After 3 weeks of SoD it's safe to say: The PvP side of this seasonal gamemode is kinda lacking

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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I had a great time with SoD when it comes to the leveling process, discovering the new runes and clearing BfD with my guild. It was a fun experience, and I think that PvE-wise SoD has a lot of potential.

I didn’t start SoD for the PvE content though, ever since Burning Crusade I have considered myself as a PvP main, and what can I say about my experience so far? Not that much good to be honest.

Even if we’re going to ignore the constant layering and event progression bugs which are ruining many Ashenvale encounters, some even to this day, the event in itself is nothing special in my opinion. It doesn’t really encourage players fighting for control on the map, instead people play it like some kind of a PvE boss rush mode, even going as far as stacking 10 raids on a single base and then just hearthing to the next base immediately after. This has nothing to do with players participating in an epic war theater, it’s just a mindless speedrun against NPCs, just like modern Alterac Valley.

But no big issue, right? Just stick to the things you know are great, like battlegrounds. Well, that’s sadly not how it worked out in SoD. The Ashenvale reputation gains are waaay higher than what you ever could achieve in Warsong Gulch matches, so you’re pretty much forced to participate in Ashenvale events until reaching the “Revered” reputation status.

And then there’s also the problem of premades running rampant in half of all available battlegrounds. In 99% of cases, a randomly thrown together PUG will never be able to compete with a group that has carefully picked their team composition, is stacking all kinds of world buffs and consumables, and is coordinating through voice chat. It’s simply not something that can ever be considered as a fair encounter, and there is no system in place to prevent premades from going against PUGs over and over again. I’m pretty sure that most people that tried out PvP in SoD for the first time by playing battlegrounds will never again consider it as a part of the game they deem enjoyable. So at this point, this just might be irreversible damage to the SoD PvP community.

Also I think that it’s kinda sad that if I’m going to see someone with the Exalted tabard in the future, I’m not going to think highly of them in any way, I’ll just shrug it off as someone who abused a broken system with no moral compass attached for hours on end.

And last but not least: Personally I think there should’ve been more PvP-exclusive rewards in Phase 1 of SoD. Right now, if you really want to compete against other players in PvP, you are not getting around to do your regular PvE content BfD runs, because besides Helmet, Neck, Cloak, Ring and Trinket, there is nothing there for pure PvPers to actually gear up from and have a fair shot at fighting other players who regularly went into the raid every 3 days. Rest in peace to all my PvP brethren who have zero interest in participating in endgame PvE content - I wouldn’t have done that either if it wasn’t for my in-game guild made of IRL friends.

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Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Sooo… you wanted not classic but cataclysm and retail with full PvP gear and no raiding? Good news for you, cata is releasing in 6 months and retail is already up. You can go there and have you char ready for PvP in a week.

You came to play CLASSIC plus, which ALWAYS has had PVE gear. I can tell you will have to raid in phase2, in phase3 and 4 so you can quit now (send me your gold).

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If you wanted to go ranking, how would you expect to farm 450k honor needed for rank14 (to overcome needing raid gear) without premades? Just saying pugs give you 5-8k honor per hour, that’s 56-80 hours at the best per week. 2 full-paying jobs lol. Nobody would ever do that

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This is true, especially at lower level brackets, vanilla WoW always had PvE gear. Though where I personally see the difference in SoD is how good the BfD raid gear actually is. Usually at this level spectrum all you could get in instances were bonuses to the basic status attributes like strength, agility, intelligence, etc.

But the BfD gear introduced a massive power creep in the form of even higher base stats in combination with for this bracket unheard of things like increased spell damage and healing done, melee/spell/ranged attack hit chance and HP/mana regeneration. People with normal world and instance drops are melting in the face of a fully-equipped BfD raider.

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Also gearing from bfd is problematic, only 2 drops from a boss and too much useless loot. Getting set pieces, epic staff, or the pearl from the end seems impossible. I’m raiding from the start and never even seen the epic staff drop, there is no difference between healing/damaging caster loot so everyone rolls it. Leather gearing is not better either.
Too much overlap and everyone can roll everything.

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Intentionally too. Blizzard did say the Ashenvale event was inspiried by Alterac Valley, and that it had a “PvE slant”.

The true PvP event of Ashenvale was supposed to be the build up phase. But they made farming PvE too effecient at that too.

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Soo after 3 weeks of SOD all you want is full BiS pvp gear obtained by solo queue only?

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PvP people act as if lvl 25 is supposed to have full PvP sets, arena and maybe even RBG rating attached, like it is end game content and not something we forget once lvl cap moves to 40. Of course rewards would be sparce it has been always like that for low lvl BGs.

What worries me, however are rune rewards locked behind content, that would mostly be skipped during leveling because of FOMO rush. If only Blizzard adds alternative ways to get runes like they did with warlock’s metamorphosis.

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Yeah I’ve just hit 25, ran my first 4 Warsong Gulch and it’s been against premades. It’s laughable. I could queue Premdes too and go against 10 random but it looks painfully boring.

There is also a factor where the group with the most Priests will win - no idea why Penance hasn’t been tweaked yet.

I never complained on these forums but it’s ridiculous. Will probably just stick to another game in my free time.

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Even if this was a thing, why does that bother you? You play your way that you enjoy and let other people play their way which they enjoy, either way both are getting something fun out of it and can progress with the rewards at their own pace.

Premade vs premade = equal challenge
Solo groups vs solo groups = equal challenge

Same thing, different methods of doing it.

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Because Players are not existing in a bubble.

Consequences of implementing seperate ques: Incentive to form premades drops away, as a result there will be close to zero Premade groups. People who enjoyed playing in a group are now lowkey forced into solo gameplay.

Congratulations, you eliminated an incentive to form groups in an MMORPG and enabled Solo-que-Gameplay (with all its toxicity, afkness, randomness etc.)

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that, is a complete and utter lie from someone has NEVER joined any pemades in SoD. This is how it works, chum.

"LFM ppl for WSG premade "
“LFM heals for WSG premade”

*joins group *

No comms, ppl you have never met before, random classes, no world buffs, everyone is a Grunt. The group you imagine does happen occasionally, but it’s like one in ten, so just stop the lies.

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Personally I would hate queuing BG as a solo healer, because ppl in solo queues are really bad, sometimes I feel like they don’t even know that there’s a flag and you need to capture and defend it. Don’t expect them to defend you ofc, but they will be mad if you won’t buff them all stamina each time for 400 mana.
And if Blizzard will force people to join only solo queues (in an MMO game btw) that will be total trash.

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That’s not how it works. SoloQueue is terrible because 95% of good players are in premades, because it’s easier. If premades are removed, all good players go to SoloQueue instead, so average pugs are better.
Same happened with retail SoloQueue, when it retail introduced SoloQueue arena with and gave incentive to play it for both noobs and pros, it became very skilled at 1800+ rating

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This. Its so absurd for me what some people here are fighting for. Like solo-que is not a good experience, in any game that requires teamplay, especially WoW.

Play stupid games win stupid prices I guess.

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If you want to know why this can’t be, read ours previous conversations
I don’t have to explain it to you in every single post

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I’m pretty sure experiencing solo BG as a healer will be the same even if they implement these changes, but what’s worse you won’t be able to team up with others for PvP BG which is stupid considering it’s an MMO.

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So the incentive to form a premade is to be able to stomp pugs, is that it?

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you’re funny wrong, that in the very same game in retail there’s a solo queue for arena. It’s fun above 1800+ rating for gamers, and above 1000 rating for casuals. It has a place for everyone, and it’s solo