A Rebuttal for Bear

Now, after reading, rereading, making some French toast, and reading once more Bear’s latest rant (and saving it into a Word document so I could refer to it again), I’ve taken a deep, calming breath, and have this to say:

Bear.

I disagree.

Respectfully.

Upon further deliberation, I decided perhaps I should give reasons behind why I disagree with his attack upon the PvP system. Well, not “attack,” per se, but rather him “calling it out,” as it were. And it's going to crit your face by way of length, so hold on.

The PvP system is not bullshit. I repeat, it is functioning. And is, dare I say it, a good idea.

Perhaps I have a different mindset. I started on a PvP server, and I actually love it. I have to wear PvP gear when I go to highly populated areas such as the Isle, and I do take dirt naps far more often than I help others get to sleep. When I play on my PvE servers, I do notice that whenever the conversation turns towards PvP, so many people view it as a chore rather than just a different way to play, a different and fun facet of the game, that I just say how I like it, give some tips, and then kind of excuse myself from the conversation quietly. However, this does not change the importance behind understanding the PvP system, as well as its lack of male cow fecal matter.

If you look at the disparity between Season 1 gear and the new Brutal’s set (hell, even the Vengeful set), you will see that there is an expansive gulf, just as there is between Heroics and Kara versus Sunwell epics. Already, people in S1 gear had a very difficult time in Arenas against Vengeful and Merciless players. With the advent of Brutal gear, S1 is virtually obsolete. Going into an Arena match with S1 will get you cut up like paper. If they had not added Merciless to the battlegrounds, a few things would happen:

• The gulf between the top end Arena players, the good, the bad, and the new would widen a great deal.
  
• A fresh level 70 would have little to no way to compete in arenas. Not with any prayer of advancement, anyway.
  
• PvE high-end raid gear would, as in pre-BC, begin to trump that gear gained by PvP
  

I absolutely hate the mindset that PvP gear are “welfare epics.” I cannot stand it. Especially not now, when you can turn in tier tokens for PvP gear, when you can purchase PvP gear with badges, when you can entirely skip a tier of raiding thanks to badge gear. If running through BGs is welfare, why isn’t badge gear?

That last item, the skipping of an entire tier of raiding, I know personally about. Without seeing any boss past Lurker in SSC and never setting foot in TK, I received a spot in my current guild, Sunder (which, at the time, was 4/5 Hyjal and 5/9 BT), and am currently their only regularly raiding Restoration Druid. I had been to Gruul’s maybe four times, and downed Magtheridon perhaps twice. But I farmed Kara for four or five months. That will do you a lot of good, in the long run.

For Restoration Druids, the new 100 badge pants are arguably better than the pants which drop off of Shade of Akama in Black Temple. The 60 badge shoulders are the best shoulders until Void Reaver in TK. Druids in Sunwell guilds are still using the 41 badge healing trinket. I know, I’ve seen it. I didn’t agree with her gemming choice, but I definitely took note of her trinket.

41 badges. That’s two weeks of full Kara clears with a badge leftover for kicks, and it functions through Sunwell.

Being in T6 with T6 gear does not automatically equate competency. Just about every single day in guild chat someone laments another raider’s gear choice and enchants, or their wasted talent points. I’ve seen druids better geared than me with straight +healing gems (that’s all; no spirit, no intellect, just straight plus healing) and a load of talents only partially filled.

Now. I do not agree with Amanda Dean. I actually am not too over-fond of her, especially regarding her somewhat snobby attitude in general. I do not believe PvP > PvE or vice-versa. I do disagree with another of your points, though, Bear.

Technically, I run raids with PvPers. My server is PvP. Our MS/Slam warrior had a 2k rating, we had, at one time, an excellent mage with the “Grand Marshall” title, our MT has the “Justicar” and “Duelist” title, and our best Paladin, Sharlet, has three pieces of the Brutal Gladiator set after the first week of Season 4, not to mention (if I recall correctly) the new belt, boots and bracers, only available through the BG honor grind. He also very recently explained to me why different ranks of Starfire were better than max rank (in PvP and PvE situations), he can tell you exactly what rank of Holy Light to use in certain situations, he can give you a proper DPS rotation for your rogue, tell you how to gem and enchant your Feral Tanking set, and give you the location and level requirements for almost every quest in the game. And he can, with a Holy, not Shockadin, but Holy spec, grab you by the scruff of your neck, slam your face into the dirt, rub your nose in the mess that is your skill and make you wish you had no idea that WoW existed, let alone PvP. With his raiding Holy spec and his Prot gear, he tanks Hyjal trash.

PvP does teach you a lot about what other classes are capable of, in a sense, as well. And that’s not helpful to face other players in a PvE setting, per se, but to work with them. This is to a limited extent, since PvP requires different rotations, more reaction/prediction than memorization and often different specs. However, though chain trapping is more difficult in PvP, I cannot see how a hunter so skilled at ice traps that a warrior is stuck powerless while they burn down the one healer at the node and then rip into their CC’d target cannot handle a distracting shot on a mob.

It most certainly does teach mana conservation. If you are out of mana in a BG, you are dead, unless you can find somewhere to hide and drink. You win nodes by your healer outlasting their healer (if people forget about the “kill the healer” rule, anyway). You have to know when to pot, when to run, to move out of the AoE, so on, and so on, and so forth. You know, “don’t stand in the fire”?

Fights like the Priestess fight in Magister’s Terrace and the Illidari Council are made immeasurably easier by people having been exposed to PvP and who can keep their cool in a chaotic, unpredictable situation.

And yes, Battlegrounds do let you “coast” to an extent, to get gear. However, the grind is eternally longer the worse you are at cooperation, just as getting your raid drop/badge gear will take inexorably longer (unless you’re extremely lucky, and in that case you can be terribad and very lucky) if you don’t work together or don’t know your class. But you can actually gain far better gear, in most cases, by farming badges than by farming Honor, if your goal is to be a PvE raider, and you don’t get looked at funny by your raiding guild.

Cooperation is actually paramount in BGs, and you can make the grind short and pleasurable the better you are at it, just as in raiding. In fact, the fastest, most efficient way to gain honor is to download Preform AV, make sure you have working Vent, and join a premade/org. Even trade-chat-formed premades can function together and take BGs by storm. In these you learn to take directives, often from a stranger, work with people you hardly know to take down an unpredictable enemy, and utterly decimate EotS in under eight minutes for an intense amount of honor. And, just like in PvE, you have to learn the strategies each BG requires and adjust it according to what players you have.

And, unlike in a raid, if someone isn’t pulling their weight, you can flag them afk or alert a GM, and they can lose all their PvP gear and their privilege to fight. You tell a GM someone is just wanding in a raid while gloating about their new epic shoulders of pwn and you’ll probably just get laughed at.

The nature of BGs themselves are changing as well. Throw someone into one with PvE gear, and you might as well lock them in a room by themselves with Nightbane. A PvE geared person stands little chance against someone in Vengeful or Brutal. Blue rep-PvP gear or S1? You’re still going to struggle. Without making Merciless available by honor grind, you’re ensuring many people’s times in both BGs and Arena are full of bloody, painful death and a slow, unrewarding grind.

That secret conversation you have regarding the PvP-geared members of your Kara Pug? I’m quite certain that when you stroll into a BG with PvE gear on, you get the same treatment. Because, let’s face it, PvE gear is not for PvP, except in certain cases (and it’s best to learn that there will always be exceptions that go both ways). I’ve had to gem and enchant PvP gear for PvE, and I’ve seen people gem and enchant PvE gear for PvP and do quite well. Bosses in Shattered Halls and Botanica and I’m sure others drop weapons with resilience on them; those are decidedly PvE instances.

A hunter I ran Kara with a lot back in my old guild was full PvP gear, both arena and that which you buy with honor, and he kicked ass on the meters and CC.

And, I cannot stress this enough: If your main hatred for BGs is the few asshats who spew profane and idiotic garbage, learn to use two tools: your profanity filter and “report spam.” If you put on your profanity filter, every word showcasing someone’s lack of vocabulary and ingenuity comes out in neat little symbols like this: !@#$%. And if you report someone for spam, they get ignored without filling up your ignore list. I play with my profanity filter on; it’s both functional and hilarious, especially when your guild finds out and wants to play the “is this censored?” game. Report spam is quick and easy; and if they’re filling up BG chat with caps and franticness and freak-outs, what else is it, really?

Merciless gear through honor not bullshit. It’s only bullshit to people who dislike Battlegrounds because you want something you can’t get without it or don’t want to raid for. It’s like how my feral friend hates raiding. He covets the gear from some of the bosses, but he finds raiding too monotonous and predictable. So, he only PvP’s, and mostly only BG’s, as he can only log in during odd, inconsistent times. He has done Heroics for badges. He’s complained that he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t call it bullshit. Yes, feral druids are in a unique position with their gear requirements, but I know Paladins like gladiator gloves, that rogues like the arena weapons, and hunters like the axes. And, perhaps the greatest practical joke of all: the +15 resilience to chest drops from doing PvE. A two minute trinket is required by my guild for Winterchill and Archimonde (and at only 8k honor, it’s hardly something horribly painful to grind out), but every applicant who wears other PvP gear gets questioned as to why they have it over better PvE gear or badge gear.

And, honestly, if you don’t want to do T5 level content, why do you feel you need the gear? In some cases, it will actually gimp your threat generation as well as making your rage bar slow to fill. I know plenty of tanks, of all classes, who take gear off just so they can tank better.

And, now that I have written this, painted a wall and a deck, reread it, taken a shower, reread Bear’s post and added more to mine, let me say, with confidence:

They’re two different grinds. The gear from each can be used interchangeably, to an extent. You can get gear for either-or through one of the grinds, to an extent. Some of one is needed for the other, to an extent. You can coast through both for good rewards, to an extent. They both teach valuable skills that can be utilized in the other, to an extent. Both require cooperation and teamwork to get done in a reasonable amount of time, to an extent.

Neither one is bullshit.