Kirise
OG
In his brief TwinkPvP blog, Drayner made a point that WoW needs to explicitly reward productive vs. unproductive behaviors in PuG battlegrounds. Continuing the theme of (relatively) simple changes that could really help PvP, let's upgrade the battleground scoreboards! Combine healing and damage into a single number of points, and add many more quantifiable factors that make a difference in battleground PvP.
Did you bubble someone? That absorbed damage goes to your score. Use an AGM or a glyphed stoneclaw totem? The absorbed damage goes to your score as well. Interrupt a healer at 72% of their cast? You get 72% of their blown heal or damage added to your score.
CC an opponent for 7 seconds? Teammates get a score multiplier aura of 1.2 toward their score for the duration of the CC and you get an amalgamation of those bonus points. Add score multiplier auras around flag carriers and capture points.
See how we can incentivize the kind of PvP behaviors that make a difference in the game? To earn bragging rights for topping the scoreboards, don't break the sheep that gives you your multiplier, and don’t DoT up enemies if you know someone nearby will likely CC them. Time your CCs to help your teammates make the most of them. Learn to interrupt, then learn to interrupt at 90% instead of 70%. Successful PvP includes prevention of damage and healing, and Blizzard could use the scoreboard numbers to combine numerous stats already available in game to achieve this.
Can you imagine getting credit for resilience, resistance, and armor on your gear by gaining score from the damage you reduced?
Want to be a scoreboard topping caster? Better make sure you really do have enough spell penetration! Want to tear up the charts with your melee prowess? Time your cooldowns to smash the enemy next to the sheeped healer, and don't break the rogue’s sap on the other side.
This would go a long way to wake up players with poor PvP skills. It can be hard to judge whether playing offense or defense or controlling mid is the right call. But knowing when and where to attack and defend, as well as how to best gear, can shine through on a more encompassing scoreboard. If you take the time to do an awesome gearing job on your rogue but never CC or pop evasion, you simply will not have a chance to top the charts. Likewise, if you can gouge one opponent, blind a second, and get blown up in two seconds by a third, then all the skills in the world won't help you top the charts while you wait for the spirit rezzer.
For beginning PvPers, WoW scoreboards make it look like big damage, big healing, and big crits decide battles. By changing the scoreboard to one unified number (with potentially a breakout tab of sub-numbers), Blizzard could prioritize the stacking of every possible tool at a given player’s disposal, instead of glorifying behaviors that ultimately hurt a team-based battleground. Moreover, greater granularity in the components of a player’s score for a BG could reinforce the importance of certain gear and playstyle choices a given player made.
Then, maybe we would see more callouts, more CC, more totems, more dispels, more trinket uses, more objectives, more bandages…and more players enjoying the depth of what PvP in WoW has to offer.
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