I heard some rumors that you might be considering a WOD style gearing for PVP gear. As I recall, this system had two tiers of gear: an honor and a conquest set. Both would scale up in PVP activities but would remain at base levels in PVE activities. The conquest would be best gear for PVP activities (slightly better than the best PVE gear) but would be ok to mediocre for PVE activities (I think unscaled it was either LFG raid or normal raid ilevel). As I recall it was very easy to get the honor set and I think it also had a faster catch up mechanism for conquest.
This would address some issues:
PVErs will no longer feel that PVP (in particular rated activities) is “required” to gear up. The WOD system will essentially make PVP gear nearly useless for PVE, so this would “solve” that issue. I believe that PVE should be the best way to gear for PVE activities (The valor points changes and increasing drop rates in PVE activities could easily do this). However, making PVP gear nearly useless for PVE activities is overkill. If your going to go WOD on us, at least make conquest gear scale up in PVE activities based on rating. That way you reward people for doing high level rated content. Without these carrots, I am pretty sure rated pvp would die.
Address the absurd amount of time it takes to get upgraded honor gear and conquest gear for new toons (alts). I completely agree with improving this but there are other much better ways (like simply increasing conquest per win or decreasing honor needed to upgrade items).
Decrease the importance of gear in pvp by reducing the ilevel gap: make it more about “skill than gear”. In my opinion the ilevel gap is too high. But after watching people trash legion templates (where gear didnt matter at all, and it was all about skill), watching the huge enthusiasm for classic (where gear is gear), and human nature being what it is I am not sure people really want a fair system. Regardless if you choose to do this, it can be addressed in other ways.
My main problem with WOD style gearing is that it completely separates PVP and PVE gearing and therefore the communities. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of people who want this and on the surface it is an easy fix for the above issues. However, it results in longer term/deeper problems especially for the much smaller PVP community. Lets face it PVP is a side show, maybe slightly more important than pet battles. Maybe. When you are a side show you dont get a lot resources to fix important issues such as bugs (if mindcontrol bug was a PVE issue they would have fixed it in days), balancing, and new activities. I think it would be better if the PVP community was more integrated with the larger PVE community and that includes being part of the core aspect of pve gearing/progression; even if finding a balance or a better system would take extra work. WOW, being nearly 2 decades old, is slowly dying away. Segregating its smaller and smaller population into little boxes will just accelerate this.
TLDR: Although WOD PVP gearing system may address some important issues it really is a cheap/lazy solution that just separates PVP from PVE. We all know that PVP is treated like a minor side show and this will just reinforce that. This will lead to even less resources for pvp (yes it really is possible) such as fixing bugs, balance changes, and new activities. There are better ways to fixing those issues while still making PVP an important aspect of the overall game.
The pros of this system far outweighs the cons. Right now a lot of pvers who don’t even like PvP are pvping. This isn’t a good thing. This doesn’t make them enjoy the game more. Source: my PvE friends.
PvP gear needs some sort of nerf. I’m basically stating that as a fact, because it is a fact. Now, the area where we can actually have a discussion about this is what kind of form this nerf should take. Should PvP gear have the same power level as it is now, but the acqusition rate slowed down by half or more? Remove the vendors? Or does it make sense to nerf PvP gear in a way that doesn’t effect PvP players for PvP, but solves the issue of PvP gear in PvE? Because I feel like that last option, with the WoD scaling implementation, is probably the best option for everyone. Unless there’s some other alternative that fixes this problem that needs to be fixed, the WoD gearing schema seems like the best solution.
I like the way it is now, I mainly pve, but have now gotten into pvp because it matters now with the content I enjoy… I was stuck a bit on gearing so I jumped into pvp and ended up going up quite a bit in ilvl, now I am progressing even better in M+ bcus I got rid of some of my lower ilvl armor with some pvp gear, I hope they don’t change this system, pvp is fun, especially if it helps you in other aspects of the game.
Legion/bfa/stands all have a tiny portion of the massive pvp participation of MoP and WoD
Reason was the pvp gearing and reward structure that did NOT revolve around rating and it was BIS for everyone who pvp’ s - also had a solid quick honor set that was a obtainable in 1-2 days tops and a small power gap between honor and conquest gear
The reason Ion said they were looking at going back to WoD is because participation sucks and the two systems (pvp vs pve) are not compatible as they have different goals
PVE should definitely be the best way to gear for PVE. WOD gearing style makes PVP gear essentially worthless for PVE; that’s overkill. How would you PVErs like it if your gear was essentially worthless in bgs?
They have lots of ways of slowing down the acquisition of worthwhile gear from pvp without just throwing it in the trash. For example: decreasing the inflation in brackets (so more powerful items get acquired slowly), or gating worthwhile PVP gear that scales up in PVE behind rating/time. Its like balancing classes: you dont take a weak class and buff it to godlike levels or take a strong class and nerf it to the point of uselessness.
Or they could just buff/increase PVE gearing.
Yea its more work then just the bandaid/easy fix of WOD gearing, but that essentially segregates the game which is a bad idea in the long term. WOW is getting older and smaller with its population slowly dying off. I dont PVE but just by glancing at the forums I see a lot of people complaining on alliance servers of not being able to push high level keys because there arent just enough people there. We are segregated into two different factions (ally/horde) for lore reasons but that segregation has negative effects -especially for the smaller community (alliance).
I’m curious to see how much valor actually helps given that you still actually need to get the item to drop at all and then need to have the right achievement to upgrade it.
Right now Blizz’s main concern is to retain subscription numbers.
Mythic+ dungeons appear to be a pain point and many players stopped paying after a bad experience in Mythic+. The idea of separating PvP and PvE gear is to use it as a band-aid fix.
This way, PvP players don’t ever have to get into M+ dungeons again, so the potential leavers won’t be hurt by M+ and leave.
Therefore, as Blizz hopes, the (although small) PvP community can continue to grow with more paying players.
Thats great. How were you able to get inside information on the company? Good to see Blizzard is sharing that information with some people. You are lucky.
I think they should do it. So pvp gear is good in casual pvp modes and casual pvpers can catch up eventually.
The conquest will be obtainable by everyone with the max ilvl given to both casuals and pvpers.
There will be two item lvls. The one for pvp will be fixed. The one not for pvp will be for all other game modes and be upgradable with valor so right of the bat isn’t any better, but it can still be upgraded if you want to pve.
Where is your source that WOD had massive participation in rated pvp? All I remember about WOD rated were tons of script botters and fly hacking (or maybe the fly hacking was in MOP). Furthermore there were more subs in MOP/WOD then in later expansions. I know for a fact that rated PVP participation is through the roof now, compared to legion/bfa.
Regardless, they can crunch the ilvl gap in pvp and create a solid, easily obtainable honor set while still allowing PVP gear obtainable in high level play to still have some use for in PVE.
I don’t like separate gearing for different activities because it makes the gear useless for anything but more of that activity. Gear that’s good everywhere is a much more appealing carrot to chase, regardless of where it comes from.
But maybe I’m weird and people like pigeonholing their characters into one thing unless they juggle multiple gear grinds.
I hate WoW pvp. It’s an unbalanced dumpster fire, and if I wanted to play some pvp content which was unbalanced but at least fun, I’d go play something like LoL.
Yet at the moment, pvp is literally the best gearing route in the game. So I’m having to bang out 1800 on my toons, which I absolutely hate, because it’s an easier (and more efficient) gearing path than heroic raiding or M+.
I agree PVE should be the best way to gear up for PVE. Just saying PVP shouldnt be completely useless for PVE gearing. If its useless, its going to remain the side show it is. If its a side show, Blizz wont bother to balance it and fix bugs.
Again, it shouldnt be too hard to find a spot for PVP gearing where its not the best gearing route for PVE and not completely useless.