Certainly,
The gearing system is horrible and the ILVL difference is awful and the rewards are terrible for casuals.
The power difference is disgusting to the point that even Venruki made a vid of him losing at 1400 rating because he was undergeared.
You say casual but you seem to mean âunskilledâ.
Yes, if you queue up at basically any point in the games history aside from Legion this could very well be the case, including periods of âequalizedâ gearing such as mop or wod.
i donât wanna sound patronizing but anyone who flames you for games played in a vacuum is a moron, and you can safely ignore that criticism. the only way anyone gets better at this or any game is by learning through experience
No, what I mean to say is people who donât have decades of social connections on a game that they figured out 15 years ago.
Not even remotely true. WoD had ILVL scaling, legion had templates, mop was fine and even BFA wasnât bad in terms of casual gearing until corruptions.
The problem is the ILVL difference between geared pvpers is massive. You can be âfully gearedâ at 1600 and randomly run into someone with 15-20 ILVLs on you.
The gear matters. It matters a lot.
To expand on this, let me point something out (from the PoV of someone who quit after MoP and didnât get back til BFA). From my understanding, Legion had stat templates that made gear slightly less of a big deal. BFA had PvP scaling (i.e a 50k RSK from my screen would inflict a 20k RSK on someone elseâs screen to better cater to their lower ilvl). Until S4 of BFA, gear was a big thing but not NEARLY as much as Shadowlands. Let me continue to elaborate: every single season of Shadowlands, they have nerfed the armor of gear by 12%. This is actually HUGE, and not something people tend to realize or consider. Add to that the fact they removed PvP scaling (because bugs that they couldnât be bothered to sort out), and yeah, Iâd say the gearing issue in PvP right now is WAY bad.
1600 is 301, and 2100 is 311.
Okay? What I said happens all the time.
You canât be full gear at 1600 and encounter somebody with 20 item levels on you, no.
Youâre really reaching huh? Tell me, what is the item level difference between a normal raid and a heroic raid?
Itâs 11 item levels for an entire raid difficulty level. That is massive.
20 may not happen at 1600 (just barely) but it definitely does happen in lower brackets and the difference would be like walking into a mythic raid with normal raid gear on.
The ILVL power gap in pvp is massive. To suggest otherwise is absolute lunacy.
Reaching is looking at the weakest possible PvP gear then comparing it to the strongest possible PVP gear and saying that one is regularly queuing into the other.
Like, it can be, and is a contributing factor, but overall pacing and stuff is more influential.
This gap shouldnât exist
Nah, it matters so much that 3k players lose games at 1400 without it.
I donât disagree.
Were they even wearing honor gear?
Classic toon
Fried takes
Thatâs what you guys always say when you canât argue a point. 
bro itâs 2s lol sorry to break your bubble but it is the casual bracket
i donât agree here, at least not totally. i donât think casual players should have to arena or rbg to eventually reach âenoughâ gear that equally skilled people who ground out full arena gear canât wipe the floor with them
there are a lot of players who play bgs mostly or exclusively, and to them, having to do rated content to not be wearing paper gear is an awful lot of homework. itâs hard to learn to be good enough to get the gear thatâd set them on equal competitive footing with the people who have arena experience(or in rare cases just buy carries) and itâs hard to network into groups without any of that experience.
i sympathize with them-blizzard has designed the game HUGELY counter to the way they prefer to play, just quick playing random bgs most of the time theyâre logged in. once upon a time they could become competitively equal to arena players just by getting a smidge of conquest per game, and the only advantage you could get over each other by doing the arenas you hate was being fully geared faster. the game really has no answer for people that miss that era, and iâm hopeful DF fixes that
I wanna point out you said this after saying itâs unfair that people have a decade of social connections.
Youâve been playing the game since mop and youâre not good enough to get fully geared?
if pikaboo posted the same thing they would slob on his knob like corn on the cob.
2s is deflated, but itâs still early in the season. I have pugged with a ton of people who just want 1800. In a few weeks, it will be 1950. Too many people still grinding gear.
I get geared some seasons but seasons like this one? Why bother?