week in an hour or two and be done.
They just don’t get it. OR they do, and they want to ‘encourage’ players to buy what they need to ‘end’ the frustration. Imagine that being your business model. Making the game just annoying enough so players spend more money.
