dukes

Forgive me if this seems a rehash of other topics - there's a lot of discussion on this issue in other places (which is ultimately close to derailing threads) but it seemed to need a single place to consolidate the discussion between people on the issue and see whats going on.


The Major Issue
So TBC comes out, and Blizzard are lauding over their nice new system whereby people who PvP get PvP gear that is good for that, and marginally useful in PvE until you get mid-way into raiding. Gear earnt in PvE has no resillience and less stamina, and so is perfectly suited to PvE, and doesn't give the advantage it once did pre-TBC over those who PvPed but can still be used for PvP.

Now we come to 2.1.2 - Season 2 is out, and it seems they made some changes to raid instance gearing. This is all well and good, but blizzard haven't stuck to what they initially started out with. Theres two main problems as I see it:

-- PvP gear encroaching on PvE gear: This is mainly summed up by comparing particular PvP items that have either no equivalent, or an insanely hard to get/high level one. The gladiators spellblade is one of the main offenders, and the gladiators maul (the druid FAP one) is another, but in different ways. The spellblade has equivalents, but they're all end-game, hard to get items that (in some cases) aren't even better. In basic terms, the spellblade is too good for PvE. The maul has no equivalent unless you count Terestians, which is both worse and the only other real raid-quality option, and this is a problem of lack of alternative than the item being too good.

--PvE being required to get specific items for PvP: This is now starting to appear in the form of the rings in SSC. Not only do they take slots for loot that mean upgrading PvE gear will be slower, but they're better than the alternatives given from PvP.

I'm sure Blizzard wants to give some kind of bonus to those who do PvP and PvE to be able to do either, but doing it in this way seems to be going backwards to me.

Possible Solutions
I only really have two possible solutions that I can think of for this.

One is to standardise a new type of damage stat. Make it so theres spell damage and AP stats that purely work on a PvP basis.

An example of this could be the Gladiators Blade - main hand sword, 2.6 speed, practically identical to the current version. However change it so its now 85 DPS base, and give it ~400 Anti-Player AP. This means it stays at around ~95 DPS in a PvP environment, but isn't anywhere near as competitive in a PvE environment.

The other solution means stacking stamina and resillience in a big way on PvP gear, but the problem with that is that then it eats up item budget in a big way too, and that means theres less DPS available for PvP, causing a problem with people using a mix of PvE and PvP gear for maximum effectiveness.


Any thoughts on this problem?

 

Vanadi

The weapons will always be outdone by a weapon of the same itemlevel that has stats allocated for pve purposes only. The weapons loose alot of stat value due to resilience being on them. And the only items that might be worth taking for a pve purpose are the weapons. Most classes can't do pve in their gladiator armor sets.

 

Schneeb

Thats the problem though PvE items of a similar level are only just better, take the the 1h arena weapon with spellhit.

Spellhit is primarily to help spells hitting, in PvE it helps spells land on things that are higher level than yourself. The PvP version of this is spell penetration, penetration is completely broken in PvE yet it still apears on PvE items and one of the most useful stats (spellhit) is on a PvP item.

This spellhit is not just a token amount but a large proportion of that items budget which doesnt correlate to its importance in its intended use at all (PvP).

If PvE armor didnt have so much wasted budget on penetration that does nothing on mobs higher than lvl 70 and was replaced by spellhit, a PvE orientated caster could cap their hit and a weapon with hit suddenly becomes a whole load less valuable.

 

Nekali

How would you feel if your PVE Weapons had 85 DPS and a anti-PVE stat which increases AP against non-pvp targets bei ~400?

As this only really concerns weapons I have no issue with some great pve gear coming from pvp. I really enjoy if there are several ways to progress your character. I also liked the way the heroic badges worked and they too provide some great gear which is not from raiding.

Some PVE gear is really usefull in pvp, too. "Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet" could have come straight from a pvp vendor. And it doesn't really matter if there is no resilence on your "Talon of Azshara" it is still a superior hemorrhage sword to the arena ones.

The only complaint I have, is the timing when these things are made available. On our realm no one has killed Vashj yet, so the pve aequivalents are not even available yet. But in the end the new weapons will only help us kill her faster =)

 

vorda

Ah well, while I'm still of the opinion that the arena weapons should be lower tuned, since they easily outgear Kael'thas level loot, what they did this patch made it alot worse though.

What were they thinking when they added *pure* PvP rings to SSC bosses, occupying a PvE slot. These rings should have been on the honor vendors, simple as that.

 

Vanadi

On the other side of the story, due to the piss poor itemization on the rogue gladiator set I am forced to use pve gear in my non gladiator slots to make up for the loss in stats. So theres always gonna be items from pvp/pve that work better in a different situation. I dont mind it too much. Yes putting spellhit on the gladiators spellblade seems awkward, but just as the lack of +hit on the rogue set maybe mages have the same issues with there spells being resisted madly in pvp. And spell penetration is not a pvp stat, because lets be honest, how many people run with resistance gear in pvp?

 

Schneeb

Any team with a paladin will probably have 70 resistance to your biggest burst damage caster.

 

Weigraf

Spell hit might not be as useful in pvp as it is in pve, but the claim that spell hit is wasted on the weapon is wrong. The chance of hitting an equal level player in PvP is 96% meaning you want enough hit ratnig to get 99% hit chance, and as it is the weapons are the only PvP items with spell hit on them which makes it quite useful.

 

Zedd

A change I would suggest is this (sorry for the long "spam-like" post"

From:
To:
from:
to
Edit for shortening

 

Maledict

Getting 3% to hit as a caster is quite literally trivial. Our single head enchant alone gives +1.5% to hit, and most dps casters have some form of + to hit talent anyway. (For example, no mage ever needs a single point of + to hit gear in PvP).

 

Tanoh

Nifty idea, but I doubt it'll happen. For one thing the items would be totally useless in anything apart from pvp which I don't think Blizzard wants. Imagine getting jumped by a mob on your way to the arena, you'd be fighting litterarly unarmed.

Also why split the spell damage portion into two and not the AP?

 

Zedd

I dont know how much AP matches the weapon damage for melee, so i took weapon damage from spiteblade and added a ammount of AP that seemed right

 

Weigraf

I know it's trivial to get the hit rating but it has to come from somewhere and you'll have 0 spell hit if you're in full pvp gear. And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the mage +hit talent only affect frost and fire spells whereas counterspell, arguably the most important spell to always hit, is arcane?

 

Miaxi

The problem is not that the spellblade is too good, the problem is that there is only one single dagger in the loot tables of Karazhan+SSC+TK and one other dagger in the Black Temple. All shadow priests, elemental shamans, moonkin druids, warlocks and mages are after that one single piece. Having an alternative way of getting a weapon is not bad when you are looking towards 3-4 months of waiting and drama till you get a lucky drop.

Weapons drops from PvE are just way too rare to keep up with the overall progression. Without blacksmithing and arenas, most people would be using weapons of far lower quality than their armor, and you really can't claim this would be a new thing; people grinded to high warlord back when it took months of dedicated play just to have a proper set of weapons. PvE weapon drops need to be tokenized, so there are a couple guaranteed weapon drops every week instead of a bunch of void crystals while casters are still going around with exalted Thrallmar swords.

 

dukes

250 AP is the equivalent of only (250/(14*2.7)) = 6.6 DPS, right? Seems a bit low with only 87 dps on the weapon.

Maybe instead of making them insignificant for PvE, a reduction to a baseline of 90DPS (still better than entry-level raid items making them useful for intial encounters/in line with karazhan but not for further progression) or ~180 spell damage, and then factor up the AP/damage against players from that. This would hardly make them "useless" for non-PvP things, but would certainly give them an edge in PvP and make them equal to weapons from entry-level BT/Hyjal which are starting to filter through to raiders in PvP situations, which is where they should be imo.

Theres 2 mage +hit talents, one for frost/fire (3 points, 3%), and one arcane only (5 points, 10%)

 

Crowl

More than a bit of hyperbole there, all he has done is reduce the better than t5-level weapons from pvp down to a t4-level when not used in pvp, its not like he has actually crippled them.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that the best items for pve at an equivalent level should come from pve not pvp and vice versa.

 

Maledict

And Arcane has a +10% to hit talent at rank 1 in the arcane tree, which again literally every mage takes.

The only class which doesn't have the + to hit needed for PvP purposes are destruction or demonology specced warlocks. (Afliction has a 10% to hit talent as well). *Every* other caster class in the game will already be at the hit cap rating for PvP opponents.

 

f1reburn

Consider the possibility that new raid content might be released before the arena season 2 ends. That new raid content might bring us pve weapons superior to the current arena weapons.

 

tunah

I agree that this is a problem. I'm in a small guild that cleared kara a month or so ago and is just starting to look at joint gruul runs with other guilds. I play 10 arena games a week on each of my characters, sometimes for fun, often because I'm obligated to if I care about character progression. My teams probably average 1500 rating, I don't gear for it or do any other preparation, and it takes very little time or effort.

Being months behind, still enjoying kara/heroics/alts, any weapon I get from PVE is just a placeholder until I get the PVP one. After killing prince for a couple of months, we haven't seen a Light's Justice drop. If we're lucky, our healing priest will have one in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, my paladin alt will have something better.

Some of the armor is well separated - the cloth pieces look like dungeon blues with +40sta, +100armor, +30resil.
Druid gear on the other hand - 4 out of 5 pieces of the feral set are better for tanking than anything I can attain through PVE. 2 out of 5 pieces of the *same set* are better for DPS than anything available.

I guess my problem is that such powerful items are available at all to casual/non PVPers like myself, which throws balance out the window.
Historically, your options for progression (at least in PVE) were:
Invest little time, little skill -> average blues
Invest a lot of time, little skill -> average epics (rep/easy raids)
Invest little time, more skill -> average epics (easy raids)
Invest a lot of time, more skill -> excellent epics (top tier raids)
but now all of a sudden I can pick up top tier epics without any level of skill and only a moderate time investment.

I don't have a problem with a 2300-rated PVP-er having an awesome weapon for raids, it's the 1450-rated mage with a spellblade (hi!) who's getting an unfair advantage.
If I were king, there would have been a season 0 blue set, at ~1900 rating it'd drop in price and the S1 set would be available.
When S2 came out, the S1 threshold would have dropped to 1700, and S2 + discounted S1 would be available at 2100 rating.

 

Plea

How exactly is this a problem? They just added some rings. Is there anything else Ive been missing? Pvp items are still better in pvp, and pve items better in pve. There will of course be exceptions, all of this are in the same game after all; you do need to have them interacting with each other.

 

Vhad

It's a problem that atleast 3 bosses had their loot tables not only expanded to reduce chance of your desired item to drop, but filled with utter stupid resillience rings when the honor vendors had already gotten new PvP specific rings. Get the PvP gear out of PvE, just as PvE items need to get out of PvP.

What!?

 

Miaxi

Hyjal/BT weapons are already superior. The arena items are on par of tier 5 content.

 

MalkuthSB

My initial reaction was that PVP gear was for PVP and PVE for PVE.

But, now I'm starting to think that it might not be all that bad for you to have done some PVP AND some PVE to have the very best gear on your character. Guys with the best gear available will have proven themselves in PVE and PVP.

Only flaw in this is that getting gear in PVP doensnt actually prove you are any good at it, but thats a whole different question.

 

Plea

t5 is old content. They probably didnt expect players would care about a change in the new entry-level raid zones. Frankly, most dont; new arena sets are better for pve than t5, at least for some of us

 

Kardinalen

Compared to the old "raid or die" mentality Blizzard had for PvP this system rocks. Yes, your Black Temple/Hyjal loot won't feel "special" but really is this so wrong for those of you who like PvE? You get a really easy way to upgrade your weapons and dish out even higher DPS on encounters instead of waiting for the random loot system to give you what you want. In maybe a year of killing Chromaggus and Nefarian my guild looted 2 Chromatically Tempered Swords and 2 Ashkandis. Add to that maybe 10 months of killing Fankriss for 1 or 2 Ancient Qiraji Rippers. How is that any better?