Are you tired of twiddling your thumbs while your character is stuck in a crowd control lock? This week, we're raising our tankards at the Pig and Whistle Inn to a hearty debate on the state of WoW PvP. We'll navigate the tumultuous waters of weekly updates, mythic affixes, and the crowd control mechanics that can make or break the thrill of combat. Expect a rundown of strategies to keep your character on their feet and in the fight, utilizing everything from savvy class abilities to the latest trinkets. It's time to turn those waiting woes into action-packed prowess.
WoW's PvP is a battlefield of both skill and accessibility, and this episode tackles the hurdles head-on. I'm laying out the pressing concerns our community has voiced, from cumbersome UIs to the daunting elitism that can tarnish the ranking system's luster. We're sharing tales of the time-hardened veterans with thousands of hours under their belts, examining the fine line between dedication and imbalance. Plus, I'll dissect the love-hate relationship with third-party add-ons, advocating for a PvP experience that doesn't leave players at the mercy of external tools.
The grand finale of our discussion shifts towards the UI—could it be the unsung hero or the Achilles' heel of WoW PvP? I'll scrutinize the reliance on add-ons like Weak Auras and Omnibar, pondering if a stripped-down UI could be the golden ticket to a more inclusive arena. As we wrap up with a hat tip to the exceptional content creators fueling our discussions, don't forget to stay connected for a part two that promises to keep the conversation ablaze. And keep those ears perked for the surprise we've been teasing—it's one reveal you won’t want to miss.
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. So grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be going over forms once again and we'll be looking at mainly pvp stuff, but there's obviously going to be a few bits and bobs here and there. Um, this guy's written an entire essay. This guy has done his gcses, all on this forum page. It's absolutely crazy. So we might be able to get through all of it, but I highly doubt it. It's that much, um, but we'll start off with something easy and before that we will do the news or the weekly news, as always. So let's start off with the weekly world bosses. You have bisricron, zirconic, elders and aerostar all located within their zones, which are the waking shore. Uh, zaralak caverns that's the one and the emerald dream.
Speaker 1:
Legion time walking is your bonus event for the week. This is where you can get time walking badges to purchase some reputation mounts, gear, anything of the sorts, as well as just, you know, revisit the old legion dungeons. I guess they were very good, the legion dungeon, so I would very much recommend it. Cooking impossible is your brawl for the week. This is essentially where you need 20 ingredients I believe it's 20 and you need to bring the ingredients back to your cook cooking pot. Yes, and you have to get the 20 ingredients before the opposite faction do. You can steal the opposite factions ingredients by killing the uh by killing uh one of the opposite faction that are carrying the ingredients, and pick it up, take it to your cooking pot instead.
Speaker 1:
Incorporeal, sanguine and fortified are your mythic fixes for the week. Incorporeal you need to cc a enemy. Essentially, sanguine when you kill an enemy, it will leave a pool of red goo on the ground. Simply move out of it. Move the mobs out of it. Don't be near the red goo. And fortified non-boss enemies have increased damage and health and any mobs they summon as well. So make sure you are bringing a talent build that can accommodate that.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm going to start off with a bit of a smaller one, but let's see how this one pans out. Stop making WoW PvP boring. Waiting is boring. I'm not playing the game for this time. That's not a word. H-s-y-t Is that an abbreviation for something? That's not an abbreviation for something that's not an abbreviation for something I'm not playing. I'm not paying game time for this game. Uh, to be told, uh, okay, hey, if I want to play pvp you have to wait.
Speaker 1:
I attack a player and he kidney shot my character. I wait six seconds. I get bored. Then he abuses and the absolute income, incompetence of the rogue class designer and cheap shots because why not? Now I wait 10 seconds because a guy is bad at his job and I get even more bored.
Speaker 1:
The rogue now proceeds to disarm my character. I get to wait even more. Okay, firstly, he's already wrong about the timers of stuff. So kidney shot six seconds. Yeah, that's fine. Cheap shot will be half dr. Yeah, so a normal cheap shot is four seconds. It's on two seconds at half dr because it's a stun and you've already stunned the target. So eight seconds in total. So please get your facts right if you're going to post on the forums Now.
Speaker 1:
The disarm is about five seconds. I believe Five to six seconds. I believe it's five. Yes, this is true and you know it is what it is. What is this Server loading simulator? If I wanted to look at loading screens, why would I play WoW, pvp, pvp? I used to be able to press X, dude, press Y and counter each other. I freaking got the noob rogue out of stealth.
Speaker 1:
What happens? The player abuses rogue class, designers, incompetence and cheap shots. Again why I outplayed him. My reward, my character, is in some stun or whatever, and I have to wait again. The situation with healers is the same. Druids have the fun stun plus cyclone, cyclone. And now you wait. Combo. Waiting is the name of the game. Wait for cds, wait for defensives, wait for bubble. You spelled bubble wrong. Uh, wait for cc. Wait, wait, wait. I am bored. Okay, then how about you pick a class that has stuff to get out of cc? Oh, wait, you do. You have trinkets. You have stuff to get yourself out of fears. You have.
Speaker 1:
You're an orc, so naturally you're going to be more resistant to stuns as you have a 25 reduced duration of stuns on you, so naturally you're getting out of stuns quicker. Um, you are a warrior, so you are very tanky. Um, but if you are wanting to play something that has that, why not play rogue yourself? Or play mage, where you can blink stuns, or play a warlock where, I don't know, you can dart packed in a stun if it's a defensive that you're worried about. Or you know, play a druid where you can't get polymorphed. If you know you're not having fun in your class, that's not the game designer's fault, that's your fault, because you're just not having fun in the class and you refuse to switch.
Speaker 1:
I want to play the game, not wait. Waiting in queue is enough. Hell, waiting to find a partner should be enough waiting. And now some classes have buttons that make me wait even more. Even in the arena it isn't waiting. It isn't waiting. They're having their go.
Speaker 1:
You have stuns, you have cc. I could say storm bolt. It's like 30 second cooldown. It's ridiculously low, it isn't, and it's a fair stone, I think, with three seconds. But you can look at hammer of justice. For paladins, that's pretty low cooldown, considering they can get it back very quickly. Um, it isn't a minute cooldown, it's more of a 25 to 30 second cooldown and that's a six second stun. Now, rogues obviously can stun constantly, uh, but they have to use certain cooldowns to do so, such as shadow dance. Um, but look, it is what it is. These are how the classes have been designed and the thing is, this guy is saying oh, I could press x, and this dude presses y and we counter each other.
Speaker 1:
Look at rogues back in classic. Rogues back in classic. There are literal videos of like rogues back whenever youtube was first released. Like rogues killing warriors with just a starting dagger because of the cc they had. So they kidney shot and cheap shot and they weren't on the same diminishing return. They weren't. So you get full kidney shot, full, cheap shot value, and then you blinded the target full and then you sapped them and then you kidney shot, cheap shotted them again and, you know, did it all again. The character was unable to move for about a minute straight. Rogue cc was that crazy back in classic. So you can't tell me that. Oh, my god, I pressed x and y and it counted him.
Speaker 1:
No, rogues have always been the same and it's actually kind of nerfed from what classic was. Essentially, if classic rogue was still in the game, no one would be playing. Rogues would be inherently in every single game. If you couldn't play a rogue, you shouldn't be playing PvP if that's how rogues were Like still in classic, that's the thing. Um, yeah, so I can. Rogues were like still in classic, that's the thing. Um, yeah, so I can pinpoint the classes that feel super bad to play against. No surprise, rogue is one of them. When playing wow pvp it feels like roulette. My experience is dictated by how many rogues and other boring to play against classes I get to play against.
Speaker 1:
How about making kidney, kidney shot Root, just like warriors charges now, at least now I have some buttons to press. How about you make stuns? Make me weight less. They want to turn kidney shot Into a root, are they? Oh my god, I can't Watching the stupid loading icon Of the stupid stuns. I rather alt plus tab and watch a movie. Movie or write another angry topic on the forums. Waiting is boring. Pvp gameplay. Have too much waiting. I am bored and PvP games are not supposed to be boring. Zzzzz, you get the gist.
Speaker 1:
Firstly, this is a warrior. He has two ways of Actually he has multiple ways of getting out of stuns. He can blade storm the stun. If he's good enough, he can press avatar and it will automatically blade storm the stun. He can fear the rogue. He can cc the rogue himself. He can intervene someone on the stun. You know warriors are fun to play.
Speaker 1:
I hopped onto my warrior like just randomly, gave it some conquest gear six and owed in a lobby. Now obviously my game knowledge. I have been playing for many years so it is up there. But it's just fun to zog every now and again and warrior gave me that whereas if this guy played a caster he would not enjoy this. He would not enjoy this this is someone who has never played a caster in their life, by the way, because if he was getting kicked he would be immediately pissed off about kicks in the game. He'd be like oh my god, shaman, kick is too low a cooldown. Oh my god, mages kick locks you out for five seconds. That's crazy. That needs to be nerfed. Warlock kick locks you out for five seconds. This needs to be nerfed. Youlock kick locks you out for five seconds. This needs to be nerfed. You know, whatever he plays, he will complain, something like he will have something to complain about. Um, it is absolutely crazy, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:
A lot of people find their own kind of annoyances within the game, within pvp itself. I don't think rogues of one of them. Rogues can be absolutely infuriating, don't get me wrong, but in a game where rep warrior, fist weaver is currently the meta or like up there in the best comps and like melee are very strong right now, going against an rmp is very relaxing for some reason, because the way that rmp plays, in comparison to what many melee players melees, it's very much zug, zug, don't get off this target. Ram my head, press w key. You know that kind of deal. Whereas rogue rmp is very much okay, they've had their go, let's charge into them and fuck them up, okay. Okay, they're going to have a go. Now We've got to run away, spread out, get ready. Who's in danger, who isn't? How do we prevent this? You know that kind of deal. It's very strategic in that sense, whereas I'm guessing this warrior just likes to play the Zog Zog comp and does not care about anything else in the game at all, moving on, and does not care about anything else in the game at all. So, moving on to this one, this one is, oh my god, he has wrote so so much.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'm going to try and pick out the main points of this. So, dear blizzard, after months upon months of pvp situation getting increasingly more questionable, decided to put down a list of the most common themes regularly discussed by the community. These are concerns frequently voiced on forums, discord channels, reddit or even in-game, and thus should represent the most common topics discussed on a daily basis. It should serve as a good guiding point that amasses most of the concerns in a legible, comprehensible way under one headline. I would love it if it reaches somebody at the headquarters in PvP department. Sadly, however, I do not expect it to, but I will attempt to anyway. I give the letter some credibility.
Speaker 1:
I started playing World of Warcraft in BFA Season 2. That's very late. I have 10,000 hours Slash played. No, no, he what? No, no, that that doesn't make sense. 10 000 hours played what the fuck? Uh, how do I do? It's 10 000 hours and then you divide it by 365. Right that? How many? I'm trying to think. There's no way. 10 000 hours is like. And then it's times 24, isn't it? Yeah, because you got 24 hours, I don't know? Um, I'm trying to think of the maths there. 10 000 hours is crazy, is it not? Uh, how much is it is 10 000 hours. Uh, in days, let's see how long is 10,000 hours? 10. Okay, well, that's 10,000 days in days. Here we go 416 days. That doesn't seem right. No, like that doesn't seem right. In terms of BFA, he's. Oh, my god, there's no way this guy's played that much since BFA.
Speaker 1:
Bfa came out in 2018, if I'm not mistaken, yeah, it came out in 2018. So this guy has spent a year since 2018 being on World of Warcraft a year that that's, I'm not gonna lie, kind of crazy. Um, I think I've just about spent that much like over all of my characters, over all wows actually, no, over all wows, probably not. I've probably done like a year and a half, but I've been playing for 15 years now, so you can kind of understand that. But you know, since 2018, having a year spent, that's crazy. Um, I got a little bit off course.
Speaker 1:
I have reached 2.664 uh cr in twos, 2.3k in threes and 2.6 in rated solo shuffle. I have reached elite six times and I have hit legend as well. Currently, I am on my way to hopefully reach a seventh elite, sixth in a row, by the end of the season in 2v2s, as that is my preferred game mode. Fair enough, that's his preferred game mode. I have played 20,000 2v2s and 2,000 3v3s. I also have reached cutting edge twice and Keystone Hero once.
Speaker 1:
Lastly, this letter is not supposed to be a hate letter. It is meant to serve as a document and constructive criticism based on frequently reoccurring opinions from the field. So, without further ado, let's delve into the specifics. So you have unfriendly ui hard accessibility, learning the ropes. No in incentive, incentivization to play. Uh. You have mmr achievements equal, unreachable, elitism and toxic. Are you losing money balance? Uh, button bloat, no communication, rss. So we'll work our way down.
Speaker 1:
Now this is a lot, by the way, um, unfriendly ui the user interface is illegible. It tells you nothing, it does not show cooldowns on either side, it's super small and only shows trinket in the baseline form as the same time, however. At the same time, however, people have been playing with multiple add-ons in order to gain edge. This would be fine if those add-ons did not provide people with so much incredibly useful information that it moves them way ahead. It's not unusual for high rated plays to play with gladius plus weak oras, plus omnibar, plus omni cd, plus gladius.
Speaker 1:
Gladiator, loss a losa. Oh, gladiator, gladiator losa is annoying. Is that the one that constantly speaks to you when, like stuff's being pressed? That one's annoying? Uh, all of this should be implemented within the game's interface, with an on off function for both the entirety of the interface and the specific spells they need to track, etc. And the player should be explicitly told that they exist. Apparently, the player is forced to use those otherwise, set them to a significant disadvantage, and they need to search numerous non-Blizzard assets in order to find them and set them up. Everyone uses them. They are critical. It's not cheating, it's vandalism to oneself to not know about those. Implementing these functions Baseline promotes learning and would significantly ease the accessibility of pvp to new players and promote growth.
Speaker 1:
I agree with this completely. I either think you have to do one of two things take pvp, uh and ui enhancements out of the game completely and weak auras out of PvP, I should say, and give everyone a fair go at it, kind of like what Plunderstorm has done. It gives you a base UI and that's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Or you allow it to be in-game and you simply have these three sort of I want to say weak auras, but that's not the word these three add-ons. You have Gladius, we-cores and Omnibar. You have these three baked into the UI and people can enable them and disable them however they wish. That way, people can still customize their UI and if they want to use these, they can, if they don't, they don't. You know, it's that simple. I think that, yeah, this is how it should be in the game.
Speaker 1:
In my personal opinion, if I ever expand on the topic, this is the reason why many people do not bother watching wow pvp. It is not comprehensible, even to the player, let alone a random viewer. Contrary to league of legends, the game is much easier to swallow and process, while wow pvp is such a copious amount of things to track in an inconsistent manner. Every player has a different ui due to add-ons. That is, that it simply dismantles any concepts the viewer might have had one time that they would decide to watch somebody else play. All of this is losing you potential players that would be interested in the game. I mean, just look at this, like 30 of the entire screen is just tracking assets. Um, this is very true.
Speaker 1:
I do have to say that this is actually a true statement, because when you first look at world of warcraft, you have a very clean ui, don't you? You have, you know, your base sort of uh action bar, and there's not much more to it. You have your quests. On the right hand side, you have your mini sort of uh action bar and there's not much more to it. You have your quests. On the right hand side, you have your mini map and your character in the middle. You know, very simple, when you go on to someone's stream and you might level with this throughout your entire leveling phase level 80, you know you get to your max level. Are we level 18? No, we're level 70. I don't remember what dragonfly is anymore, um, but essentially you get to your max level and you're like, okay, I want to try some PvP. Who's a good PvPer?
Speaker 1:
You Google it and it comes up with Peekaboo, or you know, waz, or Raikou WizK, absturge, whatever you know. There's so many good PvP players out there and you click on one of their streams and they all have a shit ton of different UIs. And you're like, whoa, why doesn't my World of Warcraft UI look like this? And then you have to figure out, oh, okay, it's because they've got these add-ons. How do I get add-ons? And then it's like you download Chaos Forge and then it's like, okay, what add-on gives me this look? And it's like, oh, it's this one, but you've got to edit it. And then you know you've got to do all of this before you even step foot into an arena, which is the worst part, and that's just no fun, is it? Let's face it, that's not fun at all.
Speaker 1:
So I think that dimming down the UI or making it so that you can't have a different UI in maybe PvP is better, but again, a lot of people can only play arenas at the level that they are with these add-ons and that makes it more accessible for them. But it should have been more. It really should just be a lot more uh, new player friendly pvp, because it does look like a shit show for so many people. If people see my ui, there'll be like what the living, like fuck, is this? It's absolutely crazy what this looks like and the thing is it works for me.
Speaker 1:
My healing frames not healing frames, my player portraits are just slap bang in the middle, very close to my character. I look at other people's and I think, oh god, no, that can't be there. That's like wrong in so many ways. But it's how they've played the game and how they like enjoy their ui and it's just how they see things, which is really good, and I think with the edit mode it's really good because people can change that ui now. But it's the extra things. It is the wee gorillas, because everyone sees these flashing images on the screen and it's like, oh, what the hell is that? What is that icon? And it's just showing you that a frost mage has popped like icy veins. They're offensive cooldown. You know it's nothing crazy. And to a normal pvp or it's like, okay, they've got icy veins up, nice, I just line aside. I played a little bit more defensive someone who's completely new and looking to get into pvp. You're seeing this giant flashing like icy vein and you're like what the hell is that? How do I get that? That looks crazy. You just don't know, and it definitely needs to be looked at and a bit more user-friendly when coming to PvP. Hard accessibility they said this already, but I was going to say it as well.
Speaker 1:
This connects closely to the prior topic. There are tons of classes and specializations one needs to understand to be able to play effectively with or against them. At the same time. However, the only way to learn about the spells inside of the game is to specifically hover over a minuscule icon that shows you a tooltip description, which usually disappears within seconds. That shows you a tooltip description, which usually disappears within seconds. The alternative to that is playing said class yourself, but doing that is for all classes and specs, by logging on and off and waiting for your specializations, to swap around and also browsing through the talent trees, spell books and then connecting the dots to the buttons you actually need to understand, is simply nothing short of tedious and annoying. What the player does instead is they go to of tedious and annoying. What the player does instead is they go to wowhead and look up the individual spells and ask around, uh, to understand. Uh, what can be done about it? All this information should be accessible from the user interface within seconds on any class, under circum, any circumstances, to promote a coherent learning process, I think, going off of this information, there should be a page in the spell book or a section in the spell book that shows every single spell in the game.
Speaker 1:
Now, people might get a bit overwhelmed with that, in which case you break it down into the classes. So you have druid spells, you have shaman spells, you have, you know all of that stuff and you can simply hover over them and look at them and when you hover over them, it can tell you multiple different information things. So let's go with incarnation for druid. Incarnation is a big offensive cooldown for the druid. It is recommended To use certain defensives During this Offensive cooldown and it will show Like small things, like high burst damage, decent sustain For 30 seconds, something like that. If you are on a shaman, for example, it will tell you what you can use to counteract this.
Speaker 1:
So, as an example it will be, it will say, uh, use astral, uh, you know, as a defensive option. You know that kind of deal like it's very bare bones and obviously there's very um, there's specifics to it. When, like abumi presses astral, you can line a site, you can do many things, but you know, it's, it's a start for those who are new to the game and newer to pvp, to get them into the scene. Essentially, I think that's the best way to go about it. It is very, very tough, though, um, learning the ropes. This has been foreshadowed by the previous parts. The learning is absolutely insane. Obviously this is the most almost a two decade year old game, uh, we are talking about and it's the largest mmorpg in the world by far. But in all of this, but with this in mind, it should be glaringly obvious that the game gravely needs a simple and consistent way on how to learn to play the classes and inspect the other spells and utilities of other classes, like I suggested with the spellbook stuff. All this is underlined by linguistics. Yeah, bop, clone, kick, super smash, cc, chaining dr. There are absolutely zero chance for a newcomer to feel welcomed in the game if they literally do not understand the language others are talking in. This is a big thing. This is a massive thing.
Speaker 1:
So I was recently playing with someone who doesn't PvP as much like not a lot at all and I was constantly asking like, can you bop? Like, can you bop me, b bop me, bop me, bop me? And they're just completely confused. They're like what, what, what was bop? Now they do pve and they probably do know what bop was. It was probably something else. I was probably like can you, you know, hodge off? Or you know, can you like, uh, rep off cc, can you know all of that stuff? And they just sometimes didn't get it.
Speaker 1:
And it is very tough to learn the lingo. It is like picking up a different language sometimes in this sort of thing. But in any other game you have stuff like this sort of lingo. So in League of Legends you have top, mid and bot, you have jungle, you have certain camps and they'll go off of a certain name. You have what is it? Drake? You have baron all of these are obviously names for stuff around the map, but you don't pick it up until like later on, when you've figured out your sort of like later on, when you've figured out your sort of character, so to speak.
Speaker 1:
So it is very tough for newcomers to feel welcomed in the game. Uh, I completely understand. This is one of the best forum posts I've ever seen, by the way, and it should be, because it is taking a lot of inspiration from everywhere on the forums about pvp and I would very much recommend going to look at this one. Um, if you've got time, one of the arguably best ways to implement this would obviously be creating a training ground type concept, but that's clearly above the resources blizzard is willing to put into pvp, and that is fine. It's been established more than explicitly that pvp is a minigame within the PvE orientated video game. That does not, however, change the fact that not only would an open spellbook help others learn in PvE as well, but it would help create the game much more welcoming and easier to understand.
Speaker 1:
Mana in general, to begin with, lex is spanned on this topic and it's pivotal within the context of a declining game mode player base. No incentive to play, wow, okay, I do not. We do not have time for that one. We will come back to this post for sure, because there is so many good like things with this and it's quality. We will look at the MMR quickly, will we? Oh God, oh, my God, all of these are huge. Okay, we'll call it there for this post for now, then, and we'll come back to this another day.
Speaker 1:
I've got to save this post, this post. If you've got time, look it up. It's absolutely quality. It's on NA forums it is called Everything Wrong with wow pvp open letter and it's phenomenal. It's absolutely phenomenal and I would really love it if blizzard could have a look at this and see what is happening.
Speaker 1:
Um, I think there are a lot of good points to be made in here, a set especially from the first ones that I've read and gone over. I usually want to shit talk these sort of posts, but honestly, this is one of the best ones that I've seen by far, by like a very big margin, and that is just amazing in itself, to be honest with you. But I will end it there. Then we will be going over this post like again. Do not worry, I will be carrying on with this post in almost a part two version, to be honest with you next week. Uh, do check out all of the socials down below. There is constant stuff happening over there and a surprise soon to be, I'm sure. So keep an eye out for that. But thank you all very much once again and go with Valor friend. Goodbye all. Thank you.