Bajheera Interview with Brian Holinka

[VoidSeeker199X]

Random BG queues are like 3-5 minutes, nobody is waiting 30+ minutes for a random BG, not sure what you gain by making a wild claim like that tbh.

I'm not joking. On EU horde I'm waiting close to 30 minutes.

[Pendraeg]

The team wants to add more incentive to do Warmode PvP at launch.

No, you really, really don't. You DON'T want to push your PvE players to PvP or your PvP players to PvE. Stop being stupid.

[RelaZ]

https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=475

"If you're a really intense player of this game and you want to go find one or two items from a raid or mythic+ and they're good I think that's okay".

For **** sake. I've had it. We explicitly ask for no PvE items, no PvE farm - and what do they do, they give us more PvE farm for BiS PvP performance and try to claim it's "WoD gearing".

There will always be a broken PvE trinket (or other item with an effect) which is clearly BiS, and Blizzard will never be proactive enough to not make this a problem. They will always err on the side of "well it's good if you do more content" - but we don't want to, we'd rather not play at all.

The only reason PvP gear was BiS in WoD/MoP was that it was more powerful than Mythic gear (higher ilvl in WoD) or Mythic gear was nerfed in PvP (in MoP, at the time Mythic didn't exist though, it was Heroic).

Why is it okay that max upgraded PvP gear is not even Mythic ilvl (272), while some Mythic gear is BiS in PvP (285) - with insane effects. Why is this bias okay?

Solution: Make PvP gear scale to a higher ilvl than Mythic gear in PvP. Re-introduce PvP specific set bonuses.

https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=1049

Honor talents shouldn't be talents, they should be PvP-only bonus passives/abilities which aren't "choose 3" - so that actual PvP issues can be rectified with them. Each spec should have ~3-4 of these "PvP baseline" bonuses.

You can't fix core issues of a spec with talents when there are competing choices which affects throughput or may be BiS in some niche situations. As long as there's a choice you will always be forced to play what's best as opposed to what fixes your class/spec.

They don't all have to be buttons, actually it'd be better if all/most PvP Bonuses were passive mechanics, all intended to fix core PvP related issues with the spec.

https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=1253

Who the hell asked for moving arenas, or arenas with massive z-axis? It's just gimmicky. We. Dont. Want. It.

Just give us Nagrand Arena clones.

Lastly,

This new talent setup has me gravely worried. There ironically seems to be too many options. I sincerely hope that it will not be possible to change talents in the starting room. Otherwise you'll be playing what is essentially a different character vs each matchup.

60 talents to change each game? No thanks (even if you can prepare templates - you'd need 10-20 of them to account for every situation). I rolled my class/spec to play it the way it was intended / sold to me, not to be forced to play it 1232138 different ways depending on what happens to be BiS against what I'm currently facing. There has to be some level of consistency - a lot of these things should be baseline (Cyclone not baseline for Resto Druids, like... what? There will 100% be matchups where not having Cyclones is BiS - and that's boring).

[Rucati]

I'm not joking. On EU horde I'm waiting close to 30 minutes.

EU Horde random BG is around 10-15 minutes que time, epic BG is even longer. Sometimes 30-40 minutes.

So queue as a mercenary, that's literally what it exists for.

[|Dexter|]

PVP got zero love! But sure they will love their talent trees and ESPORT money!

[Aggressive]

https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=475

"If you're a really intense player of this game and you want to go find one or two items from a raid or mythic+ and they're good I think that's okay".



https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=1049



https://youtu.be/SQGELG-L0Js?t=1253




Lastly,

This new talent setup has me gravely worried. There ironically seems to be too many options. I sincerely hope that it will not be possible to change talents in the starting room. Otherwise you'll be playing what is essentially a different character vs each matchup.

60 talents to change each game? No thanks (even if you can prepare templates - you'd need 10-20 of them to account for every situation). I rolled my class/spec to play it the way it was intended / sold to me, not to be forced to play it 1232138 different ways depending on what happens to be BiS against what I'm currently facing. There has to be some level of consistency - a lot of these things should be baseline (Cyclone not baseline for Resto Druids, like... what? There will 100% be matchups where not having Cyclones is BiS - and that's boring).

There is no pleasing you WoW players. First their was immense complaining about the talent tree how it is right now that it is too plain and too boring. And now cause a few players wanted to old talent tree back, people still whine....Good Lord. When those the whining stop with you guys. Never I guess

[MiiiMiii]

to me I'm disapointed the rating requirement to get max ilvl pvp gear will continue. I don't enjoy 2v2 or 3v3 arenas. I guess I will try to tryhard the solo rated pvp queue, but not happy about it.

To me we had a better PvP item solution in MoP/WoD

[Magic gun 23]

Bajheera; fuck that guy

Why?? He's been an incredible member of the community and huge advocate for PVPers, both casual and high level, for over a decade.

[Froggy]

Extremely disappointed there won't be solo queue at expansion launch.

[kail]

The solo que option sounds interesting. Will it only be in 3v3 format?

Why?? He's been an incredible member of the community and huge advocate for PVPers, both casual and high level, for over a decade.

A four-worded post intended to get a rise.

[Alkizon]

That is, nothing has changed, basically the same nonsense as the last few expansions (for couple of some, but expected, because cyclical, trifles), which means the same shortcomings, which means everything is still not going to work.

Oh, dear-dear...

This ↘ pls

To me we had a better PvP item solution in MoP

[Itisamuh]

So queue as a mercenary, that's literally what it exists for.

Yes, but it would be a simpler and better solution to just remove the faction barrier instead, so people can keep playing their chosen race and queue anywhere. There is no good reason to only allow cross faction in rated play, yet again screwing over unrated players. If they insist on keeping the factions for lore purposes, or more likely, out of laziness for not wanting to address old zones, fine. But all instanced content should be cross faction to have one healthy player pool.

[Asaliah]

LFG for mythic finally???

Can we have a solo version of the M+ ?

[Bats]

to me I'm disapointed the rating requirement to get max ilvl pvp gear will continue. I don't enjoy 2v2 or 3v3 arenas. I guess I will try to tryhard the solo rated pvp queue, but not happy about it.

To me we had a better PvP item solution in MoP/WoD

It will not continue, they confirm it in the interview. You will only be able to upgrade the PvE ilvl of the item.

[Alkizon]

RelaZ
60 talents to change each game? No thanks (even if you can prepare templates - you'd need 10-20 of them to account for every situation). I rolled my class/spec to play it the way it was intended / sold to me, not to be forced to play it 1232138 different ways depending on what happens to be BiS against what I'm currently facing. There has to be some level of consistency - a lot of these things should be baseline (Cyclone not baseline for Resto Druids, like... what? There will 100% be matchups where not having Cyclones is BiS - and that's boring).

And all because, no matter how they try to disguise it, you still work not with "talents", but with "perks", influence of which is too huge (its 2nd part - from "Current design..") on process itself, on performance, on possibilities/mechanics. Simple example:

Many of the covenant abilities will be reintroduced in the talent trees.

That not what talents' purpose is!

In fact it all looks like a bad dream, you're again "forced" to choose what you should have unconditionally, there're no talents - only perks, and specs are still "separated", while their vaunted by themselves "hybridization" represents, as before, only guest access (this was the case with druids' perks before). In essence/approach mostly the same as it was, but only more veiled, represented by different, more "pleasant/familiar" picture. And I'm not even going to touch separately here on stillborn "child" of interviewed in the form of PvP perks.

Talents as build's element aren't supposed to be easy changed, but they don't have such critical weight/influence... and that's where this phrase

The talent system will easily allow you to customize your talents based on the encounter.

starts to alarm (technically it was always there (for both systems), but for some strange reason they're trying to focus on it). So, this one mostly

The new talent system was a way to return to the roots in a sense. The goal is to allow maximum customization and the ability to be an actual hybrid.

is actually a lie, there is still no cake.

ps. All that needs to be depicted in these pictures is a list of mechanics and abilities going into spell book by default as character grows (aka class material), and ONE class tree (no separate specs', no PvP perks - PvP sets do this, but without abilities, only light talents, here's how it's done right) with branches that start from usual small bonuses to general characteristics, growing into buffs/modifiers of certain mechanics/spells and ending with "resulting" for particular branch(es), modified&replaced/added - arising from previous talents, which will be "face" of this specialization. So it was, so it worked, so why do I still see this circus in pictures and in interviews?

[Rucati]

Yes, but it would be a simpler and better solution to just remove the faction barrier instead, so people can keep playing their chosen race and queue anywhere. There is no good reason to only allow cross faction in rated play, yet again screwing over unrated players. If they insist on keeping the factions for lore purposes, or more likely, out of laziness for not wanting to address old zones, fine. But all instanced content should be cross faction to have one healthy player pool.

They very specifically said they want cross-faction to be an "opt-in" type of feature. So if you queue random dungeons or random BGs then you won't have cross-faction. That is a fairly good reason.

There's already a solution to your problem, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't there. Blizzard doesn't need to add 15 solutions to every issue in the hopes that one of them will make you happy, if you don't want to use Mercenary Mode then you have longer queues, I genuinely don't see a problem with that.

[Thelxi]

Because why mess with perfection lol