Posts with tag conquest-points

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

It's the beginning of a new arena season. Recently hitting 85 myself, I noticed a lack of information about the best ways to acquire PvP gear for my upcoming adventures in Azeroth. Well, I've put together a little guide for you that I hope will aid you in whatever your PvP goals are this season.

Conquest points are the most important type of PvP currency in Cataclysm -- and they're awesome. They're incredibly easy to get, as you only have to win four or five arena games a week to get to the starting cap of 1,343. The average piece of conquest gear is bought for 1,579.4 conquest points, so even if you never break 1,500 rating, you'll be getting a new piece of epic PvP gear almost every week.

Try to save up early for your weapon, offhand, and relic/wand. These three slots are the only pieces of gear that can only be bought with conquest points -- don't make the mistake of buying other stuff with conquest points! You can just get a slightly inferior version of the other pieces via honor, but you might have to wave around that green or blue weapon for a while if you aren't wise about what you buy!

Rated battlegrounds have been criticized as being unnecessary after a player reaches his conquest point cap for the week, which is fairly easily obtainable. This resulted in many people shying away from rated games after the cap, and queues for rated battlegrounds being lengthy and annoying. Blizzard has just announced that rated battlegrounds will now award honor points when a player has reached the conquest point cap.

Bashiok -- Rated BGs Now Award Honor at Conquest Cap

We've recently made a change in an effort to promote continued play in Rated Battlegrounds. Now when a player is at their weekly Conquest cap they will receive the full amount of Honor from kills, objective completions, victories and losses while in a Rated Battleground match. Those not at their cap will continue to earn Conquest normally, and will only earn Honor once they reach their weekly cap.

Whether you're capped and others on your team aren't, or you're all capped and just want to keep playing, we hope this change will allow more flexibility for those participating in Rated Battlegrounds.

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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.

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There are quite a few changes to PvP in Cataclysm. Let's have a look at how the changes in the past few patches will affect the other aspect of World of Warcraft gameplay ...

Resilience is different

Resilience no longer reduces critical strike chance but instead only reduces damage across the board. As resilience is the premier PvP stat, this impacts gameplay in a major way. First, critical strikes are back on the table. This means that talents contributing to crit are valuable in PvP again. Burst damage from crits will happen more often, and players can opt to stack crit for PvP without it being devalued ... much.

Zach of The Art of War(craft) enjoys PvP in all its forms, which includes competitive sports, martial arts and the considerably less badass and infinitely geekier miniature wargaming. Like Warmachines. Or maybe it's because he kind of just likes anything with the word '"war" tacked onto it.

Last week we took a look at the delicious possibilities that Cataclysm will bring to battlegrounds PvP. It's going to be pretty brutal out there, and you're going to need friends. While there is a whole bunch of cool stuff all over, the best thing about Cataclysm for battleground enthusiasts will be the rated battlegrounds. Unfortunately, one of the things this will contribute to is the decline of solo play. In order to get the most out of your battleground experience, you'll need to be part of a group so that you'll reap the benefits of rated matches.

The new Vicious Gladiator gear for arena Season 9 (or rated battlegrounds Season 1) is listed on MMO-Champion, and I'm sure avid battlers are drooling in anticipation of how these sets look. Then again, it could just be me. At any rate, there's a whole load of gear waiting to be claimed through honor and conquest! Most importantly, one thing that separates itemization this upcoming PvP season -- and this is a game-changer -- is the availability of personal-ratings-free weapons and armor through the new system. That marks the first time that max-level PvP weapons will become obtainable by players of all skill levels and the first time that top-tier PvP armor will only have a cosmetic distinction separating them from their ratings-free counterparts. You read that right: PvP gear with ratings requirements will have the exact same stats as PvP gear with no ratings requirements.

In a follow-up to the lengthy Badge and PvP point preview for Cataclysm, Bornakk posts that weapons for PvP will be tiered much as normal and heroic drops are in current raiding.

Bornakk - Cataclysm Badge and PvP Point Changes

The lower tier weapons will correspond in quality to items found in the latest raid tier on normal difficulty and cost only Conquest Points. The higher tier weapons will correspond in quality to items found in the latest raid tier on Heroic difficulty and will have a minimum personal rating requirement in addition to costing Conquest Points. All of the highest-stat PvP armor, including shoulder and head pieces, will cost only Conquest Points and have no rating requirements. We have updated our original announcement text to reflect this clarification.

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This basically means that while the best weapons will require success in Arenas and Ranked BG's, PvP players will be able to get weapons upgrades via running PvP out of the gate rather than having to hope for an instance/raid drop. It also means an end to armor pieces, trinkets and other items requiring a rating to purchase, making gearing up for PvP easier. It seems likely that this change is aimed at making PvP easier to start in and taking some of the perceived need to PvE away from the PvP game.