Season 4 Rating Requirements and Arena Change

[Boubouille]

While Season 3 is still going strong, we wanted to announce ahead of time the rating requirements that will be present for arena items once Season 4 begins. We also wanted to give everyone a heads up to some changes that will be in an upcoming patch, altering how points are gained and players are matched in the arena system. The patch with these changes is scheduled to release before the start of Season 4.

First though, the rating requirement changes:

When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:
Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:
Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.

The changes to the rating requirements for these items reflect the nature of the items, their power, and the relative difficulty that should be had when attempting to obtain them. These items are comparable to those found in the newest 25 person raid zone, Sunwell Plateau, and should therefore also feel very challenging to obtain.

To help ensure that the challenge in obtaining these items stays true to those achieving these ratings, we'll also be implementing new rules with an upcoming patch to curb practices that undermine the core concepts of the arena system. These rules are as follows:

• If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
  

This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They'll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.

• If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.
  

This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.

We're excited to see these changes implemented, which will continue to emphasize the strong competitive nature of the arenas, and the challenge in obtaining the highest end rewards available for PvP.

[Wilhelmi]

Nice! Keep 'em coming

[Snitchers]

I'm dancing in my living room. \o/

[crahb]

Nice. Although they didn't mention it...with the release of this information I'm guessing Season 4 is just around the corner.

[LavaDuck]

I'm dancing in my living room. \o/

Yey.. arena gets "harder"

[Sporny]

Nice. Although they didn't mention it...with the release of this information I'm guessing Season 4 is just around the corner.

Maybe, maybe... time to get my shoulders on my reroll then...

[Lucifer Morningstar]

Yey.. arena gets "harder"

Harder = more fun !

[Awful]

Hells yeah

no 1400 players in 4/5 S4 gear

[alcaras]

Hmm, how will folks still be able to play on two or more main teams each week under this system?

E.g. There's a shortage of PvP paladins in my guild, so I play on two 5v5 teams each week, because both teams need a paladin and there's only me. I end my games on the higher rated team to get points (one team is around 2150, the other around 1950).

Under this new system, how will I be able to play with both teams and still get decent points every week? It would seem that my personal rating would quickly lag behind and I'd be out of the 150 point safety window if I kept switching teams.

I don't want to have to choose between the two teams, since both are comprised of friends, and we can't merge the teams since there's 12 people in total across both (counting me)... Anyone have ideas on what I can do come season 4?

[druidiful]

I wish they would make this work in reverse also, so that it would be much less likely to see people in full s3/s4 in the 1500 or 1600 brackets.

[mgp84]

I can't belive this... WOW thnx blizzard. Finally every jackass in my server running around looking like me (T6 pieces w/T5 shoulders) will actually have to work for it. Thank you! I fully support this! BAN WELFARE EPIX> Because it doesn't take a single gram of brain matter to buy arena PTS and sit in an AV waving at people.

[Nikzu]

FINALLY! Thank you Blizzard.

[Golijov]

I am happy for this change, I don't think people should be able to get sunwell-level gear for playing 10 games a week, or for grinding honor. I am glad that you will need to be at least slightly skilled to get most of your season 4 gear. And quite honestly, 1700 rating is not at all hard to get, the only hard part will be the weapons and shoulders. The personal rating and queueing changes are a plus too, though I will miss farming points off clueless retards who purchased a 2k team

[leviathonlx]

Best changes Blizzard has made in a while. Least now every random joe won't look like a re-colored version of my druid in Sunwell gear 2 months from now unless they had to work for it.

[Mistik]

Finally they made something nice for the arena system even though it should require more than 1700 rating for all items imo :P

[Macalister]

This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they'll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.

Cheers! I was waiting for this change.. dodging made easier.

[Krypt]

haha no scrubs

[kuett]

u should thank blizzard on the forums also
i think the chance of seeing ur positive comments are higher if they were posted there instead

[Wessen]

What Blizz rally needs to do is take arena completely out of the live realms and have it only exist on dedicated arena and battleground servers. This get all the PvP class nerfs out of the PvE game and all the welfare PvP gear off of the toons that do not deserve to have it. There will be ways to cheat the system and get S4 without actually earning it... it will happen, just as it has every arena season so far. Get your PvP out of my PvE and go play CS, GoW, or Halo.

[Qwios]

Will say first I don't Arena anymore, and rarely bg, PVE all the way etc.

But I can't wait for the bottom to fall out of the rankings when all the current 1300-1500 teams stop playing. It will be hilarious.