Originally Posted by
JimPaladin
I missed this thread, and while all the *~Juicy~* discussion is already over, I'll contribute because I am smarter and better than everyone else:
The absolute biggest factor that ruined PvP (as well as has hurt the game in general) is two big, fat, shit-eating words: STAT INFLATION
Almost everything wrong with PvP is traced directly back to the stats becoming grossly over-inflated. Heals being too powerful, nukes being too powerful, CC being rampant, big changes like "The Crowd Chose You" and the heal debuff. There's almost not a single problem PvP has that ISN'T because of stat inflation (outside your typical, everyday terrible balancing choices, of course)
It's been like this since WotLK. That's when healers started getting FAR too powerful and when Resilience began to block a little -too- much damage, not to mention the stat inflation of gear in general meant that PvP started to become more and more gear-based rather than, well, you know SKILL-based. I remember back in Vanilla, when a level 55 could beat a level 60 (and I understand this isn't the strongest of examples because vanilla had it's fair share of terrible PvP problems, but bear with me), because a 5 level difference didn't mean 70k health and 2k attack power or whatever it's become in MoP.
I was HUGE on Arenas and PvPing in TBC, and to me, TBC had it down perfect. Fights were short, healers were niche and could only burst heal you up once before OOMing and having to either kite away to drink or just die, and while the burst was high, it was all about controlling your opponent and countering whatever strategy/abilities they were trying to use.
That's not to say TBC was perfect or anything, but it had it down as good as WoW could possibly be. People whining and saying "ohhhh but MAGES could sometimes two-shot some classes if they got lucky!!!!" are just tools who probably didn't even play during TBC, let alone PvP in it, and just read about the fabled mage two-shot on some backwater forum somewhere (probably this one!) and then began cavorting around all over the place, spewing their baseless critiques of a PvP system they were never apart of; but I digress.
TBC introduced lots of stuff like Diminishing Returns (even if stuff like double/triple blind comps existed for awhile before Blind got slapped on DR, too) and Resilience, and these were good, NATURAL changes that helped the game's PvP go into a legitimate direction that made sense.
These days Blizzard is just flailing around, realizing "Holy shit we fucked up!" and is desperately trying to correct their mistakes by implementing all these weird things like the Battle Fatigue and Crowd buffs/debuffs that don't really fix the real problem- nor do they even remedy the symptoms very much.
When I hit 80 in WotLK, I couldn't wait to try out the PvP. I dueled some Moonkin who looked like he had also just hit 80, and we began dueling. I was (of course) urinating all over his poor, under-aged face and beating him- until he typhooned me and then ran off in travel form to heal himself.
I thought "haha, yeah, go for it." and slowly walked up to him, thinking he wouldn't heal for much.
Then I noticed he went from literally 6% health to 73% in a couple of seconds. As a Moonkin. And still had a lot of mana to spare.
I couldn't believe it. And then I got to see the state PvP was in at higher gear levels and I was literally floored by what I saw. I still, to this fucking day, can't wrap my head around just how the game went from Point A to Point B so fucking fast. It was just 10 levels, what the hell happened?
Part of the reason WotLK PvP was so messed up was because of the horribly over penetrated talent trees. Sinking 71 points into a tree meant to only hold 51 was -not- a good idea and it made "hybridding" a serious issue.
"Bu-But Jimpaladin!!!! Hybridding is COOOLLLL!!!!"
While I am not one for 'hybridding', myself, I have no real problem with it- but it has to be done CORRECTLY. And in WoW's instance- it has to be done INTENTIONALLY. The thing about WotLK was that people were never SUPPOSED to specc that far into another talent tree. This wasn't -nearly- so bad in TBC (though it was kind of an issue) because with only 10 more points, you couldn't really specc too deep into a separate tree, but once WotLK hit you finally had enough points to start getting the powerful mid-tree skills of another tree. It was fucked up.
This as fixed in Cataclysm (and then grilled to death in MoP), but the stat inflation only got considerably worse.
As it stands today, we're literally wearing a Vanilla player for our bracers. Well geared tanks are pushing like 750k+ health without buffs and we're not even to the last raid of the expansion, yet. (Compared to Cata's 200kish tank health, and that was also an insane leap from WotLK's health pools).
I thought we wouldn't be breaching 1 million health until next expansion, but at this rate, we'll end the next expansion with healthpools possibly pushing like 20 million and shit.
What the fuck is wrong with Blizzard?
I mean, yeah sure, there's -talk- of potential "item squishing" and by GOD would I love to see it, but until it actually happens, all it is is talk; and based on how they just keep producing content that gives us higher and higher stats- it doesn't seem like they have any real intentions with it and it's just wishful "if we could!" thinking.
They can throw up their hands and say "We finally get it! We finally understand!" all they want, and try to retro-format PvP with all these weird changes that don't really fix anything- but it's far too late. Anything short of a complete numerical re-calculation of massive proportions is going to be able to fix what's happened with the game, either 'squishing' the stats down (the best choice) or at least re-scaling everything so it makes better sense, and isn't just mindless stat increases with absolutely no thought or concern as to how it's going to actually- oh, I dunno- effect the fucking game.
Personally I hold no faith for Blizzard to undertake such a task, and I- like many others (Blizzard themselves included), am content to just let PvP be a piece of dead content only meant to be done as a recreational side once in awhile in random BG queues. It's too bad the game has come to this, and it's so bad that even PvE is being heavily effected by the rampant stat increases (just look at all the stupid things they have to do for tanks in order to make sure they can hold aggro against the fucked up levels of DPS going out)- but, what can you do?
So, yeah. PvP died with WotLK and each expansion since has only buried it further and further underneath a mountain of numbers.
Spoken like a true Wrath of the Lich King player.
You answered your own question.