Twinking/BGS/brackets feedback

So, after sitting in que for over 3h last night waiting on a WSG match to pop it occurred to me that they have implemented separation of exp/non-exp into their own queues. i realize there are other topics posting on this but i haven’t seen any actual solutions being put forward. just the usual complaining about how “twinks sucks” or “you ruined my twinks.”

in either case it doesnt matter. twinks are breaking the normal bgs. but separating them out breaks que times as well. I wanted to start a thread that puts forth possible solutions to this issue that could ultimately result in better que times and less op twinks.

I believe one possible solution would be scaling. The same scaling that has made all the mobs grow with your level could be one such solution.
ok, so lets say I just made level 40. i’ll be in a 40-49 bracket if i que for bgs. This puts me at a huge disadvantage in terms of gear/survivability/abilities available to my class for that bracket. anyone meeting the top end [45-49] could easily steam roll my low level toon for this bracket.
as such, it stands to reason the only time to put forth the effort of queing the bgs is either the 8th-9th level of that bracket. i.e. 18,19,28,29 etc…
Heres where the scaling comes in. I believe that implementing that same scaling we see with mobs in the world may provide a more balanced bg experience. i.e. a level 20 toon scaling up to 29 once entering into a bg.
This creates its own problems with gear and talents, so lets set those aside for a moment and get to the heart of this issue once and for all.

After reading through the forums the line being drawn is between casual levelers and hardcore pvpers with twinks.
the levelers want a balanced battleground experience fit for their level of pvp competence. where as the twinks want a bg experience that is both challenging and rewarding without breaking the que system to achieve this. these two concepts are not mutually exclusive, they can in fact be one in the same desire expressed through a system that implements scaling like ive described.

now, back to the breaking of gear and talents. now… there should be a kind of disadvantage for queing lower then the cap of that bracket. this is already covered through the skill/talent system. The scaling up should be a stat change only. having no effect on talents/skills. This will still provide bonuses to those who want to turn off exp at the bracket cap.
Now, when it comes to the actual scaling of toons, i dont believe that actually changing a toons level to fit the bracket is practical. instead i believe that if we looked at the simplified stats and applied a static cap to each stat for each bracket, then raised each toon competing in that bracket to those static caps we could achieve both balance and appropriate que times no matter who is queing twinks or casual.
let me explain in a little more detail.

lets take my current “twink” level 49 rogue.
for the remainder of this part of the explanation i will be using the 40-49 bracket

i have roughly 3k HP in this bracket. Lets scale up to 5kHP
make this static for all players regardless of level/class/gear.
When we look at how the armor system works, the amount of armor still provides bonuses to the tiers [cloth<leather<mail<plate] so a plate class could still retain its damage reduction over a cloth/leather class, keeping this part of the system intact and balanced.

This type of scaling could also be applied to the other stats as well.
now this can create its own set of problems between different roles.[healers need more haste and dps need more crit obviously] but wait!! most of these classes provide their own buffs/bonuses to those stats already. so actually when we look at this objectively we could scale down those stats to be more balanced.
so my rogue currently has just about 20%crit and 10%haste. split the difference and call it 15% static across all toons. those toons with buffs and passive abilities will still see some benefit for their current role.

Now we need to look at how other primary stats could work. [agility/intellect/strength]
since these primarily control damage output its key to dial in a system that keeps things balanced but also provides some amount of flexibility to the system to allow players to have some control over their pvp gearing. So lets set another static number, currently my toon has 247agility[base+bonus]. Since these stats seemingly no longer effect various other minor stats and seem to be directly related to singular damage/heals output then we can set a static number to maintain the balance of damage/heals across all classes and roles. The outlying factor then becomes weapons.

Since we have set static levels for all stats, we now need to allow for the influence of weapons only on the static levels. this includes factoring base damage, and stat increases into the calculations. So the only equipment that can influence your toon now is weapons. For the sake of easy implementation we leave all the stats for armor out[except the armor value itself], and only use the stat value of the weapons to effect minor differences in the damage/healing output of each toon.

I think if we started to look at the problem of why its only broken for half the players one way and the other half the other way we can start finding ways to balance the stats instead of separating players from each other.

i realize there are probably lots of holes in this proposal, but i think if we want Blizz to address this problem we need to do more then just complain and cry about it. we need constructive ideas to fix the issue that they can review and possibly test and implement. so in this spirit, I’m asking that any posts on this thread include additional ideas or new ideas to fix the issue of twinking vs casual players breaking our bg system.

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options:

play locked toon in pve
make a ftp/vet 20
make a legion 110
make throwaway BoA toon for xp on bgs

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twinks having better gear hasn’t been a major issue in the lower brackets since heirloom gear went live. the problem was that we roll in premades on comms to do random bgs and have the experience to make it work.
you know who else does that? every other random guild at max level. there’s actually more gear and skill disparity at max level than any other current bracket, except for 110 which has (or had?) a few major gear issues including legion-capped mythic raid gear (which is perfectly legitimate) and those few that were able to xp-lock, farm azerite gear and transfer to a legion account before that was patched (which was exploiting a loophole).

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That is so wrong, I did tests right before queues were separated and heirloom vs a twink was hitting for about half the damage for exactly the same ability. Try it yourself.

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you dont even need to test that. simply look at the crafted gear for the brackets and they will always be slightly better or greatly superior to the BoA’s. this is true across all classic professions. the trouble is actually getting them crafted which takes time. and you can do this with xp off, but after all that effort you might get 2-4 bgs in before you level into the next tier and all that work is gone because it 10 levels lower then the next bracket.

But so much fun , some bracket you can get bis or close to it by just doing dungeons . Sockets

I think Blizz needs to seriously look at the situation and realize that mechanically its doing what they want. but in application it has been a failure. it needs serious consideration and revision to balance it back out.

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19’s are scheduling xpoff games

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at 59 you start getting sockets and once my guys hit 100 its SOO time. at 110 turn off xp to get 3 ilevel 300 azerite pieces and 210’s in every other slot plus one legion leggo(265). pvp from 110-120 with no problem. at 111 get the alch trinkey that heals with every kill and no cooldown. if i kill 5 people at once it heals times 5.

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This topic isn’t new and multiple suggestions have been made over the last 18 months.

There’s nothing left to suggest. Blizzard doesn’t care and has completely ignored over a dozen threads. They didn’t even have the maturity to warn players prior to 8.1.

There’s a really good opportunity to fix things with the squish and it will probably not happen.

I’m not saying let it go, but this thread is pointless.

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Get yourself some enchanted heirloom shoulders/legs/chest/weapon/neck, make a 20 allied race or level a standard to 20, queue for 20-29. Hit 30, delete, rinse and repeat. Not ideal, but most consistent queue popping.

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i get what youre saying floyin. and yes we could just shut up about it and let blizz run it the way they want, but i’d like to think that the more posts, the more topics and threads contributing to this idea may help influence these changes.

what were you using? i just tested my ilvl 50 bg box daggers vs ilvl 51 scaled-down epics vs heirlooms and the difference in damage was about 4 damage per backstab, with the blue box daggers coming out ahead of both the 51 epics and the heirlooms because they have agility and versatility, where the epics only have +1 top-end damage and no stats and the heirlooms have -2 top-end damage and no vers. thats 156 damage for the blues, 153 damage for the epic and 152 for the heirlooms.
ed: tested with heirlooms, random items and no mainstat enchants as well. 111 damage on a backstab, with with a difference of 47 agility and 13% vers between BIS and crackerjack-box gear.

the exp on brackets are pretty dead too if that makes you feel any better

I made a 39 warrior Turned off XP and geared as much as I could. There was no scaled down gear at the time.

I went into BG’s without knowing how to play a warrior. Just mashed all the abilities. I was easily winning 1v4’s and my warrior abilities were hitting for nearly double that of the heirloom geared warriors in the BG. Same ability, nearly double the dmg for each hit.

obtainable BIS for fury war right now is double Princess maces, which are like POD on steroids. were you looking at ability damage in the combat log or just hp bar drops per gcd?

Just curious, did something happen to classic twinking that made people come back to retail?

All the ‘no changes museum piece’ became ‘wait change everything’
A few: Splitting the lower lvl Qs making them too long to wait for. Changing battleground layouts. Changing dungeon lvl requirements so low lvls could not farm gear. No premade (coordination) allowed.

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Ah, good gosh! That sounds terrible. I was hoping classic would be a good place for folks who enjoy twinking. Sounds like blizz screwed it up big time.

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my alliance guild was running 10-man 39 premades tonight. horde can’t do it because of the queue boss, though. the 10-man premade queue on alliance is several minutes shorter than the horde solo queue timer.

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