Suggestion: Give Arena Season 1 Gear Plans to Crafters

Blizzard has announced that when Arena Season 4 opens, sometime after Patch 2.4.0 goes live, there will be new item level 159 Season 4 gear, with the item level 146 Season 3 gear becoming secondary and the item level 136 Season 2 gear becoming available for honor and battleground tokens. The item level 123 Season 1 gear will be withdrawn from the vendors.

This means it will be even harder for new folks to break into Arenas or even battlegrounds, since they will be facing folks decked out in Season 2, 3 or 4 gear. The Season 2 gear is equal to the Tier 5 raiding gear, while the Season 3 gear is a match for Tier 6 from Black Temple and the new Season 4 gear will match gear from the Sunwell Plateau. New folks in blues will be at an extrme disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the crating professions have become obsolete because most of their BoE epics remain at item level 105, below the level of most blues. With the introduction of the item level 123 Season 1 gear, a match for Raid Tier 4 gear, on sale for honor points and battleground tokens, most crafters are now unable to sell their epics. Crafting epics are also limited in itemization, leaving out a number of class specs.

There is a clear and easy solution to these problems.

When Season 4 opens, change the Season 1 gear to BoE and give plans to craft them to the crafting professions.

Now the crafting professions would have item level 123 epics to sell and there wouod be many folks interested in buying them both for entry level PvE and raiding and for entry to PvP. This is a win-win situation. The crafters would again be relevent and able to sell their wares, and the consumers would have an entry level source for item level 123 epics that would hopefully be at least close to the level 71 greens to be found in Northrend when Wrath of the Litch King releases.

There is no balancing issue at all, because all of these items are already in the game and have already been balanced. There is no need to create new artwork. Just add in the maker's line and change them to BoE and assign suitable crafting material requirements. These item level 123 plans would obviously not be any threat to the dominance of the item level 159 raiding and arena gear, but they would at least let the crafters make something of value to the many class specs.

Players can still grind honor in battlegrounds after Season 4 starts and get the Season 2 gear for that. Season 2 gear will be the minimum level of PvP gear required to have any chance in Arenas, where most competition will have a mix of Seasons 2-4 gear. However, if these players are starting off with PvE gear (i.e. no resilience) they will be of little to no use to their teams and so many will just AFK as they are doing now, thereby dragging down their teams.

Allowing crafters to craft the beginner Season 1 gear means players can enter battlegrounds with basic PvP gear and actually contribute to their team's victory, returning PvP to a contest of skill rather than just gear. This will bring life back into battlegrounds.

This allows crafters who PvP to actually make items they can use when they PvP.

PvP regulars in their Season 3 and Season 4 gear will still have a huge edge in gear over those starting in with Season 1 gear.

The crafted Season 1 gear will also be very helpful to those just entering the raiding scene, providing epic belts, boots and braces to go along with the 5-piece Raiding Tier 4 gear they can get in Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon's Lair, and initial epics to wear until they get their Tier 4 upgrades (which will be upgrades because they will not have spent item points on resilience).

This will help the crafters and those new to the PvP and raid scene, without in any way devaluing the better PvP or PvE epics.

And this will be very easy for Blizzard to do. Just add a maker's line, make them BoE, perhaps change the names, and assign required materials to craft them. The stats and artwork are already done.

Assignment of Plans:

Blacksmithing would get the weapons, shields, and plate armors.

Leatherworking would get the mail and leather armors.

Tailoring would get the cloth armors and cloaks.

Jewelcrafting would get the rings, necklaces, offhands, and fist weapons.

Enchanting would get the wands, staves, librams, idols, and relics.

Engineering would get the trinkets, guns, and bows.

Alchemy could perhaps get special drinks and potions that would be usable in Arenas.

Miners, Herbalists and Skinners would also benefit by the improved market for their goods that would result.

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Q u o t e:
Suggestion: Give Arena Season 1 Gear Plans to Crafters

Blizzard has announced that when Arena Season 4 opens, sometime after Patch 2.4.0 goes live, there will be new item level 159 Season 4 gear, with the item level 146 Season 3 gear becoming secondary and the item level 136 Season 2 gear becoming available for honor and battleground tokens. The item level 123 Season 1 gear will be withdrawn from the vendors.

This means it will be even harder for new folks to break into Arenas or even battlegrounds, since they will be facing folks decked out in Season 2, 3 or 4 gear. The Season 2 gear is equal to the Tier 5 raiding gear, while the Season 3 gear is a match for Tier 6 from Black Temple and the new Season 4 gear will match gear from the Sunwell Plateau. New folks in blues will be at an extrme disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the crating professions have become obsolete because most of their BoE epics remain at item level 105, below the level of most blues. With the introduction of the item level 123 Season 1 gear, a match for Raid Tier 4 gear, on sale for honor points and battleground tokens, most crafters are now unable to sell their epics. Crafting epics are also limited in itemization, leaving out a number of class specs.

There is a clear and easy solution to these problems.

When Season 4 opens, change the Season 1 gear to BoE and give plans to craft them to the crafting professions.

Blacksmithing would get the weapons, shields, and plate armors. Leatherworking would get the mail and leather armors. Tailoring would get the cloth armors. Jewelcrafting would get the rings, necklaces, offhands, and fist weapons. Enchanting would get the wands, staves, librams, idols, and relics. Engineering would get the trinkets, guns, and bows. (Alchemy could perhaps get special drinks and potions usable in Arenas.)

Now the crafting professions would have item level 123 epics to sell and there wouod be many folks interested in buying them both for entry level PvE and raiding and for entry to PvP. This is a win-win situation. The crafters would again be relevent and able to sell their wares, and the consumers would have an entry level source for item level 123 epics that would hopefully be at least close to the level 71 greens to be found in Northrend when Wrath of the Litch King releases.

There is no balancing issue at all, because all of these items are already in the game and have already been balanced. There is no need to create new artwork. Just add in the maker's line and change them to BoE and assign suitable crafting material requirements. These item level 123 plans would obviously not be any threat to the dominance of the item level 159 raiding and arena gear, but they would at least let the crafters make something of value to the many class specs.

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No. For reasons too obvious to mention.

PvP gear is welfare enough already, thank you. We don't need every noob and their grandma running around in full S1 thinking they are ready to raid...oh wait...that's already happened thanks to Blizzard releasing it for honor that is easily obtained through afking.

GG

Worst Idea I have ever heard. Kind of like the "Jump to conclusions" floor mat.

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Q u o t e:


No. For reasons too obvious to mention.

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Maybe I'm a noob. Hell I prolly am. But what reasons that are too obvious to mention?

I can only see up side to this. First, it helps those who are not in a large raiding guild. Those who can not be online 3 or 4 times a week for 3 hours each. (jobs, family, social life, [granted I have none]) With the release of Sunwell and prep for Season 4 gear it opens an even larger gap.

This isn't going to hurt anyone, other than making primals even more expensive and making it more of a goal to get primal nethers.

So I hope I dont sound like a jerk, I just really don't see a downside. So please enlighten me.

<---- Yet another person that doesn't see the "too obvious" reasons.

Crafting professions are falling behind again, and with S2 available to anyone who can sit in AV long enough to collect the points, where's the harm in giving people faster access to the S1 that anyone could have had for free months ago?

I think it's an awesome idea =D

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Q u o t e:
PvP gear is welfare enough already, thank you. We don't need every noob and their grandma running around in full S1 thinking they are ready to raid...oh wait...that's already happened thanks to Blizzard releasing it for honor that is easily obtained through afking.

GG

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So you won't mind then...

I think this is a bloody excellent idea!! Keep in mind that it either goes to crafters, or into the digital wastebasket. And since it was all BoP, nobody can sell it as "Ultra-rare". This idea helps everybody, and I hope blizzard doesn't hate crafting enough to see it.

Everybody who QQs about long queue times better think twice before bashing this idea. Nobody goes into BG for months getting smushed, and keeps coming back for more. They either AFK for the gear, ruining your wins, or quit PvP altogether. Not to mention that Blacksmiths need some serious love to stop people from leaving the profession in droves.

This does not change the welfare nature of lower rank PvP gear, as the Season 2 gear will move down to replace the Season 1 gear and become available for honor points and battleground tokens, allowing folks to now get Season 2 gear for afking in battlegrounds.

What this idea will do is to provide a means of getting the initial set of PvP gear by means of farming materials and having them crafted. Then the new PvPer can join battlegrounds actually equipped for PvP and be able to join in the fun and try to help the team win while getting the points and tokens for the Season 2 gear, which will then allow him to compete in the Arenas to get the Season 3 and Season 4 gear.

Many Arena contestants are also Crafters and this would finally give them a chance to actually use their professions to improve their gear for their PvP goals.

This idea provides all of the crafting professions with plans to cover nearly every spec for their customers to use to fill out PvE gear sets, as even discounting the resilience these epics are better than any rares. The Raiding Tier 4 and Tier 5 sets do not include belts, bracers, or boots and thus these slots could be candidates for Crafted Season 1 gear (at least until a better item drops).

Crafting professions would become relevant again, but still pose no threat to the dominance of the top Raiding and Arenas folks with their full sets of item level 159 Tier 7 or Arena Season 4 gear.

I'm not sure about giving crafters the plans to make the exact arena gear. However, I am currently in favor of more plans and patterns for PvP-oriented gear.

Blizzard could certainly fill this need by instead providing an entirely new set of plans for epic BoE PvP-oriented gear for all class specs, which we crafters would certainly welcome, but that is a lot of work for their gear developers and not likely to happen.

My idea is to take the existing Season 1 gear, which already exist and are due to be removed from purchase, and simply make them BoE so they can be crafted and sold. They can also change the names and make minor tweaks to them if they wish while determining the required materials to craft them. That would still be a lot easier for the developers than creating an entire new set of gear for everyone.

MMORGs are all about spending gaming time to get better gear. In WoW you can spend your time in a instances, or in Arenas, or in Battlegrounds, or in gathering materials difficult to obtain in quantities. These should all be means to getting better gear, if the effort spent for each is equivalent.

Transferring the bottom-rung Season 1 gear to the crafters when they leave the PvP vendors is a logical procedure to provide another path to gear for equivalent effort, to provide a starting path for folks just beginning to PvP, and to make professions relevant again.

Crafters who PvP should be able to make PvP gear to use in their PvP. There is very little of that at this time. This suggestion would fix that, without Blizzard having to spend time creating and balancing new gear.

The crafted gear would still be lower item level than the Raiding Tier 5, Ti9er 6 or Tier 7 gear or the Arena Season 2, Season 3, or Season 4 gear so the crafted gear would not affect their domination of the game. Raiders and Arena contestants should not see any threat to their eliteness with this idea.

/bump good idea hope they think about it

Bump. Great idea!

This is a good idea seeing that alot of time is spent getting that armor. it would reduce the time geting gear and also a way to give crafetrs some extra cash. But if that is so what profession would be used to make this armor? Blacksmiths?It would cost alot to get your skill lvl up to the point to make this gea... i say split some of the amor making. Like different professions would be able to make one part of the armor. ^^

Assignment of Plans:

Blacksmithing would get the weapons, shields, and plate armors.

Leatherworking would get the mail and leather armors.

Tailoring would get the cloth armors and cloaks.

Jewelcrafting would get the rings, necklaces, offhands, and fist weapons.

Enchanting would get the wands, staves, librams, idols, and relics.

Engineering would get the trinkets, guns, and bows.

Alchemy could perhaps get special drinks and potions that would be usable in Arenas.

Miners, Herbalists and Skinners would also benefit by the improved market for their goods that would result.

I can not stress how great of an idea this is. All the "this is a stupid idea" replies have yet to state why it would not be a great idea.

For a tailor is this really that much different than the Primal Mooncloth set? Yes one is PvP and the other is PvE. But this would really make people WANT to keep their professions up instead of just farming gold tor honor to buy such things.

The whole beauty of this idea... Bizzard really has very little work to do. A few cut and paste and things are ready to go. Great idea again.

/agree with this idea

Craft skills have seriously fallen behind the times.. most of the epic craft gear that is worthwhile to have costs too much to make .. and the rest is just mediocre junk that also costs too much to make.

Benefits of this plan :

1) Actually giving people a chance to go into PvP with some resilience [ aka as a CHANCE to not die in 5 seconds ] when they start it.

2) Improved market for the gather professions

3) May actually draw more people into actually pvping in a bg rather than only afking ! Part of the reason so many people afk is because these people have almost no chance to be useful or survive...

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Q u o t e:



Maybe I'm a noob. Hell I prolly am. But what reasons that are too obvious to mention?

I can only see up side to this. First, it helps those who are not in a large raiding guild. Those who can not be online 3 or 4 times a week for 3 hours each. (jobs, family, social life, [granted I have none]) With the release of Sunwell and prep for Season 4 gear it opens an even larger gap.

This isn't going to hurt anyone, other than making primals even more expensive and making it more of a goal to get primal nethers.

So I hope I dont sound like a jerk, I just really don't see a downside. So please enlighten me.

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Go grind more honor when S4 starts and get S2 from honor then.