What is the "best" or "right" way to view WoW PVP?

[Deleted]

What I've personally always liked about WoW PvP was that it provided such a huge skill cap you could literally 1v10 at some point in time.


As I've played quite a few MOBAs over the years as well I think an appropriate comparison would be DotA/DotA 2 with HotS.

HotS is kind of a nice game and I've played it quite a bit but, honestly, everything is so streamlined - damage numbers are pretty low and can't fluctuate either because of the lack of items, personal level, and all. It definitely has polish because it's Blizzard we're talking about here after all but you can't really shine. If you're experienced in the genre and have brains it wouldn't take you any more than a couple of days to become above-average. And even then you can rarely 1vX as, like I said - everything is so streamlined and "team-based" that it would just not allow for that.

DotA on the other hand... the sheer number of characters, items, mechanics (even the ability to chop down trees is a very nice touch) made the skill cap so high that you could pretty much always improve. And when you did good you could even solo a whole team and it would feel so rewarding.


It seems like WoW PvP felt a lot more like DotA in the past and nowadays it's just another HotS.


The second thing - the reason I would've actually preferred it over a MOBA any day of the week - was the sheer amount of buttons I could press. In your regular MOBA you would have 3 spells on 6-10 sec cooldown each, an ultimate ability on a 90 sec cooldown, and a few items/talents/whatever you call it, often times on even larger than a 90 sec cooldown. In your regular FPS you would have a lot of weapons to choose from but at the end of the day it would still come down to two buttons, a knife, and possibly a grenade too. Playing WoW often times felt like playing the keyboard. That's probably the single game that has taken the full potential out of keyboards over the last 13 or so years.


And for some weird reasons the current designers in the WoW team are striving to shift as much away from those two things as possible. It's sad.

[Cuppy]

What I've personally always liked about WoW PvP was that it provided such a huge skill cap you could literally 1v10 at some point in time.

Excuse me what?
IF there ever was a situation you could go 1v10, it sure wasn't about "skillcap" lol.

[Hashtronaut]

I used to be super into arena for the longest time, especially 3s but idk recently it just doesn't have the same feel to it.
Or it's lack of motivation on my part, either way it just feels rather pointless to do 3s (or any arena for that matter).

Still get enjoyment out of the occasional bg, but I think their lack of sticking to ONE meta for atleast a month is kind of disheartening regardless of what's OP or not they should try to leave things alone for once.

Their changes don't make things better...ever it seems

[Deleted]

Excuse me what?
IF there ever was a situation you could go 1v10, it sure wasn't about "skillcap" lol.

Don't necessarily imagine 10 people beating on you at the same time. Imagine a World PvP pre-WoD scenario where they come in batches of 1 or 2, 3 at most. In WotLK I've solo'd whole small guilds in that sense, lol. Pounce -> Savage Roar > Mangle -> Rake -> Shred -> 5 CP Rip into instant Entangling Roots and run away, then come back. I've solo'd a mage while keeping a warr constantly in CC with Roots/Cyclone and a feral with Hibernate/Cyclone, at the same time. If people become too much or you can't react to a cd - Shadowmeld into Flight Form and fly away, wait it out, heal up and come back.

[cface]

PvE is where wow shines, pvp, just play another game. If I feel competitive, I simply play another game that is not MMO

[Cuppy]

Don't necessarily imagine 10 people beating on you at the same time. Imagine a World PvP pre-WoD scenario where they come in batches of 1 or 2, 3 at most. In WotLK I've solo'd whole small guilds in that sense, lol. Pounce -> Savage Roar > Mangle -> Rake -> Shred -> 5 CP Rip into instant Entangling Roots and run away, then come back. I've solo'd a mage while keeping a warr constantly in CC with Roots/Cyclone and a feral with Hibernate/Cyclone, at the same time. If people become too much or you can't react to a cd - Shadowmeld into Flight Form and fly away, wait it out, heal up and come back.

Yeah I usually go 1v500, but they just come one at a time....
What you described is called somewhat OP (prelegion feral, played that shit too and destroyed EVERYTHING in my path. Nothing to do with skillcap tho.

[Wondercrab]

I very much struggle to view WoW PvP in a positive light the more time goes on and the more competitive games advance. With Blizzard even offering several excellent competitive games themselves, the choice between WoW PvP and just logging out and loading up HotS, Hearthstone, or Overwatch is always a no-brainer to me. WoW PvP is still ultimately a decade+ old PvE system that's been adjusted slightly to facilitate PvP. Short of a radical overhaul, I feel like it's going to continue stagnating as people are exposed to more and more better alternatives.

[Deleted]

Yeah I usually go 1v500, but they just come one at a time....
What you described is called somewhat OP (prelegion feral, played that shit too and destroyed EVERYTHING in my path. Nothing to do with skillcap tho.

When you kill 3 people, another 2 come right after, and then another 3 or so it's definitely 1vs9+, lol. There are things like cooldowns, health and resources that don't magically reset the moment you kill the first batch of people

When you say pre-Legion I can imagine you played it in WoD. WoD feral has nothing to do with WotLK/Cata/MoP feral, even TBC feral. And your perception of "OP" is totally wrong because I've killed lots of people like that in World PvP as literally any class. It's just that my fondest memories lie with feral.

Anyhow, this was just a single example of how a certain 1vX would've went in the past. Nowadays you lack the tools to do so. Your only hope would be to pop all your damage cooldowns at the very start and hope to AoE them down before they do. In both WoD and Legion you would want to pop Incarnation as fast as possible, pop Survival Instincts so no-one interferes with your damage rotation and start bleeding/bursting everyone down simultaneously. No CC involved, no LoS involved, no thought-process involved.

Oh... I forgot World PvP didn't even exist anymore because stat templates are inactive out there and you global people literally the moment you look at them

- - - Updated - - -

I very much struggle to view WoW PvP in a positive light the more time goes on and the more competitive games advance. With Blizzard even offering several excellent competitive games themselves, the choice between WoW PvP and just logging out and loading up HotS, Hearthstone, or Overwatch is always a no-brainer to me. WoW PvP is still ultimately a decade+ old PvE system that's been adjusted slightly to facilitate PvP. Short of a radical overhaul, I feel like it's going to continue stagnating as people are exposed to more and more better alternatives.

Sure, a lot of PvP games have emerged over the past couple of years - games designed specifically for PvP at that.. and WoW is also aging by the day.

The issue here is more that WoW offered a different kind of PvP that was for some reason altered to resemble said other PvP games as much as possible. Blizzard will simply kill the game trying to make it into something which it clearly was never intended to be.

[Pawstruck]

Interesting responses, guys.

Maybe it's because I've always liked stealth classes, and feeling like I'm jumping out of the shadows at a helpless victim. This is fine in PVE, but ultimately not a lot of time is spent in stealth - and PVE enemies are always "unsuspecting." PVE is more about rotation, decision-making, and prioritizing. (It has a lot in common with waiting tables at a restaurant, lol.) In PVP, I take a lot of joy in popping out on someone at the most inconvenient time for them, fighting "unfairly," and then selfishly disappearing as soon as things look bad - sometimes even leaving my team high and dry. I am a Goblin Rogue, after all...

Not that I'm super-role-play-y, but the point of a video game is to allow you to choose a fantasy to bring to life, right?

The second thing - the reason I would've actually preferred it over a MOBA any day of the week - was the sheer amount of buttons I could press. . .


And for some weird reasons the current designers in the WoW team are striving to shift as much away from those two things as possible. It's sad.

This I actually disagree with pretty strongly. The number of buttons that Shamans and Hunters had back in the day was just ridiculous. You might use 10 abilities regularly; the remaining 30 would get used maybe once per day or even once per week. Many were useless or near-useless in PVP. (Was it really super-cool to bind Hibernate JUST so you could nail an unlucky Druid in form? I never thought so.)

I think MOST classes have improved with the prune. Obviously - just think about it - in such a big game, certain people are BOUND to be upset that X ability was removed. Poor Survival Hunters, though... :/