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I came in to the season very late. Ironically I had an inverse issue from what you laid out here. I was looking to do RBGs, but due to the fact that there was a vers req for even most YOLOs at that point, you had no access. So I actually had to take a massive hit in iLvl and grind out full (or close to full) conquest gear, dropping me from 216 to 200. How did I do it? Advertising my own 2s groups and grinding 2s to get conquest. Once I got my vers to about 20% I was able to get into RBG groups to actually start climbing RBGs. The issue here was that the boosting in 2s and 3s even hindered that! So I had to deal with the ilvl gap, the boosters in 2s, just to gain access to RBGs. That's a big hill to climb just to jump in a single rated mode. PvP needs a hard look right now and I don't see that happening.
Wow always used to be my favorite game, and pvp was the only content I've been interested in. When shadowlands launched I just built my first PC and I was able to start working towards achieving a higher rating. Even though I played wow since classic, it's been mostly private servers my friends played on due to not having a decent PC, not having enough money. We tried retail a few times before, but as soon as my friends quit, so did I. Sadly none of them were interested or as invested in pvp as I was, so I never really had a chance to climb.
When SL launched, my best friends and I all started a journey together, and one of them played a bunch of 2s with me. With all that said, despite my prior knowledge about the game over the years, I'd consider myself a new player when it comes to retail pvp / arenas. I'm happy to share my experience, and I do hope you'd find this valuable.
For starters, here are some stats about my characters and a story of my journey will follow. Spec / class / games played / bracket: mw monk 518 2s, 324 3s // hpal 1047 2s, 920 3s // rdruid 827 2s, 382 3s // hpriest 401 2s, 147 3s. The number of games I've played even surprised me, but it's been a very long season and I've actively and only been playing arenas since launch.
Season start:
I started out with my mistweaver monk, which was a humongous mistake. Unfortunately the spec does not even come close to any other healers' performance this season. By having no experience I had a miserable experience being 1shot in a cheap shot, getting 70% of my health chunked by an aimed shot and so on. The more I played, the less I enjoyed the game. Despite mistweaver is my favorite spec, I knew I needed to reroll because any timed I logged on it just felt as a time waste.
2-3 months into the season:
The second character I rolled was a holy paladin. Still reasonably early into the season, but already a few nerfs in. Playing a holy paladin felt like a joke compared to mistweaver. I literally climbed the same rating with less gear within a week or so. With that, one of my friends and I knocked out rival, and reached our peak at 1996 rating. I felt pretty proud of it, but the nerfs to hpal kept coming, and with the spec being extremely stale I wanted to change it up a bit. Also my friend started playing less until he eventually quit the game, so I did not stay commited to a class that I was not fully enjoying.
Mid season:
The next character I picked up was resto druid. As I see it, it's a very fun spec and plays exactly how a mistweaver should play. The spec itself is really challenging and needs an awful lot of keybinds, precise targeting and very good timing on landing clutch CC / securing kills, or topping teammates with NS. I reached rival on the druid too, but with the lack of experience I found the skill ceiling to be a bit over what I could reach in order to master the spec.
Late season:
As holy priest is the meta currently, I gave it a try. The character was sitting at 60 in 120 ilvl gear for quite a while on my account, but I never played it after I leveled. From literally pulling my spells out of the spellbook and buying crafted blue gear / using my renown gear I was climbing fairly quickly. My experience helped a ton securing some wins, but most of my early games were a shitshow, since most teams noticed a 24K hp priest on the enemy team and I just had to keep running until either me or they got killed. This point was made in your vid as well, and this is where I noticed how much gear matters, since this late into the season almost everyone is fully decked out and at least 210 ilvl or above at any rating from what I've seen. Despite all that, reaching 1.8K on my holy priesst went the fastest.
When it comes to boosting / playing against boosters I usually keep a checkpvp tab open and type a few names in out of curiosity. I've faced r1 players a few times between 1.6-1.8k rating already. Whoever I end up looking for tends to have a few alts or their current character in 2.1k or above in another bracket. Playing those games simply feels like as if someone were to climb out of bronze in league of legends was supposed to be playing at least at a high platinum level in order to be able to climb.
What I've learnt was to remain resilient and not to give a damn about my CR. Uneven / unfair matches will always be played, but an arena match does not last that long and that makes it much more enjoyable, if you're there to figure out what you can do better against certain teams that you lost to instead of blaming gear or boosters. I've also picked up a few reliable buddies via LFG, whom I can have a lot of fun climbing with. The game surely can feel frustrating at times, but it's always the player who decides to be mad at it or just shake it off and move on and que it up.
Thank you for attending my ted talk 😀
I personally think the problem is that that PvP gear can be used in PvE. I think that´s why theres so much arena boosting going on atm. It´s mainly PvE Player who buying arena boost So.. what i Think why ppl buy it is cuz gearing through PvE is by an insane amount slower than through PvP (arena). In theory u can get full 227 in 1 Week by either buying the max raiting or gain it by yourself. So..theres 15 Item slots for 2Hand and 16 for 2x 1hand…now imagine only getting 1 piece every week through the weekly vault if you done +15 keys (especially if ur not in a mythic raiding guild). That´s literally painful to read lol. So.., right now even if i was a PvE Player i would just q PvP and gear my char that way cuz only getting 1 item per week that is max ilvl is painful af lol again
PS: I don´t think we can change anyth ab the whole gear issue but we can at least try to tell blizzard what´s the problem and what they could try to fix it. Personally i think they need to make PvE Gear better in PvE or they make PvP gear worse in PvE….PvP gear will already be better in PvP Combat in next Patch 9.1.