My thoughts on the new PvP season a few days into it.
I was shocked at the game balance last season, and how long it took for Blizzard to nerf or buff certain outliers - Some of which never even saw any hotfixes. We had a full AWC season where you were pretty much not able to play unless you played mage, and more specifically Mage + Rogue or Mage + WW.
The fact that I was shocked at this, yet still sit here surprised at how bad class balance seems now, says it all. Somehow it's gotten even worse. I have little faith this is going to get even remotely fixed, after Ion pretty much confirmed they need to grow the PvP playerbase before being able to justify allocating more resources to it.
It feels like we're playing one bugged patch after the other. The season has been out for 2 days and people are still getting the bug where you can't move your character after a Solo Shuffle round, and end up glued in place watching people kill your team for the remaining rounds.
It feels like no effort has been made to improve the reward structure and system at all. The forums are full of people who don't want to play this season because they're suddenly 500-1000 MMR lower and "can't get rewards". It's the same issue every season because Blizzard refuses to actually properly address the issue, and every time they add the band-aid MMR fix, people instantly get happy as they can get their rewards, instead of pushing for an actual change so this isn't a problem next season again. In other games, you can push through the rankings at any point in the season. Imagine if in League top players were stuck in Platinum until midway through the season, while everyone else was unable to get out of Bronze-Gold. There has to be a ranking system where you can get relevant rating/ranking BEFORE the end of a season. We should be able to hit 3000 early in the season, and it shouldn't magically get 20x easier to hit it towards the end because of some magical inflation that makes it exponentially easier.
I'm still facing the same people who have been wintrading every season the last few years. The same people who so blatantly wintraded last season for their titles, just waiting to get their rewards next week when Blizzard inevitably fails to ban 95%+ of them again. I'm still having lobbies where someone is griefing or just straight up doesn't want to play because it's a "boring matchup", as if playing in a game you queued up for is optional.
We're 2 days into the season and a lot of the people who were high last season can't even get queue pops because the MMR soft reset wasn't enough. This makes the game feel incredibly dead. The queues are very long and you can barely tell the new season just started. LFG is pretty much dead, as it hasn't gotten the attention or revamp that it has needed for a while now.
The game pace also feels incredibly slow. I realize we don't have full gear yet, but it's a problem if the game is unenjoyable the first many weeks of the season, as people will end up quitting and not come back. Another change I don't personally like is the longer DRs on CC, which I guess adds to the slower pacing of the game.
It truly feels like PvP is an afterthought and that it just isn't gonna change. Since the nerf to PvP iLvl in PvE after Shadowlands, it has been almost impossible to do content outside of PvP. This means that whenever cool new challenges come out, such as the ?? Nemesis boss, new Delve content, whatever solo content you may want to do, we have to either farm a bunch of PvE gear to play, or just not participate at all. This might sound troll to say, but remember how PvE players felt when they had to PvP for gear. The reason this is especially annoying this season is that you need 273 iLvl to queue up for LFR, the easiest raid difficulty. With the full available PvP gear this week, we're at around 270-271. Again, this may not sound like a big issue, but it becomes pretty annoying when the only way to get your 4p set bonus this early is from PvE - Which, keep in mind, we also need in PvP. It's either farm PvE gear on our alts to be able to do LFR/Normal, or wait till week 5 for 4p. I understand not being able to do the normal raid in PvP gear, but it feels incredibly troll to be locked out of LFR due to the PvP gear literally being THAT useless. Imagine the outrage if PvE players had to play PvP for early 4p.
It genuinely feels like WoW PvP is becoming this meme.
There's a massive problem in EU PvP that's been going on for years.
Harassment, threats, griefing and wintrading. The same people queuing day after day just to ruin the game for others.
Please help. @WatcherDev@TheWindstalker@BlizzardCSEU_EN
An Opinion on @Warcraft PVP, from a @Warcraft PvP truther:
WoW PvP is in the worst state it has ever been in, and it’s not even close.
- Inflation is completely gone in every bracket besides Blitz. The rank 1 player in NA Blitz is 3377, while the highest NA Shuffle player is 2401, a 976 rating difference. EU tells the same story: 3385 in Blitz vs 2438 in Shuffle, a 947 gap. Solo Shuffle has DOUBLE the active player count of BG Blitz in both regions, yet Blitz has nearly 950 more rating worth of inflation. It makes zero sense.
- Multiple specs are straight up Shadowlands-level oneshotting, while others are left in the dirt with no meaningful changes, making them completely useless.
- It took them weeks to nerf MW when it was the most dominant healer spec we’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, MM Hunter got hit with nerfs within 24 hours. Where is that same urgency for everything else?
- RMP is in what feels like 90% of games and still wins like no other comp in the game, with no foreseeable fixes to change the fact.
- With the departure of the MW meta, it’s become painfully obvious: every single healer is bad in their own way. There’s no real healer “meta” because sustain healing just feels terrible across the board.
- Dev DHs, BM Hunters, WW Monks, Outlaw Rogues in nearly every single Shuffle lobby.
@Warcraft PVP is completely miserable right now, and I genuinely wouldn’t recommend anyone queue until some of these issues are addressed. If @Blizzard_Ent and the @WarcraftDevs adjust MM Hunter that quickly, why is it taking so long to fix these major problems?
Can't wait to watch @WoWEsports and see RMP played in every single match when there's 13 available classes in the game to play.
"you're just sad that your spec isn't meta" This is not the basis of my anger, even if it was then people who main the other 33 specs would also support what I am saying. Even when FOTM swapping you still experience all of the above and I guarantee it.
@skillcapped When will the best comp section be updated on the wow articles section of classes please? Also it's missing completely for healers. Thank you
Day 909 of asking @Warcraft@WatcherDev & @Blizzard_Ent to make a dedicated WoW PvP twitter for communicating with the PvP community. An ideal format for promoting PvP in the Worldsoul Saga.
2026 is the year for PvP comms?
(New issues/bugs post below)