PvP Template = Idiocy

[Xar226]

I actually agree that once they decided to create the PVP templates, not activating them in world PVP was a ridiculous choice.

Yes, there would have been issues (what do you do if somebody is in PVE combat but gets tagged into PVP?) but they're not insurmountable, and this definitely feels like the worst choice.

[solarfallz]

As a concept it's awesome. No gear, only skill. I would even go further and deactivate artifact weapons in PvP.

Sounds to me like you are playing the wrong game, my friend.

Or you were, until Legion came out, I guess.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Not sure how anyone could dislike it, honestly.

The biggest problem the game has always had was pvp imbalance due to pve.

What better way is there to solve this? To my knowledge, there is not one.
Doesn't mean its perfect, but its gotta be a fucking ton better than with out it.
Makes me think you just don't like pvp if you are complaining about the templates this late into their implementation.

[solarfallz]

Not sure how anyone could dislike it, honestly.

The biggest problem the game has always had was pvp imbalance due to pve.

What better way is there to solve this? To my knowledge, there is not one.
Doesn't mean its perfect, but its gotta be a fucking ton better than with out it.
Makes me think you just don't like pvp if you are complaining about the templates this late into their implementation.

~500,000 HKs and some gladiator drakes for me, and the mere thought of templates makes me want to puke. How much do YOU like PVP?

[Cempa]

Resilience wasn't the balance system... The balance system was individually adjusting ability damage through the "does X% less/more to players" function tied to every ability in the game.

Resilience was to make the time to kill longer, which was replaced in WoD with larger health pools, long before templates were a thing.


That being said, I also agree that templates are awful... They are imprecise balance, they use things like Agi/Int/Str to blanket adjust damage despite it also effecting absorbs and heals that scale off of it too, so every time they nerf someone's damage they also nerf their survivability... Not to mention templates don't work in duels and world PvP, where the old system did.

The template system is inherently flawed to it's core, and is in every way worse than the old system... The templates should be removed and the old system should come back. The only good part of templates is scaling everyone to the same item level, which can be and was done with the old system by setting the ilvl of everyone's gear to the same ilvl while in instanced PvP(in low lvl BGs during WoD, the ilvl of everyone's gear was scaled to the same number, which proves it was possible).

Exactly .. your wording is much better than mine, thank you.

I think Blizz still can't seem to understand why the numbers began to slide -participation- during WoD and why they took a nose dive during Legion.

[Deleted]

its shit, they need to return to wher you could buy gear. guys remeber we are playing an RPG first before an esport, if a player has better gear he shoould be harrder to kill, its always been like that, let esports have equal ground and when it comes to competitoons then skill could matter but for the normal game templates just dont belong. I was so excited when they announced it but when u actually realize what it did to pvp it just desotryed it. I want to progress in legion with gear, not some mindless prestige farm it just makes no sense. Bring back buyable pvp gear and maybe make it like the wotlk model where u had to have certain rating to buy a wep for example or some shit.

[MyndZero]

The whole template system is dumb and should be removed. It's an MMORPG. Getting better gear and using it is part of the core gameplay. This should also be the case in PVP. If i get a mad as fuck trinket I want to go wreck some fools in PVP and this is how it should be. If you want an at all times balanced PVP experience, you would play a game dedicated to that like a moba.

[Lightbull]

Can't wait until Blizzcon when they announce that this feature is staying so people shut up about it. This is just getting out of hand at this point.

[Kauko]

It's completely fine in BGs and Arenas... can't say the same about world PvP though!

Agree. I don't see anything wrong with it. I was also fine with resilience. The main problem I see in PVP templates is the fact that you are useless in WPVP and with that grinding WQs or doing anything else on a pvp realm is a pain in the ass. No wonders Draenor and Silvermoon realms are full 24/7 even now with raised population cap.

And the second problem is gearing. The most boring system I ever saw. First of all, you get drops so rarely that you usually get something better from somewhere else and IF you get a good drop its for the same spot as was the last one. RNG gearing system has to go away in PVP. I was fine with collecting honor and spending it, even before, when we were collecting badges in different type of BGs for different type of gear I was fine with it. In PVE you go in a different dungeon, raid to get a different piece of gear. In PVP, at the moment, you just have NO control of it. And Echoes of Battle is just lame. 1 piece for one gear? I usually just vendor it as buying gear from Echoes vendor is a 10x longer process than going to a raid, M, WQs...

So for the end, Template system is not the problem of PVP as resilience was not, but people blamed it for years. They change to much stuff every EXP so that whats good, just gets lost...

[Megitsune]

The concept of "no gear, skill only" is perfectly fine to me, gear should be completely irrelevant in PvP. It should be 100% about skill with your class and outplaying your opponent. There definitely shouldn't ever be any RNG random gear, that's an awful idea and I have no clue why they even decided to put that in. If you're gonna make gear not matter then just remove it from PvP entirely. If you're trying to make it so PvP is a decent way to gear for PvE content as well, then at least don't do that RNG bullshit.

HOWEVER without gear they need to add some sort of fun and meaningful progression to PvP which imo they completely failed to do in Legion and I hope they fix next expansion. Also the whole PvP template thing does need some major work.

[Schattenlied]

Can't wait until Blizzcon when they announce that this feature is staying so people shut up about it. This is just getting out of hand at this point.

They really shouldn't... It not working in the game world, or in duels, in addition to it's primary method of damage tuning (adjust str/agi/int) also effecting all heals and absorbs that don't scale off max HP really sucks (for example: class Y needs a damage nerf, so they reduce it's Agility, but all their selfheals scale off Attack Power, which comes from Agility, so they also nerfed Y's survivability for no reason at all) ... It's very obviously flawed, it needs a massive overhaul or scrapping... The game is better off without a system with this many flaws.

And we won't shut up about it. As I say often about class design, we won't warm up to an awful design, we will just yell louder until it's fixed.

[Elestia]

Few points to understand on this:
1.) Resil basically got replaced with versatility anyway
2.) Templates provide consistent equity between players so skill actually matters. Gone are the days of "elite" pvpers that can't be touched because they're getting exponential returns on resilience. (That being said, you can still carry a marginal advantage in pvp with higher ilvl over whatever the floor is. (0.1% per ilvl above, max 10% or 100 ilvl) ).

That being said, are the templates perfect? I don't think so. But I wouldn't expect to see major class revamps anytime soon - so because of that, with better consistency (more stats, what works what doesn't work etc) balancing will improve going forward.

Also, templating and separate pvp related talents is what pvp has needed since day one in order to make it both competitive and fun. PvP before was so ridiculously broken and pathetic for so long, it's little wonder that the ones which used to "thrive" in the old way of doing things would be the ones to complain now.

Seriously... PvP should be about outmaneuvering and out-thinking your opponent. I remember even in MoP wearing a standard season set and not being able to burst the 'elite' geared players. BGs were won by either: A.) how many elites you had, how many healers you had and B.) are the elite players playing for the objective. are the healers healing them. Literally nothing else mattered.

[Lex Icon]

Agree. I don't see anything wrong with it. I was also fine with resilience. The main problem I see in PVP templates is the fact that you are useless in WPVP and with that grinding WQs or doing anything else on a pvp realm is a pain in the ass. No wonders Draenor and Silvermoon realms are full 24/7 even now with raised population cap.

And the second problem is gearing. The most boring system I ever saw. First of all, you get drops so rarely that you usually get something better from somewhere else and IF you get a good drop its for the same spot as was the last one. RNG gearing system has to go away in PVP. I was fine with collecting honor and spending it, even before, when we were collecting badges in different type of BGs for different type of gear I was fine with it. In PVE you go in a different dungeon, raid to get a different piece of gear. In PVP, at the moment, you just have NO control of it. And Echoes of Battle is just lame. 1 piece for one gear? I usually just vendor it as buying gear from Echoes vendor is a 10x longer process than going to a raid, M, WQs...

So for the end, Template system is not the problem of PVP as resilience was not, but people blamed it for years. They change to much stuff every EXP so that whats good, just gets lost...

combatant gear gives one echo while gladiators give 15 i think.

[Schattenlied]

Few points to understand on this:
1.) Resil basically got replaced with versatility anyway

No, it was replaced with larger health pools.

2.) Templates provide consistent equity between players so skill actually matters. Gone are the days of "elite" pvpers that can't be touched because they're getting exponential returns on resilience. (That being said, you can still carry a marginal advantage in pvp with higher ilvl over whatever the floor is. (0.1% per ilvl above, max 10% or 100 ilvl) ).

Literally the only thing that was required for that is scaling everyone's gear to the same ilvl in instanced PvP, which was possible before templates.

Also, templating and separate pvp related talents is what pvp has needed since day one in order to make it both competitive and fun.

No it wasn't, ilvl scaling of gear is the one and only thing that was required to make it competitive and fun...

PvP specific talents are entirely irrelevant since the normal talents still work there too. I have to ask, do you even PvP right now? Because I feel like the people who say this think the normal talents don't work in PvP or something... They don't make it "more fun", you just copy paste the "best" ones and go.

Also, PvP talents aren't a part of the template... They exist entirely separate from one another, which means there is no point at all to discussing them in a thread about the template.

Seriously... PvP should be about outmaneuvering and out-thinking your opponent.

I agree on that, and we're still nowhere near that being the case in instanced PvP... and PvP out in the world is more of a mess than it has ever been.

Templates are in every way worse than the old system with ilvl scaling. They blanket nerf primary stats to tune damage, which results in nerfs to survivability because almost every heal and absorb in the game scales off those stats too. The templates don't work in world PvP or duels, where the old system did.

So, how are templates positive? Because all I see are negatives.

[khazlol]

i wonder if pvp would even survive another expansion like this

[Kaykay]

they need to stop trying to make pvp into a seperate game, and focus on what makes mmorpg's fun. Instead of butchering insentive to play with shitty loot systems, butchering the rpg feeling with lack of character power progression (Which is the KEY element this game revolves around, get gear, do more damage, etc.). stop butchering the feel of class knowledge by making all abilities act different in pvp and by having new talents that you can only use in pvp (cc's being capped at 8-10 sec should be the absolute max extent of this, you can keep diminishing returns because that mechanic still exists in pve.).

When you do the above, you get legion pvp, which is not wow, it's a different game, a boring game that tries to look like an rpg, but is just a poorly designed moba where you start at max power and dont have to farm mobs and buy items. Heck even moba's have more rpg elements than wow pvp. It's such a flop.

[solarfallz]

they need to stop trying to make pvp into a seperate game, and focus on what makes mmorpg's fun. Instead of butchering insentive to play with shitty loot systems, butchering the rpg feeling with lack of character power progression (Which is the KEY element this game revolves around, get gear, do more damage, etc.). stop butchering the feel of class knowledge by making all abilities act different in pvp and by having new talents that you can only use in pvp (cc's being capped at 8-10 sec should be the absolute max extent of this, you can keep diminishing returns because that mechanic still exists in pve.).

When you do the above, you get legion pvp, which is not wow, it's a different game, a boring game that tries to look like an rpg, but is just a poorly designed moba where you start at max power and dont have to farm mobs and buy items. Heck even moba's have more rpg elements than wow pvp. It's such a flop.

You nailed it, my dude. And honestly, they could have even designed CC to function the same between PVE/PVP, since a) CC is pretty seldom used in modern wow PVE, and b) having to rotate CCs PVP-style in raids/dungeons would actually be pretty fun.

[Luxeley]

Blizzard essentially offered Pvpers a trade-off in Legion - players sacrifice gear progression and they provide class balance with the pvp templates. That didn't even come reasonably close to happening. The problem isn't the pvp templates. Sure, they could have implemented the templates in a much better way by allowing some customization across the board as far secondary stats go. And they could've provided much better rewards to pvp and take out the "need" to pve to be competitive in pvp (something Holinka explicitly said would not be the case). The bigger issue here rests with class design and the 2 rounds of ability pruning (Wod and Legion).

[Deleted]

Templates and ability pruning pretty much killed all the fun you could have in random battlegrounds. I used to spam queue battlegrounds in the past, it was the most fun part of the game. Right now random battlegrounds are only good for getting a few transmog sets on your character and that's pretty much it. I didn't play much of WoD so I don't remember how it was in terms of battlegrounds, but up until MoP I spammed battlegrounds on all my characters.

Because of templates there is no sense of progression in PvP. Pruning made sure every class is ridiculously easy to play (especially dps), so winning 1v2+ fights is really rare these days. I understand templates for ranked PvP, and I fully agree disabling PvE trinkets and set bonuses and such in all sorts of instanced PvP. I don't understand why the MoP system was bad to be honest. Capping conquest points on alts was super easy when isle of thunder was introduced and keeping up with gear wasn't much of a hassle.

If you're the type of player who plays WoW mostly for battlegrounds, you will not really see any rewards. Gearing up through battlegrounds is pretty much impossible, unless you play a ridiculous amount. I mean, running a couple mythics and doing Argus weekly stuff will literally get you fully geared up to a point where random battlegrounds can no longer offer any sort of upgrades, unless of course you get really really lucky. Most players seem to want to progress their character, and if you can't do that in PvP without getting high rating, popularity goes down.

If I wanted to play a spammy game with zero progression, I could always play Overwatch. I don't want WoW to be like Overwatch, because that game is really boring. The esports approach is great for ranked arenas and tournaments, but random battlegrounds are not the place for that. To me random battlegrounds were much like a game of Battlefield. You hop in and kill some people, have some fun you know. I still play Battlefield a lot, and it has nothing to do with esports. It's a game that rewards you for taking the time to unlock and learn all the weapons and maps. It helps if you're also a good player obviously, and that's the most fun part for me. Playing the objective and topping the scoreboard with a couple mates, just casual fun for casual people. You can spot the good players and the bad players pretty easily and plan your game around that. If you know the good squad is holding a certain point, you know that approaching that point is going to be dangerous and you'll play more carefully and coordinate better with your mates. In the past you could do this in WoW too. You could tell who's a pvp veteran and who's not and it gave you some variety.

In summary

Pruning made classes too easy, templates killed any sort of progression. Doing battlegrounds is unrewarding and boring.

[bewbew]

Can't wait until Blizzcon when they announce that this feature is staying so people shut up about it. This is just getting out of hand at this point.

They do that, and I expect next Expansion's PvP participation to be lower than when the game was LAUNCHED, without even PvP rewards in place.

And considering I was 100% right in regards of Legion Participation thanks to Templates and no gear, I'm comfortable in trusting my instinct.