Feedback: The State of PvP

PVP Arenas
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Hello everyone,

I have created this thread because I would like to discuss my thoughts on the state of PVP and the broad direction of the game regarding it. I’d like to begin by expressing my love for this game. I began all the way back in TBC. I have played and enjoyed all aspects of the game, from collecting, to raiding, pvping, and everything else. I have made great friends playing this game and created some of my fondest memories. Altogether I have clocked over a years game time on all of my characters. During my time playing this game I have had my criticisms regarding some of the directions the game has taken but never felt the need to express those opinions to the player-base. Unfortunately, due to reasons I will go on to explain I think it is my duty as a fan, a consumer and a blizzard loyalist to address these concerns. In doing so I would like to keep all criticisms constructive and I hope all fellow gamers do the same.

First and foremost I would like to discuss the biggest issue I have with pvp and that is something that underlays the core mechanics of all current content. The gearing system, and with it, the rewarding system. World Quests, World bosses, Crafting, Dungeons, Mythic +, Raiding, Warfronts, Arena, battlegrounds. Warforged, Titanforging, azerite. The gearing path can be a little confusing at times, but for PVE, the objective to gear is often straightforward. Capped, you begin world quests, then you can progress to other PVE content like Warfronts, Mythic +/LFR and continue to raiding difficulties. Pvp on the other-hand is more than difficult… and for these reasons… The progress to gear sufficiently as a pvp player consists of pve activities. Although many people might like dual content - dungeons / pvp etc (Including myself to an extent) there isn’t a equal playing field for pvp. For this I would like to give an example…

By the end of season 1 BFA I had sufficient gear to do RBG/Arena with. Nothing amazing, it did the job. Season 2 rolls around and people are starting to have higher ilvl from raiding. I couldn’t get into decent RBG teams even though I had desired rating experience. This was because of my ilvl. I try and get into Raids and are refused because A: Ivl (Which I can’t get because I’m not raiding in a pve guild as they are because I am a pvp player) and B: I do not have pve curve achievement to link. As for the PVP gear, as anyone who has pvp knows. You are locked to 1 guaranteed piece a week, which isn’t always as good as the piece you already have. Meaning it has a chance to go to waste. Secondly, any gear you may or not receive for playing pvp is completely random and not always guaranteed to drop at a consistent rate as your play time. In equivalent time spent, pvp players are at a distinct disadvantage from raiders and pve content players in gearing for pvp. On top of this because of the state of pvp, battleground participation is low, resulting in higher and higher queue times. This is frustrating and very time consuming to gear as a pvp player. If it is quicker and easier to get pve for pvp, and you are a pvp player, something is clearly wrong and this needs to be addressed.

Secondly, for the most part, as gear feels obtainable from all sources of the game. There is no set goal to work towards like there used to be. As a pvper there was an end goal, something to work towards. Obtain a full set of pvp gear. It was rewarding, it was fun. You could see that every win you achieved was building towards something. Something you needed. That you could choose. It is the equivalent end progression for a pvp player as there was for pve. This is not to say that pve players should be at a disadvantage. They should be allowed to play pvp. But Pvp gear should have a distinct advantage. Just like pvp will never outshine pve gear.

The desired outcome is a more simplified progression path for gear.

Max Level -> Professions/World Quests -
-> Mythic+ Dungeons -> Heroic/Mythic Raiding
-> Base Battleground/Skirmish -> Ranked Arena/RBG

Fixing the gearing system I believe is the first step towards fixing Warcraft PVP. Time is being invested in upgraded old battlegrounds like Warsong and Arathi. We got new arena maps and revamps consistently every expansion. A new battleground was added at the end of Legion. It makes me wonder who Blizzard are trying to satisfy with this content? The foundation to pvp is broken and until it is fixed and there has been enough incentive for participation, then content like this does not matter. I feel like this issue with the gearing system is underlying a lot of BFA’s problems. Azerite farming. Warfronts, World Quests. It’s all mixed progression. To me feels like content that has been designed to force participation and that is wrong. Let players play the content they like to play. Forcing players to participate in things they don’t want to is going to drive them away, and has done so already in my opinion.

For me personally, I would like for the following to be addressed to begin fixing the pvp problem.

1: Include pvp vendors into the game once more.
2: Assess the gearing methods. Bring back or improve on old pvp gearing stats like resilience.
3: As an alternative, have an obtainable PVP gear set. (Click a button in your bag to make a full pvp set of a base item level.) I don’t feel this is the right way to go but will provide an instant playing field for all participants, including an easier way to balance classes as all are built around a stat template.

This is just my general feedback and hope everyone has enjoyed the read.
I would like to know your guys feedback, let me know if you agree, disagree or if you have any thoughts on the subject.

Kind Regards

3 Likes
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if you wanna gear fast, just run mythic+, not a big deal to run +10s if you are a skilled pvp player
I was ilvl 400 after 1 week of patch release, so you don’t even need to do it long and then only do 1 dungeon per week or stop it altogether because the ilvl difference becomes irrelevant at that point. my ilvl is already above heroic raiding and i never step food in a raid

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But who the hell wants to pve?

6 Likes
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those who want ilvl.
Has been always like that since classic

Even when we had pvp vendors in wotlk you had massive advantages if you also raided ICC, mainly though for weapon and trinkets, but since pvp power etc. is gone, there are no restrictions anymore to use all pve gear. Also because pvp gear is rng garbo and secondaries matter, you have no choice but pveing

Of course as pure pvper it sucks and always has sucked but after 15 years still having hope that they change it might be a little stupid

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PVE>PVP Gear this only changed when PVP resil/PVP power became a thing just so you know its a shame we’re still not using PVP stats for PVP since it worked and put pvers in their place, mostly.

only pvp gear worth mentioning is the new trinkets are busted AF

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Just no. WoD had the best gearing experience so far. MoP was also good, but no catchup system. Legion was okish since IL didn’t matter at all (but wasn’t fun because of the static templates (blizzard decided how to play a class/spec)).

In WoD you even had significantly disadvantages when equiped PvE gear (only trinkets where fine but even there versa > all).

Therefor, PvP gear was usually not viable in PvE, in BfA it is viable since it’s pretty much the same, but they reduced item drops by felt like 90% so you are forced to do PvE again if you want gear.

They changed it quite a few times. WoD was a good system, the beginning of BfA was fine (you kinda equiped maybe even a bit faster with PvP then PvE) but the problem always is: if PvP is equal to PvE, those PvE guys are crying.

They just shouldn’t listen to them, let them cry - when noone is reacting, they stop crying again and play the game (since most of them aren’t affected at all).

Have you ever thought about, that some people don’t like to run dungeons all day long? Especially because you either need high rio score of have to deal with weird people.

Why is it wrong to let people equip via PvP if it’s that what they enjoy the most?!

2 Likes
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you run a whole day to finish one +10 dungeon? Takes me about 30mins and it actually is fun… even i was a pvper only (long ago since i moved to a different country with other timezone and terrible ping…)

anyways, wod was pretty much the only expac that I didn’t play much at all. But my comment still holds true for all other expacs.
Pve gear always reigned supreme at least in some aspects. Be it legendaries, trinkets or just weapons. Even with pvp power in wotlk some classes could pick up the tier bonus 2pc
now in bfa it is more or less just farming ilvl. Since the pvp gearing system is a disaster, you are better of with running mythics but if you don’t like that, you can only hope for rng drops of arena. if you are high rated i am fairly sure that you get a high ilvl pretty fast… stats are also rng in pve more or less so thats not a big difference. Surely you can run a dungeon 500 times to get your BiS but it will most likely just be ilvl 400 which is subpar as well.

and i said and always hoped in the past just gear with pvp and be it the best in pvp, but ain’t happen because blizzard just don’t make it happen. I gave up on that since cata already and moved on.

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Not really, but how much gear do I get from one +10 dungeon a week (except for the chest)? Exactly… And you may have fun with it, I don’t like it at all.

I already gave you an exception and you still use the word “always”. Actually WoD and Legion (somehow, PvE Gear still gave you an advantage but only pretty pretty small (except for weapons)) had such a system.

And like I said: BfA was good in the beginning, even the PvP trinkets (not the maledict, but the trinkets with Versa+Agi) were doing decent/good in PvE. The issue is, that they decreased the dropchance of items to like 25% of before.

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Except ilvl did matter, as explained in full disclosure by Blizzard themselves. That 1 ilvl = 0.1% “power” (which later turned out to just be stats) and they also compared the “power difference” between WoD s2 conq gear and WoD s3 conq gear being equal to a 10% difference in Legion.

People keep misunderstanding the impact of it just because they downplayed it when explaining it. Now that is gullible, if nothing else.

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legion pve gear was very good in pvp. wod like i said, I don’t know but whatever, did actually someone play that expac at all?

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WoD had a perfect system for arena except for one outlier: The Trashran incentivization. They indirectly forcibly made it so players had to keep running Trashran until they were fully geared by giving out a weekly quest to “win” in Trashran which would give a free conq item chosen by RNG in a box, and even locked some versatility pieces behind reputation the first season of it. Then in WoD s2 they implemented a BiS trinket for pretty much everyone, which not only was a rare drop (as in rare to see, not rare as in blue quality), but also only dropped from that weekly Trashran box in its epic form. Blue and green versions could still drop from unrated PvP content.
And this trinket was a thing in WoD s3 too, with the same limitation.
They of course implemented a “bad luck protection” which never worked, the same way they implemented a “bad luck protection” in Legion, and the latest time they implemented a “bad luck protection” was now in BfA.

Seems like “bad luck protection” is just PR jargon meaning “we can make you believe it because you want to believe it” even though it has never worked.

Oh right, and that horrible trinket in WoD not only was rare to see drop, but the secondary stat was random too, so you could get the wrong stats on it, making the drop meaningless.

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so in a way:
so that pvp can be good, pve need to be so bad that 5mio subs quit

or no… bfa managed that both sides quit :smiley:

well i don’t know why its so hard to have vendor pvp items that only work in pvp or still give that ilvl boost 50 lvl above pve gear or whatever.
You can come up with a solution within 5mins but yet blizzard doesn’t do it and thats why I believe that they actually don’t want to do it.
So i gave up on that. In this expac i don’t even play bgs anymore… thats how bad it is. I used to love bgs in my free time <.<

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This makes no sense whatsoever. 5 million players quit because of 1. the pruning, 2. the garrison and mission tables and the continuation of what made many people unhappy with MoP, which was the daily quests, and 3. a mix of other smaller factors that also played their part.

Also, that was just what the last official report of sub numbers said had quit 3 months into the game. You can bet even more players ended up having left by the end of that expansion.

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most quit because there was nothing to do ingame if you didn’t pvp.
farm garrison and raid once a week. but the last raid lasted for a year, so people got bored of that too.

the pruning in wod a start and pretty bad but not as bad as it became in legion though.
Also many quit aparantly because of no flying

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pretty sure there were vendors as late as in wod and it was grrrrrrrrrrrreat

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Well, more people than in Legion - at least in PvP… ^^

I know that quite a few disliked WoD (you obviously) and personally I agree with the first two seasons, but compared with Legion, the last season was actually a lot of fun (nothing compared to MoP last season tho).

Not really, the PvP gear system was completely one sided for PvP and hadn’t had any affect in PvE.

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