Emeraude

Considering the lack of guilds in SCC and The Eye, I don't know if releasing new arena sets would be a good idea, unless they're sending a clear message the best/easiest way for epics is the arena.

Tier 4 = ilvl 105
Arena Season 1 = ilvl 111
Tier 5 = ilvl 115
Arena Season 2 = ???

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Folken

I think that arena season 2 must be on pair with tier6, whats tier 6 ilvl?

 

packetlss

Tier 6 gear is ilvl 135.

 

Masq

I imagine it's just an error, current arena is gear is fear/immolate, no?

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• DeeNogger

That would be criminal. Getting tier 6 gear just by saving arena points for the first season? How many pve raiders will get BT gear by raiding Gruul for a year and then magically turning that experience into T6?

I think instead arena 2 is just a fancy way to describe returning the arena set pieces, which are pretty cool. Although changing the set bonuses every 'season' would be a cool way to bring new flavors to pvp, although none of these set bonuses are what Id call 'creative' or 'innovative'.

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Zaq

I believe the gloves have a 50% fear/Searing Pain pushback resistance bonus equip, but that the 4piece is still immolate cast time

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Zaq

Has there been any word about how the change from season to season will occur?

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AndrewCarr

I think these are just the somewhat updated set bonuses for current arena gear. At least that's how they're making it sound on the WoW forums.

 

Folken

Arena gear is suppose to scale just like raid gear, maybe it will cost more arena points or something like that, but i dont think season 2 gear will just be season 1 with new stats, thats stupid because since you get all 5 pc what will you do with your points then?

Regarding the saving arena points question, isn't there a point limit so that you are forced into buying the gear? Maybe points will be reset or so i don't know the details about season 2!

Probably new arena will be 120-125 ilvl, if a blacksmith craftable such as Bulwark of ancient kings is ilvl 140, and tier 6 is 135, arena must scale or else everyone who raids just owns every arena team that doesn't spend any time raiding?

 

• frmorrison

When Blizzard releases the new Arena gear, it will be new gear with updated item levels.

You can hold 5000 points currently.

Assuming the Arena gear stayed the same vs Tier 6, the Arena teams would still be competitive due to resilience, but it would be a close call, the devs said once the raiders start to get Tier 6, they will release new Arena gear.

 

obsolete

I find it ironic that 4 piece warlock set bonus most benefits the build least used in arena... destruction.

Also the arena gear needs to be scaled with new pve gear being released, i.e. T6. Sure T6 may be alot harder to obtain, but if new arena gear wasn't released to match it then you would find players in the top PvE guild having clear PvP advantages.

 

• Maels

Re-echoing that the 4 piece on the affliction set being -0.2 off immolate is horrible.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome for a 32+ destruction build. In my experience most locks in arenas are affliction or demonology though, and even demonology will take some pieces of the affliction set.
The -50% pushback on fear glove bonus is Godlike, and I don't see many builds taking the searing pain one.

It's way to early to get arena gear upgrades, don't you think? A lot of guilds will just drop PvE (just like at the start of the arena season) if that happens.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Maybe I'm crazy but I'd imagine arena 2 would be pretty close to tier 5, not tier 6. Arena 3 would be near tier 6. The changes may be more incremental depending on length of season and thus how many seasons they expect to have before the next expansion.

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• Maels

There are 2 routes they can go with to make arena seasons of equal length.

3 Arena seasons of 4 months each.
February 15th > ~June 15th : Tier 4
June > October : Tier 5
October > February : Tier 6 and that should be around when the next expansion comes out, if they keep their 1 per year schedule.
Or maybe T4 > T4 > T5 and just never give T6 equivalents.

4 Arena season of 3 months each.
February 15th > ~May 15th : Tier 4
May > August : Tier 5
August > November : Tier 6
November > February : Tier 6
Alternatively, T4, T4, T5, T6 or T4, T5, T5, T6

I personally favour the first scenario, where at around mid June players can pick up T5 arena gear, where most of the higher-end raiding guilds on the server will just start to pick up Tier 5. The current season started about the same way.

 

Emeraude

It's pretty silly upon further consideration.

The top teams get stronger immediately because they have everything they want and have 5000 points saved up. Meanwhile, the while lower or non-ranked teams don't have that luxery, so they have to save points for the more expensive arena items to even begin to be competitive, because let's face facts, Gear > Skill alot of the time.

There's also another problem of stagnation in the top ranks of each BG, it's the same teams fighting each other over and over again. Barely climbing.

The top team on our BG The Challenge was has been in the 2400 bracket for weeks, it's just impossible for them to climb out of it, because every win is 3 points and every loss is like 20+, and none of the other teams close to their rating play.

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Quickshot

I'm not sure that Blizzard will launch arena season 2 while the 5v5 tournament is still up.

Armory

 

• Maels

The time is about right now when the lower ranked teams, with less points/week will start catching up to the best teams, in terms of gear.

The best teams (in all brackets) have racked up enough points to buy at least 5 pieces of their gear, or 3 pieces + weapons.

Lower teams who save those 5000 points will be able to buy just as much of the new gear as the top teams. The new gear replaces the old gear; the gear gap of 3 new pieces + 2 old (current top teams) versus 3 new + 1 old (lower teams) isn't significant enough.

This goes out the window if you spend your 5k on old gear of course. So start saving for a potential mid-May gear upgrade, if that doesn't happen spend some and be ready for mid-June.

 

raal

With the arena being a lot more "serious" than the battlegrounds ever where, blizzard are basically forced into issuing new gladiator armor around the same time as people reach T6. You cannot have PvP tournaments where the prerequisite for winning is being a front line raider. It undermines the entire concept of the arena.

 

Brissa

And when do you decide when "people" reach T6?

If Nihilum kills the first BT boss in 3 months that does not by any stretch of imagination mean that "people" get T6. While at the same time releasing an updated Arena set would mean that -anyone- who isnt plain stupid can get something they may never ever see from raiding in very short time.

 

raal

I have no idea how they are timing it. But they have to make the upgrade once the top PvE guilds get T6, otherwise you will end up with raiders owning the arena simply because of a gear advantage. That is clearly not their intention with the new PvP system.

I think you are highly underestimating the time it takes to get a full set of gladiator items, and the competitiveness of the system. if you by "-anyone-" is referring to the average player, he will have a 1500 rating. That translates to 408 points each week with a 5 man team. The set + weapons cost 12.000 points, which means 29 weeks, or 7 months of arena before he gets the items.

People you see with full gladiator today, or even the people that post on these boards, are pretty far ahead of the curve. Just like most raiders who post are.

Even if you ignore this, people will not use the gladiator armor in raids. Season 2 gladiator armor will not be as effective for raiding as T5 is, because the stats are allocated very differently. You do not want a rogue with 12.000 HP and 1100 AP doing DPS in your raid. It is worse the other way around, resilience (which gets a big percentage of the item budget) does nothing in raids. All the stat points from raid gear does however contribute in PvP.

 

◊ Kyth

Yes and no. It still doesn't reduce it below the global cooldown since you'll just get spell not ready. It lands slightly earlier (0.2 seconds) and suffers a bit less from pushback, but that's all.

An affliction build without Bane actually gets a bit more out of this due to gcd issues. (Unless I'm very wrong because it's 4am and I haven't slept yet.)

 

Keline

They really don't have to improve the arena rewards frequently, there are many slots not covered by the arena system (trinkets, bracer belt boots, neck, rings) they can add a couple of these before upgrading the sets.

 

Folken

Thats what i was trying to say that the gear should stay competitive with tier 6, or atleast something between t5 and t6,
everything is scaling: tiers, blacksmith armor/weapons and arenas all must stay at similar levels to keep the pvp competitive.

It may seem unfair to raiders, but being the top arena team and having all the arena gear plus weapons isn't as easy as just hoarding honor by afk in AV..

 

Keeper

Exactly. Personally, I'm in a fairly high rated team(hovering between 2320-2380, though most of the attention is currently going towards the 2nd round and our mage having some Internet problems) and most of my team has practically everything they want already. They will be getting a second set of the gear, which they can customize, for specific situations.

However, I would much rather have that they would implement, as you said, epic rings/boots/belts/bracers/necks/trinkets etc.

I have been quite baffled as to why the Blood Furnace (15% silence/interrupt resist chance) neck is not an arena reward (I have done 25+runs and have yet to see it).

When speaking of the difficulty and time invested: If you are in a good team, you will be getting your items very fast. However, even if you were in a good guild, you still have DKP/Drop chances to consider. Not to mention spending several hours inside a raid instance. Although, personally I have not seen many teams who 'just' do an hour arena/night and are above 2200+ (Feel free to correct me).

I will not bother attempting to discuss which is harder to do, PvP or PvE, since that will generally end in silly arguments anyway.

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raal

You have a team rated at the very top of the food chain, somewhere around top 50 teams world wide. Most players will never reach 2000 rating, let alone 2300. In fact, the average player *will* have a 1500 rating, such is the nature of the system itself.

It is when people consider the gear you have they assume that the gladiator items are easy to get, when this is the fact of the matter: There are 14434 teams with a rating above 1800. 0.3% of those teams make it to the top 50 list. And remember, the average team has a 1500 rating, they haven't even been tallied in that number.

If they where to balance the reward system around teams at your rating, the average player would spend years of arena just to get his shoulders. For anyone other than the top 1 percentile to get their items, blizzard simply has to keep the bar significantly lower, which again means that teams like yours will have more points than you know how to spend.

Not a problem at all, the problem arise when people with little or no experience in the matter believe that any schmuck can make a 2000+ team by playing the required 10 matches each week and get "omg free epix".

I do not want to make this an "which is easier" discussion, and make no claim in either direction. I just want to clarify this point to those still in the dark: The people you are looking at are ahead of the curve by leaps and bounds.