I heard an old school wow pvp song come over my Spotify today that made me really wanna do some random BGs . My pala didnt long ago hit 60 but all the gear has vers and stuff so I signed up to heal optimistically thinking that I would be able to contribute and have some fun.
I was wrong on both counts. Every player in that BG chunked me in a matter of two or three seconds. There was no outplay. The longest I survived is when bubble was up and I didn’t last long after that. It is without question the most pointless, frustrating exercise I have ever tried in gaming. I won’t be trying it again.
I dont understand why there is such a steep incline in gear to start with, but why is this left untouched in random BGs? Am I supposed to spend hours of my life getting two shot and being a detriment to any team I join before can even have a full set of honour gear? Which in itself is absolutely worthless when compared to upgraded conquest gear?
Random BGs should be fun. There’s no ranking systems or lasting benefits once the game is done. Even if new players were 20% lower stats than geared players it would still be a huge benefit than how it sits now.
10 Likes
The problem isn’t the gear gap in BGs, it’s down to the insane amount of honor the conquest gear needs to be upgraded especially if players are high CR. if they removed the honor upgrading system on gear it would solve about 80 percent of the problems in this game mode as i don’t think we’d see as many high geared premades farming honor
i’d suggest just finding a partner in lfg which should be easier if you’re playing healer and slowly getting your conquest set over grinding hours of bgs where you’re getting stomped all game.
3 Likes
One does not simply ‘have fun’ in Random BG’s.
Which song!?
1 Like
Didn’t they do this in legion where we all had same ilevel?
Didnt everyone hate that? 
cuz it made the game more borin
2 Likes
Sadly it’s always been my favourite content :(. It was Switchback by Celldweller!
2 Likes
Not saying that everything needs to be 100% stat-for-stat normalised but even if the stat gaps were brought within a 20% range or something depending on gear. I loved Legion BGs. Could hop in on any alt and go to town.
1 Like
They should reduce the power gap OR they need to split battlegrounds by item level bracket - determined by the highest item level you’ve ever received for each slot (averaged out of course)
legion was trash because of many things.
Templates were a great idea but the way they implemented it was garbage.
Imagine devs have no idea of each spec’s favourite stat and giving everyone stats that nobody wants. Also some specs need a certain amount of e.g. haste to be even enjoyable.
Templates, but affected by you secondary stats on gear would be ideal. So it is more of an ilvl template really, which you still can modify to your liking.
Honor talents were a disaster in legion till they made them not lose every talent for prestige upgrading anymore…
so generally the balance was still trash because they made templates really bad.
Also nobody played bgs because pve gave more honor (LOL!)
sadly they never learn.
I mean it is nothing new since 17 years that the team with better gear will win. No matter which expac. It was maybe a little less one sided before but still gear was a determine factor.
Now the problem is that getting gear is taking 12038120-31 years, while before e.g. wod it took you like 10 arena wins to be fully geared as catch up. Now it is like what? 500 wins?
1 Like
Got 40k chaos bolt 25% vers with shield and shield block up in Ashran.end of story
Yeh I loved Legion for the same reason.
Players had legit concerns, but for people who just wanted to ‘log-in & play’ -it was great.
There was a good post guesstimating the disparity between min-max gear / upgraded soulbinds / max sockets / 2xLegendaries vs 0…etc etc. The disparity is pretty ridonc, but gear is just one (albeit major) factor.
If progression in PvP is a necessity, it would be good if all powerups (not just gear) were attainable through PvP (not just rated Arena), and capped at an attainable level for the tier players are playing in.
I do think that ‘borrowed power’ (Legendaries/soulbinds/artifacts/azerite) are good for PvP (as without them, there’d be little point buying the next expac), but they should be attainable through PvP, sans content/rated gates.
I also like that Random BGs are accessible to everyone & it would be a shame to see them bracketed.
2 Likes
Well this was indeed a very bad idea. I remember loging my rogue around 200-210ilvl to get pvp gear in random bgs. After 15 mins que I got in, saw a healer struggling against enemy ret, so I had a great idea. I rushed to help him. Then I stealthed behind his back and died within 1,5sec to his splash damage. He didnt even notice me being there. I logged off.
Oh boy. Warlock nerf inc then.
/s
Ashran has lots of gimmicky damage buffs, but alas, the dev team has probably taken this comment as gospel and will proceed to nerf Chaos Bolt by 50% next patch…
there’s also some npc (horde) called
it also has chaos bolt ability which does unhillable damage, unlucky you if you’re his target
No.
Some arena folks complained that templates were horrible. Imagine a caster with 10% haste. It was awful.
Casuals loved it.
If you want more fair BGs that’s why rated BGs exist to match you against others with similar gear. You also get way more rewarded by doing them.
I thought rated games matched people of similar rating, not gear?
Either way, not everyone can / wants to play rated.
…& even if they could, it doesn’t solve the problem of massive disparity in randoms.
Rated BGs separate players by their skill & communication. Gear is just a baseline which everyone will have.
My suggestion is for the match-making system to fairly balance each team by item level. Each team can have a mix of well-geared & low-geared people, but the average should be similar if possible.
Ideally for the sake of queue times, this system would draw from a single pool of players rather than horde & alliance. Either allow mixed BGs, or make the mercenary mode option more visible when queueing via the interface.
Blizzard really managed to ruin everything this expansion.
They forced Arena players to mindlessy grind BGs for Honor, making BGs just another content to grind till you eventually get fed up…
If you force players to play a content they don’t enjoy (or that simply isn’t fun after the 50th time), players will most likely find ways to make such content less tedious as possible, which explains why the amount of AFK players (mainly in Epic BGs) has increased drastically this expansion.
On the other hand, BG players got forced to play rated Arena to enjoy their favorite part of the game…
and good luck sitting in LFG for hours if you are somehow new to arena or you don’t play a desired spec (even worse if you play Alliance).
Also, since players can just bring their 2.1k CR gear from RBG to 0 CR in 2v2 Arena, good luck trying to learn your class with that ILV gap…
BGs fun got simply decimated, it is ALL about gear.
On my 213ILV DK i get oneshot accidentally from AoE damage; on my geared druid i crit 30k starsurges and i can 1v5 low geared players…
Where is the fun?
I actually leveled in the 51-59 BGs and i felt sad when hitting LV60…
Artificially increasing partecipation by forcing players to play content doesn’t make it “successfull”…
The fact that “this is an MMORPG change game!1!!2!!3!” is a TERRIBLE argument.
MMO character progression can feel rewarding and fun at the same time; what we have now is neither of those.
4 Likes
Templates are a bad aid fix at best, there’s not choice or good progression in that option.
Pvp should have a minor advantage with gear but not like now, new players need:
Conduits just getting them
Level up conduit
Legendaries
Gearing
It takes too long to get going and y the time you get there you’re fed up and move on.
Even honor gearing isn’t an issue per say.
What is a problem is total gear disparity between highest and lowest ilvl.
256ilvl vs 233 ilvl is just a stupid stupid gap, I said this before it came out and my answer hasn’t changed.
Honor gear needs to start at no more than a 15 ilvl gap and level up with 3 steps go near to gear.
Conduits need to be awarded for BG wins for catch ups and include leveling them up.
Gearing for pvp needs to be for just for pvp as a separate progression it will allow a greater flexibility in control without disrupting pve with the gear availability.
In short
-Min max ilvl gap needs to shrink to no wider than 15ilvls
-Make conduits farmable in pvp content even if via bg quests in each game joined