Neverwinter Combat League Event Review
During the last weeks the head count around Protector’s Enclave noticeably increased as players fought for rewards in the first Neverwinter PVP event. We killed, dazed, capped, yelled at each other, gave up, barked when others gave up, got 30 min penalties, gg’d and now the rankings are finally final (not sure at this the blog post has been properly updated though)! Time to recap the Combat League Preseason!
I had not been an avid PVPer. If you follow my stuff you might know that I don’t believe and compete in a matchmaking system that is so flawed. I did however give the event a chance and soon realized that the system was indeed producing close matches. With more people in the queue due to the event, we got a rough idea how matchmaking could work. It wasn’t perfect, but you could definitely tell the difference between your anyday and NCL queue. Wait times were ok, but I don’t think players care as much anyway if the match is at least decent.
Exclusively solo pugging, I hardly met premades unless it was an absolute off-time or we had a premade or partial premade on our side as well. That said, even in a well-populated matchmaking, premades do still present a problem. Not sure the system tries to match (partial) premades regardless of ELO, but the most lopsided matches I had with a 2k partial on the one and a BiS counterpart on the other side. People also duo queue, because the chances of meeting a full premade are slim, but fielding a competent partner in a pug battle can be a gamechanger.
That said, I first indeed thought you have to premade to get anywhere near to the top and that’s wrong. You could get into the Top 40 solo, so score one for the matchmaking. I nonetheless think most of the top players premaded and that a solo queue system for leaderboard purposes still has to become mandatory, simply because it counters so many flaws and evenly distributes the randomness of the matchmaking. Premades can work around that randomness by filling the roles they need. That’s fine of course, just not for a single player ranking. And group composition matters a lot. Given same ELO, some matchups were still a stomp because one team had that node-holder or backcapper or perma-stun HR that couldn’t be offset. The devs have hinted they think about such a solo queue system and it makes sense. I still like what I saw from matchmaking during the event though. Matches were mostly close, although that doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t one-sided. At a certain skill and gear level a team just bleeds slower and most gg’s came at the 250-400 mark.
I somehow totally missed that they removed the Legion PVP gear from the reward store. It’s probably for the best, because that stuff wasn’t worth the 1,000 Tokens and could have caused a major backlash. I recently criticized the reward structure of the Lliira event and the NCL was actually a great example how it should be done. There’s progression in form of a Mount, Gear and Enchantments and high-end characters can buy RPs and / or BoE stuff to sell as well as compete for the grand prize. And all comes at reasonable rates. It’s not handed to you either, but especially since the NCL ran for a few weeks, you can get there.
The Preseason also was an opportunity to get a deeper look into class balancing and it’s safe to say that SW’s need all the help they can get in PVP. It was the only class that failed to fill their Top 40 ranking, because there simply weren’t enough Warlocks in the Top 1000. Rogues and Wizards widely dominated the NCL, because their tools can fulfill a variety of tasks on the battleground that helps winning a game. Tank and healing came in 2nd, because they are potent node holders but can’t score that much. One exception is the GF, which has a dominant amount of burst. GWFs and HRs seem to be in a weird place right now. The high-end builds are beasts, but below that players struggle to contribute.
It remains to be seen whether the NCL will constantly get more players involved into PVP even outside event days. It would be nice, because the Preseason showed the potential. It got me PVPing daily, respeccing my chars and actively trying for the Top 40, which I achieved with my CW and failed on my Protector GF (she got a full set of Elemental Burning gear in the process though). I originally thought my lowbie would be able to get two pieces of the armor set as well, but due to the queue times I couldn’t constantly get matches within the limited playing time so I had to settle for one. As 2k player I generally experienced that I was too often caught in the crossfire of higher geared players. For the ELO such matches might look fine, but as lone lowbie it was frustrating because I literally couldn’t do anything other than running to a node and die. Best would be to not only get equal ELOs on opposing, but also on your own team so you fight alongside and against others will the same rating. But then we are again talking about vastly higher queue times…
Overall though I’d consider the Neverwinter Combat League a success and hope it’s here to stay. We’ll see each other on the battlefield during the regular season!
