Timestamped.
This guy is Gold 4, almost Legendary PVP, and knows full well it's garbage tier.
Okay, this is going to be a bit long but I want to elaborate:
I made bottom Legendary just before cycle reset. Currently rank 10 gold 2 on new reset. I go against whales daily. Sub 300 res, fully FTP with not a single cent given, two 2* gems with the rest all 1* and no gem above rank 3. Necro.
Streamers as usual are massively overblowing the “pay2win” situation of the battlegrounds and are intentionally misrepresenting what PvP is in this game - which is a push the cart 8v8 type BG and not arena. I have a list of issues with the PvP, balance, and the BG’s in general that I would love to rail Blizzard for and talk about but the notion that “any whale who spends a little money can just 1 shot everyone and win” in PvP is blatantly false, which is what I was replying to regarding that incredibly stupid Rich/Asmongold video of him with 13k USD in gems going up against literal Bronze players who didn’t even have their legendaries. Those videos are the equivalent of the click-bait League of Legend YT videos of shitty streamers beating up their Bronze viewers in custom games, claiming they “found a new build that needs to be nerfed now!”.
The only times I’ve been “one shot” and felt helpless have been against super whales with literal 5* 5 Quality +8-10 rank gems, and by “one shot” I mean I was quickly killed before properly reacting because of my gear score disparity vs. theirs. I’m talking about me specifically and not my teammates. I play a lot of PvP and the amount of times this has happened can be counted on my fingers. To get to 5/5 +8-10 you need to spend literally tens of thousands of dollars. The vast majority of players, including those at/around Gold 5 and Legendary rank, will not be encountering those players and if/when they do, they will most likely be CC locked assuming balanced teams because in gold+ people start learning how to play. In addition to this, if/when you do encounter those players with your FTP gear, you will actually gain rank on the loss because the BG’s distribute rank points based not just on Win or Lose, but on individual performance and the disparity between your and your teams gear vs. your opponents.
People who spend money on gems will have zero impact on your ability to climb in DI’s BG’s.