BfA PvP predictions

[Knolan]

So BfA is around the corner and I don't believe the PvP is assembled (number will change and maybe abilities after the expansion lauches).
The predictions here are based on the meta, not on actual numbers, it may be that we see a class doing broken damage and dominating the later against all odds (see hunters on the start of MoP for an example).

My predictions are:
- Arms warriors will be the best overall class of the game on release, right now they have pretty good overall toolkit (healing reduction, nice mobilities, great defensives) a very good CC with ranged undispellable stun with storm bolt and, most importantly, the best anti cc kit in the game (blade storm, avatar, spell reflection and berserker rage, option to play gnome, undead or human).
- Combat rogue will come as a close second, bringing a lot of control (gauge, blind and between the eyes) and overall a lot of versatility. They can even play a pretty good "buff" build (prey the weak + thick as thieves + take yout cut).
- Demo lock CC removal if playing with imp and netherward looks like a very interesting combination, not how it will play of, but one I am curious to see.
- Unless DKs bring an insane amount of damage, they won't be very strong as most of their toolkit has been pruned at this point.
- Monks have been hit very hard on the CC department, not sure if they will be able to recover. To be honest, I don't see many reasons to bring a monk in place of a demon hunter (who has an offensive dispel in addition to the same CC).

So, what are your predictions?

[rda]

My predictions are short:

1. PVP is going to be practiced by about as many people as now = very few. They ruined PVP in Legion by their changes to gearing / rewards and specs, and they are not undoing these changes, in some cases doubling down on them. What they are calling "conquest" in BFA isn't what was being called conquest before, etc.

2. The expansion overall will be received worse than Legion was and after a very short peak, the game will continue to be losing players. This will multiply the effect of 1 and the ladder size will reduce even lower than it is now - perhaps to half of what it is now. The effect might be partly hidden by changes to the rating system which might be using opaque names like "diamond" instead of clear numbers like 0.1% of the qualifying players, but we will still perhaps get to know the final numbers from third-party trackers.

3. War mode is going to produce some enthusiasm early on, then people will quickly figure out that world PVP is shit and war mode isn't really making it non-shit, and they will stop talking about war mode altogether. War mode is a welcome addition, but mostly only in that you can use it to turn PVP off on PVP servers, that's about it.

4. PVP mode for islands is going to add exactly nothing. If you can queue as a group and if the rewards from PVP islands are greater than from mythic islands, maybe some people will run it, but without ratings this is just going to be skirmishes, and with ratings this is going to be a weird type of arenas.

That's about it. It isn't interesting to be discussing specs whatsoever because (a) they are trash, we just had another round of mini-prunes on top of Legion ones, and (b) there are multiple elephants in the room which make this pointless. It's like discussing which color of a tie would fit a dead body lying in a coffin better.

[Osmeric]

Casual PvP will remain moribund.

[Kanariya]

Melee will continue to be OP in both damage and extreme mobility. Casters will continue to be tissue-paper level trash with the exception of Frost Mages maybe.

[Nathasil]

The two main differences between Legion & BFA when it comes to PvP are:
1) gear matters again
2) Warmode

@1: I think back in the days of Honor Points and PvP vendors and PvP specific gear a lot of players participated to collect the current PvP Set, even if it was useless for their PvE activities. I know i did...and some of my friends did as well. It was really awesome to see how with each piece of gear you swapped and resilliece you gained how much tougher you became. At least for me. Of course, after i had all the pieces from the honor vendor i stopped...but that was still WAY more PvP than i would ever do in Legion without these systems.
BFA lets gear matter again but there is no vendor and no PvP specific gear....it's just another source of "random" loot, like M+ and anything else. That has absoluetly no appeal for me.

@2: I believe warmode would be great without factions. I do not think it will work very well with factions. In other expansions Blizzard could have easily made warmode FFA...but BFA is a FACTION BASED expansion...it would be totally weired to make the prime new PvP mode FFA in an expansion like that. But this is how they wanted it...so have at it, i suppose.
Depending on the rewards i MAY occasionally sign up for a 40man premade to sit at some portal-point for the opposite faction to slaughter them while they are still in loading screen (or shortly after, because of the protection buff you get from loading screens...), but given how the system EXTREMELY incentivises you to group up and hunt for other players i see absolutely no point in turning the mode on when i just want to worldquest and NOT actively hunt for other players. And therefore i believe the mode will be overrun by "hunting parties" (mostly on one faction) which will quickly drive out any "normal" players who just want to get some worldquests done with the old PvP-Server feeling.

[twistedmynd]

And now for a rare glimmer of optimism amongst a sea of negativity:

• The better gear hooks players like the Legion M+ system did. We have a mass conversion of people who would otherwise not participate in rated pvp filling up their conq bars every week.
• The flavor abilities that were added back make for a more interesting team compositions that hard counter other comps. Instead of rock, paper, scissors we go back to rock, paper, scissors, spock, lizard. Just like the meta from the first 12 arena seasons (bc-cata).
• The class design team appropriately balances the classes as they enter the first season with no runaway, imbalanced, overpowered dps.
• A few pvp talents maybe get tweaked or a few new ones are added that allows for your class to have new hard counters or escape other class's that hard counter you.
• Healing isn't pure obliteration because cooldown stacking isn't a thing anymore. No more does a match revolve around fixed timed "goes" that match your dps cds. Mana wars becomes a way to win, but so does strategic burst or cross cc's.
• World pvp isn't 1 shots or ridiculous gameplay. The warmode breathes new life into it. People spend hours just running around in packs slaughtering one another.
• Duels become really popular outside the new city capitals. The single player arena brings people to the location and organically, everyone hanging out there get's into silly dick wagging contests and duel all day and night.
• The island expeditions find a new audience of casual pvp'ers and turns out to be much more fun than previous attempts at 3 group content.
• Random bg's aren't faction imbalanced anymore because everyone wants to do their daily win and racials aren't so tilted towards one side. Everyone get's fast queues and every map is much closer to a 50/50 win rate.

[wholol]

And now for a rare glimmer of optimism amongst a sea of negativity:

• The better gear hooks players like the Legion M+ system did. We have a mass conversion of people who would otherwise not participate in rated pvp filling up their conq bars every week.
• The flavor abilities that were added back make for a more interesting team compositions that hard counter other comps. Instead of rock, paper, scissors we go back to rock, paper, scissors, spock, lizard. Just like the meta from the first 12 arena seasons (bc-cata).
• The class design team appropriately balances the classes as they enter the first season with no runaway, imbalanced, overpowered dps.
• A few pvp talents maybe get tweaked or a few new ones are added that allows for your class to have new hard counters or escape other class's that hard counter you.
• Healing isn't pure obliteration because cooldown stacking isn't a thing anymore. No more does a match revolve around fixed timed "goes" that match your dps cds. Mana wars becomes a way to win, but so does strategic burst or cross cc's.
• World pvp isn't 1 shots or ridiculous gameplay. The warmode breathes new life into it. People spend hours just running around in packs slaughtering one another.
• Duels become really popular outside the new city capitals. The single player arena brings people to the location and organically, everyone hanging out there get's into silly dick wagging contests and duel all day and night.
• The island expeditions find a new audience of casual pvp'ers and turns out to be much more fun than previous attempts at 3 group content.
• Random bg's aren't faction imbalanced anymore because everyone wants to do their daily win and racials aren't so tilted towards one side. Everyone get's fast queues and every map is much closer to a 50/50 win rate.

That's hopeful at best,it'll be exactly like legion and the actual problem doesn't lie in the gear or cd stacking, pvp is boring af scripted gameplay ( especially in arenas).

Here's what going to happen in bfa:

Arcane is broken on beta , rogue is strong af on beta, guess what's gonna happen ?

RMP again ! this will be so much fun.

And then you will have some LSD and other locks comps who try to counter rmp, then you will have melee cleaves to drink those tasty lock tears and jungle/php.

Guess what, same comps as legion in 3v3.

Which means the balance is about the same, the gameplay will be the same minus some minor class changes which will have no impact on direct pvp gameplay much.

The new pvp system is just shiny hat tricks meant to make it seem like actual change.

BFA is legion 2.0 for pvp, people who believe otherwise are delusional.

I'm not trying to sound negative, there's a difference between negativity and truth, gotta stop chasing that carrot. It's been dangling in front of our faces for years now, gotta wake up eventually.

PS: i'm not directing this at just you, mainly at anyone who thinks bfa pvp will actually be different than legion.

[Mafic]

PVP will probably be the best way to obtain an epic weapon in BFA via conquest which may anger some PVE raiding/mythic players. Epic battlegrounds will have their own queue as well as other battlegrounds which will award conquest as well as the warmode system, arena and the rated scene.

Gear and trinkets mattering in PVP again is a big deal as well as enchants and gemming.

The downside to BFA PVP is PVE class design is mediocre but the PVP honor talent system will be enough to hide the warts.

[Osmeric]

PVP will probably be the best way to obtain an epic weapon in BFA via conquest which may anger some PVE raiding/mythic players. Epic battlegrounds will have their own queue as well as other battlegrounds which will award conquest as well as the warmode system, arena and the rated scene.

Gear and trinkets mattering in PVP again is a big deal as well as enchants and gemming.

The downside to BFA PVP is PVE class design is mediocre but the PVP honor talent system will be enough to hide the warts.

I get the feeling the PvP reward system in Legion was hobbled by a requirement that there be nothing driving PvE players to do PvP, if they didn't want to PvP.

[Mafic]

Queued / unrated pvp will not give conquest points. Hazzikostas only talked about rated pvp.

Quote WoWHead on Conquest points:

Conquest Points
One of the biggest complaints from the Legion changes to PvP was about the RNG when receiving loot. In order to fix that, Blizzard is re-introducing the Conquest Points, which will be a deterministic method to receive PvP-oriented gear. Every week you will be requested to earn a certain amount of Conquest Points and, when doing so, you will receive a piece of gear. When you're finished with a set, you can move on to acquiring a higher tier of armor. Blizzard also noted that there will be ways to skip ahead, if you're a Gladiator-type player, to shoot for the top gear.

Conquest Points will be obtained by doing PvP activities similar to how it was gained in the past, but also from new sources:

Rated Arenas
Rated Battlegrounds
Unrated Battlegrounds (Light Cap)
Epic Battlegrounds (Weekly Quest)
World PvP activities

The "Light cap" means, you can not replay random battlegrounds and put in effort for conquest but just would have to win one per day to get a fixed amount of points. Example: Your bar is at 1000 conquest points, and you get 20 conquest for a daily random battlleground win.. which means, you would have to play 50 days one random battleground a day to get conquest gear.. which is not really useful character progression.

Epic battlegrounds only allow you to do one weekly quest to gain conquest points. Which is even worse than the daily conquest cap in random battlegrounds.

Again, casual pvp will be lackluster in BfA, as like it was in Legion. As there is no real useful character progression.

Noone i knows plays rated battlegrounds. And noone i knows plays rated arena. And they never will, no matter how many epics these components will drop.

And warmode? No, thank you. Not in a warmode which favors organized groups and does not seperate solo players from premade groups. I am not playing cannon fodder for mythic nolifers.

These are all good point but the tuning of conquest rewards hasn't been set in stone yet. At the moment warmode is very lucrative but if that turns out to be the case I can see Blizz increasing the amount of conquest for rated and unrated BGs and arenas and nerfing warmode loot from defeated marked Assassins.

We will have to just see how it turns out!

- - - Updated - - -

I get the feeling the PvP reward system in Legion was hobbled by a requirement that there be nothing driving PvE players to do PvP, if they didn't want to PvP.

Of course but I think Blizz finally accepted that the pool of players that dabble in both PVE and PVP are driven by gear rewards.

[Rucati]

Arenas might be fun, without CD stacking hopefully the games slow down a little bit and become less "CC the healer for 5 seconds and instantly kill something" and more of bouncing between targets and chaining CC with less tunnel vision.

The rest of PvP I don't know about, but seeing as how BGs are the most boring thing ever and world PvP has been a mess since vanilla I don't expect anything good from either of those. In all honesty I kind of know arenas will still be terrible, but I'm still kind of hopeful that arenas get back to BC/Wrath levels of fun, at least for a few months at some point in the expansion.

[Osmeric]

Did you even read what i wrote? Unrated battlegrounds give one daily low conquest point reward for the first won battleground. And nothing more. You are not able to farm conquest points with normal battlegrounds.

This is how it worked in Cataclysm and MoP, right? Or did Tol Barad give CP in Cataclysm...?

[Osmeric]

You do remember that Honor allowed you to buy gear as well?

Not very good gear, though. It was really just starter gear, and now would not be much of a incentive to PvP.

[Mafic]

Did you even read what i wrote? Unrated battlegrounds give one daily low conquest point reward for the first won battleground. And nothing more. You are not able to farm conquest points with normal battlegrounds.

And it is even worse with epic battlegrounds. They only have one weekly quest.

The best solution would be to give a small amount of conquest points from every battleground won. That would honor effort.

They could do a tiny amount of conquest per unrated arena and BG, but PVE players would complain that they are forced to do such content for a guarantee at epic weapons.

Obtaining an epic PVP quality weapon with a guarantee within a month and a half of game play is better than what I am seeing for loot drops in BFA PVE. BFA PVE weapon drops being part of the loot tables will make it very hard to obtain a weapon so PVP players having guaranteed weapon within a 1 1/2 month is way ahead of the PVE player base as they are stuck with RNG.

But since the PVP seasons for BFA are going to be double the length of Legion aka returning to old PVP length seasons a grind of 1 1/2 month for an epic weapon is not a long time.

Six weeks give or take isn't a long time as in the past the average time to obtain an epic PVP weapon was roughly 4 weeks. At this point they could bump up the reward for the weekly epic BGs and daily and hit the 4-5 week mark easily.

[Kyphael]

I think the extra incentives will encourage people to toggle world pvp on. Sure, maybe they'll give up after they get tired of the extra effort of looking over their shoulder, but I personally will toggle it on just for fun. I've never played on a pvp server, only done battle grounds and dipped my toes into 2v2 arena, but now I can stay on my home realm and engage in some world pvp while questing? I'll bring a whole new experience to my play time this expansion I've never had before and I personally can't wait. So even if the lore/expansion itself disappoints, at least from that aspect I'll have done something new.

[Mafic]

Not as long PVE would yield better stats for PVE. And PVP would yiield better stats for PVP. Also, nowadays organized pve players do not feel forced to play LFR anymore. Probably the itemization ladder for conquest would stop at LFR gear for someone who only plays matchmade battlegrounds.

Well LFR loot on the BFA beta is very high at the moment and the rewards for mythic+ seem lucrative compared to raiding. I do not know how the final loot tables will look for PVE but I do know that weapon upgrades are very scarce on the beta at the moment.

Loot boxes will drop in PVP still but what isn't clear is if PVP weapons will be part of the loot table now (eg honor and conquest quality). Also how muhc will the honor weapons titanforge relative to the conquest weapons? No one is sure for now. And will we be able to break down the PVP gear to obtain what we want from a vendor?

We have some idea of how it will work in that in WoD boxes would drop from green honor weapons up to blue honor weapons. The gearing of honor right now is less clear than conquest and the rated scene. Just have to see what ends up happening the next month when loot tables are updated.

[Nerovar]

Here's my prediction: Gearing will be just as shitty as in Legion because they removed the distinction between PvE and PvP gear. This will once again result in a gearing system that has to be lacklustre, slow and shitty in regards to other aspects (such as questionable secondary stats like in Legion) because they can't allow PvP to be a viable option when it comes to obtaining high quality PvE gear. It will never work as long as there's no distinction because Blizzard will never ever "force" PvE players to play PvP in order to get gear more quickly (so it will be the other way around).

Balance will be same as in Legion (since they didn't change much when it comes to classes). Gameplay will be even more scripted and alot slower than in Legion. Certain specs (e.g. WW) will probably lose their niche unless they get some overtuned seasons (like Frost DKs get every once in a while).

Dueling will be back (which is cool I guess...). Warmode is not a real feature (and it will probably kill the PvP population on my realm since it's an RP-PvP realm). Island expeditions will be uninteresting because of the reward structure I mentioned.

Overall it will be pretty shit.

[Mafic]

I just double checked the beta and the blue PVP weapon is the first thing you unlock at level 1 and it requires 20 conquest points.

[Defias-Pillager]

The state of PVP hinges on whether or not Warlocks are still retards that sit in the middle of a map and ED-209 you.

[lunethzero]

Same as legion i think. theres nothing much ive seen that will change things dramatically. Ret still feels like a wheelchair spec, mages will still be the best caster. No real rewards and incentives to pvp for real aside from a minimal amount of junk. The overall state will be largely ignored. etc etc etc.