Season 5 began today – about 15 minutes ago actually. This is the first time that I have played WoW with these seasons. I’m in culture shock at the moment. All these names like ‘Savage’ and ‘Deadly’ and ‘Hateful’ and ‘Gladiator’ and BG vs. Arena and rating vs honor and … INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!!
Maybe someone can lay all of this out for me in noob speak so that I can understand it all.
What is the weakest? Savage blue sets? Then it’s Hateful? Then Deadly? And I can buy the Savage with just Honor for like 60k a pop or I can spend 12k Honor and some arena points? How long does a season last?
How difficult are the arena points to achieve? I realize that arena rating is difficult when you get past 1700. And if that’s the case then I have no chance at the Arena weapons… so I should probably just get a PvE weapon then since there are no honor weapons?
You can see why I’m confused, right?
My plan of action to tackle Season 5 is to get level 80 first. Once I’m level 80 then I’ll slowly start evaluating which of these sets I want and how I’m going to obtain them. I plan to make an arena team with my friends and if we suck then we suck – we’re in it for fun because we enjoy actively fighting other players. My last final is Thursday, so after that I’ll be free to BG a lot during the day and participate in heroics and smaller raids if I so choose.  My ultimate goal is to not get overwhelmed or stressed about needing to get the best stuff.
There’s also crafted blue PvP gear that’s good to start with.
I wouldn’t bother with evaluating the gear. When you get to 80, purchase the crafted PvP gear, start an Arena team, and play a few matches.
See where your skill level falls out, and purchase the gear to match. No point worrying about the 1900+ rating gear if you aren’t going to be playing at that level.
Arena is cancer. You either will love it or hate it but either way you will play your 10 games per week.
I hope it will die with next expansion and we will see more Wintergrasp like end-game PvP.
Okay Keen, here’s a full write up for you. (I’m only doing it so I can procrastinate and not work).
There are there types of teams: 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5. Each season usually lasts about 4-5 months. You get more points for the larger the team. So if you had a 1700 rating with a 2v2, each player may receive 500 points, where if you have a 1700 rating on a 5v5, each player may receive 700 points.
The gladiator sets (Savage, Hateful and Deadly) are 5 piece armor sets (Helm, Chest, Gloves, Shoulders, Pants) and weapons. The Savage is equal to level 80 blues, the Hateful is equal to level 80 10man gear and the Deadly is equal to level 80 25man gear.
Savage you’ll most likely be able to buy with no rating, Hateful will take mid range rating (probably 1700-1800) and Deadly will take high end rating (probably 1900-2100).
There are two different ratings to take into consideration: personal and team. Each team has an overall rating is based on the wins and losses the team itself goes through. The personal rating is based on the games you played in with the team. (As a 5 man team can have up to 10 members). All gear is based off personal rating. This way someone can’t stockpile points and then just join a high rating team for a week to get the gear.
I believe that some PvP gear will be able to be attained via the badges that drop off the heroic 5mans, the 10mans and the 25mans. (Hateful for the 5/10man badges and Deadly for the 25man badges). But only one or two pieces if they do allow it.
Also, some of the PvP gear drops off the boss from the Wintergrasp raid (10/25man one boss raid that you can do once a week but only when your side controls Wintergrasp).
Also, the other pvp gear pieces (boots, belt, bracers, rings, necklace, trinkets) are all purchasable with honor and battleground marks.
I apologize if I went about that in a confusing way, if you have any more questions, I’ll try to answer them.
To tack on to what Mordiceius wrote:
Arena seasons are of indeterminate length (much like bliz dev cycles). They’re probably about as long the time between content patches (i.e. the time it takes to to release another set of tier pve gear). At the end of the season everything closes down and resets, your team and personal ratings are reset to 1500 and titles/mounts get handed out for folks who’re rated high enough.
At the beginning of the new season a new set of gladiator gear is released with a new prefix (this time it’s Deadly), and all the previous sets get pushed back (last season’s set becomes available less arena points and lower/no ratings, the season before that becomes buyable with honor points, and the season before that drops off the face of the earth. (It’s a bit odd for this season as everyone went up 10 levels since last season, but this is the way it’s rolled from season to season in the past)
There’s some cross pollinating of gear from pve as well, as various tokens let you get gladiator gear without pvping, but generally the latest season is comes solely from arena points and rating (especially the really visible items like weapons/shoulders).
It’s not hard to accumulate some arena points even if you dink along at 1200 or so, and with honor gear and other sources you’ll slowly build up a resilience set, lots of people still use some pve gear (big weapons for physical classes are most common for that). But just as arena difficulty accelerates as you get higher, especially past 1700-1900, it similarly accelerates in the other direction as you get lower, falling much below 1300-1400 and you start hitting deeply disorganized teams that are just getting their 10 games/week in.
Really!? You’ve been blogging your opinions about WoW for the last 2 years, really!?
Have you thrown in the towel on WAR?
I love Arena (while others hate it). The thing is, Arena is the only true hardcore competition. Most people say that BG’s are a lot more fun. The truth is it’s actually just a lot easier to farm marks/honor while afking in them. In Arena, there is no AFKing for the points. It’s either win or lose. I have a great amount of respect for people on their Vengeful mounts and titles, they actually spent the time achieving something hard. Same goes for PvE.
Kinda like Vort asked, what happened to “I’ll get my does of PvE from WoW and RvR from WAR” ?
It’s not like I care what game you play, in the end people should play whatever game that gives them most fun for the time and money spent. But I’d love to hear the reasons behind you starting to aim for Arena gear and PvPing in WoW at all, when you’ve joyfully slaughtered WoW PvP on several occasions and told us how you love RvR. ><
I know of a group of 5v5ers that “win traded” on the last night the arena season to get their Gladiator titles. This team went 30-0, in one session, vs. their own guildies, to earn their mounts and goodies. Seeing a title above a players head should not necessarily warrant respect.
Seems to me that the most desperate players take the most desperate measures to get their achievements. That is my biggest problem with arenas.
I enjoy the BGs more than the arenas. The rock-paper-scissor issues are not as apparent in the BGs as the arenas. I wouldn’t mind seeing a rating system for the BGs. Although they would probably be just as corrupt as the arenas.
keen
id very much like to hear your opinion about WOW arena and if it is feasible to add the arean feature in WAR’s pvp option (aside from scenario and rvr)
@Vort: Totally haven’t given up on WAR. My time spent online this past week was minimal because I’ve had to choose which game I want to juggle with studying for finals and finishing up the semester. I chose WoW because I felt like I have more that I need to accomplish there, whereas my Shaman is near 40 and doesn’t need so much attention.
@Proximo: I absolutely love RvR more than WoW-E-sport PvP. Hands down, RvR is superior in almost every way. I really dislike the WoW battlegrounds unless I’m playing with friends and the team is organized – even then it’s just less boring. The one aspect of WoW PvP that I MIGHT eventually like (if they can fix it – more coming on that later) is Wintergrasp. I have yet to even play arenas but I hate the premise but I like fighting other players.. it’s a toss up.
@Mathias: When I get to play some arenas I will definitely weigh in on whether or not it’s as bad as I’ve always envisioned or not.
@Keen: Wintergrasp was the sole reason why I resubbed for WoW like 2 weeks after WotLK release. However I never got there, my DK is currently lvl 69 and have done but 4-5 quests in Northrend. I started a Marauder alt (now main) in WAR, and it totally reignited my love for WAR and even though my WoW account is still open I haven’t played it for 3+ weeks now.
@Mathias: I very much doubt we’ll ever see a arena system in WAR. This because it’s the opposite of what the entire WAR idea is about, which is large scale PvP. Add to that the fact that Mythic is trying to get people OUT of scenarios and into the open RvR, I think it’s pretty clear that their mindset is not leaning towards allowing 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 in WAR. Heck, they’ve even stated that there will be servers where scenarios are locked, only open RvR.
Besides, arena system would be completely stupid in WAR, they are trying to balance classes for many vs many, it would just make balancing lots harder, or arena very unbalanced if they did so.
My2cents. =)
The most fun you will have will be pairing against teams in full deadly armor as you enter arena for the first time.
Hardcore gamers are already level 80 with max raid gear. They created teams 15 minutes ago and are now nearing ~2200 team/personal rating. As soon as they have enough arena points to buy all their deadly armor and weapons, (~3 weeks) they will scrub some of their less fun teams are remake them thereby getting a new team and personal rating of 1500.
Thats where you come in.
I found WoWhead’s writeup of the items and the multiple ways of obtaining each extremely helpful. (Now if only they could update their database so that you can actually FIND this information…. ;))
http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=60347
Arena is not fun right now unless you’re a rogue, death knight, rogue, or mage. It’s an instant gibfest. If you’ve been following the forums, there’s a massive outcry over the level of damage being put out and how a full set of PvP gear with resilience statistically won’t do enough to cut it down. Amusingly, there are lots of quit threads and mentions of “going to Warhammer.”
Here’s a now-infamous video of a rogue doing 20,000 damage to people in seconds:
http://warcraftmovies.com/stream.php?id=96367&stream=1&h=82eedfab8232c36352de2e2e470eaa46
With full resilience from PvP gear, that damage would only be reduced to 16,000.
If it was possible, PvP has gotten worse than it was throughout the entire Burning Crusade expansion. RNG is more rampant than ever. For instance, warriors have a random chance to use Execute regardless of your life meter, and Execute can crit for about 9,000 damage. Rogues have crazy baseline abilities like being able to dismantle your weapon and shield. Retribution paladins were majorly buffed and are killing people in the duration of a single stun.
As a side note, if you’re a warlock, don’t bother. They are currently the worst class in the game by far in a PvP setting. You will get discouraged and want to start a death knight or play a different game.
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“Arena is not fun right now unless you’re a rogue, death knight, rogue, or mage.”
*Cackles madly*
Oh, yeah, Bartleble? Well, why don’t you just
You can’t do that while stunned
You can’t do that while stunned
You can’t do that while stunned
You are dead
Dammit!
@Toadee: Maybe he’s a rogue? 😛
Keen and I rolled Death Knights so we’re not king of the hill but we are in a good place.
I cant fathom how Blizzard could have done this badly in balancing.. the damage is just out of whack. Its not the gear atm, its the game. Played a bit with my resto shaman and a DK friend. We won slightly more than we lost, but everytime we lost it was because of seeing one Rogue, because those guys can take me down ALWAYS in under 5 seconds (yea the rogues with about 10 sec stunlock).
Yeah… it’s pretty bad. The balance makes it a bit…. well, the only word I can think of is “dumb”.