Arena PvP Season 4 rating requirements

[Eyeball-Dragonmaw]

Finally.............not everyone will be walking around with FREE welfare Arena epics:



While Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4.

First though, the rating requirement changes:

When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:
Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800

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: none

In 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

The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.

The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain.

To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system. These rules are as follows:

* If a character?s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.


This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.

* If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team?s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.


This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.

We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP.

[DM.]

Oh yea thats some great news for those hardcore pvpers.

[Balgair]

Good news for the elitists/FotM combinations, bad news for those who play for fun and don't really enjoy getting trampled over by people with gear 2 seasons ahead. Ratings on S4 gear, ok, fair enough, I'm not a massive fan but most of them look vaguely attainable with luck and I can see the point in needing to have at least some skill. But ratings on stuff buyable with honor is just... why?? As if it isn't annoying enough doing BGs in my honor gear and getting owned by people in arena gear; I now need a rating to even upgrade my honor gear?

Personally it's not a huge deal to me (aside from the madness of ratings needed for honor gear); I play to have fun with friends and don't ever expect high ratings, and frankly haven't even grinded honor pieces that much yet so... not much of a big deal, just have to adjust my expectations (and hey, going from nothing to s4 is a pretty big jump, so fair enough) But it's disappointing to know I've got less to aim towards, because frankly high ratings just aren't going to happen for me; both my teams are firmly in the mid 1400s currently, might tip over 1500 with time, but I'm not really expecting to get much further.

[Hybuir]

but rating on regular honor bought items... it's like saying you can buy this with regular honor but you have to be this good to use it. It encourages good people to help out the players in your everyday AV, but forces your everyday AVers to have to arena. :-/ you can be honor bought the whole way but if you have arena gear then you still have the definate advantage. were so many hardcore pvpers saying OMG they have season 1 stuff, but why do they have my rings? zomg nerf honor? seriously?

[Rollie]

The biggest negative thing here is that it's a positive feedback loop. The more gear you get, the more benefit you get from gear, getting you more gear, getting you more benefit, etc etc

[Hybuir]

The biggest negative thing here is that it's a positive feedback loop. The more gear you get, the more benefit you get from gear, getting you more gear, getting you more benefit, etc etc

you mean the richer get richer and the poorer get poorer?

[Alanthus]

mmm, a bane to all MMO's, hard core player rewards putting them so far ahead that players not spending their lives online can't even remotely compete... How do you reward the hardcore players and still keep the game interesting enough to get the rest to keep paying their monthly fee? WoW hasn't done too badly by making each paid expansion an effective reset event but does that work if there is competition out there

[heartless_]

Meh, Blizzard has no clue. This would of all been fine had it been in place on day one of arena season 1, but it wasn't. To start this now is just stupid and really screw everyone that isn't geared up.

I am just completely disenfranchised by arenas dictating almost all of WoW now. I am seriously sticking to my protection paladin now, getting to 70, and sticking to PvE. Blizzard is going to ruin their cash cow trying to "fix arenas" into an e-sport.

Give us tournament realms, remove arenas from normal realms. K tks bye.

[Jokester]

That argument can be made about high-end raid guilds as well.

Not really, high end raid guilds good gear doesn't impact low end raid guilds ability to progress.