Alright, long rant incoming. Iām sure you all know what this meansā¦
āEnjoyā
The gearing system in BfA is extremely broken. This affects both PvE and PvP, but it affects PvP most of all because PvEās rewards a little more crazy and out there. If thereās gonna be some crazy powerful new bonus or other effect, itās probably going to come from PvE.
Ironically, this is a response from Blizzard to try to keep PvP a little more pure. Yeah, itās not working.
Blizzard wants PvP and PvE rewards both to be useful in both. Itās a noble goal to be sure, but there are two massive hurdles in our way:
- The weekly rewards and caps, which provide the strongest rewards in the, are given independently in PvE in PvP. Thus the least timegated reward is always given to those who do both. This isnāt necessarily a huge problem if this is kept reasonable, but when you get geared twice as fast? Then itās a problem.
- The balance between PvE and PvP items depend on specific circumstances and the most popular builds in any particular game mode. This makes the balance extremely brittle. PvE items becoming BiS in PvP or vice versa (although this almost never happens, it has happened with a mage trinket!) is just a meta shift away.
In order to get this stuff under control, weāre going to have to get gearing under control. And yes, thatās essentially a pun.
I want less RNG, and I want less caps. I should get one random chest. If I do PvP and PvE I get more choices from that chest, but I still get just one chest.
Now I will get the same amount of rewards even if I PvP and never PvE.
But PvE might still contain rewards that are very powerful or even mandatory in PvP.
This is extremely hard to solve without some contrived garbage like PvP Power. PvP Power basically takes a sledgehammer to the problem and solves it by sheer brute numbers. Itās going to give a lot of dissonance, and it might have to get balanced around open world mobs and lots of other things. Itās an ugly solution.
But the gear must, nevertheless, confer an advantage to PvPāers that PvEāers simply donāt benefit from.
So what mechanics do PvPāers take advantage of that PvEāers donāt? Well, honestly not much. There are a few mechanics that are sort-of hidden in the game today that we can put back on items so that PvPāers need to equip them. Thatās probably a good start.
For example PvP items could:
- Reduce CC durations (from e.g. 40 seconds down to 8 - not further )
- Introduce diminishing returns
- One of the trinkets is once again āthe PvP trinketā (although a choice for the 2 others would be great, too!)
- Make you take less damage from certain spells (i.e. PvP specific changes)
- Make you give more damage with certain spells (i.e. PvP specific changes)
- Introduce borderline mandatory effects like Conflict and Strife
How do we get PvE items out? Well, if the price for 5% extra damage is to risk you getting CCās for 20 second polymorphsā¦ yeah, not worth it.
How do we make sure new PvPāers donāt get trampled? Itās simple: Professions. Cheaply made low quality items that contain all the effects PvPāers need to get started. Now with controllable stat distributions thanks to another innovation by Shadowlands.
And even if you donāt have some of them, these things like lower CC durations mean a lot less in random BGās where people are just slapping one another at random. But they mean A LOT in competitive PvP, which is exactly what we want.
And the effects that make you take less damage while stunned or make you take shorter polymorphs? Very little effect in PvE. In fact PvE effects can just ignore it.
We get increased transparency in the way the spell effects work and we get mandatory PvP gear in high-end PvP. We get rid of a trinket slot, perhaps both, so that PvE trinkets canāt come in and cause trouble, and we get some very useful set bonuses and other goodies on our PvP items.
And there is no need for PvP Power.