Details on Arena System (BC)

[Sang-Drax]

CM Drysc graced us with some additional details on how the arenas will work:

When a player enters an arena battle, all buffs and conjured items are purged/deleted. This is done to ensure no outside buffs or items from members outside of your team are able to be used in an arena battle.

No consumables other than bandages and conjured items can be used while in the arena. There will be a waiting area similar to the current battlegrounds where players on the team will be able to conjure items and cast buffs.

Abilities/spells/items with cooldowns longer than 15 minutes cannot be used while in the arena.

Each arena team will be given a rating, and will be matched up in the arena queue against teams of a similar rating (matching within that specific cross-realm battlegroup). As time progresses the matching system will broaden its search up to a limit if a closely rated team cannot be found.

Ratings adjustments are made in the same way that ELO ratings adjustments are made. This system works by adjusting each arena team's rating from a specific match based on the rating of the team they are up against. If a team wins against a team of a higher rating, the increase of their arena rating would be much higher than if they had won against a team of a lower rating. This system will help promote players improving their skill and besting teams which may have previously held the top spots.

At the end of each week, characters receive arena points based on their team's rating. A team must have fought a minimum number of battles for the week, which we have announced as currently set to 10 games. A player must have played in at least 30% of the team's battles that week in order to be eligible to receive arena points. Each eligible player will then receive a fraction of the teams total awarded points to spend on arena rewards.

Players may spend their points on arena rewards, or save their points until they have enough to get the rewards they desire.
There is a limit to the number of points a player can stockpile, which is currently planned to be as high as the most expensive item.

At the end of a season, players on a team are given a title based on their team's relative position on the ladder which will last through the next arena season.

[Poag]

Aka,

Ladder based system, challenging higher teams returns more advancement points than lower teams.

Fun

[Tampler]

Abilities/spells/items with cooldowns longer than 15 minutes cannot be used while in the arena.

Translation:

"warriors, you cant use 2 of your best attacks, so bugger off and DIE!
:/

[Meistari]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating

[Megana]

Looking more and more like the City of Heroes/Villains arena system the more info we get - which is not a bad thing, I have a friend who's a CoH arena battler and loves it.

As usual, Blizzard's genius is not for coming up with stunningly original ideas, it's for picking up other people's ideas and executing them well.

[Demon]

wow, bring it on, i literally can't wait

[Tiberian]

Translation:

"warriors, you cant use 2 of your best attacks, so bugger off and DIE!
:/

Not to mention Paladins classic Lay on hands. Gah, totally screws some classes over....

Maybe they should stop other classes 10 minute call downs, desprate pray anyone? From working too.

An engineering not working = Whats the bloody point in having engineering now, since its useless in pve and now the main areana system.

[Panther]

Translation:

"warriors, you cant use 2 of your best attacks, so bugger off and DIE!
:/

Not to mention Paladins classic Lay on hands. Gah, totally screws some classes over....

Maybe they should stop other classes 10 minute call downs, desprate pray anyone? From working too.

An engineering not working = Whats the bloody point in having engineering now, since its useless in pve and now the main areana system.

Hmm....do you really think it's a demostration of skill if warriors were able to pop recklessness every arena fight and cut everything into pieces?

These abilities have long cooldowns for a reason: They are very powerful! And if any class is able to use such an ability every fight (due to queue time) it only comes down to which team has more imbalanced long cooldown abilities on their side...
Remember it also includes stuff like Soulstone and Reincarnation
Good decision on Blizzards part imo.

Only consumable engineering items don't work, equippable items (i.e. trinkets) are allowed.
There shouldn't be one profession which is "required" to do well in such a match.

[StuartB]

Hmm....do you really think it's a demostration of skill if warriors were able to pop recklessness every arena fight and cut everything into pieces?

These abilities have long cooldowns for a reason: They are very powerful! And if any class is able to use such an ability every fight (due to queue time) it only comes down to which team has more imbalanced long cooldown abilities on their side...
Remember it also includes stuff like Soulstone and Reincarnation
Good decision on Blizzards part imo.

Only consumable engineering items don't work, equippable items (i.e. trinkets) are allowed.
There shouldn't be one profession which is "required" to do well in such a match.

Don't forget that this is the system that will be implemented in Burning Crusade, so all classes will go through major changes to abilities ands talent trees before this will be implemented..

[Tiberian]

Hmm....do you really think it's a demostration of skill if warriors were able to pop recklessness every arena fight and cut everything into pieces?

Do you really think theres skill to pvp? No. A lot of it envloves having the best gear, or having the correct team set up. Not to mention, no matter having all the talent reviews the classes are far from balanced. Several classes would need their whole trees looked over in bc in order for there to be balanced fair "skill" pvp. I can already see warlocks doing well in the areana system.

No but taking away some classes cool downs, and not others sucks. As it is, if a warrior pops recklessness, he weakens himself. If a paladin uses his lay on hands, he loses all mana. So there are already drawbacks to using those skills. Where as...a human priest has no draw back from using his 10 minute instant heal that costs no mana. Or an ice mage who uses ice snap.

I wouldn't mind so much, but it really sucks that rogues can still burn all there cool downs, mages still can, but the ones unlucky enough to have a cool down over 15 minutes won't be.

These abilities have long cooldowns for a reason: They are very powerful! And if any class is able to use such an ability every fight (due to queue time) it only comes down to which team has more imbalanced long cooldown abilities on their side...
Remember it also includes stuff like Soulstone and Reincarnation
Good decision on Blizzards part imo.

And the abilities also have draw backs. Also, there are over powerfull abilities that haven't been disabled. This reminds me of warsong gultch where paladin is the only class who cant use one of his skills while running with the flag, but yet, a rogue can sprint, a druid can use travel form, and a shaman can use ghost wolf.

As it is...this game is not balanced. Some classes have it easy, others don't. Again i wouldn't really mind too much, but can you imagen going into the areana, vs a mage and priest. The mage casts sheep, pops all his cool downs, the priest buffs him with Power Infusion and starts to cast pyro. Ouchie.

Only consumable engineering items don't work, equippable items (i.e. trinkets) are allowed.
There shouldn't be one profession which is "required" to do well in such a match.

As it stands, engineering has no other use over than pvp. I would hardly say it would be required. At most it gives you a grenade, with a 3 second stun. Still, this can be quite handy for some classes who lack crowd control. My main point here is, Engineering is useless apart from battlegrounds, though areana seems to be the main focus of pvp in the xpac.