It was taken away due to not enough players queuing so they felt the need to mix premades with soloers for faster queue times. But why aren’t more people playing PvP? That is the bigger question. Here is a lift of proposed solutions:
1.Remove NPC’s. You know how it is: You’re ahead by 100 or so points, but they close the gap by getting NPCs. Even worse, you could hit them first or more often yet the other team can still get credit for a kill. Mechanics like this can drive people away. Then you have Lord kills that deflect players away from points in Legacy.
2.Bigger nodes: Lots of classes have big AoE’s, no one likes giving the opponent free decapping progress just to avoid taking damage or conditions. This way you can have two dragonhunters drop traps on a node, avoid damage, and still hold the point. Graveyard seems to be a reasonable size.
3.Temple of the Silent Storm: Need I say more? Uggh, fine. Temple is annoying because it’s vertical, narrow, lots of LoS, its layout confuses noobs, and whoever channels tranquility gets all three points for free. Like a lord or enough NPC kills can be a complete game changer allowing a fast recovery and even win. This battleground needs to be scrapped, maybe even replaced with Spiritwatch which is actually good but not available in ranked. Battle of Khylo on the other hand had so much potential, but they just had to kill it with the trebs. Despite aggressive trebbers firing at mid people still rush center. No, get sides if you really don’t want someone dedicated to a treb. Even if they aim for sides it will rarely ever land near the node.
4.More map variety: Stronghold has okay foundations, but they just had to kill it by needing to summon NPCs and kill a lord. It would be better with a bigger map to accommodate mounted combat where you have a breakbar and fall off the mount and get stunned if it breaks. The objective wouldn’t be lord slaying but channeling a flagpole at their base. Such a map would be 20 vs. 20 and only soloQ’ers would have access to it. Speaking of flags flag carrying objectives where you invade their fort and bring the flag to your base 3 times is a nice simple NPC free idea.
5.Better balance: Too much CC falls here. Add a resolve mechanic, closely examine the professional meta, get ideas from top players, have them compete against other pro teams in an internal balancing tournament to see what needs adjusting. If an underperforming class does all the right things yet still loses what could you adjust on both ends to make it more even? If a class like Shiro rev or daredevil wins a 1v1 then it would need a pass since they’re designed to be strong in dueling, so obviously dueling viability shouldn’t be the only factor. I remember on a staff ele killing a thief on point. Why did I, an elementalist (in that match) built around group support beat a class that’s supposed to excel in dueling? My win that time was due to burning and reflects (they ran pistol/pistol)
For balance we can get rid of all non-celestial amulets but reintroduce PvP exclusive amulets that shave some stats off everything but one set, like a celestial set with an offense bend that has power, crit, and ferocity higher than celestial and everything else lower, or a condition one with condition duration, but other stats reduced accordingly (especially to accommodate the extra stat). This would ensure everyone has decent defense and healing power so if they get into a situation where they know those stats can come in handy they can do that job okay. It’s not that great knowing what to do in a certain situation but knowing you’d be ineffective due to a chosen stat combination. This balanced but with an extra emphasis on a certain role will need rebalancing as well but seems to be a step in the right direction.
6. Separate PvP and PvE abilities cooldowns: This one is obvious: A vet mob has more HP than a player, so a four second knockdown would give you a good opening to deplete his healthbar further. However, players don’t have healthpools that big and stun duration and cooldowns need to take that into account. If a certain move in PvE has a 20 second cooldown then make it 25 or 15 in PvP depending on its type.
These decisions will bring more people into the game and I think league tags were a big step forward for PvP player population. After all, who wants the stigma of being a sub-amber badgeless?