The problem with adding every stat combination to the PvP vendor, is that it becomes the de facto best way of gearing then.
I mean, in PvE you have to deal with the fact that you don’t always loot the item you want.
With deterministic loot through a PvP vendor, you only need to buy one item for each slot. The BiS item. And then you’re done.
That is incredibly powerful in and of itself, if the item level is comparable to PvE. It downright wipes the floor with the rest of the game if you can pick any stat combination possible for every piece of gear.
Blizzard can try out every single ‘solution’ to fix PvP gearing but as long as they ignore the real issue here, it won’t be fixed. Just give us some damn PvP stats back!
Bis items with certain stats, scaling, gearing through pvp and pve, it won’t work. The PvP system as we have it right now and having a reason to farm PvP gear for the PvP stats and we have a working system. I love both parts of the game, PvE and PvP. I don’t like I need to be involved in PvE to stay competitive with PvP.
Honestly, they need to step off their high horse and just return to the way it always has been. This way people don’t need to force themselves to grind dungeons or get 2.4k ratings to get something that works for either PvE and PvP.
PvPers are still forced to raid and farm mythics to be competitive.
I am not sure why they are trying to reinvent the wheel with each expansion. We have had good systems in the past. Change for the sake of change, I suppose.
Well, a PvP stat creates a huge barrier of entry. You just can’t do anything if you don’t have a lot of this PvP stat.
And it goes the other way as well. If you’re decked out with a lot of PvP stats, then you’re completely useless in PvE and you become a liability to any group.
Blizzard wants a low barrier to entry where players can seamlessly transition from one aspect of the game to another. A PvP stat goes against that desire.
Item scaling runs into the issue of overwriting character progression and nullifying character identity.
If I’ve taken the time to get the best gear possible, then it feels like I’m being played a fool if someone who’s barely bothered to gear up at all, suddenly goes toe to toe with me. That undermines a fundamental aspect of any RPG, that the time and effort you put into your character should matter.
The second problem is that it nullified your own character customization, another hallmark of an RPG game. If I’ve geared around 25% haste, then it feels disruptive if Blizzard artificially changes my item level and stats, so suddenly my character doesn’t behave the way I’ve customized it to behave.
And then there’s the joker issue, which is World PvP. Do you scale gear for that? If you do you totally undermine the value of outdoor questing. And if you don’t, then ask Legion how big a mess balance can become if you have one set of rules for instanced PvP and another set of rules for outdoor World PvP.
So those solutions aren’t without issues of their own.
Bfa has the highest barrier for entry out of any expansion in WoW’s history, so it seems they have epicly failed then.
Considering so far SL isn’t making it better, it seems they will continue to epicly fail unless they actually listen to us.
As for this one set for all - I have 2 raid sets, one m+ set and 3 pvp sets os clearly they’ve screwed that up to. In fact, 80-90% of my bags are filled with gear I may need.
Perhabs, but PvP participation has never been this low. We were all in the same boat, you sucked at the start and gradually became stronger. While not ideal for fresh characters, the overall PvP community never really had a problem with it. I think catering to the wrong crowd is what lead to this demise in PvP activity.
They should not cater to people who want to PvP once in a while. Getting a full set of honor gear made you viable and wasn’t hard to get.
And there is nothing wrong with having different sets of gear, them talking about thinking that is bad is hilarious, as most people have multiple sets now in BfA.
This expansion is even worse when it comes to the entry barrier, it’s literally never been this bad.
Yeah, and now you can’t do anything because of the PvE requirment. The current barrier is astronomically high, with random BGs basically being high end content instead of entry level content.
You aren’t competitive until you have at least iLevel 465 and the BiS essences.
Sure. All the borrowed power in the form of Azerite Traits, Essenced, and Corruption Effects, they’re absolutely mandatory and raise the barrier to entry substantially and are design failures in that regard, despite various catch up mechanics.
The goal for Shadowlands is that gear is just gear, no strings attached. And besides having to do a little work to get your Covenant unlicked, then your character is pretty set for anything once you’ve got a decent set of items.
It feeds into that while alt-friendliness Blizzard are going for. Low barriers to entry.
Right, but that’s not really to enable an entry level of play. That’s more a wardrobe of different sets in pursuit of optimization and BiS. That’s more a concern on the opposite end of entry level, i.e the high-end competitive level.
Well it’s them you have to persuade, not me.
Their chosen design is not my perfectly idealized design, but I can see the pros and cons of the various design options there are. I think it’s doing a disservice to pretend that alternative designs, like a PvP stat or scaling, don’t have drawbacks of their own.
If there was a design that was 100% awesome in all regards, it’d be easy. But that just isn’t the case.
Right. And two wrongs don’t make one right.
There’s no doubt that Blizzard often struggles with a steep barrier to entry late in an expansion where they’ve piled up on systems and system and systems that all feel mandatory.
If that’s an issue they recognize and want to do do something about, then it’s probably not smart to start out with a PvP stat that instantly raises the barrier to entry on day 1 of the expansion.
Personally I don’t mind a PvP stat, because it’s not disruptive to my gameplay. But design-wise I can see where they’re coming from.
That depends on how that barrier is broken. If you can do it purely through PvP, then I do not think it is much of a problem. It is what most PvP players want.
It is not much of a problem either when you are semi-competitive with basic gear, that can be obtained simply through winning some random BGs or low end arenas.
Resilience doesn’t need to come back (I’d rather not see it come back) when there is a good gearing and scaling system in place from day 1. Resilience was a poor system for various reasons.
The game’s numerical systems have also evolved since WotLK, so a proper scaling mechanism can surely be implemented now. Something akin to the WoD system most likely works the best.
Sure. I mean, I’m not one to say that alternative designs don’t have merit. They do. But Blizzard do have to decide on something. And it’ll have pros and cons like all other designs have.
I still think feedback is valuable and there’s a lot of design iteration and changes to come, but I doubt Blizzard will deviate too much from deterministic acquisition with universal gear and stats.
Not having a PvP stat creates a huge barrier of entry for PvPers (i.e. the ones mainly doing PvP).
Make the PvP stat something you can add to all gear via the upgrade vendor up to a certain “cap” of base ilvl + pvp stat.
So either you can have low ilvl + lots of pvp stat or high ilvl + no or little pvp stat, with PvErs opting for the second option.
Essentially: E.g. 1 PvP stat = 0.2 ilvl, Max total ilvl cap = 500. So an item with ilvl 480 baseline can be upgraded with 100 PvP stat, and an item with 450 ilvl can be upgraded with 250 PvP stat.
This allows PvErs to not need to have 2 sets, and also doesnt put them “so far behind” PvPers in terms of power in PvP.
Entry-level is being able to defend Stables in Arathi Basin, or acquire the Seasonal Arena mount, without having to do any prerequisites. Just queue and go.
And you should be able to do that in Shadowlands. If you’re max level, then you’re really not missing anything vital that you need before you can start PvPing with some measure of success.
A PvP stat creates an instant barrier to entry. You need it. If you don’t have it, you’re not going to be able to defend the Stables in Arathi Basin, and you’ll more than struggle to win Arena games at 1400 rating. So the prerequisite to PvP becomes getting a set of PvP gear with the PvP stat (through Honor or crafting or whatever).
Well it’s an option. Like I said, there are plenty of alternatives one can brainstorm. And depending on what you value, I think there’s as much merit to other designs as to Blizzard’s design. But it’s Blizzard who ultimately gets to choose based on what they value, so…
I guess if I were Blizzard (hey devil’s advocate!) I’d say that the above choice is difficult to communicate to the player (I can get a PvP stat, but then I lose item level, but what does the item level give me? And what does the PvP stat do anyway?).
And it still introduces a barrier to entry. If those who do PvP have all adopted a lot of PvP stat, then you need that too when you start out doing PvP, otherwise you’re cannon fodder.
Given this criteria I want to point out that with this in mind there has never been an issue for PvErs without PvP stats to ever defend AB or get the PvP mounts and as such there has never been a “barrier to entry” for PvErs and therefore there is no argument against PvP stats.
If you had reasonable PvE gear in WoD/MoP/Cata you were certainly capable of doing the things you just described (if that’s what constitutes the “barrier”).
PvE gear has been fully capable doing what you’re describing since forever, TBC/WotLK/Cata/MoP/WoD. If you have decent PvE gear, you’d be able to do all those things. Maybe not if you’re terrible, but that’s a skill issue - not a gear issue. Winning at 1400 rating used to be possible with no gear back in the PvP stat days (including WoD scaling).
No need to get a PvP set if that’s what you’re after.
On the other hand, if we’re talking about “barriers of entry” of trying to enter into serious PvP (i.e. not just dabbling around in BGs or low MMR arenas), not having a PvP stat forces all PvPers into heavy PvEing - which is a massive barrier to entry into such PvP for PvPers - whom are the main target for PvP content.
And that’s why people despise you.
Yes, and we’re the customers who tell them how terrible their ideas are. And you’re the Blizzard loyalist who tells everyone to shut up because Blizzard gets to decide anyway
Just in kinder words of course, don’t want to get banned now do you?
I don’t think you understood what I tried to explain.
Different items would have different amount of PvP stats that could be added (upgraded) based on their base ilvl, such that the maximum ilvl of all items would be the same level (i.e. at the cap).
No loss of item level at all.
E.g. If 500 ilvl is “the cap” then a 480 helm could be upgraded with 20 PvP stats (assuming, simplified, that 1 PvP Stat = 1 ilvl in value), a 450 helm on the other hand could then be upgraded with 50 PvP stats. Once upgraded they’re both at the same power.
I think Versatility is an excellent candidate for the PvP Stat, make it affect players only (or War Mode / Instanced PvP only) and remove any DRs from the stat.
Remove it from all gear and only make it possible to gain via upgrading.
No, it does not.
You will still have your base ilvl of 460-480, and most PvPers will have an ilvl 460-480 (with most of it being contributed from the PvP Stat), and some top PvPers will be at 480-500 (depending on how Blizzard chooses to unlock the last upgrades). You will be at a similar level, with PvPers having a small edge in PvP content.
If Blizzard doesnt want there to be an edge at all (that only the top PvPers can get) they can make it so that PvPers are also running around with 460-480 ilvl (or whatever level they’d like).
It depends on what they put the “max ilvl cap” at. In my previous example I put it at 20 ilvl above the highest base ilvl items in the game right now, but it doesn’t have to be like that. It could be 480 ilvl that is the chosen cap instead of 500 ilvl, or 485, or 490 etc.
I was keen on replying to you, and then you went and said that.
Ridtur, you may not like my opinions and thoughts, but you clearly appreciate the back and forth and having someone you can bounce your own opinions and arguments off of.
So don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Or you’ll be stuck trying to air your views in a conversation with Rakar.
