So I have four 60’s in classic, but only actually care about two of them. One is a Rogue, which I want to play pretty seriously in arenas; while this shaman I intend to play mostly in PVE.
I know it’s easier to show up as a fresh 70 later on and get into raids than it is for PvP. The problem is I’m really looking forward to leveling the Shaman, and kindof want to do that first. If you show up a bit late to the arena scene, is it possible to be competitive, or is it basically necessary to get going at the same time as everyone else?
I never really did much arena grinding during retail, and honestly I don’t even know how good I’ll be (I’d like to think I’m a pretty decent PvP Rogue in Classic), but I’d prefer not fall so far behind that it’s impossible to be competitive, if that’s an issue.
My rogue is one of my first 60’s on classic and I’ve had him for a long time and he’s done all the raiding etc in classic and is geared in p5/6 gear. I think I just kindof want a change of pace, and I loved my Enhance Shaman during tbc retail.
I dont see why it would matter too much when you decided to start.
Isn’t the point to win more games than you lose? Just don’t lose and you’ll manage to climb the ladder quickly enough. Especially if all the good players are already at the top
I guess my worry was that if I’m in fresh 70 gear and most other competitors are already wearing S1 gear etc, is it even possible to win more than you lose lol. Again, I never arena’d very seriously during retail, so it’s kindof an unfamiliar subject for me.
You can enter arena in week one in blues as a fresh 70, be pretty competitive and you’ll get a higher number of points right off the bat, even though your gear is subpar.
But if you start arena in week 8, no decent arena team is going to take you in your 70 blues. So you’ll mostly be forced to run with sub-1500 teams just running their 10 games for the first few weeks until you can get a couple pieces (which is taking you longer because of your rating) You also likely won’t get accepted into many premades until you start hitting a minimum resil threshhold which will even further extend the time needed to get offset pieces.
So basically until the new season, at the least, you’ll always be a tier or two behind the curve, which will impact your ability to gain rating, which impacts your ability to get points for better gear, which further impacts your ability to gain rating so on and so forth…
Especially depending on how they release the seasons you may be able to cheat it a little as a dps class by running some PVE gear, but as a healer or any other class that is commonly focused you’ll definitely be at a disadvantage
Probably not but then you don’t really need to. You just run 5’s since they give the most points for rating and play your 10 games a week. Even if you lose all 10 you’ll still end up around 1400 rating which is still comparable to the points you’d get for a 1600 rating 2’s team, albeit significantly less than most people will be getting.
Run your 10 5’s for points, then you can play around in 2’s and 3’s since that rating ultimately wont matter.
Exactly This. The try-hards were handed S1 by default for the HUGE gear gap. Highest I got was dualist in mixed blues+PVP/Arena gear. By Season 3 my gear had fully equalized and I began to dominate(Never got rid of my blue JC trinket!). Once you’re behind the curve you won’t be competitive until you get caught up, the margins are just that tight 2k+
I swapped from holy to ret back when S1 gear was available for honor. I was squishy as hell in BGs, but still had fun. If it’s arenas, buddy uo with someone good and get carried some for gear. Then get competitive.
Long answer it can be harder to push for Rank 1 if that is your goal, but starting late in TBC isn’t so bad because the gear gap even between S1 and S2 isn’t so big you couldn’t get glad inS2 using S1 gear and weapons, but it would obviously be harder but not impossible.
As for season 1, just get some T4 armor a and weapons and gem resilience and fill in where you can with BG and easy to gain arena items. You will do just fine, just gotta play cleaner, resilience only allows for slightly more sloppy play in TBC, it’s not the insane OP stat it became in Cata.
What changes has blizzard made that will make arena harder to get into?
If anything it’s gonna be easier to get weapons (assuming arena rating required) because in T4 many will seek better offhand weapons because “gotta parse” PvE only players are loading the bracket making titles and rating required items actually easier to get.
Arena only gets harder than it should be when gear gaps are too large or when too few people play. Both of those issues are present in retail but we already know that the gear gap is not going to be a problem in TBC due to there being several good ways to get setup for arena before you have the arena gear.
