Is PVP in WoW really on the decline?

[FatDudeFemaleCharacter]

I can't help but notice the last few post complainning about melee uptime and melee in general and equating it to how the game is going down hill because of it. Curious as to how people think that way. Specially when it finally feels like melee have a chance against most ranged now in a 1v1 match up. I mean most ranged kept their tools, melee just got more to put then on an even plauing field. Hell, wizards are still probably the most dominate on the US ladder with a wide range of casters performing well. And in rbgs ranged usually were the defacto choice but now we are finally seeing other melee being worth wnd visble to bring instead of all ranged and a rogue or maybe a dk. I think ranged players are just finally having to work for their wins and being punished like melee when they make a mistake instead of having an out for everything melee have.

Two notes pre 7.2.5 sub was out of control with up time and now feels better. And hunter are still great at kiting melee, they just don't have 70 million ways to get away from melee like they did in the past.

If by have a chance you mean automatically win by smashing a PvE rotation buttons because ranged has no counterplay 1v1 or even 2v2 then yeah

[Kagthul]

If by have a chance you mean automatically win by smashing a PvE rotation buttons because ranged has no counterplay 1v1 or even 2v2 then yeah

0/10, not even a decent attempt.

Play a ranged. Trust me, as an affliction warlock there is no counterplay to melee. I cant escape. Ever. I cant be peeled for. I can sit and be a punching bag. Shadow Priests have it no better.

Beastmastery Hunter is pretty close to the same boat. There's... disengage. All the melee except some DK specs have at least 2 gap closers, most have 3, some even have 4. You will NEVER peel a competent melee off of you. Your only snare is worse than every melee snare.

Mages have it great. Fire doesn't have to cast to cast. And can cast the few things it does have to cast while moving. Frost can root fo days (back to have roots on separate DRs i hear?). Arcane can implode you before you have a chance to act.

Other ranged though? Yeah, it aint so rosy. Melee sticks to you like glue and has, generally speaking, at least one more gap closer than you have openers, if not more, and often on shorter cooldowns than your opener.

It pretty much sucks to play ranged right now.

[meumaxu]

The only thing i would change for PVP now is get rid of status template.. that sucks and doesnt give me any kind of improvement for playing. I wanna use all my gear and get stronger with ilvl, if i wanted to play a template status game i would go to a moba. I just wnna pwn casuals with my top endgame pve gear

[rda]

It's kind of funny to see 10 pages of posts about WoW PVP being crap, declining, dying, whatever... and not a single one of them (admittedly, I only skipped through most of it) has any constructive criticism. As in: What would make PvP better? Not "Improve class balance, make gear less RNG, I don't like the template", but concrete ideas.

But of course, there are none. Because classes CANT be balanced, ever. Because RNG is actually a way to keep people playing instead of gearing them out in the first week. Because the template actually solves the problem of "we don't want to PvE to get PvP gear" vs. "We need to PvP to get gear for PvE".

I thought I would remark that...

"It's kind of funny" but the guys complaining about how all they see is unconstructive whine that nobody can use to improve the game disappear immediately after they are given / pointed to the constructive criticism they allegedly wanted to see.

:-)

[inkberry]

1) I am talking about PvP in general, not just 3v3 arena. In 2v2, any healer can competently top their respective dps off until dampening takes hold, at which point mana may become an issue. In bgs, healers can heal entire teams fairly well, through ridiculous sums of damage without ever running oom;

2v2 doesn't matter. Battlegrounds and rbgs don't matter. Blizzard balances around 3v3 because they realize along with everyone else that actually knows what they're doing that 2v2, random and rbgs are a fucking joke.

2) Healer based utility is through the roof relative to most iterations of this game's history as well as other, similar MMOs. Is it at an all time high for WoW? No, but that is not what I said. Every healer in this game has enough tools to deal with the situations in which they find themselves in a PvP environment. That was not always the case in WoW.

Who cares? Healer utility was pruned significantly (once again, unless you're playing rsham or hpriest) compared to most dps, while at the same time being indirectly nerfed with the amount of damage going out in legion compared to the previous expansion. To be able to actually top someone's healthbar off requires more mana and spellcasts than it has ever taken in the past. I don't even know why you're in this thread, you obviously don't have any experience of significance.

Players healthpools in relativity to damage is lower than ever before? Ehhh, in WoltLK I could three or even twoshot people with lava burst. I remember that super clearly because I had been enhancement for most of the expansion and then asked gm if he could switch my gear to elemental. Which GMs actually did back then. I was amazed by how insanely strong elemental was after being enhancement for a long while. Literally twoshotting most players in pvp. However, somehow in wotlk during a blizzcon the 3v3 matches could go on 40 minutes. So even if it was possible to kill people fast matches went on forever. I guess that happens without dampening.

>Damage relative to healthpools and healing throughput.

Please read before replying. Healers can't top people off with 1-2 casts like they could in wotlk unless you're playing rsham or holy priest.

[Holofernes]

i used to be a arena hero. over 6 k games in 3vs3 over the years. But doing arena now is no fun at all. The classes have been pruned down. U need to change your whole action bar and put the pvp talents in your bars. Gearing is made obsolete.

In the old times people who were exceptionally good could do awsome plays. Battling with good players that used their whole toolkit was really fun. Nowadays, nobody has a toolkit anymore. One very strong player could decide a bg. Now everyone is a generic char that does the exactly same thing. Healers are overpowered as fuck. I main a 930ish warrior, thats fucking useless in random bg. all i can do is kill people if there is no healer around. no plays allowed.

My little resto shaman, he has ilvl 890 only, no sockets, no enchants, nothing, just a random garbage char, that happens to be healer, can tank 5 dps for a minute . as a healer u can run around in the biggest zerg and type / lol at all those poor guys trying to hit you, while chaining cds and feeling unkillable. My 930 Warrior would never be able to ever kill my lowie shaman, if i would play against myself. And its not because im bad, its just how the game has been designd.

Nowadays u get messaged for using a "kickbot" only because u hit your windsheers on this very bad druid that trys to blanket cyclone u constantly. Rofl

Its NOT fun to get raped by a bm hunter in open pvp, that sends pets onto you and does turtle trolling around until you dead. Lol open pvp. Immunity classes autowin.

Tanks in open pvp is the worst, who ever came to the idea that tanks should do this much dmg and healing in pvp needs to be fired. Hell we see tanks in the finals of wow arena tournaments right now. The moment this happened the first time, blizz should have reacted. But hell no, they like this "creativity and awsome play".

Ultima Online had a better pvp system than legion.

[Caolela]

That is nothing at all like what this guys doing. There is a million ther things he could be doing than playing a game he doesnt like. there is nothing you or anyone can say to change my mind hes calling a game hot garbage then continuing to plau said game...all this says to me is he does enjoy the game an also loves the sound of his own voice so needs to troll on forums.

Already discussed this in posts #139 & 179, etc.

However, it might have occurred to you that some of us want the game that we paid for back, or not in such a rotten condition, so we can use the product we own as we purchased it.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Frost can root fo days (back to have roots on separate DRs i hear?)

nope, one single root dr

[Kagthul]

nope, one single root dr

Good. I hadn't checked into it, just seen it posted a few times on the WoW forums lately.

Glad to know it's wrong.

[Holofernes]

nope, one single root dr

nope no dr on the 70 % slow. its up 100 % of the time. Source: im a warrior main.

Random root from blizzard / whatever hits you is on a different dr than frost nova root.

[Kagthul]

nope no dr on the 70 % slow. its up 100 % of the time.

Roots are not snares.

Not that im saying permasnares aren't also an issue - they are. But that is one shared by .. .well, every melee. I LOVE waddling around as my warlock or hunter with a snare on me 100% of the fight because theyre all passively applied with no opportunity cost of any kind.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Random root from blizzard / whatever hits you is on a different dr than frost nova root.

incorrect, frostbite shares dr with frost nova/pet nova

nope no dr on the 70 % slow. its up 100 % of the time. Source: im a warrior main

why would snares ever have a dr?

[Kagthul]

incorrect, frostbite shares dr with frost nova/pet nova


why would snares ever have a dr?

because providing opportunities for counterplay and giving people a chance to escape would create far better gameplay.

perma-snares (which are almost all passively applied at ZERO opportunity or resource cost) are skill-less bullshit of the highest order.

- - - Updated - - -

2v2 doesn't matter. Battlegrounds and rbgs don't matter. Blizzard balances around 3v3 because they realize along with everyone else that actually knows what they're doing that 2v2, random and rbgs are a fucking joke.

Right, because "balancing" around the least-participated in form of PVP (by a very, very large margin) is a surefire way to get more people into PvP.

[Paulosio]

While I agree pvp got worse when holinka came, despite more focus being placed on it, the server pop thing happened to every single server in WoD because they increased sever capacity. My server on EU (Outland back in the day) was high/full/locked depending on time of day/year and it went to low overnight in WoD.

Indeed. I can't believe how many people still believe that the low, medium, high server designation actually indicates the number of people who play on those servers compared to the past.

Lets imagine a server has acapacity of 10,000 and that server had 10,000 people playing on it. It would then obviously be dsignated "full".

Now imagine if that same server had it's capacity upped to 20,000.... That server would go from "full" to medium" immediately without any change in the number of people playing on it. This is exactly what happened during WOD and it has happened at other points in time too.

Get it into your heads and stop using the server population designation from the realm select screen as a guide to how many people play on a server today compared to at some point in the past....

[Deleted]

I thought I would remark that...

"It's kind of funny" but the guys complaining about how all they see is unconstructive whine that nobody can use to improve the game disappear immediately after they are given / pointed to the constructive criticism they allegedly wanted to see.

:-)

Well, anything that is constructive is better than the senseless whining of "PVP is dead". By forcing people to give specific examples, a lot of whining actually stops because people realize that there is no silver bullet solution to a lot of the issues.

[rda]

Well, anything that is constructive is better than the senseless whining of "PVP is dead". By forcing people to give specific examples, a lot of whining actually stops because people realize that there is no silver bullet solution to a lot of the issues.

Thanks for replying, but no, the reason whining stops is not because people suddenly realize "oh, it all is so difficult, we were complaining too much and wanting too much". No, not at all. (It is difficult, yes, if done properly, but what the PVP development team in WoW did was so little that this team could have consisted of a single part-time developer. No kidding, we can go and count what they did and this all amounts to very, very little.)

No, the whining largely stops not because of that realization that the issues are complex. It stops because people just leave. There's no use to complain, nothing changes. The blues say they are listening, and I can't know if they do or don't, but they sure as heck do pretty much nothing after supposedly hearing the complaints. The regular tuning of the specs is all they do, this tuning doesn't help and it takes very little time to do, development-effort wise. So, people are just leaving. That's why this forum is a desert and that's why the complaints are disappearing. When there will be zero people playing, there will be zero complaints.

[Deleted]

Thanks for replying, but no, the reason whining stops is not because people suddenly realize "oh, it all is so difficult, we were complaining too much and wanting too much". No, not at all. (It is difficult, yes, if done properly, but what the PVP development team in WoW did was so little that this team could have consisted of a single part-time developer. No kidding, we can go and count what they did and this all amounts to very, very little.)

No, the whining largely stops not because of that realization that the issues are complex. It stops because people just leave. There's no use to complain, nothing changes. The blues say they are listening, and I can't know if they do or don't, but they sure as heck do pretty much nothing after supposedly hearing the complaints. The regular tuning of the specs is all they do, this tuning doesn't help and it takes very little time to do, development-effort wise. So, people are just leaving. That's why this forum is a desert and that's why the complaints are disappearing. When there will be zero people playing, there will be zero complaints.

If you hear every minute of every hour of every day "I'm completely underpowered, need buffs!" or - even better - the typical "Nerf stone, paper is fine, sincerely scissors", there is a point where you basically switch off. Hence: non-constructive feedback is not only not helping but actually hurting because it makes devs switch off.

Noone goes to work saying: "I'm going to fuck over my customers today". So, the devs will have a reason to do what they do, especially given that they will have to work in a team and challenge ideas against each other. It's always easy to second-guess decisions and changes from your armchair, so you should probably just put yourself into the shoes of the devs first before making statements on them not doing anything.

[rda]

If you hear every minute of every hour of every day "I'm completely underpowered, need buffs!" or - even better - the typical "Nerf stone, paper is fine, sincerely scissors", there is a point where you basically switch off. Hence: non-constructive feedback is not only not helping but actually hurting because it makes devs switch off.

Noone goes to work saying: "I'm going to fuck over my customers today". So, the devs will have a reason to do what they do, especially given that they will have to work in a team and challenge ideas against each other. It's always easy to second-guess decisions and changes from your armchair, so you should probably just put yourself into the shoes of the devs first before making statements on them not doing anything.

I am sorry but it is clear that you aren't a dev and are reasoning about how things might be to the best of your understanding. The above reeks of being written by someone with no experience. I am a dev and has been for a long time, so I will tell you how it really is.

This perceived lack of constructive criticism in a lot of posts that you are talking about only turns off newbie devs and stupid devs. Professional devs know that sorting out through tons of feedback for a few grains of treasure is part of the game. That's just how things are, the cost of doing business, etc. Same for doing tech support - it helps *a lot* if the devs get to do it from time to time because that way they quickly see what's important and what isn't instead of theorizing about it. Best shops rotate devs to do it regularly. Yet 99% of the support cases are not very constructive (by the way, the percentage of actionable vs unactionable complaints is a signal in and of itself, but let's even leave that aside). Stupid devs complain about having to rotate to support all the time, but good devs know that this is actually where the treasure is and the big opportunities to improve the product are.

The amount of complaints is a complete non-issue. You can't escape it and you learn to tune it out. If you can't, don't call yourself a dev. Simple.

- - - Updated - - -

(On a re-read I realized that the above sounds unnecessarily patronizing. Sorry for that. The point still stands - that a lot of posts do not contain constructive critique is (a) not an issue, it is easily tuned out, (b) a signal in and of itself, and (c) in this case partly created by the devs themselves who plain didn't do much for years.)

[Deleted]

Hm, I still believe that devs are human beings. And all human beings have the same base tendencies. Like switching off when all you hear is constant bitching.

[Nofo]

I'm one of the people making it decline. Did some arena in MoP, almost hit 2k, so not impressive. Did RBGs too, loved them, and did break 2k. Played slightly rated less PvP in WoD, and while I did get my 40 RBG wins in the two first seasons of Legion, with 80+ losses (exhausting), I just... haven't felt it after that.

Reasons
- PvP guilds are hard to find, and when you do find one, it will die. Or maybe you end up being benched, defeating the purpose of joining;
Rbgguy: Whisper for invite
You to Rbgguy: Hey, throw an invite, please
Rbgguy: Just a sec, forming the group
You to Rbgguy: ok!
*5 minutes pass by, no invite*
*press J, 10 people are in Warsong Gulch*
- Without a solid group, I need to pug RBGs
- RBG pugs are toxic and full of impatient shits that leave mid-game after the enemy team caps the first flag in WSG
- My 2k from MoP won't help me anymore; people now want just 2k Legion xp
- I feel I've reached my skill ceiling
- Blizzard doesn't seem too concerned with striking down on boost/win selling, making RBGs coming across as not serious
- I feel sort of sad that I've missed out on the lore and the game itself, with the amount of BGs I've done (several thousand). Something about some Deathwing, blabla Pandaria blabla Garrosh, blabla Draenor. No idea why we went to Draenor. And now the Legion is invading. I don't know the in-game lore, because I've been too busy fighting over fucking lumber in fucking Ashenvale, a battle that's been raging for years.

So instead of pugging RBGs and never hitting 2k again (highest in Legion was 1,7k) I've been doing m+, highest up to 10 without actually making the +10 in time, though +8 we do flawlessly. And it's more fun. More enjoyable. More relaxing. Friendly people. No raging, no one leaving "mid game".

Husband quit too. My b-net list had people that did RBGs, but they've either stopped (rated) PvP or stopped playing completely.

In my eyes, the PvP community needs to look at itself, with the shithead attitude and class/spec favour, as maybe two reasons for the decline.

Edit:
Fucking up matchmaking, like when your 1500 MMR group meets someone at 2100
You win two in a row, gain 20 rating, lose the next game, and with it, 21 rating.

Exactly the same thing, was 2459 in MOP legion floating around 1800 in 3s and randomly rbg when I can, random casual bgs are aids if you don't got buddies rolling with. grinding M+ is way more entertaining (the whole don't leave mid game thing is nice) hell we even jokingly started a guild after clearing Heroic NH and we only have like 5-8 actually players in it and all we do is grind M+ and we out gear most of the raid guilds minus top tier guilds on the server. we all have like 4 toons each and just gear from there. its damn near impossible to find solid pvp anything anymore which is horrible because PVP is awesome part of why wow is fun.