I didn't see this addressed directly anywhere, so I'd just like to point out something that was glaringly obvious to me.

Where you say that anyone can farm a 1300point team, that's where I disagree. If the "1300 teams hanging around to eventually get their gear" get denied their gear due to point cap, those 1300 rating people will say "sod it, it's not worth it."

This means the top of the foodchain need their points from somewhere, while you aren't getting any from the easily farmable 1300 teams, since they all quit. This in turn leads to your rating steadily declining, until you ARE the 1300 team that the elite still farms to hold their +1800 rating weapons.

This is all rather extrapolated, sure. Nonetheless a feasible outcome.

What is said in your second part of the statement "no reason people that bad should have that gear.". If they don't have that carrot to keep them trying, then they won't stick around banging their heads against the wall. Ergo, nothing to farm points off.

Blizz has repeatedly stated that Arena is supposed to be about skill, and they want to reward skill. I doubt many people even hang around 1300 since theres nothing that prevents you from just forming a new team, there's always plenty of fresh 1500 teams around.

You need to ask yourself why these 1300 teams would reform a 1500 team if their "carrot" is removed. Many of the casual teams know they are not going to get over 1600 rating because they play with their friends on unbalanced teams or other such arrangements. What incentive do these casual teams have to enter the system if they will be shut-out from the gear that they actually want? What effect will a rating limitation have on casuals wanting to enter the system? I don't even need/want the weapons and I can see little reason to be in the system if i'm just going to have max arena points in my bank in 30 weeks or so that i'll never be able to spend.

Which brings us back to my original thesis in this thread. The answer isn't to tie the weapons to a point requirement. Making them exclusive will reduce interest in the arena system overall and thus hurt everyone to some extent. The problem isn't with "bad players" getting these weapons, it's with how disproportionately good they are for PvE use compared to everything else. No one is saying for a moment that someone who saved and got a Merciless Spellblade but PvPs with 0 resil on the rest of their gear is overpowered in PvP. The only reason to put an honor cap on the weapons is to prevent PvE spillover. So solve the weapon disparity instead, and let people who want to save for a weapon on a 1450 team do so. And then at the same time, create a new tier of rewards for the very best players (Gladiator-caliber, or maybe top 1% -- the people that no casual PvPer ever really runs into except maybe a couple of games when starting up a new team).

I realize it's silly to propose random fanboy ideas deep in a huge thread, but what the hell.

Imagine the following Arena model: Fix weapons (if not by giving them more survival stats, then lower their base DPS to be comparable to a weapon a full tier below, but give them a passive bonus vs. other player opponents that makes up for it, so your 98 DPS 1h would function like a 92 DPS 1h in a raid but be unchanged in PvP). In addition to Arena Points, also add a new reward system. Every maintenance, have the arena masters mail out arena tokens ("Medals" or whatever you want to call them) to anyone who is on a top 1% team and was active within the last week (along with some season-based participation requirement, to prevent teambuying/hopping). Have it ramp up, so that being in the top 1% but outside the top 1% gets you one or two tokens, top 0.5% gets you ~4, and then the top 3 get increasingly more. Create a vendor that sells the next season's arena gear, in exchange for these tokens, priced such that even a #1 team can't buy more than one piece every few weeks, and a team lower in the top 1% might be able to get 1-2 items over the course of a season.

So, for example, in Season N, you'd have four sets of gear:

Season N-2 gear: Available via honor and BG tokens
Season N-1 gear: Available for arena points, discounted
Season N gear: Available for arena points, full price
Season N+1 gear: Available via premium tokens only

Everyone still has something to work for, from the brand new reroll or the player who sucks at PvP and just wants some epics, to the 2400-rating guy who does nothing but PvP.

Using this model, the "premium token" stuff could yield items good enough to be on par with the current tier of raid content for PvE use, but superior to them for PvP use, while the normal arena points gear should be a notch below.

Anyway, just a random brainstorm that's probably more due to lack of sleep than anything.

Blizzard repeatedly stated that vanish was working as intended as well, then they "fixed" it, and then they stated that it was working as intended anew.

Whatever Blizzard repeatedly states, actions speak louder than words. If Joe Casual and friends reform their team twice and see a steady decline in points for a month or two, then their carrot is in effect removed.

This means that either they let players "patch" their gear with arena, with the added effect that people whine about "zomg e-Z PurpalZ!", or they put a skillcap in, which means only the very elite will be able to use "highskill" arena gear and people will go back to whining about RNG, lack of reasonable upgrades and lack of well itemised gear.

If your primary concern is the spillover from PvP into PvE, doesn't this just reinforce the problem? Now, you've got Shadow Priests (with their 0 upgrades post-Prince in Kara for multiple tiers) scrambling to make winning 2v2 teams with Warlocks, so they can buy a season ahead of the current raid content (since, in theory, we're operating under the assumption that currently available gear, or 'N', retains parity with the existing tier of PvE gear).

The only significant difference is that the difficulty is increased. Top teams would still be using their PvP weapons to PvE ends (unless your contention is that no top Arena team would have any raiders on it, henceforth).

My contention is that someone who is on a 2300+ team (team-buying aside) deserves some PvE advantages and I have no problem whatsoever with that, and such people are rare enough that it would not disrupt PvE progression in any way. It's no different from how the handful of HWLs/GMs back in 2005 could get weapons that were Nefarian-quality long before their guilds had killed Nefarian.

A weapon that functions the way the current Merciless Spellblade does for PvE purposes would be entirely balanced and reasonable if only the top PvPers could get it. A weapon that functions the way it does for PvP purposes is fine in the hands of anyone who can save up the 3k+ points, on the other hand.

I have difficulty being passionate about this 'requiring a rating' issue.

I do have the following opinions/observations though.
I know this is sloppy but lets break people into 2 groups with 2 choices
PVP - Centric
#1 Casual - Will lose access to weapons and play only other teams who also have no weapons.
#2 Serious - Will keep weapons and play teams who also have weapons.
PVE - Centric
#3 T6 guilds - The Arena weapons are good but all have clear upgrades in PVE, for PVE.
#4 <T6 guilds - Many will lose access to S3 weapons and have nothing to look forward to in SSC/TK.

As far as I am concerned members who identify with groups 1-3 have no problem. A PVP team with weapons will fight others with weapons. A team without weapons will fight other teams without weapons.

T6 guilds have access to MANY weapons on the cakewalk first 2 bosses of hyjal and bt all of which are nice. So Group #3 is fine too.

The real problem is Group #4. This group hurts the most by losing access to the weapons. Given enough time to farm they can slowly outgear encounters and progress, which may come to an end.

Time will tell but I somewhat expect S3 gear to be a pretty big jump to help the T5 raiders (the largest population of raiders) to move up to T6. I think Bliz is happy having the main pack one tier behind the top raiders but 2 tiers is too much.


That aside my only beef with the rating requirement is that it applies a vastly different limitation to players based on their class/spec. Blizzard has made little effort to balance 2v2 , as a consequence some builds truly shine in this format. On my battlegroup getting 1800-1900 in a 2v2 puts you a lot closer to the 1000th best team than to the top ten teams, it is not an accomplishment worthy of any reward.

Furion, I'm not trying to persuade anyone that the "buy a rating" fix won't work.

I'm just stating it won't.

Any system that actually prevents people from selling slots on their team, power-leveling teams, etc. would have a hugely disproportionate impact on real teams. It will thus be "reverted" before it ever sees the light of day.

I mean, I suppose my certainty could be misplaced. There are some workarounds to really ensure that you cant buy weapons unless you've been on the team a long time or played in a lot of games. And perhaps that's what they're going to do.

But even if they go to that extreme, high-end teams will still be able to sell a single slot to mediocre players for extremely high amounts of gold. Players like myself would likely give in and just wait till next season. But someone will indeed pay. And someone will indeed sell.

If 40-man guilds could be convinced to carry scrubs along on raids to sell epics, surely 5-man teams will be willing and able to carry a 6th -- especially if all 5 are good already -- who can show up for whatever the "weapons minimum" is and maybe not even cost the team too much rating.

Anyway, I've lost interest. Drysc is basically wrong in his post about what people are upset about. But he's inarguably right that if they want exclusivity, they can make the weapons more exclusive this way.

So please, Drysc, makes sure that when S4 rolls out, we can buy the S3 weapons at the same slightly discounted price we can buy S1 weapons now. The gigantic, massive, gaping flaw that was old game was the 6+ month wait for weapon upgrades far too many people experienced. The arena system fixed that. If you are going to unfix it, at least maintain a 4-month "guarantee" path for those of us willing to do arenas.

Again, I find the arena gigantically fun. I also get gear really slowly vs. good players. If there is no kind of incentive for me to participate -- and for me excruciatingly slow farming of PVP armor does not constitute an incentive -- then I'll probably drop out over time. Why? Because my teammates share the same "at least we'll get a weapon at some point" philosophy that I'm sure is what many many casual arena players have. In fact, I bet the points are spent by 1300-1600 teams disproportionately on weapons.

I hope they don't drive most of us out of the arenas.

Really I agree with Gurgthock outside of I'd say more of a specific item that isn't available as next seasons gear to create the "these guys are good, no one else has this" feel more so. Instead of a season 3 weapon in season 2, just a really good weapon still marked like season 2 but amazing, so that if they keep it for a while next season it still stands out, and so that the people hording points don't take away that cool factor right off.

I call shenanigans. Season 2 hit on June 12th - 14 weeks ago. A 1500 rated 5v5 team makes 376 points per week. S2 armor and a bonegrinder cost 12k AP - your hypothetical scrub would have months to go, even if he had saved a few points from S1.

Good idea Gurg. I would say rather then clutter up the itemization by trying to add another PvP/PvE differentiator to resilliance, they could clean up some PvE itemization holes and delay the widespread release of new gear until January or so. Blizzard has said that they aren't necessarily going to rev the gear each season, the season where they cut over to the new system would be a great one to skip a tier and cut down on the mudflation.

Current system
Season 1: S1 is T4 level, PvE T5
Season 2: S2 is T5 level, PvE T6
Season 3: S3 is (probably) T6 level, PvE T6
Season 4: S4 is T7, PvE T7

Proposed
Season 1: S1 is T4 level, PvE T5
Season 2: S2 is T5 level, PvE T6
Season 3: 99% of people continue to work on T5 gladiator gear, 1% get T6 stuff, PvE T6
Season 4: 99% of people work on T6 gladiator gear, 1% get T7 gladiator, PvE T7

I could live with that. It should be 3 and not 4 though, because many players like to go 3xSX, 2xS(X-1) for the 70 resilience bonus.

You can make the PvE weapons as good as you want, but there are some that will get bitten in the ass by the RNG, and that's why most get the equally-good-to-better arena weapons instead of hoping on a once-a-week 10% drop (and then add on the fact that many people in the raid will most likely want it).

For example, a lot of my non-set stuff (teir4) was badge gear because their comparable instance items just would never drop for me. Obviously this isn't weapons, and is certainly different, but it's just an example of how some items will always elude you in a random loot scenario. The best solution I've seen to this is (actively in the game) to have bosses select from two different loot tables: Accessory or Weapon (Like Prince). RNG is still a factor, but your chances at getting a very good weapon is much much higher.

The crafted items from ssc/tk25 are also another cool option.

The main problem is they lack of any reasonable PVE weapon itemization. IF they increased the chance and types of weapons in SSC this would not be an issue. The items they do have are often poorly itemized. Players will normally take the road of least resistance. Why arena if you can get items of reasonably quality raiding? Current a majority of players I know PVP simply to fill in voids for PVE. There are a few who PVE to fill in voids for PVP, they have the top rated teams on the server, sell slots on secondary teams, help others with wellfare epics and the like. Rinse and repeat. Basically all their plan seems to be doing is to make these slots more valuable. I am sure they will have some secondary rule about having to had played X games, but in the end the result will be the same some players will feel others do not deserve the weapons and items they have. If they add a games played requirement for the season, these highly rated players will simply churn teams, making it even more difficult for 1500-1900 teams to progress to the point they are worthy of weapons.

The solution seems worse then disease, but you have to consider how Blizzard ended up trapping themselves. Blizzard feels players will not play unless they have a reward for doing so. Originally they were supposed to only add gear when a certain amount of guilds progressed so far in PVE. I believe season 2 gear was released to soon, they could just not release season 3 gear until everything is back on track, but the problem is they fear losing subscribers as the high rated pvp players already have every part they could possible want and would have little use for their arena points. They could added a 2.5 set of gear, to overlap with missing items, but that would not likely keep hardcore pvpers interest until season 3. If I had to change things, I would simply reduce the amount of points highend teams earned, this way it is more difficult to get every part. Players who are looking to fill voids could still do so, including the weapons.

If highly rated teams want to stand out more give them a good looking tabard, or make a team rank required weapon(with a high percentage of games required) which does not cost many points and simply has a better model(since all they say they want is to look good)...and for the record the hwl/GM system only limited it to one or two new players a week, but it still was not a good measurement of skill as it only matered how much time you played as most guilds earned so many points per hour. Teams which were a little weaker would just swing shift to try and make up lack of skill. Considering your server many players just spent an insane amount of hours pugging to become HWL/GM, likely destroying their life in the process.

You could make these "n+1" weapons or whatever slightly better but with impressive graphics, names, and the like, similar to PvE weapons. Like for two handers, make it 3.8 speed with a little extra AP and a sweet graphic. It wouldn't be ridiculously better, but people would still pursue it and have prestige from having it.

The central problem is that it's difficult to make weapons that are specialised for PvP/PvE, for all the reasons covered above.

Solution: Don't try to. Take the resilience off the arena weapons, and let people acquire them through PvE. Have raid bosses drop tokens that you turn in at the arena vendor and buy the weapons. Or split the function off and have a separate "weapon vendor" who sells stuff both to raiders (for tokens) and PvPers (for arena points). Yeah, that means everyone gets the same weapon quite fast. Frankly, the game is already balanced around that assumption.

If you want icing on top, you can leave in the extra special raid drops that give you one item per month for one person out of 25. And you can put in some extra special arena stuff that's limited to the top few people, or that you need to have the full arena set in order to buy.

But just let people get a weapon without waiting on the flipping RNG. And that actually supplies something between normal mode BM and Black Temple!

hmmf. This has probably been said by now, but i think if the arena weapons were as defensively oriented as the arena sets, it would likely too drastically cut down on a team's ability to... kill anyone. i'm sure holy priests would love it, but the majority of us need weapons that will actually help us kill the other players, otherwise we have to go dungeon crawling for upgrades over the pvp weapons. Blizz has the right idea with season 3 i think. by restricting the weapons to higher ratings, only people who take arenas at least somewhat seriously will be able to pick em up. you certainly wont see new 70s with 0 epics and a big fat 138 dps 2 hander.

How many new 70s have you seen with 0 epics and a big fat 127 DPS 2 hander?

a few... i think its a lot more common to see em with the shoulders and gloves from arenas though, right? haha.

another way to look at it though is that while your weapons from pvp may translate well to pve, the opposite is also true.

That sums up basically what I've been trying to get across from the start. Ensuring that we get a new weapon once every 3-4 months -- ensuring -- makes the game a little more fun than going 6+ months without one.

But then this is the same Blizzard that won't let you have two specs. So at least its consistent.

This. I would like there to be a armor set style weapon tokens in addition to the boss drops currently in game (since some variety is nice). The weapon drops would be superior to the token weapons but have their drop rate reduced even further from what it is now.

Well I cannot say or add much more to this thread but I'm very suspicious about this change with weapons that require certain rating since it will affect mostly melee classes.

If we look at current state all caster/healer classes scale with each piece of gear as they get increase in their spells/abilities. Melee classes scale with weapon 60-75% and with gear 40-25% respectively.

If we put aside Stormherald, PvE ranged weapons and Twin Blades, we are facing situations where hunters, rogues and warriors (and other physical dps classes) will be seriously affected since casters can simple use their PvE weapons and perform quite well. In this environment where physical classes that have no access to BT/Hyjal weapons will have no real option from choice of gear that they can scale the most.