Face down in the dirt once again

No one here is level 80

With my alt warrior hitting level 80 the last week the dilemma of all fresh max-level character presented itself once again to me, and with the familiar feeling of being kicked in the face by a horse. I’m talking about entering the PvP grind. I recently did it with my druid, and after having collected a respectable PvP set I once again find myself at the bottom with my warrior.

The PvP development has been like a rollercoaster in World of Warcraft. From being player-created outdoor battles in Hillsbrad Foothills to Battlegrounds and the Honor system. Then away with the Honor system (it was really bad) and add the Arena. In the third upcoming expansion Cataclysm we will even see a mix of Battlegrounds and Arena in Rated Battlegrounds, as well as a re-introduced Honor system.

Somewhere here along the ride it all went wrong, and I know where it did: when The Burning Crusade launched and introduced resilience. Basically it was created to combat the burst damage that caused you to two-shot someone. Resilience reduces the chance of being critted as well as the damage from crits, and it is the PvP stat.

Now to the problem. The problem is less apparent when you are sitting in a full gladiator set and every piece of equipment you wear has resilience on it. It is very apparent when you have just dinged 80 and want to start PvP. You start out with your quest blues and greens, none of which have any resilience, and you will get smashed. Face down in the dirt. Two-shotted. Repeatedly. And this will continue until you have accumulated enough honor points to buy yourself a PvP set with resilience.

After they introduced the resilience stat and started moving Arena towards an E-sport everything is being balanced around it. When Blizzard makes balance changes to abilities in PvP they assume that you are wearing maximum amount of resilience. It’s OK for an ability to do 3000 damage against a player with full resilience. It has been measured and calculated to strike a balance to players’ health and defensive abilities. But when you stroll into a Battleground with 0 resilience it will do 6000 damage. Tough luck. You got it coming. Serves you right. Can’t please everyone, eh?

No, I guess they can’t please everyone. But at least they could make the system bearable to new players, which, I assure you, it is not right now.

The cheapest PvP item will cost you 30k honor points. If you play smart (do the PvP daily quest and deliver one of each mark to the Battlemaster), have the entire day to waste, and have at least some luck in winning you can get that in one day. But it will be a pain. You will curse, shout, and cry at your screen as you time and time again find yourself face down in the dust from someone in full PvP gear that you could barely hurt. By the time you get enough to buy your third piece of gear you will start wondering why you torture yourself like this.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! No, by doing Arena you can purchase the same items for petty sums like 6,000 honor instead of 30,000, if you add some of your Arena Points. So basically what Blizzard is telling is: don’t be retarded, do Arenas.

The problem is that I don’t like Arenas. I didn’t like them when I did my 10 games per week in Burning Crusade, and I don’t like them now. Hard to tell why exactly, but I just don’t. I even think that Rated Battlegrounds is a nice idea, and I look forward to it.

And for the sake of mentioning it, you can also buy the PvP set from emblems you get in heroic dungeons (PvP gear from PvE), but if you are a freshly dinged level 80 you will want to use those emblems to fix your PvE gear. You can also craft a blue PvP set with related profession (Blacksmithing for plate, etc), but aside from being rare and costly the difference between it and the PvP gear that you buy from honor are huge.