PvP design in BfA is complete garbage. Worst PvP game of all time.

[Big Thanks]

I come from a "fighting game" background. I love PvP in all games.
BfA happens to be absolute garbage and the worst PvP game i've ever played.

Reasons:

1) I need to play what Blizzard wants me to play
As a rogue i MUST play assassination for example. A friggin RPG and i NEED to play what Blizzards wants me to play.
I want to be able to pick the spec i like to play and be somewhat viable, but no, complete and utter garbage all other specs.

2)Customization is dead
50% nerf to all azerite traits destroyed all customization.
Talent TREES? Non existent. We MUST play what Blizzard wants us to play because only one choice of talents is viable.

3)Game completely unbalanced

Rant:
I dont remember the PvP situation being THIS bad in any other expansion.
I remember having fun in almost all specs ive played before.
The people behind the PvP design should be fired.
They are playing God in deciding what is viable and what is not. They create the meta, not the players. The players have no choice but to play the meta Blizzard created...because 90% of specs/talents/azerites are useless.

TLDR: I hate BfA's PvP. As a "fighting game" it is a complete failure.

[Thelxi]

I agree that pvp is in dire straits overall, but as a rogue you really are getting the worst of the expansion. Rolling one of the OP specs is always an option. It's just not a good expansion to play rogue in pvp.

[Big Thanks]

I agree that pvp is in dire straits overall, but as a rogue you really are getting the worst of the expansion. Rolling one of the OP specs is always an option. It's just not a good expansion to play rogue in pvp.

Im sorry but i was extremely mad when made this thread.
I came out of a WoW gaming session of getting my ass handed to me non stop in duels (playing Outlaw rogue).
The difference from Outlaw and Assass is day and night.

Some guy with 370 ilvl daggers Assass rogue was powning a Warrior with 210k health.

The same warrior who ive lost to with him at 100% life.

Game is completely unbalanced...and is not healthy for my mind considering WoW a "fighting game".
I should just stop doing it.

[NewGenGuild]

PvP in 2k19 lul

[melzas]

1) I need to play what Blizzard wants me to play
As a rogue i MUST play assassination for example. A friggin RPG and i NEED to play what Blizzards wants me to play.
I want to be able to pick the spec i like to play and be somewhat viable, but no, complete and utter garbage all other specs.

Wrong. Unless we are talking glad range (and I'm 100% sure you are not glad range player), pretty much all specs are viable, definetly all specs are viable for 1800ish rating, which is cutoff for full elite set (minus the cape). I'm 100% positive good player can dominate random bgs with any spec as well.

This is by far one of the best expansions (if not the best) balance wise. All 3 hunter spec are strong. All 3 mage specs are strong. All healers are viable (with both priest healing specs too). At least Sin and Outlaw are strong and viable (and I've seen plenty of sub at 1800ish, but I see most players say they are in bad spot atm). Both warr specs are viable (historically Arms was pretty much the only warr spec for arena, now you have fury too).

So your statement that YOU MUST play X spec is BS. You HAD TO play X spec in vanilla, because some spec DIDNT WORK AT ALL, like, ret in raids. In BFA some specs are slightly weaker balance wise, with the curve being so huge, that you won't even notice if you play for fun/low ratings (I'd say Frost DK, Sub Rogue, Enh sham, Aff Lock, Feral druid). Complete and utter garbage specs wouldn't be able to play at 2k ratings, and I can show you a player with 2k or more for any spec (except tanks ofc).

2)Customization is dead
50% nerf to all azerite traits destroyed all customization.
Talent TREES? Non existent. We MUST play what Blizzard wants us to play because only one choice of talents is viable.

There is literally more choice in talents than ever, with pvp talents introudced the way they are in BFA. For arena the talents you pick differ depending on some many factors - 2v2, 3v3, your comp, enemy comp, your strategy (burst or decay), your playstyle. Perhaps it's not true for every single spec in the game but it's true for most. Watch cdew resto druid/shaman pvp guide videos (multi glad pro pvp player), talent picking section to see how many choice and how many factors that come into play with them there are.

3)Game completely unbalanced

You can see every single class in glad range. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Don't know the statistics for specs, but I'd guess at least 60-70% of specs (excluding tanks) are viable for glad/range.

Rant:
I dont remember the PvP situation being THIS bad in any other expansion.
I remember having fun in almost all specs ive played before.
The people behind the PvP design should be fired.
They are playing God in deciding what is viable and what is not. They create the meta, not the players. The players have no choice but to play the meta Blizzard created...because 90% of specs/talents/azerites are useless.

TLDR: I hate BfA's PvP. As a "fighting game" it is a complete failure.

To me it looks like you are just an unhappy person looking for something to blame his misery for. The balance was never better than now, ESPECIALLY in terms of specs that are completely unviable in pvp. This is hilarious, beacuse I see that you are very active on classic wow boards, and in classic, there were literally plenty of specs, that weren't viable 100% (and I'm not talking, not viable because X spec is 10% stronger, classic unvialbe meant 100% not working).

[Big Thanks]

@melzas

I was mad, and im still mad by the fact i cant win duels as an Outlaw rogue.

WoW is not a "fighting game" and i understand it now...its my bad for seeing WoW as a "fighting game"

[Redecle]

1. WoW has never been advertised to be balanced around dueling. Ever. Nor is it fully a pvp game either. Game has a ranked pvp mode, but in an mmorpg, or just an rpg or at least an adventure game the main audience has never been the pvp one. Doesn't mean it's not there, but it's not the main focus. For dueling, if anything since TBC it has been balanced for 3v3 arena and even before that it wasn't balanced for dueling, but larger groups, where singular players actions don't matter as much, if you don't know that by now i don't know what you were expecting, that has been common knowledge for over a decade and stated fact by the devs, game is not balanced for duels and will never be, but 3v3 party, maybe one day it was 5v5, but more than one person regardless. The classes are designed that some are hard counters to others, but not directly to each other, why classes have weaknesses and strengths, why some wear plate whilst some wear cloth armor. That already removes any 1v1 balance. Hence why some classes have synergy with each other, whilst on their own they are weak. And some are solo god tier and won't bring that much in to a party except their solo performance, some are useless cause they shine in another aspects of the game like solo pve or group pve. Although this has been more of a thing in the past, still exists but no way near the divide which it was pre cata era, where classes had a pvp spec and a pve spec and one completely useless one and you played said spec even if you didn't like it, cause it was the only option.

2. From a game dev point of view more customization and balance, will never exist together. In the case of WoW with variables like classes and their purpose, specs, gear, player skill, location, talents, traits, plus i'm sure couple more things, the balance should already be negative value one at this point. Now we could expect to have more customization since it is an rpg after all, but the more balance will suffer. There's a chance a possibility if all stars align and in one particular scenario of a pvp encounter that they might, but in general I wouldn't keep my hopes up. The more classes and specs there are the further we go from balance.

To have balance we need to have less classes and specs or at least less other variables, no gear making a difference, no extra traits from azerite tagged on top of specs, but basically all the customization that is extra layer on top of a class, to have more customization expect less balance they just don't go hand in hand. The less abilities there are the more likely some level of balance can be achieved, but when you add more traits or talents, it leads to the current situation where there's a cookie cutter builds, just to reach anything resembling balance, which in a game with 36 specs is that at least every class has 1 spec that can compete, even that might not be the case. It's just a statistical fact that the more you add variables the more difficult the balancing becomes, devs are not gods who can foresee every pvp situation and purpose, cause pvp is in the end based on instincts of the player. One rotation can be set in stone, but player positioning and effectiveness with said rotation is already a variable. At this point devs are obviously taking out talents and abilities, cause it is too much to balance even the slightest. If they keep adding them and then azerite traits, we will be where vanilla was where there's like 2-4 classes who oneshot people, with the right gear and with absolute cookie cutter build and rest who don't stand a chance in pvp.

How does one balance 36 specs so everyone is viable against everyone? By homogenizing the specs to be the exact same, that is the only way to have balance. And at least for me that seems to be the number 1 problem players have had with the game, they don't want that cause it takes away from the rpg element even more than it already has.

I don't know what kind of fighting games are in question here, but first assumption is Tekken or Mortal Kombat or something that's an actual fighting game. A game that from ground up is designed to be 1on1 game, i'm sure there's some tag team modes, but the main core and characters are designed to be in 1on1. Where as WoW from start has been designed to be an MMO with pvp which essentially means warfare and that is usually 1000+ versus 1000+ Although for technical purposes WoW has narrowed that to open world something like 200v200 until servers crash, where there's literally no balance no matter what, strength in numbers is the only balance. Over time coming down to 40v40, still no meaningful balance cause it's a zerg ball of death, to 10v10 more tactical zerg ball of death, to arena 3v3 where class and spec synergies are the key element to any balance, cause it's still a team effort.

Games roots come from for pve with pvp layered on top as are the pvp talents currently, talents are "balanced" for pve and then rebalanced for pvp and then pvp talents on top of that. That's way too many balancing rounds. And that pvp further has been designed around war, as is in the name. 2 rival factions in war, all the way from vanilla. War that has nothing to do with balance, only chaos. Singular players don't win wars. Smaller cohesive units can have an impact.

It's a miracle that the ranked pvp mode works as well as it works.
With 36 specs that creates 1296x 1v1 scenarios to balance, it doesn't include any gear and stat differentiates, talents, azerite traits, number of different players with different skill levels and playstyles.. You see where i'm going with this, the number of possibilities to take account to balance everything becomes astronomical. And according to players all those things would have to be taken in to account before releasing things or at least fixing them on the way. Good luck being a pvp designer.

[Kralljin]

I'm not hailing BfA as a great PvP experience, but some points aren't exactly right.

1) I need to play what Blizzard wants me to play
As a rogue i MUST play assassination for example. A friggin RPG and i NEED to play what Blizzards wants me to play.
I want to be able to pick the spec i like to play and be somewhat viable, but no, complete and utter garbage all other specs.

Minor point, Sub is playable, it is however far more reliant on executing a proper CC-Chain on the enemy healer.
Shadow Duel is OP, but you cannot simply throw CC's at the enemy healer and hope for a kill during a Kidney on your focus target.

Honestly, i'd argue that since Legion, the overall spec representation has improved, because earlier certain specs, such as Fire or Fury, were just declared dead by default in PvP.

50% nerf to all azerite traits destroyed all customization.

Isn't customization "dead" if there are no alternative options (meaning no Azerite traits at all) or straight up imbalance, meaning that one choice is far more attractive than others?

A blanket Azerite nerf is not the cause of this, if you nerf everything by 50%, everything is (more or less) affected equally.

Talent TREES? Non existent. We MUST play what Blizzard wants us to play because only one choice of talents is viable.

PvP is always pidgeonholing you into certain talents.

Looking back, PvP also pidgeonholed you even into entire specs in earlier expansions.
Ever heard of Rogues anything else than Sub before Cata / MoP in PvP? Me neither, because abilities like Cheat Death and Shadowstep were Sub only.

It's just not a good expansion to play rogue in pvp.

If you're willing to play Assa, you basically play the strongest Melee spec as far as PvP is concerned.
Rogues are a PvP evergreen, there's barely been any phase in WoW's history were at least one Rogue spec wasn't counted among the topdog PvP specs and if there was one, it didn't last long.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Kinda sounds like you have a flawed memory almost every thing in your op has applied to Almost every expan.

[Big Thanks]

Ever heard of Rogues anything else than Sub before Cata / MoP in PvP? Me neither, because abilities like Cheat Death and Shadowstep were Sub only.

Combat/ sub hybrid was a big thing.
Cold blood / Sub
Deep combat and assassination to literally just spam AoE fan of Knives silence in rated 5v5

But i agree im just salty WoW PvP is not an actual fighting game where everything is somewhat balanced.

If a mod is reading this, plz close the thread...it was done in the heat of the moment of a losing streak game session.

[nyc81991]

Yeah it's pretty bad right now.

[lummiuster]

I come from a "fighting game" background. I love PvP in all games.
BfA happens to be absolute garbage and the worst PvP game i've ever played.

Reasons:

1) I need to play what Blizzard wants me to play
As a rogue i MUST play assassination for example. A friggin RPG and i NEED to play what Blizzards wants me to play.
I want to be able to pick the spec i like to play and be somewhat viable, but no, complete and utter garbage all other specs.

2)Customization is dead
50% nerf to all azerite traits destroyed all customization.
Talent TREES? Non existent. We MUST play what Blizzard wants us to play because only one choice of talents is viable.

3)Game completely unbalanced

Rant:
I dont remember the PvP situation being THIS bad in any other expansion.
I remember having fun in almost all specs ive played before.
The people behind the PvP design should be fired.
They are playing God in deciding what is viable and what is not. They create the meta, not the players. The players have no choice but to play the meta Blizzard created...because 90% of specs/talents/azerites are useless.

TLDR: I hate BfA's PvP. As a "fighting game" it is a complete failure.

Honestly PVP sucks because of people like you. It sucks because blizzard keep trying to perfectly balance things. Unbalance is great. Just like in Vanilla. You play a spec because you love it.

[Big Thanks]

Honestly PVP sucks because of people like you. It sucks because blizzard keep trying to perfectly balance things. Unbalance is great. Just like in Vanilla. You play a spec because you love it.

Im trying to "find fun" in specs im playing and im failing in every single one of them.

Outlaw, fail
Sub, fail
Brewmaster Monk, fail

And by fail i mean lose all duels agains assass rogues, paladins....hell even arms warriors...lool

[Gorgodeus]

@melzas

I was mad, and im still mad by the fact i cant win duels as an Outlaw rogue.

WoW is not a "fighting game" and i understand it now...its my bad for seeing WoW as a "fighting game"

That is your whole problem right there. Duels do not mean shit in WoW, Never have, and never will. PvP is balanced around 3v3 or larger. Not 2v2. Not 1v1.

[Kralljin]

Deep combat and assassination to literally just spam AoE fan of Knives silence in rated 5v5

Do you seriously consider this an argument?
FoK interrupting was in the game from like 3.0 to 3.2, then it was removed (for good reason).

The entire 5v5 bracket doesn't even exist anymore (for a variety of reasons).
And this happened over a decade ago and as said above, didn't even last that long.

This is just such a damn specific example in a broad discussion that it just doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Especially for you, considering you care about duels mostly and 5v5 was the largest Arena bracket.

Combat/ sub hybrid was a big thing.
Cold blood / Sub

As far as i know, both of these went deep into sub, to get Shadowstep and Cheat death among other things.
Cold blood / sub basically traded Shadow dance for Cold blood, but still was pretty deep in Sub.

Like, Tier 1 - Tier 3 from Assa up until Wotlk was basically mandatory for every rogue spec anyway.

[Big Thanks]

As far as i know, both of these went deep into sub, to get Shadowstep and Cheat death among other things.
Cold blood / sub basically traded Shadow dance for Cold blood, but still was pretty deep in Sub.

Like, Tier 1 - Tier 3 from Assa up until Wotlk was basically mandatory for every rogue spec anyway.

I got 2000 rating with deep combat and preparation in sub (without shadowstep) in WotlK...and a Korean Pro was doing the same thing.

Customization was a thing back then not anymore

[Schmilblick]

Im trying to "find fun" in specs im playing and im failing in every single one of them.

Outlaw, fail
Sub, fail
Brewmaster Monk, fail

And by fail i mean lose all duels agains assass rogues, paladins....hell even arms warriors...lool

- Duels are not PvP
- World PvP is not PvP (40vs1)

Arena is the real balance and Battlegrounds at some extent.

[lummiuster]

Im trying to "find fun" in specs im playing and im failing in every single one of them.

Outlaw, fail
Sub, fail
Brewmaster Monk, fail

And by fail i mean lose all duels agains assass rogues, paladins....hell even arms warriors...lool

Man this game fuckin suck for real. You just brought me a flashback of when I was playing and I want to puke. Quit this game and wait for vanilla maybe.

[Dovay]

I come from a "fighting game" background. I love PvP in all games.
BfA happens to be absolute garbage and the worst PvP game i've ever played.

Reasons:

1) I need to play what Blizzard wants me to play
As a rogue i MUST play assassination for example. A friggin RPG and i NEED to play what Blizzards wants me to play.
I want to be able to pick the spec i like to play and be somewhat viable, but no, complete and utter garbage all other specs.

2)Customization is dead
50% nerf to all azerite traits destroyed all customization.
Talent TREES? Non existent. We MUST play what Blizzard wants us to play because only one choice of talents is viable.

3)Game completely unbalanced

Rant:
I dont remember the PvP situation being THIS bad in any other expansion.
I remember having fun in almost all specs ive played before.
The people behind the PvP design should be fired.
They are playing God in deciding what is viable and what is not. They create the meta, not the players. The players have no choice but to play the meta Blizzard created...because 90% of specs/talents/azerites are useless.

TLDR: I hate BfA's PvP. As a "fighting game" it is a complete failure.

I feel like the main reason that blizz dont fix the current pvp system is because it seems that every single dev is too busy playing classic, i mean honestly it doesnt feel like they care at all how pvp is atm, PvE gear is BiS and just plain up front broken since u can get insane stats from some pieces and you can gain shields that are absorbing wayy to much in pvp. For them to fix this they gotta add some sort of pvp spesific ability to make pvp gear more valuable for pvpers to get, make it feel like something u realy want to put time into, also they realy and I mean REALY gotta add in a vendor instead of this trash gearing system they currently have. You have a chance to get a piece of gear so there is no point in grinding past the certain gear u get, hopefuly they add some sort of pvp vendor in 8.2, but chances are low i guess.

[Big Thanks]

- Duels are not PvP
- World PvP is not PvP (40vs1)

Arena is the real balance and Battlegrounds at some extent.

I am much calmer now...since i havent done a single duel for 2 days.

Im just doing random Battlegrounds with Sub Rogue and having tons of fun with my 5700 DPS with 370 ilvl daggers...

Im having fun though...