Torth

I personally think a static required rating for the purchase of arena weapons will have a long term negative effect on the competitive nature of the Arena scene.

1. Competition

Personally viewing the arena as a competitive game - a view which I assume Blizzard shares due to its tournaments and monetary prizes - I see no glory or benefit in beating a poorly geared team. Being in full Merciless Gladiator Epics and destroying a 0 resilience priest isn't competitive. A good team will eventually get gear, a bad team which has the gear is still a bad team and will get beaten by good teams. At the top end of arena play the teams are mostly identically geared anyway. With the few exceptions to slots not provided by the pvp system (2nd Ring, 2nd Trinket, etc) everyone is wearing Merciless Gladiator, Veteran's Garb, & a T3 BS weapon. At that point it's simply a skill and class composition issue because everyone is geared identically. When playing chess you can't really be considered better than someone if your opponent started the game without rooks. Let the terrible teams save up for 5 months for 1 item. It will give them less excuses for the loss.

2. Battlegroup

I'll be blunt about it; not all battlegroups have the same degree of competitive play. 1900 in certain battlegroups isn't as easy to achieve as it is in others. I'm not naming names but you know who you are.

3. Classes

Classes, due to mechanics and gearing methods, are not all equally hampered by this change. A mage without a great weapon can still do his job. A rogue or warrior without a good weapon is useless. Our mage for the longest time used a Greatsword of Horrid Dreams, if our warrior had been runnning around with a Sonic Spear it would have been much more painful.

4. Incentive to Play

The arena is a pyramid like hierarchy. There are a lot of teams at the bottom that feed the small number of teams at the top. You can't get 2000 without 50 teams at 1500 feeding you those points. A static point requirement creates a a block at 1900. Teams over 1900 have an advantage over those under. This causes less people under 1900 to play. In turn this will reduce the point pool available to those over 1900 perhaps even reducing them under 1900. The irony. A good competitive arena should strive to have fewer barriers for entry. You never where talent might pop up. If a 7 foot Chinese guy from the middle of nowhere that doens't speak English can become a millionaire basketball star, that kind of situation is good. It encourages more people to play thinking with skill (or stilts) that "I can become a superstar " instead of throwing barriers in their path.

Personally the 1900 isn't going to be an issue for me. I can hit that number. But I don't see it as being a good long term idea. In terms of maintaining a competitive arena the idea that you don't deserve gear because you haven't done XYZ doens't quite jive. It makes more sense in a pve environment where the obstacles are static instead of dynamic. Finally. if pvp weapons affecting pve situation is the issue (Hello, Merciless Gladiator's War Staff) then I see that as an itemization issue. Perhaps they should create or focus more distiguishable stats between pve and pvp. Kinda like resilience. If the fact that Kael'thas' Nexus Key staff has a ton of stamina and no spell hit while the Merciless Gladiator's Staff has +spl hit is an issue then they should fix that.

 

Randor

Seems to me that Blizz could just up the amount of honor needed for S3 gear/weapons. Change the cap to 10k and double the amount needed. The top teams could still get what they needed since they'd be rolling in points and more casual players could still have access to the gear/weapons (some of it for pve) but just have to spend more time getting it done, or they could opt for the more affordable s2 gear.

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Zyrxil

I think that would still run into the problem of reducing incentive to play. I would say the majority of non-top teams are just players earning points to purchase a Weapon for PvE usage. They get the weapon, and they keep playing, becoming the rungs on the ladder for the top teams to get to their ratings. Now increase the price so that Weapons take an inordinate amount of time to save up for, and suddenly people that have more PvE weapon options may just stop playing. Maybe not a huge amount, but I think there would be a noticeable effect.

 

◊ Praetorian

It really wouldn't be hard to just make it the top x% (let's say top 20%?) of the BG, instead of some fixed number like 1900, if you want to account for the different levels of arena activity across battlegroups. They never said "it will definitely be 1900." They just threw out a ballpark number, which I interpreted as just them saying "we want you to have to be good at PvP to earn these weapons -- not fantastic, not the top 1% or anything, but definitely solidly above average" which is what "1900" means to me.

 

Helot

I'm glad thier re-tuning the arena's slightly, to favor PvPers rather then casuals.

Currently, joe schmo, who just started and leveled his character, can spend a few weeks in the Arena's and get an insta-upgrade to a weapon that (likely) is far beyond anything he would be able to obtain normally. Which means that now as he's playing with pug group xyz, he's pulling aggro cause of his 'leet' dps, all from one/two weapons that he barely put the time into. There's no incentive to go find the best upgrade you can possibly get, just arena for it. Gear? just arena for it! It's not perfect, but it's got more going for it then blues and greens.

With a weapon revamp, Joe will have to find a good team, and spend quality time earning a weapon. Just like the Hardcore Raiders, who spend quality time with a good team, beating the edge content. They don't walk into an instance, wipe to one boss 50 times, and end up fully geared for the rest of the instance, so why should it be that way for PvP?

The downside, of course, is that casual raiders, who are looking for strictly weapon upgrades (likely possessing adequate gear for thier level of raiding, but want more DPS) now have to put more effort into getting extremely good gear. Face it, if your a rogue, once you get the S2 weapons, you can stop looking till BT/Hyjal. There's nothing that matches the pure DPS of the weapons. The only key difference is a stat distribution, and PvP S2 gear ain't horrid. Bit o' resilience, bit o' stam, but it's got the Crit we all love, and the AP we all die for.

Chaith logs on
<zyl> Actually, I do like my paladin. He's fun to play, but don't tell Chaith.
<chaith> Looks like i logged in at the right time
<zyl> ....
<zyl> I pressed enter half a second after you logged on.

 

Calantus

It would take around 2 months for a joe schmo to get a weapon (or 2 weapons or weapon+offhand). And that's just a weapon, which wipes out all of his points and he has to start again to get armor. In 2-3 more weeks he will get a shoulder or glove, or he can wait a month for a different piece of armor.

Crap players getting easy epics fast is a myth that really needs to die.

 

Visper

Paladins and warriors gain the most from wearing pve gear as classes that don't need to stack up resilience as much they have more room to increase their regen and healing output or their damage. As a warrior with 4 piece season 2 and stormherald their are warriors that just seem to totally out gear me

 

Safid

I'm a bit confused as to why they're thinking of making this change.

Joe Casual gets onto an arena team and manages to make a 1500 rating a week. That's a highball estimate. I know Joe Casual. JC is in my guild, at the office, etc. They're lucky to pull 1350-1400. But let's just say that JC can score 400 points a week. It takes him 9 weeks to get a 2h or a 1h+oh weapon. That's nine weeks of him getting his ass kicked over and over, and now he has a weapon.

What's the problem? He's not going to dominate anyone in PVP suddenly. He has no resilience. He has no stamina. He's JC and he doesn't know how to really PVP. All he does is hit a bit harder, and he put in the time to get the weapon(s). So it can't be a PVP issue.

I can only conclude that it's a PVE issue, that they don't want physical DPS classes to have access to t5 weapons when they may be just running KZ and Gruul. That's always going to happen so long as these weapons are available *somehow*. All putting a rating requirement to buy is going to do is encourage people to sell ratings. It will mean that I can simply get my personal team up to that ranking and invite JC in my guild for a week / 3 games / whatever so he can get his weapon, then kick him. Meanwhile the solid PVPer who can't get his rating above 1743 is denied access to weapons unless he does the same, essentially circumventing the system. It means that some lucky people who 'dont deserve' the t5 weapons can get them and some can't. You're still going to have guys like me who's guild can't down Gruul running around with t5 (and t6 eventually) weapons. So what's the point? Why is it OK for me to have them but not JC?

JC that does *not* have access to a supportive guild or a for-sale high rated team is just screwed. He can't advance his character the way he wants to. And as noted previously, for physical based classes, this is huge. To magic classes the weapon is essentially another piece of armor. To a warrior or a hunter or a rogue, it's the single biggest increase to your effectiveness you can get. A starting off mage can grab two pieces of armor instead of his staff and be more or less as effective. Not so with a starting off rogue or warrior.

In other words, I see few positives to the idea and tons of negatives. And no, it won't affect me personally, assuming 3v3 rating counts (I'm a bit crap at 5v5)

 

Tower

I'm not sure he was mostly commenting about the speed of attaining such a weapon, but for a casual player to obtain a 98dps weapon in raiding is pretty much not going to happen. Think he has to kill Vashj at a minimum? Its the speed and difficulty, the speed at which he would obtain such a weapon is unchanged with the proposed rating req, but the difficulty to use it is.

 

tristantio

I think the main issue with weapons is that they give the largest percent increase in effectiveness for any given slot in PvE (and PvP), so they want to limit the fact that players are able to arena for a few weeks and get amazing weapon upgrades.

I have paladin and warrior alts, and my warrior just got the merciless gladiator's mainhand axe and tomorrow will have the offhand (and my paladin and warrior are on an extremely crappy 1300'ish rated 5v5 to farm points while my warlock plays more competitively on a 5v5).

Considering the best weapons I could have easily attained for an alt before were around 71 dps (the standard rare level 70 weapon), I'm now going to have two 97 dps one handers. Since my guild is still doing karazhan/gruul's lair, that means my alt fury warrior is going to have better weapons than any of the PvE raiding warriors in guild.

 

Kiklion

I do believe people are underestimating Joe Casual. My friend Kahmos run's a Pug 5v5 every monday for people who haven't gotten arena points for the week. His team usually gets to 1650 rating, best ever was at 1713. Now I know sometimes he does get good players who don't have a consistent team, but with picking up pretty much any random 4 people and being above 1600 has gotten him decent points. The only thing they try is to run 2 healers 3 dps. When they went Pally + 4 dps they lost 8/10 games and swore not to do that again.

 

Suesse

I really thought I understood the arena system. I thought they intended to give these amazing weapons to everyone to level the playing field of PvE vs PvP. Did they change their mind? or did I misunderstand?

It has been nice in TBC that weapon drops haven't caused drama or bad feelings (because half of our raiders have put in the time to obtain PvP weapons). It has removed many of the problems with poor drop rates. Back in the original wow, my guild didn't see Chromaggus's shield until we were several bosses into Naxx -- I think it made a slight but noticeable difference in our progression (perhaps this is just because I'm a warrior). Now, I go pick up a gladiator shield since we've had bad luck at Gruul.

I honestly thought we would see a parallel to last year, where pvp gear suddenly became very easy to get (in preparation for the next expansion). It's strange that it is going the other way.

 

tristantio

On my 5v5 team I use for my paladin/warrior to farm points I basically invite 4 randoms into the team every Monday night and play 10 games. Due to my main playing somewhat casually anyways I don't really focus much at all on my alt team (finding 4 people to consistently play with them at a certain time of day is a hassle too since most nights I'm playing my main), and some Monday nights will play with 4 rogues as partners.

Despite this, it really hasn't taken that long to get the mainhand and offhand merciless gladiator's weapons for my warrior. Hell, my paladin has 2 pieces of s1 gladiator gear and over 3000 arena points banked that I was saving for a season 3 weapon for her.

 

Safid

Without access to these weapons, yes, a rogue in t6 PVE gear is going to crush one in basic honor gear + some merciless gladiator's, which I too thought Blizzard was trying to prevent.

 

Andorien

My realm has about 300 5v5 teams. 6 of them are above 1900. So, "1900" means something different to me I wonder how many of the other hundreds would stop playing, either because they wanted a weapon, or, on a more emotional/visceral level, because it would feel like the arena was "not for them" any more. Then I wonder what that would do to wait times, and then to the ratings of people who didn't quit, as Torth explains.

If it's the top %, all the same stuff applies. I'm really very worried about this proposal (and I usually hate the chicken-little stuff about proposed future changes) and I feel like it has a very real chance to do a huge amount of damage to the arena system.

 

tristantio

It really wouldn't be that difficult to just make it so only people of, say, Challenger arena ranking and above were allowed to use the arena weapons.

It dissuades the 1300 rated farm team from getting the weapon upgrades while still allowing them to get the armor upgrades (which are great for PvP, bad for PvE, unlike the weapons which are good for both).

Anyone who does even a half assed attempt at arena can hold a Challenger rating (wasn't that like the top 40% of teams or something?) and it wouldn't be as difficult as holding a 1900 rating.

 

doogless

The problem is how good the PvP weapons are in PvE, not how easy they are to acquire. Person A is a "casual" player, who has a crap arena team and farms points each week so he can buy a weapon. Person B is a serious PvPer who has almost a full Merciless set, weapon included. Both of them step into Karazhan, or Gruul's Lair, or the beginning of SSC/TK, where their respective guilds are progressing. Why in the hell does Person B deserve to use a PvP weapon in a PvE environment more than Person A? Because he "earned" it? It's a PvP weapon that blows away a PvE drop for a guild progressed to that stage of the game, regardless of how skilled the wielder is in PvP.

 

DecimusGarona

Just because the season 3 weapons will require a rating to use, doesn't stop Joe Casual from farming for the Season 2 weapons, which are still way above and beyond anything that he could have gotten from PvE. If Joe doesn't feel like spending 1 hour per week in the arena either, he can even go get S1 gear and weapons from Battlegrounds where time >>> skill.

I would still rather see some sort of percentage requirement rather than a strict rating cutoff, especially since for the first few weeks of the season a 1900 rating is pretty much the top 1% of the bracket. Restricting the weapons to top 20% or top 30% would be far more reasonable.

 

Yaltus

I think the people who have commented that it's the "taking the PvP weapon to PvE" issue, and not any inherent concern about giving casual PvPers the weapons for arena itself, are on the right track. Right now, Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade is the third best caster main hand, and since the Archimonde drop is a sword, Shadow Priests only have one other option. Lots of raiders are unhappy about the PvP gear, not because they have some desire to instagib noobs with their Black Temple gear, but because they don't want to feel compelled to do arena matches to raid competitively. If the weapons have a rating requirement, then you really up the level of dedication required to get them, hopefully absolving serious raiders from having to get them. Certainly, some people do both, but I for one am horrendous at PvP, and would never consider a rating required weapon.

Of course, if the arena weapons didn't have things like spell hit (a PvE stat if there ever was one), it might not be this bad.

Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.

 

Rephaim

Restricting the weapon will eventually make it much harder for newer teams to catch up with older teams because they will have to beat people with the weapons to obtain it themselves.

The real key should be making a new stat like Feral Attack Power, that only applies in PvP, and then just making the weapons normal DPS 2 tiers down.

 

Suesse

Yes, these pvp weapons help guilds who have not downed vashj yet. It's true. Is this hurting the game? A guild who has been raiding since the start of the expansion and doesn't have Vashj down yet probably will never finish the Black Temple, not to mention whichever new raid they're releasing. Does it hurt to speed up these people?

I don't think the availability of merciless gladiator weapon to a guild like mine makes us think we're as skilled as the guilds who finished SSC/TK months ago.

 

Kardinalen

I personally see it as a blessing, not a problem. Arena PvP offers quality weapons for just about every class and specc there is and after spending X time in the arenas you are guaranteed to get one. 2 Ashkandis, 2 Lok'Amirs and 2 Chromatically Tempered Swords in about 10 months of killing Chromaggus and Nefarian in vanilla WoW - does anyone actually want to go back to that?

 

tucciim

Wouldn't the simplest solution be to make arena gear only wearable in arena's, bg's, ..?

To throw out some flamable material, why not just give a full set of arena gear when you enter the arena. JC (joe casual) may be the best pvp'er ever but just has time to play 1 day a week due to other obligations. Makes it hard for him to make friends and other good players to get on a good arena team. He's forever left slugging it out in the trenches of 1400's. He'll always be far behind the curve in getting the gladiator gear.

I guess I just think pvp should be pvp not gear vs gear. Level the playing field if you want to see skill vs skill and not which team has the better gear.

 

Braque

How long till we see Resilience Penetration I wonder?

Said half in jest, but makes perfect sense really, it'd be a bit like spell penetration, acting as +crit on targets with Resilience, but not doing anything on targets with none. Leave crit rating on the armour, but replace crit rating on weapons with Resilience Penetration. Bingo, weapons with a stat even more worthless in PvE than Resilience, but just as valuable in arena PvP as crit. Dps scaling of PvP vs PvE itemisation solved. Next up: Healers.

 

Suesse

This game is largely about character progression that is why people want to play in their gear (not premade gear).