Cataclysm Badge and Honor Changes

[SurfD]

What?  There will be raid rating?  I'm guessing it's based off a gearscore or something like it?

I think they mean something more along the lines of: To get heroic gear, you must first have cleared normal at least once, which is the equivilent of: to get the "better" pvp weapon, you must first get rated.

IE: Base level Raid / PVP gear is open to all, Heroic Raid / Tier 2 PVP gear requires you to "prove yourself" somehow to earn it.

[Koyasha]

I'd say that I would be upset about the cap per week mechanic.  There shouldn't be any cap that is less than the total amount of content I can choose to do.  It doesn't matter if it's likely I never will choose to do ALL available content in a single week, any further artificial cap beyond 'there's nothing more to do' upsets me.

[caladein]

No, what they mean is that there will be still be two tiers of PvP weapons.  The first won't have a (PvP) Rating requirement and be equivalent to normal-mode raid drops.  The second tier will have a (high in all likelyhood, PvP) Rating requirement and be equivalent to the Heroic-mode raid drops.

The only difference from the current system is that even now the normal-tier PvP weapons have a high rating requirement.  Two tiers of the same weapons already exist (and have since Season 6 for PvP and ToC for PvE) and here is a PvE example and a PvP one.

[Shrike]

So does this mean itemization for 1handers will go back to its traditional place of absolute suckitude and shaman will have to PvP just for weapons upgrades again?

I so do not trust changes in expansions. Sad, but true.

[Rendakor]

I'd say that I would be upset about the cap per week mechanic.  There shouldn't be any cap that is less than the total amount of content I can choose to do.  It doesn't matter if it's likely I never will choose to do ALL available content in a single week, any further artificial cap beyond 'there's nothing more to do' upsets me.

The argument you're making is that you'll never do all of the content in a week, but you wish you could earn badges for it all if you somehow magically could. That's dumb. What Blizzard is going to be able to do now is allow all kinds of content to reward Frost badges, and you can pick and choose what you want to do. There will (should) be more content available that grants these, because there's already a hard cap in how many you can earn per week. This change helps both the casual and the hardcore.

[Ingmar]

I'd say that I would be upset about the cap per week mechanic.  There shouldn't be any cap that is less than the total amount of content I can choose to do.  It doesn't matter if it's likely I never will choose to do ALL available content in a single week, any further artificial cap beyond 'there's nothing more to do' upsets me.

The cap is only on the points, you can still get actual drops from the encounters themselves. So, unless you have every upgrade already that you might possibly want, there's still going to be a reason to do content after the weekly points cap.

[Merusk]

There IS a weekly cap on the top-tier (valor) points you can earn per week, according to their first post.  This doesn't matter much, since there's already a cap on the number of Frost badges you can earn per week.  It's ~57 if you do each day's heroic, 10 and 25 of VoA and ICC (including killing Arthas) the weekly raid quest and the weekly ICC quests. 

As Ingmar said, even if you hit that cap you've still got a shot at loot off of bosses, so you'd still want to run that content for the drops.

There isn't a cap on the triumph badges and they mention no cap beyond the max-point cap for the "heroic" points.

Both max point caps make sense because if you're maxed out on points, you've bought everything you want that's available via points.  Your Valor points reset to 0 and any remaining roll-over to be come Heroics at each content release similar to Arena points resetting.   There's no use in stockpiling them buy gear on day one of a new raid because they'd be buying the same gear. 

[Azazel]

Newest announcement says that base level PVP Weapons have no rating requirement, but that the higher ilvl ones will. The comparison they made was that the Raid-level weapons would have no requirement, while the Hardmode-level ones would.

Whups! And there goes my interest in coming back to WoW!

 

[caladein]

Newest announcement says that base level PVP Weapons have no rating requirement, but that the higher ilvl ones will. The comparison they made was that the Raid-level weapons would have no requirement, while the Hardmode-level ones would.

Whups! And there goes my interest in coming back to WoW!

 

I don't see how you do it another way.  If you're going to have Heroic-mode PvE be both hard (gated) and reasonably rewarding (higher item level) you need to provide an equivalent to it on the PvP side.  If you don't, you wind up requiring PvPers to run the hardest PvE content in the game just to be competitive at PvP.

As of now, the Tier 2 weapons (just like Heroic ICC-25 weapons) are so far into the realm of the hardcore that they really needn't enter into most people's consideration.

[Typhon]

I'm not following what you are saying caladein.  The way I, and I think Azazel, read "while the Hardmode-level ones would" part of the post was - this will continue the current state - whenever I PvP I'll end up going up against folks that I seemingly cannot kill and to who I seem to be nothing more than a speed bump.

I read a little further (not in the same post) and it seems like armor doesn't have the same restrictions as the weapons, but this may be just my lack of reading ability (or their inability to collate all this information into a cogent and centralized source of information). 

[Rendakor]

Ok, I'll try to clarify. Currently, there are 2 types of PVP weapons: ilvl 264s which require 1800 rating, and ilvl 277s which require 2200 rating. In the cataclysm system, the ilvl 264s (which are on par with Normal ICC25) will have no rating requirement, they'll just cost a ton of Arena Points. The ilvl 277s (equivalent to Heroic ICC25) will have a rating requirement.

No armor will have rating requirements at all; there will similarly be two tiers of gear: one of which costs Honor Points and one which costs Arena points.

I really don't see how that is a dealbreaker to anyone; if they allowed people to get the ilvl 277 weapons with no requirement, everyone would do so before raiding because ilvl 277 PVP >= ilvl 264 PVE. The change makes the low level ones accessible (to the point where raiders will probably still grind for them because getting weapons is hard), while still giving people something to work for. Also, the enemy having only a weapon that is one tier higher than you will not render you nothing more than a speed bump.

[Selby]

The change makes the low level ones accessible (to the point where raiders will probably still grind for them because getting weapons is hard), while still giving people something to work for.

This is a good thing.  Right now my PVP set lacks a weapon and I can't get into a rated arena team to save my life (much less really want to) and it's annoying as hell.  I end up using my raid weapons instead ;-)

[Rendakor]

Yea same here; my arena 2s team is like...1300? It's awful. I ended up rolling on a second Heartpierce for my Rogue; the one I use for raiding has Berserking on it and that's less than ideal for PVP.

[Simond]

Don't forget - rated battlegrounds in Cata as well.

[Shrike]

Yea same here; my arena 2s team is like...1300? It's awful. I ended up rolling on a second Heartpierce for my Rogue; the one I use for raiding has Berserking on it and that's less than ideal for PVP.

I think I'd just stick with berserking. I ran with double 'zerk on my shaman during my brief flirtation with arena play. Considering the "knifefight-in-a-phonebooth" nature of arenas, I don't see the AC reduction issue as a particularly big one. Generally, you either won or lost in a few seconds. We hit about 1550 in 3s in two evenings (hunter/pally/shaman). Of course, my only other 80 PvP toon is a DK, and she runs runeforges, so...dunno. Still, not something I can see getting too excited about.

[Merusk]

Leather may as well be cloth with the ease of getting ArP as a melee class.

Shadowpanther agrees with Berserking, followed in a very distant 2nd by the Titanium Weapon Chain, for PvP.
http://shadowpanther.net/enchantments-pvp.htm