Who is it doing the actual complaining?

[Deleted]

I don't think gearing up or getting honor talents is a problem at all, infact getting artifact knowledge and gear can be way easier to get through pvp than pve.

I think problem lies in balancing and communication to the PvP developers, they seem none existant, offer no indsights on their changes, and blatantly shoot in random directions with nerfs buffs without communicating with the PvE department.

If they just started tuning classes more frequently, and added just a few notes on why! they could make the game so much better, ABUSE your ability to control pvp templates.

[Deleted]

I don't think gearing up or getting honor talents is a problem at all, infact getting artifact knowledge and gear can be way easier to get through pvp than pve.

I think problem lies in balancing and communication to the PvP developers, they seem none existant, offer no indsights on their changes, and blatantly shoot in random directions with nerfs buffs without communicating with the PvE department.

If they just started tuning classes more frequently, and added just a few notes on why! they could make the game so much better, ABUSE your ability to control pvp templates.

Yea that is one thing i can get behind, their pruning is made with abit to wide movements.
So instead of -/+ 200% i would say, 10% change and see how it does would be more viable.

But that is a minor thing

- - - Updated - - -

To avoid a wall of text I'll simply summarize the reasons without explaining them, we all can find the explanations in basically every other topic in this same subforum. Some reasons are more trivial for me than others. Haven't played for months, my knowledge might be obsolete.

(In no particular order)

1) Stat gap. Honor set in 1 week or less vs AK, AP for each class and spec of the same class, Honor Talents, IL and their rng fest.

2) Balance.

3) Skill ceiling and floor too wide. It is enormous. (League of Legends devs balance the game keeping in mind even this aspect and some changes are made just to fix this issue, for example).

4) Pruning.

5) Non new PvP things. New bgs, maps, events, skins, tournaments, esports, dedicated patches, zones, rewards. PvP is simply an afterthought it seems.

6) Lack of comunication. In League of Legends devs keep writing essays about everything that I can't keep up with even if I would have the whole day free, I swear. In WoW you don't even know what are the template stats of your spec.......

7) Lack of clear fantasy and 8) gameplay.

For example, in the past disci priests were the best at: shielding, dispeling, doing damage. You had a clear role. Now it simply plays like every other healer. Now every healer is basically the same. Also, it is all a mess role wise. Holy paladins are the one with the highest dmg output 0o, resto druids are the tankiest (in bear) 0o, monks have the best heals over time 0o.

Another example, mages were the kings of ccs (and AoE damage for the matter). Now it is the only class without any hard cc (stun like) 0o.
Shamans were not known for having extremely powerful ccs. Now they have an AoE, ranged, Stun. 0o The best cc in the game one could hope to have lol (not necessarily reliable in PvP by all means, differently from PvE, talking about their stun).


Back in the past there were clearly defined gameplay. This point got too long. Let's move on.

...

Ok lets hit some of the points you made here, ill try to make it brief.

1) Stat gap. Honor set in 1 week or less vs AK, AP for each class and spec of the same class, Honor Talents, IL and their rng fest.


I might be misreading this, since it doesn't make much sense try to specify abit what you mean

2) Balance.

Again as stated in my original post, every single class at the moment has the viability to reach R1 in multiple comps, that is the definition of balance.
I don't think you are looking for balance i believe you're looking to win and win by a mile, wether or not you admit it.

3) Skill ceiling and floor too wide. It is enormous. (League of Legends devs balance the game keeping in mind even this aspect and some changes are made just to fix this issue, for example).

You didn't state a example, but it is interresting you brought up LoL since i can say from personal experience that is a game where everyone complains about balance, and are just in general toxic.

Also the skill ceiling gives you something to strive for, if you automaticly became pro at everything you touched, and life was on easy mode all the way through.
Would you feel accomplished ?

4) Pruning.

I think i know what you mean in this, and i tend to agree that the devs both PvE and PvP make abit fatfinger movements.

5) Non new PvP things. New bgs, maps, events, skins, tournaments, esports, dedicated patches, zones, rewards. PvP is simply an afterthought it seems.

So thats just a straight up lie, i'll make a small list of what i can remember of the top of my head.

- New elite sets every season
- New Elite enchants every expansion (granted not in legion, since you cant enchant your artifact which would make it pointless)
- New Elite Tabard every season(ish) (granted not yet in legion, but will be coming in S3)
- 7.2 will be bringing fun mode BGs
- PvP Faction in legion (ganktastic world pvp #timelessisleflashback)
- 2 new arenas in legion (and rework of the 2 most beloved arenas)

And that is just some of the things that they have done for us recently, ontop of that you mention tournaments, blizzcon wow tournament has and most likely will always be a major part of blizzcon, this blizzcon you even got a title for watching it.

6) Lack of comunication. In League of Legends devs keep writing essays about everything that I can't keep up with even if I would have the whole day free, I swear. In WoW you don't even know what are the template stats of your spec.......

I agree that there could be better communication between the players and the devs, but this is not done out of past experience, now were stuck we community managers because well, we broke it our selfes back in vanilla i believe.

long story short, the toxic part of the wow community pushed a dev to defend him self leading to him quitting or getting fired.
"This is why we can't have nice things."

7) Lack of clear fantasy

I can't tell if you mean PvP Fantasy or Class fantasy, if it is the ladder then i strongly have to disagree, since everything this expansion is revolved around who you are and what spec you play.

8) gameplay.

I just plainly disagree with everything stated in your post, every class has very clear upsides and downsides, and if you dont know them, then thats on you.

9) Templates.

Thats personal preference, and i can't really call you wrong on that, since thats how you like to play the game, but if the majority of the players like templates then sadly thats what were gonna do, it's called democracy and wars have been fought about it.

10) Honor talents. 9 out of 10 are useless, unbalanced, uninteresting or spells that specs already had back in the past.

I don't know what rating you play at, or if you're even playing competively, but again i just plainly have to disagree with you. and if you cant see the use of most of your PvP Honor talents then i feel sorry for you.

11) PvE stuff giving PvP rewards or being displayed as if it is pvp (for example, Tower WQ giving honor points by killing undead npc 0o). It's not something which bothers me particularly, but it feels so strange and the contrary is not true anyway. Hopefully the amount is low enough to not force players who want to prestige to keep killing npcs...

Again with the templates in place, this makes it so all gear is basicly just that... Gear.
If you get it through the means of PvE or PvP it really doesnt matter or make a difference unless you're raiding at a mythic level and what all your stats to be BiS.

Sure we got the tower WQ's, but we also got our FFA WQ's which imo is very fun except for darkbrul i cant stand the movement in that place xD
again this is a classic case of not being happy with what you got, and being unsatisfied with what you dont have.


12) Materialism 13) Utilitarism, 14) Standardization, 15) Stagnation 16) Artificiality

I've chosen to skip theese points since they hold no ground and would take way to much time for me to debunk
Ain't nobody got time for dat.

[Seneca]

I'll start by saying, again, that some points are trivial for me, but not for other players, so I listed them for clarity (for example point 11 is mostly trivial for me), some other points are definetely less important than others (for example point 5).

Btw, a few more points which came to my mind right now, the second and thid ones are the most important:
- templates don't work in wpvp;
- pvp partecipation is extremely low, so a) it is hard to find players to play with, you have to wait a lot of time to find others, even worse if you want to do rbgs, so people in order to avoid it might prefers to do something else entirely; b) it is hard to make progress, to climb ladders, because there are simply a too low amount of players to play with/against; c) it is hard to find someone to talk about it, to find guides, videos, and so on;
- e-sport wise it is at the very bottom, which is something that has many implications.

Ok lets hit some of the points you made here, ill try to make it brief.

1) Stat gap. Honor set in 1 week or less vs AK, AP for each class and spec of the same class, Honor Talents, IL and their rng fest.

I might be misreading this, since it doesn't make much sense try to specify abit what you mean

In the past you had to farm honor set for a few days and your stats would be equal to half the pvp playerbase basically.

Right now, if you don't play a lot (best case), want to play another spec of your main class (better case), want to play an alt altogether (worse case), or just started to play WoW right now (worst case), you have to a)farm an enormous amount of stuff b) still be time gated.

You need:
- Honor Talents (the lesser evil surely);
- An artifact weapons with as many traits as possible, time-gated by Artifact Knowledge and farm-gated by Artifact Power;
- Items which are heavily rng-gated.

In Wotlk, for example, I could ding max level with my alt, farm the honor set, and be ready to stomp even at high rating, relatively speaking.

Right now, if I ding max level with my alt, in a few days I still miss 100 IL (which is reduced in PvP I know, but it is still like, 10% less stats?, it's huge), an artifact weapon with, like, 20 less traits compared to the other players (biggest offender and many more traits are going to be added), and, hopefully, all honor talents unlocked.

In order of importance: 1) Artifact traits (time-gated /farm-gated) 2) IL (rng-gated, wasn't able to change my rings in 1 month for example, so is the rng nature), 3) honor talents.

2) Balance.

Again as stated in my original post, every single class at the moment has the viability to reach R1 in multiple comps, that is the definition of balance.

Well everyone has his own vision of balance. For example, for you it seems that classes (12) are what matters. For other might be specs (36). For others glad-range means balanced, for others r1 range, for others tournament winnable, and so on.

I only know that with a class/spec with which I played for 11 straight years I couldn't break 2.4k, with another class/spec which I've never played in my whole life, all of a sudden, I reached 2.4k in 1 week, without using voice with my teammates, with all macros, bindings and addons messed up as fuck and, with like a few spells I even forgot I had many times. I froze quite early so didn't have the time to master it, let alone play it for 11 straight years.

A few months ago, all ww monks and fdks I had in my friendlist all of a sudden gained 400 rating with a new patch. No joke. The same for other specs/classes in different periods.

Wouldn't call that balanced.

Anyway, if u read my whole post, you would know by now that I said that wow pvp has never been balanced, so it is nothing new tbh.

I don't think you are looking for balance i believe you're looking to win and win by a mile, wether or not you admit it.

Why are u so aggressive all of a sudden? I thought u wanted to have a fair conversation.

Anyway, let's pretend it didn't happen.
That is not my case I'm afraid, because in Legion I played one of the strongest class/spec available, so the "unbalance" is something which benefits me greatly, trust me.

You didn't state a example, but it is interresting you brought up LoL since i can say from personal experience that is a game where everyone complains about balance, and are just in general toxic.

LoL is way way more balanced than WoW trust me, even including the fact it has 150 champions, I was in the 99% percentile in that game so I fully know how that games works and it is not something I say lightly.

Community is toxic, that doesn't mean that the game is not balanced.

Example about skill ceiling:
I can watch the video of a resto druid for 1 min and easily tell if he has 2500 rating or 3000 rating.
I can't do the same, or not that easily, if I watch the video of a frost dk.

Example about skill floor:
a 2 frost dk comp with 1500 rating stomps a 2 arcane mage comp with 1500 rating by an enormous margin (2 3k rating arcane mage would probably win against 2 3k frost dk, instead).

Also the skill ceiling gives you something to strive for, if you automaticly became pro at everything you touched, and life was on easy mode all the way through.
Would you feel accomplished ?

Who said anything different? Why did you assume that I meant that skill ceiling has be lowered? That's totally not my point.

My point is that, many specs are way too easy to play compared to others, and many other specs are way too hard compared to others. The solution is not to lower the skill ceiling of the hardest one (the solution u tought I meant?) but make so every class is (very) "easy" to play and at the same time (very) "hard" to master.

Generally speaking, casters have a higher skill floor and a higher skill ceiling compared to melees.

4) Pruning.

I think i know what you mean in this, and i tend to agree that the devs both PvE and PvP make abit fatfinger movements.

Don't remind me...

So thats just a straight up lie, i'll make a small list of what i can remember of the top of my head.

- New elite sets every season
- New Elite enchants every expansion (granted not in legion, since you cant enchant your artifact which would make it pointless)
- New Elite Tabard every season(ish) (granted not yet in legion, but will be coming in S3)
- 7.2 will be bringing fun mode BGs
- PvP Faction in legion (ganktastic world pvp #timelessisleflashback)
- 2 new arenas in legion (and rework of the 2 most beloved arenas)

And that is just some of the things that they have done for us recently, ontop of that you mention tournaments, blizzcon wow tournament has and most likely will always be a major part of blizzcon, this blizzcon you even got a title for watching it.

Well half of the things you listed are not yet implemented so I guess it is a moot point, they could get scrapped altogether for what we know, the other half is about things we have always had in the past among many other things.

Okay, you know what, let's compare that to TBC:
- Implementation of the arena system;
- Implementation of a new PvP reward structure, rating infrastructure, and so on;
- 3 new arenas;
- 1 new bg.

The first point alone (arena system) is 10 times more deep than all the things you listed, I think we can agree on that?

Let's compare that to Wotlk:
- introcution of a big world bg with destructible environment, siege weaponry, etc.;
- 2 new arenas;
- 1 new bg;
- 1k of PvP achievements (which were implemented in Wotlk if I remember well), with several titles, cosmetic rewards, and in general stuff to strive for;
- huge focus on e-sports stuff made by blizzard (LoL like in a sense).

New elite sets, enchants, tabards and cosmetic stuff have always been there in a way or another. I remember in Wotlk there were 2 or 3 sets per season, tabards, 2 or 3 weapons per season. If I am not wrong weapons and tabards were not simply recolors. Plus achievements with titles and rewards.

6) Lack of comunication. In League of Legends devs keep writing essays about everything that I can't keep up with even if I would have the whole day free, I swear. In WoW you don't even know what are the template stats of your spec.......

I agree that there could be better communication between the players and the devs, but this is not done out of past experience, now were stuck we community managers because well, we broke it our selfes back in vanilla i believe.

long story short, the toxic part of the wow community pushed a dev to defend him self leading to him quitting or getting fired.
"This is why we can't have nice things."

I don't think multi-millionare companies work like that. It's not like an incident made 10 years ago caused by a few toxic players is preventing them from doing what they want.

As you said, LoL is 10x more toxic than WoW, still they write essays daily. http://www.surrenderat20.net/

I swear the mole of work is immense, check it, LoL devs even explain why 1 champion doesn't even have his cigar anymore...

Also, Ghostcrawler is talkier than ever, that means that it is Blizzard higher officiers that prevent anyone else from communicating, it is not the devs which are feared (u can find lots of GC articles in that same link I gave you).

7) Lack of clear fantasy

I can't tell if you mean PvP Fantasy or Class fantasy, if it is the ladder then i strongly have to disagree, since everything this expansion is revolved around who you are and what spec you play.

Class fantasy, which affects both pve and pvp.

I miss the fact that, for example, disci priests were the absolute best healers at dispelling, damaging, pressuring, shielding, dispel protection.

8) gameplay.

I just plainly disagree with everything stated in your post, every class has very clear upsides and downsides, and if you dont know them, then thats on you.

I am not talking about what you think I am talking about I guess.

Anyway, Fantasy and Gameplay are linked. I'll give you an example about gameplay too to better explain my point.

Fantasy: Disci is not the best at dispelling, damaging, pressuring, shielding, dispel protection.

Gameplay:
- Dispelling (all healers have many way to dispel stuff, Paladins have an endless way to dispel disease and poison (Pure of Hearth), Shamans can heal with their dispel (Purifying Waters);
- Damaging (the highest output by far, Penance, swords and smite spam were scary, now hpaladins have the highest output with Avenging Crusader lol);
- Pressuring (Spammable offensive dispel which removes 2 buffs, Mana Burn, and so on);
- Shielding (PW:S, Aegis, Mastery, and so on).
- Dispel Protection (they had stacking trash buffs).

Now in a way or another, all specs and classes have and do the same stuff. A comp with a disci priest were extremely different compared with a comp with a resto shaman for example.

That extreme difference is not there anymore. I mean I guess the simple removal of Mana Burn is enough to explain thy point I want to make, isn't it?

9) Templates.

Thats personal preference, and i can't really call you wrong on that, since thats how you like to play the game, but if the majority of the players like templates then sadly thats what were gonna do, it's called democracy and wars have been fought about it.

Well what is good about reducing the choice a player can make about his own character? I mean, what's the advantage of being forced in a certain path? It's not like that same path cannot still be chosen even if there are many more out there...what am I missing?

10) Honor talents. 9 out of 10 are useless, unbalanced, uninteresting or spells that specs already had back in the past.

I don't know what rating you play at, or if you're even playing competively, but again i just plainly have to disagree with you. and if you cant see the use of most of your PvP Honor talents then i feel sorry for you.

Going back with the aggressive attitude. People usually are aggressive when they have no other way to react to something or explain it, you know that right?

and if you cant see the use of most of your PvP Honor talents then i feel sorry for you

I didn't simply say all honor talents are useless, to quote me again:

useless, unbalanced, uninteresting or spells that specs already had back in the past

It is 4 conditions we have there mate.

1) useless (the only one u saw apparently), 2) unbalanced (some are overpowered (<- the ones you were telling me about I guess)), 3) uninteresting, 4) spells we already had in the past.

Let's bring examples, which is actually something that I do but you do not, it seems, anyway:
- useless: Concentrated Power, arcane mage, 5* row, left. It would not be taken even if it was the only one of the row, it is a net loss 99% of the time, do the math.
- overpowered: Overgrowth, resto druid, last row, right.
- uninteresting: Spectral Recovery, ele shaman, 4* row, middle.
- spells we already had: Honor Among Thieves, ass rogue, 4* row, middle.

Again with the templates in place, this makes it so all gear is basicly just that... Gear.
If you get it through the means of PvE or PvP it really doesnt matter or make a difference unless you're raiding at a mythic level and what all your stats to be BiS.

And who is talking about gear? 0o

The issue is that you can gather prestige points by killing npcs, so if you kill npcs the whole expansion you could get the "most prestigious" pvp rewards, like weapon appearances etc. I was told it is low enough right now hopefully (it was extremely high months ago, in fact I spammed world tower WQs to get all my honor talents in a few days, now it is not possible anymore though...).

Sure we got the tower WQ's, but we also got our FFA WQ's which imo is very fun except for darkbrul i cant stand the movement in that place xD
again this is a classic case of not being happy with what you got, and being unsatisfied with what you dont have.

This is a case of people gaining honor talents and, worse, cosmetic "pvp-only" rewards by killing npcs (pve).

It has nothing to do with happiness or satisfaction.

12) Materialism 13) Utilitarism, 14) Standardization, 15) Stagnation 16) Artificiality

I've chosen to skip theese points since they hold no ground and would take way to much time for me to debunk
Ain't nobody got time for dat.

Keep the passive-aggressive attitude up man, it is surely a necessary attitude in order to have unbiased conversations, to explain your own opinions and to bring your own arguments, or to embrace the ones made by others, I was told, isn't it? (<- it was ironic if it was not clear).

A suggestion I can give you, if you surely want to take it, feel free to not do it, is to not use that kind of attitude if, first of all, you want to simply have a chance at having functional, fair, unbiased conversations which can be useful to yourself or to your interlocutors, being them in forums or in real life, and secondly, because, to the eyes of your interlocutor, anything else you are going to say, no matter how functional, is going to be stained by that attitude, generally used for a lack of any argument.

[Cempa]

Rated arena is NOT the only area of PvP .. In fact I would argue its the LEAST fun area ..

Also, the way you setup the questions makes it very clear you are biased and closer to elitists than the great majority of the player base ..

I'd like to see rated game play isolated from the rest of WoW and given its own balance/scaling/gear/talents that are different than random / world and PvE.

Then lets how how many play YOUR elites sub-game ..

[JoshuaNLG]

I hate the argument people bring where "If you're not rank x+ you're not allowed to complain" like fuck off, rated PvP isn't the only form of PvP this game has to offer.

[BicycleMafioso]

My issue with Pvp now is that in non-instanced zones, it's shit.
In battlegrounds, it's mêléeswarm with stun-spam and you can't live for shit as a healer because 9 Russians sit on you from the moment you res 'til you release again.
In 2s, feral having unhealable pressure, holy paladins being bonkers and my Rdru partner can't play at all against UH-DKs so we can't win there either.
In 3s, stuns.


What is even worse than the actual combat, is that though gear matters far less, almost not at all compared to previous expansions, the grind is far worse to get you started. I tried playing my Holy Paladin in BGs to farm honour levels so I could do some arenas, but without Divine Favour, Light's Grace and Avenging Crusader, I am not functionable in Pvp; the other options are simply not competetive, and those three are in the furthest right column.
AP grind is also a serious issue, but thank goodness for instant AK20 now.
Legion and the playerbase being so "Legiondary"-centric also makes it almost anti-climatic to actually get a legendary (and I only just got my second and third total combined across my four capped characters that I Pvp with, last week) since they don't actually have any form or function.
The fact that the best way to farm and grind honour is from Pve content with a Pvp-skin on it without instanced Pvp-templates leaves everything with a sour after-taste.

Gear not mattering anymore, sure. But the barrier of entry seems higher.
And I mean that in the sense of even doing unrated BGs. I didn't even feel this frustrated when I played Rogue against Stunherald in Eots in TBC as I do trying to grind Holy Paladin honour.

[Deleted]

Well i do not practice rated PvP but in unrated instanced one things are soo much beter

[Kagthul]

Echo-chambery poll is echo-chambery.

[Sigxy]

I don't mind PvP in the BGs and Arenas but, in the open world PvP it is definitely the worst I've seen. I want a different system, so on PvP servers there are just a few areas where there's Alliance vs Horde conflicts so they can add in the PvP stats like in instanced PvP (PvE servers will not be effected). Rest of the zones: I think we can agree, with the threats wanting to destroy Azeroth, Horde and Alliance fighting makes no sense.

[Deleted]

The last 2 addons rated pvp population halfed. Plenty of people to say game is shit before quitting.

[Evelyn]

current rating or experience?

[Gatsbybutters]

Pvp participation being so low says it all really. Most people only pvp now for quick AP.

It's boring, and the only people who enjoy it currently used to be fodder. Now they can bind 3 buttons with cds macro'd in on most any spec and compete. WoW pvp isn't an mmo instanced pvp game anymore, it's fake moba. It's monster energy. Call of duty. Jerry Springer. Trash tier. Garbage gameplay made for garbage people by garbage people. No more thinking about stats, strats, prep, you can be good without being good. Here's a ribbon.

[Halobob87]

To avoid a wall of text I'll simply summarize the reasons without explaining them, we all can find the explanations in basically every other topic in this same subforum. Some reasons are more trivial for me than others. Haven't played for months, my knowledge might be obsolete.

(In no particular order)

1) Stat gap. Honor set in 1 week or less vs AK, AP for each class and spec of the same class, Honor Talents, IL and their rng fest.

2) Balance.

3) Skill ceiling and floor too wide. It is enormous. (League of Legends devs balance the game keeping in mind even this aspect and some changes are made just to fix this issue, for example).

4) Pruning.

5) Non new PvP things. New bgs, maps, events, skins, tournaments, esports, dedicated patches, zones, rewards. PvP is simply an afterthought it seems.

6) Lack of comunication. In League of Legends devs keep writing essays about everything that I can't keep up with even if I would have the whole day free, I swear. In WoW you don't even know what are the template stats of your spec.......

7) Lack of clear fantasy and 8) gameplay.

For example, in the past disci priests were the best at: shielding, dispeling, doing damage. You had a clear role. Now it simply plays like every other healer. Now every healer is basically the same. Also, it is all a mess role wise. Holy paladins are the one with the highest dmg output 0o, resto druids are the tankiest (in bear) 0o, monks have the best heals over time 0o.

Another example, mages were the kings of ccs (and AoE damage for the matter). Now it is the only class without any hard cc (stun like) 0o.
Shamans were not known for having extremely powerful ccs. Now they have an AoE, ranged, Stun. 0o The best cc in the game one could hope to have lol (not necessarily reliable in PvP by all means, differently from PvE, talking about their stun).


Back in the past there were clearly defined gameplay. This point got too long. Let's move on.

9) Templates.

I miss stacking resilience because my spec is made of shit. I miss stacking mana regen because my comp is about rotting. I miss stacking haste because otherwise I can't get 1 cast off. I miss customizing my character.

10) Honor talents. 9 out of 10 are useless, unbalanced, uninteresting or spells that specs already had back in the past.

I am not necessarily against the concept of honor talents, I am against the philosophy of (hey, let's randomly throw a few darts at the wall, the ones which stick will be honor talents, this will definetely make so this mechanic (honor talents) will have a reason to exist).

There are other issues like honor talents randomly activating in world pvp, being things pvp exclusive, having to be balanced separately (so double work), etc.

11) PvE stuff giving PvP rewards or being displayed as if it is pvp (for example, Tower WQ giving honor points by killing undead npc 0o). It's not something which bothers me particularly, but it feels so strange and the contrary is not true anyway. Hopefully the amount is low enough to not force players who want to prestige to keep killing npcs...

12) Materialism 13) Utilitarism, 14) Standardization, 15) Stagnation 16) Artificiality (for lack of better words). I know, this is getting philosophic. Anyway, these points would need a whole book and concern the whole game. In a sense, most of them are linked. To keep it very short:

"Materialism": the fact that everything is about numbers (almost all talents are about numbers, so the ones numerically superior are taken // item drops are rng (<- random number generator) heavy rather than about achieving something in particular or in a certain way // an item with 900 IL is better than an item with 899 because stats in PvP are about the IL).

"Utilitarism": lfg, lfr, bg spam rather than world pvp (which is 100% dead). It is all about power rewards and doing things as soon as possible. Random bgs give loot, world pvp does not, so people who wants to boost their stats are forced to do bgs, for example. It's all about max level and doing it asap. I can't even clear some zones and finish their questlines because I hugely outlevel them, so it's about 0 narrative and rpg aspects. It's about powerleveling. It's not about the journey anymore (vanilla lovers, I summon you to explain this point ).

"Standardization": as opposite to customization, same weapon (artifact one), same stats (in PvP stats are predetermined), same talents, templates which force you to take certain paths and playstyle (if a template reduces your crit chance/damage to 50%, you are not going to take talents which are about crit, for example).

"Stagnation": nothing new, same specs/class in certain or all ratings (because they are broken), but it also about same maps, same gamemodes. Look at pve and what it offers to better understand this point.

"Artificiality": honor talents being pvp exclusive and popping off all of a sudden when you hit another player in world pvp, many abilities/spells which do not fit the game or the spec/class (frost dks have a honor talent which is basically a ball which keeps bouncing between target 0o).



Now, the one milion dollar question(s): What's similar and what's different from the past?

Similar:
- Balance (it depends on the season surely, some were probably worse or as worse as the most recent, some way better. The fact that there were way less specs in the past surely helped (down to 27, compared to the 36 of today);
- Skill Ceiling and Floor (always too wide probably, even in the past)
- Lack of Comunication (blizz devs have always been silent, even though I must say that now they reached new heights when you don't even know how your spec fully works in PvP).

Different:
- Stat Gap (It was way, way better and easier, I think this is not arguable);
- Pruning
- No new PvP stuff (Tbc was a revolution, infrastructure wise, even just remembering the introdution of arena is enough to understand the magnitude of PvP changes and implications; Wrath was a revolution, community wise, esports wise, out of the game guides/videos/topics wise, also introduced 1 bg, 2 arenas, 1 enormous world bg (Wintergrasp)).
- Lack of clear Fantasy and clear Gameplay (this point is quite clear and obvious I hope);
- Templates;
- Honor Talents;
- PvE Stuff giving PvP rewards and not viceversa anyway (if I remember well);
- Materialism, Utilitarism, Standardization, Stagnation, Artificiality (in different degrees and shapes, surely).


The end, sorry for english, it turned to be a wall of text in the end, well rip.

So, in the end u made a wall of text and used Rito games as an example of good devs work. Good job!

[Hexme]

Probably the worst expansion, overall, when it comes to pvp

* The grind to get into pvp has never been bigger(full talents/30+ traits vs honor set)
* The above makes alts almost inaccessible
* Zero content
* Class balance/design is completely dogshit. When pve has complains about class balance, just imagine how bad it is in pvp
* One of the shittiest structures when it comes to gear rewards

Forgot to add that legion s1 barely surpassed the worst season of wod in terms of arena representation. To put this in perspective, starting seasons always have very high representation due to the influx of subs/game hype etc. The worst season of wod happened when the game had lost almost 50% of the subscriber base.

Pretty much this, in fact if you love the pvp system in Legion, you're part of the problem.

[Seneca]

So, in the end u made a wall of text

It turned out to be a wall of text, as I explained in the end, I guess you didn't read it all.

Didn't want to hurt your sensibility, sorry.

Also, sorry if your teacher forced you to read it all and make an essay too.

and used Rito games as an example of good devs work.

Not really, I said that a) riot devs communicate a lot and b) that LoL is way more balanced than WoW, which doesn't mean that it is balanced, simply that it is more balanced than WoW. Random numeric example: WoW balance: 2. LoL balance: 5.

Good job!

Good job to you for spending all your resources to blame me about things which are not even WoW related. Time well spent and arguments quite useful to the community, I would say.

Pretty much this, in fact if you love the pvp system in Legion, you're part of the problem.

Maybe someone loves it "enough" to enjoy it.
Or maybe some particular pvp activities are better than others (dunno, doing random bgs with a premade group once in a while maybe?).
Maybe someone doesn't have any alternative (game) or is waiting for a change.
And then surely there might be people who simply love it (everyone is unique after all).

My opinion is that people who truly love it are a very minuscule minority (if we consider all the above cases plus the fact that the pvp partecipation dropped a lot).

[shoegazing]

2500 xp and I loathe how dumbed down PvP and class design are in this expansion

I'd even play WoD over this (gladly), that's how bad it is

Ability pruning ruined this game. If I wanted to run around smashing 123 123 123 like a moron I would go beat up a training dummy.

[Matthias]

2500 xp and I loathe how dumbed down PvP and class design are in this expansion

I'd even play WoD over this (gladly), that's how bad it is

Ability pruning ruined this game. If I wanted to run around smashing 123 123 123 like a moron I would go beat up a training dummy.

This seems to be the most common denominator that I can understand. I've always played an Arms Warrior, their skill cap has never been to high compared to other classes since their job has always been to just smash faces, not control the field much. Highest level of skill required eating traps (which I sucked at). Hence the pruning in WoD and Legion don't affect me as much, I still run around bashing faces, I just wish I had some self healing.

Other classes that lost utility probably just don't feel as fun as they used to be. Pruning was needed imo, in MoP our toolkits were bloated to hell and it felt like we had an answer for everything. But some of the things they trimmed were just silly. I mean as a Warrior I've had Second Wind since TBC, it's the primary thing that allowed us to have a shot 1 v 1.

WoW isn't balanced around dueling, but dueling is a great pass time to many, who are queueing or waiting for friends. A great way to practice also, and learn how to interact vs other classes. In WoD I never bothered dueling cause I had like no chance. Where as I used to constantly watch Warrior 1 v 1 videos in other expansions to see how in hells name they could best Mages and what not. Keep in mind dueling is broken atm also.

Overall people are going to cry about class balance forever, but it's fine as long as the classes are fun. When you prune the fun, it might be done.

[shoegazing]

This seems to be the most common denominator that I can understand. I've always played an Arms Warrior, their skill cap has never been to high compared to other classes since their job has always been to just smash faces, not control the field much. Highest level of skill required eating traps (which I sucked at). Hence the pruning in WoD and Legion don't affect me as much, I still run around bashing faces, I just wish I had some self healing.

Other classes that lost utility probably just don't feel as fun as they used to be. Pruning was needed imo, in MoP our toolkits were bloated to hell and it felt like we had an answer for everything. But some of the things they trimmed were just silly. I mean as a Warrior I've had Second Wind since TBC, it's the primary thing that allowed us to have a shot 1 v 1.

WoW isn't balanced around dueling, but dueling is a great pass time to many, who are queueing or waiting for friends. A great way to practice also, and learn how to interact vs other classes. In WoD I never bothered dueling cause I had like no chance. Where as I used to constantly watch Warrior 1 v 1 videos in other expansions to see how in hells name they could best Mages and what not. Keep in mind dueling is broken atm also.

Overall people are going to cry about class balance forever, but it's fine as long as the classes are fun. When you prune the fun, it might be done.

Arms Warriors didn't have a low skill cap, they just had a high skill floor.

There was always plenty for a good arms warrior to do. Reflecting traps and polies, intervening blinds, bladestorming kidneys, ping ponging around keeping MS pressure up.

The skill floor however for arms warriors has been pretty high (in other words the class has become quite easy to learn) ever since the removal of stance dancing. There is no longer any need to plan ahead if you want to reflect a spell for instance, you just see the spell and press the button.

Just because it's easy for the lowest common denominator to achieve modest success by training a target and doing their dps rotation doesn't mean that a class doesn't have a high skill cap, it just means that a class has a high skill floor. After WotLK arms PvP has become "easy to learn, hard to master" until now in Legion where it's just "easy" like every other class in this stupid game, dumbed down game.

BTW, the notion that "some pruning was necessary" is absolutely ridiculous. The game was fine. If you felt you had too many buttons on your bars, no one was stopping you from removing some. I 100% agree though that there will ALWAYS be balance complaints. Previous expansions had balance issues yes, but at least the classes were fun to play. Now they aren't fun and the balance still isn't any better than it's always been.

[Matthias]

Arms Warriors didn't have a low skill cap, they just had a high skill floor.

There was always plenty for a good arms warrior to do. Reflecting traps and polies, intervening blinds, bladestorming kidneys, ping ponging around keeping MS pressure up.

The skill floor however for arms warriors has been pretty high (in other words the class has become quite easy to learn) ever since the removal of stance dancing. There is no longer any need to plan ahead if you want to reflect a spell for instance, you just see the spell and press the button.

Just because it's easy for the lowest common denominator to achieve modest success by training a target and doing their dps rotation doesn't mean that a class doesn't have a high skill cap, it just means that a class has a high skill floor. After WotLK arms PvP has become "easy to learn, hard to master" until now in Legion where it's just "easy" like every other class in this stupid game, dumbed down game.

BTW, the notion that "some pruning was necessary" is absolutely ridiculous. The game was fine. If you felt you had too many buttons on your bars, no one was stopping you from removing some. I 100% agree though that there will ALWAYS be balance complaints. Previous expansions had balance issues yes, but at least the classes were fun to play. Now they aren't fun and the balance still isn't any better than it's always been.

A lot of that stuff though came down to luck and timing for a Warrior though imo. Eating traps required the most awareness, and I suppose Intervene > Reflect CC, but with Focus macros you can never be positive who the damn caster is targeting.

What I find absolutely hilarious is that Warriors have been complaining about stances being "dated" since WoTLK, jealous of how DKs could just swap presences on a whim. I personally always loved stance dancing, I even want Zerk stance back. I like sword and boarding for Spell Reflect and Shield Wall, but once again Warriors complained that such abilities required a Sword and Board Macro and yea your latency certainly mattered.

I still stand by we were too bloated in MoP. I mean I had 4 gap closers ffs. I mean in Cataclysm for the life of me I couldn't understand why they gave Warriors a class with 3 dashes Heroic Leap, and then Mages a class with the most control Ring of Frost.

When pruning they should have kept each classes prime state in mind for WoTLK, and rebuild from there.

[shoegazing]

A lot of that stuff though came down to luck and timing for a Warrior though imo. Eating traps required the most awareness, and I suppose Intervene > Reflect CC, but with Focus macros you can never be positive who the damn caster is targeting.

Respectfully, no.

Good warriors have always known how for instance bait a spriest's disarm by using Bladestorm and then reflect it with /cancelaura into Spell Reflect.

They have always had the awareness to predict an incoming Blind (let's be honest, good Rogues aren't going to Blind randomly, we are going to Blind at the optimal point in a match) and successfully Intervene it way more often than dumb luck.

"That's just luck!" is the kind of thing people say when they don't know how to make their own luck.