Legion PvP Really That Bad!?

[Matthias]

I'm seeing so much negativity on the forums about it. Even more than usual. This expansion I've done by bar the least PvP I ever have since TBC, largley because Legions PvE keeps me so busy as it did in TBC.

I play an Arms Warrior. Season 1 of Legion I think I got to like 1600 in RBGs, scratched 1800 in 3v3 before tanking, cause I stopped caring about rating and only about trying to reach Prestige 1.

I'm really not seeing what everyone is complaining about. People are saying melee are overpowered.....isn't that the case every expansion? Melee start off strong, and casters start to dominate later seasons. Mages still wreck me, and for the first time since I can remember I don't just simply eat a warlocks face off, those pricks are a pain to kill for once.

I feel like people who whine about PvP and say "I don't PvP because it's unbalanced" just suck or don't know how to adjust. The game's never been balanced. What PvP I have done this expansion I have thoroughly enjoyed.

As for low representation....

At the end of The Burning Crusade, Blizzard concluded that "Players go where the gear is". In Vanilla and TBC a lot of casuals PvP'd because it was a solid reliable way to get gear. WoTLK they made the best PvP Gear locked by rating, while PvE gear from raids was far more accessible, therefore more people started to raid. Now with Legion and Mythic+ PvE is the most solid way to get gear.

I think Blizzard dropped the ball removing PvP gear and vendors entirely, the WoD system seemed fine to me. I feel like only a small niche of the audience can appreciate the fact that gear doesn't matter that much anymore in PvP. Thing is in an RPG people want to see their power progress. Which is why less people just PvP.

I will say I'm bias in the fact that as an Arms Warrior I feel that I play a class that's just not allowed to be bad for a long stretch of time. (Ele Sham and Boomkins Blizz could care less about it seems). However no matter what nerfs, or state I'm in I almost always play Arms. I persevered through the early WoD season with it, and I would have trucked along with it had it not been changed.

If anything my biggest beef with Legion PvP is World PvP. Yes Blizz there is an audience for that. This is the first time in a while where World PvP can happen often due to a lack of flying, all while not being holed up in our Garrisons. However due to no templates it's super imbalanced. I mean just make all players take less damage in WPvP. However even with those imbalances....WPvP has never attempted to be balanced and I still have a blast with WPvP.

Bigger problem is lack of templates for duels. People like to duel to kill time while queuing, waiting for teammates or just to hone their skills. It needs to be reminiscent of competitive PvP.

[Deleted]

If anything my biggest beef with Legion PvP is World PvP. Yes Blizz there is an audience for that.

... and blizzard should never ever listen to that crow. If they wish to have pissing match about how's the biggest jerk, they should just run for president.

[Deleted]

Biggest issue is not balance because, honestly, even though Holinka and team are pretty dead in the head, the current player statistics, streams and simply technologies behind the game allow for a better balance than ever. Sure, there can never be perfect balance and that's the fun of it because it allows for constant meta shifts. And people have the complete right to whine here and there about balance issues. Most of them are complete idiots (no excuse) but that's a whole different topic.

I don't think balance is the issue here. The issue is how dumbed down everything has become. As an arms warrior, for example, you no longer feel unique, you no longer stance-shift, you no longer have a low-cd Spell Reflect that could be a game changer, you no longer even have self-heals for god's sake. You're just yet another streamlined spec/class that has some damage buttons, a damage cooldown button and a stun on a 30 sec cooldown. Just like all others. Game feels more like a MOBA now after all this pruning and dumbing down of stuff.

On your last points, I highly agree. WoD was just as dumbed down, with absolutely terrible class design. Playing an Arms Warrior then actually caused me pain. It literally hurt. But at least I stood around because of the little World PvP that had remained in the game and because of the duels. Now they're both gone.

The funny thing is that Legion baited me into buying the stupid expansion, constantly promoting World PvP with the focus from Garrisons removed, the brand new PvP system, world quests that got you out in the open, even PvP world quests (that are honestly more PvE to me than PvE world quests themselves). And now, especially with the increasing gear ilvl, World PvP isn't even possible. Well... if someone enjoys instagibbing level 1 mobs it may be for him.

[wholol]

Just do what most pvpers did, play other pvp games for the pvp aspect and just play wow for pve. Can't you tell arena participation is at an all time low because of that as most people started focusing on overwatch and mobas in general instead.

[xindralol]

try it for yourself ...
but there's a reason a lot of people quit / only play pve now

still you might enjoy it - just don't expect any kind of depth : )

[DeicideUH]

My only big complain about PvP right now is that some classes have too good toolkits, while others suffer a lot. Damage by itself is fairly balanced, I like templates and the Honor system is a nice incentive for me to play more PvP than usual, but some classes have great combination of burst, healing, mobility, CC, utility and/or survivability compared to others.

About WPvP... give up. That's something that's impossible to balance. Get the best combo o gear/buffs and jump into those FFA PvP areas when respective WQs are up.

[Deleted]

My only big complain about PvP right now is that some classes have too good toolkits, while others suffer a lot. Damage by itself is fairly balanced, I like templates and the Honor system is a nice incentive for me to play more PvP than usual, but some classes have great combination of burst, healing, mobility, CC, utility and/or survivability compared to others.

About WPvP... give up. That's something that's impossible to balance. Get the best combo o gear/buffs and jump into those FFA PvP areas when respective WQs are up.

The problem is indeed toolkits combined with balancing of burst/ sustain damage.
Some classes are way to OP while others... Well, just look at the comps in top rating.

[ItachiZaku]

To be honest, PVP is the same as it has always been. The game is pretty much the same as it has always been. Right meow, i can pretend to say that "it is bad" only cuz my #1 main PVP toon isn't all that great now (resto druid), I'm still solid and decent, cuz I am solid and decent. I was going to have my MM be my #1 or 2 toon to 110, but I really disliked the changes and it felt... just bad in the pre-event.

So in my anecdotal example, MY legion PVP would seem to feel bad, but there are always op and weak toons, mine just happened to be weak.

[Matthias]

Biggest issue is not balance because, honestly, even though Holinka and team are pretty dead in the head, the current player statistics, streams and simply technologies behind the game allow for a better balance than ever. Sure, there can never be perfect balance and that's the fun of it because it allows for constant meta shifts. And people have the complete right to whine here and there about balance issues. Most of them are complete idiots (no excuse) but that's a whole different topic.

I don't think balance is the issue here. The issue is how dumbed down everything has become. As an arms warrior, for example, you no longer feel unique, you no longer stance-shift, you no longer have a low-cd Spell Reflect that could be a game changer, you no longer even have self-heals for god's sake. You're just yet another streamlined spec/class that has some damage buttons, a damage cooldown button and a stun on a 30 sec cooldown. Just like all others. Game feels more like a MOBA now after all this pruning and dumbing down of stuff.

On your last points, I highly agree. WoD was just as dumbed down, with absolutely terrible class design. Playing an Arms Warrior then actually caused me pain. It literally hurt. But at least I stood around because of the little World PvP that had remained in the game and because of the duels. Now they're both gone.

The funny thing is that Legion baited me into buying the stupid expansion, constantly promoting World PvP with the focus from Garrisons removed, the brand new PvP system, world quests that got you out in the open, even PvP world quests (that are honestly more PvE to me than PvE world quests themselves). And now, especially with the increasing gear ilvl, World PvP isn't even possible. Well... if someone enjoys instagibbing level 1 mobs it may be for him.

Funny thing though is the pruning didn't really bother me too much. I personally think class balance and diversity was at it's height during WoTLK, but could just be me being rose tinted because it's the last time I ever did Arena religiously. However by MoP I felt like things got a bit convoluted. I my tool kit seemed to have an answer for everything. Every class did, it seemed like everyone had some OP stun and insane mobility.

With the prune yes I have less abilities, but the ones I do have just matter more. Do I wish they kept Spell Reflect base line? Yea. And I personally miss having all three stances.

Understand part of the reason for the pruning was to allow newer players to not feel as discouraged. Many of us have over 10 years of experience playing the game, a decade of knowing what mods to look out for, macros to use, keybinds etc. A new player that has no idea what they're doing will get smoked on the DPS meter.

However my thing is that philosophy should only apply to PvE. PvP should be all about improving your micro play. I remember when I started learning the tricks of the trade in WoTLK nuance things like how Demo Shout can knock people out of stealth and Rend will knock Rogues out of stealth if they Vanish. Or in MoP how you could Intervene to your Banner.

[DeicideUH]

To be honest, PVP is the same as it has always been. The game is pretty much the same as it has always been. Right meow, i can pretend to say that "it is bad" only cuz my #1 main PVP toon isn't all that great now (resto druid), I'm still solid and decent, cuz I am solid and decent. I was going to have my MM be my #1 or 2 toon to 110, but I really disliked the changes and it felt... just bad in the pre-event.

So in my anecdotal example, MY legion PVP would seem to feel bad, but there are always op and weak toons, mine just happened to be weak.

They need to look at the utility of some classes. I play Hunter (mostly Survival, because it's fun, but sometimes MM). And just adding traps to MM made a huge difference, however, the spec is completely vulnerable to both casters and melee because it has no mobility anymore while still maintaing its lack of defenses.

As Survival, I also feel the lack of good defensive skills, healing, instant CC or on-demand burst (not asking all of those, just pointing out what the spec lacks. Giving us better defensive CDs would be enough to make the spec really good).

It's weird that I can drop a warlock's health by more than half (including its shields), but then he starts CC'ing/healing and finally wins, killing me while having its health almost back to full (happened yesterday in a BG; I was defending a node while stealthed). Some classes can turn an almost loss into a win, while others can't.

It's so infuriating that I can't attack during my only damage-reducing CD, while a Paladin can do full damage while immune (and has two imunity CDs that can be used within 20 seconds of each other), has a shield, can use a instant stun AND has an attack that both deals double damage on me when I'm stunned AND heals him. (As a rule, I run away from paladins if I have no backup).

Those are just anecdotal examples. Of course someone else will come and say "but I kill warlocks and paladins so easily". Of course you do, but the point is that some classes are lacking in toolkit. They are just too vulnerable in too many situations.

[Faenskap]

World PvP... So I take my spriest to the Darkbrul Area (I need that honor). What. The. Fuck. That was such a frustrating experience I felt like deleting my priest and uninstalling the game. Rogues and DHs looking at me, 1 second later, it's "Release Spirit".

Does the instanced game feel bad? It depends on what I'm playing. I used to main warlock (and goddam those warriors are so annoying ) but I'm slightly moving away from that, due to heavier emphasis on playing with a demon (for both affli and destro). Then it's the constant buffs and nerfs. The talents, both regular and the PvP ones offer very varied playstyles but imo not a fan. The choice you make at the start of the BG could be your doom. Let's say I choose Bane of Havoc (destro lvl 44 PvP talent for AoE) but I end up defending, it'll be useless in a 1v1.

As mentioned I also play spriest and while I've never been top tier - and warriors, why are you so cruel - I just feel completely useless in a normal BG when melees are hungry for that void energy. Though that's probably always been the case, warlocks can deal with being trained better than spriests.

Even instanced PvP feels very bursty and I've had quite a few "wtf just happened" moments.

Yeah, I don't know. I sort of want to keep on playing, as I must have a mental disorder that doesn't allow me to replace WoW with some other game. But still, I just feel completely useless at times when I'm either playing a spec I don't like (affli) or trained till kingdom come as a spriest so I end up burning myself out changing between warlock/spriest while also leveling other alts.

[DeicideUH]

World PvP... So I take my spriest to the Darkbrul Area (I need that honor). What. The. Fuck. That was such a frustrating experience I felt like deleting my priest and uninstalling the game. Rogues and DHs looking at me, 1 second later, it's "Release Spirit".

Darkbrul is a bad place to be. The healing and berzerk items are so OP (tip: Berzerk buff also increases damage taken by a lot). You can be clever and ambush people there.

Funny story: was doing Darkbrul with my hunter. Orc warrior engages me. Less than 3 seconds later I'm at 51% health and he gives me a 2.5 Million damage Execute. He didn't have the Berzerk buff, and didn't have it either. Still baffled how a skill can do more damage than my entire health pool.

[Faenskap]

Darkbrul is a bad place to be. The healing and berzerk items are so OP (tip: Berzerk buff also increases damage taken by a lot). You can be clever and ambush people there.

Funny story: was doing Darkbrul with my hunter. Orc warrior engages me. Less than 3 seconds later I'm at 51% health and he gives me a 2.5 Million damage Execute. He didn't have the Berzerk buff, and didn't have it either. Still baffled how a skill can do more damage than my entire health pool.

It's... insane. I guess it can be very fun for people with a lot of front-loaded damage, but as a spriest I don't feel dangerous :P I'm also seeing very high numbers for Excecute in instanced PvP too.

[Krusza]

I'm seeing so much negativity on the forums about it. Even more than usual. This expansion I've done by bar the least PvP I ever have since TBC, largley because Legions PvE keeps me so busy as it did in TBC.

I play an Arms Warrior. Season 1 of Legion I think I got to like 1600 in RBGs, scratched 1800 in 3v3 before tanking, cause I stopped caring about rating and only about trying to reach Prestige 1.

I'm really not seeing what everyone is complaining about. People are saying melee are overpowered.....isn't that the case every expansion? Melee start off strong, and casters start to dominate later seasons. Mages still wreck me, and for the first time since I can remember I don't just simply eat a warlocks face off, those pricks are a pain to kill for once.

I feel like people who whine about PvP and say "I don't PvP because it's unbalanced" just suck or don't know how to adjust. The game's never been balanced. What PvP I have done this expansion I have thoroughly enjoyed.

As for low representation....

At the end of The Burning Crusade, Blizzard concluded that "Players go where the gear is". In Vanilla and TBC a lot of casuals PvP'd because it was a solid reliable way to get gear. WoTLK they made the best PvP Gear locked by rating, while PvE gear from raids was far more accessible, therefore more people started to raid. Now with Legion and Mythic+ PvE is the most solid way to get gear.

I think Blizzard dropped the ball removing PvP gear and vendors entirely, the WoD system seemed fine to me. I feel like only a small niche of the audience can appreciate the fact that gear doesn't matter that much anymore in PvP. Thing is in an RPG people want to see their power progress. Which is why less people just PvP.

I will say I'm bias in the fact that as an Arms Warrior I feel that I play a class that's just not allowed to be bad for a long stretch of time. (Ele Sham and Boomkins Blizz could care less about it seems). However no matter what nerfs, or state I'm in I almost always play Arms. I persevered through the early WoD season with it, and I would have trucked along with it had it not been changed.

If anything my biggest beef with Legion PvP is World PvP. Yes Blizz there is an audience for that. This is the first time in a while where World PvP can happen often due to a lack of flying, all while not being holed up in our Garrisons. However due to no templates it's super imbalanced. I mean just make all players take less damage in WPvP. However even with those imbalances....WPvP has never attempted to be balanced and I still have a blast with WPvP.

Bigger problem is lack of templates for duels. People like to duel to kill time while queuing, waiting for teammates or just to hone their skills. It needs to be reminiscent of competitive PvP.

The issue isn't the balance, it's the gameplay. Someone that's only peaked at 1800 probably isn't going to see much difference between this expansion and the last few.

The game has been pruned to the point of every spec having no depth to them anymore. There's nothing skillful in the game, it's just a damage race. This is what most people's main complaint is, mine included, and rightly so. Due to the fact there's such a low skillcap, it has affected the balance massively, you can't play crappy comps anymore because there's nothing that lets you outplay stronger comps, it all comes down to damage.

Balance aside, most specs simply aren't interesting anymore due to this, there is little that sets them apart.

Pruning should've stopped after WoD when the massive complaints came in about it, but it got even worse in Legion.

[Deleted]

Funny thing though is the pruning didn't really bother me too much. I personally think class balance and diversity was at it's height during WoTLK, but could just be me being rose tinted because it's the last time I ever did Arena religiously. However by MoP I felt like things got a bit convoluted. I my tool kit seemed to have an answer for everything. Every class did, it seemed like everyone had some OP stun and insane mobility.

With the prune yes I have less abilities, but the ones I do have just matter more. Do I wish they kept Spell Reflect base line? Yea. And I personally miss having all three stances.

Understand part of the reason for the pruning was to allow newer players to not feel as discouraged. Many of us have over 10 years of experience playing the game, a decade of knowing what mods to look out for, macros to use, keybinds etc. A new player that has no idea what they're doing will get smoked on the DPS meter.

However my thing is that philosophy should only apply to PvE. PvP should be all about improving your micro play. I remember when I started learning the tricks of the trade in WoTLK nuance things like how Demo Shout can knock people out of stealth and Rend will knock Rogues out of stealth if they Vanish. Or in MoP how you could Intervene to your Banner.

Diversity - yes, class balance - yes, and no. Diversity itself can't really allow for the best class balance. In my opinion late-MoP was the most balanced for the sole fact that, as you said, everyone had an answer for everything. All classes had essentially near the same capabilities and that allowed for all of them being competitive at the the top. I've said it many times around here - MoP class design wasn't the best. MoP made it so that everyone had 2-3 burst cds, 2-3 defensive cds, 2-3 trinkets, 2-3 CC abilities, and an interrupt. Class diversity was almost gone but it was still fun in a sense. I could spend literally hours in front of the PC and still have fun. Ever since WoD I can't do that - I can't even describe how fast I get bored of everything. And now you might say that probably it is I that has changed over the years - but how do you explain the fact that when I enter a WotLK/Cata/MoP private server I still have fun, even today. A lot more fun than Legion can offer me.

They should've "pruned" the MoP class design a little bit but introduce some more interesting diversity as well. They not only overdid the prune but they also pruned totally the wrong stuff. Cause still everyone has an interrupt, still everyone has a damage cooldown, still everyone has a defensive cooldown - it's all the same monotonous sh*t, they just combined the spells so you have less buttons to click. Yet, they removed all the cool stuff. When they removed Symbiosis after MoP they literally said they did it, quote - "because it was too confusing to most players". Like what the...?

The spells that matter the most sure did make the cut after the prune but the so called "skillcap" was always hidden in the little ones. I don't get if the new generation is way too spoiled but when I was still a new player to the game - the fact that there were so many classes/specs/spells/options simply mesmerized me, made me love the game, and also made me strive to be better. Every single time I discovered some of those "tricks of the trade", as you call them, I felt so damn good about myself. And when I learned how to use it in a day-to-day practice - even better. At least for me, this ladder-climbing and self-improvement has always been the most appealing thing in a game. Oversimplifying things just ensures that you get bored of it quicker. Every single expansion I've gotten bored of the game quicker and quicker, with even less of a desire to continue playing it on pservers later after. Legion got me hooked for half a month, not a second more.

[rda]

I feel like people who whine about PvP and say "I don't PvP because it's unbalanced" just suck or don't know how to adjust. The game's never been balanced. What PvP I have done this expansion I have thoroughly enjoyed.

They don't want to adjust. Not don't know how to adjust, plain don't want to.

Glad you are enjoying things. Have fun with a few tens of thousand people who enjoy it as well. (Is there even a hundred thousand now on EU or US, whatever your region is? Guess we'll see at the end of the season.)

[thilicen]

My biggest beef with Legion PvP is how some comps can literally chain-CC someone for 20 seconds without diminishing putting an end to it. They need to shrink the amount of CC categories for more comps to be viable.

[Cempa]

My only big complain about PvP right now is that some classes have too good toolkits, while others suffer a lot. Damage by itself is fairly balanced, I like templates and the Honor system is a nice incentive for me to play more PvP than usual, but some classes have great combination of burst, healing, mobility, CC, utility and/or survivability compared to others.

About WPvP... give up. That's something that's impossible to balance. Get the best combo o gear/buffs and jump into those FFA PvP areas when respective WQs are up.

Hasn't that always been in WoW? From Vanilla warlock and frost mage onward .. Always some class's and builds have clearly far too much in toolkit.

[DeicideUH]

Hasn't that always been in WoW? From Vanilla warlock and frost mage onward .. Always some class's and builds have clearly far too much in toolkit.

Yes. But I do feel Legion was somehow worse. In past expansions, specs usually got new toys, and some of them were overtuned. But now, not only some specs got new overpowered toys, some others were pruned too much.

Maybe because my class (Hunter) was affected a lot. Some specs are just too good compared to others nowadays.

[Linri]

as someone who loves pvp, this x pack gave me almost zero pvp satisfaction, i think i MAYBE pvped for 2 weeks at max level by that time, i was so bored and unsubbed

i guess my time has come, to lay down the sword and move on