Hello everyone,
Hope you’re all doing well.
This is 2nd part of my QQ thread in regards to PvP, balancing and all things related.
Previous thread was Current state of PvP (2021, Q1), enjoy the read if you will.
Not to go into too much of details this time, i’ll try to keep it short.
First things first, gear related issue.
Even thought general idea was to go back to Warlords’ type gearing, Blizzard has left some things out. (or rather, added them into PvE, without disabling them in PvP)
This of course, is Domination Gear and sockets they bring.
Max PvP gear is 246 baseline, with +13 ilvl increment in PvP combat. Last 2 Bosses in Mythic Sanctum drop 259 gear, with Domination Sockets. May I also add, some of this gear contains versatility, making it BiS PvP item from PvE sources.
Back in Warlords, certain items were disabled in PvP. This was stuff like trinkets from Archimonde, etc. I don’t see a reason why Domination Sockets aren’t either disabled in PvP, or there was an option for PvP players to obtain said sockets through PvP.
Now, second issue that affects players that play both PvP and PvE. Or more specifically, it affects Weekly Vault. If you choose PvP item as a PvE player, you’re likely to get benched. If you choose PvE item (say mastery/haste instead of versatility) - You automatically lower the chances of getting into LFG’s. This was working fine in the previous patch, as gear was limited to 226 from both sources, without the +13 ilv increments. Why isn’t there an option to pick both items, as they are no longer same ilv and serve different purposes? (a la BFA weekly chests)
Third issue - Catch up mechanisms.
This issue mainly exists due to the Weekly vault. Say 5 weeks into the season, if player A decides to reroll (for obviously many many reasons), they’re far, faaaaaar behind a player B due to weekly PvP participation. How far you ask? Let me do a quick math here for you and show you the actual problem.
Weekly cap is 800 points. 800 x 5 weeks is 4k points. In Translation, that is all player B is going to get within 5 weeks - A Weapon, Helmet, Chest and he’s 75 points from buying a ring.
HOWEVER. Player A has 4k points. And he has been lucky, like, luckiest anyone can be.
Player A scores a Weapon, Helmet, Chest, Legs AND shoulders from Weekly Vaults. That is WHOPPING 5125 Conquest points. To top it off? HE STILL HAS THE ORIGINAL 4K POINTS FROM WEEKLY CAPS. He can literally gear himself up, the only thing he would be missing points wise is 2 rings and 2 trinkets. (Seeing as Medallion is a dumb purchase, and 20 int/agi/str/whatever isn’t going to make much of a difference), he’s only missing 1750 Conquest points to fully gear up.
So, if you reroll by week 5, and you’re facing a player who’s been playing the same class for those 5 weeks, you’ll have 3 items, while mr. luckydo overthere will be decked out in gear, missing only 3 (4 with insignia) items.
Fourth issue - The amount of time that’s needed to cap conquests.
In 2’s, you get 25 conquests per a win. That’s 32 wins you need for a WEEKLY Cap.
This is an absurdly high number compared to previous expansions.
They should either increase the conquest amount gained per win, or lower the prices of items. IMHO, Pandaria model was the best - 180 Conquest per win, for example gloves cost 1650, Helmet cost 2250 and Weapons cost 3400. So it would be 10/13/19 wins respectively for the items. (However, keep in mind, MoP had a conq. earned requirement before you could buy weapon - 3 weeks worth of cap if i’m not mistaken)
Current system however:
Gloves cost 700, Helmet costs 875 and Weapon costs 1800. Per win you get 25
That’s 28/35/52 WINS respectively.
To buy weapon in Pandaria you had to play approximately 38 arenas (50% winrate, around 190minutes, if you had avg arena lasting 4 minutes + 1 minute ready timer) - 3 hours and 10 minutes to get weapon
To buy weapon in Shadowlands you have to play apporox 104 arenas (50% winrate, around 520 minutes, if you had avg arena lasting 4 minutes + 1 minute ready timer) 8 hours and 40ish minutes to get weapon, NOT INCLUDING THE CONQUEST TIER UPGRADES
Fifth issue Class balancing / tuning
Meta has changed, and hopefully will keep evolving. Seeing that Venthyr Arms is no longer meta, (at least from my experience so far), warms my heart.
However, here lies the problem.
PvE Changes are being pushed through to PvP as well. This sort of thing should not be happening. Hunters are currently dominating 2s ladders, and they’re getting a 10/15% flat buffs due to them being bottom on charts in PvE.
Sixth issue - Conduits
PvP needs some sort of a functionality to upgrade conduit traits, for example buying random lowest itemlevel trait (like the ones with Stygia) until 226 with Honor. Above that, same, but with Conquest points
Technical things aside, the current actual balance in PvP that is problematic:
- Hybrid healing
- WW Damage (still lol, it’s been problematic from the start of Shadowlands)
- Disc priest damage could be lower, mana regen could be higher
- Ret Paladin damage too spiky, still able to 2 shot people (I get it, I get it, fast meta and all that, but seriously AoE blind into 2 shot is broken, especially if you trinket it into HoJ and then get 2 shot.)
- Hunters dominating ladder and still receiving buffs from PvE into PvP; read above
- Due to meta being fast, all healer damage could be amped up a bit, to match discs’. IMHO, as noted in the previous thread, - All healers should be given a proper DPS rotation, and should be properly tuned for PvP combat.
- Assassination damage, bruh i get it, they needed some lovin’ cause they’ve been bad last patch, but damn, you gave them too much lovin’
TL:DR - Domination Sockets in PvP, Weekly Vault issue when playing both PvP and PvE, Weekly Vault issue with catch up (or lack thereof), Amount of time spend farming for an item sucks and of course, my rambling about PvP balance.
TL:DR 2 - Provide us with more hotfixes containing PvP tuning more often; Tune some classes, Tune hybrid healing, Tune burst, Tune healer damage.
I’m looking forward to see how the meta is going to shake up once we unlock renown 48 legendaries, and the last tier of soulbinds.
Season 1 was warrior garbage, Season 2 seems like it’s shaping up to be Hunter garbage fest. Please give us PvP updates more often, to shake up the meta and not keep it stale.
Kind Regards,
Slightly less frustrated subscriber than in previous post who plays mostly arena (due to not seeing that many warriors lately)
