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

[DeicideUH]

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.

This. Gear is not the problem, unless you are doing WPvP.

Also, Honor talents are not the problem. Yes, unlocking all of them takes some time and effort, but getting the first column is actually pretty fast.

The big real culprit are the Artifacts. Not only Artifact traits matter a lot, but the Artifact level also increases your HP. In my opinion, the whole Artifact Power grind is a terrible system. Four months playing and most people are far from having a full unlocked artifact. This creates huge gaps in the power level between players in the same character level.

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?

Stat templates are not really the problem. The toolkit of some specs are. Some got too many utility, others lack it.

[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.

i was actually carrying my own 2nd account with a freshly dinged monk in mop on my main account and winning around 50% of the matches, thats how i geared up alts. so yes you could do this easily before aswell.

[Nfinitii]

Idk, I don't c anything wrong with needed to invest some time in ur toon to play at a high lvl. Raiders need to do it. But idk, I played in wotlk where u had to raid to get the best gear for pvping so I guess I'm just a different breed of character.

[ItachiZaku]

This. Gear is not the problem, unless you are doing WPvP.

Oh lord. 8.9 mil health blood DK that other night... jesus fuck.

[Soisoisoi]

Oh lord. 8.9 mil health blood DK that other night... jesus fuck.

Wait, what - how? Highest I've seen is like 5mil with Flasks n shit.

[Nzete]

I'm personally in a better pvp place than past expansion. However, I have good gear and artifact power from my other activities in game (mythic+). I just random bg for funsies or do arena with guildmates for the participation mounts.

You do need someone to be in the bottom end of ratings for fun for the high end of ratings to mean anything.

[ItachiZaku]

Wait, what - how? Highest I've seen is like 5mil with Flasks n shit.

No fucking clue. Saw a couple warriors in the 7 millions and was like, fuck off. That DK stood and was brawling. Didn't respawn and join back in.

[effs]

No fucking clue. Saw a couple warriors in the 7 millions and was like, fuck off. That DK stood and was brawling. Didn't respawn and join back in.

There's a buff that gives you like 50% extra in Suramar, but can't remember if it only applies if you're in Suramar xD. But yeah, wpvp is incredibly depressing :P

[Pvp guy]

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.

Way to put words in my mouth for your own agenda. I never said anything about reaching a high rating, as I said we only played about 25 games that night. Nor did I say anything about using a fresh 110 as a viable way to reach 2k. What my point was, was that I reached 110 and was able to enter arena literally minutes afterwards and was COMPETITIVE. And I had to do NOTHING to be that way, no gear grind required. Now, im not stating there aren't hurdles to overcome. Yes I will have to get some gear, and yes I will need to grind the honor talents. But personally find neither of those grinds daunting as they go fairly quick imo. The biggest culprit is of course the artifact which I agree with you about. The AK catch up mechanic is going to be really nice, and should be implemented now lol. Anyway the point is I was competitive immediately still wearing my questing gear. In any prior expansion I would have been at a far worse disadvantage and not competitive at all.

[ComputerNerd]

They removed one gate and unfortunately added another, one that is actually worse.

[Riistov]

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

Same here on my frost mage alt. Sitting at 845 ilvl, 21 points in my artifact, with 2 gold traits after hitting 110 a week ago.

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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.

Agreed that Enh and Ele could use another def CD.

Playing Ele at the moment, while I don't have that many complaints (Ele is more viable in pvp than it has been since the end of MoP) still feels like it needs Sham Rage back.

[Caliph]

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.

agreed. There's no barrier but getting your talents. AP is easy to get if you do both pve and pvp. if you pvp all day then you should be skilled enough to overcome 1-5% extra damage. That's practically equal compared to 12 years of being roflstomped as you started to gear in the past.

The old system sucks and i like the new one. It comes down to skill and well class but that's always been constant.

stop whining OP, just stop.

[Daffan]

I always liked the idea of PvP only gear that has low ilvl but jumps high inside the instance.

+It doesn't screw up PvE progression because it only works in PvP
+It means they can give strong rewards in PvP for PvP. You don't have to PvE to be good at PvP

-World PvP is harder against PvE Heroes, but who actually cares about World PvP

[Kagthul]

-World PvP is harder against PvE Heroes, but who actually cares about World PvP

But even that gets mitigated by the shfiting iLevel. Its win-win-win.

That system (from WoD) worked great. Why they threw it in the trash is a mystery.

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ITT: people who cant do simple math and rely on "feels".

agreed. There's no barrier but getting your talents. AP is easy to get if you do both pve and pvp. if you pvp all day then you should be skilled enough to overcome 1-5% extra damage. That's practically equal compared to 12 years of being roflstomped as you started to gear in the past.

The old system sucks and i like the new one. It comes down to skill and well class but that's always been constant.

stop whining OP, just stop.

You're factually wrong. It's been proven already, with math.

The flaw in everyone's reasoning is that the "old system" was constant. It wasn't. Wether the quality of the PvP in WoD was good (i dont think it was particularly great, from a balance perspective) - the gearing and reward system in WoD was the best system the game ever had.

Everyone tries to posit the system in WoD as a "fresh 100 in questing greens trying to gear in BGs and getting roflstomped because people have 50% more stats than he does".

The problem is.... that wasnt the system as presented in WoD, unless you were just not paying attention. There were MULTIPLE ways to gear your character for basic PvP in a matter of HOURS. In WoD, the measurement for "viable for PvP" was Honor gear, which was obtainable within six hours of NOT EVEN PvPing..

The stat difference between someone in full Honor Gear vs someone in full Conquest gear? 9.4%. It was also unlikely to be that high - as by doing Ashran or sending your alts Medallions, you would almost always get 2-4 pieces of CQ gear during your six-eight hour "gearing up" process. Your actual stat difference was far more likely to be between 6-7%.

And that was it. That was the barrier of entry for PvP in WoD. Six hours. Maybe eight, if you were slow or got into a "good" Ashran where you could actually roll with the team and win CQ. (but in that case, you'd also end up with better gear).

Six hours.

Now lets examine the current barrier:

You hit 110.

1 - You can enter PvP, where you're likely to be about 5-7% behind on stats. Just about the same as before.
2 - You have to grind your honor talents for days. People saying "but the first rank is easy to unlock!" (which is true) need to just shut the hell up, as about half the classes REQUIRE the third row to be completely unlocked to even be VIABLE. To get them all - several days of playing a LOT of BGs and doing the WQs (particularly since the nerf to towers only spawning once a day). And that's if you make yourself do the absolute shit-show of the "FFA" zones.
3 - you have to grind your Artifact for WEEKS. This will be allieviated soon in 7.1.5 if you already have AK 25 on your main - but that's hardly relevant at this point. Again, some classes/specs REQUIRE 25+ ranks to even be remotely viable and some are totally viable with less than 10.

Same here on my frost mage alt. Sitting at 845 ilvl, 21 points in my artifact, with 2 gold traits after hitting 110 a week ago.

This is a not possible. If you hit 110 a week ago, you have AK4 at most. At AK4, you did not grind almost 1.2 million AP on items that gave you 1-2k... or if you did, then that is hardly a low gate.

So lets examine:

WoD: six to eight hour "barrier of entry" that didn't even actually require you to PvP. You could also eventually, through any form of PvP catch up and have NO stat difference between you and the people at the top. Casual, Rated, Ashran, whatever floated your boat. Some forms were slower than others, but you could do it however you liked.

Legion: "Barrier of entry" is dozens of hours of grinding honor talents, weeks of gated AP gains, and you still end up with a stat delta the same as WoD.... which you can never overcome through PvP alone unless you manage to get to the top 15% of rated players.

It's simple math, people.

Anyone who thinks the barrier of entry for PvP is lower right now than it was in WoD isnt capable of doing 4th grade math.

[Deleted]

But even that gets mitigated by the shfiting iLevel. Its win-win-win.

That system (from WoD) worked great. Why they threw it in the trash is a mystery.

- - - Updated - - -

ITT: people who cant do simple math and rely on "feels".



You're factually wrong. It's been proven already, with math.

The flaw in everyone's reasoning is that the "old system" was constant. It wasn't. Wether the quality of the PvP in WoD was good (i dont think it was particularly great, from a balance perspective) - the gearing and reward system in WoD was the best system the game ever had.

Everyone tries to posit the system in WoD as a "fresh 100 in questing greens trying to gear in BGs and getting roflstomped because people have 50% more stats than he does".

The problem is.... that wasnt the system as presented in WoD, unless you were just not paying attention. There were MULTIPLE ways to gear your character for basic PvP in a matter of HOURS. In WoD, the measurement for "viable for PvP" was Honor gear, which was obtainable within six hours of NOT EVEN PvPing..

The stat difference between someone in full Honor Gear vs someone in full Conquest gear? 9.4%. It was also unlikely to be that high - as by doing Ashran or sending your alts Medallions, you would almost always get 2-4 pieces of CQ gear during your six-eight hour "gearing up" process. Your actual stat difference was far more likely to be between 6-7%.

And that was it. That was the barrier of entry for PvP in WoD. Six hours. Maybe eight, if you were slow or got into a "good" Ashran where you could actually roll with the team and win CQ. (but in that case, you'd also end up with better gear).

Six hours.

Now lets examine the current barrier:

You hit 110.

1 - You can enter PvP, where you're likely to be about 5-7% behind on stats. Just about the same as before.
2 - You have to grind your honor talents for days. People saying "but the first rank is easy to unlock!" (which is true) need to just shut the hell up, as about half the classes REQUIRE the third row to be completely unlocked to even be VIABLE. To get them all - several days of playing a LOT of BGs and doing the WQs (particularly since the nerf to towers only spawning once a day). And that's if you make yourself do the absolute shit-show of the "FFA" zones.
3 - you have to grind your Artifact for WEEKS. This will be allieviated soon in 7.1.5 if you already have AK 25 on your main - but that's hardly relevant at this point. Again, some classes/specs REQUIRE 25+ ranks to even be remotely viable and some are totally viable with less than 10.



This is a not possible. If you hit 110 a week ago, you have AK4 at most. At AK4, you did not grind almost 1.2 million AP on items that gave you 1-2k... or if you did, then that is hardly a low gate.

So lets examine:

WoD: six to eight hour "barrier of entry" that didn't even actually require you to PvP. You could also eventually, through any form of PvP catch up and have NO stat difference between you and the people at the top. Casual, Rated, Ashran, whatever floated your boat. Some forms were slower than others, but you could do it however you liked.

Legion: "Barrier of entry" is dozens of hours of grinding honor talents, weeks of gated AP gains, and you still end up with a stat delta the same as WoD.... which you can never overcome through PvP alone unless you manage to get to the top 15% of rated players.

It's simple math, people.

Anyone who thinks the barrier of entry for PvP is lower right now than it was in WoD isnt capable of doing 4th grade math.

Spot on. It's not about how someone who just dinged a minute ago fairs against someone fully geared, it's about how long it takes to catch up to equal playing field. There's a ginormous difference between now and Wod in that compartment. There's just no denying that.

agreed. There's no barrier but getting your talents. AP is easy to get if you do both pve and pvp. if you pvp all day then you should be skilled enough to overcome 1-5% extra damage. That's practically equal compared to 12 years of being roflstomped as you started to gear in the past.

The old system sucks and i like the new one. It comes down to skill and well class but that's always been constant.

stop whining OP, just stop.

Refer to what I said above. I'm not sure where you got that 1-5%, when the final artifact trait alone is 5% extra damage. That's not counting the passive damage you get from the 35 artifact traits before that or the stats from gear.

But yeah, if you wish to contribute. What do you think is the reason for the low pvp participation rate in Legion, if there is no barrier to enter pvp and the system, carrots included, is better now than it was in the past? Do you think that my whining or me being dense is what's keeping people from pvp'ing?

[Osmeric]

But even that gets mitigated by the shfiting iLevel. Its win-win-win.

That system (from WoD) worked great. Why they threw it in the trash is a mystery.

The motivation for the Legion system has long been clear: to stop PvP gearing from obsoleting any gear from PvE content, and to remove the motivation for PvP-hating PvE players to do PvP.

[Sencha]

Gap between a fully pvp-geared player and a fresh starter has clearly been reduced compared to previous expansions where you could be two-shotted by glads if you entered a bg with low gear. It's no longer the case now but people like OP are still complaining. Guess those people will complain no matter what Blizzard will put in place.

[rda]

The motivation for the Legion system has long been clear: to stop PvP gearing from obsoleting any gear from PvE content, and to remove the motivation for PvP-hating PvE players to do PvP.

That can't be the main reason, because that's done trivially without changing the system in WoD - just make conquest gear scale to the ilvl of honor +10 in PVE (that makes conquest gear nearly as useless in PVE as honor).

I think they changed things because they wanted to simplify it all - see ability pruning, removal of glyphs, removal of tons of enchants, removal of various stats, just one weapon in the form of artifact, etc, etc, etc, it's a big vibe for Legion: let's simplify things (but do them really well, presumably - sadly, simplification alone did so much damage that it is pretty hard to recover just but doing what's left well). The PVP team jumped on the bandwagon and brought their things to cut - PVP gear and PVP currencies first and foremost.

- - - Updated - - -

Gap between a fully pvp-geared player and a fresh starter has clearly been reduced compared to previous expansions where you could be two-shotted by glads if you entered a bg with low gear. It's no longer the case now but people like OP are still complaining. Guess those people will complain no matter what Blizzard will put in place.

Replace "fresh starter" with "a guy who just got honor gear" (which takes no time) and the whole point reverts - the gap is worse instead of better.

Plus, actually, with artifact power, I am not sure even the initial point is correct. What was the power difference between a fresh guy in quest greens and full conquest before? Quest greens were scaling up, I remind you, although to the level lower than honor. So, what are we talking about - 30%? 40%? The difference in gear in Legion would cover about 10% of that and, frankly, the difference in artifact will certainly cover at least 15-20%, and I didn't yet count honor talents, so that might actually be a tie.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Spot on. It's not about how someone who just dinged a minute ago fairs against someone fully geared, it's about how long it takes to catch up to equal playing field.

Is that how Blizzard see it? Perhaps they are talking about someone who has been playing for years but never actually tried PvP, and would therefore have a good amount of AP.

[Straamibuu]

Personally I like that the gear normalises in rated PvP, and I'd take it further and make it use templates for world pvp (not sure on if the WoW engine currently could handle that as I have no idea the backend).

The other change I'd make, much to the horror of pure factionists (is that a term?), would be to allow the sides to mix. Have random BGs fill both sides with any race/faction. And why? Well, they're never going to balance the two factions, and tbh it's not fun on either side when you have a battlegroup that just stomps the other. Getting stomped in 90% of the bgs itself isn't fun, and playing the other side... it just feels so hollow.