I pity you who still PvP and/or complain about small-scale balance nonsense

[Deleted]

I think most dps classes (not ret paladin lol) could potentially oneshot someone if they had the right gear/trinkets.

A warrior wouldn't reach a warlock or mage in time though, unless they didnt notice him.

Didn't Seal of Command have a chance to oneshot anyone as well, though?

Anyhow, the fact that we're trying to compare vanilla world pvp to legion's is tragic in itself. Still a more enjoyable experience due to community and immersion, though! Inbefore Garrisons and Class Halls. I don't blame them for that all that much, though. By today's standarts walking up to an instance (be it PvE or PvP) entrance on a 60% speed ground mount (as you have no gold to buy a 100% one) is pretty outdated and it's understandable.

[stickyjam]

WotLK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IxI_pZOns4
Legion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0bu45wo3Bg

Tell me more about those globals, please.

Edit: I could care less that Ele is the least pathetic of all right now. It's still pathetic :P

- - - Updated - - -

.

Ele can kill people in a couple of globals.

Watch some of the GCDTV games, you can see the ele trucking people down.

Destro lock of 7.1 and 7.1.5 could also double chaos bolt people down.

Arcane made of 7.1.5 could

Boomkin also has full moons.

The game has pruned a lot of stuns/mico stuns/ small defensives/ variety of defensives. You can't have high burst with no counterplay.

[Deleted]

The game has pruned a lot of stuns/mico stuns/ small defensives/ variety of defensives. You can't have high burst with no counterplay.

Exactly! That's what I meant! We're finally on the same page.

All I'm saying is bump damage higher but even moreso buff healing and reintroduce defensives! Because low damage with low healing and barely any defensives feels like PvE, is forgiving, is harder to balance, and generally not nearly as much fun!

[Rascal Bob]

Well.. it sure as hell is "fun" in a certain way. But back in the day blowing multiple people up made you feel good about yourself. It felt as some sort of an accomplisment, even if it was mainly because you outgeared them. The fact that you could 1v5 with gear, yet be able to beat most people 1v1 on a rogue/frost mage with a weapon from an earlier expansion and barely any gear on whatsoever meant a lot. You knew you killed them because you were better than them.

Right now, as you said, you simply look at someone and they blow up. For a fact, they might've faced the other way and don't even realize how they died. Even if you didn't have any legendaries and sub-880 ilvl gear you could still oneshot anyone with a Full Moon crit.

On the other end of the spectrum - in instanced PvP (arenas) balance druids tickle everyone to death - hardly any high damage numbers. They're considered top-tear kind of right now, especially for BGs, simply because they have such a nice AoE PvE rotation with dots, Starfall and the artifact ability and the pathetic healers can't outheal it. Kind of reminds me of those youtube series back in the day "Murder with a spoon" or whatever it was called. The fact that someone doesn't have the tools to react accordingly to your damage doesn't make your damage "over the top", it just makes their tools and healing pathetic in comparison, nothing more.

It's not fun being blown up but sure as hell was fun blowing others up. For that very reason getting gear felt rewarding. Nowadays, literally nothing feels rewarding for me in this game anymore.

Moreover, my emphasis in this thread has always been about blowing people up because of skill, not gear. As in my example in my previous post - Blood DK wasn't nearly as viable in arena as it had too many counters. But out in the open - if someone didn't dispel your dots you literally oneshot him the moment you came close to him.. if someone didn't dispel your Mark of Blood - you simply don't die cause of self-heals. You had the tools to outsmart people and damage was high enough to punish them for their mistakes fast enough. I've played this game for 10+ years actively in PvP. Yet in Legion I literally can't 1v2 two bots. Because I lack tools. Because the skill cap between a "pro" and a bot is negligible.



No, right now you can get into a BG/arena, do at your worst and hardly be punished for it. You are no longer gated by gear, but grinding honor gear for a day and a half is one thing, grinding artifact power and honor for weeks just so you can have access to your abilities is another - and is definitely not fun.



That argument was valid in MoP as well. Even more specs were viable at high level than now. It doesn't matter, though. Cause the gameplay is dogshit.

- - - Updated - - -



In Vanilla you blew people up the same way but melees were immobile and needed time to get to you, and casters had huge cast times on their high damage abilities.

This still offered some kind of counterplay. Not to mention that PvP revolved almost entirely around gadgets in the form of items, consumables, etc. Now there's absolutely no counter. Whoever clicks their button first wins. Imagine a cowboy pistol duel but with no chance to miss and your bullet spreading out to 50 people at a time instead of one.

If anything, getting gear feels more rewarding then ever, the oneshots are truly amazing.. If all the satisfaction you got was from defeating noobs with no gear then I pity you. Of all the things that are wrong with PvP right now you seem miss all that was important.

Gearing was just something you did and forgot about once you were geared. If you were facing lower geared players all the time then you weren't in the right spot to take on a true challenge. Wpvp might just be slightly worse then facing non pvp geared players back in the day but not by much. The only reason you could 1v5 was because of gear or they had to be seriously retarted. In other words you like to oneshot PvE players in a PvP environment while not getting oneshot by them. Now in wpvp everyone can oneshot everyone, it's bad but at least its fair to everyone. I rather have my PvP template enabled in every form of PvP, fuck the guy who came up with the whole "everything goes" in wpvp. Most of the videos you linked are fun to watch but disgusting in terms of pvp, mostly it was geared players pouring everything into noobs which was fine because they would gear up later themselves but in no way showed the "skill" you're talking about. There was no real counterplay just like in wpvp now, I'm getting the feeling you depended more on your gear then your skill.

On another note you liked your rogue/mage because you could defeat one with better gear while having not so much yourself. No, those classes weren't particularly hard to play, as a rogue you just had to remember a couple of openers and frost mages have been(which sorta ended with MoP) the dueling/pvp class for ages. Entire books have been written of solely mage vs rogue/warrior/x. This proves again why you don't seek a fair playing field or anything you just want to play the fotm, the OP. While I miss my old sub rogue, I didn't stop playing it in WoD when it was inferior while you would probably go combat to faceroll stuff.

I'm going to assume you're a casual pvp player? Gadgets and stuff haven't been allowed in rated pvp since I started doing it. In any serious duel, ment to improve ones skill or to find a way to fight a certain class you would agree that no gadgets,potions or whatever would be used.

I agree that pvp is not great, but if pvp just ment oneshots and doing 1vx for you then you missed out. PvP should be about timing, trying to figure out what your opponents set up is so you can anticipate it etc vs equally skilled players. What sort of accomplishment can one get from just achieving the expected outcome? Pvp should not be just trying to oneshot(through a healers def cd's) or PvE, which is what's happening now, all you see are melee cleaves with retarded amounts of burst damage or dot comps with retarded amounts of consistent damage, which a healer can't really out heal even if the other team isn't ccing him. And by the way before the nerf, arcane mage was the best caster not ele.

[Deleted]

If anything getting gear feels more rewarding then ever, the oneshots are truly amazing.. If all the satisfaction you got was from defeating noobs with no gear then I pity you. Of all the things that are wrong with PvP right now you seem miss all that was important.

Gearing was just something you did and forgot about once you were geared. If you were facing lower geared players all the time then you weren't in the right spot to take on a true challenge. Wpvp might just be slightly worse then facing non pvp geared players back in the day but not by much. The only reason you could 1v5 was because of gear or they had to be seriously retarted. In other words you like to oneshot PvE players in PvP environment while not getting oneshot by them. Now in wpvp everyone can oneshot everyone, it's bad but at least its fair to everyone. I rather have my PvP template enabled in every form of PvP, fuck the guy who came up with the whole "everything goes" in wpvp. Most of the videos you linked are fun to watch but disgusting in terms of pvp, mostly it was geared players pouring everything into noobs which was fine because they would gear up later themselves but in no way showed the "skill" you're talking about. There was no real counterplay just like in wpvp now, I'm getting the feeling you depended more on your gear then your skill.

I only said that the option to outgear someone in a BG was fun. In all of my posts I have emphasized on skill, actually. I've played since TBC, and rather hardcore since the start of WotLK and to be honest I have 1v2'd, 1v3'd and 1v4'd even, equally geared people pretty often. The element of outgearing someone just enabled me to push it even further. For example, in MoP I could literally 1v7 as my full S15 geared ret pally. Sure, those 7 were in S13/S14 gear and the ilvl gap was huge but had they been more skilled they would've easily annihilate me. Call it narcissistic but I've always taken pleasure in beating people that are less skilled than I am. And since WoD, especially now, I've been feeling that there's barely anything that could define said skill.

On another note you liked your rogue/mage because you could defeat one with better gear while having not so much yourself. No, those classes weren't particularly hard to play, as a rogue you just had to remember a couple of openers and frost mages have been(which sorta ended with MoP) the dueling/pvp class for ages. Entire books have been written of solely mage vs rogue/warrior/x. This proves again why you don't seek a fair playing field or anything you just want to play the fotm, the OP. While I miss my old sub rogue, I didn't stop playing it in WoD when it was inferior while you would probably go combat to faceroll stuff.

No, it was an example of how skill could win even absent any gear. As a matter of fact in WotLK I mained a feral druid and had 95% duel win rate, was it? Feral wasn't really considered OP back then and, on even grounds, was countered by almost everyone in a 1v1 situation. I hardly lost to any frost mages either which were considered the kings of duels. I played a lot of Mutilate rogue (hated the Envenom/Sub specs), I also played a lot of destruction warlock, ele sham, ret pally, blood and unholy DK as well. Honestly, over the years (private servers, etc.) I've got a good grasp on every single DPS spec, as viable as it has been, but those were the few specs that I "mained" so to speak. I was not that much into 3s back then (preference) but I did push 2s rating pretty high up and focused more on World PvP and duels - hardly lost to anyone eventually, honestly. It was fun times. Most fun I've ever had - leveling/dailies in Northrend as my Nelf feral. Flight form, Predatory Swiftness Cyclone/Root/Hibernate, and Shadowmeld gave me so many options that I warfared vs multiple people at a time through the whole zone.. it was epic. Now all the tools are gone and any nobrainer can just instagib you out of nowhere :/

I agree that pvp is not great, but if pvp just ment oneshots and doing 1vx for you then you missed out. PvP should be about timing, trying to figure out what your opponents set up is so you can anticipate it etc. Not just trying to oneshot or PvE, which is what's happening now, all you see are melee cleaves with retarded amounts of burst damage or dot comps with retarded amounts of consistent damage, which a healer can't really out heal even if the other team isn't ccing him. And by the way before the nerf, arcane mage was the best caster not ele.

Yes, here I agree, and that was the whole point of the thread. Right now it's some cleave PvE fest that hardly takes any skill. And World PvP is even more so. Moreover DPS in instanced PvP is so negligible that mistakes are hardly ever punished and all that matters is the score on your Recount at the end of the game. Yet people are crying about OP damages and that's due to the even more pathetic fact that healing is even worse, and that all the defensive spells/utility in the game has been pruned, and even the lowest and most pathetic of damage can feel overpowered in comparison.

And PvP isn't meant for one-shots but in MoP, if an Arms Warrior blows up all of his def cds (Die by the sword, Shield Wall, banner and Last Stand - name went out of my head for non-prot specs) before he's fallen below 35% for Second Wind and before you've used your damage cooldowns as a ret, YOU SHOULD be able to oneshot him. Still in MoP, if you catch someone without a trinket and a defensive cd like Barkskin, bubble, etc, you should oneshot them in a single Deep Freeze with Alter Time, PoM and on-use trinket available as a Fire Mage. In WotLK, if you didn't outsmart the destruction warlock's Succubus by vanishing twice, focus kicking, gouging, or even stunning it as a rogue, you SHOULD nearly get oneshot in a Chaos Bolt into Conflagrate combo. In Cataclysm, if you played a feral and wasted your Dash/Stampeding Roar vs someone like a frost mage who has a lot of roots, you SHOULD get kited into oblivion and punished for that. On the other hand, if you don't know how to Scare Beast/fear/kite/etc. the feral's Frenzied Regeneration in bear form you will heal him up to full hp and deserve his full bleeds which will eventually deal 90% of your hp.

I invested YEARS in duels, world PvP, battlegrounds and arena ever since TBC and, trust me - I'm not over-exaggerating, I happen to know every bits and tricks of every DPS spec since then, in every single expansion. I didn't push high ratings in 3s up until Cataclysm but I happen to think that I was in my best form during WotLK. I happen to know how every class can counter another (like I said, in every single expansion except for Vanilla). And all those years and knowledge have gone to complete waste because Legion is a moba and you outplay someone not with skill and practice but rather with a higher dps - and a dps that feels like hitting him with wet noodles, at that.

[salovia]

1. World PvP. This is the thing that have probably given me more sweet memories through the years than most real-life activities have.

This is sad WoW is fun, but you probably need to get out more or do different things when you go out.

Guess what - this is gone, absolutely gone.

I don't find this to be true at all. I still hang out at Halaa which still pops off with WPVP occasionally. Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's 20v20. You can also go visit any warden tower if you want to do WPVP. You can also still raid cities. You can also still harass quest hubs or WQ spawns. I'm guessing you're not on a PVP realm if you think there is no more WPVP. There are even lots of toys and pots to make WPVP more interesting, stock up on that stuff and it can be a blast.

2. Dueling. ... The skill required there, and the sheer room for improvement, have never been lacking behind arenas, in my humble opinion.

If you think dueling requires the same skill as climbing arena ladders maybe you should would have more fun in a simpler game. Duels are not balanced and are not intended to be. If you want to customize your spec specifically for winning duels, you can still do that and go stand outside SW/OG/goldshire/crossroads/wherever and duel people.

For me, the game started losing said depth back in MoP but at least this expansion offered something that I will forever cherish - balanced duels.

No, duels have never been balanced, that's part of why they can be fun.

They could add a 1v1 wargame mode with little to no develpoment time required

It seems like don't know anything about product development or software engineering. Nothing is ever as simple as 'little to no development time' for something like WoW.

3. I mentioned the word "depth"... Well... it's gone. ... Because if I wanted to play a game where you had literally 4 abilities with super simplistic design and very predictable outcome I'd rather play League of Legends.

I've been playing since BC, so not since Vanilla, but a while. I disagree that 'depth' was either a.) really a good thing or b.) really there at all. I remember playing a warlock sl/sl build which was fun, but is that really depth? Having a ton of 'talent points' or abilities on your bar just makes complexity, not depth. Back then there were 2-3 "viable" builds for every spec (I'm being generous). There were certainly more abilities on your bars, but I'm not sure that's really depth. The abilities didn't build on each other, they were just situation buttons you could press.

Also, I don't think there are any classes or specs with "literally 4 abilities". Even Frost DKs have a few more abilities than that.

4. Damage. Yes... even though the top threads everywhere (even here) are something along the lines of "DAMAGE TOO HIGH PLZ NURF", I personally think that there's not enough damage out there. Over the expansions since WotLK damage has been more and more sparse but that was compensated with how many abilities you could pump out over a given period of time. In WotLK you had 30k hp on average and a Ele Shaman's Lava Burst could hit for up to 12k or something. You could literally almost kill someone with a Lava Burst into instant Chain Lightning into Frost Shock or something. But it required a cooldown to be instant casted, had a slow cast, and mobility for eles was sparse

I think people tend to not like high damage in PVP because it makes the game too simple and there's not a lot of room for reaction/skill. Do you really think PVP would be better if everyone just popped cool downs and one-shot each other (we're pretty close to that anyway...)

In MoP Lava Burst hit for around 80k on a 560k health pool but it was spammable as f*ck and overall you could still have that great feeling of pumping out damage.

That doesn't really sound like 'depth'. It sounds like just spamming an ability and doing damage. If you want depth I'd imagine you'd love having to setup CC chains and manage resources like insanity/embers/shards/combo points/holy power/etc. instead of just jumping around and blowing your load on the enemy.

At least late-WoD gave us damage and that felt at least a little bit fun! In Legion... 3 mil health pools, Lava Burst does 150k - 200k damage at most. This is nothing short of laughable. Now you can say that "bruh, focus of eles is now shifted away from Lava Burst... they have Icefury now, Frost Shocks, Earth Shocks, instant Lightning Bolts, blah blah" but at the end of the day all the fucking abilities hit like wet noodles and slapping someone with a wet noodle over and over again isn't fun.

This is literally the depth you were complaining is missing. You might have to use more than one ability on more than one opponent in order to set up a kill. Shocker!

the game was so pruned that there's literally nothing left to counter said damage... But this isn't an excuse for every single class feeling completely underpowered.

The best way to counter most damage is to avoid it entirely. Kite melees and interrupt casters. If you let a lock free cast chaos bolts into you, you're dead. If you let a DH sit on you, you're dead.

Until they buff the damage, buff healing accordingly and reintroduce some utility to cope with said damage (at this point I'm fine even with blatant % damage reduction cds) this game won't be ANY fun to me, I don't know about you. And crying about OP damage instead of missing utility and underpowered healing is beyond me.

If you ramp up damage and then give everyone a 30% damage reduction for 8 seconds ability on a 3 minute cool down, you'll be dead outside of the 8 second window and you'll be spending a lot of time waiting for a rez timer.

5. Oneshots. Yes, you heard me right. I miss oneshots. The low amounts of damage (point 4), and the PvP stat templates have made it so making those sweet "crit montage" videos on youtube owning in battlegrounds impossible.

If you want to nuke people, play a high-burst class - sure it's much rarer to line up trinkets/cooldowns and get a lucky crit to one-shot anyone these days from 100-0, but it's not too hard to 2 or 3 shot them if you can catch them without cooldowns/heals in a stun. Those one shot videos you like so much are typically montages of high-geared players in random bgs or wpvp where they are in some sort of premade and are coordinating damage cool downs + zerker/lust with their teammates in order to one-or-two-shot fresh level capped toons. Is that skill? Is that depth? I don't think so.

even the biggest retard/newb can outdo you in everything and even 1v2 isn't remotely possible unless your enemies are literally (as bad as it may sound) retarded or braindead.

I'm sensing a pattern here - I think the only way you like PVP is if you can outgear your opponents and you play a class that can one shot things. Now that gear doesn't really matter and damage has "slowed" down you're probably not having a lot of fun and I totally understand that. Maybe a different game would be more fun for you.

6. Soloqueue. Something that Blizzard has been refusing to do for years now. If the game is gonna be so much focused on arenas then make a solo-queue system.

Arena Skirmishes, Random Battlegrounds are both solo-queueable. You can even join LFG groups for random battlegrounds, rated battlegrounds, arenas and war-games. In that sense you can queue without a full party or without friends.


I

The game is dumbed down enough so that you don't require voice comm anyway, so please - for the sake of someone's nostalgic 1-hour PvP fix - at least add this feature to the game. It will be highly appreciated.

I don't do arenas because I'm Bad® and enjoy the pace of random bgs more, so I can't comment too much on the current state of arenas other than there are comps that work and there are comps that counter other comps - BUT - If the game is so easy, challenge yourself to get gladiator this season without using voice comms in either RBG or Arenas while solo-queueing in LFG groups.

If you still think it's too easy, do it as a brewmaster monk.

---

I have my own complaints about PVP, but as a one-off statistic my winning rate in random battlegrounds has gone from 88% in WOD to about 60% in Legion S1 and so far in S2 - This is good! I have MANY more games that are 1450:1500 losses or 2:3 losses and even though it's frustrating dying in a single stun, games are a lot closer and a lot more fun than that used to be. Farming GYs in random bgs gets boring after a while.

[Pawstruck]

This could have been such a good thread...

I was hoping to come here and find a half-philosophical discussion of what it's like to PVP in a game where the devs can smash your hard-made character with a few patches. (I quit myself after all the ridiculous nerfs to Rogues. They were too strong in some aspects, but as usual Blizz went WAY overboard). Instead, just generalized, uninformed whining. :/

[FrantACs]

No, I said I miss oneshots. I miss these kind of stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLg47hEezc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhCceNFkdEk&t=291s

Now that's your best caster spec of 7.1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0bu45wo3Bg

Throwing noodles at everyone. Kills people only cause of underpowered healing and lack of utility. Laughable.

I see... so you basically miss something from PVP that was bad and needed fixing? How is that kind of Gameplay fun? The oponent has no chance to react. How is that a good system? How is that balanced?

edit: Real PVP is and should be completely based on the skill of the two players (or teams) fighting each other and should not be decided based on Gear or RNG (like critical strike and multistrike used to be).

[Rascal Bob]

I only said that the option to outgear someone in a BG was fun. In all of my posts I have emphasized on skill, actually. I've played since TBC, and rather hardcore since the start of WotLK and to be honest I have 1v2'd, 1v3'd and 1v4'd even, equally geared people pretty often. The element of outgearing someone just enabled me to push it even further. For example, in MoP I could literally 1v7 as my full S15 geared ret pally. Sure, those 7 were in S13/S14 gear and the ilvl gap was huge but had they been more skilled they would've easily annihilate me. Call it narcissistic but I've always taken pleasure in beating people that are less skilled than I am. And since WoD, especially now, I've been feeling that there's barely anything that could define said skill.



No, it was an example of how skill could win even absent any gear. As a matter of fact in WotLK I mained a feral druid and had 95% duel win rate, was it? Feral wasn't really considered OP back then and, on even grounds, was countered by almost everyone in a 1v1 situation. I hardly lost to any frost mages either which were considered the kings of duels. I played a lot of Mutilate rogue (hated the Envenom/Sub specs), I also played a lot of destruction warlock, ele sham, ret pally, blood and unholy DK as well. Honestly, over the years (private servers, etc.) I've got a good grasp on every single DPS spec, as viable as it has been, but those were the few specs that I "mained" so to speak. I was not that much into 3s back then (preference) but I did push 2s rating pretty high up and focused more on World PvP and duels - hardly lost to anyone eventually, honestly. It was fun times. Most fun I've ever had - leveling/dailies in Northrend as my Nelf feral. Flight form, Predatory Swiftness Cyclone/Root/Hibernate, and Shadowmeld gave me so many options that I warfared vs multiple people at a time through the whole zone.. it was epic. Now all the tools are gone and any nobrainer can just instagib you out of nowhere :/



Yes, here I agree, and that was the whole point of the thread. Right now it's some cleave PvE fest that hardly takes any skill. And World PvP is even more so. Moreover DPS in instanced PvP is so negligible that mistakes are hardly ever punished and all that matters is the score on your Recount at the end of the game. Yet people are crying about OP damages and that's due to the even more pathetic fact that healing is even worse, and that all the defensive spells/utility in the game has been pruned, and even the lowest and most pathetic of damage can feel overpowered in comparison.

And PvP isn't meant for one-shots but in MoP, if an Arms Warrior blows up all of his def cds (Die by the sword, Shield Wall, banner and Last Stand - name went out of my head for non-prot specs) before he's fallen below 35% for Second Wind and before you've used your damage cooldowns as a ret, YOU SHOULD be able to oneshot him. Still in MoP, if you catch someone without a trinket and a defensive cd like Barkskin, bubble, etc, you should oneshot them in a single Deep Freeze with Alter Time, PoM and on-use trinket available as a Fire Mage. In WotLK, if you didn't outsmart the destruction warlock's Succubus by vanishing twice, focus kicking, gouging, or even stunning it as a rogue, you SHOULD nearly get oneshot in a Chaos Bolt into Conflagrate combo. In Cataclysm, if you played a feral and wasted your Dash/Stampeding Roar vs someone like a frost mage who has a lot of roots, you SHOULD get kited into oblivion and punished for that. On the other hand, if you don't know how to Scare Beast/fear/kite/etc. the feral's Frenzied Regeneration in bear form you will heal him up to full hp and deserve his full bleeds which will eventually deal 90% of your hp.

I invested YEARS in duels, world PvP, battlegrounds and arena ever since TBC and, trust me - I'm not over-exaggerating, I happen to know every bits and tricks of every DPS spec since then, in every single expansion. I didn't push high ratings in 3s up until Cataclysm but I happen to think that I was in my best form during WotLK. I happen to know how every class can counter another (like I said, in every single expansion except for Vanilla). And all those years and knowledge have gone to complete waste because Legion is a moba and you outplay someone not with skill and practice but rather with a higher dps - and a dps that feels like hitting him with wet noodles, at that.

Alright, I think we can agree that we both liked the old style of PvP better. Instant cc, more defensive cd's etc. The problem is you can't let people die in 3 seconds now because to counter burst cd's they have to cast a 1.5 second cast cc or too few tools to mitigate the damage. Too much instant cc like deep freeze, insta clone etc have been removed. Btw do not make any reference to MoP warriors, they were retarded xD

[Deleted]

This is sad WoW is fun, but you probably need to get out more or do different things when you go out.

You're obviously a troll but I'll answer you nevertheless because I really liked how you responded to every single piece of my post.

So starting with that - not that it is of your concern but I've done all sorts of things during my teenage years apart from gaming. Now I'm 23 years old, pretty laid back, have a decent job, long-term girlfriend, living on my own, etc. - barely gaming anymore even. So I've experienced plenty of life so far and still... when I reminisce of past memories I'd choose the nights spent World PvPing over the nights when I got drunk like a pig in some bar any day.

I don't find this to be true at all. I still hang out at Halaa which still pops off with WPVP occasionally. Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's 20v20. You can also go visit any warden tower if you want to do WPVP. You can also still raid cities. You can also still harass quest hubs or WQ spawns. I'm guessing you're not on a PVP realm if you think there is no more WPVP. There are even lots of toys and pots to make WPVP more interesting, stock up on that stuff and it can be a blast.

Actually I've always played on a PvP realm. Still, while leveling people wouldn't even scratch me cause noone would bother with World PvP anymore. I was super excited about world quest and such.. But the fact that people die in a single Blade Dance on my DH or Justicar's Vengeance on my ret is kind of sad. I don't feel like World PvPing, I feel like killing level 1 mobs And said tools you mentioned enhance said "fun" even more. Even ganking lowbies in the past hadn't felt so onesided.

If you think dueling requires the same skill as climbing arena ladders maybe you should would have more fun in a simpler game. Duels are not balanced and are not intended to be. If you want to customize your spec specifically for winning duels, you can still do that and go stand outside SW/OG/goldshire/crossroads/wherever and duel people.

If you think dueling is still possible then you literally have no clue about them. In previous expansions I've had duels that have lasted for minutes. I've played feral vs feral in WotLK where you intentionally drop bleeds off the target so that you can instant Hibernate them, heal up and reset. And that would last for quite a while until someone makes a mistake (doesn't reapply Faerie Fire on time for example and lets you hard reset from stealth). That's just one example of a fun duel. Right now you have no utility so you just open on the other feral and spam damage until he dies. And that's in a wargame. Out in the open whoever opens up with a Rake first and does two Brutal Slashes wins. Fun

And while arena requires you to have knowledge of how CC setups work, how LoS works and also very good communication and team synergy, in duels you are required to know every little detail of the class you are facing, as well as your very own. There are many, gladiators even, out there who simply can't duel. There are also people with 2,8k+ MMR that still manage to win a 3s game with very little to no knowledge of the capabilities of some of the lesser-known specs they face, especially in EU where the meta is ever-changing. Not saying that 3s don't require skill, it obviously does. It's just that duels are underestimated and they don't require any less of it. I've seen a lot of high-rated people who suck at duels, but on the other hand - I've literally never seen a person who is good at duels but can't reach a high rating in arena.

No, duels have never been balanced, that's part of why they can be fun.

Yes, duels have never been balanced but in MoP they were as close to balanced, without the devs implicitly trying to balance them, as they can. Every class had multiple offensive cds, every class had selfhealing, every class had multiple defensive cds, every class had mobility - and that allowed for that. Not saying that this is the best class design ever. I'd rather have classes shine on their own like in pre-MoP when a ret had little to no mobility but had some unique tools like Cleanse (pretty unique for a dps spec), Judgment of Justice and a damage cooldown (which was completely fine at the time as it was dispellable). But nevertheless, the fact that after a month or so of constant dueling I could beat pretty much anyone I came across in a 1v1 with every single dps spec meant that they were balanced enough for you to beat someone if you manage to outplay them.

It seems like don't know anything about product development or software engineering. Nothing is ever as simple as 'little to no development time' for something like WoW.

The funny part here is that for the last 2 years I have actually worked as a software developer Sure, I make mobile applications but I've got good enough of a grasp on things to tell you that updating the UI of the wargames screen with a 1v1 option and modifying an if-else statement to check only for a single opponent instead of a teammate and two opponents on the opposite party is literally minutes of work-time. It would probably require more time to test it before release than to develop it

I've been playing since BC, so not since Vanilla, but a while. I disagree that 'depth' was either a.) really a good thing or b.) really there at all. I remember playing a warlock sl/sl build which was fun, but is that really depth? Having a ton of 'talent points' or abilities on your bar just makes complexity, not depth. Back then there were 2-3 "viable" builds for every spec (I'm being generous). There were certainly more abilities on your bars, but I'm not sure that's really depth. The abilities didn't build on each other, they were just situation buttons you could press.

Also, I don't think there are any classes or specs with "literally 4 abilities". Even Frost DKs have a few more abilities than that.

First of all, nearly all classes have "literally 4 abilities" nowadays, at least rotational ones, at a handful of cds here and there as well. In WotLK frost death knights had two diseases applied by Chains of Ice/Icy Touch and Plague Strike respectively. They had frost/unholy rune dump in the face of Obliterate and blood rune dump in the face of Blood Strike. They had a runic power dump in the face of Frost Strike and Death Coil. Those were only their damage rotational abilities. They had a ton of utility spells on top of that as well and they were still considered the spec with least buttons in the game. Now they have literally 4 buttons.

I'll tell you what is depth - depth is to manage runes and not be able to spam 6 Chains of Ice right after each other because the runes have been unified. Depth is the ability to hit like a truck with Obliterate/Frost Strike when you have the correct setup for it but also have them dependant on your diseases which dispelled reduce your damage by like 50%. Depth is when you have to preemptively pop Icebound Fortitude if you don't want to get stunned instead of making it into yet another trinket.

Depth is when you're playing a feral and when the Predatory Swiftness thing procs you have more than 5 choices to make - to HoT yourself (Regrowth), heal yourself (Healing Touch), Hibernate, Roots and Cyclone. Now you know you always use it for Healing Touch and you don't even have to get out of cat form for that - literally feels like playing an enhancement shaman.

Depth is when you have cool mechanics that don't simply do damage or reduce damage taken, i.e.: Mana Drain for warlocks, Mana Burn for priests,, 75% MS when you Overpower a cast as a WotLK arms warr, Alter Time back in MoP for mages, etc.

Depth is when all classes don't have the same interrupt spell on their bars. Ferals have to go into bear form to interrupt and arms warriors have to change stance from Battle Stance to interrupt.

Depth is when you have tools. In WotLK a ret had to keep up his Sacred Shield, could proc Art of War for instant Flash of Lights, could stun a target and heal up with either Holy Light or Flash of Light, and could Repentance a target to heal up with either Holy Light or Flash of Light. In Cataclysm a ret could do all of those as well, though Art of War was replaced with Word of Glory which you had to play around your Sacred Shield with, had to sacrifice damage for it (choices), etc.. In MoP you could build Selfless Healer stacks to heal up with instant or reduced cast-time Flash of Lights, had Word of Glory as well (though it felt totally different - a lot more accessible but less throughput), and you could still stun/blind to heal up. You had so many options. Now, playing as a ret, you're just a dumbed down damage machine that rotates bubbles until they die. And in order to heal they have a single spell at their disposal - Flash of Light, which involves no mechanics around it whatsoever.

I think people tend to not like high damage in PVP because it makes the game too simple and there's not a lot of room for reaction/skill. Do you really think PVP would be better if everyone just popped cool downs and one-shot each other (we're pretty close to that anyway...)

No, low damage makes the game simple and too forgiving. In the past damage has always been a lot higher but healing was higher as well. In 3v3 if both DPS popped burst but the enemy healer wasn't CC'd and the enemy team peeled correctly you could never kill someone even if the damage was high. Even if you CC'd someone - be it the healer, or a peeler, the enemy had the defensive tools to respond to your damage and still survived. A balanced game revolving around high damage means that a kill is landed the moment someone makes a mistake. And this is how it should be. Right now you can literally make a mistake every 5 seconds but the low damage would carry the game into dampening (wasn't even such a thing pre-MoP btw) where the thing that matters the most is literally your recount DPS score. The team that did the most spread-DPS pressure eventually wins when the pathetic multi-target damage takes over the even more pathetic now-dampened healing.

That doesn't really sound like 'depth'. It sounds like just spamming an ability and doing damage. If you want depth I'd imagine you'd love having to setup CC chains and manage resources like insanity/embers/shards/combo points/holy power/etc. instead of just jumping around and blowing your load on the enemy.

No, it was depth. Because you had so many totems at your disposal that were pruned later on. You had options. And you had to do exactly as you described - manage your mana, setup CC chains and etc.. Now all you do is spam damage. And the only new mechanic for eles in hits expansion is a weird spell (Icefury) that makes your slow your highest damaging ability for the next 4 uses, lol. While your Lava Burst literally hits for 5% of the enemy's hp. Lol! Kind of like in WoD the highest damage abilities of Fire mages were Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave - two spells that have never been meant for dealing damage. Great class design.

This is literally the depth you were complaining is missing. You might have to use more than one ability on more than one opponent in order to set up a kill. Shocker!

No, like I said depth is having tools and interesting mechanics. Depth is not adding more PvE spells that simply do damage. In Legion every class has an artifact weapon ability on a CD that literally does ONLY damage. What depth si that. That feels like an ultimate from a fighter game, not an ability that should be in a MMORPG.

In WotLK rets had literally 3 rotational abilities - Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and Judgement. Yet all my 4 bar rows were full with utility spells - this is depth. Not to mention that all other specs had more rotational abilities and the same amount of utility spells. If I had to place all of my spells on the bars as a shaman, or a warlock I'd fill them in even before all the macros. Now I can't fill a single row with spells and all they do is "deals X amount of damage", "deals Y amount of damage". Great depth.

The best way to counter most damage is to avoid it entirely. Kite melees and interrupt casters. If you let a lock free cast chaos bolts into you, you're dead. If you let a DH sit on you, you're dead.

Here I agree with you except that if you let a lock free cast Chaos Bolts into you each Chaos Bolt would hit for around 350k, which means that he would need to cast 9 of them to kill you. This is more than 10 seconds worth of Chaos Bolts Sorry but I can literally eat my breakfast in the meantime, come back at him and reset the fight entirely.

If you ramp up damage and then give everyone a 30% damage reduction for 8 seconds ability on a 3 minute cool down, you'll be dead outside of the 8 second window and you'll be spending a lot of time waiting for a rez timer.

Actually in both WotLK and MoP you could kill someone in literally less than 3 seconds if he just sat still and you bursted. This is how high damage was. Still, quite a few 3s games went on for more than 10 minutes because healing was also high and everyone had the tools to prevent said burst. So this argument of yours is the most bs invalid thing I've ever read around here so far.

If you want to nuke people, play a high-burst class - sure it's much rarer to line up trinkets/cooldowns and get a lucky crit to one-shot anyone these days from 100-0, but it's not too hard to 2 or 3 shot them if you can catch them without cooldowns/heals in a stun. Those one shot videos you like so much are typically montages of high-geared players in random bgs or wpvp where they are in some sort of premade and are coordinating damage cool downs + zerker/lust with their teammates in order to one-or-two-shot fresh level capped toons. Is that skill? Is that depth? I don't think so.

Actually these crit montages are something that happened to me 9/10 times I joined a BG. I never needed someone to back me off to preform the same way people do in those crit montages. There's a difference between battlegrounds and rated battlegrounds. While in the second one you had MMR, equal gear, semi-equal team composition, and communication, first one has always been a slaughterfest where you have always been able to 1vX if you outskill/outgear people - now you don't. Lack of depth, stat templates and low damage make you just yet another sheep in the herd. There's literally no way to shine or stand out which should be completely natural in a RANDOM BG.

I'm sensing a pattern here - I think the only way you like PVP is if you can outgear your opponents and you play a class that can one shot things. Now that gear doesn't really matter and damage has "slowed" down you're probably not having a lot of fun and I totally understand that. Maybe a different game would be more fun for you.

No, I actually always strived to 1vX and win versus people that outgeared me. The tools present in the game and the high damage that actually needed skill and fast reactions to avoid made all of that possible. Now everyone has mobility and the tools to CC and kite are nonexistant. So 1v2ing is basically you throwing unavoidable damage at someone while on the other hand - two people throw inavoidable damage at you. In WoD it was kind of the same but at least then you could outgear them and your DPS would be higher than theirs combined so you would eventually win. But now - whatever you do, they would always deal twice as much DPS as you and you wouldn't have even standed a chance.

Arena Skirmishes, Random Battlegrounds are both solo-queueable. You can even join LFG groups for random battlegrounds, rated battlegrounds, arenas and war-games. In that sense you can queue without a full party or without friends.

Arena skirmishes and random battlegrounds are casual solo-queues. I want ranked solo-queues. The group finder is good for nothing as most of the people there wouldn't even queue with you as they have a different class in mind and would most often even lie about their ratings. I want a soloqueue where I know that if I'm 2500 MMR per say I get automatically placed with people of similar MMR without having to bargain or check up on them.

I don't do arenas because I'm Bad® and enjoy the pace of random bgs more, so I can't comment too much on the current state of arenas other than there are comps that work and there are comps that counter other comps - BUT - If the game is so easy, challenge yourself to get gladiator this season without using voice comms in either RBG or Arenas while solo-queueing in LFG groups.

If you still think it's too easy, do it as a brewmaster monk.

I won't challenge myself sh*t this expansion. I literally queued 5 times before I saw how dumb down and easy everything is. Like I said - if I wanted such gameplay I'd rather play a MOBA - LoL, Dota 2, HoN, Smite, even HotS are better than this crap. Please, you challenge yourself, go to a good populated TBC/WotLK/Cata/MoP private server and get rank 1. If you enjoy the current gameplay, and find it hard and engaging, then I could only assume that you would do absolutely terrible on there.

[salovia]

You're obviously a troll but I'll answer you nevertheless because I really liked how you responded to every single piece of my post.

Not trolling. Just curious since I've also been noticing a big change in PVP and was curious to hear about how others felt.

Now I'm 23 years old ... So I've experienced plenty of life so far and still

Alright if you say so

But the fact that people die in a single Blade Dance on my DH or Justicar's Vengeance on my ret is kind of sad.

Maybe don't play high-burst classes? Try WPVP with a dot class or something. The only place that one-shotting is remotely that common is Darkbrul with zerkers. It's annoying down in that pit, but it can also be insanely fun. I was down there for about an hour yesterday with ~7-8 other players just enjoying the FFA and back-and-forth of zerking.

If not a high burst class, maybe a healer would offer a different challenge.

If you think dueling is still possible then you literally have no clue about them.

Hmm, I definitely have some clue about them.

{rose-tinted memories of feral duels}

Alright well you can still have duels like that. If all of your duels are literally over in 2 GCDs you're just too good for the game, might as well unsub.

If you just open and face-tank a feral, you're implying you're not cloning to heal up or stop heals, you're not hitting your affinity to heal/tank/cast and you're not trying to kite/avoid cooldowns/trinkets when they're popped. If that's the way you like to play duels that's totally fine, I just don't think it's the game that's different here. There are plenty of ways to duel other than face-tank and mash dps buttons.

{anecdote about how some 2800 rated players can't duel}

Alright, I'll take your word for it. Some players can't duel. I might suggest that players at high ratings know that duels aren't balanced so they don't try to optimize their skillset for duels. Would I really want to duel a DK who will AMS through my cool downs as a lock? No, that would be kind of silly. Maybe I could get a defensive AMS to prevent fear, or eat a chaos bolt before I pop my cool downs, but I'm not going to lose sleep at night if I can't 1v1 the FDK by myself if I'm at 2500 MMR (which I'm definitely not). My point is dueling is not balanced and it's different from Arenas. I don't think it's a big deal at all if anyone that is good at arenas doesn't care about dueling (not even counting healers who would have no interest in dueling).

{anecdote about how mop duels were perfectly balanced}

I liked MOP too, but I don't think a lot of people would agree that dueling was balanced (in MOP or ever).

But nevertheless, the fact that after a month or so of constant dueling I could beat pretty much anyone I came across in a 1v1 with every single dps spec meant that they were balanced enough for you to beat someone if you manage to outplay them.

Sounds like you beat the game. Grats. I highly doubt the 'every single dps spec' part, but hey, if you said it must be true

The funny part here is that for the last 2 years I have actually worked as a software developer Sure, I make mobile applications but I've got good enough of a grasp on things to tell you that updating the UI of the wargames screen with a 1v1 option and modifying an if-else statement to check only for a single opponent instead of a teammate and two opponents on the opposite party is literally minutes of work-time. It would probably require more time to test it before release than to develop it

You omitted the testing you'd be writing, the i18n/l10n efforts required, the updated test matrices their QA would have to manage, etc. Are you adding solo queue for 2s and 3s or are you actually wanting to add 1v1 arena? Are there achievments? Are there gear rewards? Weekly quests? How does MMR for 1v1 work? Do you allow queues as Healer or Tank role?

Your gross oversimplification of all of the elements involved make my point for me. Either way, it doesn't matter since neither of us works at Blizzard or has any impact on how quickly they roll out features.

First of all, nearly all classes have "literally 4 abilities" nowadays, at least rotational ones, at a handful of cds here and there as well. In WotLK frost death knights had two diseases applied by Chains of Ice/Icy Touch and Plague Strike respectively. They had frost/unholy rune dump in the face of Obliterate and blood rune dump in the face of Blood Strike. They had a runic power dump in the face of Frost Strike and Death Coil. Those were only their damage rotational abilities. They had a ton of utility spells on top of that as well and they were still considered the spec with least buttons in the game. Now they have literally 4 buttons.

All of the sudden we're only talking about 'rotational' abilities (whatever that means) and now you've thrown in a 'handful of cds here and there'. Suddenly we're not at 'literally 4'. I don't doubt that there are a lot less spells in the game, but no spec anywhere has literally 4. You're oversimplifying again to try to make your point.

Are some classes more complex than others? Absolutely. Were lots of abilities removed? Absolutely. Stop exaggerating to make your point.

I'll tell you what is depth - depth is to manage runes and not be able to spam 6 Chains of Ice right after each other because the runes have been unified. Depth is the ability to hit like a truck with Obliterate/Frost Strike when you have the correct setup for it but also have them dependant on your diseases which dispelled reduce your damage by like 50%. Depth is when you have to preemptively pop Icebound Fortitude if you don't want to get stunned instead of making it into yet another trinket.

I like the example of requiring diseases on your target to setup higher damage abilities - that to me is depth as well - like having Immolate on a target (just one dot, but similar), or windwalker mastery requiring you to alternate abilities to keep a damage buff up, etc. Cool stuff!

There are plenty of classes out there that manage similar things to what you mentioned. Like how there aren't 'rotations' anymore but instead there are priority lists - that was a pretty fun move in my opinion.

Depth is when you're playing a feral and when the Predatory Swiftness thing procs you have more than 5 choices to make - to HoT yourself (Regrowth), heal yourself (Healing Touch), Hibernate, Roots and Cyclone. Now you know you always use it for Healing Touch and you don't even have to get out of cat form for that - literally feels like playing an enhancement shaman.

Maybe you should try some of the other classes, you seem to be bored with feral/frost/ret. Maybe even switch roles if DPS is too dumb for you.

Depth is when all classes don't have the same interrupt spell on their bars. Ferals have to go into bear form to interrupt and arms warriors have to change stance from Battle Stance to interrupt.

I dunno if that really counts as depth. Changing stances was nearly instant, so interrupting was just two actions indtead of one. Seems like a nice quality of life improvement to me.

Now, playing as a ret, you're just a dumbed down damage machine that rotates bubbles until they die. And in order to heal they have a single spell at their disposal - Flash of Light, which involves no mechanics around it whatsoever.

Statements like this make me think you just play FOTM specs and haven't really played recently.

Just looking at Ret, which you brought up:

- Justicar's Vengeance - extra damage/healing on a stunned target (depth!)
- Word Of Glory
- Judgement Of Light
- Blessing Of Protection
- Holy Ritual

Not even mentioning bubble or cleanses, or the interaction between talents like Divine Punisher/Divine Purpose and holy power generation (heals and damage).

{opinion about low damage being too forgiving and somehow low damage is too simple}

Alright if you say so.

No, like I said depth is having tools and interesting mechanics. Depth is not adding more PvE spells that simply do damage. In Legion every class has an artifact weapon ability on a CD that literally does ONLY damage. What depth si that. That feels like an ultimate from a fighter game, not an ability that should be in a MMORPG.

True, I agree with you, that's not too exciting. The artifact weapons though are a big tool for devs to balance and turn knobs though. That's why they are simplified.

In WotLK rets had literally 3 rotational abilities - Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and Judgement. Yet all my 4 bar rows were full with utility spells - this is depth. Not to mention that all other specs had more rotational abilities and the same amount of utility spells. If I had to place all of my spells on the bars as a shaman, or a warlock I'd fill them in even before all the macros. Now I can't fill a single row with spells and all they do is "deals X amount of damage", "deals Y amount of damage". Great depth.

You probably need to page through your spellbook. No argument though - they removed a lot of abilities. Is needing a bunch of people to summon a Doomlord depth? Is a firestone/spellstone depth? Were shards depth? Old Healing stream and water totems were depth? They were nuisances in my opinion. Don't forget they added spells over the years as well - gateway/portal/etc.

Here I agree with you except that if you let a lock free cast Chaos Bolts into you each Chaos Bolt would hit for around 350k, which means that he would need to cast 9 of them to kill you. This is more than 10 seconds worth of Chaos Bolts Sorry but I can literally eat my breakfast in the meantime, come back at him and reset the fight entirely.

Once you hit max level Chaos bolts hit for a *little* bit more than 350k, even more so if they're popping cooldowns/zerker/potions/etc.

literally

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

{nostalgia about wotlk}

{nostalgia about being the greatest player to ever live}

first one has always been a slaughterfest where you have always been able to 1vX if you outskill/outgear people - now you don't. Lack of depth, stat templates and low damage make you just yet another sheep in the herd. There's literally no way to shine or stand out which should be completely natural in a RANDOM BG.

Ah I think we're getting to the root of the problem now. Today it's harder to go into a BG, overgear everyone and one-or-two shot your way to being a 1v7 badass. That's definitely true. You can still do some amazing things if you get a lucky group (those can be super fun!) but no, you can't go wreck undergeared folks with your OP FOTM class now. You can still roll a FOTM spec and wreck people, but they wont be vastly undergeared. You might have to press 3-4 buttons instead of 1-2.

Now everyone has mobility and the tools to CC and kite are nonexistant.

Come on even you have to agree that's a *little* exagerrated. Stuns/roots/fears are everywhere.

In WoD it was kind of the same but at least then you could outgear them and your DPS would be higher than theirs combined so you would eventually win. But now - whatever you do, they would always deal twice as much DPS as you and you wouldn't have even standed a chance.

I thought your specialty was 1v7'ing scrubs that outgeared you? I even disagree with you that an 880 geared person is not going to do twice as much damage as an 810 person in a BG. Skill might make a difference, but not gear. In that example they would do 7% more damage.

Arena skirmishes and random battlegrounds are casual solo-queues. I want ranked solo-queues.

Too bad I guess.

The group finder is good for nothing as most of the people there wouldn't even queue with you as they have a different class in mind and would most often even lie about their ratings. I want a soloqueue where I know that if I'm 2500 MMR per say I get automatically placed with people of similar MMR without having to bargain or check up on them.

Maybe you just lack the social skills to find 2500 rated players. Ask on forums for partners/teammates and find a group that way.

I won't challenge myself sh*t this expansion. I literally queued 5 times before I saw how dumb down and easy everything is.

Oh I see, you queued 5 times and then are drawing a bunch of conclusions compared to when you played FOTM classes in previous expansions. I guess we're not really having a discussion and I got tricked into feeding the troll. Nice job 8/10.

Like I said - if I wanted such gameplay I'd rather play a MOBA - LoL, Dota 2, HoN, Smite, even HotS are better than this crap. Please, you challenge yourself, go to a good populated TBC/WotLK/Cata/MoP private server and get rank 1. If you enjoy the current gameplay, and find it hard and engaging, then I could only assume that you would do absolutely terrible on there.

No thanks, I have a blast in random bgs on live as it is!

Have fun playing those other games. See ya.

[Jwowwxoxo]

^

Pretty much covered it

[Teri]

After the recent HP buffs/dps nerfs random BG pvp certainly changed, healers are much more powerful in context now having more hp to heal.

Also enjoying tank specs more as they aren't all about doing dps in BG but support/disrupt.

I don't miss one-shot pvp at all, it still pretty much can happen in open world (yes there are some pvp areas for world quests) but FFA pvp is completely different beast and often I see people only go for the objectives unless grouped up to outnumber someone or certainly outgeared by a large margin.

One shot pvp never been about being on the receiving side, but completely overpowering the opponent's lesser gear or numbers and that's still highly possible on pvp areas (at least on pve servers).

I used to 1 shot (or at least kill very fast, with the double trinket, arcane power, presence of mind+ 8 piece mage tier2 (netherwind) build back in vanilla, and that got me to Field Marshal back then when I played on US alliance.

Any non-tank was pretty much guaranteed kill, but that also means after using cooldowns you had weaknesses, no iceblock for example :P

[Deleted]

Not trolling. Just curious since I've also been noticing a big change in PVP and was curious to hear about how others felt.

While I don't question your curiosity the fact that you constantly try to provoke and oppose me even in the cases that you slightly agree with me feels quite a bit like trolling.

Alright if you say so

All I meant was that your assumption was wrong and the fact that I'm more of a family-man nowadays means for me that I've gone outside just enough. There is nothing wrong with having fond memories of games as well.

Maybe don't play high-burst classes? Try WPVP with a dot class or something. The only place that one-shotting is remotely that common is Darkbrul with zerkers. It's annoying down in that pit, but it can also be insanely fun. I was down there for about an hour yesterday with ~7-8 other players just enjoying the FFA and back-and-forth of zerking.

I've also had my share of fun down in the pit. It's definitely a cool aspect of PvP and I won't lie - I have enjoyed it. But it alone cannot satisfy me. Even as a DoT class everything feels way to overtuned, and the lack of utility spells to prevent the damage makes it feel even worse. That's why I complained about low damage in instanced PvP but I would never encourage damage buffs before some utility spells are reintroduced as well, and healing/self-healing is buffed accordingly. If only damage was increased it would become the same slaughterfest like World PvP and that's even less enjoyable.

If not a high burst class, maybe a healer would offer a different challenge.

Last time I played a healer seriously was in WotLK when you could deal decent damage numbers and support the DPS - i.e. Disc Priests and Holy Paladins (Shockadins even). Ever since Cataclysm when healers became healing-exclusive I haven't enjoyed them much. And even if I eventually tried out a healer spec in Legion I would still get bored before my subscription months ends. I don't know how to put it anymore but the gameplay just feels to shallow nowadays. In MOBAs I can't play the same character, or even role, for more than 4-5 games at a time. That's because the simplified design (3 buttons and an ultimate ability) gets me bored really fast and I need to change. With WoW I have always multi-classed as well but it wasn't until WoD when I started to barely be able to play enough games to weekly cap in arena before I got extremely bored and felt the need to play another class. Good complex class design keeps me occupied, moba-like oversimplified class design does not. And the best part about Legion is that it is so damn difficult to multiclass right now. Even if you ding 110 on most of your chars, with the premise of gear not being as important, you still don't have access to most of your honor talents right away and you need to grind so damn much Artifact Power. Honestly, every single class I've played in Legion so far got me bored before I even unlocked my final column of honor talents. Getting bored so fast simply couldn't happen to me pre-WoD.

Alright well you can still have duels like that. If all of your duels are literally over in 2 GCDs you're just too good for the game, might as well unsub.

If you just open and face-tank a feral, you're implying you're not cloning to heal up or stop heals, you're not hitting your affinity to heal/tank/cast and you're not trying to kite/avoid cooldowns/trinkets when they're popped. If that's the way you like to play duels that's totally fine, I just don't think it's the game that's different here. There are plenty of ways to duel other than face-tank and mash dps buttons.

Yes, I have unsubbed. That's the reason I'm writing here, instead of the official forums.

I've already given this example but feral vs feral in WotLK - you had to reapply Faerie Fire to not let the other feral restealth, you had to drop bleeds specifically to instant Hibernate him, heal up, attempt to DR Hibernate again near the end of it (he would either sit a DR Hibernate or would shift to caster form to prevent it leaving himself open if you manage to restealth), then Cyclone, HoT yourself some more, and then restealth as you've timed all of this with his fading Faerie Fire on you.

As a ret in WotLK/Cataclysm your wings would be dispellable so you had to stack obsolete Hands and buffs on top of yourself to prevent a mage, for example, to steal them. In WotLK you also had to wait out for the opportunity for the enemy to not have an absorb effect on himself so you can Judgement and get some mana back - otherwise you ran OOM and lost the mana war.

Hunter vs Feral in Cata - as ferals couldn't break roots apart from using Dash and Stampeding Roar anymore you had to time your Disengages, Detterances, traps, Master's Calls perfectly so that he didn't put snapshot bleeds on you (then you were f*cked). The Frenzied Regeneration spell of ferals in bear form was super OP for most people but it still offered counterplay and if you knew what you were doing was kite him away and then Scare Beast him to wait it out.

As a destruction warlock, in order to win a melee you had to time your Shadowfury, Death Coil, portal and Fears perfectly. I was beaten by many rets before I learned to play Fel Hunter against them and learned to blanket silence them in Shadowfury into a Shadowflame slow with Immolate on. That way they couldn't Hand of Freedom the stun, and were pretty much forced to Hand of Freedom the slow afterwards as they had a really slow chance of dispelling it with Cleanse due to the large amounts of debuffs already on them. Once they popped Hand of Freedom (and not to break a stun at that) you already had a great lead on them. But I've also hardly lost against any destro warlocks on my ret, either. Timing your CC, and Hand of Freedom correctly, as well as learning how to dispell Immolate the moment it gets applied before the lock could even Conflagrate it was key.

Don't get the impression that I have played only feral, ret and destro lock. I've played (and thus dueled) with all the dps specs (even all "tank specs" in WotLK). Those were just a few examples I could think of at the top of my head.

Alright, I'll take your word for it. Some players can't duel. I might suggest that players at high ratings know that duels aren't balanced so they don't try to optimize their skillset for duels. Would I really want to duel a DK who will AMS through my cool downs as a lock? No, that would be kind of silly. Maybe I could get a defensive AMS to prevent fear, or eat a chaos bolt before I pop my cool downs, but I'm not going to lose sleep at night if I can't 1v1 the FDK by myself if I'm at 2500 MMR (which I'm definitely not). My point is dueling is not balanced and it's different from Arenas. I don't think it's a big deal at all if anyone that is good at arenas doesn't care about dueling (not even counting healers who would have no interest in dueling).

Would you want to duel a DK who will AMS through your cooldowns as a lock? Well.. isn't that the challenge, though? Ever since Cataclysm the DK vs lock match-up has been pretty balanced. It was in WotLK where UH DKs had the huge upper hand. But getting to know that teleporting clears all your roots and slows (in this case 99% slow), that you should best save your Death Coil for Lichborne, that you have to focus on slows during Icebound Fortitude and try to Shadowfury before he gets enough Runic Power to pop it (before it was actually a dumb trinket that requires no Runic Power - yet again great class design) and that you can make a macro for your Fel Hunter to dispel the last magic effect from you thus rendering his silence useless could go a long way. Running around Stormwind/Orgrimmar as a warlock and never losing a duel against a DK, and then running around as a DK and never losing to a lock feels pretty good, actually.

I've always appreciated arenas but yet again, some people used to call it Player vs Box. Arena requires great teamwork but I've always, personally, found it a lot easier than dueling and open world PvP. World PvP is basically the same as arena, though you rarely have a pocket healer to account for your mistakes, and you don't only take advantage of the little box you're fighting in but rather the whole subzone, or even zone, or even world. And dueling... In arena it wouldn't really matter if you know how to counter a DK as a lock because there is always someone to heal you up, there is always someone to peel for you. You just have to communicate what's going on and rotate cds, as well as capitalize on CC correctly. In a duel it's just you, and every little nitpicky detail matters.

I liked MOP too, but I don't think a lot of people would agree that dueling was balanced (in MOP or ever).

I already said dueling was never balanced. It was just in MoP dueling was the most balanced it has ever been. And that was due to the fact that unlike WotLK where some classes were meant to counter others, in MoP everyone had nearly the same tools - everyone had 2-3 damage cooldowns, everyone had 2-3 defensive cooldowns, everyone had self-healing, everyone had 2-3 trinkets, everyone had insane mobility and everyone had an interrupt. It wasn't the most diverse and thought-out class design but at least duels were fun cause no class had a real advantage over another as they could all do everything.

Sounds like you beat the game. Grats. I highly doubt the 'every single dps spec' part, but hey, if you said it must be true

WoW is obviously a game that can never be "beaten". But I wasn't kidding on the "every single dps spec" part. I've learned how to play Demonology Warlock and Survival Hunter in WotLK. I've learned how to play Assassination Rogue and Arcane Mage in Cataclysm, etc. Literally all of them ever since the start of WotLK, and most of them (not all) in TBC.

You omitted the testing you'd be writing, the i18n/l10n efforts required, the updated test matrices their QA would have to manage, etc. Are you adding solo queue for 2s and 3s or are you actually wanting to add 1v1 arena? Are there achievments? Are there gear rewards? Weekly quests? How does MMR for 1v1 work? Do you allow queues as Healer or Tank role?

Your gross oversimplification of all of the elements involved make my point for me. Either way, it doesn't matter since neither of us works at Blizzard or has any impact on how quickly they roll out features.

We were specifically talking about 1v1 wargames. This doesn't even require a matchmaking system as it is manually joined by the two parties. It's just a way to duel with templates on as they obviously refuse to turn them on out in the open world. It being a simple wargame wouldn't need any achievements, rewards, or quests either. And not much work would be required over the i18n part as well as they already have the string "wargame" in there, and I don't think "1v1" would even have to be localized. It's literally UI with a totally reusable element + another if-else check.

All of the sudden we're only talking about 'rotational' abilities (whatever that means) and now you've thrown in a 'handful of cds here and there'. Suddenly we're not at 'literally 4'. I don't doubt that there are a lot less spells in the game, but no spec anywhere has literally 4. You're oversimplifying again to try to make your point.

Are some classes more complex than others? Absolutely. Were lots of abilities removed? Absolutely. Stop exaggerating to make your point.

By rotational abilities I mean damaging abilities that are on relatively short cooldowns. The word "rotation" originates from PvE.

Take a look at feral - pre-WoD they had Mangle, Rake, Pounce, Ravage, Shred, Ferocious Bite and Rip. After the WoD prune they were left with Rake, Shred, Ferocious Bite and Rip. That's literally 4. Most classes have no more than 4 rotational abilities nowadays.

Destruction warlocks in Cataclysm for example had Chaos Bolt, Incinerate, Immolate, Soul Fire, Searing Pain, Conflagrate, Shadowflame, Fel Flame, Corruption, Shadowburn, different Curses (Elements, Agony, etc.) and different Banes (the damaging one - Bane of Doom was it?). And here I'm not counting some spells that weren't really used (the only ones that had to be pruned for me) like Shadow Bolt. Though the instant cast proc could proc not only Incinerate but Shadow Bolt as well and you could use it instead when you were locked on fire. Still gave more options. Now destruction warlocks have literally only 4 spells - Chaos Bolt, Incinerate, Immolate and Conflagrate.

So when I use the word literally, I mean literally I mentioned "and a couple of more cds" because even cooldowns used to be alot more in the past. Ferals had Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration, Barkskin, Skull bash, Nature's Grasp, Tiger's Fury, Berserk, Incarnation, Might of Ursoc, etc. Now it's just Survival Insticts, Berserk/Incarnation, Skull Bash, and Tiger's Fury. What they should've done is make classes more diverse (remove interrupts and damage cooldowns from some of them completely) - all they did was make you have less cooldown buttons but essentially every class still feels the same. It's just that you're not engaged as much anymore, don't have so many buttons to click and the game is a lot easier.

I like the example of requiring diseases on your target to setup higher damage abilities - that to me is depth as well - like having Immolate on a target (just one dot, but similar), or windwalker mastery requiring you to alternate abilities to keep a damage buff up, etc. Cool stuff!

There are plenty of classes out there that manage similar things to what you mentioned. Like how there aren't 'rotations' anymore but instead there are priority lists - that was a pretty fun move in my opinion.

Some of the damaging rotations sure have improved over time. But that's the PvE part. The lack of buttons to press, the lack of utility, and the lack of class-identity loses me in PvP. While damage rotation mechanics have evolved over time, despite at the cost of the number of buttons to press, defensive/utility mechanics have been left behind. The honor talent system is there to fill that hole for PvPers but it's not nearly enough as so much is removed yet it offers mostly passive bonuses and choices between abilities instead of offering them all at once. And even those mechanics that actually come back as honor talents (i.e. Anti Magic Zone, Necrotic Strike, e tc..) have been dumbed down beyond belief.

Maybe you should try some of the other classes, you seem to be bored with feral/frost/ret. Maybe even switch roles if DPS is too dumb for you.

I've said it so many times yet it didn't manage to get through to you - ever since the start of WotLK I've played every single dps spec. The ones I didn't I later played the hell out of in private servers. I've always multiclassed and even though I've stuck the most to ret and feral pre-WoD this doesn't mean I haven't had plenty of game-time on other classes/specs as well. And in Legion mutliclassing is hard. Before I grind out the honor and artifact power needed to fully use my class (cause I could care less about gear but I care a lot about access to abilities - be it passive or active) I'd be bored as hell. Even in WoD when I actually managed to multiclass I got bored of every single class/spec in less than a month. The only thing that kept me there actually was the seal-changing spec of rets which unlike anything other in this pathetic expansion allowed me to be constantly engaged with swapping seals. Was a lot of fun in World PvP and duels. Now that's gone as well - the sole thing I liked about WoD

And I already told you about my view on healers - ever since the focus was shifted to healing-exclusive they've been no fun to me. And since late Cataclysm tanks have had no place in PvP as well, apart from the occasional RBG.

I dunno if that really counts as depth. Changing stances was nearly instant, so interrupting was just two actions indtead of one. Seems like a nice quality of life improvement to me.

Adding a second step is always depth. You change stances nearly instantly but you lose all your rage, and if you've specced into a certain talent - most of your rage at least. Your defensives and Spell Reflect are on Defensive Stance, your main damage is in Battle Stance, you have to switch to Berserker Stance in order to use your second charge or interrupt. The making of a macro to switch your weapons was the annoying part though we could still argue that it also increased the skill cap by itself and they could improve on that instead of removing the whole thing straight away.

Statements like this make me think you just play FOTM specs and haven't really played recently.

Just looking at Ret, which you brought up:

- Justicar's Vengeance - extra damage/healing on a stunned target (depth!)
- Word Of Glory
- Judgement Of Light
- Blessing Of Protection
- Holy Ritual

Not even mentioning bubble or cleanses, or the interaction between talents like Divine Punisher/Divine Purpose and holy power generation (heals and damage).

How could I only play "FotM specs" when I've always played everything, lol? And yes, I unsubbed in 7.1 and haven't returned since. 7.1.5 gave me a premise of hope but it turned out to be little of improvement. All I play now is the PTR and now you can't even create max level character templates and literally noone queues yet duels are obsolete cause of no stat templates so it's a downer as well.

1. Justicar's Vengeance promotes using offense for deffense, as well as using stuns as often as possible to mongo damage instead for CC. Reminds me of WoD feral druids that in order to self heal had to pop Incarnation and Nature's Vigil literally healing from their damage. It supported a playstyle that was completely mongo. I'd much rather have my Repentance back on top of my stun, and Seal of Justice, as well as the "slow-from-Judgement" glyph, and kite my target away in order to heal up instead of unleashing my PvE damage fest on him in order to do so. That's not "depth", that doesn't require any skill whatsoever. It's mongo af.

2. Word of Glory was nerfed into oblivion and 2 charges on a minute cd each feel more like a pathetic Lay of Hands than a useful utility spell. Why do you think literally noone is picking it, even after the 7.1.5 buffs?

3. Judgement of Light tries to reintroduce an old WotLK mechanic but the healing is so pathetic that it's completely useless in PvP.

4. Blessing of Protection is literally the only cool mechanic for paladins this expansion. Hurray!

5. Holy Ritual - cast a blessing and get healed, blessing ends - you get healed again. This is picked only because of the synergy with Blessing of Protection. But one good mechanic doesn't really make the cut. 1v1s and 2v2s without a healer are still a damage-fest. The fact that there's a talent that auto-bubbles you is pathetic in itself. I'd much rather have constant self-healing and utility potential because that has always been the ret fantasy since WotLK. You can't outlast anyone in a 1v1 with Holy Ritual and the dumb Justicar's Vengeance alone - you can only delay the enemy's DPS getting to you while pumping constant DPS at him as well, like yet another mongoloid.

Frankly enough, Holy Power management has been more fun in every other expansion. Even in Cataclysm when people complained that nearly the same Divine Purpose mechanic was completely RNG-based. There were a lot more buttons to press that did a lot more meaningful things and overall it was a lot more enjoyable. Yet, even pre-Cataclysm rets were fun even absent Holy Power.

You probably need to page through your spellbook. No argument though - they removed a lot of abilities. Is needing a bunch of people to summon a Doomlord depth? Is a firestone/spellstone depth? Were shards depth? Old Healing stream and water totems were depth? They were nuisances in my opinion. Don't forget they added spells over the years as well - gateway/portal/etc.

Here I agree with you. All of these were nuisances and while they felt good and interesting 10 years ago they would be completely obsolete now. But note that MoP already pruned all of those. For me MoP did a wonderful job of pruning said nuisances. It broke quite a few things as well but WoD and Legion should've simply fixed them or improved on them. It was the pruning that happened in WoD and continued in Legion that is the problem. And a lot more than those nuisances you mentioned were pruned. My whole post gives examples of them so I'm not gonna list any now.

Once you hit max level Chaos bolts hit for a *little* bit more than 350k, even more so if they're popping cooldowns/zerker/potions/etc.

No, Chaos Bolt is so pathetic that even after the latest 8%, was it, buff it's still crap. In a recent 7.1.5 hotfix it was nerfed by 10% in PvP and another 25% has been taken away from the Focus Chaos talent. It hits for 350k, and if you see a slightly bigger number it's cause of the even more stupid RNG mastery. But on average - it's pretty much 350k. Destruction warlocks are viable now in 3s not because of Chaos Bolt. They use Chaos Bolt only to refund mana, lol. They are viable because of a Fire and Brimstone/Cremation (even after its nerf) build that LITERALLY revolves around a single spell - Incinerate. They have 3 spells in this expansions but this spec makes even Immolate and Chaos Bolt obsolete so they are left with one spell and it's Incinerate, lol. And all they do is spam it over and over again like a mongoloid until someone flops. Even rank 1 players (a rating that is clearly beyond you as you clearly said you've never even been at 2500 MMR) don't bother to Fear because if they CC a target with the breakable Fear, the DPS would drop.

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

Oh, I know.

Ah I think we're getting to the root of the problem now. Today it's harder to go into a BG, overgear everyone and one-or-two shot your way to being a 1v7 badass. That's definitely true. You can still do some amazing things if you get a lucky group (those can be super fun!) but no, you can't go wreck undergeared folks with your OP FOTM class now. You can still roll a FOTM spec and wreck people, but they wont be vastly undergeared. You might have to press 3-4 buttons instead of 1-2.

Like I already said - I enjoy 1v3ing equally geared players. Gear disparity just makes it so I can even 1v7. But I obviously can't 1v7 now cause of the stat templates. I can't 1v3 either cause there's no tools available to outplay said 3 players. At most I can 1v2 and that's provided the 2 people are completely braindead.

Grinding honor and artifact power is much worse than grinding gear, trust me.

Come on even you have to agree that's a *little* exagerrated. Stuns/roots/fears are everywhere.

Actually they aren't. In MoP they overdid it (it was still fun, though) but now all that matters is DPS and there's little to no emphasis on CC.

I thought your specialty was 1v7'ing scrubs that outgeared you? I even disagree with you that an 880 geared person is not going to do twice as much damage as an 810 person in a BG. Skill might make a difference, but not gear. In that example they would do 7% more damage.

They would have 7% more stats, not do 7% more damage. Every time I've joined a BG this expansion I've done the most damage, even though often times i've had a 0% increase to the template from gear, little to no honor talents and the enemy team has eventually won. But how does this matter? Like I said a million times already - outgearing someone just pushed the 1vX element further. The main reason I can't 1vX now is that I can't outplay anyone as the classes lack any "outplay tools". For example, using rating as simply a tool for comparison - if I was, say, 2900 rated in WotLK, I could 1v3 three people that were 2500. Now, even if I'm 2800, 1v2ing two 1500 rated people would be much harder because the skill gap just isn't there anymore.

Maybe you just lack the social skills to find 2500 rated players. Ask on forums for partners/teammates and find a group that way.

No, I don't. And it's still an unnecessary struggle. Pushing a single button nowadays and getting matched will be a lot easier. If the game's gonna be a MOBA than at least make it like a MOBA. No-one formed parties by themselves in order to queue in a MOBA game since the DotA Allstar days. It's all automatic.

Oh I see, you queued 5 times and then are drawing a bunch of conclusions compared to when you played FOTM classes in previous expansions. I guess we're not really having a discussion and I got tricked into feeding the troll. Nice job 8/10.

Not even sure how I became the troll there but okay. I literally said 30 times that I've played every single spec in the game but somehow now it turns out I've only played the FotM ones. Were they all FotM then? And yes, 5 times is more than enough. I'm not saying I even lost a game in those 5 matches. All I'm saying was that the gameplay isn't fun to me as it used to be. I've watched plenty of streams as well... and even watching it isn't fun. Sorry.

Have fun playing those other games. See ya.

Not playing anything since Legion came out, honestly. If it gets into at least a semi-playable state, I might resub. Until then I won't be playing anything, I'm afraid. But thanks anyway.

[Matthias]

The only thing I can vibe with you on is WPvP and Duels. The fact that templates aren't active in duels is absurd. I learned so much from dueling other people, you have to wonder how much PvP. WPvP I still personally have a blast in, it's supposed to be rawr and chaotic and it still is. Sure I may get caught off guard and blown to bits, but that's kind of always been a thing. Once I ress I'm coming for them.

The fact that WPvP and Dueling are in the state that they're in though makes you wonder if Holinka is even really a PvPer.

I'm open to the idea of a Solo Queue 3v3 or 2v2 Arena. Their just needs to be an individual ladder for each class spec, since some specs can function better independently. Reality is that if your good in PvP you'll win most of your games regardless of a lack of coordination.

Problem is WoW is an MMORPG and I really don't like the idea of solo play being encouraged. However with Xrealm and Group Finder it's very hard to find a constant dedicated group of teammates to play with. Before you were on an Arena Team and you either had to stick it out and improve together or join a new team with a fresh rating.

[jontunnel130]

Blowing up someone when you simply outgear them is no fun. Back in the LK days I remember it took couple days before you got enough gear for resilience so you don't get one or two shotted from Rets, Rogues and Destro Locks. That wasn't fun at all.

Right now you can get into BG's or arena and survive much longer (Skill > gear).

No offense but that's the way it should be. Most of the specs today are much more balanced, just look at how many different specs are in high lvl arenas.

Personally, I have to disagree.

I think you should have to gear up and farm your pvp gear. By the time they added the "daily" bonus honor stuff and quests, you could literally get 3 pieces lickety split. Not to mention it wasnt that hard before....You just had to put the work in and when you reached your end "goal" finally done farming honor moment it felt like something you dont get from legion...accomplishment.

For me though I did not care that i was max geared out I would que nonstop because it was fun. Carrying teams to wins, or little victories within a bg.

Now the thought to que doesnt even cross my mind. Nothing matters anymore.

Also, I am firmly in the position of pvp or pve gear should be so inadequate when wearing it for the opposite setting, whether that be pvp gear in pve or vice-versa, equal ilvl gear output potential should be halved. Bring back the "pvp stat" idgaf if its resilience though pvp power seemed better as it was double edged. Templates and class carving need to go.

[Speaknoevil]

That stuff on your list was never really cared about by actual PvPers. It is all the stuff that happens outside of arena and casuals care about.

[NZod]

Haven't logged into this site in ages, but I had to find my login details again just so I can give my two cents.

I haven't liked PvP since Vanilla. No expansion since Vanilla has reignited the passion I had for PvP back in my Vanilla days. On my main, I only managed to make it to Rank 10 over the course of the game but it was the absolute most fun experience I ever had in WoW to this day. Why? Because of every step of it, really. From the first moment I began to PvP and got continually one shot by raiders and high ranked PvPers, to the moment I got the full blue PvP set and earned my first epic, the Unstoppable Force. When the tables turned and it was me holding my own, it was me that was geared just enough to manage to dish out damage that swiftly ended the lesser geared folk, and also proved geared enough to stand toe to toe with the other geared characters.

The OP mentioned he missed one shots, and I wholeheartedly do aswell. But what I miss isn't simply the act of oneshotting, it was the climb, it was the journey to being strong. Getting killed over and over again by those people that had those rarely seen purple items back in the day, from seeing what their spent time doing PvP and raids awarded them with, it was fuel for me. I said, "hey, I want that stuff, I want to be that strong, I want that kind of power" and I was determined to get it. Balance was irrelevant, skill was irrelevant (though it did come eventually, naturally, through constant pvp), the only thing that was important was the climb, was that piece of gear on the horizon you were working to get that would make you just that much stronger.

Where one day, with enough time, with enough effort and perseverance, you have the power to dish out the oneshots, you became feared and the reason for the next person to say "hey, I want that power".

The moment WoW turned away from that, the magic of PvP was lost to me. Wanting fairness is reasonable, wanting balance is reasonable, but I'm fine with being unreasonable. The days when PvP was all about gear was the most fun, both when I was getting stomped and when I was doing the stomping. It had meaning, it had purpose. Now? I just don't see the point in any of it.

That's my point of view, as an old Vanilla PvPer. While I don't share all of OP's opinions, I do share this one.