Allow me to preface this thread by saying that I love Arenas. For all their imbalances and quirks, it's completely revitalized WoW PVP for me. However, I still feel that there are some aspects of the incentive and matching system that could be improved. I'd like for this thread to remain constructive.

1. There should be a cooldown on quitting one team and joining another. Currently, players from very high rated teams will leave their team, join a new team, and "smurf" their way up the ladder till they start playing other high-rated teams. This way, players of equal skill can attempt to destroy the rating of a very high-rated team with little to no risk to themselves.

For example, I could leave my 2150 3v3 team right now and go start a 1500 team. After a couple hours, we'd start playing the 2100 teams. If we win, we destroy their rating, but if we lose, we risk almost nothing. Maybe 5 rating at the worst. When I'm done trashing my competition's rating, I leave the new team, then rejoin my high-rated team and earn my points for the week.

A one-week cooldown on earning points from a new team after you have previously been on another team that week would prevent players from abusing this aspect of the ladder. In other words, if I leave my 2150 team to go smurfing, if I rejoin my 2150 team later that week, I cannot receive points from it till the following week. In fact, this may not even be enough, as one member of the team can still "take the hit" for his team.



2. Rating loss should have some kind of normalized rate. It's very frustrating to play against a team that nets 0 points and risk losing nearly 30 rating if some kind of force majeur event happens, like going linkdead in the middle of a match. If there are no other highly rated teams playing, then I'm better off NOT playing at all. This is not a good incentive structure.



My next point is more of a question, because I can't tell yet if this has any validity, and I'd like to hear people's opinions.

3. Should 2v2 and 3v3 really have reduced earning potential? Having achieved a 2v2 rating of over 2050, 3v3 over 2150, and a 5v5 of over 1750, and numerous discussions with people on very highly rated 5v5 teams, I'm not really sure that 2v2 is any more prone to "super combos" than 5v5. Therefore, I'm not convinced that 2v2s should only receive 60% of the points of a 5v5 team.

Blizzard wants an active 5v5 ladder. 2v2 is much, much, much easier to coordinate logistically, and if it gave the same rewards, a large number of people who play 5v5 just because it offers the best points if you have a decent team, would cease to do so. The 5v5 ladder would then stagnate, which would be a shame.

That's the real reason for the 60/80/100 gap, I think.

2v2 was changed to 70% earnings without much fanfare a few weeks ago. (70/80/100)

I understand that, I just don't necessarily agree with their reasoning. Even the WSVG has eschewed 5v5 in favor of 3v3, albeit for the reason that it's more spectator-friendly. I also prefer their ruleset, such as not being able to have more than one of the same class on a team.

It'd be nice if they added different rewards or something for 5v5 rather than just capping the points you can earn from smaller team brackets. It kind of bothers me that a mediocre 5v5 team can earn more points each week than an outstanding 2v2 team.

I don't know if this is what you're really looking for in a reply Digo, but either way it's an issue for certain Alliance races.

I would really love the Pillars in Blade's Edge Arena to be fixed so Dwarves and Gnomes can actually take advantage of them, instead of having anything that's not in the center being 'Out of the line of sight' for us, it's ever so frustrating when someone is mana burning you can you can't even 'see' them to cast anything back (this happened early on in the season, since that point I pretty much gave up on using the pillars in 5v5.)

The rating gain and loss system could do with a slight revision in my opinion, when you got to the position Power Trip were in a couple of weeks ago, where they could only gain points (4-5 points a win) off the top 3 positions in their Battlegroup, and then lose 24 from anything else must have been have been rather annoying for them in the whole point collection part of the game.

Nothing beats being beaten by a low ranked burst team because of their capability to get lucky with abilities and spells; then losing 20+ points from it, while regaining 10 back from them when they don't get lucky >_>

You mean taller races can fire across the bridge from the pillar? Oh fuck me, I thought I was losing them when I ran to the corner.

I hate the tornados. The only thing they are good for is to get a team trying to hug a pillar in the middle of a totem forest to move. I guess that's the point, but they really shouldn't stray far from the pillars.

Someone in guild listed the top 10 2v2s in our bg a while back. 6-7 had either a holy priest or a paladin in them. I think shamans and hunters weren't even represented at all. While there's some class balance issues in 5v5, it's not even as remotely skewed as 2v2.

Our Human Paladin can heal our Gnome without problem for some reason from the pillars when I can be stood in the exact same position and not 'see' him. Either way, we (me and the paladin) generally don't use the pillars anymore due to the LOS issues presented by the bridge and ramps ;p, and the fact that we do sometimes have to CC, which we cannot do from the Pillars

As for the "pillars", I am actually referring to the little platforms on the side of the bridge we people tend to jump to when someone is chasing them with a snare, it's just my guild and team has always referred to them as the "pillars," sorry for any confusion caused ;D

Why do you favor not having more than one of the same class on a team? Almost none of the top teams are stacking classes.

As far as the WSVG goes, I'd say the reason they're doing 3v3 is because they know they don't have a prayer of attracting the attention of Blizzard's own 5v5 tournament. After all, it is the "real" tournament, where you don't have to play with premade characters and have your gear selected for you.

Time limits.

Nobody should have to endure a 2 hour long match watching a Holy paladin chase a Moonkin around and vice versa.

Was kind of a wierd situation but sometimes you're left with 2 people who literally cant kill each other and nobody wants to give up the points.

We settled it by a /random of sorts.... 3 casts of improved starfire, if any of the 3 stunned the paladin the moonkins team won, if it didn't, they quit.

Time Limits would be wonderful. It's incredibly annoying when both teams in Nagrand hug their pillars and refuse to go after each other.

This might be a one time glitch but has anyone else had this happen:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...98765333&sid=1

4v3
The alliance team got an extra undead mage. It's pretty funny but it was also between two top 20 teams.

I agree with all the points the OP put forward, I'm sure 95% of people do and blizzard hopefully can see these problems and will fix them for season 2 *finger's crossed*

What annoys me is when you play the same team 5 times in a row, this is very annoying if they have a class makeup that counters yours and are lower rank (or simply better players). I'd like to have a 5-10 minute limit on playing the same team again.

Well... if they're better players they should win?

I don't agree that there should be a cooldown on team switching. Right now it provides a major source for possible revenue to sell arena points, similar to raiders selling BOP epics.

No doubt, but it is silly to be matched up against the same team over and over and over again when you don't have any hope of winning.

Because my team plays at odd hours, we rarely get an evenly matched team. If we win alot against a lesser ranked team, we get less and less points from them and vice-versa. I thought that this was how Blizzard compensated for this. I'm almost certain that Blizzard tries to vary matchups when it can, but if you keep getting the same team, you can choose to keep going for it, or take a break.

Making 2vs2 and 3vs3 reward the same points as 5vs5 wouldn't solve it, would just kill 5vs5 like people said, the main problem are tornados in Nagrand and the pillars in BEM.

Also, the fact that this season is going to go on for another 1-2 months makes it rather useless to arenas seriously.

An Issue almost exclusively for 2v2 is the *seemingly* obnixious ability for rogues to destroy just about any opposing team. I say seemingly because I only pvp at lvl 70 with one class ( a priest, both in disc/holy and shadow ) so I cannot possibly represent the majority of wow classes. However, from where I stand, the use of sap and CoS is a complete ball buster in 2v2 arenas. It is my understanding that a vanished rogue is impossible to be seen in arenas without the power up that spawns 2min(?) after the fight starts. Because of this, any team with a rogue can not only easily, but consistently, force a 2v1 situation. Further, because of the nature of rogues, the remaining person has to endure at least a few moments of stun lock, longer depending on the class of the victim and the skill/spec of the rogue. Throw in CoS and any caster that is singled out to be the first to die is completely fucked.

Every team that rushes its rogue with vanish + sprint and lands the sap right off the bat has killed both me and my partner with ease. Granted we are typically a shadow priest and affliction lock, not the best combo for fighting a class that can clear all dots and resist 90% of spells for 5 seconds, but it seems that sap is just... 1 stun too many for arenas maybe?

I cant really think of a solution other than pulsing teams into combat when arenas start, or (more realistically) just reduce the CC time of sap in pvp, which shouldn't upset anyone as its rarely used, to my knowledge, in many other player vs player environments.

As always, its possible that I just suck a pvp.

I would personally like to see Mortal Strike adressed, but it might just have to do with us not having figured out a good counter for it. I have not figured a good way to deal with the MS debuff, and I am curious how the really good teams handle it - heal through it? Traps? CC warrior?

It's been said elsewhere, but the problem with MS is that it is required for the health of arenas (such that healing teams do not just dominate due to how powerful healing spells are in the game) and also required for any successful 5v5 team. This makes MS warriors the staple of every team (typically along with a paladin). Warriors certainly have other nice bonuses, like not having a mana bar, getting stronger when you attack them, etc, but without MS they are just another class with benefits and drawbacks.

They can't really remove MS or make it too easy to counter, because the system needs it. If the solution is to just give a similar effect to more classes, then you might make other combos viable, but at the same time you may be over minimizing the role of healers if everyone is tossing out huge heal debuffs.

It really is an interesting conundrum and I'm curious to see how they decide to handle it.

It is really hard to predict how the meta-game would go without MS. I predict that casters would become relegated to the side, as games would take much much longer and mana would go out much sooner.

Manaburn might become even more important, and rogues/warriors would dominate as they don't run out of juice.

I do agree it isn't a trivial decision, but right now the prevalance of Ms is a bit retarded.

Touching on that, another issue is that smaller brackets are likely to attract more casual players, as it's easier to get two people online than five. As such I think you get a bit of a selection bias, as more dedicated and hardcore players are more likely to be in 5v5 teams. You end up with a kind of selection bias where more hardcore players are in larger brackets, thus the same rating is more impressive.