Holinka's Report Card

[thelightthatstrays]

We've had (nearly) two years with Holinka at the helm of PVP development, how do you think he's doing? What was the good, the bad and the really ugly?

[Deleted]

Its better without ghostcrawler for sure but that doesnt mean its optimal. There are a few insanely imbalanced things
but generally its good i suppose. Havent played arenas for a few weeks. I might sound entirely different after capping
my non-fotm classes

[Tastyfish]

I think there has been an upswing, and really, I would reserve any real critical look at the job with more time.

[Sevyvia]

Still sort of suffering the aftermath of Ghostcrawler's reign of terror. Also, the continued, dogged insistence on refusing to have anything to do with random BG balance (1v1 balance, I guess) is a huge detractor.

[ToxTheWrecker]

I think there has been an upswing, and really, I would reserve any real critical look at the job with more time.

In most job professions; two years is more than enough to determine the quality of the employee. Giving some one more time is like saying you still don't trust them to make the right decisions or have more to prove... after two years. 1/5th of the total lifespan of the franchise.. enough time.

[Blade and Soul]

C.

And the only reason is the killing of world PVP with the introduction of Base Resilience. Yeah, they evened the gap slightly with this last season, but then decided to let people raise their PVE item levels again. So, it's still better to PVP in PVE gear in open world cases.

But it seems they are headed that way anyways. In WoD they want those of us wanting an open world PVP experience to go to Ashran.

Everything else has been good though. If it wasn't for the Base Resilience I would give him a B+ or A-.

[thelightthatstrays]

In most job professions; two years is more than enough to determine the quality of the employee. Giving some one more time is like saying you still don't trust them to make the right decisions or have more to prove... after two years. 1/5th of the total lifespan of the franchise.. enough time.

I agree, obviously. Season 13 started when, March of 2013? That's long enough for us to have been using the product he's responsible for developing.

[Tastyfish]

In most job professions; two years is more than enough to determine the quality of the employee. Giving some one more time is like saying you still don't trust them to make the right decisions or have more to prove... after two years. 1/5th of the total lifespan of the franchise.. enough time.

Yea, but you are a consumer not an employee let alone a boss at the company. I feel that there needs to be more time to distance PVP from the touch of the previous person before the current individual's hand on it can be looked at critically simply because, the excuse of GC fucking it up over so many years still has validity. When that is dead then maybe I will look at the totality of the current person's actions against Gcs but not while they are blended still.

[Baracuda]

It's better in that the they're making the transition between PvE and PvP easier, will be even better next expansion. I believe the gap between honor and conquest should be smaller tho and that EMFH should be baseline (but Holinka said that the latter isn't happening).

[Blithe]

Certainly heading in the right direction, but he's got a LONG way to go to get PvP back on its feet. I chose C.

[morislayer]

He does not get my full opinion till WoD is at least 2/3 done. Why? He needs to find a solution to Wpvp ilvl bloat, stun lock blow ups, and BG gear disparities. I am under the impression he was not in full control till MOP hit where he has tried to curb GC's terror reign.

At least he isn't Kalgan or that crew from TBC where warriors must be superior to all mentality.

Holinka's is vocal and his plans for gear, CC removal, ilvl scaling sound promising. He needs to be more in the decision making for ability pruning more (See druids latest desecration). If we can get a TBC style flow of bg's and Arena while keeping all classes (at least one spec) relevant he will have gotten a B+ from me.

The biggest thing is ilvl. If you quit in the first season of MoP there was no hope even though you went through the whole gearing process once in that current xpac. That deterrence from people getting back into PVP (on alts too) needs to be removed.

[Stormspellz]

C- at best, while there has been a few positives, its horrible over shadowed by the ridiculous problems, hunter stampede is a great example on why he's still leaves much to be desired.

[Flaim]

it's the best experience since the introduction of wow pvp, but it has its cons.
specifically that the decent balance is achieved through overloading everyone with everything.
now that wod is supposed to clear up the mess with the overload i think it will become even better, but the cleaned system has to prove itself worthy.

[Wow]

Lets see 5.0 warriors he could have fixed in 5.1 but instead he turned warbringer into the new stun lock. Also the stampede bug was on live for over 3 months before a fix was done. In 5.2 they overpowered rogues for a bit, and somehow left hunters op all mop. In 5.4 he buffed up warriors to retarded amounts also when ice lance was hotfixed for pve he could have got a pvp only nerf done on it but did nothing. And this is just some highlights not everything...

The thing about what I said is these were pvp only changes before someone trying blaming some pve guy. When people blamed gc for things it was really hard to pin down anything on someone who's job covered so much. But holinka he just does pvp and defends most of his bad choices in mop on twitter at the time he made them.

Mop was bad choice after bad choice for pvp from holinka and friends.

[PrairieChicken]

Some ideas (with good intention) from him backfire a lot of times and there are some design philosophy I do not agree with, but still better than anyone we had before.

Also a he is blamed (wrongly) for many issues that he isn't responsible for. For example whole world pvp thing happened because of pve guys thinking "we want to shove everyone to lfr so pvp gear should be inferior to lfr loot" and pve devs obviously have more influence over the game. The base resil was the best thing he could do prevent heroic thunderforged gear from destroying everything, and at the same time reducing gap between players (at a cost of wpvp but they are addressing the issue in warlords)

- - - Updated - - -

Lets see 5.0 warriors he could have fixed in 5.1 but instead he turned warbringer into the new stun lock. Also the stampede bug was on live for over 3 months before a fix was done. In 5.2 they overpowered rogues for a bit, and somehow left hunters op all mop. In 5.4 he buffed up warriors to retarded amounts also when ice lance was hotfixed for pve he could have got a pvp only nerf done on it but did nothing. And this is just some highlights not everything...

The thing about what I said is these were pvp only changes before someone trying blaming some pve guy. When people blamed gc for things it was really hard to pin down anything on someone who's job covered so much. But holinka he just does pvp and defends most of his bad choices in mop on twitter at the time he made them.

Mop was bad choice after bad choice for pvp from holinka and friends.

Holinka wasn't in charge until 5.3 or so' . So it isn't appropriate to blame what happened in the first half of mop

[Wow]

Holinka wasn't in charge until 5.3 or so' . So it isn't appropriate to blame what happened in the first half of mop

He was there in 5.0 forward I don't know whats making you think he showed up in 5.3 or that he was working for blizzard from 5.0 to 5.3 and did nothing?

[Blithe]

He does not get my full opinion till WoD is at least 2/3 done. Why? He needs to find a solution to Wpvp ilvl bloat, stun lock blow ups, and BG gear disparities. I am under the impression he was not in full control till MOP hit where he has tried to curb GC's terror reign.

At least he isn't Kalgan or that crew from TBC where warriors must be superior to all mentality.

Holinka's is vocal and his plans for gear, CC removal, ilvl scaling sound promising. He needs to be more in the decision making for ability pruning more (See druids latest desecration). If we can get a TBC style flow of bg's and Arena while keeping all classes (at least one spec) relevant he will have gotten a B+ from me.

The biggest thing is ilvl. If you quit in the first season of MoP there was no hope even though you went through the whole gearing process once in that current xpac. That deterrence from people getting back into PVP (on alts too) needs to be removed.

Almost all three of those things you listed are being solved.

1. Item level bloat: Everybody's item levels will be closer, and PvP gear will be naturally higher in an instanced PvP, or world PvP setting.
2. Battleground gear disparities have been given a solution by adding an easy to obtain set of gear at Tier 1, then Honor gear is where the gap is bridged, at being 15 item levels higher at Tier 2 and finally Conquest at Tier 3, 15 item levels higher again. 30 item levels over 3 sets vs. 28 item levels over 2 sets. You decide which is a better design.
3. It's clear that a lot of crowd control's being removed from the game, but I'm not sure how many stuns have been removed. I know for one thing that you can no longer take Stormbolt with Shockwave, and Charge is no longer a baseline stun so that stops Warriors from feeling like a stun-locking Rogue.

[apepi]

B minus for effort.

[Sithalos]

Two words: Baseline Resilience.

PvP has never been worse, imo.

[Ayla]

I havent done this many arenas in ages! I'm not one for theorycrafting, but I feel like a lot of things are unbalanced, particualrily when it comes to monks. I like the new deserter changes, and I love the 3v3 mounts.

I'll give you a thumbs up. Just 1, because I can't really speak for balance. I mash buttons, things work out sometimes. Im a PVE boomkin, but I can't pvp on her at all. Instead I play a disc priest in 3s