Original TBC Arena Gladiators by Season List

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Season 1

Priest: 159 - 15.73%
Warrior: 144 - 14.24%
Warlock: 126 - 12.46%
Paladin: 121 - 11.97%
Rogue: 115 - 11.37%
Mage: 98 - 9.69%
Shaman: 88 - 8.70%
Druid: 63 - 6.23%
Hunter: 49 - 4.85%

Only 1k gladiators existed in this list for season 1, which had EXTREMELY low population compared to other TBC seasons.

SEASON 2

Priest: 454 - 15.24%
Warlock: 436 - 14.64%
Warrior: 428 - 14.37%
Rogue: 394 - 13.23%
Paladin: 285 - 9.57%
Mage: 275 - 9.23%
Druid: 274 - 9.20%
Shaman: 215 - 7.22%
Hunter: 117 - 3.93%

Nearly 3,000 gladiators made up this list.

SEASON 3

Rogue: 900 - 16.44%
Warrior: 775 - 14.16%
Druid: 768 - 14.03%
Priest: 732 - 13.37%
Warlock: 526 - 9.61%
Mage: 498 - 9.10%
Shaman: 406 - 7.42%
Paladin: 393 - 7.18%
Hunter: 284 - 5.19%

With 5473 Gladiators, Season 3 was the most played season in Original TBC.

SEASON 4

Rogue: 858 - 16.84%
Druid: 775 - 15.21%
Warrior: 688 - 13.50%
Priest: 643 - 12.62%
Warlock: 582 - 11.42%
Mage: 460 - 9.03%
Shaman: 362 - 7.11%
Paladin: 331 - 6.50%
Hunter: 246 - 4.83%

With over 5,000 gladiators, Season 4 was still heavily populated.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20101126113725/http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=216925

The myth that season 4 was an underpopulated season is fake news. Season 1 was the most underpopulated by far. Additionally, its why everyone seems to know about season 1 but have no idea about season 1. It was Season 2 that people started actually using arena and Season 3 that it really kicked into gear.

Also note there’s a significant difference in the data versus the representation of classes for Season 1 and 2 specifically. Most people didn’t play in this era of really low resilience and overall arena participation which is why the numbers are very different.

The season 3 and 4 numbers are what we are used to seeing. The only true anomaly that could change before then and now are hunters. In a world that had keyboard turning clickers, the hunter was the only class so incredibly punished by this and was reflected in representation numbers despite being a very popular class for PvE. This isn’t the case in 2021.

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I appreciate data. Shocked at how high Warriors and Paladins were Season 1 and how low druids were. I think 12 years worth of meta evolution will change those numbers profoundly for this next Season 1.

The participation numbers are helpful though. Especially at dismissing the “sky is falling” rhetoric we hear about weapon ratings thoroughly eviscerating prospective participation. Looks like Season 3 did just fine.

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Hunters straight killing it

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All these people who think arena is ruined probably weren’t going to be very high rated anyway. They just wanted their afk participation trophies.

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Warriors have always been solid. With the amount of rogues and locks playing, Warriors got super high value in the meta.
Paladins were likely a thing since games weren’t lasting more than 20-30 seconds and bubble lasts for a good portion of the game for season 1.

Yeah when most of the population keyboard turned and clicked, the class that gets punished the most are Hunters. LoS plays into it but the biggest factor is definitely how much of the hunter toolkit you lose when you cannot move properly.

This is also a myth. Aside from a low cost offhand, items were not affordable in the first season even without rating requirements. Usually players just stockpiled till season 2 and bought something actually valueable there.

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Why do you keep spouting this dishonest argument? AFKing to a glad weapon alone took months, and that was when teams started at 1500. Now that they start at 0, it would take much longer.

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See, I feel like 70% shiv crippling is really going to ruin a lot of their days. 5-8 kiting was somewhat advanced back then. Every trash rogue does it now. Rank 1 blizzard for 70% snare was also a little less common back then. Every mage is R1 frostbolting and R1 blizzarding now for constant uptime. I feel like warriors are going to have a way worse 2021 than 2008. Even moreso considering how undergeared they’re going to be for a minute.

A similar but more complex argument needs to be made for why Hpals and Shaman will struggle. But it comes down to the same root; the evolution of meta and the persistent raising of the skill floor.

Hunters will probably BENEFIT from the evolution of the meta, like you’ve said. It wasn’t until late S3 → into S4 that mana drain meta really popularized. In S1 you rarely saw Hunter/Disc playing mana games in 2vs2. In S4 Hunter/healer was like half the freakin’ teams we queue’d into.

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Not all the gear had rating requirements in season 1. That’s what they want.

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WLD was really really solid due to how many synergies the classes fit for each other. I think this is still going to be a reality for TBC classic. I think Warrior/Healer might take a serious hit in 2s though.

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I just ask myself, why would a top tier Lock/Druid choose a warrior for 3s? Sure, MS is great. No denying that. But the only reliable Warrior CC DRs with your warlock’s and they’re a liability in this meta otherwise. Why not take an Elemental Shaman? Why not take a Frost Mage? Why not take a Spriest (I’m playing Rdruid/Lock/Spriest as a disclaimer)?

It’s not that WLD won’t be viable. It’s that the L and the D have a half dozen better comp options.

Edit: The Rdruid also cannot dispel the Warrior out of squat. Literally nothing. He’s sitting every poly and every nova and every HoJ etc.

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Not to mention if you play with a druid you don’t have magic cleanse, so you’re basically just gonna sit full cc all day

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I edited too slow, apparently. Sorry.

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Yeah there’s a lot of drawbacks and benefits to playing classes in this game.

Like I said, WLD covers every weakness.
For example, the warlock is the one dispelling CC usually.

Meanwhile the druid is immune to Mage CC and Priests can’t dispel the Druid CC.

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Eh. Devour is short range (30 instead of 41 yards), an 8sec CD, requires LoS and requires your felhunter to not be DEAD. Most 3s teams are nuking your felbaby first and foremost. Ridding the WLD of both Soul Link and Devour is imperative. Since the Felpuppy has f-all for health and armor and doesn’t benefit from resilience, it’s like PvE’ing a target dummy. The rdruid will oom themselves trying to keep it alive. Fel-Dom and repeat.

Idk. I think WLD will only be successful with extremely good players and those players would likely do even BETTER not playing WLD.

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You can play the flowchart game all you want, but its there, its effective, it works and its definitely impactful in a game where multiple classes are doing multiple things.

In season 1 you might wanna do something a lot more YOLO due to the lack of resilience, but the team has had overpoweringly high amounts of representation.

You could make that argument about any team using warlocks. You make it sound like warlocks are not arena viable due to this argument. You are wrong.

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It’s not that S4 was underpopulated, it was a downward trend from S3 which was more popular due to better gear Requirements among other things. The reason why S1 was so underpopulated is because Arena was NEW. Most PvP players don’t do Arena even today, they are grinding BGs, WPvP and dueling. One of the issues with Retail WoW is the majority of PvP players hate Arena.

So it took till S3 to gain traction but S4 went in a different direction and well my BiS PvP gear isn’t from Arena. So not much of a reason to Que S4 with harsher requirements and unattractive rewards compared to Tier 6 in PvE.

I do appreciate the Data and saw this before so it’s good to have it on the forums.

Final Note - S1 TBC Classic will be dead due to the change of the Arena system and using S4 rating Reqs that pushed PvP players away from Arena and they opted to get some better Tier gear and just PvP outside arena instead.

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S4 was still EXTREMELY populated. The downward trend only really started in WotLK.

It was almost the exact same population. It was really S5 Holy Pally and DKs that threw arena participation into the gutter and even though it did get more balanced over time, the ICC25 heroic gear just took the balance that once existed and YEETed that out the window for Season 8.

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