Blizzard on 2200 rating PvP weapon availability
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 26th 2011 at 8:00PM
Confused about when you'll be able to use your 2,200 arena rating weapons? Well, Blizzard has decided to clarify exactly when that will be, and the answer is not Jan. 25 (yesterday) but rather two weeks after patch 4.0.6 drops. Why, you may ask?
Daxxarri - 2200 Rating Weapon AvailabilityThe decision to further delay availability of weapons requiring 2200 rating was not made lightly. Currently very few guilds are clearing PvE content that drops weapons of this caliber, which would make rated Battlegrounds and Arenas the primary source for top-tier weapons. We of course don't want players who are pursuing PvE content to feel as though they must engage in heavy PvP to obtain these weapons in order to be competitive or successful.
Understandably, some folks are upset -- probably the ones who either already have the ratings and points ready to spend, or the ones who managed to get the weapons during the brief window where there was a bug. Daxxari answers those concerns in a later post as well.
Daxxari - Blizzard and Communication (RE: 2200 Weapons)Some of you may recall that there were times in the past when it was common for the Arenas to be flooded by geared raiders actively engaging in arena matches exclusively to acquire weapons for the sake of defeating PvE content. That's not the intended design for arena rewards (that they be part of PvE progression), and that was a situation that we were hoping to avoid now. Raid content is very challenging currently, and as a direct result, there are fewer top tier weapons floating around. What we didn't want was a 'gold rush' on arenas, which would diffuse the competitive space there as well as give PvE focused players an undue advantage for raid content.Blue poster text.
So as of right now, the answer to when you can get or if you already have them use 2,200-rated weapons is "soon," and the reason for the delay is to prevent the PvE-to-PvP rushes of the past. Seems reasonable enough to me, although to some degree, people are always going to PvP for PvE gear and vice versa.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
toddcore Jan 26th 2011 8:16PM
I still don't understand. If people put the time and effort required into meeting the requirements for these weapons they should have the ability to obtain and use them. If the problem is that these items are significantly easier to obtain than their PvE counterparts or that they're more useful in PvE than intended then that's indicative of another problem entirely and one that their stance doesn't address.
This kind of micromanagement, having policies that amount to "Well you earned the reward the way we intended but we feel like you probably didn't really WANT to, so we're not letting you have it yet", seems ridiculous and while I personally have no stake in it either way I completely understand why the people who are frustrated by this feel the way they do.
Tim Jan 26th 2011 11:42PM
It's more like "You earned the reward, but we don't want to force other people to earn the reward in the same way to be competitive in a different area of the game."
Cthulu Jan 27th 2011 1:09AM
Would you prefer that the arena weapons get nerfed so they weren't as effective in PvE? and then you end up having to go into raiding to obtain the best weapons?
I think this is a much better solution long term than forcing PvE to arena or Arena to go to heroic mode raiding to be competitive. I am sure the outcry would be much greater with more nerfs to PvP gear.
hpavc Jan 27th 2011 2:16AM
yes nerfing the weapon should be done, they should have a durability of like 5 or something so they have no place in pve at all.
flawless Jan 27th 2011 8:04AM
Seems like a good idea to me. Make PVP gear have 1/1 durability, and ensure that PVP activity does not reduce durability at all (I know dying in PVP doesn't, not sure about actually hitting people).
Those who then pursue PVP have the gear for that. They still have their questing gear that they can use for daily quests etc, but PVP gear remains for PVP.
This also means trinkets, relics, cloaks, rings and necks that don't have durability are still useable. Just means people are not going to use PVP armor and weapons in PVE at all.
Using them the other way around (PVE in PVP) at a competitive level is a bad idea due to the resilience.
Eddy Jan 27th 2011 8:32AM
Actually, the 1/1 durability idea is a terrible one.
I know many people on PVP servers who do their dailies in PVP gear, just in case, and this would make that kind of precaution impossible. Tol Barad, also, has a number of PVE-style mobs, who would rip that durability up in a second.
Wolfshanze Jan 27th 2011 1:05PM
I have the simple solution that is fairly obvious IMHO.
Base everything on resiliance.... this would work for EVERYTHING... weapons, armor, etc, etc. I can't imagine this would be too hard to code in a patch:
Items imbued with a Resiliance Rating suffer *10% stat drop on said item when used in Dungeons & Raids (making PvP items still useable for zone and daily quests & what-not, while preventing PvE people from farming PvP to raid).
Items NOT imbued with a Resiliance Rating suffer *10% stat drop on said item when used in Arena & Battlegrounds (making PvPers trying to get/farm PvE to do PvP pointless in return).
This would mean you should use PvP gear for PvP and PvE for PvE, but allow both to do questing in whatever gear they mainly use.
I think the above approach could/should be embraced by both the PvP and PvE community as a win/win scenario that would keep "those other guys" out of "our" content.
* the percentage stat drop is debatable and open to tweaking, I just used 10% as an example, this could obviously be adjusted up or down accordingly for the desired result.
toddcore Jan 27th 2011 2:53PM
"It's more like 'You earned the reward, but we don't want to force other people to earn the reward in the same way to be competitive in a different area of the game.'"
Right now you have the same exact situation in reverse. With no PvP weapons available people who are serious about PvP have to turn to raiding if they want to obtain to remain competitive. Why is that okay but not the reverse?
What if it had worked out the other way around and they had removed all weapons from raid boss loot tables to prevent an influx of PvE weapons into arenas and battlegrounds? I don't disagree that there's an issue here but this policy does nothing to address it. A "possibly maybe two weeks after 4.0.6" time frame puts the availability of these weapons sometime in February at the earliest - literally months after the expansion's release. I think Blizzard gets far more things right than wrong and they get a lot of unwarranted flak but there's nothing really okay about their handling of this situation.
Muhlla Jan 27th 2011 10:40PM
"Right now you have the same exact situation in reverse. With no PvP weapons available people who are serious about PvP have to turn to raiding if they want to obtain to remain competitive. Why is that okay but not the reverse?"
As far as I can tell (shockingly, I am not a mind-reader) the influx of PvPers into Raid Content is OK to Blizz because it does not change how raids work. In a raid you are fighting NPCs. NPCs do not change unless Blizz MAKES them change. They keep the same stats, abilities, and overall challenge. The same does not necessarily hold true for PvP.
Blizzard's theory (as far as I can tell, remember I'm not a mind-reader) is that since in PvP you are fighting other players of similar RATING rather than other players of similar SKILL, if a million PvP newbs flood the Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds then the quality of the competition drops to almost zero, and it would not take a very skilled player to defeat such pitiful opponents - thus dropping the challenge required to obtain 2200 rating.
So if a flood of PvPers go to raids, they still have to be geared, and they still have to not stand in fire, and they still have to win their lootrolls in order to get gear, all of which is difficult and takes time (nobody's really geared enough to carry an ungeared fire-magnet through a raid and shower them with free loot yet). Conversely, if a flood of Raiders go to Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds they BECOME the competition, lowering the challenge required to beat their lame selves and making it easier to win for anybody with more skill, better PvP gear, or both.
But I could be wrong. I could be completely misreading Blizz, and they could have a completely different rationale for withholding PvP weapons. They could even have no rationale at all for all I know. Did I mention that I'm not a mind-reader?
wutsconflag Jan 26th 2011 8:20PM
While I understand their reasons for wanting to delay the availability of these weapons, I foresee a LOT of incoming QQ.
Kyle Jan 26th 2011 10:02PM
Unrelated, but as a long time WoW player, I really wish the community would collectively drop the word "QQ" altogether. I have only ever seen it used by elitists and jerks, and anytime I hear anyone use it, I just lose some respect for them. It's on the same level as "nub" and any variant thereof. I'm probably one of the few though.
gewalt Jan 26th 2011 11:02PM
qq more kyle
Kyle Jan 27th 2011 1:23AM
That's the best you can come up with? Pathetic.
Psiwave Jan 28th 2011 7:32AM
QQ is bad, but 'Bad' is worse, as in 'Terribad' or 'bads' I can't help but mentally downvote comments using these terms. I've just never seen it used in a comment that was constructive or even accurate.
razion Jan 26th 2011 8:33PM
I don't see why they don't just put a limitation on the weapons to not be usable in raids. Seems like that would get rid of the issue entirely, anyway. There are a lot of things that aren't usable in arena, why is everything usable in raids? It seems if they applied more restrictions to raids they could solve a lot of problems, though I am sort of beginning to understand why they wouldn't be willing to do it. Sort of...
Hob Jan 26th 2011 10:40PM
That was my thought exactly ~ since there are abilities and items that are not useable under certain conditions, why not lock in the ultimate rewards to those scenarios? If a purple weapon is available during the current Arena, it can only be used in Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds.
Another alternate would be to scale the weapon down from purple to blue when it is used outside of an Arena ~ still valuable, but not game-changing.
thebitterfig Jan 26th 2011 11:37PM
What strikes me as the most practical way of dealing with the problem of PvP weapons being "required" for raiding is to make Resilience provide a penalty to non-PvP settings.
For example, if Resil decreased damage dealt to non-player (or player-pet) targets with a high enough conversion rate, this would basically kill PvP gear for PvE uses. 1% damage reduction per 180 resil would be approximately an anti-crit rate. This wouldn't have much of an impact on healers, but the need for high ilvl weapons is mostly a dps-thing.
Of course, the major reason that this is a problem, compared to WotLK at least, is that the PvP weapons were horrendously bad in PvE. Secondary stats were significantly more valuable in WotLK, and the combination of resilience itemisation and inflated stamina lead to serious drawbacks for those using PvP weapons. For example, an ilvl 245 PvE dagger was superior to a 264 ilvl PvP one, and the highest pre-raid weapons, the ilvl 232 ones, were not much worse than the PvP ones, unlike the current situation where PvP weapons would be significantly superior to pre-raid ones.
Guilegamesh Jan 27th 2011 12:26AM
My guess is that it is probably a lot simpler to code the weapons not being usable for a set amount of time than to code for restrictions such as "No resilience in dungeons". I don't know how hard it would be to code the restrictions but I assume they don't want to spend all that energy when 4.0.6 still needs to be released.
buenoexcellente Jan 27th 2011 1:03AM
That's a great idea. Let's also make a rule that no gear not earned with honor can be used in Battlegrounds or Arena. After all what's good for the Goose is good for the Gander.
Hob Jan 27th 2011 1:13AM
@buenoexcellente
Although I suspect you're being sarcastic, I would actually agree. If a player can get the most elite PvE weapon from the most difficult raid possible (requiring more than just their own skill, in other words), they should not be able to use it in Arenas and battlegrounds. At least, not right away.