First of all, i have read alot about that "next patch you wont be able to change gear in arenas", but i have never seen any official facts on it, nor is it like that on the current PTR. So would be appreciated if someone would post me a official statement link or likewise.

Let's say it IS coming, is it good?

I for one think its a bad thing, for my rogue atleast, not so much for my priest. For my rogue to be able to start the fight in full PvE dps gear, and once evasion/cloak is burned and still being focused just run of vanish and go full resilience gear makes me feel so much more useful. The amount of DPS i output in full PvE gear is insane, if they don't focus me they are going to lose one person pretty fast.

Compare that to only always running PvP resilience gear, then im a pretty worthless clown.

Maby its the resistance gear that makes gear swapping totally imbalanced, but i really hope gear switching stays in the arena, it adds so much more depth to the rock/paper/scissor game.

Regardless of the loss of a dynamic/dimension to PvP, I don't think it's fair or reasonable to expect PvPers to collect multiple gearsets for PvP.

I think it's good. If it makes locks/spriest team even more powerful, it's Blizard's mistake.
Gearing midfight depending on the enemy once you see them takes away all the sense of competitiveness and fair play.

If you can't use pots in an Arena and you can't use 30-minute talents, then swopping gear out seems a bit hypocritical to me. Why not just let the person have a trainer right there in the starting area so one can respec in order to maximize the chance of a win?

if Blizz is indeed making the move, kudos to them. If anything, it adds a degree of strategy to an Arena match because you'll have to make that decision to go full dps gear or full resistance/resilience gear.

You can't really compare gear to 30-minute cooldowns, selecting the gear is a BIG part of wow. If you can't swap gear it will just end up everyone running around in the same gear, Arena+Honor epics. Very interesting, or not.

Because, ya'know, farming shadow resist gear means being competitive.

It's still just Rock/Paper/Scissors, there is no "balance". Only "balance" is when Paper meats Paper.

If they want everyone to have equal gear, just give everyone who enters arena the same outfit, voila, fixed.

WoW consists of farming gear, running instances, doing battlegrounds, removing the opportunity to change gear is like making a total new game.

I think it really hurts druids. Being able to switch from resto to feral gear saved a win a few times. For that matter most hybrid healers are going to feel the sting when it gets down to 1v1.

If you can get out of combat to drink, you should be able to get out of combat and swap gear. I don't think swapping to full resist sets should be allowed, but the fix to that problem should not be to entirely get rid of gear swapping.

Considering the arenas have restrictions on use of some talents, and consumables, the "rules have already been broken". You can't change gear in combat, only weapons, so in my view, that's how Arenas should be. Less emphasis on gear controlling a fight and more on teamwork, coordination, specs and team makeup.

As a mage, I would absolutely love to be able to put on SR gear and beat SL locks as a matter of routine, but I don't know if it would be fair.

Warlocks/shadowpriests would have to put in some +spell penetration gems into their gear to combat resists, as their damage is nearly completely from the shadow school.

I don't see stacking frost resistance as a problem, literally 40% or so of all Arena mages with a rating above 1750 have a natural 10 spell penetration, and another 80 or so wouldn't be crippling.

Having massive spirit gear for evocation/los-hide-drink-time is in my opinion no problem at all.

I know I wish I could put on my 10,000 armor cloth gear vs those warrior/whatever combos.

Allowing people to change gear sets gives certain teams serious advantages in arena without allowing for the same tactics to be used against them. It's hardly fair or balanced. As someone already mentioned, farming a green set of SR gear doesn't take any skill but it will make a match trivial.

It is on the PTR and there has been no mention of the change being removed any time in the future, so I would assume that as soon as patch 2.2 is released you will no longer be able to swap gear in the arena.

I don't really like this change, because it means I can't swap to regen gear if I'm up against an outlast team. This strategy has saved me a number of times, getting out of combat for 0.5 seconds to swap a few pieces of gear is much easier than getting out of combat for 10 seconds to drink.

First, its not on the PTR, atleast i swapped gear there just now on a shaman.

Second, once your out of combat, you can also drink, you don't have to wait 10 sec.

This just in: sitting down to drink doesn't instantly refill your mana bar.

Blue post here says it will, I have not been on PTR or read the patch notes though.

Healers who carry DPS sets will be hit pretty hard by this, and they had better hope they never wind up 1v1 against a class that can actually do damage.

I've won several 1v1s against mages as a pally by switching to my ~800 spell damage gear and slowly wearing them down. I won't be able to sustain the mana needed to keep myself healed and kill the other person if I'm trying to damage someone in my healing gear.

I do carry around a ~300 shadow resist set for 2v2 as well, but I rarely use it, and don't really think I will miss it once the resilience to DoTs change gets pushed through, even if it is only about a 10% damage reduction.

I honest don't see anything wrong with switching to a different set of gear with how lopsided some of the match ups can be. Otherwise they better broadcast when queuing up who the other team is.

Definately agree with this statement. Removing gear from the equation means Arena becomes more of a test of player skill and exploiting the advantages of your makeup over your opponents, rather than 'brute forcing' a win with superior (whether its higher level, or a counter to your opponent's makeup) equipment.

I agree, some matches are extremely lopsided when one team can throw on resistance gear to effectively shut down all of another team's magical damage. This would only be fair if casters could throw on armor with 20,000 armor overall to equally reduce melee damage to almost nothing.

The reason they added drinkable water for arenas is that certain classes aren't dependent on mana and could keep going while the mana classes would just reach bottom, so they needed to make it more balanced, albeit with a catch.

The classes have the same gear swapping restrictions and to pretend like its an equivalent argument at all is stupid as hell. If one class was a master clotheschanger and could normally swap outfits while fighting but was fundamentally worse off because of arena restrictions, the argument might have a hint of credibility.

Yes, the restrictions DO make it a different game, and that is why people LIKE it. If you didn't notice before, WoW PVP was a long series of running jokes. Now they've made it so that more raiding/more money to spend on the AH don't instantly mean "better than" and that is a GOOD thing.

Disabling gear swapping is good. Being able to start stealthed, see that the enemy's dps is purely shadow based and swapping into a 300+ shadow resist set may be fun but it's totally cheese