Like almost all MMOs WoW PvP is heavily biased towards those who've been playing longer, and have acquired the better gear. I guess EVE would be the only exception. Too bad EVE combat is boring.

To the guy talking about 2k arena rating. The only way to get 2k arena rating is to get well geared. There are no undergeared 2k teams. Even in heroic gear you are doomed to a sub 1000 score. There is no way a heroic geared person can compete with 2k+ arena teams. You're only option is to raid.

Originally posted by Antipathy

You completely misunderstood them. Read them again. Your whole post above is based around arguing about things I never actually said.

 

And you still haven't shown how there's anything circular in my logic :-)

Then what did you say, if you actually know that yourself?

Originally posted by Antipathy

You completely misunderstood them. Read them again. Your whole post above is based around arguing about things I never actually said.

 

And you still haven't shown how there's anything circular in my logic :-)

I understood completely what he was saying and it applies to your argument spot on, unless of course somewhere between your brain and your fingers a signal misfired. But if you stand by the very words you posted that i read through, then you are truly dense.

Originally posted by SonofSeth

Originally posted by Antipathy

Originally posted by SonofSeth 

My logic isn't any more circular than yours.

 

Sounds cute. But like much of what you have said, ultimately meaningless.

 

Would you care to explain why my logic is circular? My guess is that you can't. You just said it because it sounded good at the time.

It's because you base your argument about skill solely on gear, and dismiss other factors. You claim that freshly dinged character is useless in a BG because other people have better gear. That assumption would be true if only way for that player to contribute to a BG fight is to outdo the epiced out player in what he does. That's just stupid, or to be more forgiving, naive.

A freshly dinged character may try to do that but if he is capable of learning, he will soon find out how wrong that approach is. We know every class has CC abilities and CC is not very much, and in most cases, not gear dependant at all, using your CCs is all about timing, knowledge of other classes, or to be so bold as to use one word, skill. What does a new lvl80 do next, he doesn't go in expecting to solo 3 enemies, he sticks with his teammates and helps where he can, untill he gets the gear with which he can solo 3 enemies.

 

You are actually so bold to dismiss the whole 2k+ arena rating gameplay where most of the people are on equal footing gearwise and only real diferentiating factors left are skill and class setup. Why do you do that other than because it doesen't effect your casual self.

 

Definiton of Circular argument goes something like:

"An argument that commits the logical fallacy of assuming what it is attempting to prove."

 

You are atempting to prove that gear is only thing that matters in WoW by stating examples of where inferior gear actually does make the difference and in the same time dismissing everything that questions such logic.

If your theory was true, than you could take some random gamer who never played WoW before, give him a character with best PVP gear available, and after half an hour of practicing on mobs, that guy could defeat any player, no matter what their skill level is as long as their gear is inferior. That isn't true.

 

This is how I understood your argument from reading your posts, if I missunderstood something, please show me where so we can continue this discussion.

 

 

I agree with this. Yes Gear matters, but that doesnt mean Skill has no eefect in WoW

WoW pvp is very dificult.  the only way i belive to ge good in pvp is to actually pvp.  In wotlk it is evident where the barriers between pve and pvp lies, because theres no way a good raiding guild would take someone in pvp gear.  The Bgs are supposed to help you gain honor to buy arena gear and pvp epics.  these are in no way a replacement to raid quality gear and vice versa.  if you were in full epics and went against a person with the pvp equivilent, you would probably lose.  adding resilience to the game was the marking point in which pvp and pve were seperated.  the only way to get better gear was to go into arenas.  i do arenas for fun but i know some serious pvpers who are in full furious and they do it for fun.  they also have a set for pve because lets face it pvp and pve specs are different in every class.  imo i would say i like it a lot as opposed to other mmo's.  if your saying the game is flawed, what game isnt?  serious people who wanted a pvp challenge got their challenge which was 2K+ rating for gear.  maybe if you tried to get there then you could talk

No one ever said skill doesn't matter. Of course it does. Particularly at the highest level of arena.

However, currently, at least in battlegrounds, gear > skill.

I'm not a great PvP player - for example, my reactions aren't top notch, and I make mistakes. I know there are plenty of people better than me, and I know that if I PvP'd more regularly, I could be better myself. Then again, I suspect the same could be said for 90% of players out there.

However, if I played my hunter in his current PvP gear, which is a little dated (mostly hateful), with an Ulduar 25 bow and Ulduar 10 polearm, then I am absolutely confident that I could beat any player in the world who is dressed in greens. I don't care how skillful he is. I don't care what class or spec he has. Because I'll be walking into the fight with twice his health and more than twice his DPS. And whilst there may be people around who are twice as skilled as me, I sincerely doubt there is anyone who is four times as good as I am. It's simply too big a gap to make up.

Similarly, if I played a character in greens (any class/spec), and some random scrub 1000 rated arena player was given full PvP epics and Ulduar weaponry then I'm pretty damn sure he'd beat me. Again, in that case gear > skill.

That's what I mean by the gear gap being too big. Within a battleground, plenty of fights are won or lost before a blow is struck - simply because one side seriously outgears the other. To me, that means the gear gap is too big. Partly because being in a battleground dressed in low value gear (greens or even blues) is simply not fun. You are steamrollered before you have any effect on a fight, and simply don't last long enough when put under any sort of attack.

I'd also say that the gear problem is worse for some classes than others. It's hard to be precise, since, like almost everyone out there, I haven't played all classes and specs. But I get the strong impression that some classes absolutely need gear to survive, whilst others do not. For example, stealth classes such as rogues and druids can, to a large extent, choose their fights. So they can get a fair number kills just by finding weak targets and exploiting them mercilessly. However - others need a certain amount of armour and resilience to do anything effective. Try playing a low geared warlock who's being attacked by a decent rogue with cloak of shadows up. Most of your spells are completely ineffective until cloak of shadows finishes - so unless you can survive that long, you can't even touch the rogue, much less kill him.

Playing a battleground in crap gear simply isn't fun. We all play for fun. So why should we have to endure several weeks of playing no fun games in order to start having fun?

In PvE there's some sort of progression. If you have crap gear, you can join other people with crap gear and run normals and heroics until you're ready to move onto harder challenges. You can choose to work with other people at your same level of gear and skill.

However, in PvP you are thrown into battelgrounds with full furious people right from the start. There's no sort of progression path. It's like a PvEr having to queue for "any instance" and not knowing whether he'd end up in UP normal or the latest heroic raid. So maybe having some sort of progression would alleviate problems. But it would be better still if the gear gap was smaller - both in PvE and PvP.

Before people misinterpret me again, here are some things I am not saying.

I'm not saying anything about arena and what attributes (gear, skill, class) are needed to get 2500 rating.

I am not saying that someone in greens can't do anything at all in a battleground. However, all it takes is a single member of the opposition to look up and think "greenie over there - easy kill" and that contribution comes to an end.

I am not saying anything at all about low level battlegrounds.

Originally posted by bboytofu

WoW pvp is very dificult.  the only way i belive to ge good in pvp is to actually pvp.  In wotlk it is evident where the barriers between pve and pvp lies, because theres no way a good raiding guild would take someone in pvp gear.  The Bgs are supposed to help you gain honor to buy arena gear and pvp epics.  these are in no way a replacement to raid quality gear and vice versa.  if you were in full epics and went against a person with the pvp equivilent, you would probably lose.  adding resilience to the game was the marking point in which pvp and pve were seperated.  the only way to get better gear was to go into arenas.  i do arenas for fun but i know some serious pvpers who are in full furious and they do it for fun.  they also have a set for pve because lets face it pvp and pve specs are different in every class.  imo i would say i like it a lot as opposed to other mmo's.  if your saying the game is flawed, what game isnt?  serious people who wanted a pvp challenge got their challenge which was 2K+ rating for gear.  maybe if you tried to get there then you could talk

Actually, whilst what you said is largely correct, there are still plenty of exceptions.

Have you seen what a prot paladin can do if wearing 4 x Tier 8.5 PvE healing gear? Those guys can be almost unkillable PvP healers.

And TBH - apart from the very top guilds, going for world firsts, most PvE guilds would be more than happy to recruit someone in full furious - since decent PvE guilds recruit people primarily because they've shown some evidence of skill, not based on their gear - and a 2000+ arena rating does show you have at least some skill.

 @ Antipathy

Ok, I see what you are saying and basicly I agree with you, that's how WoW works. It's a gear centric game and if you do widen the gear gap enough, influnce of skill is proportionally smaller. You could make the same argument about levels too, but I don't see any of those mechanics as good or bad, I just look at them as they are, it's just the nature of the beast.

I should have also put more emphasis on how I don't consider gear gap as the main focus when I say skill > gear, because I thought it was impied that when discussing those two we aren't taking into account the min max scenario, but somewhat gray area in the middle. See, I did the same when I widened the skill gap enough in my example, it's also true, but not really constructive for a discussion about WoW PVP in general.

What do you propose then? A new game with less linear progression, or maybe that WoW is tweaked in a way that gear is more like achievments, meaning for braging rights and not for increasing stats?

I've got no objections to people earning gear and improving themselves. My objections are to the size of the gear gap. Decently geared players should be maybe twice as effective as crap geared players - not many many times more effective.

The gear gap is quite heavily built into the current game. So it would be really hard for Blizzard to change it in WotLK, since so much PvE content would also have to be redesigned. So my main hope would be that the size of the gear gap would be reduced with Cataclysm.

However, there are more simple steps that could be taken now, in order to make battlegrounds more fun. For example - consider the following package of changes:

a) Honour system is split into two. As well as honour points we introduce "Heroic honour points".

b) Normal honour points can only be used to buy hateful gear, whilst "Heroic honour points" can be used to buy deadly gear.

c) When queuing for battlegrounds players could select the "normal" or "heroic" version. Normal battlegrounds would earn honour, heroic battlegrounds would earn heroic honour

d) There should be some system to stop new 80s from immediately queueing for heroic. Perhaps in order to qualify for heroic, some sort of PvP based achievement would have to be earned. Or perhaps people could buy a heroic battleground key with large amounts of honour points.

e) Maybe reduce honour cost of gear, since new 80s would be expected to earn hateful gear before progressing to deadly. And the total cost in time shouldn't be vastly more than the current time to gear up.

The result should be that new 80s are directed towards the "normal" battlegrounds where they gear themselves up and earn the right to qualify for the "heroic" battlegrounds. So the normal battlegrounds would be full of people at lower gear levels and the heroic battlegrounds would be the place the serious arena people would go.

I see that happening, to an extent when they introduce rated battlegrounds. They plan to keep everyone together, all gear groups, just give options for people who want to go the extra distance. It still leaves a lot of room for gear griefing, but at least they are starting to think about ways to allow players to distinguish themselves without forcing a gameplay style on them to do it.

I was thinking more along the lines of what they talked about when they introduced BNet matchmaking. Tiered system where when you move up a tier, you are locked out of the lower tier. This could work great for 1v1 fights and it's obvious it would need a lot more work to pidgeon hole into something the scale of a battleground. I just don't see any other way to stop gear griefing unless they somehow figure out how to separate haves from have nots.

Thing is, all theese limitations could lead to even further compartmentalisation of WoWs PVP, separating it into smaller and smaller niches. 

To the OP

my 4 fantasy MMOs that I have partaken in PVP and i will list them from best to worst from what I have seen so far.

1. Best by far was DAoC

2. From what I have seen Aion is just amazingly fun

3. WAR The open RVR was a blast

4. WOW yep sorry WOW you come in last place

You're right - a rating system might solve the problem - at least for the rated battlegrounds.

Although non-rated battlegrounds (i.e. any battleground that isn't favoured for weekend), would still suffer from exactly the same problems as before.

Actually - the problem may get worse. Since the proposed rating system seems to allow people to gather quite a high rating just by playing a large number of games - and if that's linked to gear then we might see large numbers of no-skill long term players walking around in full furious.

Nothing can save WoW anymore but bring back Sunwell type raids. Raids so hard that you know who's the best just by what boss' heads they have on their belts. 

WoW's PvP has been long dead since S2. You can't honestly sit back and say that Skill > than Gear in Arena's none what-so-ever. I've played that game way to long and I have lvled and raided with some of the best pro-gaming guilds in the US/ world. So I know what I'm saying what I say this line:

WoW's arena's are more about Luck than anything else. Oh yes you WoW loving whores, luck. And you know it. All  you need is for one CC to go off, or to CS one guy and slam you face into your keyboard rolling your head back and forth throwing everything and your mother at that one player to kill him within the first few seconds of the game and if he dies, thats game, you won the match, If  he doesn't then you lost because you just wasted everything trying to kill him. 

"oh but what if their pro-pvpers and don't die in the first few seconds of the game?"

Let me answer that too cause I know someone will bring it up, well then what happens WoW fanboi's? Thats right, everyone runs around in a circle, doing the  circle jerk until....what? OH thats right, someone gets a lucky CC to go off and do the all out nuke to the CC'ed person's hp. There is no skill... if you honestly want to say that running around in a circle for 2 mins before a CC goes off is skill than your guys minds are severely warped. (even though for some of you they are beyond warped)

You know what skill is? 2 teams going head to head, blood for blood, eye for eye, until  someone wins. Not "hey lets run in a circle until we tag someone hehe". Every time I used to Watch an arena match I just laugh because it looked like that Greek circle dance. It's just sad. 

Now one last thing I will add though, is dispite all tthat I've said, I'm not saying all WoW pvper are not skilled. By no means. I've rolled with some of those f'in awesome pro pvpers and I know that you  guys know your shit. And you guys I salute. 

But truth be told, no matter how good I am at WoW or anyone else is, like whoever said above, if a freshly dingged lvl 80 entered a arena, GEAR still outways his skill because no amount of fucking skill can kill that better geared player.... unless he is a fucktard and stands there the whole time letting you kill him. 

 

Originally posted by Hepisodic

Nothing can save WoW anymore but bring back Sunwell type raids. Raids so hard that you know who's the best just by what boss' heads they have on their belts. 

WoW's PvP has been long dead since S2. You can't honestly sit back and say that Skill > than Gear in Arena's none what-so-ever. I've played that game way to long and I have lvled and raided with some of the best pro-gaming guilds in the US/ world. So I know what I'm saying what I say this line:

 

WoW's arena's are more about Luck than anything else. Oh yes you WoW loving whores, luck. And you know it. All  you need is for one CC to go off, or to CS one guy and slam you face into your keyboard rolling your head back and forth throwing everything and your mother at that one player to kill him within the first few seconds of the game and if he dies, thats game, you won the match, If  he doesn't then you lost because you just wasted everything trying to kill him. 

 

"oh but what if their pro-pvpers and don't die in the first few seconds of the game?"

 

Let me answer that too cause I know someone will bring it up, well then what happens WoW fanboi's? Thats right, everyone runs around in a circle, doing the  circle jerk until....what? OH thats right, someone gets a lucky CC to go off and do the all out nuke to the CC'ed person's hp. There is no skill... if you honestly want to say that running around in a circle for 2 mins before a CC goes off is skill than your guys minds are severely warped. (even though for some of you they are beyond warped)

 

You know what skill is? 2 teams going head to head, blood for blood, eye for eye, until  someone wins. Not "hey lets run in a circle until we tag someone hehe". Every time I used to Watch an arena match I just laugh because it looked like that Greek circle dance. It's just sad. 

 

Not one last thing I will add though, is dispite all tthat I've said, I'm not saying all WoW pvper are not skilled. By no means. I've rolled with some of those f'in awesome pro pvpers and I know that you  guys know your shit. And you guys I salute. 

 

But truth be told, no matter how good I am at WoW or anyone else is, like whoever said above, if a freshly dingged lvl 80 entered a arena, GEAR still outways his skill because no amount of fucking skill can kill that better geared player.... unless he is a fucktard and stands there the whole time letting you kill him. 

 

I'd go as high as entire TBC for "PvP was good".
I played SP+Aff lock in S2 then Shadowcomp in S3 and S4.
Sure a warrior+shaman spamming purge and getting a windfury could drop my partner or even me in 3-4 seconds dead, but man, I had so much fun time. I got full S3 and full S4 then we actually met irl and we talked about random shit so basically, I made 2 new friends.
WOTLK, on the other hand, "LOL 30K DMG IN 3 SECONDS HURR DURR".
And you know what's funny? Blizzard buffed burst because 2v2 was imbalanced thanks to healers abusing pillars. Then they remove 2v2 from any meaningful rewards(aka Glad) because 3v3 is more balanced. But TBC's 3v3 was far more balanced and they ruined 2v2. All WOTLK 3v3 comps are based on dropping someone dead in 5-10 seconds. So what was the point of all of this? 
Well, a dude was right: WOTLK, when retards go for gladiator.
Oh and, 130+ pages of people who agree with me www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php (AJ is the main arena community, having mostly 2300+ rated players).

Hey guys, I just wanted to add one thing about vanilla and "one-hits":

When speaking about current state of PvP in WotLK older players often say "Well, it's not that different from vanilla. Players in Naxx gear could one or two shot other players as well.".

Personally I think there was a difference. Because in vanilla you had to have this kind of gear in order to one or two shot other players. But without this kind of gear fights were actually pretty balanced in terms of damage. At level 59 I did a lot of PvP before I finally got to 60. And we had a lot of fun. Same could be said for BC. At level 69 things were a bit more fast paced, but still ok. Things were different at 70 of course. Ever fought a fully geared S4 warrior in blues? No? They could one or two shot you as well (with a bit of luck and crits).

Now in WotLK I have a mage at level 75. At this level you do not have high end raid gear or glad gear. But still most DPS classes can blow up other players in only a few GCDs. So the problem is not just the gear. The problem is that the baseline damage of those  abilities has increased considerably.

So in WotLK you face to things: much higher base damage and on top of this the gear gap. Good luck to all those who whish to gear up a new char this late in the expansion :-)

Originally posted by tro44_1

Anybody like WoW's PvP over other MMOs? If so why.

I see a lot of trash talking about WoW's PvP, but yet when I played during TBC and early WoTLK, I notice thatr most of the time the BGs were packed, and the LWG would be slaming with tons of players.

If WoW's PvP sucks so much as the MMO community puts it, then why do so many play it? Why do you like WoW's PvP?

I think it is better than Eq2s PvP but worse than Guildwars myself.

That many people like something doesn't make it good, Celine Dion sells a lot of CDs but still suck.

Wows PvP is average in my book, not bad but not good either. It is not Wows strongest point but neither it's weakest.

Blizzards balance could be a lot better, they should do as arenanet and have a full time employe just watching PvP and suggest how to tune it as good as possible.

And they could also offer a variant of battleground where everybody got a standard uniform instead of their regular gear, that way there is an option to play a game based on players skill like Guildwars.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by tro44_1

Anybody like WoW's PvP over other MMOs? If so why.

I see a lot of trash talking about WoW's PvP, but yet when I played during TBC and early WoTLK, I notice thatr most of the time the BGs were packed, and the LWG would be slaming with tons of players.

If WoW's PvP sucks so much as the MMO community puts it, then why do so many play it? Why do you like WoW's PvP?

 

I think it is better than Eq2s PvP but worse than Guildwars myself.

That many people like something doesn't make it good, Celine Dion sells a lot of CDs but still suck.

Wows PvP is average in my book, not bad but not good either. It is not Wows strongest point but neither it's weakest.

Blizzards balance could be a lot better, they should do as arenanet and have a full time employe just watching PvP and suggest how to tune it as good as possible.

And they could also offer a variant of battleground where everybody got a standard uniform instead of their regular gear, that way there is an option to play a game based on players skill like Guildwars.

With Ghostcrawler's balance ideas jumpin' in? lol.