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

This is bad news for everybody who doesn’t play with a cookie cutter setup, or who just isn’t very good as pvp. Teams below 1550 rating (the majority I would think) won’t get any rewards. This will probably change the Arena landscape, as I assume a lot of people will just not bother anymore with Arena. And this will leave the hardcore pvpers battling it out amongst themselves, and they might be struggling to get a decent rating.

Has Blizzard thought this through ? You would think so. I really wonder what the mindset it of the people that come up with this stuff…

Nice discussion on Tobold’s blog

Keep your esport out of battlegrounds

We formed a 5×5 team last week, when a hunter and a warrior joined our guild. Unfortunately that left us with no healer, which is a disaster in 5×5. Ruryk’s priest alt in Kara gear then joined us, which made it a little more bearable, but we still went 2-8. This week however there wasn’t a moment all 5 were online, so we did two nights of 3×3 with mixed results. We had a very nice winning streak and finally got above 1400 rating, then lost a bunch in a row and we’re back to 1376.

At this rate we gather about 280 pts a week, and the nice gear is about 1800 pts. Some stuff is cheaper, like the gloves (and the hunter’s axe ), but still it takes about 6 – 8 weeks for a not so great arena team to get an Arena epic. Not that I am complaining though, but the term wellfare epic is, in my opinion a bit misplaced .