Being new to WoW PvP - How must it feel? :/

[Deleted]

Wall of text inc!

So I've been entrenched with this game since Beta, I've gone through a couple of accounts on the way, stopped and re-entered the game a few weeks/months later, but never really quited. I've been in some really good raiding guilds and held gladiator twice back in TBC, these days though, most of my friends have stopped playing alltogether and I only log on once in a while to play some PvP, sometimes Arena, sometimes just Battlegrounds with my girlfriend.

A thought I have had growing for quite a while now that I keep a somewhat relaxed position to this game and just play whatever alt (mage, hunter, warlock, rogue, priest - shadow or disc/holy, resto shaman, druid or soon to be my monk) for fun is how appauling it must be for a new player to try and enter PvP in this game. Why you ask? Well let me break down my thought;


1.
You just dinged 90 as a new player, you are probably not very comfortable with the amount of buffs/debuffs to keep track of, even from your own class/spec. and even less so with the other 33 specs in the game. Your character is weak, and when I say weak I mean you can't do shitall. If the person leveled completely with quests/dungeons they are probably not very familiar with positioning/LoS or hell, even how to operate their character (aka, not keyboardturn, bind all buttons etc.)

You queue up your first battleground and how must that feel? First of the disgraceful language and name calling is just... I don't have words for it. It's wierd how some people just spew their garbage all over everyone else and doesn't have a singel ounce of human dignity in their bodies. If I wasn't hardened from seeing this shit year in and year out I would probably exclude myself from every trying to co-operate or work together with people in bg's.

Second of, even if you invest in the crafted pvpgear it isn't as you can do much to help. Your damage output will be that of a papersheet. If you are hitcapped you can run around spamming cc perhaps but remember, if you are new, do you understand the need for it? Hell I rarely see anyone use cc in bgs unless it's instant and on the target they are shooting. Also, as soon as you would land any cc some herpes-avatar is obviously targeting that instantly and breaking it.
Your character is also so weak that if you are left alone in a 1v1 you will lose if the enemy has better gear in 99% of the cases, specially if you are new. I remember gearing my warlock recently and facing of against a hunter, now I could tell the hunter had no idea of what he was doing (BM'd before fear landed so he couldn't break fear on the pet for one example) yet still, thanks to attrocious gear I almost died, through all defensives. Imagine I was new to the PvP, would I have won that duel, or any duel for that matter if the gear difference is to high? Probably not.

For the first what, 50bgs you have to put up with being completely useless, standing in the back and if anyone touches you, bend over and submit. Who in their right mind would think that was a fun game? Who would invest time (quite a lot of time tbh) in such? Listen to dickheads circlewank about how great they are and how everyone else is shit while you are completely helpless like an infant.

I as an experienced player can still get some thrill out of it, for me most of the time it's more of a challenge to play a newly lvled toon in a bg and try to survive/do something useful instead of standing in the middle with BiS gear laughing at the whole enemy team as they try to plow my priest in to the ground. But for a new player it must be attrocious no? Whenever a undergeared player attack me in bgs or hell a whole swarm of them if you will I feel like god standing in front of ants, for me it's hardly fun and for them it must be utterly frustrating no? I mean, they can't even break a singel PW:shield and I can kill them with penance...


2.
Ok so let's say some poor new soul manages to get through the BG grind and onto Arena, not that arena is everyones goal when going into pvp, but still, humour my idea here!

So you are in honor gear, if you are late into a season everyone, even the teams @ 1000-1400 mmr are fully decked out, like completely as geared as my main. If you are in early, then you are in a bit of better luck, but if you are new to the game how big are the chances you managed to time your leveling to 90 to the end of a season so you could honor grind in between seasons and then start fresh in the new one? Not big I recon.

If you are new to arena, you are probably jumping into 2s instead of 3s as it requires less coordination and is in general slower paced. But so many setups have absolutely to many cc's. Instant that into instant that into instant that. Even as a experienced player it's a freakin lot of cc in this game at the moment with bullshit like 0.1sec stuns and what not but imagine being new to it, what view do you get of arena?
From trying to cap alts @ low mmr it seems most have the idea that you:

a) Mount & charge
b) Press ALL buttons, pop ALL cooldowns!
c1) We win, yey!
c2) We lost, they had superior classes/button pressing skills as in, they could do more damage than we in a short amount of time

Being new, this must be god awful to face, double dps classes with close to BiS gear tearing you a new one less than 20seconds after the doors open, how do you learn to get better when you get stunned for 5sec, trinket that into another stun for 3 sec or something or silenced or random scatter to break casts and you can't do anything but watch your character get fondled to death?
or elemental comps for that matter who just randomly shoots and then POOF! 100-5% instantly, no foreboding warning, just randomly happens.


3. <- last one 'kay!
So ok, I ranted a lot now, but I did it because being new to the game must be horrible, at least the pvp part of it. It must be like paying 12euros (whatever you pay in america) to go to a BDSM club and have some crazy person beat the shit out of you. What the pvp community lack right now is new blood. All ladders seems to be dying, queue times are horrendous at most points of the day all around the bracket, recently moved to a more populated battlegroup but even there above 2.2k you sit 5-10minutes and wait. What can we do as a community to make people come and join us?
I sometimes whisper random ppl that seems to be new (quick achiev inspect when they run past) and ask if they would like to have some help (aka: mentoring) and then try to help them on their merry way forward in PvP, but alas, that ain't much. For every person I help another 100 gets scared away with the system that is in place and the disgraceful attitude of the community in some cases.

I don't want to attribute the decline ONLY to unbalanced situation, though BM-Hunters and shamans sure contribute to a lot of people saying "f**k this" and shelves PvP forever. Any ideas what we can do more to guide new people into trying pvp? : (

and if someone new to WoW reads this, please give me your story of how you feel/felt when going into PvP! : )

[Iseeyou]

I feel the pain, maybe blizz ll take llok at pvp next xpac. Curious to hear some feedback about the new arena matchmaking coming in 5.4.

You can also look at Arena Junkies MS paint rage thread, while queing.

It helps

[Rucati]

Unless they dumb down WoW even more, this can never be fixed. It really can't. There are too many classes, spells, etc. Unless they removed some they can never make PvP more friendly to new players, there will always be a learning curve.

That being said, it's really no different than a MOBA or something (a style of game that's growing insanely fast), the only difference is MOBAs have a *much* higher learning curve, while WoW has the gear grind, which actually helps you learn about the classes in WoW while in MOBAs you have to learn all the 100+ heroes by playing multiple games against them.

As for games ending in ~20 seconds in 2v2, that's just kind of going to happen. Double DPS has been able to win in 20 seconds in Burning Crusade if they're playing against bad players, that's just kind of how it goes. New players will probably never get into WoW PvP, it's pretty much past its prime and if you want to play against other players there are better games out there. Coming from someone who has been 2k+ in 3v3 every season since BC, it's fun still, don't get me wrong, but there's little to no reason for new players to bother with it.

[Kaleredar]

It's an unfortunate ramp-up, but Battlegrounds are... okay... if you stick with other people. And while newer players might not be the best at doing damage, they're still fully capable of using CC, which can indeed be quite helpful. I don't care if a shaman has 295k health or 430k health if they can shammy nuke the enemy team off of LM, as they've just helped quite a bit.

It'd be good for newer PvPers to kind of get the hang of things in the big battlegrounds, like Alterac Valley or Isle of Conquest... the base turtles/pushes that happen with dozens of people allow them to sit back and plug away at people without having to be too afraid of someone instantly jumping on them. For example, if you're defending towers (correctly,) then you'll always have some people with you to help out.

[DenniZ]

Maybe make seperate brackets for players with different item levels or certain ranges of item levels? Just saying.

[Rucati]

It's an unfortunate ramp-up, but Battlegrounds are... okay... if you stick with other people. And while newer players might not be the best at doing damage, they're still fully capable of using CC, which can indeed be quite helpful. I don't care if a shaman has 295k health or 430k health if they can shammy nuke the enemy team off of LM, as they've just helped quite a bit.

This is a good point too. In WSG or something I'd rather play with a Rogue with 290k HP that knows how to CC healers and return the flag fast or pick up the flag and sprint across the map over a Rogue with 450k HP that sits in mid and just farms HKs all game long.

Maybe make seperate brackets for players with different item levels or certain ranges of item levels? Just saying.

This would destroy queue times. They'd have to make separate MMR for every bracket as well, or 1400 players in full gear could play 2800 players in full gear. And that would just be too many brackets, queues would be nuts.

[Deleted]

Unless they dumb down WoW even more, this can never be fixed. It really can't. There are too many classes, spells, etc. Unless they removed some they can never make PvP more friendly to new players, there will always be a learning curve.

That being said, it's really no different than a MOBA or something (a style of game that's growing insanely fast), the only difference is MOBAs have a *much* higher learning curve, while WoW has the gear grind, which actually helps you learn about the classes in WoW while in MOBAs you have to learn all the 100+ heroes by playing multiple games against them.

As for games ending in ~20 seconds in 2v2, that's just kind of going to happen. Double DPS has been able to win in 20 seconds in Burning Crusade if they're playing against bad players, that's just kind of how it goes. New players will probably never get into WoW PvP, it's pretty much past its prime and if you want to play against other players there are better games out there. Coming from someone who has been 2k+ in 3v3 every season since BC, it's fun still, don't get me wrong, but there's little to no reason for new players to bother with it.

I don't think a learning curve is bad, in fact that's just how it is, we can't change that. If you are doing something new you will have to learn. My point is most people are being scared away from trying to learn because once they hit 90 their character is just as weak as at lvl 9 against other 90's. You roam around in bgs trying to get some shit done and out pops someone driving their character like they have a steeringwheel and just utterly molests you, just because he has gear and you do not. WoW is all about burst/countering burst and a new character doesn't have any bursts and even with all cds popped they cant counter any burst.

I can't imagine a new player can learn anything from having a character that can't do anything successfully and dies instantly. In the MOBA games all characters starts at the same level/gear at the start of every new game right? So the only difference between a new player and an experienced one is the level of profficiency, and that is okey (for me).

And ye I guess you are right about the BC comment, though the burst was waaaaaaaaaaaay less back then. I did some 3s a few weeks ago with a mage and elemental friend who im trying to get back into the game (both old gladiators) and we face a 2.3k team, in the time, basically 1global, it took for the enemy shaman to tremor my fear (was playing disc priest) my friends globaled one of their team mates. Both just Alt+F4 and haven't seen em online since : (

- - - Updated - - -

It's an unfortunate ramp-up, but Battlegrounds are... okay... if you stick with other people. And while newer players might not be the best at doing damage, they're still fully capable of using CC, which can indeed be quite helpful. I don't care if a shaman has 295k health or 430k health if they can shammy nuke the enemy team off of LM, as they've just helped quite a bit.

It'd be good for newer PvPers to kind of get the hang of things in the big battlegrounds, like Alterac Valley or Isle of Conquest... the base turtles/pushes that happen with dozens of people allow them to sit back and plug away at people without having to be too afraid of someone instantly jumping on them. For example, if you're defending towers (correctly,) then you'll always have some people with you to help out.

If the goal is to go onwards towards arena (I know everyones idea of PvP isn't that but I want more ppl to queue!) AV, Isle of conquest and world of tanks (forgot the real name) are all just aweful, they rarely teach you anything about the game more than that there are plenty of bots around. Atleast from my perspective.

I do agree about the rogue notion you mentioned but... Alas that rogue will be hit once and dead, over and over again. The enemy team must be completely disabled to not break the back of a 295k FC. And if they are new, do they understand how/why such happens, and is it fun being penalized for 30seconds (if you are unlucky) every time someone kills you just because you just hit max lvl?

I rarely ever die in bgs because I understand when to get the hell out, but when I do and have to stand there for 30seconds it just makes my blood boil, I cant even imagine how it must be to stand there 80% of a 25minute game...

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe make seperate brackets for players with different item levels or certain ranges of item levels? Just saying.

Good idea, though Imagine the queus. *shudders* 20minutes queues says hello.

[Kreeshak]

I remember gearing my warlock recently and facing of against a hunter, now I could tell the hunter had no idea of what he was doing (BM'd before fear landed so he couldn't break fear on the pet for one example) yet still, thanks to attrocious gear I almost died, through all defensives. Imagine I was new to the PvP, would I have won that duel, or any duel for that matter if the gear difference is to high? Probably not.

What if that hunter was the new player? What if that hunter endured the pain of gearing up to think he will find someone to beat eventually, as if gear mattered to lose to someone so much less geared than him?

[Ultima]

Two weeks ago I joined a guild on an RP server full of new players and ex-pure PvE players who want to try PvP. We have Warlocks in full Heroic/Heroic Thunderforged who will spam Fear way past DR, players who do not follow blue posts/ MMO-C/ anything and must be informed by the few of us in the guild who pay attention how PvE trinkets work PvP combat and players who don't understand down-scaling.

It requires patience, being kind and offering a hand. I like the people who know how to play and those who don't actually want to learn. We had a lot of fun this week in the Darkmoon Deathmatch arena thingy.

[loki504]

Maybe make seperate brackets for players with different item levels or certain ranges of item levels? Just saying.

then i'm just asking how are you going to handle a prot warrior full heroic thunderforged items. and having the crafted 458 pvp items? put a crap geared into the high geared? you might say look at equipted ilvl? sure then how are they going to handle a full cp geared player that has his 458 ilvl set equipted and when the pop up comes he puts on his real gear.

they alrdy have problems with the locked/non locked exp bg.

its easly said. and would probebly work wonderfull if it wasn't to easy to cheat the system

[Decorpse]

If they dumbed it down even more so new players were just as effective as experienced players, that would be terrible.
Like anything worthwhile, it shouldnt be easy and should take time and effort to get good at.

[Deleted]

If they dumbed it down even more so new players were just as effective as experienced players, that would be terrible.
Like anything worthwhile, it shouldnt be easy and should take time and effort to get good at.

I don't think it's about dumbing it down, I think the OP and others are talking about making the experience of PvP one that you want to come back to. I haven't been playing WoW that long ( End of Cata ), and didn't PvP at all until level 90. The first few BG's I tried completely put me off for months, going from one CC to another and being killed in a global put me completely off. I did go back for more eventually, but it those first experiences where horrendous

[Kreeshak]

I don't think it's about dumbing it down, I think the OP and others are talking about making the experience of PvP one that you want to come back to. I haven't been playing WoW that long ( End of Cata ), and didn't PvP at all until level 90. The first few BG's I tried completely put me off for months, going from one CC to another and being killed in a global put me completely off. I did go back for more eventually, but it those first experiences where horrendous

I believe that vast majority of PVPers had horrendous experience when they started PVP regardless if they started at level 10, level 20, vanilla, tbc, wotlk etc. There will always be someone more experienced to beat ya. It's probably effective in any real life activity as well. You are going to struggle when you are new to something.

[Terahertz]

We've all had our fair share with being a newb. To me, my first arena games were really exciting and I usually shaked with adrenaline.

BUT.

when I was playing ele sham back in cataclysm, being the inexperienced noob, I kept facing frost mages and rogues, which by the time were one of the strongest classes in the game. I certainly got frustrated because I couldn't even improve as a player due to such players roflstomping me.

To be honest. I don't think new players will step into the arena so quickly. There must be done so much preparation before you can even win a single arena game. Keybinding, general knowledge of the game and of your class and a bit of experience. To be honest, the emphasize is at the keybindings. You cannot expect to win an arena game, or any decent PvPer for that matter, while clicking.

[magik8ball]

I've never really gotten into PvP because of such a huge barrier to entry. In order to become relevant, I have to grind battlegrounds in which I have relatively little effect and get carried. And then I get into the conquest grind that most people have a head start on me unless I happened to join right at the start of a patch. So every arena match is also people straight-up outgearing me until I sink weeks into the thing. Then, if it's not a new season by now and I have to start a good deal of that over, I'm finally on an even playing ground with other people. And that's not to mention the good skill gap between dedicated PvPers and me.

This is why I hate PvP. You need to sink a lot of time into it to become relevant, more time to stay relevant through the patches, and more time to get good enough to hold your own. It's very punishing to new players to the scene, and it is rather inaccessible to players without a ton of time to devote to it and just want to pick up and play a couple PvP matches. Regardless of skill levels, there are just too many barriers to entry.

[Koji2k11]

pre base resiliance felt like an anal rape now it's no that bad

[Lazuli]

It must feel pretty atrocious to be new to WoW pvp lol. I'd be wondering why I have lost control of my character for 90% of the time spent in a BG or arena.

[Sharde]

i would like afull interactive tutorial for fresh lvl 90s.

a step per step education on everything relevant starting at the most basic lvl.
- keybinds and movement
- differences pve / pvp
- cc
- noteworthy abilites of other classes (fight against bots with class abilites?)
- writing macros
- focus / mouseover cc
- basic gameplay (stunlock, shattercombo and those)
- reaction tests (blink out of that stun fast)
- what to use in which situations
- buffs and debuffs and what to dispel
- advanced tactics for soloplay
- tactics for teamplay
- bgs and arenas
- stats, geming, enchants

perhaps some more. every step is in a bg or arena and features bot classes. i have not seen the full training ground comming in 5.4 yet but it could be similar.

after that perhaps some training bgs against harder bots and other players currently on the tutorial.
add quests to this training fields and achievements ... encouraging teamplay and objectives.


so that at the end of the complete course you should have gained those things:
- a basic understanding of your class, gearing, teamplay, objectives.
- a free pvp set (maybe the same season as the currently craftable one).
- a free WEAPON after the whole tutorial (or perhaps only the "advanced" stuff involving playing and training bgs).
- a titel. something encouraging but not high ranked. perhaps some of the old pvp ranks up to sergeant depending on how good you where. or just " honored recruit".
- a buff for x games granting bonus honor and/or conquest. smoother transition to better gear.


would help so much i think. and introduce a mentoring system where beginners can write mails to "enlisted" veterans via a blizzard console to get tips, tricks and perhaps training courses. or weekly duelling classes for watching and training. and a honor system of some kind. make it possible to accredid teamplay, good behaviour and helpfullness.
all this would help to better the community and closing the giant gap between honestly new players and friendly mentors, leaving all those insulting n00bs and arrogant progamers on the side.


i wished for anything like this for years now. perhaps when the pve training ground are a success it will be copied for pvp some day.

EDIT: or featured training videos. there are shitloads of them on youtube. post some of the m on the forums and linkt them ingame (in the "pvp help tab" i mentioned).

[Lady Tygry]

PvP just isn't as straightforward and left to one's own devices, a think-outside-the-box mentality is needed. I'll use this week's experiences gearing an old favorite as an example to showcase mistakes that veteran players make not just in randoms but in lower-ranked content as well. Three rogues queue up for CTA AB. Two have played for several years and one is new so he's going to stick with the DPS and simply follow their lead. Our first rogue is full Tyrannical and has stuck with the class for a long time and enjoys success with 2s and 3s cleave teams. The second is an old school stunlock/control rogue who is naked. Naked rogue hasn't done ranked content in years but he remembers how powerful control is, even with DR. Tyr rogue heads to ST and uses a simple sap/cap on a priest. (Rogue saps and begins capping. Priest uses trink/EMFH and hits rogue. Rogue blinds priest and takes the node.) Naked rogue does the same thing at mines. Assume both get a teammate who follows up and helps kill the priests at each node but they then leave. Both rogues stay to guard their assaults.

A poorly-geared frost mage decides to assault both of these alone at some point. He does a couple quick arcane explosions and checks his BGTargets to see if the rogues are out elsewhere. He knows they're not but decides to try his luck as his team is getting desperate. He assaults Tyr rogue's node at ST. Tyr rogue immediately opens on the mage who iceblocks, calls for help and starts kiting and bides time with a PoM poly. The rogue doesn't have time to call and he loses the node when reinforcements arrive. The mage then heads to mine for Naked rogue's node. Naked rogue calls that he has an inc. and saps the mage when it's 7 seconds into the cap. The mage knows it would be a bad move to waste a major CD in this situation and waits for the rogue to open. Eight seconds later, the sap is off and the mage tries to cap again. He gets sapped for another four seconds when he's a second away from the assault. Repeat one last time with a 2-second sap. On the mage's final assault, he gets blinded for a full eight seconds and by now, Naked rogue's help has arrived. Had it not, he could have THEN opened on the mage but even then, he had a few more tricks for delaying an actual duel as he's much more interested in biding time and he's kept that enemy off the flag for almost a full minute.

While all this is going on, Newbie rogue has been taking in the typified BG chat, reading that what's important are killing blows and topping meters, according to everyone else. He decides to follow a DK teammate up to LM and even contributes a shroud so they can try to surprise the enemy team. Naked rogue is up there and has been trying to assess who's guarding. He sees a hunter who's using unglyphed camo and a shadowpriest who's standing far from the flag, but within range. Naked rogue's hoping one of them will leave as his team has three nodes secured so for now, he has not made a move. The DK sees the spriest and immediately DGs him to start beating on him. Newbie rogue wants to help so he assists the DK with the priest. Naked rogue isn't convinced he can take this node yet so he does nothing. His bomb and cloak are still down so he MUST wait on that hunter or risk blowing the ninja. When he sees the hunter's pet dash for the pair, he starts capping, unprotected. Patience is rewarded and he gets the assault. The DK accuses Naked rogue of poor play for taking so long to get the cap. Newbie rogue sees very little damage on the board from Naked rogue so he decides he was right to help the DK though maybe next time, he'll just stealth up to the flag and let the DK handle the enemy player.

A little later, Newbie rogue's team has lost LM and he joins a group of three others to try and get it back. His teammates open on a warlock and mage. Newbie rogue doesn't use BGTargets nor does he remember that there was a stealthed hunter there. He decides that he's going to ninja the flag. He sees an explosive trap and since there's no flare, he quickly disarms it and starts capping. He's powershotted off the cliff immediately by the hunter.

Now, I've deliberately used an example with a class who can not only be effective without gear but who fulfills a very niche role wherein, he should be off on his own fairly often-- something that's not the case for most other classes on offense.

Gear certainly helps and there are classes who are gear-dependent to the point that the player really can't afford not to be with the group if he wants to be effective. Maybe an in-game tutorial is necessary as right now, it's difficult for a new player to distinguish good advice from bad. If he's completely new and thinks gear is everything, (let's say he converted a bunch of JP to honor for a full Malevolent set (though this is seeing a hard nerf on Tues.) it won't matter. He can still get stomped by undergeared, competent players who know how to exploit any and all weaknesses they see in his CD management and overall playstyle.

All of that said, I was fortunate enough to play when everyone was new. I can't even fathom how daunting it must be for players trying to break into PvP now. I really despise that we're back to raid gear being the better choice over PvP gear-- even with it scaled down in instanced content, not because it levels the playing field for new players, but because it shows that Blizzard hasn't found a way to make the content more accessible after all these years.

tl;dr Gear doesn't matter but newbies are still left for dead in regards to getting better. A lot of hand-holding is needed as they can be witness to geared players making mistakes while looking effective on the charts. The cycle then repeats itself.

[Aviel]

I believe that vast majority of PVPers had horrendous experience when they started PVP regardless if they started at level 10, level 20, vanilla, tbc, wotlk etc. There will always be someone more experienced to beat ya. It's probably effective in any real life activity as well. You are going to struggle when you are new to something.

I've been gone from the game for awhile. Before I left, I was a respectable but not amazing PvP'er in this game: I 'grew up' from TBC on a pvp server, did a ton of BGs, and a little bit of arenas - did a bunch of raiding, etc.

Now I'm back at the very end of one PvP season, hoping to get at least trinkets before the reset. I know what to do, I understand my class, have a decent grasp of other classes. I've crafted my gear, reforged, gemmed, etc etc...doing the best I can with what I got, but my gear is still pretty bad.

It's been awhile, though, and I'm rusty, but still manage to keep the folks close to me from dying and only die myself when it's a total gank-fest. I am for all intents and purposes 'new' to pvp since I've been gone since the end of WoTLK.

I queue up for a BG. Yay! one pops, I accept. The first thing anyone says: "What's the chances that you guys don't suck? Pretty small, right?" This is my own team smack talking me. As the countdown proceeds, the abuse gets worse. "Why do I even queue up for these things, such losers..." I finally say "Are you guys really Alliance and you log in to demoralize us, or what?"

It's not encouraging, but this isn't my first rodeo, and I know some people are jerks, etc etc. But what about that player that MIGHT be promising that can never make it past not only a total lack of support, but indeed - the OPPOSITE of support. How are they going to get the needed experience to be an asset on your random BG team if you don't offer at least a little help? And if they can't get some encouragement through a random BG, how will they ever be a decent Arena partner or opponent? (assuming you want your Arena games to actually be games, not roflstomps).

You can't get better at a team 'sport' without a team, is my thought. At least have a sense of humor about someone that's really bad. But if it looks like they are trying, if you can't help 'em out at least don't be a dick.