I think this discussion has been done a million times and the conclusion is, yes, god forbid that, because then the bad teams would stop PvPing, and now the bottom half of the good teams would suddenly be the bad ones. Rinse and repeat. At any rate this is an argument for another thread at best.
I think the best way they can make progression smooth is make the drops from the first raid zone(be it 10 or 25) be ILvL T6(or if they have another raid dungeon, T7)+5, or maybe 10. So your raid gear definitely helps you progression before the raids, and will be comparable once you reach them.
I think the best way they can make progression smooth is make the drops from the first raid zone(be it 10 or 25) be ILvL T6(or if they have another raid dungeon, T7)+5, or maybe 10. So your raid gear definitely helps you progression before the raids, and will be comparable once you reach them.
Precisely - and that's exactly what happened in TBC, with Karazhan gear being a little better than T3. Of course, that makes all the T1 and T2 gear obsolete that much sooner.
All I know is it better be life time rating not current.
And we're probably not talking high requirements or requirements at all for most items. They're probably thinking of adding even more higher end weapons and stuff to help keep up with the PvE side of things.
@vashj/za dagger: You don't actually believe these will be any where near that easy to get, do you? Especially after Tigole's opening comment re: PvP rewards during the R&D panel?
I'm willing to bet those would be the cream-of-the-crop loot, i.e. from the optional challenges.
Before TBC they hammered out free items with the pvp patch. Chances are they want to give people free leveling gear again. WoW is not build on the foundation 'only the best (which in wow means those who put in the most time, but let's go with best for this.) get the best items'. Everythign for everyone. It's just a matter of time. Chances are that that time has come already. I'd expect that ZA will be a another serious kick in the nuts for raiding guilds that spend a lot of time gearing up in 25 men raiding instancees. History tends to repeat itself.
@spelldmg/healing:
There are several items that read 'add X healing and Y spelldmg', like the hakkar charm for example. They definitely got a conversion formula. Now if all healing items read like that, healers could suddenly farm quite well. The items would not be very competitive for raid dps as there is no hit/crit and instead mana regen, but for farming or leveling, things would be a looooot better and healers would not be forced to start taking a 2nd gearset in the last dungeon.
I am pretty sure most priests that did AQ40 and some nax would have been a lot better off with a +healing to speldlmg conversion and using a holy dmg spec instead of going shadow with mediocre or even bad gear.
That change was due since over a year now, would be cool if they finally got around to implementing it.
And we're probably not talking high requirements or requirements at all for most items. They're probably thinking of adding even more higher end weapons and stuff to help keep up with the PvE side of things more.
At the risk of going even further off topic, physical dps arena gear needs a serious dose of the -armor itemization if it wants to remain competitive versus t6. That -armor enchant for weapons already seems a little obnoxious for pvp.
At the risk of going even further off topic, physical dps arena gear needs a serious dose of the -armor itemization if it wants to remain competitive versus t6. That -armor enchant for weapons already seems a little obnoxious for pvp.
Well considering only T6 level items [beside trinkets] have this stat, its rather likely Season 3 will contain some portion of it.
I sincerely doubt they will make any changes to the ability of 1450 teams to get a MH Dagger through Arena. What is far more likely to happen is the introduction of additional weapons that are very minor upgrades to the existing ones, but that also have a rating requirement (if they even do this at all). That way the 1450 teams still have access to the same weapons they had before, but the 1800+ (or whatever) teams get access to something else with an additional minor upgrade. I don't think rewarding the best PvPers like that would be a bad thing.
(kaib beat me to this but anyway...)
Regarding the comments about allowing Holy Priests to grind without gear swaps, and Resto-Druids & Moonkins wanting the same gear, I think it's likely that we'll just see a lot more items along the lines of the Thottbot World of Warcraft: Item Set: Windhawk Armor set. Rather than having "+98 to healing" on the next Druid Resto helm, they'll just have "+40 Spell Dmg & Healing and +58 Healing". I see no reason at all why many healing items can't be itemised in such a way to give healing builds gear to level with, and Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids much greater access to gear.
I think we'll see almost exactly the same degree of gear reset as we did in TBC, for the same reasons.
Let's define two hypothetical people: the "average player" and the "bleeding edge raider".
Level 71-72 will bring everyone's gear up to the level of the "average player". That means everybody levels on an even playing field, allowing them to balance the quests and provide a reasonable degree of difficulty during levelling.
At level 80, after completing all group quests, everyone will have gear up to the level of the current "bleeding edge raider". That means that everyone will be entering the starting raid dungeons at about the same level of itemisation, allowing them to balance the raid game.
Think about it. Think how fast the bleeding edge ripped through all the raid content within a few weeks (obviously bugged encounters aside). Hell, look how much whining there is right now this second about how we'll all have completed BT and have nothing to do for ages before the expansion. And you want to have less of a reset, and rip through the raid content even faster?
Just imagine what would have happened if Tier 3 had been on a par with Vashj drops (which is what you're asking for). Either they tune SSC assuming Tier 3 quality gear, which screws over everyone who didn't get into Naxx - or they tune it lower, and the bleeding edge blows through it even faster and never ever plays a challenging encounter that isn't actually bugged.
So no. Level 72 greens will be the equivalent of T4, and level 80 blues will be T6. And rightly so. There's no way round it. In order to produce tuned encounters in a gear-centred game, they need to know what level of gear you're taking into the encounter. That means everyone needs to start with the same level of gear when they hit the raid game, which in turn means you need a complete reset from the previous raid game.
Asking for your gear not to be reset is asking for encounters that provide no challenge and offer no upgrades.
I think there's far too much focusing on raids as it is. Right now, the non-raiding content is much thinner than before BC, to the point where people either raid with their mains or play an alt. There needs to be other objectives. Hopefully, the new battleground is a start. We'll see.
(kaib beat me to this but anyway...)
Regarding the comments about allowing Holy Priests to grind without gear swaps, and Resto-Druids & Moonkins wanting the same gear, I think it's likely that we'll just see a lot more items along the lines of the Thottbot World of Warcraft: Item Set: Windhawk Armor set. Rather than having "+98 to healing" on the next Druid Resto helm, they'll just have "+40 Spell Dmg & Healing and +58 Healing". I see no reason at all why many healing items can't be itemised in such a way to give healing builds gear to level with, and Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids much greater access to gear.
A budget allowing 100 healing would end up being 30 damage and 40 healing = 70 healing total, so I doubt it will be like that as its still inferior and people wont take it.
However via talents like the shaman one we see, providing a %age of our +healing going into damage will be quite useful as most healers are around the 2000 mark now that will result in atleast a 600 spell damage allowance (30%).
Asking for your gear not to be reset is asking for encounters that provide no challenge and offer no upgrades.
This definitely isn't true.
Yes, making old raid gear better than anything in the next raid game is a bad move. The fix for this is to make the first tier of raid equipment only slightly better than the absolute best of TBC, for example, on the level of badge gear. Does this give raiders an advantage? Yes, but only in terms of startup time. They earned it by being cutting edge.
I don't think anyone wants to clear a tier of progression without replacing any of their 6-month-old gearset. That's not fun.
1900 rating req for season 3 weapons! (might change the #)
So S2 is either grandfathered or not affected?
I'd also like to see the rating requirement go down as the season progresses. The real reason behind this change is to stop people from hoarding points and getting the items on day 1 of the new season, or so I'd imagine.
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
Slightly stupid idea with the high rating required for weapons.
Some classes will be very affected by it, others wont (Seen from raiders view that is, which is the ones they want to keep away from the weapons).
Better to make the weapons more obviously pvp items (less stats, more res or whatever).
And should be possible to find a better solution for not allowing people to buy the new weapons the moment the season opens up (though, why is it worse than buying the new armors instantly).
It wouldn't be so bad if there were raiding equivalents to the arena weapons, but as it stands, the PVP maul is the best feral weapon in the game, and adding another 10 iLevel's to S3 gear only makes it better.
Taking over arena points from last season is retarded anyway. It is LAST season. You do not trade in SSC tier drops for T6 either once you are attuned to BT. Just stupidity at its highest level.
1h dagger, 98.6 dps, 21 agility, 40 atp and ignores ~190 armor.
Fang of Vashj, 98.6 dps, 19 sta, 54 atp and 21 dagger rating.
Item from a 10 man zone with a 3 day lockout equal or better to one from the final boss of a 25 man zone with a week lockout, time will tell but this annoys me more than the power of the PvP weapons.
Not to mention how this will effect Blacksmithing weapons...
It annoys you? It is the only thing that makes sense. Zul'Aman will be the place to raid for the many, many, guilds that for whatever reason after cleaning out Karazhan has failed to go down the 25 man road. As such, the quality of all the loot from it should be better than T4 and at least some of it, if not the majority, of approximately T5 quality.
Some obvious implications:
Guilds that are stumped in "progression" or just don't field that many raiders get to play for another few months while increasing in power.
Those guilds nearly but not quite able to start on the 25 man business, or able to but just not quite skilled enough, now have an alternative way to grow in power making them more likely to achieve success in the entry level 25 man instances should they still so desire.
Raiding guilds at T5/T6 level gain an extra source of geared recruits.
The gear gap in PvP between 25 man raiding PvE'ers and 10 man raiding PvE'ers will decrease a bit.
As for the blacksmithing weapons they can suffer the same fate as all other items - being made obsolete or no longer providing the best of the best as new content is introduced.
From a practical perspective, what is the alternative? With Zul'Aman starting at Prince/Nightbane difficulty and gear requirements and scaling up from there in difficulty and and requirements until the final boss (just like Zul'Gurub and like any other raid instance Blizzard ever made), what sort of gear should drop there if not something approaching or reaching T5 in quality? There is absolutely no benefit to Blizzard in keeping gear progression from 10 mans low compared to 25 man at this point of time in the expansion's lifetime.
Somewhat a whine post, but I hope they give prot paladins some decent upgrade options if they won't let us have the arena spellmaces - its pretty lame that our only options past the damn continuum blade / crystalforged sword are either from arena, or fucking mt hyjal