Is this the most fun you've ever had with PvP since *X old expansion*?

[LordVargK]

I always thought I hate PvP. After playing Lost Ark I now know I just hate WoW's PvP. Way too much cc, lockouts are incredibly unfun and you can get bursted within seconds.
That's maybe fun for some, but not for me.

Even some 20 year old grinding MMOs have better PvP than WoW.

[ImpalerEU]

I agree. I think this is maybe the best expac ever IMO.

MoP was slightly overtuned in every regards, you spent entire games CCed. Mages alone could sheep, blanket CS 4 secs, Frostjaw silence 4 secs, PoM Poly, double PoM poly with Alter Time, Ring of Frost, Dragon's Breath 4 secs, Deep Fucking Freeze 5 secs (or 4secs glyphed but not on the GCD), even Combustion was a 3secs stun on a 45 secs CD.
It was awesome, but slightly too much IMO.

I have very fond memories of WotLK, but I don't know how much of it is due to nostalgia. So for now I think SL is on par for the best PvP expac ever.

MoP was a good PvP expansion, but what made it unbearable and unplayable was the excessive amounts of crowd control everyone had.
That's what made MoP PvP fail for me personally.

[VideoGamePlayer]

I don't think I am. I genuinly think gearing is giga fast right now, granted it requires to have a main with which you played before, that I will concede. You get conduits 200+ instantly, renown 48+ instantly (40 but by speaking to the NPC in your Sanctum + doing the 1h of required Torghast to get your max ilvl legendary you are 48 already).

Not only these grinds are really short nowadays - and I'm speaking about post 9.1.5 to be clear - but also they are far more fun than grinding your professions for additional sockets or epic gems like we had in the first few expacs imo.

Upgrades are super fast too I think, in comparison farming conquest gear through random BGs in previous expacs like you said earlier was near impossible. You had to do arenas or RBGs or you would lose your sanity quickly. I remember having a bot farming BGs days and night in WotLK / Cata for getting my gear as it was taking so much time.

As for the gameplay in general, I strongly agree with your general sentiment that less abilities = less outplays = less fun, and that's why I really didn't liked Legion and BFA. Not only classes lost all their spells and tools but even the damage buttons felt really bland. But Shadowlands did a big effort in this regard I think, Warriors alone gained back 11 or 12 spells this expac IIRC correctly. I experienced and PvPed to a high lvl in every expacs in WoW and to each their own, but while I can see that the skill ceiling was a bit higher in some previous expacs, I think Shadowlands strikes a nice middle ground without going too much in the bullshit infinite CCs from MoP, the PvE items oneshot from Cata (Vial of Shadows, Dragonwrath, Cunning of the Cruel and Gurthalaks omg) and the haste fiesta from WotLK 1.5 base sec cast time CC + 30-40% haste baseline + 10 secs baseline CC duration that made Mages horrendous to face.

BGs in MoP gave 75 conquest per win with the weekly soft cap being 1750 or 1800 I don't remember exactly. That's very doable. Only way to get conquest from random BGs on live I think is from a single daily win, which makes it actually impossible to cap from random BGs alone. The fun of the combat in those expansions never made it feel like a grind. Especially if you got creative with your build, which is now a lost art.

Warriors definitely won the lottery with the shadowlands unpruning, followed by death knights. Probably not a coincidence that Holinka plays those two classes. With other classes they couldn't decipher what abilities should be brought back for their usefulness vs what people want back for nostalgia. Like mages getting fireball and frostbolt instead of fire blast and cone of cold. WoD alter time instead of MoP alter time. Warlocks having curse of recklessness and ritual of doom in beta. Hopefully the rest of the classes get the warrior treatment next expansion.

[Gotural]

75 Conquests per win for a 1800 cap was very doable? Bro that's about 45-50 BGs per week assuming roughly 50% winrate that's some huge grinding.

I'm not saying nowadays that gearing through random BGs is easier, I said that gearing as a whole is easier and very fast, but that includes doing arenas / RBGs of course.

Creativeness is your build was lost in MoP with the new talent system.

And saying DKs won the lottery for unpruning because Holinka plays it is really not a good argument especially considering DK strength this whole expac in PvP.

[Branflakes6000]

75 Conquests per win for a 1800 cap was very doable? Bro that's about 45-50 BGs per week assuming roughly 50% winrate that's some huge grinding.

I'm not saying nowadays that gearing through random BGs is easier, I said that gearing as a whole is easier and very fast, but that includes doing arenas / RBGs of course.

Creativeness is your build was lost in MoP with the new talent system.

And saying DKs won the lottery for unpruning because Holinka plays it is really not a good argument especially considering DK strength this whole expac in PvP.

Getting BiS back then was still faster and easier simply due to the lack of an upgrade system for conquest gear. Once you got the piece, you're done. Capping purely through BGs was at least another option you had. Call me a no-life but I was doing it just fine.

MoP trees had less choices, but your choices were far more impactful. You had more non-throughput choices which couldn't be mathed-out. Glyph choices were more meaningful as well, with most if not all throughput glyphs replaced. Some MoP glyphs brought mechanics that a class never had before, like spell reflect deterrence, mobile stealth camo, unkillable pet during BW. Hunter examples only cause that's what I'm most familiar with.

I said warriors won the lottery, DKs came in 2nd. Regardless of their tuning they got back almost all the useful utility spells they lost to talents and pruning over the years. All they really need now is dark sim, strangulate baseline, and a rune-spending purge again. Holinka does class design now, not PvP tuning.