lvl29 Twink in BG?

Not only in that, hope my fat finger dit it right this time.
I crawl back to my classic rp realm with my chronoboon
And gasp at my weird lvl 27 with legendary bow in shadowlands
 
Seems to me someone is trying to haiku unsuccessfully. I'll teach:

even a monkey
can tell that exp-reduced
is not an exploit

(Close the thread, it did run its course)
 
On a side not from exploits/not exploits I really do feel for old 70 twinks...I mean they can't even raid bt and stuff anymore because it requires 30. They could lvl to 30 but then they lose gf'd flying so why bother? I would 100% leave my old 60s at 25 just for gf'd flying because rule of cool is most important. Seriously though blizz wtf is up with tc raids being lvl 30 now?
 
Seems to me someone is trying to haiku unsuccessfully. I'll teach:

even a monkey
can tell that exp-reduced
is not an exploit

(Close the thread, it did run its course)

"I think happiness is love"
-Vladimir Putin
 
Thanks for the detailed reply Chops, also please note I did not specify F2P in this, that's about the most honorable hardcore way I can think of playing, no qualms there. Just comparing to vets.

As someone who obviously plays BGs way more than I do, what do you feel gives these players the biggest advantage? the additional abilities you get at 27-29 or the ~3-4 item levels they have over the best geared vets? Or does the combination of the two just push it to unfair levels when compared to just vets vs levers?
being a vet is no different to being a f2p vets just get the gear quicker so they can do PvP as soon as their sub runs out
 
Daggone, I shouldn't have waited this long to jump into the fray. I love myself a good culture war! TL;DR in the final paragraph if you don't want to wade through this huge post I made for you. ;)

I don't buy "intention" as part of any judgment about what's constructive and what's scummy with regards to twinking. Blizzard has shown on numerous, successive occasions that they care very much about players who twink, and that they don't care at all.

Examples of how Blizzard cares: the very existence of Behsten and Slahtz after XP got introduced to instanced PvP. Nerfing the Big Daddy, Bolt Gun, and especially the Embersilk Bandages in Cata, that last one affecting less than 200 active players. Eventual nerfs to a bunch of disproportionate gear in multiple expansions, especially the most current.

Examples of how Blizzard seemingly doesn't care: grandfathered ilvl180 gear. Unnerfed gems. SL rep gear for 49s. Trade window glitching. Re-merging of battlegrounds in BfA. The same %#$^ing scoreboard stat categories since the first introduction of battlegrounds. Damn, Blizz.

We can argue all we want about the semantics of each of the examples above. Exploit or not exploit? Scummy or smart? Sin of commission or omission? I could make a solid case on both sides for any given example, and plenty of you already have. Instead, let's reframe the question.

Do our actions support the overall well-being and growth of our compatriots, or do they degrade them?

Subscription-capped and expansion-capped players reside at the near end of a bracket. They stack very impressive gear, but knowledgeable levelers can still handily compete with them. Yeah, we'll knock the socks off some ignorant levelers along the way, that's PuG life. Everyone else knows or learns that 20-29 brings a higher grade of PvP as a combination of gear and interest (and sometimes skill). Subscription-capped and expansion-capped players who want a higher intensity of games, they organize their own exclusive opportunities -- wargame parties, guild challenges, and so forth. All of these actions are constructive. When players do them, more players want to join.

Somebody shows up with 5/6 gems and a host of grandfathered gear on the far end of the bracket for a few last hurrah games? That's like a professional singer showing up at amateur karaoke night. It's shocking, maybe it's funny, and it can even be fun for a couple of games. We get it.

Somebody finds a way to rack up 100 games on that 5/6 toon? Now you're the 12-year-old bullying 10-year olds just from your sheer size. You're the Lamborghini destroying Mustangs and Camaros at the drag strip. Nobody can consistently step up to you. Maybe if the circumstances align perfectly, sure, but that's far from the norm. Rather than deal with you, they're better off leaving. Far from inspiring, your very presence is degrading to your current bracket.

To be clear, I'm not drawing a line in the sand about "X number of games makes you a degrader", because arguing that line back and forth is pointless. Instead, understand that while we respect people who build their twinks, how we play those twinks sits on a spectrum of constructive to degradative play that impacts a bracket. Are we playing with other players, or at the expense of other players?

It would be easy to assume constructive = good and degradative = bad, but don't make that mistake. Twinks regularly get hung up on this point. The vast majority of us here (myself included) build twinks like model robots to crash into each other. Sure, we love PvP and all that, but we're here to crash robots, and we looooove to crash 'em. That's why we built better robots. PvP inherently brings expense to players in terms of their time and work.

When something gets really disproportionate, using that piece of gear to break a bracket can get Blizzard's attention. Most gear nerfs don't happen right away, but when they do, it's because twinks do Blizzard the "favor" of pushing an edge case way farther than Blizzard anticipates, alerting Blizzard to the issue. Yeah, it would be great if Blizzard fixed that to begin with, or read one of the gazillion bug reports we file, but look, World of Warcraft is huge in size. It's so big that years ago, WoWhead gave up on accurately tracking gear stats and now just provides something "close enough" from which to extrapolate the info people need. Some stuff Blizzard fixes, some stuff remains oversights, and the rest Blizzard doesn't care to address.

Sometimes we have to break the game to get things fixed. Sometimes entirely new subcommunities form out of the ways we break WoW. Breaking things is part of the joy of twinking. When our actions make it so that others don't want to play any more, we cross the line to degrading the bracket. It doesn't matter that other players could "step up" and do the same thing we do, for the same reason it doesn't matter what Blizzard intends or doesn't intend. If we play at the expense of people at the bracket, and especially if others joining us would accelerate that degradation, that's what I believe @Chops means by a scummy action.

For better or for worse, these arguments around twinking go back as far as WoW itself. The 24 vs. 20 debate might make for the best-known example in our history, and if you want to read an eloquently written piece that does a far better job explaining the conflict than I achieved in this massive post, check out @Cynwise 's piece. It remains one of my favorites.

We all have been those people. I played 64s for a short time before I realized I was doing more harm than good. I PuG'd in BfA in multiple brackets on my beloved resto shamans, and if you knew resto shamans in BfA...good god. We've all been at least a little scummy at some point.

Forget intentional or unintentional on the part of Blizzard. Forget intentional or unintentional on the part of players. We can (and have) successfully argued both sides, and missed the point in the process. Instead, let's ask ourselves how our actions impact our brackets. While we won't land 100% on constructive or degradative, we can feel the impact we would make if others followed our footsteps, and we can judge accordingly. Huge wrecking ball Fel Reaver twinks are fun to see now and then. Don't look to play those so long that people want to leave because of you.
get over yourselves. You die. A lot. QQ.
bish about grandfathered ilvl49s or please step aside before I ask you to meet me in goldshire so I can show you some green mountain hospitality, with the bramble of course, just to make it sting worse
 
can someone confirm whether 29 debuffers get banned?

I am thinking about making one when i need to sub, just so that i can still PVP.
 
I just might turn on my xp just to show you guys a true GF twink looks like. This toon was once my main in vanilla, now it is my trophy of years grinding for the best of the best gear every expansion. Words can't express how much this toon is worth to me. Only true vet can tell how hard this toon was to build. Sadly I am probably one of the last 70s still twinking. It sux 27s can't even do heroics/raids anymore. Almost everything I got on is unobtainable from enchants and gems to the tabard and xmog. Even my toon's title is OG.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/us/korgath/mysticalmite
 

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