I think a cool feature would be an arena training mode against AI for new players or returning players. They already have the ai in the brawl mode. Its really hard for new players to learn in 2s or 3s without getting flamed like crazy then they just quit.

I was consistently in the 2.3 - 2.4k CR bracket in DF S1, & was even up to 2.6 - 2.7k MMR for a while. In S2 of DF I've been sitting around 1.8k CR on average. The reason my CR is so low now in S2 is because I haven't been PvP'ing or even playing WoW much. When I do play WoW I prefer to spend most of my time in-game PvP'ing, or screwing around with mount farms / Xmog farms / gold-making. There are a lot of time where I genuinely want to play WoW & PvP. The biggest issue for me, by far, is the que times. I don't have all the time in the world to sit & wait 30 mins for a queue to pop, then however long the match takes on top of that. Even when I do have the time to spare, I don't want to sit in 30 minute que's for a solo shuffle match when I can just go play something else that actually respects my time. I can't deal with the solo shuffle que times & with how long it takes to find competent people to run 3's with at higher ratings (if you can find them at all). So much time is spent just trying to PvP, vastly more than the time that I actually spend PvP'ing. Balance is one thing, but no amount of balancing will ever change the fact that I am sitting in 30+ minute que's for a single solo shuffle match. Balancing is pointless when so few matches are being played. There needs to be a shift of development resources towards getting more players queueing & PvP'ing again, then afterwards balancing can be addressed with more in-depth solutions. It's like a fish out of water. You spend all this time reorganizing the little furniture, cleaning the fish tank, making sure the water is just right, & all while the fish is flopping around on the counter slowly suffocating to death. Then, when it finally becomes obvious that the fish is suffocating & slowly dying, they add another little castle or sunken ship to the fish tank, because that will somehow make everything better... There are foundational issues that need to be addressed. We need to be able to just login & play the game. Nothing else matters when a majority of players aren't even able to play because of how long it takes to find matches / partners.

100%! Tbh would be nice to have a pvp interview to know what the direction they want to head in.. Right now it feels like they are okay with the situation since it's radio silence..

There are no new players coming in because the same 200 players are always at the top. It’s literally the rich get richer. There is absolutely no reason or incentive for a new player to even attempt arena. I am hoping it dies so blizzard might actually radically change the game but they won’t.

1. Stop boosting and Carries. 2. Introduce solo que rates BGS. 3. Award conquest for doing regular BGS. 4. Show people their position in the solo shuffle que 5. AFK protection where If someone leaves your match you can re que at the top of the que 6. 2.5x the rewards for healers for winning / playing games (to gear alts, etc) 7. Add the same conquest rewards for DPS but maybe .5x what it is now (so you’re always making alt progress) 8. Make the PVP trink BIS for PVE, but also allow it be upgraded through PVE

I can only ever 1800 and thats it. Have never been able to push any higher cause one loss feels like is taking away 3 wins

I couldn't care less about my rating, and how hard, or easy it is to get it. I stopped PvPing in season 2 of DF for the first time since WotLK. The power shift is more pronounced than ever before. Every new rework to each class shifts the meta beyond my personal interest. They released an unfinished product, and we are the play testers paying blizz to test their game. I've fianlly had enough, and i think others are with me.

There is absolutely NO Solution to this mess when no one is playing the game. There are too many great games out right now taking people away from WOW. I left WOW because the rewards in game were not worth my time.

Describes me pretty much. Been mostly floating between 2k and 2400 my entire WoW arena career. Never been glad, hardstuck duelist and thats fine. For some reason i can't break 2k in soloshuffle. I think the main issue is that one or two bad games where the lobby just aren't in your favour will set you back several days, possibly weeks of progress. A decent lobby where you win 4 games (which is above average) you'll get like 13 points, buit one game where you go 2-4 or 1-5 and you get minus -50. Going 3-3 (which is average) means you neither gain, nor lose rating so you sat in a 30 minute que, played for 12-15 minutes and have nothing to show for it besides conquest points. That needs to stop. It's infuriating. Just feels like a complete waste of time

If you play the objective you should get more honor n conquest even if ur team is a bunch of bots

The biggest issue of the moment is that participation is so low. Long queue times, getting matched with 0cr healers in a 2200 lobby-these are happening because no one is playing. We could come up with the most elegant solution, but it won’t mean anything if people keep not participating. Blizz needs to do something to boost participation, needs to do something big and do it soon. Once participation is up to a decent level, then they can implement more elegant changes. And the goal needs to be making the various rating levels feel consistent from season to season. We shouldn’t be in a situation where we have to do multivariable calculus to figure out what someone’s past rating in a different inflated/deflated season.

As someone who played arena on and off since tbc with my friends, all I know is that when friends that are new want to start, it's not even worth considering healer for them anymore. Damage is insanely spiky, the game is way more fast paced than it used to be, there's a ton more cc, micro stuns and interrupts. Playing a healer has been a rough job for quite some time now. The happier dps players are the more frustrating the game is for healers, especially at lower ratings, which is where your new/returning players are. The top players can survive into high dampening but low ratings people die once their immunities are out to the melee train. It's compounded by lower rating DPS taking more damage and making the healers job harder. From a basic new player pov, arena is about killing people, preventing death is the healers job, so in order for the game to be concluded a healer needs to "fail" at their job. If that happens "quickly" then healers won't feel that good about their time in the arenas. I just don't think wanting fast paced games where people blow up is compatible with making more players want to play healers. If you buff healers high rated games are going to turn into endless shitshows most likely. Perhaps lowering both healing and dps to slow the game down could work, letting death be caused by compunding mistakes rather than single mistakes. tl;dr It's a catch 22, most of the player base are dps, so they want the game to play in a way that is fun for them (shit dies) but they require healers to get into the actual games who feel good when they keep people alive, ending up with long queues. That's my take.

There's a really really easy way to solve this. Scrap rating all together and just have '% position on ladder'. That way it doesn't matter if last season you were 2.4k or this season you are 2k, your % stays the same.

I think the direction retail PvP would need to move is to solo queue rated BGs. With an easy to understand tiered ranking system (like you described, bronze - diamond). I think BGs need the investment for a few reasons, 1 it would solve queue times to an extent because you are allowing the DPS to Healer ratio to come closer to optimal. The other BIG thing about BGs is that from a viewer standpoint its MUCH MUCH easier to understand that people are playing capture the flag or some version of "territories", and the game is struggling to bring new players on (evident by the observable decrease in player base each expac) so having game modes that focus a little less on the micro-gameplay of arenas and more on the macro-gameplay of a Battleground could make PvP in general more easily accessed. Few things they could do to improve the RBG scene: 1) Implement a rating system people are more familiar with and keep it consistent. (LoL seems to have a system that works pretty well in that players who achieve lets say plat, end up in plat pretty consistently. Where in wow it seems like depending on ladder / season / participation your ratings fly all over the place.) 2) Shrink the maps - AB, EotS, and Deepwind Gorge are all imo too large. (Maybe I have a short attention span but dying waiting 30seconds to be back alive and then having another 45second mounted travel time to get back to the action just feels a bit jarring, maybe having some sort of birds eye death cam or something while im waiting that I feel like I'm still in the game a bit would help... dunno but the amount of time out of combat in RBGs can feel really disruptive to the flow of the game - it's why professional sports- think American Football, has limited very short time outs, its just bad to a viewer and as a player.) 3) Ban Tanks (This opens the door for an even better dps to healer ratio and also removes specs that tend to be pretty anti-fun in a rated setting) 4) A big thing would honestly be getting symmetrical map design, my personal favorite map is WSG (seems to be a crowd favorite) and I think part of this is because nothing about it favors one side over the other like you have on Silvershard Mines and AB. Typically in other successful Esport quality competitive games if maps favor one side over the other its also typical for the game to facilitate both teams getting to play from that side in their match. (maybe after you cap a flag on Twin Peaks there is a board swap, 30sec break and now your team is on the other side and it plays like rounds?) - something like that could also work. 5) Rework rewards... I think this could be said about the game as a whole, the saturation of mounts and armor has gotten to a point where I am not excited about a glad mount anymore it has lost its prestige..(maybe its like the whole.. you want a nice car but once you have it the luster of the car decays? idk) I think some notoriety would be cool, some display in the main city that once you get into diamond or whatever the leaderboard starts displaying your name in the game and maybe a statue for each season is erected so if you make it to the top 5% or whatever it is you get to leave your mark on the history of wow. That seems better than another mount to me, idk. 6) Lastly - The in-game voice comms are actually not awful, they should be building an interface to make this HEAVILY under utilized tool of the game a more prominent feature akin to that of any major FPS competitive game. I would even take proximity chat inside pvp zones tbh.

It's weird because Blizzard has a great system in place already in SC2, which they carried over to OW, so you'd think it would work well in WoW as well

Good video, everything is pretty spot on. My few points: - They need to reduce the CR loss for healers to keep them motivated to play. Make it even more rewarding to play healers so people reduce queue times and have an easier push to get rewards - Give a mount from Shuffle, even if it's 2400 + 100 wins instead of 50 it gives people a reason to play. One of the largest problems with 3s has always been the elitist nature of people not wanting to play with people a little lower, the casuals just want to play and get rewards. - Why are people even allowed to AFK out of Shuffles, people are doing it on stream and without any repercussions. "I don't want this guy to get rating" is directly griefing everyone in the lobby, don't let /afk work. People would just stand in the starting area, but at least that gives the opportunity to kill them to balance out the losses. Waiting 30-40 minutes for some idiot to just leave is a reason I stopped queueing after 2100. - The Elite weapon transmogs this season are so bad I knew I wasn't going to try that hard. - You have unspent Dragonriding Glyphs.

I think they need to make it easier to climb on healer. I've been hard stuck 1800 and been getting into games 2,400 mmr games with other healer being 1800 same as me. I went 4-2. They went 2-4. they lost like 30 mmr and I would go up +3. or something low. then the dps would go the same and they would lose a lot less and gain a lot more.

I would love solo rated BG that bases it off your spec only. Give rating at the end of the week based on performance. Think rating based on objectives, damage, deaths, kills, and wins vs loss compared to other people of the same spec.

One of the worst things for me in solo shuffle as a healer is being whispered with all caps rage from a dps saying all sorts of negative things for something they perceived as a bad play. I feel solo shuffle is extremely toxic towards healers and I haven't been in ss's in a while now because of it. Possible solution for Solo Shuffles ONLY; Names should be blank or just 1, 2 and 3, chat should be disabled because it becomes toxic too easily and frankly can ruin your day and even transmogs should be change so you're not easily identifiable after the match. Let's be honest, how many times have you left a solo shuffle and then whispered a player saying lets play again? I haven't. I think that's what blizzard thought would happen and it's the exact opposite. I know blizzard has the ability to do this because this is exactly how pvp pet battling works and has for 15 years. You join a pvp pet battle and your mog changes each time even male to female and visa versa, you don't see their name and you can't talk, just duke it out and feel out the game. (Low key, these are actually fun and don't take a lot of time, more ppl should try). Aside from Solo Shuffle: The PVP group finder UI should be thrown out completely and replaced with a new ground up design focusing on players finding players; not just at that moment but almost like a message board with a link to your profile and optional btag where you can put your name, classes you play, 2's or 3's, time to play, relevant rating, goals , etc. etc. and that message can stay up between 12-48 hours like an auction post so the boards don't become flooded with old irrelevant posts and maybe costs something like marks of honor to post (just an idea for currency because I'm sure most people like me are sitting on thousands of these). If you find someone with similar goals on the boards you can submit something to them and start building a list of similarly skilled players with similar goals. There was an addon similar to this back in MoP I can't remember the name of it but it was amazing. Something like dating website but for wow pvp and pve for that matter. So many time's I feel (and I'm sure others do as well) that we settle for a partner or partners with the current system because there just aren't that many people q'ing at the time you're looking and that just leads to a not great experience for you and them. This leads to just not q'ing at all, at least for me.

For faster solo ques, they should do it like skirmishes. If there is not a healer within you rating, do 2 v 2, 3 rounds, with only dps. Ques would be faster and the rounds will go faster and you don't have to worry about having a healer that is not at the same skill level as the dps. Not perfect but I think it would be better.

i dont know if this is a good solution or not but i think that a "problem" that has occurred in df is since they removed a lot of the self sustain from many classes and gave all that power to healers (which is also awesome and has benefits i wont deny) whenever u get a bad healer in a shuffle it feels just that much worse cuz you cant do nearly as much as you could in the past to carry past that

The expectation for my group was to get 2.4k in season one DF bc we reach that in SL. Hard stuck at 2k everyone quit and haven’t came back. I can attest.

As a new-ish commit to retail, I love that PvP rating is super difficult/deflated. Gonna sound weird but conversations are more positive when the ratings are deflated. Conversations are “dang 1800 with how difficult it is to climb is great!” Whereas people non-stop hate on whatever that shadowlands season was where glad was “free”. It’s like hatred is more aimed at blizzard when rating is hard. And if rating is easier, hate/toxicity is aimed at insulting others for being “free”.

You had some great suggestions here ven! I want to explain another time that this situation happened - rocket league. The current highest rank is SSL, but it used to just be grand champion. They tried one season to lower inflation and it upset EVERYBODY. So their new solution was a new reward tier and it worked very well. If 3k becomes the pro bench mark and your rewards only go to 2400, then you need to add a 2800 reward.

It's so weird you make all these videos on why people aren't playing pvp, but you never touch on the absolute insane learning curve atm. New people are going up against veterans who's been grinding this shit for a decade. I used to love wow pvp (vanilla r14) but I just can't get into it these day, even after making a serious effort several times. During my last attempt at a comback I got flamed multiple times for using my defensive cooldowns "incorrectly" below 1000 rating. So it's not a super welcoming environment. All the mandatory addons are ultimately what kills it for me though. It's just an absolute garbage game mode now with everyones ability to monitor used/unused cds constantly. The arena feels like an UI monitoring mode, and it just sucks the fun out of the game. Veteran players will always have an edge ofcourse, but the addon-game just compounds this so hard.

I like that you're making this topic. a lot of players don't come because they want glad mound as they used to try. I hope you continue like that.

The only way to save pvp is by putting forth actual new pvp content. 5v5 or 6v6 small objective based modes would be significantly better. Can also incorporate people wanting to play tanks in pvp. We already have gamemode blueprints from Overwatch; yeah OW is in the dumps right now, but OG Overwatch competitive modes would be incredible on WoW.

I don't think we need a new system. I think we need a new game studio with new ideas and some young talented guys with a vision to make it happen.

Arena gameplay is too way confusing for new players (tracking all the cd's, cc, positioning etc) but in RBG you can ignore most of that stuff and still do fine.

i spent the last month just farming tmog and it’s been a blast

The main problem is: Every expansion there is less and less players participating. Because most players DO NOT CARE about arena or any arena modes (of course most people here will care, its an arena channel after all). We need people, so you add more pvp modes for people to get INTO PVP for starters. Pvp in this game is: Join a 50 mins queue to play a stressful game for 8 mins. People with real jobs (most people) can't keep up with this. Sadly THIS modes are the only way to progress your characters in pvp wich is IDIOTIC. Blizzard devs are clueless.

6 players teams 2 heals 4 dps.. redesign every single bg to fit this mold in terms of map size and objective placement..and then make a ranked pre-made version..balance for it and then add a solo q ranked version also for when your team isn't on

Venruki I saw the AQ Gates open on Frostmourne as I am Australian. I have only ever played a mage since the game was released. You're spot on with every comment you make about pvp (ret jokes aside) , I log on get my mog and log off if its a bad season, I was actually 2450 last season and this season i stopped bothering after duelist, so you nailed it on the head. All the other comments and Inez's video you previously covered are perfect, i really hope someone in blizzard is listening as you're making some very good points.

Solo shuffle 2's: 4 rounds, rotate teams. Gives DPS a spillover place to wait for their 3s SS to pop (so it'd mostly be 4 dps lobbies). Solo shuffle 5's: first team to 2 kills wins the round. 2 ppl who died go to separate teams, highest damage from winning team goes to losing team

The problem is, it takes upwards of 100 hours of gameplay to even be an entry level arena player in WoW. So the only people who are going to play are people who have already done that grind. And if the last time they did that grind was 3 expansions ago, then they're almost back at zero. I love that WoW keeps innovating its class design every x-pack, it's one of my favorite parts, but the bloat gets to be so insane that at some point you've just permanently missed the boat if you haven't kept up in a while. Dragonflight looks like a really cool expansion to me, but I still haven't touched it because I just absolutely don't want to download a dozen addons, re-learn complex rotations, bust out gear spreadsheets, and, mostly, I don't want to play GCD-locked, sweaty rotations in every single gameplay mode available. I did it before in my early 20s, I know what it takes to be 'good' at WoW, and I just don't have it in me anymore. Classic Era looks like fun as well (f*** WotLK honestly, what a sh*tshow), but I continue to pass on that as well because the community basically wants you to pay real money for every piece of gear that drops from every dungeon or raid. An obvious over exaggeration, but the gatekeeping is REAL. I don't know what else to say, retail WoW seems like it's designed for the top 1% of players, and the Classic community pretends like the game is only for the top 1% of players.

Its the barrier to entry. A player who plays an mmo IS NOT a casual video gamer. You cant just log in and pvp in rated arena. Mmo pvp is just dying in general not just in wow. Its just so much easier to log in and smash in a moba or fps game, to get your pvp fix.. no waiting, no lfg, no bullshit fuckery by devs with mmr every season. I was really hoping for big things with solo shuffle, played the shit out of s1, got to 2.9k on my rogue... but there is just a plethora of issues, long q inclued, that has not even made me slightly tempted to come back.

Would allowing triple dps for solo queue be a bad thing? That might fix queues, but would it be worth it?

I think reset the honor level system every season with rewards for certain level milestones to keep people playing would help

why do rewards need to be tied to rating? why would the bottom of the pyramid of players play if they know the rewards are out of reach?

Imagine it from the Priest's perspective. Here you are just starting out and you instantly get que'd into a 2200 lobby, your first thought is, "Well, I'm effed" and the stress levels are instantly high. The entire rating system needs to be revamped, we need to be able to progress it not get shoved into the fire. Sometimes I think Arena was bad for the game.

I still don't know why 2v2/3v3 rating isn't specialization specific yet similarly to Solo Shuffle.

I started playing again in Shadowlands season 3 and saw that the gladiator mount was more common than it used to be and it sparked a hope that I would be able to obtain it eventually. One and a half year later of PvPing that dream feels so dead. The reward system really needs to be reworked. The elite weapons should not be gated behind Glad. At tops 1950/2100. Does rank 1 players really need half of the rewards from PvP? They should just hyperinflate to almost Shadowlands levels just to get more people to play. That and rework reward system, might even bring in PvE'rs wanting transmogs. Then for 10.2 they can rework the whole rank system.

Oh just got to your WotLK experience in the video. I quit wrath for retail because of the terrible time I had trying to find a partner. LFG isn’t cross server OR cross faction. So it’s so hard. Joined retail and made 3 insanely good friends within a week and I haven’t stopped since!

In regards to the discussion with Mes: Blizzard actually does a VERY similar system with Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Every season, the MMR Resets to 0. Top 4 placements in the mode are considered a win, bottom 4 a loss. Once your at your MMR and your CR Matches, you will have a swing of about +-80ish CR per game. They have ranked floors up to 6k MMR. The average player, which would probably be rival level in this system, is about 6k MMR, which is where the last floor is. You can set Rank floors Until Rival 1, aka Elite gear appearance. At the start, you win a ton of MMR to get you up to your CR, and loose very little. At the VERY top of the Chain, you have to grind like hell to keep your top spot as anyone can take it with the way the system is designed, provided they win enough games. Right now the Top of the pile is about 17k MMR per season, with the top 20ish rounding out at about 14k. The Floors encourage you to push yourself further, knowing you won't ever be that far away from your goal. It also allows you to experiment with different partners and comps, since you can't loose past your floor. It helps lessen rating anxiety. Honestly, If they kept the numbers in the system the same, but implemented rating floors up to Whatever rating they feel is comfortable, They would likely have a larger casual base as they know that if they grind enough they can hit the next rating tier. I am a 2100 player (for the last 4 seasons) and I play a healer. If they put a duelist rank floor in, so I can't loose CR or MMR at that level, I would queue up non stop for shuffles to try and hit 2400. As it stands, the rating system is far to volatile for that, which actively discourages the way I would like to play. Finally, I would like to see them implement a Warband queue system for Shuffle/BG Blitz, where your entire warband can Queue up. So If you have 3 toons in your warband, lets say 1 healer and 2 DPS, the queue continues and places your DPS at the top as you play your healer games and then prio takes the DPS queue when it would eventually pop. Allow you to choose which toons and what prio you want to put them in. I could queue disc for games and then switch it up when my destro queue pops after 15ish minutes, or 1/2 rounds of disc shuffle. Would be AWESOME and give people a way to incentive playing healers while they wait for their DPS queues to pop without loosing their spot.

There needs to be brackets or divisions and each week you earn points towards those divisions based on performance. Would encourage weekly play, weekly placements and ranking, progress right through the season. Could be like bi weekly or something

i agree, it felt bad hitting top 100 on 2x different specs for solo shuffle, but still not even being 2400 2360 on enh shaman at one point and i was rank 47 enh shamans 2280 on spriest earlier on s2 of dragonflight and i was rank 78 but yeah both still shy of 2400. sucks

The worst part about all of this is the complete and utter lack of communication from the devs. It’s nothing new of course, but it’s just salt in the wound. And we all saw it coming when Holinka announced his departure.

Idk man. Reading some of these comments with "their" version of "fix this thing and you save pvp" it gonna be a huge obstacle for betterment.

Solo que bg be awesome. Just something more chill but can earn conquest

good video,hopefully this will get more attention

There was a time when having fun wasn't equated to an increase in rating and I think that's an issue.

What killed it for me was one day I decided to gear up my Ret pally in PvP. Bought him his greens, did a few BGs and weekly quests which eventually lead to a full blue set. So then I felt like I had the bare minimum to at least do a solo shuffle queue for some CQ and vault rewards. First queue was maybe 10min and I won 5/6 rounds. We were all close gear and ilvl. Next queue was an hour and 16min and I was pitted in a lobby with 5 other people at 1800 to 2000 and they all massively out geared me. It was an absolute and total shit show. Then of course I'm the noob etc etc lol and it's all my fault. 😂😂

i like the gold silver idea. one thing to keep in mind is that you need average joes to participate. problem is, if they cant get rewards,, like season 2 they are nearly unobtainable. they simply wont play. and we back to square 1.

I haven't played this season just come to check out what's going on!!!

Reason for me stopping to play PvP is that hey cut development on it. Nothing to look forward to and since I am not the only person that could feel that way the crowd playing it had to decrease “die off”. As you said, it’s fun but we need new modes/BGs and effort in PvP content

I don’t know if they’ve ever directly said as much, but it seems obvious that they’re trying to avoid a situation where people hit their rating target in the first two weeks of the season and then stop playing. Of course, they haven’t really solved that problem, because right now it just makes more sense to start playing in the last two weeks of the season and not at all in the beginning. Probably they need *some* kind of carrot-on-a-stick that encourages people to keep playing throughout the season. I don’t really know the best way to accomplish this in a way that doesn’t also make people feel like they *have* to play consistently through the whole season, but they need to spend some time figuring it out. A thought I have is, what if there are some rewards that do require a grind, but you make progress much more quickly at high ratings? Say, if you’re at 2400, you gain progress 3x faster than if you’re playing at 1400? That gives some benefit to people who are playing at a high level, but still makes people at a low level feel like they’re working towards something even if they don’t feel like they’re improving fast enough to hit 1800 or 2100 or whatever their goal might be.

I'm not a fan of Battle Passes in general but I would make the PVP level thing seasonal (rather than completely irrelevant as it now seems to be) - Could divide it into two tracks, one damage and one healer to encourage people to do both, level up faster winning but also when losing. Could do some bonus xp for particular actions (ie - interrupts) to try and help new players get an idea of good plays. I guess as well some kind of encouragement to add people to friends at end as the social side also needs work. Maybe a prompt then if both sides agree they get added in as pvp friends.

Hopped on wrath again and been having wayyy more fun with pvp then then now

Fixing MMR only affects a small percent of players, from my perspective catering to a small percent is why I stopped playing. Ladders are deflated due to participation, fixing MMR is cool and needed but is it really the priority?

The problem is the inflation system, it incentivizes people to honestly not give two fucks about 90% of the season and then when the ladder is at its juiciest moment you do an end of season push.

I love the idea of going to a more bracket like system of copper, bronze, silver, etc. Almost every other pvp game does that in some form, just using some random rating feels outdated since it means something different every patch or xpac.

For the first time I'm putting the work to achieve my first Glad title but I feel so close (being currently 2200 CR) but yet so far because the streamer I follow in order to LEARN from them are around 2400-2500 CR and I know, FOR SURE, that I'm not as skilled as they are. It's really sad cause I have no motivation to queue since even if going 2/4 vs a blizzcon champ enemy healer for me is a big accomplishment it's gate keeping me from reaching a goal ( getting glad ) that I think should be more than achievable if I'm able to stand my ground against a 0.1% player. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people in this situation and it is so sad because game balance is insanely good and fun but without a goal it is meaningless to even try.

The problem is that they mix a skill based system (elo) for match-making purposes with a progression based system for rewards. It is totally fine to make negative progress in the match making if the number of players go down or your new team comp doesn't perform well, your class got nerfed. All that is important here is that you are matching with opponents so that you'll get approximately 50% winrate. That is the goal of elo, that all have fun and win and lose the same amount. But mixing it with a progression based system for rewards that are supposed to be extrinsic feels frustrating and demotivates, especially if there is no chance of ever making progress again (besides negative progress). There should have been always two numbers, where one can influence the other, but they can still work towards their own purpose.

I think slow balance fixes in PVP and different games being avaliable have knee-capped my interest to play retail PVP like I did in SL. Edit: I actually didn't consider the queue times, but they are actually the strongest reason I've lost interest. Private Warhammer online servers have a 3 minute queue. I have no idea why WoW ones are so long by comparison.

vin. queue time for dps in solo shuffle between 1200-1600 is 10-15 mins. the 30 min queues dont start untill 1800 rating. i got 5 toons to 1800, pushing monk right now to be 6. im just an average joe who wants skins. however its clear that everyone plays in 1200-1600 bracket. so yeah, you get 40 in queues at 2400, and you play same 50 people any given time of the day, because no one else is there.

@Venruki what do you think about making a solo shuffle mode where only DPS can que up for it. Meaning, a 2v2 or 3v3 solo shuffle lobbies with all dps. I think that'd solve the que time problem with little setbacks. Sure, all the dps will go zug zug on each other, but they already do that in current solo shuffle anyway. Plus, there will be a skill-cap to how well you can coordinate with only dps teammates to triumph over your only-dps opponents. All in all, it's a simple solo shuffle variation they could introduce (maybe initially as an unranked gamemode and then ranked) for which everyone can que up, get into lobbies much faster, and enjoy going zug zug on each other and get some rewards too. Plus, it'd promote playing alts cause there're many dps classes that are fun to play rn, but the high que times demotivate players from trying other alts. Now a big potential downside to this idea would be that hybrid classes will triumph in an all-dps shuffle due to the self heals, but there have always been broken classes in any gamemode ever. For example, maybe ele sham is great in 3s, but not great in 2s, while sub rogue can be great in 2s, and suck in 3s (or whatever the current metas are). There will always be metas anyway, so may as well have this new, very accessible (in theory at least) shuffle variation which people could enjoy. At the end of the day, it'll be something people can que up for while waiting for the regular solo shuffles and make the game feel more alive and feel like there IS something to fucking do other than waiting for 30-60 minutes for a que pop.

I like the idea of a tier'd ranking sytem (bronze/silver/gold etc) over a numerical MMR. Especially since that would just make it percentile based ladder and thus making rating in- and deflating irrelevant. You can also just tie rewards to each respective tier. Sounds all nice to me.

Yes! Blizzard needs suggestions like these!

If they had the brackets (copper,silver, etc.) they could actually tie upgrades like in slands to it. But in order for it to not feel awful and to combat “boosting” you don’t fight anyone outside of your bracket. I.e, 1600-1799 only fighting players within that rating/bracket and it always goes off of the highest player in the group. So if you have a 2400 player in the group you only fight people 2400-2699. And the beginning of the season it only drops you back one bracket. So from 3k players drop to the 2.7 bracket. Just examples, obviously with how low pvp participation is, the bracket system won’t really work in terms of time in queue.

Casual pvpers, which for obvious reasons make up the majority of the pvp player base, have no reason to stick around and play WoW. Most of the rewards are locked behind ratings that are largely unobtainable for them. On top of that, all the casual pvp game modes have been turned into mere means to gear up for rated gameplay, so once you are done with gearing they feel absolutely pointless. If you want more players in your non-casual game mode, you need a previous, worthwile environment for casual players to transition over.

3v3 - Flag in the middle and first team to cap it wins. If you die you have a repawn time that gets longer and longer.

@venruki I don’t know why no one mentions this but I believe the core issue with wow is the add ons and data mining. The add ons cause the game’s difficulty to be inflated because the devs know the players are using them so the difficulty goes completely vertical. It’s the same for pvp everyone has the game played for them by having things screamed at them, imagine how many more casts would go off if you didn’t have an air horn and an alert message fly across the screen. This also inflates rating bc people are getting better simply by downloading an add on. Then factor in new people they won’t know about add ons and will get clapped in both pve and pvp.

The game is not accessible for new and returning players. Tbh gameplay feels over complex and a bit of outdated. Its hard to follow what's going on with so many add-ons, abilities, buffs, debuffs. The fact that you need to download and setup dozens of add-ons to be even able to play. Surely revamping the whole ranking system and making healing more rewarding would help, but in the long run it's not the game-changer.

I feel like if anything it's the loss of rating. With queue times and trouble finding partners losing rating is the issue.

If they add protected ranks, they add back boosting. I feel like all of these changes were put in place to combat that.

If you wanted to make queue times non existant, then one compromise would be to only have 1 queuing option for Arena, kinda like how skirms work. If it had proper mmr & rating then those would balance for team/comp advantage over time. I.e. you may be hard stuck 1800 when soloing but get 2k if you get a team. You could also have an option to simply hide the rating display instead of needing a separate bracket for the casuals. Solo shuffle would have to go back to a brawl with good weekly rewards. Its not perfect, but again, there would be no queue time at all.

I'm a pvp noob but as an outsider to it all, I like the idea of rated 1v1 duels + more simple bg maps like wsg or arathi, in old zone style. Also, lower barrier to entry for new players - less/no addons needed to be able to play your class effectively or know what's going on with teams.

Solo Shuffle 2's and 3's. That way you don't always have to wait for a healer.

Healer shortage has been a huge issue since basically forever. I'm not sure how they fix that without making healers just ridiculous. I think the PvP player base is small and spread incredibly thin. There's overlap of 2v2, 3v3, Shuffle, Rated BGs, and Random BG enjoyers all playing at any given time. I know that sometimes I just hop in random BGs or 2v2 because I don't want to wait for shuffle or 3v3 in LFG. We desperately need new blood in pvp, especially rated pvp. I think this has been one of the best expansions for a PvP only enjoyer and yet the participation is low. It's possible they could go with a full redesign of classes or pvp talents in an effort to make the healer role unnecessary. I remember being able to survive a lot longer without getting healed in older expansions like MoP. I don't see this as likely because it would take a ton of effort and also leave healer mains in a weird spot. They won't even ban tanks so there's no way they would get rid of healing altogether.

What if there was a shuffle mode where both teams had identical AI healers.

I never reach 1800 ever all i want is the vanilla set for warriors

Finding a consistent 3's team and solo shuffles queue's are the main reasons I am not playing nearly as much as I use too. Now i hit 2400 in solo shuff a season then quit until the next

imo they need to rework the ui for the ranked tab to show a ladder similar to check pvp (anything that has more work put into it than the number that shows at 2400+), make glad % based again to bandaid fix 2400 being arbitrarily harder or easier depending on season, then add decay and uncap mmr for glad and beyond so that people are incentivized to play throughout the season vs sitting and waiting to push till the last few weeks.. (also could help the problem of rank 1s like petkick having 26 dks at 3k vs 3-4 at 10k or whatever the season ends up being at the end)

RBGs need to be re-evaluated. Especially the rewards for it, as of right now their is no reason to ever do RBGs after you get 2400 and Hero. All the RBG mounts are bought with saddles and then became season rewards. I think RBGs and a 5v5 mini BG or arena would be a fun mode.

I played pvp in shadowlands. I am a terrible and completely unskilled player. I mostly played battlegrounds, but shadowlands was the first time i really got into arena. In SL i was 1300-1400. I know garabge, but i feel like i am probably part of the majority of players who could potentially play the game. If the devs want a broader appeal for pvp, then i think SL's inflation was the best way to go. The worst thing to do was drastically reduce inflation after the high inflation of SL. SL inflation set PVP up for failure because when the new expansion did not deliver that same inflation/popularity people dropped out. When i started arena again in DF i played probably 10 games... maybe. My team was rated something like 400-500 and we were facing people way better than when we were 1300. It discouraged me a lot. It was no longer competitive or fun. I don't care about rewards as much as the competitiveness. You're not going to attract players with awards. You're going to attract them with a high rate of fair competitive games. People start playing sports because they are fun and competitiveness is fun. They stay for the continued promise of competitive games, improving themselves, and lastly awards.

Give a weapon that is equally strong or better with the top tier PVE weapon, give more achievements, different mounts and pets and PvP specific rewards. Hey, even organise some more frequent events with money like Fortnite does. People will be back to it, in no time.

Today I got into a 2v2 skrim against 2 markmen hunters. I popped all my defensive cds before they opened on me, I lasted less than 3 seconds taking 50% less damage at 445 ilvl. That shit makes me not even want to que anymore, because I happens every 3rd match

The pvp rating system hasn't made any kind of reasonable sense for years. probably since Legion, maybe if you grade with a curve since BFA. Given the complicated algorithms of today's AI driven tech, Blizzard still largely bases their rating system on 1950s chess. Essentially they are stuck on a stone knife and bear skin tech level. It's really and truly a pathetic joke. The MS deal, going forward, should greatly help mitigate this on-going issue with the pvp rating system. Changing the ranking system to something more state of the art tech-wise will most definitely help, but the real underlying issue is Arena itself. For years, Wow pvp held tremendous potential (off the charts) yet Blizzard never even came close to touching the heels of that potential, the real question is why? Answer: no spectators (relative to the overall scope of the game). In order to understand the intricacies and nuances of Arena Pvp, you pretty much need to be personally engaged in arena. And, how much of the overall player base does that make up? 25% would be a very generous allocation. If you made Wow Pvp competitive with "objective based competition," in other words BGs with relatively smaller maps and 6vs6, in the words of Batman "things will change." This accomplishes (5) very significant and important things: 1) you open up a lot more viable comp possibilities. 2) create a product that engages viewers and greatly widens your audience. 3) more viewers equals the potential for higher overall pvp participation rates and better promotion opts for streamers and the game. 4) The non-wow player or even hardcore raider no longer need to understand nor fully grasp the nuance of Arena Pvp and watching is a hell of a lot more engaging. 5) Competitive gets a hell of a lot more sizzle and sauce. In the current state of arena, the sizzle and sauce happens once, maybe twice in a match (especially to the less Xp'd). But, if you add in a point system (something everyone with a semblance of a brain immediately grasps), now there are 3, 4, 5 or more opts for sizzle and sauce. Other things factor into this equation, but I don't want write a novella here. Yes, hardcore arena players will be pissed. But then again, no one says arena needs to completely go away. Offer objective based 6vs6 (capture the flag and node type of BGs. Smaller maps than the regular BG or even larger maps than the existing arena maps. Let this mode replace RBGs, They've turned into a complete joke anyway and happen to be less popular than Arena. Let the participation #'s speak for themselves before any sort of drastic change occurs. I am 100% confident the overwhelming majority of players will be remarkably surprised at the result.

Commenting to up your numbers bc I first watched this on asmons channel and I want to support you too

the problem for me is it takes an hour to que for and play 2 games. Assuming I go 3-3 both matches: thats at best 5-10 rating increase. I win one and lose one no progress, i lose both: -65 to 100. I'd be fine grinding rating but the ques just make it impossible. I don't have all day to play shuffle its my favorite thing in the game but the rating/conquest grinding is wild compared to everything else in the game.

The solution to solo shuffle is making it a 1 queue instead of 6 queues. Nobody wants to get locked out with people they deem incompetent for 6 queues, and it also creates imbalanced comps facing each other by design, so facing one such comp is better than, say, 3 or 4. Everybody feels bad losing 70 cr, it's not as bad if you only lose 13 cr like in a normal bracket. And you won't be able to skip rating either, because at this point, if you have enough mmr, you can park yourself to 1.5 and then win a 6-0 and it propells you to almost 2.1, for example I've had myself get propelled from 1.4 to 1.8 on one of my alts for a 4-2. Also, I bet it would incentivize people to actually communicate together.

What about what they did in overwatch for queue times, if you play as healer you get some kind of token, that would put you in front of the queue as dps. I think it may be better than just conquest points, most of us are cap all the time anyway.

Since healers are a big problem for solo queue, they should allow solo shuffle to be done 3dps vs 3dps

We really need a SoloQ for RBGs. 6v6 modify the maps.

This might be unpopular and idk how many issues it would solve but a rework of arena is necessary, I think they should combine shuffle and 3s into on bracket. No other game I know has two different versions of the same game mode just for solo qs. Make it so you can join a 3s game with a friend and a random you find through matchmaking.

Usually nobody agrees with me, but I still think role MMR should not be a thing in shuffle (there is no role mmr in other arena formats, why here?). I also think glad mount should not be 3v3 exclusive. I understand 3v3 is the most skillful arena mode, but without the mount / proper rewards there is no reason to play/push high rated other formats. I never had the chance to find a proper 3v3 group, but I always admired the glad mounts, I would like to obtain one of them. In DF season 1 I hit 2400+ rating solo shuffle, It was a big disappointment when I realised I can not keep the title and there won't be any mount regardless of the rating.

It's not fun to have 999 keys to press and you have to study same time as a surgeon to understand the skills that can be happening.

my issue is the whole social activity in wow is nonexistent like how do u make more friends to arena with when everything is solo q n u don't need a guild for anything. just feels like theirs no social interaction to make new friends/ arena / raid partners groups. unless ur in a top guild or a heavy pop server.

That's a great point... My buddies and I met during Shadowlands Season 2, and that's when we started doing 3v3. It was the first time we achieved an elite rating and got so close to the Gladiator mount. We thought, "We'll just do it next season," but little did we realize that each season would be even more challenging. Everyone's feeling disheartened, and the passion for pushing 3v3 has faded. As for Solo shuffle? Climbing to higher ratings doesn't seem to hold much meaning anymore, considering only R1 players can secure permanent symbolic rewards. (Well, there is a toy, but it's just that - a toy. At least I haven't used it a second time...) BTW Blizzard needs to offer some more helpful hints. Otherwise, crushing the new players might feel as effortless as squashing an ant. After all, the learning curve in PvP is quite steep. You need to be familiar with the abilities and strategies for every class and spec. For newcomers, getting slaughtered in every match can be pretty discouraging. Also, they should consider enhancing the appeal of PVP (after all, interest in PVP seems to be declining).

The reason World of Warcraft (WoW) is declining can be attributed to two key factors. When WoW was first launched, particularly during the Burning Crusade expansion, there were more players than in the current expansion. This was because all the content, especially the 25-player raids, was challenging yet attainable. In other words, all the gear on everyone's wishlist was accessible. As WoW continued to release expansions, they progressively made content more difficult, introducing heroic versions of raids, then mythic, and so on. This shift in design is the primary reason why WoW has experienced a decline. It may seem straightforward, but this is precisely why many players left. If players were happier with obtaining new gear, even if they had to pay for a subscription, there would likely be more players. The second reason WoW is struggling is closely related to the first. As content became more challenging, a significant portion of the player base left the game. This exodus has resulted in fewer PvP (Player versus Player) enthusiasts since the overall player population has dwindled.