Giantlol

Kind of random changes, people who can already hit those ratings barely care, and point/PR sellers have already made so much gold that I don't they need anymore than they've made. I disagree with the whole points for honor gear, and it honestly seems like the people this would hurt most are those on small BGs, where 2200 is near #1,lol. On some BGs its probably more difficult to hit 2200 than it is for people to hit 2400 on other BGs, just because they have less teams queueing at higher ratings.

As for raiders complaining about welfare weapons, most people that PvE are just as capable of hitting 1850 as PvPers are, hell, some classes even have a boost up, i.e. Holy paladins, resto shamans with some nice off pieces, druids. Rogues and warriors in particular enjoy using 2-3 or more PvE pieces and having their damage in arenas skyrocket. Raiders can complain all they want about arena gear, but arena gear is accessible to ANYONE, thats why its perfect for both casuals and hardcore players. Saying you can't get high ratings because you only play 10 games a week(Because you raid) is wrong, the only thing queueing less would have an effect on is how you execute your plans/etc. There are lots of teams out there who have gotten high ratings playing 10 games a week

 

Elaith

I can't wait to own you in season 4 Trippy!

But seriously, I definatly agree with these changes. Point selling has gotten out of hand and these changes should really fix 99% of it.

 

• Elendril

It is odd that they've assigned fairly high static rating requirements to pieces without necessarily looking at the impact the rating requirements on gear will have on the arena point pool. As someone has said already, 2200 is a monster rating for some battlegroups as it stands. I imagine the rating requirements on gear will decrease the overall point pool as less point sell teams and 10-game-a-week teams are made, which will make the personal rating requirements on some of the gear considerably harder to reach.

 

crimsonsentinel

I love the new arena changes, team ratings should more accurately reflect team skill now. I do however, disagree with putting rating reqs on honor gear (even though they are relatively easy to obtain) simply because those are on two separate systems and have different player bases. It would alienate a lot of people.

 

erb

I don't know what the deal is with ratings on gear you buy with honor, but the rest of it is a step in the right direction.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I think the requirements for honor gear will work out okay. The idea is that anyone can come and get loot that's ilvl 141-146, but if you want stuff that's ilvl 156 or higher it's going to be very difficult to obtain. You need to be clearing sunwell or in a good arena team.

 

Elaith

Well if you think about it like this than it's really not that big a deal, but at the same time it is. Lets say you walk into sunwell, work your arse off to get the gear in there and than at the end of the day come out and see some random noob who spent half the time you did and has the same quality gear you have just because he logged on once a week and died 10 times a week to mobs for (lets call them Sunwell points). Obviously you want some kind of reward for your efforts in Sunwell, your success in the hardest raid instance in WoW, and you want those rewards to stand out when your standing next to joe schmoe in Shat.

It's the same with arena, people want to be recognized for being good. People want that random noob walking around shat to see them and say "Hey look, that guy has s4 shoulders, he MUST be good!". As it is right now, any random noob can get full season 3. As it is right now having a Gladiator title is a joke when you can just smurf your way to it.

I can also see why people would be upset about the requirements for the honor gear, I mean you get them from HONOR. You get them from doing BATTLEGROUNDS. I really don't agree with it honestly. But other than that I am very pleased about these new changes.

 

Brute

Yes I'd have to be convinced that tying the BG's to the arena's was a neccessary or good idea. There should still be something for people who like to casually pvp, dislike the arena's and/or small scale pvp, and still want a couple of nice little rewards to look forward too in terms of gear/character progression.

 

Maczor

This thread is probably going to turn ugly fast. But I like these changes for one main reason.

It makes the top end Arena and Honor gear harder to obtain. Now you actually get gear based off of how well you do in Arena, and you can no longer AFK in BG's and get all the S4 off pieces. Nor can you simply save up 5K/75K and get multiple "best in slot" PVP items the day S4 hits. There is now a progression path AND you have to do both types of PVP if you want to get the best PVP gear. This is a very good change for the PVP game, and the only ones who will hate it are the ones who only PVP now because it's the easiest path to the best gear in the game.

The rules and rating requirements may need to be tweaked slightly, but it is a gigantic step in the right direction.

And since Blizzard is hell bent on making Arena an esport that is taken seriously (which I disagree with), I would expect more "Tournament Style Rules" to be imposed as time goes on. This will hurt the casual Arena player, but rarely can one have their cake and eat it too.

 

Giantlol

PvE rewards are almost all primarily better than PvP rewards at equal levels. The only problem is that for every raid you attend, you don't get loot. Though a similar system works in the way that you don't get a piece of gear every week in arenas unless you have absurd ratings. On the otherhand, you can go months without getting a single piece of loot(lolrngtable), whereas in a month of pvping at low ratings you can get at least one piece of gear. I'm not gonna say I hate these changes, but I don't think I care very much in particular. The primary difference between the 2 is that raiding requires more "sit down and come every night" type of dedication whereas you can just arena once a week and eventually get loot. Theres no "serious" commitment involved as there is in "high" end pve

If they want to make arenas "serious" then maybe they should have worked on fixing stupid things like mace stuns, blackout procs, other rng bugs, intercept not working 1/4 the time, and the immense impact PvE gear has on arenas, especially in smaller brackets.

 

• sordee

re: aadric.

Yes, rerolls will still be frustrating (always wil be). However the changes eliminates a huge reason for Players to reroll. (I.e. the ability to sell the team afterward)

All in all the changes are definitely good. (Ratings on all). And I am not annoyed by the "gaps" between 1700-2000. The idea is as you win just a few games, you can get all those pieces relatively easy from 1500-1700 that you were able to get in previous season. The key point is just winning a few games.

And yes as people have pointed out, the major loophole left is PowerGrinding server. i.e 2.5v3 or 4.5v5. A) its hard to combat. B) it does take the geared people some time to powergrind as opposed to the 1hr easy session. c) at least a good 3 or 5 can identify the .5 and have a shot in the game. For now I'm fine letting Blizz mull that one over for a future season/time.

I'm excited about these changes. Although my poor alt enh shaman will only get S4 gloves now....

 

Angeron

A) You're blatantly wrong about PvP gear outweighing PvE Gear (except maybe for pvp??). With the minor exception of ferals/protadins/spriests/enhancement shamans getting small upgrades over non-sunwell weapons from s3 weapons, pvp gear is worse in every slot for every other class for every role. Period, end of story, finito.

B) Decaying rating and rating requirement to WEAR (Not buy) items is horrible. While the arena grind is not even in the same dimension as the honor grind in terms of pain, nobody at 2400 wants their rating to decay because their druid partners computer fan melts and they can't play for two weeks while it gets replaced. Bad idea, punishes people for no rational reason.

C) Tournament Realm (which is s2 and t5 pve gear only) is for esport acceptance. World of Roguecraft is offering you the option of playing arenas to better your character in an alternate fashion on live realms, not cramming it down your throat.

D) PvE dps gear currently rules the arenas. I could link you a random sample of the top 100 rogues in any 2v2/3v3 above 2350 and you would see that the vast majority of them wear as many pieces of t6 (and glaives if they have them) as possible. It's just better to stack damage when you have a 3 second fight reset every minute. This is an issue for warriors in 3s as well (2s less so since dub-dps can poop all over a pve geared warrior), when I put on my gurtogg legs and RoS boots this evening I'll have gained 15 ap, 2% crit, and be rocking over ONE THOUSAND PASSIVE ARMOR PENETRATION in my 3v3 pvp set. Do you have any idea how unbalanced this is? It means that with three sunder armors I can put a priest with IF at zero armor without an executioner proc. It means that with my executioner proc up I can zero-out a warlock in two sunders. I find it broken as hell that I can white-crit a warlock for 1700 through soullink and voidwalker debuff. I think every caster will agree with me when I say: remove pve gear from arenas (trinkets/weapons aside).

Anyways, I love the changes (kind've). It stops me from covering my repair costs through pointselling, but I can still powerlevel people for personal rating and with the changes it means I can charge even more. The personal rating requirements don't affect me personally, and I could see how it's a mixed blessing for a lot of people, but I think it's also the right choice since lots of people cry about being required to grind 1850 to get the weapons, at 2050 it will be simply unattainable for most.

My only gripe with this is that every time I want to try a new teamsetup, it means I have to level the team from 1500 instead of jumping straight into the 2200 bracket. However, I will gladly trade this minor inconvenience for the possibility of finally facing real teams at 2200 instead of wintraders and pointsellers night after night. My team faced its first real competition since being created this last weekend and the excitement of playing a team that is for real and not a pointsell really brought a lot of life back to the team. I hope to see this kind of competition through all of s4.

I expect that this change may help reinvigorate a lot of the previously lackluster brackets/battlegroups since everyone will (hopefully) be playing for real in 3s and 5s again as team-hopping is penalized.

Did anyone else notice that there is a new trinket? Hopefully this is an update to medallion in some form(like 2000ac for casters)?

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

On your server, causing econo-trauma.

 

Giantlol

This is why most PvP warriors that have the time and aren't utterly bored of WoW raid
Theres a reason why PvPers who raid don't complain, they get the best of both worlds(though I guess that makes them raiders?!)
PvErs who think that PvE gear has no impact on PvP are absolutely wrong, the only class it might not make a change for is warlocks, and thats only because they're so often the target of FF, so they can't really afford to wear PvE gear, nor does it make huge changes for them like it does for paladins,warriors,and rogues. I can almost guarantee that a warrior with at least the option of wearing PvE gear will do much better than a warrior without(assuming they play at an equal level). Why? Because wearing full pvp gear, you can only have around 518 armor pen, but what happens when you drop...40-50 resilience, but gain 500~ armor pen? You do a lot more damage, you probably have more Atk Power, and aren't much more squishy than you were before

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Gloves are the piece that requires no rating.


My only concern with this system is that the terrible teams will stop playing after they get their gloves and offhand. For every team to gain rating above 1500, someone has to go below it and the 1400 rated teams will likely stop playing after a few weeks. This will make gaining significant rating extremely difficult

 

Cirocco

This doesn't do anything for people powerlevelling team's.
There's absolutely nothing quite so disheartening in arena's for the not exceptionally skilled but not completely awful team's, the middle of the road playing with friends teams, trying as well as they can to win a few matches in a row for a small number of points each match against more or less as good team's to suddenly be completely crushed by team's with 5/5 vengeful players and find yourself losing most, if not all, of the points you gained to team's that clearly had no business being in that bracket.

 

• Juice

Agreed. With the changes there will be less point inflation and those high arena ratings will be harder and harder to get. Is that a problem? No, we'll just have to manage expectations accordingly.

 

• topojijo

I find it amusing how they contradict something they said previously and this is in regard to the cost of shoulders. Previously they mentioned the shoulders were high because of looks. That's fair, but now they are saying items are priced according to their power, so weapons should be at the top, not shoulders.

 

• Elendril

No, the head/legs/chest are all the same ilvl/stat budget, but head is the highest of those three because of it's more prominent appearance. It's not contradictory at all.

 

Giantlol

Shoulders hold all the power! The power to look the sex.
Not to mention theres always the intimidation factor when you see people with shoulders at lower ratings. Not saying necessarily that all people buy into it, but I know for a fact that when most people see shoulders(regardles of rating, because lets face it, theres tons of shoulder teams 1700-1900) they take the game much more seriously.

 

Soul

I wonder if there will be a return to the old days of HWL-like queueing except for entire teams to try and optimize a limited point pool. Harder to organize across a Battlegroup and cross-faction, but if there aren't enough teams to make a 2200 point team feasible with normal competition, we'll probably see a lot of "Gentlemen's Agreements" and the drama that comes from such arrangements.

Season 4 should be great trolling in the Battlegroup forums!

 

Chirality

How do these changes impact changing teammates?

Say person A has a 2000-rated 2v2, and needs a new teammate. Person B is now on the 2000-rated 2v2 with a personal rating of 1500.

Because of :
Does this mean that, as the average personal rating on this 2000-rated team is 1750, that the team will play 1750-ish-rated teams?

What does it mean, though, to say that "they will earn points based on personal rating"? That a win for the team vs. a 1750-rated opponent will give person A 30 personal rating points, and a loss will lose 1, but for person B a win will gain 1 personal rating point and a loss will lose 30?

Doesn't this mean that you can essentially powerlevel someone even faster now?

 

Ellyh

I share the concerns about the amount of points available in the system as we move forward. I also feel that they also have not adequately addressed the problem of people with weapons/shoulders smurfing and grinding teams in the noob brackets (where I hang out).

For me as a casual player this is the single biggest flaw with the current arena's and I can't see anything in here to stop it from happening. I'm not very good, slow reflexes and Australasian ping mean that my ratings are probably a fair reflection of my skill level. However I get fed up with game after game of people in full sets of S3 including weapons and shoulders farming us for rep.

I was really hoping for some mechanic to clear at least the rated items out of lowby levels so we can be matched more fairly against teams with a chance to find our true level. Winning 4 matches and then loosing 6 to teams that massively out gear us in arena gear is depressing.

Hopefully I'm wrong but I suspect that these changes won't be nearly as far reaching as we all hope when it comes to people abusing the rating system.

 

• Elendril

Earn points in that context means arena points to purchase gear, not rating points.