The vers won’t matter when there are trinkets like:
and surprise there is another cheat death trinket
but especially the sanguine trinket is insanity. 1 min cd and insta tops you or gives you a 15k shield? it’s win-win.
Also the fire trinket does 12k damage on 233 ilvl which on beta people atm have 30k hp pools and it scales off vers so expect to see more
First trinket is not that impressive, but second is! Will definitely be more worth it than the Versatility bonus. It is 50% cocoon every 60 seconds and you even can use it to just top yourself which reduces the waste potential a lot.
Oh, if it really scales up to 12,000 damage on max item level, than it is impressive!
In later seasons we will have different trinkets. So it’s pointless to talk about them now.
there are
Well yes, but the damage is increased by Versa as well.
And it’s increased more than it is reduced.
(Versatility’s damage increase is higher than its damage reduction)
I really don’t get when somebody argues with Versatility as it will decrease the damage. That’s such a stupid thing to say. Yes it will decrease the damage for one player. But for the other, Versatility will increase the damage. And by twice the amount it decreased. So if anything, Versatility is argument why those trinkets are stronger. Definately not argument for “they’re not that strong”.
Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.
But to be fair, it is also not an evidence to the contrary. 
Even though it seems realistic to me. With crit luck and the stack of reaping flames on top of it, 500,000 and more seems possible.
Pretty bad example for a clip. They were stacking void ritual exactly to 1 shot people and drest didnt even hit that hard even though he had ironbark. Cdews drest hit for 88k. Also dont know the mages vers
The versa increase is already calculated in the dmg. The Tooltip of the item is the actual dmg it would do on a 0 def target. A 0 versa dresta it would be 130k pre any def stats
The defensive benefit of versa also scales hyperbolicly
Don’t start contradicting yourself now, please.
Right… Yeah… Except… It has almost always taken entire seasons for them to even react, and BFA has basically been an entire expansion where they never even learned the lesson of what they kept nerfing at the end of seasons.
No, they want raiders to have an advantage. That’s clear as day.
The only thing of actual advantage for PvPers in SL’s design is the way they lock the borrowed powers swapping behind time gates, that’ll keep PvEers out at the start of tiers, or if not then they’ll suffer worse borrowed powers.
I’m not. I think the quality of the PvP gear is spot on, and anyone will be properly equipped for PvP if all they equip themselves with is PvP gear.
So that’s great.
And then there’s some subjectivity whether you may want a PvE trinket or a higher item level piece of gear, but with suboptimal stats.
That seems fine as well. Choice is good when it is a choice. And this seems like it is.
Then there’s some fear about items that don’t exist, but if they did they would be broken.
I don’t see a cause for concern there.
And there’s some fear about some PvE trinkets that may be overpowered, but no one has tested them so it’s forum speculation. But hopefully Blizzard will nerf those trinkets, if the need arises.
Then there’s a little concern in regards to the acquisition of the PvP gear and how much time and effort it will take.
I think that’s still a concern, mostly because it seems like Blizzard hasn’t really finished the design yet.
So it all seems fairly good to me.
You sure seem to be assuming a lot there. You do know that with enough of an ilvl difference, then even suboptimal secondary stats becomes better overall due to stats weights comparisons, when comparing the items to each other, right?
Yeah I mean, it’s not like they keep bringing out stronger and stronger trinkets even when they were a disaster from the very first season of BFA. 
There’s nothing wrong in expecting a pattern to continue.
And if they don’t, which their track record isn’t the greatest in, then it’s a complete disaster. I mean, it’d all be fine if they did immediate tuning of everything as soon as something started spiking when it shouldn’t.
Even though there are already things that goes against what you agreed on in that other thread.
Nah. I just don’t think it’s a matter of absolutes.
I think the PvP vendor will be excellent for most people. Then a few people might feel inclined to branch out based on their personal conviction and grab some other items, and that’s fine.
I could see an issue if the PvP vendor provided crap gear, but I don’t see that as being the case.
Feels like the discussion makes a chicken out of a feather.
In my opinion it’s a silly mindset to adopt for a video game you’re ultimately trying to play for fun.
But if it works for some to proclaim that the sky is constantly falling whilst playing the game, then fine. To each his own.
I’m sure people will proclaim PvP in Shadowlands a complete disaster regardless of how it turns out.
And I’m sure it’ll make for many enjoyable discussions here on the forums, and we’ll have a lot of fun with that.
The worst that can happen is that it turns out balanced and perfect. The hell are we going to talk about then?!
Nah, I just don’t deal in absolutes. The design looks sweet and should work out for everyone. There’s a little concern in regards to the time and effort needed to acquire the gear, but otherwise I don’t see much of an issue.
It works for me, I think.
Your entire post is based on minmaxers being the minority. Haven’t you learned anything from the amount of people who either quit PvP entirely or went through all of that minmaxing in BFA? There was no real inbetween beyond the very low rated.
Same for Classic. Since retail hasn’t really made it easy to keep track of what entire realms are doing, it has left people in social bubbles where they don’t really pay attention to beyond the few people they regularly play with.
So Classic has shown a very large focus on minmaxing in general, which fits in with what happened in BFA. Even though the requirements to PvE were ludicrous, an extreme amount of people still did it (in both PvE and PvP), while others just quit entirely.
So what do you think will happen when that’ll be the same in SL because of those clear differences you can even see now?
inb4 you might argue that “not everyone is a minmaxer”, the trickle down effect is evident everywhere. While sure, not everyone goes to the extreme to minmax 100%, the trickle down effect keeps basically everyone above a certain level just to function in a social capacity to be able to pug. People basically expect it, or they decline you. The higher you go, the more they expect. Which in PvP, that means rating. The higher you go, the more they expect you to follow that minmaxing.
And that trickle down effect starts from the top.
Also, that gear requirement was enforced even before 2k in BFA. While you can argue that it has been like that in the past as well, the major difference is that in BFA that meant requirements of azerite levels, then corruption and cloak stuff, and so on and so forth.
It basically required a lot of PvE crap, because people wanted to minmax their chances appropriate for their rating.
It’ll be the same in Shadowlands.
Not much.
Like I said, then people will make a chicken out of a feather and we’ll have some lovely discussions about it here on the forums. I fully expect to see the usual suspects here, playing the expansion and enjoying the subsequent dissection and discussion of it.
Same fun we have every expansion.
There’s not much substance backing your claim in that post, you know. Unlike the post you replied to.
You’re generalizing too much.
A simpler way to compare what you described to what I described, in the way people will gear and how many will do it, is that the trickle down effect will make people gear through PvE on basically the same ratings as they’ve done in BFA, and that difference will be felt on those same ratings compared to those only sticking to PvP.
While what you’ve described is basically just hinting that “only the top of the top” will go the extra mile to gear in mythic raids and so on, while the rest will “be happy” with only the gear from PvP.
So while sure, they made PvP gear a LITTLE stronger than what it has been in BFA, it still doesn’t solve the essential problem. Which is that people need to gear in PvE in order to PvP. On those same ratings.
Which is why I pointed out that:
I’m not really in the mood to play lawyer about my earlier posts and write a million disclaimers and clarifications. It seems besides the point anyway. People have obviously buried themselves in their trenches, so have I, and some shots get fired, but no one is going to surrender their point of view.
Plus I have a headache.
Feel free to wait until you don’t suffer from a headache to clarify what you want to say, or even distance yourself from what you’ve said erroneously.
Doesn’t mean you should stick to generalizations in order to dig deeper into the hole you’ve dug for yourself.
The edits in the previous post covers basically the essence of what you’ve said vs. the essence of what I’ve said. And why what you’ve said is essentially wrong.
Alright. I’m wrong.
Until said arena players need to do PvE to get gear, especially trinkets, where the level of content usually demands that you go for a BiS Covenant which likely differs from the BiS PvP one.
This is why I emphasized “EVERYTHING” so much in this quote:
Which you agreed to. Because it’s a key part of those common goals. As soon as you include “But it’s okay for “some” PvE gear to be the best”, that’s when the sudden need to keep up with all of those borrowed powers instead of only the needed ones for PvP, and PvE requirements in order to get those PvE pieces suddenly starts kicking in.
And it’s not like PvE gear will stop dropping versatility pieces, as well as how versatility isn’t BiS for every slot for true minmaxing, so you’ll see the same rating ranges as in BFA requiring the same expected minmaxing for those same rating ranges in SL.
So you’ll see raiders having a clear edge, both in time required to get those higher ilvl pieces, as well as just straight up having a higher ilvl on some pieces.
Which is why those time gated locks on borrowed powers, to swap from PvE to PvP, is the only real advantage those only sticking to PvP will have. And that’ll only be relevant at the start of raid tier releases, since once that stuff is on farm then guilds becomes more ok with bringing some PvP optimized borrowed powers to raids.
Pugs will be more ruthless in requirements for mythic raid pugs though. Since there’s no social leniency in place to overlook suboptimal applicants in pug creations unless you already know the people beforehand.
Which means “empty” group finders on ratings people want to “protect”, as well as those who simply won’t get started at start of seasons and rather just wait until they’ve got their PvE gear before they even try to push because of the borrowed powers being stuck to PvE for the time it takes to progress in PvE.
Sure. Like I said, the Covenant choices seem like a can of worms.
I think it’s difficult to try and predict how players will approach playing the game.
But we’ll see, soon.
Okay, no more headache! So let’s have the friggin’ lawyer discussion about semantics. I’ll indulge.
Yes, I agreed that PvP gear should be equal in everything of PvE gear, whilst in PvP.
From that I understood the collective value of gear acquired from PvP versus the collective value of gear acquired from PvE. And “in EVERYTHING” meaning the use cases, i.e. the various forms of PvP; Arena, Battleground, Warmode.
That’s how you wrote your post with the words you chose, and that’s how I responded to it.
My response stands. I still agree to it, because when I look at what I can get from the PvP vendor versus what I can get from Raiding (and Mythic+ for that matter), then my character will ultimately be stronger with the gear from the PvP vendor, so the PvP gear is more than equal to the PvE gear, whilst doing the various forms of PvP.
I disagree on the “need”. The individual players will come to their own conclusions about what they want to do or have to do in order to achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves in PvP.
It may be that some players feel they need to keep up with all the borrowed powers to acquire PvE items, because they feel that it is paramount to min/max to the 100th percentile in the pursuit of their goal.
But that is not a playstyle or mindset that can be generalized. And neither is it an actual need so much as a perceived one.
Regardless, I don’t see it as an issue.
Players can always find issues in the game.
But some issues are the fault of design.
Other issues are the fault of playstyle.
The faults of design needs to be fixed by Blizzard.
The faults of playstyle are for the community and individual players to sort out.
When people argue a need to min/max to the 100th percentile in order to be competitive or accomplish their goal of Gladiator or Rank1, then I see that more as a fault of the playstyle rather than the design.
It is not WoW that imposes such a need, it is the player’s own mind.
Don’t like it? Change playstyle.
If they are raiders, then they use raid gear. And that is mostly no good for Arena.
If they are PvPers, then they use PvP gear. And that is mostly very good for Arena.
If they are raiders and PvPers, then they use the best of both.
A guy who does raiding and also manages to do so much PvP that he’s fully decked out and optimized with the best gear from the PvP vendor and is competitive in Arena, he’s no more a raider than he is an Arena player.
A raider is a guy who just raids. Hence the name.
That guy doesn’t do competitive Arena.
But if he does, then he’s a PvPer.
And if he beats other PvPers because he has better gear, then that’s because he commits himself more to the game, and they don’t.
And for World of Warcraft, I think that’s fine.
This is what I’ve been talking about. Heck, even Bellular brought this up. You can’t blame the player base for creating a meta. This is what most developers work together with the players on, in order to help develop the gameplay.
They NEVER call it “unfortunate” like Ion did, when players develop a meta.
But ok, to help explain the effects of a meta forming, is that the trickle down effect is not only evident from online guides, but also from encounters.
So let’s say you’ve got the top rated team going that extra mile, with everyone else in the entire ladder just doing the “normal” PvP gearing.
The 2nd rated team surely wants it just as much as the 1st rated team though.
So the 2nd team keeps losing to the first team because of that gear difference. So the 2nd team gears up to keep up with the 1st team.
But what about the 3rd team? So they keep gearing up to keep up with the 2nd and 1st team.
So on and so forth, it’ll keep going until the rating “mesh” with the ones eventually not caring about losing and being stuck in the rating.
Which is not until muuuch further down in the rating.
Which is why I said, people will do this crap on the same ratings the same as they’ve been doing it in BFA.
You’re underestimating the minmax mentality.
This won’t go away until PvE gear doesn’t affect it so heavily that it can decide the wins.
I blame the individual player for subjugating himself to a playstyle that he ultimately does not find enjoyable when he has all the opportunity to pursue other playstyles instead.
Sure. Up to a point.
I’m not sure what this refers to, or what it has to do with my opinion. I am not Blizzard. I reason my own thoughts and feelings on the game’s design, not Blizzard’s. What Ion says or does is not for me to respond to. Tweet him.
This is called “being competitive”.
And this is what “being competitive” involves.
That is the hard work that goes into “being competitive”.
Depends on the player and their approach to the game.
But people are in charge of their own actions and they can and should play the game as they please.
If they play the game in a manner they don’t enjoy, then hopefully they feel the ends justify the means, otherwise they should seek to play it in a way that is enjoyable to them.
It is after all just a video game.
No. I am placing the responsibility for the chosen playstyle on the adult behind the PC.