Official Season 4 Gear Requirements

[Bolty]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...4678222&sid=1#0

While Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4.

First though, the rating requirement changes:

When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:

Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:

Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:

Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.

The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain.


To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system.

These rules are as follows:

"If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating."

This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.


"If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating."

This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.


We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP.

This change may kill arenas completely in terms of casual play; getting to 2000 rating in Season 3 is clearly harder than it was in Season 2, and with more players dropping out of the pool due to the ratings requirements, it will be harder yet in Season 4.

Last season, ratings of around 2300 would either get you a Gladiator title or get you very close to it; a requirement of 2200 in Season 4 for the shoulders would limit those items to Gladiators only, in essence. Also, the weapon requirement (the only one that *really* matters, in my opinion) of 2050 will lock out a whole lot more people than the 1850 requirement in place now.

The effect is obvious; more people will just stop playing arenas, leading to a deflation in point values, making it even harder to get the ratings, possibly leading to even more people quitting.

Ought to be interesting. :)

-Bolty