S4 Rating Requirements - Casual Killer
Seems you're new here! If you like this site and don't want to refresh it like a madman, consider subscribing to the RSS feed to get updates delivered to you. Learn more...
##NOLIGHTBOX##
The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: noneIn addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none
No more 10 games per week and getting all the gear. No more playing specs for fun (destruction
warlocks, balance druids for example). No more boosting friends or selling points.
Getting to 2200 rating for the shoulders is a hard task, I’m not even sure I can get that high. I can’t help to wonder, what will happen to all those stuck at 1500 rating or less. Sure, they suck at PvP, but even if they’re getting 300ish points per week, they’ll be able to get some decent gear with the current system. This change might completely kick the fun part of arena combat and make it elitist only. Even those at 1500 rating invested their time and good will.
Some players are very happy about this change, mostly the ones at 2000+ rating. Sure, you know how to play and you deserved your items, but you didn’t get that far just because you had the gear.
You can give full S3 gear to some random scrub and he’ll be stuck at 1500 rating, regardless of class (ok rogues might get 1600).
I’ve played a good part of this season with some close friends, most of them poorly equipped and skilled. But I helped them get some points and learn a few things, and it was fun. We usually got together after arenas and discuss about it (read: me laughing at them). But the point is, it’s more fun to play with people you know then some random guys who you’ve never met.
One of them is a shadowpriest, and it’s common knowledge they perform poorly in arenas. He’d probably do much better specced discipline, but he has no healing gear and doesn’t want to healbot people.
Let’s take a look at some random player who likes doing arenas from time to time. We’ll call him Mr. B. Mr. B is a hunter usually found in SSC or TK. He likes killing big monsters with 24 other people, trying out new things like PvP specs, and playing battlegrounds every now and then. Mr. B doesn’t have the best gear, nor a whole lotta resilience. But he’s got decent ratings and always learns something new.
With his ratings, he won’t be able to buy any weapons, head, shoulders, boots, and maybe even rings next season. I really hope he gets better, but if he doesn’t play more, he’ll be stuck at that rating forever, and won’t get many season 4 items. Mr. B is very good at killing those monsters in raids, yet he understands PvP is another game and requires a different mindset. If someone magically gave him all the PvP items, I doubt he would reach 2200 rating anytime soon.
Why would you deny items to a fine lookin’ hunter like Mr. B? He’s doing ten times better in arenas then most other hunter (or any other class for that matter) bloggers out there and I’d say he’s a very happy dwarf. Let Mr. B buy whatever item he wants.
Related posts:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I do arenas and BG for the fun of it and breakup the raiding schedule. This new system may make people think about dumping lesser skilled PvPers who they play with for the fun of it. At the same time I can see lesser skilled players being forced to step it up and develop their skills to keep up.
It will be interesting to see how this will affect those of us that just dabble in PvP. But honestly I don’t think it will change a thing.
My thoughts are for those who know what they are doing (http://outofmana.blogspot.com/) and rated in the 1700. It is disheartening to me that someone who has participated in all seasons cannot buy something that they may want out of S4.
This also seems to go against what Blizzard has done by making the SSO gear available to everyone. Items that maybe better than T4/ZA/T5 are available to someone who runs exclusively heroics and Kara.
As always Horns thanks for the updates!
When I respec arms and go to PvP I don’t do it for the rating, I do it for fun. At the end of season 2 I was around 1850 rating with my shaman partner. Season 3 we made it back up to 1800ish but then he quit WoW and disbanded our arena team without telling me.
Since then I’ve only played with my best friend in the entire universe and Warrior+Lock doesn’t work all that well. I’m outfitted in mostly S3/Vindicator stuff with a Winherald while she doesn’t have much PvP gear, so we’re not really successful but we have fun.
Next season, if I were to find a druid or priest to play with that had the gear for it, I’m sure I could get 4/5 S4, possibly a weapon, without much problem. I’m not even going to bother trying though. I don’t really miss the 1800+ bracket where all you see is Druid/Warrior, Druid/Lock, Druid/Hunter, etc and the average match takes 15 mins.
Plus the gear is ugly. I’m just hoping this results in fewer people with 2K+ rating gear in the much lower brackets, but I doubt it will.
If you are going to use this scenario, Ill use one of my own. Mr. C is a very good PvPer with little time. He breaks 2300+ on all his teams and gets full s3. Mr.C would like some pvp gear too. He decides he wants to raid 10 minutes a night to get full PvE gear equivalent to what the best raiders have, altough at a slightly slower pace. Mr.C is a moron for complaining he cant do this. The end.
“Mr.C would like some pvp gear too”
Read PvE instead of PvP. Sorry
The big one is: Why do we care that much which gear other ppl get?
WoW gets more and more a gear race, and the only important thing is to keep ahead of people. Not out of playability or fun, but out of sheer pride and competiveness.
What needs to be done is to make the PvP rewards more useful in PvP and less useful in PvE, and vice versa.
The good thing about the Veterans gear was simply PvP gear for those unloved slots. Some people still prefer the BGs, and honor boots, bracers, and belt were nice to have. But arena ratings for BG honor gear? Gimme a break. Blizzard appears to want to force all PvP into the arenas, which really takes the war out of Warcraft. Ratings for arena only gear, no matter how high, is fine. The epic 60 pvp gear was great in its time and evened the playing field for anyone willing to run BGs for a couple of weeks to gear up, but arena gear has made BGs about who arenas. Poorly done, Bliz.
In my opinion putting a rating or arena point price on every item is a mistake.
I don’t like PvP and I am no good at it, still I managed to get some PvP gear like S1 Weapon and the current bracers. It was easier to go for PvP to fill the slot with decent gear than hoping for luck in a raid.
I farmed my weapon with my gildies by doing 10 arena duells a week regardless of the result. By doing so we all aquired one or two arena items, even our def main tank. Sometimes it was fun sometimes not.
If there is a rating on every item, people like the MT don’t really have a chance to participate. If we’re honest, we all play to get better gear. We stopped playing arena when the ratings were introduced because we realized that we do not have a chance to get anything decent. Therefore the time could be better invested in relaxing from raids or farming.
Don’t forget that getting a high rating is easier for some classes.
“I don’t like PvP and I am no good at it, still I managed to get some PvP gear like S1 Weapon and the current bracers. It was easier to go for PvP to fill the slot with decent gear than hoping for luck in a raid.”
Although I play arenas as resto (on druid of course), I did get a couple of items which I use for tanking, bracers from battlegrounds, and shoulders and gloves for arena points. It helped fill the gaps nicely when I couldn’t get any better gear. It may not be the best tanking gear out there, but for an occasional Karazhan or Gruul’s it’s more than enough.
Perhaps that’s exactly what Blizzard wanted, forcing players to raid.
Most of you commenters seem to agree with me to a degree, but many many others see this from a completely different perspective. Those at 2000+ rating want the gear to be exclusive and hate seeing every scrub running around with the same epics, while raiders are happy because many of them were ‘forced’ to grind honor and play arenas because the items are damn good.
What I didn’t mention in the post is an idea I had but it won’t happen, never. I was thinking, why not remove arena points completely. Since most of the items require certain ratings now anyway, you could gear up for offspecs more easily. I’d of course play resto druid cause it’s ten times easier to find arena teams then being feral of moonkin. I would love some destruction gear as well, but with 800ish points per week I’ll never get it all.
It awfully reminds me of the old PvP system with ranks, but that doesn’t necesarrily mean it needs to be such a bad thing (you wouldn’t have to grind 16 hours per day).
Any thoughts on that?
Yes and no.
People playing arena hardcore and manage to achieve a high rating quickly would get most of the gear within one or two weeks. I don’t think that this should be the case.
For more casual players removing the points is centainly an idea, since the rating is the cruicial point and it would be anoying to reach a certain raing but lacking the point.
I guess the way to go would be to grant an item to the arena players every week, which could be used as a currency to purachase one item with a rating up to a certain numer.
I think Blizzard introducing ratings is a good idea, the reason is because the arena gear is meant for pvpers, people hu play arenas and are good at that. They spend all their time getting high rating and points. On the other hand u have raiders hu spend all their time raiding and dont have time to pvp, the fact is you shouldnt be able to spend a small amount of time and get the same gear as a hardcore pvper, same as raiders would be upset if they allowed an easier way for pvpers to gain pve gear. Now i know they recently brought out a new heroic badge vendor but still the items cost 100+ badges each, thats at least 20 heroics for one item, if u think about time taken it works out they same as going to a BT/sunwell raid anyway.
Shame on Blizzard. Once again, Battleground players have been punished by long que times and now arena reg points for gear. Why does Blizzard want to punish us regular players? Can you believe that even the BG gear has now ridiculous requirements that have to do with arena? I guess this is how they want to prevent US from going to Age of Conan and Warhammer. BLIZZ I DO NOT LIKE ARENA ANYMORE, let me play bg’s with fast que times and get my gear!
WoWPvp=Fail
I hate being buttonholed into a “perfect” team make up or with only really good players.
I am taking my 5/5 Vengeful and DE’g it all.
When I want PvP I will play WAR (when it comes out)
This is inaccurate and ridiculous.
Why is this a casual killer? Are casual pvp’ers prevented from getting pvp items? Nope. Are they prevented from getting high end S4 items? Yes, as they should be.
Compare to pve. Is a casual raider going to have any chance at getting T6 items? No way. So why should a casual pvp player have the ability to get the corresponding pvp item?
Right now you have situations where scrub warlocks in Imbued Netherweave outfits are wearing S3 helms. That’s just plain messed up. This change will prevent that from happening with S4.
This is not a casual killer. It doesn’t prevent someone from getting pvp gear. What it DOES do, is put a barrier in place so that a level of play must be achieved before the ultra-high end items can be attained. Just like pve.
I certainly understand, that people doing arena successfully don’t like the idea of seeing badly euipped people with arena gear.
But to be honest, is it really that bad to see someone with one or two arena items while the rest of the items are crap.
If you’re successful at arena, you just don’t have to bother with these people, because it will be an easy win or you won’t duel then because they still sit at 1500.
Regarding PVE: the batch venor stuff and the removal of the prequests made mount hjal and black temple accessible for many people even casuals.
It does seem like the major complaint is that “PvP gear should not be available to all PvP’ers, like Sunwell Gear is not available to all PvE’ers”.. at some point, you’ve got to stop comparing PvP to PvE play. They are not the same. The draw is not the same, the rewards should not be the same (if they’re comparable, then WHO CARES!). PvP play does not (and should not) require the hours of coordinating 25-35 people over months to get. That’s not the point of PvP play.
To all the people complaining that there’s “Scrub warlocks with imbued netherweave” getting the “cool pvp” items, go learn to play. if you’re a good pvp’er, it really shouldn’t matter if you’re facing someone with equivalent gear.. if it does.. then either they’re a good player, or you’re not as good as you thought you were. Using gear as a status symbol in PvP (where the play cycle is measured in months instead of years for “progression”), the built in status symbols are the things like the Armored netherdrake mount, not the fact that you have pvp gear.
The “gear is a status symbol” works when it’s PvE because the “competition” is between the players and the environment. When the competition is supposed to be between players, gear needs to be relatively equal. or at least easily attainable. This allows growth in the PvP competition and player base. If you limit access to the gear, and the gear has a large impact on success, then you’re limiting the competitor pool to those who are already established. This will reduce the growth of the playerbase, creating stagnation in the PvP gameplay.
Basically.. if you complain because anyone can wear the PvP gear you have, it’s because you don’t want to have to work to keep your rating. Go PvE some more.. once you figure out how to kill something there, you can do it over and over again, and it’ll never get “smarter”.. PvP is about constant change, where the status is about your skill.. not about how cool your shoulders look compared to someone elses.
The issue with raiders getting pvp gear is a separate issue that blizzard will continue to fight with as they try to balance the “something for everyone” approach. All you hardcore players need to start preparing yourself to not be the ones catered to. With the “last” addon for the game due out this year, get ready for way more attention to be spent on the “casual” player base that makes up 80% of the revenue. having the “elite” players playing often will not be nearly the marketing strategy that they are now as blizzard tries to get the last couple of years of maximum profit from this game.
Sorry bro, but I don´t think you knew for sure what you were talking about when you said shadow priests suck.
Shadow priests are doing better than druids in 2v2 with locks in S3.
There is a 2v2 team that is leading an european battlegroup ladder just like that.
In fact, arena is mix of lots of things, but I could say the principal three ones are:
Knowing your class
Knowing how to play with your partner(s) class
Choosing the appropriate class to fight by your side