The gate to get into PvP is now higher than ever in the post Wotlk days

[Deleted]

Firstly, I'd just like to point out that we're still in the early stages of this xpack and things are subject to change, so I'll reserve my final judgement for patch 7.3. The artifact catch up in 7.1.5 is already going to help a bit (but won't fix the issue).

Here's a little quote from blizzard:

The only contribution your gear will make to your overall power is through a small modifier based on your average item level. For every point that your average item level increases, your pre-determined PvP stats will increase by 0.1%. That means a 25 item level difference between two players only results in a 2.5% difference in stats, compared to the 25% difference it makes today. There’s still a little incentive to improve your gear – a concept we think is important for World of Warcraft – but the benefits are much less pronounced.

These changes bring a couple of major advantages. First of all, it puts everyone participating in organized PvP on a much more even playing field. Obviously, you'll still want to unlock your Honor Talents to reach your full potential, but you'll be able to hold your own in battle in the meantime.

Underlined the two relevant parts. Blizzard has said on multiple occacions that they wanted to lower the gate to get into pvp and make it more accessible with these changes they made for Legion. Of course blizzard has said this before as well. However, the ending result is far from what they had hoped. Pvp is now in fact more gated and hidden behind higher walls than it has ever been in this decade. This has resulted into extremely low pvp participation rate.

In the past, we had honor gear and conquest gear. This was gear tailored towards pvp, by adding resilience or pvp power, depending on what xpack we are talking about here. In Wod and Mop it was really easy to obtain this gear, thanks to the conquest catch up mechanic introduced in Mop. If you were behind in the season, no worries just keep playing and you can catch up. In Wod, thanks to Ashran, you could gear your fresh character for pvp within days of semi-casual ashran fragment farming. In addition to full honor gear you also got a few conquest pieces too. After you were done with that, you could just hit up with someone from the lfg tool and do some 2vs2 for the rest. It only took a few weeks tops to be fully geared for pvp with 710 gear. This gear also scaled up to 740 when you entered pvp in the open world or wherever, so the gear was the optimal choise for pvp all around. It was far from the best for pve, so it didn't interfere with anyones raiding process. This is the way it should have stayed in my honest opinion, blizz really hit the nail with that system. No clue why it had to change. The only downside to Wod pvp gearing was that you couldn't buy accolade trinkets with conquest, but that was a minor issue.

TODAY:

In order to get into semi-serious/serious pvp you now need:

1) Gear. Yes, gear. It still matters, a lot. Too bad gearing is pretty slow and the shittiest part is that you can't really do this via pvp now. You gotta get it from doing pve. Since all gear is the same, the best pvp gear also comes from pve no matter what the circumstances are, which is really a big fail from blizzard. I personally like the overall rng chance for gearing in legion (titanforge etc), but for pvp you need the predictability. Right now you can pvp all day long but get no progress in the gear deparment, so you're essentially just wasting your time (cept if you are prestiging). My suggestion is that they reintroduce pvp gear that's obtainable only from pvp. This gear could only have an ilevel of 855 or 860 or whatever, but it needs to jump up higher when you enter a pvp instance or engage in pvp outside in the world, just like in Wod. Alternatively they could make gear a complete non-issue in pvp and just go with the stat templates that won't changed. You could still earn gear from pvp, however.

2) Artifact power. This is actually a bigger issue than gear as the passive damage and health increases apply in pvp as well. In 7.1.5 it'll be easier to gain ap with your alts, but reaching the max level with your artifact will still take tremendous amount of playing time. This will maintain the gate high and thus deter people away from pvp as people with maxed out artifacts will smash you. Pvp is a decent way to earn ap, but personally I'd like to at least see the passive damage and health increases go away in pvp.

3) Pvp talents. People have been suggesting these for ages, and now we get them. I like the idea of them, but they way they are implemented is far from optimal. Why do you need to grind them, again? This part is rather agonizing, really. Sure, if you're really into pvp it won't take long to unlock them, but if you rather do pve/quests for your gear, it'll take a while (specially if you like alts). This is another unneccesary gate they've created. The talents are needed in instanced pvp in order to succeed, but they aren't powerful enough to make a difference in the open world and thusly they don't distinguish "serious pvp'ers" from pve'ers enough if you are being ganked. Personally, they should just give the talents to everyone without a need to grind them when you enter a pvp fight anywhere.

So tldr; you need gear, artifact power and pvp talents now in order to do pvp. This is a huge contrast to Mop and Wod, which really had an extremely low gate to get into pvp. In legion blizzard wanted to lower the gate to get into pvp, but instead they created a higher gate than ever before in this decade.


People are saying the pvp participation rate is now at an all time low. I don't know if this is true or not (probably is), but it's really a no brainer why that is. It's the poor way of gearing through pvp combined with the extremely high gate to get into pvp without the feeling of being smashed. Now, I'm sure someone is going to start creating foam in their mouth right now and scream "BUT YOU PVP FOR FUN NOT GEAR". That may be true for you, but for most peope, this is a mmorpg not an fps. You need the sense of progression. The whole point of mmorpgs is developing your character and making it stronger. If pvp won't offer this sensation, it'll deter many people. Even pvp needs to offer carrots to those that participate in it.

The low participation rate has nothing to do with balance however. Class balance has always been whack and it will keep fluctuating one way or the other, always. Sometimes melees are strong, sometimes casters will be stronger. This'll be tweaked over the course of the xpack like always. For example, TBC had extremely high arena participation rate even though class balance was abysmal. Only a handful of specs were even viable. Ladders were active thanks to the carrots being so good, aka you could earn epics that were almost as good as raiding gear even for pve. S5 in wotlk was also really active even though it was completely melee dominated with abysmal one shot fest style class balance.

Pvp is not really more dumbed down than it has before either. I'm sure that is something that would matter to 2,5k+ players, but for the large masses it doesn't matter. There's no point whining about dumbing down if you are stuck at 1800 rating. In TBC and Wotlk you had less buttons to press than you do now for most specs.


The prestige system is a good addition, though, and will help to keep battlegrounds active.

[rda]

I agree almost completely.

They said this:

These changes bring a couple of major advantages. First of all, it puts everyone participating in organized PvP on a much more even playing field.

...and failed to deliver miserably.

I wouldn't say that's the only issue, however. You say lack of balance does not matter much because balance was never good - and I would more or less agree, but what they did to specs in Legion was kind of special. Their changes to specs not only threw the balance off - that'd have been as usual - they also made the gameplay dumb. Due to the nature of these changes: pruning. Regular changes to specs a-la those we had from Cata to MoP or from MoP to WoD were different.

I think terrible changes to gearing / powering up and changes to specs resulting in braindead gameplay are two biggest issues with PVP in Legion (both new to Legion) and are entirely the reason why we see a huge drop in participation.

[Syld]

This has been pointed out since beta, but people believed Blizzard for some reason. In WoD you could level an alt and be fully competitive in pvp in 2 days, good luck doing that now.

[Resentless]

What are you talking about? The only "gate" is 3 golden artifact traits that you get within a week or two of being max level and pvp talents that take maybe a week of grinding in the bg holiday week event, and thats playing very liberally. Me and my friends jumped into pvp immediately upon hitting 110 and found that although some people had more health, unlike previous exapcs where we would get demolished by anyone with a couple of weeks of gear, we were competitive no problem. My friend then levelled up his alt priest and we found it to be fine as well. There is some progression, which is good, but honestly this is the least in terms of barriers to entry they have ever had. You can hit max level and pull competitive numbers in damage and if you are good at your class you can go to 2k no problem.

Gear as well, although it is pretty bad that we get RNG gear each week, would be nice if it was random but would never give you the same slot twice if it was the same ilvl, you can now exclusively do pvp and get the same ilvl gear as mythic raiders. that has NEVER in the history of this game been possible before. Maybe some prefer it if you had less ilvl in pve but more in pvp... i cant see why because then you needed two sets of gear for no reason other than awkwardness. The only problem with pvp right now is general class balance, interest from the community and the rng gear factor. 2k as of season 2 is giving you mythic gear, and in my experience those two do not correlate at all in terms of player skill. Ive never done mythic but 2k is cake, and now i get the same gear so the other outdoor and pve content i do becomes easier and more enjoyable through playing the way I want to. It's perfect really.

I guess AP gain is not so great compared to spamming mythic+ but between prestiges and the daily win from random bg, skirmish, rated 2s+3's and rbgs plus world quests I'm on my 36th trait on my main wep so is it really an issue?

[Osmeric]

The biggest problem is there is almost no incentive to do casual PvP. It's not that people can't walk in, it's that they have almost no reason to walk in.

We already know what happens to PvP when rewards are removed for many players. Look at the first PvP season in Wrath.

[Resentless]

This has been pointed out since beta, but people believed Blizzard for some reason. In WoD you could level an alt and be fully competitive in pvp in 2 days, good luck doing that now.

Took my friend 2 days of grinding bgs/skirmish/2s to get 3rd golden artifact trait and full 840 gear... thats not competitive?

[Syld]

Took my friend 2 days of grinding bgs/skirmish/2s to get 3rd golden artifact trait and full 840 gear... thats not competitive?

That's BS unless he had really high AK.

[Deleted]

Took my friend 2 days of grinding bgs/skirmish/2s to get 3rd golden artifact trait and full 840 gear... thats not competitive?

It is pretty easy when you just make things up I guess.

I personally just leveled from 1-110 in 5 hours yesterday and now I'm raiding mythics with an ilevel of 870. Got my pvp taletns done by doing a few warden towers in the afternoon. Is that not competitive?

[Deleted]

the pvp stat template is a joke seriously, i know that some classes get so low % of the secondary stat they actually need, like resto druid get 14% haste....

[Pvp guy]

I have to disagree OP. I dinged 110 on my monk the other night and literally stepped directly into 2s with a ret friend. Wearing my questing gear and bugger all into my artifact we won over 50% of those first games (we played around 25) . Never before has one been able to take a freshly dinged, questing geared character and stand any chance in arena. I was competitive immediately and didn't have to do ANYTHING. Yes there was games where we were straight up overpowered by stronger teams, and we expected that. But it was far better than I expected.

On a side note, I'm quite happy to not have to start grinding a new set of gear for the new season, just queue up and keep going.

[Deleted]

I have to disagree OP. I dinged 110 on my monk the other night and literally stepped directly into 2s with a ret friend. Wearing my questing gear and bugger all into my artifact we won over 50% of those first games (we played around 25) . Never before has one been able to take a freshly dinged, questing geared character and stand any chance in arena. I was competitive immediately and didn't have to do ANYTHING. Yes there was games where we were straight up overpowered by stronger teams, and we expected that. But it was far better than I expected.

On a side note, I'm quite happy to not have to start grinding a new set of gear for the new season, just queue up and keep going.

Do show us your armory then. Not that it matters much at 1300 rating, but are you really going to claim that you can reach something like 2k with your freshly dinged character as easily now as you did in Wod?

Looking through your posting history you seem to be one of those guys who argue that you should just pvp for fun.

[Cuppy]

Do show us your armory then. Not that it matters much at 1300 rating, but are you really going to claim that you can reach something like 2k with your freshly dinged character as easily now as you did in Wod?

Looking through your posting history you seem to be one of those guys who argue that you should just pvp for fun.

Monk and a retri... I bet you can go 2k quite easily with those two. Apart from this pvp gate we also have some OP classes atm.

[Deleted]

You let people with 6% more dmg and some bullshit trait stomp you?

How are you even arguing about competetive PvP?

[Deleted]

You let people with 6% more dmg and some bullshit trait stomp you?

How are you even arguing about competetive PvP?

Maybe reread what the thread is about. Nobody's saying that's what's keeping me personally from reaching gladiator status. That's irrelevant.

The thread is about pvp being more gated than ever before, which combined with the lack of carrots to do pvp leads to low pvp participation rate Do you disagree, or? In the past, you had an equal playing field pretty quickly. Now... 6% damage as you put it is actually huge. Stats, artifacts, pvp talents... that's a big gate.

[Deleted]

Maybe reread what the thread is about. Nobody's saying that's what's keeping me personally from reaching gladiator status. That's irrelevant.

The thread is about pvp being more gated than ever before, which combined with the lack of carrots to do pvp leads to low pvp participation rate Do you disagree, or? In the past, you had an equal playing field pretty quickly. Now... 6% damage as you put it is actually huge. Stats, artifacts, pvp talents... that's a big gate.

Uh, are you stupid for real? You saying the problem is, that there is a 6% dmg difference, compared to before, when you could rofl stomp someone by virtue of 30-40 iLvLs or Shadowmourne etc?

I don't need to reread nothing, i am literally asking if you are dense.

[Deleted]

Uh, are you stupid for real? You saying the problem is, that there is a 6% dmg difference, compared to before, when you could rofl stomp someone by virtue of 30-40 iLvLs or Shadowmourne etc?

I don't need to reread nothing, i am literally asking if you are dense.

Ok, I respect your opinion. I do question what Shadowmourne has got to do with post-wotlk days, and the fact that you still didn't read the part about how long it takes to catch to the equal playing field in pvp, however.

What do you think is deterring people away from pvp? Why is the pvp participation so low now?

[Deleted]

This has been pointed out since beta, but people believed Blizzard for some reason. In WoD you could level an alt and be fully competitive in pvp in 2 days, good luck doing that now.

This. I've been saying this ever since beta. In Wod I leveled so many alts, and in 1-2 days they were AS strong as my pvp main. But people KEEP saying "But alts shoudnt be stronger". WHY NOT? In pvp it really should! :S pve on the other hand, that's about progression. Pvp is about skill progression.

[Resentless]

It is pretty easy when you just make things up I guess.

I personally just leveled from 1-110 in 5 hours yesterday and now I'm raiding mythics with an ilevel of 870. Got my pvp taletns done by doing a few warden towers in the afternoon. Is that not competitive?

Maybe reread what the thread is about. Nobody's saying that's what's keeping me personally from reaching gladiator status. That's irrelevant.

The thread is about pvp being more gated than ever before, which combined with the lack of carrots to do pvp leads to low pvp participation rate Do you disagree, or? In the past, you had an equal playing field pretty quickly. Now... 6% damage as you put it is actually huge. Stats, artifacts, pvp talents... that's a big gate.

Ok, I respect your opinion. I do question what Shadowmourne has got to do with post-wotlk days, and the fact that you still didn't read the part about how long it takes to catch to the equal playing field in pvp, however.

What do you think is deterring people away from pvp? Why is the pvp participation so low now?

To respond to the point you made to me, my bad, it was actually his 2nd artifact trait not 3rd, but his 3rd didnt do anything for pvp anyway so he didnt need it anyway. he was most certainly in 840 gear which is what the pvers get from mythic dungeons... couldn't say that in MoP or WoD, not that gear makes a shred of difference in this xpac compared to cata/mop.

In MoP I had to grind the CTA BG for 2 weeks before i was in full honor gear, followed by grinding my mmr low enough to find people with the same gear as me, all to grind up my catch up cap, only to STILL be behind people who had been capping from the start. Not to mention better weps in the first season at least. Even worse in cata with no catch up cap and several RAIDING TRINKETS and weps (vial, shadowbolt trinket, gurthalak) being so good for ARENA. Can't say that now. It is an incredibly minor difference between an 880 geared and an 830 geared person, to the point where if you had ever reached a decent rating before you can win most games off skill alone. Could NOT say that in cata or mop unless you were fully geared you were always at a major disadvantage, esp vs humans with double damage trinkets.

Really don't know how you can say the barrier is high this expac compared to MoP and cata, truly baffling statement.

edit: as to whats actually lowering participation... maybe pvp is the same after all this time and some people are bored? We have a couple of new arenas and honor talents, otherwise its the same thing. All the old guard have left the scene so theres little community encouragement. Those that are left would rather bicker amongst themselves over what title is worth more. The RNG style loot of pvp is probably a turn off as well, as you can at least target some items through mythic+. Rewards are the same as they always have been besides through prestiging which you can do faster through bgs/rbgs/WQ's. So yeah, youre right about lack of carrots. People that have loved pvp are still doing it but those that might have dabbled in it before have no reason to.

[Soisoisoi]

Gear-wise, they have it about right (a whole 8% difference between 800 and 880, /gasp..). There's barely any difference between a fresh starter and someone who's "geared", especially relative to the difference in a season or two later in the likes of MoP and WoD.

The problem is Artifacts, but that's a problem with alts and starting later either way. It's not too bad though, you can get straight to the first gold trait pretty much when you ding and to the second not long after that with AK being so fast, assuming you work on it.

[Louz]

PvP talents were made with the old Prestige system in mind.

As of now, the whole system of unlocking talents is pointless - as OP said, just another time gate, or perhaps grind gate, since this can't be outwaited like Artifact knowledge.

Still, after a week of "PvP" quests and random BGs, you have all talents unlocked.

Biggest problem comes with stat templates.

Imo a great idea. PvP completely separated from PvE. Skill>gear. They can adjust everything at any time to keep the game balanced.

Except it's nothing like that - as an enh shammy, I get absolutely shat on by pretty much any other dps class with literally nothing to do other than hitting my one and only def cooldown with 1,5min CD. Meanwhile, others get all sorts of immunities and self heals, many of them proccing automatically. Ret paladin is a prime example of automated gameplay - auto CC removal, auto dispel, auto bubble. All you need to do is mas 1-2-3 like the mad mongo you are.

About balancing - they improve survivability by increasing base HP. How nice.
But then there are spells that deal damage based on target's base health, so when they increase health, they increase the spell's damage aswell. How is that not retarded design?