More than one thing can be true at the same time. Every time someone posts about gearing problems elites brigade in to say gear doesn’t matter, it’s a skill issue. They are probably right about that most of the time. Ludus Labs was very sobering. If you asked me how good I was I would have said probably a 6 out of 10. According to the Ludus Labs i’m the bottom 7% for ret paladins at my item level in 2v2. With 318 games played, I have 149 wins and a 1000 even rating. All yolo, and all double dps, but yeah, I suck.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t still loads of bad design choices making things worse. Everyone says RBGs are free, easy 1600. Just Yolo to 1400 then join good groups they say. Getting into groups is difficult without gear or pvp credentials and you do lose rating before 1400. Ask me how i know. It’s great that lots of people are doing RBGs but the LFG is a trash way to access “the easiest” gear path.
Lower arena brackets are filled with carries and bad PVE players with tons of gear. I fought a 216 DH Tank at 900 MMR tonight. I literally couldn’t damage him as fast as he healed himself and I had to spam WoG on myself and he still bled me out easily. A bad pve player with 210+ might be a joke to elite pvpers, but for people trying to learn and gear up they may as well be raid bosses.
TLDR: I admit I need to git gud, but the “easy” path to gear (RBGs) is a suckfest of waiting in LFG to maybe get 1 or 2 games an hour and the most accessible rated format (2v2) is absolutely brutal. But i’m sure Blizz is selling a lot of tokens, so good for them I guess.
I don’t think elites say gear doesn’t matter, because gear does matter, but they say that you should improve your skill before you come to the forums asking for changes because you can still easily outplay better geared people in the lower brackets because they are terrible at this game.
Gear is huge, and is definitely a reason why some people can’t progress in arena until they’ve maxed out their gear for their specific rating. That being said, the brackets aren’t made up of entirely max geared players, and being a few ilvls higher isn’t a huge advantage that overcomes skill level.
If you can’t get 1400 with 197 ilvl gear, the problem is you.
If you can’t get 1600 with 207 ilvl gear, the problem is you.
If you can’t get 1800 with 213 ilvl gear, etc. etc.
RBGs are bad always have been, 2s have a lot of carries where you’re facing glads at 1600, 3s are much more balanced overall.
entry level is farrr too low. It’s not an exaggeration to say a full geared BFA 50 has better stats than a entry level 60, despite the level difference. which usually blizzard has taken measures to avoid since the frustration in TBC where t3 was still being used in like kara and stuff.
Edit: I don’t play often, and I have a lot to learn. So I really did know it was me.
Sometimes getting rating is also like bashing your head against a wall until it clicks. You have to put yourself in a situation x amount of times (varies for everyone), and look at that situation each time saying, “what did I do wrong”. Sometimes the answer is, ./shrug, but most of the time it is “I didn’t…”.
Edit Edit: The biggest thing i’m learning I under utilize is my UI. I’m working on WA now to show me opp’s cd’s, trying to find a better way to show my CD’s. Macro targeting in Arena, and keybind work. It’s a process, and you get worse before you get better. But i strongly believe that this all will make me better.
I feel like people brigade saying this is because if you’re bad, how would you even know if gear is the reason you lost. You get tons of people that get set up globalled, no trinket no defensives and complain that ‘said ability’ is broken/unbeatable. Gear matters for sure, but the people acting like you need 220 to get 1400-1600 are straight up delusional.
The fact that my win percentage and rank peaked in week 2 of the season suggests that gear might be at least part of the issue. It doesn’t prove it, of course, but I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that I was doing much better when everyone had roughly the same gear. Yes, the ladders are volatile in the start of the season but that cuts both ways. You go up against some really skilled players that are just starting their climb as well as other baddies like me. Getting in late on the RBG gravy train really hurt me as well.
Because like the OP said, both are true. Skills matter & gear matters. The people in the 1300 & 1400 (i.e. me) don’t have the skill to beat other equally geared people consistently, so we don’t have the ability to be higher geared people much at all.
This isn’t to say gear is everything because if you win your “should win” matches than the few times you meet over geared people shouldn’t be that much of an effect on your CR.
What the 1300 - 1799 range needs to focus on though, is what they can control. They can’t control ilvl of opps, they can’t control skill of other players, but they can control their skill.
I completely understand gear can be frustrating, but I don’t see over geared players as much as people say. However I feel some spells are a bit OP, but I highly doubt Blizz watches the forums for tips, and all you can do is focus on recognizing those skills and how to beat them.
That depends on the average ilvl floating around at that ranking. Something we can’t see - All i know is that the majority of the games i get put into involve people with 5-15k more HP than me.
I’m purely speculating here but lets say that at 193 ilvl an about 28.5k, average healthpool at around 1k mmr seems to be about 31-34k - given my mage has about 204 ilvl id say its safe to assume the average ilvl would then be about 207-210 at 1k MMR. So for staters that player has 10-20% more HP than me, and definitely more damage throughput, probably about 30%. So you’re playing at a net 20-25% handicap.
It follows that if you’re on average playing at a 20-30% disadvantage between the combination of damage output from raw stat scaling and the relative health pools. You probably need to be playing at a skill level equivalent of maybe 400 MMR higher to climb 200 MMR. Is that impossible? No. But it is putting up an artificial (yet very real) wall of difficulty from a ilvl disparity handicap.
The intro ilvl for arena is between 197-200+, if you are lower than that you haven’t done enough due diligence to queue competitively. If you are struggling to hit the next bracket, being 1400, with 200 ilvl gear, the fault lies with yourself and your team. Even if some players have 213+ ilvl, the difference is not as great as you say here, and from my personal anecdotal experience, the majority of players sub 1400 are between 200-207 ilvl. This gearing process repeats itself at every bracket, 1600, 1800, 2100, etc. Where a 220 ilvl player would only be slightly disadvantaged against a 226 ilvl player at the top end of gearing.
The majority of players who started at the beginning of the season should be finished gearing already or within the next few weeks, unfortunately those players will have an advantage over people who started late until the conquest cap catches up.
From my personal anecdotal experience, I run into mostly people between 29k to 32k hp or roughly 200 to 207 ilvl at sub 1200. When climbing from 1400 to 1600, it was mostly 36k, or 215 ilvl. The ilvl curve is steeper than the MMR curve - when you’re trying to climb to that next breakpoint your facing a significant handicap at average MMR.
I’ll provide the ilvl difference, and the relative % difference of your performance vs someone elses.
Source: WCL
ilvl 190: 2.8k dps - 27k
ilvl 200: 3k dps - 30k hp
ilvl 207: 3.7k dps - 32k hp
ilvl 214 : 4.2k dps - 35k hp
ilvl 220 : 5.2k dps - 38k hp
ilvl 226 : 6.0k dps - 41k hp
Each 6 ilvl increment jump is approximately 10-20% in damage and 8-10% in HP. Let’s pessimistically call it a net 15% handicap as you die 10% slower and kill 20% faster.
Every 12 ilvl increment jump is approximately a 32-43% in damage and 17-20% jump in HP. Let’s pessimistically call it a net 30% handicap as you die 20% slower and kill 40% faster.
You’re typically going to face a minimum 15% handicap on average if we assume the people at 1600 have that gear, realistically, its higher because you get PVE monkies that have been relying on that gear for cheese. I’m not arguing that its not possible to outskill that difference, I’m very simply stating that fighting against a 15-30% handicap when climbing is more frustrating than fun.
ez.