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.