Page 1 of 2
1
2
LastLast
  1. #1

    PVP: gearing and other pitfalls.

    So I've played this game for a while now, and I feel like there are a number of things that come up almost every expansion and cause problems. So I wanted to point them out and maybe offer some ideas for solutions.

    1. Gearing

    Issue: There's usually two forces pulling Blizzard to two different sides. On the one hand you want balanced PVP where skill matters most, and on the other people want a degree of progress and customization in PVP. Separate from that, almost universally, PVP'ers want the best PVP gear to come from accomplishments in PVP.

    Solution: First off, let's have a PVP stat, because I think the game hasn't managed at any point or in any of the iterations managed to do better than BC when it comes to desirability of PVP gear for PVP.

    I think a PVP damage reduction stat is the better choice, with damage/pacing in PVP being balanced around two players fighting each other in PVP gear. The reason a PVP damage reduction stat is better than a damage increasing stat is because you want things in any type of gear to die when fighting each other. Too low damage is a lot worse for the game than too high damage.

    I think the way to approach it is to have PVP gear use 5% of their primary stat budget and transfer it into the new Resilience stat. Resilience should then offer damage reduction equal to 3 times the value of what the same amount of primary stat would grant. So for example a PVE and PVP version of an item would be different only in the following way:

    PVE Item: 100 STR + 20 secondaries
    PVP Item: 95 STR + 20 secondaries + 15 PVP resilience
    Where 15 resilience cancels out 15 Str.

    So basically PVP geared vs PVE geared you end up with roughly a 10% net benefit to damage in vs damage out. This should make the effect limited enough to not entirely impede progress, but still sufficient to make it desireable.

    Balancing should also keep this in mind, if at any point the prevailing strategy of any class or spec overwhelmingly leans to using PVE gear over PVP gear at high ratings, that could be an indication the class has too much baseline survivability (as a combined factor of their mobility, CC and damage reductions) and should be a reason to make balancing changes to that spec or class.

    Finally, PVP gear should have an ILVL equal to the highest PVE Ilvl at a rating of 2200, not only is 2200 probably more rare and difficult for a single person to achieve than completing the highest level of PVE content, lowering it from 2400 means that those competing for the highest level of titles will be able to do so on an equal playing field, as they will have unlocked the highest tier of gear 200 rating before. Because of the re-introduction of Resilience and the budgeting I described, PVP gear would still be slightly inferior to PVE gear in PVE at an equal ILVL.


    2. Selfhealing and mobility.

    The number one thing that has bothered me in the most recent expansions is how spells like frostbolt, shadowbolt, incinerate and many DoTs seem to have zero effect in terms of moving health bars. It's often been said that damage is too cooldown based, which is true, but the issue also has to do with passive healing and shielding effects.

    Not only do these spells do too little damage in the first place, that damage is also entirely cancelled out by passive healing and shielding. Basically, the bucket is being refilled at the same rate which it is being emptied when casting these weak "filler" spells, leading to a net effect of zero. It also results in making things more bursty when CDS are active because the passive heal rate is then so far exceeded that it has no time to fill the bucket at all, making it meaningless in those situations.

    Passive healing from experience is too high when its at or above 0.5% of a characters health every second, and made worse when the character in question has high mobility.

    In shadowlands this means I expect certain Soulbind Conduits to be problematic, for example:
    Recuperator for rogues, which generates 0.5% HP per second while slice n dice is active (almost always), increased for higher levels of the conduit.
    Similarly I think Tempest Barrier for mages could be problematic, granting a shield passively on every blink, going up to 15% of their maximum health at the highest rank of Conduit. Basically 60% of a healthstone every time you Blink..

    Solution:

    Cut down on selfhealing in through passive and instant heals, especially for mobile classes like DH's, Rogues, Monks, Ferals and Mages. Self healing can exist but it needs counterplay, like kick vs drain life. Or require a significant resource (Word of Glory) or time investment (like the old Soul Harvest 9 sec channel heal for locks in cataclysm). As a rule of thumb, cut or change any effect that works out to grant more than 0.3% of max hp/sec on a mobile class. Or over 0.5% on an immobile class.

    3. Healers are too strong.

    The fact that 2v2 requires dampening levels of roughly 25-60+% just for teams with healers to begin to be killable in that format is a clear sign that they're broken in general. There's no dampening in other situations so clearly if that's the amount of healing reduction required to make anything happen against them the game is fundamentally flawed.

    Solution:

    Healers need to be weakened. Most healers are simply far too survivable. Let things die. It's absolutely outrageous that a 20 year old game like classic has healers in a more healthy spot than BFA. They're useful, even required for successful BGS but they can actually die fairly easily too when caught.

    I understand that if you're a priest facing something like a DH in 2's right now you're wondering how well such a nerf would work out. But if DH's didn't have insane self-healing combined with mobility as per the previous point they wouldn't actually be able to tunnel you down and follow you permanently with no concern for their own survival.

    UPDATE (17 September):
    Blizzard created an update post with a new proposed solution to the gearing problem: The idea is to make the PVP trinket set bonus improve the damage and healing granted by versatility and add versatility to every PVP piece. There are some issues with that proposed solution.

    1. Itemlevel is not mentioned which is a major cause for concern. If Mythic raid gear is higher ilvl than PVP gear then any such gear with versatility on it is going to outclass PVP gear still.

    As I've stated before, I believe 2200 should be the rating at which a PVPer gains access to the best possible PVP gear so they can compete on an equal playing field for the highest level of rewards (gladiator titles and above). That means that we should be getting Mythic raid level gear at 2200 rating under this proposed solution. That might pose a problem for PVE'rs if it turns out versatility is the best or second best stat for any spec.

    2. Having PVP trinkets buff only damage necessarily means that damage while not wearing those trinkets is going to be lower. Since I assume PVP is going to be balanced around people wearing their PVP trinkets, that means that any form of PVP where someone isn't wearing their PVP trinkets is probably going to feel shitty or slow because nothing will die. I've always felt that for worldpvp and PVP in general its better for damage to be too high rather than too low at a baseline, which is why I suggested the PVP stat be damage taken reduction rather than a damage done increase.

    To sum it up, I still think my proposed solution is still better overall. But I can see some merit in putting extra weight on PVP trinkets, since trinkets have often been especially problematic in the past.
    Last edited by Warning; 2020-09-16 at 11:03 PM.

  2. #2
    Yes to everything.

    Few people want to admit that healers are too strong in PvP. Why? In most random bgs, they get zerged. But WHY do they get zerged? Why do teams tunnel all the way to the healer in the back, risking death to get there? Because they're undeniably overpowered. 1 or 2 heals can negate damage I did over the span of a full minute, and there's often nothing I can do about it.

    Health relative to damage is way too high. Think back to Wrath, where you could chunk a guy who didn't play intelligently for a third of his health. Pop your offensives, and if he doesn't react with his defensives, he dies. Now he can live long enough to react, or get bailed out by a healer, even though he definitively misplayed that situation. Time to kill needs to be much much lower. I don't want to spend a solid minute fighting a person, especially when it takes a mere 3 seconds to undo everything I've done.

  3. #3
    Healers are not as strong as they used to be in WotLK/Cata/MoP but on the other hand each heal is too potent now which promote the ping pong effect we see with people being topped off relatively quickly. That is why before corruptions the complaint with BFA PVP was no one really dies and that is why the PVP maledict trinket was introduced as an experiment.

    I would love to see Rogues back to a design that doesn't rely on self heals but BlizZard simplified classes too much for that to happen. The pruning really hurt the depth of classes and is hard to undo all those changes.

    Currently in the upcoming expansion Rogues have access to survivability and heals that rivals that of hybrids and to me that feels wrong. Those that were pro pruning advocated for the dismantling of MoP classes because it became too homogenized. And yet here were are with rented borrowed power homogenized classes far worse than MoP ever did.

    https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spel...12/recuperator

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Mafic View Post
    Currently in the upcoming expansion Rogues have access to survivability and heals that rivals that of hybrids and to me that feels wrong. Those that were pro pruning advocated for the dismantling of MoP classes because it became too homogenized. And yet here were are with rented borrowed power homogenized classes far worse than MoP ever did.

    https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spel...12/recuperator
    I don't like self-heals that big for the DPSers, but that 18% of the HP in 36 seconds? Seriously? 0,5% hp per second isn't even that high.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Warning View Post
    Healers need to be weakened. Most healers are simply far too survivable. Let things die. It's absolutely outrageous that a 20 year old game like classic has healers in a more healthy spot than BFA. They're useful, even required for successful BGS but they can actually die fairly easily too when caught.
    Here's the difference to Classic: People are allowed to die in BG's.

    In Arena, death of one guy usually means defeat, death of one guy in BG's is a setback, not outright defeat.

    Classic is a lot more like Moba in terms of combat, you have less abilities to play around with, but each one has a far greater impact.
    Arena simply has this massive issue of swinging between Mana games and people dying within a single CC.
    Quote Originally Posted by Eazy View Post
    I don't like self-heals that big for the DPSers, but that 18% of the HP in 36 seconds? Seriously? 0,5% hp per second isn't even that high.
    Wouldn't say that Conduit in itself is a problem, but alongside Crimson Vial it still adds up.
    At the end of the day, it's free healing and especially as a class with high CC potential, this will most certainly add up.

    It's one of the those rather goofy things, Blizzard loves to talk about Class fantasy but this entire "Class without healing can heal themselves" flies completely under their radar.

  6. #6
    I think it is strong because it combines SND with old Recuperate. Recuperate and SND were separate finishers so if you had five combo points and the energy already spent building up those combo points you had to make a decision to make? DO I spend the CPs on Recuperate now or SND?

    Now? SND is an important part of Rogue damage profile so of course you put it up and the bonus is free healing. Yes, I do think that Crimson Vial was nerfed heading in the shadowlands because of things like Recuperator which I think feels bad.

    1. It limits what conduits you can pick to offset the nerf to Crimson vial.
    2. Punishes players beyond the new level cap of shadowlands with a nerfed version of crimson vial when leveling Rogues or a new player to the class
    3. Not sure how it will be balanced in PVP.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    It's one of the those rather goofy things, Blizzard loves to talk about Class fantasy but this entire "Class without healing can heal themselves" flies completely under their radar.
    Yeah it's pretty stupid that post-MOP "hybrid" classes in dps specs have pathetic puny heals that are subject to silence and interrupt meanwhile rogues, dhs and fury warrs rock tremendous amounts of passive self-healing. It's not vanilla where if you were a rogue you had to find a way to restealth and eat / bandage to regain health.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Yeah it's pretty stupid that post-MOP "hybrid" classes in dps specs have pathetic puny heals that are subject to silence and interrupt meanwhile rogues, dhs and fury warrs rock tremendous amounts of passive self-healing. It's not vanilla where if you were a rogue you had to find a way to restealth and eat / bandage to regain health.
    This, coming from an enhancement shaman.
    Enh has the lesser survivability of all melees, but gets trumped by for example Dh, stupid passive leech, healing.
    Hybrid getting beated in healing by a "pure" DPS class.

    Noteworthy to mention a Dh for example doesn't loose DPS for healing like a hybrid does
    Last edited by Dreigar; 2020-09-03 at 12:22 PM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Yeah it's pretty stupid that post-MOP "hybrid" classes in dps specs have pathetic puny heals that are subject to silence and interrupt meanwhile rogues, dhs and fury warrs rock tremendous amounts of passive self-healing. It's not vanilla where if you were a rogue you had to find a way to restealth and eat / bandage to regain health.
    Yes the hit and run playstyle of Rogues is not there anymore. I think they did it to make it easier for new players to play Rogue. But what has happened is that most players give up on the class quickly when they can go play a DH that has even better self heals.

    For hybrids that have poor healing it really makes no sense.

    They should have not removed so many of the weapon disarms if silences were going to be untouched.

  10. #10
    I think it's worth to mention that rogues outheal ret paladins in SL beta arenas atm

    and about retail= everyone outheal "hybrid" (ret/enha/ele/boom/sp) specs atm.


    They should nerf "pure dps" specs self heals by ~80-90% (making them ALMOST irrelevant) and add First Aid back.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Mafic View Post
    Healers are not as strong as they used to be in WotLK/Cata/MoP
    That is true, but health pools are now a lot bigger in comparison to the dmg people are doing. Right now you have ppl with 550k hp and your hardest hitting abilities do 40k, with a few exceptions, most notably fire mage and destro lock. In wotlk you had 30k hp and people were critting for 10k. In cata you had 140k and crits were 30-50k. Imo the game is too slow paced because health pools are enormous.

    It's already happeninh in SL. I was watching Snutz play aff lock and his dots were tickling people for 200-300 while their hp is 22k or so...
    Last edited by Ulfric Trumpcloak; 2020-09-04 at 03:59 AM.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Ulfric Trumpcloak View Post
    That is true, but health pools are now a lot bigger in comparison to the dmg people are doing. Right now you have ppl with 550k hp and your hardest hitting abilities do 40k. With a few exceptions, most notably fire mage and destro lock. In wotlk you had 30k hp and people were critting for 10k. In cata you had 140k and crits were 30-50k. Imo the game is too slow paced because health pools are enormous.

    It's already happeninh in SL. I was watching Snutz play aff lock and his dots were tickling people for 200-300 while their hp is 22k or so...
    i agree

    healing should be high, damage should be high, mana should matter more, mobility should be toned down

    also i'd love to see casted abilities like frostbolt do damage. I hate this builder/spender bullshit.. and in general i'd love consistent damage outside of cooldowns to be big

  13. #13
    One of the biggest reason WoLK had such a good pacing was that there were nearly no offensive cooldowns.

    Rogues did not have Vendeta.
    Locks did not have Dark Soul or Infernal.
    Warrior did not have Avatar or Colossus Smash.
    DH did not exist.

    Etc.

    It was a time when kicks had 10 secs cooldown but holy moly letting a Mage or a Lock casting freely meant they were going to melt you in seconds.

    Nowadays everyone has offensive cooldowns, which lessen damage outside of them.

  14. #14
    WotLk was designed differently in that your abilities did do damage and your knowledge of your class mattered so burst was high during WotLK but it relied on your ability to understand your class. Over time the damage was moved over to CDs and then eventually into RNG procs like we see in Battle for Abilities.

  15. #15
    The Lightbringer Cæli's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Belgium
    Posts
    3,659
    I think versa works very well as a "pvp stat"...

  16. #16
    Versa is the unofficial PVP stat. It just feels wrong though because new players to PVP don't understand this and wonder why they can't perform like everyone else in PVP.

    I think versa being the unofficial PVP stat is more confusing than having resilience on gear to be honest. Plus, if we look at BFA PVP players are forced to carry multiple gear sets.

  17. #17
    There is no problem with healers. Every single spec have defensive cooldowns atm.

    How can you kill dps with CC on healer if they rotate cooldowns? Every time you got good situation enemy go answer for it.
    How can you kill healer if enemy will CC you? Everyone have some CC now and all you got is just 2 min CD trinket or 8 sec cd dispell.

    Do you remember disc priests dying in opener vs SUB rogue with disc priest? Do you rly want it back? Or people dying in one stun?

    I agree that current state of pvp is not good but it never was and will never be. Same for balance, They can't balance all specs with so many talents, abilities, items with special effects. It was close to possible in legion but people started crying about templates...

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Eazy View Post
    I don't like self-heals that big for the DPSers, but that 18% of the HP in 36 seconds? Seriously? 0,5% hp per second isn't even that high.
    Considering it's a passive effect that you will have up most of the time, and that it will probably be increased by versatility, yeah it's pretty strong addition combined with vial.

    It's also depressing that affliction (the OG self healing dps king) now has pretty garbo healing compared to classes that used to have literally zero.

  19. #19
    I'll freely admit I'm a casual these days and have never really been a competitive PvPer, and really the further we got away from Vanilla the less I did it. The last time I did a large amount of PvP was Cata.

    Pvp for me since Vanilla is really something I did on alts. It may not have been the fastest or easiest way to gear an alt, but it was a heck of a lot more fun than the go go mentality that has been in other formats. So while I'm not super competitive, I've done a ton of BG's in my life and some arena.

    For me PvP gear needs to have an advantage in PvP. Whether that's done by stat bonuses, a stat, or whatever else, there needs to be a sense of progress there. At the same time though you need a balance where PvE gear isn't completely useless as well. Not easily done and I e always gotten the sense that if it was Blizzard would have done it. On the flip side PvP gear shouldn't be worthless for PvE either.

    Balance wise it's always been rough, but I feel like the answer is that Healers should be able to save people, but not to Infinity. That has always felt like the issue to me, either healers are basically worthless or too good. CC should be useful but shouldn't be a death sentence either, which is why I've thought versions like Blind and Gouge were a better way to go than Hammer of justice.

    I don't know how to fix it but I know Wrath was probably my sweet spot. Loved BG's and spent a ton of time in Wintergrasp and it felt rewarding enough even as a non-competitive player without it being the best way to gear.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by thrill View Post
    Considering it's a passive effect that you will have up most of the time, and that it will probably be increased by versatility, yeah it's pretty strong addition combined with vial.

    It's also depressing that affliction (the OG self healing dps king) now has pretty garbo healing compared to classes that used to have literally zero.
    Considering that vial is nerfed I don't think that's so high. But yeah, I don't want any heals for the DPS classes.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •