Is the PvP Gearing System in 9.1 Really a Good Idea?

Community General Discussion
21

You know what would have been an easy balance change that could separate PvP and PvE? A specific stat. Versatility is good and all but all it does is boost damage done and reduce damage taken. And it also drops from PvE content, which is annoying for people who want to exclusively PvE.

How about removing this garbage stat and introducing some new stat, something like Tenacity, which reduces the duration of incoming CC or something along those lines, catered towards PvP content. Then make sure that gear with that stat drops only from PvP and the gear from PvE has PvE stats only. You then wouldn’t need to have this convoluted +/- ilevel gear based on phasing inside PvP content that is bound to be a nightmare for computing.

It’s no wonder that we have 4 digit ms doing world PvP, servers can’t handle the thousands of incoming abilities and on top of that servers will have to compute pvp gear with fluctuating ilevel. This is just… idk, very counter-productive.

22

I’m pleased they are doing something. Last expansion PVP players were forced to PVE and this time it was the other way round. I would have loved a complete separation with a PvP stat but this is a compromise.

23

Looks to me like it will somewhat separate pvp gear from pve but also make the pvp situation worse when you are trying to gear up and don’t have glad friends. That is it will make the gear gap between the haves and have nots in pvp wider and introduce further imbalance.

24

So what exactly does this achieve aside from making the gear less valuable to PvE people? The insane gear difference between honor/unranked and 1800+ players will still be there, especially later in the season, and gearing up will still be a pain because of the insane conquest costs and the upgrades being gated by rating.

Hopefully this will at least reduce the number of boosters in the lower brackets, but the core issue will remain nonetheless.

25

This change only makes sense if there are no upgrades and the conquest gear is baseline equal to today’s Rival gear, relatively to the new item levels.

If not, nothing changes, except that M±spammers won’t be quite as overpowered as they were early in this season.

26

So basically doing PvE in best PvP gear means you are 6 ilvl below best PvE gear. Doing PvP in best PvE gear means you are 6/7 ilvl below best PvP gear. Sounds fair to me and still allows to paticipate in any content to some extend.
I fear PvP trinkets still remain the best PvE trinkets for some if no other 1 min cd ones are introduced.

27

Love the change, def positive news.

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28

I’m pleased by the change. I only have time to run mythic+ and seeing over half my BIS items come from PVP is irritating.

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29

Mixed.

The scaling change i’m happy about (although I think it could be larger to further deincentivise pve boosters, -6 ilevels comparatively isn’t a huge turn off, i would have made it 13 ilevels lower at minimum and then in pvp it jumps up 18 ilevels or more). I will reduce some of the pve boosting and make pvp undisputed BIS for pvp so that’s good.

I’m a bit sad NOTHING is being done about the huge gaps between those starting out in ranked and those entrenched in it. Yes reducing pve boosting a bit will help them out…but there will still be people buying boosts for pvp specifically as well as some of the pve crowd (after 6 ilevels lower isn’t a big deal when you think about easy access to a weapon) so the problems of entering the ranked territory after the season starts still remain.

Just go full hog like you did in WoD and make it so there are two sets (honour and conquest) and that’s it, none of this “rank determines gear” rubbish. Let rank determine extras like enchants, mogs, titles, mounts, but don’t let it have anything to do with the power of the gear you get.

It seems like they’ve heard the two biggest complaints about PvP:

  1. Prevlance of pve boosters due to attractiveness of pvp gear
  2. Difference in power between starters and veterans; issues with mid-season alting in pvp:

And kinda of addressed the first (a good start) but done nothing about the second and tbh to me it’s just as big of a problem as the first.

Hopefully the reduction in boosters will make it better, but i still expect to see many boosters (hopefully not one every 3 games as is the case now) because 6 ilevels base lower is just not enough to turn people off. Is the guy struggling to get a 210 weapon drop in m+ or from vault really going to give a toss that the 1.8 weapon is now 213 as opposed to 220 when it presents a guaranteed drop? I don’t think so.

Whereas if the gap was 13 at least, that same individual would be having to pay to get a boost to the very top of the ranked scene in order to get a weapon that is around the same strength as something they can farm themselves.

6 ilevels is something, sure, (and versus pvp with the extra +6 on top the gap between the two is closed) but it needs to be understood it isn’t just about making pve gear “worse than” pvp gear IN PvP, PvP needs to be significantly worse in PvE as well to stop people seeking boosts in ranked.

Why wasn’t the loot in pvp just set to 200 ilevel and it scales up by a big amount for example? 200 ilevel is plenty high enough to do world content fine, and sets a nice benchmark for entry into pve to get better gear if one wants to cross-play the game styles. Re: torg you can make it so pvp scaling applies in torg or something.

2 Likes
30

What would a 1800+ player have to do with a full bg gear players that just starts from 0CR?

From my personal experience, as a PvP ONLY player, that has not done a single heroic or mythic dungeon in this current expansion, I can say PvP gearing was fine for all players in the first 2 months of the season, since gear being gated behind 1. renown bg, 2. conquest cap.
The real problem appeared when a new player comes to play after 2 months or I start leveling/playing an ALT and try to gear that ALT in PvP, bumping my head on those PvE players that are 210ilvl geared and think they should get gear from PvP to make the PvE content useless and smashable … That was my problem with the current system.

31

Well yes, the issue starts later in the season when most people are geared to the teeth. They should at least slowly increase the conquest/honor gain as the season progresses.

Considering that RBGs are the easiest source of gearing for PvP, many people gear there and then try out arena and get stuck on low rating, making life miserable for those that are gearing/pushing through the lower ratings.

32

The PvE gap was an issue, but fundementally the issue is the gap between the unranked guy and the 2.4k cr guy.

Why? because often those pve guys seeking boosts are paying said 2.4cr dude to boost them, he’s the one rolling the match, not the pve guy. Yes it will be nice to have the pve guy be even less of a threat, but honestly, they were never the principle issue as often they could be outplayed and their lack of expertise (and versa) would show, and comapratively you’d have the versa trinket bonuses.

But when squaring up to the 2.4cr dude, not only do they have zounds of pvp experience on you, they also have much superior gear that is optimised for pvp combat, which means so long as they’re standing alongside the pve boostee, you;'re unlikely to win.

The gear gap between pvp players needs to be shrunk.

In a boosting situation, it should be enough that the skill of the booster allows them to carry their payee to victory, if they can seriously outplay 2 other players then fair enough.

But having them walk around with a near 50% health and close to 100% output advantage on top of that is just absolutely bananas.

I don’t think these changes discourage pvers seeking boosts enough tbh, and still because rank is still super important to gear, it does NOTHING to discourage pvpers seeking boosts for gear. So the unranked peeps are still gonna be finding dudes walking around in the unranked bracket with 2.4cr because of the guys who feel they “need” the 1.8cr gear to begin to perform properly.

Good initial indication of direction, but blizz need to push it all the way. No expo in the game has ever had pvp ranked boosting in such a sorry state as SL. Genuine people looking to climb rank organically, whom aren’t previous-expo glads or pvp gods in hiding are absolutely disadvantaged in getting anything from the system at current, because even their first few ranked matches in the unranked bracket as super hardcore due to having 2.4cr people playing around there.
It’s no wonder many people have just given up on the idea of gearing alts in pvp. Those without a dedicate team of pvpers to play with I mean.

2 Likes
33

Unpopular opinion inc: but I think it’s absolutely nuts that you can earn high rank gear in RBGs and then enter the low brackets of arena using said gear. They are two different game modes.

Your rank in one setting should set a scaling threshold for your gear if earned from a different playstyle. Ie if you have 226 gear earned from RBG ranking, when entering Arena with your 0 cr, this gear jumps down to 200 ilevel and only “regains” it’s ilevels when in arena when you meet the arena ranking.

They represent very very different things. It is way way easier to reach 1.6/1.8 in RBGs than it is to do it in 2s at current for example. There’s a reason people first and foremost seek the gear in RBGs as opposed to going for arenas. Arenas are what people who are “old pros” at arena do for a quick gearing, but the uninitiated are always advised “do RBGs” which means even the community is aware 1.4/1.6 in RBGs does not represent the same kind of thing as it does in arena.

So why people are allowed to “gear up” in RBGs and then stomp in the low bracket of arena in this gear is beyond me. It absolutely should be sensitive to your current rank in the pvp you are currently engaged in as opposed to whatever your highest rank in any kind of pvp is.

Blizzard have the tech to make gear this sensitive and dynamic, so i don;'t get why they don’t do it.
“But i’ve earned my RBG gear, so why shouldn’t I stomp low arena?”
Because you completely mess up the premise of the whole arena progression system if you do that. The fundemental idea is meant to be X bracket = Y average gear level, and it’s the skill difference that allows you to graduate to another bracket.
So if you want to get gear to stomp in arenas, then you have to actually get good at arena first and “earn your right to stomp” there by getting the gear to scale high in arena first.

1 Like
34

I’m all in for max scaling ilvl between brackets. I’ve stated couple of times that the best BG experiences I had in WoW were during leveling in BG’s, where all people are scalled to x9 level and most of them got their heirlooms meaning same ilvl, equal fair/competitive ground.

Again:
Pre 1400 should have MAX ilvl scaling set to 200;
Pre 1600 should have MAX ilvl scaling set to 207;
Pre 1800 should have MAX ilvl scaling set to 213;
Pre 2100 should have MAX ilvl scaling set to 220.

So like that, it doesn’t matter if you earn your 226 ilvl gear from PvE or RBG.

I know a lot of people feel that “this is an MMO”, but when it comes to COMPETITIVE PvP gameplay, you canno let a fly weight guy play with a heavy weight guy, it simply cannoy be.

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35

The only people happy about this are those who only do one form of content. For everyone else each piece of gear will be a lot less valuable and they will need to grind 2 sets of gear.

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36

I agree, but if they do that then RBGs will become a dead mode again because barely anyone would do them. It’s a tough issue to solve.

1 Like
37

I completely agree.

If you want to “play for fun” that’s what skirmish is there for isn’t it? Maybe make more options for skirmish or even a “premade skirmish” mode where you can Q for arena games in 2s or 3s with friends, but no ranking/ilevel disparity rules are applied.

But within the actual mode where you rank is determined? It absolutely makes sense to prevent people from the top from playing with/realising advantages beyond their skill upon the lower bracket players.

No other competitive game allows you to, if you’re say “Top league” play games in the bottom league unless you’ve tanked your own rating to do so.

And unlike WoW, skill is all that amtters there. In Wow, sadly, you get “rewards” for your rating (gear) which aren’t sensitive to your ranking, so you can “reap the benefits” and keep them as you tank your rating.

Either you implement scaling as above on ilevel grounds OR in my opinion you make the gear sensitive to your current ranking in the pvp you are in at that moment.

So if you were once a 2.4cr player and you have the 226 gear, if you tank your rating to 1000 so you can boost your hopeless mate, your gear literally drops back down to 200 in that content. The gear (if ranking is to be tied to power) should absolutely be tied to your current ranking at that moment not your “once upon a time I had” ranking.

38

To be honest if the mode is only being kept alive because it’s a “welfarish source of ranked gear” then chuck it in the bin. That’s a crap reason to keep a game mode alive.
I don’t believe that is the sole reason it is alive, many people (like myself) prefer the strategic style of macro play in BG pvp as opposed to the microland of arena play (but i like arena too).
I mean, you have a truckton of people who love casual BGs and randoms, the main thing stopping them from playing RBG is the groupfinder. You could easily keep RBG mode alive by simply giving it an “auto Q” option.

But don’t keep it around because of an unspoken understanding that it is basically the “EZMode way to earn ranked gear before I do ‘proper’ stuff in arena” because as said that messes the entire premise of starting out in arena and how the lower brackets work.

39

The change is slightly better than the current idiocy, but it is a far cry from “WOD-style” gearing. One of the issues with the current system - PVE people have to PVP for gear - gets better. But other issues, which are at least as big, eg - multiple huge ilvl walls created by rating requirements - remain and actually get worse.

Here’s what they do, in current numbers, citing ilvls for content of increasing difficulty in PVE / rating in PVP:

PVE: 197 - 200 - 213 - 226 (first anima for PVE / honor for PVP, after that PVE content / conquest for PVP)
PVP in 9.0: 197 - 200 - 213 - 226 (this is better than PVE due to predictability / boosting = problem)
PVP in 9.1 in PVE scenarios: 191 - 194 - 207 - 220 (whatever)
PVP in 9.1 in PVP scenarios: 204 - 207 - 220 - 233 (PVE people have less of an incentive to PVP, but huge ilvl walls remain)

This is what they should have done:

PVP in 9.1 in PVP scenarios: 226 - 233 - 233 - 233 (ilvl walls are removed, you are quickly getting within 13 ilvls of max and then are slowly getting to max, half a season after you are at max and competing solely on skill, BECAUSE THIS IS PVP)

What they did is not WoD-style gear. It has as much resemblance to WoD-style gear as a pig with lipstick to a supermodel. The change is a minor improvement over what we have now, but it leaves PVP in complete shambles.

SL fails in a truly spectacular fashion. BS addon, BS game, idiot devs.

40

soo how about the ppl joining rated bgs to afk and honor leech?
will this change remove those kind of players
my only concern about this new thing