It did used to be the #1 team but that was sort of restrictive.
Seasonal or named gladiator just sounds dorky. 
I personally know an R1 SS/Blitz player, he’s just a normal guy, nothing close to the characterization in media of some disheveled and dirty person.
Do you really think 2400 is too free? Its about 5% of the players who consistently play these ranked game modes. In Blitz for many classes, there are about 100 people that break 2400, and many of those 100 are alts of the same players. So for unique accounts its likely less than 70. What number of players or percent would be adequate in your opinion, considering that if you reduce the percentage to something like 1% the only people left at that position would be R1 contenders and their alts.
Also in comparison, 10% of players who play 3s have reached gladiator. So with these large sample groups of data which you can check on Drustvar, either 3s is easier by design from blizzard, or half of all gladiator titled characters are boosts or carries of some sort. I can’t think of another explanation for such a discrepancy.
I do agree there is nothing in between R1 and 2400, which really kills engagement. Strategist/legend is nice but its not enough. I don’t have any solutions to this, I just share the sentiment.
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It’s too easy if you’re a dedicated shuffle/arena player, yeah.
Don’t get me wrong a pve player popping into pvp and getting duelist-elite is cool but if you actively pvp you’re gonna get those week one if you have hands and mid-late season if not
Pve has a similar thing where 3k io is very easy (much easier than 2400 cr) and then nothing until title which is 3700-3950.
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Lack of exposure to the outside world.
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I’m just happy to hear that the youth are finally starting to show an interest in the opposite sex.
I was starting to get worried that a few more reasons of high-end Blitz gameplay would cause Kalvish to start a celibacy cult out in the Midwest for all of them where they worship Sylvanas’ feet.
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wow i thought it was WAY more than that. people not queueing the supposedly easiest bracket to get rewards in can’t be good. blizz abandoning pvp makes more sense every day
Blitz is kind of niche
Battleground audience can’t win because it’s competitive
Arena players queue shuffle and arena
It is you shouldn’t blindly believe people on this forum, a handful of specs have over 500 people with 2400 in blitz. Spec viability is pretty irrelevant in blitz everything works so regardless if some underplayed specs have 100 people at 2400 that doesn’t counter the point of how free it is.
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I have lots of high mmr healers with 0 cr, why is nobody paying me to help wintrade. I like goldd 
consistently is the misleading word here
anyone who queues like 2 shuffle lobbies is counted and there’s probably more than half of the ladder hat queued 2 lobbies between pve activities to try it out since the barrier to entry is 0 and quit when they got flamed or frustrated
top x% is super misleading when arena is a mini game that’s not even 10% as popular is the pve main game (not a pve enjoyer, just being objective)
because if even a few % of that greater pool of players dabbles in arena a time or 2 over 9 months they’re added to the pile
i’d argue that glad in a lot of these 2400 seasons is more like top 15-20% of active arena players, maybe more
and likely 30+% of active shuffle players
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Only Ret and MM Hunter have more than 500 players above 2400. Moonkin and Holy Priest are over 400. After that it drops off quickly with Arms is under 300, and about half of all specs have fewer than 100 players above 2400.
But the absolute numbers by spec are not the point. What matters is the percentage of the ladder. In both Solo Shuffle and Blitz, fewer than about 5% of players reach 2400+. In 3v3, it is around 10%.
So if “free” means that a large fraction of players can reach 2400, the data points to 3v3, not Shuffle or Blitz. The only reason 3v3 looks different is that its distribution is clearly distorted by non-competitive rating transfer, which inflates the 2400+ population at a tremendous rate even compared to the thread topic.
That claim is not supported by the data. You can see the actual rating distribution in drustvar, sorry can’t include links in a post.
“Percent of players” is not a vague or misleading metric; it is a simple conditional probability:
of everyone who queued this mode, what fraction reached a given rating.
If someone queued a few lobbies and stopped, they are still part of the population that tried that ladder. That is true for Solo Shuffle, Blitz, 3v3, and 2v2. That is not a flaw it is exactly what the statistic is meant to capture.
The question is not “who are the serious arena players.” It is: of everyone who entered this ladder, how many reached 2400.
Redefining the denominator after the fact as “people I think count as real arena players” is just changing the question. The ladder already defines the population objectively: everyone who queued.
Then you have to be consistent about the denominator.
Are you counting all PvE players, or only the ones you personally consider “serious PvE players”? What percentage of the overall playerbase ever attempts Mythic raiding or high level Mythic+?
Most of us play this game for fun. We get a rating, and that rating already has a percentile attached to it, and it tells you roughly where you sit relative to everyone else who queued that mode. That seems like a complete competitive metric on its own.
So what is the actual goal people want from PvP rewards and ladders? Is it that only an extremely tiny group should ever get anything meaningful, or is the percentile already doing the job of telling you how rare your performance is?
I’m not trying to argue one way or the other at this point I guess, I just don’t really understand what problem people are trying to solve when they say a mode is “too free.”
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Something additional I don’t quite understand is how these two ideas fit together.
On one hand, a lot of people want more titles and more differentiation between Gladiator and Rank 1, which implies wanting finer resolution at the top of the ladder. On the other hand, people also argue that the 2400 cutoff itself should be made much harder or more exclusive.
Those seem to push in opposite directions. If 2400 is meant to be a very small, elite group, there isn’t much room left to meaningfully separate players above it. But if you want more gradation and more milestones at the top, then 2400 would naturally need to be a broader entry point. Again its also best to look at these with percentiles.
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Something to keep in mind that’s also difficult to account for is just how much mmr people have but just don’t queue the games. Half the players in a 2700 lobby have <2k cr.
All of us I should hope. 
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yeah that’s just lying to yourself though
if you wanna pat yourself on the back because 100,000 people are on ladder but 50,000 only played once and now you’re top 3% because you’re including the 50,000 people you’re just being disingenuous
realistically, at least for 3’s there’s probably only 25,000 people who actually play the game
if 3,000-5,000 get glad (which is roughly where we’re at now) that’s not a meaningful top 3-5%
it’s 16-20%
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There is no way to objectively define who “counts” as a real arena player versus someone who queued once, got frustrated, or plays casually. You are inventing a denominator that the ladder does not track. If you want to argue that 2400 is common among “active” or “serious” players, then you need a concrete, measurable filter (games played, weeks active, matches above a rating, etc.) and you have to apply it consistently across modes. Otherwise it is just redefining the population until the outcome matches how rare you want Gladiator to feel. The position I’m taking is quantifiable data.
There isn’t anything to lie to anyone about, the data is right there. So more concretely, my null hypothesis is; The ladder percentiles reported by the game (e.g., % of players ≥2400) correctly represent how selective that rating is among everyone who queued that mode.
Your alternate is; The reported percentiles are misleading because the true relevant population is a smaller, unobserved subset of “real” or “active” players.
But you’re not defining anything, and your alternate isn’t testable since it isn’t a measurable condition….
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Remi, can you give me TLDR on what this debate is about?
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Just the weekly “Actually 2400 in solo is hard”.
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yeah but iykyk
if your objective is to earn an achievement then yeah the data is all that matters
if your objective is to argue about the prestige of rewards against elitism then no, you have to be more nuanced because “nuh uh my numbers” is just unaware outsider-looking-in perspective
the reason none of these ludaslabs type sites are useful is because most data in wow arena is useless
similar to averages,means,ect representation is completely useless
100% of seasons where outlaw rogue has been the best spec in the game it’s been bottom of the representation spread
same with enh, same with feral, same with arcane ect
only for the sake of the argument against perceived elitism , not to be officially binding because if we remove all nuance and sort of view it as completely on the spectrum as we can then 2% of 200,000 people is a very small amount
but if you’re competing with people that aren’t competing with you and patting yourself on the back you’re a loser
and if you’re trying to put other people down because you feel that at 2400 you’re in some elite group of people you’re also a loser & flat out wrong
You just switched from making a statistical claim to making a social one, and that’s fine we can talk about that, but they are not the same thing.
When we talk about ladder percentiles, we are talking about one thing only,
of everyone who queued that mode, how many reached a given rating.
That is an objective, well-defined quantity. it is just how ladders work and nothing to do with elitism.
When you say “iykyk” you are no longer interested disputing the math. Are you implying that you care about about how prestigious the reward feels for you in forums and other groups? That is a value judgment not a data problem we could ever get at objectively. and I honestly don’t know what the subtext you’re trying to point out is, you can look at my account. I’ve been playing for a very long time, but only started playing ranked with blitz because I’ve always enjoyed BGs.
You can believe that gladiator should only matter among a smaller group of people you personally respect, but that is not something the ladder measures, and it is not something any ladder can measure. Once you do that you are no longer talking about who reached any sort of rating but you you personally believe should count. Also the moment you say “most arena data is useless” because it includes players you don’t want in the comparison you are just admitting that you are rejecting the denominator and not refuting it.
So we seem to be having different conversations. I am talking about what the ladder in the game measures, and you are talking about who you think should matter socially. Calling people “losers” for taking the ladder at face value doesn’t make sense, that is what its there for. The game gives you a rating and a percentile and a cool title.
No one is claiming to be a hero of Azeroth or to deserve real-world status with other achievements, this one is no different. At no point have I put anybody down. We’re just using the only metric the game provides and ascribing cool titles to it. If anything, getting angry that too many people get a cosmetic or a title is taking it far more seriously.
If someone wants to treat Gladiator as a social club, that’s their choice. But the ladder itself is just a scoreboard.
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You guys heard it here. 1 of 5 people are current Glads.