What happened to WoW PvP? It's almost unbearable

[Professor Expert]

I PvP'd pretty hardcore in Vanilla, rather hardcore in BC and dicked around a bit in WotLK. Starting with BC, fights were pretty concise. Healing was obnoxious and you could bring someone up to full pretty quickly, but your mana was limited and healers were pretty vulnerable and needed to be protected. I'm not saying BC PvP was balanced, not at all, but it was concise, quick and didn't overstay its welcome.

Not sure where you're getting this idea. BC pvp, esp season 3, was probably the most balanced and also the most boring pvp ever was. That was a time when resilience reduced your chance to crit by a % and reduced the damage taken from crits by double that %. So if you had 10% reduction in crit chance, you'd have 20% reduction in damage from a crit. It seriously gimped specs that relied on crits to work, it made healers very tanky and it caused arena matches to last 10-20-30 minutes.

Also, mace stun happened.

Then, when WotLK came out and suddenly it took 4 people to kill a single healer in world PvP things began to start getting silly. Then Cataclysm came along and everyone started to get ridiculous survivability and the rest is history. Literally one of the only things still 'meta skill' about the game anymore is interrupting and cast juking, and PvPers cling to it like its a holy grail and validates everything about PvP.

WotLK pvp was pretty bad simply because of death knights. Early on, ret paladins and arcane mages were extremely OP. Cata pvp was not that bad until the end, where the right blend of pve gear would allow for effectively one-shot-macro'ing to happen regularly. That's where humans racial being OP originated, because human rogues with double DPS trinkets could literally kill just about anyone in a stun rotation.

When you're designing PvP for a game like WoW, or fuck, any game really, you're never ever going to make it balanced. The thing you have to do is look carefully at your game and account all its limitations and possibilities, then you have to ask yourself "How can I create PvP that makes sense when designed around the game's own confines?"

It's not about 'making it balanced' as much as it is just making it work properly for the game its in.

Balance would make the game boring. They just need to limit the duration and frequency of CC, as well as the max burst potential of any class. Burst needs to exist for decisive kills, but it should not be sustainable...and some classes like hunters and DKs can sustain heavy burst, which makes them problematic for pvp because healers are then tweaked to compensate for the burst and it makes them too strong when faced with classes that lack that kind of damage potential.

I have been saying this for like 2 expansions now. Bring in like a pro from each class and have them discuss pvp balance. For example, jamilli, mes, Vanguards, venruki, Cdew, Smexxin, etc. have them bring their opinions to class balance because the devs need some serious help. They dont even pvp in their own dang game, let the pros, the people who play this at the highest level, make decisions and help.

No thanks, and I have no idea who any of those players are that you mentioned so what makes them "pro". Player feedback should always be taken under advisement and usually ignored because it's generally bad, especially so-called pros. The devs should be competent enough to design the game themselves.

[Deleted]

I don't do much competitive PVP but I'm actually enjoying BGs lately.

[Deleted]

Wrong game since Wrath m8.

And I'm serious.

Last I pvp'd was in wrath. As in, last I pvp'd to 2.2k in arena and was arsed. Now, cba.

Other games are for that purpose.

[Kaitain]

I think WoW is not properly designed to accommodate PvP. It has several huge flaws that have never been addressed and likely never will be:

- The NPCs often have colossal amount of health compared to players. They make the game work for that situation. They then expect it to simultaneously work when players fight players? So the damage side of it is flawed from the very start.

- The NPCs have an aggro system that in no way resembles how players choose their targets. This creates a big flaw concerning healers. In PvE, the healers hardly ever get attacked. As such, they can stand around spamming heals. So to make raid healing challenging, to give it some Oh Sh*t moments, they need to make the raid's health bars yo-yo around a lot. The PvE healers need to be able to respond to mass spike damage. Those same healing classes can then heal like crazy in PvP.

- Most CC doesn't feature much in PvE, it's huge in PvP. This creates a flaw where a class needs nerfing in PvP because it has great CC and great dmg, but if you nerf the damage the class then has less damage in PvE and nothing to compensate. But Blizzard is aware that it can't go nerfing/buffing CC a lot to gain balance in PvP because you're rocking a very unstable boat that way.

- Line of Sight is barely a thing in PvE. It's huge in PvP.


... Long story short, they ARE 2 different games. WoW was made to be a PvE game, therefore PvE is the supported game. PvP is unsupported.

[therealstegblob]

Not sure where you're getting this idea. BC pvp, esp season 3, was probably the most balanced and also the most boring pvp ever was. That was a time when resilience reduced your chance to crit by a % and reduced the damage taken from crits by double that %. So if you had 10% reduction in crit chance, you'd have 20% reduction in damage from a crit. It seriously gimped specs that relied on crits to work, it made healers very tanky and it caused arena matches to last 10-20-30 minutes.

Also, mace stun happened.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The only time I ever recall BC matches lasting over 5 minutes or so (even in season 3 with the old resilience) was when a crit-burst centric DPS and a healer fought a crit-burst centric dps and a healer. I'm sure there were cases of those kinds of matches dragging on for quite awhile, especially if Resto Druids were in the mix, but you act as if super long matches were the norm back then when they certainly weren't. They're the norm now and it's absolutely awful.

WotLK pvp was pretty bad simply because of death knights. Early on, ret paladins and arcane mages were extremely OP. Cata pvp was not that bad until the end, where the right blend of pve gear would allow for effectively one-shot-macro'ing to happen regularly. That's where humans racial being OP originated, because human rogues with double DPS trinkets could literally kill just about anyone in a stun rotation.

Good for you, you remembered Ret mobility and DKs being overpowered. What does that really have to do with healers taking multiple people to kill? I understand you're trying to tie it together with the point you make later, about some classes having too much burst sustain so healers are tweaked for them, thus making healers impossible for classes without the same sustain, but Healers were also pretty insane from the getgo and never changed. WotLK was when the whole whiney "whats da point of being a healer if 1 dps kils u??" started to become prominent in actual gameplay. People don't seem to understand Healers are something to be protected and that a single DPS ought to be able to quickly kill them. That's the whole point. It'd be like bitching that a Medic can't kill a Soldier in a game like TF2 and then saying "whats the point of being a medic if i cant kill other classes as easy as they kill me shit game fuck you blizz".

And what are you talking about with Cataclysm pvp? It was awful from the getgo, with Warriors being insanely overpowered (even more so than your vaunted DKs and Rets and Arcane mages in WotLK), balance being all over the place, and finally Rogues being very overpowered once they were getting ahold of the Dragon Soul trinket. And you shouldn't try to act like you're giving me a lesson on when the human racial became overpowered, because you sound like you started playing in Cata and are just Googling past pvp history in order to construct your post. The Human racial has always been overpowered for the exact reason you just cited- because it allowed them to use two dps trinkets instead of the stun removing one. Fucking Cataclysm didn't invent that problem, dude.

Balance would make the game boring. They just need to limit the duration and frequency of CC, as well as the max burst potential of any class. Burst needs to exist for decisive kills, but it should not be sustainable...and some classes like hunters and DKs can sustain heavy burst, which makes them problematic for pvp because healers are then tweaked to compensate for the burst and it makes them too strong when faced with classes that lack that kind of damage potential.

You managed to make a valid point about burst and the issue with healing. Of course, because I actually experienced the history first hand, I already knew as much already, but you still brought it up as a point.

Blizzard's philosophy has pretty much been "if one class is broken or overtuned, don't admit you made a balancing mistake unless you absolutely have to! Just try to haphazardly buff other classes/speccs and try to even it out!". It's taking four glasses and filling one of them too full with water, so instead of pouring some of the water out, you just start trying to fill the others up but never get it right and eventually the water is pouring over the top of the glasses and going all over the place.

PvP in a game like WoW can never be balanced, it just needs some cohesive and sensible foundation to it. Healers should be powerful but vulnerable, dps should have clutch burst and cc. It's vaguely what they've been trying to do, but they always halfass the philosophy and we're just left with a confused mess.

[mikoslav]

I quite opposite enjoy pvp at the moment.



warlocks (haven't played myself atm, but this is the class i personally get wrecked by the most),.

off topic, I just want to point out to you that that s the very reason you get wrecked by them . you dont know them. if you played lock you d new how to counter it better.

I agree with most things you wrote about current pvp state of the game BTW>

[Zoneseek]

wow had decent pvp in vanilla and tbc.

vanilla had decent pvp because it was community driven. getting people to r14, and inter-server rivalries were what made it good. queuing for WSG and seeing those familiar names, scrambling to get a tank with huge fire resist in asap, and the hours/days of shit talk on your server forums thereafter really drove the pvp scene local to your server

bc introducing arena was huge. i dont know about all servers, but the top alliance guild on arthas (RET) setup a number of 5v5 nights. when this became a queueable feature it was huge, and it started off great. season 1-3 were my favorite point in history for wow pvp. you still had that inter-server community feel from vanilla, and at least in s1/s2, there were huge varieties of setups not just the same cookie cutter shit you see now.

world pvp has always been absolutely terrible in wow. NO risk. NO reward. NO fun. who cares if you die? who cares if you kill someone? You get nothing, you lose nothing, no adrenaline rush, no fun. this has been the case from 2004 right until today.

nowadays pvp in wow is more of a routine, completely disconnected from any kind of community feeling, its gone SO cookie cutter that people actually switch factions just to make sure they got the best chance...it just sucks.

game still has fun pve at least.

[Darthvador]

I've played around 1400 2's (1800-2000 mmr) game during 6.0 / 6.1 it was bearable but since 6.2 2v2 is pretty much dead. Some classe are ridiculously OP (feral druid and DK ).
I remember at the end of mop, blizzard said they want to remove all the healing to non healer and reduce CC... look like we are back to it. Dps have more healing in an arena match than a healer. and against mage / rogue or druid / hunter you will be CC'd all night.

Even if 2's is in a miserable state right now i have to say i enjoy playing in rBG's.

Tl;DR 2's is in a poor state, Rbg are cool , i wont even mention ashran it make me feel sick. *sorry for typo english is not my native language*

[mikoslav]

I have my own dislikes.

pure dps classes should have NO HEALING. only dmg reductions. it s ridiculous when hunter or rogue heals himself for 500k during 2 minute 2v2 arena.

healers should not be able to outheal damage done by 3 dmg dealers.

maining a boomkin I hate stuns, since I am completely helpless when stunned, stuns are too long, especially after I used trinket. perhaps trinkets should give 4 seconds immunity to any silence/stun/loss of control after they were used.

[Darthvador]

perhaps trinkets should give 4 seconds immunity to any silence/stun/loss of control after they were used.

I want this , it will help alot with the instant chain CC, i know its easy to interupt Cyclone / sheep / fear , i am talking about Blind, Kidney shot , Trap (if you dont have a warrior to Spell reflect them)

i have lost so many time against comp like feral / ehn or DK / feral cause once the trinket is on CD they stun your healer for 5 sec and you just dissapear

[taliey]

It's strange to see people engage in masochism and inflict more damage on themselves.

I'd say just strap on and enjoy the ride. Wheeeeeeeee.

[PaladinBash]

I think the long-running joke of continual hacking through MoP and WoD blinded people to how boring PVP has become. Now the hacking is mostly gone, there's only a stale and anti-fun meta to play out. I'd love some new arenas and battlegrounds personally...or just a big class shakeup to make it more about killing people and less about running around and healing to full the moment they aren't chain CC'd into the dirt.

[Equoowe]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The only time I ever recall BC matches lasting over 5 minutes or so (even in season 3 with the old resilience) was when a crit-burst centric DPS and a healer fought a crit-burst centric dps and a healer. I'm sure there were cases of those kinds of matches dragging on for quite awhile, especially if Resto Druids were in the mix, but you act as if super long matches were the norm back then when they certainly weren't. They're the norm now and it's absolutely awful.

2's was pretty much always long games in BC, it was a mana game and you almost never just bursted someone down in dps/healer games which was most games, 3's and 5's wasn't much different unless you played 2345 in 5's but as I mostly played double and triple healer drain comps the games went on for a lot longer.

Also there was nothing stopping games for going on for 20+mins which was fairly common in dps/healer mirror matches, you think 10min games now are boring it was a lot worse in TBC.

there were huge varieties of setups not just the same cookie cutter shit you see now.

did we play the same game? so many specs weren't even close to being viable in TBC, there is a lot more variety now compared to TBC.

I've played around 1400 2's (1800-2000 mmr) game during 6.0 / 6.1 it was bearable but since 6.2 2v2 is pretty much dead. Some classe are ridiculously OP (feral druid and DK ).

DK is far from OP, feral is really strong 2's and good in 3's, pretty much the only thing I would say that is really OP is holy paladin's.

[Professor Expert]

I want this , it will help alot with the instant chain CC, i know its easy to interupt Cyclone / sheep / fear , i am talking about Blind, Kidney shot , Trap (if you dont have a warrior to Spell reflect them)

i have lost so many time against comp like feral / ehn or DK / feral cause once the trinket is on CD they stun your healer for 5 sec and you just dissapear

And if they couldn't do that, then you'd have too high of a chance of auto-winning by attrition due to you having a healer vs a double DPS team. I am glad they made heals in general a "bad choice" for 2s. Healers do not belong in 2v2 when they are tuned to be able to tank 2-3 DPS for extended periods of time. They've broken the 2s bracket long enough. At least in 3s they have to deal with 2 DPS.

[Deleted]

wow had decent pvp in vanilla and tbc.

vanilla had decent pvp because it was community driven. getting people to r14, and inter-server rivalries were what made it good. queuing for WSG and seeing those familiar names, scrambling to get a tank with huge fire resist in asap, and the hours/days of shit talk on your server forums thereafter really drove the pvp scene local to your server

bc introducing arena was huge. i dont know about all servers, but the top alliance guild on arthas (RET) setup a number of 5v5 nights. when this became a queueable feature it was huge, and it started off great. season 1-3 were my favorite point in history for wow pvp. you still had that inter-server community feel from vanilla, and at least in s1/s2, there were huge varieties of setups not just the same cookie cutter shit you see now.

world pvp has always been absolutely terrible in wow. NO risk. NO reward. NO fun. who cares if you die? who cares if you kill someone? You get nothing, you lose nothing, no adrenaline rush, no fun. this has been the case from 2004 right until today.

nowadays pvp in wow is more of a routine, completely disconnected from any kind of community feeling, its gone SO cookie cutter that people actually switch factions just to make sure they got the best chance...it just sucks.

game still has fun pve at least.

As a player who pvped since vanilla, this is exactly what is the elephant in the room.
The ability pruning, slow phasing and lack of content is just the cherry on the top.

[Rekuja]

Trying to PvP as Horde right now.... literally cancer.

[Caliph]

It is really boring now but it's always been about a few select classes/specs. that's not pvp.

They seriously have always had a boner for rogues and mages. Whenever some other class shined because of blizzard's foresight that class was nerfed immediately. mage and rogue have always been great. I dont know how mages are now but rogues have always been pvp kings.

[Stormspellz]

pve

not even joking

it started with taking melee interrupt off gcd because it was "to hard" for the average pve to maintain dps and interrupts, designated into this mess

[Trimshadow]

The problem with WoW PvP right now? It's as bland as PvE is - there is no diversity of class left, no little tricks for you to play with, like should i take X talent over Y talent because my personal playstyle suits X better = better results for the individual, what happens if i step outside the cookie cutter? You have no choice at all...

I mean - WoW PvP has never been balanced - but right now because of Brian, yes Brian, as he is the Lead PvP Designer so PvP changes are are accepted or dismissed on his say so - he who comes from an FPS background is trying to apply an FPS mindset to what was a broad-reach RPG - right now every role pretty much plays the same - many people would play on one toon then jump on another toon, only to find yourself 'Playing' pretty much the same as you did on your 1st toon, it gets boring pretty quickly...

WoW once was a game of skill and thinking (in both PvP and PvE) about how to make your toon work for you, including gems, enchants and talent choices, gear choices etc... and working all that out was 1/2 the fun... and now very little of that exists... and it's killing the game, not just PvP... will it recover, with Chilton and Holinka in charge? I doubt it...

[Vathius]

The one of the worst things surrounding pvp is the fact that participation in arenas and RBGs is so, so low. you encounter 2200 players at 1500 mmr in arena, so how would a new person going into arena feel when they get steamrolled by a season verteran? hell, im having trouble getting above 1600 because of how many 2200+ players i encounter, and i have 2k exp! a new person would be riding the struggle bus trying to play arena.

yeah I'm struggling to break 1700 in 2s

Not to mention every single game is healer/dps ( because healing broken atm ) so games go for dayssss.