Some thoughts on PvP and Balance.....and PVE gear in PvP

[Gunwolf]

I was reading some of the posts about PvP on the forums and it got me thinking about gaining true balance in PvP. I think there are two factors that prob need to be changed to achieve some type of real balance.



1. GEAR


Been reading alot of QQ about PvE gear in PvP, weapon procs and trinkets that are too powerful. When you think about competive gameplay in other games, especially FPS....all players start out on the same ground. That is, they have the same hp, the guns each do their own damage you just pick which one you prefer....basically whoever got the most kills did purely on skill using the same weapons everyone else was. Players who improve did so purely on skill and not gear.

Now PvP gear w/ its resilience and all is sort of there. It puts players on kind of an equal footing, decreasing their damage and increasing survivability......but why then do they have to upgrade it every season? I think there is a major flaw in PVP when it comes to gear and people getting to customize what they want to wear. If you have the option of wearing your pve set with pvp offpieces since your a rogue, or having some real crucial healer or tank trinket that can save your life that the other person might not have, you have an obvious advantage.

How are you to achieve PvP balance if the PvE gear always gets better. What I'm getting at is that there is no STANDARDIZATION in PVP, and without it you can never truly achieve balance. PvP might be a little more balanced if we were all wearing full PvP gear of the same item level, but that is never the case.


Just think about it. As time went on, more complaints about too much burst, and too strong heals. The only reason that is a factor is because of new and improved gear, not new and improved skill. The best way to fix this is to give everyone item lvl 200 pvp gear (not kidding lol, an entire set like you could purchase in those tournament only servers), and make it a requirement that when you cannot enter PvP unless you are wearing that gear. Gear needs to be standardized, the same for everyone, and then after observation start to balance around that.



Keep in mind, this is not one of those "give every skill to every class". I want each class to be unique, but on equal footing when it comes to gear in PvP. There simply will not be balance if gear keeps improving. Obviously if PvP gear gets better each season, and high ranked players get better gear, that burst damage and healing will forever be a problem that must constantly be adjusted each patch.


Opinons? I think Blizzard was definetly trying to go this direction with PvP gear, they just need to make pve and pvp strictly exclusive to each other. This would only be at 80 of course.


2. Tanks and Healers in PvP.

IMO PvP would be alot more fun if it was all DPS specs, with no tanks or healers. They should have two seperate bg's, a PvE-ish bg that allows tanks and healers, but also one for only pure dps specs, that invest liek 50 pts into a dps tree. Then balance the classes according to this: hybrids deal slightly less damage and less cc abilities in exchange for being able to spot heal and dispel....pure dps classes having more cc and forms of damage, pets ect but few healing abilties.

GC said they can't balance PvP around 1v1 because if it only took one person to kill a healer, then 2v2 ect would be useless. Well the problem here is that we have to worry about healers in the first place. The fun arena games are the ones that have double dps, and generally last no longer then 3 min or so. The boring ones are the ones with the druids and paladins that you have to slowly work their mana or force bubbles to do anything.

I have a prot warr, that I play in both PvE and PvP, and have a TON of fun with him. I have always wondered tho why they provide gear for healing classes, but nothing for tanks. Most of the tank specs have certain pvp oriented talents, and tanks are definetly competitive in arena's and such......but just like healers, if they show up in a group of dps you simply can't treat it like another dps, they are seen as too much of a threat and focus has to be shifted to them.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is that Blizz doesn't want tanks in PvP, yet they support healers, even though most of the balance issues revolve around them. Why not just exclude both and have a seperate DPS only arena/bgs with more gear options then the "pve" bgs/arenas.



edit: switch the two factors around, standard gear is def more important then figuring out what to do bout healers and tanks in pvp.

[K4ge]

This is an mmo. This game is about gear. Forbidding any kind of gear would retarded. That's what tournament realms are for.

I'm not even going to write something to point 2.

[Gunwolf]

This is an mmo. This game is about gear. Forbidding any kind of gear would retarded. That's what tournament realms are for.

I'm not even going to write something to point 2.

Well in that case it's just a vicious cycle, and imbalance will be there forever. Obviously MMO's are about getting new and cool gear, with cool procs and effects and stuff. But thats for PVE. All that stuff translated to PVP ijust ends up with QQ, as the gear gets so good you run into problems of overpowered healers or burst. Isn't that why they started introducing pvp gear in the first place, and removing engineering abilities in arena, to try to place people on a more equal footing. They just need to take it all the way and make everyone wear PvP gear, so only your skills can be tested, not your gear.

Again take any FPS....me and my enemies have access to the same guns and loadout, when someone is consistently winning its always because they have more skill, and when someone improves in their rating, it's because they gained skill not better gear.

[Spurmwhale]

blizzard seems to like pve gear being viable in pvp, but not vice versa. anything they can do to create incentive to pve seems to be their motto.

pve gear currently is ridiculous compared to the pvp. mages hitting 1100 haste with 3400 spell damage is f'in retarded. thats god mode stats and frostbolts that are like scorch spams doing WAY more damage not to mention procs. pvp geared mages are on average at like 500-600 haste and <2700's spell damage. the biggest problem is this issue is only going to be worse with rated BG's since you can get away with pve gear much more, and there will be teams stacking pve damage gear with 0 resilience if they don't improve the way they do itemization between the 2.

funny in wsg last night where there were 3 of us clearing the enemy flag room. the 2 others said they couldn't carry the flag since they had 0 resilience pve gear on(rogue and i can't remember the other). rogue was dropping people fast tho including the enemy FC, so i wasn't complaining.

i honestly don't get why pve inflation of spell damage/haste/etc ratios have to be so much greater in pve than in pvp. its like they do it on purpose to create that gear elevation advantage of using pve gear for pvp. otherwise i don't understand why they don't even out the two.

[Gunwolf]

Yea, those examples you listed are alot of what I have seen and read. I have a rogue buddy who always bg's with only like pvp gloves, trinket, and some offpieces. Mages and hunter also can pull this off since they can generally kite one person and nuke them before they have a chance to fight back.


PvE gear being used in PvP has been around since vanilla, but that doesn't mean it makes sense. Its really quite stupid as I think about it more and more.

Pretend your back in Naxx patch, with ilvl 200 pvp gear. A rogue could stunlock you and get you down to 60% hp. Next season you have 213 gear, and the rogue in the same stunlock can bring you down to 50% hp. So to balance this out they add more resilience to negate the extra dmg the rogue can do, but not all of it....and at the same time give healers a little more spell power to help heal the extra burst.

And this happens every season. What is the point exactly? Why not all just rock i200lvl gear and go back to killing that way with less burst and more manageable heals/shields to dps thru.

Anyone else kinda see what I mean?

[K4ge]

Well in that case it's just a vicious cycle, and imbalance will be there forever. Obviously MMO's are about getting new and cool gear, with cool procs and effects and stuff. But thats for PVE. All that stuff translated to PVP ijust ends up with QQ, as the gear gets so good you run into problems of overpowered healers or burst. Isn't that why they started introducing pvp gear in the first place, and removing engineering abilities in arena, to try to place people on a more equal footing. They just need to take it all the way and make everyone wear PvP gear, so only your skills can be tested, not your gear.

Again take any FPS....me and my enemies have access to the same guns and loadout, when someone is consistently winning its always because they have more skill, and when someone improves in their rating, it's because they gained skill not better gear.

As I said: those things are good for tournament realms. Have the joy in an mmo comes from having better gear than your opponents and pvp is the place where it's the most fun. It may be good for the esport, but terrible for the fun.
I've been on every ATR so far and enjoyed it for the equal footing. But not on live server. Mmo's (or rpg's in general) are about perfecting your character and gear is the #1 to do that.

Oh and in naxx burst was worst. 2x sinister revenge = anything except paladin and dk drops in a stun