Serious PvP requires too much grinding. Grinding ≠ Skill

[Krommm]

The way class balance is, "skill" doesn't matter at all until high ranks, and even then it comes down to better comps usually. Before all that though, it is a huge grind fest which for anyone doing serious PvP will despise.

[Reveries1]

funny I started this season with all the honor gear for 2 specs... Your first season getting back into pvp may take a little longer to gear up then the rest but capping (Conquest) each weak is not that hard.

Next people will be complaining about how hard it is to get all 12k conquest because of the catch up mechanic blizzard added. Just like pve progression exists in pvp you start from A and work towards Z.

Also keep in mind this is what week 10 of this season? Not exactly the early bird.

[PrairieChicken]

I can cap all the conquest available in a single day. It is true that honor takes lots of hours to grind but you can run heroic dungeons without being pissed in BGs.

It will probably be even faster in wod (they are taking away justice conversion which is bit disappointing though).

[Deleted]

What is worse is missing a few weeks of capping then not being able to play for real until you have full gear much later because the difference in gear is so ridiculously big. Really fun not being able to play the game.

Don't forget rng bullshit. Hunter from rbg had 6 pieces second week cause the worldboss dropped roll+bonus roll both weeks... gave a neat ~100k hp advantage and who knows how much more dps. Imo the best approach to arena is simply not playing til the catchup cap allows to fully gear in one week -saves a lot of time and frustration.

[Hand Banana]

Grinding is a bitch for sure but really not all that bad. The big problem is the gear difference between prideful and grievous. Even when you grind to your conq catch-up cap and have grievous everywhere else, you are only at like ~536 ilvl. You could easily by 50k less health than someone else in full gear, the gear jump is so massive this season.

Anyway, 900+ honor for the karasang rares every day, ~700 honor for the ToT dailies every day, and 500+ honor for your first bg win every day. Just taking 45 minutes to do all that will net you over 2k honor every day, and while you do that you can grind low lvl 2s with a friend for prideful. Its really not that bad right now. All about being in a lvl 25 guild and having and knowing how to use the 15%/10% increased honor guild flags.

[Racthoh]

hard to call pvp a grind when every single game is different, yes it's hard work but not everything that requires time and effort is a grind

[twiddler]

To me, it's counter productive to a competitive environment to give the more skilled players a mechanical advantage by way of larger caps and faster item level gains. It does absolutely nothing but widen a gap between good players and bad ones which exists already by way of skill difference. It seems redundant when they're already better players, they don't even need the cap increase.

I concur with you entirely. I'm not entirely against grinding but I am against grinding in this case. Blizzard has made it quite evident that they want to eliminate the advantages made by tier 2 weapons and gear in general. Recently, they implemented a system such that players with late starts could catch up. Requiring a grind always causes a disadvantage so I don't see why they have gear at all.

[asb]

Requiring a grind always causes a disadvantage so I don't see why they have gear at all.

It's simply because this is an mmo. Blizzard wants players to be pursuing an incentive so they keep playing. Sure competitive play is better in TR format, but the crowd that appeals to is very small. If there were no gear treadmill, your average player would probably get bored of being stuck at 1500 forever and stop pvping.

[IzoGray]

I don't mind playing battlegrounds because I like PvP, as I'm sure many of you do. The problem just comes from the fact that, for instance, I could spend all week on my shaman and still have only acquired a few pieces of gear because if I'm healing I will only get maybe 50 honor if we lose and about 150ish if we win.

We almost never win. Add that 5-10 minute queue times and the grind doesn't even feel passable at this point. It's just slow and actually seeps away my enjoyment of the game.


I have no problem with conquest points or anything. I just don't see why the barrier to competitive PvP is TIME. Why am I not allowed to compete with everyone else? Because I don't have the time to grind out a full honor set just so I'm not immediately destroyed? I'm not asking for Blizzard to give casual players like me a mega buff or something. I just want to be able to get into the competition and battle with skill, not gear.



Edit: I've been PvPing since vanilla and I've never been bored of it so the whole "people need the grinding because it's an mmo" doesn't work. Competitive PvP has real rewards that aren't low tier gear rewards. Aside from the cosmetic xmog gear you can have there are also titles, mounts, server recognition.

[Itisamuh]

It's simply because this is an mmo. Blizzard wants players to be pursuing an incentive so they keep playing. Sure competitive play is better in TR format, but the crowd that appeals to is very small. If there were no gear treadmill, your average player would probably get bored of being stuck at 1500 forever and stop pvping.

They use this argument a lot, but I don't buy it. People don't PvP to get gear, they get gear to PvP. Unlike PvE, the fun in PvP doesn't even really begin until you've already got the gear. And also unlike PvE, it's not new content each time, it's just regrinding the same thing each season. The grind doesn't serve any purpose except to annoy, and to follow the PvE tiers. If they weren't lazy, they could easily design around that to where it's not a factor in PvP anymore.

[Anzen]

For one, I wouldn't grind Honor gear through Random Battlegrounds (as silly as it sounds), do it through Random Heroic Dungeons, it's wayyy quicker.

& Secondly, it's not much longer until the catch up cap will reach the point you can farm an entire set of Prideful in one week.

Then you can grind a character over the weekend into full Prideful and remove this hurdle you say is impairing your ability to fairly play.

[IzoGray]

For one, I wouldn't grind Honor gear through Random Battlegrounds (as silly as it sounds), do it through Random Heroic Dungeons, it's wayyy quicker.

& Secondly, it's not much longer until the catch up cap will reach the point you can farm an entire set of Prideful in one week.

Then you can grind a character over the weekend into full Prideful and remove this hurdle you say is impairing your ability to fairly play.

Are you purposely being an ass? You cannot get the conquest gear without first getting the honor gear, otherwise good luck surviving. Do you feel smarter now now that you have put 'the OP' in his place?

edit: also..my god are some of you awful people just looking for an argument. So going from 5-10 minute PvP queue to a 30-40 minute DPS PvE queue is so much better right?
second edit: Even if the queue was 2 minutes, I shouldn't have to do random shitty dungeons just to be able to hold my own in a battleground.

[Baracuda]

WoD will fix it, look up the pvp gear blog.

[Anzen]

Are you purposely being an ass? You cannot get the conquest gear without first getting the honor gear, otherwise good luck surviving. Do you feel smarter now now that you have put 'the OP' in his place?

edit: also..my god are some of you awful people just looking for an argument. So going from 5-10 minute PvP queue to a 30-40 minute DPS PvE queue is so much better right?
second edit: Even if the queue was 2 minutes, I shouldn't have to do random shitty dungeons just to be able to hold my own in a battleground.

Woh calm down there Captain!

You can't get conquest gear without first getting honor gear you say? I'll tell that to my ~5 characters I've geared in Prideful gear over the last couple of weeks that were originally in timeless/crafted/LFR. Also in response the incoming presumptive "hurr boosted" reply, I did them with friends on similar characters. We just dumped our MMR to like 400 and worked from there. Also you said good luck surviving; resilience is the same for everyone, PvP gear just gives you more damage/healing/health.

The rest of your post looked super hostile so I'm not sure if I should reply to it in fear of infuriating you further.

Reported regardless, MMO needs less people like you; willing to argue, not willing to contribute.

It's not a secret Random Heroic Dungeons are faster for farming Honor than Random BG's for the record.

[IzoGray]

Woh calm down there Captain!

You can't get conquest gear without first getting honor gear you say? I'll tell that to my ~5 characters I've geared in Prideful gear over the last couple of weeks that were originally in timeless/crafted/LFR. Also in response the incoming presumptive "hurr boosted" reply, I did them with friends on similar characters. We just dumped our MMR to like 400 and worked from there. Also you said good luck surviving; resilience is the same for everyone, PvP gear just gives you more damage/healing/health.

The rest of your post looked super hostile so I'm not sure if I should reply to it in fear of infuriating you further.

Reported regardless, MMO needs less people like you; willing to argue, not willing to contribute.

It's not a secret Random Heroic Dungeons are faster for farming Honor than Random BG's for the record.

Riight. That was super hostile. MMO needs less people who want to argue with OP for the sake of arguing, with no substance to back them up.

Oh and so what you're saying is you did a whole bunch of stuff not related to PvP just to PvP. Oh, and then you say you don't need PvP gear to "survive" in arena because all the gear does is affect your damage/healing or health....oh you mean like the chance to survive and accomplish stuff?

[Skarssen]

Honor gear is very easy to get, and character progression is a major part of the game. I also get the distinct impression that people whom complain about this really don't want PVP to be all about "skill", but would rather get equal rewards for unequal effort.

[Itisamuh]

More of the "I want to spend less time and effort and get the same rewards as you" mantra.

More like people who understand that PvP should be about skill based competition, not rewards. Put your PvE mentality away.

[Skarssen]

More like people who understand that PvP should be about skill based competition, not rewards. Put your PvE mentality away.

Lucky enough for all of us, Blizzard developers understand that without material rewards participation in both PVE and PVP would be significantly reduced.

And PVP IS about skill, but it is also about effort expended. If you think you should be able to compete with another player in PVP when they play 20 RBGs/50 arena matches a week since the start of the season and you only play occasionally, then, well, you are going to be disappointed.

There is a reason Blizzard has never implemented a permanent tournament-style PVP option afterall.

[IzoGray]

Lucky enough for all of us, Blizzard developers understand that without material rewards participation in both PVE and PVP would be significantly reduced.

And PVP IS about skill, but it is also about effort expended. If you think you should be able to compete with another player in PVP when they play 20 RBGs/50 arena matches a week since the start of the season and you only play occasionally, then, well, you are going to be disappointed.

There is a reason Blizzard has never implemented a permanent tournament-style PVP option afterall.

Right..except PvP is actually popular enough for them to hold PAID entry tournaments on completely different servers with equal gear for all etc. Riiiight..

edit: I'm saying that of course they're not going to have PERMANENT tournaments like that because they're paid entries with real prizes.

Seasonal PvP is something different from the tournament. You can still get on a random BG with a buddy and have fun. Doing arena and doing random bgs are two separate feelings. I can just mess around with my rogue in Arathi Basin for no reason.

[Dumaw]

They gonna bring an improvement on that matter in WoD, but still theres gonna be too much gap between gears, so things are going to be the same in a way. You will get the "meh" gear faster, you will get more rewards from PvP, but still gonna be an unfair fight against the best gear. They can leave a gap if they really find it necessary, but it should be smaller.

They could do something different here, but I guess they want the same history over and over again...