Please hear me out and read to the end, its a bit long but I think its worth the read.
As a long time wow player I really love this game and want nothing more than to see it flourish. I have played pvp on and off since MoP but never really made any sort of serious rating push until BFA where I achieved 2.4, sadly not with enough time to get gladiator. I always just played with people from LFG and all throughout shadowlands season 1 and 2 I had no problem getting teammates and still have a few on battle net that I played with in Dragonflight.
However with the introduction of solo shuffle and the huge deflation the 3v3 ladder (and shuffle ladder to be honest) has seen, LFG has been incredibly dead in TWW and almost all of my friends have quit for the same reasons. They started pvp in DF season 1 and now feel like they can’t achieve their rating goals and so just unsubdued from TWW. Ive tried to get them to play and they just flat out refused, instead of playing League of legends or waiting for Path of exile 2. It got me thinking that there’s got to be some way to balance the seasons so we are never this deflated again and when we were chatting about league of legends I thought, couldn’t we just use a similar system to theirs?
No more numbers, 1750, 2k, 2.2k etc all goe to feats of strength and are removed, now players will play 10 placement games and be placed somewhere in the tiers of Combatant 1-4 Challenger 1-4 or Rival 1-4 the same as league of legends. The brackets then go Duellist 1-4, Gladiator, “X” Gladiator for the rank ones. Each bracket requires that you gain 100 “CR” in that bracket to progress up and you will receive around the same amount that you do right now in 3v3, once you progress up a tier you cant fall back down, E.G a Duellist cant fall from Duellist 1 back to Rival 4, the only bracket you can fall from would be Gladiator and Rank 1 Gladiator.
If someone then makes a 2nd character on the same role, healer/dps, they can be placed higher than rival, for example if a gladiator warlock makes a second warlock/mage/rogue etc they can be placed all the way to Duellist 4 depending on how their placement games go.
Every 24 hours the cut off is evaluated and the top 0.1% of unique characters (not alts on the same account, although alts on the same account will also be granted the rank 1 title they just are not counted for a spot) are counted and granted the title of rank1 for the season, if you don’t play at least 10 games on your char above gladiator for 7 days it will begin to decay at 50 rating per day until it falls from gladiator back to duellist 4. If you fall out of the rank1 cut off you lose the title until you make it back into the cut off, only those we were above the cut off at the final 24 hours of the season will keep it forever.
Continue to reward elite sets but start giving pieces at Challenger 1 and finish it at challenger 4, give an item to add effects at Rival 1, for example like in Dragonflight we could add lightning, at Rival 1 give an item to add it to the shoulders, Rival 2 for the head, Rival 3 the hands, Rival 4 the weapon enchant, once you have unlocked the weapon enchant you also unlock the elite weapon transmog. At Duellist 1, now hear me out, the mount, make each gladiator mount a unique model only obtainable in PvP, give an unarmoured version at Duellist 1 and you unlock an armour piece for it like how you unlock the elite set with each tier you progress until you hit gladiator and your 50 wins you unlock the full version of the mount with all the armour and special effects that come with it. Once you hit gladiator you get a special tabard the same that you do just now for getting 2.4.
I would also add a currency in the game that can be exchanged for stockpiles of gold, im not sold on these numbers just a rough idea, every win you get 50 for a loss you get 20 and every 500 you can trade them for 5k gold. If you play as a healer you get 75 for a win and 35 for a loss. You could also potentially add mounts or transmogs to the vendor.
While this is primarily in regards to 3v3 i believe most of what ive said here can also be applied to solo shuffle.
I just truly believe the ranking system will never be balanced season to season the way it is, participation will slowly dwindle as a result of bad inconsistent inflation and no intensives to play after you earn your rewards and it needs to change.