About those Level 70 AV items

[oldmandennis]

I hadn't looked seriously at the items because I felt that rank 13/14 was pretty far out of reach. Here is my perspective - I'm a resto shaman currently on C'thun/Ouru/Anub. I plan to level fairly split between Elemental and Enhancement.

2H Axe - looks better then my Herald of Woe, which is what I was planning to use. There are big upgrades from C'thun, Patches, and Kel, but there are a couple of MS warriors ahead of me for those.
1H Melee - pretty good. Roughly equivalent items come from the Armaments, which are strangely not in top demand in my guild. There are some upgrades in Nax but it will probably be tough to pry them out of the hands of other classes
1H Healing - pretty good. I'm first in line on the scepter of the false prophet, I think, so that's my plan for right now, but it might be worth picking up one for an offhand healer.
1H Spell dam - Looks like the best in the game at the moment. Might want 2.
Staff - I think I prefer the dagger.
Shield - Meh. I think I'll go wormscale.
Armor - AQ40 items are better, but it's close.


Make no mistake, these are relatively easy purples. (please do not derail into weather or not that is too easy). 1 2h weapon, 5 1h weapons and a full suit of armor is about 170k honor. Assuming 10 to 1 honor change, that's the equivalent of 1.7 million. It is not unheard of to hit 1mil in a week. I could certainly hit 500k if I stopped raiding, meaning I could get better items in 1 month of PvP then I have in 1.5 years of raiding to this point. More to the point, after that month, I'd have no reason to go back to PvP.

[Monkey]

Make no mistake, these are relatively easy purples. (please do not derail into weather or not that is too easy). 1 2h weapon, 5 1h weapons and a full suit of armor is about 170k honor. Assuming 10 to 1 honor change, that's the equivalent of 1.7 million. It is not unheard of to hit 1mil in a week. I could certainly hit 500k if I stopped raiding, meaning I could get better items in 1 month of PvP then I have in 1.5 years of raiding to this point. More to the point, after that month, I'd have no reason to go back to PvP.

After a month on this system, the expansion will probably come out. The current level 70 rewards available through this mechanism are blue in the beta, so they could easily be upgraded with new rewards every patch. The removal of the "rank = loots" and "rep = loots" systems means that Blizzard can provide true gear progression via PvP now. It gives them a lot of latitude for upgrading with time and establishes a certain gear baseline for people entering the arena system.

[Artega]

After a month on this system, the expansion will probably come out. The current level 70 rewards available through this mechanism are blue in the beta, so they could easily be upgraded with new rewards every patch. The removal of the "rank = loots" and "rep = loots" systems means that Blizzard can provide true gear progression via PvP now. It gives them a lot of latitude for upgrading with time and establishes a certain gear baseline for people entering the arena system.

I was under the assumption that the arena system operated on a sort of item-level restriction basis, so that people in BRS tier0.5 gear with a smattering of the occasional odds and ends from the various BGs and maybe AQ20/ZG would be able to beat or at least challenge a less-skilled, but better-geared team from a guild that's been farming Kel'Thuzad since three months before the Naxx patch. I seem to remember seeing a blue post with something to that effect.

[Monkey]

I was under the assumption that the arena system operated on a sort of item-level restriction basis, so that people in BRS tier0.5 gear with a smattering of the occasional odds and ends from the various BGs and maybe AQ20/ZG would be able to beat or at least challenge a less-skilled, but better-geared team from a guild that's been farming Kel'Thuzad since three months before the Naxx patch. I seem to remember seeing a blue post with something to that effect.

The gear/skill/organization matching system might be coming in that patch as well, but my understanding is that it applies only to BGs. The arena matches aren't ranked because your score is based on how you do against opponents ranked higher or lower than you. The more consistently you win matches against even or higher ranked opponents, the better your (Arena) rewards.

Other news that came out today that is slightly off-topic, the T4 stats came out and...they're missing resilience rating. They appear to have better damage or healing than arena gear, but with less stamina and resilience.

So the BG and Honor rewards look like they will provide an "entry level" PvP set that you can tune with some PvE items and some arena rewards and still manage to be competitive in Arena battles (assuming you have "L2P-ed")