Balancing PVP around set bonuses

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

I only pvp casually, mostly a progression raider, so maybe my perspective is largely flawed. But with this much discussion about the complete and utter homogenization of pvp for the sack of balance, it seems they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Wouldn't it be simpler, since the overall goal is to make sure pvp'ers are using strictly pvp gear, to create gear-wide set bonuses either instead of or alongside the basic 'season' set bonuses? Instead of making head, shoulders, chest, arms, legs the only pieces with relevant pvp set bonuses; make set bonuses for off pieces too.

This could work too ways, you could have the season gear as one conglomerate set with set bonuses on interval for every accumulated piece for all 14 to 16 slots (depending on if weapons should be included or not). This wouldn't be a gear restriction as much as making sure people are using pvp gear, for crafting off pieces and other entry-level sources would contribute to this conglomerate set bonus.

For example:

Set(2): Increase PVP Power by 200
Set(4): Increase PVP Resilience by 200
Set(6): Class/spec specific trait
Set(8): Class/spec specific trait
Set(10): Increase PVP Power by 2000
Set(12): Increase PVP Resilience by 4000
Set(14): Increase All Stats and Attributes by 10%

The set bonus rewards are interchangeable and merely serve as a placeholder example. The idea being that there's a drive to keep all slots with just pvp gear to be competitive.

You could, although much more complicated, have different set bonus "paths" to chose from depending on what pieces of gear you wanted to choose. For example, an "offensive" burst dps based set; a "defensive" resil-heavy set that empowers cc and utility tactics; and a "healing" set for relevant classes that empowers healing abilities with procs or such that differentiate it from a healing version of the burst-dps set. Theoretically could allow players to stack a (6) set of one and say an (8) set from another and play around with different creative purposes to make the whole system more interesting, gaining a less predictable build (and hence less easily countered) but losing the potentially useful (14) set bonus and other bonuses on the way. But this is another topic in and of itself.

The second form would be trinket and/or weapon set bonuses alongside regular tier sets. This would include other pieces as seen fit but would not be as trivialized by the same notion of someone using pve boots or rings or something. So instead of the 14-16 slot set bonuses, there'd be the basic 5 (head, shoulder, chest, etc) and then additional slots for trinkets and/or weapons. Making the use of pvp trinkets and weapons necessary to remain competitive.



This way you wouldn't have to streamline 65% resil across the board. And I think this has the potential, if refined, to undermine the need to streamline 496 ilvl across the board as well. Thoughts or ideas?

[MrMayor]

Like the idea for the set bonus balancing, not sure about different offensive/defensive sets but it would require so much time and work to get it close to right

[Snuggli]

That's actually a really interesting idea.

You could extend this to having a (2) set bonus for having both PvP trinkets equipped that gives you extra PvP Power. It's actually got me wondering why Contenders gear has the entire set of gear as a 'set', but honor/conquest gear doesn't.

[Rucati]

The issue with this is it would make the gap between those with full gear and those trying to gear up even greater. Not only would the lesser geared person have less health, resilience, and PvP Power, but they'd also be lacking in class specific things. I think that could be bad.

As it is right now, even with all the complaining, the top PvPers are going to wear full PvP gear in every situation all the time. If you want to do BGs there's no reason you should need full PvP gear (hence the resilience change, so everyone has 65%), but if you want to be 2k+ in arenas or RBGs you need full PvP gear. Even in the best raid gear you aren't going to make up for the PvP Power on PvP gear, because there's no way that full raid gear would give you 50% more damage, like the PvP Power does.

There's no real need for this system, I think it would just increase the gap between people with gear and people trying to gear up, and there's no real need to do that.

You could extend this to having a (2) set bonus for having both PvP trinkets equipped that gives you extra PvP Power. It's actually got me wondering why Contenders gear has the entire set of gear as a 'set', but honor/conquest gear doesn't.

That's because the Contenders gear has less Power/Resil on them, so they add the extra set bonuses to make up for that. Contenders isn't *that* far behind Dreadful in PvP Power/Resil because of the set bonus. It's incredibly far behind on Stamina/Str/Int/Crit/etc. though, which is why it's so much worse.

There's no need to have extra set bonuses on Dreadful/Malev gear because from a PvP Power/Resil standpoint it's already close enough with Malev/Tyrannical gear, so there's simply no need.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

The issue with this is it would make the gap between those with full gear and those trying to gear up even greater. Not only would the lesser geared person have less health, resilience, and PvP Power, but they'd also be lacking in class specific things. I think that could be bad.

As it is right now, even with all the complaining, the top PvPers are going to wear full PvP gear in every situation all the time. If you want to do BGs there's no reason you should need full PvP gear (hence the resilience change, so everyone has 65%), but if you want to be 2k+ in arenas or RBGs you need full PvP gear. Even in the best raid gear you aren't going to make up for the PvP Power on PvP gear, because there's no way that full raid gear would give you 50% more damage, like the PvP Power does.

There's no real need for this system, I think it would just increase the gap between people with gear and people trying to gear up, and there's no real need to do that.



That's because the Contenders gear has less Power/Resil on them, so they add the extra set bonuses to make up for that. Contenders isn't *that* far behind Dreadful in PvP Power/Resil because of the set bonus. It's incredibly far behind on Stamina/Str/Int/Crit/etc. though, which is why it's so much worse.

There's no need to have extra set bonuses on Dreadful/Malev gear because from a PvP Power/Resil standpoint it's already close enough with Malev/Tyrannical gear, so there's simply no need.

This system isn't addressing top rated players, because as far as I can see they're standardized without gearing issues like those seen in the heroic ragnaros trinkets and heroic ds trinkets being used two and three seasons ago. But in bgs and r-bgs alike well below 2k thresholds (where a much larger of player-base is probably playing at), you (potentially, like i said im not a hardcore pvp'er so i could very well be completely off base) could see healers or tanks using pve trinkets/weapons/whatever to min/max attributes beyond just burst dps and survival. If you lost these kind of bonuses, it wouldn't even be debatable. That kind of bonus narrows the margin by enough to make it not even worth it to attempt the theorycrafting.

And it wouldn't bar new players as much, as I stated crafted Contenders gear and whatnot would contribute to this same set bonus system. New players may not reach the (14) bonus immediately, but it wouldn't take long, and there are powerful stepping stones along the way to feel like they're progressing. And it wouldn't feel like you're gimping yourself as much when you take off ilvl 535 raid boots to equip 458 pvp blue boots.

[Machomaije]

Like the idea for the set bonus balancing, not sure about different offensive/defensive sets but it would require so much time and work to get it close to right

And? Isnt that what blizzard is making the game into now anyway? Everything else is just a big grind in MoP, so why not.