About 5v5s, best times to play, how to rank up

I've finally found a very capable Paladin healer, with about half the gear of my previous partner but twice the skill. Pretty much any team with our gear level, possibly a little higher, has bee no problem for us. It's when they drop out and they stick us with 1850+ teams in full deadly (entire team has over 27k hp, even had one with whole team over 30k - including priests!), then we get steamrolled and lose our ranking.

Every time we approach 1600 and have a shot at upgrades - this happens.

We're looking at 19.5khp and 650 resil on my best shaman, 1922 without ToW. Paladin has about 18.5k and 780 resil, but he's pro.

Is there a strategy, good time to play, best way to dodge high ranked teams, etc. so a poor up and coming team such as us can stp getting knocked down by totally unfair matchups? We just don't have the burst, coordination, or stamina to survive teams with 2 rets and a dk with over 27k hp and 25 man KT weapons.

I'm not advocating anything against the rules, I just wonder what we can do to continue to play teams that are a fair matchup.

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Is there a strategy, good time to play, best way to dodge high ranked teams

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Play more.

The more games you play, the more "fine-tuned" your persistent rating becomes (aka, the hidden rating). The problem comes when you abandon your team and make a new one. Your persistent rating never adjusts properly so you end up facing the same group of people...because a lot of highly skilled people are doing the same thing.

It probably took me 300+ games until I was "tuned". I got up to 1800 and switched teams. Now, I go up against other 1800 rated teams because my persistent rating is high. I've armory'd a few teams that beat us and they were 1900+ (while my new team was 1500). If more people switch their teams, the 1500-1600 range becomes highly competitive.

Here's an example of why that happens:

I get to a 1800 personal/team rating.
You get to a 1800 personal/team rating.

We both leave our teams and make or join new (1500) teams.
We will be matched up because of our "hidden" rating is very close. We will be fighting each other for points @ the new team rating (1500). Ideally, If I win, I go up to 1515 and you go to 1485. Now, you get matched up against another team with high hidden ratings and low personal/team ratings. The 1500-1600 range has become a pit of highly skilled people that *had* high ratings.

Have you ever noticed that when you beat a team, but lose to them right after, the points don't add up? You win 8, they lose 14. They win 9 you lose 15. 17 points have been won, but 29 points have been lost. The points dissolve. If you face this team all day long w/ a 50% W/L ratio, you will both end up with a net loss in points and eventually get sucked into this 1500-1600 pit.

I found that when I ran my 2v2 team to 1100, I was able to get it up to 1800 without any hassle. We even joked about how easy the 1800's were. When I abandonded my team and rejoined w/ my same partner later, we couldn't even keep a 1600.

I would argue that this season has probably been the worst season for Arenas. I left my 1800 team because my partner wanted to honor-grind for some gear w/ the 1800 rating and I just wanted to keep playing arena. I made a new team w/ a new partner and I convinced my old partner to join me because we wanted a better W/L showing. We had like 300W 310L on our 1800 team. We can't get back up there. I'm so tempted to dive bomb back down to 1100 to see if I can jump the 1500-1600 gap in a run of wins.

[Edit]:
I also wanted to add that this season has the lowest number of participants, especially in the 5v5 brackets, out of all seasons. Arenajunkies had a site where you could look at the number of participants. If last season was 300k participants, this season was something like 40k (differing from battlegroups).

IMO

Play monday nights. This will be your best possibility of running into "just playing our 10 games" crowd no matter the rating.


5s is really kinda dead except for the hardcore arena junkies. I believe S6 will move a little more towards S4 rather than more of the same. Combining BGs for 5s, hell for all arena/BGS would be nice.

Its so fun bombing your rating fighting naked,dancing etc. no pressure. I bombed my ratings also and exp the same kinda thing as farleito

season 5 ends tonite, season 6 starts in a week. its a whole new rule system, you start at 0 rating and work up slowly, a lot of gear is buyable without any rating (mostly season 5 of course but some season 6 stuff I think), so a lot more people will be playing. and of course shamans are more bursty and DKs/pallys less bursty.

Well tongith went pretty well, we peaked out at 1620 and I was able to get the hateful gloves for cheap and the necklace early. we were all set for 1645 and first we scrwed up big time on a team we'd alredy steamrolled, then I got disconnected when an entire team down except 1 ret pally who killed my druid.. we lost 20 points for that crap. I guess if its ends tomorrow though, we won't be able to get our 1645 and get the cheap pants ::(
Guess I'm buying a bunch of those honor token thingies then

Yea, the past 3 weeks, there were No teams qued up for 5s. I was trying just about every day at different times during the day. It got to the point where i just gave up on 5s and created a 3v3 team just so i could get some points.

Yes, the best day for 5s is Monday (Sunday sometimes). More teams playing just for pts etc.

Also I don't think you quite got the grip on the hidden rating thingy.. I also think that the reason why so many ppl didn't play this season is b/c they don't understand it.

Hidden rating changes similar to personal rating... Let’s say you start out the season and grind your way up to 1800 (your hidden rating is 1800 also) now you join a new team at 1500. Hidden rating is made to rush you back up to 1800 where you belong. So you should win ~20 pts a game and only lose 3-4 for each loss. Now every loss will also lower your hidden rating a little.. Only if you won every match should you go ALL the way back up to 1800 easily but most likely you will even out in the 1700's somewhere.
(Oh and you will be fighting teams around your hidden ratings not teams at 1500)
Now it also factors in your partners hidden ratings when matching you up and calculating gain. So if you partner's hidden is like 1200 you will probably be even right there at 1500.
Now I'm not sure but I think it starts brand new lv 80 hidden ratings at ~1300 judging on the pt gain/loss my new DK is getting. So you should have an uphill battle on your hands for a little while when you start arena.

1 last note - I believe I read that the hidden ratings will NOT be reset with the new season. So I'm going to assume you will see teams moving up through the ranks pretty fast in the beginning.



I hope this helps some of you who don't quite understand the rating system a little.

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I found that when I ran my 2v2 team to 1100, I was able to get it up to 1800 without any hassle. We even joked about how easy the 1800's were. When I abandonded my team and rejoined w/ my same partner later, we couldn't even keep a 1600.

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Now that is b/c your team (and your partner) was still at 1800. You just tanked your Hidden rating down to 1100 that puts your average hidden rating at ~1450. Therefore you are now getting matched up against teams at 1450 even though your team is 1800.

Pros and Cons to this:
Yes, you will be fighting easy teams at 1800 rating pushing your rating a little higher than you should be.

You should have a low pts gain/loss ratio though. So if you get upset and lose to a 1500's rated team be prepared to lose some hefty pts.

This really only benefits your partner who never left the team. Your personal rating will always be lower therefore not being able to benefit from items or end of season rewards that your partner will benefit from. (and if you think you can do the flip and now hes going to help you sure, but you better get your hidden rating up there first or you might find yourself only winning 2-3 pts for a win and 17-20 each loss untill your team comes down to match your hidden >.<;)

*Now this is "In theory" I have not actually purposly did this to test it out. If any1 with a decent rating wants to test this out for real and see if I hit the nail on the hammer or not. I encurage you to let me know your results :thumbup:

Oops, I just noticed you said you tanked the "team" down not your PR down. But it’s all still relevant.

Now if you tanked the team down with your mains then there is a flaw in my theory but if you did it with alts then it’s just the same.

The other thing that you need to consider is that a lot of people quit playing arena when they reached 2k to lock in their arena titles. They would maybe play 10 per week, but that's it. It's hard to climb up when there's nobody to step on. I strongly believe that if you played in the arenas from the beginning, you would probably have a high ranking right now.

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Now if you tanked the team down with your mains then there is a flaw in my theory

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I never mentioned anything about alts. I played the same toon the entire time.

Forget about the point-tanking for a sec... I've had 3 different 2v2 partners. In all cases, we all abandoned the teams and made new ones. I agree that if you join up w/ another person who has a high hidden rating, you will go up against highly ranked teams. The problem that I saw with this was when we did go up against these highly ranked teams, we would only win a few points and they would lose a ton. If they beat us, we would go down a little and they would gain a little. Their team rating was 1800+ and ours was 1500. It's obvious that we all had a similar hidden rating. If we kept playing like this, we would keep a low personal/team and anyone up at the 1800 would only drop if they kept playing.

I really think that there were way too many 1500 ranked teams w/ really high hidden ratings. You all fight each other and stay around the 1500-1600 range. The points exchange did not seem to be weighted on the hidden rating.

Back to the points tanking... My 2v2 partner and I bombed the team to 1100. We quit our team and made a new team on Monday night. On Tuesday, we almost got the hot streak achievement. 9 wins in a row. Quickly, the fights got harder and harder. In the end, our record was 30 wins and 50 losses, but we got an 1800 rating. This was when I mentioned that we stopped playing for the honor grind. I know a lot of people tried to do the same thing and it just kept everybody in this pit.