Well, within the game the arena is a way to compete while earning gear. Exterenal tournaments give players pre-equipped characters I believe (referring to that recent 3v3 tournament) so the playing field is more level.

I don't think it is a big deal in game either, by the time the end of the season tournament came by last season, everyone was fully suited in gladiator gear (with the top teams earning more than 1500 points a week I imagine), with enough time to find their "true" rating if they started the season out undergeared.

I find it interesting that people do not include gear selection, and the process of obtaining that gear as "skill". It is does require skill. Some people are good at it, and some people are not. If is a *different* skill, but it is a skill I feel is an challenging and enjoyable part of the arena, and of the game as a whole.

Edit: Oh, and in arenas micro play skill absolutely matters, gear makes a difference, but so does class balance, and getting characters to 70 is a much bigger issue for people making teams then getting geared up.

Edit2: This thread seems broken. Posts are listed in the wrong order? Or am I mistaken?

This theme came up on some german news page lately and I find it interesting.
Source: http://www.wowszene.de/comment.php?comment.news.1117 (german)

What I want to discuss with you is the dependency from gear for arenas.

World of Warcraft with its arena tournaments seems to get some touch of an e-sport game lately. The problem with arenas is that for now the teams do not fight under the same conditions.

If WoW really wants to become an e-sport title every players must be equipped the same. The only difference would be the classes you choose for your team and the skill you have.

I really like the idea of the arena-point system and it has its use. You can use these items to do world pvp, pve or other battlegrounds but for fair and equal arena-fights this is a problem.

I think its true that currently skill doesn't matter but gear does.

Ok, now I want to hear your opinons on that. Do you think that the current arena system is unfair and every class should have its own set of equip to fight with? Or do you think that everything is ok and that your work you invest into pvp just pays off?

Something wierd yes. Farming pvp equip does not require any skill its just time consuming.

I suppose it depends on what you define as "skill". Is it strategizing, proper equipment selection, and tactics? Or is it the ability to keep an awareness of every person in your vicinity in a heated fight?

It's certainly more fair than the old rank 14 grind was. Now anyone can get the gear if they simply exert a little effort.

Almost everything involving WoW is time consuming and I doubt Blizzard will like to change that in arena. People play just that little longer to get just enough points for the next item. So many people play just for the gear and blizzard would never give those people "free" gear.

Gear does make a difference, however, Skill > Gear but at the end of the day, the team with the skill and the gear will always be the victors compared to the team with the skill but without the gear.

And on this note, is it wrong that I keep bugging people to go to AQ40 and BWL for some items I need for PVP?

The old Skill > Gear adage is not really very applicable in arenas. Simply, the teams with gear, HAD to be skilled. Otherwise they would not have enough of the gear to make any noticeable difference. Unskilled teams that were just points farming would never really be able to get any gear level in a realistic timeframe that would make them unbeatable by PvE geared players.

I've got a little list of stuff I want: Scarab Brooch, Libram of Grace, Scrolls of Blinding Light...

This really isn't true in Arena, due to Blizzard's deliberate decision to make dedicated PvP gear have massively different qualities than other gear in the game. Sure, the system is set up so that more skilled teams get gear first, but the focus on survivability on the PvP gear actually has a larger divorce from skill than anything previous in World of Warcraft.

In WoW 1.0, if you had a Rank 14 warrior square off with a BWL/AQ40 warrior, it would pretty much come down to who is better (over enough trials to equal out crit strings).

If the Rank 14 warrior squared off with some MC geared warrior, the MC warrior would be destroyed.

If the BWL/AQ40 warrior squared off against some blue PvP set with BG epics warrior, the PvP/BG warrior would be destroyed.

NOW (TBC), however:

If a full Season 1 Gladiator/epic PvP (iLevel 123), 350ish Res. warrior squares off with a full Tier 4 (iLevel 120-125), the Tier 4 warrior will be *slaughterd*. Mathmatically, the Tier 4 warrior should never win, although he might pull a couple of flukes out of his butt.

The Tier 4 warrior could be quite a bit better at PvP than the Gladiator warrior, but it just won't matter so long as the Gladiator warrior knows the basic mechanics of his class.

Similarly, the Gladiator warrior will merrily crush all PvE-geared/non-stacked Res PvP warriors below the Tier 4 warrior in gear, regardless of how good they are.

The 350ish res. S1 Gladiator will also, in all likelyhood, hand a Tier 5 PvE warrior (iLevel 130+) his head, once again, more or less regardless of skill if the Gladiator player has actually played a warrior.


~

This new paradigm is true for any class matchup that involves classes with attacks that can crit. Ask a fire mage how he feels about full Gladiator opponents versus people in low/no resilience gear. Or a dagger rogue. And so on.

It also expands to team matchups. It doesn't happen, but if you had a 2200 "true strength" team of normal composition fighting a mirrior 1700 true strength team, but the 1700 true strength team was sporting 200-350 resilience on each fighter and the 2200 was sporting zero, the 2200 team would be annihilated in any series worthy of the name.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gath&n=Schmity

50 top end doesn't make a difference? (comparing to s2 glad weapons)

While it may be nice to reduce dependency on gear, the ELO rating slowly matches you towards teams that have about the same level of play, so the gear difference is not hurting you as much.
This is a gear driven game, so giving away gear is a bad practice.
Plus there is the human factor, if I worked for it I value it more than if it was just given to me.

However, the tournaments don't have time to develop a ELO rating, so there needs to be equal gear available to all so that the best matchup and skilled players will win.

Ehhhhh...

The better weapon is, well, better, but for most practical purposes, there isn't that much of a difference being brained by Schmity with a Merciless Gladiator Greatsword or Stormhearld and being brained by him with a Torch of the Damned.

That's almost entirely because 2H's from Tier 1 BS on and are already so dang powerful. Dead is dead, after a point. See WoW forum bitching re: warriors who are hardly all equipped with Torches or Tier 3 BS weapons.

Put another way, going from a Bonereaver's Edge to a Dark Edge of Insanity was a ~ 17% increase in top end, excluding weapon speed and procs and whatever.

Gladiator's Greatsword to Torch of the Damned is only a 8.3% increase in top end, once again ex weapon speed and whatever. Deep Thunder to Torch is a 10% gain, and that one has no difference in weapon speed.

An equivalent jump to the Bonereaver's - DEoI would be going from a Thunder to the Torch. That's 19% increase in top end.

I would certainly rather have the Torch in my hand for any given swing, but for most individual fights, the difference between it and even the Tier 2 BS weapons/ S1 gladiator weapons is down almost inside a "margin of chance" i.e. parry, miss, crit versus no crit, low range hits versus high range hits.

http://beta.rupture.com/battlegrounds/arena/239429

Keep in mind I had mooncleaver in this one not deep thunder so I couldn't mace stun, but it gives you an idea.

edit: Also in saying the Deep Thunder and Torch are the same speed you're ignoring the haste rating on Torch which is ~5%.

I don't think gear will be an issue as long as Blizzard updates the arena gear frequently enough. If you are skilled enough to have a shot at the top you will get to 1900-2000 even with crap gear. At 2000 you get about 1000 points a week, which will get you geared out fast. The honor gear is a minor time sink but really not all that bad. That leaves a few slots where you don't have optimal or near optimal gear, but a few heroics can get you close enough. Ideally you want some of the new SSC PvP gear, but that will not make or break your character.

In short, the lack of perfect gear parity does hurt the game a little bit but much less than taking the character building aspect out arenas by giving out optimal PvP gear to everyone. People do play for the points.

What needs to really be addressed before WoW can become a serious esport is class balance. In the last WSVG, most successful teams played identical cookie cutter makeups. Of the 178 players that qualified for the 5v5 arena tournament, one played a druid. Virtually every team (that was not crippled by disqualifications) ran warrior/pally. Would you watch a warcraft 3 tournament where everyone played Night Elf? Me neither. Same goes for WoW. There are only so many mirror matchups I can watch before falling asleep. The biggest strength WoW has over say shooters or RTS games is precisely the variety of possible matchups. But currently that is drowned in a sea of cookie cutters.

Would the fact that you were fighting a priest and he a paladin account for most of that difference?

A gain of 13% top end and 10 weapon DPS shouldn't result in a damage disparity that great, even with it clearly being a longer fight where the per-hit advantage of the Torch would bear out. Most of that difference is probably due to the fact he won the fight and got to kill both of you.

I'd expect Schmity to win a long fight against a warrior with a weaker weapon, just like I'd expect a heavy resilience warrior to crush a zero one of same tier gear, but side-by-side, it shouldn't do that much more damage.

Paladin/Warrior is extremely anti Priest/Warrior, the differential almost has to be the weapon.
If the Priest has high end arena gear etc, they're incredibly anti Warrior, and can often live to the point of simply being out of mana, but the only real way a Warrior/Priest beats a Warrior/Paladin is too stay tight and push for a MD on the Paladin, even this takes a string of crits(or massive hits such as from the Torch) to actually get said Paladin to bubble.


If you don't mind me asking, how did you guys choose to play that game? Opposing healers first? or Warrior v Warrior in an attempt to out mana the Priest? Either one is a tough way to win, living until I simply run out of Mana happens against a Mooncleaver more often than not, and the weapon differential is just so big.

"Cannot" is not good enough if you want to make this game a serious esport. I never claimed it was easy, but that does not make it any less neccessary. "This game is not balanced for 1v1" is fine, because really, who cares about duels? But if they are offering professional contracts based on 2v2 arena then they better make it happen.

Also, I don't buy that it is impossible to balance arena. Yes pallies have plate and always will have plate. So? Consider these changes

Paladin: Blessing of Freedom now lasts 10 seconds and has a 40 second cooldown.
Druid: Tree of Life now grants a 400% armor bonus.
Druid: New Spell: Earthmend. Removes one physical debuff from the target. Castable only in Tree of Life form.

(this is not meant to be a druid vs pally whine, I just picked 2 classes I happen to play which happen to have vastly different arena represenation)

This is just stuff I made up on the spot. Don't you think those changes would increase the number of druids and decrease the number of pallies in 5v5 arena? If you feel priests are too weak in arena it is simple to come up with buffs for them too. Make blessed resilience 100% proc for example.

There are many factors to consider when balancing the classes for arena. That makes it hard. But it also gives Blizzard many knobs to turn to get it done. And if their commitment to making WoW an esport is more than lip service then they will get it done. Their track record in that area is stellar.

Nothing says the game has to be fair and balanced. Which is why they shouldn't have done it in the first place, the entire nature of the game is based on rolls, winning or losing shouldn't be reduced to who rolls a crit 3 times in a row.

This is completly irrelevant for WoW's E-Sport qualification.
An E-Sport game needs to be two things
1. Popularity
2. fun to watch
everything else doesn't matter at all. It might deter YOU from enjoying it as an E-Sport, but it doesn't prevent it from becoming one. It's all about the money, if sponsors are willing to pump money into WoW (and they already are) then you have your E-Sport