Elendril

You're really not going to learn to be a 2k team playing 10 games a week, and you're certainly not going to learn how to be a 2k team if you're NOT facing 2k caliber teams. If anything, playing against tougher teams is better at preparing you for that level of competition. It's hardly "impossible" to beat a team because they have two slots with better gear than you, and playing them is certainly far from a waste of time if your goal is to "learn to become a 2k team".

 

TheCutlery

Well, first of all, the druid is still wearing greens. Playing more than 10 games a week won't accomplish anything at this moment in time. We're not moving up because of gear right now, not because of lack of skill.

Second of all, we figure that while we're gearing up, that gives ample time to teach the druid how to do what he needs to do. Starting from ground zero on PvP gear takes a LONG while to get up to speed equipment wise. Plenty of time to get geared up skill wise.

Third, it doesn't really matter how many games we play, the rough breakdown is the same. Some easy wins, some hard wins, a similar amount of hard losses, and the steamrolls. You never avoid them. It's gladiator teams rerolling or playing in a different bracket. We saw this stuff all the way up to where we stopped in the 1700's in S2, it's not going to go away. If we lose 60 points in 3 games once an hour that ruins any progress we've made up to that point, and after several weeks of that same behavior you get kind of disenfranchised with the whole system. I'm not supposed to be playing Gladiators. There's a reason Gladiators are Gladiators and a reason I'm not. They're better than me. I'm not ever supposed to be matched up with them and I'm certainly not supposed to be losing massive points to them. Call it what you want, but the system is broken and I for one am sick of dealing with it. Hence my lax attitude towards the whole ordeal. There's no point in playing more than 10 games a week for points because today might be the day you lose 100 rating in an hour and ruin the last 2 weeks of work. Not worth my time. The system would be fine if every so often I got to curbstomp some guys in greens for 20 points a game, but it doesn't work that way. It does however, work the opposite way. I outrate guys in greens, but guys with more skill/experience/playtime can come back through the midlevel brackets whenever they want.

Oh no, I have reasonable expectations. I'm not thinking that I've got a druid now, easy street to 2k. What my questions earlier in the thread were in regards to is what teammate should I be working on getting up to snuff? In S1, War/Pal was fine. People really learned how to deal with paladins in S2 and that started being less of an option. In late S2 and now S3, if you (generally) weren't with a druid, you weren't getting anywhere. Druids are still sitting with basically only one counter, and it belongs to a class that has started to fall off the radar in the small brackets. I just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time getting a druid geared up just to see that someone else eclipse them.

 

Elendril

You claimed it was impossible for a sub 2k team to "learn" to be a 2k team because of reroll teams. That isn't true - if anything, the reroll teams ought to accellerate your ability to learn. If your complaint is that you're losing because your druid is in greens, don't complain that it's "literally IMPOSSIBLE" for teams to break 2k now because of rerolls, because that's a completely different issue.

 

gia

This is your problem. You shouldn't see rating gain/loss as progress, the more you play and the more that 100 rating you lost one afternoon becomes meaningless, because in all of the games after that you got more points/lost less points than what you would have previously. The way the elo system works is that you tend to go back to your "true" rating after enough games. If you win 10 games in a row or lose 3 games and then win 7 often times the result is exactly the same, you will end up at the same rating because the 7 wins will net you more points.

What you should be working on is actually improving your game. And the best way to do that is actually by losing games, analyzing your mistakes, finding solutions, trying them. Sometimes you are simply outmatched or outcomped, but you can still come up with things that will at least improve your odds.

 

malthrin

I hear you on that. Your Druid's stats are very weak on healing, though he actually has more health and resilience than I do. The lack of +heal is a big deal; weaker heals means more time spent stacking hots or CCing defensively instead of going bear to interrupt or CC offensively.

However, I don't think you're doing yourself any credit by blaming all your losses on Gladiator rerolls. Unless you see the Gladiator title in front of their name, they are probably just bad players in good gear. I dislike the welfare epics label, but it is true that a couple seasons of mediocrity will give you 90% of the top gear - and you can buy the rest. There's a reason these teams are at your rating - despite their gear, they are making exploitable mistakes. Maybe it's just me being over-competitive, but during our push to 1850, I never ran into a team that was completely out of our league. We certainly got our ass handed to us more than a few times, but there was always something we could have done better.

And yeah, as another poster said, progress isn't really measured or impeded by your rating. If you're learning and improving, that is progress. The week before last, my team was hovering at 1800 and we played 6 or 7 straight matches against Rogue+caster DPS teams, dropping us below 1700. Each time, however, we learned more about what we were doing wrong. Last week I used Feral Charge much better and my Rogue kept himself un-CCed and we were able to beat the Mage+Rogue teams we ran into at 1800. If you're really getting better, just keep playing and your rating will reflect where you should be. On the other hand, passing up opportunities for long-term improvement just to gain yourself a measly 60 or 70 arena points in the short term is... shortsighted.

 

Delta5

While getting curbstomped by gladiator teams can feel really bad and get frustrating, these games can help you learn a lot more than some of the close games if you can find the things that caused you to lose. Sometimes you die so fast that you cannot tell what you did wrong but other times if you can drag the game out long enough, you get to better understand what the other team is doing and how you might counter it. While this is not always possible, some matches you can drag out quite a while.

One example I have is on my Shaman when we were playing to 1850 we got paired vs a 2100 lock/pally team when we were at 1840. While we lost, it was not fast and I know exactly why we lost. (I made a stupid error) If we play any of those teams that are legit 1800’s I am pretty sure that we could beat them now that we better understand how that comp is played at a higher level. Winning these games is not as important as figuring out why you lost and how you can get better.

The second example I would offer is week one of season 3, I had been 70 for less than a month and went from 70 resilience to about 200 in a day and my partner picked up the 4 set warrior bonus. We played for a few hours after the servers came up and a few other times that week for about 30-40 games just so we could play these teams, even if we had no chance at winning them. Overall we faced quite a few 2k+ teams but we learned a lot from playing them and are better off because of it.

The times you really do not want to face these re-roll teams is when you are trying to get over the 1850 mark for the first time, we got lucky and only lost 3 points in the game in this situation and got it next game but running into 3 gladiator teams at 1840 and ending back at 1800 is extremely frustrating as your short term goal is more important for you than the long term one.

 

TheCutlery

Well, whatever you guys wanna say to defend that behavior. I have personally seen the top 2's team in our BG's playing at 1600 on 3's. I ask him what the hell he's doing at 1600 and I get a "Lol, trying something new." I've seen the number 9 2's War/Dru on the battlegroup add a paladin and play though the lower level 3's bracket as well. I've seen a 2k 5's team reroll because they "Don't like their name." You absolutely can not tell me that this stuff doesn't happen on a daily basis because I see it every day. They're not bad players with good gear, those people are easily spotted. We run several teams with our alts, and our blue dungeon geared team beats full pvp gear teams if they're horrible. They are top geared/skilled players who either got bored and put another 100g down to curbstomp 1500's for a couple hours or they're selling points. Either way, it destroys the "true" rating of any team who's not buying points, and more games does not help reset your "true" rating because this is not an isolated incident. It happens every day.

Could we learn something from playing a team much better than us? Sure. That's completely true, I can't argue that. Should this ever be happening in the first place? No, that's completely wrong, and no one should be able to argue that either. The ELO system breaks down when teams from the top are able to reform at their leisure and sell points on as many charters a week as they can play.

That'd be every time prior to this point. That's pretty much the crux of my frustration. It's 2 steps forward and 3 steps back every other week.

 

Elendril

You're drastically overestimating the impact of gladiator rerolls and point selling on the arena experience I think. Do they happen? Obviously. But are they a full 30% of the teams you're going to face at low to mid ratings? Not even close. Your view on this is clearly colored by your frustration toward particular incidents. If someone crushes you, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're a gladiator reroll team at all - I play 2s with a RL paladin friend on my warrior at about 1700 rating. My warrior also has a 2250 5s rating, but our 2s team is actually 1700 - it's not a point selling team, and it's not a gladiator reroll, but I have a shiny weapon that's sure to frustrate people I kill with it at that rating. Is the fact that I can play with a lesser skilled friend and dominate some of the teams we come across indicative of a broken system? If you were only allowed to play 10 games a week, maybe the few games you get against legitimate reroll teams would make a significant impact on your rating, but realistically there aren't that many of them and if they're beating everyone as they should they'll be out of your bracket quickly. Take your losses and queue up again and move on.

 

nfw

Isn't Blizzard fixing the matching up system by using personal ratings next patch? So hopefully this sort of things will not happen as often. It's like me trying to win the doubles tournament at my local country club, and then I'm matched against a team with professionals who were "just having fun" by crushing amateurs.

 

Maligne

It's been discussed before, but no, that won't fix this individual problem. You can be a Gladiator in 5's and have a personal 1500 2's rating, and play 2's in the 1500 bracket. You could even play in the 1500 5's bracket by simply joining a new team which resets your personal rating.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

TheCutlery

I'm sorry that you don't think a 2250 team playing at 1700 isn't a gladiator reroll team. Sorry I'm not being clear enough in the distinction, but there is a MASSIVE difference between a 2250 caliber player and a 1700. If you're not a gladiator, big deal. Semantics. You get the point. If you want to argue that it's fine that a 2250 team can do that, but since it's not technically a "Gladiator" then fine, whatever.

And are these teams 30%? Probably not. But you end up facing them 3 times almost always. 19 point loss, 16 point loss, 14 point loss and then you just stop queuing because they've dropped your rating 50 points without trying. If we were to win, we'd get 11 points for beating them because they're 1500 now and they were 2300 yesterday. It's unacceptable and it's a problem with the system. I'm sure it doesn't look like a problem with the system to you, you're benefitting from it. You get to beat lower skilled players for more points. I get to lose to better players and lose massive rating for doing so. If that's not a flawed system, then I don't know what is.

All I want is your personal rating to have some bearing in the system, and stop letting people reset that down to 1500 whenever they want. There is no reason ever that some of the players we see should be 1500. Make your personal rating stick with you, make you earn arena points off your personal rating, and pair teams based upon the average PR of the team as well as awarding win/loss points based upon the personal rating differences and you've got a much fairer system that is much harder to manipulate in an aggravating manner to the lower bracket.

As it stands, I don't really care what you say. You can downplay it all you want, but I've been seeing this crap the entirety of my experience in the arena (since S2 started), and I'm never going to buy into that argument. Maybe your battlegroup doesn't have this problem. Maybe mine is particularly shitty for this. Either way, it's a big issue impeding anyone who's not playing a no skill/overpowered combo in the arena.

 

Yes

While I will not point out that you are playing a druid / warrior combo, I will calmly suggest that perhaps if you can not find players of your level in arena, it is wise to re-enter battlegrounds and seek your equals there.

Edit: I will not say anything about learning to win more games either. (Against those unbeatable Gladiator teams who in fact have six hands and four heads).

My other main | My PvP Blog

 

Karoo

It's hard to read your posts and keep an objective view when you sound like such a crybaby.

If you stop queueing just because you lost 3 games in a row it's pretty indicative of your outlook. You think that sometimes even people playing at 2250+ don't lose 3 games in a row?

I will not pretend I've played above the 1750 rating. Because I haven't. But I know I will, as I've only been playing arena for 1 month and only with random strangers I've met and built a relationship with. And this past week we went 10-0 and it was clear we've learned quite a bit from reading here, watching videos posted here and using our own past experience to build from.

If you don't want to put in the effort, suck up the losses and keep trying you will never rise above. That's the nature of any competition. It sounds to me like you came to elitist jerks, heard some people talk about warrior/druid being ez-mode and rolled it hoping to skate to 1850+.

You didn't take into consideration that a majority of the people who come here are above average players and what might be easy for them may be very far from easy for the larger majority. Just because you run a druid/warrior 2v2 doesn't mean you can press 2 buttons and win every match. In fact there are certain comps that are a huge uphill battle even as druid/warrior. Frost mage/ret paladin and spriest/rogue are 2 that come to mind. Luckily both of those comps are far from the norm and you will rarely see them. At least from my experience.

Sit back and think about what you're doing wrong and try to fix it rather than whining about it being impossible to win because of re-rolls.

 

Tigs

If gear truly is the only thing holding you back, then be patient and gear yourselves up. It doesn't take long anymore, but you do have to work for it. Create "easy" compositions in 3's and 5's to get yourself decent points every week. My hunter is at 6 days played at 70 and will be full Vengeful/Vindicators in two weeks.

As seasons progress, the line at which you begin meeting well geared players drops. It takes 8000 Arena Points to purchase full Vengeful armor, minus the weapons. Good players will have this in three weeks. Add on two weeks for the weapons, and one more for the Misc. slot, and six weeks in you'll see players in full Vengeful gear hovering around 2.3-2.4k in 2's, 2.2-2.3k in 3's and 2.1+ in 5's. As the weeks go on, that line will drop, anywhere from 50-100 points per week. We're deep into S3, so you can expect to see fully geared players who have been sitting at 1800 rating all season.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that playing against better teams will make you a better player, in the same way that watching videos of good players will help you improve. It is also necessary to learn to overcome gear gaps against teams that have the gear, but not the skill to back it up. If you combine both of these lessons, when you finally obtain your gear a few weeks down the road, you will already be playing at a gladiator level, and you will find yourself there soon enough.

 

Elendril

You're completely missing my point in your crusade to show that the man is keeping you down. Simply because someone is a gladiator or 2k+ rated player in one bracket on one team does not mean that any team they're playing on is similarly of that caliber. I'm not benefiting from some flaw in the system getting me points when I play 2v2 with my friend - the team that we are playing has a bunch of games played and it sits around 1700 rating because THAT IS THE RATING OF US AS A TEAM.

Maybe I'm going to come off as an asshole here, but I'm not sure how else to get this across. This isn't some problem with the system that you're losing to teams that are unfairly playing in your bracket constantly. If you're capped out at 1700 rating, it's not because the system is flawed and you're playing against people who you shouldn't be - it's because your ability to compete is lacking in some way, whether by gear or by skill or by whatever. There is no grand gladiator conspiracy to pick on people and keep them from getting their weapons. There is no man keeping you down. You're not as good as you think you are and you're not good enough to realize that other people can be better than you without it somehow being "unfair". Your initial post was complaining that you can never "learn" to be a 2k team from under 2k anymore, but your attitude in your posts suggests that all you care about is getting your points and not actually learning to improve. It's not the game's fault you're losing, and if you can't recognize that you're never going to get to 2k, especially when you so adamantly refuse to listen to any argument to the contrary.

 

Viia

This is one hundred percent true. I've played 3v3 to 2k with about 10 different teams on my druid.

Playing druid/rogue/warrior with a rogue/warrior who have both been over 2k, we struggled at 1850-1900 against real 1850-1900 teams. It was brutal, but it takes to Elendril's point that hey... maybe as a team, we're just not that good... and we realized that and went our seperate ways.

I've noticed a lot of top end PVE'ers that go pvp that just aren't very good at it and it's hard to swallow, when you're the top dog pve guild on x server. This could play into a lot of peoples "wow, we're really good but [gear, gladiators, point selling, etc] is holding us back.

There are is a lot of advice that you can seek out between here, arena junkies, even the class forums have pvp guides these days on the WoW forums, that will help you get better. Watch videos, check out UI's, keybinds, reaction times, communication, coordination, all of that plays a big part.

On the bright side... winning games against Merciless Gladiator teams has become the highlight of 3v3 for me. So just enjoy this dose of reality, go download some videos, read strats, change your keybindings, whatever it takes, and get to work on getting better and not focusing on a stupid number in your honor tab.

 

Angeron

Great post. I really think that this hits the nail on the head when it comes to improving your game (though there are other factors). If you only play vs. poor players, you can only improve enough to beat those players. Having a foil to measure yourself against is really important for progression of any type, but especially in PvP where generally skills improve as the season progresses.

I can state from personal experience that both playing with AND against better players can change your game so dramatically that you will not recognize the player you were beforehand as yourself. I went from an excellent warlock but total shit warrior playing on Cyclone BG, to a 2k+rated player on Bloodlust. Same gear, new partner(s), new opponents. In my first few weeks on BG9 I played people locked into the 1600/1700/1800 brackets who would have been 1800/1900/2000 on Cyclone. As a response, I personally had to get better to compete. So even though in the beginning I felt pretty outclassed by a bunch of these teams, I asked my partner for tips every game, mentally reviewed what I did right, and what I did wrong, and took every game win or lose as a learning experience. The results have been pretty awesome, since I went into season 3 with a deep thunder and only one piece of arena gear. I fully believe that an improvement in opponent skill and my adaptation to that is responsible for better ratings. Yes I have gear now and that helps, but I didn't have much gear when I first hit 1850 playing with a shaman healing in 3 pieces of his elemental set. If you have the right attitude, and a partner with the same desire to improve, you can do really impressive things even despite the gear gap that might exist.

As Tigs said, if you can learn to overcome the adversity of being grossly undergeared, you can learn to play at a very high level.

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.

 

Spoonman

On my warrior, I normally spec something like this, but the 2 points in blood frenzy have been nagging me, mainly because I don't see high ranked warriors taking it. When I originally decided on the spec, I justified it as being equal to or better than an additional 2 points in 2h spec, assuming 50% uptime then it gives the same amount of +dmg, and if you have multiple melee then even better. Would I be better off going for something like imp execute/slam, or even dropping a point from commanding presence and going 3/3 blood craze instead? This isn't a spec for any bracket in particular, although I'll be playing most 2s.

 

• Argium

Blood frenzy totally depends on your arena combo. 3 melee? You'll defiantely want it. Ele shaman based? Not really worth it.

 

nfw

This line of reasoning is flawed as it's based on the assumption that we all have the same potential and it only takes practice to realize. It's like no matter how much you play with your friends and how many NBA games you watch, you will never become an NBA player without the right genes. If one's upper limit is around 1600, it does them absolutely no good to play against Gladiator teams at 1500.

 

TheCutlery

Good thing we don't have to worry because Gladiator teams are never at 1500!

Seriously this got outta control quick with people who can't get the point. Do I suck? If you think so, fine. Whatever, I'm cool with that, I don't care. I'll agree with you on that just to make you guys shut up about it.

Is the rating system broken? (Which was my real complaint from the start) YES. No one wants to agree with that.

It's been a long meandering road to my mindset, something no one seems to get, even though I've explained it several times. S2 Starts, my friends and I start playing the arena. Midway thru S2, we're getting some gear, we're becoming frustrated that we're 1450. We're not bad PvP'ers. In World PvP and BG's, we destroy people on a regular basis. Outnumbered, outleveled, outgeared, we win. Even to this day, unless you find me at half health, or you bring a friend, I rarely die in world PvP. Arena? Yeah, guess it doesn't work like that because unless you're in one of the "Right" groups, you're not doing anything.

Near the end of S2, we optimize group makeups for our teams, based upon what seems to be the cheesiest bullshit. I get war/pal to 1787 before Warlocks and druids start to take over. We are still not full S2 geared yet, but even on our "points for alts" teams, we run start running into point selling teams at 1500 who curbstomp us for >15 points, and it's clear the balance and the system are broken.

S3 hits. About 4-6 weeks in, and we're still struggling to get out of the 1600's because there are so many teams in that bracket who outclass us and destroy us in record time. These are teams with Rival or better titles, S3 weapons and shoulders already, and it is becoming more obvious by the week that Personal Rating isn't the fix for the system.

A few weeks ago, I get fed up with the crap and make a team that exists solely for points. I'm not competitive anymore, I honestly don't care. The system is garbage. The fact that some people can exploit it for their means doesn't change the fact that it's broken. Point selling and 2k+ reroll teams DO exist and ARE ruining the lower rating levels. I take issue with the fact that 1500 is "Average." I am not an average player and am getting sick of looking like one because the top 25% get to be "Average" again whenever they feel like it and destroy any progress I'm making towards digging myself out of mediocrity.

This week - I make a post on EJ asking who the best 2's partner is likely going to be for 2.4 and then I get told that I'm whining and I suck, when I really don't care about either. All I want to know is who the top ranks are going to be teaming with to exploit the system so that I know both what to expect and what direction to move forward in. The final word from me on this matter is this -- I don't care about being competitive right now. I don't care about my rating now. I don't care what you think of me for it, and lastly, THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. You can not blame someone for being completely indifferent to a system that can be gamed, breaking the integrity of the system. You want to call me a whiner, that's fine, but if you think that 3 losses in a row out of every 10-15 games from a 2k team (and like I have said before, THIS DOES HAPPEN, AND HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR 9+ MONTHS) doesn't ruin your progression, you're full of it. I am not complaining about being destroyed last week by some point selling team for 60 points in 3 games. I'm complaining about that happening on a REGULAR BASIS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF MY TIME IN THE ARENA.

I now shall end this derail of the warrior PvP thread and let you guys get the last word in on how I'm a pussy and just need to suck it up and win back those 60 points that I lose every 10 games and overcome adversity. You truly are a bunch of admirable people for doing so yourself, when you have no idea what I'm talking about if you're a 2k+ player.

 

Mearis

I'll be brutally honest Cutlery. The problem isn't the make up of your teams. The problem isn't the gear.

The problem is you. You are a terrible player, and you got people who laugh at you and hold you as an example of an awful player on this very board.

The only thing that you can possibly do to fix it is admit how terribly bad you are, and actually try to learn to not quite be as terrible.

You need to read http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf first, then after you realize how it applies to you you might be in a position to improve.

 

nfw

How do you know he's terrible? Have you played against him?

 

Mearis

Plus, read his posts.

 

nfw

His team was terrible compared to his battle group, but how do you know he, singular, is terrible? Without knowing the competition, team composition?

Terrible or not, he still has a valid point. The system is easily exploited, one doesn't have to be great at arena to be allowed to make that point.