206 player and 226 player walks into the bar.
they both get into an argument and decide to fight.
the 206 player skillfully leaps across the bar, utilizing every advantage he has.
the 226 player simply extends his arm and cleaves the 206 player in half due to his immense power.
Skill determined this.
Yes dude git gud, just line it br0 kick it in stealth, you must be a jedi, see it before happens.
i mean he was talking about pve but thats super delusional.
20 ilvl is massive in pvp and pve.
its a completely different game
Tbh I’m pretty certain it did say in PvE when he made this comment. He specified a DPS difference.
He also didn’t say 20 ilevel difference.
I’m ngl this is disingenuous at best.
The DPS differences within reason aren’t that wide. It’s generally dependent on itemization. Such as secondary stats. What trinkets you have. Legendaries. Class/specc, gem slots, enchants, food/pots etc etc.
Ofc its a skill issue if u cant make it into higher tiers to gear up further.
True, it is indeed a skill issue when you lose vs 220+ people if you have 197.
There was more context to his point, but let’s all ignore that. (And the fact it wasn’t connected to pvp at all)
I think the PvP argument is more that if you’re item level 200 and you regard yourself as very skilled, then you should also be able to raise your item level to 207. And from there to 213 and finally 220 depending on how skilled you think you are.
If you are constantly stuck at item level 200, then yeah, there’s probably a skill gap between you and the players who do manage to progress further.
Though it’s a bit twisted to imply that this context was Ion’s point. So it’s my point. 
I wouldn’t rly listen as it wasnt what Ion said
He’s ripped something out of context, the conversation was the DPS differences in PvE. And was talking mythic raiders.
There’s lots of posts around talking about 20 ilevel differences which just wasnt the context. No ones gonna compare a fresh 60 to a mythic raider.
It was more the case of "218 odd players v 226 ilevel odd players in PvE environments.
People have levelled this out to a extreme of 200 ilevel players v 226 ilevel players to poke at ion again.
Not saying I like ion or the direction he’s putting the game in but i don’t rly understand people who just try to make him look bad disengiously.
Tbh I wouldn’t worry with trying to fight him.
WoW is built on its verticle grind. It’s the thing WoW does best. The distinguishing feature between WoW and games such as ESO and GW2 is that verticle grind. The raids. The constant power progression. The theme park incentivized content WoW produces
WoW has been the most vertically Grindy games on the market in the western industry it’s bizarre to me people still play this game if they specifically don’t like that feature.
And the best part is u get ex wow players and things who come to gw2 and start saying gw2 needs a more intense verticle grind associated with it. While they complain about how Grindy WoW is.
We can say ion doesn’t know what he’s doing but realistically 3/4s of the forum don’t even know what they want.
But they will complain on every decision.
In PVE rotation matters big time, there are some interestingly geared players who uhm…do less damage than some normal raiders I’ve played with.
In PVP we just need to have gear streamlined else the game will be in the same state for the rest of the expansion.
Which is all fine in theory, the reality is that you’re more often than not fight people who have higher ilvl than you. Does that mean you’re not able to progress? no, but it creates too many artificial barriers which make the whole process way harder than it needs to be and a miserable experience.
If people would fight similar ilvl, then move up and fight similar ilvl people etc, then it would not have been such a miserable experience.
That’s sort of the age-old discussion about what should determine the outcome of success in WoW.
Traditional MMORPG design dictates that time and gear and luck are as important factors to success as the player’s ability to push buttons.
Modern PvP games lean more toward success being purely determined by the player’s ability to push buttons and communicate with others. Skill if you will.
So what’s the ideal design for WoW? Oldschool or modern approach to success? There’s no right or wrong answer to it, but everyone has their preference and Blizzard tends to ping-pong a bit between the two extremes.
Old devs already figured out why putting gear behind rating was a bad idea. And even before that, in PvP it was only a few items that were tied to rating, there’s never been this huge of a gap. The so called “traditional MMORPG design” works for PvE, not PvP.
Mid-season Start
“Players getting into PvP mid-season face a very significant challenge to gear up and become competitive because players that started earlier in the season are so far ahead in terms of gear. We want to make it more reasonable for a player to join in on organized PvP mid-season, while still rewarding the commitment of players that have remained invested in PvP throughout the season.”
" Rating Requirements
The current rating requirements on PvP gear create an artificially sharp division between players over 2200 rating and those below that rating threshold, which is unduly difficult to cross. We’d prefer that teams progress up the ladder on a curve against gradually more difficult opponents, instead of running into a wall at a certain rating."
And when they wrote that, the gap was small compared to what we have now. Not to mention how long it takes to gear in the first place (only to have gear that’s not even good)
I don’t think it’s so clear-cut, but you’re obviously diving into the discussion and taking a side as opposed to observing it from afar.
I think the game has over the years proven that it can be one design or the other equally well. Whether you’re doing 24 hour long Alterac Valley Battlegrounds or 3 minute intense Arena matches on the Tournament Realm, the design of PvP can please either extreme in a very satisfying manner.
People just have different preferences and Blizzard tends to bounce back and forth on who to please, and rarely having luck when trying to please both at the same time.
I doubt there are many people who enjoy getting stomped into the ground because of a massive gear difference or having to continuesly try harder because of a gear difference.
So where are all those people exactly Blizzard is supposedly catering to that enjoy that experience? On the other hand, while there are outliers, it seems to be a consensus amongst the PvP community that this system that we have now isn’t a fun experience or healthy for the game. It’s exactly the same thing why people hate twinks. Sure, some people enjoy fighting other people who don’t stand a chance, but I’m pretty sure most people don’t like to be on the receiving end.
Good game design I guess, alienating the largest portion of your community (aka casuals) and making people quit.
Guys let’s just vote with our wallets. If they will see another 1/2 drop maybe someone would fire this out of touch clown called game director.
They are non-existing. Devs are catering their own ego - pretending they know better while the game is significantly worse with every expansion. Ion was joking that the doomsayers are saying that it’s WoD 2.0. Let’s face the truth it’s worse so far. There is no single good thing in the game. WoD at least had amazing raids and good gearing. Imagine that there is ongoing pandemy and WoW has less players than in corruption time in BFA.
Except that’s not what he said. He said the stat budget was 26% bigger, and roughly 26% dps increase excluding external power sources.
Except that this is wrong by a factor of two because 26% increase in stats means you are getting 26% more primaries and 26% more secondaries, then these multiply and the product is more than 50% output. I don’t know where you got your pic from, but it’s simply wrong, the math is completely different. And in PVP, there’s an additional multiplicative factor because survivability suddenly matters and it got boosted (by way more than 26%) as well. Plus a difference of 26 ilvls is not 26% more stats, its higher because percents compound as well, but that’s just icing on top.
It’s actually true. Some specs rely more on gear than others but overall you will win just because of clean play.
Some people really don’t understand that people are not stuck because of the gear gap. Like this guy:
With similar ilvl the people who are stuck would just be stuck at ~1,6k instead of 1,4k or something. They will still not get any relevant rating by any means, so it’s just an ego issue of a “bad” players who wants to be placed higher.
I guess the Raidbots devs just suck at math then 