Thoughts on expansion pvp

[Deleted]

When I first got to know about cata and rated bgs I got so happy.
My thoughts were:

1. I love bgs, gaining rating and titles and rewards from doing them will be awsome. Im not much into arena, bgs are my thing. As shadow priest in general, we have been working better in bgs as well.

2. I enjoy farming while waiting for queues and stuff. I love cooking and many professions, and gathering useful buffs. I imagined rated bgs would be like pvp raids: flask up, buff up, eat fish. In order to make an effort, just like in raids, to get best damage and best results. Like ppl not flasking for raids, they wont get as good performance as the once who do. A bit more thought and preparation for the fight, like facing a raid encounter. I rather raid than bg, but I like the preparations and using consumables for buffs, for situational use.

3. Engineering. Face it, it's a pvp profession. It's no money gain like other professions, there are much better professions for pve.
For example, we all know that playing a class pve - we know what's the best professions for them to get more of an improvement. That's nothing wrong and noone has complained about it. Proraiders want to perform their best, and tbh so do many pvp:ers.
On both sides there are ppl rolling the best class atm cause they know they will always perform well in an easy way, but there are also others who play their class and also are updated in what to do to increase that class/spec performance.
If engineering isn't working in rated bgs, it will be a useless profession. I know it, you know it, all of us know it.
It's not a gamebreaking profession, and like raiding ppl, many pvp:ers will keep themselves updated on what professions are best for their class and spec. If engineering is a must to all classes/specs pvp, ppl will level it up, just like proraiders are grabbing the best professions to increase their performance.
What is wrong with this?

4. Pvp:ers have less time to play than pve:ers?
Cause this is what I don't get. I read about arguments: ppl can't farm buff food and flask and etc, therefor it's unfair to force us to use them.
Ppl in raids don't complain about that. No flask - no loot. Simple as that. You should want to perform your best and be willing to prepare yourself. I bet most regular pvp:ers don't see any problem in this.

5. Take away the buffs, bring forward the skill?
That could be true. But face it: in arena, sure many ppl are skilled. But somehow you can notice how the best combos and specs are represented more in higher ratings. Why? Well, just think about it for a bit.
If it was all about buffless skills, combos/specs would look a bit different on higher ratings.
Would allowed buffs change how the higher ratings look? I don't think so, that's why it's not gamebreaking.

6. Being in a team for rated bgs: it's ok, we had teams for premades, shouldn't be anything new. However, I think many ppl would enjoy being able to join a random team for individual rating. Sure, the performance will probably not be as good as a premade, but then the choice is there. I think many ppl would enjoy that, and proteams aiming high shouldn't have a problem with this. Being in a proteam and face a team with random dudes is probably a fast win and fast points anyway. It could also be solved that random groups just face random groups and the opposite, then players got to choose playstyle either way.

I could go on writing all day, but need to grab some more coffee. Just type your comments please.

[Xart]

Gonna be like every expansion I guess so far. Broken in start. Fixed in midle of it. Broken at the end.

Nothing new.

[Devanox]

1. Good for you.

2. PvP isn't PvE and min/maxing stats isnt really going to be what lands kills, controlled burst and CC will. Also, adding the ability to use flasks and feasts adds a gold tax on a portion of the game that returns nothing in terms of monetary gains. PvE consumables have always been frowned upon for PvP the same way that certain abilities are frowned upon in dueling or world pvp, having one team with a bunch of pots vs another team that doesn't have that luxury would give an outside advantage to the team with said pots.

3. Engineering will be what it always has been, a fun profession that has its uses. When they allowed alot of the engi stuff to be used in arena (ex. Gnomish Lightning Generator, Rocket boots) it caused people to use engi solely because it was the most OP prof for PvP and without it you would be at a sever disadvantage.

4. Pvp'ers most of the time put in more gameplay hours than Pve'ers due to having to farm PvE and participate in PvP extensively in order to attain BiS gear for PvP. Farming mats for consumables would just be another chore that PvPers dont really want to do deal with (the same way some PvP'ers purely ignore PvE because of its time investment.)

5. Shadowmourne proved that having 1 piece of gear advantage made a team that much more formidable than another team without a legendary. DFO and DBW could make a wizard/melee hit for way more than they were pre-trinket. Small little stat buffs could add up to entirely break certain classes. Buffs that are undispellable (pots, elixirs, etc.) would have to be balanced for PvP thus reducing their effectiveness for where it really matters, PvE.

6. The only way players could be judged on a personal level would be via damage/healing and KB's (with the current implementation of game mechanics). Players would yell at each other to let them cap flags in order to increase their rating gain. Massive fights on roads and in the middle would occur for KB and damage farming. The only way a personal skill level system could work is if blizzard developed an active AI that would monitor every player in a BG and judge them based on their actions. If that sounds half as expensive and difficult as i think it sounds then you would understand why that idea would be difficult to balance, seeing as how trying to sneak cap a base in AB could be frowned upon by an AI configured the wrong way. Its a pipe dream, althought blizzard mentioned a system to help teams fill up open slots (sort of like a dungeon Queue system for rated BG's) so that hopefully can tide you over.

And thats that wall of text. I also play a Spriest myself and i have optimistic feelings on Cata PvP, rated or non-rated. Blizzard does these things because balancing classes is enough of a pain already so they want to cancel some of the external variables. Hope this helped!

[Stormcleave]

If it's anything like live it will be 3/4 Mages, a few healers on your the sole melee getting blown to pieces every 2 seconds after you res.

[Deleted]

1) Cool, I'm glad that you're eagerly anticipating it

2) I can't agree with you here. I dislike farming, i would rather spend my time PvPing. I just dont see the attraction. The way i see it is that if every player scales up by the same factor (the benefit of a flask or two) then the before and after effects are the same, so if every doesnt use a flask then nothing is different to if everyone used flasks.

3) I agree with engineering. I would love for it to be viable, but not gamebreaking. Who doesnt like the odd bomb eh?

4) Pretty much what Devanox said in point 2. Adding a monetary requirement to pvp isnt analogous to ppve. In pve you earn gold through loot. People very rarely loot in pvp, it isnt worth the time, and it only generally happens when you dont want someone ressing nearby. Regardless, there is a difference between the lootable gold for pve and pvp, and it is very much in pve's favour. Imposing this gold cost on pvper would require them to go out and earn it, something which i am loathe to do.

5) I cant agree with you here. Scaling everyone by the factor of a couple flasks will not change the amount of skill require.

6) Meh, Im fairly happy to only queue with my guild. My pvp guilds have rarely had very much issue with fielding 8/10 men for a BG. Sure i might like to be able to improve my rating outside of guild pvp, but PuGing BGs holds little attraction to me unless i have 3 or more companions who i play with regularly.

[Arka90]

3. I think they want to balance all the professions equally, so they will probably put in some passive stat bonus for enginerring (or something like rocket gloves that would add dmg equal to those stats). If they do that, it will not be useless, it will be as good as all the other professions. Also, you are saying that nitro boost wasn't gamebreaking, and that you aren't much into arena. This probably means you didn't do arena back in season 5 when you could use it in arena. I did do arena back then, and a lot of it (probably ~100 games per week in averange). It was VERY gamebreaking, and probably would/will be the same in any form of rated PvP. You pretty much had to have engineering back then to be able to compete.

5. The setups in arena often don't have much to do with how well their buffs go together (unless it's some kind of melee cleave like TSG or beastcleave). You mostly pick classes that have CC that don't share DR, or you team up dps classes that don't rely much on dispel (like warlock when they had pet dispel) with a healer that doesn't have very strong dispel. Those are reasons why it was very rare to, for example, see a 3v3 team with both a warlock and a disc priest at high ratings.

Though, the reason they made some of the CC share DR (like blind and fear, or sap and poly) was to make many of the OP setups weaker. So removing that would actually just make things worse.

6. I think the reason why you can't join random teams is because you would face organized teams with usually pretty good players in them, and this would lead to loosing almost every game. Most people wouldn't enjoy geting completely owned to the point of geting farmed at the GY (this happens EVERY time I get 4-5 arena masters and join WsG or AB... Imagine if you had even more.), and hence this would probably be a bad idea.

Also, rated PvP in WoW is about teamwork (and should be). It's very rare for people in random BGs to work together, I actually need to do like 5 random BGs before I can even find ONE person that knows how to support his teammates. Most just play extremely selfishly, and only care about their own score (which means they don't try to help you win the BG either, just farm kills).


I really like the way rated BGs look atm, and I'm hoping that I will enjoy them (unlike random BGs, which I hate). Maybe even as much as I enjoy arena.

Also, have to add that I do like seeing threads like this, even though I don't agree with everything you typed. You point out things you think are wrong, what you like, and how you would want things changed. It's a lot more fun reading and commenting on posts like this than the QQ threads (most about how they want some class buffed or nerfed) that take up like 95% of the space on every wow forum.