I edited my post above asking about the reward system.

I apologize for the double post, but could you please have a look?

Thanks! :)

also, perhaps an avenue you could provide for reward to those who PvP a lot, have bought everything that they can at their PR level, but still have no way of acquiring the hateful or Deadly sets...

1. Gems
2. Trinket
3. Potions
4. PvE gear
5. Faction Rep

just some ideas. :)

I really don't know why you are against it for people, who try so hard, to ever get the PvP gear. Makes it so hard to have hope to do better in such a system.

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Q u o t e:


You are by no means pigeonholed in the 1300's, it simply means that to rise to 1600 you'll have to be able to beat 1600 teams half the time. As stated above, if you're still 1300 it's because you're still losing to 1300 teams half the time, which kind of means you really should be at 1300, not because a rating system is keeping you there out of spite.

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The difference is, in other seasons I had a reason to keep playing at 1300. Beyond just the joy of 10 minute queues and then losing. Now? I have no reason to keep playing. Everything I can get with arena points at my 1300 rating, I already have with honor points. In games where I can actually tank Van, or otherwise be useful.

It's the same thing that happened in S4. I lost any reason to play arena. Except now, I also have no reason to expect to be able to restart my team and have a shot at hitting 1600 because I have a good week or two. Instead, I have to go back to 1300 and sit there.

I understand I probably SHOULD be at 1300. The difference is, I felt like I had a chance before if I really wanted to find the "right" class and attempt to get rating. Now I feel like it's going to take an obscene amount of effort to even have a chance to spend my arena points.

I like the new ranking system, but the reward system needs to be adjusted.

A quick analysis of Emberstorm 3's show that only 226 teams out of 3,564 teams are qualified to buy the lowest Deadly set piece that requires arena points (i.e. the gloves). That means only 6% of all those teams can get the most basic set piece.

There are 689 teams (1600 or greater) that qualify to get any reward requiring a rating (19%)

That means that 94% of all arena participants can only spend 1525 arena points before there is nothing left to get (on the savage set). Many of those aquire equal or better pieces through other means (raiding, honor, etc.)

And 81% of arena participants are locked out of premium honor gear as well.

In this system there is less and less incentive to play arenas. This becomes greater the further down in ratings you go.

Without these rewards, participation in arenas will go down, there is no doubt. This will further the issue as good teams see there rating fall to accommodate the bell curve.

The rewards system needs to adjust or the benefits of the new system will go for naught.

Thanks,
-Symm

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Q u o t e:
I like the new ranking system, but the reward system needs to be adjusted.

A quick analysis of Emberstorm 3's show that only 226 teams out of 3,564 teams are qualified to buy the lowest Deadly set piece that requires arena points (i.e. the gloves). That means only 6% of all those teams can get the most basic set piece.

There are 689 teams (1600 or greater) that qualify to get any reward requiring a rating (19%)

That means that 94% of all arena participants can only spend 1525 arena points before there is nothing left to get (on the savage set). Many of those aquire equal or better pieces through other means (raiding, honor, etc.)

And 81% of arena participants are locked out of premium honor gear as well.

In this system there is less and less incentive to play arenas. This becomes greater the further down in ratings you go.

Without these rewards, participation in arenas will go down, there is no doubt. This will further the issue as good teams see there rating fall to accommodate the bell curve.

The rewards system needs to adjust or the benefits of the new system will go for naught.

Thanks,
-Symm

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Thank you very much for those numbers...and for the well-written post!

This is fantastic news.

Thank you.

I find the rating system to be acceptable. However, I feel the measure of 'skill' is much more dependent on the current state of BurstVP. Until that is remedied, the system wont work very effectively, as Comps should not be a measure of skill.

Side bar, Kalgan. You hotfixed Explosive shot, but hunters were probably last in the group of "too much PVP burst". Allowing the "big 4" to continue into 3.1 (which is months away) will drive many people away from PVP. Changes need to be made now, not in several months.

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Q u o t e:


/agree

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Kalgan, will the req's for Hateful gear drop before 3.1? The lvl 78 craft set is better in my opinion or at least par on the whole for some peices of the savage set. Spending the arena points you make at 1400's to get bad blues doesnt make any sense.

If the only way to climb the latter is to win more...and winning requires better gear, but better gear is un-obtainable until you win more...but you can't win without the better gear... (and the cycle continues)...

If the MMR is now making is MUCH harder and longer to crawl out from the pits you start out in...will there be lower requirements for the current 1650 gear? Or are we stuck with PvE gear for DPS'ing?

---

Q u o t e:
I edited my post above asking about the reward system.

I apologize for the double post, but could you please have a look?

Thanks! :)

also, perhaps an avenue you could provide for reward to those who PvP a lot, have bought everything that they can at their PR level, but still have no way of acquiring the hateful or Deadly sets...

1. Gems
2. Trinket
3. Potions
4. PvE gear
5. Faction Rep

just some ideas. :)

I really don't know why you are against it for people, who try so hard, to ever get the PvP gear. Makes it so hard to have hope to do better in such a system.

---

How about money as well? I've said this before. PvP'ers are sorely lacking cash (because we're busy PvPing rather than farming...on account of one is much more fun than the other).

Both are time and effort invested, in fact it could be said that it takes MUCH more effort to pvp well than to farm mindlessly.

Yet, I continually find myself having to PvE to afford all of the things listed by my friend above.

I continually find myself spending time in raids in the hopes of getting better gear FOR PvP how asinine is that?...I do not want to be pigeonholed into raiding (which is currently the only choice I feel I have...I cannot possibly purchase any better PvP gear at this point unless my team's rating somehow miraculously improves...I like my team. They are fun and great people and we would have SOOOOO much more fun in this game if the system responded in equivalent fashion the way PvE does via its reward system), I want to spend more time PvP'ing and having fun, not doing what you're forcing us to. What happened to the Customer is always right?

Blizzard, it is obvious you have always favored PvE'ers. Are we PvP's not deserving of your love and splendor? I must believe we are intended to or the PvP system, BG's, and Arenas would not exist, but at least 68% of all PvPer's must feel inferior to the rest of the community.

Please, help us and we'll love you for it. You've frustrated us for far too long with your rewards system...to the point that we do not feel appreciated.

Sounds like a 2nd year college student taking his first year of statistics came up with this. Everything you describe sounds like a bell-shaped curve indiciative of population densities. My question is, how will you combat the gravity that this bell curve system will create at the centerline.

For argument purposes, let's call 1500 the middle of the 68% (one standard deviation). By sheer volume, you have a higher chance to face these teams because they are more frequent. Ultimately, it looks to actually do the opposite of what is intended, separate the pros from the casuals.

My prediction, if we say 1/10 teams created will ever make it above 2k (arbitrary number), this system will ensure that that number moves more towards 1/15 or 1/20. I hope there are plans of lowering the rating requirements for gear or the fat midline this system creates will be running up a slide coated in vasoline for their entire WOW Arena Tenure.

---

Q u o t e:


Kalgan, will the req's for Hateful gear drop before 3.1? The lvl 78 craft set is better in my opinion or at least par on the whole for some peices of the savage set. Spending the arena points you make at 1400's to get bad blues doesnt make any sense.

If the only way to climb the latter is to win more...and winning requires better gear, but better gear is un-obtainable until you win more...but you can't win without the better gear... (and the cycle continues)...

If the MMR is now making is MUCH harder and longer to crawl out from the pits you start out in...will there be lower requirements for the current 1650 gear? Or are we stuck with PvE gear for DPS'ing?

---

Kalgan,

I agree with the point of his response. The problem with the blue set is that it does not compare at all to the burst output of PVE drops or the people lucky enough to soar to the top of the arenas at the beginning because of their raiding guild getting them epic'd out. The problem is, so much time has gone by that the people with mad skills and not so good gear cannot dethrone these people because they have now obtained the deadly sets. There is no PVP weapon currently available either that is competitive on the arena scene outside of 2000+ rating deadly.

In my opinion there should be some changes made very quickly and similar to the changes listed on this post:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910131749&sid=1

to account for the PVE'er getting welfare hateful while the PVP'ers are stuck as the odd men out grinding for hours for gear that is inferior.

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Q u o t e:


Completely legitimate gripe imo. Players in the 1300-1550 range definitely need more access to hateful quality gear, I can totally understand why you would be out of incentives to gain more points.

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Kalgan,

Music to my ears...all of ours, I should think. Just knowing your thoughts on this have brightened my day to a degree that I'm not sure you could possibly know.

Thank you.

Would it be correct to say that reforming teams constantly now hurts you?

Also, does your rating from other brackets factor in, e.g. im 1934 in 5s at the moment, does that play into my 2s MMR? I thought I read somewhere that they were separate

yay second page!.

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Q u o t e:
I find the rating system to be acceptable. However, I feel the measure of 'skill' is much more dependent on the current state of BurstVP. Until that is remedied, the system wont work very effectively, as Comps should not be a measure of skill.

Side bar, Kalgan. You hotfixed Explosive shot, but hunters were probably last in the group of "too much PVP burst". Allowing the "big 4" to continue into 3.1 (which is months away) will drive many people away from PVP. Changes need to be made now, not in several months.

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If anything, survival hunters have the MOST tools now in arena. Explosive shot being instant cast magic damage with LnL allowing HUGE burst, full evasion from spells and phsyical from the front, scattershot, wyvern sting, mortal strike aimed shot, 40 yard range, pet that can intervene or absorb damage, frost trap for CC, wing clip for CC, ice trap for CC, Concussion shot for CC, TNT for RNG stuns, mail armor, 24+% dodge with 30% runspeed on dodge, a disengrage abiliy, and inability to oom. They, along with mages, are probably the classes in MOST need of immediate fixes.

Hunter cup runneth over, now.

There are way too many complaints about the gear rating requirements. New system, old system, whatever. It's a simple progression just like with pve and it takes some work. It's completely optional, so if you don't like it don't do it, but stop requesting the entire system to change just because you don't want to put the effort in.

If you are having trouble getting rating for hateful mainset and deadly offset

* Have you done everything you can with bgs? 5 piece savage full hateful offset and a decent weapon from a heroic, upgraded trinket, a crafted ring perhaps and neck perhaps.
* Do you have the best chants and gems?
* If you are struggling in 2s, have you tried 3s or 5s?
* Are you playing a comp that makes sense? I won't vouch for all specs (in particular the prot pally earlier in the thread!), but I'm pretty confident every class has at least one spec which is arena viable in some bracket. Some have more options, but mastering the ones you have is more productive than crying in a forum.
* Have you read up or given some thought to the strats for that comp versus others?
* Are you running arch10/25 every week? (I completely disagree with the idea of it dropping free hateful/deadly and seriously hope this is not a practice blizzard extends to future seasons...but, it's there now and not going away so play the game)
* Do you have professions leveled to a point where you can achieve some bonus ability from them? Special JC gems, herb hot, rocket boots, mining stam, skinning crit, lw fur, etc etc etc.

These are all things that are within the control of every single player. They take time and effort, but so does running the same raids every week so that you can get enough gear to be let in the door of the next one. Think of arena the same way as raid progression. Set goals for each week and look at what you are doing to push that little bit further.

I think the new system is actually really awesome in that sense. If you just want to casually do arena, it sounds like the system will drop you down to a nice comfy 1300 or whatever it takes to get you pairing 50/50 win loss.

And lastly, for the random comment on resil, there is nothing to fix there. It works, it does what it says it does. Kinda hard to tell what your situation is though since you are afraid to post on your main. Folks who run in pve gear are dangerous but fragile. As a response, you can either choose to be dangerous and fragile as well, or stack resil/stam a bunch, but in addition to that you probably need to run with a comp and a strat that can deal with it.

Just a couple thoughts on Arena Rewards

PvP Weapons
Deadly Weapons should be buffed to 226 ilvl and future seasons should have comparable top end PvP/PvE weapons

Hateful/Savage Weapons should be added to the game (It's not hard to get comparable PvE rewards)


Participation

Participation needs to be rewarded more for low/mid level rewards.

Examples

1. Sponsor Quests- Fight under the banner of arena enthusiast NPCs (I don't know if there are any in the lore) and win X arena games in Y bracket to receive a mid level item (Currently Hateful ilvl stuff).
2. Adjustable Rating Requirements- Every arena game you win lowers the rating requirements on gear by a small amount
3. Sponsor Factions- Sort of a mesh of the above 2. Winning games for an arena faction gets you rep that allows you to purchase items with no rating requirement.

Shadowsynth,

Thanks for a well thought out rebuttal to the discussion at hand. In many ways I completely agree with your post. At the end of the day the system needs to reward the best players in a significant way, both in recognition and in prizes.

The problem is that the vast majority of players (myself included) will never attain the level requirements needed to spend the arena points we earn.

I enjoy arenas, particularly now that the match ups I get are typically well balanced for me at the 1400 level, but I gain nothing from my participation in arenas (certainly one of the primary reasons people play them).

I don't think it's unreasonable to let us scubs get a few rewards at the end of the day (sure it can take us longer, or whatever).

The alternative should be alarming to the better players. The loss of each Arena participant lowers the average point rating of everyone above 1500. The system wants perfect distribution from 200-2800 (i forget exact numbers).

Anyway, I do agree that we need to continue to reward the better players.

-symm

Further question for this FAQ:

Why was the decision made to do this in a secretive way and then explain things as an afterthought only when people became utterly confused mid-season?

I'm not complaining, just really curious.

Is it because a secretive process is less exploitable? Is it because there was hidden tracking going on all season long and people might have changed gameplay if they knew what was coming?

Those new to arena remain baffled by these ratings and I have a terrible time trying to explain to them about how fun arena can be in a progressive sense with this new system. It is tough to direct them to several mathematical posts on the subject as those don't convince them the "game" is more fun.