I’m a casual pvper. I’m not any good, but I’ve played arena at least an hour a week the whole season.
On my pevoker, I have 72 2v2 games played on one character with 23 wins rated 1562, and 101 2v2 games played on my rsham with 53 games won rated 1818. I’ve also done around 10 solo shuffle games. My season reward progress is 22%.
Last season, I did the same but bounced around on more characters. I ended the season at maybe 10%.
It’s a participation trophy. Why is the grind so bad?
Shuffle doesn’t give progress if somebody leaves, 2v2 gives fractional percentage.
The threshold is only something like 1000 rating, I think, so those initial 10-11 games or so don’t really do anything. Also 3v3 gives a lot of progress, like 1% per. RBGs also give a decent chunk.
Dear OP,
Thank you for sharing your insightful concerns regarding the current state of Player vs. Player (PvP) mechanics and balance within World of Warcraft. Your message underscores several critical aspects of the PvP experience that resonate with many players in the community. In this response, I will aim to provide a comprehensive examination of the issues you raised, along with an analysis of the underlying mechanics, balance considerations, and potential solutions to enhance the PvP environment.
PvP balance in World of Warcraft is a dynamic and multifaceted challenge. The objective is to create a competitive environment where all classes and specializations have the opportunity to excel, while also ensuring that skill and strategy play pivotal roles in determining outcomes. Achieving this balance requires a nuanced approach, as changes to one aspect of the game can have far-reaching implications for the broader PvP landscape.
Your message highlights several key issues that merit closer examination:
**1. Class Imbalance:
Class imbalance remains a persistent concern in PvP. Certain classes and specializations often dominate the meta, leading to a homogenized experience where players feel compelled to choose specific classes to remain competitive. This undermines the diversity and richness of the PvP environment.
**2. Gear Discrepancies:
Gear discrepancies significantly impact PvP outcomes. Players with higher item levels or better gear often have a substantial advantage, which can overshadow skill and strategy. This creates a barrier to entry for new or returning players, who may struggle to compete on an uneven playing field.
**3. Crowd Control (CC) Mechanics:
Crowd control mechanics play a critical role in PvP encounters. However, the prevalence and duration of CC abilities can lead to frustrating gameplay experiences, where players find themselves unable to act for extended periods. Balancing CC to ensure it is impactful without being overbearing is crucial.
**4. Burst Damage and Healing:
The balance between burst damage and healing is another critical factor. High burst damage can lead to extremely short encounters, while excessive healing can prolong fights indefinitely. Striking the right balance ensures that PvP encounters are dynamic and engaging.
**5. Communication and Coordination:
Effective communication and coordination are essential in team-based PvP modes, such as arenas and battlegrounds. Players who can communicate and strategize effectively often have a significant advantage, highlighting the importance of teamwork and synergy.
Class imbalance is a multifaceted issue that arises from various factors, including class design, talent choices, and synergy with other classes. To address this, a holistic approach is required:
**1. Regular Balance Updates:
Frequent balance updates are essential to address disparities between classes. By monitoring performance metrics and player feedback, developers can make targeted adjustments to ensure that no class consistently outperforms others.
**2. Diverse Playstyles:
Encouraging diverse playstyles within each class can mitigate the impact of imbalances. Offering multiple viable talent choices and playstyles ensures that players can adapt to different situations and opponents, reducing the dominance of a single meta.
**3. Community Engagement:
Engaging with the community through forums, surveys, and PTR testing can provide valuable insights into class balance. Players often have firsthand experience with the strengths and weaknesses of their classes, making their feedback invaluable.
Gear discrepancies can create significant barriers to entry and progression in PvP. To address this, several measures can be implemented:
**1. Scaling Mechanisms:
Implementing gear scaling mechanisms in PvP can help level the playing field. By normalizing gear levels, players can compete based on skill rather than gear disparities, creating a more balanced and fair environment.
**2. Accessible Gear Acquisition:
Making PvP gear more accessible through various avenues, such as conquest points, battleground rewards, and weekly quests, ensures that players can progress without feeling disadvantaged. Providing catch-up mechanisms for returning players can also help mitigate gear discrepancies.
**3. Skill-Based Rewards:
Rewarding players based on their skill and performance, rather than purely on gear, can incentivize participation and progression. Titles, mounts, and cosmetic rewards can provide meaningful incentives without impacting gameplay balance.
Crowd control mechanics are integral to PvP, but their prevalence and duration can lead to frustrating gameplay experiences. Balancing CC requires careful consideration:
**1. CC Diminishing Returns:
Implementing diminishing returns on CC abilities can prevent players from being locked down for extended periods. By reducing the duration of successive CCs, players have more opportunities to act and counter their opponents.
**2. CC Break Abilities:
Providing each class with abilities to break out of CC can enhance gameplay dynamics. These abilities should have cooldowns to ensure strategic use, preventing overreliance while offering counterplay options.
**3. Visual and Audio Cues:
Enhancing visual and audio cues for CC abilities can improve player awareness and reaction times. Clear indicators of incoming CC can help players prepare and respond more effectively.
The balance between burst damage and healing is critical to ensuring dynamic and engaging PvP encounters:
**1. Burst Damage Tuning:
Regularly tuning burst damage abilities to ensure they are impactful without being overwhelming is essential. This can prevent scenarios where players are eliminated in a single global cooldown, allowing for more strategic engagements.
**2. Healing Efficiency:
Balancing healing efficiency ensures that healers can mitigate damage without prolonging fights indefinitely. Adjusting mana costs, cooldowns, and healing output can create a balanced dynamic between damage and healing.
**3. Defensive Cooldowns:
Providing each class with defensive cooldowns can create counterplay opportunities against burst damage. These abilities should have cooldowns to encourage strategic use, preventing overreliance.
Effective communication and coordination are vital in team-based PvP modes. Several measures can enhance these aspects:
**1. In-Game Communication Tools:
Implementing robust in-game communication tools, such as voice chat and customizable chat channels, can facilitate coordination. Clear communication can significantly impact team performance and strategy.
**2. Team Synergy Incentives:
Incentivizing team synergy through rewards and achievements can encourage players to work together. Recognizing and rewarding effective teamwork can foster a cooperative environment.
**3. Community Resources:
Providing community resources, such as guides, tutorials, and forums, can help players improve their communication and coordination skills. Sharing best practices and strategies can enhance overall gameplay.
Community feedback is invaluable in addressing PvP balance and mechanics. Developers must actively engage with the community to gather insights and make informed decisions:
**1. Transparency:
Maintaining transparency about balancing decisions and the rationale behind them fosters trust and understanding. Regular updates and communication can keep the community informed and engaged.
**2. Feedback Loops:
Creating feedback loops where players can share their experiences and suggestions ensures that developers have a comprehensive understanding of the PvP environment. This can guide future balancing efforts.
**3. Collaborative Testing:
Involving the community in testing new mechanics and balance changes through PTR and beta testing can provide valuable data and insights. This collaborative approach can identify potential issues before they are implemented in the live game.
In conclusion, PvP balance and mechanics in World of Warcraft are complex and multifaceted challenges that require continuous attention and refinement. Addressing class imbalance, gear discrepancies, crowd control mechanics, burst damage, healing, and communication are critical to creating a fair and engaging PvP environment. By implementing targeted measures, engaging with the community, and maintaining transparency, we can work towards a more balanced and enjoyable PvP experience.
Thank you for bringing these important issues to light. I look forward to hearing more thoughts and experiences from the community as we continue this discussion.
Best regards,
Paris
World of Warcraft Player and Enthusiast
Oh wow, what an immense time commitment. Blizzard, shower this man with rewards asap!
All jokes aside, the games don’t count until you’re past 1k, and you’ve divided what incredibly little time you’ve played arena between 2 brackets and 2 characters, whereas if you dislike arena so much, you should have just focused on one character and one bracket.
It’s not. You’re just lazy 
You also feel entitled to a reward without putting in the required effort, and are spending time crying about it because you don’t like pvp enough to invest meaningful amounts of time into it.
You could have have knocked out a few extra % alone on the progress bar if you were cranking out games instead of whining about a participation reward taking too long to achieve.
What makes you feel compelled to obtain the mount in the first place? You don’t need to have every mount in the game, and it just seems odd to expect a free pvp mount when you do very little pvp content.
Correct, but you’ve hardly participated, and for what participation you did have, you spent most of it bouncing between characters and/or brackets at sub 1k rating, so in effect, you weren’t even participating in terms of doing the content required for the mount (e.g., winning games over 1k cr).
The seasonal pvp mount is there to encourage you to play regularly throughout an entire season. Anyone that does this will get the mount no problem, and in most cases, complete the progress bar many times over.
An hour a week is nothing. If that’s all you can afford to and/or are willing to commit to pvp, then pvp rewards are not your priority, which is fine, but you shouldn’t expect a free pvp reward for incorrectly allocating roughly 1 hour per week to getting it, not to mention that roughly 1 hour wasn’t even entirely spent actually playing/winning games above 1k cr.
The seasonal reward isn’t that bad. But the issue remains is the lack of rewards in general and most being tied to rating where you only see about 10ish % of the player base ever get to. Shuffle has helped a little with that because it removed the LFG barrier but overall PvP just needs more grindy rewards that aren’t tied to rating at all. Rewards for the top end of the ladder are fine and there probably should even be more but right now seasonal rewards are really only obtained by a small amount of players.
Yeah, seasonal reward track just for casual play would be cool. 
Honor level is stale and sort of unapproachable.
Not to mention the rewards from honor level are plain and a lot of mount recolors. Was never developed. The idea should have worked but it was like a lot of things, just canned after it’s initial implementation. It was like dueler’s guild that was put in during BfA. Another idea that if developed at all could have been a fun little 1v1 game mode. But it was put in and left to rot. Kind of sad honestly. Most people didn’t/don’t even know the dueler’s league existed.
I think it’s valid for someone who doesn’t know how it all works to ask these questions. No idea why you’re being so aggro.
He’s talking about the entirely participation based mount reward. I don’t think he’s lazy if he’s qued up nearly 200 rated games. If you’re new just trying to get a reward, I think it’s reasonable to expect to get it after that time investment.
I don’t think you’d reasonably need to commit more than an hour a week for that mount.
This thread mad weird and condescending for it being made by a seemingly new player with zero ego about their skills.
I’m over here with the opposite. What am i suppose to do with 20 vicious saddles and 2k marks of honor?
Buy all the mounts on both factions.
Ensembles/arsenals from old vendors.
Alt class sets, too
It takes an inordinate amount of wins to get the saddles and you have to do it twice because the first one is always the current mount. My wife is constantly trying to get me to do this on one of her toons and I have no real drive because it’s an annoying grind when you’re just queueing to get the saddle. It’s different when you queue for fun, it will be a lot easier for people to q up RBGB next expansion and get it
I wish I could sell my saddles for 1k gold.
youre assuming i haven’t done this already 
Exactly… 1k is nothing but a the same time something lol
Can’t always coddle people. I wasn’t aggro, but instead just telling it like it is.
You (and probably the poster as well) just don’t like what I said because it isn’t what you wanted to hear.
Yeah, and on top of going the wrong way about getting it, the op is crying about putting in roughly 10 hours (check my math) towards getting it throughout nearly 3 months, those 10 hours including losses and many games put in at sub 1k cr.
Throughout the course of nearly 3 months, this is nothing, but we can agree to disagree. Of that nearly 200 rated games, remember that WINNING ABOVE 1k CR matters, not just queueing games and losing and/or grinding away wins while below 1k cr across multiple toons.
Why not? PvErs gladly spend much more time than that for their reputation mounts, ksm mount, vault cap each week, etc.
Sounds like you just aren’t really into pvp either, but still feel entitled to the rewards that pvp offers.
Again, why do you think this? Why does being new entitle someone to anything?
6 pack abs are generally a participation award too, but most don’t want to grind, and those expecting to achieve them by getting a new gym membership and putting in 1 hour a week working out are just delusional/entitled. The mount (or the 6 pack abs) isn’t important enough to the person, which is fine, but at the end of the day, they know what they need to do to get the reward, and like it or not, they should just do it instead of complaining about why they didn’t get the result(s) from the work that they didn’t do.
This case is no different really, although I’m sure you will disagree.
What you and I think are both subjective, but at the end of the day, there is a goal post that Blizzard set (a remarkably low one to be fair, regardless as to whether or not you are a new player), and instead of just simply taking 2 minutes to review what you need to do, and then setting out to do it, the op put in a minimal amount of effort, and then proceeds to complain that the process is taking too long.
Again, just telling it how it is. Them being a new player has nothing to do with it, nor does their ego about their skills. I didn’t attack either of these.
If anything was “attacked”, it was me calling them entitled and/or lazy, which has nothing to do with their game time or their skills, and is as far as I can see, accurate.
Hate all you want, twist it all you want, take is personal if you want (it isn’t though). Crying about a participation reward taking too long, while hardly participating (imo), and while there are numerous pve participation rewards that similarly take weeks/months of mindless grinding, is what it is, which is lazy and entitled.
The reason the op and you feel otherwise is likely because you don’t enjoy pvp content that much, which is fine, but you shouldn’t feel entitled to the rewards from pvp content (no matter what the reward is), and regard the effort/time required as too much simply because you don’t enjoy the content (and/or are not that good at the content).
(I’m OP. I updated my character to the one I’m playing)
Season 4 launched april 23rd. That means I have at least 12 hours logged doing rated pvp which has achieved me 22% progress. I think it’d take around 7 hours to get the m+ participation trophy, KSM. This season’s raiding participation trophy, Voyaging Wilderling, requires beating each raid on normal. It’d take maybe 6 hours mid season.
Doing 2s, it’d take me maybe 36 hours to get the mount vs 6.5ish for other participation trophies. That’s 6x longer than the other participation trophies.
The guys arguing I’m not hardcore enough for the mount are missing the point. This is not some bragging rights mount. This mount should be a participation trophy designed to entice casual players to try pvp. Convincing casuals to try pvp is the only way you’re going to grow the arena player base. At the current gain rates, it’s impossible for casual pvpers to get it, so they’re not even going to try. That hurts arena’s popularity.
BTW, I 100% agree pvp should get a plunderstorm-like rewards track every season, but I’d settle for them fixing the bait they’re currently using for arena.
I have all the saddle mounts and it doesn’t give me more saddles. 
What does it give you?
2s Just take a lot longer man. RBGs are a lot quicker.
Nothing?
It just looks like this after I get my seasonal mount (fluffy rapto)