Some thoughts

[Hindenburg]

warlocks could realistically 1 shot people.   

Wut?

No. We could not.

We did get raped pretty badly by warriors, tho.

[kildorn]

warlocks could realistically 1 shot people.   

Wut?

No. We could not.

We did get raped pretty badly by warriors, tho.

Back in those days you could for a bit, it was entirely due to negative resists though. A 2x damage multiplier on a soulfire crit was pretty much lights out.

[Fordel]

Curse of Shadows/Elements was a grand ole time before they fixed negative resists.

[Hindenburg]

I could be wrong, but my memory says that they fixed negative resists before ashkandi was available.
I'm absolutely certain that they were gone by the time c'thun bit the dust.

[Gobbeldygook]

Not to mention the /afk problem is relativly easily solved by tweaking the way honor is rewarded and by granting 0 honor and tokens for 0 damage/ healing done in a round.  Even the shittiest of shit players can land one blow over a 10 min game. 

I'm not saying Honor should provide equal gear to top tier arena, but it shouldn't be the loltastic shit it is right now. 

1. I favor the wintergrasp model for BG rewards.  Even if your side is full of failure, that's not necessarily your fault and the game should recognize that.  Give people rewards for success and failure, but make sure the rewards for success are large enough that people really try.

2. It only looks really bad because this is the first season and the tier set is still blue.  In season 6, you'll be able to buy the entire hateful set for honor with no rating requirements.

[Gobbeldygook]

Double posting because goddamnit, I pressed spacebar and it replied.
---

I can run heroics on a daily basis. I'm suggesting that it's a viable level of gear (ilevel ~200) for BG grinding.

and that's exactly the level of pvp gear you get from BGs: ilevel 200 blues (the savage set, yes, they are actually ilevel 200) and a half-dozen ilevel 200 epics (the off-set hateful gear, plus I'd include the wintergrasp helm and trinket).  Glad we're unintentionally in agreement!
---

My POV on this is the same as it's ever been - normalize gear inside arena, BGs and wintergrasp (when the battle is going on), and allow everyone to set up their trinkets/weapons/enchants/gems at an arena battlemaster or something beforehand. That's it.

Objections:
1. Arenas will experience a short-term renaissance, then it'll crash and burn as people find out gear is not why they are getting farmed every week.  The gear differential gives them something to blame for their failures.  When the only answer for failure is 'lol you need to reroll or l2play', they'll stop showing up fast.

edit: nix points 2-4 if your proposal is "You get rewards for playing that in no way actually help you get better at what you spend your play time doing" and just repeat that mantra to yourself: You get rewards that do not actually make you better.

2. BGs will experience an explosion in popularity, then people will stop showing up because the only remaining incentive will be completing achievements.

3. PVPers will no longer be able to join in on PVE because unless they go out of your way to participate in PVE, their gear will be nothing but shitty leveling greens and blues.  The current model means when I'm putting together a 5 man or scrounging up a puggies to fill in some slots in a raid, I can take PVPers without hesitation because even though their gear isn't great for PVE, it's at least good enough.

4. PVPers will get farmed in any sort of world PVP (like when they go do their dailies) because, again, they are in shitty leveling gear.

5. You can queue up for BGs and get into WG before you're 80.  Shall we autolevel all the 71's to 80 while we're giving them free epics?

I have very adequately addressed why comparing the deadly gear to what people can get via honor is retarded: It all requires rating.  You do not have to face people in full deadly in the arenas in the starting gear because they are at a higher rating because the deadly gear requires a high rating by definition.  Finally, if you want to participate in this discussion, come in informed and not spouting off idiocy like "Blizzard have shown that they don't want to make old pieces available through honor"  Go get informed.

[sinij]

Afking is a separate problem than failing.  And yes, as was pointed out, failing while trying still needs to be rewarded, or there are no sheep for the wolves.

There aren't many wolves in BGs, we don't generally eat carrion. You can't reward people for BGs, because there is currently no way to make sure they try (and most don't). I have no problem giving something people for trying and failing, but I have huge issues rewarding people for not trying and failing. You don't have to be AFK to be entirely and intentionally useless to your team.

Even PvE that is designed to be defeated, you have to show some basic competence. There isn't such check in place in BGs and there isn't incentive to try because you still get rewarded even if you don't. The main reason you don't see many people AFKing in battlegrounds is because gear you can get by only AFKing isn't that desirable.  AFKing in BGs is directly proportional to quality of BG-only rewards that you can obtain by AFKing.

Here is good analogy - Imagine if in a raid you could wipe 3 times on a boss and get the loot. Do you think such encounter calls for best-in-the-slot loot?

[Zetor]

My POV on this is the same as it's ever been - normalize gear inside arena, BGs and wintergrasp (when the battle is going on), and allow everyone to set up their trinkets/weapons/enchants/gems at an arena battlemaster or something beforehand. That's it.

Objections:
1. Arenas will experience a short-term renaissance, then it'll crash and burn as people find out gear is not why they are getting farmed every week.  The gear differential gives them something to blame for their failures.  When the only answer for failure is 'lol you need to reroll or l2play', they'll stop showing up fast.

edit: nix points 2-4 if your proposal is "You get rewards for playing that in no way actually help you get better at what you spend your play time doing" and just repeat that mantra to yourself: You get rewards that do not actually make you better.

2. BGs will experience an explosion in popularity, then people will stop showing up because the only remaining incentive will be completing achievements.

3. PVPers will no longer be able to join in on PVE because unless they go out of your way to participate in PVE, their gear will be nothing but shitty leveling greens and blues.  The current model means when I'm putting together a 5 man or scrounging up a puggies to fill in some slots in a raid, I can take PVPers without hesitation because even though their gear isn't great for PVE, it's at least good enough.

4. PVPers will get farmed in any sort of world PVP (like when they go do their dailies) because, again, they are in shitty leveling gear.

5. You can queue up for BGs and get into WG before you're 80.  Shall we autolevel all the 71's to 80 while we're giving them free epics?

I have very adequately addressed why comparing the deadly gear to what people can get via honor is retarded: It all requires rating.  You do not have to face people in full deadly in the arenas in the starting gear because they are at a higher rating because the deadly gear requires a high rating by definition.  Finally, if you want to participate in this discussion, come in informed and not spouting off idiocy like "Blizzard have shown that they don't want to make old pieces available through honor"  Go get informed.

Mmk. Point 1 is pure speculation, but even if it were to come true, it doesn't change my point that arenas NEED to be on an even footing to have a semblance of fairness, being promoted like the esport [lol] that they are. If gear is equalized, people will blame countercomps, lag, disconnects, racials, RNG or specs - high-end arena players have ALREADY been doing this since season1. None of those factors are directly within Blizz's control (except for maybe RNG-related skills), so it's ok. I personally don't care about bruised egos when one of the 500 teams thinking they're the best priest/rogue combo in the galaxy get completely dominated by a mirror, and being unable to use the "my rogue only had two week's worth of arena points, you are in 5/5, gg" excuse.

Why exactly is "you get items that don't let you get better" (I assume you refer to the full 'welfare' pvp set everyone would have an option of using) bad? Arenas and BGs are minigames, they should be treated as such. In chess terms, like it was already stated, it'd be stupid to get an extra queen and get your bishops to fire lazer beams out of their eyes when you hit a certain ELO rating. Or getting an auto-headshot-targeting deagle if your K/D ratio in counterstrike is over 10. The entire point of arena is glorified dueling/deathmatching for fun / fame / epeen. To clarify my proposal, it'd give players the option to set up an alternate current-season pvp kit at an arena master with enchants/gems, switching out individual pieces with stuff they actually own. Then they could use their arena points and rating to buy those items so they can use it outside arenas/BGs. Last year's public WOW tournament server (which used this system, sorta) was pretty successful, even though most of the people who joined and thought "oh man we'll be #1 for sure" didn't get past 1600 when they went up against the big fish. But at least they were able to do it in a fair environment and have fun.
About the 71-80 comment: the only two BGs 71s can fight 80s are wintergrasp and AV (and I've seen level 20 alts in wintergrasp driving tanks for lulz and honor), where WG is not really gear-dependent and AV is a pve zergfest. So no.

Lastly, I strongly disagree with the deadly/honor comparison. I was talking about barrier of entry. We're at the start of s5 now... TBC had four seasons, and participating in s4 as a newcomer was pure pain. ALL a newcomer has access to is the crafted gear (I was actually being generous by linking the savage stuff). They have to do a LOT of honor grinding for the 2-seasons-behind gear (also note that weapons are not getting 'honorized', refer to my raid gear comment). Oh, and my 'blizzard HAS shown' part was pointing out how s3 weapons/shoulders lost a whole 50 of their rating requirement when arena moved into s4, and how season2 got the name 'welfare epics'  because it was honor-obtainable gear with 0 rating requirements. And while you might get matched against people of your gear level in arenas (remains to be seen, in the 1600s everyone is using a mixture of hateful and t7.5 with quite a few deadly pieces, while me and my partner have savage and heroic gear - we started arenas a week ago), that won't happen in BGs, which are, incidentally, required as part of the massive grind to 'get up to speed'.

(edit: you didn't address my points about raid gear, its effect on arenas, and 1200-rated raiders getting full arena sets via tokens, btw - Kalgan's "it won't be quite as easy" implies it'll still be possible. Yes, I read the article, and it does sound way better than the old arena system, but it's still stupid. :p)


-- Z.

[Sheepherder]

Spurious arguments.

You normalize people's gear when they enter arenas, so they all use a proscribed set with some modification options.  When they leave the arena they are put back in their normal gear.  The normal gear will be tier gear and Naxx-equivalent epics, bought with arena points (Tier 7.5 for high rank, 7 for low) or honor (Blue heroic gear).  Resilience will be redesigned as a passive buff applied to all classes but only affecting actions initiated by other players, and will apply outside of instanced pvp as well.  Healing will not become overpowered in instanced pvp, this cannot happen when Blizzard controls all the variables and doesn't even have to add new gear tiers to their arena system, just new tiers of rewards to be used outside of it (as an aside, it also allows minute tweaks to classes by changing their arena sets).

The problem with arena participation is that it is an ELO system.  It needs fodder to run, but the fodder needs a realistic change at shinies in order to attempt it, and you apparently can't give out the shinies to the bads, even though that is what Naxx-10 and heroics do.  Short answer: ratings should determine whether you get the Naxx-10 loot or the Naxx-25 loot for use outside of the arenas.  As an additional option, make a point scoring system and divvy up a gold pot between the teams after the game is over.

[Lantyssa]

Has anyone considered that their mention of having items and skill bars which equip when changing between dual talent specs would be easy to replicate for arenas and battlegrounds to ensure a more balanced playing field as far as equipment is concerned?

[Khaldun]

Basically, I only do BGs for fun. Otherwise, I'm PvE with my guild or the occasional PUG. So I'm geared that way--right now I'm in Naxx purples, mostly: my rogue has very few PvP items. I could acquire the blue stuff pretty quickly, I'm sure, but I have other fish to fry.

For Wintergrasp, this is no problem: if you're doing a lot of straight up PvP in there, you're already failing at it anyway. It's about tactical action at the larger scale, and your gear or spec is not so important. WG has issues with its design, but the issues are not issues with PvP.

Strand is substantially the same, and it's the only BG I still find really fun. There's enough to do in there that isn't pegged to your own character's gear or spec.

In TBC, I felt like I could go into Eye or AB or even Warsong Gulch and still have some fun. Yes, sometimes you'd get steamrolled by a premade, but that wasn't gear. Yes, sometimes you'd come up against someone who was in the very best PvP gear and you'd die pretty fast, but it wasn't to the point where it felt like it was pointless. But I ran AB the other night, and basically insta-died again and again to arena-focused players. One-shots, constantly, whereas what I was doing to them was negligible on the few occasions where I got a chance to open up on someone. And I'm not in greens: I'm in some of the best PvE gear in the game at the moment.

That's pretty much broken. Arenas are absolutely no fun from my perspective--exactly what everyone here has said already. If I want that kind of game, I'll go play a game that's designed around that game, rather than a game where that's been awkwardly kludged into a design that can't really accomodate it.

This is not a big deal now but it will be a big deal soon, because the usefulness of BGs to the game since they've appeared has largely been "something to keep people busy while we work on new content, when they start to totally exhaust the existing content". If walking into a BG is roughly the same as bending over for the soap in prison, expect that usefulness to evaporate.

[Vash]

I could be wrong, but my memory says that they fixed negative resists before ashkandi was available.
I'm absolutely certain that they were gone by the time c'thun bit the dust.

They fixed negative resists around the time of BWL, but once that was gone the era of double trinkets was just starting to take off.  Although mages were much more notorious for double trinket abuse with AP+PoM+Pyro or AP+PoM+Frosbolt shatter crits, warlocks could use it to devastating effect too, heck even elemental shamans (horde only) were brutal in that era.  Plus you have to remember how terrible the gear of the average Joe was in those days compared to the people in T2, T2.5, T3.  Just about any well geared raider of any class could go into WSG/AB and be more than capable of 1-2 shotting your average random BG'er in greens/blues.  Factor in the berserker buff and your just adding insult to injury.  I mean, having more than 3k health as a clothy w/o epics or rank 7/8+ pvp gear was not really feasable.

I guess I should have just simplified it and said, flashbacks to the days when just about everyone could 1-3 shot everyone else.   

[Fordel]

/necro


Since this seems to be the generic PvP whine thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIXYMY4dOmI




 

-edit- Pasting the entire link makes it work better.

[Ironwood]

That just reminds me of the SA 'make a wow pvp' video attempt.

[apocrypha]

Now I think about it I was effectively spamming random buttons when I started levelling a pair of DeathKnights. I should just copy that macro and zero-stress one-button it, awesome 

[Xanthippe]

/necro


Since this seems to be the generic PvP whine thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIXYMY4dOmI




 

-edit- Pasting the entire link makes it work better.

Amazing.  Now that's real skill.  From the class most likely to say "l2p" on the forums.

[Paelos]

I'm going to laugh when every arena team that wins any competition has at least one DK on it, if not 2. I never liked arena much anyway, but to even bother setting foot in there unless you have a DK on your team is to waste your time.

[K9]

Ret-Disc doesn't do awfully against DK+XXX

[Gobbeldygook]

I'm going to laugh when every arena team that wins any competition has at least one DK on it, if not 2. I never liked arena much anyway, but to even bother setting foot in there unless you have a DK on your team is to waste your time.

Here's the top 100 on the tournament realm about a week ago.

56 Paladins
41 Hunters
33 Rogues
31 Warlocks
30 Death Knights
29 Shamans
27 Mages
19 Priests
6 Druids
3 Warriors

There's an extremely overpowered class in the death knight/paladin comp.  It's not the death knight.

[Paelos]

More pallies than I would have guessed, for sure. I would have figured about 50/50.

I'm a warrior though, and as you can see by the numbers, we know not to bother with it. It's a completely reversal from the way arena teams used to be for a warrior.

[pxib]

Sounds like Deathknights have become the IWAY of WoW PvP... beatable by the experienced, but an easy to play "I win" button against the masses.

[Fordel]

Clearly all the warriors forgot all their skill, while all the hunters finally learned to play. 



Also clearly, Arena is the only pvp which blizzard can accurately measure skill. 

[Paelos]

Clearly all the warriors forgot all their skill, while all the hunters finally learned to play. 

Also clearly, Arena is the only pvp which blizzard can accurately measure skill. 

Obviously, I mean it's an E-Sport right? We warriors just drank the retard juice this season. That has to be it.

If they would stop touting Arenas as a sport, or skill, or some kind of display of awesome outside of group composition choices and FOTM classes, I wouldn't care. But they don't.

[Gobbeldygook]

If they would stop touting Arenas as a sport, or skill, or some kind of display of awesome outside of group composition choices and FOTM classes, I wouldn't care. But they don't.

Are you claiming there is absolutely no difference in average personal ability between players at 1400 and 2400, merely a difference in gear and comps?

[Ingmar]

If they would stop touting Arenas as a sport, or skill, or some kind of display of awesome outside of group composition choices and FOTM classes, I wouldn't care. But they don't.

Are you claiming there is absolutely no difference in average personal ability between players at 1400 and 2400, merely a difference in gear and comps?

I don't think anyone is saying anything about the people at 2400. That's a different universe than the majority of arenas. The difference between 1400 and 1800 though...

[Paelos]

If they would stop touting Arenas as a sport, or skill, or some kind of display of awesome outside of group composition choices and FOTM classes, I wouldn't care. But they don't.

Are you claiming there is absolutely no difference in average personal ability between players at 1400 and 2400, merely a difference in gear and comps?

I'm claiming that to get to 2400 you have to have the right FOTM arena class setup and gear. Put the best skilled players on warriors and druids and watch them fail over and over again. Why? Those classes suck in this current iteration. Skill is irrelevent when the playing field is so unbalanced.

[Gobbeldygook]

I'm claiming that to get to 2400 you have to have the right FOTM arena class setup and gear. Put the best skilled players on warriors and druids and watch them fail over and over again. Why? Those classes suck in this current iteration. Skill is irrelevent when the playing field is so unbalanced.

It's true that the deck is stacked against druids and warriors, but they are still succeeding at even the highest levels of play in the hands of excellent players.  For example, Alloraan earned the title Arena Master as a prot warrior (Yes, he PVPs as prot in the gear set you see him in) and currently sits at #3 in the 5's bracket on his BG and #29 in 2's.

Fortunately, Blizzard recognizes the relative weakness of warriors and is doing something about it.  This isn't BC where if your class is weak, the rational response is to reroll the FOTM because Blizzard isn't going to do anything about either of the situations.  Warriors are getting across the board PVP buffs in 3.1.  They might not be enough to bring warriors up to shaman representation, but it shows Blizzard is at least paying attention.

[Azaroth]

Missing the point.

WoW Arenas aren't about any kind of intelligent design.

IT'S ABOUT ESPORTZ.

And yes, Warriors drank the retard juice. As proof that there IS juice somewhere and people must be drinking it, as a very well geared Retribution Paladin I could faceroll my way to 2k not five months ago.

For some reason, I am absolutely no longer viable at the higher levels of competition no matter what I do. Gotta be the juice.

[Gobbeldygook]

For some reason, I am absolutely no longer viable at the higher levels of competition no matter what I do. Gotta be the juice.

Overpowered spec gets nerfed, does not like it, news at 11. 

Counter example: The #1 2v2 team on EU Misery is resto druid/ret.

[Merusk]

You're that same kind of asshole who said Hunters were fine in BC, and just needed to L2P.  After all, there were 3 or 4 hunters in the worldwide tournament who did great, and you could cherry pick teams from the top tier of each individual battle group to show they were also fine.  Never mind the aggregate showed they were underpowered, they just needed to L2P. 

Clearly they all did and should get no nerfs at all from here on out, right?  This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the wars drinking retard juice at the same time.

[Fordel]

The way 'balance' is right now, would be like playing a Hockey Game, but not allowing 1 of the teams a goalie.



Sure, there is probably some set of players that can compete without ever having a goalie... but otherwise. 

[Paelos]

There would still be a subsect of people that would say that because it's possible for the best players in the world to play without a goalie, that the whole system is perfectly acceptable...

While everyone is riding the failboat.

[Gobbeldygook]

The way 'balance' is right now, would be like playing a Hockey Game, but not allowing 1 of the teams a goalie.

There would still be a subsect of people that would say that because it's possible for the best players in the world to play without a goalie, that the whole system is perfectly acceptable...

A fine fellow named Shepherd once argued with me.  You are also arguing with me.  Thus, you are definitely dogfuckers.  Colorless, formerly-green ideas should be allowed to sleep in whatever manner they wish!  By making a strained, meaningless analogy and appending some word salad, I have won the day.

You're that same kind of asshole who said Hunters were fine in BC, and just needed to L2P.

There is a difference between a "X is not viable" and "X is fine".  If you had said back in BC "Hunters are not viable", yes I would have pointed you to the many successful hunter-based drain teams and asked how you think the lot of the rest of the class could be improved without making high-level arenas into World of Petcraft.

That analogy doesn't work because ret really is fine.  There are about as many people at 2k+ playing ret as there are of some classes (hunters, mages, warrior, warlocks, and shaman, depending on bracket) and that's with ret as a less-viable bitch spec.  You're not going to see very many people playing ret competitively when they could be playing the FOTM if they just put their points in the tree on the left instead of the right.

[Zetor]

Nobody is contesting that the top-rated prot warrior Alloraan is an awesome player (I'm on his battlegroup and fought him a few times in BGs etc), but he couldn't be a top-rated prot warrior if he didn't stack high-end pve gear for block value; this'll be true even after charge stops being on DR with other stuns in 3.1.

Also, lol arena esports, gear inequality, class balance, rng, racials, blah blah (I made my points several times over this thread already, not going to bother repeating them).


-- Z.

[Nevermore]

Balance!





Those graphs show how many of each class are in the current top 10 arena tournament teams.  Aside from the fact that A) WoW PvP has always been a mess and B) the whole tourney thing is especially stupid, it does make me wonder why they keep nerfing Druids in PvP.  Last live patch, the only Druid change was a PvP nerf.  Upcoming patch, not even including the collateral damage from the Armor/HP nerf (PvE change), there's also the nerf to Maim stun.  Why?