I am not whining for the sake of it, there's nothing in that original post that amounts to "zomg MY RAID EPICZ WHUT AER YOU DOING TO TEH SYSTAM". The gist of that post is that Blizzard set out a system when TBC came out, and now they've just changed it all around for (what seems like) no reason at all.

It makes complete sense for PvE gear to be good in PvE, and PvP gear to be good for PvP. What doesn't make sense is that the PvP gear is arguably the best gear for both in particular slots. This is compounded by the fact you can put in a low time commitment, 10 games a week for 5-6 weeks for a weapon if you're at least half decent (and doesn't require "skill", merely time) to get the particular PvP item you want while PvE items are on a completely luck-based system, so it makes sense for the PvE items to be of higher quality (even if only slightly so).

I think you could do this similar to the way they made the AQ weapon quests. Maybe not require quests for the weapons, but kind of similar to t4/t5 armor pieces nowadays. Simply stick two/three different weapons on each item, but make it easy to figure out so you don't have to look loot up every time on WoWHead or something similar.

I have to seriously question this claim. While I know the general level of raiding experience for people on this forum is higher than average, the attunement elimination from yesterday's patch suggests that there isn't this massive number of people who have become "bored" as it were with SSC or The Eye; they're still very viable raiding instances, and often serve as the peak progression levels on servers. (On my realm, there is only one guild in The Eye, for example.) As a result, I think there's a lot of legitimacy to the OP inquiry, mainly because it seems things are getting reverted back to "the days of yore."

Character progression is character progression. Relatively few people play this game just to mix/max their raiding stats. Hokey PvP-only stats wouldn't do a whole lot except further segregate a game that doesn't need to be segregated, and I don't think that PvP'ers deserve an automatic win in all PvP confrontations due to specialized equipment, compared to PvE'ers running around with 6000 life and massive amounts of spell damage that just gets mitigated into nothing by the aforementioned specialized equipment.

I don't mind pvp being an alternate upgrade path to help you keep up in pve for areas where you haven't been fortunate with drops.

On a purely selfish level I like the fact that pvp rings are dropping in SSC that don't require me to do AV 40 times to obtain.

But forcing competitive pvp groups to get 25 people together and raid to have the most powerful pvp arsenal is silly.

Having alternative ways of filling up those last equipment slots allow guilds to move on instead of farming old content for months and months just because those blasted Rejuvenating Gems and Staffs of Shadowflame won't drop.

An alternate perspective would be that they want the players who participate and excel in all facets of the game to be the strongest in both arenas. Someone who only raids and doesn't do arenas will have fewer options, and in some cases, may be denied a couple of optimal pieces, as compared to someone who does both. Someone who only does arenas and hasn't touched PvE since getting the last Primal Nethers for his smithing weapon will in turn lose out on a few options that are available to players who do both.

This doesn't mean that the raider has Might of Menethil while the PvPer has a TUF and it's a complete joke, nor does it mean that successful gladiators get full sets of gear they can raid in. But I don't think a middle-ground is so unreasonable.

The more I think about this, the less it really bugs me. Yeah, it's occupying a slot on a loot table, but surely every guild has at least a few people who PvP who will happily put the item to use. And in the grand scheme of things, it's like 4 new drops in a zone that has dozens of items on its tables.

That is a problem with PvE loot tables and the random drop system, not with the quality of Arena rewards. Just be glad that those, who decide to get the Spellblade, won't contest the Fang of the Leviathan for you when it drops.

The GM weapons did not take that much more time to get when you consider that you received a weapon for every possible slot and spec (well, no wands) as well as a full set of epic armor when you were done. Now count how long it takes to get the _full_ set of arena armor and every single weapon and compare. It might seem easy when you are looking to get only one piece of equipment but you are forgetting that you received the full package at once back in the day.

Of course they do. It's what they specialize in (pvp), they 100% deserve an advantage in pvp over a pve player. What the hell would be the point of pvp gear progression otherwise? I'm sure you'd feel grand if a new 2400 arena rated warrior app'd to your guild who had never set foot in a raid bumped your spot because the tanking/dps gear he got from arenas was better than your own. An extreme example to be sure, but the point is valid.

If you are geared for pve you should be at a severe disadvantage vs someone who is just as hardcore a pvp'er as you are a pve'er. This game has never been skill based, it is a gear reward system and unless they can find a way to balance this game primarily around skills (ie. never) the gear is going to be the deciding factor in your specialization.

He didn't actually say they shouldn't get an advantage over the pve player, he simply stated that it shouldn't be an automatic win for the pvp'er, which doesn't sound that unreasonable.

Counterpoint:
Is someone who tries to play at the 2000+ arena level using solely gear obtained from raid zones going to fare well? Do these new items change that? Will someone who now has 25 resilience as opposed to 0 resilience suddenly become an arena god in his full PvE set? Hell no. The rings are only a factor in PvP when you're comparing two people who otherwise have the best available PvP gear from arenas and honor.

Now, someone who uses the new ring drops (and any other new loot we haven't discovered yet) to fill a small hole in their PvP set, alongside the ilvl 128 honor-bought resil ring, going to have an advantage? Sure. But they aren't a PvP noob -- they're a PvPer who is PvEing to complement their toolset.

The question isn't "Should a 2400-rating warrior with no raid experience be able to outperform a raider in a raid setting?" The question is "Should a 2400-rated player who also raids have an advantage over a 2400-rated player who doesn't?" particularly if that advantage is not a decisive one. Similarly, should a hardcore tier 6 raider who also PvPs have an advantage in PvE over someone who refuses to set foot in a BG or arena?

Well, needless to say I totally disagree. I do agree that there should be an advantage, but the idea seems to be perpetuating that PvP gear should be an automatic win (which by many accounts seems to be the case). It shouldn't be. A vast majority of the WoW playerbase is playing this game to improve their character, and it's really not fair at all that raiders on PvP servers should be relegated to killing Internet dragons, or to say that players in PvP gear should be essentially relegated to PvE blues (or worse) while their power at killing players improves exponentially. There's just no need to segregate like that. The game's already become too rigidly structured (even sterile).

The issue with this argument is simply that I (personally) won't get the Fang of Leviathan due to it being vastly inferior to the Spellblade... that's the main issue I see with that weapon in particular.

For me, the Spellblade would be something like an 11-12 DPS upgrade over the Fang--and a 15 DPS upgrade from the Magus-Blade--according to Vontre's upgrade tester, which is rather substantial compared to any other single upgrade available in SSC for a Mage. (Probably worth 2-4 single item upgrades, depending on your current gear.)

Like I said, I will be getting it... but I don't really view it as fair towards other casters that don't particularly enjoy or want to participate in PvP.

Considering that less then 100 guilds worldwide have killed Kael'thas at this point in time your statement is really false.

My personal view is that I have no problem with some crossover items between PvE/PvP, its simply inevitable that its going to happen. What I do have a beef with is the difficulty/effort required to obtain top tier PvP items compared to thier PvE equivalents. To obtain PvE rewards you have to SUCCEED. Its all or nothing, there are no rewards for losing. The same standard should hold true for PvP, if you are mediocre or bad you should not be reaping the rewards.

One suggestion I have might be to reduce the rate of arena point gain in half. This would at least force people to maintain a highish rating to obtain the rewards in a reasonable amount of time. Is this an elitist point of view? Sure is, however I just dont feel that people should be rewarded with top of the line gear for being mediocre and bad.

Of course, part of the gladiator's spellblade problem would be fixed just by reitemising SSC and TK a little bit (and quit making more spell damage swords than spell damage daggers). Blizzard's item designers still have a penchant for sticking 2h melee weapons and DPS plate on everything... there's far more epic melee 2h in heroics, kara, gruul's, SSC and TK than there are caster weapons, and yet a typical raid will have ~8 casters but probably 0 people who DPS with a 2h melee weapon. The token solution has fixed the old "more felheart/nemesis to disenchant!" problem. Now they just need to line up the other drops to more closely correspond with what people need.

Theres a lot of hostility to the suggestion of anti-player AP/damage - I can understand that, and that's why I wanted feedback on a possible solution.

Being able to integrate PvE and PvP is certainly something that I don't mind, however (to use the example snape gave) having items that are in excess of quality from a PvE perspective than those from what is currently the end-tier-5 boss is pretty ridiculous IMO. Integration is fine in terms of making things close so that they can do the job, just not QUITE as well as their specific counterpart from the other section of the game.


This post was originally made to try and understand the decision of why Blizzard deviated from their original course in TBC of making PvP items good for PvP and PvE items great for PvE, with little to no crossover. 2.1.2 clearly changes this, and now I understand why they may have decided to do it - integration of the PvE and PvP mini-games within WoW. As far as I see it, it's a bad thing to gone quite so far i.e. practically back to a post 2.0 situation where anyone can get good gear from PvP. A lot of WoW just broke down in the face of the honour changes post-2.0, because suddenly a lot of people decided they didn't want to raid when, for a fixed time investment, they could get whatever they wanted.

Edit (response to next post): A personal example of the RNG is that we have had 0 dragonspine trophies. ZERO. This is with killing Gruul from 4 weeks before he got nerfed to the current week, something like 15 kills total (if not more). Our rogues are starting to get rather frustrated with the situation (well, one isn't because he got it before he joined the guild). They could really do with sorting out that system when you compare it to the PvP system currently in place.

I completely agree with this. The RNG system really stinks when it comes to gearing up your raid with weapons comparable to your armor. We had such crappy weapons luck in my old guild that we killed Patchwerk for the first time with 5 of the 6 rogues mainhanding Perdition's Blade (granted Perd's was OP for Rag loot, but still). I <3ed the AQ40 token system for both armor and weapons as it eliminated those random luck streaks that punish the 95% raider whose Mom is sick the one week in 5 months that Nef decided to drop his BP for example.

We have killed Morogrim for 3 months now and have yet to see Talon of Azshara drop, so I for one am thrilled that I have a new pair of swords courtesy of pvp. Its not that I am not willing to spend the dkp, god knows I am lol, its just that I want to advance my character and am glad that relying on the fickle whims of lady luck is not the only way I have to do so.

Like I said, my argument was an extreme case. Which the rings obviously are not, however they set a bad precedence. I was taking the extreme counterpoint to Nezralix's point that pve'ers should not be at a severe disadvantage in pvp vs. a person who has spent thier entire career obtaining only pvp gear. Which is absurd.

IMO pve geared players no matter how well geared should get curb stomped by a high level arena team, or bg team for that matter. I'm quite sure I'm in the minority on this, but it does seem like fair play. People act as if the weapons in the arena system give some huge advantage over pve counterparts which is simply untrue, the difference is probably somewhere in the range of the advantage the rings give a pve'er that is on a decent arena team.

Yes, the weapons are nice, but complimented with the arena sets the arena gear is absolute trash for pve for any class. To say that someone should be able to gain the pve gear and have the best of both worlds (the best in pve (minus the 1-3% dps from the pvp weps) and the best pvp minus the resilience but far and away superior in dps and healing) is just not right.

My counter argument is, that if you think it's fair that a pve/pvp 90%/10% player to have a 'decent shot' at beating a player that is pvp 100%, then you must also think it would be fair for a pvp/pve 90%/10% player to compete in pve vs a player that raids 100%.

I agree, on our slow-progressed server, it feels wierd that people just go to a vendor and buy the best PvE weapons on the server(from a pvp system! - sorry for caps) on the same day as it released. When we're working on Kael'thas and people run around with weapons that are not only 'as good' but even better than what he can drop! I think we're looking at a "2.0 scenario" here.

I agree completely, every week we shard at least 1 and sometimes 2 or 3 2-handers, you need 1 or 2 per tier, not 1 every other boss. For HKM, Gruul, Mag, Fathom Lord and Kael to all drop them, when there use is VERY limited is just silly.

As for the Arena weapons being as good as T5 Weapons, sounds good to me. I have had the Arena Swords since early Gruul attempts, I will be getting the new ones soon (shouldn't have stopped PvPing). As someone who had horrible luck with weapon drops Pre-TBC (we were on 4H and had 1 Maexxna's, 1 DS and 1 AQR drop.... ever), I love that I can get something if the RNG decides it doesn't like me.

A raid of people in Arena Gear isn't going to do as well as a raid of people in PvE Gear, however while there is normally a couple options of varying levels for armor, weapons tend to be more limited. For example if it wasn't for the Arena weapons I would still be using Fool's Bane or Edge of the Cosmos and a Searing Sunblade, because I never saw a Spiteblade and we have yet to get a single Talon.

Not to mention this makes raid loot easier to sort out. We have 2 sword spec rogues, if Arena weapons didn't exist then there would be drama over who got the Talon when it finally dropped. Instead I am going to pick up the new Arena MH and he will get the first Talon... problem solved, and I get to focus on other stuff instead.

Since when is an alternative to bad luck with the RNG, when it comes to huge upgrades for your raid a bad thing?

No person who PvP's is ever going to waste their time and going to get a piece of gear that is only useful for PvE.

Every person who PvE's has ALREADY seen many pieces of gear sharded due to bad itemisation. Now, on top of that, we'll be sharding useless PvP rings as well that no-one wants.

That's the imbalance - making PvE progression even more reliant on the RNG is ridiculous. Add the rings in as a trash drop, make them crafted recipes, whatever, but having them replace progression gear on loot tables that are already full of items that are getting sharded after week one is nonsense.

Oh, and definitely agree with the above - Blizzard need to realise that very few classes need or want two handed weapons, and stop itemising so heavily around them.

I think that <most> people here agree that alternatives to gear progression are good. The problem again, in my eyes, is the relative power of the items you get in a system that yields guaranteed loot (PvP) over one that doesn't (PvE).

To say it a different way, I don't squabble over PvPers getting good gear. I'm glad for them. I just don't think it should be head and shoulders above raid gear in raw power when their system is more or less guaranteed (not RNG-based) and requires 1/5 (roughly) of the "effort" that goes into good raiding (5v5 vs. 25-man raids).