Season 3 aspirations
by John Himes 
Nov 28th 2007 at 11:00PM
The third arena season started yesterday amidst a flurry of activity on my server. Trades people were making gold by the handful. Non-raiders and alts everywhere suddenly received a huge boost from the first-season gladiator's gear which was moved to honor vendors. Last season's winners showed off their bugged titles and mounts while players across the servers began competing to win those rewards for themselves next time around.I haven't been much of a PvPer on my main character, an Alliance rogue. In fact, I've been rather horrible at it. (I suppose I do better from range, since I always had much better luck as a hunter or warlock.) Nonetheless, I've been learning a lot in the past few weeks and have decided to aim for at least an 1850 rating this time around. For many hardcore PvPers, that goal is probably laughably easy to attain. For someone like me, who has basically died ten times each week to grab a few welfare epics, it seems rather lofty.
I've started building up my PvP gear and reading up on strategies. My main arena partner and I have even discussed respecing our talents a couple of times a week in order to maximize our PvP potential while maintaining our current level of raiding ability. I'm not sure how far we'll go, but we'd both like to pick up some new weapons.
There must be other players that are in a similar situation, getting into the arena seriously for the first time. I imagine that yet other people will simply be content to grab more items from the cheaper "Merciless" rewards. What are your own goals for this arena season? Are you going to any special measures to achieve them?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Charlie Nov 28th 2007 11:21PM
I would like to get an 1850 personal rating as well. Just to prove to myself that I could do it. I've never gotten higher than 1650, so i've got a ways Oo.
I started to PvP alot at the end of season 2. So I only have 1 peice of arena gear (merc chest), and the only honor item i have is my insignia. But soon (2 weeks!) I will have the pvp waist and s2 shoulders to completly replace my primal mooncloth set (which has 0 stam), and break 100 resilience and 9k hp unbuffed. Huzzah!
Charlie Nov 28th 2007 11:23PM
Oh, I'm also with you on the respeccing part. Being a holy priest, the two cookie-cutter specs for PvP and PvE are very different, but i realized after tooling around for awhile its very possible to get a good mix! You just have to be willing to make sacrifices.
jlpknights82 Nov 29th 2007 12:41AM
I don't feel the need to get a high rating, mainly because, well, I'm just not that good of a PvPer. Haha. I'm very casual about arenas, though we do try. We always have around a 1500 rating by the end of the season. We don't entirely slack off.
Also, I got my merciless weapon and shoulders already, so I'm not in a huge rush to upgrade. This season I want to finish getting into all epics. I need gloves and legs. A better chestpiece (currently s1). And also some of the honor rewards for ring, neck, trinket, and relic slots. My hope it to go into the next expansion very well-geared. :D
Nick S Nov 29th 2007 1:17AM
I'm only newly 70, so arenas are laughably impossible for me in my mixed blues and greens. I'm happy that I can purchase old arena gear with battleground honor - that way I can earn my gear with teamwork and cleverness that maybe make up for my mediocre (+620 spell, fire mage) gear.
Being a new 70 is a tough place to be... high expectations, and not a lot of resources with which to meet them right away.
jaxson_bateman Nov 29th 2007 1:27AM
I'm a PvEer; no doubt about it. I would much rather raid than BG any day of the week. I'm not even a huge fan of PvP (PvP healing is generally not all that fun, especially when the mentality of a lot of people seems to be "hey, heal me, but if you get focus fired by a few people... meh"). But I want to get 2k rating and the full Vengeful Gladiator set. Why?
Because I'm extremely competitive, and want my toon to be as complete as possible. Being a paladin, I'll have an easier time than most obtaining this rank - atm I've just started playing with an MS warr and things are going well, and previously I've had an ~1850 rank with a lock before I stopped arenaing. If I weren't to get the rating, that would be fine - getting a Merc Glad weap and shield (already have the shoulders) would not be too bad. But I would just love to be able to walk around in a full Venge Glad set. To me, it would tell others "hey, this is how much I love my toon".
Heilig Nov 29th 2007 1:45AM
My goal for season 3 is to find a single person anywhere that still wants to run instances. These welfare epics have completely killed PvE. All anyone does now is farm honor for 3 days so they can get a piece of gear that's better than most stuff that drops in Kara. And they're guaranteed to get it, no rolling, no hoping the right thing drops, no requirements that you even have any skill.
Oh, you can't get the weapons or the shoulders? Cry me a river in your other 9 epics that you can get by being horrible at this game. I'm so freaking sick of seeing people strutting around with their two new "purpz" when half their gear is greens, they picked the healing S1 gear, they're feral spec, but didn't bother to take feral charge. I swear to god I saw that today. That's a person that would be laughed out of any party, but he has the same gear that others with skill worked their butts off for to have the absolute best 6 months ago. Now they are scaling up the PvP gear and giving away what used to be the best, but the gear from raiding is exactly what it used to be. There is no point to raiding anymore.
Way to kill your own game, Blizz. Grats.
sephirah Nov 29th 2007 5:33AM
Get a life and stop "working your butts off for to have the absolute best".
Take a deep breath, relax and repeat "Envy is bad. I play this game to have fun and not to complain about others playing the game the way they want"
Ultimate Pwner Nov 29th 2007 2:32AM
WTF is up with this 'Welfare Epic' QQing crap, u guys are just getting angry that people are getting epics and you guys had to raid for weeks and weeks to get your T4/T5, and some guy gets a similar piece for almost no effort. PvE doesnt require skill because all yo do really is press 3 buttons. PvP on the other hand is the latter. I think its good that Blizzard did this. The reason for my opinion is that we all subcribe to this game and should all be geared more or less equally. None of this 'I raid BT, im better than u!" nonsense.
Tridus Nov 29th 2007 6:23AM
Yeah, win trading requires tons of skill. Getting epics for never winning a single match requries tons of skill.
It was Tigole at Blizzcon who first called them "welfare epics", and with good reason. The fact is that arena gear is FAR easier to get then the equivalent ilvl raid gear.
Kees Nov 29th 2007 5:40AM
I do raid BT and I do my battlegrounds. As a main tank PvP epics are laughable, only the shield can get my attention.
We usually do our 5v5 arena team, sticking around 1800 rating with pve gear ;) Well at least the S3 start made us gain a lot of resilience ;)
Bolus Nov 29th 2007 3:01AM
One of the problems I'm seeing in the near future is with the lack of any tanking gear obtainable from PvP, seeing that the only 2 specs that are not viable in PvP are prot pally and prot warrior, it's still super time consuming to gear up a tank to do PvE raid content.
It's super easy now to spend a few hours a week to get DPS ed out with crazy epics but all of the tank gear is still in the 5 mans, raids and buyable for high numbers of badges (assuming you get around 15 from a kara clear, and run a few heroics, it'll take a month to buy the 75 badge chest). I was already *partially* established with my gear from having hit 60 a few months ago and running instances, but someone new wouldn't be able to step up as easily with most of the DPS I've seen this week. And the tanking drops from heroics aren't much of an upgrade.
At least healers get good gear.
Hooper Nov 29th 2007 3:09AM
@6
I just read all of your posts...................you assume that the only people in the world are raiders or you're hated PvPers.
There are still us casuals out there. Oh, and we outnumber all of you. I'll spec however I damn well feel like speccing and I can care less how you think about it. Its a game. Once its not fun, its useless.
Elephunk Nov 29th 2007 4:28AM
@9 Hooper
it's even worse for casual raiders, raiding 2 times a week wipeing on new bosses, repair bills and pots for over 100g each run. to get some T4 gear and now they hand out S1 gear for penuts. *sigh*
Pwnmeister Nov 29th 2007 3:37AM
People who care that much about this game shud be shot.
monkeyslayer Nov 29th 2007 4:30AM
with the new personal ratings in place, these "welfare" epics are gonna be a bit harder to farm, since u have to play all 10 of ur games and can't just play 3 games and switch in a geared friend or whatever. should be alot more interesting, on mal'ganis everyone and their grandma has gladiator gear now, so either its more healthy competition or just annoyingly long queue times.
and i respec once a week, 100g a week. it seems like a huge blow but a pvp spec and a pve spec are totally different and will increase ur performance many times over. however...skill > everything.
V-eRGe Nov 29th 2007 9:30AM
This is wrong.
You obtain arena points from your team rating, not your personal rating.
Personal rating only matters when purchasing weapons and shoulders.
skalgrim Nov 29th 2007 5:41AM
Well, I've been WOWing for over two years now and have never, ever PVPed in any sense of the word.
Part of me would love to get into arenas but, you know what? I haven't got a clue about them. I'd love to know how to get started, what the deal is and all that but it's bloody hard to find a dummies guide anywhere and, I suspect, being a holy priest (even in epics) isn't the most useful thing.
Spiritoffire Nov 29th 2007 7:16AM
I already have a plan for my arena/pvp points, i already have Merci glad shoulders from last season so I'm just starting to get back into pvp, and I have both the wartiger and warhorse so that was a waste of tokens >.<
-Merci glad helm
-Vengeful Glad Chest
-Vengeful Glad Gauntlets
-All the Vindicators
-Gladiators warstaff
-Talisman of the Alliance
Grinding 10K+ Arena points, 60K+ Honor, and 150+ Marks
is going to take awhile
Chriasas Nov 29th 2007 7:44AM
Two Words...Warlock Wings
Drak Nov 29th 2007 8:13AM
I l love how they're called "welfare epics" even though they take a lot of skill, dedication, and intelligence to get. Unlike raids where people can not carry thier own wieght and get epics, that doesnt fly in arena. People who call them welfare epics must've earned thier other epics by fighting static bosses in raids that never do anything different at all. That sounds difficult.