As someone who always did rated bgs for vicious mounts in bfa and SL I can tell you this is fully to blame on solo shuffle: there were 45 groups last season I checked at peak time (SL s4), now something like 5 and all high rating.
People don’t like the toxic and timewasting lfg environment, and solo shuffle is a solution for that, the only downside the terrible queues.
I don’t think that makes sense lol.
Solo Shuffle is closer to Arena than it is RBGs.
I still prefer RBGs, I don’t think I’ll ever appreciate Solo Shuffle for what it is.
Just target whoever is the least geared/has the lowest overall HP and you basically win. It’s also a nightmare for healers, probably the worst thing you can experience as a healer.
I got into RBGs as a healer, and that’s the peak PvP experience, imo.
No small deathmatches in a small room that favor melee, nah. An actual large battle with objectives, tanks having a purpose, etc.
In terms of Conquest, I think RBGs still net you the most as well, along with arenas.
Well, both arena and rbg participation went down a lot when shuffle came around, some people are interested in the rewards and they now have an alternative to lfg, so they take it.
If you want a screen of 45 groups around during SL for rbg, I can find you some.
When players asked for solo queue, I assumed they wanted something along the lines of a rated solo skirmish, not 6 games rotating the comp. This makes queues long, breeds toxicity, and makes it difficult for healers to climb with rating.
Also, healing uncoordinated 3s is awful, teammates tunnel, LOS you, fail to peel, fail to use defensives etc. There’s also high toxicity, flaming, etc. I once witnessed one dps getting angry at the other and tossed games on purpose, people rage quit… all of this contributes to a very unpleasant laddering experience.
As a healer, pvp was once my choice for end game content. Solo shuffle was awful, and the 2s and 3s ladder was so deflated fighting multi glads as low as 1400 cr, I quit and converted to a mythic+ player. I never looked back. I feel my actions are far more impactful than they were in SS and I’m rewarded far better for my efforts. But, I can’t be the only healer who converted and had the same sentiments?
There’s other issues too. A lot of times classes are balanced around raid/mythic+ and this doesn’t always translate well into pvp, so you’ll have broken specs/horrible imbalance. By the time these problems are addressed (if even) it’s often far too late causing many frustrated players to write off pvp for good/unsub.
It will be interesting to see what happens with rated solo battlegrounds. I think it may kill off other forms of pvp, because right now we have many modes of play splitting the already dwindling playerbase. Battlegrounds is more user-friendly, and healers have more breathing room. Damping in SS was terrible.
tl;dr to answer your question OP, it means pvp is in one of the most unhealthy states it has even been and has many dire flaws that need to be addressed if it ever wants to have an active, healthy playerbase again.
I just also think, if PvP was fine/alive, and Solo Shuffle queues were this long (45 mins) then that indicates they’re PvPing in another way.
But, as far as I know, pretty much all forms of PvP are dead except casual PvP, and that has longer queues than it used to have.
The only thing Solo Shuffle did actually kill was Arenas, I was there for that.
My IRL friend and 2’s partner quit in DF season 1, so buckling down and going into Shuffle was really my only choice if I wanted to continue.
Finding a replacement arena partner was hard so I just gave up and went to see how well I could do on my own.
Lol, I did better than with my parner, ended up reaching 1800/Rival in Solo Shuffle.
I still don’t like it though, which is a shame.
I still yearn for the battlegrounds.
BG Blitz will sate me, I just know it.
Yes, this is also what I would’ve preferred: solo queue for 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3 or rbg, some private servers in wow do that, and the queues are definitely the biggest issue of shuffle currently.
Yes, I noticed some rare cases where people flame others, and then the people who get flamed lose matches on purpose when paired with the flamer, so it makes sense to not flame, got me some free win!
There’s no doubt m+ is better off than rated pvp, it has much more participation and you can see this if you compare how many people get the keystone master and the vicious mount: vicious mounts are arguably easier than keystone master mounts, or at least no harder, and yet 23% of players (almost 1\4 of the playerbase) got this season’s KSM mount and only 1,2% got the vicious mount (1\80 of the playerbase), so it’s 20x less popular!
Yes, you’re right about this, I was just letting people notice how most of the rated pvp playerbase immediately swapped to shuffle as soon as it became available, but there’s no question rated pvp participation has been low for several expansions now, this can be noticed by the fact 20x more people get the KSM mount than the vicious ones each season.
Indeed, I remember bg queues not being very impressive even in unrated, even though that still has more people playing.
I’m also hopeful bg blitz will be the solution, I definitely prefer rated bg and liked them all the time I did them in bfa and SL, it’d have been perfect if I didn’t have to wait sometimes 30 mins to get into a game because of the lfg system and lack of healers and especially tanks.
Man i wouldnt even bother lol, 70 mins lol
Most games follow this format. There’s always a surplus of DPS and never enough heals or tanks. Mostly because these two roles get a lot of abuse, especially in a PVP setting.
No one wants to listen to someone whine and cry to them for 20 minutes because they didn’t hold aggro properly or heal properly when they can just be a DPS without half the abuse.
If you want faster times, just queue as heals or tank. Otherwise, there’s really no solution.
PVP in WoW is an afterthought. I don’t think you’re going to see much growth there.
Yes, for me anything above 15 mins is unbearable, it ofc depends on what I have to do for my goal: in shuffle I need to win something like 52 games (48 + 4 to get above 1k rating) at a minimum to get the seasonal mount, so according to my previous season’s stats need something like 75 games played to win that many, which would mean around 19 hours spent just waiting in queue and more time spent waiting than actually fighting, and even when I’m one who does all gold wq and stuff like that while in queue they still end up being too long.
If queues were 30-70 mins even at my low rating I’d have to try 3 vs 3 again, even if I despise the lfg system.
Sure, a healer can play 2-3 matches while a dps is waiting for 1 match, but you will probably go 2/4 or 3/3 on most of those matches (because it’s almost luck based for healers) and your rating will probably still move at the same speed (or even slower) than someone playing dps with long queues. You get burnt out 3x as fast. And that’s why people don’t want to heal.
So I wouldn’t say faster queues are exactly a benefit in this case.
A title? Well, lol… Most people quit right when they reach 1,8k anyways
Yes, even on the comment thread on wowhead when the news of the title came out most of us were saying it was just a band aid fix.
Personally since I’m only going for the vicious mount, I’d much rather have fast queues and going 3-3 on most matches than spending that long in queue, however I don’t like the healing role in general, rated pvp is really in a dire state atm: I always did rbg in bfa and sl for the mount and liked them but there was a really long wait time for healers and especially tanks, my arena experience was worse since there’s a lot of gatekeeping and 1300 rating people demanding you play as a 2k to play with them (just an example), 2 vs 2 gives so little % that it’s not even worth talking about, 3 vs 3 is better but harder to find groups for and now with shuffle the amount of groups for any of these modes plummeted cause “everyone” is playing shuffle, but even so queues are so horrible I can’t even get a match today.