Hello everyone, this is a simple fix that would make bgs more enjoyable. First let put some context , anyone do rated push (arena/bgs) has to grind some honnor at some point, and there is no way to controle the outcome of the bg or at least not without some conditions.
Today i’m talking about gear, the sad feeling when you queue in a random bg and have 30 to 50 % of your team under 50k hp specially when it come to healers, i get it they have to play in order to get gear that’s the part of the game , but there is no fun for them or for the player that are geared and are grinding honour to upgrade their pieces when you know at the beginning of the bg that you lost simply because of gear, yes the skill and the knowledge about the game can compensate for the lack of gear, but still the gear represent a barrier when they get oneshooted over and over until they afk and even that i’m sure we all been through that, however the fun drop lower when the enemy team decide to not end and hold you for 15 min.
No need to mention that team comps are too a factor for the win conditions but we’re not talking about that because touching that parameter would just increase the queue times and we don’t want that.
I’ve been in both ends of this scenario the highly geared and the undergeared.
i’ll give one example, i played a bg with 50% competitor geared players 40% undergeared and 10% elite the enemy team had two elite ret and rogues these three players absolutely smashed the warsong.
My idea to make the bg more enjoyable is to scale all players to the highest geared ilvl player in the bg meaning if there is an elite in the bg everyone gets the same ilvl as him, that would make bgs :
Last longer
Enjoyable for Alts grinding
Get players that does not have the skill to go to duellist and elite a taste of what their character can do at higher gear.
Close the gap between gear in normal bg, so you can enjoy a good fashion fight with out systematically getting stomped.
We would have more ppl queuing
What i would propose is just bumping the ilvl of every player in the context of normal bg to the highest player, not the same gear scalling of bfa, more like the time dungeons but in reverse.
It’s the way of the world, it’s an MMO and gear / character progression is an important part of that.
What actual incentive is there to improve your PvP gear if you are handed the same power level on a plate by just Clicking Join battle?
I no longer play Retail, but the “issue” is as old as the game, TBC has a nice set of PvP gear catch up mechanisms. Basic Blue PvP Gear set available at Faction Rep vendors and easy gear catch up methods, via daily PvP quests, previous seasons gear either available for honor / PvE Raid gear tokens or reduced Conquest cost.
I Started playing on the second patch of TBC many years ago so i get where you come from, however in retail, you have Epic bgs like alteract valley and normal bg like warsong.
My point is :
You’re not handed any pvp gear it’s just your ilvl that gets up, so even in that case pvp gear would be in advantage in comparison of pve gear, ofc some ground rules should be in place like for the trinkets, etc …
I’m only targeting normal bgs, what’s the point of playing the bgs if you get oneshooted over and over, you don’t enjoy it.
Yeah mechanics to catchup alts like the pvp box in 9.1.5 are good but the point is to play the actual game , PVP gear differences between season is not the same gap like it was in tbc or wrath.
AV was one of the original BG’s in Classic / Vanilla along with AB and WSG … not sure what your point is. Only new BG in TBC was Eye of the Storm.
I understand your not handed gear and your ilevel is bumped up - my point is there is no incentive to gear if you only play casual content ( random BG’s are casual content ).
PvP has never been about equality ( except for Legion and then some were more equal than others ), gear should matter, and PvP gear progression should not be rng based.
As it should be on content that matters like , arena, rated bgs , epic bgs like AV, but what you don’t realize, is at the moment you have to upgrade every piece of gear over and over until you reach max iLvl, you can earn that amount of honnor in various content , normal bgs are rendered casual and chill content, if i want i would never set a foot in a normal bg and still find a way to upgrade my gear , the question is not the character development , the question is what can bring back the bgs and make them more enjoyable , The gear difference is to a point where 2 high geared players can change the course of a bg of 10 players , where is the point to that … and if you set an ilvl requirement for healers for exemple the queues will get longer and longer, atm the bgs are just PURE RNG, it’s always who has the most geared players that win the game if they aren’t trolling ofc.
I find PvP more fun when it’s balanced.
I don’t think people should be ‘entitled’ to free wins, just because they have high rating or Mythic Raid.
Hard to blame so many people for afk’ing/quitting when the experience is so garbage.
I think that TBC gearing was so good because as a fresh 70 lvl you could join BGs in preraid blue gear and have a lot of fun, even in phase 1, where in phase 2 you even had catch up gear from reputation vendors. And you might wonder why is it like that? Well let me try to explain: phase 1 blue gear has 40 stamina, 30 agility, 50 attack power, 10 crit strike and if you compare it to phase 2 epic gear it would be like: 50 stamina, 37 agility, 60 att power, 15 crit strike. In simplified words stats made small difference gap between blue phase 1 gear and phase 2 epic gear, so little that my fresh 70 hunter has 9k hp while full epic geared phase 2 hunter would have around 10,500 hp.
And now in Shadowlands gap is too big that it is really annoying and it is too much at this point that the begining of grind is not fun at all.
I would fix it with new PVP secret vendor that sells blue recipes (PVP) for essences that you would obtain from killing players in open world. I know it would be grindy but if they have good open world systems with bunch of new ways to farm reputation and gold (which is not AOE farming btw, that thing is anti RPG and sucks), it can be very fun way to grind, and if you finish it with main, you could gear up your alts, or in worst case scenario you would be able to buy that gear from auction house. It would be very cool feature for all open world lovers and it would be great way to start gearing your character for pvp.
Make BG items slightly above those blue items and make rated gear slightly above honor items, don’t make even bigger gaps by making rating timegate upgrades, but do it like TBC did, even wrath, that’s why those expansions were fun because players could jump right into content and feel useful in BG.
PS: I do top 3 dps with my hunter that is blue geared in TBC classic, almost every time, and with my warlock I do pretty damn good too, any ranged class can perform well in BGS with starter gear, but that only works for classic expansions.
They had it right in Legion with templates > everyone scaled to a base item level and stats with every item level above the base adding a 0.1% boost to the templace, which was relatively minor.
So even a fresh max level character could jump into unrated PvP and stand a fairly good chance, instead of having 70% less hp and getting killed in 2-3 attacks.
Gear progression in PvP should be kept solely for rated combat.
Interesting topic but WOW has never been this way and always been gear based. Iv recently returned for some PVP played a few days catchup then decided to quit again as you get one shotted.
I think the problem is no new players will PVP at the moment simply because no one wants to get one shotted on repeat.
BUT at the same time, its WOW, therefore if you dont like it, go play elden ring or a different pvp game Just my 50p
Yeah your spot on mate. I too have played since day one here and there and that hasn’t changed.
What has changed is the world of gaming, pvp and tbh some of WOWs demographic.
My opinion is people don’t want to be one shotted in these games anymore. And when it happens alot probably just alt F4 after a bit and play something that’s they can pick up and put down and well…enjoy I guess
That’s just my opinion though. Some people might enjoy getting globaled. Iv got HLL for that though lol
Just my 50p