(WoW) PVP Prospects...
I've never really been into competitive gameplay - I preferred cooperatively blasting things back when I played Doom in the computer lab and I've pretty much ignored many "big" games (especially in the FPS genre) because they had a large focus on online PVP play. My competitive streak is something I try to mess with as little as possible because I know going down that road gives me no joy. So after avoiding WoW arenas like the plague, why am I even considering it?
Um... well... as I mentioned before, that Season 11 paladin armor looks pretty strikingly cool. Just how much trouble am I willing to go through for a look I like? That's the question...
Due mostly to converted Wintergrasp (the last PVP-oriented thing I thought well of in the game), I'll probably go into patch 4.3 with 4000 (or near to) honor points. That's a couple items of the lower-tier PVP gear that (if the pattern holds) has the previous season's model. Not what I want, but it's a small leg up in being PVP-viable. No, the good stuff comes from conquest points.
So how do you get those? Well... arenas. Technically, you can get them through rated battlegrounds, but that requires a (winning) group of ten people in advance and time to do it - a level of coordination that's just a bit too much to really consider. Can also get all of 25 points from a daily random battleground win, but that's too chancy. Also, I can get them by converting valor points, but it'll be a while before I have a surplus of those (functional raiding gear comes before appearance). No, arenas seem to be about the only viable route I can even consider if I want to see any of that gear in the next few months and that... is likely to be somewhat painful.
There's a weekly cap on conquest points that starts at 1350, I think, and goes up if your rating goes up past certain points. On the other hand, if you lose, your cap doesn't drop, but your rating goes down and you don't earn anything from losses. Theoretically, even a losing team will slide down the rankings until they match up with groups they can win against. Sometimes. Though... in a ladder system like that, someone is always on the bottom, too.
I'm horribly unclear on just how many points you earn from a win. Conflicting sources seem to say 1/10th or 1/5th of that initial weakly cap. And each visible armor piece is between 1650 and 2200 points. So the whole look appears to be about 9350 points, or 7 weeks of reaching the cap (barring any cap increases). Whether that requires 5 wins a week or 10 (or if the reward is even more variable than that), I'm not sure. I also don't know how long a typical arena match takes.
The timeline doesn't seem horrible for an armor set, but the involvement is daunting:
- Learning to PVP, which means discarding Protection philosophy and any concept of actual rotation for better snap judgements in how to defeat other plays as (probably) Retribution.
- Respecing? I really don't want to flip-flop my spec every week, but PVP Ret is not the same as PVE Ret. I could use the latter, but it would put me at a disadvantage. How bad of one, I'm not sure.
- Gearing. In competitive PVP, you need Resilience. In PVE, you pretty much avoid it. I'd need to put together a gear set using justice points and crafting probably that would be entry-level passable.
- Coordinating with 1-4 other people. Actually, two already said "sure I might be interested" to my surprise, so getting a team together may not be that hard.
Mostly there, though, I'd be starting from near-scratch and... ugh. The idea of an uphill battle all the way is wearying even without having started. I don't even know if the numbers I have are right, and sources seem conflicting so I don't have a good site to go to in order to find exactly what I need to know.
I suppose I could just pass on the set. Or pick it up with honor points in 5.0 (or 4.4). Eh... not sure how interested I am, but I guess we'll find out in early December.
Um... well... as I mentioned before, that Season 11 paladin armor looks pretty strikingly cool. Just how much trouble am I willing to go through for a look I like? That's the question...
Due mostly to converted Wintergrasp (the last PVP-oriented thing I thought well of in the game), I'll probably go into patch 4.3 with 4000 (or near to) honor points. That's a couple items of the lower-tier PVP gear that (if the pattern holds) has the previous season's model. Not what I want, but it's a small leg up in being PVP-viable. No, the good stuff comes from conquest points.
So how do you get those? Well... arenas. Technically, you can get them through rated battlegrounds, but that requires a (winning) group of ten people in advance and time to do it - a level of coordination that's just a bit too much to really consider. Can also get all of 25 points from a daily random battleground win, but that's too chancy. Also, I can get them by converting valor points, but it'll be a while before I have a surplus of those (functional raiding gear comes before appearance). No, arenas seem to be about the only viable route I can even consider if I want to see any of that gear in the next few months and that... is likely to be somewhat painful.
There's a weekly cap on conquest points that starts at 1350, I think, and goes up if your rating goes up past certain points. On the other hand, if you lose, your cap doesn't drop, but your rating goes down and you don't earn anything from losses. Theoretically, even a losing team will slide down the rankings until they match up with groups they can win against. Sometimes. Though... in a ladder system like that, someone is always on the bottom, too.
I'm horribly unclear on just how many points you earn from a win. Conflicting sources seem to say 1/10th or 1/5th of that initial weakly cap. And each visible armor piece is between 1650 and 2200 points. So the whole look appears to be about 9350 points, or 7 weeks of reaching the cap (barring any cap increases). Whether that requires 5 wins a week or 10 (or if the reward is even more variable than that), I'm not sure. I also don't know how long a typical arena match takes.
The timeline doesn't seem horrible for an armor set, but the involvement is daunting:
- Learning to PVP, which means discarding Protection philosophy and any concept of actual rotation for better snap judgements in how to defeat other plays as (probably) Retribution.
- Respecing? I really don't want to flip-flop my spec every week, but PVP Ret is not the same as PVE Ret. I could use the latter, but it would put me at a disadvantage. How bad of one, I'm not sure.
- Gearing. In competitive PVP, you need Resilience. In PVE, you pretty much avoid it. I'd need to put together a gear set using justice points and crafting probably that would be entry-level passable.
- Coordinating with 1-4 other people. Actually, two already said "sure I might be interested" to my surprise, so getting a team together may not be that hard.
Mostly there, though, I'd be starting from near-scratch and... ugh. The idea of an uphill battle all the way is wearying even without having started. I don't even know if the numbers I have are right, and sources seem conflicting so I don't have a good site to go to in order to find exactly what I need to know.
I suppose I could just pass on the set. Or pick it up with honor points in 5.0 (or 4.4). Eh... not sure how interested I am, but I guess we'll find out in early December.
Looks like you can do it with just BGs if you've the time: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3595670888#1
ReplyDeleteHmm. So I see. Still requires winning, but not a full rated battleground group. Though at 50 CP per, that's... what? 28 BG wins per week to cap CP. That is... probably... a lot of time. Something to consider.
ReplyDelete