Your thoughts on arena's

[Blithe]

I would play season 8 and season 3 over and over if I could, if it meant for balance purposes only. The game has never felt balanced again outside of those time periods, and it's really sad.

[Gigana]

I would play season 8 and season 3 over and over if I could, if it meant for balance purposes only. The game has never felt balanced again outside of those time periods, and it's really sad.

S10 was pretty good.

[Rorke]

Season 10 sucked, season 11 was the best and most skilled season that ever existed.

[fruitshoot]

Season 10 sucked, season 11 was the best and most skilled season that ever existed.

PVE items, RLS, RMP, trip melee dps to counter RLS. yeah... no.. it was an abysmal season.

[Gigana]

PVE items, RLS, RMP, trip melee dps to counter RLS. yeah... no.. it was an abysmal season.

Don't feed the troll.

[Rorke]

No it was a great season outside of the triple dps comps. The skilled classes were good and the unskilled classes stayed bad. Usually when Warriors have a bad season, its always pretty good.

Triple dps didn't counter RLS. Only a bad RLS would lose to Triple DPS. The cool thing about season 11 was the fact that the Rogue class was at an all time high when it came down to skill cap. Like you needed a really good Rogue to pull off Thug or RLS well. A world class Rogue back then also had the ability to "clutch" the game for his team and steal a win.

Now you don't see that anymore because the top melee now is a class that has a low skill cap and has no tools to really change the flow of the game. There is little to no difference between a rank 1 warrior and a rival warrior. Back with season 11 Rogue, there was a huge difference between a rank 1 Rogue and a glad Rogue. I mean it was crazy how much skill it took to play a Rogue back then.

[Stormspellz]

No it was a great season outside of the triple dps comps. The skilled classes were good and the unskilled classes stayed bad. Usually when Warriors have a bad season, its always pretty good.

Triple dps didn't counter RLS. Only a bad RLS would lose to Triple DPS. The cool thing about season 11 was the fact that the Rogue class was at an all time high when it came down to skill cap. Like you needed a really good Rogue to pull off Thug or RLS well. A world class Rogue back then also had the ability to "clutch" the game for his team and steal a win.

Now you don't see that anymore because the top melee now is a class that has a low skill cap and has no tools to really change the flow of the game. There is little to no difference between a rank 1 warrior and a rival warrior. Back with season 11 Rogue, there was a huge difference between a rank 1 Rogue and a glad Rogue. I mean it was crazy how much skill it took to play a Rogue back then.

what...triple dps FARMED rshaman teams, that was their bread and butter comp, Cunning doing 50% of a casters damage passively in 3s let alone lol rbgs. human thugcleave could global you in the first smoke bomb through d-cds and if they messed up they had another. Season 11 is up there with s5 on horribly broken.

[Morbownz]

I played it in TBC and loved it although it didn't always seem fair, especially in 2s. Classes were less homogenized and CC was unique to each class. I tried it in Cata and was just baffled by it, it seemed to be in a terrible state in 2s... it felt like Blizzard had actually washed their hands of it. So I instantly stopped and have never returned. From what I've heard, 2s doesn't seem to have improved much either.

[Rorke]

what...triple dps FARMED rshaman teams, that was their bread and butter comp, Cunning doing 50% of a casters damage passively in 3s let alone lol rbgs. human thugcleave could global you in the first smoke bomb through d-cds and if they messed up they had another. Season 11 is up there with s5 on horribly broken.

Bad shamans would die to triple dps. It's like when bad shamans today die to phd.

Sure in the duelist brackets triple dps counters rls. But among the best, triple dps wasn't an issue. Good Rogues and Shamans made sure of that. Of course, you had to be at the top of your game to counter and outplay such a mindless comp such as triple dps, but it made you a better player.

Another cool thing about season 11 was that whichever team had the better Rogue usually won. It was a great season.

[Stormspellz]

Bad shamans would die to triple dps. It's like when bad shamans today die to phd.

Sure in the duelist brackets triple dps counters rls. But among the best, triple dps wasn't an issue. Good Rogues and Shamans made sure of that. Of course, you had to be at the top of your game to counter and outplay such a mindless comp such as triple dps, but it made you a better player.

Another cool thing about season 11 was that whichever team had the better Rogue usually won. It was a great season.

you just contradicted yourself pretty heavily a few times. Ya sure pve rogue'in your way to victory was awesome for rogues but horrible for everyone else. It was a terrible season from how insane pve gear was to balance.

[zoned]

Arena is the most balanced it's ever been, the problem now is carries and rank 1 players on alts. Although this has always been a problem it has recently exploded with all the alts. I know several pros that have between 5-10 alts, sometimes of the same class and all above 2700 (glad range). This ads .00001 to the player pool and takes away most of the precious few glad spots available. I bet even the pros doing carries for money are mad about all the alts taking up spots, cutting into their profits.
There is about 1200-1500 gladiator spots of which 50% are sold, another 45% are alts of high end players. This means 95% of all titles are secured by 100 elite players US side. Leaving 1200 or so gladiator skilled players unable achieve a deserved glad title. Discouraging to say the least, most legit skilled gladiator players don't even try to push titles and often just quit. Blizzard may as well just remove glad titles/mounts from the game.

[Schwert]

I like arenas but they did a lot of wrong with them - especially now.
The systems they use haven't evolved much and now we're stuck in a huge rut.

MMORPG PvP is never going to be fully balanced; They're rarely ever balanced in PvE. And there's nothing wrong with imbalances as long as people are having fun and the rewards are fair.
And to be frank with how many friends I have who have quit the game over arenas - Not many folks I know are having fun right now.
People throw around "skill" like it matters so much; When I can't see the difference between randomly being globaled at 2k and 2500 by an ele shaman. There's stuff that a Gladiator player will do differently from a 2k player but when games are thrown that hard by RNG now it's stupid.
(And I've done it myself; Random gibs with 150k slams.)

Also CC.
It's still stupid in WoD and there's certain classes I straight up dread seeing because it's just un-fun to play against.
(Godcomp, LSD, Rogue comps - CCCCCCCCCCCCCC)

I'm gonna have to agree with Zoned;
It was extremely annoying to queue into R1's/Gladiators at 2400 the entire night and obvious pilots. I'm not even going to get started on the bots.
I have one friend with 4 alts in Gladiator range. I have a few with two and another has a whopping twenty pilots done already this season all in US glad range.
Guy doesn't even play his own account anymore.

While Zoned is certainly over-exaggerating Gladiator is indeed extremely controlled and Holinka has stated the top players would rather game the ladder than play.
Which shows the state of the top end.

Rewards system revamp is needed;
Can cut a lot of overall problems in the top end by still giving Gladiator alts their title/mount but also giving it to the next guy for example.

[juice9]

I agree, 3s are where it's at

[Gedias]

Arenas were immensely popular in TBC and it felt like at the time it was on the verge of becoming a legitimate e-sport. It seemed like a lot of players were coming over from counter-strike or other FPS games to WOW just to play arena. During WOTLK the number of arena matches played dropped off quite a bit, some of it no doubt because raiders didn't need to do 2s to get a good replacement weapon, but it still felt like there was a pretty vibrant scene. And then in CATA the popularity of arenas just seemed to crater.

I think the biggest problem is that with every new expansion there is a ton of new talent/class challenges that throws class balance way out of whack, which is why the later seasons 3, 8 and 11 are considered the best since it takes Blizzard that long to get everything balanced. They were also longer so they were a lot more stable. Basically, PVPers want less change and more stability in core mechanics than PVEers, but Blizzard has always catered to the PVE crowd since they are larger. If Arena had somehow been spun off or separated from WOW it might have been more successful but at this point it is just a side activity in WOW, not a truly competitive game.

[Ogudei]

Warlocks are def the best

[Ciddy]

I was one of those SL/SL locks in BC, with a discipline priest as a partner. It was fun. Healers we faced ran out of mana very quickly.

2v2 is all I've really done. My guild has never been big on PvP. It's almost impossible to drag ONE person from my guild / group of friends to some 2v2 arenas, much less 3v3 or 5v5, and I don't want to just do them with randoms from trade chat.