Pally/Resto Druids NEVER FUCKING DIE. Ever. :(

Uh, yeah looking back I just noticed it. My excuse is the volume of traffic this forum is getting these days, "new posts" link doesn't really work properly when it takes you 30+ minutes to read through first page of threads (hey, gotta get some work done too)... ;)

Also of note is that points are seemingly divided up before checking if people are eligible for recieving them, so you won't be able to dump all the team's points onto one person at each calculation. It's in the same thread with the bullet points quoted up a few pages back here.

Arcanite Bombs

Considered a consumable, so won't be a valid tactic.

Also far too expensive to be viable.

Class stacking is hard to define, stacking 3shadow priests and 2holy priests for example, they're very different characters even tho they're the same class. Pure stacks like 5rogues or 5mages would only last so long, a few good CC/silence would totally break the whole strategy, even if you'd probably lose 1 or 2 members very fast.

I think balanced groups will still beat stacked groups of the same "type", so making restrictions would only make it annoying if you want to play with certain people, whatever their class is.

Someone correct me if I'm misinterpreting this but it looks like what will happen is this:

You earn arena points each week based on your rating, then proceed to hoard them until you have enough for the reward that you want. If you do not have enough to get the reward you want before the end of the season, you will never get it because all ratings/arena points are wiped. Assuming Blizzard tunes the costs of the Arena Rewards to assume you play every week that season (don't see why they wouldn't), and only wants top 1% of all competing players skillwise to get the best reward, you would need to be in the top 1% AND play every week that season.

Its still much less hardcore than the current honor grind (where you can't stop even for a day), but the feeling of being trapped in a situation where you cannot stop even for a week will still be there to some extent.

I'm assuming only the rating gets wiped after each season. Arena points earned would probably persist through seasons, however it was stated somewhere that there would be a limit capped at roughly the value of the most expensive arena item will be to prevent hoarding of arena points. So, I'm guessing obtaining each item will be less laborous, however, obtaining all the items you'll want will require some effort.

Edit: Well, nevermind, here's a copy and paste of Drysc's post:

Were still continuing to develop the arena system and the ability for arena points to persist between seasons is something that has not yet been finalized. Its dependant upon a number of factors which themselves have not been balanced and finalized. So for now: unknown. Isnt it exciting? Youre livin on the edge man.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...tmp=1#blizzard

Eh, restricting class stacking is a decidedly poor idea. Let a metagame evolve. If the top-ranked teams are one-dimensional, let the people gunning for them within a given server cluster field groups designed to exploit those weaknesses.

Besides, doesn't fighting a 5-paladin group just sound like FUN?

This is essentially how I understood it. Casual players are still fucked :).

Ehh, sort of. Let's say there are 10 epic rewards that you want to buy: a weapon, a shield, and a full set of 8 pieces of armor. Let's say that their cost is such that you absolutely must finish top-ranked every week of the season if you want to buy all 10. Ok, so if you miss a week you won't get all 10. But are you "screwed" really? So you go away on holiday for two weeks, and then come back and resume PvPing. You buy 8 of the 10 epics for that ladder season, but fail to pick up the boots and gloves. Next season, you buy the (likely upgraded) boots and gloves first.

Obviously people who play 24/7 have more potential gains than those who take breaks, but that's inevitable. What this system doesn't do is actively punish you for time off. You lose the potential gains, of course, but you aren't backsliding.

Depending on the rating curve, it's entirly possible that getting the top rank won't require 24/7 play, or even benefit from it. If the points gained/lost per match is high, after a week or so there'll be a top group who only get significant points from beating eachother. Sure, you could play 16 hours a day farming lower ranked teams, but you'd lose all those points in 1-2 losses. With high-stakes matches, teams get sorted remarkably fast with ELO (the point of it, after all, is to sort by skill, not by games played).

Of course, it could also all be 8k with a 1 point minimum for winning, making the winning strategy to play all day and hope you get matched downwards, just like it is now.

Basically only over people who take complete breaks though right? Your ability to win games isn't going to be expressed much differently in 300 vs 50 games in a week -- assuming that once you hit the top 20 you're going to largely be playing the same 40 teams.

I thought that people might try to protect their rating by playing the minimum number of games. I don't know what happens with an ELO system restarting that often, but from what I remember in War3 (which was 'weighted ELO' according to Blizz) if you hit the minimum number of games, and kept winning at the same ratio, there wasn't a lot of pressure to play more then the minimum. My experience was on fairly small ladders (AT 2v2, USWest, and the beta servers) and the problems at the top end were finding games when you wanted to play, the reverse of having to play constantly ;) It was quite irritating to wait 35 minutes for a game then wind up drawing a streaking team, or your hitting your worst race matchup.

It doesn't seem like enough is concrete to do anything more than speculate, but it seemed to me that the rewards available don't necessarily change every season, just when they feel like changing them. The seasons are more to reset rankings so you don't get stagnation as well as an opportunity to add in new gear beyond just arbitrarily doing it (like with the recentish honor rewards upgrade).

It's kind of hard to tell from that quote, but that's what I'm reading it from.

As far as class stacking, I'd much rather something be broken and Blizzard fix it (ie. one class is just TOO GOOD) than bandaid the problem with arbitrary rules. Assuming they can do it promtly of course. :P

Nope. If you're consistantly winning, then you move up in ranking very quickly. Blizz can pretty much decide how many games it takes to reach your "final" rating, and you'll generally only deviate from that time significantly if your final rank is your starting rank or if there's so few players that you can't play anyone of your rank. Other than that, there's no real relationship between final rating and time taken to get there. If two teams of equal skill play 1000 games against eachother, they'll end up exactly where they started. If one of the teams is significantly better than the other, they'll go up in rank over the first hundred games or so, then mostly stabalize.

Thats only true for 2 teams Shalas, with a much larger number you will be paired against teams that have won as well, and if you keep winning you will keep going up since its safe to assume at least one other team will do good and 'give you points' when you beat em
ofcourse, as soon as its just you and that other team left at the top you cant get much further ahead
so this actually benefits huge clusters, the more teams, the more winning teams, the more teams close to you in points, the more points you can get from them over a prolonged period of time, and since you need a certain amount of points to buy items, not a certain ranking (1st, 2nd etc) you will get your items first
ofcourse, provided you can keep winning in what is going to be a much more competitive field (due to the larger population)

You don't get points for winning the individual matches, your team is awarded points at the end of the week based on what ranking your team has, so I imagine the top team will get the same amount of points whether they have won the minimun ten games or a thousand.

edit: nm, misunderstood krag, feel free to delete

I think that is one of the points of using an ELO ranking system.

At least Pallys can't use their third life (Lay on Hands). With coordination, you could get decent burst damage (one Pally Stuns, then all five judge Command, at least 2000 Holy damage instantly, then of course some autoattack damage). Not the best burst, but it sure would be FUN for the opponents ;).

Anyway, it will interesting what Blizzard decides to do about racials (Arcane Torrent seems to be really powerful, even at a 2 min cooldown).