Arena enthusiasts might be elated to hear that the personal ratings required to purchase weapons and shoulder pieces will remain for the current
Season 3 items even as
Season 4 will introduce
new items into the game. According to Tharfor on the European PvP forums, in response to a question as to whether the ratings will be removed from items as soon as the new season starts, the ratings requirement will still exist (to purchase but not to use) the item but will likely be lowered. It's highly likely that Season 4 weapons and shoulder pieces will retain the 1850 and 2000 personal rating requirements. Exactly how much of a ratings reduction Season 3 will see remains to be seen.
This means that players saving up Arena points in the hopes of obtaining a Season 3 weapon or shoulder piece will still need to have competitive personal ratings in order to purchase the items. This is bad news for those hoping to obtain easy welfare epics, but good news for some players who might feel that their item values would diminish greatly if the rating requirements were removed completely. At any rate, it looks like Season 3
will last for a while, so there's still time to jack those ratings up. Good luck, everyone!
Tags: Gladiator, Items, Ratings, Ratings-requirements, Season-3, Season-4, Shoulder-piece, Weapon
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Arena
Mar 5th 2008 at 1:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
shiplore Mar 5th 2008 1:20PM
welfare epics? Really? it's not just as much time spent to lose as to win?
nalthien Mar 5th 2008 1:42PM
I argued against the concept of "welfare" epics for a while--until I got an alt to 70 and wanted to get some new gear for him without spending another set of countless hours in Kara to move up the ladder.
Instead, I spend 30 minutes, once a week--and win or lose, I've already started to collect epic gear better than what I could have obtained in Kara spending hours in game.
So yes, to say they are "welfare epics" is an entirely accurate description.
arb Mar 5th 2008 1:28PM
Not sure what #1 means tbh - clearly placing Personal Ratings on items means those particular items require skill and achievement not just time spent losing games each week.
Regarding the point about time to jack up ratings, perhaps seasoned campaigners can enlighten me about what happens to Personal Ratings between Seasons. Do they get reset to 1500 or carried over? In the former case, it'll be a whole new grind in S4 to get up to the Personal Ratings required for Vengeful gear, let alone Brutal stuff.
Raaj Mar 5th 2008 1:48PM
No, it just means that you're either halfway decent or you're rich enough to buy your way onto a good team that will carry you (like probably 80% of the people with the shoulders/weapons do). If you're offended by that statement, it obviously applies to you.
jack Mar 5th 2008 1:34PM
I'm entertained that they, while at the same time removing the attunements for Hyjal and Black Temple, are KEEPING the requirements for PvP weapons and armor.
Angus Mar 5th 2008 1:53PM
Walk into Mh or Bt with 24 other folks that are also wearing crap gear. Watch what happens. Heck, walk into those places with 25 T4 geared folks.
Removing attunement from the end raids isn't letting people without the gear walk into them and get tons of end game loot in a month.
Compare that to a druid warrior combo currently that can manage the rating requirements and have the gear fairly fast without having to compete against 4-10 other people in rolls or DKP for it.
Urthal Mar 5th 2008 1:34PM
How does skill have anything to do when your latency is 500ms higher than your oponents? If you are not in the US, you can look at 15 weeks worth of arena points to get enough to buy a weapon. How is this welfare?
Manatank Mar 5th 2008 1:38PM
Perhaps you shouldn't be doing arenas then? How can that even be fun? You do play this game for fun right?
Cieron Mar 5th 2008 1:39PM
Guess I have to farm heroic badges for the new caster weapon now. Sucks.
Schadow Mar 5th 2008 2:16PM
Manatank: I play from New Zealand had at the time I was doing arena I was averaging 800ms latency. As a melee DPS class, all that was needed to thwart me was to simply move. I could be standing right on your toon swinging away according to my UI, but still not close enough to hit you.
So arena was painful. Very painful. But at that time my guild was barely out of Kara and into Gruul's Lair, nowhere near the content I needed for decent weapons upgrades. So I bought my new charter each week, and took my 10 losses each week, until I saved enough for Merciless Gladiator weapons.
Comparable weapons were not available to me in PvE, so I had to use the Welfare system to acquire them. You can't save up badges and buy uber swords - they just aren't available.
So to have more "fun" in the PvE world, I had to stroll on over to PvP land.
Given the availability, I have to assume that was the game designers' intention. Otherwise suitable PvE weapons would exist for badges, and PvP weapons would be more specialised to PvP.
Fortunately for the heavy PvP people, we welfare recipients make easy wins so they can pad their personal ratings.
Jordrah Mar 5th 2008 3:55PM
snap schadow! you told his ass!
but i totally agree with you, there should be some sort of token system for pve weapons imo
Diaz Mar 5th 2008 1:52PM
Your 'reward' in the arena is your title and your mount.
The gear should be there to level the playing field.
Thus the contests would be determined by the relative 'skill' of the participants and not by a substantial gap in gear.
The rating system originally widened that gap in gear with the excuse that the gear would make those higher ranked players stand out (as if the title and mount did not achieve this) but that since each season the gear moved down to lesser ranked players it was in effect 'fair'. With the above change lesser ranked players will be effectively 2 seasons behind in gear sets.
Add to this that even now in the arena the 1400 bracket is filled with players 'smurfing' teams for gold or simply arena griefing. There is a problem here that isn't being addressed, and all the talk of 'welfare' is childish at best.
kenney Mar 5th 2008 1:56PM
Enough with the "Easy Welfare Epics" please.
The thing I REALLY don't like about this system is it really makes it hard to break into that 1850 rating, especially with the current trend of teams to elevate personal ratings by raising a team, lowering it with alts, and raising it again.
If you have a team that is struggling up through the mid 1600s-1850 ratings, then you know the misery of fighting teams that are not only extremely good, but equipped with weapons that you cannot hope to get until you beat them. It's bad enough with a single season disparity, it is going to seriously suck with a 2-season disparity to overcome. Arena is turning into a king of the hill game where the kings of the hill become harder and harder to displace simply by gaining that position.
Let's talk for a second about the difficulty of hitting that rating as well. Here is my server, 5v5 ladder: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Bloodlust&ts=5&p=1&sf=rank&sd=a&ff=realm&fv=Proudmoore
That's five 5-man teams with access to weapons. 10 3-mans, 23 2-mans, many with cross-membership. There ae about 50 individuals on my server with access to the 1850 weapons. We have more people clearing black temple than players with access to s3 weapons. And we do have a lot of arena teams.
I'm not a fan of the rating requirements in general, but specifically I think failing to lower the bar for s3 gear is a mistake- at least it is if you are going to introduce a new line of s4 weapons. The rating requirement system is a bad mechanic for arena, and there must be a better way to balance pve vs arena.
Khanmora Mar 5th 2008 2:12PM
Drysc posted this statement in a thread last night and said they had changed their minds about comments made in previous threads that ratings requirements would be removed. The problem right now is that the point sellers and smurfers are a plague in the lower rating brackets. It's really difficult to get above 1500 if you are in S1 gear and going up against teams in 3s and 5s that have 80% of the team in full s3.
Drysc's thread from last night:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5103672570&sid=1&pageNo=2#24
compare to previous statements:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2040595188&postId=19971535511&sid=1#131
bloodlight Mar 5th 2008 2:56PM
and we have the normal blizzard nonsense when it come to arena. They "balance" arena by destroying PvE. and then immediately turn around and destroy any balance in the arena, by setting upa completely unbalanced system based on "earned " gear. If blizzard wanted real balance they would set up the areana teh same way as the new tournement were each player got a full selection of gear then you have a chance at Balance.
But Blizzards constant actions to keep the haves having and the have nots down as far as possiblle shows ther real desire in arenes, They want to assagethe whiny 12 year old with ego problems that can onl feel good, whan they get easy wins over people with half the gear they have. Makes ya wonder whichj VP's child they are actually catering too.
clozer Mar 5th 2008 2:47PM
I like how they wont lift off personal ratings of old seasons.
Yet they lift off attunements for the most elitist raids in the game.
Welcome to World of Arenacraft
Clem Mar 5th 2008 2:47PM
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Oh, and…
Easy welfare epics!
Alex Apr 20th 2008 1:16PM
Easy wellfare epics eh?
Not so easy to me.
Well they are easy, but much more brainwashing.
You have to do 6 hours of AV Premades a day just to get about 15k honor. (not pug games but premades)
My spellblade was 25.2k. just my main hand!
So lets do math. 25.2/15 = 1.68
okay so 1.68X6 = 10.08 (10hours 4.8 minutes) of AV????
That doesnt sound easy for someone with a life.
Also vindicators 2 rings. 1 necklace. boots, belt, bracers takes another 94k honor.
so thats another 38 hours doing av premades.
And all S1/wellfare gear = 85k honor (chest,legs,gloves,shoulders,head)
Thats another 34 hours of premade AV.
So all in all Vindicators + S1 wellfare gear( no weaps) = 72 hours, of non losing constant playing premade AV.
Personally i have a life and i dont think i wanna spend 3 days playing for the bottem of the barrel gear.
My advice: Keep your honor, and wait for s2 to become wellfare.
bloodlight Mar 5th 2008 3:15PM
as to al the buying and selling of teams, there is a simple solution that could be had were not Blizzard catering to ego challenged 12 year olds.
-------------------------------------------------------------
No toon may be on more that 1 arena team during any given season, nor may any toon leave and re-join a team during a season. a team may have no players over the course of a season than 1.5 times its available slots. Thus a 2v2 team would have no more that 6 differant toons over the course of a season, a 3v3 maxes at 9 and a 5v5 at 15.
does this stop selling altogether, no nothing really will do that short of making teams fixed at charter signing. But it will limit it. What team will really want to kick a good player knowing they cant come back and replace them witha scrub that is gonna bring there rating down?
Good_Idea Mar 5th 2008 3:28PM
Why are raiders complaining about arena armor? Arena armor is "purple", but it's not that great for raiding. Does the color purple turn everyone's brain off? The armor is for arena, who cares if it's purple? Does the color make you jealous?