f13.net

With the end of the current arena season coming up, is anything good going onto honor vendors? With Blizzard's current April Fools thing fucking up the boards, I'm not about to prowl around there.

Short Answer: Not really.


Long(er) Answer: We won't really know till it is out and patched. The current honour only gear, didn't actually exist on the PTR as honour only. With that said, someone at Blizzard is still DETERMINED to make Arena work, somehow, so don't expect much suport for non-arena PvP avenues.


WinterGrasp is getting a few new items. Chest, Waist and some more trinkets for pvp.

Deadly Bracers and Feet for honour; Chest, Waist and Trinket for WG marks.

I think that'll be it for the upgrades that don't require arena.

Linky (http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=46886.0)

List of gear in season 6 (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/11/15864860497-arena-season-6--upcoming-changes.html).  Short version: Hateful set pieces available for honor, deadly off-set (except for libram/totem/relic/idol) will be available for honor.

Man this shit is confusing. They really need to give these things tier numbers instead of just calling them hateful/deadly/naughty/whatever. So let me see if I have this right:

For season 5, arena people have had 2 purple sets available, Hateful and Deadly, with Deadly being the better of the two. With season 6, all of Hateful and the crappy bits of Deadly are getting kicked to honor. Yes?

Yes.

Hateful gear is equivalent to naxx 10, deadly is equivalent to naxx-25, furious is equivalent to ulduar-25.

There are some ranges in the level of the gear, the Furious gear ranges from 226-232 for example.

Also I wholly agree with WUA, the naming convention is fucking retarded.

Cool, thanks for the info.

They name all the pve set too you know. They just happen to be a hell of a lot more popular and have tokens attached.

The PVE sets don't overlap as much either.

The PVE is different by both class AND tier for names, which is why everyone calls it by tier.

I've heard that arena participation is down 60% over last season.  Why does Blizzard continue to promote this?

I wonder what percentage of players are in arena?  My guess is that it's 20% or less.

I don't care about arena, but I really resent the emphasis on it for a relatively small number of players who enjoy it.

I've read that people are deleting their arena teams at this point, just to ensure as few people as possible actually get the Gladiator titles this season. Just to burn the entire system to the ground.

WoW can market arena games. They can try to make it into a competition with bright flashing lights and big cash prizes. They can hope to bring more people to the game because of that exposure to the public. They can't do that with raiding because it's not a "sport" if you aren't playing against human competition.

Only the people on the inside know this is really just a heavy pile of bullshit. Nothing about the system is fair or balanced, and the majority of the players realized that if you played X class, you were fucked. Certain classes right now are awesome, others are terrible if you suck or average if you are highly skilled, and a couple just can't show up unless you draw the right opponents and are absolutely top notch and lucky.

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Life-e-Casual/Season-5-Now-65-Less-Popular (http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Life-e-Casual/Season-5-Now-65-Less-Popular)

That's the article ppl are drawing the decline in numbers from. He runs the data breakout per battlegroup for arena teams, and the numbers (if correct) are pretty damning. In essence, there were ~640k teams in Season 4 and 220k in Season 5. Two of every three teams just said "Fuck it."

I thought it was pretty well understood that (many? most?) people were doing arenas for "welfare epics" or whatever the word was. Now that there are ratings requirements there are fewer that want to put up with them.

Pretty sure at least a couple of sites actually said "get on an arena team and get your 10 matches a week going. Even if you hate PvP - the rewards are awesome."

I suppose you might tin-hat that the "easy" rewards were the hook into the thing just to get it jump-started and buzz-worthy. Now that there's "enough" participation let it go esport...?

I'll freely admit I only did arena for a shield during TBC. Shield drop rates were shitty and the arena one had armor and stam that was head and shoulders above anything you could get in pve if you were already def capped. Arena drew me in for the rewards, but I also enjoyed being able to compete. I would, in fact, still do it if I had a remote shot at being effective as a warrior.

Participation is right fucking down, and with the arena system the way it is that means less people get rewards, not more.

Someone got all pissy that you didn't have to 'work' to get good gear. During the run-up to WOTLK Blizz had said they came to realize that the ease with which you could get PVP items was completly out of balance with the ease of obtaining PVE items and this had to be rebalanced.  They'd originally made noises to the extent of making PvE items as easily obtainable as PVP, which lots of us took to mean fewer hours put in, good quality items for everyone.  It sounded like the game would reach the point that you'd have no excuse NOT to be fully-epic geared, just putting in a little time here and there which was OK with me.  (Particularly since I love playing alts.)

However, while they DID drop the effort required to get PvE gear in a lot of ways, they also increased the effort required to get PvP gear.  Kind of a shitty way of going about it, but I guess someone in the leadership still has that whole "Purples should MEAN something" mentality going.  So while it's balanced more evenly between the two, it's now harder to get PvP gear than pve gear.  Maybe some day they'll get it right. Heh.

The writer dismisses arguments relating to 'not everyone is 80 yet', but that's not the actual argument.  The argument is about alts.  Even PVE players often had multiple alts they arena'd with because of the gear.

I sat down with a spreadsheet when I hit 80.  The deadly gladiator gear came out equal to or worse than level 80 blues.  It's not just that the carrots are too high (They totally are), it's that there is no carrot.  Unless you're a shaman then you angst over the best in slot PVE totem requiring a 2050 arena rating.

As for his 'suggestions' - lulz.  Complaining about PVE gear in arenas makes you look old.  Racials are always a good choice, but make you look older than John McCain.  Bitching about engineering makes you look hip in a vintage way.

All moot. A blue has spoken, and they didn't even try to dispute that Arena has been abandoned by large numbers of players.


From here (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864310217&sid=1&pageNo=1). Nothing about leveling or alts, just "We didn't want many people in Arena anyway!"

For people who understand their playerbase pretty well, they are sure drawing the wrong conclusions from that information in regard to arenas. I often get the feeling, as everyone does, that if it wasn't either a marketing ploy or some BigDawg's pet project, this would have been totally revamped or lost.

I think he's mostly correct. Before rating requirements Arenas were the path of least resistance to get high-end weapons. Then came the "welfare epics" for honour that further exacerbated the trend.

I do agree though that the Arena format, like meeting stones, is someone's pet and not likely to die or diminish anytime soon.

Well, it's a good thing your entire PvP reward system isn't designed around that, or anything, otherwise I might think you were full of shit.

How to fix the arena system: "Season six will be the last arena season on the normal servers. Once that is complete, all future ranked arena battles will take place on the Tournament servers only. These server may have slightly different rulesets from the rest of the server types to facilitate arena combat balance.

The arenas will remain active on the rest of the servers, but only for exhibition or practice matches. Acquiring new PvP armour will in future be based around the existing battlegrounds and Lake Wintergrasp."

Whoever's pet project (Evocare, I'd guess) Arena is gets their own little private ghetto to play in, and the rest of the game stops having to have everything balanced around 2v2 PvP.

Th icing on that cake would be for them to announch the Azshara BG as a team deathmatch battleground, 20v20, first side to 1500 kills wins.

Overall I'm digging the life of a battleground whore. Honor comes at a decent rate, and come Season 6 I'll be able to deck myself out fully in PVP purples without setting foot in the Arena. Granted I'll always be outgeared by Arena whores, but in the chaos of battlegrounds and Wintergrasp that's less of an issue. Whose faction buddies come riding over the hill looking to gank someone is at least as frequent a decider as who has better gear.

Only nuisance will be getting a better weapon than my Titansteel Destroyer. One of my UO buddies somehow became leader of a raiding guild all of three days after dinging 80, and he keeps trying to get me to go to Naxx with him, but bleh.

Speaking of PVE, I had just hearthed out of Wintergrasp and into Crusader's Pinnacle. Some freakin' blood elf prot pally, of all things, tried to gank me since I was still flagged. I'm like, is she kidding? Does she think I'm AFK, or lagged, or something? Bitch I am not AI, and your PVE purples do not impress me. Squish.

The argent tournament is coming in 3.1 and there are some epic 2h weapons that will be buyable for 25 tokens (Champion's Seals).

The Alliance version is [Claymore of the Prophet] (http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45074#.). I'm pretty sure that it's not an upgrade over the Titansteel Destroyer, however it is a change of scenery if nothing else. If you do want to improve though, your only real option is raids. I'd only look for Naxx-25 and Ulduar-10 stuff, Naxx-10 is all sidegrades except for Death's Bite. If the guild isn't a load of mouthbreathers it may be bearable for you, bearing in mind your dislike for PvE.

n.b. The tournament is not a pvp event, altough it is planned to have multiple stages across several patches.

Warrior and Druid class representation at the top of the Arena tournament by week:

(http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/april/arenatournament_warrior.jpg)
(http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/april/arenatournament_druid.jpg)

LOLZ

Druids are obviously overpowered and need to be hammered with more nerfs.

The warrior (arms) and one of the druids (resto) are on the same team, with an affliction warlock. It is like a weird throwback arena team from last expansion.

I find the overall class differences between Europe and the US to be interesting. Why does Europe favor Disc Priests over Holy Paladins? Why are there so many more DK's in the US?

What exactly are those numbers?  Is it some sort of weighted average?  Is it numbers from top teams?  Or do they really have possibly two entire servers for 60-63 players worldwide?

Class breakdown for the top 10 teams on each realm I believe.

From the tourney realm: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=48560.0


The Tourney realm lets you pick whichever class/race you want and have them be maxed and ready to go instantly. You get a pool of gear to select from pvp and pve. So everyone is on equal footing gear/class wise, so it's all about composition and planning (and execution obviously).

It also displays what most people who PvP regularly already know. X spec is totally dominate, Y spec is totally shit.

I kinda miss playing on a PVP server, but not really. On one hand, sometimes you just want to get your damn quests done without fighting the same guy 18 times. On the other hand, when I was on a PVP server I never did battlegrounds, and was much more pleased with my couple hundred kills than I am now with my paladin's several thousand kills.

The former meant there were a couple hundred times where I met someone within my own level range out in the world and bested them, by hook or by crook. (I almost always ran around solo.) The latter means I fired the weapons in Wintergrasp a bunch of times.

I'll sit here and bemoan it, but I know if I went to a PVP server, sooner or later the whole "having to play PVP even when I don't feel like it" thing would bore me out like it did in the first place.

/random

I'm a mere 10k HK's away from the 50k HK achievement.


My best advice for capturing that old 1v1 feeling, is defend a tower/bunker in AV that normally doesn't get defended after the zergs blow past them. Assuming your battlegroup isn't one of those totally fucked up one where one side starts with 9 players vs 40 at least.

Retaking Stonehearth or Icewing bunker, 3.5 mins into the capture timer, then just waiting to see who comes to save the day.


The other thing (again depending on your server, I think you've mentioned WG being dead during off hours already on yours) is just cruising WG when the battle isn't up. Where I play, it's a semi-decent way to find people. It's also lets you get that PvP server feel, while still letting you fuck off and do your Hodir dailies or whatever if you get annoyed.

When the hell does Season 6 start, anyway? I want my welfare honor purples, and I'm up to like 69k honor even taking it slow.

If you talk to the Arena organizer in Dalaran they tell you it will start next Tues.  I'm assuming it will be in a mini-patch with all the Noblegarden holiday stuff.

Edit: As a bonus it gives them a chance to see all of the class/talent changes they made in live for a week to catch any bugs that could screw up class balance even worse for the next Season (like Warlock's conflag being able to crit for 10k+ which has already been hotfixed).

I find it funny that warlock's are getting hotfixed asap (even though the damage was complained about multiple times on ptr), but 9k+ Death Strikes that can heal for 14k+ is fine.

I find it high-fucking-larious that PVE people can buy PVP gear right now with whatever the latest poopsock token is, but I have to wait for the next arena season to start before I can buy any new shit with honor.

Nobody will be buying PvP gear with tokens for a month or two at least, since the supply of those is very limited. The next arena season is in 4 days, it's hardly a monumentous wait.

I've pretty much lost interest in playing over the constant changes that have been made.  I have played, since the expansion, a hunter (which seems to have gotten worse), a warlock (which seems to have gotten worse) and a priest (which seems to have gotten better, but I still get dead quickly vs. a DK).

Are we all supposed to be DKs or pallies?

I know I'm whining, but I keep waiting for the changes to DKs, or at least for Ghostcrawler to stop making stupid statements (like "since hunters are easy to play, they shouldn't do as much damage as other classes").  Any day now.

Apparently, yes.  I've had the same issues since way back in the original game with my mage.  Never was good at PvP in any way, only the element of surprise or ganking someone already low on health would result in a win.  I don't even bother to seriously PvP anymore because of it.  I've assumed that Blizzard likes the way things are and doesn't feel like changing them to suit my needs any time soon ;-)

Ghostwalker said that? Man i knew the guy was a tool, but for fuck's sake that's beyond even the retardation he was spewing last year.  I'm convinced it's just that they hate hunters.

That got hotfixed not long afterwards, thanks.

E: And by 'hotfixed' I mean crippled, of course.

They'll never get hunters right. Pet classes are a nightmare to balance in both raiding and pvp. Especially pvp though.

You're right, the problem is they think of them as a pet class.  They shouldn't be, the pet is nothing more than an annoying DoT and a way to keep things at range when leveling-up.  That's all the further the pet should have been taken, because now it's just clown shoes trying to make the pets relevant without making them overpowered.  That's not going to happen.  Unholy  DKs were treated in the "it's another dot" way and its worked fine for that spec.

<Channels Itto>

Hunter pets aren't DoTs, they're melee attacks.

 :oh_i_see:

<Channels Lantyssa>

Hunter pets are ranged dps.

 :oh_i_see:

Ranged DoTs with an immobilization component.  But close enough.  Glad you see the light. ;D

I often wonder why every class isn't a pet class.  Why would Warlocks need a pet more than Mages and Priests, for example?  Surely both classes could get a crappy tank pet suitable for solo PvE without making Warriors useless, or whatever the rationale is for withholding them.  Maybe give Warriors and Rogues something that has some kind of gimpy out-of-combat heal or something.  It always amazed me how much more fun my resto shaman was when he had his earth elemental out, because healing was actually useful, rather than something you do because your gimped DPS kills the enemy slower than they kill you.

That's a great idea. I wonder why Blizzard never added anything of the sort? (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=3273)

There's some pet that does first aid now?  Whu?

Really what warriors need is a way to impale themselves which entails not getting a repair bill.  Dual-wielding two handers is expensive.

Actually... http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25883  :grin:

Either everyone has pets or nobody has pets. Trying to balance when some do and some don't is stupid.

The short list of classes without pets is in fact Warriors and Rogues.

I must've missed the Paladin pet.

Paladins come with another paladin.

Oh yea, forgot about Paladins.

Hunters are no less expensive.  Our repair costs are lower but we have them whether we actually get hit or not, plus we get to spend 1g per 100 ammo and that's only if we make them ourselves - buying them doubles that cost.

Put me in the "no pets please" camp.

Pet classes are not terribly powerful right now.

So why should there be no pet classes at all?

That would leave rogue, warrior and pally in WoW.

That's not what I said, also there are only two pet classes. Summoning a shadowfiend for 15s every 5mins does not make my priest a pet class.

It's possible to balance pet classes if the effort is put into it.  The pet isn't the problem.  How long have they been trying to balance Paladins (and everything else)?

Franky, it really doesn't seem like they're trying hard enough to balance pallies and dks.  Both seem very powerful compared to anything I'm playing.

The Alliance losing 99% of everything it's involved in is sapping my will to PVP. If it weren't for Wintergrasp offense zergs and 4am AVs against like 12 horde guys, they would never win anything on my battlegroup.

I lived through those days on Rampage.  Now at least it's 50/50 for everything except AV.  I wish I knew why Horde can consistently field 40 at the beginning, but Alliance can only get 12-15.

Though this week has truly, truly sucked in AB.  All the guys trying out their shiny new honor purples are running with the 'zerg the farm 24/7, forget about the other nodes.' strategy. :awesome_for_real:

I just relapsed and subbed again. As I burned myself out with raiding in the classic with Nefarian, I'm not really into doing dungeons or raids (nor am I in a guild either). I like PVP, but I've never done any arenas since it seems too much dedication. Now I'm currently leveling my warrior up and I'm decked with merciless gladiator gear which seems to be better than the quest rewards at least so far (lvl 74 atm).

Now from what I gather, they've removed all welfare arena weapons, so is there any way to get PVP weapons now without going to the arena?

I don't know the math well enough to know how precisely uber it is, but my Paladin kicks much PvP ass with a Titansteel Destroyer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Titansteel_Destroyer), craftable by Blacksmiths or just purchasable off the Auction House.  There's also weapons you can get for champion tokens from the Argent Tournament. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Greatsword_of_the_Sin%27dorei)

No non-arena PVP weapons, sorry. You'll either have to take Kail's advice, or bite the bullet and do a raid or two.

Crafted weapons are your best bet as long as you like maces and daggers, since that's all we can make right now. If you can't get by with a titansteel weapon of some kind, you're stuck doing the tournament, raiding, or possibly doing heroics if you're one of the specs that has a passable heroic purple. There's a decent 2h axe, for example.

Not related to PvP at all, but this is a stupid question which doesn't really need it's own thread:

Rolled a DK and took Blacksmithing, and as I was levelling, periodically sunk cash into the AH to skill it up.  Now it's sitting at around 410, so that's fine.  Problem is, I'm at lv 78, without cold weather flying, and I've only got about 500g or so.  Cleared out Sholazar and Zul'Drak, more or less, and as far as I know, all that's left to do is Icecrown and Storm Peaks, both of which require flying mounts.

Anyone see a way for me to get out of this without having to grind mobs to the tune of 500g?  Bearing in mind that I am completely retarded at gaming the AH?

Run mining circuits of HF/BoT/GW/etc - you're looking for cobalt, not saronite.
Oh, and one of the two zones you mentioned gives you a 'rental' flying mount that can only be used in that zone but doesn't need cold weather flying iirc so you might want to take a look at that. I think it's K3 in Storm Peaks but don't quote me.

You could sell instance runs; I've made as much as 50g per run from twinks looking for VC and SM runs.

Run dailies. If you did a full slate of 25 dailies a day it would only take you a couple days to get to the 1k you need for cold weather flying.

EDIT: I believe in Storm Peaks you can get a loaner flying mount from one of the NPCs at the goblin town, too.

Run dailies. If you did a full slate of 25 dailies a day it would only take you a couple days to get to the 1k you need for cold weather flying.

[/quote]

Incidentally, does anyone know if the Sunwell Plateau dailies are still viable.  I've got 2 level 70s I haven't begun leveling yet, and I had considered running some of those just make some easy cash.

Then again, I could probably make more cash flying around on my main and harvesting herbs.  Frost Lotus prices are INSANEEEEEE right now.

They're still available, but grant XP at 70 instead of cash unless you don't have WOTLK installed. The XP is also very crappy when compared to doing real quests in Northrend, however.   At 80 it's even worse money than just selling greys.  I went back and did a few on my DK, planning to get another exalted rep and title.. I'm better off soloing MGT for the rep.  Quests give 4gp per turn in at 80.  Ditto the Netherwing and Skyguard quests. (Which don't have very viable alternate ways to level the factions if you want the mounts.. Curse it.)

I don't think I saw it officially listed in any patch notes (stealth fix) but the drop rate for frost lotus was dramatically lowered a few patches ago.  I noticed it right away on my herbalist character and all of the herbalists I know in game have noticed it too.

Combine that with Ulduar creating a huge demand for flasks and it's pretty easy to see why frost lotus prices should be heading through the roof on most servers.

Aha, thanks for the tip about that Storm Peaks mount, that's exactly what I needed.  Works in Icecrown, too, evidently.  Phew!  Thanks!

Ya the only quest that kept it's cash value after they nerfed the old dailies was the outland fishing daily, I guess cause they forgot to nerf the bag drops.