Lower PvP Weapons - Why not?

[Bisley]

Ok. just curious. They did away with pvp weapons because of the whole merciless gladiator and gladiator weapons type concept because they were better than was available for pve. and thus people used pvp weapons for pve almost 24/7. Cause malchezaar weapons were ilvl 125, rest of kara was ilvl 115. heroic weapons were ilvl 105 and except an occasional weapon off ZA early bosses (ilvl 132) most people went for merciless/gladiator weapons. (ilvl 136/123 respectively). the only thing better for "casuals" were the badge weapons from IQD

146 - IQD badge weapons
136 - merciless
132 - za
125 - malchezaar
123 - gladiator
115 - karazhan
105 - heroics

Most people didnt have access to ZA. which puts the gap between PvP weapons available and the "average" 10 man raid gear (which most people struggled with that too somehow). The badge weapons took a LOT of badges, which were harder to get back then. So far and away the only good option for "casuals" was merciless weapons.

Now fast-forward back to today. Lets examine the potential options (for mostly non-raiders)

239 - Furious T2
232 - Furious T1 = ICC5 heroics = ToC10
219 - ulduar 10 = ToC5 = ICC5 regular
213 - deadly = naxx 25
200 - Heroics = naxx 10 = hateful

So we'll auto scrap furious T2 as its better than what is available from PvE. But I think if they made furious T1 weapons cost 75,000 honor (or even bump the cap to 100,000 and make it cost that much) PvE players that dont raid (doesnt make sense to me either, but im sure these make up a larger portion of the PvE playerbase than most people realize) will grind ICC heroics and an occasional ToC10 for weapons. PvP players that dont excel in arena's (im sure this makes up a large portion of the PvP playerbase) will grind honor for their weapons. Also, since PvP weapons are coated with resilence and stam, they wont even be good for PvE (except maybe tanks). Do you take the 232 weapon with 2 dps stats, or the one with 1 dps stat. eh?
Im not suggesting this from a "OMG I NEED WEAPONS" stand point (i have 232 or better weapons for all of 80s already). Just that I understand why they did away with the merciless/gladiator style honor grind for best available weapon. But that really doesnt apply anymore. If I have 2x 251 weapons for my rogues combat PvE set, and I need 2x daggers for PvP mut... should I have to PvE for PvP weapons?

Blizz's entire concept was "we dont want people to PvP for PvE gear".... why does "we dont want people to PvE for PvP gear" not apply? And at the price of honor cap for 2-3 season old weapons, I dont think many people would grind that out over just getting the weapons from ICC heroics.

[Relictus]

Wtf is up with your timeline. Half the stuff about TBC is set in wrong time periods (S1 gladiator weapons vs sunwell badge weapons?), and where the hell can you buy furious weapons now?

Also, if your timeline made any sense at all, "casuals" on most servers can pug ICC25 or at least ICC10 for some weapons.

[Bisley]

ok. you just proved my point.

casually available PvE weapons = ilvl 251+
casually available PvP weapons = -none-

The point is you CANT get furious weapons. But why not?
For the pvp'ers that DONT go into ICC pugs, or get 1800 rating, the best available weapons are ilvl 232 NON pvp weapons. So why not make the ilvl 232 pvp weapons available? PvE'ers wont flock to them cause they have better weapons available, and pvp'ers WILL flock to them. because they are pvp weapons. This makes sense.

[Kairu]

ok. you just proved my point.

casually available PvE weapons = ilvl 251+
casually available PvP weapons = -none-

The point is you CANT get furious weapons. But why not?
For the pvp'ers that DONT go into ICC pugs, or get 1800 rating, the best available weapons are ilvl 232 NON pvp weapons. So why not make the ilvl 232 pvp weapons available? PvE'ers wont flock to them cause they have better weapons available, and pvp'ers WILL flock to them. because they are pvp weapons. This makes sense.

1800 is easily done as casual.

so, 264 for casual PvP

[Relictus]

Use the 251 pve weapon then. I used IQD badge weapons on my enhance shaman alt until I was able to buy vengeful weapons. The pve weapons were also better than the merciless ones, so there wasn't any reason to use the merciless ones. Similar to right now, use the pve weapons until you can buy the pvp ones.

[Bisley]

no. for CASUALS it isnt easy to get to 1800. What weapons do you use to get there? oh, pve weapons? That makes sense
Statistics kinda show how it works out. In my BG (vengeance) there are 41 pages of teams over 1800 in 2v2. and 247 pages of teams overall. 17% of all teams in 2v2 have access to 264 PvP weapons. 83% of people DONT have access. And then count the number of people who only play battlegrounds and dont even have an arena team.
Yknow... The REAL casuals, not the people who play 3 hours a day but dont raid ICC 25 hardmodes so they just consider themselves casual.
The REAL casuals CAN log in, run FoS/PoS/HoR and walk out with loot (maybe not so much HoR for truly casuals) but its available to far more than just 17% of the players. Im not asking to give ilvl 264 weapons to everyone. I just think pvp weapons should be available to the bottom 80% of pvp'ers too.

actually, bloodlust-us has 68 pages of teams over 1800 and 249 pages of teams listed with the lowest team at 1151. So its pretty likely that there might be a cap on the number of teams shown. Even so, 68/249 is only 27% on the "best battlegroup in the US". Even the BEST battelgroup has 73% of players without access to the weapons

[truant19]

1800 is not casual. I am a season 3 and seaon 4 glad, and I only play casualy now with my wife and friends in arena, and I have yet to break 1600. I dont have time to farm honor for my off set peices or have the friends with the proper classes to make a decent team. Yet, I can easily join a pug icc 25 man on a saturday night with no problem.

Though the weapons that drop in reg PoS and FoS i belive are 232 and.... well you cant get easier then that and those weapons will make you decent in casual pve and pvp. So its not like there isnt any options out there.

[Kairu]

no. for CASUALS it isnt easy to get to 1800. What weapons do you use to get there? oh, pve weapons? That makes sense
Statistics kinda show how it works out. In my BG (vengeance) there are 41 pages of teams over 1800 in 2v2. and 247 pages of teams overall. 17% of all teams in 2v2 have access to 264 PvP weapons. 83% of people DONT have access. And then count the number of people who only play battlegrounds and dont even have an arena team.
Yknow... The REAL casuals, not the people who play 3 hours a day but dont raid ICC 25 hardmodes so they just consider themselves casual.
The REAL casuals CAN log in, run FoS/PoS/HoR and walk out with loot (maybe not so much HoR for truly casuals) but its available to far more than just 17% of the players. Im not asking to give ilvl 264 weapons to everyone. I just think pvp weapons should be available to the bottom 80% of pvp'ers too.

Theres a difference between casual, and bad, though many bads use the excuse of being casual. You can play your 10 games a week and easily get 1800, as long as your comp isn't completely stupid. That might've been hard to do in Season 3 and 4, but now when the top teams are 3000 instead of 2100-2200, its alot easier to do.

[Bisley]

Either way, bad pve'ers have access to pve weapons and bad pvp'ers have access to pve weapons...

So far all the arguments are for "you have an alternative, use it" and no one has a single excuse for why it would be bad.


EDIT: having merciless weapons be FAR better than the PvE equivalents and easier to get (back then getting 100-150 badges took more than just a day or two, so most "casuals" didnt have them (the people who only play 1-2 dungeons a day tops) it would take a true casual 20-30 days to get the badges to get a weapon. Whereas it would take 2-3 days to get a weapon that surpassed all weapons other than the 20-30 day grind weapon. THAT was a bad thing. There was no "real" alternative to PvP weapons for casuals. Now a days there ARE alternatives which just means that PvE'ers wont flock to the PvP weapons. the fact that there are alternatives is one of the best points of why it wouldnt be harmful to let pvp'ers have pvp weapons

[jayremy]

The topic isn't about giving casuals the best gear, not by any means, or people who aren't that good at arena.

The point is to make lower tier weaps available, it takes a long while to get pvp gear all decked out on a char especially for casuals, compare it to pve. This post suggest allowing LOWER ilevel gear for the masses, heck getting a heroic level weapon isn't that hard, some people even get carried through toc 10 mans if they are in a raiding guild and can obtain weaps.

Having pvp weaps available to progressing pvpers, who don't only focus on arena, if anything balances things out in gear disparity. Weapons are very important to many classes, 232 - 226 i think is a fair number ilevel to be available to all pvpers. Yes players may go for 232 over that heroic 200 item, or 219 but people are skipping ilevel content in pve already anyways and have been. Besides a pve 232 isn't hard to get but is also always better in pve than a 232 pvp weapon.


Note one final concept, why should we have to pve for our most vital slot pieces to be viable in pvp? You cannot farm frost emblems doing bgs can you? You cannot trade that old furious peice you replaced for a t9 piece can you? You do not have to pvp to get into toc or icc do you?

[Kairu]

The topic isn't about giving casuals the best gear, not by any means, or people who aren't that good at arena.

The point is to make lower tier weaps available, it takes a long while to get pvp gear all decked out on a char especially for casuals, compare it to pve. This post suggest allowing LOWER ilevel gear for the masses, heck getting a heroic level weapon isn't that hard, some people even get carried through toc 10 mans if they are in a raiding guild and can obtain weaps.

Having pvp weaps available to progressing pvpers, who don't only focus on arena, if anything balances things out in gear disparity. Weapons are very important to many classes, 232 - 226 i think is a fair number ilevel to be available to all pvpers. Yes players may go for 232 over that heroic 200 item, or 219 but people are skipping ilevel content in pve already anyways and have been. Besides a pve 232 isn't hard to get but is also always better in pve than a 232 pvp weapon.

Still don't see why it matters. That same casual can just go run FoS//PoS//HoR and get a pve weapon of the same iLvl value. Creating pvp equivalents, people would just flock to it being easier to get, since it isn't RNG based.

Either way though, there are alternatives that any casual can get.

[Bisley]

They are PVP equivalents, doesnt mean they are equal. And if you put things at honor cap, its not just "easier" to get for casuals. Running 1 FoS/PoS per day is a lot easier/faster than running 3-4 battlegrounds a day. PvE people will get the better PvE weapons faster. And if people DO wind up grinding BG's (which i dont think most pve'ers would) then maybe the BG queues will come back down (AV is up to 2-3 minute queues and everything else is over 8-9 minutes on vengeance) since most people wont BG queue since you cant be in the dungeon finder at the same time.

[Kairu]

They are PVP equivalents, doesnt mean they are equal. And if you put things at honor cap, its not just "easier" to get for casuals. Running 1 FoS/PoS per day is a lot easier/faster than running 3-4 battlegrounds a day. PvE people will get the better PvE weapons faster. And if people DO wind up grinding BG's (which i dont think most pve'ers would) then maybe the BG queues will come back down (AV is up to 2-3 minute queues and everything else is over 8-9 minutes on vengeance) since most people wont BG queue since you cant be in the dungeon finder at the same time.

I have a friend who has been running HoR for 2 months now on his mage and still hasn't gotten the drop he needs.

Also, this random battleground queueing is their way of reducing queue times, I don't think lower level weapons will do that. If anything, it'll encourage people to bot, which, though reducing queue times, doesn't do it in a great way.

[Feel The Power]

1800 as a casual is hard if you don't have friends who are into pvp. You may be in a guild with many people, and some may like to do arena or pvp, but many have their little clique of friends that they only do arenas with regardless how good you are. You can't pug icc for weapons, you're lucky if you can pug toc on my server if you're not part of the "cool crowd"...which btw does not mean they are good, it means they are just a big clique on my server who have the few good people carry them while they make anal and fail jokes.
You can't just put together an arena group in trade chat saying you want to be a serious group if you don't have the achievements for hitting the high ranks...which you can't get the achievements in the first place since you can't find good people as a casual.

[Strykie]

They should allow 2 season old weps, ie Furious as of Wrathful for 50k honor and 1k arena points also requiring 1200 rating.

[Bisley]

I have a friend who has been running HoR for 2 months now on his mage and still hasn't gotten the drop he needs.

Also, this random battleground queueing is their way of reducing queue times, I don't think lower level weapons will do that. If anything, it'll encourage people to bot, which, though reducing queue times, doesn't do it in a great way.

your friend is the exception, not the rule.

And the premise of being CASUAL is that you arent going to exclude friends or reroll a character just to make a good comp. Maybe I want to run spriest rogue because its me playing with my brother who lives 4 hours away and we have a good time doing it. It doesnt mean either of are bad, and if we run a poor comp, maybe its because we dont care THAT much and we'd rather play the game our way? I think thats what casual means. not all casuals are just bads. and not all "good casuals" have access to the hardcore player gear.

Even if they did add some sort of arena point requirement (since you can get arena points from the daily now) with or without the rating requirement would be an acceptable idea. Though requiring rating is like saying "this is only for arena folk" and i know its not hard to get, but some people like BGs and dislike arenas. no one requires PvE'ers to do ANY raiding to get ilvl 232 gear.

[Floreon]

To help out the new PvPers, they should let you buy the T1 weapon of the prior season, but not immediately when the season hits, and give it a different name or even a different graphic, to keep some of the prestige of "I hit this rating this season"

[Bisley]

different name/graphic would be fine. But TBH, you have achievements/statistics page if you want nostalgia.
Just putting furious weapons back in would be incredibly simple for the design team (would take like 5 minutes to implement tops). People seem to get too offended about how stuff thats now irrelevant is common.
Well I think its unfair that I paid $30,000 for a brand new 2001 car and now a days EVERYONE has a 2001 car and they get them for 5K. thats just complete crap I want a refund.

[Lythox]

Nah I'm happy with the rating requirement on the lowest tier weapon. It's not hard to get yet you need to show some dedication to pvp. you can already get a whole wrathful offset rating free and there's plenty of weapons dropping in puggable raids or eventually toc5 if you're really desperate. Gearing up ain't hard.

If you really want a weapon with resilience on it and fail getting 1800, I think it would be nice if blizzard would make a lower tier wep (tier 1 is rather nice stats to be given away without that much dedication/effort to pvp) and make it cost a fair amount of honor, like 68k like the trinket costs too atm..

Also would be nice if relentless rating req and offset would get boosted to a bit higher, it was fun having a mid range and high end tier. now its just, you play arena or you dont at all tiers.

[zødd]

TDLR: There is not reason why not.