Will the Holinkoaster Effect end next xpac?

[Dizzeeyooo]

People wanted to PvP because it was the only thing that would prove they were good players back then.

speaking as someone who spent 90% of tbc playing arena - majority of people I knew/played with did it because it was fun

The fuck does this even mean? Why can't you just play the game and enjoy it like 99% of the player base? Holy shit nerd.

the player base for pvp currently in the US is 50k people lol - if you don't think that speaks of a larger issue then idk

[Kralljin]

Shatter+snapshot: The best mages always refreshed their dots whenever shatter was up, this ensured each tick would have a 50% increased crit chance.

Shatter does kinda still exist, not in exact same way but it's still there, if you want massive burst as Frost Mage you can pick Glacial Spike.

That aside, dots as Frostmage? Frost Mage didn't have any Dots at all until Frostfire bolt was added into it and the Dot itself dealt pitiful damage.

You do realize that most freeze effects got a damage threshold added into it? You wanted them to remain in freeze until you could land a shatter combo.

PoM: When it was usable with any casted spell it had a lot of versatility good players could capitalize on.

Ever since BC, PoM was pretty much Arcane only and Arcane never saw much play in PvP as far as i know, too squishy.

Armors: Switching your armor to counter your opponent wasn't something only the best mage players did, but it added something extra for an up-and-coming mage player to learn

Bit torn on this one, felt too much like Stance dance for my taste.

If Armor would have been off GCD i'd agree, but switching Armor in Combat felt so damn annoying due that.

Combustion: Decent players used it for the stun, better players used it for the inferno blast reset, the best players used it for both.

Considering fire saw only really use in RBG and there it caused massive issues due Combustion spread, i'd say it's better that this skill is gone for good.

Really, the whole Ignite mechanic has been a massive balancing nightmare in both PvE.

Spells with different schools: If you're locked out of your main spell school in legion, you're screwed. If you were locked out before the prune, you still had a couple damaging spells you could cast.

The only skill here would be Fire Blast, if you get interrupted on Frost you can still cast all your Arcane stuff (Poly, Blink) and i honestly doubt people started to hardcast a 3.0 Fireball that dealt no significant damage whatsoever.

Aside from that, i think access to Fire skills as Frost Mage was already removed much earlier.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Considering fire saw only really use in RBG

someone did not play arena in season 11, fire was better/more popular then frost

That aside, dots as Frostmage? Frost Mage didn't have any Dots at all until Frostfire bolt was added into it and the Dot itself dealt pitiful damage

he is talking about nether tempest/living bomb from mop

[Deleted]

What a lot of people don't know, and Blizz doesn't exactly advertise it much, is that the reason you don't feel the 'gear grind' in Legion is because new 110 dings are put into separate queues with other new dings, all having not reached Prestige 1 yet. After P1 you go into normal queues.

If you were put into normal queues as a new ding with everyone else that are geared, you'd have the same 2-shot experience as pre-Legion.

They do it this way to hide the fact that gear and the rest actually matters.

That is completely ridiculous (if it's even true). Getting prestige 1 is very easy and what makes the difference not noticeable is that only the ilvl matters and gear aquired anywhere is good for PvP. It's the difference in power from the best gear to the average gear beeing about 10%.

[Kagthul]

That is completely ridiculous (if it's even true). Getting prestige 1 is very easy and what makes the difference not noticeable is that only the ilvl matters and gear aquired anywhere is good for PvP. It's the difference in power from the best gear to the average gear beeing about 10%.

Actually were at about 14.5% right now....

Which is higher than LK-WoD, where the average was about 9.5%.

[Deleted]

Actually were at about 14.5% right now....

Which is higher than LK-WoD, where the average was about 9.5%.

How is it that if any new 110 can go into argus and get geared in 910 in a couple of days. It's a difference of 30ilvls at worse. Get out of here with your bollocks. I don't believe you for a second.

[Mafic]

How is it that if any new 110 can go into argus and get geared in 910 in a couple of days. It's a difference of 30ilvls at worse. Get out of here with your bollocks. I don't believe you for a second.

This is true.

Scaling along with Concordance throws balance way off for Legion PVP despite having a template system in place. When the final raid comes out the disparity will grow.

- - - Updated - - -

What a lot of people don't know, and Blizz doesn't exactly advertise it much, is that the reason you don't feel the 'gear grind' in Legion is because new 110 dings are put into separate queues with other new dings, all having not reached Prestige 1 yet. After P1 you go into normal queues.

If you were put into normal queues as a new ding with everyone else that are geared, you'd have the same 2-shot experience as pre-Legion.

They do it this way to hide the fact that gear and the rest actually matters.

Yes.

There is a rare occasion with a mythic geared player shows up in the low honor brackets but it doesn't happen frequently for people to notice.

[Caolela]

That is completely ridiculous (if it's even true). Getting prestige 1 is very easy and what makes the difference not noticeable is that only the ilvl matters and gear aquired anywhere is good for PvP. It's the difference in power from the best gear to the average gear beeing about 10%.

It is immaterial how easy it is to get to P1. What matters is the fact that until you hit that level you're not in regular queues with everyone else that are at whatever level beyond P1.

If you think an up to 14.5% difference in power as a new ding is nothing, especially when you may have teammates similarly gimped, then I suggest you try gimping yourself by that amount and seeing how it goes.

[Kagthul]

How is it that if any new 110 can go into argus and get geared in 910 in a couple of days. It's a difference of 30ilvls at worse. Get out of here with your bollocks. I don't believe you for a second.

This entire topic has been discussed, math-ed out, and dealt with at least three times now.

ill TLR it for you because you're not up on how things actually work, but the gist of it is this:

Previous to Legion, you could hit max level (80, 90, 110, whatever) and with a few hours of work [/b]not even PvPing[/b], be in PvP gear that was between 7-9.5% behind the absolute best PvP gear in the entire game. That was it. That was the entire barrier of entry into PvP.

And within hours, you could be within LESS than 10% of the BEST geared players in the entire game. Which the guy i was responding to seems to think is fine (he claimed 10%, and seemed to think this is acceptable).

Keep in mind, this 9.5% difference was during a time when people complained rampantly about being out-geared and that gear disparity getting them two-shot, but now 10% is fine? If you were getting two-shot in the past with a sub-10% disparity, why aren't you getting 2-shot now with a 10%+ disparity?

Now, post-Legion launch, you hit 110 and have to:
- Gear Up. Your gear floor starts at iLevel 800, and the current easily attainable average is about 920, putting you at a 12% flat stat disadvantage from gear alone (not counting your artifact). As you yourself said, this takes "a few days" on Argus. "A few days" is a LOT more than "about 6-10 hours". Oh, and the gear you get is RNG and maybe not even good for you.
- get all your Honor talents, some of which (depending on class) are absolutely necessary to even be useful in PvP. Other classes can PvP without any Honor talents and not have it affect them really.
- Get your artifact as high as possible. Yes, the insane new scaling means youll get all the base traits quickly, but there's two things with this:
1- this is not how Legion launched, and comparing the system to as it is only right this second is assinine.
2 - you're still weeks behind and cant catch up - and Concordance and the extra trait levels MATTER. You still get extra stam for every point in Concordance. And Concordance itself, while "halved" in PvP, is still immensely powerful. It can single-handedly swing a fight.

So, lets compare:

Pre-Legion:
*Get to Level Cap.
*Get basic PvP Gear (6-12 hours, and you largely didn't even have to PvP).
*Go PvP

Post-Legion
*Get to Level Cap
*Get basic Gear (days)
*Level Up Artifact (which, at launch, took weeks to "catch up"; the system is better NOW, but thats because it was broken as fuck and they realized that)
* Level up Honor to get all your PvP talents (days-week, unless you sit down and grind grind grind grind)

Oh, and in the new system, gear is completely lootbox/rando, and in the old system, you could "complete" your gear and move on by buying gear from a vendor. And with the WoD system (WoD's PvP was all sorts of messy, but the gearing system was dead-on), there was no "Best gear for PvP is PvE gear" and no "I PvPed and got better gear than raider" - because of the scaling iLevels.

The new system isn't any better than the old one.

Gear matters just as much, if not more, but now takes far longer to acquire to be viable, also requires an Honor grind to get talents that should just exist, and requires Artifact grinding.

[docterfreeze]

Shatter does kinda still exist, not in exact same way but it's still there, if you want massive burst as Frost Mage you can pick Glacial Spike.

That aside, dots as Frostmage? Frost Mage didn't have any Dots at all until Frostfire bolt was added into it and the Dot itself dealt pitiful damage.

You do realize that most freeze effects got a damage threshold added into it? You wanted them to remain in freeze until you could land a shatter combo.

After frost bomb was nerfed in MoP, mages of all specs got living bomb. I know about the freeze threshold, but that's where snapshotting came in. Any spells cast on a target with shatter on them would keep the 50% increased crit chance for their full duration, even if the freeze broke.

Ever since BC, PoM was pretty much Arcane only and Arcane never saw much play in PvP as far as i know, too squishy.

PoM was the most popular talent in MoP. Mainly used for instant frostjaw, polymorph, and pyroblast.

Bit torn on this one, felt too much like Stance dance for my taste.

If Armor would have been off GCD i'd agree, but switching Armor in Combat felt so damn annoying due that.

I meant before a match/duel started, not during combat. They had a cast time so swapping armors in combat would be really dumb. What's wrong with stance dancing anyways? With warriors and DKs it added an extra layer of skill to the class.

Considering fire saw only really use in RBG and there it caused massive issues due Combustion spread, i'd say it's better that this skill is gone for good.

Sorry for not clarifying but i'm talking about MoP, the expansion just before the big amputatio... I mean "prune" we had in WoD. Frost was still top dog in MoP but fire wasn't too behind. It had scary burst, and saw play in all types of PvP.

The only skill here would be Fire Blast, if you get interrupted on Frost you can still cast all your Arcane stuff (Poly, Blink) and i honestly doubt people started to hardcast a 3.0 Fireball that dealt no significant damage whatsoever.

Aside from that, i think access to Fire skills as Frost Mage was already removed much earlier.

Frost- Frostfire bolt, arcane explosion, fireblast
Fire - Ice lance, cone of cold, arcane explosion
Arcane - Ice lance, cone of cold, fireblast

[Deleted]

It is immaterial how easy it is to get to P1. What matters is the fact that until you hit that level you're not in regular queues with everyone else that are at whatever level beyond P1.

If you think an up to 14.5% difference in power as a new ding is nothing, especially when you may have teammates similarly gimped, then I suggest you try gimping yourself by that amount and seeing how it goes.

You mean compared to dinging and beeing an easy honor kill for weeks until you can get some gear by playing in constant frustration is somehow better than going to argus and gearing up in 2 or 3 days?

You have no case. Get out!

- - - Updated - - -

This is true.

Scaling along with Concordance throws balance way off for Legion PVP despite having a template system in place. When the final raid comes out the disparity will grow.

With knowledge increases you can get concordance in 1 or 2 days. Non-issue.

- - - Updated - - -

This entire topic has been discussed, math-ed out, and dealt with at least three times now.

ill TLR it for you because you're not up on how things actually work, but the gist of it is this:

Previous to Legion, you could hit max level (80, 90, 110, whatever) and with a few hours of work [/b]not even PvPing[/b], be in PvP gear that was between 7-9.5% behind the absolute best PvP gear in the entire game. That was it. That was the entire barrier of entry into PvP.

And within hours, you could be within LESS than 10% of the BEST geared players in the entire game. Which the guy i was responding to seems to think is fine (he claimed 10%, and seemed to think this is acceptable).

Keep in mind, this 9.5% difference was during a time when people complained rampantly about being out-geared and that gear disparity getting them two-shot, but now 10% is fine? If you were getting two-shot in the past with a sub-10% disparity, why aren't you getting 2-shot now with a 10%+ disparity?

Now, post-Legion launch, you hit 110 and have to:
- Gear Up. Your gear floor starts at iLevel 800, and the current easily attainable average is about 920, putting you at a 12% flat stat disadvantage from gear alone (not counting your artifact). As you yourself said, this takes "a few days" on Argus. "A few days" is a LOT more than "about 6-10 hours". Oh, and the gear you get is RNG and maybe not even good for you.
- get all your Honor talents, some of which (depending on class) are absolutely necessary to even be useful in PvP. Other classes can PvP without any Honor talents and not have it affect them really.
- Get your artifact as high as possible. Yes, the insane new scaling means youll get all the base traits quickly, but there's two things with this:
1- this is not how Legion launched, and comparing the system to as it is only right this second is assinine.
2 - you're still weeks behind and cant catch up - and Concordance and the extra trait levels MATTER. You still get extra stam for every point in Concordance. And Concordance itself, while "halved" in PvP, is still immensely powerful. It can single-handedly swing a fight.

So, lets compare:

Pre-Legion:
*Get to Level Cap.
*Get basic PvP Gear (6-12 hours, and you largely didn't even have to PvP).
*Go PvP

Post-Legion
*Get to Level Cap
*Get basic Gear (days)
*Level Up Artifact (which, at launch, took weeks to "catch up"; the system is better NOW, but thats because it was broken as fuck and they realized that)
* Level up Honor to get all your PvP talents (days-week, unless you sit down and grind grind grind grind)

Oh, and in the new system, gear is completely lootbox/rando, and in the old system, you could "complete" your gear and move on by buying gear from a vendor. And with the WoD system (WoD's PvP was all sorts of messy, but the gearing system was dead-on), there was no "Best gear for PvP is PvE gear" and no "I PvPed and got better gear than raider" - because of the scaling iLevels.

The new system isn't any better than the old one.

Gear matters just as much, if not more, but now takes far longer to acquire to be viable, also requires an Honor grind to get talents that should just exist, and requires Artifact grinding.

That is deceitful.

First, you don't get geared up within hours back then. You would need to have a group of fully geared pvp'rs carrying you. Gearing up took WEEKS of hopelessly losing.
If you want to boost people through pvp, i can also make the case of boosting someone in a mythic raid in hours.

Ridiculous. Deceitful.

In Legion you can gear up BY YOURSELF in days and have a fun time beeing competitive in PvP. As i said before, it took weeks of frustration before. What you are saying is simply lies.

The only thing you are right on is the pvp talents. But it's not difficult to get and it is fine because you are able to enjoy pvp and have fun rather than a horrible experience beeing 2 shot.

[Lodreh]

...WoW isnt really a pvp game...

WoW is about dungeons and raiding / being social with a guild mostly.

So much this it hurts. The game is about finishing quest with your friends.

[klaps_05]

PvP tuning and Class design are 2 different things.
2v2 balance was worse than duels.
5v5 was difficult to balance due to how many variables there are when you put 10 people together and rewards based it werent really fair as 1) skill in a 5v5 situation is a moot point and 2) 5v5 was mostly used for easy wintrading.
3v3 has always been promoted by blizzard as the highest level of PvP.

Glad mounts should always be character bound. Why should you be able to use the mount on a character you didnt earn it on?

If you want to experience PvP, there are battlegrounds/skirmish. Given the variety of battlegrounds we have, I think they have done ok. They can certainly do a lot more, but PvP participation is much lower than PvE, so it gets less resources.

Rewards from random BGs are still there - titles, achievements, mounts, reputations, tabards, using marks of honor to buy old sets/weapons for tmog, actual gear, etc. Battleground participation is low because we have had the same BGs for years and they get boring naturally.

PvP templates should be always on in arena, rbgs and duels. Random bgs and world pvp are FFA either way. The only "customization" you ever did was if you wanted haste vs mastery builds, heavy int builds, heavy resilience builds, heavy spirit/regen builds - gear needs to be entirely equal in order to determine skill. In Legion it was not incorporated correctly - ilevel should be completely irrelevant. Even a 0.01% hp difference can turn a win into a loss.

PvP talents should have been something exclusive to arena and rbg only, tho pointless anyway - you pick whats best, there is no varience.

PvP rewards are boring - r1, gladiator and mounts have no prestige when everyone can buy it, which is why I actually find the vanilla system much better. In vanilla you grinded to get shit. Hours and hours and hours and you didnt even know your standing until the end of the week.

TLDR: Blizzard missed the Dota2/Overwatch/CSGO esports hypetrain. When the players arent really hyped about something, focus is put somewhere else.

[Omaski]

Correct, and that can be used to negate changes that screw over PvP.

While i agree that templates can be used to fix PvP without affecting PvE...it also completely stopped any semblance of customization which is a key part of an RPG. Ive played Ret Pally since Cata, in both PvE & PvP. In MoP PvP, fighting as a Ret basically meant you will be focused all match to nullify your utility that was only truly useful on others...not yourself, but with reforging/gemming, I could focus more on versatility to be a bit more tankier to counter the game-wide strat, or if i wanted to focus solely on damage, i could reforge/gem to mastery and hit like a truck.

Templates basically tell a player that you will play the way Blizz tells you to play with no way to fix the weaknesses of your spec.

[fiestatastic]

But MoP pvp was the best pvp ever was overall. PVP was pretty great in cata also, very similar to wrath, actually I'm not even really seeing a distinct difference between wrath and cata, wintergrasp=great and so was tol barad.

WoD specifically, pruning, getting rid of 5's, a lot of other stuff mentioned, is where pvp got gutted, and then Legion took it further with more pruning, templates, terrible balance, and just put the nails in the coffin and buried pvp.

[Omaski]

You mean compared to dinging and beeing an easy honor kill for weeks until you can get some gear by playing in constant frustration is somehow better than going to argus and gearing up in 2 or 3 days?

You have no case. Get out!

- - - Updated - - -



With knowledge increases you can get concordance in 1 or 2 days. Non-issue.

- - - Updated - - -



That is deceitful.

First, you don't get geared up within hours back then. You would need to have a group of fully geared pvp'rs carrying you. Gearing up took WEEKS of hopelessly losing.
If you want to boost people through pvp, i can also make the case of boosting someone in a mythic raid in hours.

Ridiculous. Deceitful.

In Legion you can gear up BY YOURSELF in days and have a fun time beeing competitive in PvP. As i said before, it took weeks of frustration before. What you are saying is simply lies.

The only thing you are right on is the pvp talents. But it's not difficult to get and it is fine because you are able to enjoy pvp and have fun rather than a horrible experience beeing 2 shot.

I think you missed the point being made. in WoD, once you hit max level and wanted to get into PvP, you go to Ash'ran (ass'ram to me) where you can get full blues in like 2hrs max and get a purple after completing the quest (4 events and Boss), then, because of the honor catch up, you could compete in 2s, getting honor fast to get the rest of your purple gear. THAT WAS IT...possible in 1-2 days, less if you grind. But in Legion, once you hit max level, you still have to gear up having to do either WQs, LFR, or Mythic+, which take longer on argus because of no flying, all while having to upgrade your artifact/concordance & your honor talents.

[Kralljin]

PoM was the most popular talent in MoP. Mainly used for instant frostjaw, polymorph, and pyroblast.

Considering it was mostly used for CC spells, i consider this a gain, instant CC spells at 40yard range are one of the most dumbass things in PvP, because it's the kind of stuff that has basically no serious counterplay, which is not a great design.

I meant before a match/duel started, not during combat. They had a cast time so swapping armors in combat would be really dumb. What's wrong with stance dancing anyways? With warriors and DKs it added an extra layer of skill to the class.

By itself, i don't think it's that wrong, what made it annoying for me was it constantly triggered the GCD and you had to macro everything, which was just not that well designed.

But then again, Stance dance slowly became a joke over the years until it's removal in MoP, started in Wotlk when Berserker Rage could be used in all Stances.

[Omaski]

Considering it was mostly used for CC spells, i consider this a gain, instant CC spells at 40yard range are one of the most dumbass things in PvP, because it's the kind of stuff that has basically no serious counterplay, which is not a great design.



By itself, i don't think it's that wrong, what made it annoying for me was it constantly triggered the GCD and you had to macro everything, which was just not that well designed.

But then again, Stance dance slowly became a joke over the years until it's removal in MoP, started in Wotlk when Berserker Rage could be used in all Stances.

Spammable CC @ 40 yrds is the dumbest thing in PvP

[Kralljin]

Spammable CC @ 40 yrds is the dumbest thing in PvP

Wouldn't mind seeing some sort of CD on Fear / Poly, but Instant CC's are worse.

Spammable still means you can LoS / Interrupt them, Instant means you can't do shit unless you're a Shaman and perfectly predict Grounding.

[Mafic]

With knowledge increases you can get concordance in 1 or 2 days. Non-issue.

Rank 1 concordance or 2 is pretty much gimped in BGs because it is nerfed by what 60%?

At this point if you don't have rank 10 concordance or higher in arena or bgs you are wasting your teammates time simply entering. Blizz has convinced people they can jump right in to do PVP in legion but that isn't the case at all.