I agree with you in that I wouldn't spend honor on HWL gear... but I was under the impression the gap-filler PvP gear was going to be on rep vendors with a gold cost, not an honor one. Has the type of currency (gold or honor) been stated or verified anywhere? (Edit: If it's honor, instead of gold, this definitely changes how attractive it'll be.)

As for getting to Revered with the various factions...? My Hunter has yet to step foot in an Outlands instance and is Revered with CE, Aldor, and Kurenai and Exalted with Consortium. Would depend on the factions, I suppose. It would be weird to grind PvE instances so I could be better geared for PvP, but whatever, a grind is a grind is a grind.

I wonder when S4 comes out, and S2 is pushed onto the Honor vendors, what will happen to S1 gear? will it end up being placed on Reputation vendors (instead of blue PvP gear)?

I'm not an expert on UI and the combat log, but can someone confirm whether this means Mage's Water Elementals will be distinguishable in the new combat log, or whether they will still be merged into one unit for parsing?

I think it means that the text of the log will not actually say "Maledic'ts Pet <Water Elemental> Hits You for 450" but that the data on the backend for the event will do so. That's what the Hex codes are for.

So basically you had the intention of purchasing what is essentially free HWL gear when it becomes free and because of that interalized my statement about about people who are running around wearing HWL gear right now and became offended.

I stand by my comment though that people in HWL gear (currently) have made incredibly poor itemization choices when brought into contrast with the alteneratives. I also still don't believe for a second that with the amount of offensive pressure you can generate in addition to the added stamina and avoidance you'd get from BT ilevel gear that you would be less effective than in HWL when it comes to arenas. I've seen no evidence of that. Yes you need survivability in arena but it's still a balancing act and if you can't generate any offensive pressure who really cares if you can survive the first stunlock?

If all you're saying is, "HWL sucks because you have to spend honour on it", while you might be technically correct, your point is absolutely irrelevant to the thread, because this is about the 2.4 changes.

Actually, almost all combat parsing mods use ParserLib who can easily be converted to use this new event system. Mods like Omen and Recount all use Parser so they shouldn't take many changes at all. If anything, the majority of changes will be to add more information. Omen will change to use the unique identifier for every mob that the new combat log provides so it can get correct threat assessment on multiple targets with the same name.

The effort that goes into getting HWL/GM gear in 2.4 is more than likely going to be marginal, or at least significantly less than the current amount of effort that goes into Season 1's 5-piece set. Get off the horse and think about the people who don't play 100+ hours a week. You say HWL gear isn't worth the effort. Most of the people who want this gear don't have the option of having someone hold their hand as they waddle through Zul'Aman and Karazhan picking up all the welfare gear their guildmates don't want.

Try this... take that new 70 Shaman you have and get him up to competitive Arena status without exploiting your guild and live like the other 95% of the people who play this game. Let us know how long until you get sick of it.

If the gear is subpar, then what is par? Take a look at PvE, if T6 is par, then T5 would be subpar, but it's not, because the 'par' in this case is much lower.

Sure, if full season1 is par, then yes, the HWL is subpar, but for many people, getting full season1 is not feasible (due to the time requirements of farming that much honour), in which case it is a PvP upgrade for them.

Well that's the rub now isn't it. It's the chicken and the egg. Either way it's a loss so we're just arguing whether you want to die slow or fast. The point is at some point you have to be able to generate offensive pressure and I just don't see outlast teams having enough survivability in HWL to actually outlast.

*sigh* again read read read. I NEVER said that moving them to vendors was a poor idea. I am not on a horse. I made my shaman just to pvp so If you want I can give you a journal of my progress. I have not set foot inside Kara or ZA nor a heroic. I'm just PuG BGing in the hour or two before raids and on the weekends and running five man pugs. Moreover... why would I run Kara for arena gear? Heck I only guilded my alt two days ago so I could see if groups were starting up for ZA on my main. I'll be more than happy to update you on my progress, but I get the distinct feeling this is just a smug comment coming from you.

You want to get into semantics. If knowledgable players do not routinely look to obtain the gear even if it's just a stepping stone then said gear is sub par. I don't know of a single guild mate who has purchased a piece of the lvl 70 HWL gear to date. So I think that HWL safely qualifies as such.

I didn't even have to look to see that you play horde. The idea of being able to get in a winning WSG/AB/EotS every day while sub-70 as Alliance is incalculably laughable. Even if you managed to do it it would take so long as to triple your levelling time.

But as has been mentioned, you've wholly missed the point since you're talking about buying the blue set with honor instead of gold and rep as it will be in 2.4, which is what this thread is about.

I bought the HWL blade the instant my mage hit 70 when TBC launched. It has spell hit and successful instance runs were still very iffy that early into the xpack.

I do hope they decide to keep the armor sets' skin for something at a later date if they plan on phasing the gear itself out. The PvE benefits PvP thing they're pushing in 2.4 would be nice to eventually have S1 on rep vendors (for gold) so that anyone can get geared for arena w/o stepping foot in a battleground.

Alright I'm done here after this but seriously what about these statements is false and/or hard to understand?

1. It doesn't matter how easy HWL gear becomes to obtain because no one really cares about it RIGHT NOW.

The value of the item under the current system is both relevant and important because if it is highly valuable than people will have problems with it being easily available. Since it isn't highly valuable right now it means nothing.

2. Conversely even if HWL became "hard" to obtain under 2.4 it wouldnt' really matter either because no one cares if something they weren't using anyway becomes less accessible.


Which brings me back to my original point which people seem to want to ignore. It doesn't truly matter which vendors, or how much rep you will need to get HWL items because it isn't really going to have an impact on the baseline population of WoW players. Most will still be honor grinding for S1/S2 with the possible availabilty of HWL to fill holes as a mere perk. And if the piece you would use as filler requires more effort than you're willing to give you're going to shrug and move on instead of creating a post on the WoW forums campaigning for a nerf to the rep grind as has been done with stuff that people actually really wanted like say the Hyjal rep grind.

Respectfully, buying the HWL blade over a year ago with a bunch of excess honor and badges at a time when there was nothing else to spend it on is a bit different than buying the same sword today don't you think?

I used the HWL shoulders and gloves on my warrior and purchased them between 2.2 and 2.3 I guess. They served me well for a while. Sure their offensive power blew, but it gave me a nice boost in survivability so that I could use pve pieces elsewhere to maximize my power. Add in there that they don't share set bonuses with the epic sets so any class can get 2 35 resil bonuses fairly quickly to maximize survivability. Add in there that there are some classes that live or die by the 4 piece bonus (druids for example) and I see it being useful.

WWS should be ready for these changes (after it hits the PTR). WWSv2 was already in the works, but the WWS developer decided to stop work on it until the combatlog changes are finalized (Good choice, IMO).

*hails his new combatlog overlords*

Why does this statement piss me off to no end? Heroics are to gearing for raiding as BGs are to gearing for arena, until all classes are balanced in all arenas, I'd rather not see an even larger influx of mediocre players in casual epics romping around the world sucking in BGs (at a later date) and countercomping my pvp alts in 2v2 and 3v3.

Make the gear cost like 1-5 heroic badges and 1-5 pvp marks and a small amount of gold. You provide reason to do daily heroics and daily BGs, and anyone can do a couple heroics and lose a few BG games.

Even if you remove the need to grind the hell out of BGs at the start to get geared for arena, those players will be coming back to BGs with a couple epics, knowing dick all about their class and how to win BGs. I'm not sure if EotS can get worse than it already is when it comes to PuG teamwork, but I'm sure handing out epics without the need to zone into a BG and desire a win to get closer to those wonderful casual epics is a good way to make matters even worse.

I don't see the reason to be upset. You can easily go into arena in full pve gear and suck just as bad until you suck up some welfare epics with a 1300 rating. This change isn't really going to help people that much it's not like being in HWL gear is going to change that 1300 team into a 1600 team. HWL isn't actually that expensive to begin with it's just you might as well get the S1/vindicator gear with your honor instead. This isn't even close, for instance, to the ability to get tier 5 ilevel badge rewards by mowing through kara and heroic dailies and I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing either as long as they don't make it even easier to get badges.

I think its you who are missing something here. When 2.4 hits a lot of players, previously not interested in arena or fresh 70 will buy HWL sets. Full HWL set + badge clock + ring from ssc + ring from spirit shards + couple of vindicator items (which i already have) and i'm sure as hell i'm not going to grid honor for S1 gear. Its stupid, boring and time consuming.

I'd be really curious to know who you consider the "baseline" of players. I'm willing to bet the actual baseline is not the people that you play with on a regular basis.

You're absolutely right. You'd have to be a complete moron to buy HWL/GM under the current system instead of buying S1 for a thousand honor or so more. Assuming a low barrier cost in 2.4? You'd have to be a complete moron to start your honor grind without it (unless you had phenomenal PvE dps gear, or something).

You seem to take this stance of "either it's extremely useful to people of all gear levels, or it's not useful to anyone." You also seem to suggest that the people who are grinding honor wouldn't prefer to get instagibbed slightly less often. I'm not sure that's the case, but maybe your baseline is different from mine.

I don't think people are ignoring that point of yours so much as telling you it's completely untrue.

The only reason you don't see every fresh 70 in 5/5 HWL is because you'd have to be a fool to spend honor on it when you could just save a bit more and get the vastly superior S1 or Vindicator's gear. This has nothing to do with the quality of the HWL items themselves, but rather their price. Blizzard saw the problem, and therefore changed the price. They'll now presumably be available for purchase with just gold and the appropriate rep, meaning it will now be foolish to start the honor grind without them.

Just to reiterate: you specifically said that the items themselves were poorly itemized and inferior, when this is just not the case. The items themselves are fine, and will be a great upgrade for anyone just hitting 70, now that they have a more appropriate price.

So to say "It doesn't matter what vendor they are on, they are still worthless" is blatantly untrue.

I'm seriously in disbelief. How can you quote that sentence and then ignore the two words in caps?

We could probably use a "PvP in 2.4" thread in the pvp forum to take all these circular arguments over honor point gear, its acquisition, good or bad for the game, etc, etc. Right now it's just crapping up this thread like the warlock/priest haste posts were.