State of 5v5 arena? (EU vindication/general)

[Kaynin]

I'm on vindication, dinged 70 a week ago and went straight to the lion's pit. Granted, I did not expect to win yet. But here's what I've encountered so far.

First week. 1 win 9 losses - 4x shaman 8500 hp, 150 resiliance. 1x clothadin friend, 0 resiliance 6600 hp.
8 teams were full vengeful 3 geared, including shoulders on at least three people. Sometimes all five. All teams I lost 6-10 rating from. One team I won 22 rating from.

Did not meet blue geared/s1 geared teams.

Second week. This week, only had one day but, 8 wins and 13 losses. My partner was a full vengeful resto shaman this time. One of the best pvp resto shamans on my server.
21 games, met one team with s1 gear twice. The rest, all s2 or vengeful geared. Most of these teams were all 1400-1600 rating. Met one team I only lost 2 points against. The rest was between 8-18 win or loss.

Vindication battlegroup in the EU is a relatively small battlegroup. In battlegrounds, horde wins most of the time. Which is pretty nice. But 5v5 arena really seems to be dominated by full s3 geared teams. The occasional fresh teams are basicly so demoralized after a week, they forget about it and move to 2v2/3v3, causing even the better teams to go below 1500 rating, just because there's only good geared teams playing.

I wonder how the people that do arena in EU in this or other battlegroups have experienced the 5v5 bracket as of late. Is this the situation on most/all brackets? Have I had an extremely unlucky pooling in the 31 games I played so far? I didn't expect to get to high rated. But I did half expect to be able to hover around 1500. I broke below 1400 now. I've made a few mistakes, I've bettered some macro's. But most of the teams, I can't down a target. Simply because they outgear me. While they play on such a low rating. It's somewhat degrading...

I don't actually mind loosing, I'm no hothead, and these losses have taught me a great deal, but on the other hand, I also need to get points somehow in order to get the gear in which I can eventually compete on a good level with. This causes me to even consider temporarily migrating to another battleground. (I adore my current server though.) If there's battlegrounds with more active 5v5, and with a gearwall slightly higher then 1500.

I'm 70 for one week, running in 9500hp and 212 resiliance and 410 spelldamage now. Which simply isn't enough to nuke down an s3 geared warrior.

Against most of these teams, I dont have a chance, if my initial burst fails, I die within seconds. So far only s3 geared teams without melee I've been able to beat.

...So yeah, is it just my battleground? Is the grass greener on the other side? One month cooldown on transfers might be worth checking out another battlegroup for to get points quicker.

[Havelcek]

The truth is that arenas have been out so long now that people have gathered a lot of gear, even if you only log in once a week to lose your 10 games. Though seeing S3-geared folks in that bracket is probably more about win-trading than anything else.

[Mosg2]

I transferred to Barthilas which is on BG9 (Much to my chagrin, thought it was BG6) and my experience has been fairly similar. Almost every team I ran into from 1500-1650 was at least 70% S3, with most everyone having at least the weapons/shoulders. As Havelcek said, arena has been aroung long enough that people have been able to accrue points and go hog wild on the S3 stuff... Also, keep in mind that with the personal rating requirements on much of the S4 stuff, many people are burning points on the S3 stuff that they don't feel they'll be able to replace with S4.

The good news is that the difference between S2 and S4 won't be *that* significant. If you're in full S2/S3 when S4 goes live and you've got points banked then you'll do ok. Casters have an easier time of it than melee--They've *got* to get the new weapons to see a significant DPS increase.

[Kaynin]

Hmm, also asked around at other battlegroups and people I know in other battlegroups.

It seems a global problem in 5v5. No one bothers with that bracket anymore unless they got the decent gear. ;_;

[Crayonbox]

5s is mostly dominated by a more competitive players than the 2v2 and 3v3, in my experience anyway.
The 2s and 3s brackets contain the most class imbalances and thus is easier to rank gimmick teams to 2k rating, however the 5s bracket are more balanced and tend to keep players who are actually interested in the competition. Usually...

best bet is to keep playing and get the gear and practice for when season 4 comes out where everyone starts at 1500 again.

[Boylston]

I've chronicled my gear and arena records week by week on my blog, but I think what you're seeing is pretty universal.

I have fought folks with Gladiator titles and full vengeful that are on 1450 rated teams. I could tell all the same stories you're telling. If you just ding 70, you are at a severe disadvantage to folks who may be completely horrible but have slowly accumulated S2 and S3 gear.

The good news is Patch 2.4 rep-based-PvP items help. My first week in arena was spent with my new shamans (3 of them) at 6600 HP, 0 resilience, and 500 or less spell damage. I played with a warlock and we went 2-13. Things have slowly bounced their way up and down since then.

I'm sustaining between a 1550 and 1600 rating now, and I expect that with a couple more pieces of arena gear and some spell damage that we'll start breaking 1700. I think of our current situation as training to run with ankle weights on.

Hang in there, accumulate as much honor gear as you can, and work on your spell damage. That's going to be the biggest thing for you. The good news is that a S3 warrior on a 1500 team and a S3 warrior on a 2200 team will have about the same HPs. If you can get your tactics and teamwork with your partner solid, you'll be set for when your gear improves.

We are getting better, so my current complaint is not that the teams in the 1500-1600 have much better gear, it's that we will occasionally lose to a team that's at a 1300-1400 rating but is full of S3 geared folks. 18-20 point losses stink!


Keep at it-- If you can get better now, you'll totally mop up once the gear levels are matched better!

[Ellay]

Your going to get hit with well geared players then entire way, pretty sure it's like that on every battlegroup.
I'd shoot for the S1 gear and max it out and move forward. It took me quite a while to get better and better when I first hit 70 >< so your not alone.

[Kaynin]

Well, so far most of my problems have been faulty macro's.

[target=focustarget] not targeting hunters that feign. Was the most annoying macro error. Hunter at 30%, he feigns, I blow my instant, but I dont get the target except with my main. Can't target the hunter with my alts for some reason, aaaaargh! He got healed up, instant at the ready on my three alts, uugh, screwed. :P

>.< Some other stuff too that needed tweaking.

Accidentally going below the bridge was a huge mistake once. There was this team that constantly charge me, hit me once then jumped below the bridge. (Which looked very funny) and I had beat them quite badly once before, so they were just messing about, I figured, what the heck, went down tried to kill them, LoS screwed me over. xD

But that's all not the problem really, everyone has to learn, arena has always been a learning curve. :P Just would have been way more awesome to be up against teams in similar gear for better competition. =) Ah well, I'll just farm all non set epics first, then s1 stuff where I don't have vengeful yet. (Probably will get like, gloves in two weeks, then going for chest in 3-4 weeks.. Mmh... I reckon in about two months I should be geared up enough to compete proper with s3 teams.)

[Catamer]

I got my shaman team to 70 and jumped right into the arena and was shocked at how bad I did. fighting teams with full s3 gear and you can hardly scratch them. 3 good hits and one player is only down 20%. I won 1 and lost 9 game in my first 10 games. I know my problem is I just need a lot better gear. I guess I'll have to get some non-arena pvp gear before I start to win. I haven't figured out how the points in arena are given, seems random to me.

[Kaynin]

I got my shaman team to 70 and jumped right into the arena and was shocked at how bad I did. fighting teams with full s3 gear and you can hardly scratch them. 3 good hits and one player is only down 20%. I won 1 and lost 9 game in my first 10 games. I know my problem is I just need a lot better gear. I guess I'll have to get some non-arena pvp gear before I start to win. I haven't figured out how the points in arena are given, seems random to me.

You start with 1500 rating, winning or loosing alters that rating, eventually every reset (wednesday in EU) it will give you arena points if you have a team with 10 or more games played that previous week based on the rating you have at that time.

The higher rating the more points, there are calculators on the internet that will say how much points you get for the rating you're at.

And mhm, save first week as me then. Having the exact same problem, that I just can't hurt the first target hard enough to kill them quick, + I get raped within seconds after if I don't down two targets wuick enough.

I did better the second week with a full s3 geared healer backing me up, but still was genuinly tough.