Grundar

It is hard for me to believe someone would seriously argue that one class being so much harder to play and so much harder for the team mate can also argue it is not gear related too.

This is the truth. I just got my first S3 piece, no S2, my priest friend has ZERO resil and can only play once a week. Our hunter had the first S3 piece a couple of weeks ago. The priest got his PVP trinket this week and our druid still does not have one.

It is not uncommon for us to play a team that completely destroys us, not skill based. A 4/5 rogue just removes any one of us. Period. And we have checked.

If you are saying it is all skill then look at your gear. There is no reason to tag us as buying points, it should be obvious many don't so it is not a response at all to do that. It is an insult. We play for fun and fun is gone when you have no chance.

What Talgog said is much more eloquent than what I could say. The doors opening and a PMR with shoulders/weapons etc are not outgearing me persay, but the fact they have all that and are in the late 1700 to early 1800 followed by the complete lockout skill wise is what bothers me, then we lose the match and 19 points goes to them. Can anyone truthfully say this system is fair?

 

Locrius

Gear shouldn't be an issue, the honor system is still in place to close the gear gap. The average bad can still have 4/5 s3 and the rest s2.

Also, relating to Woeye's post. That is a fairer system then what is currently in place, yes. However, it has the potential to be exploited, as many teams do significantly better at certain ratings. An example might be a warlock/druid powering through to 2.2k, then subbing a warrior in, skipping the large amounts of double dps teams that (at least in my BG) swamp the lower ranges. This is just one example, the same can be done for druid/rogue to power a team past the point where paladins are common, and then subbing in a second rogue at upper ratings.

It would also allow say, a 1900 player, farm 2k a little easier by exploiting the PR gap. It'd be pretty simple to play games with someone at 1500 PR, get them to 1600, have them drop it in another 2v2, then repeat. It'd be limited points, yes, but eventually, they could get to 2k.

 

mofidik

To come back to the point of "ratings should be 100% skill based".

While we'd all like some kind of supreme entity to decide who is skilled, this is simply not feasable. Skill is far too subjective ( i ms crit 4 2k so i pwn) and situational, there's simply no way you can really measure who was infact the most skilled, granted that it was a reasonably close match.

Grundar, I could make claims like yours aswel. For example, I farmed for all the honour pieces in every season, and still people like you with fresh 70s can farm for one season's set and have the same honour gear I have. It'd defenitaly be more fair if I could sell my old honour gear for some return so I don't have to farm as much for the next season. Nobody cries about this is because we farm our gear and have fun with it, you being too lazy or too impatient apparantly is plenty reason, you think?

"Hey, that guy there in full S3 worked for his stuff. I want that for no effort or it's no fun. But it sure was for him when he had to farm just like me." Doesn't that even sound dumb to anyone?

 

rogueftw

This is such a great system. I think Blizzard should implement this in pve as well. If x percent of loot has dropped from a certain boss and are in circulation, then that loot is locked out permanently. You want the loot, bring more skills next time.

 

Nightfury

As an MMO, a lot of this game is about gear. Yes, in arena, gear can cause a lot of losses. However, you can also beat teams that outgear you with skill.

Currently, the best setup for me as a Shadowstep rogue is probably 4/5 vengeful with 4 pc t6, sporting warglaives and all that jazz. Notice that a lot of those items come from PvE. The question a lot of PvPers will pose, is why should PvE gear take a time intensive investment, where you need to learn the fights, so up on time, coordinate with 24 other people to get gear, or just go 3-7 or 0-10 to get gear of roughly the same quality. I've also heard a lot of PvErs talking about that with weapons, that getting s3 weapons easily is wrong, as they are as good as or better than a lot of the pre-warglaive items.

What a lot of people reply with is the fact that PvE is generally static. You never enter a heroic and find out that Illidan is farming gold by killing 5 mans. This is true. But at the same time, my friend recently transferred off server to raid sunwell. If I want to raid sunwell, I have to build up the gear... What if I dont want to run kara, heroics, find groups, and build up badges and get loot, to improve, to get better loot? Well... the top guilds laugh and say too bad. I can't get the best PvP gear for myself, coming off PvE drops, and rogues with warglaives and 4 pc t6 will almost always kill my partner, or me, faster then I can kill their partner.

So this brings me to the personal rating requirements: I do agree with them. I hope to see s4 weapons, but I dont know if I will be able to. However, just like in PvE, there is a pretty clear progression chart. BG for s2 and honor for off-set, either the s3 or s4 offsets. Arena in order to get personal rating and points. Buy what s4 you can, and complement it with s2 and/or s3 gear. As blizzard put it in the patch notes, you will have to work, improve, and get better.

While at the very beginning of s4, 1800s for s3 weapons if you don't already have them can be very hard. However, I'll argue that PvE is pretty much the same. Only the best are in Sunwell at this point. There are still guild who consider TK progression, and there are a lot of guilds who can do all/most of BT but not too much in Sunwell. Over time, ratings inflate, bosses get nerfed and attuments get removed.

If you cannot progress through building up gear, there are two possible problems: One is you aren't a great player. This happens in PvE too, trust me. The other is: yes, it is possible to be farmed by higher rated players. However, Blizzard is working to make this increasingly unattractive to higher rated players//teams, and I have a feeling gear is secretly being factored in somewhere. We added a new player to our team, and queuing at his 1500 rating we faced nothing but other full//mostly s3 teams.

All in all, if you want a 100% skill based game... good luck. It probably will not be this one. Secondly, if you want all the gear handed to you, find one of those private server things, or play on test realms with character copies.

I know someone who is killing Felmyst and other bosses, but doesnt know how to play at all. He plays on one of those private server things, with full t6 handed out, and you can even get some sort of custom teir 9 thingies the owner designed if you want to 5 man Illidan or whatever.

 

Mordinm

Of course not. The problem is none of the proposed changes make the system "fair". All they do is change who is getting raw end of the deal. Now 80% of the people get screwed 10% of the time. Most people propose screwing 10% of the people 100% of time by forcing "2k+" people who are on 1800 teams to play 2k+ teams.

 

oldmandennis

More of the endless bandages and complications from having both personal and team ratings.

Just stick a fork in team ratings, they are done. Do everything with personal ratings, and base all matchups on average personal ratings. If you are more then 100 or 150 above average team rating, your gains round down to 0. Done. No more exploits, no more team selling... the only thing you can do is hire yourself as a mercenary to raise somebody's rating.

 

Darlal

I really feel like this is the blisteringly obvious. The other large advantage (in my opinion) of having 1 personal rating per bracket that doesn't reset is that it removes rating inflation. In a 1-rating-per-character system the total BG rating is limited by the number of players, not the number of teams (which can constantly be re-created). The beauty of this system is that it actually takes care of the edge cases fairly well.

For example: 2000 rated Druid joins up with a 1500 rated Warrior.

Either:
(a) The warrior is a fresh 70 with tons of pvp skill, but no pvp gear beyond BG gear (or else their rating wouldn't be at 1500)

or (b) The warrior is a seasoned lvl 70 with many arena games, but a true rating of 1500.

In either case, playing 1750 rated opponents isn't unfair at all. In case (a) the 1750 team has a shot at an under-geared warrior, and in case (b) the 1750 team has a shot as the warrior's skills clearly aren't up to snuff. Nonetheless, if the 2000 rated druid manages to teach the warrior/carry him to victory, they both deserve the points they get.

Another big advantage of this system is that you can't run into extremely geared players (say with shoulders) below 1700-1800 bracket unless their partner has a 1300 rating. To be honest, in the 1700-1800 bracket you should be strong enough to compete with a 2000+ player playing with a 1500- player (either due to lack of skill or lack of gear). This also makes point/rating buying/selling much more difficult and much more risky for the buyer/seller.

 

Whistles

I've been wondering why my personal ratings were dropping below my team ratings. PR has dropped 15 points below my team rating in one week of playing since 2.4.2 despite the fact that no one besides me and my partner have ever queued in our 2v2. (1468 and 1453)

This is going to be really annoying when I can't buy gear in Season 4 because my PR is too low despite the fact that our team rating gets a little better every week.

 

Darlal

You played against a team whose rating was more than 150 over one of the players. Thus your team gained points based on their team rating, but your personal rating changed based on the average of their ratings. I really think this new system is excessively confusing and just a bit dumb.

 

Whistles

Didn't make it really clear that I realized that after reading the blue "clarification" linked above. Specifically this.

I guess I can look forward to my PR sinking further and further below my TR as I continue playing. Hopefully they'll have a better system before Season 4 and the influx of new PR requirements on gear. They've got a full arena reset on the start of Season 4 to fix anything they've messed up in the past, it'd be pretty awful to still have a broken system after that opportunity.

 

Grundar

This is not responsive at all...it just changes the insult.

"Hey, that guy there in full S3 worked for his stuff. I want that for no effort or it's no fun. But it sure was for him when he had to farm just like me." Doesn't that even sound dumb to anyone?


Nobody is saying you are not entitled to the gear you got, the point is we are having to go against people like this and it is not a question of skill. It is totally a question of gear.

It is not an answer to say give up your life and farm all day, that is not the point. If it is about skill then it is about skill, this is not. We have a 5 team and 2 on it did not have any PVP trinket. that is a fact. So why are we getting matched with 4/5s?

What progress can there be when others can 'fix' their way down and win a game soley on gear?

That is the question and the answer is (1) it is not fun becuase skill matters not at all and (2)

 

Locrius

4/5 s3 and s2 weapons, as well as full s2 with honor, are still available to you. If you're determined not to improve your gear outside of arena, of course you won't get far. To be honest, it's people like that this system is determined to shaft, and for good reason. Are you really complaining that you can't get a full set of PvP gear that is "Sunwell Equivalent" without farming 15k honor for a trinket? That's just pathetic. If you want amazing PvP gear, then work for it.

 

Saraya

You can keep your TR while resetting your PR(leave and rejoin a team), but the opposite does not hold true(if you get some guys to tank your TR, they're still feeding an equal amount of PR into the system). PR deflation is just a symptom of this problem. I totally agree with just removing TR completely since having two ratings with inconsistent calculations really just bogs the whole system down.

The only bandaid solution I have:
1) At the end of the arena match, anyone using gear with rating requiements would temporarily be boosted to that PR for rating calculation purposes: ie. in a 1700 rated match, someone with S3 shoulders would be boosted to 2000 PR even though their current PR might be 1500.
2) The other team gains/loses PR based on this new rating

This is just a bandaid solution of course, and would cause some PR inflation, but it'd stop people from grieifing other people's PR down at least. And getting the point recognition that you beat/lost to someone with gear you don't have access to would be nice too.

 

Taja

How can you even be surprised at this? The season has been going on for ages and ages so even with a 400/500 points a week income you should have full gear by now apart from shoulders and weapon. Theres a bunch of weapons alternatives available trough raiding/s1 honor gear/badges. If your lucky you snagged s2 shoulders last season or still walking around with s1. You could have farmed all the veterans gear by now or buy s2 with badges. Or even have s2 all the way from PVE tokens. People who have been playing since s2 regardless of skill should have full gear by now if they have not skipped a week of points. If you are in such terrible pvp gear you simply don't belong in the 1500 bracket, you probably balance out in the 1300 bracket where you can still meet people with hardly pvp gear. Stop thinking its 2 seasons ago when only a selective group of people had full gear.

 

rogueftw

This is the biggest problem for me and my teammate right now. Currently, we've grind out all the honor gear for our new toons (warlock & rogue) and we just can't get pass 1500. Seems everybody above that severely out gears us to the point that skill becomes such a small factor. We're not new to WoW, we're veteran players that just started playing new toons again 3 months ago. In season 1, we played at the high 1900's as warlock & shammy. I consider us to be above average players. Gear upgrades from pve is not an option as we don't pve because of real life conflicts (can't sit down to play for more than 2 hours usually). Without rating requirements, we could be competitive again in 2-4 months. With the rating requirements, it seems impossible now. I'm still holding onto hope that with the season 2 gear, the gap will narrow enough for us to compete.

 

Krellian

What many fail to consider is that gear is a means to an end. For example, two players have equal gear, one has a 1450 rating, the other has 2.2k rating. Gear clearly did not matter. The low rated player is happy, he has gear to play with, the high rated player is happy, he has ratings most cannot achieve, blizzard is happy because both pay a monthly fee.

Stop worrying about good/bad players with gear, your rating is your 'bragging' right. (or title). Despite any gear a bad player has/bought, he can never legitamaly achieve your rank. Just like from the PVE side of it, blizzard has implemented certain titles/rings etc. that only actually good guilds can get, despite any guild can get into that content. It keeps both sides happy and blizzard wealthy.

 

mofidik

While it's easilly justifyable to a high rated player that a worse player will never achieve the actual ratings, it almost entirely defeats the progression/achievement curve an MMO should have to make it interesting. Even if low rated people are apparantly easilly entertained (in your example), I think many people who did work for weapons/shoulders (I know I did) think it's a succesful system that make your achievements more "benchmarked", so to say.

You can't really deny that "having the shoulders" became a thing on it's own and is worth keeping. Do you need the wear shiny gear to have people know you're a good player? No, not the people you care about. But it's largely a social game, and wearing Gucci just beats wearing second hand clothing. More of a feeling I guess.

 

rogueftw

This is such a wonderful concept and I'm not sure why Blizzard moved away from this. They already had titles and mounts to distinguish players. Also, the way points are awarded, good players gets to show off their epics way before the average toons.

 

Krellian

For this specific reason PR requirements should be adjusted based on bracket. For example shoulders could be 2PR 2.2K, 3PR2k, 5PR1,850 (just example numbers). This would achieve two things, 1) compensate for class balance, paladins and mages are very weak in 2's, but very strong in 5's, reverse for druids and warlocks, and 2) compensate for the difficulty of forming/maintaining a 5's team vs a 2's team. Most people I know 2's for rating and 5's for points, that should not exist.

 

Krellian

Easily fixed. Once Q'd you cannot change gear AND you cannot Q with an empty gear slot. If you Q with greens you have to fight with those items.

 

Krellian

The question I have is WHO CARES? The bad player who lost his way to good gear is still..a bad player. Just like a PVE player who died his way to good gear (through badges) still can't clear SSC. Rating and boss kills, regardless of good or bad gear, actually do take skill. That is something that cannot be bought. That is your reward, gear is just keeps bad players paying, er playing.

 

mofidik

Gear is not and should not just be there to keep bads playing, it should also be something to achieve for good players. So yea, lots of people actually care. It's just entirely against what MMO's are about (character building) so I can't really see why you don't just play FPS's/RTS's or something, if you're so fond of starting maxed and staying there.

Blizzard just pampered ultra casuals with free gear too much, it genually tricked some of them (you?) into thinking free gear would actually make things more fun, and now people are even saying the current system is too much work. Well have some news, you're playing a character progression game that's already really carebear in its league, so if you want to be succesful that's what you got to do. Is that unfair? No, people that really want to compete just farm that gear, so you won't get matched against people who just spend more time on their gear (bar the 2 T6 rogues and paladins per battlegroup) at the top level.