Zeboim

When reading about the world wide arena tournament i realized you only have 2 months to get your arena gear. We first assumed it would be 3 months and I determined that the top 15% of teams would be able to get full arena gear. But now that its only 2 months i decided to redo my calculations.

8 weeks means 8 chances to get points. you need 15750 points as a hunter to get a 2 hander, ranged, and 5/5 set. This means you need to gain 207 rating each week to get the full set before the season ends. That means you need to play more than 10 games a week and win. Your end rating will be 3156 and that rating means less than 1%(I didn't figure out exactly) of the teams will get the full set. This is all things being equal where you will play people of comperable rating and keep winning. I suspect after you get pass 2500 you will only be getting 2-3 points per win and losing 30 points if you lose 1 game which means playing 100 games and not losing once to be able to get the nessesary rating.

I don't know about you guys, but even being in a (I think) top team, I seriously doubt I will be getting that high.

 

LuckyAC

Well, I don't think rating will rise gradually like that. Teams should get to their full strength within a week or two, then hover there for the rest of the time. Stiil, it definitely looks like it will be hard to get the full set.

 

Zeboim

Well, you can get 2432 rating on the first week and keep it for 8 weeks, you'll get enough poitns to get the full set. Howver, even at 1700 rating myself, I'm noticing most matches im only gaininst 8-10 points.

 

Elendril

Elo rating systems aren't really about progressive rating gains - the idea is that they level off after a while after teams reach their "true" rating, or the rating that is reflective of their true strength. If teams play a lot in the early weeks, they will approach their true rating rather quickly. I'd be absolutely shocked if any team ever reached a 3156 rating.

 

Zeboim

This is true. My simulation had everyone getting their rating within 100 points in 5-6 weeks. Your true strength would need to be close to 9500 to be able to get a 3100 rating at the end of 2 months which would put you in the 0.00000001% bracket. Yes, thats near impossible and I'm probably off by a few decimal places.

 

Kazanir

Yeah, expecting those sorts of gains is...insane, to put it mildly. I doubt that it's even possible to be so much more skilled than another team at WoW that your true strength is 9500 compared to a baseline 1500 average.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Zeboim

For a comparison for people less knowledgeable about probable ELO ratings. The highest ranking chess Grand Master(whose name exscapes me but is Russian) has about a 2850 rating. The best chess computer(few generations after Deep Blue) is estimated to have just over 3000 rating.

Though chess starts at 1000 rating, they also play semi random people of differring ranks. They do not play only people as close to their rating as possible as we do in WoW which should further reduce our chance to get any higher than a 2500 rating.

 

Kazanir

In chess, there are zero random factors. The entire game is based purely on skill -- analytical ability combined with play experience and memory. That means that a grand master is going to beat a beginner every single time. There are, in practice, no exceptions to this. That means that in terms of the ELO system, the grand master's true strength is indeed quite high compared to the novice. However in an arena match, the chances that even a novice team could beat a team of experience pros is much higher than in chess. It's still a very small chance, but it's orders of magnitude larger than in a chess game.

Magic: the Gathering's rated ELO system is a great example. Simply because of the random elements in the game, an amateur player could beat a player like Kai, Finkel, or Kibler (heh) a lot more often than in a chess game. It was still quite rare, but it did happen. Correspondingly, the highest ratings in the system hovered near the 2000-2100 range, starting from a baseline of 1600. I think that WoW's system will develop a lot more like M:tG than like chess.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

LuckyAC

Actually in chess, a draw is the default result, and white has a huge advantage. That means a 2500, with white especially, should be able to draw a fair portion of the time with even the strongest player in the world. Chess does not start at a 1000 rating. It doesn't start at any fixed value at all, but a provisional rating, which is based on your results and your average's opponents rating for the first 20 games, during which period you barely affect your opponents (not zero-sum) Obviously this isn't possible when everyone starts at the same time. In the FIDE system, there is a floor of 1800. in the USCF system, there is no floor.

Chess players don't play random opponents at all. They play in tournaments where everyone is of similar strength. A top tournament would have a range no wider than 2700-2800, which is probably less than the range for these arena pairings.


I don't know how you can say people would need a 9500 true strength (obviously not possible, no one's true strength will be much over 3000, if at all). I guess you are assuming they are playing 10 games a week only, but nobody is going to do that the first week. You can play as much as you want, and if your true strength is 2500, you can get to 2500.

Of course, in the beginning, the range won't have spread out, so you will be playing underrated people, but over the course of the first couple weeks, it will get easier and easier, and should be possible by the end.

 

Lamaros

You can be in a 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 team, though.

 

spronk

I don't understand why it matters arena points, I was led to believe, don't "expire" so you can carry a balance forward into the next season. Get a few items the next 8 weeks, a few more after that...

 

Kazanir

As a derail, are there really teams out there who are winning every game? I haven't joined a serious 5v5 team yet, but my duo isn't doing nearly as well as I had hoped. I'm chalking a lot of that up to the fact that I have become a big PvP-skill-less carebear in this game (as has my partner), but I find it hard to believe that there are really teams who are going anywhere near undefeated. Maybe Igni and his ilk have had much better results though.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Vazu

First things first,

Undefeated teams won't exist over an entire PVP season. People get DC'd or somebody strings together 2-3 huge crits on your healer. Skill and class balance make up the largest part of your rating, but there's always that 2-3% of luck and unlucky waiting to screw you. Strongest I saw today was:

Druid (Feral)
Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (some form of Holy/Prot)
Rogue
Warrior

..they pick a target, Shaman pops Heroism and the amount of DPS on that person is really, really insane. Druid pops out, Cyclones your healer. They've got totems. Just about everything you'd want, honestly. Mortal Strike from the Warrior or Wound Poison from the Rogue. They had two true healers and a 3rd hybrid if needed. All very skilled players. Rough team to play against.

 

marketa

I made an excel spreadsheet to calculate points and plan out the what rating the guild teams need to maintain for a 8 week season.

You can download it here: http://www.notorious-guild.com/uploa...alculators.xls

I'll probably make a more advanced one to use past history and how many games you need to roughly play to advance to a new rating soon.

 

• Maestroquark

This entire thread is based off the assumption that arena points expire, like ranking. As spronk pointed out, is that even true?

What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?

 

Lionus

Arena points don't expire. You can stack 5000 points.

 

Emeraude

But when do you stop accumulating new points is the question.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.

 

spronk

Unless they changed it in the last few weeks I am pretty sure arena points never expire, and the max you can accumulate is 5000. The most expensive items, the 2h weaps, cost 3750 so there's no real reason to hoard points beyond 3750.

And yes, both my 2v2 and 5v5 team have lost a lot, but we have been playing just for fun. I think my 5v5 teams rating is around 1450 right now, so slightly below the starting 1500 even after losing a number of games. I would be interested in hearing about any team that has gone 10 games undefeated and how high your current rating is.

 

Keline

I think it's based on the assumption that your rating expires after the season, so you're back at square 1500 where points come slowly.

on topic of the arena, how many practice skirmishes do you guys do before starting rated ones, and how do you do iton the following days?

Yes I've seen warriors perform extremy well in my team and in other teams.

 

Dinadass

I haven't seen anyone undefeated, but the highest ranking I've seen so far is an alliance team on my server in the 3v3 bracket. They have a ~1950 rating or so last I checked, with a record of roughly 90-35. Wins are giving them 4-8 points and losses are costing them 20-30.

Anyone expecting to go undefeated, or nearly undefeated, is in for a rough surprise. There are enough teams out there that you will eventually lose to some either because they have a certain class makeup that is better than yours head on head, or the previously mentioned lag/DC and some opponent getting a crit string. Still will be fun though, and it's nice that once you get to your rough skill level, you don't have to play 24/7 to get the rewards.

 

Tinkerfizzle

My 2v2 team is 98 and 40 right now. Our current problem is that we rarely face anyone that I suspect is above 1600 rating, so it's rare that we earn more than 5 points per match. When we do find someone near our rating, we get a decent gain of 15.

So I'm guessing that in time, we'll have a larger pool of near-rating opponents to face.

 

aquacadet

While you can be on all 3 arena teams only the team that nets you the most points for the week will add to your arena point total. This was a recent announcement. http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/77808755.htm

 

Ghostz

The closest I've seen to an undefeated team is 42-1 for 5v5. They went somewhere around 38-0 before losing their first game and they went on to beat the team they lost to a few times after that. I think they're somewhere around 1850-1900 rating right now. Also, to those people saying that they're getting 4-5 rating per win and losing 15-20 per loss, this should even out a bit as time goes on. Right now they're probably the only team of that rating playing and they're being matched up with teams that are lower. As more teams play more games you'll see more teams in the upper tier and you'll be playing teams with approx. the same rating as you so the rating returns will be pretty even.

As for 2s and 3s, there always seems to be a certain mix of classes that really do wonders to counter you. My 3s team is me (priest) a rogue and a druid and anything with 2+ good frost mages seems nearly impossible to beat.

From the first few days of play I have to say I'm really impressed with the whole arena system. Is there anyone here that's found any glaring problems with it?

 

• Wodin

I want to use a completely different spec for 2v2 and raiding, but other than that, no problems that I can see. I suspect we may well see some tweaking to the timers of certain abilities depending on how the metagame shakes out, as it seems that many teams are basing their strategies around having a few specific buffs.

It's been lots of fun even if the particular 2v2 team we run isn't exactly the highest rated(we have a beer icon for a reason ).

 

Abaxial

So I'm taking it that the previous convention of only playing ten games a week is not true?