Well, as expected, I went 0-10 as my freshly 80 team stepped into the arena last night before the weekly reset. They have their Savage Saronite set, but only 2 of the team has L219 Garfrost Hammers, with the rest of them wielding Amphitheatre of Anguish quest reward axes. I have a few questions/requests for confirmation:

1.) Just to refresh my memory, since I haven't played arena for a while... In the newest ratings/points system, I get the same number of arena points for any rating 0->1500, correct? A 10-loss week is still worthwhile playing and I'll get as many points as a 1499 team, right?

2.) My gear-up strategy is going to be a.) Get 219 weapons for everyone, b.) Gear up my tank a bit for PvE heroic purposes (mostly done), c.) Run heroics each night to get some L232/245 Triumph badge gear, d.) Sneak into a few BGs each night in order to accumulate honor. Can anyone recommend a better order for gearing up? (Forgot VoA, looks like I should at least try to get my gang through there individually each week, yes?)

3.) As for arena strategy, I was basically mounting up and going for broke with AW + top DPS buffs going in a hope to kill someone, anyone at first and maybe win a match against some bad players. Didn't work out too well, I killed 1-2 people tops in a match before getting rolled. I know this is crummy strategy if I had gear, but I was curious what tactics people tried out with fresh, undergeared characters.

I assume that the best to hope for is some 10-loss weeks for a few weeks until I can get some decent gear? Has anyone had any kind of upward rating climb with freshies??

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful replies!

Boyl