Priest/Rogue 2v2 Frustrations

[Concillian]

Ok, according to those numbers the top 3 classes in 5v5 make up 54% of the top teams, and in 2v2 they make up 53%. The bottom 3 classes are 10% in 5v5 and 8% in 2v2. I don't see a big difference. If you want to balance the arena numbers according to population, you have to cast a bigger net then the top 20 teams, people who would find rerolling a relatively trivial task.

You missed hunters, who aren't even listed in 2v2, 2v2 is less balanced than 5v5, but check out 3v3. It's definitely the most balanced.

What about the poor MT, who just goofs off after raids. Does he deserve 1/4 the points because half the population is sporting Deep Thunder? 4 of the top 5 2v2 in the US feature a druid. Do they deserve even MORE points because the class is underplayed?

You don't need to respec to be viable now? This doesn't fix that problem, it doesn't really present a new problem either.

As far as the 2nd point, this is exactly why it needs to be normalized to the general population. You can't just look at what top teams are using, because they are, as you point out, re-rolling just to have the "uber-combo". I contend that the majority of the population doesn't want to be punished just because they aren't a part of ANY "uber combo" (hunters are an excellent example). Handicapping removes the requirement to re-roll, which is stupid anyway.

Pallies are a virtual necessity for any 5v5 team with a healer to have any shot at decent ratings... that's just stupid. Start penalizing teams for using pallies in 5v5 and start encouraging teams to use druids so the arenas are less about having an "uber combo" of classes and more about playing at your skill level. The effect of handicapping will be that the teams with sucky players who have good ratings just because of their class combo will start sinking, and teams with skilled hunters will start moving up.

[oldmandennis]

You missed hunters, who aren't even listed in 2v2

Yes they are. There are 3 of them listed in 2v2, which is 1%.

What about the poor MT, who just goofs off after raids.

You don't need to respec to be viable now? This doesn't fix that problem, it doesn't really present a new problem either.

Personally, I run a 5v5 team after raids. I play my feral and our MT runs prot for the first 3 games, and then we switch to better toons. I would be pretty annoyed if having a prot warrior around meant that those 3 games really hurt us.

As far as the 2nd point, this is exactly why it needs to be normalized to the general population.

Well if you handicap to the general population, then you end up not handicapping the dreaded war-pal much at all. They are 24% of the population when expected is 22%. Double hunters would be **PENALIZED** playing against them. Priest-Rogue would get a tiny advantage.

[Concillian]

Well if you handicap to the general population, then you end up not handicapping the dreaded war-pal much at all. They are 24% of the population when expected is 22%. Double hunters would be **PENALIZED** playing against them. Priest-Rogue would get a tiny advantage.

No, you determine handicap by looking at the the top #X teams vs. the general population...

That is you handicap to get the top team ranks representing the general population. You have to use the top ranks because these are where people will maximize potential of a class.

You look at what the top #x teams per battlegroup have for % of each class at the end of each season vs. % of that class at 70, Classes with high ratios (like 2 to 1) receive heavy negative handicapping and those with low ratios (like 0.5 to 1) receive heavy postitive handicapping.

For example, in 2v2 rogues are reasonably represented, so wouldn't get much handicapping, but in 5v5 they would have +handicapping. Hunters would receive +handicapping in all brackets and paladins -handicapping in all brackets.

The downside is that these are spec specific, yeah prot warriors get hosed, but they get hosed anyway, there's really only one arena item for prot warriors anyway (shield). You can't balance arenas around what are quite obviously non-PvP specs.

[oldmandennis]

Under your scheme, War-Pal would get a bonus against Priest-Rogue. War-Druid (currently 3 out of the top 5 teams in the US) would receive a huge bonus.

[Bolty]

This amused me - rankings of top 2v2s on Stormrage. This week we plummeted all the way to 459th in our Battlegroup.

There are 10 arena teams on Stormrage higher than us. The top two are Warrior + X teams. It's hard to figure out some of the other teams, though, since some of them have 1 player with a record and others without. Seems like a lot of team player shifting going on. A couple of Shadow Priest + Warlock teams there I wish we could face.

Thankfully my 5v5 is doing a lot better - just started this season with 3 out of 5 of us brand new to 5v5 play. :)

-Bolty

[Kevin]

This amused me - rankings of top 2v2s on Stormrage. This week we plummeted all the way to 459th in our Battlegroup.

There are 10 arena teams on Stormrage higher than us. The top two are Warrior + X teams. It's hard to figure out some of the other teams, though, since some of them have 1 player with a record and others without. Seems like a lot of team player shifting going on. A couple of Shadow Priest + Warlock teams there I wish we could face.

Thankfully my 5v5 is doing a lot better - just started this season with 3 out of 5 of us brand new to 5v5 play. :)

-Bolty

It also looks like you have folks formed another team just to ruin other folks ratings based on some of the 2v2 teams rated above you having only players with losing ratings. They rejoin the higher rated team and them play a few matches at the end of the week, but by forming a new team and completely outgearing folks they can play lower rated teams and pummel them. Blizzard needs to fix this because it really sucks when you are at a 1600 or so rating (which for only having 3 or 4 pieces of PvP gear per person on the team isn't bad) only to run into folks that are lower rated than you but decked out in nearly the full gladiator set who just crush you and who you end up facing 2, sometimes 3 times.) Too bad Blizzard doesn't do something about folks who do stuff like that, it sure feels like griefing to me.

[Arnulf]

It also looks like you have folks formed another team just to ruin other folks ratings based on some of the 2v2 teams rated above you having only players with losing ratings. They rejoin the higher rated team and them play a few matches at the end of the week, but by forming a new team and completely outgearing folks they can play lower rated teams and pummel them. Blizzard needs to fix this because it really sucks when you are at a 1600 or so rating (which for only having 3 or 4 pieces of PvP gear per person on the team isn't bad) only to run into folks that are lower rated than you but decked out in nearly the full gladiator set who just crush you and who you end up facing 2, sometimes 3 times.) Too bad Blizzard doesn't do something about folks who do stuff like that, it sure feels like griefing to me.

Yes, unfortunately this is common practice, and to my dismay I have to admit that I'm doing it too. The reasons being that I want to have at least some points at the end of the week. So teams are shifting members in and out according to the need of the players and not of the team itself.

The only way that could be stopped is that one had to be in the team the whole week in order to earn points for that week.

[Bolty]

The only way that could be stopped is that one had to be in the team the whole week in order to earn points for that week.

That won't help either. People play their 5v5's for Arena Points, and use 2v2 as a sandbox playzone to get high ranking. The only way to truly fix this is to introduce a 1-week cooldown on team switching. The amount of "dirty pool" that goes on in Arena games is really sad, but if you don't do it, the teams that do will get ahead of you. Once you get to the ultra-ultra-competitive level (top 100), it starts getting really dirty.

GG, as Arnulf says, this happens all the time. Last season Quark and I got smashed repeatedly by a 2400-rating team that had disbanded and recreated just for the "fun" of it and the ability to severely hurt the rankings of other high-end teams. Duh us for re-queueing when they were playing after we hit them the first time, yeah, but it still shouldn't be allowed. Here's a 1750-ish (at the time) rating Rogue/Priest team with *zero* PvP gear (sans trinket) against a Warrior/Druid (of course) group in full PvP gearing. Smashed us flat 3-4 times, costing us 60 rating or so. This team builds up a quick rating, invites a friend of theirs, and maybe gets that friend a Netherdrake/Gladiator rating at the end of the season. Since the team is reformed so late, they can rise fast in few games, allowing their friend to get the necessary participation level to qualify easily.

Then we'd occasionally see these teams where one person is a PvP god and the other one is a PvP newbie or a bad player. The god player is helping their friend build up arena points and then jumping to their "real" team at another point in the week. This is yet another example of how broken the system is. You find all this stuff out by scanning the Armory after games to see the details of who you just played. We'd see it maybe once a week - a team where one member's on a 2000+ 5v5 team, and the other member is on no team at all but the 2v2 and is severely undergeared compared to their partner.

Team switching *needs* a cooldown and I don't know why Blizzard is so hesitant to stop people from gaming the system like they do.

-Bolty

[Kevin]

Edit: Nevermind I reread some stuff again and see the issue (for those who may have read this post earlier)

[oldmandennis]

The thing about team cooldown is it doesn't address many of the problems brought up here. Issues I can think of:

1) teams temporarily reforming to drag down their rivals
2) teams being sold
3) teams reforming for the fun of smashing lowbies
4) teams that are used to powerlevel friends


Any others?

While #1 is bad, it's the only one that a cooldown fixes. What would you think about individual ratings, doing away with the whole permanent team concept? For each match, the teams rating is the average of the players, but you only get points for your *personal* rating compared to the other teams. So if you are 2000 and your partner is 1500, your team is 1750 and you play against people who are 1750. If you win, you get no points or nearly no points, but your partner is getting 32 per game.

This solution knocks out problems 1, 2, and 3. #4 I would argue is legit - there should be a way for people to help their friends catch up. It's not like such a team is really going to crack the top teams, not unless they level off for a while and gear up.

Also, I think they should give points for every bracket, but at a much reduced rate. Your number 1 bracket could give 80% of what it does now, number 2 20% and number 3 10%. That would reduce the incentive for people to slum with alts, without making it prohibitive to help out friends.

[Bolty]

#4 I would argue is legit - there should be a way for people to help their friends catch up. It's not like such a team is really going to crack the top teams, not unless they level off for a while and gear up.

No, no, they are though. Consider this scenario.

2 very highly rated players want to help a guildie get lots of arena points/Gladiator rank/whatever. They drop their team (or worse yet, sell it), starting over, inviting Newbie to their new team. Back to 1500 rating.

They then play 50 games with this total PvP newbie and just kinda screw around. Win a little, lose some, not really trying, just getting games in. Let's say for the sake of argument that they gain about 200 points, which isn't unreasonable when one of the two players is a God compared to your standard 1500-rating team.

Now the uber player brings in the other uber player while the Newbie sits. They rocket up the rankings and in the next 40 games get up to 2300 ranking. So, 90 games have been played and Newbie's participated in 50 of them.

From that point on, every week, they play 10 games. Newbie plays in three of them to satisfy the 30% requirement. The uber players make up any lost points in the remaining seven games and just hover at a high ranking.

After a few weeks of this, the season ends. Newbie got WAY more Arena points than he deserved, and sports a title he doesn't deserve. "So what," you may ask. This is no different from players in AQ40 escorting someone in all blues through BWL and gearing them up at lightning speed, even if that player is awful. Right?

Wrong. Newbie's rise, points, and title came at the expense of other players. That's what separates Arena rewards from PvE rewards. For him to rise, others got wafflestomped and pushed down. And the players who got wafflestomped could be much better players than Newbie. That's why the system has to fight things like this from happening. Every team they beat on their way back up to 2300 took a loss for Newbie, losing Arena points and standing, while Newbie gets the Arena points undeserved.

-Bolty

[oldmandennis]

2300 is an exaggeration - thats the #1 team in your BG and there's pretty much no way to maintain that ranking giving away 30% of your games.

In any event, team switching cooldown's don't stop your little scenario, unless your 2 uber players want to play for a seperate 2v2 team to try and take #1.

My personalized rankings would solve it. The sucker would actually need to be on the field for the win in order to get any points.

[NotSoDarklord]

2300 is an exaggeration - thats the #1 team in your BG and there's pretty much no way to maintain that ranking giving away 30% of your games.

In any event, team switching cooldown's don't stop your little scenario, unless your 2 uber players want to play for a seperate 2v2 team to try and take #1.

My personalized rankings would solve it. The sucker would actually need to be on the field for the win in order to get any points.

Around 2200 is where 2v2 starts capping out on points to where gaining rating does not produce a significant increase in points gained. This rating would not be that difficult to maintain giving away three games a week, especially if the team was smart about it and queued when higher rated teams were running when giving away the three games a week.

As far as powering random people to gladiator goes, this is a serious problem given the current system and although not many people are currently doing it because it is more of an end of season tactic, it will be very prevalent in the end of the season using a method similiar to what bolty mentioned only stopping once a sufficiently high rating was reached with the two uber players playing and the random person benched and never playing again. Gladiator does not require a constant amount of games per week at all, which leads to the potential for gladiator ebayman, a fresh 70 in all greens and little to no actual gladiator gear besides of course the mount.

[Warlock]

Anyone know which class the Warhammer lead dev plays?

[Frag]

Anyone know which class the Warhammer lead dev plays?

Paladin.

~Frag :D

[Xame]

Team switching *needs* a cooldown and I don't know why Blizzard is so hesitant to stop people from gaming the system like they do.

I fully agree with you on the cooldown but it doesn't change the fundamental flaws of the Arena PvP system.

The chess rating system (the one they are trying to model in Arena) is based on a few assumptions:

1. The game starts fair<>
   
2. Luck is not a function of victory<>
   
3. Awards are based on Classification<>
   [st]
   Lets take this apart one at a time. "The game starts fair": In chess both people start with the same number of pieces on the board. In Arena, your gear is a huge factor of who walks out with the win. So too does the classes you are playing and facing. If a priest walked in a match with his raid healing set on he will get pwned so fast they might as well not bothering to press a key. Skill can make up for some gear and class but not all of it.
   
   "Luck is not a function of victory" Again in chess, there is no luck. In my younger years when I played chess competitively, a ranking difference of 75-100pts would almost guarantee victory for those ahead in ranking. The differences in play become so small that only very small mistakes are ever made and exploited to victory every time. In Arena, luck is just part of the game. Who you face in matchups, to did that shot crit or get resisted. Victories don't always go to the best, just the lucky. I would not be suprised that from a pure skill perspective (if that could be measured by mistakes made), that the top +100 teams are all making about the same number of mistakes in a match. Some are just having better luck then others, or having better matchups.
   
   Most chess tournaments recognize that there are levels of game understanding that need to be "gotten" to move to the next level of play. Yes the biggest prizes go the the winners and the top 5. But the remaining prizes go to the people at the various skill levels. In Arena the rewards are items that help Arena PvP. Thus those people who have played season 1 have a huge edge on those who didn't. Add to that those that are playing season 2 are gaining huge rewards and advantage over those in season 3. If you leveled a new toon to play season 3 Arena, you have almost zero chance of being competitive no matter what your skill. You will simply be outgeared and no amount of time playing will make up for it.
   
   If blizzard wanted to make Arena a test of skill they would be better off modeling the system of that of Roman gladiators. There were 5 (I believe) types of gear sets in that system that could be used and all where about equal. The rewards from winning where given outside of the arena. It would be a simple change to the preparation period and would make for more even matches (even better if you could see the classes of your oppenents). Today the desire/temptation to create a 2v2 team to gear a friend is so high given that Arena gear makes such a big difference in the win percentage of low end fights. The reforming of teams isn't nearly as big of a problem as gearing in 5v5 and using that gear difference in 3v3 and 2v2 to "escort" friends in the mid-range ranked fights. And sadly, it is one of the only ways I can think of to gear a new toon for competitive Arena PvP in a reasonable amount of time.
   
   But at the +1900 level that you are fighting in Bolty, much of this is moot. You are most likely facing people also decked out with gear equal to yours. Some of these 2v2 teams are breaking up and reforming only to act as escorts and so might even help your rankings. If they are dragging a noob up with them as an escort, they would have out classed you anyways given they have an anchor on their ranking and still found a way to rise in the rankings to the non-cheese level.

[oldmandennis]

stuff

I don't know that a bit of randomness invalidates the whole system. Over the course of hundreds of game (more then you can probably play in chess), it evens out. Primary evidence of that is that team Pandemic pretty much wins everything. The disparities between classes don't inherently make it a bad system, the problem is that some classes are good in all or almost all situations, and some are bad nearly all the time. If it really was a giant game of rock paper scissors, I think most reasonable people would be ok with that.

There is not a huge gap between S1 and S2. Also, S3 is probably a long long way off (it will most likely coincide with the release of another top level dungeon... i.e. not on the radar and possibly not before the next xpac). Nothing is terrible about spending a couple of months at 1800-1900 while you grind up some more gear. Even at a middling rate, its not hard to catch up, especially if you hit the BG's pretty solidly. My warrior didn't play in season 1, and will have 4xS2 in 5-6 weeks - I find that fair. Especially since I know I'm not a fantastic warrior right now. Remember, the only way to really practice arena's is to play in them, the chance that a really good player will have no gladiator gear is almost zero.

Your comparison to Roman gladiators is a bit odd. What do you mean that rewards were given outside the arena and what does this have to do with Warcraft. I'm not sure exactly what you expect other then it sounds vaguely like arena wars.

[lemekim]

I don't know that a bit of randomness invalidates the whole system. Over the course of hundreds of game (more then you can probably play in chess), it evens out. Primary evidence of that is that team Pandemic pretty much wins everything. The disparities between classes don't inherently make it a bad system, the problem is that some classes are good in all or almost all situations, and some are bad nearly all the time. If it really was a giant game of rock paper scissors, I think most reasonable people would be ok with that.

The only reasons it seems like Pandemic is winning all the time is because a) they have 5 people on the team, and they can produce almost any matchup that is strong against opponents' matchup, andB)if you are judging them from their success at WSVG, there isn't even 1/10 of the good teams represented there.


WoW is simply not built for PvP - it's a PvE game with some PvP tacked on. Trying to balance PvP here is like trying to make Waffles out of Jell-O mix - it just doesn't work. Randomness is only a very small tip of the iceberg - you have to balance cooldowns, PvE performance, pets, CC, healing, burst, latency, and let's not forget the horrible system that is Rage - and this is just for starters.

[Arnulf]

1) teams temporarily reforming to drag down their rivals
2) teams being sold
3) teams reforming for the fun of smashing lowbies
4) teams that are used to powerlevel friends
Any others?

5) discovering that you have not the necessary 30% and your teammates are not on or not willing to play some more matches, thus leaving the team and forming a new one ad-hoc just to get some points this week

Reasons #1, #2, #4 make me speechless. I had no idea. I am too naive it seems..

I recognize #3 though. Starcraft ladder games had this. Players with a high rating were creating new battle.net accounts to smash entry-level players.

Interesting thought for me: when Blizzard unveiled the arena system I thought to me that this was finally it. The definite system that would ensure some modicum of measurability. I had not counted on the ingenuity of the players to trick the system to their advantage. Instead of willingly confining themselves to the rules they found ways to play the system itself.

[oldmandennis]

WoW definitely is PvE oriented, but millions of people enjoy the PvP. It seems to me like they are a few major but not massive changes away from having a really great PvP game. There is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It remains to be seen if they can make those changes before Warhammer or Conan come out and get it right.

I picked Pandemic because they seem to win almost all the time. Bloodlust is the consensus most difficult BG, and they ended up at the top of that in 5v5. I don't follow the WSVG closely (and their website is a complete mess) but I remember them messing with the other team in the final by copying their composition. In any event, the variability in an arena match doesn't seem to be any more then a game of football or basketball - and a billion people seem to think those are fun competitive and exciting.

The idea that the ladder doesn't have a "modicum of measurability" is silly. The vast majority of people are at a ranking that fairly closely resembles their skill, gear, and commitment. Reformed teams aren't keeping you below 1600.