Problem with 5v5 arena matchups around 1500, solution

It seems to me, that around 1500 rating.. there is -extremely- varying opposition. Some times, we can just cruise to 1600, and opponents seem to be made of paper... they even die in pairs sometimes.

Then, at some times.. we are consistently meeting uber teams in full S4.. who just mow us down, both with superior survival, superior dps, and superior skills and tactics. My main often dies within a second. By the way, anyone else feel that warriors became insane with S4 gear? I saw one in EOTS yesterday.. he had 3x the amount of damage done as #2 in damage done. But I digress.

To conclude, I attribute this unpredictable arena matchup problem to a flawed arena system design. The whole team concept is making the near-1500 play very, very chaotic and unpredictable. A lot of people have good gear and skills from 2v2 and 3v3.. but 5v5 teams often aren't active for more than a few days. So what happens is that people create new teams and reform, all the time. This introduces a lot of unpredictability in the matchup system, because sometimes the new team is way above its proper rating, and sometimes it's way below its proper rating. As an example, today we met a team that took 16 rating from us, at ~1540. That team is now at 1800+. This situation makes it very frustrating to play arena if your performance roughly coincides with the entry point in the Elo system.


My solution: Remove the team construct. Introduce a persistent personal rating for each character, in each bracket.. that never resets, except on a new season. To match teams, the average personal rating for that bracket would be used, for the people that signed up for the rated game.

So for example: John, Jane and Jay signs for 3v3.. John has a personal 3v3 rating of 1600, Jane 1500, Jay 1400, so their average is 1500. This is the rating used to match them against an opponent. Wins and losses adjust their 3v3 rating according to standard Elo system rules.


What do you think? The Elo rating system was originally designed for chess, where there is no such thing as team rating, and no resets/reforms. Taking that system and applying it in an environment where you can repeatedly reset your rating, introduces a lot of instability and unpredictability in my opinion.


Edit: For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

I would have to say first that every system in the world can be exploited. ie. I'll just let my rating tank then form a new team at 1500. So ill be playing team in the 1300 bracket and getting points at 1500.

I take arena much like I did school. Its fun when your doing well and quite upsetting when you're not. But realize in the end you are there to learn. Playing with the best, studying with the best, will only make you the best. Dont hang around with teams you can beat all day long, play teams that beat you over and over. Nothing pisses me off more than hearing "They out gear us, thats why we lost." This is a cop out.

I am in no way dismissing the importance of gear in this game. But with S2 epics for anyone willing to grind honor its only a real issue at the high end. When people say its a gear issue 9 times out of 10 someone made a mistake and a team with gear and strat capatilized on the error. Ellay really needs to fraps what happens when he misses a nuke, or messes up the kill order. I might be going out on a limb here, but I imagine those things are really important because he mentioned them in the training video and I'm playing at a new level since attempting to master them.

Back to my school analogy. Remember unless you're in full S3 or S4 you're in the arena to learn. Dont expect to go in play 50 games and learn everything. Take your time and enjoy the losses. Every loss points out a weakness. This provides an opportunity for you to become better. And let me point out again, your losses probably have 20% to do with gear and 80% do to a flawed strat or execution.

I think most of what I posted was off topic to your original post but it comes from my attitude that the 4 Quadbox shaman healer team is unbeatable. That means I should be anyone and the only thing messed up is that Im not number 1 yet. Ellay makes me feel like a slacker :P

The rating system is flawed, and I'm a perfectionist, loses are unnacceptable to me and I have to rationalize them as learning experiences, lol

Not to be cranky, but you are completely off topic. I also see most of my arena matches as learning experiences.. and I'm quite happy with my current performance.

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Originally Posted by 'Elektric',index.php?page=Thread&postID=91297#post 91297

Nothing pisses me off more than hearing "They out gear us, thats why we lost." This is a cop out.

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It is not a cop out. Before season 4 came out, me and my healer (2v2) both had 90% season 1 stuff. In the 1400 we lost many fights because people where in full s3 gear. They knew they had use cause they attacked me and 3 shot me, and then 2 shot my healer. Anything with season 2 or less we had a chance, but when they had 50% season 3 we couldn't take them. I know this is true cause we went against a team 1 had seaon 1 gear the other full season 3 gear. I was able to take out the season 1 priest with no problem but the season 3 hunter 3 shot my healer, we both killed the healers at the same time. By the time i got close to the hunter to attack i was dead.

I don't generally post stuff on the official forusm - it's a waste of time, and you rarely get a constructive discussion going.
For example, a typical reply to a post like this would be "lol someone got pwned, l2play".

Not very interesting. I was hoping this community could share its views on this issue.


Edit: Also, I don't think many average wow players know how the arena rating system works, much less what an Elo system is.

As usual I fall into infective statements. I seem to have a hard time discussing advanced topics with people. They don't understand that there's an issue to be discussed, but rather try to find the reasons to why I want to discuss the topic so heatedly. I look like a troll/whiner when I'm honestly trying to discuss an issue that troubles me.

I think your idea has some merit.

It would minimize the situation that I face all the time in 5v5s - we meet teams in the 1400s that have 2 unskilled, badly geared people and 3 challengers/duelists/gladiators. After getting stomped by them numerous times I've looked a few of them up and they are on the 8th or 13th highest ranked 2v2s and 3v3s in our battlegroup. What, exactly, are they doing playing teams ranked 1420 and winning for 15 points?

About half the teams I have faced are of this makeup. I guess selling teams wasn't OK, but selling skill on a crappy team is OK. I'm not mad at them, they are just exploiting what Blizzard allows them to exploit. But it makes entering arena at 1500 a bit choppy.

People could still get around this in your system (gladiator eventually gets up to a 5v5 PR of 2100 by PowerLeveling teams up from 1400 to 1700 several times, then spends some of his proceeds on a new team and AFKs 38 matches till his 5v5 PR gets down to 1300, then starts again), but at least they'd have to work for it a little bit.

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People could still get around this in your system

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The problem isn't really with people purposely exploiting the system, but rather the natural consequences of the flawed design that supports rating resets.

Having played in the 2k+ brackets in both S2 and part of S3, gear isn't really the winning factor. Class setups and knowledge of the different comps is much more important. Just for example...

Warrior in full S2 vs Warrior in full S3 + Weapon Difference (7.3 DPS)

Armor: 6923 vs 7415 = 492
Strength: 179 vs 199 = 20 + 4 = 24
Stamina: 274 vs 307 = 33 + 7 = 40
Penetration: 0 vs 252 = 252 + 98 = 350
Resilience: 115 vs 115 = 0
Crit: 165 vs 183 = 18 + 4 = 22
Hit: 42 vs 36 = -6 + -3 = -9

So you think an extra 24 strength, 40 stamina, 350 armor penetration, and 22 crit rating takes a warrior from barely hitting you to being able to 3 shot you? The season difference is a mindset issue imo. You see a warrior with full S3 and you feel like you lost before you even begin. Yet there is very little difference in stats between the two season's gear.

Also, lots of the people that have gotten the ratings for weapons and shoulders are then free to play with other people that want to have fun. When I hit full S3 on my priest I started playing with other guildmates that sucked in arena but wanted points for gear. I don't think there is anything wrong with helping other teams when you have no need for a personal rating anymore.

People are still missing the point.