Needing the season 1 arena gear to get the 2nd one with be very unfair to any new teams that just start doing arenas on the 2nd season... its not like you need to hand in t5 to get your t6.. And that way it wouldn't allow us to mix 2 pc bonus from both arena sets, which would be better than most of those 4pc bonus announced

It doesn't need to be that complicated. Just inflate the prices for new gear, amount earned, and maximum points. Minimizes the impact of storing points and makes the obsolete gear easier to obtain.

If you disagree with the way prices are now, you simply inflate the three parts at different rates.

No it isn't. There is more to arena than just damage, even for a rogue. The minute any decent team finds out the rogue is packing 0 resilence he's going to get splattered on the pavement in an instant, even if he does have a comparable amount of sta. Resilence really is a great stat that makes a ton of difference. I'm really not too concerned about raid gear becoming required for pvp, they just need to keep the resilence far away, which they seem to be doing.

Thats true at the highest echelon of raiding yes.

However for raids that simply havent gotten that far yet its not the case.
Comparing T4 warrior dps legs with the current Gladiator ones they are fairly similar with T4 possibly comming out very slightly ahead.

For your average raidguild who wont be seeing SSC in a long long time being able to get ilvl 135 loot that will vastly outclass T4 (that they need to wait on average about 15 weeks for) with little or no effort is broken.

Sure the guys in the top tier guilds probably dont have to farm arenas for loot (although they probably will anyway) but the people in the average joe guild most certainly has to.
In fact with raids being as hard as they are its not unlikely that in a year or so average joe (who was clever enough to actually join an arena team) will have most of his gear from arenas being so good that he probably wont get an upgrade in those slots ever from raiding. This despite the arena gear having certain stats that are useless in pve.

This is all very broken and essentially boils down to the problem that you dont have to actually acomplish anything in the arenas in order to recieve gear.

Compare it to raiding. If you start raiding once BT is released, you still have to go through the other instances to gear up, right. I do not see how it is more unfair to require people that just start PvP teams to follow the same curve? It makes it harder for people to just go into arena for a couple of top-end weapons, which I guess is a concern for a lot of raiders.

You cannot skip raid content and just go for the new items, why should PvP be different?

Because they want it to be fair and that everyone has almost equal gear. In PVE however, the sense of progression is important, thus you are expected for not to skip raid-tiers.

I am by no means claiming that resilience is not important. It is, very much so. Someone wearing T6 could however get more HP than someone in gladiator and still use a lot of his excess socket slots to get resilience as well. Put a few "PvP friendly" resilience-items in the non-set slots and you are good to go.

I encourage you to take a equipment editor, then make as good a PvP set as you manage with the Gladiator items, and normal honor rewards. Then you do the same with T6. You will end up with slightly less resilience (depending on your configuration), but more HP and a ton more offense. This is without even considering the weapons which will drop side-by-side with T6, and have a huge impact.

So what you are saying is that you do not want a second tier of gladiator items because you should be able to take your raid weapons into PvP and be on equal footing with people that focus on playing the Arena? Even though it cannot be done the other way around?

Sorry, but anyone who honestly believes Resilience is just 'sorta important' for a Rogue, in highly rated 5v5 arena play is just plain wrong. Some of the very best Rogues have 11k HP and 300+ Resilience. Rogues are one of the easiest classes to assist down in arenas, and unless your team has cloth, you'll be one of the first kill targets. It's just way too easy for Warriors to completely dominate Rogues. Stacking DPS gear at the expense of survival is a quick way for your healers to run OOM while a Warrior unloads on you. The future of arenas is starting to turn toward endurance and finesse > brute force.

How can you compare the current gladiator set with T6 anyways, I guess it will not be before Season THREE that we will actually see many guilds clearing enough of Black Temple to talk about T6 sets.

I really expect the gladiator sets to be upgraded by season 3.

I've seen nobody that claims resilience is bad. Quite the opposite. However, Gladiator / Tier 6 are 5 items, out of 17 equipment slots! Add that to the fact that T6 has more sockets and you are looking at a very -real- opportunity to customize your gear any way you see fit.

1) Take the 12 non-set slots, which are available both to raiders and arena players and optimize those for arena play.
2) Take both Tier 6 and the Gladiator set items, and socket them for the arena.

The T6-based set is now better, simply as a function of higher item levels

It is still "fair". You came later, you start further back and work your way up. Just like you do with raiding. PvE does not have dibs on progression being important, it is the core reason why anyone does anything in a game. To see progress.

You will probably not be able to take on any top rated team until you get better gear, but your rating will reflect this and you will not meet them even if you want to. If you are decent you will start closing the gap between you and the top, just as a decent raid guild does.

Also, this thread probably belongs in "PVP Discussion" right?

Personally I don't want that to happen, but I realize that this is pure ego. I want to feel like the prior season gave me progression. If anyone new can just hop in and get tier 2 gear on an equal footing I will feel cheated. It is probably what will happen though.

Yes, and when every player in the world can wipe 10 times a week for four weeks and get a garuanteed piece of tier 6, I'm sure it'll be fair to update the arena sets.


And don't tell me it isn't that easy. I've got my rogue alt in arena, rocking full green "of the bandit" gear, the level 65 quest reward fist weapon, and arena gloves.

It can be fair, it will just take time to progress to that point, just like in raiding if getting Arena set 1 is required before Arena set 2. How is it "fair" that PVPers can skip 20 iLevels of gear yet raiders can not?

I should certainly hope T6 would absolutely destroy season 1 arena/BG items in stats. The amount of effort to obtain them isn't even remotely comparable. As for fully slotting your T6 with resilience gems, I'm sure tons of cutting edge raid guilds will be doing that. =)

Bottomline IMHO:

- T4 is a sad joke. At best its a side-grade from dungeon blues, at worst it is a clear downgrade (rogue shoulders?). T4 is clearly inferior to Arena stuff for PVP (or even for PVE in some cases).

- T5 is what the arena gear competes with, and t5 does't even exist on some servers yet. The SSC weapons I have seen are marginal upgrades to arena weapons for PVE, and due to their stats probably worse for PVP.

Right now arena and BG epics are on par with, or better than any raid drops really for PVP. If you upgraded the arena gear this season, PVE in anything but Black Temple would be pointless. Hell, there's crafted stuff nearly as good as T5.

Did we not already have this discussion when the first set of Arena gear came out?

If you lose 10 games a week, the gear doesn't come that fast (unless you recharter each week). Losing 10 games is your free ride to one or two pieces of gear, probably a weapon, shield, chestpiece, or gloves. The way this breaks endgame raiding currently seems not unlike blacksmithing or tailoring. The superiority of the gear keeps the masses playing the Arenas.

Please refrain from sweeping generalizations. T4 alone is a solid upgrade for many classes and combinations. A raiding warlock benefits quite a bit going to T4 from dungeon blues, and arena epic armor is not as good as T4 either. It IS surpassed by certain epics, but it is not all "a sad joke".

Your post is obviously meant to apply to some sets of T4 gear and to weapons. Deal in specfiics, not oversimplifications and emotions.

I remember some1 having this suggestion when this came up w/ the Arena 1 gear. What if the pieces required a certain rating to even equip? 2000+ for weapons 1800+ for BP/Legs/Helm 1600+Shoulders/Gloves 1500+ Wand/Libram.

Sounds like a great system to keep the experienced player winning with less skill than the newcomers. Unfortunately, I don't think that was how blizzard envisioned the system working.

Sounds like a good way to make the casual/mediocre Arena player play for four weeks and then quit since they can't equip anything they buy.