Role-Based Bolstering for PvP

[Patchkid]

Role Based PvP “Bolster” System:

All players queue PvP with role preferences selected prior to joining a match. Very similar to how Roles are selected for PvE, but with a slight change in flavor as roles in PvP are not the same.
- This does not lock you to a specific role!!!
- You minor buffs and debuffs specifically tailored to offer incentives to perform the role assigned
- Roles are not mandatory, and alternative roles would only be slightly reduced in effectiveness

Why?
This allows Trion to attempt team composition balance in an effort to make PvP Warfronts a more balanced experience. The most common complaint is the “cross-healing” or “healer stacking” that happens in some warfronts along with the trend that some teams have absolutely no healers because of the lack of incentive for DPS players to switch to that role.

How it works:

When you join a PvP match, a role is assigned to you based on:
1. What you picked as preferences when you queued.
2. What Trion’s balancing system has determined is needed to balance the teams.
3. Or, in cases of joining a match late, what is missing from the current team.

You would not ever be assigned a role you did not select as an option, and therefore could guaranty to get boons you specifically desire if you wish to wait for that role to be available.

What are the roles?

- Melee DPS
- Ranged DPS
- Healer
- Support(??)

What are the “boons” and “banes for each role?

This is a subjective topic of balance that would need to be heavily considered by Trion.

Examples of Boons and Banes would be and increase to:
- Durability (health bonus, flat damage reduction, healing taken)
- Sustained Damage (increase to Damage over Time effects)
- Burst Damage (crit power, crit chance)
- Ranged Damage (specific to ranged abilities, minus DoT effects)
- Melee Damage (specific to melee abilities, minus DoT effects)
- Resistances (general chance to resist status effects)
- Healing Power (boosts all healing abilities)

I would like to see Melee DPS boons in burst damage, durability, and melee damage, while making them slightly weaker in areas like ranged damage, healing, and sustained DPS.

My preferences for Ranged DPS boon would increase sustained damage, ranged damage and resistances, while making them slightly weaker in areas like melee damage, healing, and durability.

A healer might gain boons to increase healing power, durability, and resistances while making them slightly weaker in ranged damage, melee damage, and sustained damage.

The support soul would be an interesting one as I see them playing more of the “jack of all trades” with a little DPS and a little Healing so I’d think the support role would be used to play whatever is needed most gaining boons in burst damage, durability and healing with banes in ranged damage, melee damage, and sustained damage. This makes them potentially “well rounded” at different roles, but amplifies roles like Dominator, Bard, PyroCon, or Oracle.

Bear in mind, Boons and Banes do not hinder your abilities significantly. We’re talking about 3-5% difference total. They are simply incentives to use the role assigned by the queuing system. By no means does it prevent a player from performing alternate roles, or greatly impede that role.

How many of each role would be in each Warfront?

Tough question to answer. That would be up to Trion's balancing and testing. Limiting the number of players that can gain the Healing and Support boons would be the first part of balancing matches. Due to the overwhelming amount of Ranged DPS in PvP these days, it's hard to say whether having a certain number of Melee DPS creates any impact to the PvP match (though I personally feel that Melee DPS is essential to end stalemates, and push teams back, but that's just me) or if the DPS roles can be freely allocated to whatever flavor and boons the player prefers.

Anyway, that's the thought on how to implement a method in which players can freely select any soul combinations they desire, but will have incentives to play the role that the balancing system assigns them to prevent over-stacking / lack of specific roles in PvP matches.

[Dark Mits]

This would add another layer of balancing complexity. Besides, most of the boons you have suggested already exist passively or actively in the soul tree system.

The fact that players like to be dps won't change. WoW has tried consistently to incentivise non-dps roles, and even with unfair extra rewards to those other roles, the situation didn't change. It's not a game issue, it's a player issue.

Premades in Warfronts will always have higher rate success than total random groups, just like organised raids in PvE have higher success than pugs (either in # of bosses killed, time to complete or both).

[Patchkid]

This would add another layer of balancing complexity. Besides, most of the boons you have suggested already exist passively or actively in the soul tree system.

The fact that players like to be dps won't change. WoW has tried consistently to incentivise non-dps roles, and even with unfair extra rewards to those other roles, the situation didn't change. It's not a game issue, it's a player issue.

Premades in Warfronts will always have higher rate success than total random groups, just like organised raids in PvE have higher success than pugs (either in # of bosses killed, time to complete or both).

I don't disagree in principle. The point is to make a conscious decision when you queue for warfronts to state your are willing to perform one of the roles you selected. If the queuing system then assigns you to healer, and you chose not to heal, everyone else in the match can hold you accountable. They literally can point to a player and say "You're not doing your job".

Right now if a team of 15 players has no healer, no one can be held accountable. No one is assigned to be a healer. The queuing system did not determine if someone should heal, and there's no way for you to hold anyone else accountable except for yourself. Everyone has the ability to switch to healing (unless they didn't buy the souls), but no one wants to do it -- that's fine! I can't tell anyone else how to play, and if I'm not willing to be the healer, then I'm no better than the rest of my team.

But, if someone is assigned to healing because they actively picked that job as an option when queuing, the mentality shifts completely. Now there is a person assigned to healing, and they picked to sign up for it! That's a totally different situation.

It'd be like someone joining the queue for PvE as a healer, and then joining an expert saying "i'm not going to heal, I'll just DPS - someone else can heal, I won't do it". Generally, you're gonna kick that player. He just chose heals to bypass the system relying on someone else to pick up the slack.

Give the PvP community the ability to police itself, and you'll see a difference eventually. Sure, people will sign up as a healer, and then go DPS, but it's going to hurt their reputation with the PvP community.