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