Legion PvP Guide

[LordAmbrosia]

OP gives a nice explanation for those who want to catch up on changes. Thread is filled with "Legion pvp is cancer" "Unsubbing" "The fun is gone from PVP". Same shit people have been bitching about for every single tiny change for 13 years. Biggest community of crybabies ever.

[Deleted]

ah, I thought Mark of Honor will be removed in Legion

Mark of Honor won't be removed in Legion!

more info here: http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17612904134

[Krusza]

I just found out guild wars 2 has rave reviews, and you can jump straight to pvp without even questing/leveling, wow, that's pvpers dream come true, I will give it a try, no more screaming and kicking with blizzard, I will come back if they come to their senses and rollback the stupid pvp overhaul in legion

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yeah do that do pve raiders, no more gear, all templates, everyone equal, "it's all about skill" right? kill bosses as progression, and blizzard will give you some titles LOL

So you're crying about there being no "gear progression" anymore but saying that GW2 is a PvPers dream because you don't have to gear?

I'm guessing that's some sort of sarcasm. If it is, it doesn't prove anything and your arguments have pretty much been non-constructive.

You won't enjoy GW2. You have to be good just to enjoy casual PvP. You can't run around button mashing in a BG like in WoW, which you seem to enjoy so much. It's actually a pretty complex game, it probably has the most enjoyable PvP gameplay (in SPvP) but that's the only place the game really works, which is a shame.

[ns66]

So you're crying about there being no "gear progression" anymore but saying that GW2 is a PvPers dream because you don't have to gear?

I'm guessing that's some sort of sarcasm. If it is, it doesn't prove anything and your arguments have pretty much been non-constructive.

You won't enjoy GW2. You have to be good just to enjoy casual PvP. You can't run around button mashing in a BG like in WoW, which you seem to enjoy so much. It's actually a pretty complex game, it probably has the most enjoyable PvP gameplay (in SPvP) but that's the only place the game really works, which is a shame.

i said gw2 is good for me because i don't have to quest and level to max to start pvp, can you read?
how the hell do you know i won't enjoy gw2? complex? do you have a phd? go get one then we can talk

oh btw you still haven't answered my question about why not use templates in raiding, and get rid of pve gear, lets "use your skill, not gear", lmao

[Krusza]

i said gw2 is good for me because i don't have to quest and level to max to start pvp, can you read?
how the hell do you know i won't enjoy gw2? complex? do you have a phd? go get one then we can talk

oh btw you still haven't answered my question about why not use templates in raiding, and get rid of pve gear, lets "use your skill, not gear", lmao

Why not use templates in raiding?

Templates were mainly implemented to give Blizzard a way to balance stuff seperately in PvP without affecting PvE. You can increase/decrease stats on the template and keep it tame. It also lets you control the amount of overall damage/healing that's happening in PvP, which couldn't happen before as stat amounts were equivalent to ilvl, which shared with PvE. The only way to do it was to do something like "x ability does x in PvP" which is fine a certain ability is too strong, but sometimes overall damage/healing is too high, and it it's a way of blanket nerfing a spec without tweaking specifics, which is sometimes needed. It's also a good way to keep specs tuned down that scale up better than everyone else towards the end of the expac due to certain stat levels (locks as an example in the past).

The trade-off is that gear needs to have minimal effect for the templates to work, but there still needs to be some gear, obviously. The only thing I'm sorta missing is the fact you can't max a certain stat anymore, but it's a good tradeoff for easier balancing.

Is there a better system they could've developed? Probably. But this is what we have, and it's an improvement. It's not killed PvP, lol.

Oh and btw, yes you don't have to gear to do PvP in GW2, because it uses the EXACT SAME template system that wow uses, minus any stat increase from gear at all. And what's a PHD got to do with anything?

Lol.

[ns66]

Why not use templates in raiding?

Templates were mainly implemented to give Blizzard a way to balance stuff seperately in PvP without affecting PvE. You can increase/decrease stats on the template and keep it tame. It also lets you control the amount of overall damage/healing that's happening in PvP, which couldn't happen before as stat amounts were equivalent to ilvl, which shared with PvE. The only way to do it was to do something like "x ability does x in PvP" which is fine a certain ability is too strong, but sometimes overall damage/healing is too high, and it it's a way of blanket nerfing a spec without tweaking specifics, which is sometimes needed. It's also a good way to keep specs tuned down that scale up better than everyone else towards the end of the expac due to certain stat levels (locks as an example in the past).

The trade-off is that gear needs to have minimal effect for the templates to work, but there still needs to be some gear, obviously. The only thing I'm sorta missing is the fact you can't max a certain stat anymore, but it's a good tradeoff for easier balancing.

Is there a better system they could've developed? Probably. But this is what we have, and it's an improvement. It's not killed PvP, lol.

Oh and btw, yes you don't have to gear to do PvP in GW2, because it uses the EXACT SAME template system that wow uses, minus any stat increase from gear at all. And what's a PHD got to do with anything?

Lol.

blah blah blah...
you think you are smarter, i can only smash buttons in wow bg, gw2 is too complex for me, so i just told you it's the other way around, lol

[Krusza]

blah blah blah...
you think you are smarter, i can only smash buttons in wow bg, gw2 is too complex for me, so i just told you it's the other way around, lol

Thanks for replying to my explanation of a question you asked with "blah blah blah"

Real intelligent one here.

[Mafic]

The rated participation is going to drop because they are taking away players that would have filled the bottom of the ladders as they will be working on the prestige system.

Holinka explicitly stated that prestiging is for one group of players (eg non rated players) and ranked play is for players pushing for rating. That is why Holinka has said he doesn't want players to be able to prestige and push for rating.

[Brociopath]

Does stat buff from food, rune, flask or potions achieved inside of a BG add to the stats of your player, or will it just be suppressed by the stat template? Difference between rated and unrated? In WoD you could do all kinds of silly stuff in unrated, but all was disabled in rated.

[Kagthul]

The guide itself is stellar; thanks to the OP for compiling it. Im sure it will be helpful to people who haven't been following along.

Some of the responses, though... bleh.

First off:

The Template system is a trainwreck. It should never have been a thing. Its just an uncessary step that doesn't allow customization or fun. We (players, including myself, who were in the original beta for vanilla WoW) have been telling Blizzard they need to separate PvP from PvE for a long time (you know, since the original beta) - but not with some silly band-aid template - by assigning separate tuning/coefficients/durations to each skill/spell separately... and listing them on the fucking tooltips

... they fuck with the templates and then STILL have to do this anyway. The template was a waste of time. (see the recent Warlock hotfixes - they nerfed the template - and then had to tune-up several abilities because they were gimped by the template change).

Secondly:

"But the template makes it so starting level 100s can just jump into PvP and not be massively behind like they were in WoD!".

Complete, total, and utter bullshit.

A fresh 100 wont have PvP talents, which arguably makes him worse of his team than being undergeared. On top of that, you also wont have a maxed out Artifact - which, singlehandedly, is worse than any gear gap. (The "final" AP-waster ability is a flat 15% damage/healing/damage reduction (depending on spec and class)).

But lets not forget the "But at least you wont be 40% behind like in WoD because of gear!"

... the gear gap in WoD, before the recent update to the new Legion style system... was 9.2%... that's it. Because Honor gear was essentially free and could be earned in four hours WITHOUT PVPing. Measuring the gap between a freshly dinged 100 in greens and people in CQ gear was never a valid argument because you could get a full set of honor gear without even pvping in mere hours.

And you cant tell me that 9.2% didn't matter and change the outcome of games. It was huge...

And guess what? The gear gap in Legion between casuals and the top end of the ladder/people who can acquire mythic gear? About 8.5-9.5%. So.. you know.. EXACTLY THE SAME AS WOD.

Furthermore, theyve screwed casual PvPers completely out of even wanting to participate. The very nature of a pyramidal ranking system means over 80% of players who participate will NEVER see rewards better than they can earn in fucking LFR! AND you have to do rated to even get that! There's literaly -no- incentive for the casuals to inflate the rated ladder/ranks, so rated participation is going to plummet like a rock.

There's no reason for me (a relatively casual PvPer who just likes to get in some random BGs when he has some downtime, and occasionally plays with friends) to participate at all. I can get better gear than im likely to ever earn on the ladder from crafting and LFR. I can PuG a Heroic Raid within 2-3 weeks of release and get better gear than MOST people can get on the ladder. Or Mythic+ Dungeons for the same thing.

No incentive at all. Ladder participation is going to shrink massively.

And dont even get me started on the unbalanced shit-show that is "World PvP" (not that i wont be enjoying the piss out of soloing 3-4 dps at once on my Blood DK).

Legion PvP is just awful. If there was ever any proof that the PvP team needs new leadership and a new direction - it's now. Its going to be an unmitigated fucking nightmare shitshow.

[SirreASDF]

Lots of words

I'm afraid I have to agree with you..Especially on the gearing changes.. The idea behind the template was good imo.. Instead they fuck it up by making it scale, and on top of that the god damned artifact AND honor talent system..

It's going to be a real shit show trying to catch up if you get behind on anything..

Artifact could just have scaled to full power in pvp and balanced for that.. and the item level increases your stats hurrdurr should be removed.. I personally don't give a shit about progressing my character any more... It was fun before, now it all just feels like a chore that you have to maintain just so that your opponents wont have an advantage over you..

Meh, not impressed.. Buuuut we'll see how it turns out, giving it a chance at least

[ns66]

glad real pvp players agree legion had turn pvp into a piece of shit, only those pve players who know nothing about pvp like the change, and think now they can do well in pvp with their raid gears, well I think they will find out they still suck in pvp since it's much more than some scripted encounter lol

[Elisha]

I really like the new template system. Gear shouldn't matter in PVP and now it's possible to bringt finally some balancing into the game without to pay to much attation about pve. It's a realy good win win for PVE and PVP. I like it!

[Hotmail]

I don't understand why Blizzard keeps pushing for "skill-based PvP" in a game that was never meant to (and arguably, can't) support that kind of gameplay. Baffling, really.

[Mafic]

The guide itself is stellar; thanks to the OP for compiling it. Im sure it will be helpful to people who haven't been following along.

Some of the responses, though... bleh.

First off:

The Template system is a trainwreck. It should never have been a thing. Its just an uncessary step that doesn't allow customization or fun. We (players, including myself, who were in the original beta for vanilla WoW) have been telling Blizzard they need to separate PvP from PvE for a long time (you know, since the original beta) - but not with some silly band-aid template - by assigning separate tuning/coefficients/durations to each skill/spell separately... and listing them on the fucking tooltips

... they fuck with the templates and then STILL have to do this anyway. The template was a waste of time. (see the recent Warlock hotfixes - they nerfed the template - and then had to tune-up several abilities because they were gimped by the template change).

Secondly:

"But the template makes it so starting level 100s can just jump into PvP and not be massively behind like they were in WoD!".

Complete, total, and utter bullshit.

A fresh 100 wont have PvP talents, which arguably makes him worse of his team than being undergeared. On top of that, you also wont have a maxed out Artifact - which, singlehandedly, is worse than any gear gap. (The "final" AP-waster ability is a flat 15% damage/healing/damage reduction (depending on spec and class)).

But lets not forget the "But at least you wont be 40% behind like in WoD because of gear!"

... the gear gap in WoD, before the recent update to the new Legion style system... was 9.2%... that's it. Because Honor gear was essentially free and could be earned in four hours WITHOUT PVPing. Measuring the gap between a freshly dinged 100 in greens and people in CQ gear was never a valid argument because you could get a full set of honor gear without even pvping in mere hours.

And you cant tell me that 9.2% didn't matter and change the outcome of games. It was huge...

And guess what? The gear gap in Legion between casuals and the top end of the ladder/people who can acquire mythic gear? About 8.5-9.5%. So.. you know.. EXACTLY THE SAME AS WOD.

Furthermore, theyve screwed casual PvPers completely out of even wanting to participate. The very nature of a pyramidal ranking system means over 80% of players who participate will NEVER see rewards better than they can earn in fucking LFR! AND you have to do rated to even get that! There's literaly -no- incentive for the casuals to inflate the rated ladder/ranks, so rated participation is going to plummet like a rock.

There's no reason for me (a relatively casual PvPer who just likes to get in some random BGs when he has some downtime, and occasionally plays with friends) to participate at all. I can get better gear than im likely to ever earn on the ladder from crafting and LFR. I can PuG a Heroic Raid within 2-3 weeks of release and get better gear than MOST people can get on the ladder. Or Mythic+ Dungeons for the same thing.

No incentive at all. Ladder participation is going to shrink massively.

And dont even get me started on the unbalanced shit-show that is "World PvP" (not that i wont be enjoying the piss out of soloing 3-4 dps at once on my Blood DK).

Legion PvP is just awful. If there was ever any proof that the PvP team needs new leadership and a new direction - it's now. Its going to be an unmitigated fucking nightmare shitshow.

World PVP is going to be funny with mythic geared tanks acting like raid bossses smashing players all over the place. Yeah PVP in Legion is one giant cluster of not fun lol.

[Spacewalrus2010]

Exciting changes! Can't wait for legion

May actually give a decent effort to arena/RBGs now haha.

[Revik]

World PVP is going to be funny with mythic geared tanks acting like raid bossses smashing players all over the place. Yeah PVP in Legion is one giant cluster of not fun lol.

But no one spec's tank for PvP at least VERY few people do and especially not rated PVP. Which means that if they are mythic geared it is because they were raiding which probably means very little PVP talents. If they are mythic geared from rated PVP it wouldn't have been done as a tank which means their artifact weapon likely is not fully powered.

Most people on here are being disingenuine as their actual motives for what they really want out of PVP. This has been true since WoW first started. Most people on here want to be able to dominate over other people however that might be while at the same time not being dominated themselves. If it appears that someone might have a slight advantage over them because they play a certain play style they want it nerfed while buffing their own play style to dominate others. This is really what it comes down. People say they want equality but in reality they are just like those femi-nazi's that just want everything and the world for themselves. The bad part is that these people don't have the objectivity and self awareness to even know that is what they are asking for.

I for one am looking forward to the changes. I personally like getting more powerful as I continue to play (what little I have time these days). Before getting a full set of gear and all my motivation was lost because that was as powerful as I was going to get. I like the idea that while I continue to play I get more power (however small that might be) while earning possible rewards down the line. This is an MMORPG where time should equal some kind of reward.

If I want completely equalized PVP I can always go play Street Fighter or Soul Calibur for that. At least there I can curse myself for not being good enough as opposed to blaming a game system that I have willing played and supported.

[SirreASDF]

Most people on here are being disingenuine as their actual motives for what they really want out of PVP. This has been true since WoW first started. Most people on here want to be able to dominate over other people however that might be while at the same time not being dominated themselves. If it appears that someone might have a slight advantage over them because they play a certain play style they want it nerfed while buffing their own play style to dominate others. This is really what it comes down. People say they want equality but in reality they are just like those femi-nazi's that just want everything and the world for themselves. The bad part is that these people don't have the objectivity and self awareness to even know that is what they are asking for.
.

This is so true.. and as you say, most people don't even realize this.. Looking back at my own opinions in previous expansions (some spent doing top tier PvE and casual pvp and some the other way around) it always shifted..


As an example:
In the current state, I'd want no gear/arti/talent scaling what so ever in PvP, just cosmetic rewards or whatever. And to circle that back to the quote, that is because of my current view on the game and the limited playtime I will have for Legion.. It would simply benefit me the most, therefor it feels like the correct way to go for me..

If I had unlimited playtime, like I used to have as a kid or while in uni my opinion would be something else most likely, since I wouldn't ever feel limited because of playtime. I would probably jump at the joy of being able to get the best possible gear for PvP by doing mythic raids, since that would mean doing arenas for fun, instead of for progress etc..

Edit: Overall, I'm happy with the changes though I guess. I think it'll help balance in the long run.

[docterfreeze]

That bit on artifact knowledge.... should I hold off on picking up treasures until I get a lot of knowledge?

[Deleted]

That bit on artifact knowledge.... should I hold off on picking up treasures until I get a lot of knowledge?

1. the Artifact Knowledge bonus is not retroactive => Artifact Power-giving items you have already acquired will not change. You still receive the preceding Artifact Power values from items you acquired prior to learning the Artifact Research Notes. For this reason, stockpiling items that award you with Artifact Power is pointless.

2. starting with unlocking the 14th point (on your Artifact Weapon) you will always want to have enough Artifact Knowledge so that farming Artifact Power makes sense. for that reason, the percentage gain is what counts. if a treasure gives you 2% progress out of a 100% to get from point 13 to point 14, it will still give you 2% progress when going from point 16 to point 17. the required Artifact Power increases for each point but so does your Artifact Knowledge (if you do your work orders).

tl;dr: pick up and use all Artifact Power items as you go