Why is pvp balanced around 3v3?

[Mormolyce]

I don't like the excuse of "too hard." If we accepted that argument, then our species wouldn't have advanced so much.

You misunderstand. If healers were tuned to the level of 2s, for example, they'd be too weak to keep anything alive in 3s and 5s and everything above 2s would become DPS only, removing like 90% of the strategy involved in arena. It's not so much that it's hard, more that it has too many implications for everything else.

Also, the best way to balance 2s is to drastically increase class homogenisation, which Blizzard doesn't want. Because players would hate it.

[shell]

Battle Grounds aren't used for balance because the ability to win is decided on a goal. Flag caps and resource points are more valuable than killing the opposition. In theory, every BG is able to be won by not making a kill on a player.

Yeah, the main focus is 3's but they do make balance decisions based on performance in BGs. Hungering Cold was changed because of BGs. This is what they said at the time, "We added the cast time to Hungering Cold for PvP reasons. It is one of the most powerful forms of crowd control in the game, especially in Battlegrounds, and yet was impossible to prevent."

It doesn't happen as often but they've said they keep their eyes on bgs.

I am curious when they first started coming out and saying that they balance around 3's though. From what I've read, a lot of people liked season 3 and season 7 for arena, and I'm sure these seasons had issues, but did they start balancing around 3s before, between, or after? If it's after both seasons then I find that pretty funny since that would mean that players liked arena a lot more when the devs didn't try so hard to balance pvp around 3s, the way they do now.

[hammock]

I am curious when they first started coming out and saying that they balance around 3's though. From what I've read, a lot of people liked season 3 and season 7 for arena, and I'm sure these seasons had issues, but did they start balancing around 3s before, between, or after? If it's after both seasons then I find that pretty funny since that would mean that players liked arena a lot more when the devs didn't try so hard to balance pvp around 3s, the way they do now.

Started balancing around 3s after WOTLK I think.
2s will probably never be balanced but the game was a hell of alot more balanced when they were actually trying.

[Palatinus]

You misunderstand. If healers were tuned to the level of 2s, for example, they'd be too weak to keep anything alive in 3s and 5s and everything above 2s would become DPS only, removing like 90% of the strategy involved in arena. It's not so much that it's hard, more that it has too many implications for everything else.

Also, the best way to balance 2s is to drastically increase class homogenisation, which Blizzard doesn't want. Because players would hate it.

I don't really like the argument of healers being tuned for 2s as being bad as then they would be too weak in 3s.

How about they just increase the healing debuff in 2v2? Can't be hard to check how many players are in the arena and change it depending on that....its just another lame excuse to not even try to balance the game.

[Terahertz]

It's funny though, because 3v3 isn't even balanced AT ALL

[TJ]

It's funny when blizzard says that because it's a lie, it's balanced around making Mages as strong as possible and disregarding everything else. True story.

But seriously, it's funny that blizzard say they try to balance the game when they make stupid decision after stupid decision and make PvP even worse.

[shell]

It's funny though, because 3v3 isn't even balanced AT ALL

It certainly seems that way. On the one hand, I understand the thought process behind balancing around 3s, it makes sense in terms of 2s being imbalanced yet popular and 5s being chaotic and unpopular. Also, as far as strategy goes it might have the most potential towards balance in terms of synergy and strategy but it ends up not working that way.

Overall, I guess I would say its better balanced around synergy/strategy, even if its only by degrees, but not better balanced as far as each spec goes. I've stopped reading his tweets but GC wrote something several weeks ago where he basically said that it would be unfair to players if they tried to make all the specs viable for 3v3. Which I think has a lot people scratching their heads wondering why the devs even bother attempting to balance around 3s. But the class balance aspect is why they're trying to shove RBGs down people's throats: when a certain spec whines, legitimately or not, that they aren't viable in 3s, the devs can turn around and say that's ok because you're viable in RBGs.

If they can manage to get all the specs viable for either 3s or RBGs, that's probably the best anyone can hope for since perfect balance is impossible.