The never-ending season is coming to an end November 20th, 2007.

Source: WoW Forums -> Season 3 Start Date



2.3 has also been slated for November 13. Hopefully, that one week of live servers and the final build of this patch will be enough time for people to adjust to and experiment with the new patch.



What major changes, if any, are expected in Season 3? New top matrices? Significant differences in strategy or gear choice? I know in our Battlegroup, Season 3 gear is a must-have, since only a tiny number of guilds have entered Hyjal/BT (2 in the whole Battlegroup?).



Personally, I have mixed feelings about this - I think dropping the significant changes in 2.3 and a new Arena season simultaneously could have less desirable results than we may anticipate.

This statement makes no sense. S3 is supposed to be equivalent to BT gear; if no one has BT gear, how is S3 gear a "requirement?" On a related note, I highly doubt the top rated teams will be playing for the remainder of the season.

I sincerely hope that the next one isn't so beaten into the dirt. As far as I'm concerned, the season died out a month ago.

Personally, I'm really appreciative of the one week advance we're recieving on the patch. From a Warrior's standpoint, I have to play around with about three~ different talent decisions since deep arms or mid-tier protection may be viable with the talent swapping.

Let's just hope that the Netherdrakes are an awesome shade of pink.

What do you think of AR/Prep rogue and Discipline priest in 2v2 and 3v3 next season? Looks fairly compelling.

I find it really odd that the last week of the season will be played with different mechanics than the entire rest of the season.

Is it just me or were Arena seasons supposed to go for 3 months? 6-19 is when S2 started, so we're having a full 5 months here for this one.

Well, you will have some time to tweak around your playstyle depending of your class, to farm badges from Zul'Aman/Karazhan for the PvP cloaks, I think this delay is rather positive.

Sadris, you really don't need to be negative every time you post.

Back to the topic in hand, I'm interested to see how the Hunter changes affect play. That and how many Rogues switch to Hemo due to all those changes as well.

Hopefully also the Resiliance bug that was supposed to be fixed in 2.2 will actually be fixed as well, eventhough it doesn't greatly affect me, it bothers me that they said it was fixed and it's obvious that it's still broken.

If Warlocks continue to dominate, I'm sure there'll be some sort of change to them but not something people expect, like a change to the mechanics of the Felhunter or something to that effect.

Overall I'm looking forward to the new season.

Locks are likely to be brought a little down next season I think since a lot of their strength in 2v2 (as opposed to higher brackets) were the 2 drains and those are being nerfed this patch. Then we have rogues possibly going sub builds which have always looked stronger for 2s but falling short for higher brackets. I think 2v2s will shake up a little next season. We'll see though.

I honestly think 5v5 will be roughly the same, maybe more druids, possibly more hunters, but the strong makeups don't look to be going anywhere.

As for the length of the season I haven't even noticed it. I didn't start arena until season 1 was almost over and I didn't even have a 5v5 until 1/3rd of this season, then didn't have my own 5v5 until another 1/3rd of the season was gone. So for me and my team the season actually feels rather short. Hell I'm not even in full arena gear. I'm missing my wand and I only have 2k points saved up.

That's actually quite interesting if they really give us one week to play with 2.3 builds.

Who ever is making the graphs about arena statistics should make one of the info right now and one just before the season switch. I would imagine a HUGE jump on all of the hunter pillars.

Top Five Relevant Changes for Season 3
(in my opinion)

1. Introduction of +Dmg to Healing Gear

I think this will change the dynamic of arenas over all brackets and rating levels more than any other change.

2. Mortal Effects and Channeled Drains

This has more capacity to shake up 2s team compositions and specs more than anything else. I'm not sure how many SL/SL warlocks are running 5s, but I think UA or full demonology is a more likely build. We'll see how the season plays out as far as SL/SL viability in 2s and 3s.

3. Hunter Utility

For my hunter friends, I hope this brings them back to high-level pvp viability. A few were already there, but not enough, sadly. If anything, the good hunters will have less of a struggle finding teams to play on, since team leaders might actually desire them now.

4. Personal Rating Requirements

I'm excited to see that scrubs are being prevented from having gladiator titles/best possible pvp gear/bragging rights simply because their friends let them lose 3 games a week. It may not prevent selling points, but at least I'll know my S3 shoulders/weapon are an accomplishment not everyone can make.

5. New, Useful Glove/4 Piece Bonuses

Let's be honest, some of them were really, really bad. Some are still more useful than others, but it's at least a step in the right direction.

---

I probably missed some. The introduction of pvp gear as badge rewards should make for some interesting pugs at least. ^_^

1.
To be honest, this change makes me mad already. I have a lot of "weekend-PvP-get-those-arena-items-with-10 games/week-at-maybe-1.5k rating" PvE only dudes in my guild and generally on my server.

That they didn't put a viable healing PvP cloak into s2 was bad enough. Now all those dudes who do only PvE all day will have access to PvP gear that easily, because they run just for stupidness 3+ heroics a day and have heroic marks for the next 2 centuries.

I have nothing agains PvE, but forcing someone who just wants to PvP into that many heroic instances is madness.

2.
That they reverted silence diminish returns is also generally seen a paladin nerf. Yes it was a buff for healers in general, but it affects pallys by far the most in arena.

3.
+Dmg on healing is nice, but it won't have such an impact for arena, i think. It's already a mana war most of the time, where you surely don't want to waste it on manainefficient spells as a healer.
Sure, this will be some more interessting for priests/shamans and maybe even druids, but far less for paladins.

If you think you are going to see a huge jump in hunters Im afraid you are going to be really disappointed. Hunters will still be crap in 2's especially with buffs to rogues. They can be easily bursted down in 3's and in 5's they are easily CC'd. They will do better thats for sure but they didnt get anything that makes them unique and wanted vs other classes. Arcane shot dispell is nice but priests and shaman do it better plus both classes provide greater synergy. They do good dmg so do mages and locks and hunters dont have the survivability or the CC that those classes do.

As long as 2 healer teams as built around warriors and 4 dps are built around killing warriors I dont see hunters becoming a huge factor. They will be annoying in BG's but will just be a dmg sponge otherwise.

So you would rather do hours and hours of battlegrounds over running a heroic or ZA? If you are grinding honor fast you probably have a pre made if you can get a 10-15 man premade you should be able to get 5 people to run an instance. Plus even if you hate people you should be able to run heroics with your 5v5 team on days you are not doing arena and grinding honor. The people that this hurts are people that just AFK in BG's and get free honor.

The reverted silence change is not a nerf it never went live.

How many Badges will the season 3 pvp cloak be? I've been looking and I can't find this information.

AFAIK 60 Badges.

Like i said: "That they reverted silence diminish returns is...."

It WAS a buff, that never went live, but it was a buff nevertheless, though. :P

And you can't try to tell me that grinding 30k honor on 2 days AV weekend takes more time or is more boring than several days of heroics.


It will be 60 badges.

It will be with the AV changes better get that easy honor while you can.

No you cant complain about buffs you didnt get that dont go live because they were never in the game.

It's just a cloak, they still have to PVP for the weapons, gladiator set and honour items. I can understand your frustrations not wanting to do heroics but it's not like people who don't PVP much can avoid the honour/arena grind.

@Ralask

This is a discussion about 2.3. And this change was part of 2.3. I can "complain" all day out if i want about this specific change not going live, because from my point of view it was viable and it should have gone live.


It's just a cloak, yes. But that's not the point. It's a PvP cloak for doing PvE. That's what i don't like about it, especially since there is really no other option than still using the VERY old PvP cloak.

The +damage on healers is a very big deal for Paladins, actually. Look forward to destroying felhunters in a jiffy come next patch. The anti Priest/Pal/War class is Warlocks. Look for that group comp to get quite a bit stronger. They'll definitely be doing extremely well due to the fact that everyone and their brother is gonna be drooling over using a rogue next patch. Not to mention the difference in training Priests in dual healer setups is going to be RIDICULOUSLY difficult next patch. +30% healing is just absurd, seriously.

Anyway. I think everyone is desperately looking forward to this. S2 was way too damn long.

Blizzard put something in late but decided it wasn't tested thoroughly enough so pulled it, in doing so they acknowledged the problem exists and are working on a solution. Sure, you can complain all you want, but of all the positive things in this patch you sure seem to be knitpicking at two negatives that are borderline. 1) A "buff" that never existed, and 2) the fact that to get a cloak upgrade you need to run a bit of PvE.

Really, I guess it all comes down to how people view the game and whether they want to spin everything towards the negative or the positive.