Nezralix

It's true; Blizzard needs to do something fairly significant in the way of feral itemization to make it less sparse and more optimally and consistently budgeted. It's pathetic that feral druids have to grind honor and/or arena points to fill some slots to really even be ready for Kara.

 

Thanaomira

Apologies if this sounds like I'm needlessly picking apart your sentences, but there are fairly different answers to each.

First disconnect: arena games, for me, are about having simultaneously running parallel upgrade paths. "Hi, your druid, which you want to be your pve main, just dinged 70! Congrats, here's a respec, and umm kid there's a lot of work you need to do to get into ZA. Good luck."

True -- but running Kz takes time. So okay, I run Kz, get badges, get upgrades, yay. But random being random, there's going to be some slot that didn't get upgraded after 1-2 months. I expect to have $ENOUGH arena or honor points at that point to be able to upgrade my crappy blue healing item to some epic pvp item -and- that will be a PvE upgrade. More importantly, by filling in these PvE holes, I may then be able to leverage myself into a ZA run (just to reiterate, I'm a 10s raider, not a 25s raider).

So, I gear up the non-rating stuff of S4. Will this suddenly catapult me from 1300s to 1550?

Not a chance. I don't watch pvp videos, I turn with the keyboard, I don't practice twitch reflexes: all of those are fairly fatal to advancing.

So since I cannot advance with more arena play, I'll just go to the BGs and get gear that way.

Note that, except for a passing remark in the last question, I haven't really talked about pvp in this whole response. That's fairly telling. It's all about enabling pve play for me. Hence why I just joined a dance-for-epics 5v5.

Oh, and I don't really mind at all that there are S4 PR reqs. Really, I have no opinion: I'm not a PvPer, so who cares what I think (myself included)? I'm just saying that, for myself, yeah I'll leave arenas after a bit, thus contributing my miniscule amount to PR/TR deflation.

 

Ngita

Use it in PVE and Battlegrounds?, for the "most part" is by no means all parts, if you would like to point out a good source of feral druid shoulders for example. Random is random and saying their is a upgrade for my alt in Kara when i was exalted with Kara on that alt 9 months ago and have cleared it a good 10-15 times since doesnt really help.

 

• Playered

This is rather stupid, I tanked (one of two) in Kara shortly after TBC came out before Arena Gear really even existed because our guild had slow-leveling tanks (2~ weeks into TBC?).
You do not need PvP items to do this because if you are really at that (rather low) level you will not be solo tanking the entirety of Karazhan as a Feral Druid in the first place.

It is a completly non PvP related issue that Feral tanking gear is lacking the rather small amount of stats required to become crit-immune. From Blizzards stand point, at this time it was ment that sockets would allow these items to become either specific Tanking or DPS items however using defence gems was never accepted as a means of doing this by the community really.

Note I'm not saying that the PvP items are bad for tanking gear because they are obviously not, however they are not required and are not the only option available to you.

 

Spookeh

they are not required, but they are the best early option for several slots. belt bracers particularly, for S3.

and shoulders, its S1 for honor, or greens 'of the monkey' (argh) all the way until you kill HKM for T4

 

Duilliath

Similar to -I think - DPS Warriors, the lack of items in some slots is glaring for ferals. We can steal rogue shoulders from Setthek Halls and... well, that's about it, other than the Arena/Honour gear. Nevermind the fact those never did drop for me until I had t5 there.

Similarly, s3 chest will hold up until you can pick up your tier6 chestpiece.

I PvE for PvP gear (e.g. I use the Band of the Eternal Champion in my PvP gear, as well as 2t5) and PvP for PvE gear. As a Feral druid, you pretty much have to. The best PvE weapon ? S3 - followed by s2. It wasn't until the badge weapon that there was an equivalent to the (for most people) unattainable s3 weapon. The ZA one was about equal to the s2 one.

Best bracers in game ? Until t6, it's the Vindicators. Best boots ? You guessed it.

I could continue for a while, but I think you got the basic idea. It's not never because ferals are a major fan of arenas/pvp (they may or not be), but simply the abundant lack of proper itemisation that drives people to hit the arenas and we're not the only class/spec that's missing good items.

 

Spookeh

side note- as a feral in pvp, i use Vindicator's Band of Triumph + Vindicator's Band of Salvation

even though one is a healer ring, it still has stam/resil on it which you'll like. and, you do have to heal, especially in arena i find.

other options are Veteran's Band of Triumph (you can equip S2+S3 of same type) and the Heavy Felsteel Ring (cheap BOE, resil stam and strength)

i think resil is more important than the very nice dps stats of the hyjal ring. but, i do kinda want 2t5 set bonus..

 

Akka

Actually, S3 set is better than T5 for rogues and warriors for PvE (that is, for raw damage-dealing stats). And it has lots of survivability on top of that.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

Fugazor

I think there will be even more problems with S4 and those changes.

1) No more point selling
That means all "market" will go for personal boosts, and now instead of 1850/2000 boosts now we will see 1575/1700/1800/1950/2050 boosts. The biggest change here will be probably boosts to 1700 - for that you can buy everything you could in S3. But what does that mean for non-boost players? They will be destroyed even more at ratings 1500-1700 by all those "casual" boosts to 1700.

2) Personal rating on items
First we need to understand that "average" rating is 1500. So what can "average" player buy with that rating? S4 gloves, offhand/relic/idol, wand/throwing... yup that is all. People will buy that and quit, maybe some will stay and slowly trying to save 5000 cap for wotlk. How does that affect others? Well if those people quit then other people that were 1500+ before will take their place, then they got pissed about that and *boom* domino effect - suddenly gaining rating in arena will became much harder and that will hit everyone.

3) Rich get richer
Top players in arena always had advantage of gaining gear faster. Now with personal rating on important items like weapon there is paradox - you need beat people that have those items to get them. Comparing to PvE it would be - boss X is tuned for T6 and only he can drop T6 - stupid isn't? S4 only make this gap even bigger - buy personal boost or have fun playing fair and balanced arena "honestfag".

 

lairpie

Everyone is going to quit pvping because of this. I think that's obvious. Just like everyone quit the game when [insert description of each of the scores of pvp changes that everyone were going to make everyone quit.]

You can't get a set of t6 without being in a t6 boss killing guild; you can't get a set of t6 quality pvp gear without being on a good team. Sure, you can get some t6 level items from badges, just like you can get some top pvp gear from honor, but if you want the best gear, you're going to need to be on a top team. To see people on the same boards that are overflowing with pvers whining about pve items being made too easily accessible all the time now overflowing with complaints about pvp items being fixed such that you might have to actually win a few games to get them is funny.

Seriously, getting 1550 personal rating takes winning 4 games more than you lose. Just buy a new team, go 6 and 4 for two weeks, and poof, 1550. Go 6-4 each week for a few weeks and you'll be at 1700 in not too long.

 

Duncan

A lot of people seem to think that you "simply can't beat someone in full s3 now (or full S4 later)".

That's just not true, it happens, quite often. Indeed you almost have to do it right now to reach a 2k rating.

Overall it's still a matter of team composition and outplaying your opponent. They are human, you are human, make less faults and/or have a better team comp and you can win.

 

Emily

Blizzard want people to play PvE and PvP to maximise their character. Whether the balance of this is correct for all specs is up for debate, but it's intended that you need to PvE for some PvP gear and vice versa.

 

Denogran

I don't think you're getting the point. That's easy to do right now, because there's a lot of scrubs like me out there who go in at 1500 and lose 6(/10) games. As soon as I have nothing to play for, I'm going to stop arenaing. Not because I'm pissed at these changes, or even think they're bad. Just because I won't have any motivation to continue to play. Which means you won't have scrubs like me to beat in order to get those 6 wins. So then who are you beating to move up in ranking?

So ya, I think you need to reward people for doing well in Arena. But I don't think that these new rating reqs are going to do that in a great way.

 

lairpie

What would people opposed to these changes like to see instead? Propose another way that meets the goal of making it an actual achievement to get pvp gear somewhere remotely on the level of difficulty, even if not time commitment, of getting equivalent pve gear. Its pretty easy to point out the flaws that will always exist in any system, but I've never seen a plan for how to do it any better that wasn't just as riddled with holes.

 

Denogran

My problem with it is that it's so late in the process. Basically, a crappy team could have full non-rating S3 gear if they wanted, and thus only have one or two items to work on when Season 4 drops, removing motivation to play after those items are achieved. If this had been implemented earlier, say Season 1 started with 2 sets - an awesome set requiring ratings and a not-so-awesome set that didn't require ratings. People could still get gear, just not the best gear. Then each season, you could remove the previous season's ratings, giving everyone something to work toward, and motivation to try to continue to compete.

Now, it's like they're actually actively limiting the number of people who can get gear, which is entirely counter-cultural to the rest of the game. Dungeons and raids don't get harder as time goes by, just the top guys get harder places to get better gear. This patch is going to give the top guys better gear, but by making _every_ level of arena more difficult to compete in. It just doesn't seem to fit with anything else in the game.

 

lairpie

This seems to be a pretty common sentiment, that I think is completely off base. Dungeons and raids do get more difficult as time goes by. Sunwell is harder than BT and hyjal. Other than kael, t6 stuff is harder than t5. Heroic Magister's Terrace is harder than heroic mech. ZA was harder than Karazhan. At every level, the new content introduced is always harder than the previous content of that bracket and for the most part has better rewards. Blizzard isn't making the old pvp rewards harder to get, they're actually lowering the rating required to get them and lowering their points cost. That's almost identical to how they have always nerfed the current highest level of content substantially to go with introducing the next level.

Complaining that it will be harder to catch up, despite blizzard making it even easier to get all of the pre-existing gear is pretty much identical to expecting Sunwell level loot to be handed out to make it easier for guilds entering BT to catch up. Everything they are doing with arenas is bringing arenas and getting loot from them much more in line with how pve gear progression works.

Yes, they should have made it so a 1500 level team could never have gotten a full set of gear in 1 season in the first place. Absolutely. Then in s2 that 1500 team should have had to work all season to go from blues in a few slots they didn't have a s1 piece for to s2 or instead finish their s1 set, and save for s3. That would have been better, and I believe it was a mistake. From there, so many people's expectations were set too high. They could have corrected the mistake by introducing the s2 items at prices higher than s1, then making s3 the same better prices as s2, which they should have, but they didn't. My guess is they didn't really expect the seasons to last as long as they did, but the pvp season length is largely determined by pve progress both on the development side, and on the guild side. This let the seasons be so long that we got into this position where anyone at all, no matter how bad could get full gear each season.

The problem is, that unlike some video games, blizzard really does try to fix at least some of its mistakes. At this point, they can't make the pvp seasons any shorter. If s4 had started already and everyone had s4 weapons and a few pieces of that gear for the classes for which pvp gear is pve viable, it would really diminish the value of sunwell loot. I don't think anyone really thinks that's a good idea either. So, they're basically left with making the prices way higher, which I personally think would be the better solution, or making some rating requirements.

If all the people with 1500 teams are going to quit because they've gotten all the things they can get without actually having to figure out why they're at 1500 and try to do better, how can they not see that its a problem that right now a 2k team gets everything it can possibly need in a season and can save up points for the new season well before the season is over. This is just as real of a problem, except that they still don't get anything for getting better. Its already way harder to get to 2200 than it should be because any team in any bracket that hits 2k doesn't have a reason to keep playing after a while because they have all their gear.

 

rayijin

To summarize what the changes do is bring the effort required to get pvp epics closer to that of pve epics.

Here is what happened:

1) Season 1 and 2 gear requires zero skill, zero effort and zero gear to acquire. Instead, a player must make a miniscule time investment to acquire it. S2 weapons better than PvE equivalents and far easier to obtain.

2) PvE gear requires consumable, repair money and high time investment to acquire. The "good" loot is not guaranteed, and wiping offers exactly zero rewards. In fact, wiping punishes players by forcing them to farm more.

3) This leads to much complaining, rightfully, that pvp epics are "welfare" epics. Many PvE'rs are disgruntled with the free epics being better and easier to acquire than PvE gear, and either quit, make angry noises, or pvp even though they hate pvp to get a pve edge.

4) Season 3 gear finally requires some skill to acquire - at least the most highly visible and biggest upgrade pieces. Some bitching accompanies this, but point selling/point boosting is rampant, meaning players can be carried to it (opinion: similar to PvE, except it's done for gold rather than for "the guild", leading to a negative view of it).

5) Season 4 is announced, and requires skill/effort/time commitment/practice to obtain about half of it - or rating selling/carrying. Getting PvP gear begins to resemble the skill required to get PvE gear.

This is my own theory:

The cycle has come full circle - except now the people still playing the game are used to "welfare" epics, while most of those who would have been happy with these changes in s1 have already quit.

Hence, now that the "welfare" epics are being taken away, those that remain, that have been complacent with their free epics, are now upset.

Even those that originally raised protest but then ended up simply farming the easy epics - such as myself - am feeling a little sad that my soup kitchen purples are being taken away.

However, what the overall effect is balancing pvp/pve rewards, and I consider it a good thing:

PvE has taken some of the best aspects of PvP (gold inflation ==> less farming ==> more skill, less timesink; Always have been trash epics to make wiping not quite as bad)
PvP has taken some of the best aspects of PvE (skill required to get gear ==> gear has meaning ==> no longer just a timesink, doesn't reward "wiping" as much)

What we're seeing is PvP and PvE converge in reward/effort ratio - PvP just lets you do it with fewer players.

** Edit: I think PvP is a timesink similar to PvE, if you want to get good at it. Play a lot of games, develop PvP strategies and reflexes, and you can get better. Maybe you'll plateau at a certain spot, but those who play an hour a week would never be able to get epics from a hard PvE instance either. So when I say effort, I don't just mean natural "skill" or reflexes, but also, time.

 

Thanaomira

To re-iterate, I have no opinion on these changes, as I'm not a serious pvp'er.

To answer your question, I'll mention the rank system in Netrek. For that, to go up a rank (Ensign, Lt, Cmdr, Capt, Fleet Capt, Commodore, Admiral), you needed to have X personal rating after N hours. (I'm heavily glossing over details.) Generally, N and X went up by 1 for each rank, with X starting at 2.0 (very easy to attain) and N being 0.0 (there was a way to get 2.0 rating within seconds of starting that involved a highly obscure manner, but it did happen, which was amusing).

As you might imagine, personal ratings plateau, so how could people hit Admiral? Well, either have an 8.0 rating after 6 hours of play... or they could "double into Admiral" by having a 7.0 rating after 12 hours of play, or "quad" by having a 6.0 rating after 24 hours of play.

Naturally, "single" Admirals were highly respected, but still a quad Admiral was someone who was still pretty good. So the first benchmark was, could you single into Fleet Captain, because if so, as long as you maintained the same level of play, you were guaranteed to quad into Admiral.

Could this be applied to warcraft pvp? Maybe. One thing to note is that, in netrek, rank is 99.8% aesthetic; in warcraft, PR/TR ratings has much more an impact (it enables what you can get).

<hr>

I'm not sure there's consensus on first principles. Which is more important: keeping a high level of participation in arenas? Or locking a certain PR and/or TR out of gear? I believe those two tenets are mutually contradicting.

 

Denogran

Sorta butchered your stuff there, tried to grab the relevant statements from each paragraph to make it a little easier on the eyes.

First, dungeons and raids don't get more difficult, more difficult raids and dungeons are added on. Dungeons and raids, nearly without fail, have constantly gotten nerfed. Doing Mag now is orders and orders of magnitude easier than even a couple of patches ago. If scrubs quit this patch, _all_ ratings will become more difficult to reach, not easier.

And I have no problem with Blizzard trying to fix things, but I think that implementing this fix now, instead of waiting till the gear reset of WotLK, is not a good solution when looking at the larger picture. There's actually potential, if enough bad people stop doing arenas, that Season 3 shoulders and weapon will actually be harder to get in Season 4, than they are in Season 3. I think they could actually solve it by releasing a Season 3.5 gear along with Season 4 gear. Basically, just give something for the crappy people to work toward, so that the overall difficulty of play remains about the same.

As for the high-end arena players, I'll agree that the system is a waste for them. But at least the prospect of titles, end of the season rewards, and just plain bragging rights will keep them competing. In other words, even without the gear, there's still a motive for these people to play.

 

lairpie

The people with 1500 teams that quit arenas will still play wow, just do other things, and far fewer will quit than people are implying. The 2200 teams that have all their gear and get bored because there's nothing to really strive for quit the game.

Plus, there's a lot of point inflation each time a team with sub 1500 rating rerolls a new team. Those teams trying to get to 1550, 1700, whatever, that keep getting down to 1400 and then rerolling pump tons of extra points into the system. All those teams right now that no one plays at high levels now steal a ton of points from the system.

 

Ngita

Pointing out the flaws doesn't necessarily mean your opposed to what blizzards trying to achieve.

What I want is fair, fun, competitive arena system at all levels. The gear as such isn't important. Indeed I suspect they are rapidly painting themselves into a corner in unless they have severe inflation from 70-80. Even if they make 80 Blues as good as t5. S4 will still be very good @ 80. They don't want large amounts of people not desiring level 80 blues.

Shorter seasons with smaller gear upgrades or making it take longer to get the gear would have helped. So would have permanent personal rating, As it is anyone who has a remote chance at the highest level rewards only has to compete for 1/2 the season, the rest of the time they are free to manipulate the arena system for their own enrichment.