Arena Season 4 - no more welfare epics

[Xanthippe]

Drysc posted new Arena Season 4 gear and requirements.

Season 4 gear will require personal and team ratings of anywhere from 1550 to 2200.

No more buying arena points.

So who will continue to play on 1500 teams?  Won't this pull down the ratings of everyone?  Or do I still completely misunderstand the ratings system?

[Nonentity]

Well, you'll see lots of scrubs with chest and legs.

EDIT: To answer your question, no. 1500 teams losing to just farm points simply inflates the point economy, dumping more points back into it.

If they are at rock bottom at 1440, and fight their way back to 1500, they're only taking points from other 1500 teams, so this really isn't affecting the teams in the middle. Ultimately, however, is that they're only INFLATING the point economy, albeit very slightly, rather then pulling down the ratings.

[caladein]

The fixes to stop point-selling seem solid.

The rating requirements on the Honor-bought gear are a bit annoying, simply because I wasn't really expecting it.  Slots like Boots and Belts have crafted gear for PvE at most levels (haven't kept up with SW25 drops) so it seems a bit unfair to be unable to outright buy those pieces with Honor (like you can with say, Boots of Blasting).

[Paelos]

This change will basically bone my battlegroup, Bloodlust.

It's ridiculously hard to gain any kind of decent ranking there already.

[Nebu]

Why would they do this?  If you're a highly rated team, you'll get a gear improvement... and if you're highly rated won't this make you even harder to beat?  So... the disparity between the haves and have-nots gets even larger. 

Seems that the higher ranked teams need some type of handicapping system, not gear that makes them even harder to dethrone. 

[Paelos]

Why would they do this?  If you're a highly rated team, you'll get a gear improvement... and if you're highly rated won't this make you even harder to beat?  So... the disparity between the haves and have-nots gets even larger. 

Seems that the higher ranked teams need some type of handicapping system, not gear that makes them even harder to dethrone. 

Exactly. From what I've heard around the water coolers, Bloodlust is one of the harder battlegroups to get a high ranking. I could be wrong about that, but it's what I've heard from people who play on different servers for pvp. Essentially, they have told me an 1850 rating team on Bloodlust could easily be a 2000+ team on another battlegroup.

All this chage will do is fuck over everyone who isn't already at the top. There won't be a reset button at all because the top teams will have all the best S3 gear, and then will be the only ones getting the rating to get the S4 gear. On a really competative battlegroup, this would just make it pointless to arena because you'll NEVER hit the low end of the requirements.

[Nebu]

I have a solution: Frequent server wipes!

[caladein]

I have a solution: Frequent server wipes!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/index.xml

[Nebu]

Well played.

[Xanthippe]

I don't like arena, and now I like it even less.

I thought it was a great way to give people who like to duel somewhere to do that, but now arena has become the focus of pvp.

I want to see more battlegrounds with different pvp objectives.  Arena is too artificial - it ensures a focus on certain classes with certain specs.

If players really want to see how skilled they really are, they should play naked arena.

[Fordel]

I don't like the change, but not because of any potential arena balancing.


I don't like it because its entirely motivated by the "People who aren't raiding might be getting purples, oh noes!", or the "You have to EARN ur epicz!" lines of thinking. It started with S3 and shoulder ratings. Since shoulder items were "prestige" slots  . Now it's virtually the entire set. The same way Tier sets are only for those who can do 25 mans, now the Arena sets will only be for those who can achieve the statistically improbable upper ratings.

It's done to appease some ego's and e-peens. Now having a full suit of season 4 "will mean something". 

They've more or less come full circle with their PvP reward system. Before it was a giant grind where it was only statistically possible for a tiny percent of the players to have the top rewards, or even the average ones. Then we had a window of open rewards (still with grind), with the top most percent receiving them faster (much faster) then everyone else.  Now it's been replaced with a different kind of 'grind' with the same probability (or lack there of) of anyone not in the top percentiles of seeing anything from the system.



The side effect, is it will bone certain specs that rely on the Arena awards to keep pace. The upgrade path for things like Balance Druids or Ret Paladins (less so with paladins now I suppose) is significantly more 'narrow' if you don't have access to the Tier sets.

[Merusk]

It's also done (wrongly) so that you can't Half-ass collect arena points then wtfpwn PvE content.  The s3 stuff is on par with T6 for DPS classes with a few minor tweaks.  They didn't want to invalidate the progression curve there with easily obtained pvp points. (And they ARE easily obtained.. too easy, really.)

It's just a symptom of a much larger problem, infrequent "global" resets with a crazy power curve.  Each season or tier of gear "has" to be better than the previous one, so it will trivialize something along the way.  With no level cap raise for 2 years, that means that as you approach the end of that curve, things get stupid, as we've seen here.

  Fuck, I already 3-shot mobs I see guys in green/ blue mixes struggling with and I'm not what you'd call "uber geared."

Combine this with the arena-focus Xanth mentioned and WoW's finally showing some serious flaws it's competitors should be able to exploit if they're paying attention.

[Hutch]

Combine this with the arena-focus Xanth mentioned and WoW's finally showing some serious flaws it's competitors should be able to exploit if they're paying attention.

Highlighted for lulz 

[Merusk]

True 'nuff.

[Koyasha]

They've more or less come full circle with their PvP reward system. Before it was a giant grind where it was only statistically possible for a tiny percent of the players to have the top rewards, or even the average ones. Then we had a window of open rewards (still with grind), with the top most percent receiving them faster (much faster) then everyone else.  Now it's been replaced with a different kind of 'grind' with the same probability (or lack there of) of anyone not in the top percentiles of seeing anything from the system.

Well, I would say the major difference is that in the old Grand Marshal system, victory wasn't rewarded - figuring out the most efficient means to farm honor, and then doing that, 24/7, was.  Very often this meant running from anything that even looked like it might be a difficult fight, because it was more efficient to flee and go back to pwning noobs 15 minutes later than it was to potentially have to fight for longer than 15 minutes.

At least with the Arena system, especially since they're making point/ranking selling harder, the rewards actually come from being victorious, not figuring out how to game the system and then doing it all the time.

[Fordel]

I'd agree, if Victory in Arena wasn't limited to the few chosen Class/Specs for each season.


I hate when game play is exclusionary, let alone by design.

[Koyasha]

I don't know...that just seems like the nature of combat, particularly in games, to me.  Tactics are developed, refined, become very strong for a while, then a counter is found, and so on.  'Bad' specs and combinations often simply need a new tactic to be developed to make them effective.  This isn't always the case, but time is needed to determine if it is or not.

Worse yet, perhaps, is nerfing 'overpowered' tactics before they've had a chance to be fully explored in the way that only the fullness of time can do.  Even worse than that is when they nerf a tactic 'late' - meaning, after the counters have been discovered.  This is something their slow patch pace occasionally causes.  I can't recall any very specific examples off-hand because I don't pay that much attention, but I do recall thinking that some nerfs have essentially come to things that once seemed like they needed nerfing, but no longer did when the nerfs finally came.  Only by waiting a considerable amount of time before acting to ensure that the tactic has been fully explored (or explored to a reasonably full degree) should any changes be made, and even then it is important to make sure not to make changes if new developments involving the tactic arise between the decision to make the change and the implementation.

One prime example (in the MMOG field) of tactics being learned in the fullness of time (although this concerns PvE rather than PvP, the idea is the same) is back in EQ.  The Enchanter.  Early on in EQ, the vast majority of players thought enchanters sucked.  It took a few months for the general populace to really grasp the idea of mezzing and how powerful crowd control was in the game.  But a more 'pvp' oriented example comes from arcade/console fighting games, in which many tactics that are initially considered broken and/or unbeatable are eventually countered.

And in the end, well, it's not possible to design a system of combat in which every possible combination of classes and/or talents is equally effective.  No matter what strategy or tactic you're using, if you want to maximize your effectiveness - and that's really what victory, in any situation, is about.  Maximizing your effectiveness through every means available to you.  - you will need to gear and specialize your character properly.  Are Protection Warriors underrepresented in the Arena?  Absolutely - and I see no problem with that, because if they want to maximize their effectiveness FOR arena, they need to either devise some tactic in which protection is useful (rare and highly unlikely) or switch to a talent spec that is effective.  On the other hand, I do see a problem if an entire class, regardless of how it specs or what choice of tactic and teammates, simply has no effective place.  That seems to be what they're trying to eliminate, however, so it's understandable if they're not there yet.

All that aside, however, the lack of a perfect absolute balance in which every class and spec is equally effective in any potential makeup of team shouldn't prevent us from establishing competitions in which victory is rewarded.  If it is your intention to compete at the highest levels, then adjusting your character's talents and possibly even class should not be out of the question.  If it is not your intention to compete at the highest levels, well...the previous season's gear is there at much more attainable ranking requirements.  This is much like the difference between a person who spends hundreds or thousands of dollars on obtaining the best equipment for their sport, or building their Magic deck, to the person who is not interested or competitive enough to take it that far.  The latter does not really need access to the best golf clubs, or the rare cards that are vital for their ideal deck.  In the same way, if you're not so dedicated to victory in the arena, then season four gear is and, in my opinion, should be, understandably out of your league.  It is 'pro gear'.

[sinij]

I think WoW is too much of a PvE game to be really viable as competitive PvP medium. In PvP power comes from mobility, control of a battle field, raw damage, raw healing and survivability. Class weaknesses and strengths have to be designed around these fundamental principles and not around some rigid party system revolving around best way to Tank&Spank foozles.

Brief search into statistics suggests that three classes dominate wow PvP by wide margin - warriors, rogues and druids. From what I remember about WoW these are classes with best mobility and survivability.

[Kail]

Are Protection Warriors underrepresented in the Arena?  Absolutely - and I see no problem with that, because if they want to maximize their effectiveness FOR arena, they need to either devise some tactic in which protection is useful (rare and highly unlikely) or switch to a talent spec that is effective.  On the other hand, I do see a problem if an entire class, regardless of how it specs or what choice of tactic and teammates, simply has no effective place.

That problem, in my opinion, isn't that Protection warriors are gimp, it's that respeccing from a PvE build to a PvP one every time you've got to switch roles is unfeasable unless you're rolling in obscene amounts of gold.  I am a bit confused about the rest of the argument; are you claiming that the only difference between a good talent build and a bad one is that no one has discovered the "counter" for a good build yet, or what?

As to this arena change, I'm kind of divided...

On the one hand, it does sound like the elitist, "they deserve more because they're HARDKORE, but you can still pay a sub fee for the privilege of basking in their presence" kind of bullshit that drives me berserk.

On the other hand, I don't have any arena points on any of my characters, so I sport nothing more l33t than S1 gear anyway, yet I'm still sharing the BGs with people decked out in top tier arena gear.  In theory, this might be a boon to me (and other casuals in the same boat), making it harder for my opponents to outgear me by as much.

EDIT: "PvE to PvP" not "PvE to PvE" -_-

[caladein]

SirBruce/omnibus incoming!

If players really want to see how skilled they really are, they should play naked arena.

The only reason that Arena gear is even an issue is because pre-BC, PvE gear dominated even the HWL gear in PvP.  That's why we have Resil and the new Stam weighting, so PvEers aren't able to rofl-stomp PvPers right out of their raid.  The problem became though, that T6-equiv. gear, even if it's not itemized for PvE, it still pretty good for it if you're still in Kara.

As an example, my S3 stuff (as a Disc Priest), even with most of it sporting PvP enchants/gems is only a few points shy of my T4 in raw healing/regen (not to mention it has a boatload more Stam).  PvE-gemmed/enchanted and it's no contest.

I don't want PvP to be the one-stop shop for everyone's gearing needs (just like I didn't like PvE being the only option for getting viable gear pre-BC).  If this makes things "fair" between both progression paths, I'm happy.

They've more or less come full circle with their PvP reward system. Before it was a giant grind where it was only statistically possible for a tiny percent of the players to have the top rewards, or even the average ones. Then we had a window of open rewards (still with grind), with the top most percent receiving them faster (much faster) then everyone else.  Now it's been replaced with a different kind of 'grind' with the same probability (or lack there of) of anyone not in the top percentiles of seeing anything from the system.

1700 (which is everything short of MH Weapon and Shoulders) is not statically high, probably the top 25-40% of arena players for most Battlegroups. (I'm hesitant to say 35-50% since I don't remember if that rating got you a title last season.)  1800 for last season's main-hand is just under top-10%.

I'd agree, if Victory in Arena wasn't limited to the few chosen Class/Specs for each season.


I hate when game play is exclusionary, let alone by design.

It's not.  If you're not a Hunter, you can easily find a bracket/combo where you'll be successful at for your skill level.  Hell, want to be a tank in the Arenas?  Roll a Discipline Priest .

[Merusk]

Even if you're only excluding one class, it's still exclusionary.

It particularly rankles those of us who DO play Hunters.. to the point I've begun looking at other games.   You're going to exclude the class I enjoy playing because you can't wrap your mind around making it work? Fine, I'll find a game that doesn't.*  I can't be alone on this, and since Hunters are THE most played class it's a silly thing for Blizzard to do.

* It shouldn't be THAT fucking hard, either. At it's core, an archer class is a ranged damage dealer that deals "Physical" type damage instead of "magic" type.  For SOME fucking reason this seems to elude most designers and they think "Some kind of 'rogue/ warrior at range' hybrid"  instead of "oh! Mage/ necromancer/ warlock/ whatever with arrows..."

[Koyasha]

That problem, in my opinion, isn't that Protection warriors are gimp, it's that respeccing from a PvE build to a PvP one every time you've got to switch roles is unfeasable unless you're rolling in obscene amounts of gold.  I am a bit confused about the rest of the argument; are you claiming that the only difference between a good talent build and a bad one is that no one has discovered the "counter" for a good build yet, or what?

Mm, no.  I perhaps stated that too strongly.  Certainly, there are going to be many talent builds that are wholly ineffective, especially if you count completely off the wall talent builds.  However, a few of those which are not now considered good probably have strategies and tactics that have yet to be discovered that will make them viable, and perhaps even quite potent.  If I remember correctly, in arena season 1, druids weren't considered very useful, which is entirely opposite to what the charts show us now.  As far as respeccing often is concerned...I don't know.  I don't really see a hell of a lot of point in the current cost of it, but the current amount of money it costs isn't really that much, not when viewed in comparison to how easy money is to obtain now.  Within an hour or less I can earn over 100 gold with dailies, which can cover two respecs and have some left over, so there's no serious issue with respeccing twice a day if you want to, and in a realistic sense, it should never be necessary to respec more than two or three times a week.  So while I'd like to see the costs removed, and for that matter, the option to 'respec' your gear (for pvp and tier sets, that have individual sets for certain specs) I don't have a major problem with the current system.

I think Sinij has a point on WoW perhaps simply not being viable for a serious competitive pvp medium.  I do, however, think it can make a comfortable middle-ground.  It will probably never reach the level of balance that Starcraft has, for example, but I think it can reach a level that is 'fair enough' for most people, even though there will always be copious amounts of complaining.

[K9]

It seems to me that this will only make win trading worse. Part of the underlying reason for win trading is a shortage of low-ranked teams injecting points into the system; the fewer teams that exist at lower end, the fewer points there can be at the higher end, due to the "theoretical" zero-sum nature of the system. Recreating and farming 1500 point teams helps to artificially inflate the system, and it seems that this may be necessary for a lot of people now comfortably on 2K ratings who will slip to 1700ish ratings (or something) when there are fewer low-end teams trying due to the disparities in the system.

Also this seems like another situation where late entrants will have no good means to catch up once the season is under way, except through win trading.

[caladein]

Even if you're only excluding one class, it's still exclusionary.

It particularly rankles those of us who DO play Hunters.. to the point I've begun looking at other games.   You're going to exclude the class I enjoy playing because you can't wrap your mind around making it work? Fine, I'll find a game that doesn't.*  I can't be alone on this, and since Hunters are THE most played class it's a silly thing for Blizzard to do.

* It shouldn't be THAT fucking hard, either. At it's core, an archer class is a ranged damage dealer that deals "Physical" type damage instead of "magic" type.  For SOME fucking reason this seems to elude most designers and they think "Some kind of 'rogue/ warrior at range' hybrid"  instead of "oh! Mage/ necromancer/ warlock/ whatever with arrows..."

It's not so much that "Hunters are excluded" it's that, more so than other classes, they're simply hard to play well.  You can see that to a certain extent in the spike of times at 2300+ that use Hunters versus everyone else.  Great Hunters get great results, everything below that gets shafted relative to their skill level.  Anecdotally, Hunter/Priest was very dangerous when I played it, but I was just f'ing beat after playing our games.  (Compared to Priest/Rogue which was pure easy-mode even with a relatively less skilled/geared/experienced partner.)

Hunter is just a class that's mechanically broken but at the same time attracts a lot of retards.  That's not the Arena system's fault any more than it's the raids' fault though.

[Xanthippe]

If I remember correctly, in arena season 1, druids weren't considered very useful, which is entirely opposite to what the charts show us now.

Haven't druids had some significant changes to their class since then?

[K9]

Arena water was probably the big one for druids.

[Miasma]

I don't PvP so apologies for the stupid questions.  If they put the oldest season gear on the honor system each season does that mean you have to farm all that honor over again to replace a S1 chest with an S2 or does it not work like that?  And about how much grinding would it take to get a full set of the old stuff?

And if I did ever get into PvP would it make more sense to farm this honor while I'm level 60, I'm kind of worried that going into a 70 battleground this long after everyone else would mean I was just a speedbump.

[K9]

The cost of the whole S2 set from honour will most likely be identical to the cost of the current honour S1 set.

So yes, be prepared to regrind a LOT for upgrades.

[caladein]

PvP Gear:

Old High Warlord/Grand Marshal: Honored with Thrallmar/Honor Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, Sha'tar, Keepers of Time
Season X-2: Honor vendor.
Season X-1: Arena vendor. Reduced point costs (~15%) and reduced or no rating requirements.
Season X: Arena vendor.  Full price and rating requirements.

As for how much: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pQhoPrK7VYhhL75rYewXWBg should be pretty accurate.

[Zetor]

I personally dislike this idea. My guild has maybe two people who regularly pvp competitively, for everyone else arena and BG gear are simply an alternate way to advance their character (we don't raid and ogri'la style stuff is a joke); our 5v5 team (which is 'whoever is on at the moment, sometimes in greens, sometimes with no healer, almost always pve spec') will never break 1700, therefore missing out on most of season4 completely, including BG gear. Yay!

Also, not all arena sets/pieces are equally useful for pve and pvp. Just my characters (along with guildies who gave input on arena gear) who've arena'd enough to get at least one item have a huge disparity when it comes to using arena/vindicator gear in pve (the s3 weapon is good for almost any class, though):
- Shaman: Enhancement and Elemental are very well-itemized (sometimes better than equivalent pve gear, which would be tier5/6), Restoration is 50% good (around tier5 level for season3), the other 50% is overloaded with stamina and spellcrit with no mp5, making it useless even when compared to kara-level stuff.
- Warlock: Pretty bad; yeah, lots of stamina, but LOW spell damage; warlocks don't need insane amounts of stamina for pve btw, ditto with spell penetration (vital for arena, 95% useless for pve). Frozen Shadoweave (entry-level stuff any tailor can get) is better than season 3 chest / shoulders and boots, same with Spellstrike (which is BOE to begin with). I assume the same is true for shadowpriests and mages.
- Warrior: Shield is money for prot spec (season2 that is, prot warriors don't get to 1850, they just... don't), rest of the pieces are very good for dps warriors if gemmed for pure str / attack power / crit; I don't play my warrior that much, but I'd say season3 is a bit better than tier4. Weapons are as good as their tier6 equivalents.
- Holy priest (guildie): Arena gear has ZERO spirit, and only two pieces have mp5 (which is worse than spirit post 2.4). It does have a decent amount of raw +heal, but tier4 stuff still wins. Badge gear blows it out of the water, no contest. The only time my priest guildie puts on her arena gear is when we're doing a 'random damage' fight like the third boss in hMGT.
- Feral druid (guildie): Very good for dps and tanking alike. Too bad feral droods are useless in arena, eh?
- Hunter (guildie): The gear is very good (not as dps-oriented as badge gear though), the weapon is good for *marksman* hunters, way too slow for beastmaster (BM is the superior pve spec).

Edit: I've been in the 1800s [that's about 1830, followed by a repeated roflstomp back into the 1700s by a 5/5 s3 team... no weapons for you!!] on my warlock, but I stopped playing him... and a pve-geared resto shaman isn't anywhere near as easy to get a high rating with, ditto with the other big PVPer in my guild [feral druid].


-- Z.

[Polysorbate80]

I don't PvP so apologies for the stupid questions.  If they put the oldest season gear on the honor system each season does that mean you have to farm all that honor over again to replace a S1 chest with an S2 or does it not work like that?  And about how much grinding would it take to get a full set of the old stuff?

And if I did ever get into PvP would it make more sense to farm this honor while I'm level 60, I'm kind of worried that going into a 70 battleground this long after everyone else would mean I was just a speedbump.

I'm a Prot Paladin (and I refuse to respec for battlegrounds); even in full S1 I'm going to be nothing but a speedbump.  A better speedbump, mind you; I can already tell a difference between full blue PVE gear with 0 resilience and 3 pieces of Gladiator's with (I think) 115-ish resilience.  I hold no illusions that I'm suddenly going to be dangerous to anyone, but I do enjoy making the other team work harder before my eventual and unavoidable death...

I haven't figured out how long a *complete* set will take (it's too depressing), but the basic 5-piece Gladiator's head/chest/legs/gloves/shoulder set is about 55000 honor.  As a non-DPSer, I don't get tons of honor for kills, so I average maybe 300 points a BG--Alterac can take 10 minutes and net almost 600 honor, but a shitty Warsong can take almost an hour and give <50.  At that rate it'll take 40-50 hours for just those five pieces (assuming I only do the minimum number of warsongs needed).

[caladein]

233k as the absolute worst case.  More likely though, you'll be Honored with a few places and can bring that down to as low as 168k.

[Merusk]

I don't PvP so apologies for the stupid questions.  If they put the oldest season gear on the honor system each season does that mean you have to farm all that honor over again to replace a S1 chest with an S2 or does it not work like that?  And about how much grinding would it take to get a full set of the old stuff?

And if I did ever get into PvP would it make more sense to farm this honor while I'm level 60, I'm kind of worried that going into a 70 battleground this long after everyone else would mean I was just a speedbump.

I'm a Prot Paladin (and I refuse to respec for battlegrounds); even in full S1 I'm going to be nothing but a speedbump.  A better speedbump, mind you; I can already tell a difference between full blue PVE gear with 0 resilience and 3 pieces of Gladiator's with (I think) 115-ish resilience.  I hold no illusions that I'm suddenly going to be dangerous to anyone, but I do enjoy making the other team work harder before my eventual and unavoidable death...

Prot paladins have their niche, and are better than prot warriors in pvp by fucking MILES.  Throw your last 15-20 points into Holy instead of ret then focus on stam, resil and +healing gear instead of PvE stats like Def, Parry, Dodge, etc. (but get some good +block like that trinket)  Get enough +heal and you have awesome +spelldam, which relates right back to Concecrate, SoR/V and Holy shield damage.  Due to the +heal on your gear you can do the usual pally healing thing, but then tank multiple melee fighters at once and kill them in conc/ holy shield while they can't do jack to you. *

Spellcasters will still fuck you up hard, but they're pally-banes in general.

*Except for goddamn stunlock; but fuck, stunlock kills everyone. It's a stupid mechanic.

Hunter is just a class that's mechanically broken but at the same time attracts a lot of retards.  That's not the Arena system's fault any more than it's the raids' fault though.

I was ranting more about the designers than any particular system. It's THEIR fault that the class is so fundamentally harder to play well.  It really shouldn't be any more or less difficult to play than any other class, and so should be represented equally as well.  Blizz seems to agree, from statements about class representation, but they don't seem to want to fix it prior to getting out the new x-pack and perhaps addressing it there.

[Hutch]

I was ranting more about the designers than any particular system. It's THEIR fault that the class is so fundamentally harder to play well.  It really shouldn't be any more or less difficult to play than any other class, and so should be represented equally as well.  Blizz seems to agree, from statements about class representation, but they don't seem to want to fix it prior to getting out the new x-pack and perhaps addressing it there.

I quote you twice in two days. Stalker alert!

My take: Blizz is focused on pushing out the xpack, as you mentioned. For the 12-18 months following that launch, they'll be "fixing" all the things that will break after players figure out how to exploit their 10 extra talent points and the new tiers of talents. (This will apply to all classes, not just hunters). Making hunters easier to play well isn't going to be higher on their to-do list than making sure they don't suddenly become OP in arenas.

[Gobbeldygook]

233k as the absolute worst case.  More likely though, you'll be Honored with a few places and can bring that down to as low as 168k.

233k is the absolute worst case if you're not willing to lose 10 games a week in the arena.  Don't waste your honor points on the pvp set when you're just going to replace those with vastly superior arena gear in a few weeks.  Buy your boots, rings, etc.
---

I'd agree, if Victory in Arena wasn't limited to the few chosen Class/Specs for each season.

It's not exclusionary at all.  There is absolutely no class that can't break 2k in any bracket.  You have to respec if you're remotely serious about arena, so what does it matter if you need to change your main spec to some other tree?  Hell, I'm pretty sure there are verified examples of every single spec save protadin/prot warrior hitting 2k, although finding a 2k+ feral druid, balance druid, or fury warrior would take some serious searching given that they have extremely strong alternative specs.
---
Protadins are better than prot warriors in PVP, but that's not saying match.  Don't bother 'optimizing' for prot pvp...because that's retarded.  You're hurting yourself in PVE where you are kinda viable so that your time spent PVPing hurts less.  Why?  Your role hasn't changed: You're still pretending to be a holy paladin so the other team gets confused and wastes time on you instead of someone that matters, such as an actual holy paladin.

One of my fondest PVP memories is watching a protadin charge a tower in EOTS, bubble, and everyone just ignored him.  We stared at him, waited 12 seconds, and blew him up in less than 10.

Edit: Protadins can win vs melee DPS in a 1v1 fight IF there is no outside interference.  1v1 with other melee DPS, it's a simple matter of who runs out of health first and that's a fight a protadin can win between bubble, heals, etc etc.