I think a lot of us are frustrated with how Blizzard decided to limit gearing through PvP content forcing us to participate in PvE just to compete.
Why does gear exist at all in PvP? Why not just use stat templates for each spec? They did this in Legion but let gear influence stats by 10% as I recall. I really think they should go full-stop and just make stats completely predetermined by Blizz HQ.
Pros:
Everyone is on an equal playing field. If you lose in a mirror match it’s only because they were better than you (or have better racials…)
Balancing is far easier to implement and doesn’t require abstract changes to talents that dance around PvE viability. Rogues too strong? Turn down their Agility.
Rewards and player motivation can be focused on the stuff we actually want like titles, mounts, transmog sets.
Could literally be implemented in one patch fairly easily. PvP gear rewards still make sense as they allow a PvP player to transition into PvE content throughout endgame.
Blizzard has said they want to limit PvP gearing to make arenas more accessible to PvE players, but what could possibly be more accessible than not needing gear?
Templates were bad. PvP scaling is bad. There really isn’t a good solution other than making sure we have access to the most powerful gear through PvP only…and also I don’t like how higher rated players get better gear. Used to be that we all ended up with the same gear eventually, it just took bad players longer. Even with the same gear the bad players will get crapped on by good players, so I really don’t see what was wrong with that system. Also give us the previous season’s arena set for honor. That way any alt can come in and grind honor to at least get on somewhat even footing.
It depends who you ask. I personally love the idea of a templated pvp system where everyone is on par gear-wise and skill is what determines who climbs, not who grinds more gear. It also exposes which classes are actually imbalanced.
The problem, is that player participation inevitably goes down because there’s less grinding. So anyone that’s awful at pvp but wants to make up for that with gear, generally stops pvping and you’re only left with the best players fighting each other over and over. This also looks bad for Blizzard, since less people are in-game and it makes their numbers look like the game is tanking.
And nobody listens to you after you bragged about being r1 TBC but saying there were no glad mounts back then and that’s why you don’t have one, doubled down and told everyone you move with your arrow keys and proved that you have a brain the texture of raw chicken breast
I showed screenshots of getting to the top, and admitted that I was wrong about the mounts since I constantly swapped teams and forgot about having to stay on a top team at the end of the season to get the mount. You on the other hand, haven’t shown proof of being anywhere close to to me. Nice try though lol.
People say they want skill to be the determining factor because it sounds good on a forum.
The truth is, people who are bad seldom know they are bad and when they outgear an opponent, they feel skilled and have fun. As such, they keep doing it.
When all that’s left is skill and you basically mandate anyone who isn’t in the top 50% of players has to lose more than they win at all times and gear progression doesn’t matter, PvP dies. Because if it’s bad for players under the 50% mark, imagine how bad it is for players under the 20% one. They’ll just quit. And each week, a new bottom is formed, until all thats left is a handful of Arena Diehards wondering why Blizzard doesn’t care about Arena and the dozens of people still doing it.
Yeah no thank you, i like having my pvp gear i do not like pve and i like gear progression. i agree make pvp gear less frustrating but do not remove it
The honor to upgrade is too much. It’s great that I can get free 249 on everybody now, sure, but I rarely get close because I don’t want to grind the honor on all my characters.
But, all this easily be offset by offering a reward system focused on something other than gear. Such as what the OP suggested:
I totally disagree with the narrative that PVP becomes boring unless there is a gear grind. I can see the logic behind pvp participation falling when gear is equalized and there is no incentivized reward system to replace the gear reward system that was in place before. This is why participation fell in the past. People are essentially talking about a game quality improvement when asking to adjust the power creep or remove the gear gap. They are not necessarily focusing on a method to ensure pvp participation stays at a certain level. However, mounts, transmogs, titles, and battle pets are sought after just as much as gear is in game. So Blizz would need to be prepared to have that alternative in place.
There was huge gear grind in place at the launch of Shadowlands for PVP. Since the launch we have seen PVP participation decline in huge amounts. The PVP player base has literally been cut in half. So not only is the argument about a gear grind being a must nothing but a strawman, it is just outright incorrect.
With so many people complaining about the power creep and the gear gap, we can safely say a good majority of the community understand the situation and want the gear gap narrowed or removed. People know what they like or what they want. To force feed the people something they do not want is a sure fire way to see participation decline. That is just common sense.
Dont listen to any player on these forums that said templates were “BaD foR tHe GamE!111” they weren’t . I remember pvp in legion being the most balanced it had ever been because of templates. Also templates made pvp in wow very linear. Basically hit max level, and queue it up. That was it. No grinding conduits, renown, honor nothing. I swear players on these forums are totally delusional when it comes to templates. and its no wonder this place is considered a massive joke to a LARGE majority of the pvp community.
it has a 10% delta depending on your ilvl and it also had a borrowed power system that added to that delta
i’d agree with a system that was full on templates with zero delta, be a zillion times better than bliz constantly pushing down pvp gearing so it can’t shortcut a single thing for pve grinds
but the mop/wod were superior to every other gearing system, 100% equality for any player who put in some time - fast base honor gear that wasn’t that far below the conquest stuff
only complaint anyone ever had about those systems was mid season catchup for alts or new players, but could have been easily solved by huge conquest point boosts for anyone starting later in the season
each conquest set turned into the honor set for the next season so you didn’t have to regrind an honor set every season and got some lasting benefit from your gear grinds
it was rewarding every single step of the way, and completely fair except for pve gear that occasionally was OP in pvp