PvP is in a death spiral

PVP Arenas
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PvP is currently in a death spiral. Unless Blizzard take immediate action it will only get worse:

Blizzard created Solo Shuffle, this effectively killed 2v2 and 3v3. Solo Shuffle is now the de facto WoW PvP mode.

Then the death spiral started:

There are significantly more DPS players than healers. This means that in Solo shuffle DPS players have to wait. Given that the vast majority of the playerbase plays DPS, this means that most people are negatively affected by this and will spend a lot of time just waiting for the game to pop.

What happens next? Well because more people play DPS, it is easier to rank as a DPS player, because the DPS pool is much larger.

Well this leads to even more DPS players. Why struggle as a healer? When you can reroll a Retri Paladin and get higher mmr?

What has Blizzard done to fight this? Well healers get faster conquest boxes, this has the negative unintended effect that healers actually have to play less to fill their weekly vault. Or do less solo shuffle if you are just casually looking to gear through conquest solo shuffle. This means healers play even less.

We are now stuck in a situation where the waiting time for DPS players are very long. Don´t worry though!! Things are only going to get worse. Because as a DPS player waiting for over 45 min for a game, once the game starts you want your bang for your buck. So if you feel like the healer is ´´screwing´´ you over, there is a chance that you will behave extremely toxic towards said healer.

What is a consequence of all this toxicity? Well even more healers leave. What does this lead to? You guessed it!! Even longer waiting times for DPS, yaaaaay!!!

Of course all these things constantly compound and feed off each other and WoW PvP is now basically in a death spiral. 2v2 and 3v3 are in such a horrid state that no one is going to bother switching to that deflated mess and things are only going to get worse for Solo Shuffle.

Note, this is not some judgement on Solo Shuffle. PvP in WoW however is a complete mess, and Blizzard giving Solo Shuffle healers a mark of honor or whatever terrible ideas that their interns come up with ain´t going to fix this mess.

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Nothing wrong with that!

How is that different to before, where you were looking for a team all evening long just to log out frustrated. There is a reason why SL season 3/4 were basically dead. This season you wait quite long for a shuffle, but at least casuals can play a 1-2 rounds here and there, not relying onto somebody else.

A lot of text, but what I am missing here is your point. What do you want them to do to fix that (in your opinion)?

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If blizzard wants to make solo shuffle the “final PvP mode” ( I strongly disagree with that ) without killing the other 3 brackets then they should just stop giving conquest for it or give way less.
Like this people will have to go back to 2s/3s/rbgs to gear up before jumping into RSS… wich would be better seen that some people just join when they are 408 and have to fight against 424 people then come to the forum and cry about class unbalance!
This is a MMORPG and the “Solo “ part should not be the main part but if we are heading through this direction then I guess times changed!
I’m really sad 2s/3s are so deflated and rbg are dead… I mean the social part should be really the strong part of this game but unfortunately the toxicity and sociopath people that are part of this community are like “ Gne gne I don’t want to find people to play with I want to stay in my corner and cry because nobody wants to play with me “

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As healer player : I personally dont play cause fast pace meta and no rating gain. Yes and i was tired of every game playingagainst disco priest…

I dont like conquest boxes. i would like if blizzard send via mail Xanax or Cocain or whiskey as thanks/compensation mental health.

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? How clueless are you

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Who woulda thunk gamers online hate each other? Something has gone seriously wrong in the social design when people rather choose the strangers that you don’t speak with over the people that you would need to speak with to get somewhere.
And yes, social design in game design is a thing.

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It’s not only because of shuffle 2s and 3s are dies, you can pretty much blame the playerbase for it themselves.

It’s the players that are toxic, picky when choosing teammate, fotm rerollers etc. Streamers complains about facing ret paladins all day long yet they can’t resist to roll and play one themself.

It always have been more popular to roll a dps than healer, never have I seen the lfg full of healers waiting for a dps to queue.

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The game has literally been rewarding people for being picky, it’s been rewarding people for fotm rerolling, and it’s been that way since the game launched. That has never changed. Ever.

That’s such an overly simplistic and shallow way of looking at it to say players are to blame, when the game’s design itself has been encouraging people to act poorly.

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Yes but everyone knows that rets gonna get nerfed, they’ll never allow a spec to be this good for a long period of time.

Players just can’t resist to get free rating even if it’s just for a short period of time, the ret situation is just a reflection of that getting rating is more important that playing a class they like.

The developers knows this and probably does this deliberatelly to get players to have something to work on since they know players gets bored of doing the same thing over and over with the same class.

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There were always more DPS than healer players, and this goes for all MMOs and class based online games ever since their existence.

As for Solo Shuffle, they saw it pleased the casual masses and thus put it in as a permanent game mode, and this is what it’s good for. Folks dont need to LFM for arena teams, just click a button and bam you’re in que for “3v3”. It’s not real arena tho, random teammates and comps mashed together…true arena is still the premade 3v3 at the end of the day, but Solo Shuffle is the path of least resistance, add in the fact that you don’t autoloose if you lost 1 round…no wonder it attracts more people.

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Its just the easy way … this shows how the human brain works … we are not smart but LAZY.
I think rewards like glad should be kept in normal 3s because that’s where the real format of 3s is and has to stay there!
How can people compare people with no organization running around waiting for dampening to kick in at 50% to 2 teams well coordinated and on voice ?
Solo shuffle its just a brawl and has to stay like that I would not even consider it competitive …
People never unsubbed because of LFG for 15 years and they will not start now so just make up a team and queue some 3s and you will see it will be easier for everyone

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I’ve seen plenty of deep damp comps just trying to stall the game until high dampening lol

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With the current pace and meta and the dampening ramp up in 3s (very slow) I don’t think this is possible .
Avoid speaking if it’s just to make air come out of your mouth

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the sad part is i miss shadowlands pvp

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pvp is dead its just rets and melee zerg

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I’ve been playing wow for quite some tears. Never played anything else than feral. Feral had it’s major ups and downs, but that usually meant the same state for months,not a week or two. Since DF, there seem to be quite drastic changes almost every week, and that makes it very difficult to master the game. You can’t predict dmg well anymore.

I think they either did this to cater to the short attention span/easily getting bored younger players.
Or it’s also an easy form of income if ppl pay 60€ to get a lvl 60 character.
Or maybe both…

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I fully disagree that adding solo shuffle was wrong. It was a necessary step because 2s and 3s started to drop even before and pvp playerbase started to decline drastically. So they had no choice but to add a mode which will attract more people in pvp. 2s and 3s have their huge disadvantages which were stated numerous times on forums (high skill caps, boosters ruining the game, hard for new players to enter and find partners, time-locked gaming etc)

However, i agree that overall pvp is getting worse. I have few reasons for that:

  1. Too many boosters ruining the game. Git gut argument isn’t working since casual players will never become as good as boosters since latter spending their life to this game for maximum performance since they getting money for that.
    2.Low rewards for pvp. I mean re-coloured gladitor transmog doesn’t really look nice for most of the classes with come exception and crates from rated bg dropping mostly useless trash until 2.4k (which most of players can’t get to anyway)
    3.Dumb balance changes in the middle of the season. Seriously overbuffing retri palas in the middle of the season when people provided so much efforts in their characters and had all rights to expect to reach a result was like a slap in the face. Such big class changes must be done BETWEEN the seasons so people could know and be prepared for what to expect.

Besides the main reasons i wrote up there are also minor reasons which have a cumulative effect on pvp experience:
1.embellished items creating advantages for those who plays pve and pvp since developing these items to higher item rating is possible mostly for pve players (getting concentrated primal infusion is 10x easier for mythic players compared to pvp players because only best players can reach 2.4k+ to get it).
2.pvp addons are often glitching or bugging requiring an immediate /reload in the middle of the fight.
3.poor class balance for certain classes
etc.

Devs should pay more attention to pvp if they don’t wish to loose pvp subs

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You might prefer still 3s, where you can be the one trick pony in you preferred comp, but most people obviously see it differently, otherwise this thread wouldn’t exist.

I recently equipped a character half with shuffle and half with 3s. I can assure you, equipping with 3s is a lot faster, so I doubt that conquest points are an issue for shuffle.

I am also curious why the devs should artificially create popularity for regular arena? If it dies out it’s not because of shuffle, it’s because people don’t want to play 2s/3s anymore.

And why do people not want to play it anymore? It’s just not up to date anymore! In what modern MMO you don’t have a solo queue mode?

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I don´t mind the introduction of solo shuffle at all. The implementation however is awful.

Honestly in general the problem is Blizzard´s misguided focus on competitivness in both PvP and PvE. Especially in a game so poorly balanced.

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To be fair at this stage I’d resign from Solo Shuffle. Make one 3v3 ladder and add an option to queue as 1 or 2 people as well. If people queue as 3 it should prioritize other 3 premade players and only pair with 2+1 or 1+1+1 players when there are no 3 premade players available. This way ladder would be more active and imo current solo shuffle doesn’t make sense as a player with biggest amount of wins gets most CR. Best specs are still on the top of a ladder. It will reduce the queues significantly and still make players play together if they have synergy but also give an option to queue as 1 or 2 people. You don’t have to put faster stacking dampening as it’s just one match it wouldn’t take ages. Disadvantage of playing 1/10 matches against RMP is nothing compared to 50 min. queues. And eventually if you enjoyed playing with someone you can queue together later and play premade.