In PvE, I think a lot of the better performance of one person over another within a class is actually tied to encounter learning than class learning.

Take the destruction warlock for example, there's really not too much one can do to become better at mashing your shadowbolt key over and over. You probably max out on your ability to do that within your first raid as destruction. However, your ability to not stand in the fire and die, or anticipate where to stand to avoid damage and be able to keep on doing DPS, or when to use cooldowns to maximise damage on an encounter while minimising threat issues, can improve.

Most of these are really encounter specific skills though, not class specific. Anyone who can dodge the fire as a warlock can do it as a mage (although there probably is a melee/ranged distinction).

Ahhh ic what he meant now, and I definitely agree with his assessment. I actually like how it ramps up, If attunement for t6 was kept, just its a shame people skip Vashj/Kael when they are two of the best fights pre sunwell in my opinion.

I would agree with you that skill plays a large part of Arena matches. I would agree with you that it "Should be made of individual player skill" but simply put, it isn't. When people used to farm personal rating with the old alt setup to wipe down the team rating then obliterate lower players it was frankly an exploit that allowed them to obtain higher level gear, which in turn allowed them to have, at least, a higher chance of winning these arena matches. That 2000 rated team you speak of may of got there in season 1 gladiator gear and be equally skilled as the 2300 team, yet the 2300 team exploited to obtain there higher Season gear and thus (beside those odd chances of DC's and Lag) be more likely to win.

Essentially what im saying is that as much as skill is the biggest deciding factor in the arena, it is not always the explanation for when a team is rated higher than another. It looks like Season 4 is going to sort most of this, and by now, on my server at least, many people have Season 3 so i imagine arena will become a lot more balanced and based on skill as we move forward.

Please elaborate on that. Otherwise I realize that exploiting may influence arena ratings. My point was, that it doesn't account for all deviation which is found when comparing (a lot of) high-ranked teams.

Well Seife what people used to do (before personal rating and team rating was made as item requirements) people will get a high team rating with their main characters, then join it with alts and just run in to matches naked and run down the team rating back to like 1500. This way their mains keep the higher personal rating because they just win all the matches at 1500 again and repeat the cycle. Essentially it enabled them to purchase Shoulders and weapons etc.

So if you ever used to meet full Season 3 teams back at 1500-1600, then thats why.

I like to compare WOW to Dance Dance Revolution... How hard can 4 buttons smashing be? See DDR.
There's your skill. Enough said.

Sure, there's a limit how many abilities you can use in a given timeframe (global cooldown). But there's no limit how much you can move and turn around with your mouse. Which abilities you use when you decide is not for your character to say.

Agree. Just want to point out that gear, team setup, talent spec and dedication/time spent is a part of what we refer to as skill for me. Don't forget that WoW is an rpg, building your character should be the larger part of what you spend your time doing, so that should also be what makes you stand out compared to other players.

Sorry then seife, but your original post did in fact imply that you believed every high rated team got there via having more 'skill'.

You simply can't say that. My point was that some people have attained higher gear via exploiting and thus gear is not equal.

Nj00s if you include gear into skill then i suppose skill would be the overall word to use, i just doubt that gear comes under Seife's, or most other people's for that matter, definitions of the word skill.

Skill in wow isn't as straightforward as in fps games. In an fps game precision, reflex and positioning is what define your skill, randomness is pretty limited and every player has the same weapons.

Skill in wow is about reaction speed, but then again global cooldown can limit this. It's about game, encounter and class knowledge, knowing what your opponent can do whether it's an npc or a player and how to counter it is just as important.
This is all very limited and playing the game for 2 years should have learned you that. The most important aspect in my opinion is communication, being able to speak at the right time for the right thing is what defines a good player in pve and in pvp. And communication is something you can't really learn in a shord period of time.

But wow is still an RPG and the amount of success will still be determined mostly by your gear, rng and lag. In a way that's good, in another way it isn't.

I still think they could make things a little more interesting by implementing more conditional abilities, skill combinations, etc. Things that are, again, more on a class level of increasing interactivity. Warriors swapping stances to use certain abilities(and weighing that decision based on how much rage you have), Afflocks and DoT rotations + more active mana management than most classes (Dark Pact vs Lifetap based on the pet mana, your mana, danger of Lifetapping, etc) and Rogues managing their combo points while keeping S&D, Rupture, so on so forth. Every class could use a dose(or a higher dosage) of things like these. Imagine keeping track of combo points/finishers while managing 5 DoTs and switching back and forth between stances to use different abilities all the while having more abilities like Overpower/Riposte popping up for use every so often. It would be so much fun.

Maybe I'm looking for a level of complexity that may seem convoluted to some but it's where I get enjoyment.

Touché. I meant equal among all relevant competitors. If you're trying to get Gladiator, there won't be an excuse such as 'they outgeared us', because every relevant competitor sooner or later has the same gear as you have (this could somehow be a factor if seasons were not going on for 5-6 months). This is especially true because hard to obtain PvE gear (for example Kil'jaeden drops right now) is also not viable in high ranked arena competition.

I'm just not talking about those players in the 1500 range facing s3 gladiator rerolls. Of course they will have a hard time (due to skill issues which is then magnified because of gear deficits).

I don't know if this increases the amount of skill required, but future raids could be designed with the concept that a player should be able to play every spec of their class.

Revisting 4H in Naxx, the encounter was difficult, but the real challenge was having enough warriors with enough gear. In the upcoming expansion that is not a problem, four classes have the ability to tank. With so many "possible" tanks in a 25 person raid in WOTLK it should be much easier to require 6-8 tanks for a given encounter more so than a 40 person raid Pre-BC.

For a lot of people playing multiple roles is already part of the game, respecing weekly for arena and PvE. In PvE paladins and warriors commonly respec for given encounters. The new DK is already described as the specialized magic encounter tank with the rest of the time certainly dps.

With 9 months between content(lol) or generous amounts of loot at the raid level this could easily be the expectation.