I know it's too early for anyone to make any plans on saving points for S3, but how long do you think S2 will last? Will there be S4 before the WotLK xpack? Do you think it will introduce new gear that will match the level of Tier6? What about honor gear? If, say S3 starts somewhere october/november, will you save points for upgrades/new weapons? I'm just curious about the community's opinions.

I have heard S3 is to start in the middle of october, in about 2 and a half month from now.

I'll see if I can verify it.

It was already said by a blue poster on the WoW forums that there won't be a new set of gear for each season, I highly doubt that season 3 will release tier 6 equivalent gear.

Don't forget more pvp orientated gems and enchants. Imagine an immune to disarm enchant that adds 20ap and 10res or something, great for rogues and for warriors eager to drop those 2 points. Make it cost 1200 arena points and you'd see a lot of players with it. Possibilities are endless, just look at everything PvE and imagine it's PvP equivalent coming from arena.

Resilience+AP/dmg gems
Resilience+sta leg enchants

Whatever they offer, let's hope it doesn't allow for 600+ resilience.

They could even add tabards and mounts that were very expensive but amazing looking and people would want to get them.

I believe Season 3 will have a new set of gear, especially with the upcoming nerfs to Kael and Mother means more people will have Tier 6, plus the devs get to reuse the set artwork.

Perhaps all the PvP items non-set will not be updated, but there needs to be a new PvP cloak, there wasn't a season 2 upgrade.


However, what is unknown is when the new season will start, I am guessing late October.

After spending my points regularly on my 70s for the first season of gear I know that for this third season I'll be stockpiling 5000 points on all my characters and just spending them after (if) I hit that cap beforehand (my pally/warrior are in a scrub 5v5 point farming team for about 300 to 400 points a week).

I think the 15 item level difference between top PvE weapons (Illidan's dagger for example) and the top PvP weapons gives a significant advantage to an Arena team with advanced PvE progression. If the intent of this arena gear is to prevent PvE from being a prerequisite of competitive PvP, I think at least new weaponry will be required.

Wrath of the Lich King, the new expansion.

I don't know, maybe it is just me but I think it would be a joke to start handing out Tier 6 equivalent arena gear when the vast majority of guilds are still working on T5, or in many cases even T4 content. Also assuming ZA contains tier 5 equivalent loot drops, it would essentially be a kick in the nuts to their own brand new raiding instance to have far better gear easily obtainable from an hour or two of PvP each week.

The only slot that anyone would ever consider using non-gladiator gear for serious arena competition would be their weapon, and the difference between Illidan weapons and the currently available merciless gear is minimal at best, especially when you factor in the loss of a decent chunk of resilience. Many warriors are using T3 BS weapons over the gladiator equivalents anyways, so I don't really see why it would all of a sudden become an issue for someone to have +10 DPS on their mainhand because they are one of the very few who have downed Illidan. If anything, I would say that the T5 resilience rings and T6 epic gems grant just as much of advantage to PvErs in the arena as that minimal damage increase.

The only reason I could foresee any new gear being released in S3 is to give people who have completed their S2 set something to spend points on. As a druid this really isn't a problem for me, if I had extra points I would be more than happy to start collecting the feral and/or moonkin sets. For everyone else, I hope they at least release gladiator equivalents to the boot/belt/bracer/ring/cloak/etc. so that there is an alternative for people who don't particularly enjoy PuGing with a bunch of AFK honor bots in the battlegrounds.

Heres the thing though, with the way itemization gains are being set up in WoW, it is intentional that PvP/arena gear is preferred over PvE gear for the purpose of PvP combat. You do more PvP, you become stronger in PvP. That is intentional, not a side effect.

However, just looking at it from a warlock perspective, arena gear from season 1 to season 2 had a miniscule gain in damage stats, while it had an increase in armor and resilience/stamina (a little one). Armor, resilience, and to some degree stamina, don't really have any benefit in PvE for a caster, while comparing to PvE gear which increases in crit/hit and spell damage.

Yeh they are painting themselves into a bit of a corner. I think they will have a "filler season" and then release a Tier 6 set in in Season 4, closer to the next xpack.

As people have pointed out, there are a lot of interesting items they can release "as filler' that would keep people going. Outgearing ZA would be a huge mistake.