PvP - The Real issue was never Addressed

[Nurvus]

I posted this thread on the EU forums, but there is little player activity there, zero Blizzard activity, and here players are usually more knowledgeable.
Here's the link to the thread:
https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17614584263#1
Please post this on the US forums if you think Blizzard should see it.

/DISCLAIMER
This isn't meant to magically fix everything about PvP.
It's meant to make PvP FIXABLE by creating a solid core to work with, which the game currently lacks.
It is currently impossible to balance PvP across an entire expansion without constantly changing everything or removing scaling completely.
But as good as removing scaling may sound for some (or all) of you, it has consequences that are difficult to ignore.
/DISCLAIMER

Over the expansions, Blizzard has tried multiple ways to balance PvP.
Some of them ignored and messed with PvE, the rest separated PvP from PvE.

Most changes focused on Mobility, Movement Impairment (MI) and Crowd Control (CC).
Some changes targeted Health and Burst directly.
Mobility and MI were often changed to compensate changes to CC.
CC in turn was often changed to adjust how much Burst it could enable/prevent.

But all of those changes miss the real issue.

Our damage scales from Primary Stat, Critical Strike, Haste and Mastery, in some cases even double-dipping from one or more of those Stats.
However, our defense scales from our Stamina alone.
It is a curved (polynomial) growth vs a linear growth.
It always has the same result. It always gets out of control.

I am not ignoring the fact that Healing also grows like damage, at least for Healers.
However, you can't heal a dead target, so before you balance Healing in PvP, you have to balance how long someone can survive without getting outside healing - such as when the healer is CC'd.

• Increasing Health just delays the point where damage gets out of control.
• Versatility is 1 step forward and 2 steps back, as although it reduces the difference in scaling, it does so by replacing an interactive secondary stat such as Haste, Crit or Mastery with a boring passive bonus with no gameplay value, and is far from enough to achieve balance.
• PvP Resilience, PvP Power, 2 iLevels on Gear and PvP Modifiers are not balance tools - they merely separate PvP from PvE.
• PvP Templates is a balance tool that avoids the issue instead of fixing it - it slows the rate at which damage gets out of control by making Instanced PvP almost not scale at all with iLevel.
  But it still scales. There will still be a single point in iLevel where PvP is balanced.

However, PvP Templates (and PvP Modifiers) have a couple terrible flaws:
[1] - They are meant to allow Blizzard to balance PvP and PvE completely separately, almost as if WoW is two games instead of one.
But since PvP Templates are not compatible with World PvP, this leaves World PvP (PvPvE) even less balanced than before PvP Templates were introduced...
Why are PvP Templates incompatible with World PvP?
Player A is soloing a powerful NPC that usually requires multiple people.
Player A can do that because of his iLevel, Talent Setup, Stat distribution, etc.
Player B attacks Player A, causing his PvP Template to kick in, having 2 extremely important effects that can cause that NPC to suddenly start destroying Player A:

• Nerfing his Stats.
• The PvP Modifiers and/or the Stat distribution provided by the PvP Template may be incompatible with his Talent setup.

[2] - It removes a LOT of customizability that many PvPers enjoy.
You no longer customize Stats with Gear.
You no longer customize your Trinkets, Set Bonuses.
The players that appreciate the removal of customizability have always been able to just grab an existing build from various guides in the internet. It makes no sense taking that away from the players that enjoy the creative process behind it.

--------------------------
[][SUGGESTIONS][]
--------------------------

|[Solution - Defensive Stats]|
1 - Add Defensive Stats
1.1 - Defensive Stats do NOT replace or compete with Secondary Stats (unlike Versatility).
Instead, they are extra Stats on gear like Tertiary.
1.2 - Defensive Stats are not RNG like the current Tertiary Stats.
Instead, they are guaranteed like Secondary Stats.
1.3 - There would be at least 3 Defensive Stats. Ideas:
- Vitality - Increases the effectiveness of received heals and absorbs (including self-cast).
- Toughness - Reduces damage taken by X%.
- Leech - X% of damage, absorbs and healing done gained as a unique Healing.
- Regeneration - X% of damage taken is healed over the next Y seconds. Effect rolls over.
1.4 - Other Tertiary Stats (Indestructible, Movement Speed, Avoidance) Removed
1.5 - Defensive Cooldowns and Healing adjusted across the board to compensate for higher mitigation.
1.6 - Defensive Stats would have diminishing returns like Armor.
2 - Remove Versatility
It offers no gameplay value with its offensive component, and its defensive components are handled by Vitality and Toughness.

---
|[Polishing the Solution - Implementation]|
1 - Itemization
Here is how I propose Secondary and Defensive Stats to be distributed per Slot:

• Armor Slots - Head, Shoulders, Chest, Bracers, Gloves, Belt, Legs and Boots
  - 1 Secondary Stat
  - 2 Defensive Stats
• Main-Hand, Off-Hand, Neck, 2x Rings and Cloak
  - 2 Secondary Stats
  - 1 Defensive Stat
• Trinkets remain unique.
• Jewelry might no longer have Stamina and instead have high Defensive Stat.

Currently, our gear has Primary Stat, Stamina, 2 Secondary Stats and a chance to roll a Tertiary Stat and/or Socket.
With my suggestion, each Item Slot would have a Set number of Secondary and Defensive Stats.
The number of Secondary and Defensive Stats per Slot would be inspired by the changes to Jewelry - different items having focus on different types of Stats.
In this case, gear categorized as Armor is focused on Defense, and the rest is focused on Offense.

This has various beneficial effects.
Among them, making upgrades feel more impactful and requiring smaller stat jumps for gear to feel exciting.
Because you have 2 roles on items - Offensive and Defensive - and each item slot focusing on 1 role, this means an upgrade will represent a big change to its intended role and small change to the other role, instead of a medium change to everything.

2 - Armor
Apparently irrelevant for PvE because monsters simply take X% less physical damage, it is relevant for PvP and for World PvP (PvPvE), because it causes Magic damage to scale better than Physical against players.
Armor Slots should have baseline Resistance in addition to Armor
Resistance would be simply Armor vs Magic damage. Not the old Resistance.
On a 1 to 4 scale:
Plate has 4 Armor and 1 Resistance.
Mail has 3 Armor and 2 Resistance.
Leather has 2 Armor and 3 Resistance.
Cloth has 1 Armor and 4 Resistance.

]Example of Items[
Offensive

The Black Hand
Two-Hand
1254 - 1882 Damage Speed 3.60
(435.61 damage per second)
+242 Strength
+364 Stamina
+164 Critical Strike
+158 Mastery
+161 Toughness
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 100

Defensive

Robes of Necrotic Whispers
Binds when picked up
Chest Cloth
105 Armor
337 Resistance (equivalent to Armor on Plate of the same iLevel)
+211 Intellect
+316 Stamina
+135 Haste
+157 Leech
+113 Vitality
Durability 165 / 165
Requires Level 100

---
|[Further Polishing the Solution - Coherence (Critical Strikes)]|
I think World of Warcraft should feel like one game, not two.
Critical Hits are not cool just because of high numbers, but also because of the interactions with spec mechanics.
If 100% bonus damage from crits is too much variance for PvP, detracting from skill, this also holds true for PvE, and even if it is less likely to have a impact on a group/raid scale, it can make a difference, and is quite noticeable on a personal level.
Critical Strikes should deal 50% bonus damage/healing (down from 100%) in both PvP and PvE.
This change also allows Blizzard to buff crit chance, which should improve crit reliant classes and further reduce the frustrating design critical strikes have right now.

[Ihsatakar]

There used to be a working solution to this problem, but it was removed because of something about a barrier of entry to pvp and scrubs getting destroyed without it.

[Nurvus]

There used to be a working solution to this problem, but it was removed because of something about a barrier of entry to pvp and scrubs getting destroyed without it.

That is solved with proper matchmaking.

This thread is not about low gear vs high gear.
It's about the flow of PvP changing completely from the beginning to the end of an expansion, because there is only 1 point in iLevel where things work out the way Blizzard intends them to - if at all.

[Schattenlied]

It's rare that I read through something like this and agree with much of it, let alone all of it...


This is one of those times.

[Metallourlante]

Just bring back resilience imho, after all "Resilience will fix it".
I'm not saying put it on gear like it was before but add that to the template: range 830-840 ilvl get X resilience, 840-850 ilvl get X+5% resilience etc etc or something like that

[Nurvus]

Just bring back resilience imho, after all "Resilience will fix it".
I'm not saying put it on gear like it was before but add that to the template: range 830-840 ilvl get X resilience, 840-850 ilvl get X+5% resilience etc etc or something like that

Resilience isn't useless if added as an extra stat, but it never really succeeded in solving the scaling issue.

You have Primary, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Versatility interacting with each other, producing a polynomial curve on your output.
Then you have Stamina.
Stamina and Resilience aren't enough either.

And then there's the fact that PvP Templates don't work with World PvP.
They are there to balance PvP separately from PvE, and World PvP happens to be a mix of both.
PvP Templates also take away from you any sort of customization, which a lot of players enjoy.

My suggestion aims to not only fix scaling for PvP, but allow Blizzard to have the same gear system for PvP and PvE with all the customizability.

[Metallourlante]

Resilience isn't useless if added as an extra stat, but it never really succeeded in solving the scaling issue.

Yeah, I have to agree with you on that. After I wrote my post I thought how bad was resilience at the end of several expansions, so probably isn't a solution.

[Theed]

Agree this is one of the major issues and your suggestions sound good.
But I think the biggest issue with pvp is the melee/ranged arms race and the last two expansions seem to favor towards melee players. This comes down to class design. Melee specs skill floor need to be increased and caster specs need to feel less punishing. Interrupts are too powerful and there are too many. Casual caster players quit pvp completely because it can be very frustrating if you know nothing about fake casting or positioning. Fresh melee players don't face any of these problems. Melee can't be interrupted and positioning isn't nearly as important as it was back in BC/Wotlk. Every melee has strong defensives because of PvE/Raid mechanics where they need to stand at the boss. Kiting is no longer a thing as melee usually has 2-3 ways to clear snares or close gaps. Things like Auto bubble, auto trinket or adaptation made things worse and need to be removed.

[Nurvus]

Agree this is one of the major issues and your suggestions sound good.
But I think the biggest issue with pvp is the melee/ranged arms race and the last two expansions seem to favor towards melee players. This comes down to class design. Melee specs skill floor need to be increased and caster specs need to feel less punishing. Interrupts are too powerful and there are too many. Casual caster players quit pvp completely because it can be very frustrating if you know nothing about fake casting or positioning. Fresh melee players don't face any of these problems. Melee can't be interrupted and positioning isn't nearly as important as it was back in BC/Wotlk. Every melee has strong defensives because of PvE/Raid mechanics where they need to stand at the boss. Kiting is no longer a thing as melee usually has 2-3 ways to clear snares or close gaps. Things like Auto bubble, auto trinket or adaptation made things worse and need to be removed.

Those are all valid concerns, some of which arose from a snowball of changes, including the melee/ranged arms race you mentioned, and in most cases at some point it is connected with scaling, such as when damage gets out of hand and Blizzard (ignoring the scaling issue) considers the cause to be too much uptime, and starts changing gap closers, cc, snares, instant spells or cast times - overlooking the real cause.

My suggestion creates a solid core that lets Blizzard roll back that snowball and do things properly.

[Deleted]

i dont understand how the recent 7.1.5 damage buffs to some classes are even applied to pvp in the first place, wasn't the template made for exactly this issue ? why did we suddenly see Arcane mages demon hunters and boomkins running around like gods, when they were only buffed to be more viable in the raiding scene ?

[Professor Expert]

This seems like a complicated version of versatility, which is fine the way it is.

You said WoW should not feel like two games, yet you're suggesting gear that effectively splits the game into pve and pvp. Versatility was the best bridge between pvp and pve in terms of gearing because it provided a benefit to damage and healing that carried over in both pvp/pve while offering damage mitigation.

Season 3 had resilience which worked by reducing the chance a target would be the victim of a crit by a additive amount, as well as the amount of damage that a crit would deal. So if you had 20% resilience, and the average melee had 25% crit chance, it meant that your chance to be crit upon was 5% and the damage would have been (2.0 * .80 = 1.6) 160% vs the normal 200%. This broke classes like fire mages whose damage relies on crits, made it nearly impossible to kill healers, made classes with a bubble disproportionately strong. Crit damage being 1.5 instead of 2.0 is debatable for the same reason. Some classes are tuned around frequent crits as the basis for their damage.

The way I see it is that pvp damage comes too fast, too easily and with no opportunity cost. Short DPS CDs, CCs and such all usable without compromise and no ramp-up time for the majority of classes. Damage outside of DPS CDs is actually manageable, so how about making on-demand burst take some skill to pull off besides pressing a button and amplifying your DPS by 3x for 10-15 sec.

[Nurvus]

The rollercoaster balancing is there by design, or do you think 7.1.5 demon hunters happened by accident?

I think Blizzard never saw the issue in the way I'm presenting it.

They can still play rollercoaster even if they implement my idea.

[Kagthul]

i like math.

[Deleted]

Sadly, pvp isn't going to be fixed in this xpack unless they bring back proper rewards from it.

[Deleted]

PvP has never been fixed since 2005 actually. People thinking that gear made it good are delusional. The problem lies deep at the core of the game design.

Class design has always been a massive powercreep for the benefit of raids but making pvp increasingly frustrating. Its world of raidcraft after all, not an MMO in the developers mind.

Was better when it wasn't tryharding to be some type of "esport" (which its not).

[Cuppy]

PvP has never been fixed since 2005 actually. People thinking that gear made it good are delusional. The problem lies deep at the core of the game design.

Class design has always been a massive powercreep for the benefit of raids but making pvp increasingly frustrating. Its world of raidcraft after all, not an MMO in the developers mind.

Was better when it wasn't tryharding to be some type of "esport" (which its not).

Setting class balance aside, exact stat templates (Everyone on the same_line) could make this esport easily.

[Deleted]

Setting class balance aside, exact stat templates (Everyone on the same_line) could make this esport easily.

They would need to fix burst, way too much stuns in the game, melee vs ranged balance, less RNG (crits, dodge, hit chance are all RNG), classes which have too many tools in pvp versus others (like monks and paladins)

[Nurvus]

Setting class balance aside, exact stat templates (Everyone on the same_line) could make this esport easily.

All PvP Templates accomplish comparing to past systems is removing customizability.

Think about it.
What do Stat Templates do of useful that wasn't already handled before?

Getting fully decked in the highest iLevel PvP Gear got easier with every new expansion.
In WoD instanced PvP adjusted your iLevel.

If we're going to handle it with that mentality, then improving those 2 systems would be more than enough to "ensure" the "eSport" aspect of PvP Gearing.

However, keep this in mind:
a) It still needs adjustments every single new Season
b) It still does not work for World PvP

Handling things that way just ignores the issue instead of fixing it.

PvP Templates and PvP Modifiers are a cop-out solution.