First of all, if you have stabalized at 1600 MMR, but avg CR is below 1600, you will have a max ilvl of 207. Facing people with 213 ilvl. This will only be a problem for you if your CR or lower than your MMR. Which is a very typical setting for boosters.
Secondly, you say playing with a friend will be bad. Well, not really. If you play with a friend at a much lower rating, you will be scaled down to his bracket ilvl. This is also going to happen to your opponents, so this will be a good experience for your friend. As we scale down everyone that has higher ilvl than the bracket says 200 = 1400 rating.
If your MMR is higher than your CR, that’s is due to the fact that you are boosting your friend, playing with a person who has less experience, and this will be a disadvantage for you opponent, and therefore you would ruin the experience of their game. Essentially, if they have MMR at 1600 and CR at 1600 they have ilvl 213.
If you have 2000 CR and plays with a friend at 1000 CR (combined 1500 CR) and your combined MMR is at 1600, you would have ilvl max 207 and your friend won’t have any adjustments to his gear if his has lower than bracket suggests. Why? Because this is boosting. Even though he is your friend.
Thirdly, your suggestion about removing gear is very invasive compared to my idea. I’m trying to define brackets more, not remove the whole idea about gear in PvP, as I think this is more doable than your suggestion. I’m not saying I don’t like your idea, which I do, but I think it’s just a too big change to make it go through.
No, not as simple as that. I want people to scale and enjoy gear improvements. But I want that to be a part of the rating you obtained them. Making people less stomped at lower rating having no chance what so ever killing the opponent who could both outgear and outskill them when they play at a lower rating than they should.
I actually dont wanna lose power just because i play in a different bracket. Would feel weird to lose hp and character power when entering the arena.
There are way easier solutions.
Either decrease the power between ilevels. So a 220 ilvl char isnt 25% stronger than a 200 ilvl char more like 10% or something but this is hard when gear is competing with pve gear and ilvls where are 4 different raid difficulties etc.
So the easiest thing is a pvp stat but less main stat for example.
Even (this time) customable Templates like in Legion are a far better solution.
ilvl differences was still a thing, but a power reduced by 90% compared to WoD, except ilvl increments was accelerated compared to WoD, so you could eventually reach close to that same difference.
You couldn’t choose your own stats distributions.
The artifact weapon proc was scaled down in a similar fashion to ilvls, yet you could level it indefinitely. Don’t remember the exact numbers, but in the middle of the expansion you’d have a new character start with a proc of let’s say +900 of their main stat after they had just finished locking up their abilities that far with the extra ring. But someone that had kept up with the gearing had that same proc, except for them it’d give them +9000 of their main stat in PvP.
It was that same difference for dpsers and healers with that proc. So you’d get steamrolled without even the need for the geared player to pop any CD, while the freshly dinged one was popping everything struggling to either do any pressure at all, or as a healer to keep people alive just a little bit longer, yet dying without the geared opponents even breaking a sweat.
ilvl was a requirement, and even moreso was the artifact weapon lvl for both better abilities from the artifact weapon (which was left as is unless specifically targeted in hidden nerfs) and for a better proc (which was a must for some classes to even be able to play, moreso for the ones that couldn’t be carried by spammable CC abilities and relied 100% on damage output).
But sure, templates like they had in Legion except without the ilvl difference, no borrowed powers like the artifact weapons that you had to level up, and stats distribution you can choose for yourself (unlike Legion), then that’d be great.
Or in other words, like WoD except without the need to gear up. And more freedom in stats than in WoD, even though WoD had more freedom than Legion at least. (An example people liked to use back then was an ele sham with a haste build vs. an ele sham with a mastery build, back in wotlk.)
I didn’t say the “avg CR is below 1600”. I just said the MMR had stabilized at 1600. I meant that the CR would be hard stuck at 1600 with 50% win rate at 1600, but I guess I wasn’t clear about that. Sorry, that was my bad.
In other words, the people hard stuck at 1600 would have their ilvl at 213 or w/e it was.
Actually, I think I can put the fix into 2 sentences;
“You can wear gear equal to your teams average ilvl based on the current PvP ilvl thresholds. If you have higher ilvl than your teams average, you will be scaled down to this ilvl”
Exp; team avg CR = (1200+ 976+2400)/3 = 1525,3.
1525,3 is 125,3 rating above first threshold which is 1400. That means; 1525,3 = 204,3855 ilvl.
The team should have a maximum of ~204 ilvl.
MMR does not matter in this case (which I think is correct).