Arenas Are Open

[Kestrel]

We are excited to announce the launch of our Arena feature!

There were many details to finalize and decisions made during the implimentation process, please fine some of the important ones below.

Arena Systems
• Arenas are now open on all realms, including Hardcore, for level 60 players
• For the Hardcore realm, all arena gear is statless, but there are some recipes to grab
• Arenas available at launch are the Circle of Blood, the Ruins of Lordaeron and Sunstrider Court
• Arena registrars can be found in SW, Org, or the Gurubashi Arena
• Blood Ring armor can be bought with Conquest Points
• Conquest points are awarded during each weekly honor reset based on arena rating
• Cross realm is enabled for skirmishes
• Rated arenas are realm specific
• Rated arenas are a best of three series
• There will be a 2 minute prep time between rounds
• Cooldowns of 10 minutes or less reset along with their buffs. Class buffs and consumables do not get cleared
• Each round lasts up to 15 minutes, and a round that runs out of time goes to the team with more players alive, drawing if even.
• Two Shadow Sight orbs appear 90 seconds into every round. Picking one up lets you see stealthed and invisible players for 15 seconds, but you take 5% more damage and it breaks your own stealth or invisibility. A used orb comes back after 3 minutes
• Transmog is temporarily disabled while in an arena
• You can't change your gear while a round is being fought
• Leaving a rated arena forfeits the match for your team, gives you Deserter, and the loss counts twice for your team's rating
• Leaving a skirmish gives you Deserter and costs you 4 wins' worth of Blood Ring reputation
• Teams need 3 rated games a week to earn Conquest Points
• Blood Ring is back in the Call to Arms rotation
• on its day skirmishes award double honor and 90 Blood Ring reputation instead of 60
• Resilience on existing gear is now shown as two lines, Reduced Critical Damage and Reduced Periodic Damage, with the same total effect
• This is in support of a split of the Turtle WoW resilience system to test out some more dynamic and targeted PvP stats
• There are now Blood Ring vendors at the Gurubashi Arena
• More gear will be coming (likely in K40 phase) to these vendors

Do keep in mind that during this Beta phase of the server, things are much in flux and subject to change. If you don't like something, make a reasonable argument for why you think it should change.

[Knifewrench]

I think having consumes be this useable in arena is a mistake, this is highly abuseable with some consumes and becomes a fest of who can throw more money at it when at the highesst ranks, u can just unclick wisdom flask reclick it and u got a mana pot without cd. This promote rmting.

[Liberty]

[Duraluminium]

• Rated arenas are a best of three series
• There will be a 2 minute prep time between rounds
• Each round lasts up to 15 minutes, and a round that runs out of time goes to the team with more players alive, drawing if even.

I see a problem here.
Let's imagine 2 scenarios:
1. The teams are not even close. In the first round one team wins easily giving zero chances to the opponent, now the loser team just waits 2 mins to be murdered in the 2nd round and then again 2 mins and 3rd round.
Outcome: Big morale hit for the losers, boring routine for the winners, half afk experience overall
2. The teams are very close, both teams got good healers and not enough burst. One arena game becomes a set of 3x15 mins games where nobody can kill and noone dies + 2 mins breaks, overall it lasts for 50 mins with no winner in the end.
Outcome: very exhausting experience for both teams

Conclusion: 'best of 3' is good for tournaments, but it's bad for regular arena games in my opinion.
To be fun, arena games should be fast, dynamic

• Cooldowns of 10 minutes or less reset along with their buffs. Class buffs and consumables do not get cleared

There are multiple trinkets with cd longer than 10 mins, and they are used to cover the lack of cc for many specs and classes.
For example, I was playing a lot of skirmishes with my surv hunter on Tel'Abim, and as surv hunter got zero ways to kick casts, I used Thornpod for that. As it got 1 hour cd, it will not reset, so I basically cannot play surv in arenas.
I keep the fact that this trinket is very hard to obtain on our half dead server out of discussion here.



Overall I think that adding rated arenas before balancing PVP out is not going to work well

edited: And I agree with the post above that consumables completely destroy any balance in PVP, so if you add rated arenas, you should ban consumables there. With the exception for PVP healing and mana potions maybe.

[Knifewrench]

• Rated arenas are a best of three series
• There will be a 2 minute prep time between rounds
• Each round lasts up to 15 minutes, and a round that runs out of time goes to the team with more players alive, drawing if even.

I see a problem here.
Let's imagine 2 scenarios:
1. The teams are not even close. In the first round one team wins easily giving zero chances to the opponent, now the loser team just waits 2 mins to be murdered in the 2nd round and then again 2 mins and 3rd round.
Outcome: Big morale hit for the losers, boring routine for the winners, half afk experience overall
2. The teams are very close, both teams got good healers and not enough burst. One arena game becomes a set of 3x15 mins games where nobody can kill and noone dies + 2 mins breaks, overall it lasts for 50 mins with no winner in the end.
Outcome: very exhausting experience for both teams

Conclusion: 'best of 3' is good for tournaments, but it's bad for regular arena games in my opinion.
To be fun, arena games should be fast, dynamic

• Cooldowns of 10 minutes or less reset along with their buffs. Class buffs and consumables do not get cleared

There are multiple trinkets with cd longer than 10 mins, and they are used to cover the lack of cc for many specs and classes.
For example, I was playing a lot of skirmishes with my surv hunter on Tel'Abim, and as surv hunter got zero ways to kick casts, I used Thornpod for that. As it got 1 hour cd, it will not reset, so I basically cannot play surv in arenas.
I keep the fact that this trinket is very hard to obtain on our half dead server out of discussion here.



Overall I think that adding rated arenas before balancing PVP out is not going to work well

edited: And I agree with the post above that consumables completely destroy any balance in PVP, so if you add rated arenas, you should ban consumables there. With the exception for PVP healing and mana potions maybe.

i agree, but i think rated it is not the problem, but rewards. rated can be a good test for balance but it should be doing something minor till balance is done. one thing i can think of is rated arena atm giving 0-2000bonus honor u get over weekly cap, this is very minor but still a incentive that people tryhard wich gives data to balance around.

[Zvyrhol]

If I remember correctly, Conquest Points were supposed to be spent only on T3 PvP gear on Turtle WoW. Blood Ring sets required only rep. This seems like a slight change of idea. Nevertheless, Turtle WoW hasn't fully implemented Conquest Points so I don't mind.

Also, according to one announcement of Turtle WoW team, Conquest Points come from 3 sources: rated arenas, WPvP events and Call to Arms Battlegrounds ~ according to the wiki. Though I'm not sure about third source, I think it was a weekly BG quest or something (not implemented but announced).

[Symbol]

Did you guys try this on HC?

Updated game, theres no queue option, the npcs dont mention any options for a team or register.

What purpose will Conqeust serve besides these transmog pieces? (HC)

[Psychonought]

Trying to use FERALSPIRIT as an orc shaman in arenas gives error

You cannot use this ability in battlegrounds.

Tested to see if its tied to specific arena location. It errors in all of them.

[Duraluminium]

You've added arena sets that are going to become obsolete with T2 PVP gear.
You've postponed T2 PVP gear so we are supposed to farm arena sets instead.

But:
You did not balance classes in PVP at all, so most players will just skip arenas and wait for T2 PVP. Especially the specs that need support in PVP to fight efficiently, or who are just weak in 1v1 by design.
Also you still did not add agility necklace for honor, so agility users could get 6% resi when str and int users do..

[Wubc]

Another vote for substantially limiting consumables in arenas. A team with flasks, elixirs, food buffs, etc as well as immunity potions, sappers, etcetc will be at a substantial advantage over one that does not. I'm quite confident no one wants a meta based on who brings the most consumables.