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retribution pally/MS Warri/rogue/he...
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by chaud on May 03, 2008, 09:03 PM Let me preface the stats by saying there is information for 2v2 and 5v5, but I find them less important than the 3v3 data. I also can't see anything over ~1800 or 1900 as being valid data, as there are so few teams at that level. With that said, make of the stats what you will.
I was surprised that mages were slightly higher than the general 3v3 population has them at. I guess mage/rogue is doing better than I expected.
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by Boubouille on May 02, 2008, 04:35 AM Season 4 Vendors are now on PTRs. They are PTR stats and could be changed at anytime before the release on live realms. - Prices are the same as current season 3 items.
- Personal rating requirements aren't on the items, but will be here in the live version, scroll down to the blue post by Drysc for the details.
- Some of the usual high-resolution screenshots have been turned into very-high-resolution screenshots (especially on armors), any feedback on them is appreciated.
Item pricesScreenshot of all item pricesArmorsOthersWeaponsNew weaponsBrutal Gladiator's Blade of AlacrityBrutal Gladiator's Swift JudgementBrutal Gladiator's HatchetBrutal Gladiator's WaraxeArmor models screenshotsMale (Human) Female (Blood Elf) Rating requirementsWhile Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4. First though, the rating requirement changes: When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to: Shoulders: 1950 Weapon: 1800 The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements: Shoulders: 2200 Weapon: 2050 Head: 1700 Chest: 1600 Legs: 1550 Gloves: none Off-hand: none In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement: Boots: 1700 Ring: 1650 Bracers: 1575 Belt: none Necklace: none Trinket: none The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement. The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain. To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system. These rules are as follows: - If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive. - If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.
This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating. We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP. ( Source) |
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by chaud on April 22, 2008, 09:12 PM While Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4.
First though, the rating requirement changes:
When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:
Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800
The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:
Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none
In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none
The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.
The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain.
To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system. These rules are as follows:
If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.
If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.
This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.
We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP.
R.I.P. Team hopping. |
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by chaud on April 16, 2008, 03:18 AM GameSpy: So let's talk about the Arena Tournament, and what it means for World of Warcraft.
Tom Chilton: The big objective is to build WoW into a viable eSports game platform.
Apparently PvP is still heading towards eSport acceptance from their point of view, and from comments later in the interview, it is nice to see that they recognize how far it still is. GameSpy: Arenas definitely turn WoW into more of a competitive game, but the Arena Tournament realm has a wildly different approach from the live realms. Do you feel that players will want to have this kind of approach available at all times?
Tom Chilton: We don't really intend for the Arena Tournament realm to replace WoW. We do feel like the arena games are a game within the game, a meta-game of WoW. We don't necessarily want people to feel like WoW is no longer a game to them. Also, within that, it kind of makes sense to structure the tournaments in a way we're doing. They're not something we can run all the time, so we've broken them into this seasonal concept, allowing us to pace how often we have them, and to make sure that they're as well-supported as we can support them. There you have it, no permanent TR planned for now. The TTR, and I am sure the TR, are something fun to play on, trying out different classes on equal gear footing, but not how WoW should be. PvP is only part of the game, and I imagine that people would grow bored with the game much faster if they could just create a 70 alt that is well geared on live. Not to mention how many bad players would fill the ladder with classes they have no idea how to play. GameSpy: Have you looked internally at the distribution of players doing arenas on the live realm, separating those who are playing competitively with those selling teams or just tanking games to get gear?
Tom Chilton: We don't really have any way of knowing that. We can't distinguish what the intent of a given player is, whether they consider themselves to be competitive or whether they're just doing it for the gear or whatever. Certainly as far as players who are trying to exploit the system through loopholes, we have some changes coming in a patch just a few weeks away where we'll close a lot of those loopholes.
GameSpy: Are you able to talk about those changes yet?
Tom Chilton: Not just yet.
GameSpy: But we can expect the changes will be targeted at the point-selling teams.
Tom Chilton: Point selling, personal rating selling.
GameSpy: The two big things that players seem like they're against are the point-selling teams, since you can face highly skilled and geared players at even the low ratings, and those who bring alts or friends on a team to tank a team so that they can then get a high personal rating on the real team.
Tom Chilton: Exactly, that's what we'll be addressing.
I know this is a welcome change for me, as dragging my alt up in 3s when fighting a team with shoulders that is selling PR or points every other game was annoying. Also will cut out the PvPers way to make gold, which I am sure is not welcome to many of the people that sell. I am still not sold on this "fixing" it permanently, as they may leave loopholes in. Only time will tell. GameSpy: How did you go from way back in the days when you didn't believe that World of Warcraft could ever be a competitive eSports type game to now, when you have an eSports team on board?
Tom Chilton: I'll tell you, it's been a slow evolution. When WoW first came out, we didn't really have any semblance of organized PvP. We had Tarren Mill versus Southshore...
GameSpy: Which was awesome!
Tom Chilton: That's nostalgia speaking!
Now, I was not around for these fights, so any opinion I have is based off of the oldest videos that contain them, but it looked like it was reasonably fun. There likely is some truth to it being nostalgia for players, as pre-BC was apparently much more fun for some people, but if you asked them how much they liked it then, you would find a very different answer. I don't think you can deny that old world PvP was fun though. GameSpy: Has shifting WoW over to a game with a full-fledged arena system for competitive players heavily influenced development in other aspects of the game? Making sure that classes and talents remain arena viable?
Tom Chilton: Sure, we call it the Arena magnifying glass. There's definitely more emphasis now on class balance. It puts everything under the microscope. Even what would ordinarily be considered extremely small balance differences really look big under the arena microscope. It's definitely influenced us in terms of the things we have to do so that players feel that it's a strong and balanced environment.
At the same time, WoW isn't just an arena game. We always have to play that against what the implications are for the rest of the game. To make sure that nothing that we do isn't making the rest of the game not fun. All aspects of the game are now tied together. Inevitably, changes that we make don't influence PvP alone, and don't influence PvE alone, so we're very cognizant of that every time that we make a change.
WoW will likely never achieve perfect balance, more swinging of one extreme to another, resto druids going from virtually unnoticed in 2s to extremely popular, and warriors staying very strong regardless. Keeping PvE in mind for balancing also would make it much more difficult to come to any near balance for arenas. GameSpy: When "small" balance changes come about to fix arenas, like the recent Druid Lifebloom change, how do you handle it interfering with raid balancing and soloing? Are you ever forced to change the conditions of the world to reflect an arena change?
Tom Chilton: We do a little bit of that, where sometimes we'll change something for the sake of class balance with some kind of change to a PvE encounter as necessary. Like retune them or change the dynamics of the spells or abilities. We try to avoid having to do that, and our general tactic that we take is that if we're going to make a change that negatively impacts PvE, we try not to, and offset it in some other way.
One example would be the Lifebloom change. Rather than hitting the periodic heal effect of Lifebloom, we ended up changing the backend part of it, the actual bloom, which really doesn't have as significant an impact in PvE.
We try to make sure that we isolate the changes as much as we reasonably can, and at the same time, with each patch, we're all often looking for ways to retune and improve PvE through our PvP balance changes.
An example would be that recently, more because of PvP, all mages got access to Ice Block. Not only do all Fire mages have Ice Block as a survivability mechanism, etc., we've also replaced that talent slot with Icy Veins. We knew that this was an ability that was also useful for PvE. It opened up a different build. Prior to Icy Veins, you generally saw all raiding mages going deep fire and spec some in arcane. But that opened up a Frost mix with Fire as a viable raiding spec. And that's had really positive effects on PvE balance.
I don't see the Lifebloom change as significant in either PvP or PvE, but I guess on the bright side he didn't hurt resto druids in PvE that much? As far as the mage changes go, ice block did not make fire or arcane viable at all, but did help out in PvE, allowing several debuffs to be removed and deaths to be avoided. I see it as more of a PvE change than PvP. As far as Icy Veins goes, sure he made 2/48/11 viable, but now it is the mainstream spec, and 10/48/3 is less useful now. Icy Veins is a welcome PvP buff though, and helped so far as mage burst and a slight amount of pushback protection. It being dispelled is another matter though. GameSpy: Have you had similar balance issues with the battlegrounds as opposed to arenas?
Tom Chilton: Definitely, they're very different PvP experiences. The PvP balance feels different between arenas and battlegrounds, but also between 2v2, 3v3, 5v5. Class synergies come into play more in the smaller environments. There are certain classes that feel like they're extremely strong in battlegrounds, but are either harder to play or are just not as good in some arena formats.
A good example is the Hunter class. If you're playing a Hunter in a battleground, you generally feel they're a very strong class. Arguably one of the stronger battleground classes in the game. But they're extremely skill-sensitive in the arena environment because of the line of sight issues, that sort of thing. We find that the very skilled players can play Hunters well in the arenas, but I think it's fair to say that it may take a higher level of player skill to achieve the same kind of result in the smaller arena environment.
Glad to see that they recognize most hunters are "huntards". At least he put it nicely. Hunters in battlegrounds are extremely annoying, often topping damage/KBs as multishot does a nice job of finishing people off. GameSpy: Do you feel that you have a good grasp of what group compositions are like in the arena formats, and that balancing is about where it should be? Should Druid healers continue to be retooled for the smaller formats?
Tom Chilton: There's more balancing that we can do. Balance changes tend to take a very long time to play out, and to realize the full effects. So we'll make a change in the game, and players have the expectation that there will be immediate results. Suddenly X class is now performing far better in the arenas than it used to be. Usually if you see those immediate results, we've swung the pendulum way too far. It means that three months later, six months later, that class will be completely dominating the arena. So we're kind of always struggling with that knowledge that when we make changes, we have to be subtle, where we can, and be patient to let those changes shake out.
We're looking forward to the arena tournament environment to give our most competitive players a chance to try out those changes. There's a lot of inertia that the players have right now with the prevailing builds and the strong group make ups, that sort of thing. When we make changes, it's not always easy for them to adjust and try new things.
Most players have no desire to wait out changes and feel that they must go and demand change today, rather than provide any constructive feedback. GameSpy: How satisfied are you with the layouts and physical setups of the current three arenas? And do you plan to create new arenas with environmental hazards or other forms of variety?
Tom Chilton: The arena environment can use more locations. We'll probably get a little more bold with some of those, and in some areas we may even simplify. For example, when we introduced Ruins of Lordaeron, it was geometrically more simple than the Blade's Edge arena. There are fewer line-of-sight obstacles than Blade's Edge. It was in a lot of ways a product of what we really liked about Nagrand arena and Blade's Edge, and trying to use that to make an arena that we felt a lot of classes would be happy with. We'll probably try some new things, we'll add some new arenas for Wrath of the Lich King. Some may be a bit different from what we've seen so far.
I, as a mage/warlock don't mind ruins that much. Sure a priest or druid running up and around and down the center is annoying, but it is less annoying than chasing them all over the BEM arena to me. They have less space to run, and won't gain an entire arenas length ahead of you, giving them time to stop and heal or drink + shadowmeld. New arenas sound interesting, and maybe will bring something other than things to LoS around all day. Clearly trapdoors and smoke in the future.  GameSpy: Hindsight being 20/20, do you feel that Resilience as a gear mechanic was a good way to separate PvE and PvP gear, and that it accomplished its objective?
Tom Chilton: It certainly accomplished its objective. I would make a note that its primary objective wasn't to separate PvE from PvP gear. Its primary objective was to make people not explode so quickly. Before The Burning Crusade came out, when people were running around in their high-end raid gear, which was very DPS optimized, it felt like it was turning the PvP environment into something not fun. When you were playing against high-end players, you just couldn't stay alive. You'd get into an encounter and then, "Bam! Bam! Bam!" People would be dropping dead right and left.
That was the primary goal for resilience, to make sure that the fight times in PvP were long enough that the crit results weren't streaky enough that it was too random number generator-driven, or that you just didn't have enough time to play your class. It accomplished that, and I think a secondary benefit was that you could more clearly distinguish what kind of activities you were doing. There's PvP gear, PvE gear, and you could kind of feel different from each other. It almost did that too much, in that it has in a lot of ways provided a pretty big barrier to cross-over gameplay.
We definitely want to encourage players as much as possible to experience as much WoW as they can, so it really behooves us to make sure that there's some kind of crossover, where you can take your PvE gear to PvP, and your PvP gear to PvE. It's there that we felt that the crossover was weakest. It's not that we really want to change the stats on the PvE gear, we just want to make sure that PvE players have access to some reasonable level of resilience so that they can do arenas and have a fun experience without just blowing up.
Ahh resilience, the target of so many complaints, by so many rogues and AP pom pyro mages. Resilience certainly does do it's job, I remember being AP PoM pyro in WSG at 60, and just with HWL/blue PvP gear being able to get zerking and one shot some carriers. Today, even in the highest end PvE gear, I would likely just make a dent in a prot warrior with 20k hp, or people with high resilience. The increased stamina and addition of resilience helped to reduce the fights where you had no chance at all, but also have brought some fights to a place where they will never end, or certain specs aren't viable anymore. It is the lesser of two evils, and I prefer the current system over what I could do at 60. The separation of PvP and PvE gear is fine in my opinion, as you can now buy a starter set from vendors, or if you are a raider that wants to get into arenas, you can trade in tier tokens for gear. The added PR requirements on the S4 gear will likely make shoulders unattainable for most, and weapons much harder. Hopefully PR selling will be taken care of with the introduction of S4, so that I don't have to see a feral druid that is in the 1600s with shoulders again. |
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by chaud on April 14, 2008, 03:14 PM  This should help to satisfy some of that prestige that people wanted. It also means that teams may be more active in S4, at least until they get their shoulders. May help to reduce the so called "dead" top end of the ladder in different battlegroups. Source here and here. Added as a picture due to armory's ups and downs. |
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by chaud on April 13, 2008, 03:08 AM SourceWell, this scan includes 167,534 teams and 390,988 players with more than 0 games played on a team. 2v2 has no real surprises, ruled by druid/warrior or druid/rogue. Warlocks are still hanging in there, and mages are last yet again.  3v3 is actually not much different, ruled by druids and melee, with priests hanging in there. Mages are on par or underrepresented regardless of how "good" RMP is. Warlocks are not doing as well as I would have expected either.  5v5 is pretty standard, ruled by warrior/healers that are not druids. Druids, rogues, and hunters could use some help, while mages and warlocks are hanging in there.  Why run something other than melee? |
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by archie on April 01, 2008, 07:16 PM Hey, The EU community is currently building up an Arena Community Channel for people to meet each other, for match appointments and anything you'll need during the upcoming Arena Tournaments! Get IRC and join us in #arena.eu @ quakenet today! Enjoy your stay and good luck on the TR! Information about the tournament can be found here- archie |
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by chaud on March 27, 2008, 03:14 AM With 2.4 out and Proximo 2 released, I guess now is the time to talk about it.
The original review of Proximo gives you the basic features, those being a list of enemies, party targets, one click binding, and more. Proximo has become one of the most, if not the most, popular arena addon. It addresses the basic need to be able to easily target or check the status of the opposing team that tab targeting and a focus just cannot do.
I know I have seen this question in IRC a lot today, so I will go ahead and address it. Nothing will show your opponents specs in arenas anymore, as Blizzard has disabled inspecting enemy talents in arenas.
Most of the previous features are still present, and some new ones have been added.
Race icons added, some buff/debuff tracking, grow direction, more announcements, talent spec inspection removed, and more.
Proximo's new features include allowing for bindings on Mouse3,4,5. This is something long requested, and can be seen here in the menu. | 
BoF duration |
The new default race icons are shown to the left. I have mana bars turned off in that screenshot.
The buff/debuff tracking is still new, and may have some bugs, but I found it to work reasonably well. The buffs that are tracked are listed below
Druid
- Cyclone
- Entangling Roots
- Hibernate
Hunter
- The Beast Within
- Freezing Trap Effect
Mage
- Ice Block
- Polymorph
- Evocation
Paladin
- Divine Shield
- Blessing of Protection
- Blessing of Freedom
Priest
- Pain Suppression
- Psychic Scream
| | Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
- Fear
- Death Coil
- Seduction
- Howl of Terror
Warrior
General
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New Race Icons 
Bloodlust Duration |
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You can download Proximo 2 here. And if you feel like watching me try to play a warrior while testing Proximo 2, take a look here |
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by archie on March 26, 2008, 10:19 AM Source: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/Qualifier Round One Practice Starts: March 31, 2008 - 10:00 AM Pacific Time (5:00 PM GMT) Begins: April 15, 2008 Ends: May 20, 2008 - 2:00 AM Pacific Time (9:00 AM GMT) Qualifier Round Two Practice Starts: June 3, 2008 - 11:00 AM PST (6:00 PM GMT) Begins: June 17, 2008 - Ends: July 15, 2008 - 2:00 AM PST (9:00 AM GMT) Update: European Eligibilty: Residents of the following states are allowed to participate: Finland France Germany Spain United Kingdom Luxembourg Norway Sweden Belgium Russia Italy Switzerland |
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by chaud on March 20, 2008, 02:14 AM There will be no changes to gear availability/rating requirement until Season 4 starts, which will not begin when patch 2.4 goes live. When Season 4 starts here's what will happen: - Season 1 removed
- Season 2 moved to honor
- Season 3 rating requirements and prices lowered
- Weapon: 1800 rating
- Shoulders: 1950 rating
- Season 4 gear added
Season 4 isn't expected to begin any time soon, but as always we plan to give at least a two week notice before it does. Stay tuned to these forums or any of your fine local fansites as I'm sure the information will spread fairly rapidly once we do announce a Season 4 start date. |
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Priest
