Roywyn

I've been thinking about something similar, making weapons only "work" if you currently wear 2 pieces of that season's arena set.

That would also make weapons undesirable for PvE, since you'd have to wear 2 pieces of usually subpar gear and you could only get one 2/5 PvE set bonus at most.

PvE armour isn't good for PvP and vice-versa since resilience/stamina make up a large part of the item budget, or the lack of those stats makes you too squishy for PvP. That doesn't hold for weapons, the DPS/damage/healing/feralAP gain outweights the loss of stats by large. And a season 2 shield offers 2k more armour than the best blues, but nobody really complains about shields

Oh, for people who throw around numbers:
In the 5v5 ladder of our BG, 1% of all teams are above 2000, 2% above 1900, 5% above 1750 and 10% above 1650, 20% above 1530. (EU Bloodlust BG, ~2100 5v5 teams total)
I guess it's just vastly different to other BGs. While a certain threshold is trivial in one BG, it's impossible to reach in other BGs.

 

Maurice2u

Hopefully we'll see PvP weapons get more 'distinction' as PvP items, like armor has, in the future. Perhaps some buff that applies when in BG/Arena only.

As a rogue, I will say a lot of it could be fixed by putting some more 'filler' weapons somewhere in the game. Having a 70'ish DPS blue be the best off-hand sword for a "very" long time has forced a large amount of rogues to Arena for the quickblade.

Arena armor is not a problem, and for many classes, the weapsons don't hold a serious disparity, but the off-hand swords from PvE have a big whole in progression, and if you look around, you probably notice many of us (combat sword rogues) using either Latros or Arena Quickblades in the off-hand. /meh

A single craftable 1.4-1.6 speed epic sword that did not require master swordsmith to use (ie: BoE) would kill a good 1/3 of this debate, sad as that sounds. Sure, tons of us would have it, but better than using a blue until we: A) suck it up and grind out an Arena blade B) get crazy lucky for the Kara one to fall our way C) take a tanking sword and put it in our off-hand (have seen this a lot of late) D)respec to swordsmith

 

Levidian

There are teams designed around rocking the other teams paladin FIRST, with .5 sec mass dispell priests on the team. Granted more rare but they do exist.

 

Levidian

Arena rates are so you look hardcore when someone checks your armory. :P

 

Osse

So true.

I wouldnt mind a server based special title though. :P

 

Kasi

Yeah I have to disagree with the idea that having a weapon as good as T5 loot devalues raiding. Especially when its a bunch of gear vs one weapon. Lets say there is the average raider who wants loot and the average pvp'er who wants loot.

Raider can go in, and even if not of the greatest skill will probably get a bunch of decent stuff if he shows up. Would the raider raid if they were told, yeah you can raid but you're not allowed to get the best loot even if its there. Probably not. Same thing for the average pvp'er. They're going to emotionally feel left out of things if these restrictions go through. Another thing is of course the competitive nature of PVP versus PVE, and that people have to lose in PVP.

I don't know how you guys feel, but losing an arena match for me affects me a lot more than wiping on a boss. With a boss I know I can refine my play, improve my gear and because the boss is staying the same we'll beat him once we get better. In PVP if I do the same I won't beat PVP. I'll just move from 1550 to 1600, or 1600 to 1650. Whoopee. It won't get me any better gear if people here have things like they want them.

The point is it goes back to what Amera said. Is a good piece of gear that big a price to pay for a viable and popular pvp culture? I don't think so. But if harsh changes go through, I'll laugh my ass off as Arena system collapses when a good 60% of the players in it who realize they'll never get access to the good stuff leave the system. I'm sure Blizzard will really love marketing that on CBS.

 

Cwealm

I will, as well, particularly since it is a ladder. If a good number of people say to hell with the arenas, it isn't going to be the people with 2100 ratings, and a not insignificant number of the epeens currently in favor of a rating system will suddenly find themselves with sub-1900 ratings. And 20 minute queues.

The main cachet with raid gear is not the stats, but that it looks cool and people know where it drops and that you have to be in a good guild to get it and that it took some work. If stats were everything, why then was the season 1 reward a mount? Why did people spend ludicrous amounts of dkp (in my guild, at least, when ZG was a dkp event) for the ZG tiger and raptor? Why did people race to be one of the first with a netherwing drake? Why are people STILL wearing the Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade or buying Murloc costumes?

 

Celandro

I think the fact that top PVE raiding guilds have far better access to PVP loot than a low raiding guild like myself is a bigger issue for game balance than the reverse. People using PVP loot for PVE has zero impact on other people doing PVE who don't PVP (dkp systems excepted but thats a guild issue not a blizzard issue). The impact on PVP of the PVE gear is far larger. As a kara raider, I don't have access to the T3 BS weapon or the trinkets/rings/amulets which puts me at a huge disadvantage. Every time a PVEr can use PVE gear instead of having to spend arena points, I fall further behind. I think the only people who have legitimate complaints are PVE rogues but thats due to a severe itemization flaw of PVE offhand weapons. Some sort of token system for weapons would help a lot I think without affecting arena players.

 

Eir

This whole thread is about adding loot to Arenas because loot is a significant motivatior for people doing Arenas. If they added items slightly better than Arena rewards to honor vendors, would it devalue Arenas and remove motivation to do them? Of course it would.

 

tristantio

Not really...I mean arena you can get in your 10 games for the week in about an hour if you have good queue times. To grind out 40,000 honor (the cost of weapons) at around 1000 honor an hour means it will take 40 hours of grinding in AV for the honor to buy a weapon.

If you maintain a mediocre arena rating you can pull in 600 arena points a week, so in 6 weeks (or after 6 hours of work) you can get a weapon.

While arena does have calendar time restrictions associated with it, I'd much rather spend 6 hours earning my item instead of spending 40 hours earning it, even if it was slightly better.

This isn't even taking into consideration arena is much more fun than doing AV.

 

Grailyn

Why is it not fair then for elite pvpers to receive a prestige factor to their weapons? Yes they all look alike, which sucks, but people will still inspect you or see on the armory that your using a Season 7 Mace of the Badass and not a Season 1 Mace of the Mildly Annoying.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ther&n=Grailyn

 

Aphyrax

We kind of do. It is the rating on our character sheet. Trolling the official PvP forum is much more fun with a high arena rating, because you get to tell all the other trolls that they need to "l2p".

When I inspect a PvPer I don't go for the loot. I know what they are wearing anyway. I go straight for the ratings page to determine my degree of "impressedness". The same is true for title. I would take "Gladiator" over a fancier glow on my weapon any day.

 

tristantio

I'd have to agree with Aphyrax here, when I see PvPers I could care less what their gear is, it's their title and rating that signifies their skill and impresses me (I always do a double take when i see a Gladiator).

When I see a raider I think they are impressive based on the gear they have, as it signifies what dungeons they've conquered. Very little of the PVE gear is an upgrade for PvP, so the significance isn't that I'm envious of their gear (I don't really PvE at all) it's just that I think, "wow that guy did good to kill that boss".

 

Talgog

Radical suggestion based off those numbers:

-- Revamp honor-mine AV as was mentioned at Blizzcon
-- Put Arena weaponry - and weapon component nethers and vortexs for people who want to use the smithing gear - into the honor system pool.
-- Slap 120,000 point prices or whatever on the 2H weapons and equivalent nether components, adjust to taste.
-- Require S1 weapon before S2 weapon, S2 weapon before S3 weapon.

Leave the armor in the Arena.

 

Aphyrax

Wait, wait. Let me make sure I understand this correctly. Are you proposing REMOVING the weapons from the arena vendor and putting them into the honor system instead? At a price that would require roughly 150 hours of PvPing to get them? And not just 150 hours once, but 150 hours every arena season? That is every 4 months I would have to spend the equivalent of leveling a new character to 70 to stay competitive in PvP?

If that is indeed your proposal then you just won the award for worst idea in this thread. Sorry, no way to be nice about it. People like PvP precisely because it does not require grinding (or at least not a lot). People dislike raiding because of the time requirements. Why on earth would you want to take the worst part of raiding and introduce it into the PvP system?

 

Soladoras

Except raiding and pvp are completely different activities, and there are some that enjoy one activity and not the other. Of course if the best pvp rewards were all honor based, no one would do the arena, and if there weren't some slots that were best filled with honor gear, no one would queue for battlegrounds.

But the reality is, you have 17 gear slots to fill. At the absolute most, 2 of those 17 slots can be filled with arena gear that is not vastly inferior to available PvE drops. Even then, this only effects a minority of the classes. Can you honestly say that you are adversely impacted simply because someone else you saw in Shattrah was using [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer] instead of [Talon of Azshara]?

 

dantae

In my case, it's not an issue of being adversely affected, since these people actually help inflate my ratings which is sort of fun I guess. My issue is that they in no way deserve the item when they're walking around with 1300 ratings across the board.

 

Yakout

If this is indeed what is really wrong with making Arena weapons available to players of all rankings, why not address it directly rather than giving top teams a gearing advantage over lower-ranked contenders? Instead of denying lower-ranked players access to the weapons, make the model or skin of the model scale with your rating. Rating under 1500? Fine, your S3 Bonegrinder looks like a [Cracked Sledge]. Not that bad, but still under, say, 2000? Yours looks like a [Grand Marshal's Bonegrinder]. Rating over 2000? Looks like a [Gladiator's Bonegrinder]. Rating over 2500? [Torch of the Damned]. Or suchlike. Numbers being whole arbitrary, of course.

[Full disclosure: I started doing Arena to get a good, slow weapon for my offhand (as there's something of a gap for Enhance Shaman between the heroic blues and A'lar in the Eye), and I finally got it this week after maybe 10-12 weeks of matches, usually playing 15-20 matches every week. I started playing just to get the weapon, but I began enjoying it, playing more than the minimum amount of matches needed, grinding out some honor PvP gear, etc. Am I "good" at Arena? Not really, no; some of that is spec and class, but also a lot is lack of PvP experience and gear. Am I better than when I started? Much. Would I have ever set foot in the Arena had I not had the PvE-viable weapon to lure me in? Not a chance. Will I quit if weapons need a rating to buy? Maybe, maybe not... I really don't know. It'd hardly encourage me tho'...]

 

tristantio

It's funny at the beginning of the arena season everyone was excited about it, however now that the seasons have progressed and more than just the top rated teams have bought weapons, those up near the top rating wise feel this sense of entitlement that no one else should have the arena weapons, and only they should.

News flash, you also have a full suit of merciless gladiator's gear most likely if you're 2000+ and the scrub that spent all that time at 1300 rating to earn a weapon has no pieces of the armor set.

Also with a rating system if you take one team out of the sub-1500's, it means another team has to leave the above 1500's (excluding teams that reform and therefore artificially inflate the point pool above 1500).

What if the cut off point for weapons was that only the #1 rated team in each bracket was allowed to use them?

Would you people at 1900 + rating feel the same way as you do currently?

Hell, that would mean that 10 people from 5v5, 6 people from 3v3 and 4 people from 2v2 in any given battlegroup were allowed the weapons, totaling 20 people overall. Isn't it likely that in any given battlegroup there are only around 20 people using tier 6 weapons? To put it equally with raiders then why not set the bar that high? If you're not the #1 rated arena team, clearly you're a scrub and don't deserve a weapon (hint, the reason you're able to go from 1500 to 2000+ at the new season's beginning is not solely because of a weapon, it's that full suit of season 1 gear/early season 2 purchases or those PvE epics. Try moving a character above 1900+ rating in nothing but blue honor gear, which is all that's available to people entering the arena late, and you will see it's just about impossible).

 

Crossbones

First off, next season when this change goes into effect, the season 1 gear is being moved to the honor vendor so you don't have to start in blues if you want to BG instead.

Second, #1 is a bit extreme, but I wouldn't mind some high bar I've never been to so far (like top ten 5v5 or something, there's more than 20 people per BG with T6 loot). I really enjoy challenge/competition and I already have all my gear this season (and got my title last one) so for the next few months I'm just playing for fun. I'd love some upper tier item that I can't yet achieve but might be able to if we kept improving up until the end.

 

Cwealm

I doubt that would be enough. If the title, the high ranking, the full set of gladiator and all the extra slots (throwing weapon)- not just access to it- actually having it, the ability to crush nubs at 1300 level in BG, the chance to play in the season end competitions, the superior experience (trust me- those on a 2100 team are having more fun than those on a 1300 team) and the prestige are not enough to make them happy, different weapons won't either. Reading the comments of some, restricting access is the only thing that will make them happy. For now.

Maybe blizzard can write a script so every time you ride by someone with a higher arena rating, it makes you dismount and salute them?

 

syeren

Arena at our level on my Battlegroup is anything but "fun," my battlegroup's top 20 is made up of 90% queue dodgers, who no matter what time you queue, you will beat them and they will just stop queuing for that night, we have 2 teams in the top 20 who we don't have a winning record against (who of course we have played against,) the rest simply stop queuing if they come across us and lose 1 game, which then leads to the horrible experience of farming 1900-2k rated teams which is extremely boring and just a horrible time sink.

My solution is somewhat simple, I don't think anyone on your faction should be able to buy anything the top rated players of your faction don't have yet, and if you're class representative doesn't exist / buy your weapon choice, I guess it's time to get good like those players have done.

 

Evalara

Whether they "deserve" (by any one individual's arbitrary standards of judgment) those items or not is irrelevant. What matters is what's best for the game, and I think it's become pretty clear that making those items inaccessible is bad for the game. Take a simple utilitarian look at it. Take away arena weapons from all but the best teams. You gain the satisfaction of your superiority over the "scrubs" - a miniscule, indirect source of utility. The "scrubs" lose the use of those weapons - a massive, direct source of utility. Queue times likely go up and it likely becomes more difficult to achieve a high rating. Which was greater, the total gain or the total loss? We can't know for sure but the intuition is clear: as a whole we are much worse off.

Or, to take another angle at it, would that guy with the 1300 rating "deserve" a set of shoulders? If yes, why does he "deserve" the shoulders and not a weapon? Would he "deserve" the weapon if it cost 6300 points instead of 3150? If so I'd say you just think the weapons are priced improperly. If not I'd say your objection is not about who deserves what at all, it's a fundamental disagreement with a points system that lets you buy what you want. I'd say if that's the case you'd prefer a a pure ladder system like pre-2.0 honor.

 

Andorien

Does this sound like a proposal that players will enjoy and find fun?

You've hit the nail on the head here.

 

Bogeywoman

Those of us who saw our friends burn out and quit because weapons were only purchasable by the "very best", and all the crazed system-gaming and 72-hour playsessions, asian farming, and drama that went on as a result, hope that Blizz would this time make the weapon limits achievable by pretty much anyone who put in a modicum of effort.

Limiting great gear so that you have to do more than, e.g., jump in a cave to get it, fine. Gear only the top N% can use? Hello high warlord grind.