Hi,
these new changes are an absolute disgrace and 0 thought has been put into it obviously.
It used to be from 0 - around 4.4k GS (not the deciding factor i know, but still around that), and then from 4.5k GS - 6.8k GS, which wasnt perfect but absolutely fine for most players.
You had a range of players in every BG that you were able to compete with, acceptable Que times for both brackets and people that donated 284 weapons could be matched by having some GS-space to outgear them with other pieces of gear, besides weapons.
Now with the new Brackets going somewhere from 0 - 3k GS (guildy cant que anymore after hitting 2.8k GS with fresh 80 LOL) and from 3k GS - 6.8k GS.
Every player that just buys 264 gear from the auction house because its really cheap, and else still is in leveling gear, will get into BG's with players mostly above 6k+ GS.
This will have major downsides, which overshadow any benefit (probably the intention behind the changes were not scaring of new players from Frostmourne who aren't able to get better gear for now)
1. Que times are UNBEARABLE right now, it's more common to get 20+ min ques than getting que pops after LESS than 10 minutes. Absolutely horrible.
This will get better for a while, due to many players from Frostmourne hitting lvl 80 soon, but on the long run will be a massive problem again.
2. Players that reach 3k GS will have 0 fun grinding their PvP gear, cause they get oneshotted by everyone literally every single BG (Bgs now consist usually of 3-4 low GS players and the rest has 6k or more, so theres no competition between low geared players).
3. This will lead to a) unbalanced teams (Team A has 5 low GS players, Team B just 1 sometimes)
b) MASS AFK-ing from low geared players (which was basically gone)
and ultimately c) less players leveling new characters (-->less donations, even less players queing for lower bracket)
These changes don't add any value at all to the BG que system, but make THOUSANDS of players gaming experience tremendously worse.
There are multiple ways to address this issue, and I would like to discuss this a bit further by giving a few incentives.
My humble advice would be:
-Open another bracket for players from gear range 3k GS - 5k GS, which would FOR NOW exclude Frostmourne players, due to their gear limitations.
-Make it so that players that "overgeared" slightly, can delete their gear again and farm their offparts/furious set with players in their gear range.
-Most importantly, keep on observing the impact of your changes, find ways to alter the downsides of these changes and adjust if neccessary.
-LISTEN TO FEEDBACK from your playerbase, its them who are bearing the consequences, not you. Maybe even go so far to explain yourself on what brought you to make these changes. HUNDREDS of people that I've spoken to who are new players thought that this is a Bug, because it's so utterly counterproductive.
There was a report on the Bugtracker for this and the response after dismissing it was more or less just:
"Its no bug, we changed it."
Sorry, but thats not how to handle things. If your changes are so questionable that people think its a bug, you might need to overthink them.
Que times for High GS bgs are more or less instant 24/7 so its not taking a toll on que times in any way.
Whatever it is that you'd change, it would not make it any worse, because it can not get ANY worse than it is right now. I have spoken to an abundance of players that share this opinion and your community don't deserve any of these changes. They are straight up horrible.
Best regards.