On the PTR, your PvP gear requires a certain Arena rating to work. Assuming this is going to go live, I can hear the cacophony from my computer :) I suspect this is Blizzard’s answer to the concept of ‘welfare epics’ and is also a way to stop solo’ers from getting epic gear without having to really work within a group. I know BG’s are cooperative in a sense, but most people just seem to do their own thing in a BG. That won’t be possible in Arena (if you want a rating over 1000 at least) so in order to progress you’ll need to play nicely with others :).
What do you guys think? I don’t PvP but was thinking about it, but with the twitch aspect of Arena, there’s no way I’ll be doing PvP now. Also, for those who are on the PTR, can you give us some more details about this?
I think people cry way, way too much about “welfare epics”. And frankly, I don’t see what the difference is between someone who grinds out arena points on a 1300-1500 team and someone else who grinds out crafting mats for tradeskill epics.
Perhaps Blizzard feels the barrier to obtain Arena epics is simply too low for the quality of the gear. Seemed to me everyone had top season gear all the time. Perhaps Blizzard is trying to make it mean something a little more. I’m pretty sure this is how it was when the Arena gear first came out and it was also the way the honour gear (eg. high warlord) worked for a while. They’ll probably leave it like this for a while and then change it after the hardcore don’t think it’s as special anymore or perhaps last season’s gear won’t have such requirements, only the current season.
PvP grind sucks, and people think because they arena, they are entitled to better gear than those that choose to go solo in battle grounds. Truth be told, both areas of PvP grind suck, but if you can only get old arena stuff in BGS, then the high level arena gear shouldn’t be allowed to be equipped in BGS. Hell, if you are in full S2, and see a full S4 coming at you, you are pretty much as good as dead.
That’d be a decent way to get a little balance going in the BGS, either that, or make S4 equivalent that can be bought with badges and honor, maybe a little less stats, but close. THen you wouldn’t have a premade of S4 folks steamroll the map.
A lot of players have simply given up on the arena due to the fact that they don’t find it fun getting pounded 10 times for a meager amount of points. Unfortunately, those lower-tier players are needed to keep the arena ladder functioning properly, since somebody has to have a shitty rating in an ELO system. Instead of finding a creative or rewarding way of luring players back into the arena, Blizzard is simply requiring them to come back in because they can’t get battleground PvP gear otherwise.
In a nutshell, this is a stupid band-aid by Blizzard.
I have a feeling that they are shooting themselves in the foot with this move, as it should be obvious by now that a pretty big part of the player base wants no part of the 30 minute crowd-control shitfests that pass for WoW eSport.
I ran a 2100 rated 3s team before my last hiatus from the game, and I’m running 2s rogue/druid now. Average game length with our setup is about 20 minutes. Druid/Rogue mirror matches last until someone DCs, even if there is a significant gear disparity.
Druid/Hunter matches are my personal favorite as they simply do not end. I played a game – today, in fact – that lasted over 45 minutes. When my poisons ran out, I decided to just go get lunch instead of continuing the tedium.
EDIT: Just to give you an idea of why I call them 30 minute CC shitfests, here’s how that game went after the opening:
Hunter lays freezing trap. I eat it with CloS.
Druid roots me when CloS ends.
Druid Cyclones me when root is up.
Hunter scattershots me as cyclone wears off.
Hunter freezes me while I’m scattered, thus preventing me from cloaking or avoiding it.
Druid Cyclones me as freezing trap wears off.
Repeat ad nauseum for 50 minutes. Neither my partner nor the opposing team’s druid run out of mana. Ever.
I don’t think this is really that big of a deal though. If you want the best PvP gear, you gotta do arenas for it, and they’re adding 2 new arena locations with different twists, so it should be interesting.
One of the problems was that the PvP gear was so easy to obtain that it was driving the cycle of mudflation. When you feel like you have to PvP to get gear in order to raid, something is broken with the system, and this seems like a way to put the brakes on it. There are already PvP items on live that require arena rating, so I’m not sure why this is all of a sudden a huge issue.
I play WoW off and on but I never PvP, so this is an honest question. Doesn’t this effectively give people who are already among the best at PvP an even bigger advantage than they already have over people who aren’t very good at PvP? If so, how can such a change hope to keep fresh blood coming into the Arena PvP system?
I’m a Shadow Priest, and I run 2s with a Rogue, and 3s as Shadowplay with a UA Warlock and a Resto Shaman. My 5s I run to help my friend get points; we run SP/Mage/Warlock/restokin/Disc Priest.
As far as I’m concerned, CC is what we use to temporarily stop a heal until the trinket or dispel goes off a second too late to save him from my MB/SW:D, or we lose.
I think my longest ever arenas match was a 3s match with my UA Warlock vs a Resto Shaman (other four people were dead), both in full Brutal (including shoulders). That duel lasted two minutes of pillar-humping fun, until the Shaman had to heal and the Warlock landed the Howl on it.
Other than that, I can’t think of a single game, 2s/3s/5s, that’s lasted longer than five minutes (we’ve had some very long 5s matches because our healer is amazing).
Maybe you should just play a less-boring combo. :)
I reckon the number of people playing BGs is far greater than those doing Arenas. Restricting all PvP gear for those who want to play in the Battlegrounds but not the Arenas is just dumb. So if this happens, the people who primarily play BGs will either have to do high-end raiding or be on an arena team to even be competetive. Doesn’t make much sense to me.
Yes, and it also means everyone else playing normally also can’t get these epicz.
