Blizzard and PvP: Incompetent or Focused on Bottom Line?

[Caolela]

If you want to get into the business angle, the shareholders of ATVI pressured blizzard to "diversify" itself, and that took WoW from being 70% of the company's revenue to something like 20-30% that it is now. It's one of those cases where caving to the money men in the interest of more favorable short term gains resulted in products that are less profitable and less sustainable than ever before. Up to the point where they essentially decided to sabotage WoW by catering to the drones who play MOBAs it was steadily gaining subscribers.

Interesting, and explains the steady downhill direction (for the players) WoW has been on for a long time. The stats analysis angle seems very apt as well, since it can be seen throughout - everything they do to the game now in some way makes for longer time-in-game = more profit. Has nothing to do with making a better game or fun or what players want.

It's past the time to GTFO, boys. Stick a fork in it, WoW's done. Killed by the greed-meisters.

[Deleted]

Honestly, what's wrong? Things are getting re-pruned or whatever. Most specs are fine and actuall good/balanced for 3v3. Only a few specs now are a bit strong like assa rogue, and like 2-3 more. Most specs are viable to get 2.2k+ with in the right synergetic combination of specs (comps). Most complains I see are from people with 0 clue. It's really sad when blizzard change a spec depending on un-experienced players deem is good or bad xD

[Stormspellz]

incompetent, even if holinka is nothing but a PR talking head with no actually authority, the rest of the dev team clearly don't know what they are doing.

[rda]

I stopped pvping completely after 7.1.5. Unsurprisingly, that made me log in much less - the total time I am now spending on WoW is about 3 hours a week.

So, I don't really know what's going on.

But I am genuinely wondering how many people are going to be in the ladder for season 2. That said, the arena trackers are broken to this date, and if they stay broken, we might never know.

[Lorianus]

I think the templates didnt do them any favor in the balance department, just as an example (not to say that something is under/overpowered):

In legion they would nerf a frostmages intellect by 5%, pre nerf a glacial spike would hit for 1 mil avg, after nerf it would hit for 950k avg.
Before the templates they would simply go and nerf glacial spike by lets say 20% down to 800kavg hit and compensate the nerf with lets say a 20% buff to frostbolt.

The templates can only balance your overall damage but they do nothing against single spells that deal enormous dmg.
I think one could get examples of something like this for nearly all classes in the recent pvp balance hotfixes.

[RelaZ]

Honestly, what's wrong? Things are getting re-pruned or whatever. Most specs are fine and actuall good/balanced for 3v3. Only a few specs now are a bit strong like assa rogue, and like 2-3 more. Most specs are viable to get 2.2k+ with in the right synergetic combination of specs (comps). Most complains I see are from people with 0 clue. It's really sad when blizzard change a spec depending on un-experienced players deem is good or bad xD

Good? Balanced?

Every second game you play above 2.2K is literally RMD, and one fourth of the games are RMP. And it's nothing like the RMx of old, it's just damage spam where someone dies after their defensive CDs are used, usually within 60 seconds.

It's definitely not balanced atm. And it's certainly not fun if you played competitive PvP in this game prior to this expansion. It's literally just PvE "damage damage damage" mongoloidism.

---

I'll just randomly namedrop a few of Blizzard's blunders when it comes to PvP gameplay this expansion:

Spell Reflection reflects everything
Grounding Totem grounds everything
Reverse Magic (no skill, no way to counter)
Blessing of Sanctuary (no skill, no way to counter)
Feral not having Cyclone (spec reduced to dps bot)
Greater Pyroblast (Why do they design half the caster classes around super long casts that one shot? It's not fun to get double blinked with prismatic shield + pyro all game)
Blink while casting (lag makes this ridiculous, on your screen he's next to you yet you cant hit him and then 0.5 seconds later he teleports away while still casting)
Adaptation + Relentless (stupid passive options reducing skill cap further)
Auto bubble (again, stupid passive)
Meleeattack while BoPed (you can attack while in BoP? Is their goal to remove all thought process from the paladin toolkit? Another stupid skill-reducing change)
Scatter on disorient DR (DRing both categories to get trap as MM? What the fuck are you even thinking Blizzard)
Survival has to trap with roots (lag makes this horrible + it's almost impossible to even get traps vs rdruid and mw - why is a teams main cc almost impossible to use vs 2/6 healers?)
Enraged Maim (instant, 6 sec cd, almost no cost. Also even if it weren't so stupidly designed in the other areas it's on the wrong DR school for Ferals)
Burning Determination + Calming Waters (passives that reward you for failing, and way too much so - just give caster dps at least one dps spell from other schools they can use while locked out instead, in the case of rshamans figure out other better non passive solutions to their problems)
SLT talent (promotes even more brainless damage tunneling instead of skillful cc-chaining)
Ranged melee interrupts (wtf? actually just I'm done)

But really.. it's just obvious they don't even give two shits anymore about PvP. Almost all of these things can be chalked up to either one of these things:

1) It's a quality of life change for PvE (auto-bubble, melee damage while in BoP) and they don't want to nerf how an ability operates in PvP (that's why you only see % damage/healing nerfs on abilities and never anything else). It's a case of "Shut up PvP guy" combined with "Don't change how abilities operate in PvP, that could confuse PvErs".

2) CC Reduction. Blizzard seems to believe that the game is at its best when all we do is spam damage into one another with as little thought process as possible. That's why stuff like Blessing of Sanctuary, SLT-talent, Adaptation, Relentless, Calming Waters, Burning Determination, Reverse Magic etc were introduced in the atrocious state they are while at the same time lots of CC got nerfed/removed (Feral Cyclone, Traps, Garrote, Gouge etc)

3) Cluelessness about what makes for fun PvP gameplay. Some of the design choices are just ridiculous, such as Greater Pyroblast. Who in their right mind that would ever be fun to play against? All the mage does all game when he plays with that talent is sit there and cast that spell, blinking at the very last second to avoid interrupts/los. Same goes for roots into trap gameplay of Survival Hunter. It seems Blizzard is completely unaware of how laggy their game is, any competitive Hunter on EU could've told them that making roots the main way of getting traps was a horrible idea as people just run around for the roots entire duration. Another change that goes into this category is the Soothe prune + Grounding and Spell Reflection changes as they make for even more boring gameplay.

[Professor Expert]

Good? Balanced?

Every second game you play above 2.2K is literally RMD, and one fourth of the games are RMP. And it's nothing like the RMx of old, it's just damage spam where someone dies after their defensive CDs are used, usually within 60 seconds.

It's definitely not balanced atm. And it's certainly not fun if you played competitive PvP in this game prior to this expansion. It's literally just PvE "damage damage damage" mongoloidism.

That is not a balance issue. The lack of diversity is a side affect of making rated pvp irrelevant. If I do arena, it's almost always skirmishes. Between them and BGs I get the gear I need, or WQs and Mythic+ stuff. I prefer not to do the pve stuff because I don't really like it after doing it the first time around.

I don't like to use the word "balance" with regards to pvp because it creates false implications of fairness in peoples' minds that SHOULD NOT exist. Yes, for the game to be fun and engaging there need to be some discrepancies among classes. This not only makes classes feel more relevant, it also makes the game more dynamic as you require cooperation to be effective.

3) Cluelessness about what makes for fun PvP gameplay. Some of the design choices are just ridiculous, such as Greater Pyroblast. Who in their right mind that would ever be fun to play against? All the mage does all game when he plays with that talent is sit there and cast that spell, blinking at the very last second to avoid interrupts/los. Same goes for roots into trap gameplay of Survival Hunter. It seems Blizzard is completely unaware of how laggy their game is, any competitive Hunter on EU could've told them that making roots the main way of getting traps was a horrible idea as people just run around for the roots entire duration. Another change that goes into this category is the Soothe prune + Grounding and Spell Reflection changes as they make for even more boring gameplay.

Playing with GPB is actually fun if you modify your play style to set your targets up for it as often as possible. Ever since I got it, I've been having a blast...and nothing else on that tier is particularly useful so you're not really giving anything up by choosing GPB. I think the cast time could be cut down by 0.5 sec at least, on average it hits about as hard as chaos bolt and it cannot crit, nor does it contribute to ignite.

[Tyrean]

I think the templates didnt do them any favor in the balance department, just as an example (not to say that something is under/overpowered):

In legion they would nerf a frostmages intellect by 5%, pre nerf a glacial spike would hit for 1 mil avg, after nerf it would hit for 950k avg.
Before the templates they would simply go and nerf glacial spike by lets say 20% down to 800kavg hit and compensate the nerf with lets say a 20% buff to frostbolt.

The templates can only balance your overall damage but they do nothing against single spells that deal enormous dmg.
I think one could get examples of something like this for nearly all classes in the recent pvp balance hotfixes.

I see what you mean, but the Frost DK template change was a good example of how they leveraged the template to manage an outlier. DKs were doing too much damage using breath, and the frost strike damage was also super high. So they nerfed mastery (frost damage) to the ground and then buffed up haste and crit to compensate. So they shifted the damage sources from armor ignoring frost to physical with obliterate. DKs still do decent damage, but it is just not broken like it was before. They *could* do stuff like this with other classes like rogues or boomkins, but they just aren't. It is hard to tell why they make the decisions they do sometimes because there seems to be no real clear methodology, more like there are just some people on the "team" that get their opinions heard over others.

[Caolela]

incompetent, even if holinka is nothing but a PR talking head with no actually authority, the rest of the dev team clearly don't know what they are doing.

I don't know how much more bullshit like this you have to see for 'X' more months, how many more times it needs to be explained that the only "incompetence" here is Blizz didn't think they'd lose so many PvP'ers with the changes wrought by Legion. They miscalculated that, but also hoped, "No biggie, they'll just buy OW or HotS..."

The rest of it was fully intentional, not incompetence. Do you think they sat around not realizing what templates, RNG, and one wep per spec + a silly grind would do? Don't be naive, or a fanboy looking for an excuse for Blizz.

Another example: why do you think they started RNG BiS trinkets in WoD? To get you used to the idea of all-RNG in PvP that they had fully planned for Legion, so it would be less of a shock.

Their job is to rip you off, to get your money while providing the least content they can get away with and still have you subbing. Imbalance causes FotM rerolls, always has which means longer time-in-game raising those specs. They're going for simplified MOBA playstyles too and the quick buck from transient players, as Prof Ex said above. The arena issues are another outcome of all of this. It's as plain as the nose on your face.

[Philomene]

I'll just randomly namedrop a few of Blizzard's blunders when it comes to PvP gameplay this expansion:

Spell Reflection reflects everything
Grounding Totem grounds everything
Reverse Magic (no skill, no way to counter)
Blessing of Sanctuary (no skill, no way to counter)
Feral not having Cyclone (spec reduced to dps bot)
Greater Pyroblast (Why do they design half the caster classes around super long casts that one shot? It's not fun to get double blinked with prismatic shield + pyro all game)
Blink while casting (lag makes this ridiculous, on your screen he's next to you yet you cant hit him and then 0.5 seconds later he teleports away while still casting)
Adaptation + Relentless (stupid passive options reducing skill cap further)
Auto bubble (again, stupid passive)
Meleeattack while BoPed (you can attack while in BoP? Is their goal to remove all thought process from the paladin toolkit? Another stupid skill-reducing change)
Scatter on disorient DR (DRing both categories to get trap as MM? What the fuck are you even thinking Blizzard)
Survival has to trap with roots (lag makes this horrible + it's almost impossible to even get traps vs rdruid and mw - why is a teams main cc almost impossible to use vs 2/6 healers?)
Enraged Maim (instant, 6 sec cd, almost no cost. Also even if it weren't so stupidly designed in the other areas it's on the wrong DR school for Ferals)
Burning Determination + Calming Waters (passives that reward you for failing, and way too much so - just give caster dps at least one dps spell from other schools they can use while locked out instead, in the case of rshamans figure out other better non passive solutions to their problems)
SLT talent (promotes even more brainless damage tunneling instead of skillful cc-chaining)
Ranged melee interrupts (wtf? actually just I'm done)

+ AMS
+ Meta stun

They really need to get rid of all of this crap. Reduce the potency of all automatic, proc or random crap. Make people actually do what they're doing. Punish them for making wrong decisions, reward them for doing it right. It is where the prune should've be targeted. People don't play the game anymore, they're spamming 1 or 2 abilities, refreshing a buff or a DoT and then pushing enlightened buttons.

As spriest, though I'm maining Holy, they butchered the class and made it a damage bot : 10% DR on fade (useful against stealth opening or any stun), leap of faith (+ glyph), spectral guise (although I never really liked this spell), PoM, off-heals are now awful (and limited to 4 casts), MD costs a lot of mana and makes you unable to cast any healing spell right after, speed boost tied to a short-CD defensive, etc. Now basically you just have to deal with managing your damage and burst, while before you had all the assist crap to deal with, while having to deal damage, and even manage snapshotting that fucking Warlords removed. God.

[Stormspellz]

I don't know how much more bullshit like this you have to see for 'X' more months, how many more times it needs to be explained that the only "incompetence" here is Blizz didn't think they'd lose so many PvP'ers with the changes wrought by Legion. They miscalculated that, but also hoped, "No biggie, they'll just buy OW or HotS..."

The rest of it was fully intentional, not incompetence. Do you think they sat around not realizing what templates, RNG, and one wep per spec + a silly grind would do? Don't be naive, or a fanboy looking for an excuse for Blizz.

Another example: why do you think they started RNG BiS trinkets in WoD? To get you used to the idea of all-RNG in PvP that they had fully planned for Legion, so it would be less of a shock.

Their job is to rip you off, to get your money while providing the least content they can get away with and still have you subbing. Imbalance causes FotM rerolls, always has which means longer time-in-game raising those specs. They're going for simplified MOBA playstyles too and the quick buck from transient players, as Prof Ex said above. The arena issues are another outcome of all of this. It's as plain as the nose on your face.

So your argument is they intentionally tanked pvp because they figured the pvp'rs would stick around any way? thats still incompetence.

[xZerocidex]

incompetent, even if holinka is nothing but a PR talking head with no actually authority, the rest of the dev team clearly don't know what they are doing.

Devs are incompetent af, with ppl like Celestalon designing this game and wanna make this game tablet-friendly people should really start worrying.

[Caolela]

So your argument is they intentionally tanked pvp because they figured the pvp'rs would stick around any way? thats still incompetence.

Don't know where you're getting that I said they intentionally tanked PvP. I haven't said that. But what they've done with Legion (and WoD) was obviously intended or it would never have gone through. They simply did not anticipate the amount of losses they've had by going a bridge too far. That's why they got the arena titles mess and ladder collapse.

It's one level of incompetence by not knowing their customers well enough, and I'd say arrogance in thinking they can do anything to WoW in pursuit of higher profits and get away with it. But it's not the kind of incompetence that some like to think.