Trying to fix brackets in arena, here’s my idea!

PVP Arenas
1

First and foremost, the reason I post here is because of the postitive reception it got on the r/worldofpvp. Hopefully, these thoughts could be veiwed and discussed to improve a setting that in my opinion has a few faults. Especially regarding the PvP gear system and boosting tendencies we see today.
I’m open to adjustments to this idea, but these are my initial thoughts.

TLDR: If you obtained ilvl gear at higher rating you are only allowed to use it at that rating. You will be ilvl squished according to your teams average CR. Brackets are made to showcase ilvl caps.

Ever single bracket (explanation below) should have a gear cap that squish your ilvl when you enter the arena. It should be based on the average current rating between teammates.

Brackets: you can have max this ilvl depending on average current rating:

Unranked (0-1399) ilvl 200

Combatant (1400-1599) ilvl 207

Challenger (1600-1799) ilvl 213

Rival (1800-2099) ilvl 220

Duelist (2100+) ilvl 226

Elite (2400+) ilvl 233 *Weapon ONLY

Example when boosted: 0 rating player boosted by a 2400 rating player = 1200 rating. Highest rated player gets ilvl squish to 200 and lowest gets his current ilvl.

They will still face average MMR, or whatever the system suggests these days. The team with a booster will then be at a disadvantage as they might have higher mmr and face people with higher current rating. Therefore have their ilvl lower than what the opponent has.

In detail this will look something like this:
Boosting team = Blue team
Team with two players with similar CR = Red team

When they enter arena this happens:
Blue Team has a 0 rated player and a 2200 rated player = avg CR --> 1100 rating.
Combined MMR = 1650
0 rated player has 170 ilvl (nothing happens)
2200 rated player has 226 ilvl (gets scaled down to 200 ilvl)

Red team has two 1600 players = avg CR --> 1600 rating.
Combined MMR = 1650
Both players have 213 ilvl (nothing scales down)

This will eventually make it alot harder for boosters to boost, and easier to for the average player to face players at the same skill level.

1 Like
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… What’s the point of squishing the higher ilvl player’s ilvl, but leaving the one with an ilvl lower than the bracket as it is?

What’s the point of ilvl differences at all? WoD’s gear system got it perfect. PvP and PvE was separated, with the only problem being Trashran. You could catch up, except for the Trashran trinket, in a simple fashion.

3 Likes
3

Well, squishing the higher ilvl person is done for obvious reasons. He obtained the gear at higher brackets that doesn’t belong in the lower bracket making it an unfair advantage.

Not doing anything about the low ilvl player is mainly due to the fact that I think they need to farm some PvP to be able to compete. Not get “free” gear when entering arena. Like farming BGs etc until you hit the max threshold of ilvl 197.

1 Like
4

Except that still screws over the people fresh to the new bracket. A fresh character, even if fully geared with honor stuff at rank 7 in every slot, will still be heavily timegated because it’s still not possible to acquire more than a couple of conquest pieces from the extremely poor catch up system in place, even when having capped on conquest already.

You can thank the vault for that. It has seriously screwed over new alts, returning players and new players.

Oh right, and the legendary timegating too. Gotta love that one. Especially when people are discovering it’s better with different legendaries for different slots these days, meanwhile you’re stuck waiting for enough soul ash to upgrade your first legendary.

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I don’t see how they have any issues with catchup with this system. Any player below 1400 CR will never face anyone with higher than 200 ilvl at the maximum. And if they farmed it all, without any conquest gear, they will have an ilvl of 197 and will be able to compete with ilvl 200, until they get higher up on the ladder.

6

I’m in my 2nd week of rated PvP on my first Shadowlands char to hit 60. I got my full rank 7/7 gear before starting. I’m currently on ilvl 208 with a rating of 2k as my highest.

It’s not fun. It’s not rewarding. The timegating is pure garbage.

With your suggestion, I’d still be screwed.

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Yes, I understand. Is the CR cap at around 4500 ish for you now then? In that case, you can have about 7-9 items at the 220 ilvl if you farmed all the honour for this.

I mean, I think you did pretty good when you got 2k rating within 2 weeks. This post is mainly for everyone who struggles to get past 1400 and above due to boosters killing the ladder with 230 gear at the 1400 brackets. Where people has less than 200 ilvl

8

The conquest cap isn’t increased with rating as far as I have noticed. I’ve got 7 conquest items, all upgraded to 220, whereof 1 was a subpar item from 3 crappy choices from the vault. My conquest earned in total is 4950 and I have 175 left of that.
My legendary is still on ilvl 225, although I haven’t done my torghast weekly yet (still haven’t unlocked twisting corridors, because the quest chain is timegated too), because I tend to leave it for last. But I don’t think I’ll be able to upgrade it to rank 4 this week, at least according to the wowhead guide.

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Guide on how to kill PvP better than BFA.

10

Could you explain why?

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While ilvl matters more for some than for others, what I’ve noticed personally is that my losses have very rarely been due to my ilvl. Most of them have been due to me playing badly, shaking off the rust and getting used to Shadowlands (which I’m still in the process of).

Especially on that rating, people say there are boosters but I’ve only noticed a couple of them. The vast majority have been regular players and people playing on alts.

Part of the problem is that people get a mistaken impression of how many boosters there actually is, since titles are account-wide now. Including the gladiator mount, which is also account-wide.

12

Yes , I see. Well, to be fair, I think my system definitely will solve some of the time gating you are referring to, as you won’t face anyone above ilvl 220 at your rating. Which means, if you had a little more luck in Vault (which definitely is luck based) and had the 235 Legendary, you would probably not be that far off. Considering you’d have about 210+ ilvl vs the 220 people who played 8 more weeks than you. Which I think is fair due to the fact that they spent a lot more time than you getting their gear. And you will eventually catch up to them, as they have a static cap of 220. Catching up should take some time, if not, people would feel bad for using weeks in weeks out in something a fresh char did in 2 weeks.

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It really shouldn’t. It’s only a problem for PvEers. PvPers are happy with proper catch up. It was one of the few things PvPers liked about WoD during that expansion. Although that’s when people started noticing more and more how others would use their main’s exp in the group finder, while playing bad on their alts. But at least gear wasn’t an issue anymore, which it had been for a very long time prior to the implementation of that catch up system. Which came in the last few seasons of MoP, and then improved in WoD.

The most common complaints about gear in WoD was 1. Trashran (first season had the reputation req for versa off-pieces, and the weekly conquest box which was basically the same problem as with the vault during the early part of the season), 2. Trashran (RNG trinket which became a thing from WoD s2 and lasted 'til the end of the expansion, where you could only get that BiS PvP trinket from the Trashran weekly). 3. How there was fewer options in stats builds, compared to something like wotlk.

That was all. Well, that and affli locks in WoD s3 that ran with mythic raid pieces fully socketed with haste.

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Personally I would remove the whole gearing system and have PvP numbers to be equal to everyone. But as far as I see it, Blizzard won’t remove gear differences from PvP. So, making it less of a difference per bracket could be a solution to some of them problem. Especially the boosting problem in my opinion.

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That’s only if they’d be losing only because of the ilvl. But they aren’t. I’m certainly proof enough, playing with others having similar ilvl as me when I started with 199, making sure to only play viable comps and playing it decently.

So squishing the ilvl in the way you’re suggesting, wouldn’t solve any of that. They’d still be held down by simply playing badly, and not playing what’s viable.

Boosting itself is a whole different issue, which can only be mitigated in 2 ways:

  1. By actively policing the game, which Blizzard doesn’t do anymore.
  2. By making it as tedious as possible. Which it hasn’t been ever since arena teams were removed.
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with this system, i couldn’t play with my teammates gearing their new alts even if i’m on my alt that already has 220ilvl

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Ofcourse you would! You would only be scaled down in the arena match to ilvl 200 if they were below 1400 CR. Depending on the average CR of your team.
And as a team, you would never face anyone with higher ilvl than 200 ilvl.

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yeah but on average, we are alrdy lower than our enemies. this would put us in even more disadvantage.

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This is exactly my point though. If we remove the gear disadvantage, people will only lose because of skills or a counter comp. and essentially, people at lower ratings don’t have to fight at two fronts, both be at a disadvantage gear wise and skill wise. The skill will determine the rating they deserve and you won’t have that many complaints about the obvious ret paladins with 230 ilvl boosting people at low CR by blowing people up in one global because fresh chars at ilvl 170 has to little versatility to survive a burst window the equally geared people would have.

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Except you’re not removing it, you’re shifting it around.

In other words, despite being at the same MMR, the team that has stabilized their MMR at the 1600 range would have an ilvl advantage instead.

As Deymio put it, it’s counterproductive for friends playing together occasionally.

And since you said you want to remove the gear disadvantage, easiest way would be to bring back the WoD gearing system. Makes both Deymio and everyone else who occasionally plays with a friend much happier, and it also makes the people who doesn’t even realise why they’re losing happy.

The WoD system was clean. Except for Trashran.