5v5 arena Question!

[Nitro]

I'm buying points the difference is as large as me being kitted out in 3 months or in 9+ months

I'll use my 5 shammies to farm gold and go the 3 month route.

[empeha]

for points i would suggest following:
1) buy a high rated 5vs5 team.
2) loose 3 matches
3) buy (or play with your regular) 5vs5 team to make 7 games.

buy a 5vs5 high rated team would be more expensive than pay a 5vs5 team to play 7 games a week for you.

[thinus]

Someone said 6k to get a set of armor? You seriously expect someone to wait 20 weeks (5 months!) to get gear? Think about that for a minute or two.

It is not a complete set. There are numerous slots filled with honor gear and you can buy S1 gear with honor as well. You also make the assumption that your rating will stay rock bottom. As your gear improves your rating will probably improve as well.

But I agree that the Blizzard pvp system is completely screwed up.

Lets analyze how it works:

Without rating trading - top rated teams are rewarded with more points, gets gear quicker, starts each season with a huge advantage and new teams face an uphill struggle right from the start.

With rating trading - new teams buy points with gold, devalues the rating system and further fuels the gold buying market.

[Vyndree]

I'm sorry that is cheap as hell. Why fake your way to getting good items rather then just work hard for them?

While I agree with you, the WoW PvP system is so fucked up, its the only way to do it without wasting your entire life away (like the original PvP system). 2.4 is doing a LOT ot help n00bs get the ball rolling, but its still a huge time commitment.

People will choose the path of least resistance almost always. Its just human nature. :P

QFT. The reason why buying arena points "matters" timewise, is because you're not going to be facing appropriately geared people in your given level-range. Half the people you will meet in prime-time arena pvp even in the 1500's are full season 3 players powerleveling up an arena team for sale. You will not be evenly matched, and you will not receive appropriate points (or point decreases) when fighting teams "of your level". Sure, buying arena teams isn't helping the problem, but it's a bigger issue than any single team/player can fix -- which is why Blizz has their eyes on it for 2.4.

I think the biggest issue in this case is that honest players are being penalized when full s3 arena farmers are recreating low-ranked teams when they shouldn't be in that bracket to begin with. That's the biggest problem - that means that honest players are going to have a much lower rating then they deserve, just because they may have "lost" to a 1500-ranked s3 group which set them back many more points than if they had played the group when it was rated 1800's+. So yes, I believe the whole way until you get your full s3 set you're going to be sitting at rock bottom in the rating system due to that fact alone.

2.4 is helping, but it's not here yet. They're changing the way teams are gaining points and taking personal rating into account. There will also be some baseline pvp gear you can get from rep vendors to minimize the HUGE gear gap for new 70's.

However, until it gets here, the PvP arena system ramp-up is completely fubar'ed, and most will find a far more efficient use of their time farming PvE gold to spend helping them become BASELINE competitive with the current PvP system, flawed as it is. If you don't have the gear to support your skill, you can expect a long, frustrating pvp arena experience wading through the low 1000's bracket.

[Boylston]

You know what would really help...

* One team per character per season.

or

* After switching teams, you are not eligible for arena points for next 3 weeks.

The ability to switch in and out of teams if the root cause for a lot of these problems. That and the personal rating farming that is going on.

[Vyndree]

You know what would really help...

* One team per character per season.

or

* After switching teams, you are not eligible for arena points for next 3 weeks.

The ability to switch in and out of teams if the root cause for a lot of these problems. That and the personal rating farming that is going on.

I think that's a little excessive. However, with the 2.4 changes where point earnings are based on each individual's personal rating, I could see making personal ratings stick for a whole season instead of reset when you join a new team -- that would make it difficult for s3 geared folks to restart with a new 1500's team, as they wouldn't be getting great points per game, and the 1500's teams they're up against wouldn't be losing as many points per game.

That way, if you get stuck with a sucky arena group, you don't have to worry about not getting arena points for weeks if you bail for a better group/more synergistic group makeup.

[yarr]

However, with the 2.4 changes where point earnings are based on each individual's personal rating,

Where did you get this vyn? I don't see it in the current 2.4 test patch notes ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patch...atchnotes.html), was it in the earlier "leaked" notes?

[thinus]

However, with the 2.4 changes where point earnings are based on each individual's personal rating,

Where did you get this vyn? I don't see it in the current 2.4 test patch notes ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patch...atchnotes.html), was it in the earlier "leaked" notes?

I think she means this:

Arenas
Matchmaking: If a queued player has a personal rating higher than their team rating, the matchmaking system will now use the highest personal rating of a queued member of that team for matchmaking purposes, instead of the team rating. In addition, when making a calculation for rating gains and losses at the end of a match, the calculation will use the higher of the personal or team ratings on the opposing team.

[Majo]

1.) Here's my opinion: I compare buying points with the idea of buying BOE epics on the auction house. It's a way to spend your hard earned gold to better your character. Buying BOE epics gets you up to par for PvE content faster, and buying points gets you up to par for PvP content faster.

It's just gear, and all it does it accelerates you to a competitive level. What it doesn't give you is player skill; it doesn't get you top dps on the damage meters, nor does it give you the glory of good arena ratings/titles. That's a whole other achievement -- buying gear merely brings you to the starting line of the *actual* race.

My advice to anyone buying points is: don't short yourself by waiting until you're geared to start doing arenas; play as many games as you can so you can familiarize yourself with arena strats now rather than later. If you want to be good, the best time to start is now, and you're not saving yourself that much time by getting the gear if you don't know how to play yet. Even if you can't break out of the 1500's due to your lackluster gear, I guarantee you'll at least learn something, and learning is half the battle. Actually it's 100% of the battle once you're wearing the same gear as everyone else.

With that said, I really like the rating requirements they've put on the latest season's gear. It actually associates them with achievements and makes them represent something. If I were to have it my way, I would have a rating requirement on ALL of the latest season's gear, but cut the arena point cost of the previous season's gear significantly (maybe 50%) to make it more accessible. You can still be competitive wearing last season's gear (we're talking 5-10% stat differences), but the latest season will represent a tournament ranking reward.

That's my 2c on that.


2.) Let's be inventive here, guys -- after all, we are on a multi-boxing forum, right? So how about you buy two 2k+ teams at the same time, multi-box both of those teams very late at night when not many people are queuing, and hit that queue button at the same time? If you do it late enough at night, you would have VERY good chances of queuing up against yourself. Don't have 10 characters (if you're doing 5v5's) to multi-box with for double queuing? In that case, you could either:
a) Hook up with another multi-boxer. (Hello The Zerg)
b) Help some of your dear friends get some arena points too. They'd love you forever.
c) Sell those extra slots to people.
^ ^ (great idea!)

So here's what you would do. Queue up in the middle of the night.. you might need to do the first set of games around 3am-4am to maximize your chances. Exchange wins with yourself each game. When you do this, the higher team loses more/gains less as the lower teams gains more/loses less. What happens because of that? The 2 team ratings get closer and closer to each other until the point where you're exchanging exactly 15 points each game. The closer your rating gets to each other, the better chance you have of actually queuing up against yourself (matchmaking goes off team rating right now). If you have the exact rating (i.e. both exactly at 2137 rating, exactly) you could start being more relaxed about the times you queue, too. Maybe not too relaxed, but not 3am-4am I'm sure.


The result:
[spoiler]a) Your purchased teams last longer than 3 weeks of losses before you need to buy a new one.
b) Your points earnings stay constant in that time frame (for the most part).
c) You would have bought a 2nd team, or even 3rd team, once your other team expired, so you're not really spending more money.
d) You can make back some, if not all, of your investment selling those extra slots. Heck, it could end up being profitable.[/spoiler]


Was that long winded? inch: Well, I hope somebody finds that helpful.

-Majo

[BobGnarly]

1.) Here's my opinion: I compare buying points with the idea of buying BOE epics on the auction house. It's a way to spend your hard earned gold to better your character. Buying BOE epics gets you up to par for PvE content faster, and buying points gets you up to par for PvP content faster.

There is a very significant difference. Clearly BoE epics are condoned by Blizzard, since they set the BoE flag on the item and allow them to be placed in AH. Just as clearly, they don't condone this team selling stuff, as we can see by the coming changes in 2.4.

To be perfectly honest, I could extend that line of reasoning to include buying chars/gold on ebay. Both are trading my time for items (whether its in game gold, which takes time to make, or my personal assets which do the same). Probably not an apple/apple comparison, but its pretty close imo.

It's just gear, and all it does it accelerates you to a competitive level. What it doesn't give you is player skill; it doesn't get you top dps on the damage meters, nor does it give you the glory of good arena ratings/titles. That's a whole other achievement -- buying gear merely brings you to the starting line of the *actual* race.

And an ebayed character is just a character, and also doesn't supply player skill, but most people frown heavily on this.

My personal opinion is that it would be nice if this was not possible via some game mechanic (which, hopefully, eventually will be the case). I know it sucks for newly minted 70s, and they are trying to address that in future patches; however, if we going to go with the notion that in-game achievements should have merit, then they should be unadulterated by both external influences (cash & ebay) and gaming the system ala current purchasing teams thing.

Of course, that's what I like, what I'll get is probably much different.