3 things I want to talk about here.
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Regarding the end of seasons rewards not being adjusted to reflect player bans and team disqualifications, see my thread here. Should we expect this issue to repeat at the end of this season and in future WotLK seasons?
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Arena gear rating requirements. How is this going to be handled? TBCC arena participation was low and the percentage of PvP players that had access to the gated gear was abysmal, mainly due to two things: The low participation rate and the starting rating being 0. Not starting at 1500 meant that there was less rating being injected into the ladder resulting in a lower average rating for everyone overall.
The rating requirements needs to either reflect the state of arena and the game so that a proportional amount of players equivalent to the PvE counterpart have access to the gear or it needs to be done away with completely and be replaced with a different system of incentive to reach higher rating.
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Wintergrasp.
From what I understood, it’s going to be made into an epic battleground similar to retail?
The issue with this is that Wintergrasp as an epic battleground is a total failure as it doesn’t fit the mold of a battleground. Having a different objective for each side, that is defending or attacking, makes it not work as a battleground. Because one side will always have an advantage and result in the other side not even trying. It requires the dynamic incentive of wanting access to the Vault of Archevon to work. Because with an incentive, it makes players more likely to participate on the side that has a disadvantage rather than just give up and leave like they do on retail when you get randomly put on offense.
How can the challenges of having a balanced, enjoyable, Wintergrasp be tackled? Because from the solution provided, I am not optimistic at all.
12 Likes
I would like to add the following questions:
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Will the Hyper Vision Goggles from TBC be disabled in arena? See this GH post with rhetoric suggesting that they should have been disabled in original wrath, but were not due to an oversight.
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Is the team happy with the modified rate of arena points that happened in S4 of TBC:C? Obviously raw amounts will change going into Wrath but wondering if the rate will remain the same both overall and between brackets?
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What is the plan with Ring of Valor?
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Will there be any #somechanges to Season 5 PvP gear to make it more structurally aligned with Season 6-8 gear?
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Will previous season’s weapons be available to purchase with honor or honor/AP? Will Savage or Hateful Glad weapons be able to be purchased at all in S5?
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Will there be an increase to the honor and/or arena point cap?
More detail to these questions (and some others like Dynamic DR) can be found here.
Thanks for bringing up PvP!
5 Likes
This question especially. I made a thread regarding that way back in early season 4.
The bracket disparity is really bad.
3 Likes
Hello. I’ve been keeping an eye on Classic PvP, and I can answer your questions.
- Season 4 is our last Season with Arena teams, and it’s important for us that players are rewarded for their skill and their effort accordingly. Now that we’re approaching the end of Season 4, we’ll keep in mind the feedback from all of the Seasons during Burning Crusade Classic. We aim to be fair, but at the same time, we want to make sure that players are following the rules.
- Now that we’re not going to have Arena teams, players will be able to keep working on their rating, no matter how many different partners they play with. We believe that this will change both the participation numbers and how many players get to the higher ratings. That said, during the first Season of Wrath of the Lich King Classic there will be many different options for you to get PvP gear, including Hateful and Deadly Gladiator. We are currently analyzing the ratings requirements around these. We might modify some of the Hateful gear requirements, while at the same time keeping Deadly gear as the ultimate PvP gear.
- One player needs to win a Wintergrasp match in order to unlock the Wintergrasp victory rewards for that player’s realm and faction. We’re encouraging players to join the battle when it’s active to unlock the rewards for their realm and faction. With multiple Wintergrasps running at the same time, it will enable players from the same realm to have more than one chance per period to earn the awards. That said, we will continue to monitor the system and make adjustments as needed.
Thank you for the reminder of these issues.
3 Likes
Thank you for the response Deaskis.
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Just to be clear, the issue here is that the cheaters were effectively preventing others from receiving rewards even if they were getting banned. It’s good to know that with the changes to team in WotLK that issue is probably going to fix itself, but please ensure that the rewards for the last season of TBC are properly handled and potentially look at rewards that should have been handed in Season 3 if that is still possible.
To clarify, from my understanding of what others have been saying, what happened is basically if you banned the 3rd place in a competition and instead of giving the bronze medal to the fourth place, you didn’t give the medal to anyone.
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That’s good to hear, please keep us up to date with what those ratings are going to be. 
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Same as #2, keep us up to date.
Communication 
3 Likes
Hi Deaskis, I’d like to raise an issue regarding the Nitro Boosts engineering tinker (aka “rocket boots”). While it’s true that rocket boots were allowed in original Season 5, (and then removed in Season 6), I’m slightly disheartened to hear that they will be allowed for at least Classic Season 5 for the following reasons:
- We’ve done this song and dance already with the Nigh-Invulnerability Belt. One can argue that the rocket boots are even more of a powerful effect than the belt, however the backfire potential to insta-lose a game was one of the most frustrating things about TBC.
- Keeping boots in the game because they were in original S5 is not consistent with other decisions. If Blizzard wanted to 100% preserve the experience to be the same as original TBC/Wrath, they never would have disabled the belt. In addition, rocket boots were allowed to be used in the original Season 3 (and before) – how come they weren’t enabled for Classic Season 3? What caused this change of mind from having #somechange (boots disabled in BC) versus #nochange (boots enabled in Wrath)?
- It makes engineering mandatory for competitive players. Engineering was already considered to be one of, if not the best profession due to Synapse Springs and/or Pyro glove. This additional boon puts it far over the edge, even more so than the 24 spellpower from enchanting in TBC. Making a profession mandatory isn’t the end of the world, but having it in the first season when the economy is in its infancy makes it especially punishing. Finally, those who would not want engineering without the boots have to take it for one season, then have to relevel the profession they do want. The only upside here is that you only need 25 points of Northrend Engineering as opposed to 50 Outland for the belt.
- Boots are a bigger boon to some classes over others. Low mobility classes such as priests benefit a lot more than high mobility classes like druids.
- They undermine good positioning. One of the (many) things that separates great players from good players is their ability to position themselves well depending on a number of situations. However, what good is good positioning, as say a resto druid, when a priest can just rocket boots over to you and fear you anyways? We already had situations with stuff like priest blackout stunning people at range then walking up them and fearing. And no, you cannot “counter” someone’s rocket boots with your own rocket boots, especially if there’s pillars and range and line of sight, and a myriad of other factors. Rocket boots remove all of that.
- You can’t disable them mid-season. There’s no “trial” period where we play the first 3-4 weeks of the season, say “oops this actually isn’t fun” and then disable them after people used them to get their rating (and also invalidating their profession choice). I think the risk that they become too toxic is too high, and would rather not gamble an entire arena season on it.
- Re: the “fun” aspect, throughout TBC Classic, flag runners in BGs have been allowed to use the rocket boots (as was in original TBC). While this can be very frustrating to play against, this is a non-competitive game mode and at the end of the day, there’s not too much foul play here. If you’re seeking to preserve the “fun” aspect of rocket boots, consider re-allowing them to be used while flag running (despite being disabled in 3.1) but not in arena. That way, people can still get their fun in BGs without any spillover into arenas.
If Blizz is truly adamant about keeping boots in for season 5, the backfire rate in arena must either be extremely high (so that it doesn’t really become viable for people to use them in serious arena), or actual 0. If you’re willing to remove heartbeat, you understand that how even the tiniest of percentages, such as a CC heartbeat or engineering backfire, can still ruin one’s game experience. The losses I suffered due to someone’s belt backfiring felt far worse than the “fun” from games I won due to my belt saving my life. I don’t know how rocket boots will be any different.
7 Likes
Hello again!
We’ve reviewed the engineering items, gathered feedback, and taken a closer look at how certain items and enchantments interacted during the original Wrath of the Lich King. Additionally, the Nitro Boosts enchant can introduce a big advantage for the players that have them as you mentioned, while at the same time, it has the capacity to randomly backfire, which can introduce an unfair loss of rating. For original Wrath, the dev team tried different iterations and still decided to just remove it. So thanks to your feedback, and in the spirit of the competitive nature of ranked Arenas, we will remove them from Arenas starting with the first season of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
We’ve decided that the following Engineering enchants and items won’t be available for use in Arenas in the first or any season of Wrath of the Lich King Classic:
- Gnomish Lightning Generator
- Nitro Boosts
- Gnomish Net-o-Match Projector (BC item)
- Hyper-Vision Goggles (BC item)
Thanks again for all of your feedback. We look forward to seeing you in the Deadly Arenas!
9 Likes
Thanks Deaskis and the rest of the team for being so understanding! See you in the arena
2 Likes
Hi Deaskis & Co.,
I would like to pose a question to blizzard which is: for Season 5, what does Blizzard expect the average player to do with their Arena Points?
Historically, there have been three tiers of PvP gear coinciding with the season: “Current Season”, “Previous Season”, “Two Prior Seasons”. Generally speaking,
- Current Season cost Arena Points and have rating requirements on at least some pieces (in BC weapon/shoulder, in Wrath all pieces)
- Previous Season cost Arena Points (in WotLK AP + Honor) but have no rating requirements
- Two Prior Seasons cost honor.
While these classifications are easiest to understand in later seasons (currently Brutal being current, Vengeful being previous, Merciless being two prior), the same tier structure applies in the earlier seasons as well. In Season 5, Deadly will be the current tier, Hateful being the previous tier equivalent, and Savage the two prior equivalent. However, where they differ is that Hateful pieces still have rating requirements and there are no Hateful (or even Savage) weapons.
In Season 5, the items you spend arena points on are Hateful and Deadly Gladiator’s main set pieces. Deadly Gladiator pieces start at 1750 rating. Hateful Gladiator pieces start at 1615 rating. At the end of Season 4, the highest Challenger cutoff - corresponding to 65th percentile of arena participating players - across all 6 NA/EU brackets was 1490. Unless Blizzard has reason to believe that the rating distribution will be more top heavy, somewhere around 70-75% of the player base will not have anything to spend their arena points on.
While I personally will not be gatekept by these rating restrictions, I still believe it is incredibly important that players of all skill levels have some incentive and/or reward for playing arena. Please consider removing rating requirement on the Hateful Pieces (and consider adding Hateful weapons for purchase as well, as previous seasons’ weapons were among the most popular purchases with Arena Points in TBCC).
16 Likes
Just saw the video Blizzard released discussing the removal of rating for Hateful and the lowered ratings for Deadly. I noticed that certain items were not shown (such as gloves, weapon(s), and off pieces). On beta, the vendors have been changed to show Brutal gear as well. I assume this is due to some internal iteration/discussion on Blizz’s end.
When you’ve settled, would you please make a post/table detailing the rating requirements for each of the pieces? Or push it to beta and I’ll compile & distribute it myself. Also information on the point requirements & rate of points earned relative to S4 TBC would be appreciated as well 
Thank you again for these changes.
Looking at that video’s vendors and the cost on the items, I have a very big issue with items having a cost of 40 to 60k honor. That just sounds like a ridiculously high number, especially for a blue piece of gear, even with the increased honor gained and Wintergrasp weeklies.
4 Likes