I feel like there is a bit of confusion coming from some people when something like “PvP gear” or “PvP power” is mentioned because I read alot of arguments that don’t make sense, so I think it should be clarified for those who don’t understand.
When people talk about PvP gear, they are talking about gear that is obtained strictly through PvP that has attributes specifically for PvP. You can not be optimal in any form of PvE with this gear.
In the past, PvP players would begin their journey after reaching max level by grinding random battlegrounds, which awarded honor at an amount dictated by victory or defeat. Honor is used to purchase your first set of PvP gear which traditionally had a stat called resilience which lowered the damage you received by other players and at times also lowered your crit damage (but that was more for very specific balancing purposes.)
The next set of gear you would begin working on was earned by gaining Conquest points earned from participating and winning rated arena matches. This gear was marginally better than than your old set of honor gear and had even higher resilience values.
Players that would farm out a full set of conquest gear had the best possible gear for that season for the activity they chose to earn it through, (PvP,) and even though it’s primary stat values were significantly lower than that of raiding gear, raiders would get squashed. Why? Because they didn’t earn that gear through PvP, and they had zero resilience attribute.
There was one season that resilience levels were getting so out of hand that Blizz introduced a new attribute called PvP Power, and it increased the damage you dealt to players. It was a failure because it was simply a bandaid on a good system that suffered from inflation.
Regardless, this leads me to the point of this explanation and that is “9.0 PvP Power,” a tooltip datamined from the Shadowlands Alpha that suggests that PvP Power is making a return.
Why would they do this? Probably to provide people who prefer PvP a route in which to progress in endgame on their own terms and not be forced into content they don’t enjoy. If they worked backwards instead of forwards, and kept player damage against other players low unless PvP power was present, it would work similarly to how resilience worked all those years, but in a more offensive direction.
This style of gear progression doesn’t even intersect with the PvE ecosystem, and leaves everyone happy they aren’t forced into content to be competitive.
PvP power has nothing to do with stat templates.
PvP power has nothing to do with an AP style treadmill grind.
PvP power does not benefit a player in a PvE environment in any way.
It feels strange that this seemingly needed to be explained to alot of people on these forums, but perhaps alot of them came into the game during Legion which is the expansion that a proper PvP gear progression system was ripped away from the players.
